The Lawman's Legacy. Shirlee McCoy
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Bay didn’t offer much in the way of excitement for its police force. Loitering, vandalism and robbery topped the list of crimes. Every once in a while, domestic violence or assault, but bodies didn’t appear at the base of cliffs. People didn’t just die without warning and without cause.
Someone had died, though.
Maybe someone very close to his family.
Douglas’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, his heart thundering in time with his racing thoughts.
“Do you think it’s Olivia?” Aiden asked, his voice shaky and weak.
“I don’t know.” Douglas glanced at his father, worried about him in a way he’d never been before. Aiden had served as chief of police for as many years as Douglas could remember. Stoic, serious and unflappable, he wasn’t the kind of guy to let anything shake him. But he was shaken. Visibly so. “Are you okay, Dad?”
“Of course I am,” Aiden muttered as Douglas flew down Main Street and out onto the rural road that led to the bluff and the lighthouse. Two police cars followed, lights flashing blue and red through the cloudy afternoon. His brothers. Douglas was sure of it. No way would Ryan or Owen stay away. No doubt, Keira was in one of the cars. Together, they’d identify the body. They’d piece together what happened.
He just hoped they wouldn’t find Olivia.
Hoped she was happily enjoying her day off.
The lighthouse loomed in the distance, growing closer with every passing mile. White and red, it stood stark and tall against the steely sky. A small, quaint cottage was a few dozen yards away from it. Once the lighthouse keeper’s home, it now belonged to Charles. He’d built a small apartment at the back of the building and had offered it to Olivia.
Maybe, she was there.
Douglas prayed she was there.
Charles’s blue Nissan, the one Olivia used to transport the twins, and a beat-up Chevy station wagon sat in the driveway. Dark green. Wood trim. Looked like it had lived a few decades too long.
Douglas knew the car, had seen it parked outside his sister Fiona’s bookstore dozens of times in the past year. He knew exactly who it belonged to. Remembered the day he’d walked into the Reading Nook and seen Meredith O’Leary for the first time. Curvy, pretty, secretive Merry.
Had she found the body?
“That’s Merry’s car,” Aiden said as Douglas got out of the SUV. Gulls screamed, their haunting cries mixing with crashing waves as Douglas made his way along the path to the cliff.
Large boulders and smaller rocks jutted from dark soil. The briny scent of the bay carried on the cold wind that blew across the bluff. All of it felt familiar and homey and right, but nothing was right about the day or Douglas’s reason for being at the lighthouse.
Up ahead, a woman stood near the edge of the cliff, strawberry blond hair whipping in the wind, shoulders hunched against the cold.
Definitely Merry.
There was no mistaking her hair, her ultra-feminine curves, or the way his stomach clenched, his senses springing to life when he saw her.
Two lunch dates. That’s all it had taken to convince him that Merry was a woman worth knowing better. He’d looked into her eyes, listened to her laughter and imagined doing the same over and over again in the weeks and years to come.
Two dates.
And, then she’d broken things off.
It’s just not working out.
That’s what she’d said, but she’d refused to look in his eyes when she’d said it, refused to tell him what part of their time together hadn’t worked for her.
Because it had all worked for him.
She stepped closer to the cliff’s unstable edge, and his heart lurched.
“Merry!” he called out, but she didn’t seem to hear over the crashing waves and screaming gulls. He ran forward and snagged her coat, yanking her away from the crumbling earth before it could give way.
She screamed, turning around, her fist aiming for his nose and coming a little too close for comfort.
“Hey, calm down!” He sidestepped another blow, grabbing her hands before she could swing again. They trembled in his grip, the fine tremors making Douglas ease his grip, smooth the skin of her knuckles.
“Douglas! Thank goodness you’re here. Olivia is…” Her voice trailed off as if she couldn’t bear to speak the words, and he had no doubt she really believed Olivia was lying at the base of the cliffs. But it was a hundred feet down to the rocks and water. A hundred feet could make identifying someone difficult.
“Stay here. I’ll take a look.”
Please, God, don’t let it be her.
The prayer whispered through his mind as he approached the cliff edge, looked below at the rocks and crashing waves.
A body sprawled facedown on slick rock. Arms and legs splayed. Blond hair soaked and trailing into foamy puddles. Even from a distance, Douglas recognized the small frame and delicate line of the neck.
Olivia.
For sure.
Dead.
For sure.
His father stepped up beside him, tensing as he looked at Olivia’s body. “It’s her.”
“Yeah. I’m afraid so.”
“We need to be the first to examine the body. If she fell, fine. If she didn’t, we need to know what happened. I’ll get the climbing gear.” Aiden hurried away, not giving Douglas time to respond.
If she fell.
The words seemed to hang in the air. The other possibilities hovering with them.
If she hadn’t fallen…
“We were supposed to meet for lunch,” Merry said, and Douglas wasn’t sure if she was speaking to him or to herself.
He turned, studying her pale, pretty face, searching her dark, hollow eyes. Haunted. That’s how she looked. How she always looked. Despite her smile, despite her easy laughter, there were always shadows in her eyes. He’d noticed them before he’d asked her to lunch, had wanted to find out what caused them, but Merry had shut him out. “Were you here looking for her?”
“Yes. She was late, and she didn’t answer her phone. I got worried and came to make sure she was okay. I thought maybe she’d overslept or her car hadn’t started. I never thought…” She shook her head.
“You went to her apartment first?”
“Yes. The door was unlocked, and I walked inside. Checked her bedroom. She wasn’t there. She loves the bluff and looking out over the bay. I thought maybe she’d come here and lost track of time, so I came to check. I don’t know what made me look down. Maybe just a feeling that things weren’t right. Do you think she fell?”
“I won’t know until I get down there. For now, I’m going to assume that’s what happened. Unless you know something that makes you think differently.”
She hesitated, her dark gaze skittering away. “I don’t.”
Lying?
Maybe. Or maybe she was still in shock, still trying to wrap her mind around Olivia’s death. He couldn’t blame her if she was. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He’d seen Olivia the previous day, pushing Charles’s twins in a double stroller, a smile on her face.
He shoved the image away.
He needed to focus on the job. There’d be time to mourn later.
He scanned the ground near the cliff, looking for signs of a struggle, some clue that