Her Last Chance (24 page)

“Fetch her a wheelchair from behind
the desk, too,” a dark-haired nurse told him with a grin. “What are you waiting
for? Go do what the lady asks.”

Epilogue

__________

I
t had been a long hard
week. They IDed Josephine’s mother through dental records and Marsh was
arranging a proper burial. Prudence was being buried today—as a victim rather
than an accessory—a concession to Brook Duvall’s position and Director Lovine’s
wishes. Steve Dancer was on enforced leave, until Marsh and the departmental
shrink deemed him well enough to return to work.

Gloria Faraday had been released
from custody, with no proof of her involvement in the crimes. Marsh didn’t know
what to make of that. The painting that had been the catalyst behind the whole
thing had been reluctantly donated to the National Gallery by all the parties
involved. It wasn’t much consolation but it gave him some satisfaction that no
one person would walk away rich from such a terrible situation.

Josephine was slowly regaining
movement in her shoulder, but she was not a woman who took immobility
gracefully. Thankfully, Vince was recovering well enough to have left the
hospital yesterday with only a broken leg and the rapidly healing scar from an
emergency splenectomy to show for his near death adventure.

They’d all survived and right now
that was all that mattered.

“What are you doing?” Marsh watched
Josie sling the rucksack over her good shoulder. “I can carry that for you.”
But she shook him off.

She looked up at him, blue eyes bright
and alive. He’d been so certain he was going to lose her when he’d raced into
that damned beach house.

“I need to say goodbye,” Josie said
quietly, making his pulse pound.

“Goodbye?” he asked her warily.

“Not to you.” She pulled a face.
“I’m moving out of NYC.”

Did this mean…?
His heart
stopped beating. “Where exactly are you going?”

Fingering the strap of her
rucksack, she rocked back on the heels of her Doc Marten boots. “I’m moving to
Boston to live in sin with a hot FBI agent, though
not
with his parents.”

“Oh, yeah?” He took a step until
his body brushed up against hers and caused all sorts of short circuits to his
brain. “Who said I wanted to live in sin?”

Her smile was wicked. “Trust me,
you want to live in sin.”

“No, I don’t.” He took her hand and
leaned down, parting her lips for a deep kiss.

She wrapped her good arm around his
neck. “What do you want then?” She planted a kiss on him that stopped his
breath, not the kiss itself, but this newfound confidence to treat him like he
was hers. Because he was hers.

“I want to take a cab up 5th Avenue
to Tiffany’s and pick out the biggest diamond ring you’ve ever seen.”

She laughed, but he caught a
glimmer of happiness lurking in her eyes.

“Diamonds are so cliché.” She faked
a yawn.

“How about the tab off a can of
soda?” He interlinked their fingers and grinned. She hadn’t said no.

“Not
that
cliché.”

 “So where are we going to first?”
he asked as they got down to the lobby.

“We’re going to say goodbye to
somebody very special.” She lifted the flap on her bag and showed him the urn
for Marion’s ashes.

Ah
.

He bent to pick up an old newspaper
that had dropped out of someone’s recycling box.

“Hey! What is that?” Josie’s tone
turned icy as she pointed at the paper.

He looked down and there he was on
the front page of
The
NY News
with his tongue down Detective
Jenkin’s throat.

“That was Plan A, before you were
kidnapped.” He looked at her furiously jealous face and suddenly everything in
his world righted itself. Even when she drove him nuts, she was what he’d been
searching for his whole life.

Then he kissed her, dragged her
back up the stairs to her apartment and even though she bitched at him the
whole way, he knew that this was going to work. They’d go scatter ashes and buy
rings later. Right now he finally had her where he wanted her. In his life. In
his heart.

Want to know more about how Marsh and Josie first met?
Read the opening scenes of...

HER SANCTUARY

©Toni Anderson

New York City,
March 31st

E
lizabeth Ward eased back
the blinds and peered into the quiet street that ran alongside the apartment
building. Rain streaked the windowpanes, drops running together and fracturing
in the orange glow of the streetlights. A dark-colored Lincoln crouched like a
shadow next to a squat, black and silver hydrant. Her former colleagues from
the FBI’s Organized Crime Unit sat in that car. Watching. Waiting. Her
so-called protection.

Betrayal burned the edges of her
mind like battery acid.

The grandfather clock in the
hallway chimed five times, making her jump.

Five a.m.

Nearly time.

Her fingers gripped the edge of the
window frame. Night’s gloom clung to the red brick of the Victorian tenements
opposite, its weak edges and cold breath eating into what should have been
springtime.

A drunk wove his shopping cart down
the back alley, searching for a safe spot out of the killer wind. Even
Midtown’s exclusive neighborhoods were scattered with down-and-outs, hunched
behind dumpsters, curled up between parked cars. A community of desperate
souls, listless, gaunt, and stinking like the dead.

She envied them.

She wanted to be that invisible.

Swallowing past the wedge in her
throat, she counted to ten and slowly inhaled a lungful of air. She’d done her
job, and done it well, but it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

She sat at her computer in the
darkened room and signed in to an anonymous email account. Wrote two messages.

The first one read,
Terms of
contract agreed. Proceed
.

There was more than one way to skin
a cat.

Her teeth chattered, but not from
cold. A rolling shake began in her fingertips and moved up through her
wrists—whether from rage or fear she didn’t know. She clenched her hands
together into a hard fist, massaged the knuckles with her interlocked fingers,
grateful for the unyielding gold of her signet ring that bit into her flesh.

Pain was a good reminder.

She pulled her shoulders back,
typed carefully,
Beware the fury of a patient man
.

Baiting the tiger, or the devil
himself.

Bastard
.

A tear slipped down her cheek, cold
and wet. She let it fall, blanked the searing memories from her mind.

Elizabeth logged off. Reformatted
her hard-drive, erasing every command she’d ever received, every report she’d
ever sent. Letting the computer run, she headed into the stylish bathroom of
the apartment the FBI had leased for her undercover alter ego and prepared for
the final chapter of her New York life. She leaned close to the mirror and put
in a colored contact lens.

One eye stared back, frosted
iced-blue, the other looked eerily exposed, its pale green depths shining with
fear. With shaky fingers she put in the second lens and made up her face. Heavy
foundation hid the dark circles under her eyes and translucent powder covered
her rampant freckles. Blood-red lipstick and thick black eyeliner dominated her
face, making her look harder, bolder.

“Hello, Juliette.” She knew the old
fraud better than she knew herself.

Blush emphasized cheekbones sharp
enough to cut, and mascara elongated her thick lashes. She pinned her hair back
into a neat bun, tight to the nape of her neck. Pulled on a wig that was
similar to her own dyed, red hair, but cut shorter into a bob that swung just
beneath her chin.

She was ready to die now.

Her lips curved upward. Her cheeks
moved, her eyes crinkled, but there was not an ounce of happy to buoy it up.
The façade held, despite the escalating internal pressure.

FBI Special Agent Elizabeth Ward
had sat quietly when the Assistant DA had informed her that mobster Andrew
DeLattio was being allowed to turn state’s evidence. Then she’d excused herself
and thrown up in the restroom.

Lines of strain etched her eyes and
mouth. Her pulse fluttered.

Truth was she didn’t mind dying,
but she wasn’t going to stand on the sidewalk with a bulls-eye tattooed to her
ass. Juliette Morgan was a target for every organized-crime family in the US
and Elizabeth intended to make her disappear.

Permanently.

She walked through to the main
bedroom, pulled out a scarlet Versace pantsuit and a tangerine silk blouse and
walked back into the bedroom.

Can I really do this?

Yes!
The answer screamed
inside her head. How else could she reclaim her life? And if she died trying?
So be it.

She dressed. The red and orange
clashing violently in an eye-catching display of high fashion—exactly the
effect she was going for.

Satisfied, Elizabeth walked through
to the lounge and took one last look at the stylish Manhattan apartment. She
was done with it, burned out, wasted, with no future to speak of and a past
full of regrets. Time hadn’t diminished her fury; if anything it burned
brighter and stronger every day. DeLattio owed her and Witness Protection or
not, she was going to get her revenge.

Forcing herself to move she stopped
before she’d gone two paces. Her eyes caught and held an old sepia photograph
staring at her from the hall table. A young couple grinned at her from their
perch, affectionately hugging two tiny figures between them.

It knocked her sideways, the
lifetime of grief locked up in that treasured photograph. She swallowed three
times before she could catch her breath.

Ah, God.

Elizabeth blinked to kill the tears
and slid the photograph into her purse, next to her Glock. Hiding behind dark
sunglasses, she picked up her keys and left without a backward glance.

***

Triple H Ranch,
Montana, April 3rd

In the open doorway
of the ranch house with his old dog pressed against his side, Nat Sullivan
gazed up into the inky depths of the night sky. No moon shone tonight, though
stars glittered like tiny diamonds against the blackest coal.

It was two a.m. and his eyes hurt.

A thin layer of fresh snow covered
the ground, gleaming like exposed bone. The storm had been a quick blast of
fury, totally unpredicted, but not unexpected, not this high in the mountains.
Trees popped like firecrackers deep in the heart of the forest.

A dull throbbing poked at his skull
like a hangover. Not that he’d had the time or luxury to get drunk. The
headache was the lingering aftereffect of a difference of opinion he’d had with
a couple of repo men that afternoon. They thought they had the right to come to
the ranch and steal his property. He figured they’d be better off dead.

Stroking the silky fur that covered
the old dog’s skull, tension seeped from his stiff neck as his muscles
gradually relaxed. He let out a breath and his stance tempered, shoulders
lowered as the tightness slowly eased.

Peace, finally, after a day of almighty
hell.

The Sullivans had been granted a
temporary reprieve when his mother suffered a heart attack. A life-and-death
version of the silver-lined cloud.

Nat tried to force a smile, found
the effort too great, his jaw too damn sore to do it justice. Last time he’d
seen his mother she’d been pasty gray, her hair standing on end, lying flat on
her back in a hospital bed.

Still giving out orders.

Old. Weak.
Cantankerous
. His
mother would go to her grave fighting for this land. He could do no less.

Absently, he played with the silky
fur of Blue’s ears. The Triple H was nestled in the foothills of the Rocky
Mountains, a lush valley butted up close to the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
Settled by his great, great grandparents, it was as much a part of his heritage
as his DNA. A few hundred acres of prime grazing land, carved over millennia by
the friction of ice over rock.

Nat had had his adventures,
traveled the world, seen more than his fair share of beautiful country, but now
he was back to stay. Montana was in his bones, the backdrop to every thought
and the oxygen of every breath. He leaned against the doorframe, looked out at
the mountains and welcomed the fresh clean air pressed close against his
cheeks.

It was sacrilege to think the ranch
could be taken from them.

A shooting star plunged across the
night sky, falling to its death in a brilliant display. Nat drew in a sharp
breath at the flash of beauty. The dog stiffened beneath his palm, a low growl
vibrating from its belly all the way to its teeth. Nat cocked his head, ears
tuned in, attention focused. A low humming sound grew louder, like the buzz of
a honeybee getting closer.

A car.

Heading this way.

“Quiet, Blue. Go lie down.” He
didn’t want the dog making a racket and waking his niece. Pulling the baby
monitor from his pocket, he checked it against his ear to make sure it was
still working, and turned back to the open door.

Could be nothing.

Could be Ryan driving home drunk
even though he knew better. But Ryan didn’t always show good judgment after a
bad day. Didn’t sound like Ryan’s truck though. Nat flicked off the baby
monitor.

Hidden Hollow Hideaway was remote
and secluded, with mountains surrounding and enclosing the ranch on all four
sides. Miles off the beaten track it was hard to find even in daylight. At
night it was damn near impossible. People did not just pass by and they weren’t
expecting any paying guests for at least another week. Troy Strange was their
only neighbor for miles and he was more likely to visit smallpox victims.

Trouble was coming—Nat smelled it,
almost tasted it at the back of his throat.

Cursing, he grabbed his rifle and
ammo off the gun-rack above the kitchen door and loaded it, chambering a round.
He moved quickly outside to stand in the deep shadows besides the big Dutch
barn. Cattle lowed behind him and a wolf’s howl echoed through the hills to the
east.

Prickles crept up Nat’s spine. Were
the repo men coming back for another shot at his horses? Despite all his
attorney’s fine words?

The car was cresting the rise a
hundred yards from the main house. It sure as hell wasn’t Ryan’s truck. Nat’s
heart thumped hard against his ribcage and adrenaline banished tiredness. He
hugged the side of the barn as headlights cut deep into shadow. The rig, a Jeep
Cherokee, pulled into the yard in front of the main house, cut the lights, cut
the engine.

Silence resonated around the
granite peaks like a boom in his ears. Nat breathed in and out. He smelled the
exhaust fumes tainting the pure mountain air, listened as silence combed the
darkness, as if nothing existed except the colorless wasteland of night. Just
time and universe, cold and rock.

Anticipation sharpened every sense
as he waited, balanced on the balls of his feet. Nobody moved. Nobody crept out
of the Jeep. Nobody sneaked into his stable to steal his prize-winning Arabian
horses.

Nat’s breathing leveled off, his
heart rate slowed. He relaxed his stance and adjusted his grip. Waited.

The repo men had brought a truck
this morning.

Nat waited another minute, then
another. His eyes grew gritty with fatigue and he fought back a yawn. This
wasn’t the repo men. He didn’t know who it was, but it wasn’t them. Cold seeped
into his hands from the frigid metal of the gun; his trigger finger was
freezing up.

“Damn it all to hell.”

He wasn’t about to leave some
stranger hanging around his property in the middle of the night.

Though it was pitch-black, Nat’s
eyesight was sharp and well-adjusted. He knew every inch of ground, every
stone, fence, and broken-down piece of machinery on his land. Picking out
shades of gray, he moved toward the car. Flicked off the rifle’s safety and
peered in through the frosted-up glass. It was like trying to see to the bottom
of a riverbed in the middle of winter. He couldn’t make out a damned thing.

With one finger, he lifted the
handle of the driver’s side door. It clicked open, but no interior light came
on. Nat took a step back and peered inside, made out a bundled up figure in the
back seat, curled up, unmoving.

Gripping his rifle he felt the tension
crackle like static on a dry day. The fine hairs at his nape sprang up, tensile
and erect.

“Drop the rifle, mister.” The voice
was softly feminine.

“Now why would I want to do that?”
he asked.

She was silent. He could feel her
apprehension; almost see her weighing her choices in the concealment of the
Jeep.

His teeth locked together. “I don’t
think so, ma’am.” He might have been raised to be polite to women, but he
wasn’t dumb. “Not ‘til you tell me why you’re sneaking onto my property in the
middle of the night.”

She shifted slightly. He heard the
rustle as she pushed aside the blankets.

“What’s your name?” she asked.
There was a lilt, some sort of accent in her voice that sounded both warm and
aggressive at the same time. It undid some of his irritation and sparked a
glimmer of curiosity.

“Well, ma’am.” Pitched low, Nat’s
voice was steely with courteousness. “A better question would be what the
hell’s yours?”