“So you killed a woman, just to feel powerful?” The words scraped out of Ellie’s dry throat.
“Well, they do say a writer should know what he writes about,” Brad said, grinning, “And isn’t murder the ultimate high? The ultimate power trip? Life and death…but it wasn’t good, Ellie. No, the killing part was exciting, the sexual high like nothing I’d ever experienced before. But afterward she looked so ugly, lying there. I couldn’t believe I’d had contact with such an ugly whore. I felt sick. I couldn’t touch her. I couldn’t arrange the scene like I’d intended, like Abbott did, for you to find and remember.”
Ellie stared at the mad demons that peered out of Brad’s eyes. Nothing he said made sense, yet how could it? The man was insane. When the door behind Brad erupted open she tried to move, but it too late—Brad grabbed her, holding her pressed against his chest with the scalpel at her throat. A warm trickle of blood bloomed at her neck from the tiny cut the vicious blade had already made. Ellie glimpsed Reilly’s face, cold with fury, as he raised the gun and pointed it at Brad.
Then, through the mist before her eyes, things began to register again. Reilly was there. She’d known he would come for her. But it was too late…
****
Reilly stood there, his gun raised in both hands and aimed steadily at Brad Anderson’s head. His eyes blazed as he took in Ellie’s white face and the rosette of blood where the scalpel had nicked her throat.
“Touch her one more time, Anderson, and you’re dead,” he said quietly, the deadly promise in his voice unmistakable.
“Maybe I’ll just cut her, and you can shoot me as she dies. Either way, you lose and I win. I’d welcome death, believe me!” Brad said, his voice rising in hysteria. Reilly stood helplessly, knowing that if he made the wrong move, Ellie could die. Cold fear washed through him. The scuffling sound behind him must herald the arrival of the other officers, but they would be as helpless as he was in this stalemate. Worse, their arrival could send Anderson over the edge—taking Ellie with him.
Then a low growl made him turn his head just in time to see a scruffy white dog hurtle by in a blur. Brad moved the knife from Ellie’s throat as he threw out his arm to defend himself instinctively from the bundle of furry fury. Ellie, seizing the moment, pushed herself away from Brad as Reilly launched himself forward. He caught the other man below the knees in a rugby tackle that brought them both toppling to the ground, the white dog hanging on defiantly, his teeth deep in Brad’s leg.
Moments later, it was all over.
****
Or almost over. The lights from emergency vehicles still flashed like some devilish disco playing out on the cliffs around Ellie’s cottage. Dawn came up over the strangely quiet ocean, but the weak sun failed to warm the lonely figure sitting on the sea wall.
Ellie had been there for hours, trying to absorb the reality that the nightmare was finished. A paramedic had dressed the small wound on her neck, offered her pain killers, rolled his eyes when she refused to go to hospital, and moved on to minister to the victims of a car accident some miles away.
Tuesday, the stray dog, leaned against her leg, and Ellie absently rubbed his ears. The dog had whimpered softly when the ambulance crew had carried Jack Goodfellow from the cottage, attached to IV tubes but still breathing. A short time later two burly police officers had led Brad out in handcuffs, and the dog had issued a staccato warning bark. Ellie had ignored both events, keeping her eyes fixed on the lightening horizon.
Then Reilly had come out, pausing to pat Tuesday. The stray wriggled with pleasure. “You’re quite the little hero, boy, aren’t you?” Reilly told the dog. He placed warm hands on Ellie’s shoulders and feeling her chilled skin through the light shirt she wore, he slipped off his jacket and wrapped it around her in a tender gesture that made her gulp back a little sob.
“It’s all over, Ellie. Brad will probably spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric prison. Jack Goodfellow lost a lot of blood, but he’s going to be okay.”
“Brad claimed Jack was trying to protect me, to make up for not protecting his fiancée….” Ellie’s voice trailed off.
“That’s probably true but he was no match for Anderson. But now he no longer has to live with that guilt. He can finally look toward the future.”
“What about you and I, Liam? Can we look toward the future, too?” The silence that followed her words seemed to stretch forever. Reilly spoke at last.
“That depends on whether you can meet my conditions or not.”
She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath, now it escaped from her in a huge sigh. “And what conditions might those be, Liam Reilly?”
“Condition number one is that you’ll marry me.”
She turned in his arms, a smile lighting up her face. “Yes, yes indeed. And your other condition?”
“That you love me as much as I love you, Ellie Fitzpatrick.”
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Resort to Murder Page 21
