Shades of Stars (Lola Pink Mysteries Book 2)

by Gina LaManna

  Biking also took longer, and since I was playing the waiting game with Dane, I figured I might as well burn off some of my nervous energy. I worried about him being alone with Anders, but I also didn’t want to disrupt any progress he’d made. He’d promised that Semi would drive him there, and if I trusted anyone to keep Dane safe, it was his loyal tank of a bodyguard.

  By the time I reached Ryan’s shiny new condo on top of Mr. Reynolds’s old grocery store lot, I was feeling an odd combination of determined and chipper. I knew that neither Dane nor I was guilty, and I sensed we were close to finding the real murderer. There was no way I’d let either of us be framed for a murder we didn’t commit—if I could only poke enough holes in the police theories, they’d have to drop the investigation against us.

  It was with this new resolve that I faced Ryan’s building. As usual, the security guard was oblivious to my presence, so I made my way upstairs without a hitch. As I knocked, I hoped he had the answers I needed. Unfortunately, it appeared he wasn’t home.

  I waited for a few minutes, knocking several more times, but there was still no answer. Easing onto my tiptoes, I tried to peek through the peephole to no avail. After one more futile attempt to knock, I heaved a sigh and decided to cut my losses and try back later.

  Resigned to wait for Dane’s return at the castle, I let myself out of Ryan’s building and climbed back onto my bike. I pointed my wheels toward the winding road along the shoreline that’d lead me straight back to the gates of Castlewood.

  Route 1 didn’t have a designated bike lane, but it had wide shoulders and plenty of space to share the road. Plus, it had the best views and the shortest distance between Ryan’s condo and the castle. I cruised along at an easy pace, alternating between bouts of deep thought and no thought at all as I gazed over the ocean and the waves lapping against the shore.

  I was engrossed in the crystal blue water when I first heard the screech of tires. The car came out of nowhere, swerving toward me as I careened out of the way—just barely managing to stay upright on the bike as I skidded toward the edge of the road that ended in a cliff over the water.

  I’d just regained my balance when, to my horror, the car shifted into reverse and shot backward at me. I pedaled wildly forward, but I didn’t have enough momentum to escape unscathed. While the car didn’t touch me, it grazed my back wheel, denting it in a way that left it unusable.

  The impact sent me sprawling. I hit the pavement with a hot skid that had my skin burning and my eyes tearing up in shock and pain. Not only had the asphalt been warmed by the sun, but little pebbles dug into my skin while sand pinched at the open wounds. I was bleeding and skinned from head to foot, aching all over.

  My mind snapped to attention at double the pace as the door to the car swung open and a pair of shoes stepped out. A set of hands reached for my wrecked bike and, with a hefty grunt, the man tossed it off the side of the cliff. I could only let out a low moan of dismay as I heard it clank against the rocky ledge on the way down.

  “Hi there, Lola,” a deep, rocky voice said. “Were you looking for me?”

  “Ryan!” I gasped. “What are you doing?!”

  His eyes narrowed as I pulled myself to my feet and faced him. The same temper that’d flared up from him over and over again was back, raw and exposed in an entirely new light. He wasn’t here for a chat this time; he was here to kill. Again.

  Ryan pulled a gun from his pocket. “I don’t have much time, so I’m not messing around. Get behind the car.”

  I glanced behind me, stalling—hoping and praying for a car to chance upon us and be the guardian angel that would save my life. But no cars sounded, and only Ryan’s laugh drew my attention back toward him as he shook his head.

  “Nobody is coming for you,” he said. “Andrea wasn’t a fighter either. It made things simple. Painless. I promise the same for you if you cooperate.”

  “Is this where you did it?” I took a step forward since I couldn’t see another alternative. I was dismally unarmed, and I couldn’t outrun a gun. My phone had clattered to the ground when I’d fallen. It was my only hope.

  Ryan watched my eyes as they fell to the cell. He nimbly stepped forward and, with one swift kick, sent it sailing off the cliff. “Yep,” he said in answer. “This is the lucky spot. Move it, Pink, or this is going to be a lot more painful than it needs to be.”

  “How’d you get the paperweight?”

  He threw his head back and actually barked with laughter. “Fittingly enough, Andrea got me access.”

  “Why on earth would she do that?”

  “During one of the rare moments when she remembered she was supposed to love me, she invited me to visit her on set at Castlewood,” he said with a shrug. “By then, it was already too late. I knew she was seeing someone else at the castle, and I figured it was the boss. She wouldn’t settle for anyone less.”

  “So you snuck into Dane’s office and stole it?” I asked, keeping my eyes peeled for a rock—something, anything that could be used for a weapon. “If you and Andrea were broken up as you claimed, why did it bother you if she was dating someone else?”

  “She just didn’t know she loved me.” Ryan smirked. “For years she strung me along. We were engaged twice. But then she kept meeting someone else—someone richer, more famous, more...whatever the hell she was looking for. I was never enough, even though I was supposed to be. We were meant to be together, but somewhere along the way, I’d become her sloppy seconds. After all I’d done for her, she never wanted me for more than a few free meals and a warm bed in between her other conquests.”

  “I’m sorry, Ryan, really,” I said. “That is a terrible feeling, and it wasn’t fair of her to treat you like that. But you didn’t have to kill her. And even if you did, why frame Dane?”

  “That bastard has more money than any of us. Andrea drooled over him—salivated over what it’d be like to have someone like that love her. Wouldn’t it just be poetic if the one thing Andrea wanted more than anything—Dane Clark and his billions—brought about her end?”

  “But he didn’t kill her. He barely knew her. You killed her, Ryan.”

  “Because of him. Dane made sure I would never be enough for Andrea,” he mumbled, leaning closer and smelling of smoke and booze. He’d been hitting the bottle again, though he wasn’t drunk—just slightly buzzed for confidence. “Honestly, everything would’ve worked out fine if you didn’t insist on poking your head into Andrea’s business. Now, I’d like to finish things. There are two ways we can do this: You can jump, or I can push you. Your choice.”

  I felt sick to my stomach. Violently ill. If Ryan got his way, I’d never eat another of Mrs. Fredericks’s gooey cookies. I’d never call an emergency meeting of the Sunshine Sisters on the water tower, and I’d never wear a fluffy white wedding dress and marry the man of my dreams. I’d never...I stopped, wiped the tears away, and looked at Ryan.

  If I had any say in the matter, Ryan wouldn’t get his way.

  I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  “Fine,” I whispered, scanning the area one last time as I inched toward the edge of the cliff. “I’ll jump on my own. Just give me a second.”

  “I’ll start the countdown at three,” he said, stepping toward me, lowering the gun so it was pointed toward the middle of my back. “Move it, Miss Pink—two. And one...”

  Chapter 28

  I DIDN’T HAVE A FOOL proof plan. I didn’t even have a good plan to avoid dying. The best plan I could come up with was to ‘stay alive’ and that wasn’t exactly brimming with specificity.

  But when he said two, the target on my back seemed to glow red, begging for him to pull the trigger. I began to panic. My time was running out, and if I didn’t do something, I wasn’t going to make it out of here alive.

  On the count of one, I took action. I leapt away from sure death on the cliff and lunged for cover behind the car. Ryan didn’t fire immediately, which was exactly what I’d been counting on. It would probably b
e easier for him to make my death look like an accident if I didn’t have bullet holes riddling my body.

  I ducked behind the car and scurried to the back of the vehicle. My afternoon had turned into a game of cat and mouse, which was better than the game of Lola jumping to her death.

  “Don’t do this, Pink,” Ryan said, his voice a soothing whisper that could lure a girl to believe he was sincere. Though it would’ve probably worked better if he wasn’t holding me at gunpoint. “I can’t let you live, but we can make this friendly. Simple. I don’t want to hurt you—it’s just that you’re in the way. You need to disappear.”

  I hadn’t found much in my quest for weaponry, but I did scoop a few small stones from around my feet and tossed them to the other side of the vehicle. The noise was enough to pull Ryan’s attention in that direction while I crouched and moved the other way. We circled the car like a pair of boxers in a gruesome dance.

  We’d rotated so that my back was to the cliff again and Ryan’s was to the road, the car a barrier between us, but we couldn’t stay in orbit. Sooner or later, I’d have to take a stand, or he would get sick of the game and just shoot me.

  In order to take a stand, I’d need a weapon. Glancing down to where my pretty blue Angelo shades had fallen after my tumble from the bike, I knew they were my only chance. Reaching for them, I snapped one of the arms off the frame, hard—so hard the plastic formed a jagged sort of edge, and I was left with a somewhat flimsy, incredibly rough, shank. That, plus the element of surprise, was going to have to be enough.

  I counted out the seconds as Ryan’s feet inched toward the nose of the car. My hands began to shake, my heart pounding. The second his foot rounded the curve of the hood, I made my move.

  Leaping forward with a bloodcurdling scream, I plunged my makeshift weapon straight toward his stomach. Ryan flinched and stumbled backward, teetering close to the edge of the cliff as I barreled after him. I continued my forward momentum, screaming like a maniac before following up with a knee to his private bits, connecting in a way that took the wind from his lungs.

  A visceral reaction kicked in as he curled over on himself, the gun clattering to the road as he groaned in primal pain. Though athletics were not my forte, I lined up the most perfect football punt I could visualize and sent the gun cartwheeling into the abyss.

  Ryan’s eyes widened in alarm for the first time since he’d run me off the road. His expression flicked to one of shock, then melted away to the cold-blooded look of a determined killer.

  “Enough with the games, Lola,” he said. “It’s time for you to die.”

  I cried for help as he came at me—a loud and startling yell that I prayed someone—anyone—would hear. My heart sank when I got no response. Ryan had selected a widely unused stretch of road, and luck wasn’t on my side this morning. Not yet.

  I dodged his attack and sent another knee toward his groin, but he was ready for it. He not only protected himself, but he caught me in a horrible embrace and used my momentum against me. Together, we hurtled toward the edge of the cliff.

  At the last second, he pulled back to detach himself from me and administer the final shove that would send me over the side and tumbling to certain death.

  But this time, I was ready.

  While he lined up the hit that would be the figurative nail in my coffin, I prepared, as well. He came at me, his arms stretched forward in a pushing motion, and at the last possible second, I ducked and flattened myself to the ground. Where I’d been standing seconds before, there was nothing but air. The momentum of a six-foot male on a murder rampage carried him off the cliff as I dove downward and rolled, smacking the road and feeling every inch of my body scrape against grit and gravel.

  I continued to roll closer to the edge as I regained the ability to function, pulling myself to my feet in time to glance over and see Ryan holding onto twisted vines and tangled bushes while his feet dangled over nothing but rocks and waves pounding below. I barely had time to breathe in relief before worry for him crashed over me. I’d only wanted to escape—I hadn’t wanted to cause Ryan’s death.

  “I’m going to get help,” I called after him with urgency. “Hold on—I can’t reach you!”

  “You bitch!”

  “Yeah, you’re welcome,” I muttered as I hauled myself to my feet.

  My heart still pounding, I rushed to the car and dove into the driver’s side door. I fumbled about for any sort of phone since mine was swimming with the fishies, but Ryan must have kept his in a pocket because there was nothing in the car. There were, however, keys in the ignition.

  I rolled down the window as I started up the vehicle. “I’ll be back!”

  If there were any chance of me saving Ryan by myself, I would have done it. But he was too far down for me to reach, and in the event I did find a way to haul him out of the ravine, he would most certainly kill me before I could call the cops. I’d had enough of the fun and games for one afternoon, so I’d let the police handle the rest of it.

  I drove like a madwoman to the nearest gas station a mile down the road and half ran, half stumbled into the facility—still bleeding from a rainbow of grimy wounds.

  “I need to use a phone,” I said. “Now! Someone’s dangling from the cliff up there. Call 911!”

  The shocked little man behind the counter merely stood there with his lip puffed out in confusion. “Uh—”

  I slid around the counter and picked up the phone, dialing 911. I gave them the nature of the emergency as well as the location, and I threw the names of Detectives Ross and Plane in for good measure. Then I hung up and dialed Dane.

  “Lo—” he began.

  “It wasn’t Anders, it was Ryan!” I cried as soon as he picked up. “Ryan fell off a cliff, and he needs help. And oh, I’ll need a ride. My bike is busted. Also, my phone is dead. But I’m fine.”

  Dane took a full thirty seconds to process my wild ramblings. When he churned through the information, he sounded dangerously professional. “Where are you? I’ll be right there.”

  I gave him the location as best I could, and then I hung up the phone despite Dane’s plea to stay put. The poor little man at the counter of the gas station was still processing all that had happened as I returned to the side of the road where Ryan had gone over.

  “Oh, thank God, you’re still hanging in there,” I said, leaning over the side to find him gripping tight to tree roots and sturdy bushes. “Don’t let go. Help is on the way.”

  Ryan looked up at me, a change in his features from when I’d left him. His eyes had gone dull, his lips drawn into a painfully thin line. The skin on his face displayed an odd mixture of the palest of whites, dotted with red blotchy spots. His muscles must be screaming with hurt, but he didn’t make a sound.

  I leaned over the edge of the cliff, sensing a new resolve in him. “Ryan, don’t let go. I’m not a huge fan of you trying to kill me, but I don’t want you to die. Just hold on for a few more seconds. Wait—do you hear that? It’s a siren. That’s the emergency crew coming to save you.”

  Ryan looked up at me with a blank stare. As brakes squealed to a stop behind me, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him.

  “Ryan, no—don’t,” I whispered. “Hold on!”

  But it was too late. Even as I screamed, he’d already made his decision. With a shake of his head, he released his grip.

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter 29

  “DAMN, YOUR BOYFRIEND has a lot of expensive crap.” Richard’s opening sentence after arriving at the castle was about as elegant as I’d come to expect from him. “Must be sweet living here, huh?”

  “It’s not a hardship,” I said with a smile of understanding. Although Richard and I couldn’t be more different in so many ways, we did have one thing in common: neither of us had grown up in this sort of luxurious environment. I could appreciate his wonder of it all. “Can I get you something to eat?”

  “Uh, yeah.” Richard’s eyes flicked from an expensive set of silv
er candlesticks to me. “I’m always up for some grub.”

  I winked, then pressed the intercom button on the door to the patio where we sat overlooking the sprawling private pool. It was a beautiful day, and I’d chosen to take my work meetings outside. “Mrs. Dulcet—when you have a minute, could you have some coffee and snacks sent to the back patio?”

  “Give me just a few minutes,” she replied instantly.

  Richard’s eyes grew even wider. “How do I get myself some of that?”

  The day after Ryan had gone off the cliff began with a bustle of activity. I had no time to waste despite yesterday’s tussle with a murderer—there was a gala to finalize, gossip to share, and a boyfriend to reassure. Seeing as Dane would’ve preferred I stopped working entirely to ‘rest’ and ‘recover’, we had come to a compromise.

  Instead of giving up work entirely, I agreed to hang around the castle as much as possible. An easy promise to make, seeing as my bike was still totaled, leaving me with walking as my main method of transportation. I’d take my meetings at the castle so Dane could ‘keep an eye on me’ until I convinced him that I was completely fine. For my first meeting of the day, I’d invited Richard to Castlewood in order to final the details for The Lost Leprechaun’s part in our upcoming charity extravaganza.

  While the moments following Ryan’s fall from the ledge had been filled with horror and alarm, the rescue teams had quickly determined that Ryan’s attempted suicide had been wildly unsuccessful. In fact, he’d landed in a thorny bush and wedged himself in a crevice not all that far down. The firefighters quickly freed him, then the cops handcuffed him even faster.

  We’d both suffered from a series of scratches and bruises, but the worst injury of all was Ryan’s shattered ego. He had not been a happy camper as the police tossed him in the back of the cruiser and arrested him for the murder of Andrea Ricker, along with his attempted murder of me, and a few counts of other charges I’d mostly tuned out.