Love Beyond Words (City Lights, #1)(91)

“Where is he?” she asked over her shoulder. David limped behind her, the gun a dark shadow in his hand. “Do you think he has any idea what you’re doing right now? That you killed—” her breath hitched, “—you killed a man and you’re going to kill again? Do you think, wherever he is, he can even imagine it?”

“Shut up,” David said dully.

“I don’t think he could fathom it,” Natalie said, her voice sounding strange in her own ears, too calm for what was about to happen. “Julian’s too full of love to imagine that someone close to him would be capable of ending a life. Never mind two. You think he won’t know it when he sees you? That he won’t read it in your eyes?”

“I said, shut up.”

“I think he will,” Natalie said. The ocean crashing against the shores of Mile Rock Beach was louder now. They were almost there. “I think it will be the first thing he sees when he looks at you. Whatever you think might happen between you and him died when…when Marshall did.” Her breath hitched. “It died with Marshall.”

“He’ll never know,” David said. He sounded numb. “It’ll be weeks before he gets back. By then, I’ll have gotten used to…what I did.”

“Where is he, David?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Then tell me.”

“Croatia.”

Natalie stopped. “Croatia.”

“That’s what I said.” David nudged her with the gun. “Move.”

Rijeka, she thought, and the tears came now, blurring what little vision she had in the deepening dark. To make amends. To make peace.

She stopped and clutched the railing, sobs wracking her, her legs threatening collapse. “Don’t do this, David. Please. I can’t…I don’t want to die. Don’t take me away from him…”

David made a strangled, tear-choked noise. “Now you know what I’ve been feeling. Now you know exactly what it’s been like for me, watching the two of you...” He sniffed, wiped his eyes, and pushed the gun into her arm. “Keep going. We’re almost done.”

#

The labyrinth’s stony pattern was hardly visible in the meager light of a night that seemed so black and dark. She could just make out the ankle-high rocks that curled and turned and coiled toward a center. She’d hoped there would be people walking it and taking in the view of the Golden Gate Bridge, but it was late on a cold Sunday night. There was no one.

“Okay,” David said. “This is it.”

Natalie hugged herself in her thin gray sweater, her dress swirling around her knees in the frigid wind. Below, white-capped waves crashed and gnawed on the rocky shore.

“Get…uh, get on your knees,” David said. The gun in his hand trembled.

“David, don’t,” Natalie said. “You won’t be okay in a week or two. I promise you. Julian will know because it will be there, written in your eyes. If you do this…he’ll see it.”

“Shut up.”

“I know because I’ve…I’ve seen it.”

“You’ve seen what?”

She looked up at him and even in the darkness, she could see the terror behind his glasses. The desperation.

“My parents. I watched them die and it doesn’t leave. Not after two weeks, not after two years, or three or four…” Natalie clutched her sweater, staring, as the terrible memory that crawled out of its grave, whole and unbroken, all at once.

“The screams came first. Screams and screeching tires. I turned around and saw my mother…my beautiful mother. She turned too. She saw the car coming and reached her hand out to my father. He sprang on his heels as if to push her out of the way but it was too late. That drunk man barreled his big ugly green car into them…that huge, heavy machine they had no chance of withstanding, and they broke and bent like straws against it and under it and I saw the life knocked out them…I saw them alive one second and then dead the next. I saw it.”

The pain of that horrible day flared and then settled to a dull ache, like an open wound finally sewn shut. She sighed and let it go, feeling as if a shadow had been lifted from her, a heavy burden set down.

But too late. I’m too late. “Don’t do this, David,” Natalie said. “You know how bad it is…you saw Marshall…”

He shook his head. “No, I turned and ran. I ran before…” He heaved his own breath, steeling himself. “It’s too late,” he said, echoing her words. “Too late for me if I turn back now. That makes it too late for you. Let’s get this over with.”

Natalie felt the tiny spark of hope burn out. She dropped to her knees beside the curls of stone, shaking until she thought she’d break apart. David took a step closer. Then another. Natalie waited for calm, for a sense of peace to fall over her but it didn’t. Instead, anger mingled with fear, and her hand curled around one of the labyrinth’s rocks beside her.

“I’m sorry,” David said, raising his arm. “I know you don’t believe me, but I truly am. I didn’t want this to happen. I…”

Natalie clutched the rock, tensed and ready. It probably wouldn’t work. He’d probably kill her anyway but at least she’d die fighting. And then a voice came out of the dark, a slender figure in black raced toward them, like a shadow or ghost.