Hailey gasped. Her father had killed himself?
“He did that to spite me!” Eleanor yelled. “Even in death he couldn’t be the husband I always needed. He had to get the last word in.”
“He died because you and I ruined his life! Don’t you see? You and all your poisonous weeds were choking everything he’d created. He didn’t want that for Hailey and Nicole. It might not be the way any of us would have done it, but this treasure hunt of his made sense to him. And in the end it did exactly what your precious prenuptial agreement was supposed to prevent. It set the truth free.”
“His will means nothing!”
Graham shook his head, a mixture of rage and heartache brewing in his eyes. “Madeline called me. I know what you did to my son.”
He turned quickly to face Stella before Eleanor could answer. “Thirty-five years ago your father died of a heart attack—”
“Graham, don’t!” Eleanor screamed.
“—it wasn’t a heart attack. It was murder. Calculated so no one would know. So you would be left alone with no choice but to take Eleanor’s offer and walk away from Garrett for good.”
“No…” Stella’s hand flew to her mouth.
“I helped her,” Graham said with gut-wrenching sorrow. “God, I shouldn’t have. But I loved her. My wife had just left me with Bryan, and Eleanor had been the one person I could confide in, because she’d gone through the same thing with Garrett. I…I was blinded by her. And when Eleanor came to me with the idea, I thought just the attempt would be enough to prove my loyalty to her. To get her to see I was the man for her and not Garrett. Your father wasn’t supposed to die, Stella. I swear that to you now. I calculated a low dosage. I didn’t know his heart was so weak, but then he—”
The sound of a gunshot ripped through the stillness of the early evening air.
No!
The bullet hit Graham dead center in the back. His eyes flew wide. He gasped in a breath. Then he was falling forward, toward Stella. Falling down…
Stella screamed. Hailey ran forward to catch him. “Graham!”
She got to him before he could take Stella down with him. He was heavy, slamming into Hailey with all his weight. They both went to the ground hard, and Hailey rolled him, unable to believe what had just happened. Her eyes flashed to Eleanor, holding the gun in her rock-steady hand. Hailey’s training kicked in, and she quickly assessed the situation. Realizing her bag with the Beretta was ten feet away and Eleanor’s barrel was trained on them, she knew there was nothing she could do until she got Graham stable.
Blood poured out the exit wound in Graham’s chest. She scrambled to her knees and pressed against the wound to stop the bleeding. Tears sprang to her eyes when she realized it was useless. “Graham, no, no, no…”
“Hailey…” His hand closing over hers on his chest stopped her frantic movements. She focused on his kind slate gray eyes, even as her vision blurred and a sob caught in her throat. “I told…Madeline…to go to the police. She said…it was an accident. You believe her…don’t you?”
“Yes,” she whispered, not understanding his words but hoping to comfort him. “Yes. Of course it was.”
That seemed to calm him. He closed his eyes, his hand tightening around hers. “Tell Nicole how sorry I am. I love her. I…love you…like my own. I’m sorry. So sorry…for all of it.”
“No. Don’t go,” Hailey said, squeezing his hand. “Not like this. Graham…”
“I warned him,” Eleanor said from across the yard. “If he had just listened to me, this would not have happened.”
Graham took a stuttering breath. His grip relaxed, and his eyes lost focus. As Hailey felt him dying, she didn’t care about what he’d done. All that mattered was that he’d come here to try to make amends.
“Graham…no, please…”
“We need to call an ambulance.” Stella made a move at Hailey’s side.
Her scream brought Hailey’s head around until she was staring at the woman she’d thought was her mother, pulling Stella backward by the hair with a gun aimed at the other woman’s temple.
Oh, God. She was going to kill them, too.
“There will be no ambulance,” Eleanor said coldly. “No one to rescue you. This is your fault. Don’t you see that? If it weren’t for you, none of this would ever have happened.”
The pain in Hailey’s chest was fresh and raw, but the voice ringing in her ears pushed it down with a wave of rage.
Eleanor’s eyes were wild and black as night. “I tried to make things right. I worked so hard so that no one ever knew what you’d done. I even raised your miserable daughter for you, but you still managed to come back to ruin my life. This is my life!” she screamed. “I’m not going to let you ruin it anymore!”
“Eleanor,” Hailey said calmly, pushing slowly to her feet, “put the gun down. Enough people have already been hurt.”
“You.” Eleanor’s frantic eyes swung Hailey’s direction. “If you had stayed out of it, Graham would still be alive. You did this!”
Hailey held up her hands. Her eyes shifted to her bag, where she’d left her gun, then back to Eleanor. How long until someone from the house came running? They had to have heard the shot. They knew Stella was down here. The woman who’d given Hailey directions knew Stella wasn’t alone.
Eleanor kicked Hailey’s bag away, looking smug. “No one’s coming to save you.” The gun in her hand shook. “They’ll call it a murder-suicide. You came down here looking for Stella, and Graham followed. He knew you were going to turn him in for what he’d done. He killed both of you, then shot himself. I’ll make sure the police link Andrew Adams’s death back to your father’s. Both of them died by the same poison. They’ll know Graham was the mastermind behind it all.”
As Eleanor rationalized it all out loud, Hailey sensed she had minutes, seconds before Eleanor started firing. Eleanor’s eyes were barely tracking. She knew she was trapped.
“I know what it’s like to love someone who doesn’t want you,” Hailey said quickly. Eleanor’s surprised eyes darted her way. Seemed to focus. Yes, keep looking at me. “To give your heart to someone and have them trample it. I’ve been there. Not once, but twice.”
“Men are pigs.”
“They are,” Hailey agreed. Inched forward. Hoped she could lull Eleanor enough to make a move for the gun.
“I could have told you that thief you married was a loser. But, no, you didn’t listen to me, either. You never did.”
“He was,” Hailey lied, willing to say anything to keep Eleanor distracted. “The other one…” She thought of Shane. “He didn’t want me, either. So you and I, we’re not all that different. I know what you’re feeling.”
“You don’t know,” Eleanor said. “Not unless he left you for a slut like this. Do you know what I gave up for your father? Do you know how hard I worked to make him love me? But he wouldn’t. Not after her.”
Eleanor’s eyes flicked to Stella, then back to Hailey and suddenly widened as she realized Hailey had moved close. And whatever calm she’d slowly been sliding into imploded. “Oh, I don’t think so.” She took a big step back, tightened her hand in Stella’s hair and pulled until Stella yelped. “I see what you’re doing, and it won’t work. You’re not getting away this time.”
Hailey’s adrenaline pulsed. If it weren’t for the gun pressed against Stella’s temple, Hailey could take the woman. She was stronger than Eleanor, and she had youth on her side. But she was too afraid Stella would get caught in the cross fire. She’d already lost her father and Graham. She wasn’t about to lose the mother she’d just found.
And that’s when she noticed a shadow shift ever so slightly in the trees behind Eleanor.
Shane.
She could just make out his eyes, peering back at her in the dense foliage as Stella and Eleanor argued.
Her heart jumped as their eyes locked. A silent communication where she knew impetuousness and doing things on her own wasn’t going to save her or Stella. She had
to rely on him. He was here. He’d come for her. Even after she’d told him she never wanted to see him again.
“Enough arguing!” Eleanor bellowed. “Say good-bye to your daughter.” She pulled the gun from Stella’s temple, pointed it at Hailey.
“No!” Stella screamed.
The gun bobbled, started to move back to Stella, and Hailey didn’t hesitate. She dropped low and lunged for Stella.
Two shots rang out, almost simultaneously. Followed quickly by another. And another.
Hailey’s right side hit the ground. A searing burn suddenly erupted like fire in her shoulder. Stella grunted as she landed with a thud.
“Hailey!”
Footsteps pounded across the ground.
“Hailey!” Stella rolled out from under Hailey and scrambled to her knees. “She’s bleeding! Help me, she’s bleeding!”
Hailey gasped as Shane skidded to his knees at her side. “Christ Jake, hold on, Hailey. We need an ambulance.”
Stella leaped to her feet, then was gone.
Shane’s gun hit the ground near her head. She looked up at the hazy clouds rushing by overhead as he pulled her shirt out of the way. “Eleanor…”
“She’s gone. Don’t worry about her.” He ripped off his T-shirt and pressed it against her shoulder. “Jesus, are you trying for matching scars? Because this isn’t the way to go about getting one.”
The panic in his voice belied his snarky words, and she closed her eyes. Rescuing her was one thing. Being worried about her…that was something she couldn’t let herself think about. Not now. “What are you doing here, Maxwell? I thought I told you to”—she grimaced as he pushed down—“get lost.”
“Yeah, well,” he said as he worked, making her feel like a rag doll in the process, “I figure you don’t listen to me, no reason I should listen to you.” She ground her teeth against the pain as he wrapped his shirt up and around her shoulder.
“I need an ambulance!” he hollered.
Voices and yelling could be heard from way off. The pounding of feet getting closer. Shane’s labored breathing.
Hailey closed her eyes and tried to focus on nothing.
“Come on, Roarke,” he said. “Tell me what a jerk I am. Tell me how you want to kick my ass. We both know I deserve it.”
“I don’t have the energy.” She was suddenly dog tired. More exhausted than she’d been her whole life. And ready to be done with everything. Him, her family, all the lies and hurt. Especially the ache in her chest that was growing by leaps and bounds after everything she’d seen and learned today. “You saved the girl, Maxwell. Got the bad guy—”
“Yeah, that’s why you’re lying here bleeding. Where’s that goddamn ambulance!”
“But I’m not dead. Which…is where I’d be if it weren’t for you. You can go home a hero now.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you,” he whispered close to her ear. “Hailey, do you hear me? I said I’m not leaving you, and I’m not.”
She took a long breath. Let it out slowly. Voices echoed around her. She felt hands on her body. Heard someone with a thick Jamaican accent tell Shane to move out of the way so they could treat her, but she didn’t open her eyes. Couldn’t.
“Blood pressure’s dropping…”
“We need to move her…”
“Get that stretcher over here!”
“I’ll be right here when you wake up,” Shane whispered in her other ear, even after she thought he’d gone. “Don’t you dare give up on me. Do you hear me, Roarke? Don’t you dare give up…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Shane.”
Shane’s eyes popped open at the sound of his name. He was sitting in a small corner room at Port Antonio General Hospital, where he’d been holding vigil the last twenty-four hours.
“Shit, man, you don’t look much better than her.”
Tony.
Shane pushed out of the chair by the side of Hailey’s bed and looked toward the door where his partner was standing with a scowl on his face. He didn’t have to ask to know what Tony was seeing: three days’ worth of stubble, hair that was probably sticking out all over, matted and wrinkled clothes.
He was groggy as hell, stiff and sore, but he met Tony halfway across the room with a fierce handshake. “I didn’t expect you to get here so soon.”
“O’Conner wants this wrapped up.” He nodded toward the bed. “She gonna be okay?”
Shane’s gaze followed, and just like it had every time he’d looked at Hailey in that bed, his stomach clenched. “Yeah. It was touch and go for a while. Bullet did some damage inside. But it looks like she’s gonna pull through just fine.”
Tony nodded, looked around the run-down room. Shane knew what else his partner was thinking. The place was clean, and the level of medical care here so far seemed pretty good. But it was Jamaica. Shane couldn’t wait to get Hailey back to a facility in the States. “How’d you get her a private room?”
“Stella Adams set it up.” Shane scrubbed a hand through his hair. “She’s got some clout with the people down here.”
Tony nodded again. “Still can’t believe that’s her mother.”
“Yeah, you and me both,” Shane said quietly.
“We reran Bryan Roarke’s tox screen based on the info you gave me. Came up positive for cardiac glycosides. Chemical found in plants like digitalis, lily of the valley and—”
“Oleander,” Shane finished, rubbing his shoulder. “Yeah, I know.”
“Not a common method of murder if you want to do it on the sly, because you have to know the dosages, but it’s effective.” He looked toward Shane. “Madeline Roarke turned herself in. She’s pleading out. Saying Eleanor told her what to do. Apparently, good ol’ Bryan found out about Eleanor’s involvement with Andrew Adams’s death. Not sure if Graham Roarke told him or what, but either way, Bryan was blackmailing her for control of the company. To get back at him, she told Madeline about his affair with Lucy and suggested a way to teach him a lesson. Madeline’s claiming she thought the poison would just make him sick, not really kill him.”
Shane huffed, stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You believe her?”
“No. But she’s also been pretty adamant that she didn’t cut him.”
Shane shook his head. Any way you sliced it, Madeline Roarke was looking at doing some serious time.
“One thing’s for certain,” Tony said. “She didn’t set Hailey up. Lucy Walthers is also talking. She’s the one who planted the dagger to frame Hailey. Wounds came after Bryan had already died. DA’s pretty convinced she did the cutting.”
God, these people were sick.
“What about what happened to Hailey at her uncle’s place? Who mixed the poison with the tea?”
“We’re not quite sure. But when we went through McIntosh’s apartment we found Graham’s bronze. You said he was the one who ran you off the road at Graham’s property, right?”
“Yeah. Hailey recognized his voice.”
Tony nodded. “There were two different factions at work here. Eleanor and what she was trying to do to keep her secrets from coming out, and McIntosh and his quest for control of Roarke Resorts. As for that poison in Graham’s tea—”
“Yeah?”
“Graham Roarke was taking digoxin for his heart condition. We found the medication in his kitchen. Wouldn’t have been hard to mix some of that in a fresh batch of tea if you popped in to commit a theft. And if you happen to kill off a Roarke or two in the process? Makes it a lot easier to get control of the company you want so bad.”
“Jesus.” Shane ran a hand over his hair. “So it wasn’t mixed for Hailey. But for Graham.”
“Looks that way. McIntosh and Lucy Walthers won’t see freedom for a long time, don’t worry.”
“And Hailey’s father? You think it really was suicide?”
“It’s looking that way.” Tony let out a breath. “That woman…Eleanor? Man, sounds like she was a real piece of work. Real puppet-master pulling all t
he strings. I have a sinking suspicion neither of us would be right in the head after living with her for five years, let alone thirty plus.”
Shane only nodded.
“Speaking of that dagger,” Tony said. “Funniest thing. Still hasn’t turned up in evidence. Doubt it’ll ever show up. What do you think?”
Shane glanced at his partner. There was a good chance they were never going to figure out what Lucy had used to cut Bryan, but Tony was making sure Shane’s ass was in the clear no matter what. “I owe you, man.”
“Yeah, you do. Again,” Tony said with a half grin. “Which is why I don’t feel guilty about dragging your ass back to Chicago when I’m done questioning everyone here. The sooner we get this cleared up with O’Conner, the better it’ll be for you. And her.”
Shane nodded and looked back at Hailey. And realized in that moment he hadn’t had a single Tic Tac in the last two days. “I’ll go back with you. But I’m not staying.”
Tony stared at him a beat, then said, “You’ve got a little over ten years until your pension kicks in. What are you—”
Shane turned his eyes on his friend. Maybe his only true friend, because he knew every one of Shane’s darkest secrets. “Tony, you and I both know I won’t make it to retirement. Not the way I’m going now. I’ll be lucky to last another three years without getting myself killed, or worse, getting you killed. You’re always telling me to get a life. Well…” He looked back at the bed. “Maybe it’s about time I listened.”
In the silence, he knew Tony was considering whether he was serious. “What are you gonna do?”
Shane shrugged. “I don’t know. Jack’s always trying to get me to switch over to PI work. I’ve got a few possibilities.”
“You gotta have people skills for that, wife.”
Shane chuckled. “I’ve got people skills, Goldilocks.”
“Oh, yeah,” Tony said, rolling his eyes. “You rank right up there with Commander O’Conner.” He nodded toward Hailey’s bed. “What about her?”