Page 99 of Whispers

Harley was dead and, somehow, she was responsible. Whatever had happened after she’d left the sailboat was because she broke up with him. She knew it. Harley, sweet, sweet Harley, might not have been the love of her life she’d once thought him to be, but he certainly didn’t deserve to die.

Twenty-two

Claire couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned in her bed, while images of Harley and Kane blazed through her mind. Alternately crying to herself or lying dry-eyed and numb, she watched the clock and listened to the house creak in the storm. Somewhere a limb battered a window, and rain splashed noisily in the gutters until, right before dawn, the rain stopped suddenly.

Still she couldn’t sleep. The past few hours replayed themselves in her mind, like a record that skips to the same few notes over and over again.

After being examined by a physician and questioned by several deputies and detectives, the Holland girls had been released to their parents, who had been called back to Chinook from Portland. Dominique, in tears, had fussed over her daughters and Dutch had promised them the best legal counsel on the West Coast. No one, not even Neal Goddamned Taggert, was going to win this one. He told the girls that he believed them, that of course none of them had killed the Taggert boy, but his words lacked conviction or empathy. Harley’s death was just one more obstacle in Dutch’s cluttered life.

As Claire had huddled in the backseat of her father’s Lincoln, she’d caught his harsh, uncompromising gaze in the rearview mirror and suddenly realized that his concern wasn’t grief over the loss of a young man’s life but worry about a scandal surrounding his daughters. He was only worried what stockholders in Stone Illahee and his other holdings might think.

Now, Harley’s handsome face slid through her mind, and his desperate pleas for her not to break the engagement rang in her ears.

I can’t lose you. I’d give up everything for you. Everything. Please, Claire, don’t . . . don’t say it’s over.

Tears rained from her eyes. “Harley,” she mouthed. She’d never intended to hurt him. And now he was dead, found, according to what she’d overheard at the sheriff’s office, facedown in the bay, maybe the victim of an accident, or suicide, or murder.

Suicide? Dear Lord, she prayed not. Murder? Who would hate him enough to kill him?

Miranda’s skirt was stained with blood; Tessa was nearly catatonic. They’d both been to the marina and needed alibis. Oh, Harley, what have I done?

Squeezing her eyes shut, she willed his image away. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life feeling guilty because he’d died on the night she’d broken their engagement, but, deep in her heart, she knew that a cloud of dark uncertainty would follow her for the rest of her days.

She pulled herself into a sitting position and buried her face in her hands. But it didn’t help. In her mind’s eye, she spied Kane, tall and rawboned, dressed in faded denim and black leather. His rugged face, intense gold eyes, and smoky voice commanded her attention.

I’d like to do anything and everything I could with you. I’d like to kiss you and touch you and sleep with you in my arms until morning. I’d like to run my tongue over your bare skin until you quiver with want, and, more than anything in the world, I’d like to bury myself in you and make love to you for the rest of my life . . . And, believe me, I would never, never treat you like that bastard Taggert does.

She couldn’t take it another minute. She threw off the covers and tossed off her nightgown. Silently she grabbed a pair of jeans she’d flung over the end of her bed and grabbed a sweatshirt that was lying wrinkled on the floor. She struggled into a clean pair of socks and carried her boots in sweaty hands as she passed by Tessa’s room with the door firmly closed and Miranda’s room where light from the bedside lamp sliced through the crack in the doorway to fall upon the worn rug in the hallway. Slowing, Claire peeked into the

room. Miranda sat on her window ledge, her knees tucked up inside her nightgown, her arms wrapped around her legs as she stared vacantly out at the lake. There was a soul-rending sadness in her eyes that Claire had never seen before.

Quietly, she stepped into the room.

Miranda slid a glance her way. “What are you doing?”

“Going for a ride.”

“It’s not light yet.”

“I know, but it will be soon,” Claire whispered. “I can’t sleep. Can’t stand another minute in bed.” Suddenly she felt awkward and out of place in this sad, somber room with its pine-paneled walls and bookcases filled to overflowing. “What happened to you last night?” she finally blurted as she crossed the room and rested the edge of her rump on the other end of the window ledge.

Miranda’s smile was brittle, her skin pale. Blue smudges made her eyes appear sunken. “I grew up.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You don’t want to know.” She looked out the window again. “And I don’t want to tell anyone.”

“There . . . there was blood on your skirt.”

Randa nodded and ran her fingers on the edge of the open window frame. “I know.”

“Was it yours?”

“Mine?” She shuddered. “Some of it.”

“Oh, God, Randa. Aren’t you going to tell me what happened?”

Miranda’s eyes focused sharply on her middle sister and she looked older than she ever had. “No, Claire,” she said firmly. “I’m not going to tell anyone. I’m eighteen, remember. An adult. I can make my own decisions.”