Sorority Secrets (Campus Love and Murder Sorority Eyes Romance Book 2)

by Ciara Christie

  He laughed.

  “This is our getaway,” he said with a straight face. “I had them made as comfortable as possible.”

  “Our getaway?”

  “Trust me. There’s not much time.”

  “What about the priest?”

  “What about him? The church gets a new roof out of the deal.”

  “But what about the family of the deceased?”

  He did a double take. “Alice, for the smartest person I’ve ever met that is the dumbest comment I’ve ever heard. There is no deceased. There is no mourning family of the deceased. They’re all specially hired to play their grieving roles.”

  “You sneaky bastard.”

  He grinned.

  I hitched up my skirt and climbed in as Michael opened up the lid of the other coffin. It too was empty. He climbed in as Robyn and Harry appeared. They were dressed identically to Michael and I.

  “Why didn’t you guys tell me about this?” I whispered.

  “We needed you to act natural,” Robyn said and pulled the veil over her face. “Now lie down. Both of you.”

  Robyn and Harry sealed the lids over us.

  “For the record,” I said, “it’s the weirdest feeling in the world to be present at one’s own marriage and funeral in the same day.”

  “His and hers coffins,” Michael said. “It’s genius.”

  “Good luck, Alice,” Robyn said.

  “Wait! Where are we going? Will I ever see you again?”

  “I don’t know, Alice.”

  The lid sealed shut.

  FIFTY FOUR

  Alice’s Journal

  An hour later the coffin lid was removed. I sat up inside the cabin of a private jet.

  Michael sat up in his coffin.

  “I slept like the dead,” he said and leaned over and kissed my lips.

  “You will be if you ever pull a stunt like that again without consulting me.”

  His face grew solemn as the jet taxied onto the runway.

  “I’m sorry, Alice.”

  “When will I ever see my friends again?” I asked. “And Emily?”

  “We’ll figure out something, I promise.”

  I climbed out of the coffin, and let him hold me tight.

  “Where are we going, Michael?”

  “To the place they’d least expect.”

  “Your home town?”

  He nodded.

  I had mixed feelings about that. Yes it was beautiful, but my stomach knotted at some of the memories.

  “Or anywhere you’d like, Alice,” he said. “But first a honeymoon in Monaco. And no argument.”

  “Monaco?”

  He grinned. “Sun, sea and lots of...”

  I kissed him. Hard. “Shut up with the wisecracks and make love to me.”

  I pulled away. “I was hoping you’d say that,” he said.

  He led me across the cabin and opened a door. It lead to a bedroom with a four poster bed.

  “No way,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I grinned and pushed him backwards onto the bed. “Make love to me until Monaco.”

  FIFTY FIVE

  Alice’s Journal

  With forty five minutes before touch down at Nice airport in France, we shared a sensual shower and then dressed.

  I found the garter and the small hand gun and felt a knot in my stomach tighten. I rolled the garter up to one thigh and slid the gun inside before pulling on a cotton summer dress.

  We landed and were met by a customs and immigration officer who helped load our luggage into the back of an open convertible sports car parked in an aircraft hangar on the outskirts of the airport.

  Money exchanged hands between Michael and the officer. Then we left in the sports car with Michael driving.

  It was only twenty nine miles to Monaco and we sped through a tunnel that took us across the border.

  “How about a quick tour of the principality?”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “It’s on the way to our villa.”

  “Villa?”

  “You’ll like it.”

  The winding road up the mountainside gave us a breath-taking view of the coast. Michael expertly took the bends and my breath away as he kept the nearside of his car a mere few inches from the low stone wall that ran alongside the road. The sheer drop over the side made my stomach flip. I leaned into Michael and buried my face into his shoulders.

  I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

  “Michael pull over.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I need to tell you something”

  He stopped the car at a small lay-by situated near tight bend of the mountain road.

  “They call this stretch of the road devil’s curse,” he said.

  I climbed out of the car and stared out at the aquamarine vision that was the ocean below us. I felt his reassuring hand so my shoulders. He gently but firmly tuned me around to face him.

  “Any regrets?”

  I took a deep breath. “Michael, I’m pregnant.”

  “You told me that already.”

  “But what I didn’t tell you was that I want to jeep the baby and that means we need to start afresh. With new identities so we never risk our family breaking up. Understand?”

  He blinked.

  “Are you going to say anything?” I asked.

  “You’re going to have my baby?”

  I swallowed hard. “Yes, it’s yours. Ours.”

  His lips met mine as his arms held me more tenderly than ever before.

  I heard a car race along the road and then brakes squeal as it approached the tight bend.

  Something made me push Michael away and glance at the approaching sports car. The blond woman behind the wheel seemed familiar.

  “She looks like Sinclair,” I said.

  Michael nodded. And the man in the passenger seat could be...”

  I automatically pulled up the hem of my skirt and retrieved the hand gun.

  The man in the passenger seat was Jonathan Barret. He aimed a gun at us. I took aim and squeezed my trigger.

  The windshield of Sinclair’s car shattered. The car swerved out across the road and then directly at us.

  Michael pushed me aside as the car hit ours and then collided with the wall of the mountain road. I picked myself up off the road and ran at their car.

  It had smashed through the stone wall and was teetering on the edge. Sinclair lay still. Face down on the hood. Barret had been crushed against the wall.

  Both were dead.

  “How could they have known?” I asked.

  Michael looked around. At this hour there was no traffic.

  “This gives me an idea. A way for us to be free. Give me your passport.”

  I smiled. “Will it work?”

  “Long enough for us to make a life elsewhere with new identities.”

  “Good enough.”

  We dropped our passports inside Sinclair’s car.

  “Ready?” Michael asked.

  I nodded. We stood at the rear fender and together we kicked out hard. The car groaned as it slid off the road and tumbled down the mountain side. Taking Sinclair and Barret with them.

  It somersaulted a dozen times and exploded.

  We ran back to our car and drove in the opposite direction. I glanced back at the fireball rising up into the sky and felt my stomach skip.

  FIFTY SIX

  Robyn’s Journal

  As the sun sets over the golden Kimberley Lake my heart fills with regret. I find myself out on the old wooden jetty without quote understanding why. I replayed the past week’s events in my mind.

  After we’d helped Alice and Michael escape, Harry and I had gone our separate ways. We hadn’t spoken since and I went back to living with Mai Ling. My heart felt shredded.

  Knowing Alice and Michael were now safe I had hoped and almost convinced myself that Harry and I would get back together. But he had ignored all my calls. In fact, no
one had seen him for two days.

  The silence feels like a knife to my heart.

  I clutch my journal to my chest, knowing there is much I need to set down as a final message to Harry that needed to come from the heart.

  Harry, if you read my last thoughts please understand and forgive me. All the hopes and dreams for a life together now torture me. The hope of starting a family together. I know now that will never come. Of celebrating each new day for the miracle of living with my best friend, lover and soulmate who is there to depend on, I know will never come again.

  The knowledge I’ll never again share kisses that spontaneously make me smile with the beauty of vulnerability and feel like I am flying with lips on mine that are scintillatingly sensual and arousing. I am now adrift with remorse and loss.

  The thought of knowing I’ve lost forever the feelings of having the kind of sex with someone that makes me simultaneously feel like a goddess, but also a dirty whore. That I had thrown away the chance of sharing a perfect union with a soulmate who understood me completely and accepted all my faults makes me laugh with a sickening bitterness. The loss consumes me and I sink to my knees before the drowning sunset.

  I tried to tell myself that you Harry are not the perfect soulmate I convinced myself you are. If you were, then surely you’d have been at my side to lean on throughout each moment of despair I felt over the Maddox case. But that would be to deny my unforgivable part in our downfall. My resolute decision to put Alice and Michael in constant danger. And all for what?

  Kimberley Lake had brought us together and it feels only right that it should witness our irretrievable end. I’ve kicked off my shoes and stepped to the edge of the jetty. The only peace I will ever again find in my life is now just one step away.

  I will love you forever, Harry. Goodbye.

  I set the journal down on the jetty.

  Through my sobs I didn’t register the low rumbling engine until it was almost on top of me.

  It suddenly died and the absence of noise dragged me out of my self-pity long enough to glance up at the figure climbing out of the car and striding toward me. I recognized Harry’s athletic frame and felt my stomach back flip.

  I hadn’t eaten in three days and was sure I was hallucinating from the hunger as I slowly stood and faced him.

  “I called you,” I said with a bitter edge that shredded my throat into a painful rasp. “A hundred times.”

  He nodded. “I needed time,” he said.

  “For what?” I asked. “To decide if you could tolerate loving a complete bitch? A disappointment? A mistake?”

  He flinched at my outburst.

  “To realize, Robyn,” he said, “that I needed to apologize to you for not supporting you in your hour of need. To apologize for failing as a soulmate to appreciate the emotional turmoil you must have experienced over the whole Michael Maddox case. To find a way to ask you to forgive me. And to promise I will always, going forward, consider how my actions make you feel.”

  To be sure my heartbreak wasn’t making me delirious I needed to touch him to be sure he was real. I poked his face with one trembling finger.

  He smiled and reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a small blue velvet box and dropped to one knee.

  “Robyn,” he said with watery eyes drowning me. “Will you accept this fool of a man and marry me?”

  I shook my head. “I hate you so much, Harry.”

  I beat my fists against his powerful shoulders. “Don’t you ever again make me feel abandoned and so completely worthless,” I screamed. “Without you I want to die.”

  Tears rolled down his cheeks and he leapt to his feet and embraced me. I felt myself collapse in his arms. His lips sought mine and felt like a breath of fresh air to a suffocating woman. He held me until my sobs subsided.

  It was a long, long time.

  “Take me home,” I said. “Make love to me like it’s our first and last time.”

  “Is that a ‘yes’?” he asked.

  I laughed.

  “Did I tell you I hate you?” I asked.

  “Tell me again,” he said and allowed himself a small smile. “As often as you like.”

  FIFTY SEVEN

  Robyn’s journal

  Whenever I think of Alice and Michael, or whatever they call themselves now, I shall always be grateful for knowing them. It’s a shame the world will never know, until perhaps one day when they are safe to return to our world, just how much we all owe them.

  As I gazed out of the Sorority Eyes office window across to the golden lake I heard a knock at the door.

  “Come,” I said.

  The door opened and a sweet, pretty face looked at me with intense and brightly curious eyes.

  “Hi Robyn,” she said. “You said at the wedding I should pop in and discuss an opportunity.”

  “Hi Emily, please come in. Take a seat.”

  She gracefully sat down before me.

  “So?” she said eagerly.

  “Well, Emily, as you may know we run a Private Investigation service.”

  “Sorority Eyes.”

  “Yes, and according to your resume, you have a rather unique skill set that we might be interested in.”

  “Tell me more!”

  “It just so happens that a client called me yesterday. It’s a delicate situation.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “Well... to be honest, yes possibly.”

  “Romantic?”

  “There’s always the chance...”

  “I’m in. Just promise me one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t tell Alice.”

  <<<<>>>>

  THE END

  Emily’s Sorority Eyes adventure begins next in:

  A Field of Secrets (Campus Love and Murder Sorority Eyes Romance book 3)

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