By Request Collection April-June 2016. Оливия Гейтс

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СКАЧАТЬ wasn’t going to come any closer. By the time she threw the rock, he’d have a bullet in her. Then she heard exactly what she’d been hoping for, a slide of rocks in the tunnel behind her.

      Lightman shifted his gun and the light toward the tunnel’s opening. Piper used all her strength to hurl the rock at him. She heard the sound of it hitting flesh and bone before two shots rang out nearly simultaneously. She saw Lightman pitch to the ground and heard the crash of his flashlight. Then for a moment everything went black.

      “Stay down.” It was Duncan’s voice.

      She was perfectly happy to obey the order. Her head ached. Every bone in her body ached.

      “I’ll take care of Lightman.” Daryl’s voice now. She saw two shadows rush out of the tunnel. “You see to Piper.”

      Aiming his flashlight at her, Duncan dropped to his knees. “You’re bleeding. Did he shoot you?”

      “I’m fine.” She touched her forehead gingerly and felt the blood. “I did that to myself. I had to make it look good when I fell.”

      She had, Duncan thought. Too good. He’d heard her head connect with that boulder. He used the flashlight to check her eyes, but the pupils weren’t dilated.

      “Lightman isn’t shot, either,” Daryl said. “Looks like she knocked him out cold with a rock.”

      The relief that rushed through Duncan erupted in a laugh as he sat down beside her and scooped her onto his lap. “I don’t know why I was worried about you.” Then he lowered his mouth to hers and, trembling, he found everything. Everything.

      “If you two want to come up for air for a minute,” Daryl said, “I’ve got some more good news.”

      “What?” Duncan raised his head, but he didn’t loosen his hold on Piper.

      “Lightman has some interesting items in his backpack—a white sheet, several plastic bags filled with rose petals. I’d say this stuff, along with what I recorded from the wire on Piper, should be enough to send him away for a very long time.”

      “Are his reading glasses in there?” Piper asked.

      “They are,” Daryl said.

      “They’re going to connect him to at least one other RPK victim.” Then she told them what she’d discovered in the file. “They have to be in an evidence bag somewhere, and they may have his prints on them. I’ll bet he doesn’t even remember he left them behind. And you may even be able to trace his purchases. Those are expensive designer frames.”

      Daryl glanced over at her. “You sure you want to practice law? I could use someone with your eye for detail in my office.”

      “The FBI could use her, too,” Duncan said.

      “I can’t get a signal on my cell,” Daryl said. “How far is it to the outside of this place?”

      “Fifteen feet or so through that tunnel,” Duncan said.

      “I’ll let Sheriff Skinner and Vi know that we’re all safe and sound, and I’ll check on Ms. Lewis.”

      For a few minutes after he was gone, Piper stayed right where she was with her head pressed into Duncan’s shoulder. Just a few more minutes, she told herself. She’d be fine in just a few more minutes.

      “It’s my fault,” Duncan said. “I convinced you to come up here. And I brought her around to the library.”

      She raised her head and looked him straight in the eye. “Enough. Stop that right now. I agreed to come up here, and I’m the one who broke the rules by rushing out to tell you about my discovery in the files. There’s enough blame to go around. And I’m really, really tired of dealing with irrational people today. Those two were total fruitcakes. What I need more than anything else is for you to kiss me again.”

      When he tightened his arms around her and lowered his mouth to hers, she poured herself into the kiss. He was here holding her, and she felt her fears drain. She’d needed this. And she needed more. So much more. She wanted …

      Daryl cleared his throat when he reentered the cave. When Duncan broke off the kiss, he said, “I’ve got Deanna Lewis secured. She took quite a blow on the head. Skinner’s notifying the trauma center in Albany. He’s already called in the state police. They’re on their way to the cliff face right now.”

      Duncan helped Piper get to her feet. “I have to call my boss. She’ll probably want someone from the FBI office in Albany to take Lightman into custody. Can you make it out to the ledge?”

      “Sure.” Every bone in her body ached when she got to her feet. The adrenaline rush was over. But Patrick Lightman was trussed up like a turkey, and she and the people she loved were fine.

       15

      THE LATE-AFTERNOON SUN SLANTED long shadows over the patio at the back of the kitchen as Duncan put steaks on the grill. He felt as though the day was never going to end. He’d wanted to talk to Piper alone, but one thing after another had interfered, the latest being a celebration dinner that Vi had insisted on. Sheriff Skinner had been invited to stay, and then the men had been assigned to grill duty while the women made salad.

      Daryl stepped out of the kitchen with three beers. “The ladies are chilling champagne, but I told Vi we’d start off with these.”

      Sheriff Skinner took one of the offered bottles. “I propose a toast to a job well done.”

      Duncan took one of the bottles and raised it. “It’s not over yet.” His eyes strayed to Piper inside the kitchen. She was tearing lettuce into a bowl. And for a moment he felt the same thing he’d felt when he’d slipped uninvited into her bedroom last night—just an inkling of what it might be like to see her do that ordinary task again and again.

      “You’re referring to the fact that Deanna Lewis wasn’t working alone,” Skinner said.

      “We listened to her say ‘we’ and ‘us’ several times while we were crawling through those tunnels,” Daryl said. “And Lightman overhead her making a phone call to someone telling them that she planned to eliminate Piper.”

      “I think Russell Arbogast is in the clear,” Skinner said. “His credentials seem genuine, and he claims he knew nothing about Deanna Lewis’s reasons for taking on the job of photographing the castle. But he says she was the one who pitched the idea to him, and the portfolio she showed him of her freelance work was impressive. Her résumé checked out.”

      “When Arbogast first approached Adair and Vi, I ran a thorough background check on him,” Daryl said. “I should have dug deeper on Deanna Lewis, but my impression was the same as Arbogast’s. There was nothing there to raise any alarm. I have someone working on her now.”

      A hissing noise from the grill made Duncan glance back at his steaks. “Whoever Deanna was referring to and talking to on her cell has to be connected to both her and the sapphires. She told Piper that they were given to their family, and that Eleanor stole them. I’ve called Cam. He and Adair, along СКАЧАТЬ