by B. J Daniels
She didn’t look back, just kept climbing. Lorenzo wasn’t worried about catching her. His arrogance wouldn’t allow him to hurry. He thought he had her right where he wanted her. Maybe he did. Maybe this voice inside her head was of her own making. If so, then Lorenzo had driven her to this.
We’re almost there.
The sound of Harry’s voice sent a stab of yearning through her. She hadn’t lost her mind. Instead, she’d found something else here at Fernhaven. Something she couldn’t bear to lose.
She slowed as the path reached a small clearing. Mist swirled around large boulders and wind-twisted trunks of cedar trees.
Walk just ahead and wait for him. Stop.
Jenna stared back the way they’d come. A breeze stirred the tops of the trees, swirling the fog and mist, making a low groaning sound. The air was cold and damp and seemed to cut through her clothing. She hugged herself to still her trembling as she caught a glimpse of something moving through the fog toward her. Lorenzo?
She drew the gun and started to take a step back, but Harry stopped her.
There’s a cliff behind you.
Jenna swung around. She could see nothing but fog. She kicked a small rock and heard it drop over the side, hit way below her, then again, the sound echoing up until she heard nothing. She could feel Harry with her.
Jenna…
She turned back around, hearing something in Harry’s voice that scared her more than standing on the edge of a cliff.
“What is it?”
We’re not alone. I don’t know who it is.
She heard a strange sound in his voice and began to shake harder as a figure slowly took shape out of the mist.
Raymond Valencia stopped just yards from her. He looked odd, his clothing almost too neat after the climb up the mountain.
“Raymond?” Why did she get the feeling it wasn’t really him? “What are you doing here?”
“He can’t save you, Jenna,” Raymond said. “He was never interested in saving you—only himself. He’s a con man, Jenna. A thief. Haven’t you realized that?”
Who was Raymond talking about? Lorenzo?
“He tricked you, Jenna. Made you fall in love with him. You think it’s a coincidence you ended up at Fernhaven?” He shook his head. “He willed you here, knowing you were in trouble.”
She shook her own head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Harry Ballantine, Jenna. He’s the one who got you here so you could save his life.”
She stared at Raymond, her heart in her throat. Raymond Valencia knew about Harry?
“Tell her, Harry. You stole Bobby John Chamberlain’s identity so you could attend the Fernhaven grand opening to steal the jewelry you knew would be here. But you got caught in the fire. Except Bobby John Chamberlain was supposed to die. Not you. Not Harry Ballantine. Come on out, Harry. Show yourself. Don’t be shy.”
“How do you know all this?” Jenna cried.
“Because Raymond Valencia’s dead, Jenna,” Harry said, materializing beside her. “His helicopter crashed not far from here in the storm.”
“That’s right, Jenna,” Raymond said. “I can’t help you, either. But I can warn you. Harry wins either way. If he fails, he’s trapped here for eternity. But then so are you.”
She felt her knees go weak. None of this was happening. She was still inside the hotel on the floor, suffering from a concussion after Charlene had hit her. Maybe she was dead. Or maybe just dreaming.
“There is no redemption for Harry Ballantine because of the life he led before his untimely death,” Raymond said. “No matter what he does, he isn’t leaving this place. Save yourself, Jenna, before it’s too late.”
Redemption? Is that what this was about? The mist seemed to engulf Raymond. Jenna stared at the spot where he’d been standing, but he was gone.
She looked over at Harry. Their eyes met. Was it true? Was he nothing but a thief and a con man? Had he lured her here for his own reasons? “Tell me what he said isn’t true.”
His image seemed to fade. He said nothing.
She heard the snap of a twig, the scuff of a shoe on stone. Lorenzo came lumbering up over the rise. He looked winded and his pants were muddy, as if he’d fallen.
He leaned against one of the large rocks, obviously trying to catch his breath, but his eyes were on her. His lips turned up in a smile. “Looks like it’s just you and me, Jenna. You shouldn’t have taken my money.”
Jenna took a step toward him, remembering the cliff behind her. Lorenzo had strength and size on his side, not to mention a weapon under his jacket. Lorenzo always had a weapon close by.
He pushed himself off the huge rock he’d been leaning on and sauntered toward her. “You didn’t really think you could get away from me, did you?”
“No,” she said, realizing she never had. “I guess I always knew this moment would come.”
He was close enough that she could smell him, the sweat, the blood, the stale, leftover fear. “This is some freaky place you picked to hide in, you know?”
If he only knew. She drew the gun from behind her and pointed it at his heart.
He froze in midstep. “What do you think you’re doing?” He let out a coarse laugh. “You don’t even know how to use a gun.”
She fired off a shot that ricocheted off the rocks behind him.
He swallowed, his face going slack, a flicker of fear showing in his eyes. “So you learned how to fire a gun. You ever see a bullet rip through flesh? Ever see someone die right before your eyes? It’s an ugly sight, Jenna, one you would never get out of your head.” His smile broadened. “Firing a shot into the air is one thing. But put a bullet into a man? The man who fathered your daughter? The man who you once loved?”
He started to step closer.
“Don’t!” Jenna cried, her finger tensing on the trigger. He was right about one thing. She couldn’t shoot him.
She lowered the gun, dropping it to her feet as she braced herself.
She’d already decided there was only one thing she could do: grab him and take him with her over the edge of the cliff. She tried not to think about leaving Lexi behind, because that would make her weak, and right now Jenna had to be strong. Dying herself was one thing, but she couldn’t leave Lorenzo free. Couldn’t leave knowing he could get her baby girl.
Lorenzo smiled. “I knew you couldn’t shoot me.”
She thought about what Raymond had said—that Harry had brought her here. That if he couldn’t find a way to leave, then he would make sure she didn’t, either. Was that why he’d brought her up here? He wanted her to die and be trapped here with him?
After you grab him, drop down and let the momentum of his motion propel him over your head and out.
At first she wasn’t even sure she’d heard Harry, let alone heard him correctly.
Raymond’s right, I can’t save you. All I can do is try to help you. If you should fall, try to stay close to the edge of the cliff. There’s a ledge about ten feet below you.
A ledge ten feet down. Right. “Always a con man, huh?”
Lorenzo frowned at her words. “What?” He quickly glanced behind him. “Who are you talking to?”
Jenna, Raymond was wrong, though, about us. If it makes any difference, I didn’t bring you here. You were sent to me. I thought it was because we were supposed to be together. I guess I was wrong about that. Something is happening to me. Hurry. I feel as if I don’t have much time.
“I asked you who you were talking to,” Lorenzo snapped, and stuck his face into hers.
She grabbed him by the jacket and did as Harry told her, jerking him hard and at the same time ducking down. Her shoulder caught him in the groin. He let out a howl. His larger, heavier body went airborne over the top of her.
She’d done it!
Then she felt his fingers clutch the back of her jacket and find purchase. She was jerked backward. She grabbed at the ground, but the weight of his body pulled her over the edge of the cliff
.
She turned in the air, throwing herself into the movement, breaking Lorenzo’s hold on her as she shoved him away, propelling him outward and her toward the cliff.
But now she was falling, and below there was nothing but fog and the sound of Lorenzo’s screams.
Jenna saw the ledge coming up at the very last moment. She closed her eyes, bracing herself for the inevitable. She hit, but something—someone—broke her fall.
She lay stone still for a moment, trying to catch her breath. Below her, Lorenzo’s screams stopped with a sickening thud.
She closed her eyes and told herself it was over. She was alive. Lexi was safe. They would never have to fear Lorenzo again. “Harry?”
No answer.
Tears welled behind her closed lids. A sob escaped her lips and she choked on her tears. She had won. But her loss was overwhelming.
“Will I ever see you again?” she asked in a whisper.
She tried to feel his presence, but could sense him slipping away. She choked back more tears. “Do you have to stay here?”
Still no answer.
In the distance she could hear sirens and voices calling out for her.
But inside her head there was nothing but silence.
Chapter Sixteen
Jenna remembered little of the rest of that afternoon and night. Fernhaven had been crawling with police. There were dozens of questions, statements to be made, bodies to identify.
Only one memory would remain from the moment Jenna was lifted off the rock ledge and taken back to the hotel.
That image was the sight of her daughter running out of the back of the hotel and across the courtyard to meet her.
Jenna had fallen to her knees, throwing open her arms as Lexi ran into them. She’d crushed her daughter to her breast, crying tears of joy. They were alive. They had survived.
Lorenzo Dante was dead, his body broken at the bottom of the cliff. Raymond Valencia’s body had been found along with the ruins of his helicopter, which had gone down in the storm not a half mile from Fernhaven.
Detective Rose Garcia had ridden down the mountain in the ambulance with P.I. Mike Flannigan. He was listed in stable condition. Word was he would recover. Security guard Elmer Thompson had suffered a slight concussion, but would recuperate.
Four other bodies had been found. Rico Santos was discovered dead in his car back down the highway. Rico, a known criminal, had been murdered in what looked like a professional hit.
Farther down the road, Gene “Jolly” Barker was also found murdered in his car. Same MO.
Charlene Palmer, wife of criminal Stan Palmer, had been stabbed to death in the hotel parking lot.
Alfredo Jones was also found dead in his car—shot at close range.
If she could have, Jenna would have left as soon as the police were through questioning her. But she had to wait until a rental car arrived from the nearest town.
The hotel provided everyone with rooms. Jenna asked for one on ground level. She couldn’t bear to stay in room 318, knowing that was where Harry Ballantine, aka Bobby John Chamberlain, had died.
She put an exhausted Lexi down to sleep. “Can we go to the ocean now?” Lexi asked before she drifted off.
“Yes.”
“Is Daddy gone?” Lexi asked quietly.
Jenna had told her that Lorenzo had an accident and was killed. “Yes, honey, he’s gone.”
Lexi looked sad. “Is he gone because I wanted a new daddy?”
Jenna hugged her daughter to her. “No, baby. He’s gone because he couldn’t love us enough. You and me, we deserve someone who loves us…bigger than the sky.”
Lexi laughed and looked up into her mother’s face. “Bigger than the sky?”
Jenna nodded, fighting tears.
The events of the past few days didn’t seem to have scarred her daughter in the least. But Lexi had youth on her side, and what to her was a happy ending. All the bad guys were dead or in jail. Jenna and Lexi were both safe.
Jenna was just glad her daughter realized they had to leave.
As Jenna curled up on the bed, she prayed Harry would come to her in her sleep.
He didn’t.
THE NEXT MORNING the hotel was still buzzing with police and crime-scene investigators.
Jenna loaded the suitcases into the rental SUV, checked to make sure Lexi had buckled herself in to the car seat, and put Fred next to her.
Then she slid behind the wheel. As she started the car, she glanced at Fernhaven. In the morning sun, mist bathed the rooftops, the mountain behind the hotel shimmered a verdant green and Fernhaven looked like a fairy princess’s castle.
She hurriedly looked away, turning the SUV around and heading off the mountainside. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t.
“Hey!”
Jenna glanced in her side mirror and saw a man who’d been talking to one of the policemen. He waved to her to stop. She braked and lowered her window as he ran up to her side of the car.
“Hi,” he said, and smiled.
He wore jeans, boots and a leather bomber jacket, and he had a knapsack thrown over his shoulder.
Jenna stared up at him. There was something familiar about the man. The smooth, self-confident way he moved. The set of his broad shoulders. Something so familiar, and yet she knew she had never seen the man before in her life.
“Any chance of hitching a ride out of here?” he asked.
“Sure.”
His hair was a tawny blond, long at the neck, curling up over his collar. His smile broadened as he crouched next to the car so she didn’t have to look up. His eyes were a clear deep blue.
“I kind of got stranded up here,” he said. He glanced in the back seat and gave Lexi a wink. “It’s the strangest thing. If I told you how I got here, you wouldn’t believe it.”
She looked into his eyes and saw something that lifted her heart like helium. Was it possible? “Where are you headed?” she asked. If Fernhaven had taught her anything, it was that there were things beyond earthly understanding.
“Don’t really have a destination in mind, to tell you the truth.” He laughed, the sound making Jenna’s pulse quicken with a familiar excitement.
She glanced back at her daughter. Lexi was smiling at the man in a way that made her heart jump.
“We’re going to the ocean,” Lexi said excitedly. “Aren’t we, Mommy?”
“Yes, we are,” Jenna said. That was exactly where they were going.
“No kiddin’? I grew up on the California coast. You headed that far south?”
“Quite possibly,” she said, surprising herself, scaring herself, and yet having never felt so right about anything.
He laughed again, wiped his right hand on his jeans and stuck it in the window. “John James Harrison. My friends call me Harrison.”
Jenna’s hand trembled a little as she shook his hand. It was large and warm and fit hers perfectly. “Jenna…McDonald. This is my daughter, Lexi, and the cat is Fred.”
“Glad to meet you and I appreciate the ride,” he said as he ran around to open the door and slide in. He smelled of the outdoors, a mixture of fresh air and green trees. “I’m planning to keep both feet on the ground for a while.”
“Oh?” Jenna asked as she got the car moving again.
“I’m a helicopter pilot,” he said as he settled in, putting the knapsack on the floor between the bucket seats. “My last job just about killed me.”
“Really?” Jenna said, thinking about the chopper crash that had killed Raymond Valencia. This man had been the pilot? And he’d walked away without a scratch?
“Someone must have been watching out for me up there,” he said, looking out the windshield to the blue sky overhead. “I thought for sure I was a goner. That was one close call. Something like that changes you. I know it sounds corny, but I feel as if I’ve been given a second chance. Silly, huh?”
Jenna shook her head, thinking of Harry Ballantine and second chances. “No, that’s a feeling I’m
pretty familiar with,” she said and smiled over at the man beside her.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6178-9
WHEN TWILIGHT COMES
Copyright © 2005 by B.J. Daniels
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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*Cascades Concealed
*Cascades Concealed
*Cascades Concealed
†McCalls’ Montana
†McCalls’ Montana
†McCalls’ Montana
†McCalls’ Montana
†McCalls’ Montana
