Hale's Point

by Patricia Ryan

  Hale’s Point

  Patricia Ryan

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 1995 Patricia Ryan. All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For Rich, with love

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  About the Author

  Also by Patricia Ryan

  Chapter 1

  HARLEY ANN SAYERS awoke to the crash and tinkle of glass.

  She lay still in the dark, struggling to hear anything above the sounds of her own ragged breathing and the blood pounding in her ears. A door closed softly downstairs. Foosteps crunched in the glass.

  Someone’s in the house.

  Harley swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly dry. She sat up and reached toward the night table, her hand shaking violently as it groped for the phone. No phone; of course not. This wasn’t her apartment, this was Raleigh Hale’s house. Mr. Hale didn’t like telephones, and he didn’t think they belonged in the bedroom. Great. Just great.

  A sound that she couldn’t identify—a dull thump, thump, thump—provided counterpoint to the groan of the floorboards from his footsteps. The floors always creaked underfoot in this two-hundred-year-old house, even through the Oriental rugs.

  Harley got up, located her robe in the moonlight from the open window, and put it on over her short summer pajamas. Trembling, she fumbled with its sash, tying it in a double knot, then tidied her loose hair with an unsteady hand and crept into the hallway. He hadn’t turned any lights on downstairs. Did he know she was here? Probably not, considering the noise he was making.

  She could hardly breathe, she shook so hard. She paused at the top of the stairs to think. The only phone was in the study, at the front of the big house. He was in the solarium, at the back. Maybe, if she avoided the really squeaky floorboards, she could slip into the study and dial 911.

  But first, a weapon. She entered the closest room and looked around. Tucker Hale’s room, unused but unchanged for over twenty years. A museum in memory of a dead son.

  The moon, filtered through half-closed blinds, painted luminous stripes across hundreds of books and record albums shelved in floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Arranged in groups among them were dozens of model airplanes, cars, and sailboats. Nothing with which to defend herself. On the floor, leaning against the walls, she saw two guitars… and a baseball bat.

  She gripped the bat with one hand and the skirt of her robe with the other and crept downstairs.

  Her heart began to hammer. He was playing the piano. He played surprisingly well, his choice of music very beautiful and very familiar—one of her favorite pieces: Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

  Why, after breaking into Raleigh Hale’s house at one in the morning, had this guy headed straight for the solarium and sat down at the piano? Was it possible he was someone who belonged here—maybe Mr. Hale, himself? He was supposed to be sailing in the Caribbean all summer, but maybe he’d had to cut his trip short, and came home without his keys, and didn’t want to wake her… . Wishful thinking, she knew.

  She’d better get a look at him before calling 911. Cautiously she padded to the entrance of the solarium. Her shaking worsened when she saw him, barely illuminated by the moonlight. He sat at the grand piano with his back to her, motionless as he played. She squinted at his dark form.

  He was big, as she had suspected from his footsteps, with a broad back and wide shoulders. It looked like he was wearing a baseball cap. Medium-brown hair, unkempt and overgrown, hung down almost to the collar of his gray sweater.

  This isn’t Raleigh Hale. Get out!

  Suddenly he stopped playing. He rested one hand on the keys and rubbed the back of his neck with the other. She heard him sigh. Slowly, deliberately, he closed the piano, leaned his elbows on it, rubbed his hands on his face…

  And turned to look directly at her.

  She gasped, paralyzed with fear and infuriated with herself. She should have called the police. No—she should have run while she had the chance. Too late now. He’d catch her in a second.

  The man at the piano just sat and stared, his eyes wide and curious in the dark. He looked at the bat, at her face, at her white terry cloth robe and bare feet, then back at her face.

  Don’t show fear. Fear draws aggression. And don’t shake. He’ll see you shaking and know how scared you are. She held the bat with both hands in a threatening posture, prepared to swing.

  She could see him a little better now. She could see that he was unshaven and that his black cap had the white image of a leaping fish on it. He wore jeans, and his loose sweater had a hole on the shoulder, revealing a patch of white T-shirt.

  He reached for something, some kind of stick. Harley raised the bat. “Put that down!” Her voice quavered. Get a grip!

  “Easy.” The stick was curved at the top: a cane. That explained the dull thump she had heard earlier. With one hand on it and the other on the piano, he rose to his feet. Harley cursed inwardly. He was well over six feet tall, long-limbed and square-shouldered. She, at five-foot-four and a hundred ten pounds, would be no match at all for him.

  “Sit down!” She swung to emphasize the command, and nearly threw herself off-balance. “Now!”

  He made no move to obey her, but leaned on the cane and regarded her with an expression of puzzled amusement. “If you’re going to work me over with that, do me a favor and lay off the bad leg.” His deep voice had a raw edge to it.

  He took a halting step toward Harley, supporting himself with the cane. She saw his left leg drag a bit. That was good, but he still looked dangerous. His forearms, revealed by the pushed-up sleeves of his sweater, were cabled with muscle; he was lean, but strong. And that cane, in the hands of someone like him, could make an effective weapon.

  Harley took a deep breath and tried for a menacing tone. “Just stay where you are.” Another swing, this one more controlled.

  “Or you’ll pop me out of the stadium?” A mild grin, another awkward step.

  “Or I’ll pop you in your leg.”

  The grin faded. She could see his eyes clearly now. They were brown, and in the silvery moonlight they looked enormous. A nasty scar meandered down his left cheek, disappearing into the dark stubble on his jaw. “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Try me.”

  His gaze rested on the bat, and his eyes grew even wider. He took another step and reached for it, saying, “Hey, that’s—” But before he could grab it from her, she whipped it away.

  She hauled back and slammed it with all her strength into the shin of his right leg, the good one. The impact jolted her, and she heard him grunt as he went down, his cane clattering on the slate floor. For an agonized moment, he curled into a ball, clutching the leg. Then suddenly he bellowed an oath so blistering that Harley drew in her breath, stunned by what she had done.

  Leave now. She started to turn, then paused. Suddenly he didn’t look like such a threat anymore, and she was beginning to realize that perhaps she wasn’t entirely defenseless,
after all. The man rolled onto his back, holding his right leg with both hands and growling, “Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.” He groaned, released the leg, and stretched out, breathless, on the floor. “That was my good leg!” he gasped.

  “Not anymore.” she said.

  He looked her in the eye, astonished. The look disarmed her and made her feel guilty. Why should she feel guilty for disabling an intruder? He said, “Wow, you are one coldblooded piece of work. I can’t believe you did that!”

  “I always do what I say I’m going to do.” She stood over him, holding the bat, feeling confused and light-headed.

  “How commendable.” He sat up and massaged the shin, shaking his head. “That was some swing.”

  “Adrenaline.” Seeing him brace his hands on the floor, she added, “Don’t get up.”

  He raised both palms in a pacifying gesture. Oddly, he still looked amused, despite his obvious pain. He even smiled at her… .

  Right before he snaked out his long arm, closed his fist around the bat, and yanked it out of her hands in a blur.

  Harley, you fool! she thought, backing up. His smile became a cocky grin, as if to say his control of the situation had never really been in doubt. He hefted the bat in his hand, testing its weight.

  Get out now! She turned and sprinted toward the front door. Halfway through the dining room, she heard a rattling sound behind her, something rolling toward her on the floor. She stopped and turned. The baseball bat had taken a crooked path and come to rest against a leg of the mahogany dining table. She could see him through the entrance to the solarium, still sitting on the floor.

  “You can have it back.” he said, as Harley picked it up. “I just wanted to look at it. That’s all I wanted in the first place, before you went after me with that bat.”

  “Why?” Slowly she walked toward him, holding the bat across her chest with both hands, confident now that she could get away any time she wanted to. She stopped just outside the doorway to the solarium, leaving him at a safe distance.

  “I saw the initials on it.”

  Harley flipped the light switch and the frosted sconces lit up, bathing the solarium in their golden glow. She examined the bat. Near the handle, burned into the wood, were the letters T.H. and a child’s crude drawing of a rocket ship spewing clouds of exhaust.

  “That’s my bat,” he said.

  His bat? Harley looked at him quickly and retreated a step. He was crazy. Either that or trying to pull a fast one. “Tucker Hale is dead,” she said.

  The expression slowly drained from his face. “Wow,” he whispered. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “He told you that?”

  “He?”

  “R.H. My father. He told you I was dead?”

  People close to Raleigh Hale called him R.H. “Your—Mr. Hale said… He didn’t say it in so many words, but…” She took a breath, trying to remember. “I saw pictures of you— of Tucker.”

  There were two photographs on Raleigh Hale’s desk. One, framed in silver, showed a young boy about ten at the wheel of a large sailboat, the name Anjelica painted across its stern. He wore a white polo shirt and chinos, and he grinned excitedly as he wrestled with the big wheel. In the other, framed in ebony and mother-of-pearl, a graceful white sailplane lay aground in the middle of a grassy field. Next to it, his hand resting on one slender wing, stood the same youth, older by five or six years. He had gotten tall, and wore a work shirt and patched jeans, his long hair caught in a disheveled ponytail.

  “And I asked him about you.” Harley continued. “About his son. What he did, where he lived… and he said, ‘Tucker’s gone.’”

  “And you just assumed—”

  “But then I asked someone else. A woman named Elizabeth Wycliff. She said something happened a long time ago and I shouldn’t—”

  “Liz Wycliff? She’s an old family friend. She still teaching at Columbia, or has she retired?”

  “She just retired last month.” Harley said. “She was my statistics prof.” So. He knew who Elizabeth Wycliff was. That didn’t prove anything, but…

  “You go to Columbia?” he asked.

  Harley nodded. “M.B.A. program. It was Liz who got me this job. She introduced me to your—to Mr. Hale.”

  “What job? You work here?”

  “I’m house-sitting while he’s on vacation.”

  “Vacation…” He rubbed the back of his neck again. “Damn.” After a moment, he asked, “So what did Liz tell you?”

  “Not to talk to Raleigh Hale about you. About Tucker. Not to mention his name. Not to open up twenty-year-old wounds.”

  “Twenty-one,” he said. “I left twenty-one years ago.” He stared at the floor, eyes unfocused. “I was sixteen.”

  “Look… I want to believe you. But you broke in here in the middle of the night like some kind of—”

  “I didn’t think anyone was home. I knocked, but no one answered.”

  “I’m a sound sleeper. Until I hear glass breaking.” He reached into his back pocket. Alarmed, Harley raised the bat. “What are you—”

  He produced a little white card and held it out to her. “Identification.”

  She remembered the way he had grabbed the baseball bat. He could just as easily grab her arm. “Throw it.” He flicked it toward her and it spun to the floor at her feet. She kept her eyes on him as she bent to retrieve it. It was a business card: “Hale Aviation.” There was an address in Alaska, and a phone number.

  He said, “My driver’s license is in my wallet, which is in there.” He nodded toward a duffel bag on the floor next to the piano bench. “Also a pilot’s license and a library card. If you require a major credit card, I guess I’ll have to take my business elsewhere, ‘cause I’ve never had one of them.”

  She had no intention of passing by him to get to that duffel bag. He might be lame, but he was clearly still quick and powerful. “Take your hat off,” she said.

  After a moment’s pause, he removed the cap, set it on the floor, and ran a hand through his disheveled brown hair. He looked up at her and smiled. “I guess I have been forgetting my manners.”

  She studied his rugged face, looking for similarities to the teenage Tucker, or perhaps to the elder Hale. He did have the same somewhat patrician nose as Mr. Hale. Long and straight. Through the stubble she could make out a cleft chin and smile lines. Tiny grooves between his dark eyebrows. The scar still bore faint stitch-marks. It had healed some, but hadn’t settled into looking like a real part of his face, as old scars do. This one might not even show that much, over time. She wondered what had caused it. And his limp.

  He was watching her study his face, calmly and patiently, his own eyes on hers. Despite the depth of their color, they had an almost childlike transparency, undermining his laid-back machismo. Like when he thought his father had told her he was dead. He probably thought he had looked pretty stoical, but Harley had seen the hurt in his eyes.

  Was Raleigh Hale this man’s father? Mr. Hale had a commanding presence and aristocratic good looks. She could sense some of that in this man. They had a similar build, and some of their facial features were the same, but their coloring was different. The older man had fair skin and the kind of white hair you could tell had once been blond; the man claiming to be his son was darker. Also, Mr. Hale’s eyes were ice-water blue, and Tucker’s… Already she was thinking of him as Tucker, she realized.

  Then there was the way he spoke. A hint of something. A distant, deeply ingrained upper-crust flatness that he shared with Raleigh Hale and Elizabeth Wycliff. You can take the boy out of Hale’s Point, but you can’t take Hale’s Point out of the boy.

  As she inspected him, she saw him inspecting her, his gaze resting on her mouth, her hair, her hands gripping the bat.

  “You’re trembling,” he said.

  “You would be, too, if a ghost woke you up in the middle of the night.”

  “Ah! So you admit I’m the long-dead Tucker Hale.”

  She thought for a moment. “Tucker Hale
’s room is just like he left it. Tell me what’s in there.”

  “You mean all my old stuff’s still there?” Harley nodded. “Not just Rocky, but everything?”

  “‘Rocky’?”

  He nodded toward the baseball bat. “Rocky the rocket bat. Fastest bat in the East. Is the dartboard still there?”

  “It’s still there.”

  “The models? The cars and boats and planes? Are they still—”

  “Everything’s just like you left it. It’s real creepy.” Just knowing about the dartboard and models wouldn’t have convinced her. But he had called the baseball bat “Rocky.” When he did that, although she couldn’t say just why, she knew in her heart that he was Tucker Hale.

  He began positioning himself to get to his feet. It looked like a pretty challenging endeavor. “So I take it I’m free to stand now, without risk of further bodily harm.”

  She cringed, “Listen, I—I’m sorry if I hurt you. Are you— is it very bad?”

  Straining, he managed to chuckle. “Nothing another operation couldn’t fix. Course, that’s what they said three operations ago.”

  “What? Did I—I mean, are you going to have to have another operation ‘cause I…”

  She dropped the bat and held out her hands to help him up. He let go of the cane and took them. He had large hands. They felt warm around hers, and a little rough. Rising to his feet, he said, “Of course not. Can’t you take a joke?” He didn’t let go of her hands.

  “I’ve been told it’s not my strong suit.”

  He grinned and shook his head, then turned her hands palm up and rubbed his callused thumbs over them as if trying to soothe away their trembling. His touch only made it worse, just when it had been getting better.

  He looked up. “I’m sorry I scared you.” She knew he was. She saw the remorse in his eyes. And something else. Something that made her extract her hands from his and cross her arms, one hand automatically pulling closed the collar of her robe.

  “You can put your hat back on now.”

  He leaned down and swooped his hat off the floor, then tossed it across the room like a Frisbee. It landed neatly on top of the duffel. “Funny thing. At home, I can wear a hat indoors and not think twice about it. But here—” his gaze took in the huge, trailing Boston ferns, the piano, the Ming urns “—it simply isn’t done.”