Dangerous Attraction Romantic Suspense Boxed Set (220 page)

“Hands up and get away from the kid,” one of them yelled.

Skelly immediately complied. “I’m afraid we have a lot of explaining to do,” he told Cheryl. And in a lower voice, added, “Uh, I’d suggest we keep what you just told me between us, though.”

“Right.
They’d
think I was nuts for sure.” Though she’d never been so happy to see cops in her entire life.

“Are you all right?” a fatherly type asked her.

Cheryl nodded. “He’s okay,” she said of Skelly, who still had his hands raised. “But his cousin and my dad…” She nearly choked saying, “They could be hurt bad. Help them, please. The people who were holding me are real dangerous.” She couldn’t call Helen Dunn her mother. “Their boat is tied up on the north side of the pier.”

“Giordano, stay with these two and get the whole story,” the fatherly type said. He motioned the other two uniforms to follow him and raced for a door.

Giordano was a pretty dark-haired woman with sympathetic brown eyes. “If the kid thinks you’re okay, you can lower your hands,” she told Skelly. She pulled out a notebook and indicated they should both sit. “Now, about that story.”

Cheryl began with her finding the note and deciding to meet the mother she’d been told was dead.

KEELIN TRIED TO KEEP HER HEAD, but under the circumstances, doing so wasn’t easy. His gun pressed into her side, his other arm around her as if they were lovers – no doubt in case anyone noticed them – Weaver had hauled her around the back end of the stalled Ferris wheel. Nothing was moving during the fireworks display. And since everyone’s attention was glued to the south lakefront, no one paid them any mind when he forced her down the ramp toward the dock level.

“Did Jeremy Bryant put you up to this?” she asked, pushing the question past the lump lodged in her throat.

“The geezer doesn’t have a clue. Cheryl’s grieving mother sent Bryant on a wild goose chase to Indianapolis to get him out of the way.”

The sky lit with a myriad of trembling colors, and Weaver popped her inside the dock-level building, this time to cross through the car park. The explosives rang hollowly through the poorly lit, dank garage. Keelin thought fast, wanting to get as much information as possible out of the man. Helen’s taking Cheryl at the same time Feldman was trying to ruin Tyler was too convenient to be mere coincidence.

“Were you working with Nate Feldman all along?” she asked, as they dodged a couple of cars parked too close together and hurried through an empty slot.

Weaver seemed surprised at her acuity. “Feldman sent me to find Leighton’s ex.”

Eureka! Gathering her courage – she would rather think of anything but the gun he held – Keelin doggedly kept on in the belief that Weaver would want someone to realize how clever he’d been.

“How could Feldman know Helen Dunn was alive?”

“That blonde broad he’s been showing around, she found Helen’s demand for more money to keep playing dead. It didn’t take much to seduce Leighton’s ex,” he bragged. “Not that I’m complaining. Didn’t take much to get Helen to spill her guts about her ex and what he owed her. Took even less to convince her that if we snatched the brat, Leighton would pay anything to get the kid back.”

So Vivian had only a minor role in the drama, and Helen had been duped, probably didn’t even know anything beyond her own involvement.

As Weaver shoved her through a door to the north side of the pier, Keelin asked, “How did you hook up with Nate Feldman in the first place?”

“Did some work for him on one of Leighton’s buildings. Feldman didn’t want it to meet city inspection.”

Horrified, Keelin said, “But that’s the building where the Smialek boy died!”

“Shame about the kid.” Not that he sounded sorry. “Shame you put it together, too.”

Keelin recognized a threat when she heard one. Though the gun was still pressed into her side as they approached the boat where Helen already waited, the idea of her dying somehow seemed surreal.

While a series of fireworks rent the sky above the pier’s buildings, Keelin calmly asked, “Do you plan on shooting me?”

“Won’t have to,” Weaver said with a brutish laugh. He pushed her forward so that she went flying down into the boat. “I can take this baby far enough out that you’ll never be able to swim back.”

Keelin heard the last through a daze of pain. Crumpled on the floor where she’d landed between the middle and back seats, she saw him jump down after her.

“What are you talking about, Jack?” Helen asked nervously. “We only planned to get Tyler’s money, not kill anyone.”

“Plans change,” Weaver said grimly, cranking the engine to life. “Here, hold this on her. You let her go and it’s your neck.”

“Jack, please…”

Still stunned, Keelin pushed herself into a sitting position and noted that while the gun was pointed her way, Helen seemed distracted. Truly upset. Her hands were shaking. Perhaps she could capitalize on the fact.

“He’s using you, Helen,” Keelin said as Weaver leaped up to the dock and began untying one of the lines. “He was paid to find you.”

“Shut your mouth, bitch!”

Wide-eyed, her face cast a sickly green by the mercury vapor lights, Helen said, “That’s not true, is it, Jack?”

“Of course not, baby. She’d say anything to turn you against me.”

The bastard was so arrogant that when he lied he didn’t even look at the woman he’d duped, Keelin realized. Nor did he notice the movement in the shadows mere feet from where he worked, his attention focused on untying the last line.

Heart thrumming with sudden hope, Keelin pulled herself to her feet and pressed Helen. “A crooked businessman named Nate Feldman put Weaver up to finding you and seducing you to get at Tyler.”

“I said shut your damn mouth!” Weaver spun around, his attention now directed on her. “Or maybe I won’t wait to let the fish get you.”

Another burst of twinkling blue and white lights revealed a figure running toward them even as Weaver hurled himself into the craft and took the wheel. Keelin nearly fainted with relief when she realized the man was Tyler. The explosion of accompanying sound covered his footsteps as the craft slowly turned, its prow headed straight out toward the middle of the lake.

And then Tyler leaped.

“Jack!” Helen screamed too late.

Keelin’s heart was in her throat as Tyler flew through the air. His foot touched the side of the boat; his momentum kept him sailing. Even as the villain turned, Tyler was upon him, the thud on contact audible.

The men went down in a heap, Tyler on top. But Weaver was a decade younger and undoubtedly stronger considering his massive physique. Keelin held her breath as they rolled in the confined space, arms flashing, the sound of fists contacting flesh more imagined than heard beneath the increasing cacophony of the fireworks display. Rockets were bursting in the sky as fast and furious as the men were hitting each other.

Suddenly Tyler flew back, arms flailing. And Weaver was instantly on his feet and after him. Forgetting Helen for a moment, Keelin looked around wildly for something loose that she could use as a weapon. Her gait was unsteady as the boat slowly continued moving out into the lake.

Keelin was wondering if a loose flotation cushion could do any damage when Helen ordered, “Just stay put,” as her lover pounded her ex-husband with his fists.

“Is that what you want?” Keelin asked, revolted by the brutality. “You want to see Tyler dead because he divorced you?”

“He stole my child from me!”

“He
paid you
to stay out of your child’s life because he wanted to protect her. And you readily took his money.”

The gun wasn’t even pointing at her anymore, Keelin realized. Helen’s heart wasn’t in this. Cheryl’s mother might be greedy, but she obviously wasn’t given to violence. This time, she’d chosen the wrong man to partner.

“Weaver’s been working for Feldman for a while.” Keelin yelled to be heard. The fireworks display was coming to a dramatic climax, layers of color building on one another. “He made a few adjustments in one of Tyler’s buildings that was being renovated. The result was a child’s death.”

“You’re lying!”

“He would have killed Cheryl if he’d had to!”

Helen’s mouth gaped, but she couldn’t seem to force out a denial.

“Perhaps he’ll kill
you
for the money.”

Suddenly Weaver cried out. Keelin saw his head snap back and his body jerk. Tyler took the advantage, grabbing the man by his shirt front and heaving him into the windshield. A panicked Weaver scrambled over the glass and onto the hood of the prow. Tyler vaulted onto a seat and followed.

Keelin held her breath as the men tightly circled one another around the confined space. Tyler found an opening. He clipped Weaver in the jaw, stunning and pummeling him until the younger man fell prostrate over the bobbing prow.

Appearing ready to pass out himself, Tyler stumbled toward them.

“Are you all right?” Keelin yelled worriedly, rushing between the seats to meet him.

Tyler leaned forward, hands against the windshield, gasping for breath. “I’ll survive.”

She reached up and touched his bruised and bloody face. “Foolish, foolish man.”

“I wasn’t about to chance living without the woman I love,” he said, the unexpected declaration thrilling her.

“She may have to live without
you
!” came a raspy voice from behind him.

Under a canopy of colored brilliance combined with smoke that shadowed the sky as far as the eye could see, the scenario played out in slow motion before Keelin’s horrified eyes.

Weaver was on his feet, hand raised and grasping something gleaming and sharp. His energy spent, Tyler obviously had to force himself to turn around to face the aggressor once more. He exposed his chest even as the man’s arm began its downward arc.

Suddenly Jack Weaver jerked and froze, a surprised grimace distorting his features. His chest bloomed dark against his lighter shirt. His fist opened and the weapon fell, clattering and slipping into the lake.

And, like a felled tree, Weaver followed.

Keelin didn’t even hear the splash.

Then her gaze flew to a dazed Helen, still pointing the gun straight where her lover had stood.

“OUR FINAL REPORT IS AN UPDATE on the disappearance and recovery of North Bluff teenager Cheryl Leighton,” Skelly McKenna told his television audience. “A fantastic story of greed and violence. A complex and far-reaching plot was allegedly hatched by businessman Nate Feldman, seen here as police arrested him early Sunday morning.”

Snugged in the crook of Tyler’s arm at his home, Keelin watched
The Whole Story
with him, nervous about his reaction to her cousin’s coverage. Skelly focused on Feldman himself, leaving out the exact details of Tyler’s twelve-year monetary arrangement with Helen as well as Keelin’s own paranormal connection with Cheryl. His discretion surprised and pleased her, though Keelin knew at least some of the details were bound to come out during Feldman’s trial. Helen had already pleaded guilty to kidnapping and extortion, but also pleaded self-defense to her lover’s death. Lake Michigan’s waters still cradled Weaver’s body.

As far as anyone had been able to tell, Vivian and Brock had only been involved peripherally, and while in love with Brock, Pamela had remained professionally loyal both to Tyler and L&O Realty, so Skelly never even made reference to them.

“In a bizarre twist,” Skelly went on, “Feldman is also allegedly responsible for the unsecured porch railing that caused the death of Harry Smialek, the Wicker Park boy who died on an L&O Realty renovation site…”

Tyler had already received apologies from the Smialeks and had learned that their lawsuit against L&O Realty had been instigated by one of Feldman’s lawyers.

To Keelin’s relief, Cheryl was more resilient than she imagined. The girl hadn’t invaded her dreams at all since the rescue. And, even now, Cheryl had insisted on being with her friends since everything was back to “normal.” Keelin knew Tyler had made an appointment to take Cheryl to a family therapist, but instinct told her the teenager would fully recover.

“At least this story has a happy ending,” Skelly was saying, the visual a shot of Cheryl wrapped in a battered Tyler’s arms.

And for her a new beginning, Keelin thought, at last free of the guilt that had haunted her. She had finally put the ghost of Gavin Daley to rest.

Skelly was on camera once more. “Tomorrow, a story on Lily Lang,
The Blonde Bombshell
, who, convicted of murder, escaped from prison thirty years ago this week.”

Tyler pointed the remote at the television and turned it off. “Maybe your cousin’s not quite the sleazoid I accused him of being.”

Equally pleased, Keelin agreed, “I think there’s hope for Skelly yet.” He’d even asked for their blessing before doing the follow-up.

“What about us? Is there hope for us?” Tyler asked, the question making her heart leap.

Though they’d professed their love for each after their night terror had ended, the last two days had been divided up between the police and sleep, Cheryl’s well-being and Keelin’s family matters. While Uncle Raymond had greeted his long-lost niece with enthusiasm, Aileen had suggested she wait a bit before broaching the subject of the reunion.

And, amidst all the chaos, she and Tyler had not gotten around to discussing
them
.

We do come from different worlds,” she reminded him.

“But not different planets. I’m sure you’ve heard of jet travel.”

She frowned. “You would be happy with a long distance relationship?”

“Certainly not.” He kissed her nose and tightened his grip on her. “The closer the better. I meant we could be an international family with two homes if that would make you happy.”

Her pulse raced and familiar yearnings filled her, yet Keelin argued, “Then there are more personal differences.”

His eyebrows shot up. “You mean because you’re a woman and I’m a man? I believe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

Not smiling at his attempted humor, she said, “I come from a Catholic country.”

He immediately grew serious. “I’m open-minded and flexible. Isn’t it possible to work something out?”