Secrets and Scars: A Gripping Psychological Thriller (Fatal Hearts Series Book 3) (12 page)

My eyes flickered to his face, detecting a vein throbbing next to his eye. Something else caught my attention then, a slight tremble in the foot that pushed me into the ground.

He put on a good show, but he was just as terrified as the rest of us.

Owen fired a shot into the sky. “Last warning, Alvin. Let her go or I shoot.”

“Go fuck yourself. She’s not leaving this island alive.” Alvin pressed his foot harder on my chest, crushing me with his weight.

I gulped down small breaths, unable to fit enough air into my crushed lungs.

Alvin dropped his gaze to my face.

I heard a click, and then a gunshot cracked the air.

Alvin’s gun crashed to the ground. His foot lifted from my chest as he drew his bleeding hand to his chest.

I coughed and wheezed, greedily drinking in oxygen mixed with dust.

Using his incapacitation to my advantage, I pulled myself to a sitting position and pushed myself away from him, ready to stand.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Alvin’s hand shot out, dragged me to my feet. “Prepare to fall.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“I know you’re in there somewhere, Miles,” I whimpered in desperation. “You don’t want him to do this to me. Please...”

Alvin and I were getting dangerously close to the edge. His bleeding hand was around my neck so I was protecting his front, in case Owen or Jeordi took another shot at him.

“Miles: that’s who you are.” Owen took careful steps in our direction, his hands raised, the gun dangling from his finger. “Look, I won’t shoot. You’re not Alvin. You’re Miles Durant, a good man.”

“I’m not Miles, you son of a bitch.” Enraged, Alvin swung me to one side like a sack of potatoes and kept moving backward. He didn’t even look to see where he was going. Were we going to end up dying together?

A trickle of blood from his gunshot wound ran down my neck and naked breast in a small stream.

“Owen is right,” I added cautiously, my words audible only to Alvin. “You are the man I loved.” I gulped down my tears. “I still… I still love you, Miles. Please, I need you to do the right thing.”

“Fuck you.” His rough voice assaulted my ears. But I heard the crack between his words, a barely audible wobble.

“If you let me go—”

“You’ll what? There’s not a fucking thing you can do, bitch. Nothing.” With a loud grunt, he swung me around so we approached the cliff sideways. We were so close now.

My toes grabbed any solid thing on the ground—grass, rocks, small plants—to help stop me from moving with him. I was no match for his strength and determination.

The water was visible hundreds of feet below. Waves crashed against the rocks that would eventually kill me. A fall I’d never survive.

“Stop,” Owen shouted, panic in his voice. “Don’t do it.”

Alvin ignored him. His chest and arm muscles contracted as he prepared to throw me over.

Owen and Jeordi would not be able to save me without falling to their own deaths.

My eyes met Owen’s. Tears glistened on his cheeks.

Seeing the pain on his face, the fear he had for me, the undiluted love in his eyes, I knew I wanted to survive.

Unspoken words flowed between us. Time stood still as we waited for the inevitable.

“Thank you,” I mouthed to Owen and closed my eyes.

Although Alvin’s heart pounded hard against my back, he didn’t make a move to push me over. My lids fluttered open again.

What was he waiting for? This was the moment he’d looked forward to for thirteen years.

In the heartbeats between life and death, a strange thing happened.

A fist flew into Alvin’s face—his own fist.

“That’s enough! Let my wife go.”

Miles. Oh, Miles. Save me, please.

Suddenly I was thrown from side to side as Miles and Alvin argued, just like they had done earlier today—hurling words at each other, issuing threats and warnings. At one point Alvin tripped and almost lost his balance.

“Try and stop me.”

“I will,” Miles shot back.

In that instant, the hand around my neck loosened and another hit me hard in the back, shoving me away.

A scream ripped through me as I went flying. As I fell.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I landed on solid ground a few feet from the edge of the cliff.

The impossible had happened. Miles had won over Alvin. He had saved me at the last second.

As quickly as I could, I scrambled away on hands and knees to an even safer distance, and then I rose. Ignoring the sharp stones under my feet, I stumbled the short distance between me and Owen, threw myself into his arms, and held him tight.

Owen produced a cloth—the wrap dress I had lost along the way—and draped it around me.

“Thank God you’re okay,” he breathed as he tied the knot just above my breasts.

“Should I shoot?” Jeordi whispered next to us. His gun was pointed at Alvin—or Miles. I wasn’t even sure anymore which persona was out at any point in time.

Owen raised his head to give Jeordi the instructions, but then we all fell silent at the horror movie playing out in front of us.

If I were somebody else, someone unaware of Miles’s multiple personality disorder, I would have seen an insane man beating the crap out of himself. But being me, and knowing what I knew, I saw Miles and Alvin fighting each other.

I clapped a hand to my mouth when one of them picked up a jagged-edge rock from the ground and crashed it on the side of his opponent’s face. He swayed from side to side, groaning with pain.

Blood gushed out of the wound and raced down the side of his neck, disappearing into the collar of his soiled t-shirt.

Both my hands covered my mouth now, my eyes growing wider every second.

The persona on the cliff edge threw himself to the ground. He slammed his head against rocks and roots, pulling at his own hair, pushing his fingers into his own eyes.

I desperately wanted to look away. I tried, but my gaze was drawn to the scene like a moth to a flame.

“What the fuck?” Owen said beside me.

“Should I finish him off while he’s on the ground?” Jeordi asked, but his weapon was at his side now. He was too shocked himself to do anything.

Disbelief wrapped itself around Owen’s words. “I don’t think that’s necessary. At this rate, he’ll finish himself off.”

The man got to his feet only to throw himself down again. He picked up a stick and drove it into his thigh.

More blood, more screaming, more swearing.

“You fuckin’ traitor. You piece of shit.” It was Alvin talking now, and with each word, the body jerked.

That was all it was really: a body they both occupied.

The body hit the ground again with a loud thud, a crunch as though something had broken.

The body stilled.

None of us moved.

The whole world paused.

A flicker of the hand, a lift of the head from the ground. The body rose again.

Like a zombie, it turned to face us.

I looked past the unruly hair and the dirty, blood-stained face, and saw Miles’s helpless eyes. For just a moment before Alvin took over again, I saw the man I used to love.

I wished I could help him.

He stared at me for a long time and mouthed a silent “I love you.” He had mouthed those words to me so many times before, when we were together in a crowded room but too far apart to hear each other. I’d mouthed “I love you” right back.

This time I could only stare, my tongue glued to the top of my mouth.

His weary eyes moved from me to Owen’s face and stayed there. This time, when he spoke, I heard every word. “Take care of her for me… please. Give her what I couldn’t.”

His gaze returned to my face again. “I have to do this. It’s the only way to keep you safe.”

The next moment seemed to pass in slow motion. Miles turned around toward the cliff. And then he stepped over the edge and disappeared out of sight.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

My body was numb. I felt nothing. I was a ghost.

One moment, I was standing in Owen’s arms, a few feet away from where Miles had stood. The next, I was on my hands and knees at the edge of the cliff, gazing down.

As my heart broke inside my chest, I heard the splinters snap, felt their jagged edges digging into my flesh.

The physical pain that had tortured me earlier had melted away. The pain I felt now in the depths of my soul was worse than anything I had ever experienced before.

Owen sat beside me, a hand on my head, crying softly for his best friend, the man who had been like a brother.

I was too shocked to cry.

We said nothing as we watched Miles’s unmoving body on the rocks down below. He had not survived the fall. He couldn’t have.

Emotions swirled in all directions inside my body as I mourned without tears the man I had loved. At the same time, relief filled my broken heart. The man who had caused me so much pain was dead.

As we watched the body on the rocks, the waves washing over it, washing away the blood, the dam inside me finally broke.

I looked away from Miles’s body and lay down on the ground. My cheek rested on stones as waves and waves of sobs ripped me apart.

The dead body sprawled across the rocks was not Alvin’s. Though I could not see his face to determine if the personas had switched places mid-fall, I knew.

I could never have imagined the nightmare ending this way. I had been ready to kill both Alvin and Miles, but it hurt deeply to think Miles had to pay for Alvin’s crimes.

It was his body that hit the ground, his bones that broke, his heart that had been shattered at the end.

Alvin had come and destroyed everything, only to step out at the last second, leaving Miles to pay the price.

Miles had been an innocent man, and I deeply regretted what I had done to his younger self, every decision I had made that destroyed him as a child.

As I lay there with images flashing through my mind—images of the past, the future, the present—I wanted to die. I was free, and yet it was impossible to imagine tomorrow.

I would have to go on, of course. Especially now that two people had sacrificed their lives for me—Miles and Jim. How could I let their lives go to waste?

I would live on, find a way to carry the scars stamped onto my body and heart, the burns on my soul.

Even when the physical scars faded, I’d still see them, no matter how much time passed. Every moment of every day would remind me of Alvin Jones. Like Miles, he, too, would remain inside my heart.

I would never be able to look back on the good memories I’d made with Miles without remembering the bad. I’d never be able to look back on the past without pain. My pain, and Jane’s, and Stacy’s, and Jim’s, and Owen’s. So many tears that had fallen to the ground because of me. So many lives lost.

But the price of freedom had been paid. The danger was gone. Melanie was safe, and so was Chloe.

Kelly had died along with Miles. Her broken body and soul lay right there on the rocks, next to the dead man at the bottom of the cliff.

Chapter Thirty

“Come, sweetheart.” Owen sniffed. “It’s over. Let’s go home.”

I lifted my eyes to his face, allowed him to kiss my forehead, to wipe away the tears. He pulled me to my feet, but my body was so weak I almost sank down again. Owen didn’t let go.

We walked over to Jeordi, who looked like he’d seen a ghost. Before we all left together, I turned to look back at the scene that would be forever stamped on my mind—the cliff’s edge with its stones, the fresh and dry grass, the shrubs, the dirt.

I halted and shook my head. “Owen, I need to know.”

Owen nodded. I didn’t need to explain.

The last time I had made the mistake of not checking to see if Alvin was still alive. This time I couldn’t go on without making sure.

Prior to starting on our journey down the mountain to the beach, Jeordi pulled a bottle of water from his backpack and gave me a drink. I barely took a sip before handing it back to him. Swallowing hurt my throat.

“It’s a long walk to the beach. Let’s get back to my farm so you can get something to eat first.”

I shook my head vehemently. “This can’t wait. Water is enough for now.”

Our hike down the mountain passed quickly. After a few short breaks, we finally made it to the beach.

It took a long walk along the edge of the water to find the spot where Miles had fallen.

He lay with his eyes open, gazing blankly up at the sky. One of his legs was clearly broken.

Both Owen and I broke down again, holding on to each other as we cried.