Obsession Falls (50 page)

“Summer. Please. Don’t do this. Leave me if you must, but don’t—” For the first time, Kennedy realized what he might have to give to win. And he had to win, or Summer would be gone. He would seek her in every woman’s face, but she would live forever in the shadows, dominated by Jimmy. Dominated by evil.

He struggled to get to his feet. “James.”

Jimmy’s head jerked around, his attention inexorably caught by Kennedy’s voice. Kennedy … the man he had respected. The man he had hunted. The man who had dominated his life.

“James.” Kennedy fought his way past shattered bone and broken nerves to speak the words that would goad Jimmy into a final act of savagery. “We have so much in common. Our intelligence. The game. Our enmity. So … do what you have to do to exorcise me. Kill me. Sacrifice me. Do it! Sacrifice me as the cornerstone of your love.”

Jimmy took a step toward him. “Why?”

“Then Summer will have no more illusions about who you are, what you are, and she’ll be free of you.” Kennedy pointed at his own face. “Come on, man. You haven’t got much time. A knife to the heart. A bullet to the brain. A garrote around the throat. You’ve done it all before.”

Jimmy’s eyes glowed with a sick desire. “I have. In prison, I did it all. It was the only way to survive. You taught me that. You taught me to kill.”

“Then use your skills.”

Jimmy took a step toward Kennedy.

Loudly, prosaically, Summer sighed with exasperation. “What a drama queen Kennedy is. Come
on,
Jimmy.
They’re
going to figure out where we are. We’ve got to leave.”

Jimmy wavered.

She slid a hand around his neck. “Darling, you promised me heaven. How long must I wait?”

Still Jimmy stared at Kennedy, fixated by the chance to finish this at last.

Kennedy stared back.
Yes, motherfucker. Look at me. Do it. Kill me.

With a snarl of fury, Summer turned, picked up the rebar, and swept it across the desk. Books, pens, and paper clips flew. She picked up the black velvet bag and stuck it in her pocket. Then she swept again. Her holster and pistol toppled off. She sent the keyboard and monitor crashing into the wall. Cables stretched, then snapped. Sparks flew. Glass shattered.

Astonished, the men stared at her flushed face.

Jimmy’s Glock 18 automatic pistol remained on the desktop. She picked it up, smiled at it, then grinned unpleasantly at the two men.

They both stepped back.

She checked the safety, then tossed it into the corner. “You two make me sick.” She walked toward the door.

Damn her. Kennedy had baited the hook, hooked the fish, had been reeling Jimmy in—and just like that, with a sweep of her arm, she seized Jimmy’s attention. She held such power over Jimmy.

And over Kennedy. In a low voice, Kennedy said, “Summer. Please. Before I even met you, I loved your picture. Don’t leave me alone, Summer. Don’t leave me.”

She didn’t even glance his way. She kept walking.

Jimmy hurried after her, grabbed her arm, and twisted her to face him. “So you’re going with me?”

“Do you promise not to kill him?” she asked.

“I won’t kill him,” Jimmy assured her. “But you—you’re
sacrificing
yourself to save him?”

“Yes, damn you. I’m sacrificing myself to save him.” But her body told the truth. She wasn’t sacrificing anything. She swayed toward Jimmy, her face upraised, waiting for a kiss.

Jimmy laughed softly, and opened the door for her.

The ocean’s wind billowed through the entry and into the office, stirring the papers on the floor, the pages of the books, clearing Kennedy’s mind of everything but pain and frozen anguish.

With a last, contemptuous glance at him, Summer walked out of the house, out of the game, out of his life.

He was not so lucky with Jimmy.

Jimmy stayed. He came to within arm’s reach of Kennedy. And he gloated. The bastard gloated. In a low voice, he said, “I promised not to kill you. I’ll keep my promise to her. But I bought this property. I stopped construction. The place is abandoned. No one knows you’re here.”

Kateri knew he was here. “You lied … to her.”

“I didn’t lie. I simply didn’t tell her all the truth. You’ll get an infection from your wounds. You’ll die here, screaming in pain. And no one will ever know what happened to the honorable and wondrous Kennedy McManus.”

Eventually, Kateri would send help. “Summer … will figure out what you’ve … done.”

“Don’t you get it? She doesn’t care about you. Not really. She and I are alike—we survive by any means possible. And you despise us for that.”

But it didn’t matter what Kateri did. Kennedy didn’t care if he lived or died. “I don’t despise … Summer.” Speech became more difficult, but he had to say this. “I love her. Take … care … her. Treasure … as she is meant … be treasured.”

“Don’t tell me what to do with her. She chose me. I know what’s best.” Jimmy walked toward the door again, and turned. “When you get desperate, try drinking your piss and eating your earwax. I heard it’ll keep you alive a little longer. You’ll suffer a little longer.”

Summer came back and stuck her head into the room. “Jimmy, come
on
. I can hear the helicopter coming for us.”

Jimmy offered his hand.

She took it and led him out the door. It shut behind them with a solid
thunk,
leaving Kennedy alone.

He fell to his knees and for the first time since he had seen his parents led away in handcuffs, he cried. Blood and tears mixed on his face and splattered in a bright pink shower onto the rough wood floor.

Yes, he had survived. Yes, he had lifted himself out of the filth of his past and become a man of honor and integrity. And what had that won him? No love. No peace. Only pain, mutilation, and loneliness. His sister was right. If he didn’t die here, one day he would be an old man, looking for Summer, sleeping with her photo, always wondering where she was, what had happened to her …

His face burned and bled. His lips were swollen. His tongue was swollen. His throat was closing. Maybe he would die now.

Pain pierced his knee and riveted his attention. A shard of glass had cut through his jeans. He jerked it loose, and more blood mixed with the blood from his face … he was kneeling on the contents of Jimmy’s desktop: the papers, the pens, the paper clips …

The paper clips. The paper clips that could be straightened and used to unlock the manacle. No one knew that better than him. No one … except perhaps for Summer.

Driven by anger and purpose, he scrabbled through the debris.

Maybe there was more to this than he had imagined.

Maybe Summer had not trashed the desktop by accident.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

Summer laughed when she saw the house’s outer entrance. As Kennedy promised, the iron door had been blasted, warped, and mangled, and rested flat on the floor of the entry hall. The studs around it were shredded, seared and blistered. Mr. Szymanski’s grenade had done what she had hoped. Now it was up to her to finish the job, to take out the bastard who had no respect for classic cars. No respect for age. No respect for life.

She leaped over the flattened door and the last rays of sunshine slanting below a low-hanging bank of clouds.

In one graceful bound, Jimmy followed.

To the west, carried by the freshening winds, she could hear a helicopter’s blades chopping the sky. She couldn’t see it—the low cloud bank concealed its approach. But she knew she didn’t have a lot of time. “Which way?” she shouted.

Jimmy grabbed Summer’s arm. “This way.” He ran over the construction-pocked ground toward the ocean cliffs, pulling her after him with a grip so brutal she could feel the bruising start.

“Stop that. Let go.” She twisted away. “I’m
coming
with you.”

“To save your boyfriend,” Jimmy mocked.

“Yes!” She ran beside him.

The helicopter sounded closer.

“Even if it’s true,” he said, “even if he wants to believe it, he’ll always know you
really
came with me because you wanted me.”

“I know.” She reached for her belt.

“Because you want excitement, passion, life lived to the fullest.”

“He is exciting.” She unfastened the buckle. “He is passionate.”

Jimmy ran backward, watching her curiously. “He is dull as dishwater.”

“You’d be surprised. He massages my feet. He puts the groceries away. He knows how to cook.”

“Bor-ring.”

“Sometimes, all a woman wants is a man who’ll care for her, do the little things that mean he cherishes her comfort.”

Clearly, Jimmy didn’t get that.

So she added, “Besides—Kennedy can
talk
me to orgasm.”

Just as clearly, Jimmy didn’t like that.

She twisted the belt in her fist. “You’ve watched me. You’ve spied on me. You know everything about me, right?”

He frowned. “I suppose not everything.”

“You’re right.” She stopped.

Finally he realized she was threatening him—and that he should be afraid.

He lunged for her.

Too late. She lifted the belt over her head and whipped it in a single, swift circle.

The stone in the middle of the belt met the middle of his forehead. His skull made a sound like a melon breaking open. His eyes went blank. He fell backward, hard, flat on his back.

Above the sound of the wind and the approaching helicopter, she screamed, “Serves you right, asshole!”

He never stirred.

Yes. He was unconscious. Comatose. With a concussion, she hoped. Or a possible brain hemorrhage. Or hopefully death. Because he might be right—life with him would be a life lived to the fullest. But it would also be a short life, one balanced always on the razor’s edge of fear, one of waiting for the moment when he tired of her, or thought she betrayed him, or she failed him somehow … he would point a gun, the bullet would crash through her skull, and she would become another undiscovered body tossed like trash into the forest.

She ran toward the house, stopped at a distance, and looked back at Jimmy.

He hadn’t stirred.

She ran again, toward Kennedy and sanity.

Funny. She knew how hard she’d hit Jimmy. She’d heard the sound of the stone against his skull. But even now, she feared him.

She glanced toward the sky.

She feared the helicopter filled with his men. So loud. So close.

She ran harder.
Get inside.

She didn’t make it.

A Bell Jet Ranger burst out of the clouds.

She glanced over her shoulder.

The helicopter swooped low, prepared to land.

Two men were in the front, the pilot and, standing at the open side door … oh, God. She recognized the other guy. Barry. From Wildrose Valley. The guy who directed operations after Jimmy had shot Dash. Barry was Jimmy’s man. And he knew who she was.

Barry surveyed the scene, saw Jimmy lying motionless on the ground and her sprinting toward the house. He yelled something at the pilot, lifted his hands—he held a gun. Not a pistol like hers, but an automatic rifle.

She’d played this scene before, with Dash, but last time she’d evaded a pistol and she’d had a goal—the forest. This time she had no cover, the spray of bullets was inescapable, and to get in the house, she would have to make a leap over the door.

She couldn’t hear the sound of the gun firing. Not over the sound of the helicopter. But there was no mistaking the smack of bullets hitting the ground around her.

She dodged from side to side.

She didn’t have a chance. This time, she wouldn’t escape. She was dead.

More bullets.

Run. Dodge. Stop. Sprint. Swerve. Evade. Escape!

The helicopter moved above her.

She wasn’t going to make it—

Out of the house a monster leaped through the broken doorway. Blood covered its face and it roared like a wounded lion.

Kennedy. It was Kennedy, his face unrecognizable, but definitely Kennedy, and he had Jimmy’s Glock 18 automatic pistol in his hand.

Barry saw him, too, and changed his target. Bullets skittered away from Summer and toward Kennedy.

Kennedy jerked as if he’d been hit. He went down hard on one knee, teetered for a moment, then regained his balance. He pointed the Glock, and raked the front of the helicopter with a barrage of answering bullets.

The helicopter’s windshield shattered. The pilot ducked. He lost control.

Barry shrieked obscenities at the pilot. Grabbed for the door. Lost the rifle. It tumbled, over and over.

Summer flung herself to the ground.

The pilot fought to bring the helicopter level again, battled the wind turbulence that curled over the top of the ocean cliffs.

Kennedy aimed and shot again, aimed and shot again. Summer saw the way he fought the barrel rise, fought to make each bullet count.

Summer leaped up and ran again, toward the house, toward Kennedy.

The helicopter wobbled and spun—and tilted sideways.

Barry fell out, caught himself, clung to the door, dangling and yelling at the pilot.

Kennedy aimed through eyes so swollen he could barely see, ceaselessly putting all his bullets through the windshield.

The pilot convulsed and collapsed.

Violently, the helicopter spun in a circle.

Barry lost his grip. Arms and legs flailing, he plummeted to the ground, screaming all the way down. He landed on the hard-packed ground, and broke into a welter of blood and brains—and that was justice for every body he’d dumped in the forest.

The helicopter swung around again, and again, tighter and tighter, a top spinning out of control. The tail rotor clipped a tall Douglas fir. Jet fuel spilled, ignited, and the tree exploded into flames.

Summer dropped to the ground and curled into a ball, her arms over her head.

With a roar, the engine detonated with blistering heat and a flash of light she could see with her eyes shut.