“Yes, they are, but neither of them would have risked being seen paying ransom money to a siren if they’d intended to kill her all along.”
More smoke drifted toward the ceiling. “Then it must have been one of her other clients. She had to be blackmailing more than just Gilroy and James.”
“Perhaps she was, but we both know that none of them killed her, Lyle.”
His gaze leveled on mine, and again I saw that darkness. But beneath it, shadows of pain and remorse stirred. “What do you mean?”
I tensed, ready to move should that gun waver in my direction the merest inch.
“I mean,” I said softly, with just the slight touch of siren magic—enough that it might help calm him down, but not enough that he would sense it. “You left out one suspect, Lyle. You left out yourself.”
He laughed—a harsh, unpleasant sound. “I didn’t kill her, Harriet. I loved her.”
“And yet, the minute she was out of hospital, you forced her to tell you who’d beaten and raped her. Forced her, your words, not mine.”
“But I didn’t mean-”
“When did you find out the baby wasn’t yours, Lyle?” I cut in ruthlessly. “In the hospital, or when you’d beaten the information out of her?”
“I didn’t beat her,” he muttered. “I loved her. I didn’t do it.”
He was trying to convince himself more than us. Ceri was right—he had blocked out those events.
“You loved her, but you hated what she did. You hated the fact other man continued to answer her call.”
“I was going to take her away. I was going to marry her.”
“You’re already married, Lyle. And you were never going to get divorced, because you had no intentions of halving your property in the settlement.”
“The bitch is not getting her hands on my money,” he said, voice dark and low. “She’s not.”
“Why do you think Mona was blackmailing James and Gilroy? Why do you think she wanted money?”
He stubbed the cigarette out on the desk again, his movements sharp, angry. “I guess she wanted money of her own to go away with.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But not with you. She was running from you, Lyle, wasn’t she?”
He ran his free hand across her eyes. “I loved her. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for her.”
It was an almost desperate sound. The wall was coming down.
“For her, or for you?” A hint of anger crept into my voice, despite my best effort to remain calm. Lyle had destroyed, or attempted to destroy, so many lives, and all in the name of his so-called love for a siren. “If you were so in love, why couldn’t you accept who she was, and what she did, instead of trying to mold her into something she could never be? If you were so in love, why did she feel it was safer to run than tell you the child she carried was not yours?”
For a moment, he simply stared at me, face white, eyes wide. Shock. Then the darkness swirled in, and with it came the madness.
I saw the decision to kill before he even raised the gun. I threw myself sideways, but after everything that had happened over the last couple of days, I was no where near fast enough. The bullet hit tore into my shoulder and all I felt was pain. Red hot pain. I screamed as I went down, heard a second soft retort, then that gun was in my face.
“Damn it, half-breed, I loved her. Don’t you dare tell me I killed her.”
I gripped my shoulder, but blood pulsed through my fingers and there was a roaring inside my head that almost consumed me. But if I blacked out now, I’d be dead.
Kaij, I thought, and somehow pressed that button, get here fast.
“You killed her, Lyle.” The words little more than a hiss through clenched teeth. “You beat the information out of her, and then you raped her. Mona tried to use her song on you, not Frank, didn’t she?”
“No,” Lyle said, almost desperately. “No.”
“You hired me to find her killer, Lyle. You wanted revenge. This whole sad mess was all about getting justice for the woman you loved. Well, I found her killer. What are you going to do, now that you know who it truly was?”
For the longest minute of my life, I simply stared at him. And for the first time in a long while, I saw true clarity in his gaze.
“I’m sorry, Harriet,” he said softly, “For everything.”
He raised the gun. I surged forward, a scream wrenched from my lips that was both pain and denial. But I was too late. Far too late. Lyle pulled the trigger, splattering blood and bone and brain matter across my father’s pristine carpet as his body fell backwards.
He was dead.
It was over.
I closed my eyes and let unconsciousness take me.
Epilogue
“Hey, Harri, you want another beer?” Guy said, poking his head into the living room.
“You mean there’s some left?”
A pained expression crossed the ogre’s face. “I’ve only been here an hour, and Moe and Curly haven’t arrived yet. Of course there’s some left.”
“Then I’ll have one.” I hesitated, hearing footsteps out in the hall, and leaned back in the sofa to see who it was.
Keale appeared, carrying a slab over one shoulder and a newspaper under the other. “Footy started yet?”
“Five minutes. What did the new lawyer say?”
He grimaced, handed the beer over to Guy, then sat down rather gingerly. Five days had past since he’d forced Rebecca out of the skies, but the burns had been deeper than they’d looked. “He said Lyle’s confession, along with Rebecca’s, should help convince the judge of extenuating circumstances. Especially since Kaij will put a good word in for me-”
“Kaij said he’d do that?” I cut in, surprised.
“Yeah.” He eyed me for a moment. “You haven’t talked to him?”
“No.” I hadn’t even seen him. Neither during the three days I’d been in hospital, or two days out of it. Oh, plenty of other police officers, and even the occasional PIT officer had come in to take statements, but not Kaij. Not once. Not even to see if I was okay.
To say it pissed me off would be something of an understatement. I mean, I hadn’t really expected any deep show of sentiment, but hell, would it have killed him to come in and say ‘Hello, how’s the shoulder?’
Obviously, the answer was yes.
“Odd,” Keale said. “He did ask after you. I thought he-”
“Did the lawyer say anything else?” I cut in, really not wanting to discuss or think about Kaij any further.
He grimaced. “The fact is, I did hit the helicopter, and I did kill people. He reckons that, at the very least, I’ll be put on a long term community service sentence, and lose my flying license, except for set times when I’m working. I’ll have to attend a drug and alcohol course, as well.”
“All of which will be better than prison.”
He nodded. “You seen the front of the Herald-Sun?”
“No.” Nor did I really want to. The day after Lyle’s death—once I’d been patched up and was fairly sensible—I’d given Greg his exclusive. The story was quickly syndicated across the country, dragging Lyle’s name into the mud and clearing Gilroy in the process—although it had brought his liaison with a siren out into the open.
But as he’d predicted so smugly, it really hadn’t done much to dent his popularity. In fact, it had probably increased it by making him seem more ‘human’.
My father was happy. Gilroy was happy. Greg was happy.
I wasn’t.
I’d lost a friend. A friend who’d also been a relative. And whatever else Lyle had become, whatever he’d done during the last few days of his life, that’s what I would remember. Not the madness, but the man who had occasionally treated me as kin.
“You might want to.” Keale took the newspaper out from under his arm and handed it across.
I unfolded it. There, on the front page, was Lyle being carried through the golden trees of the Phillecky clan's retreat. Bramwell and Gilroy were at the head of the precession, putting Elven sensibilities before everything else, as always.
No one had told me about the funeral. No one had invited me onto the ancestral lands to sing his soul onto the evergreen fields.
Some things never changed it seemed.
I threw the paper to one side. I intended to say goodbye to Lyle in my own way. With Darryl’s help, I’d give Mona a proper siren burial. That, more than anything else, would set Lyle’s soul at rest. He had loved her, at least until love had turned to madness and aggression.
More footsteps echoed, then Moe and Curly appeared, carrying another slab of beer and a stack of pizzas. Curly slid one off the top and handed it to me with a grin, then put the rest on the coffee table. I opened the box warily, and was surprised to see seafood. Just seafood and cheese, and none of the other muck they preferred. The ogres were definitely spoiling me.
Guy reappeared, carrying beer. He handed a can out to everyone then chucked the newspaper on the floor and sat beside me. “See that Elven brother of yours got his pic in the paper again.”
“Yeah. Lyle’s funeral.”
“You didn’t want to go?” he asked.
“I wasn’t invited.”
“Harri my friend, when has that ever stopped you from doing anything?”
I grinned. “Well, almost never, but this is different.”
“How?”
“It’s family. I’m not.”
“Their loss, man.” He snagged one of the pizza boxes and opened it up. The aroma of pineapple and meat filled the air. He inhaled deeply, sighed in contentment, then said, “You heard from them at all? I mean, you saved your brother’s life, not to mention his political career. I would have thought they’d be falling all over you with gratitude.”
I snorted. “I don’t think gratitude is in my father’s vocabulary.”
Guy shook his head. “Elves. They suck, don’t they?”