She leaped over the flattened door and the last rays of sunshine slanting below a low-hanging bank of clouds.
In one graceful bound, Jimmy followed.
To the west, carried by the freshening winds, she could hear a helicopter’s blades chopping the sky. She couldn’t see it—the low cloud bank concealed its approach. But she knew she didn’t have a lot of time. “Which way?” she shouted.
Jimmy grabbed Summer’s arm. “This way.” He ran over the construction-pocked ground toward the ocean cliffs, pulling her after him with a grip so brutal she could feel the bruising start.
“Stop that. Let go.” She twisted away. “I’m coming with you.”
“To save your boyfriend,” Jimmy mocked.
“Yes!” She ran beside him.
The helicopter sounded closer.
“Even if it’s true,” he said, “even if he wants to believe it, he’ll always know you really came with me because you wanted me.”
“I know.” She reached for her belt.
“Because you want excitement, passion, life lived to the fullest.”
“He is exciting.” She unfastened the buckle. “He is passionate.”
Jimmy ran backward, watching her curiously. “He is dull as dishwater.”
“You’d be surprised. He massages my feet. He puts the groceries away. He knows how to cook.”
“Bor-ring.”
“Sometimes, all a woman wants is a man who’ll care for her, do the little things that mean he cherishes her comfort.”
Clearly, Jimmy didn’t get that.
So she added, “Besides—Kennedy can talk me to orgasm.”
Just as clearly, Jimmy didn’t like that.
She twisted the belt in her fist. “You’ve watched me. You’ve spied on me. You know everything about me, right?”
He frowned. “I suppose not everything.”
“You’re right.” She stopped.
Finally he realized she was threatening him—and that he should be afraid.
He lunged for her.
Too late. She lifted the belt over her head and whipped it in a single, swift circle.
The stone in the middle of the belt met the middle of his forehead. His skull made a sound like a melon breaking open. His eyes went blank. He fell backward, hard, flat on his back.
Above the sound of the wind and the approaching helicopter, she screamed, “Serves you right, asshole!”
He never stirred.
Yes. He was unconscious. Comatose. With a concussion, she hoped. Or a possible brain hemorrhage. Or hopefully death. Because he might be right—life with him would be a life lived to the fullest. But it would also be a short life, one balanced always on the razor’s edge of fear, one of waiting for the moment when he tired of her, or thought she betrayed him, or she failed him somehow … he would point a gun, the bullet would crash through her skull, and she would become another undiscovered body tossed like trash into the forest.
She ran toward the house, stopped at a distance, and looked back at Jimmy.
He hadn’t stirred.
She ran again, toward Kennedy and sanity.
Funny. She knew how hard she’d hit Jimmy. She’d heard the sound of the stone against his skull. But even now, she feared him.
She glanced toward the sky.
She feared the helicopter filled with his men. So loud. So close.
She ran harder. Get inside.
She didn’t make it.
A Bell Jet Ranger burst out of the clouds.
She glanced over her shoulder.
The helicopter swooped low, prepared to land.
Two men were in the front, the pilot and, standing at the open side door … oh, God. She recognized the other guy. Barry. From Wildrose Valley. The guy who directed operations after Jimmy had shot Dash. Barry was Jimmy’s man. And he knew who she was.
Barry surveyed the scene, saw Jimmy lying motionless on the ground and her sprinting toward the house. He yelled something at the pilot, lifted his hands—he held a gun. Not a pistol like hers, but an automatic rifle.
She’d played this scene before, with Dash, but last time she’d evaded a pistol and she’d had a goal—the forest. This time she had no cover, the spray of bullets was inescapable, and to get in the house, she would have to make a leap over the door.
She couldn’t hear the sound of the gun firing. Not over the sound of the helicopter. But there was no mistaking the smack of bullets hitting the ground around her.
She dodged from side to side.
She didn’t have a chance. This time, she wouldn’t escape. She was dead.
More bullets.
Run. Dodge. Stop. Sprint. Swerve. Evade. Escape!
The helicopter moved above her.
She wasn’t going to make it—
Out of the house a monster leaped through the broken doorway. Blood covered its face and it roared like a wounded lion.
Kennedy. It was Kennedy, his face unrecognizable, but definitely Kennedy, and he had Jimmy’s Glock 18 automatic pistol in his hand.
Barry saw him, too, and changed his target. Bullets skittered away from Summer and toward Kennedy.
Kennedy jerked as if he’d been hit. He went down hard on one knee, teetered for a moment, then regained his balance. He pointed the Glock, and raked the front of the helicopter with a barrage of answering bullets.
The helicopter’s windshield shattered. The pilot ducked. He lost control.
Barry shrieked obscenities at the pilot. Grabbed for the door. Lost the rifle. It tumbled, over and over.
Summer flung herself to the ground.
The pilot fought to bring the helicopter level again, battled the wind turbulence that curled over the top of the ocean cliffs.
Kennedy aimed and shot again, aimed and shot again. Summer saw the way he fought the barrel rise, fought to make each bullet count.
Summer leaped up and ran again, toward the house, toward Kennedy.
The helicopter wobbled and spun—and tilted sideways.
Barry fell out, caught himself, clung to the door, dangling and yelling at the pilot.
Kennedy aimed through eyes so swollen he could barely see, ceaselessly putting all his bullets through the windshield.
The pilot convulsed and collapsed.
Violently, the helicopter spun in a circle.
Barry lost his grip. Arms and legs flailing, he plummeted to the ground, screaming all the way down. He landed on the hard-packed ground, and broke into a welter of blood and brains—and that was justice for every body he’d dumped in the forest.
The helicopter swung around again, and again, tighter and tighter, a top spinning out of control. The tail rotor clipped a tall Douglas fir. Jet fuel spilled, ignited, and the tree exploded into flames.
Summer dropped to the ground and curled into a ball, her arms over her head.
With a roar, the engine detonated with blistering heat and a flash of light she could see with her eyes shut.
Stunned and deafened, Summer looked up in time to see the helicopter bounce off the edge of the cliff and plunge into the ocean. Flames leaped so high they seared the brown salt grasses and made sea birds scream with fear.
She touched her fingers to her ears, massaging them, hoping to ease that broken, stuffy feeling the great explosion had caused.
Gradually, her hearing returned. The tree crackled and burned. New, smaller explosions came from the helicopter as it submerged. Yet … no gunshots. No screaming. The helicopter no longer ripped the air with its blades. Jimmy was still flat on his back, unspeaking, unmoving …
She wasn’t afraid anymore.
No. More than that. She was thrilled. Exalted. They had won. She and Kennedy had won. They had beaten Jimmy at the game he had fought so deceitfully!
“We did it,” she yelled. She looked at Kennedy, still kneeling on the hard-packed earth. She stood. She raised her fists to the heavens. “We did it! We beat Venom. We won Empire of Fire!”
Kennedy nodded. He mumbled
… something. The pistol drooped in his grasp; he dropped it as if it had become too heavy. Sluggishly, he toppled over, landed on his side, writhed in agony.
Summer’s brief, meaningless triumph was transformed into abject fear.
Kennedy had been almost killed. With the injuries he had sustained, he could still die. For a game. For a grudge. To satisfy the vengeance of a madman.
“Kennedy, no, please!” She ran to him.
His face was shattered: swollen, broken, bruised. Blood pumped from a wound in his hip—at least one of Barry’s bullets had found its mark.
In the distance, she could hear sirens.
With frantic efficiency, she pulled off her shirt and made a pad, then pressed it against the gunshot wound. “The cops are coming,” she told him. “Stay alive, my love. Please. Stay alive.”
Kennedy looked up at her through a face so shattered she knew no one could ever quite put it back the way it was. “Love?” he muttered.
“Yes.” She was fierce. Desperate. “You’re my love. Please. Stay with me. Stay here. Stay alive.”
“Will … try.” He slurred his words.
He was so hurt. For her. He had saved her. From darkness. From terror.
From Jimmy.
Two police cars and an emergency vehicle pulled in and parked close. Garik got out first, shouting instructions to his heavily armed troopers.
EMTs shoved her aside and went to work on Kennedy. She hovered, watching helplessly as they fought to stabilize him.
He lay panting, crazed with pain, but when they tried to give him drugs, he pushed them aside. Opening his swollen eyes a mere slit, he gestured her close. Through battered lips and broken teeth, he asked, “Jimmy?”
“I knocked him out. I may have killed him.” Summer turned and gestured toward Jimmy’s resting place. “He’s right over—”
Jimmy was gone.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
Impossible.
Not impossible. Not for Jimmy.
Summer grabbed the Glock 18 automatic pistol off the ground. She leaped to her feet.
Law-enforcement officers shouted at her, “Put the gun down, lady, put it down!”
She ran a few steps. She held the pistol out straight, swept the area with the barrel, searching, seeking, ready to protect Kennedy. Ready to kill for Kennedy.
“Put it down, ma’am. Put it down now!”
Then she saw him: Jimmy, standing on the edge of the cliff, highlighted against twilight’s golden sky, looking at her. Staring at her.
He watched her aim. He touched his forehead in salute, then his lips in a gesture of affection. He turned. And he jumped. Like an Olympic diver, he hung for one moment, arms outstretched.
She aimed. She pulled the trigger. One shot. One shot into Jimmy’s heart.
Jimmy plummeted out of sight.
Then … there were no more bullets. In his zeal to defend her, Kennedy had left her only one bullet in the magazine.
She ran toward the cliff. She flung herself onto the ground. She peered over the edge.
Far below, ocean waves crashed against the cliff and battered the rock arches. The helicopter burned in pieces, draped across the boulders, lighting the area with a harsh blaze. Seabirds circled and screamed warnings, and in the swells, corpses floated: seals and sea lions, brutally killed in the crash and conflagration.
And there, rolling in the surf, facedown, unmoving, and sullenly aflame—a body. Was that Jimmy? Could it be that the man who had caused them so much grief had spread his arms and embraced his own death?
Jimmy Brachler had enticed her to shoot him. Then he had given his body over to the vast Pacific Ocean for disposal. She supposed he had died on his own terms. “Good for you, buddy. I hope you’re happy at last.”
She rolled over and sat up.
Garik stood behind her, his hand on his service pistol. He held out his hand, palm up.
She handed him the pistol, butt-first, then allowed him to help her to her feet.
She looked around. Looked for Kennedy to give a report. Looked for Kennedy to know he was still alive.
The EMTs had placed him on a body board and were moving him to the ambulance. Blood and bandages covered him. Tubes went up his nose and into his veins. Pads held his head in place.
“Wait!” she yelled. “Let me tell him!”
The EMTs paused.
She raced to his side. She leaned close to his ear. “Kennedy,” she said.
He opened his eyes a slit.
“He’s dead,” she said. “Jimmy’s gone.”
He nodded once, a tiny jerk of the chin.
She thought he smiled.
“Gone,” he whispered.
Then the EMTs loaded him into the ambulance, and he was gone, too.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Two Years Later
Kennedy and Summer entered the foyer of their San Francisco penthouse and dropped their bags, and groaned in unison. And laughed in unison.
“It was a wonderful trip,” she said, “but I am glad to be home.”
“I’m glad you liked it.” Kennedy’s blue eyes twinkled at her.
To celebrate the second anniversary of their victory over Jimmy Brachler, he had arranged for six weeks in Provence, just the two of them. Kennedy rented a lovely chateau, they wandered the narrow roads through fields of lavender, ate good food, drank good wine, and made love at every opportunity.
For the first time they even talked about those dreadful days when they had confronted and overcome the fiend who sought to destroy them, and they congratulated each other for surviving against all odds.
They did not discuss the eighteen months of surgeries and rehabilitation Kennedy had undergone to return him to his former quality of life, nor whether Summer’s bizarre obsession with the cruel and charismatic Jimmy Brachler had been real, or simply good acting.
Some things were better left unsaid.
The vacation was a delightful break from their usually busy lives; since their marriage at Kennedy’s hospital bed, his firm had grown exponentially. Summer’s vacation-home-concierge business now employed over seventy people and covered the West Coast from Vancouver to Northern California and included the ski areas of Idaho.
By unspoken agreement, they were uncertain about their desire to have children. Their experience with Jimmy had left a permanent scar; they feared to bring their own child into a world they knew could be so precarious.
But still, their life was good, with homes at Martha’s Vineyard and here in San Francisco. They kept a condo in Virtue Falls. They regularly visited Mr. Brothers in Wildrose Valley, and as Mr. Brothers grew more feeble, they helped him with his fund-raiser. Wildrose Valley was becoming a cherished part of their lives.
In secret, Summer had visited the cave that haunted her nightmares, the cave where she had hidden from Dash. With a bright flashlight, she had been able to illuminate the stony walls and floor, and she had discovered her fears were all for naught. The cave was wide and long, but shallow, and the floor was only a few feet below the shelf where she had rested. Yet … yet sometimes, even now, in her nightmares, she fell again into blackness and eternity. And sometimes, she fell into the flames … with Jimmy at her side.
But she never told Kennedy, and in the daytime, the memory of Jimmy had no power to hurt her.
Now Summer wound her arms around Kennedy’s neck and kissed him. “Thank you again. I will never forget the wonderful time we had.”
“Nor will … I.” He glanced toward his office. “Now I need to go … see how many frantic messages I have … waiting for me.” Kennedy spoke slowly, careful as always to form the words as his speech therapist had taught him.
Jimmy’s brutal use of the iron rebar had left a lingering souvenir: Kennedy’s facial nerves had been demolished, and some had not recovered, leaving him with a drooping eyelid, features that seemed slightly lopsided, and difficulty in speaking.
But as before, in business he managed to get his point across, and
in their personal life, he never spoke hastily or in the heat of the moment.
She sometimes wished she would acquire that trait.
“Go on,” she said. “But don’t stay too long. We’re both so jet-lagged we almost fell asleep in our soup.”
“Is that … what that was? Soup?” He grimaced. “First-class airline meals … cannot legally be called … food.”
“I know. We should have grabbed a sandwich in the airport.” She yawned.
He gave her a push toward their bedroom. “I’ll be in … soon.”
She nodded, grabbed the strap on her duffel bag, and dragged it down the hall and into their bedroom.
She had decorated simply, in the Japanese style, making the view the centerpiece of the room. On a clear night, from the wall of windows, they could see the Golden Gate Bridge, and across to Marin County.
Tonight was not a clear night. Rain splattered on the glass and clouds swirled around the building. Good news for a city suffering from drought.
As she walked in, soft lights automatically illuminated the room. One of the spotlights had been shifted to shine directly onto the table on her side of the bed, to illuminate a twelve-inch-long, elegantly wrapped box, and beside that, a tall, cut-crystal vase filled with dozens of long-stemmed red roses.
Wine and roses.
She sighed, and smiled.
Kennedy had arranged to make every moment of their vacation perfect. So she would not tease him for forgetting that she hated those freakishly long-stemmed dark red roses. She always thought they were appropriate for vampires on the prowl and excessively dramatic tango divas. Still, it was the thought that counted—that, and the card, thrusting up from the center of the flowers, and the small gold-wrapped box with it.
Wine and roses and jewelry.
“Oh, Kennedy.” She reached for the gift, yanked her hand back, and sucked on her thumb. Someone had failed to remove one of the thorns. She looked closer. In fact, someone had failed to remove any of the thorns. Kennedy needed to have a word with his florist. She reached more carefully for the card and gift, and when she had them, she just as carefully pulled her arm back.