Falling Darkness. Karen Harper

where they were going, but he’d hardly figured out that his last remaining child intended to go with them.

      Claire wiped her tears on the stuffed whale, remembering the last time she’d seen her mother, her father too, though they’d lost him far earlier. She was so exhausted she was losing control. What if she regressed, had a narcoleptic nightmare or, worse, had her muscles lock so she couldn’t move, couldn’t keep up? Would they carry her too?

      “Come on,” Gina said, patting Lexi’s lolling head as she slept, then pecking a kiss on her father’s cheek. “I have a lantern, and I’ll lead the way, stay with you the night while Papa goes back in. The breeze is picking up, but we will pray it doesn’t rain on us, yes? Berto has a piece of plastic we can get under, extra one from the fishing boat. Come on, then, and we all get away. Berto says he cannot tell me where we meet that other ship, but we will find it tomorrow.”

      Claire thought Gina must know too, unless she thought that some boat or pontoon plane would meet them offshore. After all, they were headed for an American navy base in hostile territory, crawling with marines. Worse, Gina had no clue she was leaving her homeland with people who were not who they said they were. She’d be stuck on a snowbound island in Northern Michigan for much of a brutal winter. But Gina had cast her lot with them, with Heck, and they owed her for her help. Together, they were safe so far.

      As they started off down the dark road, following Gina, Claire held hard to the stuffed whale as if it was her lifeline instead of Lexi’s. Jace carried the child, and Nick steadied Claire with a strong hand on her upper arm. She knew she’d messed up the timing on her meds, which needed to be taken regularly. Was any of this even real? How she wished it was all some dreadful nightmare and she’d wake up next to Nick in Naples. But dangers had lurked there too, thanks to their other murder/suicide investigations—and thanks to that monster, Clayton Ames, who still haunted them here.

      She fought to keep her balance as they went single file down the twisting path toward the now-familiar stretch of beach. Along the shore, the waves were whispering a warning, hissing at her. Dizzy, light-headed and scared, she thought for a moment she was plunging into the ocean again, bouncing, as their plane belly-landed and sank. She was in the rocking lifeboat. She was being followed by men with guns and by a stone woman who held a dead baby in her arms and stared at her—and that woman was her!

      Was she looking in a marble mirror? She saw a woman there who loved two men. And most frightening of all, as her feet slipped in the shoreside sand, she knew she had not only her child with her but was growing one inside her too.