Chapter Six

The lights flickered overhead before they were thrown into darkness again. She heard Liam stumble and curse. Good. She hoped he fell and took Tara with him down the stairs. Wouldn't that be poetic justice? Lovers tumble to their death … news at eleven.

Brona fumbled to turn on the torch. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a movement down the hall. She swung the torch, blasting the intruder with light. Since she knew Tara and Liam were behind her, the person in front of her was…

"Oh my God." There was someone else in the house after all. "I have a weapon," she warned. "I'll use it if I have to."

"Who's there?" Liam called, his voice booming with authority.

"I don't know," Brona yelled back to her husband. She hated that for a split second she felt safer since he was there with her.

"Stay back," Liam said.

However, Brona wasn't sure if he was talking to Tara or to her. Brona decided she wasn't going to stay where she was. Liam wasn't going to tell her what to do ever again. She gripped the letter opener and ran toward the intruder as the intruder ran toward her. She stopped cold and choked back a cry. The person had a weapon raised against her. "Who are you? What do you want?" she demanded.

"Who are you? What do you want?" Liam echoed her questions, irritating her further.

A long brittle silence stretched between them. The intruder didn't say anything, but stood there staring, the weapon poised and ready to be used. Whoever he was, he mocked them. They were three against one. How did he think to win?

"Who's there?" Liam asked again.

"Do you really believe he's going to answer you when he hasn't breathed a word so far?" She shook her head at him.

"I'm scared." Tara's voice shook.

Scared? Just wait until she got her hands on Tara. She would show her sister scared.

Tara had inched her way over to Liam and looped her arm through his.

A crimson haze blurred her vision as fury pounded and rippled in time to her beating heart. She was standing right next to them and they didn't care. She had seen too much, witnessed too many tender scenes that they carelessly displayed. She shot them both a cold, dark look before she turned and ran toward the intruder. She didn't care what happened to her. She could die this night and it wouldn't matter. She was already dead inside. She lost her husband and her sister in a moment of truth.

The intruder ran toward her, but determination like a rock perched inside of her and she wouldn't back down. The intruder was poised and ready to strike, but Brona was prepared, too. She lashed down with all her strength. She slammed into something hard and unyielding.

Dazed, she fell backwards as her world closed in on her. Flashes of her life came at her like bits of shattered glass.

She remembered the day.

Pelting rain, the ground slick where she walked. She slipped on the terrain she had walked a million times over. Brona reached out and tried to stop her fall, but the side of the cliff was like smooth glass and there was nothing to stop her descent. She hit the rocks below, her body broken and blood pooling beneath her head, the coppery smell making her nauseous. Spray from the ocean hit her, drenching her further. She couldn't move. "Liam!" She thought she called, but no sound left her lips. A wave washed over her, but she was beyond caring that the tide had risen. She closed her eyes as she slid beneath the surface.

"No!" Brona screamed as the fateful day came crashing down on her like the waves that had ended her life. It had been raining, a storm like tonight. She went for her usual walk near the cliffs. Soft and muddy terrain had caused her to slip. She fell to her death. That's why nothing made sense tonight. Why she saw blood where there wasn't any. She was remembering her last moments. The blood had pooled beneath her head. Not here, but on the rocks.

She wasn't supposed to be here. "Oh my God."