by MJ Rodgers
“But why is Mrs. Ayton saying I pushed her? She must know I didn’t”
“The fact that her injuries were serious enough to put her in a coma for several days makes me doubt that she remembers much about how she fell. Obviously, she’s accusing you because she wants to try to hurt you or keep you away from her son. She may even want to believe it could be true that you’d push her.”
“Now that we know what really happened, how can we prove it?”
Michael extended his hand to Briana and pulled her to her feet. “I have a few ideas. Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“To see a man about a dog.”
“THIS IS G. H. FOOTS, Sergeant Vierra,” Michael said as he introduced the little, round man, whose bald head bobbed up and down like one of those spring-necked dashboard ornaments.
“G.H. is the dog trainer and handler from the Ayton estate. He has a statement to give you about Mrs. Ayton’s prize show dog. Napoleon, and the injuries Napoleon sustained at the Ayton estate on Christmas Eve.”
“What does this have to do with the case against Ms. Berry here?” Vierra asked.
“It has everything to do with it,” Michael said. “Mrs. Ayton tripped on Napoleon’s leash. That’s what caused her to fall down the stairs. Napoleon fell with her and was injured.”
Sergeant Vierra turned to stare at the dog trainer.
“I didn’t realize the little fella was hurt at first,” G.H. said, his head bobbing in nervousness. “I thought he was off his feed because he was missing his mistress. But then I noticed him favoring his right front leg, and the abrasions around his neck.”
“When did you notice this?”
“Late Christmas Day. He was dragged down those stairs with her, all right. The vet agrees. He took X rays. Poor little fella’s got a sprained leg and a couple of broken ribs.”
“Even if the dog fell with her, that doesn’t prove she was tripped by its leash,” Vierra said.
“No?” Michael asked. “Then how do you explain the fact that a servant had to unwrap the leash from around Mrs. Ayton’s ankles before he could free the dog?”
“What servant was this?” Vierra asked, clearly startled.
“His name is Kuen. He found Mrs. Ayton at the bottom of the stairs. Sheldon Ayton came running down the stairs mere seconds later. Kuen removed the whimpering dog to the kennels so G.H. could see to his care and Ayton could see to his mother’s.”
A frown puckered Sergeant Vierra’s brow. “If Mrs. Ayton fell because she tripped on her dog’s leash, why is she saying Ms. Berry pushed her?”
“That’s a damn good question,” Michael said. “Now let me ask you one. Has Mrs. Ayton inquired about Napoleon’s injuries?”
“No. She made a fuss with the hospital when she told them she intended to have Napoleon stay in her room and they told her that health regulations prevented it. But she’s said nothing to indicate she has any suspicions that the dog is injured.”
“If Mrs. Ayton really remembers the facts about her fall, don’t you think she would have asked about the injuries her prized pet sustained, the dog companion she’s so attached to that she even wants him in her hospital room?”
Sergeant Vierra’s mouth was turning mutinous. It was clear that she didn’t enjoy learning that she’d been lied to.
“I want to talk to that servant, Kuen,” she said.
Michael looked at his watch. “He should be here any minute. When I spoke to him on the phone, he said he would drive here directly from the estate.”
Vierra turned to G.H. “Come with me and we’ll get your statement on the record.”
“Ms. Berry and I would like to sit in,” Michael said.
Vierra turned to look at him. “No way.”
“Or we can all wait until I call Ms. Berry’s attorney,” Michael said with a smile. It was a bluff. He had already tried to have Keith here, but had found his friend would be in court all day. Still, the sergeant didn’t know Keith’s schedule.
Vierra shook her head in defeat. “All right. But you sit quiet, both of you. I ask all the questions.”
Michael nodded, pleased that he had achieved his goal. He knew it was important to stay with this and keep pushing Sergeant Vierra to get the charges dropped.
“You go ahead, Michael,” Briana said. “I want to be in the parking lot when Kuen arrives, so I can bring him directly up.”
It sounded like a good idea to Michael. The more carefully they monitored this situation, the better.
“Where should Ms. Berry bring Mr. Kuen, Sergeant?” Michael asked as he turned back to Vierra.
“We’ll be in interrogation room two,” Vierra said as she led G.H. toward it.
Briana took note of the room. As she turned to leave, she felt Michael’s hand grasp hers and hold it tightly for a moment. “It’s almost over.”
As Briana descended in the elevator and made her way toward the parking lot, she could still feel the warmth of his hand.
Almost over, he had said. And then what? They hadn’t talked of a future. Not that there had been time, with this charge hanging over her head. Or was Michael simply avoiding the subject because he knew they didn’t have a future?
He had told her that he loved his work and it consumed him. He had said he was not a man who would marry.
Falling in love with him had been an absolutely insane thing to do! Still, she could have stopped breathing more easily than she could have prevented it.
If he couldn’t return her love, it was going to break her heart.
Briana pushed open the doors of the police station and stepped out into the sunshine. She brought her hand up to shade her eyes as she did a cursory check of the parking lot to see whether Kuen had arrived.
The arm came out of nowhere, wrapping itself across her chest—a hard, strong arm. Briana gasped to find herself suddenly and forcibly pulled back against a man’s body, her arms rigidly imprisoned by her sides.
“Don’t worry. It’s just me,” a familiar voice whispered against her ear.
Briana actually gave a sigh of relief when she heard it. “Rory! What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to get you. I’m not going to let that bitch Gytha Ayton put you behind bars with her lies. We’re getting out of here now. I have our tickets for Dublin. We’ll be gone before anyone knows it.”
“Rory, it’s okay. Dr. Sands is upstairs right now with Sergeant Vierra, straightening all this out.”
“Straightening all what out?”
“The Aytons’ manservant and the dog handler can prove that it was Napoleon’s leash that tripped Mrs. Ayton and caused her to fall down the stairs.”
“I see. So it’s Dr. Sands to the rescue again, is it?”
Bnana couldn’t understand the disappointment in Rory’s words. She tried to turn to face him, but his arm still held her firmly against him.
“Rory, let me go—”
Briana’s sentence was cut off along with her breath as Rory’s hold tightened. His considerable strength was not a surprise. His obvious willingness to use it on her was.
“I can’t let you go,” he whispered in her ear, his voice suddenly deep and deadly soft. “You don’t remember my telling you that on Christmas Eve at the bottom of the stairs, do you? My laying my heart at your feet? It had taken a half bottle of bourbon to give me the courage.”
He laughed. It was a bitter sound. “Stupid, huh? A gimp with no money, no profession, trying to win the heart of a woman who had just married a man who would be a billionaire.”
Briana’s stomach began to crowd her lungs in sudden fear. This wasn’t the Rory she thought she knew. And yet, there was some dark intensity here, something that she could see now had always been below the surface of his signs of affection.
Rory continued to whisper in her ear like a lover—a lethal lover.
“You didn’t understand what I was saying. You still thought I was your brother. And then Sheldon came along and stood between us again. I kne
w I had to get you alone. I was in the hall when that bitch stomped out to tell Sheldon you were an impostor. I saw the leash wrap around her ankle. You yelled a warning, but the dog was barking at me in the shadows, so she didn’t hear.”
“Rory, if you were that close, couldn’t you have saved her?”
“Why would I have wanted to save that bitch? I had just had to listen to her call you the foulest names! She deserved to break her neck for saying such things.”
Odd snatches of forgotten memories were flashing in Briana’s mind—memories of her time as Natalie. Times when Rory’s touch had lingered on her arm, and the uncomfortable sensations she had felt. A kind of relief that she would be marrying and leaving the estate in Louisiana. Briana was beginning to understand that, even as Natalie, she had sensed something wrong about Rory’s regard for her.
“When you saw Gytha Ayton falling down those stairs, you went rigid in shock and fainted,” Rory’s whisper continued. “I carried you back into your bedroom and waited until everyone’s attention was on Mrs. Ayton. I tore his rings off your fingers, dropped them on the bed. Then I replaced the veil on your head to keep the hallway light from awakening you and carried you down the back stairs to Mama’s car.”
“What were you going to do with me?”
“I just wanted to take you away from that bastard! I wasn’t going to hurt you! You don’t believe I would hurt you?”
“No, of course not, Rory,” Briana lied. His viselike grip was hurting her.
“I put you in the back seat and covered you with a blanket. But I didn’t have the car keys. When I returned with them, the car was gone. It wasn’t until later that I realized I was so drunk that I had put you in the wrong black Lexus. Mama’s car was on the other side of the house.”
“Rory, how were you planning to explain all this to me when I awoke?”
“I wasn’t planning! I was drunk! I just knew I couldn’t let him have you. Nat, you never loved that bastard! I know you didn’t!”
“You’re right, Rory. I never loved Sheldon.” At least she could say that truthfully. She was beginning to strongly believe that she had allowed herself to be talked into marriage to Sheldon mostly to get away from Rory.
“Of course you didn’t. When I heard you had filed papers to annul your marriage to Sheldon, I thought it would just be a matter of time before we’d all be back together again. But no sooner was Sheldon out of the picture than you turned to Sands! Do you know what that did to me? Do you?”
Rory’s arm squeezed tighter. Briana concentrated on breathing through her constricted lungs, trying to calm her rising fear. She had to keep her thinking clear and focused. And to keep placating the man who was crushing the breath out of her.
“You’re wrong about Dr. Sands,” Briana lied. “I’m just his patient.”
“No doctor does what Sands has been doing for just a patient!”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“He took you into his own apartment! You think I don’t know that he hasn’t let you spend a dime of Natalie’s money? That he’s footed the bill for everything, even knowing that as Briana Berry you’re penniless and he’ll never get any of it back? He’s used his friends and influence all over this damn town for you!”
“How do you know what he’s done, Rory?”
“Because I had the two of you watched. Every minute.”
So many things were becoming clear for Briana now.
“Sheldon never had me followed or spied on, did he, Rory? That was you. It’s always been you.”
“Yes, it’s always been me! When I wasn’t with you, I had to know what you were doing. And thanks to your generous checks, I could afford the best private investigators. We shared so much, Nat! We were so close! Then, out of the blue, you accepted Ayton! And Mama was so thrilled. And I couldn’t tell her the truth. I knew it would break her heart. And then there was the money. I didn’t know who the real Natalie had willed it to, you see.”
“Rory, you don’t have to worry. Carlie is going to get the money.”
“I’m not worried. Not anymore. I tried to forget you. For Mama’s sake. But when I saw you marry Ayton, I knew I couldn’t. I was too drunk to do it right the first time. But ever since Ayton told me you were at the Institute of Dreams, I’ve had you watched. I knew the right moment would come—the moment when I could get you alone.”
Briana shivered as his hot breath blew on her neck.
“I thought I could convince you to go away with me when I came to your hotel room in Louisiana. I almost did. But Sands interrupted us. He won’t be interrupting us now. We’re leaving. We’re going to be together.”
“Rory, please understand. I don’t return your feelings. I can’t go with you.”
“You’ll go. You’re mine. I created you. I’ll see you in hell before I’ll let Sands or anyone else have you!”
The last segment of Briana’s dream images flashed before her eyes. She now knew who the masked man was. He was the other side of Rory Taureau, this side she was seeing now, a side of dark obsession and cruelty.
She shivered in revulsion.
Rory must have felt that shiver. “You will learn to love me,” he said, a wild anger filling his whisper as he began to push her toward a black Lexus in the parking lot.
Briana filled her lungs with air to let out a powerful scream, guaranteed to be heard for blocks. But she never got a chance to let it out. Rory’s hand clamped hard and tight over her mouth.
She kicked and fought, desperate to break his hold on her. Rory grunted when her shoe connected with his shin, but he was horribly strong and deadly determined. He held on fast as he dragged her to the car.
Briana looked around, certain there had to be someone witnessing her abduction. But, incredibly, in the middle of the day, in the parking lot of a police station, she saw not one single soul.
“I borrowed a few sedatives from Dr. Neilssen’s bag when he arrived,” Rory said. “We have a long way to go. I’ll make you as comfortable as possible.”
Briana pushed through the icy fear seeping into her body, numbing her limbs. They were almost at the car. She reasoned that Rory was going to have to use one of his hands to open the passenger door. She readied herself to scream and fight like hell for her freedom the second he let up on his hold.
But she never got the chance. Rory delivered a sudden, sharp blow to her diaphragm that literally drove the breath from her body and dropped her like a rock. She lay paralyzed on the pavement, trying to suck air into her lungs, horrified to find she was unable to raise a hand or let out a peep.
Rory opened the passenger door. “I’m sorry. Really. But you gave me no choice. I’m not giving you up.”
Hope drained out of Briana along with her flagging strength. She blinked as tears of rage filled her eyes. And almost missed the sudden flurry of motion.
One minute Rory was staring down at her. The next he was leaping back and crouching, his hands balled into fists as he assumed a fighter’s stance.
And then Briana saw who he was squaring off against.
Michael.
Her heart pounded in her throat as she desperately fought against the weakness that made her so ineffectual, so unable to help. But it was no use. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even speak.
She watched Rory’s lightning-fast fists shooting out in sharp, vicious jabs. Time and again, Michael leaped back, just missing being struck by those deadly weapons.
Briana’s heart was in her throat. She knew Michael was no match for a professional boxer. Michael’s hands weren’t even balled into fists. They were making sinuous circular motions as he moved in front of Rory, keeping just out of range.
Then Rory leaped forward in a sudden surprise attack, his right fist on a direct path toward Michael’s chin. But the blow never connected. In a move so fast that it registered as a mere blur in her eyes, Briana saw Michael’s foot deliver a sharp kick to Rory’s middle. The foul oath spewing out of Rory’s mouth ended in a choke as
Michael’s right hand followed up with a chopping blow to his throat.
Rory fell forward, hitting the pavement with a thick, crunching sound. He lay still, unmoving. Michael stood over Rory’s body like a wonderfully fierce avenging angel, the sun a white fire through his hair, the anger a blue devil in his eyes.
And then he was down on his knees beside Briana, cradling her to him, rocking her gently, whispering things she could not hear over the pounding of both their hearts.
MICHAEL FOUND BRIANA standing beside the institute’s pool late the next afternoon when he returned from town. She was looking out at the Virgin Mountains and the valley below. He had seen her packed bags in the hallway.
And they had sent a jolt through him.
He had known from the first that he had to let her go, of course. He couldn’t try to keep her here. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be fair.
His life was the institute. His passion was dreams. He still had so much to learn about them, from them.
He couldn’t ask her to live his dream, give up on her own. Everyone had to find their own dreams and be true to them. Without that, life just wasn’t worth living.
The sunlight caught the thick waves of her red hair, setting them on fire. She turned when he approached. The color of her eyes had changed to the balmy island blue of her blouse, her cheeks to a white desert sand. The silk of her pineapple slacks made a swishing sound as a smile that said aloha spread her lips.
“Michael.”
He’d never known how good a smile could feel, or how wonderful his name could sound. Saying good-bye to her was going to be the hardest thing he ever had to do.
“How did it go with Sergeant Vierra?” she asked.
“Rory Taureau is being charged with attempted kidnapping and assault with a lethal weapon—his fists. Vierra plans on putting him away for quite a while. Soon as he’s out of the hospital, that is.”
“I’m sorry for Carhe,” Briana said. “She called here a while ago to apologize for Rory. Begged my forgiveness, as though she were responsible. It must be pretty tough being a parent sometimes.”
