He was breathing hard, still pale with pain, yet his arm was steady as he leveled the gun at her. For a moment, she simply stared at the cold black eye, frozen by terror. “Take the diamonds and go,” she said, desperate to go looking for Rourke. “They aren’t important. Please, just go.”
“I can’t do that. Not now.”
She’d seen his face. He wouldn’t let her go. “I know, Matthew,” she said. “I know.” She needed to divert his attention, maybe slow him down. “But…tell me what happened to my mother. I’ve wondered all my life.”
“She fell from Meerskill Bridge.” His voice was chillingly matter-of-fact.
Jenny had an image of her mother falling, her limbs fluttering in the wind, the crushing impact of the rocks and boulders at the base of the falls. “Did you push her?” she demanded, feeling a sick hatred for him.
“I said she fell.” The gun wavered the slightest bit.
Good, she thought. He’s agitated. Maybe his concentration would break.
“She liked to go out, Mariska did, and she liked to party. She let the cat out of the bag about the diamonds one night, years ago. One thing led to another, and we went to the bridge. She was tipsy and she fell, and since I was the only one present, I got scared people would think I’d done something to her.”
It must have made him insane to lose her before he’d forced her to give up the diamonds, Jenny thought. She pretended not to be watching the gun. “So you…you took her up to the cave.”
“It was an accident,” he insisted.
She took a deep breath, catching the scent of the shirt she was wearing. Rourke’s scent. “All right,” she said. “Whatever.” Then, in a gesture of surrender, she brought both hands out and up, offering herself to him.
The moment he reached for the handcuffs, she brought both fists up and swung outward, hitting his jaw so hard that she felt her hand bruise. Maybe she even broke a bone. Then she raced for the bedroom, knowing she had only seconds. He lurched after her just as she released the safety on Rourke’s gun and swung toward him.
See it, then shoot it, Rourke had told her. There was a split-second window of opportunity. She held a gun on him. This was her chance. She could shoot him right now. She saw Matthew’s hand come up, saw his weapon pointed at her. She squeezed the trigger. He howled and staggered back. His gun was gone. She had no idea where it was and could only hope he didn’t, either.
She saw a glimmer of Zach’s face then, so like his father’s, his desperation to love and protect his dad shining from his eyes.
“You bastard,” she said to Matthew, and tried to see where his gun had fallen. She couldn’t find it. “Move,” she said. “We’re going to find Rourke.”
He hesitated, his eyes narrowing speculatively. He held his hand inside his parka. Was he bleeding, or still holding the gun? No, if that was the case, he’d have used it by now.
“Don’t make me do it, Matthew,” she whispered. “I don’t want to, but I swear to God I will.”
His hand came up, and he leveled the gun at her face. “So will I,” he said. “And then you’ll lose your chance to find out where Rourke is.”
She knew she was being played, knew he was probably lying about Rourke, but even the slimmest of chances was better than none at all. Her hand shook as she lowered the gun, then dropped it to the floor with a thud. As he bent to pick it up, she fled to the kitchen. There was only one thing Matthew wanted. The diamonds. She scooped them up and kept running for the door. A blast of cold hit her as she sped outside, already scanning the area for Rourke but unable to locate him or the dog.
Shouting at her, Alger burst out onto the porch. A shot rang out and a sob tore from Jenny as she ran, her progress nightmarishly slow through the drifts of snow. She made it to the dock, turning abruptly, her fist held out over the snow-covered surface of the lake. “Don’t come any closer,” she called to him. “You don’t want me to drop these. If I do, you’ll never find them.”
He stopped where he was, the gun still pointed at her. “Hand them over,” he ordered.
Good, she thought. This was what he wanted. “Tell me where I can find Rourke.”
It had stopped snowing and weak rays of sun colored the sky, imbuing the landscape with magical light. The wind had calmed to nothing. Where was Rourke? Off in the distance, a shadow flickered, and she was seized by a terrible sense of hope. She forced herself to keep staring at Alger, refusing to give away her thoughts with a searching glance. The shadow seemed to recede and then return.
Rourke? Or maybe the dog?
Matthew came at her and she knew he wouldn’t stop. But she also knew he wouldn’t shoot her so long as she held the diamonds in her hand. She saw a blur of movement behind him. He lunged, and at the same moment, she flung the stones. They scattered in a wide arc and disappeared, sinking into the snow-topped surface of the lake.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The second Jenny stepped into the brightly lit lobby of the hospital, she felt a squeeze of pressure around her lungs. Three times before she’d come here—for her
