A Clandestine Affair Page 17

  Medina turned the gun from Enrique to Jaci.

  “Don’t do it, Medina,” Jaci pleaded, fitting her hand around the knife. “Don’t let him kill me, or we can’t save Carlos.”

  But Medina started to sway the way she had that night on the beach. The gun fell from her hands, and Enrique scooped it up. Jaci hurled the knife at Enrique in one quick motion. She hit her target, but not before he got off the shot.

  The pain was white-hot, so excruciating that Jaci had to fight to keep her focus. The knife was lodged in Enrique’s chest, but apparently not the heart. He was leaning against the dressing table, struggling to dislodge the blade. The gun was on the floor where he’d dropped it, just inches from his feet. Behind him flames from the overturned candles were licking their way across the lacy runner that covered the heavy wood.

  Medina was sobbing and wringing her hands.

  Jaci scooted from the bed and onto the floor. She had to get to the gun, but with her ankles still tied, she’d have to move slowly to keep from falling.

  Only the room had started to spin, and the floor seemed to be rolling like waves at high tide. She grabbed the wall for support, but her hand slipped in a stream of her own blood, and she fell against the bedside table. Her arms raked across it, knocking one of the photographs of Andres and a half-dozen candles onto the white spread as she sank to the floor.

  Reeling from vertigo, Jaci closed her eyes. Just a second. That’s all she could spare. When she opened them again, the room was ablaze and a blood-soaked Enrique was standing over her with murder in his eyes.

  She looked at the door, half expecting Raoul to come bounding through it. He didn’t. There was only Enrique. And Medina—twirling in the midst of the burning room as if she were dancing again with Andres.

  Jaci felt the heat of the blaze and smelled the stench of the unspeakable evil that haunted Cape Diablo and this dreaded villa of death.

  So she closed her eyes again and thought only of Raoul. She imagined herself safe in his arms. So safe, she didn’t even hear the gun when it fired again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Curls of smoke were drifting out the third-floor windows of the villa by the time Raoul made it to the courtyard. He spotted the shovel immediately and wasted no time in smashing a window and breaking into the house.

  He raced up the three flights of stairs, not daring to think what he might find at the top. He just knew he couldn’t be too late. He might deserve it, but not Jaci. Please, God. Not Jaci.

  Head down and gun drawn, he followed the smoke to the open door at the end of the hallway. He stepped inside, and for one horrible moment, his heart stopped beating. Jaci was lying facedown in a pool of blood.

  He took in the rest of the scene at once. Alma had taken a bullet to the head, and there was no way she was alive. A dazed and bloody Enrique was lying on the floor, covered with blood. A broken statue lay beside him.

  Jaci groaned and rolled over, and Raoul’s heart all but stopped. She was alive, and that was all he needed to know.

  “Are you real?” Jaci whispered. “Or am I dead?”

  “I’m real, baby. I’m real, and we’re leaving this hellhole of an island together.”

  He bent to gather her into his arms as flames cracked and crackled around them.

  “You can’t leave Medina,” Jaci said. “She saved my life.”

  “If you mean Alma, she’s dead,” Raoul said, knowing that even if she wasn’t, there wouldn’t be time for him to carry both women out of the burning house.

  “She’s dead, and you will be, too,” Enrique bellowed.

  Raoul turned just in time to see the gun in his hand.

  But there was no way in this world Raoul was going to lose Jaci to a bullet now. Enraged, he let her slide from his arms, as he charged Enrique head-on. He might die. Jaci wouldn’t.

  Gunfire shook the room.

  Enrique gasped and rolled onto his back.

  Raoul spun around as Linsky and Paige stepped through the open door.

  “You missed the party,” Jaci said.

  Linsky just shook his head. “Get her out of here, Raoul, before she destroys the rest of the ten thousand islands.”

  Raoul was already lifting her into his arms. A half second later, he had her out the door.

  JACI WAS STRETCHED OUT ON a cot in the back of the medic helicopter Linsky had called for Carlos while rushing to follow Raoul into the villa.

  “How is Carlos?” she asked, thinking as she did that her voice sounded as if it came from about ten feet above her.

  “Hanging in there. He’s about as out of it as you are, though. How do you feel?”

  “Woozy.”

  “That’s from the pain medication in the IV,” the paramedic explained. “But you’re doing great. Pressure’s in the safe zone, and the bleeding’s under control. How’s that arm feeling?”

  “No feeling at all.” She looked down to make sure it was still there. “What’s the verdict?”

  “I wouldn’t sign up for any weight lifting competitions in the near future. That bullet ripped through a lot of muscle and tissue just below the shoulder, but it will heal. You’re a very lucky woman.”

  She looked up at Raoul. “Yeah, I am. Very lucky.”

  “What a sight!” the pilot called over the drone of the engines. “That old house looks like a giant bonfire. But catch it quick, or you’ll miss it, ’cause we are out of here.”

  “Good thing those cops and that guy they had handcuffed made it out of the house when they did,” the paramedic said. “Another five minutes, and they’d have been toast.”

  Jaci tried to sit up, but the second she put weight on her right arm, she was stabbed with agonizing pain.

  “Take it easy,” Raoul murmured. “We’ll be at the hospital soon.”

  “I have to see it,” she whispered. “I have to see the end.”

  The paramedic started to argue with her, but Raoul cut him off. “No use to fight her. You can’t win. Besides, she earned this one.”

  He fitted his arms behind her shoulders and lifted her so that she could see the island through the open door of the copter. Jaci stared at the brilliant flames leaping through the clouds of dark smoke.

  The monstrous villa was consumed by the raging fire. It was as if the evil had erupted like a volcano, obliterating not only the house but Medina herself, and the delusional world she’d created.

  The images that had haunted Jaci on the island hit again, only this time the boy in the pool was smiling and two beautiful little girls with long, black hair were waving to her from the beach.

  “Medina’s world is over,” Jaci said as Raoul lowered her back to the cot.

  “Medina?”

  Of course, he didn’t know yet. There were lots of things she hadn’t told him, such as how Medina had hit Enrique with the statue just when he was about to put a second bullet into Jaci. After all the woman had done in her sordid life, she’d been shot and killed by her own brother while trying to save someone else. What kind of twisted fate was that?

  But Enrique had still held the gun and wasn’t so dazed that he’d have let Jaci escape if Raoul had not come to the rescue.

  “Are you getting tired of saving me, Raoul?”

  “Yes. So don’t do anything else dangerous.”

  “Did I tell…” Her tongue was getting too thick to tell Raoul what she was thinking. So she just held his hand and drifted off, smiling at how thrilled her mother would be to know that she’d finally found a man she could love.

  Epilogue

  Four months later

  Satisfied that the project summation was just as she wanted it, Jaci typed the last sentence: “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

  Medina Norberto Santiago had been proof of that. The crimes on that long-ago night had gone down pretty much as Jaci had concluded. The intricacies of what happened before and after the murders had been filled in by Enrique, who was hoping for a bit of leniency for murdering Mac Lowell and attem
pting to murder Jaci, and by Carlos, who no longer felt he had to protect Medina at any cost.

  Additional evidence, including what remained of the bodies, was discovered when Raoul’s ocean salvage operation raised the Conquiste. It was a convoluted story of infidelity, rage, duplicity and misguided loyalty—motivations as old as time, yet as current as the day’s headlines of any major newspaper.

  Andres had given all the servants the night off so that they could attend Cinco de Mayo festivities on the mainland with friends and family. They had all taken advantage of that opportunity except Alma, who’d changed her mind about going at the last minute, and never left the island.

  Andres, Medina and his daughters had returned to Cape Diablo just after midnight, much to Medina’s displeasure. She’d wanted to stay and party until dawn. Andres, however, had business to take care of. He was expecting a major drug shipment to arrive from Central America in the wee hours of the morning, one that he would disburse to major U.S. drug traffickers for a huge profit.

  Medina had put the girls to bed and then gone back to the bedroom she shared with Andres, to continue the argument she’d started on the boat. When she couldn’t find him in the villa, she’d gone to the old boathouse, thinking he’d be there drinking with his buddy Carlos, who’d returned even earlier than she and Andres.

  But it had been the young and innocent Alma she’d spied through the window, wearing one of Medina’s white festival dresses and stealing her husband from her just as she’d stolen his children’s affections.

  He’d pay. They both would.

  She flew back to the house in a rage, determined to hurt him the way he’d hurt her. And nothing had ever hurt Andres as much as when she’d drowned his only son.

  She suffocated Reyna with a pillow and planned to do the same to Pilar. But the younger girl had awakened and fought back, so Medina had picked up the statue and crushed her skull. Then she’d taken one of Andres’s guns and gone to the boathouse.

  She burst into the place and fired, killing Alma with the first shot. Andres had rushed her to take the gun away, and it had gone off in the scuffle. He also fell dead. At least that was the story Medina had hysterically related to Enrique and Carlos when they’d arrived at the boathouse searching for Andres so he could oversee the drug exchange.

  Enrique was the one who’d come up with the bizarre plan for Medina to claim to be Alma. They were near the same age, both beautiful Hispanic women with long, dark hair. They could make it work as long as the servants didn’t return to the island. He’d called on Carlos’s loyalty to their father to persuade him to go along with it, never knowing that it was the promise Carlos had made to their dying mother that had sealed the deal.

  Enrique took over the drug smuggling in Andres’s absence, making himself a very rich man in the process. Medina, having suffered from a severe personality disorder all her life, proceeded to go completely mad with the help of the illegal drugs Enrique provided.

  But it was Carlos who’d suffered most of all, Jaci had concluded in her report. He’d given up his life because of a promise he’d made to another man’s wife—the only woman Carlos had ever loved. In the end, he’d planned to overdose and kill both himself and Alma with drugs he’d had brought in from Mexico.

  Jaci took the report from the printer, clipped it together and slipped it into the folder with copies of pictures of the blood splatters, the villa and the recovered Conquiste, plus charts she’d drawn on how the evidence all fit together.

  She’d made no mention in her report of the boy whose image she’d seen in the murky pool. Nor had she mentioned her eerie experience in the girls’ bedroom, when Pilar had warned her about the wicked witch.

  Looking back, Jaci decided it could have all been illusions brought on by the isolation and her own obsession with solving the case. That was the only reasonable explanation.

  But she didn’t fully buy it. The aura of evil that had clung to Cape Diablo and the crumbling villa was too powerful to be imagined. The children who’d been so cruelly and violently murdered had haunted the island as surely as the waters of the gulf pounded its shores.

  At least that’s the way Jaci saw it, and who was to say she wasn’t right? Except for her professor, if she’d been stupid enough to put that in the report.

  With the thesis project complete, things were in order for her to graduate in May—a few months later than she’d planned, but she’d gone through too much not to finish this project the way she wanted it done. She’d needed a few weeks of healing before she could type. She didn’t have to wait to start her career, however. She’d taken a job with the Miami Police Department. Tomorrow was moving day.

  Her phone rang. Her heart jumped as she picked it up to check the caller ID. It was only her mom.

  “Did you finish that report you were working on?” her mother asked.

  “About five minutes ago.”

  “Are you seeing that diving guy tonight?”

  “No, I’m not seeing Raoul.” Because he hadn’t asked.

  “Good, then you have no excuses why you can’t go to dinner with Clarence and me tonight. We’re meeting the Baxters at seven. Their son, Matthew, is going to be with them. He’s single and a surgeon. You probably don’t remember, but you met him at Claiborne’s Gallery the night you got that idea for that horrid Cape Fear project.”

  “Cape Diablo.”

  “Whatever. Anyway, tell me you’ll join us. You shouldn’t spend your last night in town alone.”

  Jaci tried to think of a reason to say no. There really wasn’t any. “Okay, Mom, dinner it is.”

  “That’s great. Wear something nice and don’t talk about crime all night. You’ll never get a man that way.”

  Maybe her mom was right, Jaci decided, as she wrote down directions for the restaurant.

  She was crazy in love with Raoul. And unless she’d misread every sign, he was just as in love with her. He told her so—even when they weren’t making love. How often did men do that? They’d spent lots of time together during her recovery. He’d even made great strides toward putting the guilt behind him, and was excited about his career again.

  There was just this one small problem. Raoul had yet to say those four little words that Jaci had hoped to hear before she left for Miami. Not only had he not asked her to marry him, he’d never uttered the M word.

  She showered and put on the sexiest little black dress in her closet. Not that she cared about impressing Matthew the surgeon, but her ego did need a major boost unless she wanted to end up in Pityville tonight.

  The doorbell rang just as she brushed on some lip gloss. Probably a lost pizza delivery man. Happened all the time in her apartment complex. She peeked out the peephole, but all she saw was a huge bouquet of flowers.

  Disappointment kicked her in the heart. Was this it? Was Raoul chickening out and sending flowers in lieu of a personal goodbye?

  The bell rang again, and she finally gave in and opened the door.

  “Raoul.”

  “Of course. You didn’t think I’d let you leave for Miami without saying goodbye.”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  And now he was here, making a party of her leaving, not only bearing flowers but champagne. “What are we celebrating?”

  “Your new job. And Carlos.” Raoul took two glasses from a white gift bag.

  She set the flowers on the bare kitchen table while he uncorked the champagne and filled the glasses.

  “What’s Carlos’s good news?”

  “The judge granted him a suspended sentence based on his age, health and cooperation. And the latest MRI shows that treatment has been even more effective than Dr. Young had hoped.”

  “That’s great,” she said, trying to get in the mood of the celebration. She was thrilled for Carlos, but that didn’t make moving away from Raoul any easier, especially when he didn’t seem disturbed by it at all.

  They clinked their glasses together. “An
d to new beginnings,” he said.

  Her heart fluttered in spite of herself. “As in?”

  “I’m expanding my diving and recovery operations.”

  “Great. That’s just great.” She didn’t clink to that. In fact, she set her glass on the counter and turned away.

  “I knew this wouldn’t work,” he said. “I gave romance a shot, but I knew I couldn’t pull it off.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. She blinked hard, determined not to let Raoul see them. “You don’t have to explain. Things are what they are.”

  “One more toast, Jaci.”

  “No, thanks. I’ve had all the celebration I can handle for one night.”

  “Just pick up the glass, please.”

  She turned around to tell him what he could do with his champagne and his new beginnings. He was down on one knee. Her heart jumped to her throat.

  “The ring’s in the bottom of the champagne flute. You were supposed to find it, throw your arms around me and say yes. But I guess I’ll just beg the old-fashioned way. I know I’m ready now to fully go on with my life. I want passion. I want happiness. I want you. Marry me, Jaci. Marry me, and let me love you for the rest of our lives.”

  “Yes! Yes!” She started to throw her arms around him, but hesitated. “My job is in Miami.”

  “I know, and mine is all over the world. But I’m moving my headquarters to Miami. I didn’t want to say anything until the plans were finalized. That’s what I was doing the last two—”

  She cut off his words by pressing her lips to his. The kiss was breathtaking, but she pulled away long before she’d had enough.

  “I just have to make one quick phone call.” She dialed the number and waited for her mother to answer. “Can’t make dinner, Mom, but just wanted to let you know that you don’t have to worry about finding me a man anymore. In fact, you can go ahead and start planning my wedding.”

  “What did you say? Is this a joke? Is it that diver fellow? Have you set a date?”