by Naomi Niles
"Thanks. John has some vacation time coming up the end of the year. Maybe we could come for the holidays," she said, and we hugged goodbye.
"We'll have to see what's happening then," Tate said rather cryptically, then they got into their car and drove away.
"That was incredibly rude." I elbowed him as soon as they were out of sight.
"I just don't think it's wise to promise them they can stay with us over the holidays." He glowered darkly, and I had to struggle not to get angry at his callous attitude.
"I know it's awkward with Missy being her sister, but she is still Halle's aunt, and Halle loved having a cousin to play with. It's important to have extended family. There's nothing worse than being an only child, with one parent already deceased, and feeling completely isolated in the world."
"Believe me, I know all about feeling alone in the world," he said, and I realized that was something we had in common.
Taking his hand, I hugged him apologetically, feeling his muscles relax as he leaned against me. It had been an emotionally draining day, and we were all exhausted from the strain. Kissing him, I smiled and said, "Let's go home."
"No disturbances on the mansion grounds; all is clear," Barnes reported to Tate after checking with his team when we arrived home.
I turned to Halle and said, "Do you want to help me cook dinner?" I knew it was something she loved to do, but she just shook her head lethargically.
"No. I ate at Mommy's goodbye party, but it made my tummy feel yucky because everyone was so sad."
"I know. It's okay to skip dinner tonight. We should do something fun and relaxing to clear our minds," I said, having no idea what that might be.
"Can we go swimming?" Halle asked, and her hazel green eyes lit up.
I turned to Tate, who still looked thoughtful and brooding. Something serious was on his mind, and it was like he was in a different world. I squeezed his hand to get his attention and said, "What do you think? Should we go swimming?"
He shook his head, clearing the dark cloud from his eyes, and when he looked back at me, his handsome grin was back. He scooped Halle into his arms and said, "Swimming sounds great."
We changed into our swimsuits, and then I helped Halle put on hers. Tate said to her, "Race you to the water!"
Halle's mass of dark curls flowed behind her as she ran through the vast mansion, squealing with delight, with her father just two steps behind, letting her win.
"I'm the fastest!" She raised her arms up victoriously as we reached the pool, and the security guards had to rush to catch up to us.
"Wait a moment while we secure the area." Blake Barnes held out a halting hand as he sent in a guard to walk around the perimeter of the pool and make sure it was secure. I don't think anyone had expected us to go swimming after the funeral, so they weren't prepared for it – but knowing Tate and Halle, they should have been.
The father and daughter team both had the same fun-loving spirit for adventure; it was part of what I loved so much about both of them. You never knew what exciting thing either of them had planned next, and neither did they. Life for them was spontaneous and fun, and I wanted to be a part of the Holland family forever.
Of course, I would always be a Clare first and foremost. Even if one day my wildest dream came true and Tate asked me to marry him, I would forever be the daughter of my father and mother. The importance of that was clearer to me now than ever before. I just needed to tell Tate that I needed to spend a lot more time with my mother while I still had the chance.
I just wished I didn't need to tell him now when something else was so obviously weighing heavily on his mind. I didn't know if it was Missy's funeral, pressures at work, or the fact that Stuart was still out there somewhere. Most likely it was a combination of all three, and now I wouldn't be available to help with Halle as much, so I could spend time with my mother. It was the worst timing possible, but I couldn't help that. I just hoped Tate could understand how important this was to me, and that he would wait for me.
"All clear," the bodyguard stepped out from behind the pump house in the rear corner and waved at us. It was all the permission Halle had been waiting for, and she bounded into the vast tiled room excitedly.
"I love swimming!" she shouted out happily as she ran around the pool towards the deep end, eager to show off skills in the water.
"Don't run by the pool. Always walk, so you don't slip and hurt yourself," I admonished her lovingly, and she slowed from a full run to a humorous speed-walk that was nearly just as fast.
I couldn't help but laugh, and Tate and I shared a meaningful look as he chuckled, too. It felt good to have some levity after such a difficult day, and he squeezed my hand.
"I need to talk to you about something when Halle goes to sleep tonight," he said to me softly, and I sensed from his tone it was something I might not like.
"I need to talk to you about something, too," I confessed, wondering how he would feel about my decision to spend more time with my mother and less time here at the mansion.
"Morton, watch me jump off the diving board!" Halle cried out, and the hulking bodyguard walked around to the shallow end of the pool to dutifully act as her audience.
"Wait, Halle," Tate said. "No jumping off the diving board until I'm in the water to catch you."
He begrudgingly left my side and entered the pool, swimming with long strokes of his muscular arms to the center. Halle stood at the base of the diving board, eager to climb out onto it.
"I can swim by myself, Daddy. Watch me!" Halle took her first step up onto the diving board, and I felt my heart catch in my throat. Her skills at swimming weren't consistent yet. Sometimes, after jumping into the water, she would get disoriented and couldn't find her way to swim to the edge. It was dangerous for her to jump in alone until her skills improved.
"Halle, don't jump yet," Tate shouted out, but something in the gleam of her eye told me she would do it anyway. Morton was too far away, and so was Blake.
"Stop her!" I shouted out to the bodyguard standing at the far end of the pool. With trained reflexes, his hand shot out and grabbed her by the arm, yanking her back from the edge of the board moments before she climbed out onto it and jumped into the pool
"Thanks," Tate said to the guard, as I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Treading water in the center of the pool, he called out to his exuberant daughter and said, "Okay, now you can show everyone how well you can jump in the water."
"Watch me," Halle called out happily, but when she took a step towards the diving board again, the bodyguard yanked her back and held tightly to him. Twisting in his grip, she cried out in distress, "Hey, let me go."
"Not until your father watches you bleed out all over the floor," the man said, and he turned so we could see his face. A scream of terror tore from my lips as I saw it was none other than Stuart Haynes.
Within fractions of a second, he drew a gun from his side and fired multiple shots at Morton and Blake, hitting one in the head and the other in the chest. The two brave men who had dedicated their lives to protecting ours were dead. They fell to the ground, and I knew there was no saving them from such fatal wounds.
My scream sounded like a distant noise as it echoed off the tile. Stuart turned the gun towards Halle and pressed it against the crying child's temple, above her right ear.
"Stuart, you don't have to do this. Let her go." Tate's voice was tight as he watched helplessly from the middle of the pool as his three-year-old daughter was suddenly taken hostage by an insane murderer.
No doubt the uniform and equipment Stuart was wearing had been taken from the body of another guard he had slain earlier in the day, and he'd been hiding behind the pump house by the pool ever since, waiting for his chance to blend in with the others. When Blake sent a guard to search the pool, Stuart must have killed him, too.
"You don't tell me what to do!" he shouted down at Tate in the water as he yanked painfully on Halle's fragile little arm, dragging her away from the diving board.
After several steps, he came to a stop. Shouting down at Tate, Stuart ground the gun deeper into her temple, and said, "I tell you what to do now. You got that? I'm in charge now, not you."
"Okay, just calm down," Tate said in as soothing a voice as he could muster. "You're in charge now, Stuart. You're in charge; just please, don't hurt Halle. She's innocent in all this."
"Innocent? My Rose was innocent. She was beautiful and naive and sweet until you corrupted her with your sick and twisted games, turning her into a whore."
"I didn't kill Rose. She was struck on the head when she was with you and died of a cerebral hemorrhage from the blunt force trauma."
"Yes, she was with me when she died, but it's still your fault that it happened. You killed my precious Rose, so I'm going to kill everyone who's precious to you; after you've watched them die, I'm going to kill you. Then Rose will have justice."
Stuart was irrational with rage, and there was no doubt in my mind that he'd carry out his threats, starting with Halle. I had to do what I could to stop him while Tate kept him distracted.
Carefully, I moved slowly towards the door. If I could get to it, there was a panic button I could push that would activate the silent alarm and bring help. With Morton and Blake dead, there was no way to know if anyone in his team was still left alive in the house. Sending a distress alarm to the police was our best chance at survival.
Tate was saying to Stuart, "I know the trauma to her head was an accident. I know you didn't mean to kill her."
"Don't talk to me about my relationship with Rose. You don't know anything about us."
"I know that you loved her," Tate said in a soft and soothing tone.
"Of course, I loved her, and she loved me. When we made love, she would look into my eyes and tell me we would be together forever." Stuart twisted Halle by the arm, making her cry out in pain in and fear. In a low hiss, he whispered, "Then you took her from me, just like I'm going to take away everything from you."
"I didn't take her from you," Tate growled. "You're the one who let her fall out of the sex swing so she hit her head so hard that she died. You never should have used it if you didn't know what you were doing. That's how she died. You killed her with your ignorance."
Stuart was so livid, he threw Halle over his shoulder and stomped forward towards Tate, coming to a stop at the pool's edge. It was the moment to make my move: Stuart was distracted, locked in an argument with Tate.
As discretely as I could, I crept towards the door, moving slowly so I wouldn't draw attention to myself. My heart was pounding in my chest. I had to get there before he hurt Halle or Tate – I had to.
"I didn't kill her. It's your fault she's dead." Stuart pointed his gun at Tate and screamed, practically near hysteria. "We were going to get married, but we needed money first, so I told her to apply for a position as your nanny. I had no idea at the time that you would make her your whore, forcing her to have sex with you.
“When she told me about the contract you wanted her to sign agreeing to let her fuck you, I told her to tear it up. We'd find some other way to get the money to get married, but she had already accepted the job."
"That was her choice to make. Rose Landon signed that contract of her own free will, and I compensated her by paying her generously," Tate said defensively. "Besides, I wasn't the only one enjoying our arrangement. She said I was the best fuck she'd ever had."
"You're lying!" Stuart raged. "She only pretended to like your kinky sex games until she got so corrupted by your money and power that she thought it was true. The real Rose Landon would never be into sick things like that, but you warped her mind and changed who she was. That's why when I wanted to win her back, I had to pretend to be like you and tell her I wanted to use the sex swing with her.
“I took her into that secret sex dungeon I helped you build and put her into that sex swing I helped you set up. She claimed to love it, and she leaned back in it so her tits were hanging upside down and begged me fuck her upside down in it like you used to do. So I did, but I couldn't come.
“Fucking her like that wasn't the same as when we made love at my apartment. She wasn't gazing into my eyes and telling me she wanted to be mine alone forever. You had turned her into a filthy whore, so I started to choke her like she told me you liked to do.” Stuart was lost in the memory of that night as he continued to talk.
“She had explained to me how you had introduced her to auto-erotic asphyxiation. She said it really turned her on, so I decided to try it. For a while, it helped. I was able to forget how she had cheated on me by letting another man fuck her for money and how she had betrayed me by becoming a whore.
“But suddenly, I realized I was choking her too hard. It was no longer erotic and turning her on. She had turned blue, but the restraints from the swing made her unable to signal for me to stop.
“Then I realized I didn't have to stop, and I kept choking the nasty, dirty bitch, punishing her for being such a whore. That's when I came, but she had passed out from the lack of air. I let go of her neck, and she instantly started breathing again, but I felt horrible. I had nearly choked my precious Rose to death, and it was all your fault.
“I had to get her out of that awful swing. I unlocked the restraints holding within it, but I hadn't been prepared to support her weight. After all, when I had put her into the swing, she had been fully conscious. Now that she had blacked out, she just fell forward without the support of the swing straps and hit her head on the floor.
“I heard the crack of her skull as the bone broke and blood ran out of her nose. I picked her up, but her eyes rolled back, and she was no longer breathing. She was dead. My precious Rose was dead – and it was all your fault." Stuart pointed a shaking gun at Tate.
"How is it my fault? You just confessed to killing her yourself," Tate asked, looking horrified by all he'd just heard.
The information was more than Halle needed to hear, and I prayed that she didn't understand the meaning of any of it. I just thanked God Stuart now had her slung over his shoulder so she couldn't see him pointing a gun at her Daddy. This whole awful situation was going to be traumatic enough for her as it was without seeing that, if any of us even survived the night.
"It's your fault because none of it would have happened if it weren't for you. You offered Rose the job of being your nanny and then turned her into a whore by making her fuck you. You paid her so well she didn't want to leave the job and brainwashed her into thinking you were a better fuck than I was.
“You're the reason she left me and the reason I had to win her back. You're the reason I put her in that swing, to try and show her that I could do everything for her that you could. That's why I tried the swing. That's why I tried the auto-erotic asphyxiation. That's why she fell and hit her head. That's why she's now dead."
Stuart had tears of grief running down his red face, and I wondered if Tate might be able to talk him down from his emotional breakdown.
Swimming towards the edge of the pool, closer to Stuart, he said softly, "It was clearly an accident. You loved Rose so much, you never would have hurt her on purpose. Tell me, why didn't you call the ambulance when she hit her head? Maybe something could have been done to save her?"
Stuart wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, still holding the gun and his voice quavered. "I wanted to, but then I heard voices and panicked. Rose was naked; her head was bleeding. I was naked and covered with her blood. Who would believe me that it was an accident? So I dragged her body out of the sex dungeon into your room, closed the door, and cleaned up the mess. Then I escaped after everyone had left, and no one ever thought it was me. In fact, they all thought it was you."
Stuart was laughing now – not a joyous sound, but one of malevolent evil, taking joy in Tate's pain.
Tate glared up at him. "Why didn't you come forward to the police and confess?"
"I almost did, but Detective Miller had so many compelling reasons for thinking it was you,” Stuart admitted. “When I thought ab
out everything, I realized that in fact, you were ultimately responsible for what had happened to her, and I figured it would be true justice if you were imprisoned for her death – but that never happened.
“Miller let you go free and started a manhunt for me. I'm the victim here. I'm the one who was deprived of my love because of your misdeeds. That's when I realized, if I wanted justice, I would have to get it on my own."
I was nearly to the door now, but the argument between Tate and Stuart was ramping up to dangerous levels.
Stuart set Halle down on the tile floor right by the pool's edge. Grabbing a fist full of her thick curly hair, he forced her to look down at Tate, still treading water in the pool, helpless to save his daughter. As the father and child looked each other in the eyes, Stuart moved his gun rapidly from one to the other.
"I'll get justice by killing everyone that's precious to you, just like you killed my precious Rose. Then I'll kill you. I'll shoot you right in the fucking face, but not until I kill your kid first and make you watch. I'll do it for Rose because I love her."
He was getting angrier and more volatile with each sentence that he screamed. He had lost all sense of reality; he was going to pull the trigger. I couldn't wait any longer. I lunged the remaining distance to the door and my hand pressed against the panic button, activating the alarm.
Although the alarm was silent, my movement was too big to go unnoticed and Stuart startled as he realized what I'd done. He drew in a breath and tightened his grip on the handle of his gun in preparation to pull the trigger. Tate saw it, too, and using all his strength, he launched himself towards Stuart in a futile attempt to stop him, but there was nothing he could do from down in the water.
"Daddy!" Halle's tiny voice screamed out in terror, and I closed my eyes, unable to watch.
The sound of the gunshot echoing off the tiled floors and walls was deafening, and my hands flew up to cover my ears, as I crouched down out of instinct to avoid being hit, although I wasn't the one Stuart was shooting at.
When I removed my hands from my ears, I could hear Halle sobbing and Tate gasping. The pool water was already pink from the blood of the victim pouring into it, and I was too afraid to look and see who it was.
