One Last Breath

by Lisa Jackson

  “You think I like saying that?” Derek flushed.

  “She was at the wedding.”

  “But you were the one who got hit, and Dad. And if Rory was taken out, who would inherit?”

  “Mom.” Where the hell was this going?

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” His mother gazed at Derek with pure hatred.

  Derek lifted his hands. “Your mother first, Liam, then her heirs. We all know where I stand in this family.”

  “You aren’t cut completely out of the will.” Geoff’s remark seemed pulled out of his gut. He glared at his oldest son.

  “That’s a drastic way to get an inheritance,” Liam said angrily. “No one would—”

  “Kill a family member for money? It’s a time-honored tradition, bro.”

  “You’re full of shit, Derek.”

  “We all know she needs money.”

  “Her marriage may be falling apart, but she’s not destitute.” Liam couldn’t buy this. It was crazy. Off the charts.

  Only his mother and father weren’t saying anything.

  “You’re not listening to this,” he declared, looking from his mother to his father.

  “Maybe Viv meant to kill Rory and got her stepbrother instead. Rory was supposed to be with Aaron, coming down that aisle. Viv couldn’t know that she was going to run out on you.”

  “This is crazy,” said Liam.

  “You think I don’t love my sister? You think I haven’t run all this around my head?” Derek demanded.

  “I don’t think it’s Vivian,” Stella snapped. “Rory’s the one who had the most to gain. That’s why she didn’t walk down the aisle.”

  “She was in on it,” Geoff agreed.

  “I checked with our lawyer about the lab results,” Stella said tightly to Liam. “DNA proves Charlotte’s yours. A Bastian.”

  “I don’t think it’s Rory,” Derek said, taking a long sip from his drink.

  “You’d rather believe it’s your own sister?” Stella’s voice dripped acid.

  “Well, where the hell’s she been going?” Derek asked her. “You said yourself she’s been sneaking out, never saying what she’s doing. I called the office, by the way.” He turned to Liam. “She showed up and left, and never returned. She’s meeting someone, that’s what I think. Our sister has demanded a job, for money, but maybe to get the hell out of the house without anyone knowing where she is.”

  “She moved in here by choice,” Liam reminded him.

  “Or, did Javier kick her out?”

  “Enough speculation. Call her up! Ask her where she is,” Geoff growled.

  “Good idea.” Liam’s voice was harsh.

  “You know I hope I’m wrong,” Derek said, his lips turning down. “It’s just when you lay it all out . . .”

  “Where is everybody?” Vivian’s voice rang out from the foyer.

  Derek spread his hands. Looked at his father.

  “We’re in the den,” Geoff called harshly.

  Liam heard her footsteps head their way, then she was standing in the doorway. She looked haggard and worn in a way he’d never seen.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked them.

  Liam spoke before anyone else could. “They’re questioning your loyalty to the family,” he bit out. “Think maybe you’re after Dad’s money. Maybe even were involved in the shooting.”

  Vivian’s mouth dropped open in horror.

  “I never said that!” Stella cried.

  “Where have you been going, sister, dear?” Derek drawled. “Who’ve you been meeting?”

  Vivian stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. She turned to Liam, then her mother, and finally her father.

  And burst into tears.

  * * *

  “Tell me,” Shanice insisted as Mick clicked off his phone. After Liam Bastian had ignored his calls and they had struck out at Liam Bastian’s penthouse apartment as well as the Bastian-Flavel Construction offices, they’d finally gotten a break with Darlene Stemple and learned where Aurora Abernathy was. They were just finishing up an early dinner at a Mexican food cart in downtown Portland when Mick got the word, and almost immediately afterward, Mick’s buddy, Zach Pitman, got back to him.

  Wadding up the paper wrapper of his quesadilla, Mick marched toward the car, Shanice right behind him. “Let’s roll. I’ll tell you on the way to the Bastians’.”

  They climbed into her car and she eased into traffic, nearly striking a bicyclist who’d wooshed by on his way to trying to beat a red light. “Son of a—”

  “This is a bike town,” he reminded her. She could see that. Bike lanes were marked in paint and bicycles flitted around the core of the city.

  Carefully, she melded into traffic and told Mick to punch Geoffrey’s address into her GPS.

  “Pitman had some good info. They’ve come to the conclusion that Teri Mulvaney, the woman who took a leap from the Bastian-Flavel Construction site, the one we drove to earlier today?”

  “Hallifax.”

  “Yeah, well, they think it was more likely murder than suicide or an accident, mainly because Ms. Mulvaney was seen with a guy earlier that night at the bar. The forensics team is still working on the physics of it, but preliminarily it looks like she was pushed. Portland PD is working on the homicide theory. They checked with her roommate and friends and anyone she had been seeing, to find out who was accounted for, had an alibi. But a local bartender who saw a guy buying her drinks is coming up with a composite sketch with an artist. Sounds like a hook-up at a bar.”

  “Teri Mulvaney’s lucky night,” Shanice said with a grimace. She slowed as the cars in front of her were piling up, waiting for a traffic light to change. “Why take her to a construction site to kill her?”

  “It was nearby. Convenient. Empty.”

  “But how did he know that?” She squinted against the sunlight bouncing off the hoods and mirrors of the surrounding vehicles. They were heading into the setting sun, where the hills flanked the west side of the city, traffic crawling in a thick, slow stream out of the downtown area. “Do you think he’d already scouted out the Bastian building?”

  “Maybe he worked there. One of the guys on the construction team? One thing: unprotected sex was involved.”

  “DNA,” she said with satisfaction, easing on the gas again, the line of cars starting to edge forward.

  “They’re hoping to get a hit. Match the DNA to someone already in the data banks. And they’re sorting through footage from a couple of street cameras that might have caught an image nearby. Too bad the construction site didn’t have any. This guy’s sloppy. No condom, so maybe a camera caught him.”

  “We should be so lucky. But how does that connect with what happened at the wedding?”

  “Might not. Just the latest crime connected to the Bastians. . . and it happened about the same time as Liam Bastian’s runaway bride returned.”

  “Correlation isn’t causation,” she said, repeating a line Mick said often himself.

  He frowned and nodded. His need to solve the Bastian shooting was his great white whale, the one that got away, the case that had kept him awake at night long after he’d retired from the force.

  Shanice’s motives were different. She wanted justice for Aaron. Right now her jaw was clenched so hard it ached, and she forced herself to calm down. They were getting closer, she knew it. She just hoped they would get a break. And she felt Rory Abernathy was the key.

  Mick’s phone rang again as Shanice exited the highway and headed down winding streets where trees guarded gated estates. Stately manors, built near the turn of the last century, stood next to modern homes, all built into the hillside with expansive views of the city. Nice neighborhood.

  She heard him grunt a hello into the phone as she drew up near their destination. Geoffrey Bastian’s home was much like his neighbors’, hidden from the street by a tall fence and trees, a circular drive leading to the home itself. Thankfully, the gate was open, the drive filled with a bevy
of vehicles, from an older, silver Honda—presumably not a Bastian vehicle—to a sleek black Corvette and another black vehicle, a Tahoe. She pulled in behind a green Mercedes SUV parked haphazardly and taking up too much space. The whole aura of the home and its surroundings oozed money. Expensive. Grand.

  She’d had some experience with the extremely wealthy. Within their walls were secrets, dark and dirty, the same dirt hidden behind every damned wall in the world. Didn’t matter if those walls were constructed of marble and gold, or tar paper and tin, they were often also constructed of lies and deception. If they were lucky, she and Mick were about to lay bare a few of those well-hidden lies. She glanced at the glove box, where she’d locked her sidearm.

  “Who was that?” she asked Mick as she popped the box and pulled out her gun.

  Sounding satisfied, Mick said, “Hal at Seattle PD came through. They’ve got video from different angles about three blocks around the Nile and have been checking out the vehicles. He’s sharing with me.”

  She knew he was referring to a deputy he’d once worked with at Seattle PD. “He’s taking a chance.”

  “If we learn anything, he wants first crack. I’m happy to oblige. Anything to solve this thing.” He looked over the front of the house. “All right, let’s go.”

  Chapter 23

  Beth finished her third glass of wine—or was it the fourth?—and who the hell cared anyway? Five years of her life, gone. Snap! Just because Rory Abernathy Bastian reappeared as if she’d been gone overnight instead of... how many days was it? Like eighteen hundred? Beth should know because she’d spent twenty-four hours of every day thinking of Liam Bastian, hoping to marry him.

  She took a long swallow and fought tears, while having a private pity party for herself in the living room of her apartment, nice though it was. She’d turned on the gas fire and the place was warm, probably too warm, but she didn’t care. She’d expected to move in with Liam and now it was over. Her future. Her whole life. At least as Mrs. Liam Bastian. Turns out there was already someone filling that role and that’s the way Liam, the idiot, wanted it. She had to face facts. She wouldn’t have him back now if he came crawling back to her on his hands and knees, a five-carat diamond ring in one hand.

  Oh, yes you would.

  She swore softly, more than a little buzzy. She was holding her phone in one hand and systematically, as she spied a picture of Liam, took a drink, then deleted the photo. She’d already taken down all the photos she’d put on display as part of the apartment’s decoration. They were in the garbage, their frames broken, the glass shattered as she’d smashed them all.

  Now, it was time to delete the memories captured on her phone. There was one by the lion exhibit at the zoo. Click! Gone. Oh, another favorite, a selfie with Liam as they were hiking at Multnomah Falls, the water cascading behind them. Click! And poof! it was no more. Oh, and this one, at a concert out at Edgefield. Click! Just like that, history.

  God, this was depressing. He’d been her whole life for so long, even before that wretched wedding, though she’d pretended not to care. Now nothing mattered. Not even the job she’d liked so well, working at a boutique art gallery. She couldn’t work up any enthusiasm. The friends they’d shared were mostly coupled up, engaged, married, or at least dating seriously, and she couldn’t face them. She started to cry but blinked back tears and reminded herself she at least would no longer have to deal with his family: Stella, with her sneers, Vivian, never realizing how great her life was, Derek with his quick, sharp tongue, and Geoffrey, who had never been a barrel of laughs to begin with, but after the shooting had become utterly joyless.

  Like you. Now.

  She took another gulp of wine and staggered to her feet. The sun was setting outside the window. She was done thinking about those damned Bastians. She wobbled to the slider door and her private patio, just big enough for two chairs and a small table. How many times had she shared a bottle of wine with Liam right here, from the eighth floor with its peekaboo view of the Hawthorne Bridge? Yes, another high-rise blocked most of the view, but still, it was pretty nice here. Or had been. And now? Now what? Start over? Date some stranger on the Internet? Ask her friends if they know anyone? Start taking up golf or tennis or attend church? Forget five damned years? When she thought of the hours she’d sat at his hospital bedside as he’d gone through the operations that had put him back together again after the attack at the wedding, she wanted to scream! Why couldn’t the assailant have killed Rory instead? That would have solved all her problems!

  Problems . . .

  Liam had other problems he didn’t even know about yet.

  A burning anger swept through her like wildfire and she swept up her phone again. Liam was number one on her contact list and she pressed the button, waiting for him to answer. When the call went to voice mail, his cool voice telling her to leave a message, she almost threw her phone over the edge of the balcony.

  Instead, she did just as he suggested. Telling him just enough to assure he would call her back.

  Immediately afterward she fell into a dark funk. Head lolling back, she cried silent tears, distantly aware of the city far below, the rumble of vehicle engines occasionally interrupted by a shout or a honk, bits of conversation floating upward, the heat of the day still rising from the streets.

  He’s going to be real sorry, she thought. I’ll make sure of it.

  * * *

  Rory heard the sobbing even before she hit the bottom step to the back hallway. It was coming from the wing housing the den, and the tortured sobs were followed by shouting and questions and a general scramble emanating from Geoff’s den.

  Rory froze, not sure whether she wanted to step into this family drama, but at that moment Vivian burst from the room, her face twisted in some kind of agony or anger. Immediately she dashed for the front of the house. Behind Vivian, his strides longer, Liam was half running to catch up to her and didn’t notice Rory in the intersecting corridor. His eyes were trained on his sister.

  Stella’s voice echoed down the hallway—“For God’s sake!”—as Derek, hot on his brother’s heels, burst from the room. As if sensing Rory, he glanced back at her, shaking his head, seemed about to say something, then moved on quickly, the leaves of a potted plant shivering as he passed.

  Rory started to take after them all, when Stella stepped into the hallway, and Geoff’s wheelchair nearly bumped into his wife as he followed as well. “Well, get out of the way,” he barked, the wheels of his chair skidding a bit.

  Stella whipped around, looked like she wanted to slap him, saw Rory, and turned her fury on her daughter-in-law. “Stop skulking around!” And she took off after their children with Geoff rolling behind her, strong shoulders and arms pushing the wheelchair forward.

  Well, hell.

  Rory wasn’t about to stand there, frozen to the damned spot in their house. No way. This was her family, too. She strode after them to the front door, which was standing wide-open to an orange sunset, a soft summer breeze with the scents of roses riding on it wafted into the foyer. Outside, in the driveway, Vivian was trying to get into her car, the Mercedes’s driver’s door open, she struggling with her seat belt, the car alarm dinging softly. Liam was attempting to reason with her, but she was beyond reason, and she rounded on Derek when he stopped short at the end of the porch. “You bastard. You . . . you fucking bastard!” she screamed, angry and hurt and looking as if she wanted to murder him.

  “I’m sorry.” Derek was short.

  “How could you? I love my family. I love all of you.” Furiously, her face red, tear tracks visible, she swept an arm out. “All of you, damn it!” All trace of the Vivian of old, the contained woman with the sly smile, drawling and cool manner, was gone. “And while I’m trying to put my marriage back together! Doing everything I can to hold on to my . . . future with the man I love . . . you stab me in the back! Accuse me of unthinkable crimes? It’s . . . unbelievable.” Fighting sobs, she yelled, “Horrible, horrible stuff. How dare
you!”

  “I didn’t know you were following Javier,” Derek said stiffly as the incessant seat belt alarm kept chiming. “Sneaking around after him, stalking him. I had no idea you were that pathetic!”

  She launched from her SUV, suddenly abandoning her car and, face contorted in rage, charged Derek.

  “Whoa,” Liam said, grabbing Vivian around the waist as she flew at her half brother like a virago.

  In that second, Rory realized they weren’t alone. There was another car wedged between Vivian’s and the curve in the driveway, a small SUV. A man and a woman climbed out of the Ford Escape that had been sitting at the end of the drive.

  Mick Mickelson, she’d bet.

  Vivian was still screaming at Derek, who did look a bit sheepish and had taken two steps backward. Liam hadn’t yet let go his grip on his sister, and about that time Stella spied the approaching couple and straightened as if shot by a cattle prod. “Uh-oh,” she said under her breath while her husband stared at them as well, his jaw rock hard.

  Liam followed their gazes, looking behind him, slowly releasing his grip on Vivian, who woke up slowly to the fact that something momentous had taken the focus away from her and her tirade. She glanced back, her face red and puffy, her mouth quivering. Upon seeing the man who radiated “the law,” even if he was maybe retired, and his female partner, who appeared to have a gun on her hip, Vivian took a step away from Liam and tried to bring her breathing, which was practically a pant at this point, under control.

  “Mickelson,” Liam said, and the man and woman looked at him.

  “Who?” Vivian asked, shuddering a little and swiping at her face to brush away tears or hair that had fallen over her cheeks.

  Stella’s hand had flown to her chest. “Oh, my God. What’s happened?”

  “Liam Bastian?” the man asked, and Liam nodded curtly.

  “You were expecting them?” Derek asked in disbelief.

  “I’ll tell you all about it when we’re inside,” Liam said, making ushering motions to his entire family. His eyes met Rory’s, but before anyone could take more than a few steps, a news van approached. White and gleaming in the dying sun, the station’s call sign emblazoned across the side, a satellite dish visible, it rumbled to the open gates. Liam saw Rory’s gaze shift and glance back. “Everyone inside,” he barked, “unless you want to be on the Channel 7 news.”