It didn’t take long for him to have some of the answers. He’d been satisfied to learn that there was no way Kelly was responsible for the four days of Britta’s disappearance while she’d been here in Raven’s Cliff.
However on the day that Ryan had thought a bullet had been shot at them, nobody could verify Kelly’s whereabouts. Thank God the bullet hadn’t found its mark.
By the time he’d finished the calls, he slumped into the chair opposite the sofa, exhausted but unable to sleep. It was always sad to realize one of the good guys had become one of the bad.
He suspected that Kelly had walked the wrong path, and the motive had probably been money. There had been many times in Ryan’s career that he could have taken a bribe and looked the other way, but he’d never been a lover of the things that money could buy.
Maybe it came from the fact that as a young boy he’d learned not to get too attached to things. Things got broken when war broke out, houses and apartments were lost when eviction papers were served.
Maybe that’s also why he had never formed a deep attachment to any person. He stared at the woman sleeping on the sofa. Except Britta. Her loving heart and spirit had somehow reached inside him and grabbed hold of what little innocence, what little love had survived his parents’ marriage.
It was near dawn when he finally fell asleep in the chair next to the sofa, his gun within easy reach and his dozing senses still on the alert for any danger that might come their way.
He awoke two hours later to find Britta still sleeping. He stared at her for a long time, grateful that her sleep seemed to be deep and peaceful.
Despite the tears she’d shed the night before, he considered her one of the strongest women he’d ever met. He was aware that part of his love for her was built on a fierce admiration. She’d had everything she knew and treasured ripped away from her in a single night, and yet during the time he’d spent with her in Boston she’d met each loss with a stoic acceptance.
As he remained watching her, she began to stir, first stretching like a cat with her arms overhead, then opening her eyes.
For an unguarded moment they looked at each other, and all of what they’d shared in the past was there, both the joy and the pain.
He broke the eye contact and stood. “Good morning,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
Her slender hand moved to her discolored throat and she nodded. “Okay, I think. Better than last night.” She sat up and ran a hand through her sleep-tousled hair. “Anything new?”
“Why don’t I go make the coffee, you get dressed and then we’ll talk,” he replied. It was far too difficult to concentrate with her in that skimpy nightgown.
Minutes later she joined him at the kitchen table where he had the coffee ready and had toasted some English muffins.
She was dressed in jeans and a pale blue turtleneck that perfectly matched her eyes and hid the marks Kelly had left on her neck.
“Sometime today Kelly will be picked up and taken back to headquarters,” he said as she slid into a chair. “I had him checked out as far as the dates of your abduction here were concerned, and it’s impossible that he had anything to do with it.”
“What about the day we thought we were shot at?”
“That’s still up in the air. My gut feeling is that he was probably responsible for that, but not the days you were gone.”
“So we still have a mystery on our hands.” She reached for one of the English muffins and looked out the window where dawn was just beginning to break. In the distance the lighthouse was visible, one of the first structures to catch the early-morning sun. At the very top the damage from the fire that had occurred so long ago was visible.
“What are our plans for the day?” she asked as she turned to look at him once again. Her eyes were as blue as the morning sky outside the window.
“We’re going to just sit tight here until I hear that Kelly is in custody.” He reached for an English muffin. “There’s no point in going out and making ourselves a target for him.”
“Good, then I want to talk about us.”
Her words hung in the air between them as Ryan tensed. This was what he’d dreaded all night when she’d told him all her memories had come back.
“If all your memories have returned to you, then you should know we have nothing to talk about,” he said.
“But I think we do.” She paused, and once again her gaze went out the window. For a long moment she was silent, as if collecting her thoughts.
Her silence made his dread grow deeper. He knew he didn’t want to have this conversation with her, that it would probably mirror the last talk they’d had more than two months ago when he’d walked out of her life. He’d never forgotten the pain that had darkened her beautiful eyes, and he’d never wanted to see that kind of pain on her face again.
He steeled himself as she returned her gaze to him. “I love you, Ryan. I loved you before and I’m in love with you now.”
Each word was like an arrow into his heart, piercing him with a sadness he’d only known once before, when he’d initially told her goodbye.
“And I think you loved me before and that you love me still,” she said. As usual, with her emotion came her accent. Under any other circumstances he would have found it charming, but not now. He didn’t want to hear the emotion in her voice. He didn’t want to see it raw and naked as it shone from her eyes.
He drew a weary sigh. “Britta, why do you want to rehash the past? Hopefully within days we’ll be done here and you’ll move on to your future somewhere else with somebody else.”
“I don’t want to move on with somebody else,” she protested. “I didn’t understand why you walked away from me the first time, and I’ll understand even less if you walk away from me again.”
She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. “We’re good together, Ryan. We have laughter and we have passion. I don’t care what you tell me. We were in love. You can’t lie about it any longer. I have my memories back and I know what happened.”
He pulled his hand from beneath hers, finding her very touch like fire against his skin. He got up from the table and instead stood rigid and straight. “We also fought.”
She frowned at him. “We didn’t fight,” she protested. “We discussed things. We had different points of view. That’s not fighting, that’s exchanging ideas.”
“Yeah, we exchange ideas and it isn’t long before somebody gets angry and then voices get louder and tempers flare and before you know it the police are at the door for domestic violence.” The words bubbled out of him unbidden, his voice harsh and angry, and he wasn’t sure who was more surprised by them, him or her.
“Ryan.” She got up from the table and approached him where he stood, a look of confusion on her face. “Ryan, what are you talking about?” Her voice was soft as a caress and touched him despite the bad visions the talk had evoked in his head.
He wanted to run from the conversation, from the childhood memories that had become nightmares he had as an adult. But he knew she wouldn’t let him run, that she wouldn’t be satisfied until he gave her answers.
“That’s what love and marriage mean to me,” he finally said. “Fights that turn into thrown fists, screaming matches that always ended in a police presence at my house.” The words spewed out of someplace deep inside him. He had never talked about his childhood to anyone before in his entire life, had always found the topic too painful, too intimate to share.
“I spent most of my childhood hiding in the bottom of a closet afraid that when I finally came out one or both of my parents would be dead, killed by each other. We moved from place to place, evicted by landlords after so many disturbance calls to the police. My parents said they loved each other, but that didn’t stop them from their fighting. I decided then I’d never get married, that I didn’t want to have anything to do with love.”
“But that’s not love,” she said, her voice soft and winsome. She took a step toward him but sto
pped as he narrowed his eyes and held up a hand, wanting to keep her away from him.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me all this before?” she asked, her eyes filled with a deep compassion.
He didn’t answer and she did exactly what he hadn’t wanted her to do, she touched him. She not only touched him but she wrapped him in her arms.
He stood stiffly in her embrace, not wanting to yield to her softness, to the promise of something different that he saw in her eyes, that he felt in her heart beating against his.
“Love is about allowing for differences in people, it’s about loving them despite the fact that they think differently or have another opinion. We argued, yes. I’m a strong woman and I have my own opinions and I like to be heard. You’re the same way. We argued in a healthy way, Ryan, and never crossed that line. What your parents had, that wasn’t about love. That was about control or something else, but it definitely wasn’t about love.”
He could have stood in the sweet embrace of her arms forever. He might have even fallen into the fantasy of possibility her words produced, but at that moment his cell phone rang from his pocket.
She dropped her arms from around him as he reached for the phone. “Burton,” he said.
He listened to the caller on the other end and looked everywhere in the kitchen but at Britta. Thank God for the interruption, otherwise he might have lost the last modicum of strength he had to keep her at an emotional distance. And that would have been a mistake for both of them.
He finished the call and hung up. “Kelly is now in custody. The arrest went smoothly without conflict. He confessed to everything. He was on the Boston Gentleman payroll. He took the shot at us in the town square and he’s sporting a nasty scratch down the side of his face. He is hoping to cut a deal by offering information about the gang, but we aren’t going to deal with him. He’ll be facing a murder charge, attempted murder concerning the attack last night and a host of other charges that will keep him in prison for a very long time.”
“That’s good news,” she said, her eyes still shadowed with emotion.
“That’s great news. In fact, I think we should go out for breakfast to celebrate.” He wanted to get her out of the bungalow, out among other people, where having a personal conversation would be impossible. “Then we’ll hit the streets again. Maybe today we’ll learn something that will move us closer to ending all this.”
He didn’t look at her, but instead turned and walked into the living room, aware of her following just behind him. “I’ll shower first,” he said as he grabbed some clean clothes from his suitcase. All he wanted to do was escape before she could begin a dialogue again.
She remained silent as he disappeared into the bathroom, but he had a feeling the personal issues between them weren’t resolved as far as she was concerned.
As far as he was concerned they were done. Tonight after she went to bed he was going to call and request that somebody else be put in charge of her care.
It had been a mistake for him to come back into her life in any capacity, and he intended to do exactly what he’d done the first time he’d gotten in over his head with her…run.
AS USUAL by the time Britta and Ryan left the bungalow the early-morning sunshine had disappeared and dark clouds hung low in the sky, creating a gray pall that clung to everything. But the gray weather outside couldn’t compete with the utter bleakness of Britta’s heart.
The mystery of the missing four days of her life couldn’t compare with the mystery of why Ryan refused to give their love any chance at all. Her heart had ached for him when he’d told her about his parents’ marriage and the terrible childhood he’d suffered, but if there was one thing Britta had learned over the past seven months it was that you couldn’t do anything to change your past but you could pick the path of your future.
It was obvious he was done with any further conversation about their relationship. Since they’d left the cottage he’d been closed off, so distant she had a feeling nothing she said would reach him, so she didn’t even try.
She almost wished for her amnesia back so she wouldn’t remember the pain of losing him before, a pain she knew, if she couldn’t change his mind, she’d experience all over again.
They headed for the docks where they’d discovered a little diner that offered terrific breakfast fare. It was obviously a favorite place of the local fishermen, and today several of them sat at the counter or lingered around the wooden tables.
Ryan lifted a hand in greeting as he saw Sam Lanier and Captain Claybourne seated at one of the tables. Captain Claybourne motioned for Ryan and her to join them.
Britta would have preferred that she and Ryan sit by themselves, but Ryan beelined to the table as if glad for the company.
“You’re both out and about early this morning,” Captain Claybourne said as they sat at the table.
“I figured most of you would be out on the water already,” Ryan replied.
“Weatherman says a front will be blowing in sometime this morning with high winds and rain. No use going out just to come back in,” Claybourne said.
At that moment the waitress arrived to take orders. When she’d left the table the men made small talk. They spoke about the unusually bad weather, about local politics and sports. Britta listened absently, her attention focused on Ryan’s handsome features.
Had she fallen in love with him simply because of their forced proximity? They’d been cooped up together in a small apartment in Boston for months while they waited for the trial to begin. It had been a forced intimacy that was unnatural. Except it hadn’t taken long for it to feel completely natural.
No, she hadn’t fallen in love with him simply because they’d lived together like husband and wife for several months. She hadn’t fallen in love with him because he’d been convenient and the only male in sight.
She’d fallen in love with him because of his inner strength and convictions, his moral code that mirrored her own. She’d fallen in love with him because he hated to lose at card games and loved crime dramas on television. She loved him because he had a wonderful ability to laugh at himself and could make her laugh no matter what her mood.
Who knew why two people fell in love with each other? It was one of the great mysteries of life that nobody could completely figure out.
When the waitress refilled their coffee cups, then left the table, Britta focused on the conversation instead of dwelling on thoughts of Ryan.
“People are getting nervous,” Captain Claybourne said.
“The entire town is on edge. Look around in here. This is usually a noisy crowd, fishermen telling tales, flirting with the waitresses, tourists taking in the local flavor and such.”
Britta realized there was an unnatural hush in the diner. Men sat alone at the counter, huddled over coffee as if trying to get warm. Men and women at the tables spoke in low, hushed tones as if sharing secrets as their gazes furtively darted first one way, then another. Beneath it all was a thrum of energy that felt discordant and sick.
“Are you a superstitious man, Captain Claybourne?” Britta asked, looking at the salty old fisherman curiously.
His weather-worn features softened with a smile. “As a rule most sailors are a superstitious lot. Never begin a voyage on a Friday, never rename your boat or you’ll incur the wrath of Neptune. Whistling on board is said to bring on a storm and avoid black cats and overturned washbasins before getting on a ship. That’s just a few, but I could go on and on.”
“Please don’t,” Sam said with a laugh. “If you get him started, we’ll be here until midnight.” He cupped his hands around his mug of coffee. “People are whispering that the curse of Captain Earl Raven has taken over the village, that evil walks the streets now.”
Ryan looked at Captain Claybourne. “You born and raised here, Captain?”
He nodded. “That’s the truth.”
“So you were here the night the Beacon Manor lighthouse burned.”
“And rode out the hurrican
e that followed,” Claybourne replied. “Hell of a night it was. The whole town saw the lighthouse on fire. It would have been worse if the storm hadn’t moved in and the rain hadn’t doused it.”
His eyes narrowed and he paused to take a sip of his coffee. “The storm that night was the likes of which I’d never seen before. It was as if hell had come up for a visit. The next morning the town was damaged, the lighthouse was burned and that poor woman from New York was gone.”
“Woman from New York?” Britta asked.
“She was a rich one engaged to Nicholas Sterling III,” Sam said. “A real looker, too. Her father was some millionaire businessman. She seemed quite smitten with Nicholas.” He frowned. “Now that one, a trust-fund fellow, thought his family’s money could solve any problem that might come up.” Sam frowned. “He should have lit the lighthouse that night. It was the anniversary of Captain Raven’s wreck. The lighthouse was supposed to shine on those rocks where the old sailor had lost his family.
“After that night, Nicholas’s father lost everything, made some bad investments and eventually left town a broken man,” Claybourne continued. “There’s still a lot of storm damage around, but we’ve slowly been rebuilding.”
Sam snorted. “It would help if the mayor kept his promises. Of course, I know right now he’s grieving the loss of his daughter. But we’ve been hearing him talk about tearing down the damaged buildings and cottages for years and it hasn’t been done.”
“What do you think about Chief Patrick Swanson?” Ryan asked the men.
Sam grinned. “The man scares the hell out of me.”
“He’s a good man,” Claybourne said. “Tough but protective of the town and his men.”
At that moment the waitress delivered their orders and they focused on the food. As more people came in for breakfast there was still a pall over the occupants. Even the clink of silverware and glasses seemed subdued.
They had just finished the meal when a woman came flying in the door. She was a birdlike older woman, thin and with dark hair as wild as Medusa. Her body shook as she looked around the room. She froze as her frantic gaze landed on Sam Lanier.
With the Material Witness in the Safehouse Page 14