Convinced the last thing her friend needed was to be alone right now, Jordan decided to delay her exit in the hope that maybe Emily would open up to her. “Would you mind if I take a quick look off your balcony? I’ll probably never have an opportunity like this again.”
Emily nodded. “A quick one, though. I hate to rush you, but I really do need to get back to my paperwork.”
Jordan slid the door back and walked out onto the deck. The balcony alone was almost as big as her room, and the view was spectacular. She walked up to the railing and sniffed the salty ocean air, thinking this was how the ocean should be viewed. She leaned over to get a better look at the rippling waves as the ship glided through the water, and she noticed they were right over the middle rescue boats.
“You really need to go now, Jordan,” Emily snapped before Jordan could comment on it.
Confused, she met Emily’s gaze, noticing her friend was breathing rapidly now. Jordan walked back into the room and shut the door. “Are you sure you’re okay?” She was more than a little worried about her friend’s strange behavior.
“I’m fine.” Emily spat out the words and glared at Jordan. “I just need you to go.”
Warning bells sounded in Jordan’s head. Something was terribly wrong here, but she didn’t know what it was or how to fix it. If Emily wasn’t ready to talk about whatever was bothering her, there was nothing more she could do to help her. Frustrated, she walked past Emily to the door. Halfway there, someone knocked, and she jumped.
“Dammit!” Emily swore. “I told you I had business.” She rushed past Jordan and opened the door.
If Jordan had thought her visit up to this point had been a bit strange, she now realized things were about to cross over into bizarre. Beau Lincoln, dressed in a tuxedo and holding a bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket in one hand and two glasses in the other, stood outside Emily’s door with a cocky grin on his face that almost made her want to throw up.
His eyes lit up when he saw Jordan. “Hot damn! Ever since I got your call to come down here for some fun, I haven’t been able to think about anything else. Now, I find out there will be two beautiful women instead of just one, and I’m ecstatic.” He walked into the room and placed the champagne and glasses on the table. “Who wants a drink to get the good times started?”
Jordan shot Emily a look, finding it hard to believe what she’d just heard. In that moment, everything became crystal clear as to why Emily had been in such a hellfire hurry to get her out of the room: she’d been awaiting a private “party” with the sleaziest man on the ship.
Eew!
Disgusted, Jordan reached for the door. The faster she got out of there, the better. She chastised herself for being such a poor judge of character and for feeling sorry for Emily. The woman was as bad as Marsha—worse, since Beau’s wife was probably not even cold yet.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Jordan,” Emily said.
“I think I’ve seen about as—” Jordan’s hand shot up to her mouth when she turned around but not fast enough to stifle a gasp.
Emily Thorpe, the woman she thought of as her friend, was pointing a gun directly at her head.
“Emily, what are you doing?” she shouted, trying to figure out what was going on.
“What the hell is this?” Beau asked. “You called me down here promising all kinds of great things, and now you pull a gun on me? Give it to me.” When he took a step closer to her, she slammed the side of his head with the revolver.
Moaning, he slumped to the carpet, blood oozing from a three-inch gash near his temple.
“Emily, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you need to give me the gun before you really do hurt one of us.”
“Shut up, Jordan. I told you I had business to take care of. You should have listened to me.” She kicked Beau in the side, causing him to yelp. “I’m going to make you wish you’d never met me.”
Jordan repeated the earlier request. “I don’t know where you got that gun, but you need to put it down.”
The New Yorker threw back her head and laughed, except it came out as more of a cackle. “Compliments of our friend Goose.”
“Goose? How did you get his gun?” No sooner had the words left Jordan’s mouth than a horrible vision ran through her head. It was the image of Goose’s orange and blue plaid shirt and the scrap of that material that had caught on one of the rescue boats—the one that was right below Emily’s balcony. “Goose fell from out there?”
“You could say that,” Emily said, her hands now shaking so badly Jordan was afraid the gun might go off accidentally.
“And what would you say?” She had to keep Emily talking until she could figure out a way to get the weapon out of her hand.
“I’d say the man signed his own death warrant when he walked in here demanding a million dollars.” She huffed. “He had no idea who he was messing with. For a security professional, he wasn’t all that smart, if you ask me. He should’ve never accepted that whiskey on the rocks when he got here. He thought he was so smart because he insisted that I pour myself a drink from the same bottle.” She snickered. “The fool had no idea the inside of his glass was coated with a fast-acting sedative. In ten minutes time, he was so groggy he offered no resistance when I led him outside. Getting him over the railing proved to be a little more difficult, but I did it. And now, he’s shark bait.”
Jordan was horrified, and for the first time she realized that the woman standing in front of her now was probably mentally ill. How could she have missed seeing the signs before?
“Emily,” Jordan pleaded one more time. “No one has to know about this. We can say that Goose got drunk and fell into the water by himself. But you have to let me and Beau go. We’ll get help for you, I promise.” She took a deep breath and moved closer to Emily, hoping she didn’t end up on the floor like Beau.
“I know how much you hated your life in Colombia with your aunt and uncle. They robbed you of your teenage years. Let Beau leave, and you and I can talk about it. If you talk about it, it will no longer have power over you.”
Emily’s head snapped up. “How do you know about that?”
“George told me. He’s as worried about you as I am.”
A lone tear ran down Emily’s cheek, and for one promising minute, Jordan thought she had gotten through to her. That tiny hope was dashed when the woman raised the gun again.
“Get back, Jordan. I don’t want to hurt you, only Beau, but I will if you force me to.”
“Why me? What in the hell did I ever do to you?” Beau asked, now holding his hand over the wound above his eye in an attempt to stop the bleeding.
The noise that came out of Emily’s mouth sounded more animal than human. She got down on her knees and placed the muzzle of the gun against his forehead.
“You, my friend, are responsible for everything in my life that caused me pain, and tonight, you’re going to pay for it.”
CHAPTER 22
“Get up, Beau,” Emily ordered before turning to face Jordan. “Grab a couple of scarves out of the top drawer behind you.”
“You’ve got the wrong guy, lady. I don’t know you from Adam,” Beau said indignantly.
For a man with a gun so close to his head, Beau Lincoln was being awfully confrontational, dangerously so, in fact. Whatever had made Emily think he’d caused all the grief in her life was at the core of her anger right now. Coming across with attitude wasn’t the best way for him to defend himself and diffuse the raging volcano building inside the woman.
“You just met Beau a few days ago, Emily. And although I’d have to agree he’s a slimeball, how could he possibly be responsible for all your pain?”
“Shut up about that, Jordan,” Emily screamed. “Just get the scarves.”
Jordan did as she was told and handed a red and a blue scarf to Emily, thinking the expensive silk accessories probably cost more than her own entire outfit.
Emily threw the red one back at her. “Tie up his legs.�
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“Emily, do you really—”
“Just do it, Jordan, or I’ll shoot him right now.”
Jordan bent down and wrapped the scarf around Beau’s legs. He didn’t even try to resist, making Jordan think he’d finally realized Emily was not fooling around and that she was close to going off the deep end.
“Now tie his hands behind his back,” Emily growled. “Tight enough so he can’t feel his fingers.”
“Honestly, Emily, you have mistaken me for someone else. Please don’t do this to me,” Beau whimpered, fear in his voice now.
Emily stepped in front of him and did a slow 360-degree turn in front of him, giving him an up-close look. “Brianna Sloan. Recognize the name, moron?”
He shook his head. “Trust me. I would never forget a woman like you.”
“Then how about my grandmother’s brownie recipes?” She spit at him. “Does that ring a bell?”
“What are you talking about? I never—” He stopped, his mouth open, his eyes filling with terror as recognition washed over his face. He lowered his head. “I thought you were dead.”
She slapped him across the face so hard a red handprint appeared on his cheek. The wound over his eye began to bleed again, but with his hands tied behind his back, all he could do was blink when a drop of blood slid down his face.
“I may as well have died. You never even bothered to come to the hospital to find out about me or your baby.” Emily’s voice broke, and she paused. “You told me you loved me on more than one occasion, and I believed you, but all you wanted were the recipes. I heard you were bragging about how you duped me into giving them up right before you dumped me.” She turned away to swipe at a tear sliding down her cheek. “You called me a two-bagger—said the only way you could even touch me was with two bags over my head.” She swiped a plastic bag off the table and in a second had it over his head.
Beau tried to protest but only succeeded in falling across the bed.
“Guess you’re just a one-bagger,” she said, curling her lips in a sarcastic smile. “How does it feel now?”
“Emily,” Jordan shouted. “He’ll suffocate. I know you’re not that cruel.”
“Do you think he gave a flying flip about how cruel he was to me? I’ve waited a long time for this.”
She allowed Beau to fight for several more minutes before yanking the bag from his head. As he gasped for air, coughing uncontrollably, she jerked him to his feet once again.
Standing directly in front of her, he finally managed to catch his breath and begin breathing normally.
He stared defiantly at her. “There’s no way you could be Brianna Sloan. I have no idea why, but you’re lying through your teeth. Even the most expensive plastic surgeon in the world couldn’t take that fat, pimply faced mouse of girl and turn her into you. So, what’s your angle? Are you looking to get some easy money out of me?”
Emily’s arm swung back so quickly, he was unprepared when she delivered a solid left hook to his chin. Screaming in pain, he fell backward, hitting his head on the edge of the table, which elicited a slew of obscenities from his lips.
Emily didn’t even flinch. She was beside him in a flash and shoved her foot hard into his chest, the stiletto heel digging into his skin while he screamed in agony.
“All these years I’ve been thinking about what it would be like when I finally got my revenge. I wondered what you’d say when I confronted you. I have to admit I thought you might be at least a little remorseful. Never in a million years did I expect to see you act like that same cocky jerk who ruined my life back in Ranchero.” She took her foot off his chest and glared at him. “For God’s sake, Beau, I was only fifteen years old. You could’ve been arrested. Lucky for you I lost the baby when I ran from you and ended up wrapping my dad’s car around the bridge abutment and refused to tell the authorities who the father was.” Her voice caught. “I prayed you’d come to see me once you found out how injured I was. When that didn’t happen, I wanted to die right along with your bastard child.”
Jordan hadn’t said a word throughout this entire confrontation, thinking maybe if she let Emily release all the pent-up anger that must’ve been smoldering all these years, she could talk some sense into her. The most important thing now was to get the gun out of her hand.
At first Jordan believed, as Beau had, that this was just a case of mistaken identity, but after hearing Emily’s story, she remembered Wayne Francis telling a similar one earlier in the week. He, too, thought the girl who had been so humiliated by Beau had ended up in a terrible accident and died that night.
“Emily,” she began, wanting to comfort her friend, despite the fact she still had Goose’s loaded gun in her hand. “I can’t even imagine how much pain you were in back then. Young love can be devastating, but hurting Beau now won’t take that pain away. I promise if you give me the gun, I’ll go with you to talk to anyone you want once we’re back on shore.”
“Oh, I’m not going to hurt him, Jordan.” She laughed. “I’m going to kill him just like he did to that innocent girl so long ago. My father couldn’t even look at me after he’d discovered I’d been pregnant. Said I had disgraced him with his congregation and he could no longer look any church members in the eye.”
Jordan inched a little closer to Emily. “Is that why he sent you to Columbia to live with your aunt and uncle?”
Emily lowered her head but not before Jordan saw the pain in her eyes. “He couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. Since I had no friends and had been airlifted to Children’s Hospital in Dallas the day of the accident, no one bothered to visit me. He conveniently told everyone I had died of complications. When I was discharged, he drove me straight to the Dallas airport and put me on a plane—not that anyone in Ranchero would have recognized me, anyway. My face was so badly mangled I didn’t look anything like I used to.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He preached fire and brimstone all my life, so I don’t know why I expected him to do anything other than condemn me for my sins. When he sent me to live with his sister and her husband who ran a missionary school in Colombia, he said he hoped God would forgive me because he never would. How ironic that he died hating me. He never did see me as the victim in all this.”
“What about your mother? Didn’t she have a say in your going to Colombia?”
“He ran her off long before I ever really got to know her. Then he blamed me for all her cheating. Said I was just as bad as her.”
Jordan took a chance and moved another step closer. Keeping Emily talking seemed her best strategy. At least then, she wouldn’t be making good on her threat to kill Beau.
“Look at what you’ve made of your life. Something good did come out of all that pain, Emily.”
“It’s Anna,” she corrected. “And if you call being treated as a slave from the minute my plane touched down in Bogotá, then yes, my life did change. My uncle, who was at least a hundred pounds overweight himself and had breath that could have stopped a train, used to tell me how ugly I was and that I was fortunate he could see past my looks to the beautiful girl I was inside.” She sniffed back her tears. “Yeah, I was lucky, all right. Lucky enough to work like a dog and never allowed to have any friends. He even farmed me out to some of the families around the school to babysit, but I never saw any of the money,” she said sarcastically.
“Why didn’t your aunt try to stop him?” Jordan asked.
Emily huffed. “She was more afraid of him than I was. But I got my revenge on him just like I’m going to do with Beau. One night when he was all liquored up, I slipped a little drain cleaner into his beer. It was just enough to make him violently ill, and while he was in the hospital I took a bag of emerald stones that he’d stolen from one of his church members. I boarded the next plane back to Dallas.” She snickered. “I would have loved to have seen his face when he pulled up that plank of wood on the floor and discovered his precious gems were gone. Even my aunt didn’t know they were there. He had no clue he’d spil
led the beans to me one night while he was drunk.”
Jordan turned when Beau moaned, and she saw him grimace in pain. She had to find a way to get the gun from Emily, then get out of there and bring back help.
But Emily wasn’t through talking.
“In Dallas, I used some of the emeralds to hire a world-renowned plastic surgeon. He literally had to wire my jaw shut and remake my entire face. Because of it, I lost eighty pounds. When I looked into the mirror for the first time after surgery, an entirely different person stared back at me. That’s when I decided to go to New York. I thought if I changed everything about my life, maybe the resentment wouldn’t eat at me every minute of the day. I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept through the entire night. Still can’t.”
“Emily, look at you. You have so much more than Beau does. And you don’t have to get revenge. He’ll probably go to prison for the rest of his life for killing his wife.” Jordan knew that was reaching, but right now she didn’t have anything else up her sleeve.
“I didn’t kill her,” Beau protested, before Emily kicked him in the back.
“Shut up. Even hearing your voice makes me angry.” She shook her head. “You were the one who was supposed to die, you jackass. Not your wife. She was just another innocent victim of yours, like me. Stefano wasn’t supposed to die, either.”
Jordan was confused at the reference to Stefano. How did the Italian chef who’d died of an allergic reaction play into this story? She couldn’t resist asking about it. “You killed Stefano?”
Emily’s eyes darkened. “He was a casualty of war, so to speak, although I don’t think there were too many tears shed over his death.” She got right up in Beau’s face. “I remembered you telling me how your mother had died of an allergic reaction to nuts. You said that’s why you never ate any of my grandmother’s brownies with nuts in them. You even mentioned that right after you started college, you’d been rushed to the hospital with breathing problems because you’d accidently eaten pecan-crusted fish. The doctor warned you never to eat nuts again if you wanted to stay alive.”
Murder for the Halibut Page 20
