The Last Kiss Goodbye: A Charlotte Stone Novel

by Karen Robards

  “Hit him!” Michael yelled.

  Screaming, Charlie smashed the canister into David’s head with all her might. The thud was sickening. The look in his eyes was worse. They went wide and black. His fingers slackened on her ankle. Shaky with terror, she jerked her leg free, and scrambled out of his reach.

  The van slid another few inches into the water.

  David just had time to gasp out, “Charlie!” before the water covered his mouth, and then his nose—

  “Get the hell out of here!” Michael screamed.

  Blocking the horrible sounds of David’s frenzied flailing from her mind, Charlie pushed off from the top of the cage and scrambled toward the strip of night sky she could see through the open cargo door..

  Even as she struggled to climb the now nearly vertical floor, the water gave a great gurgle. Her heart jackhammered. She clawed frantically for the door as the van sank, taking her with it as it plunged with terrifying speed toward the depths of the lake. Quick as a blink, the water closed over her, swallowing her, rushing up her nose, blinding her.

  Holding her breath, she tried frantically to swim up through the sudden fierce suction that pulled at her from below.

  Lungs burning, heart pounding, pulse racing, she fought valiantly as she was dragged down and down and down into the dark, swirling water. Soon her lungs felt as if they would explode and she opened her mouth to suck in air because she couldn’t resist the urgent need any longer, only there was no air anywhere and what she sucked in was water.

  Lost in blackness, dizzy and weak, struggling until she couldn’t any longer, Charlie saw beautiful shimmery stars pinwheeling through the darkness in front of her eyes and felt the cold water rushing past her turn warm and comforting, like a lover’s arms.

  She could hear Michael screaming, “No, no, no,” in her ears as she died.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Seen from the green, grassy shore, the lake at night was beautiful. Its smooth dark surface rippled in the moonlight, reflecting the icy white sickle of the moon itself, and the glitter of thousands of stars. The breeze blowing in off the water was warm, and smelled of flowers.

  Charlie felt happy. She felt at peace.

  Even so, there was a tremendous amount of commotion around her. The red flashing lights of police cars ringed an area not far away. She could hear voices, cries, weeping. She looked closer. Although she was not physically near, she recognized the three young girls huddled together, the woman and two men kneeling around a second woman lying supine in the grass.

  She even remembered their names: the girls were Natalie and Diane and Kim; the kneeling woman was Lena, and the men were Tony and Buzz.

  The supine woman in the soaked yellow dress, with the heavy man’s watch glinting silver on her slender, motionless wrist, pulled at her. Charlie felt a drift of gentle sadness as she realized: that woman, drenched and drowned, lying unmoving and pale in the moonlight, was her.

  Dr. Charlotte Stone.

  She drew closer.

  “I thought she was right behind me.” Lena sounded like the words were being ripped out of her throat. She was wet and shivering despite the warmth of the night. Moonlight gleamed on what looked like a tear sliding down her cheek.

  Buzz slid an arm around Lena. His clothes were dirty, ripped. A grayish powder—ash, she remembered there had been an explosion—dusted his hair. “It’s not your fault. We should have come back faster. By the time we got to the Inn, saw your laptops still on the table, and figured out what had happened, Myers was long gone.”

  “If one of the waitresses hadn’t remembered seeing a gray van tearing out of the parking lot and been able to tell us which way it went, we never would have found you.” Tony’s voice was hoarse. His white shirt was torn and smeared with grime, and he had a cut on his cheek. Like Buzz, his black hair was full of ash. His face was white with shock, twisted with grief. “I can’t believe we got to you too late. Charlie. Dear God in heaven, how could I have let this happen?”

  The raw pain in his voice made Charlie want to reassure him. But Buzz and Lena already were, and then more people joined them, police officers and others, official types. She heard one of them say, “We’ve got divers down there trying to extract Myers’ body. It’s still trapped in the van,” and then because she didn’t want to hear anything more about that, she moved away.

  “Charlie!” From out of the shadows Michael appeared, tawny hair washed silver by the moonlight, tall body powerful as ever, handsome face solemn and unsmiling as he walked across the grass toward her.

  She knew him instantly, as she knew she would always know him in any realm, in any universe, in any dimension, in any time.

  “Michael,” she said, and smiled at him as the slight uneasiness Tony’s pain had caused her gave way to pure joy.

  He opened his arms to her. She walked into them. They closed around her, hugging her close. She could feel every hard, muscular inch of him. She lifted her face to him, and he kissed her, his lips hot and slow. Sliding her arms around his neck, she kissed him back.

  She could feel every thrilling nuance of that kiss.

  She never wanted it to end.

  They were on the same side of the barrier now, and he was hers, just like she was his. Nothing to separate them any longer.

  Ghosts couldn’t stay. But what she hadn’t realized was, she could go. With him.

  “I’m dead?” It was both a question and a statement, asked when he stopped kissing her at last.

  “Charlie.” His honeyed voice was husky, low. She was in his arms still, with her cheek resting against his wide chest, knowing there was no place else in heaven or hell where she would rather be. When he hesitated, when he said nothing more beyond her name, she tilted her face up so that she could see his eyes. They gleamed down at her, their usual sky blue veiled by moonlight.

  A faint tinkling of chimes blew in on the breeze. Charlie turned her head to listen.

  Not too far away, in a clearing in the middle of a copse of tall trees, a sprinkle of falling moonbeams turned into a column of solid light.

  Her mouth fell open as she looked at it. The light was beautiful, celestial, divine.

  She knew what it was. The gateway. The passage.

  The light mesmerized her. Drew her. It was everything she could do to tear her eyes away to look up at him, to draw his attention to it. All of a sudden it occurred to her that maybe she could take him with her into it, that maybe its power would hold his weight as well as her own, that maybe there could be an eternity for them together, after all.

  “Michael.” Pulling out of his arms, she caught his hand instead, tugging him with her toward it. “There’s the light. Come with me into the light.”

  “Charlie.” He resisted. He was too big, she couldn’t budge him against his will. “No.”

  “You see it, don’t you?” she asked in sudden consternation, because she remembered then that he’d never been able to see it before.

  “I see it.”

  “You can walk into it with me. It’s strong enough for both of us. I can feel it. I’m”—almost—“sure it will take us both.”

  “Maybe.” His tone was grim. “Whether it will or not, babe, you don’t want to go.”

  Charlie frowned at him. “What? Yes, I do.”

  He shook his head. “No, you don’t. Being dead sucks. You want to stay here. You want your life.”

  She answered almost piteously: “No.”

  “Yes.” He was inexorable. “They’re over there giving you CPR again. You can still go back.”

  “No.” But then she thought of her house, and her work, and her mother, who would grieve. So, it seemed, would Tony, and Buzz and Lena, too. And—others. Her colleagues. Her friends. Then there was Michael. What if he couldn’t walk into the light with her? What if he was torn away from her, and she never saw him again?

  Until that moment, she hadn’t really noticed that the breeze had turned into a gentle suction, wafting her toward that poor dr
owned body in the grass.

  She looked up at him, undecided, and he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Kissed her like he was promising her forever, like he had found eternity in her arms. Clinging, she kissed him back, and was still kissing him when—swoosh—he was no longer there.

  A moment later, she was lying in the grass coughing and sputtering and spewing out lake water like a fountain.

  Michael stood where she had left him.

  The feel of her was still in his arms. The taste of her was still on his lips. She was back in her body. He could see her moving over there in the grass. She would be fine, he knew. She would live, and have her life.

  He wished with every glimmer of his being that he could say the same.

  The light was still there. The white light that she’d been talking about for so long.It had come for her. Not for him.

  But he could feel it pulling at him. He walked toward it, curious. It waited for him, beautiful and shimmering. He could feel the hope of it, the promise of it. Looking at it, he was tempted. Just to try.

  For a long moment he stood there, resisting the pull, deep in thought. Then he turned his back on the light and walked away.

  There was a woman he wasn’t yet ready to leave.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  KAREN ROBARDS is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over forty books and one novella. The mother of three boys, she lives in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.