Deadlier than the Male
Page 19
After watching her start toward the house, he heard a shriek. Forgetting everything else, he rushed toward the spot, his flashlight beam ranging ahead…
…and touching on a violent struggle near the bluff’s edge, not between Mara, Mrs. Somers and some unknown assailant—but between Mrs. Somers and…Christine. But how could his dead wife…?
Stunned, he froze, then realized it was Mara he saw—Mara wearing Christine’s red coat as she struggled to grasp Mrs. Somers’ right hand.
The hand that held a gun.
“No!” he roared, his voice reverberating off the star-washed rock as he instinctively pulled the knife from his pocket. “Drop it. Drop the weapon, Mrs. Somers. Now.”
Startled by his shout, the housekeeper gaped in his direction. Taking advantage of the other woman’s distraction, Mara twisted to snatch the revolver from Mrs. Somers’ hand.
It should have ended there—and would have, except that Mara’s legs tangled in the long coat. Stumbling, she went down hard, rolling over the cliff’s edge with a shrill, truncated scream.
Mara fell, her body twisting before she slammed down onto a narrow shelf. There was a loud snap, her left elbow cracking as it struck rock first, and the gun she had been holding spun over the side.
She nearly followed, her momentum carrying her close to the edge before her fingers clutched rock as one leg swung out over empty space. Pain exploded through her injured elbow, kaleidoscopic color bursting through her vision.
Yet she hung on, even as the strength drained from her left hand. Hung on and pulled herself back to safety, where she shuddered uncontrollably and listened to the shouting somewhere above.
“You killed her.” Anguish poured through Adam’s words, a grief so raw that Mara couldn’t doubt his feelings for her. “You killed her, and you killed Christine, didn’t you?”
“What? No!” shrieked the older woman. “Mara attacked me. Marched me here at gunpoint and said she’d get me out of her way so she can have you all to herself.”
Galvanized by fury, Mara uncurled herself and looked up to the lip of rock perhaps six feet above. Looked up and then felt around to find a crack in the sheer rock face, a jutting stone at her hip level. Dangerous hand-and footholds, but there was no time to find better.
“Stop lying!” Adam shouted. “I saw the blood on her face, the gun in your hand. I know it was you. My God, no wonder Rebecca’s been so—and now you’ve killed Mara, too?”
Hot tears coursed down Mara’s face as she hauled herself still higher, too out of breath to speak, to tell him that she was alive.
“You have it all wrong,” Mrs. Somers pleaded. “I wrestled the gun from her. That’s why I had it. I swear, she was trying to kill me.”
“Why, Mrs. Somers—Dora? Why would you do this?”
One more step. That’s all I need, thought Mara. With her left arm useless, she fought to push herself up with her legs.
“Don’t you understand?” Mrs. Somers wailed. “I’m Rebecca’s mother, just as truly as if she’d come out of my own womb. We could have been perfect, the three of us. The perfect family. We still can, if you’ll just—”
“You’re insane. Now get back from the—”
“It’s all ruined anyway. She ruined everything. I see that.”
“Stop,” Adam ordered. “Stay away from—”
Mara was close now, so close to their voices. Reaching her hand upward, she touched the edge……of a shoe? She barely moved her fingers in time to keep from being stepped on.
Bracing herself on bruised knees, she stared upward as an arm swung out over the edge. Was it Mrs. Somers? Did she mean to throw herself off the same bluff where she’d tried to push Mara?
“No,” Mara said, recoiling instinctively for fear of being knocked back down, perhaps to topple all two hundred feet this time.
At the sound of her voice, Mrs. Somers shrieked in surprise, and there was a grunt as Adam tackled her and pressed her flat atop the bluff’s edge. With his body pinning the struggling woman, he stretched his hand into the darkness, saying, “Mara? Mara, is that you?”
“Adam,” Mara gasped back, clutching him with her right hand. Holding on and swearing she would never let him go.
Epilogue
“B e careful with her, baby,” Adam told his daughter the next afternoon as they approached Mara, who was dressed and ready to leave the hospital where she’d spent the night. “You wouldn’t want to squeeze her too tight and hurt that broken arm.”
Mara had other bumps and bruises, as well, enough that the doctor hadn’t objected when Adam insisted she be kept for observation.
“Are you kidding?” Mara asked, falling to her knees beside the bed to kiss and hug Rebecca. “Your hugs are exactly what the doctor ordered.”
Smiling up at Adam, she added, “And so are your kisses.”
“You’ve had plenty,” he joked, though he doubted there could ever be enough kisses to reassure himself that she was whole and safe beside him, in spite of last night’s horror. He still saw her falling every time he closed his eyes.
“The sheriff came,” Rebecca reported, her expression earnest. “And he told me they had her locked up tight, where she can never hurt me.”
“They’ll put Mrs. Somers in a special hospital,” Adam reassured her, “where she won’t be able to hurt anyone again.”
“And she won’t be allowed to come back to our house ever,” the girl added, her relief filling Adam with the hope that, with love and patient understanding, she would survive the past year’s trauma with her spirit intact.
When a knock came, Mara stood. “Finally, my discharge papers. Come in, please.”
Instead of the nurse they had expected, Principal Jillian Rhodes appeared, looking troubled, a beautiful vase of autumn-hued flowers in her hand. Elegantly coiffed and dressed as always, she shifted her gaze to each of them in turn. “I’m here to tell you all how sorry I am.”
Mara raised her eyebrows, clearly surprised by the apology from Barbara Fairmont’s bosom buddy.
But Adam supposed the principal might be rethinking that relationship, considering Babzilla’s arrest for disorderly conduct and public intoxication after he’d spoken to the sheriff last night. Adam wondered how Red Bluff’s cruelest gossip was enjoying being the subject of the latest rumors.
Looking to Rebecca, Jillian Rhodes said, “It was wrong of me to say you had to change classes. A terrible mistake. Do you understand that?”
Clearly nervous, Rebecca looked first at her father and then at Mara before asking, “Does this mean I can go back to school?”
“Of course I want you back, Rebecca.” Mrs. Rhodes set the vase atop the rolling table.
“We’ve made other arrangements,” Adam said stiffly, still furious over the way the principal had hurt both his daughter and Mara.
“I understand you’re still upset with me,” Mrs. Rhodes said. “And you have every right to be. I thought I was doing the right thing, but…I’ve been given to understand I may have reacted a bit hastily. I apologize for that.”
The stiffness in her voice made him wonder whether the superintendent had given her a hard time for Rebecca being pulled from the school. Had the man forced her to come here and try to make things right?
Mara shook her head. “You weren’t the only one at fault. If I’d been completely honest with you—”
Mrs. Rhodes’ expression softened. “Perhaps you might have been, had I been a bit more willing to hear you out.”
“Everybody makes mistakes sometimes,” Rebecca piped up, looking at Adam.
Remembering, as he did, he thought, how often he had told her that on days when her mother was distracted or unhappy.
Mrs. Rhodes smiled and smoothed the girl’s blond-streaked hair from her forehead. “Right, Rebecca. And one of mine was failing to do my homework.”
Rebecca gaped, clearly astonished.
“So many parents complained to me about your leaving that I finally got around to reading the
research that you sent me,” the principal admitted to Mara. “I’ll confess, it was all quite exciting. Very promising. And then I got to thinking, perhaps you really are the kind of teacher we need: dedicated, caring, even willing to take risks for the welfare of your students.”
Adam smiled to see Mara blush.
“Come back to school, Mara,” Mrs. Rhodes continued. “Please.”
Mara lifted her chin. “And I could teach Rebecca?”
“It might be a bit awkward—” It was Mrs. Rhodes’ turn to flush this time “—to have you seeing one of your students’ parents. And certainly, living at the Jakes home—”
“Her living there will be perfectly natural.” Adam looked into Mara’s beautiful face and thought of all they’d been through, all the two of them had suffered to find each other once again. He wasn’t about to let it be for nothing—wasn’t about to allow the hand he’d clasped so fervently to slip out of his grasp.
Dropping to his knees, he took that hand and kissed it. “Marry me, Mara. Marry me and make me the happiest man alive.”
Her green eyes filled, and in the silence that followed, he heard what sounded like a whispered prayer from Rebecca.
“Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes….”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Mara said, laughing, and pulled him into the first kiss of their future, the kiss that marked the start of an extraordinary new adventure: a marriage with the very first woman who had ever loved him, the pesky little girl with scabby knees and ugly glasses who had grown up to become the living key to all his dreams.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7504-5
DEADLIER THAN THE MALE
Copyright © 2010 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
THE FIERCEST HEART
Copyright © 2010 by Sharon Sala
LETHAL LESSONS
Copyright © 2010 by Colleen Thompson
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