Veiled (A Short Story) (7 page)

Right. He was
crazy
.

She continued walking backward as he advanced
on her. Thoughts of kicking him in the crotch or shins flashed through her
mind, but the man had a gun trained on her face. And his finger was
on
the trigger. He had every intention of shooting. He probably figured it didn’t
matter if the bride found at the bottom of the cliff had a hole in her head.

The flies on Will’s face flashed in her mind.

Is that my fate?

She backed into the fence and froze. Mathews
smiled, his face barely lit by the moon shining on the ocean behind her. Her
fingertips touched the hard clear plastic of the wall. It felt strong and
secure.

“Climb over.”

“I can’t.” She didn’t move. She was going to
make him put down that gun. Or else shoot her.

His eyebrows narrowed, his finger straightening
and flexing on the trigger. “Turn around and start climbing.”

“No. You’ll have to throw me over. Did you
think I’d just hop over because you told me to?”

Don’t shoot.

In the dim light, she saw him make his
decision. She closed her eyes.
I’ll always love you, Jack.

“Mathews!”

Lacey’s lids flew open and she exhaled.
Terry.

“Put the gun down, Mathews!”

Mathews mashed his lips together, indecision on
his face. He didn’t look toward the voice. His finger quivered on the trigger.

“It’s over, Boyd,” Lacey said. “Don’t add
murder to your crimes. So far all you’ve done is threaten me.” She didn’t mention
his other two murders. She saw Terry’s armed silhouette to her far left. Her
peripheral vision searched for Jack; she knew he was near.

“Back away from her and lay the gun down,”
Terry ordered.

Mathews stared at Lacey, a twitch starting on
his right eyelid.

“You don’t want to hurt me. It’s not going to
help your mother,” she whispered.

He took two steps back, his gun arm shaking
now. Lacey took a deep breath.

“Is he armed?” Mathews asked her. He hadn’t
looked in Terry’s direction.

“Yes,” she said. “You need to—”

Mathews whirled in Terry’s direction, emptying
his magazine. Lacey fell to her knees, covered her head with her hands and
flattened herself on the decking. Terry instantly fired back.

A shadow rushed out from her right and tackled
Mathews to the ground, pinning him on his stomach and landing on his back. The
gun spun into the plastic fencing. Jack grabbed Mathews’s head, slamming it
into the ground, and Lacey heard the sickening crack of a breaking nose. Jack
smashed his head again.

“Jack,” Lacey shouted. “Stop!”

Mathews’s head hit the wood deck a third time.
The man’s arms sprawled motionless beside him. Lacey lunged on her knees to
stop Jack before he did it again. “Jack, he’s not moving,” she shouted as she
grabbed his arm, barely noticing that he wore a bulletproof vest. Jack paused,
gasping for air, and studied the silent man.

“Good,” he breathed.

Jack turned and grabbed both her shoulders,
scanning her for injury before wrapping her in a death grip. “Are you okay?”
His pupils were huge, far larger than they needed to be for the dim light, and
his chest heaved.

“I’m okay, I’m all right.” The emotional wall
cracked, and she started to cry. Deep gulping sobs of terror, which she’d held
back while Mathews’s gun dug into her ear. The dress pooled around her waist,
and she pushed at it, wanting it off. She couldn’t stand to have it touching
her skin. She wrestled with the fabric, panic shooting through her limbs.

“Lacey, hold still!” Jack hung on tighter to
her shoulders.

“I need it off. Get it off!” The dress tangled
around her legs, keeping her from struggling to her feet.

“I’ll help you—just hold still!” He shifted his
bulk off Mathews’s still body. Lacey leaned back on her elbows and frantically
kicked as Jack grabbed the tulle and pulled the dress over her legs. Her legs
finally clear, she collapsed onto her back, panting. She looked at the ceiling,
feeling the hot tears stream into her hair.

“Where’s Terry?” Jack asked.

“Right here.” Terry moved into Lacey’s line of vision.

She scrambled to her feet, her head suddenly
clear at the sight of blood running down Terry’s shoulder and onto his stomach.
He clasped the useless arm to his chest. “The little bastard nicked me a good
one.”

Lacey ordered him to sit and used part of
Patty’s dress to apply pressure. Blood instantly seeped through the tulle. He
was more than nicked.

“How’s Mathews?” Terry asked.

Jack put his fingers below Mathews’s jaw and
paused. “Got a heartbeat.”

“Good.” Terry looked at Lacey. “You hurt?”

She shook her head and wadded up the dress for
more pressure, pushing harder against Terry’s shoulder.

“Thank God. Scared me.” Terry leaned his head
against the clear plastic wall and closed his eyes. “Someone should probably
call 911.”

Jack pulled out his cell phone.

“This whole thing was like an episode of
Hotel Impossible
gone bad,” Jack commented. He gripped Lacey’s hand tighter as they walked along
the beach. Two days had passed since the shooting, and they’d come back to
Seaport for a day trip to check on Terry.

“Really bad,” Lacey said. “Lott was completely justified in
letting all those old employees go. Mathews’s mother included. He had pages and
pages of complaints about those employees. I just don’t understand why the
staff wouldn’t want their business to be a success. It would have meant job
security.”

Jack simply shook his head. Terry had taken two bullets to
his shoulder and one to his bulletproof vest. He had breezed through surgery
and was already back on the job with his arm in a sling, even though he
couldn’t do much but give orders. Mathews was sitting in the county jail with a
broken nose and healing a concussion. The little police department couldn’t
take the hit of losing two active officers at once, so Terry returned to work
with the loan of another officer from the county sheriff.

Lacey was relieved that Terry would be fine. For a split
second that night, she thought she’d caused his death by telling Mathews that
Terry was armed. Thinking it through later, she knew Mathews would have fired
no matter what she’d said.

An attempt at suicide by cop? Possibly. Mathews’s lawyer
wasn’t letting him talk to anyone.

“Do you think he really had a relationship with Patty
Marino?” she asked. “Or was it infatuation twisted by a bit of mental illness?
Maybe he was stalking her and really believed that Patty loved him. And if he
couldn’t have her, no one could.”

“I think a mental evaluation is in his near future,” Jack
answered. “When you didn’t come right back in with that dress, I went out to
look for you. And when I saw the cruiser was gone, I knew he was the guy we
were looking for.” He kicked at a shell in the sand. “Terry didn’t want to
believe me at first. But when Mathews turned off the radio after Terry tried to
contact him, he knew.”

“I was praying there was a GPS system to track the patrol
units,” Lacey said.

“Yep, although I have to say, watching that blinking light
on Terry’s onboard computer as we raced after you guys isn’t an experience I
care to repeat.”

“I drove as slow as I dared.”

“Didn’t matter. The computer showed the car had stopped
moving when we were about a third of the way to the hotel. I thought I was
going to lose it. Seeing it move meant that you were still alive, but once it
stopped …” He shook his head.

She squeezed his hand and sucked in a deep breath of sea
air.

“Terry figured out Mathews had held back his own name from
the list of people who use that cabin. One of Will’s friends mentioned that
Will and Mathews fished together frequently,” Jack said. “What motivates a man
to kill his fishing buddy?”

“The love of a woman apparently.”

Jack scoffed. “Patty’s friends claimed she had nothing to do
with Mathews. I think it was all in his head. And when she didn’t jump up and
down for joy when he killed her ex-husband, Mathews overreacted. I think you’re
right—it might have been one of those ‘If I can’t have you, no one can’ type of
situations. And he assumed people would believe that Will killed her and then
himself.”

“I’m still shocked that he was angry enough at a hotel to
dump her body there.”

“In his head, he was punishing the hotel for his mother’s
depression. He couldn’t strike out at his mother, so the hotel got the blame.
In his head, it was completely logical.”

“I don’t want to get married there,” Lacey said.

Jack laughed. “Did you think I’d consider it now? This is
the last place in the world I want to have a ceremony. Somehow, having my wife
kidnapped and held at gunpoint seems to have soured it for me.”

She stopped and smiled at him. “Your wife?”

He took her face in his hands. “I’ve thought of you in that
way for a long time. We just haven’t made it legal yet.” He kissed her on her
nose. “By the way, the Oregon Coast is off the wedding site list. I don’t want
to have anything to do with this coast.”

“You know, I don’t want a big wedding,” Lacey whispered.

Jack threw back his head and laughed. “Lord, why didn’t you
say so?”

“Because I didn’t want to disappoint your sister and my
father. They seem so happy making plans.”

“Lacey. This is our wedding. Not anyone else’s. I can handle
my sister’s nosiness if you take care of your father.”

She nodded. “As long as he’s invited, I think he’ll be
okay.”

“So where
do
you want to get married?” He held her
captive with his questioning gray gaze. “Whatever you want to do is fine with
me.”

“I don’t know. Outside. Small. Warm. And I do want water.
Just not Oregon Coast waters.”

“We have a lot of options. Hawaii? Mexico? What about a Napa
vineyard or Lake Tahoe?”

Some of the wedding anxiety melted away. She hadn’t realized
how much she’d worried about satisfying other people for her own wedding. This
was supposed to be fun to plan. “Now you’re talking. Shall we take some quick
vacations to check out locations?”

“I’ll follow you wherever you want to look. We could have a
lot of fun searching for the perfect site. Just tell me when to show up with
the ring.”

She slipped her arms around his waist and lay her head on
his chest. “I love you, Jack Harper.”

“And I love you, Mrs. Almost Harper.”

Kendra Elliot’s debut novel, Hidden, sold more than 100,000 copies in its first few months. She is the best-selling author of the romantic suspense novels
Hidden
,
Chilled
, and
Buried
. Her next novel,
Alone
, will be released in January 2014. She lives in the rainy Pacific Northwest with her husband, three daughters, and a Pomeranian, but dreams of living at the beach on Kauai.