Dead By Nightfall

by Beverly Barton

  “The same as yours, I imagine—that this York is no one’s puppet.”

  “I think he really wants to be Malcolm York.”

  “Yes, I agree,” Sanders said.

  “Maybe he already believes he is the real York.”

  The deserted thatch-roofed hut looked inviting, a place to escape from the oppressive late-afternoon heat, but Nic knew it was a deadly trap. Without slowing down, she kept pace with Jonas as he avoided the partial clearing and stayed inside the relative safety of the woods. Every muscle in Nic’s body screamed in pain, reminding her how badly she needed rest. The blisters on her feet had burst, leaving raw flesh rubbing against her cotton socks. Even though she had reapplied the native mosquito repellent, dozens of the bloodthirsty little beasts had left red marks on her skin, itchy bites that begged to be scratched. Pausing long enough to catch her breath, she gazed straight up, searching the patch of visible sky through the canopy of treetops. She couldn’t see the sun, but she did see streaks of scarlet and fuchsia overlaying the azure blue and suspected that daylight would soon be fading. Wildflowers grew in profusion in the jungle. Patches of orange, red, white, and yellow blossoms had flashed by in her peripheral vision while she’d been on the run for what seemed like days on end. Jonas had known which flowers, which plants, which berries were edible and they had stopped several times during today’s hunt to eat and replenish their strength. When he had eaten a variety of insects, Nic had passed on the offer to join him. She didn’t think Baby Powell wanted nourishment from such wild delicacies.

  Up ahead near the riverbank, Jonas stopped unexpectedly. From where Nic stood several feet away, all she saw was the flickering sunlight dancing on the water. Jonas glanced over his shoulder, held up his hand in a Stop signal, and then stepped back far enough for her to see the body lying facedown in the mud.

  It’s the young woman she had seen earlier that day.

  Forcing herself to stay put instead of rushing forward to find out whether or not the girl was dead, Nic waited to see what Jonas intended to do. Using the tip of his boot, he nudged the small body. No sign of life. He inserted his foot under the woman’s midsection and turned her over. Nic’s stomach lurched when she saw that part of the pretty girl’s face had been shot off.

  Jonas motioned for Nic to back up and away from the river. Just as she took the first tentative steps backward, repetitive blasts of gunfire erupted downriver, probably less than a quarter of a mile away. Apparently one of the hunters was zeroing in on the dead woman’s partner.

  Every instinct Nic possessed urged her to help the other captives, but logic dictated her actions. There was nothing she could do to help anyone else. She would be lucky to end the day alive.

  Nic turned and ran for her life.

  Jonas caught up with her a few minutes later as they headed away from the direction of the gunfire. Without speaking, communicating with expressive looks and easily understood hand signals as they had done all day, not even a whispered word between them, they slowed their pace and trudged deeper into the forest. Nic longed for rest, but rest would have to wait. Jonas would let her know when he felt it was safe enough for them to stop.

  She wondered how many captives were dead. Two that she knew of, one from this morning and the woman by the river. Possibly three or more were dead now, after the recent shooting spree. Without any set rules to follow and no limit to the prey they could kill, the hunters wouldn’t stop until the end of the day.

  A two-word prayer replayed over and over in Nic’s mind.

  Hurry, sundown.

  As darkness descended, the hum of the jet engines lulled Griff into a quiet, reflective state of mind. He glanced across the aisle where Sanders sat with Barbara Jean, his arm draped around her shoulders. Over an hour ago, Yvette had reclined her seat, closed her eyes, and was now either in deep meditation or she had fallen asleep.

  Tomorrow morning, they would arrive on Amara. Griffin had visited the island on a number of occasions during the construction of the resort complex, but he had not been back there for more than five years. He had leveled York’s spacious, sprawling mansion overlooking the ocean as well as the dungeonlike prison where the slaves had been kept. Every semblance of Malcolm York had been wiped off the face of Amara. Everything except the graveyard.

  After killing York and escaping sixteen years ago, neither Sanders nor Yvette had ever returned. Each of them dealt with the past in their own way. Griff had chosen to face the demons and dared them to destroy him. He had fought the debilitating memories, had conquered his fears, and had found happiness with the woman he loved. Ironic that York’s “ghost” possessed the power to take away the one thing he now treasured above all else.

  Without Nic, he had no life.

  When he found her and brought her home ... ?

  He would take her to his island where they had spent their honeymoon, where earlier this year, they had made love day and night, reaffirming their commitment to each other. But even then, rumors circulating in Europe about Malcolm York had concerned him.

  Six years ago when Griff had purchased the Caribbean island, both Sanders and Yvette had questioned his reasons for doing so. He wasn’t sure either of them would ever understand. Owning the island, remodeling the old manor house, and creating good memories there had been one way in which he had tried to overcome the past. What happened on Amara had taken away a part of his soul that he could never recapture. In some odd way, being able to enjoy spending time on another island, one that he owned, that he controlled, proved to him that he could conquer the horrific memories of Amara.

  Either you conquer the bad memories or they conquer you.

  When he found Nic and brought her home, would she ever be able to conquer her memories of being York’s captive?

  Falling in love with Nic, refusing to give her up, and then marrying her had put her at risk. Only at the time, he hadn’t known just how terrible that risk would be. From the very beginning of their relationship, he had been selfish. He had never been in love before, had never needed a woman the way he’d needed Nic. If only he had known then the price she would pay for loving him, for being his wife, he would have given her up for her own sake.

  He could still hear York’s voice taunting him. “I’m afraid your wife is unavailable at the moment. She’s still in bed with her lover.”

  If Nic had been forced to have sex with another man, Griffin knew they were not lovers, no more than he and Yvette had been. But he also understood that, in time, Nic might bond with this man, as he had bonded with Yvette. The thought of another man touching her, having sex with her, sharing the horrors of captivity with her enraged Griff.

  Now he truly understood how Nic must have felt when he had finally told her the complete truth about his relationship with Yvette.

  If you’re out there, God, please listen.

  This man, whoever he is, help him protect Nic.

  Griff ached deep inside. Deeper than his heart. Soul deep.

  York had sent Nic out today, to be hunted down as if she were an animal. I don’t want her upset, not today of all days. She and her partner are participating in her first hunt. It should be quite an experience for her.

  Nic was smart. She was in excellent physical condition. She was a survivor. And York wouldn’t want her to die this soon. Griff had to believe that all those pluses added up to Nic having a damn good chance of surviving the hunt and being alive at the end of the day.

  At twilight, Nic found herself slowing her pace, but she didn’t dare stop. If she stopped, she would fall to the ground and be unable to get back up on her feet. During their trek away from the hunters, Jonas had guided her through brambles and tall grass, under bushes and around trees, urging her on with backward glances. Now in the semidarkness, she could barely see him up ahead of her, his broad shoulders silhouetted in the last rays of sunlight fighting through the tangled roof of treetop greenery.

  If they could make it just a little while longer ...

  Ni
ghtfall was fast approaching.

  And then in what seemed no more than minutes, darkness surrounded them and Nic could make out only Jonas’s shape even though he was only a couple of feet ahead of her.

  Suddenly she heard the trickle of water. But being unable to see beyond her outstretched hands, she could not immediately locate the source. Something told her that they had circled around the compound and were now back near the stream ambling down the low, sloping hillside. Unexpectedly, Jonas reached out, grasped her wrist and pulled her along with him. Grateful that he had found the stream and was pausing for a drink, she knelt beside him. He lifted his cupped hands to her mouth and poured water onto her parched lips. He repeated the process several times, and then placed his mouth close to her ear.

  “Look up,” he whispered.

  Craning her neck backward, she lifted her gaze toward heaven. Countless stars twinkled above them in the vast night sky, like pinpricks of light shining through a piece of black velvet.

  What an amazing sight.

  Jonas pulled her down beside him onto the damp earth and put his arm around her. She settled against him, thankful for his support. The buzzing chorus of what had to be a million crickets serenaded them.

  “It’s nightfall,” he told her. “The hunt has ended and we’re still alive.”

  Nic slid her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder. She wanted to cry. She wanted to laugh. She wanted Griff to be the one holding her. But she was far too exhausted to laugh or cry. And with Griff thousands of miles away, she took comfort in the arms of Jonas MacColl.

  Chapter 29

  Four days at the Paradise Resort without a word from York. Four days of waiting. Griffin divided his time between tending to business and marathon walks every morning and evening. Yvette had not left the hotel since their arrival, but she had joined Sanders, Barbara Jean, and him for dinner each evening. Sanders had done the exact opposite. He had escorted Barbara Jean on afternoon excursions to explore the island, but they had not ventured out alone. Two of the six Powell agents temporarily assigned to bodyguard duty on Amara went with Sanders and Barbara Jean whenever they left the hotel.

  Half a dozen photos of Nic lay spread out on the dining room table in Griff’s penthouse suite. Afternoon sunshine flooded the room through the wall of windows overlooking the ocean. The light shimmered across the photos, spotlighting them with a bright sheen. As much as he had wanted to rip the pictures into shreds and burn them, he couldn’t. The candid snapshots, no doubt taken by one of York’s flunkies on his command, were all he had to prove that Nic was still alive. He loved the photographs as much as he hated them.

  Griff downed the last drops of the water in the bottle he’d been nursing for the past half hour while he had been conducting business via telephone and e-mail. He had been able to delegate a great deal to others, but some matters required his personal attention. Employees around the world depended on the large network of Powell corporations for their livelihood. He had people counting on him, people Nic would not want him to let down while he was scouring the globe for her.

  Those damn photos called to Griff as if they possessed some type of magic power. He should have stuffed them in an envelope and locked them in the safe, not left them nearby where they posed a constant temptation.

  Slamming shut his laptop, he cursed under his breath. Frustration had begun eating away at him, the waiting and not knowing like droplets of acid dripping continuously into his mind. But that was what York wanted—for Griff to go slowly but surely out of his mind.

  He shoved back the desk chair and stood, took several deep, huffing breaths, and crossed the room. Standing by the dining table, he stared at the photos. He reached down and picked up the one of Nic with York, apparently taken the night after Nic’s first hunt. She looked exhausted, her expression blank, her face streaked with dirt and perspiration, her clothes filthy and tattered. York stood beside her, a rifle strapped across his shoulder, a triumphant smile on his face.

  Goddamn it, he looked just like the real Malcolm York. Whoever had given him his new face had been a talented surgeon.

  Griff’s gaze zeroed in on Nic’s hand clasped in York’s as he held their arms up in a gesture evoking “the winner and today’s survivor” for the camera.

  There on the third finger of her left hand was her engagement ring. Odd that York allowed her to wear it.

  Griff kept Nic’s wedding band anchored just above the knuckle on his pinky, the only finger the ring would fit. Using his thumb, he twisted the ring around and around, remembering the day he had placed it on Nic’s finger.

  Their wedding day.

  Nic hadn’t wanted a big fancy wedding. He could have given her a wedding fit for a princess, but that wasn’t what she’d wanted.

  “I had the white gown, the bridesmaids, and the flower girls when I married Greg,” she’d told him. “I was young and starry-eyed and put more thought into the wedding than I did the marriage. With you, it’s different. I’m different.”

  And so they had gotten married in a little chapel in Gatlinburg. Barbara Jean and Sanders had been their witnesses. And they had spent their wedding night in a rental cabin, the one he had eventually bought as a gift for her, the same cabin where she had gone the day she left him.

  If he could go back to their wedding day or the day before or the night he had proposed, he would tell her everything about Amara and his relationship with Yvette. If he could do it all over again, he wouldn’t keep any secrets from Nic. But there were no do-overs in this life. You got one chance to get it right.

  Griff laid down the photo he held and carefully chose another, looked at it, and then took his time studying the other four. All the snapshots were of Nic. One with York and two with the man York insisted was her lover taken the night after the hunt. Three were of Nic alone and apparently taken before the hunt, perhaps several days before. The last photo he looked at, the one he couldn’t put down, showed Nic, wearing shorts and a halter top, sitting on a wooden bench. She wore no makeup, her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and although she faced the photographer, she appeared to be looking beyond the camera, her thoughts far away.

  Had she been thinking about him? Had she been wondering why he hadn’t found her, why he hadn’t rescued her? Or had she been remembering the two of them together, just as he was doing right now? Had she been thinking about the first time they made love? Their wedding night? Their honeymoon?

  There had been a lot of women in Griff’s life, before he’d been abducted and shipped off to Amara and in the years after his escape from York’s hellhole.

  He remembered some of the women, recalled several with fondness, and had genuinely liked many of them. But until Nicole Bellamy Baxter had stormed into his life with her take-no-prisoners attitude, he’d had no idea what it felt like to need a woman the way he needed air to breathe. From the moment they first met, they had mixed like oil and water. She had disliked him on sight, both personally and professionally. And although he’d found her undeniably attractive, he had figured her for a ball-bashing bitch.

  As an FBI agent, Nic had been all about law and order, following the rules, doing everything by the book. Griff, by his very nature, was a rebel—always had been and always would be. He lived by his own rules and did whatever was necessary to see justice served. They had locked horns more than once whenever the Powell Agency had taken an interest in one of the bureau’s cases.

  And then the inevitable had happened.

  He would never forget the night they made love for the first time. Every detail, every word, every touch, every sensation was imprinted on his brain.

  “It’ll just be sex,” she’d told him.

  “Sure, honey. Whatever you say.”

  But it hadn’t been just sex for them, not that night, not ever.

  He never forgot to use a condom, but he’d forgotten that night. Afterward, they had been concerned that she might be pregnant. But it hadn’t happened. Now, he almost wished i
t had. After they’d been married for a while, they had decided they wanted a child, but try as they might, Nic hadn’t conceived.

  Considering the hostility they had felt when they first met, who would have ever thought they would wind up madly, passionately in love, married, and wanting children? He wasn’t sure who had been the most surprised by that turn of events. Nic or him?

  “God, woman, I love you,” Griff said aloud. “Whatever you do, don’t give up. I’ll find you. I swear I’ll find you.”

  Once again, Nic had no idea where she was. They had left the jungle compound yesterday morning and the jet had landed at a private airstrip shortly before dawn. Neither Jonas nor their trainer, Vartan, had traveled with her. She had tried questioning York about their destination and about Jonas, but he hadn’t been forthcoming with information about either.

  “You have experienced the thrill of the hunt,” York had told her. “It is time for you to prepare yourself for the next phase of your captivity.”

  And that was all he had told her.

  While still nighttime, York had whisked her from the airplane straight to a waiting limousine with shaded windows. Wherever they were, the climate certainly wasn’t tropical. When she had deplaned, she had felt a definite chill in the air. She suspected they were in a big city somewhere. As the limo had zipped along a well-paved road, they had passed through block after block of well-lit streets. After at least a thirty-minute drive, the car had pulled up in front of an old house on the outskirts of town, a two-story stone-and-brick residence flanked on either side by what appeared to be deserted buildings. Upon entering the house, York had turned her over to a stern, sullen-faced woman, whom Nic had suspected wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if ordered to do so.

  Nic had been confined to her room since their arrival, a small, dark room on the second floor. As soon as old Sourpuss had left her alone, she had explored the bedroom and the tiny connected bathroom with antiquated fixtures and no windows. And then she had checked out the single window in the bedroom, which she quickly discovered couldn’t be opened. Numerous coats of paint over the years had glued the window permanently shut. At daylight, she had peered through the window in the hopes of figuring out where the house was located. No such luck. The only thing she’d been able to see was a garbage-strewn alley and the backside of other run-down buildings.