Harbour Falls (A Harbour Falls Mystery #1)(110)

But first I needed to get her off her game.

“You and Ami murdered Chelsea, didn’t you?” I said tauntingly, even though I knew this approach could backfire terribly.

Jennifer looked stunned that I’d actually said it out loud, and I took that brief opportunity to make a run for it. Unfortunately Jennifer was faster, and she grabbed me easily, one arm hooking around my neck as she wrenched me back to her with more force than I’d anticipated. I cried out, and Jennifer hissed in my ear, “Shut up! Shut up, or I’ll f*cking shoot you right here.”

She jammed the gun against my temple for emphasis, and knowing she’d follow through on her threat, I quieted. Jennifer tightened her grip until I coughed, and then she relaxed her hold slightly, asking, “You wanna know how Chelsea died?”

“No,” I croaked, trying not to sob.

Nobody was going to rescue me. I was going to end up dead, like Chelsea. I wanted to cry over every mistake I’d made that had led me to this. I should have listened to my dad. I should have listened to Adam. I’d gotten in over my head, and my own stubbornness was going to be my end. I didn’t care to hear any more about the Harbour Falls Mystery. I’d heard enough answers to the questions I’d once sought. Realizing that I was likely going to pay with my life had a way of killing my last bit of curiosity.

But Jennifer, apparently, was determined that I knew it all before I took that final breath. “Ami tried to strangle Hannigan,” she ground out, laughing.

Still trapped in the stranglehold, Jennifer’s breath wafted across my face, hot and sticky, her voice harsh in my ear. Some small, incoherent sound escaped my mouth, and Jennifer slid her free hand to my throat. Traitorous tears rolled down my cheeks. So much for dying with dignity. Her fingers pressed along the column of my throat, and she whispered, “Ami couldn’t finish the job though.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, fearful that Jennifer was truly going to strangle the life out of my body. I was sure she—as opposed to Ami—could “finish the job.” But thankfully, she moved her hand away and slid her arm back around my neck in a kind of loose chokehold.



“So I stepped in,” she resumed, the cold metal at my temple a reminder that Jennifer could shoot me just as easily as strangle me. “I dragged Hannigan out to the water. In her weakened state, she hardly fought. But it still took longer than I thought it would to drown her.”

It was all so horrible and cold-blooded: Ami strangling Chelsea to near-death, and then Jennifer stepping in and drowning her to finish the job. “Stop,” I groaned. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

But it was as if Jennifer hadn’t even heard me. “After it was done, we dragged her up in the caves,”—Oh my God, the caves!—“left her to rot. And now you’re going to join her.”

Terrified as I was, I managed to choke out, “You won’t get away with it twice.”

“Oh, but I will,” she said coolly. “Everyone will assume you shot Jimmy, as they do already. And then, when you just disappear, it will look like poor Ward went off the deep end for the second time.”

She laughed evilly, and I gasped, “No!”

Jennifer was going to frame Adam. All the years Adam had spent being the prime suspect in Chelsea’s disappearance, even still was, it was easy to imagine the police would put him through the same kind of hell once I went missing.

“Come on, Fitch,” Jennifer said, pulling me with the arm still wrenched around my neck. “It’s time to take a walk up to the caves and finally put an end to this.”

In a last-ditch effort to stall her, I asked, “What about Ami?”

Jennifer paused and looked down at Ami’s still form. She’d been out for a while so I tried to play on Jennifer’s sympathy. “She should see a doctor,” I uttered in little more than a whisper, since Jennifer’s grip was so damn tight. “She should have woken up by now.”

“She’ll be fine,” Jennifer said. “In fact, this will work out even better. Now, when she shows back up at home, she can claim she hit her head and had amnesia for a few days. Nobody will question it, since they all know she’s a little whacked.”



Jennifer started pulling me toward the door, but I struggled. “Quit it, or I swear, I’ll knock you out before we get to the caves,” she warned.

I was torn on whether to take my chances and continue to struggle, or see if I could get away from her once we left the lighthouse. In any case I knew that if Jennifer succeeded in dragging me up to those caves, I’d be done for.

But I didn’t have to think about it for long, because, out of the darkness, a familiar voice broke through the noise of our scuffle. “Let her go, Jennifer.”

Adam!



I’d never been so happy, and so terrified, all at the same time. I tried like hell to break free but quieted when Jennifer reclaimed her grip, and the gun was once again pressed to my temple. And then I froze completely when I caught sight of Adam in the doorway, his own .38 pointed at Jennifer. But I knew he couldn’t shoot her. It was too risky. If he missed, he might hit me. Even if he did succeed in targeting Jennifer, her gun could still discharge, shooting me. And she must have been thinking the same thing.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Jennifer chided. “If you shoot me, my gun goes off and BAM! Your little girlfriend’s brains are all over the ground.”