Relative Strangers (26 page)

"It's
not
that simple—"

"Let's get something straight," Margot cut in. She stepped closer, forcing Meg back a pace. "I don't want you here. I don't want your help. I don't want to know you. And if you don't leave now, I'll call security and tell them you barged in here and trashed the place. You'll sit in jail while I finish this. It's your choice." Reaching around Meg, she opened the door at her sister's back.

But Meg wasn't about to walk away now. "I'm sure we can work—"

"You have thirty seconds."

"Margot—"

"Twenty."

"I'm not leaving," Meg said.

"Don't make me count down from ten."

"What am I supposed to do, Margot? Tell me."

"Go home. Five."

Meg crossed her arms and locked her knees. "Forget it."

"Your determination is touching, but I'm a desperate woman who has something important to take care of, and you're in my way. Four."

"What are you going to do?" Meg asked. "Hit me?"

Margot reached past her and pulled the gun from her purse on the table by the door. "Three."

Meg laughed incredulously. "You wouldn't."

Margot pointed it at Meg's chest, resisting the need to check the safety. She knew it was on because she'd double-checked it before putting the weapon away. "You don't know me, Meg. Not at all." She cocked the gun. "Two."

"I'm not stupid enough to believe you'd shoot me."

Margot
stepped toward her,
and Meg
backed away invol-untarily. She
didn't realize what she'd done until Margot smiled and lowered the gun. "One."

She slammed the door in Meg's face and flipped the lock.

Chapter 26

Ryan sensed Meg was gone the instant he woke. Scrambling out of bed, he threw open the bathroom door. Empty.

He dragged on jeans, shoes and a shirt before going above deck where he saw that she had taken the inflatable raft to shore.

"Damn it!"

Instead of driving his fist into the wall, he called Nick. "Meg's gone."

"I just saw her," Nick said. "She came to see Margot."

"Where is she now?"

"I thought she was headed back to you. She looked upset, so I didn't bother her. Everything looked fine otherwise. No one's hanging around Margot. No one followed Meg."

"How long ago?"

"Fifteen minutes."

"She should have been back here by now."

"Damn, Ryan. I didn't think to—"

"Just keep an eye on Margot until I get there."

Throwing the phone aside, he whipped the life raft out of its compartment and pulled the cord to inflate it.

Within minutes, he was pounding on the door to cabin eighteen.

«

*

Margot yanked open the door and froze.

Ryan stared at her, the words stuck in his throat. She looked so much like Meg that it stole his breath. Brushing past her, he scanned the room. "Where is she?"

Margot knew who he meant but was too stunned by his ap-pearance—and his resemblance to Beau—to respond right away.

He stalked up to her. "Where the hell is she?"

"You're Ryan."

"You're the bitch who got my brother killed. Where's Meg?"

"I didn't know Slater was going to kill him."

He jerked her forward by the front of her sweatshirt. "I don't give a fuck at the moment. Just tell me where she is."

"I don't know. I suggested she go home and forget about all of this."

"If anything happens to her, I'll break your neck before Slater Nielsen can get anywhere near you." He stormed out.

Margot watched him go, a pang of envy shooting through her. Oh, to still be loved like that.

Nick stood at the end of the walk, waiting, his baseball cap in his hands.

Ryan said, "Call the feds and tell them where Margot is."

Meg didn't think about Margot or Ryan or anything but climbing the steps to her front door. Her brain was too muddled to sort through it. All she wanted was to sleep.

When she stood before the door, realizing she didn't have her key, she saw that it didn't matter. The door was ajar. She pushed it open to destruction.

Plants had been dumped out of their pots, the dirt spread out as if someone had sifted through it. The bookcase had been tipped, books and pictures scattered, the television dumped on the floor. Even her mother's dollhouse had been smashed. Next to it, MOMS KRAFT BOCKS had been re-duced to sticks.

A low moan came from deep in her throat as she sank to her knees. Rocking forward, she dug her fingers into the carpet, closed her eyes against the sorrow. How had everything gotten so messed up? What had gone so wrong?

"Meg."

She raised her head to see Ryan standing just inside the front door, his forehead creased with concern. Rage clouded her vision. She was surrounded by the debris of her life. Con-trol had been stripped from her. And he had helped.

Going to her, he reached down to help her up, but as she rose, she pushed him away and swung at him with an open hand. Her palm struck his cheek with a crack.

He flinched back but made no other move.

She hit him again, a dry sob catching in her throat. When she blindly struck out a third time, he caught her wrist, his fingers gentle but firm.

She jerked free. "This is my life," she said. "Take a good look."

"I'm sorry."

She turned her back on the apology, swiping at the mois-ture in her eyes. Her cheeks burned with shame for striking out at him when he had done nothing more than try to love her. She fought off the need to scream. "There's nothing left," she whispered. "Nothing."

"It can be replaced," Ryan said.

She whirled on him, seizing on the anger to hold back the grief. "The TV can be replaced. The microwave can be re-placed. The pictures even. My peace of mind can't be re-placed. Losing your best friend and getting shot kind of messes with that after a while.. And what's it all been for,

Ryan? We haven't accomplished anything but lose the people we love."

She kicked at the remains of a picture frame, dissatisfied when it merely disintegrated into more pieces. A pace away, she picked up a jagged chair leg and swung it at the remains of the television. Glass shattered. She spun for something more to batter.

Before she found it, Ryan snatched her into his arms. He hung on, his arms strong around her until she melted into him. Her breath hitched as he stroked a hand through her hair.

"Margot didn't want me," she said, beating a loose fist against his shoulder. "She didn't want me."

He tightened his arms around her. "I'm sorry, Meg. God, I'm so sorry."

She broke the embrace before the precarious grip she had on her self-control shattered.

He let go, hurt by the rejection. He needed her so much, but she didn't seem to need, or want, him. "Meg, please."

"She didn't keep the emeralds. I know where they are."

He rubbed both hands over his face. "That doesn't change—"

"I love you. You're the only one I've ever loved so much I can't think." Crying now, she said it again. "I love you." It came out easily, and she repeated it a third time, realizing that she had never spoken the words aloud to anyone before him.

He buried his face in her hair. "Thank God." It was all he could manage.

Meg curled her fingers against his back. "I'm sorry I keep pushing you away. What I feel for you scares me. I'm so afraid something will happen to tear it away from me like everything else—"

"This is all very touching."

They sprang apart. The man they each knew as Turner Scott gave them a toothy grin. "Unfortunately, I have work to do," he said, and lunged.

Ryan wasted any advantage he would have had over Turner by thrusting Meg out of the way. She caught herself against the wall as Ryan took a stunning blow to the jaw. He went down with a thud, and Turner towered over him, plunging a hand into his jacket.

Throwing herself at his back, Meg hooked her arms around his neck. He jabbed an elbow into her ribs. She fell back and was scrambling to her knees, groping for a weapon, when Ryan wobbled to his feet. Turner slugged him in the midsection, and Ryan doubled over. The thug karate-chopped him across the back of the neck before slamming a knee into his kidneys.

Grasping the splintered chair leg that she had used on the television, she swung it at Turner's head. It connected with a jarring crack, and he pivoted toward her.

She swung again. He caught the makeshift weapon with one hand, grinning, and walked her backward until her back hit the wall. Panic stuck in her throat.

Turner twisted the weapon in a direction her wrist would not bend. One final jerk, and she released it with a grimace. He trapped her against the wall with his shoulder and pulled out a gun. "This will be fun."

Over his shoulder, Meg saw Ryan staggering to his feet. She went for Turner's eyes, but he grabbed her wrist, yanked her around so that she faced Ryan, and locked a forearm across her throat. He pressed the gun into her back, where Ryan wouldn't be able to see it.

Meg saw blood trickling from the corner of Ryan's mouth, saw a red welt at his temple. Black spots floated across her vision at the sight of the blood on him, but she blinked them away. "He has a—"

Turned jerked her head back, choking off the warning, and her air.

Ryan's eyes went black with rage, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "Let her go." He took a menacing step forward.

Meg dug her fingers into the arm against her throat, sought to catch Ryan's eye. But he had focused his hatred on Turner, as if he knew that seeing her struggle for air would undo him.

She felt Turner flex his gun hand behind her back, heard the slight but distinct click of the hammer being pulled back. She gasped out a desperate attempt to say the word "gun."

Too late. Ryan lunged.

Meg didn't hear the gunshot.

She just saw Ryan reel back. He hit the wall and slid down it, his eyes wide with shock. When he hit the floor, his head flopped forward. A broad streak of blood defined the path that his body had taken down the wall.

Suddenly free, Meg staggered forward, a black curtain closing in at the edges of the world. "Oh, God. Oh, God."

Dropping to her knees at his side, she gripped his arm with a shaking hand. Blood had stained his shirt from his shoulder across the front of his chest, had spattered his neck and face with bright red droplets. There was so much of it she couldn't tell where he'd been hit. "Oh God,
no."

Turner hooked a hand under her arm and hauled her up. Choking out a protest, she tried to get away from him, slapping, kicking and screaming at him. Ryan needed help. Ryan was bleeding.
Dying.

Shoving her against the wall with one hand, Turner pinned her there with a hand on her throat. He pointed the gun at her nose, and she froze, comprehending that if she was dead, Ryan would most certainly die, too.

"What's going on here?"

Turner turned at the sound of his partner's voice, and Meg shoved at him with a strength born of desperation and fury. He stumbled back, and she shoved again. Off-balance already, Turner went down on one knee and ducked his head as Meg fell on him and rammed a fist at his face. She punched him again and again until strong hands seized her by the arms and lifted her away.

She saw blond hair and a scar as she writhed against this new assailant, screamed in frustration when he wrestled her to the floor and pinned her on her stomach, a knee in her back. With her cheek smashed against the carpet, she saw Ryan propped against the wall, blood pooling under him. She squirmed desperately under the weight on her back.

"Help me, asshole," Dillon shouted at his partner. "Get the cord from the blinds."

He let up with the knee, but before she could take advantage, he wrenched her arms behind her back. "Tie her. Hurry, damn it."

Turner wrapped the cord around her wrists and jerked it tight. Meg released a sharp gasp of pain, her head arching up off the floor.

"Not so tight. Jesus," Dillon snapped.

The cord loosened slightly.

"Gag her, too."

Turner stuffed something, a dishcloth from the texture of it, in her mouth and secured it with a bandanna.

Bound and gagged, Meg let her cheek fall to the carpet and lay still. She focused on Ryan, on his chest. She couldn't tell if he was breathing. Hair fell across his forehead and into his eyes, but he showed no signs of awareness.

The knee in her back disappeared as Dillon got to his feet. "What the hell were you thinking, Turner?"

"The guy was threatening me," Turner said.

"He doesn't even have a weapon, dickhead. Just get her out of here."

Hands caught at Meg's shoulders, wrenched her to her feet. Turner tossed her over his shoulder and headed for the door.