Fatal Hearts (30 page)

“About that. From what Sylvia said after Boyd arrested, I think the Senator is their father. That’s why she wanted to get rid of them. I think she’d have been satisfied if they had just dropped the investigation and gone home, but neither McBride was built that way, I guess.”

Morgan let out a whistle. “Okay, that puts things in perspective. I’m guessing that’s what this whole thing with Dr. Gunn was about. Dr. Stratton was trying to deliver up a bad guy for Boyd so he could lay the blame somewhere and go home, mission accomplished.”

Hayden groaned. “Yeah, I am going to be seeing a lot of you, aren’t I?”

“Yep.” He laughed. “Now why don’t you go hang with the guy you really want to see. Officer Gordon will be happy to give you a lift.”

CHAPTER 31

Physically, Boyd felt fine. Well, a little banged up from hitting the floor, and his chest hurt like he’d been kicked by a mule, which they said was from the CPR. But all in all, he felt way better than a guy who’d been recently dead deserved to feel. And so far, everything was looking good. For a while, there’d been talk of shipping him to the Heart Center in Saint John for an ICD—an implantable cardioverter defibrillator—but they seemed more comfortable after they’d heard his history.

He was grateful now that he’d had that exhaustive workup done in Toronto after Josh’s death. They’d relaxed a smidge when they confirmed that he’d had every possible test less than two weeks ago at the Toronto Heart Centre—he’d even worn a monitor for two solid days—and they’d found no identifiable electrocardiographic abnormalities. They unbent a little more when they learned he’d lived an active life and managed a demanding job without any symptoms until Dr. Stratton had started lacing his food with some kind of drug to make him vulnerable.

The consensus now seemed to be that with the beta-blocker and the something-something blocker they were giving him, he should be fine.

He could have told them that.

All he really wanted right now was to see Hayden. Dying had a way of helping a guy sort out his priorities. Especially when it afforded you a chance to have an out-of-body chat with your dead twin.

“Boyd!”

He looked up to see Hayden framed in the doorway.

“There you are.” He smiled. “I was beginning to think I’d lost you to that dandy, Ray Morgan.”

She laughed, but as she moved to his bedside, he saw she was dashing away tears. “I think he’s taken.”

So are you. Now I just have to figure out how to make you see it.

He cleared his throat. “I hear Sylvia is just a few doors away, shackled to her bed.”

“Yeah, she’s going to have to get used to being locked up.” She wiped away another tear. “All I can say is thank God it happened at Sylvia’s and that portable defibrillator unit was there. And the first time when it didn’t work—God, you scared me.” She sat on the edge of his bed.

He pulled her down and kissed her forehead, then tipped her face up and kissed her mouth. “Hayden, darlin’, I had to come back. You said you’d never forgive me if I didn’t.”

She pulled back. “You heard that?”

“Heard it. Saw it. Until you hit me with the juice that second time. That must have jerked me back in. I don’t remember anything after that. I really was out of it once I came back.”

“Boyd McBride, are you telling me you had an out-of-body experience while you were clinically dead?”

He shrugged. “I know. I never gave much credence to that stuff. And there was no big beckoning light. Mostly, I just saw you working over me and that nurse who kept getting between us.”

She laughed and swatted him. “That nurse was trying to keep some minimal circulation going so we didn’t resuscitate a profoundly brain-injured version of you.”

“I know. I just like to hear you laugh.”

She pushed her hair back from her face. “So you’re saying no to an ICD, I hear?”

“For now,” he said. “But I’m happy to revisit the decision if I have any symptoms. And I’ll take all the drugs they tell me to take and avoid all the ones I have to avoid. I won’t take up training for an Ironman triathlon. I’ll go to all the doctor’s appointments I need to, do the stress tests, wear the monitor. In short, I’ll be the perfect patient. And if I do all that and have so much as a flutter, or if I find I have anxiety about it, I’ll be the first one at the doctor’s office saying I want the ICD.”

“Sounds good.” She reached for his hand and linked it with hers. “Do you remember your confrontation with Sylvia?”

“You think I could forget that?”

“Well, you did lose consciousness. People often lose memory of whatever happened immediately before they black out.”

“I remember everything.” His face took on a somber expression. “We did it, Hayden. We uncovered Josh’s murderer.”

“And you found an aunt and two cousins. And, omigod, a father! The Senator is your father. I heard Sylvia gloating about not letting Arianna steal Lewis away from her with the old pregnancy trap.”

Boyd felt a flare of rage at that, but he quickly dialed it back. He was under orders not to sweat that stuff anymore. From Josh.

“Yeah, seems like a proper introduction will be in order. I just wish the guy could communicate. I’d ask him how a guy his age got involved with a girl our mother’s age, and then let her fend for herself when he got her pregnant.”

“I expect you’ll find that Sylvia managed that too. She probably ran the poor girl off before she could . . .”

“What?” Boyd asked. “Finish what you were saying.”

“Sorry, I just thought of something else. Jordan Stratton is your half brother.”

Boyd blinked. “You’re right. I hadn’t even thought of that yet.”

“Yeah, lots to talk about. And this case is so convoluted. Ray Morgan is going to have you living at the police station while he debriefs you.”

“Yup.” He ran his thumb over the back of her hand. “Lots for us to talk about too.”

He saw the anxiety leap in her eyes, felt it weigh down the air between them.

She dropped her gaze to their linked hands. “You must be anxious to get home.”

“I will need to go back soon, to tell Mom and Dad about what happened to Josh, what I’ve really been doing in New Brunswick.”

“And about this.” She gestured to the monitors.

“I wish I didn’t have to, but yeah. I imagine it’ll be making national headlines, if not international ones. It’s just too juicy.”

“When will you leave?”

“As soon as the doc clears me to travel and the cops have had a chance to extract everything I know or think I know.”

“A couple of days?”

“Probably.”

She drew a deep breath. “You can stay with me if you like. Dr. Stratton’s house will be a crime scene for the immediate future.”

Boyd felt a pang at that. Here she was offering to do the thing she’d had enough sense—enough self-preservation—to avoid doing before. Letting him move in. He hoped that boded well for him.

“I’d like that,” he said. “They’re going to keep me tonight, but as soon as they spring me, I’d love to go to your place.”

“Good. I’ve already arranged to take a few days’ leave, so we can spend whatever time Ray Morgan can spare you together.”

She ducked her head, and her glorious hair fell forward again. Where had the elastic gone that she usually used to pull her hair back? That’s when it struck him—she was trying to cover up her tear-ravaged face.

She looked up at him and smiled brightly. Too brightly.

“Hayden, do you think a man’s promise should survive death?”

“
What?
”

“Because I made a promise to you that I fully intended to keep at the time, but now I don’t know if I can do it.”

Her eyes rounded. “What are you saying?”

“I promised that I’d get out of your hair when this thing with Josh was done. But now that the time has come, I don’t want to.”

She just looked at him blankly.

“I want us to be together,” he added helpfully.

“I told you, Boyd. I’m committed to my residency here. I can’t go traipsing off to Toronto.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“So, what? We try to do the long-distance thing?”

“Not that either.” He heard the pace of his own heartbeat picking up on the monitor and took a calming breath. It wouldn’t do to have a nurse barge in right now. “I was thinking I could relocate.”

“Here?”

He laughed at her tone. “Yeah, here. You’ve got over a year left on your residency, right?”

“Fifteen months.”

“So I’m thinking I could get a job. If the PD doesn’t want me for such an indefinite stint, I can—I don’t know—get a PI license or do security or, shit, hang out with the Senator.”

“What about after, when I’ve finished my residency?”

“I’ll go where you go.”

“What if that’s Haiti?”

“You mean the Doctors Without Borders thing?”

She put her hands on her hips. “Yeah.
That
thing.”

“So you’d be gone for a few weeks here and there. You really think I’d begrudge that?”

“Boyd, the minimum commitment is nine months.”

He felt his face go slack. “Nine months?”

“Yes.” She looked so miserable.

“Then I’ll go with you.”

“To Haiti?”

“To hell if I have to. But yeah, to Haiti. Actually, Canada has a commitment to the UN to help train local police in a number of countries, including Haiti. It’s called International Police Development, and is administered by the RCMP, but all kinds of forces take part in it. But even if that didn’t work out, I could go as a civilian volunteer.”

“You would do that?”

“In a heartbeat.” Then he hastened to add, “One of those effectual ones where everything is synced up and blood actually gets pumped, not one of those v-fib sons of bitches.”

She grinned, and this time it looked real, not like that horrible bright smile earlier. He must be making headway. Then her smile faded.

“What if you can’t go? What if there’s no program or no money or what if your parents are ill and need you?”

Ah, here we are.
This was the test. Much as he’d worry about her and fret for her safety and miss the hell out of her, he would never try to stop her. Yes, it could be dangerous. Kidnap of aid workers for ransom was pretty much business as usual in some of those countries. But his job was dangerous too, and he wouldn’t want her telling him he couldn’t do it.

“Then I would learn to give good phone sex. And make Port-au-Prince my new vacation hotspot. And you would probably have to be really patient with me asking about the security detail.”

She blinked rapidly, which he took as a good sign. “Why would you do all this? Why complicate your life like this?”

“Josh was right. I have been an emotional coward. I still am. But not anymore. Starting right here, right now. I love you, Hayden Walsh. I want to spend my life with you, wherever that turns out to be.”

“You love me?”

“Of course I love you. And I’m not looking for someone to be at my side with those defibrillator paddles. I’d just get the ICD if I was worried about that. Which I am not.”

“I love you too, Boyd, but—”

He chuckled.

She looked at him indignantly. “That’s funny?”

“Josh said you wouldn’t make this easy for me.”

“
Josh?
”

“Yeah, I kind of talked to him. And by
kind of
, I mean I know it was probably me having a conversation with myself while out of body, and Josh was a projection of my own mind. But it felt like he was there. I told him I needed to get back, because now that I’d found you, I couldn’t lose you.”

“Josh? Omigod.” She clamped a hand over her mouth and her eyes flooded again.

“Or my oxygen-deprived brain’s projection of him. Whatever the case, it was comforting. He was happy, peaceful. Like maybe death isn’t the lonely, cold, dark place I imagined it to be.”

Tears streamed down her face, but she was smiling. “That makes me so happy. You have no idea.”

“I’m not saying it
was
Josh. I don’t know if I believe in that woo-woo stuff.”

She grabbed some tissues and blotted the tears, then blew her nose. “I choose to believe it. It’s so comforting.”

“Then you’ll also be comforted to know he says he’ll come back and kick my ass if I do anything to hurt you.”

Her laugh was choked with emotion. “What about . . . Did he say anything—”

“He still loves you. He’ll always love you. But he says it’s different there. And, yes, he knows I love you and he’s good with that.”

She sniffed. “Really?”

“Really,” he said. “Now, can we get back to the part where you said you love me too?”

She tossed the tissues and sat down on the edge of the bed again. “It’s true. I tried not to. I tried really, really hard. I kept telling myself you’d be leaving soon—that I wanted you to leave so I could get back to my normal life, but I couldn’t help myself.”

He took her hand. “Does this mean you’ll release me from my promise?”

“It does.” She bent to kiss him and he caught the back of her head and held her mouth there, giving her all the tenderness in his heart. She pulled back a moment later to give them both a chance to breathe.

“But don’t go thinking you can get away with that again,” she said sternly. “No dying to get your way.”

He laughed. “I wouldn’t dream of it, baby.”

EPILOGUE

Boyd looked out over the crowd assembled to watch him and Hayden take their marriage vows. He’d always thought that if or when he got married, it would be one of those city hall civil ceremonies. Hayden would have been good with that, but he’d wanted to give her a beautiful, intimate wedding.

And, yeah, okay, he’d wanted the world to watch as the most extraordinary, strong, kind, brave, beautiful woman pledged to love him. Well, everyone in
his
world anyway. A world that had grown enormously in the past year.

He glanced to his left where his best man, fellow Fredericton City Police Detective Ray Morgan, stood. Of course, Morgan looked like he’d stepped straight out of the pages of
GQ
in his charcoal-gray tux. The man had actually sat down with Hayden and Boyd to pick the tuxedos. Grace Morgan had been terrifically helpful to Hayden too, in picking out gowns for the attendants.

Morgan adjusted his tie and raised an eyebrow.

Boyd lifted a hand to his own tie to find it slightly askew. Leave it to the clotheshorse to notice that millimeter by which it was off. He adjusted it. Morgan gave him a barely perceptible nod.

The organ’s tempo changed slightly, and his half brother, Jordan, entered the church with Hayden’s grandparents and guided them to their seats. His groomsmen were doubling as ushers, given how small the gathering was. Boyd had felt a little weird asking Jordan to do it, but he hadn’t been at all insulted. Not much of Sylvia in that one. He was much more like his father, thank God. A year after the two of them met, Boyd still didn’t feel like they were true brothers, and maybe he never would. On the other hand, the only bar he had to measure sibling relationships was being one half of identical twins. Probably most sibling relationships didn’t measure up to that. And to Jordan’s credit, he was a good man and a decent fisherman. He was also endlessly grateful that Boyd didn’t hold his mother’s heinous actions against him.

As Jordan made the stately walk to the back of the church again, Hayden’s mother came in on the arm of his other groomsman, Detective Craig Walker. Now those men—Ray and Craig and a few of the other guys—felt more like brothers than his half brother did. But family was family, and he was grateful for all of it.

Hayden’s mother shot him a smile that outshone even the beautiful, shoulder-baring dress she wore. Hayden had said the dress was designed by one of Haiti’s hottest designers, Jean Yves Someone-or-Other. Boyd knew nothing about fashion, but even he could see how the garment brought together, with surprising harmony, the colors of the sea and earth of Evelyn Walsh’s native Haiti. Of course, like her daughter, Mrs. Walsh could have worn a burlap sack and still looked fantastic. Evelyn’s skin was slightly darker than Hayden’s, and she had brown eyes and short-cropped, tightly curled dark hair. She possessed the strong European facial features indicative of her mixed heritage. And when she smiled like she was doing right now, Boyd could totally see Hayden in her. He smiled right back.

He let his gaze sweep the crowd, lighting with pleasure on Frank and Ella McBride. Beside them sat the Senator. He had an aide beside him who helped with his mobility issues. His recovery had been remarkable, perhaps because he’d never actually had a stroke. At least not initially. As it turned out, he’d gotten an anonymous tip that his first love, Arianna Duncan, who’d disappeared from his life without explanation, had given birth to twin boys before she died. Boyd’s money was on Dr. Gunn dropping that dime. Wherever the tip had come from, Lewis Stratton had hired a private investigator to try to find Arianna’s boys, but Sylvia had found out. She’d started poisoning him immediately. What she passed off to the doctors as a stroke was a toxic metabolic issue created by drug intoxication. She’d carefully managed him from that point on, keeping him minimally conscious. He could talk quite well now, and he had done so at length with the police.

Behind them sat Boyd’s aunt Sandra, her daughter and son-in-law, Angela and Jeremy Wood, and their now toddling baby girl, April.

So much family. And now he was about to acquire some more. He glanced back at Hayden’s mother and the various aunts, uncles, and cousins in the pews behind. It was easy to see where Hayden got her passion and humor from. If he and Hayden had kids, he hoped they inherited all of that. Of course, there was a chance they could inherit his LQTS, which would suck. They hadn’t made any decisions, but Boyd had made it clear that he was a fan of adoption if she didn’t want to risk it. Kids were still a ways off, though. She’d yet to do her first stint with Doctors Without Borders, or DWeeB, as he liked to call it, if only to get a rise out of Hayden.

She actually had a few months left on her residency. And to Boyd’s surprise and delight, she’d recently announced that she’d accepted the recruiter’s offer to come back to Fredericton after her months in Haiti. One of her rotations had introduced her to a collaborative practice on the Northside, and she’d been totally sold on their multidisciplinary approach. It wasn’t Toronto or Vancouver, but her experience there showed her there were plenty of people who needed her services. People who were marginalized by poverty, illiteracy, mental illness, addiction, and countless other reasons.

Boyd had kissed the hell out of her, then dragged her out house shopping. She’d wanted a house with a huge interior wall big enough for his beloved panoramic art installation, but he’d shaken his head. The feeling that he used to get from looking at that picture he now got from looking into her eyes, only it was a million times better. He’d since sold both the condo and the art to the same buyer. Their life was here, at least for the moment, and give or take a few DWeeB bumps.

The organ music changed again, jolting him back to the moment. Hayden’s maid of honor, Courtney Clark, a friend from Hayden’s high school days in Montreal, was coming up the aisle on Jordan Stratton’s arm. She looked gorgeous in an elegant gray gown. She took her place with a smile for Boyd.

Next came bridesmaid Gayle Ballard, one of Hayden’s friends from med school, on the arm of Craig Walker. Dressed in a slightly different but identically colored gray gown, she looked a little dazzled by the size of her escort. But Boyd knew Craig was as happily married as the rest of them. There must be something in the water in Fredericton.

Boyd smiled at the next pair. Grace Morgan, looking as classically beautiful as ever, on the arm of Tommy Godsoe. Tommy was a former police K-9 handler turned K-9 breeder and trainer, and he and Boyd got on like brothers from other mothers.

Then every eye in the house was on the double doors as Hayden came through on her father’s arm.

His breath caught at the sight of her. The dress she wore was beautifully simple, and it hugged her curves lovingly. Her gorgeous hair had been twisted up, but not in the loose, sexy thing she usually did with it. This was smooth and sleek, and as lacking in ornamentation as the clean lines of the dress. If this was Grace’s influence, he approved. It gave her a classic, timeless look. And her face . . . God, he loved that face.

He got an elbow in his side. “Breathe, McBride,” Ray Morgan murmured. “If you faint, everyone’ll think you died.”

Man, drop dead once and they never let you forget it.
“Isn’t that getting old for you, Morgan?”

“Nope.”

Hayden and her father had reached the chancel steps and Michael Walsh took his daughter’s hand and placed it in Boyd’s. “Take care of her, son.”

“I will, sir.”

As her father moved to take his seat, Boyd whispered to Hayden, “Are you ready for this?”

There it was, that light in her eyes, the one he never tired of seeing. The one that made him feel like he could do anything, take on anything.

“I’m ready.”

As they turned to face the minister, Boyd swore he could feel Josh with him, feel his approval and that warm, cocooning peace. Then the sensation was gone.

The minister was talking, but Hayden was staring at him, wide-eyed. “Josh?” she mouthed.

He gave her a slight nod and mouthed, “Yeah.”

Smiling as though she felt the same sense of benediction he did, she faced forward again.