Hale's Point
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
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?”