How do you know that?
Because I saw them, dummy. If we get lucky, maybe there’ll be some of his DNA left when the cops find the body.
Jesus, Nathan.
What? The boyfriend is always the number one suspect. Especially if they find her broken necklace in his vehicle. It’ll look like they struggled.
You hate him that much?
Let’s just say, wiping that smug look off his face will be almost as much fun as—
Stop talking. Please. Let’s just get this over with.
* * *
THE MEMORY FLEETED as Nathan knelt in front of Olive to check the dilation of her pupils. She wanted to shove him away, but she couldn’t lift her hands from the chair seat. “Almost there,” he murmured.
He rose and grabbed some paper towels from the counter to clean up the spilled coffee. Olive tried to scream, but her tongue felt thick and heavy and she couldn’t open her lips. She clutched the edge of her chair as the room spun faster and faster. Her mind clouded, but she used every ounce of her strength to keep the shadows at bay. The moment she succumbed, it would be over. The way it had been for poor Anna.
* * *
THE VOICES HAD gone silent again as Olive stepped onto the bridge. She could feel the night wind on her face, could hear the distant hoot of an owl. Consciousness was within arm’s reach, but something—someone—kept pulling her back under.
Hang on, Olive. Just a little while longer. Sleep is your friend right now.
Daddy?
Shush. Sleep...
One of the silhouettes came toward her. Something dangled from his fingers. A necklace or a charm. The sparkle of the gold mesmerized her, but when he spotted her in the shadows, the chain slipped from his fingers and disappeared through a crack in the floorboards. He barely seemed to notice. He came to her slowly, calling her name.
That you, Olive? What are you doing out here? Answer me!
Shush. Sleep...
He waved a hand in front of her face. Olive? You awake? Olive!
Sleep...sleep...
* * *
OLIVE FOUGHT OFF the shadows even as lethargy lulled her. She wanted nothing so much as to close her eyes and let the darkness take her, but she could hear a voice in her head—Jack’s voice now—urging her to fight. Don’t let go, Olive. Don’t ever let go.
Nathan stood over her with mounting impatience.
“Give it up, Olive. Just close your eyes and go to sleep.”
She blinked rapidly to let him know she was still cognizant and defiant.
He sighed. “I should have ended it when I saw you on the bridge that night. I should never have taken a chance that you would one day remember, but I was still on such a high after Anna. I felt invincible. Like nothing could touch me. And I liked you, Olive. I liked having you around. The old man was almost decent to me with you in the house. So I took you back home, put you to bed and in all this time, your memories have stayed buried. Maybe they would never have surfaced if I’d left you well enough alone.
“But I got restless. Father was content to be a big fish in a small pond, but not me. I want more. You can understand that, can’t you? I don’t want to forever be known as his son. I want to make my own mark. Achieve what he never had the guts to do. But Tommy was always going to be a problem. So long as we were both in Pine Lake, I could keep him in line, but the higher I climbed, the lower he sank. He would always be there with his threats and bribes, needing me to clean up his messes. So I started making plans, figuring out the best way to eliminate the problem without incriminating myself. And one day, the solution fell right into my lap.”
Nathan finished mopping up the coffee and threw away the paper towels.
“I had lunch with Jack’s old attorney about another case. Jack’s name came up. Imagine my surprise when he told me that they still kept in touch and that neither of them had ever believed Wayne Foukes was guilty. He said Jack would never rest until the truth came out. Right then and there, I decided that Jack King would have to come back to Pine Lake and kill Tommy Driscoll.”
* * *
JACK FOUGHT HIS way up out of the darkness. He could hear voices nearby, but the pounding in his head muted the sound. He knew at once where he was. The floorboards swayed beneath him as the truss creaked and rattled above him. His right wrist had been handcuffed to the guardrail of the old Pine Lake Bridge.
A few feet away, someone lay motionless near the edge. It took Jack a moment to put it together—the slight body, the copper-colored hair.
“Olive!” He whispered her name. “Olive, can you hear me?”
She didn’t answer.
“Olive!”
He yanked at the cuffs and then forced himself to remain still as he concentrated on the voices.
“I did as you wanted,” Tommy Driscoll said angrily. “I got him out here, didn’t I? The rest is up to you. I don’t want any part of it.”
“Tommy, Tommy.” Nathan’s voice was deceptively soft, dangerously persuasive. “How many times do I have to remind you that we’re in this together? Just like old times. It’s in both our best interests that Jack not be allowed to leave Pine Lake alive.”
“Jack is one thing. What about Olive?”
“She’s become too much of a liability, I’m afraid.”
“For God’s sake, Nathan, you can’t keep killing people. First Jamie and then Marc Waller. And now this. Even I can’t whitewash four bodies.”
“You can do anything you want. That’s why I helped get you elected. Despite our clashes and your backstabbing, we’ve both benefitted from our arrangement. We’ve each turned a blind eye when we needed to. All that would have ended if Jamie had made your affair public. You should be thanking me for cleaning up another of your messes.”
“Thanking you? For murdering someone I cared about?”
“You’ll get over it. And as for Marc Waller, what were you thinking, paying him to terrorize Olive? You thought you could manipulate me by threatening my cousin, but when has that ever worked out for you, Tommy? All you accomplished was to open yourself up to blackmail. And once again I had to clean up after you. Marc Waller’s blood is on your hands, too, so get off your high horse and let’s end this once and for all.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“You brought Jack’s gun?”
A moment of silence while Jack imagined his weapon changing hands.
“I still say you should have left well enough alone,” Tommy said sullenly. “Everything was fine until you brought him back here.”
“Everything was not fine. He was never going to rest until he solved Anna’s murder.”
“You say that, but he hadn’t been back in fifteen years.”
“He would have come back eventually. Wouldn’t you, Jack?” Nathan turned to peer at Jack through the darkness. “It was always going to come to this.”
Jack didn’t answer.
“Look at it this way.” He came over and hunkered on the bridge just out of Jack’s reach. “Now you get to go out the hero.”
Jack slowly lifted his head. “There’s only one way that can happen.”
Nathan grinned. “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?”
“It’s your plan so not exactly rocket science.”
The smile vanished as Nathan stood, aiming the gun at Jack’s head. “You’re the one who’s going to expose Anna’s killer after all these years. Like I said, you’ll get to be the hero. Unfortunately, a dead hero, but your name will finally be cleared. That must give you some satisfaction.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Tommy stalked into Jack’s periphery.
“You need to have a little talk with your partner. Nathan’s gone to a lot of trouble to set you up, Tommy.”
“Set me up? You’re the one handc
uffed to the bridge.”
“No, he’s right.” Nathan turned. “You’re just too dumb to figure it out. First you killed Anna and now you’ve gone and killed Jamie Butaud and Marc Waller.”
Tommy tried to draw his weapon, but Nathan was quicker. He spun and fired two rounds straight at Tommy’s heart. He dropped with barely a sound.
Jack shifted so that he could keep Olive in his line of sight. She didn’t make a sound, hadn’t moved a muscle. Either she was out cold or—
Nathan said with chilling aplomb, “You’ll notice that I shot him with your gun, Jack. You found out he killed Anna and confronted him. He drew his weapon and it was either him or you. Just like with your old partner. Photographs of Jamie will be found in his possession, along with Anna’s necklace. Thank you for finding that, by the way.”
“You haven’t missed a trick, have you?”
“I’ve always been a lot smarter than you, Jack. This just proves it. You want to know the real beauty of my plan? Nothing will touch me. I checked into a Dallas hotel this morning. I had lunch with old friends and pre-dinner drinks with a colleague before attending a fundraiser. Now I’m fast asleep in my room where the police will likely awaken me in the morning to tell me about poor Olive.”
He moved away from Jack. His focus now was on retrieving Tommy’s weapon. He turned his back on Olive and her hand shot out to snake around his ankle. He lost his balance and crashed to the floor but not before he’d kicked Olive aside. She rolled beneath the guardrail, clutching the floorboards with a gasp.
Jack’s left hand shot out helplessly. “Hang on. Hang on. Hang on,” he said under his breath as Olive clung to the edge of the bridge.
Nathan was picking himself up, reaching for the gun...
As Jack tore at his restraint, a movement to his right caught his eye. Something glinted in Tommy Driscoll’s outstretched hand...the handcuff key...
Jack strained toward the key even as his wrist screamed in protest. He had the key between his fingers. Don’t drop it, don’t drop it, don’t drop it...
He was free, lunging for Olive with one hand as he grabbed Tommy’s weapon with the other. “I’ve got you,” he said as he turned and fired.
Chapter Thirteen
The next two days passed in a blur of police interrogations. Olive barely saw Jack. When the dust finally settled, she drove out to the cabin late one afternoon and they had drinks on the dock as they watched the sunset.
The last thing she wanted to do was rehash what had happened. What more could be said? Nathan and Tommy had killed Anna and then given each other an alibi. The secret had eventually destroyed their friendship even as it had kept them dependent on one another until Nathan had decided to break free.
A breeze picked up as twilight moved in from the pinewoods. Out on the lake, a loon trilled a warning. Olive shivered as she searched Jack’s profile.
“I was allowed to see Nathan today,” she told him.
He turned. “How did that go?”
“As you might expect. He shows no remorse. Quite the opposite, in fact. He seems rather proud of the way he’s manipulated people in this town for years, especially those closest to him. Tommy, Mona, Beth Driscoll. Me most of all, I think. I can’t believe I never saw the real Nathan. I trusted him. I always thought he had my back.”
“He fooled a lot of people,” Jack said. “He knew as soon as he made that call to me, I’d come back here to search for Anna’s killer. He played me, too, Olive.”
“He did say one thing that I think you should know. Jack...” She put her hand on his arm. “Anna never cheated on you with Tommy. Nathan saw her tattoo that night on the bridge when he tore off her clothes. He made up the story about Tommy’s ‘mark’ so that you would go after him even harder.”
“What about Jamie Butaud’s tattoo? He didn’t make that up. I saw the autopsy report.”
“No, but he manipulated her into getting a similar tattoo. Even then, he was laying the groundwork to frame Tommy. The heart tattoos connected the victims. Or maybe Nathan just got a sick thrill out of seeing Anna’s tattoo on Jamie Butaud. I don’t know. But Tommy wasn’t innocent. He could have stopped Anna’s murder. He could have been faithful to Beth instead of having an affair with Mona Sutton and then later going after a troubled young woman like Jamie. He made it too easy for Nathan. I guess we all did.” Olive paused, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I just wanted you to know about Anna.”
Jack touched his knuckles to her cheek.
“Jack?”
“Yes?”
“Nathan said that Tommy hired Marc Waller to come after me.”
“He thought he could somehow control Nathan by threatening you.”
“That explains the incident in front of the coffee shop, but who was in the dark sedan that almost ran me down before you got to town?”
“Could have been Waller, then, too, or Beth Driscoll. She drives a dark sedan and she had an ax to grind. She’ll deny it, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s always known the truth about Anna. Or at least suspected.”
“Mona must have suspected, too. I have to wonder if it was Tommy in her office the other day trying to coerce her into remaining silent.”
“Maybe it was the other way around,” Jack said.
“Another maybe,” Olive said with a faint smile. “Will we ever know the whole truth?”
“One can hope. Nathan’s trial should prove interesting.”
“What happens in the meantime?”
“He’ll be incarcerated once he’s released from the hospital. After everything he’s done, he won’t get bail.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Olive paused. “I mean what happens to us? You and me. School will be starting soon and you’ll be heading back to Houston. After everything we’ve been through, do we just say goodbye?”
His gaze deepened. “What do you want to happen, Olive?”
“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “I know I don’t want you to leave town.”
“Even if I plan to come back?”
“For the trial, you mean.”
“Before that.” Jack stared out over the water for a moment. “I’ve decided to hang on to the cabin. I’ll need a place to stay when the trial starts, and in the meantime, I can drive up on weekends and holidays. Maybe you can come down to Houston now and then.”
“Are you suggesting a long-distance relationship?”
“For now. Until we can sort things out. I care about you, Olive. I may even be falling in love with you.” He brought her hand to his lips. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I don’t want to lose you, either.” She entwined her fingers with his and squeezed his hand.
“Olive?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t let go, okay?”
She smiled. “Not a chance.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from POINT BLANK SEAL by Carol Ericson.
Join Harlequin My Rewards today and earn a FREE ebook!
Click here to Join Harlequin My Rewards
http://www.harlequin.com/myrewards.html?mt=loyalty&cmpid=EBOOBPBPA201602010003
We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Intrigue story.
You crave excitement! Harlequin Intrigue stories deal in serious romantic suspense, keeping you on the edge of your seat as resourceful, true-to-life women and strong, fearless men fight for survival.
Enjoy six new stories from Harlequin Intrigue every month!
Connect with us on Harlequin.com for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!
Other ways to keep in touch:
Harlequin.com/newsletters
Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks
Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks
> HarlequinBlog.com
Join Harlequin My Rewards & Instantly earn a FREE ebook of your choice.
Earn points for every Harlequin print and ebook you buy, wherever & whenever you shop.
Turn your points into FREE BOOKS.
Don’t miss out. Reward the book lover in you!
Register Today & Earn a FREE BOOK*
*New members who join before December 31st, 2017 will receive 2000 points redeemable for eligible titles.
Click here to register
Or visit us online to register at
http://www.harlequin.com/myrewards.html?mt=loyalty&cmpid=EBOOBPBPA201602010001
Point Blank SEAL
by Carol Ericson
Prologue
A light glimmered among the rocks to his right, and Miguel Estrada shifted his MK 15 in response, his heart thudding against his chest. He whispered into the mic clipped to his flak jacket. “Twenty degrees to your right, up another thirty yards.”
Miguel couldn’t tell if the SEALs on the ground were following his directions or not. They’d moved out of his view behind some rocks, and they couldn’t answer him and risk giving away their position. He just had to trust they’d heard him and reacted accordingly, especially since this wasn’t his regular team and they were missing that natural rapport.
His world became the area in his scope, and his eyeball tracked back and forth to scan that world, looking for any movement or more light.
These caves tucked into the rugged interior of Afghanistan were a maze, deep and complex. The intelligence they’d received on the whereabouts of Vlad had led a team of SEALs, including him on sniper duty, to this godforsaken part of the world.
The intel suggested Vlad would be lightly guarded and relaxed, not suspecting the hell about to be unleashed upon him. Miguel just hoped Vlad didn’t have any children with him. That made everything more complicated—like the two boys the team had run into on their trek up here.
Thank God, it hadn’t been Miguel’s call to make on how to deal with the boys. Elias had decided to release them, and it looked like that had been a good call since they hadn’t seen them—or anyone else—since those boys had scampered across the rocks.
Pine Lake Page 18