Surfacing mere feet from a ripped-apart hull, she yelled, “Bryce!” and then went down again, going deeper this time, reaching out with both hands in every direction. No matter how deep she went, no matter how close she got to the wreckage, no matter how many times she tried, she came up empty.
An eerie sensation suddenly floated through her, twisting her chest into what she thought of as a big knot of grief. The weird feeling intensified, sadness gripping her from the inside out. She’d felt this way on entering Widow’s Peak. Finally understanding came to her.
“No, Bryce, no!” she cried.
A sob caught in her throat as his spirit washed over her and through her, and she sensed that he was at peace with what he’d done.
He’d given his life to save hers.
“Let me find you, Bryce, please let me find you!”
She could bring him back—she knew she could—but she didn’t have much time.
Taking a deep breath, she opened her mind to him and went under to seek his spirit and, hopefully, his body as well. She moved by instinct, knowing that when the grief shadowing her increased to an almost-unbearable degree, she was close enough to reach out and touch him.
Her hand brushed something smooth. She lunged closer. Bryce’s face. Caught under the hull, his body hung there, and when she grabbed him and slung her arm over his chest to pull him to the surface, she felt no heartbeat.
Wanting to scream her grief, she held it in. She had to conserve her energy, had to pull him up out of the water into the boat. It wasn’t too late, couldn’t be too late. She would bring him back. She would!
They broke surface together, Hailey gasping, Bryce deadly silent.
A horn blasted at her and she realized a boat was coming straight for them. Then hands were reaching down and she was blindly pushing Bryce’s body up, ignoring the pain it caused her wounded arm.
“Hailey, are you all right?”
“Danny!”
Her brother reached down for her and pulled her out of the water. He helped her lay Bryce on his back on the floor of the boat so they could work on him.
As Hailey positioned herself to administer CPR, Danny said, “I called the rescue team on my cell. What happened?”
Then it hit her. “Danny, Ray is still in the water!”
Her brother immediately jumped overboard.
“Be careful he doesn’t try to hurt you!” she yelled, though she hoped under the circumstances, Danny could take care of himself.
Hailey gave Bryce two breaths, then compressed his chest for thirty seconds. She alternated breaths and chest compressions over and over, keeping the blood circulating until his heart could start pumping on its own. A light cut through the fog and a male voice hailed her. Even though she recognized it as belonging to one of the men on the lake rescue team, she didn’t stop until Bryce gasped and began to breathe on his own. His heart pumped weakly beneath her hands.
Bryce’s eyes fluttered open for a second. “Hailey, it’s gone,” he whispered, before his eyes closed again.
“What’s gone?” she asked as a rescuer jumped on board and took over for her. He checked Bryce’s vital signs.
“He’s lucky you got to him in time. Let’s get him to a doctor.” Signaling the rescue boat, he moved to take the driver’s seat.
Hailey gasped, “Wait a minute—Danny.”
“Where?”
“Here!” Danny yelled from the water. “I need a hand.” Once they helped him topside, her brother said, “Sorry, sis, couldn’t find Ray. It’s impossible down there.”
Hailey was sorry, too. Ray deserved to pay for what he’d done. Then again, she guessed he had with his life.
Sliding down next to Bryce, still unconscious—battered, bruised and bleeding but alive—she took his hand and kept track of his pulse in case his heart stopped again. “We’ll start a recovery operation at first light. Get us out of here.”
As the boat sped to the main town dock, Danny said, “I was worried when I heard your message, so I came to see you, but you were both gone. Then I heard that horn blast and went for the other boat.”
“When you didn’t pick up, I thought the worst,” Hailey admitted. “That maybe Iceman got to you after all.”
“I told you I wouldn’t gamble again. I messed up, Hailey, big time. I can’t believe I nearly bankrupted you. But I realized you and Bryce were right. I finally got professional help. I started seeing someone this afternoon.”
That afternoon…when she’d spotted his car parked off-road and had assumed he’d gotten himself in another game.
“But enough about me,” Danny said. “What the hell happened out there anyway?”
“Ray was going to kill me because of what I learned about Violet and Alice McKenna. They were sisters.” Something that Bryce still didn’t know. “Ray didn’t want it known that his aunt had other relatives who could lay claim to the inheritance. I guess Bryce stopped Ray the only way he could.”
Bryce had sacrificed his life to save hers.
Thank God she’d been able to bring him back.
BRYCE woke up confused and hurting all over. The room was dark, but a window revealed the storm had passed and the sky was clearing. Moonlight filtered into the room, revealing a woman asleep in the chair next to his bed.
What the hell? Why was he in a hospital bed, connected to an I.V., and why was Hailey keeping vigil?
It took him a moment to remember what had happened.
Hailey had almost died because of him. Because of the McKenna curse.
The curse…
Bryce remembered more. Remembered awakening in the boat to a startling discovery. “It’s gone. It’s really gone.”
“What’s gone?”
He reached out and grasped Hailey’s hand and tugged. “Can you come closer for a minute?”
“Sure.”
She got up from the chair and sat at the edge of his bed. He could see that her eyes were glassy, like she was trying not to cry.
“Closer.”
She leaned in to him.
He hooked a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her close enough to kiss her. Their lips touching made him think of everything good that could happen between them now. When he let her go, he was grinning, at least as much as his bruised face would allow.
“The curse. I used to be able to feel it, especially around you. Not anymore.”
Hailey stared at him a moment, swallowed hard and said, “You died in the water.”
“I know. No white lights. Nothing so dramatic. But I swear I felt Mom. I swear she told me it wasn’t my time and pushed me away, told me to come back.”
“Thank God I found you when I did. Ray wasn’t so lucky.”
While he regretted the man’s death, Bryce knew that if he hadn’t stopped Ray, the man would have shot Hailey. “He killed my mother, didn’t he? And he tried to kill you because he worried that her spirit would confide in you.”
“You know it was Ray?”
“I didn’t know for sure until I saw him, but when I went looking for you, I kept going over everything we’d learned and I just didn’t believe the men we suspected were actually guilty. Then when I saw Ray go after you, it mostly fell into place. What I don’t know is why.”
“Your mom found this journal that belonged to her mother,” Hailey said. “Alice learned that her mother had another child when she was very young. She gave her up for adoption.”
“Violet?”
Hailey nodded. “Your mother’s much older half sister. Ray overheard them talking about it and didn’t want the McKennas messing up his plans for the money he and Mike were going to get when they inherited Widow’s Peak.”
“Greedy bastard! What about Mike?”
“Ray said he didn’t know, that he acted alone.” Hailey took something out of her pocket. “I’m actually amazed this didn’t end up at the bottom of Geneva Lake.”
She handed him what looked like a pillbox, saying, “I found this in a desk drawer in
Violet’s room. I think Violet found it after your mother was killed. Open it.”
Bryce did so. His heart lurched when he recognized the contents.
“This is from the necklace we kids gave Mom for Mother’s Day. There were four wheels, one for each of us with our birthstones. This one was mine.” Staring at it for a moment, he remembered their giving her the present as if it was only yesterday. He touched it with a fingertip and swallowed hard. “Thank you for this. It means a lot to me. I don’t want to lose it.” He closed the box. “Will you keep it for me until I’m out of here?”
“No problem,” she said, replacing the box in her pocket.
“What about the police?” he asked.
“While you were still in the E.R., I called Chief Schmidt and told him everything that happened with Ray…and where to find your Mom’s body.”
“I missed that part. Where, I mean.”
“The old coal bin,” she said. “Ray buried her under a ton of coal.”
Bryce swallowed hard and figured that if she could see his eyes, she would know that he was now holding back tears. “We were that close to her body in the basement, and I didn’t have a clue.”
“Stop beating yourself up. You don’t have to feel guilty anymore.”
“How so?”
“Even if you had gone with her that night, Ray would have learned about the blood connection. His killing your mother wasn’t a crime of passion. It was deliberate. If he hadn’t done it that night, he would have found another time and place. Like he almost did with me. There was nothing you could do to stop it.”
“Okay, no more guilt,” he promised, his eyes getting heavy. “Leave the rest till I get out of this place.”
Hailey squeezed his hand and stayed put. Bryce took comfort in that as he let sleep take him.
A houseful of McKennas was challenging to say the least, but Hailey was glad Grania and Reilly and their father, Murtagh, came to gather around Bryce when he was to be released from the hospital. Only Liam, in the midst of investigating a kidnapping in New Orleans, was absent. If anyone had thoughts about why Bryce’s wife didn’t share his bedroom, they kept it to themselves.
Ray’s body had been found. And what was left of Alice. They would finally be able to bury her in a few days.
Chief Schmidt had led an investigation as to what had happened on the lake. The bullet-scarred remains of Bryce’s boat and recovery of Ray’s gun had satisfied both him and the district attorney that there was nothing to prosecute. The case was already closed.
And Hailey had brought home Bryce’s grandmother’s journal.
Hailey had told his family everything she knew about Violet and Alice and the murder, but she kept some information to herself until Bryce returned home and they shared a buffet breakfast in the family room.
“I can’t believe I lost my Alice out of that bastard’s greed,” Murtagh said, stabbing a sausage with his fork.
Looking at him, Hailey got a glimpse of Bryce’s future looks—silver hair and eyebrows, but still handsome and distinguished, with smile lines at the corners of his eyes.
Grania gave her older brother a piercing stare. “People will do unconscionable things for money.”
Obviously a jab at their marriage of convenience.
Hailey took a bite of her quiche and kept her thoughts to herself.
Murtagh cleared his throat, but his voice still sounded thick when he said, “What I don’t understand is why my Alice never told me about Violet being her sister.”
“Maybe she didn’t know until right before the end,” Hailey said. “And maybe she wanted Violet’s permission to tell people first. I was thinking about why Alice might not have found the diary after her mother died,” she said. “Then I figured it must have been in storage. I got a look at the basement here while doing laundry.”
“And?” Bryce asked.
“I discovered an old hope chest. It looked promising, so I dug through it and found all kinds of interesting things including these.”
She placed legal-size papers on the coffee table.
Closest to them, Grania took a look. “These prove Violet was given up for adoption, that she was Mom’s older sister.”
“And it proves this family has a stake in Widow’s Peak,” Hailey said.
“Violet left it to her nephews.”
“Ray couldn’t benefit from a crime,” Reilly said.
Bryce countered, “But he didn’t kill Violet.”
“A lawyer would argue that Violet would have changed her will if Mom had lived,” Reilly said.
“I took Mike’s brother from him.” Bryce’s expression was grim. “I won’t take anything else.”
“You don’t have to take anything, Bryce,” Hailey said. She hadn’t told anyone this yet—she’d wanted to wait until they were all together. “Mike is horrified at what his brother did. He came to the house yesterday to apologize. He hadn’t had a clue as to what Ray was doing, but he feels he should have, that on some level he’d known things weren’t right but he’d ignored the feeling. He offered to share the proceeds from the sale of Widow’s Peak with Alice’s children. Equal shares. He said it’s the only way he can live with himself.”
“Bryce, this would mean we don’t need James Croft,” Grania said. “Our shares of the money would put McKenna Development back on solid footing. We won’t have to declare bankruptcy after all!”
“That’s why you were courting Croft?” Hailey asked, amazed that he’d come up with the money to rescue Danny under those circumstances. “Because the company was going to go under?”
“Afraid so. I guess using what would have been Mom’s inheritance is something we need to consider.”
Hailey heard the hesitation in his voice. Easy money, but Bryce was torn about taking it. A fact that made her very happy. She had underestimated him, but she would never do that again.
They finished brunch and Murtagh and Reilly volunteered to be kitchen detail. They started by clearing the dirty dishes. Even though her arm didn’t hurt anymore, Hailey let them do the heavy work.
“You look like you could use some more sleep,” Grania told her brother.
“Actually, I could use some fresh air.” Bryce gave his sister a penetrating look. “With my wife.”
Wife…Hailey smiled.
Grania’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh. Don’t do anything foolish now.”
He didn’t ask her what she meant by that, just nudged Hailey toward the door. She was glad to leave the house and let Bryce lead her to the walkway. Hand in hand, they started down the bluff. She couldn’t help but look across the lake to Widow’s Peak. Since Alice’s remains had been moved, the place had a whole different vibe for her. No more darkness. No more fear. The spirits were at peace, at last.
Halfway down to the water, Bryce said, “We need to talk.”
“Uh-oh, that doesn’t sound good.”
“But it needs to be done, Hailey.”
He stopped and cupped her shoulders with both hands and, wanting more, she swayed toward him.
“Maybe you could kiss me hello first.”
Ignoring the suggestion, Bryce let his hands drop. “I want you to know nothing has changed. My offer to let you go stands.”
“Wait a minute. You still want a divorce?”
“I’m willing to let you have a divorce per our agreement.”
“Forget the agreement! I don’t see our relationship as business anymore. What happened between us is very personal to me, and I don’t want a divorce.”
“Hailey…” Bryce’s expression turned hopeful. “You’re certain?”
Hailey stepped closer and wound her arms around his neck. “I love you, Bryce McKenna, and I probably always have at least a little since you stood up for me against those bullies when I was just a silly teenager. I’m not going to go unless you shove me out of your life. If you want to divorce me because you don’t love me, that’s on you. It’ll be your decision, not mine.”
“I do love you, Hai
ley. I’m crazy for you. I want to spend my life with you, have kids with you.”
Exactly what Hailey wanted to hear. “Deal,” she said, grinning.
“Deal.”
Taking her in his arms, he kissed her—a deep, soul-stirring kiss—then nuzzled her ear and whispered in it.
“The curse killed me, but love brought me back.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0834-6
DEAL BREAKER
Copyright © 2011 by Patricia Pinianski
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