Harbour Falls (A Harbour Falls Mystery #1)(112)

Adam was removing his cell from the back pocket of his jeans when I cried out, “Don’t do it, Adam. Please.”

Jennifer hissed in my ear, “Shut up!”

I began to struggle, despite my fear of getting shot. I could hear Adam saying something as I managed to put some space between me and the cold steel of the .38. In response Jennifer wrenched my neck hard, leaving me gasping for breath.

But then, suddenly, a loud shot rang out, deafening me. Jennifer’s grip tightened, and I couldn’t breathe. But then her hold on me inexplicably loosened. I began to fall, certain that I’d been shot. Jennifer’s body fell onto mine, but I felt no pain. Maybe this is what dying feels like? Painless.

As I lay drifting in and out, somebody lifted Jennifer’s weight from me. I heard voices and then felt someone lifting my head from the ground. “Adam?” I whispered, opening my eyes as I felt his welcome touch.

“Maddy,” Adam whispered, “My God, I thought I lost you.”

His hands gently ran over the swelling on my cheek where Ami had hit me with the gun, and I winced. I struggled to sit up, and Adam helped me to my feet. “What happened?” I asked, my ears reverberating from the gunshot that had rung out so close to my head.



Before Adam could answer, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Max stepped into the lighthouse, smoking gun—literally—in hand. I relaxed back into the warmth of Adam’s chest as Max bent down over Jennifer’s very still body. “She’s dead,” he said somberly, releasing his fingers from around her wrist, where I supposed he’d been checking for a pulse.

Max had shot and killed Jennifer Weston. He’d saved me. He’d saved Adam. It was now more obvious than ever why Adam employed him as security here on the island.

“Took you long enough,” Adam said in a tone that would have sounded light in other circumstances, but now it just sounded grim. “I was worried I’d pressed the wrong key.”

I later found out Adam had somehow managed to call Max from the cell phone that had been in his back pocket. He had Max on autodial, and at some point during the ordeal, he reached back and hit what he’d hoped was the correct key. Thank God it had been the right one. I shuddered, imagining what might have occurred if Max had not arrived or if he had gotten here too late.

Adam held me close to his body, and I looked up at him, hoping my eyes conveyed the emotions no words ever could. “I’m sorry,” I said to him, wanting to apologize for having ever mistrusted him.

But just then Ami let out a moan as she began to come to. Max glanced at Adam questioningly. Adam grimaced and said, “She was in on this whole thing. But we finally have the answer to what happened to Chelsea. These two”—he nodded to Jennifer’s still body and then to Ami—“killed her.”

“And I know where they put her body,” I muttered, my voice weak.

Both Adam and Max eyed me, stunned. I told them all Ami and Jennifer had told me, finishing with how they’d dragged Chelsea up to one of the caves within the cliff face. Even before I’d finished my story, Max was on the phone with the police.

Adam wrapped his arms around me, holding me in a way that showed me he truly realized how closely he had come to losing me. “Let’s go outside,” he murmured into my ear. “Max can keep an eye on Ami until the police get here.”



I glanced over my shoulder; Max was cuffing a disorientated Ami to the metal railing. I’d seen enough, so I allowed Adam to lead me from the lighthouse, out into the welcoming cool air of night.

Under a black velvet sky that I was thankful to be walking beneath, waves crashed all around us. Adam and I walked silently, hand in hand, along the sandy stretch leading down away from the lighthouse, and then Adam stopped, turning me to face him. “Maddy,” he began, his voice catching. “I don’t know what I would have done had I lost you.”

“Adam,” I soothed, “you saved me. How did you even know I was here? Did you see the note?”

He nodded. “Yeah, and when I got here, I saw your car at the top of the cliffs. But you’re wrong about one thing.”

I looked up into his face, beautifully lit by a sliver of moonlight peeking from behind a lone cloud. “What’s that?”

Adam took a deep breath, and said, “Actually you saved me. You’ve shown me how to trust again. You’ve shown me how to live, how to love. And I love you, more than you know, Madeleine Fitch.”

I stepped toward him, pressing my body to his, soaking in all his warmth and strength and love. “I love you, too, Adam Ward,” I replied reverently.

Adam bent down, his lips grazing mine. “It’s finally over,” he muttered against my mouth.

I caught his bottom lip with my own lips and then kissed him back, slowly and languidly, savoring his taste and the feel of his skin against mine. Breaking away just long enough to speak, I amended his words, “No, Adam. All the bad stuff is over, yes, but for us this is just the beginning. Our beginning.”





Chapter 29



On a bitter, cold November morning, Chelsea Hannigan’s body—or, rather, what remained of it—was recovered from the back of one of the many caves that lay recessed into the jagged cliff face overlooking the lighthouse. Skeletal remains and a few tattered shreds of a once-vibrant sundress were spirited away to the crime labs in Harbour Falls for final analysis. Though there was no doubt from the preliminary tests that were conducted on the scene that the remains were, in fact, those of the woman who’d once been engaged to Adam Ward.