If she was dead . . . No. He wouldn’t allow it.
Her father’s bodyguard was there to protect her. Rafe was sending someone over, too. Both her father and her mother would die for her.
But this guy, this Wyatt—he was lethal, he was intelligent, and he had fooled everybody.
Eli’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. Chloë wouldn’t open the door to Wyatt . . . would she?
No, she was so smart. So intelligent. He’d said it over and over. He’d believed it. He reveled in it. He loved their conversations, loved knowing she was in the world, bright and beautiful. . . .
But Wyatt had proved to be an expert in all matters of security. Did he even need Chloë to let him in? Could he somehow sneak inside anyway?
Eli was on his own land now, driving the access roads beside the vineyards. Looking up, he could see his house perched at the top of Gunfighter Ridge.
Hang on, Chloë. I’m coming.
He made the final push, driving past the rows of olive trees and through the vineyards at speeds that made the F-250 clear the ground. In normal circumstances, such speed would make him swear.
Now he cursed because he couldn’t go faster.
He reached the ridge, drove straight up the forbidding angle of the slope, his deep tread tires biting into the dirt, throwing stones behind him in a fury. He gunned it at the top. The truck flew high, landed hard in the parking area. He skidded to a stop.
One glance showed him Arvid’s bloody, motionless body.
Wyatt was here.
Eli vaulted from the truck and up the stairs, punched in the security code, and opened the door.
The red light started blinking; Wyatt had tinkered with the system. In thirty seconds, the alarm would go off.
Eli had thirty seconds to find Chloë. It was his only chance to catch Wyatt by surprise.
He glanced around, weighing the possibilities.
The music was playing. Loud.
No one could hear her scream.
The door to his office was closed.
Chloë never closed it.
Eli sprinted across the living room and up the stairs. He turned the knob; it opened under his hand. He flung open the door.
Wyatt was crouched over the struggling Chloë, his hands around her throat. Seeing Eli, he reached into his coat and pulled a gun.
Eli leaped at him.
Chloë hit Wyatt in the face with her fist.
Blood welled from a cut below his eye where her pink diamond had sliced deep. “Goddammit!” His face glowed a ruddy, angry color.
And the alarm went off.
It blared in a rhythmic, earsplitting, nauseating cacophony, blocking the sound of the shot that went awry and Wyatt’s shout when Eli kicked the gun out of his hand.
Eli kicked again, intending to connect with Wyatt’s head and take him out.
Wyatt caught his foot and pulled.
Eli landed on his back.
In a split second, he saw Chloë on the floor, desperately hurt, crawling away, dragging her right arm limp and useless at her side.
Then he was on his feet again, facing Wyatt.
Eli couldn’t hear him shout. He couldn’t hear anything; the alarm rocked the house.
But Wyatt was laughing in delight and assurance, gesturing for Eli to come at him.
Wyatt was a former FBI agent. The son of a bitch knew martial arts, and that took the fight to a whole different level.
Good thing Eli was four inches taller with a longer reach. Good thing his cousins in Chile had taught him street fighting.
Good thing he didn’t fight fair.
Wyatt aimed a kick at Eli’s groin. Eli jumped into the air toward Wyatt and took him down, punching the top of his shoulder, knocking him into the corner of the desk.
Wyatt’s head wobbled on his neck.
He recovered fast, grabbed Eli’s arm, and twisted it behind his back.
Eli felt the bones in his wrist splinter.
He shrieked in agony.
The alarm kept going off, loud, insistent.
Eli punched Wyatt in the face with the fist of his other hand.
Wyatt’s nose broke.
Eli took fiendish delight in the crunch of the bone, the gush of the blood.
Wyatt must have seen Eli’s satisfaction, because he came at Eli in a blitz of karate movements, chopping him at the throat, lifting him by the windpipe, and flinging him into the bookshelves.
Behind Eli, two of the adjustable shelves tilted and fell. Books rattled to the floor.
Eli gagged, clawing at his throat. Through the pain, he saw Wyatt move in for the kill.
From the floor, he kicked upward and connected right between Wyatt’s legs.
Wyatt collapsed, gasping, holding his ’nads, the shriek of the alarm a satisfying accompaniment to his suffering.
Eli started toward Wyatt to finish him off—and in a move he never saw coming, Wyatt put him on the floor and wrenched his broken wrist sideways. As Eli gasped, Wyatt leaned over him and lifted the flat of his hand to break every bone in his face. . . .
Through a haze of pain, Eli saw a large, pale, oblong stone object lift high above them. It smashed down on the back of Wyatt’s head.
Wyatt fell like a lightning-struck tree, landing hard on the carpet.
Chloë stood there, holding the marble figurine of Bacchus in her good hand, a fierce expression on her face, ready to hit Wyatt again.
The alarm ceased, the silence so abrupt and startling that Eli wanted to embrace it.
He staggered to his feet. More pain. Sometime during the fight, he had cracked his ankle. Damn it. He was a mess.
But not as much of a mess as Chloë.
She stood listing to one side, her shoulder at an odd angle. A purple string of bruises circled her neck. She was breathing hard, but she held the marble figurine cocked, ready to deliver the next blow if necessary.
Wyatt had almost murdered her. He had bombed the cottage. He had driven her off the road into an abyss. And today he had tortured her, kicked her, pulled her arm from its socket, and throttled her with the intent to kill.
She had survived.
She’d saved Eli’s life.
He looked down at the body at his feet: Wyatt Vincent, a big, fast, nasty, brutal cockroach with blood welling from the wound on his head.
No matter what happened, no matter whether Wyatt was sent to prison, he would never stop. He would be back to find those diamonds, to destroy Eli’s family, and to kill Chloë for this humiliating defeat.
Eli looked into her angry, fragile, bruised, and vulnerable face, and he knew what he had to do. What they had to do.
Taking the figurine out of her shaking hand, Eli put it down on the floor. Showing her his broken wrist, he asked, “Can you help me pick up the trash and throw it out?”
She understood him immediately. Her voice rasped in her swollen throat, but she nodded, and she said, “Yes.”
Pride swelled in him. She was strong, stronger than any woman he’d ever known, coming back from near death to take that murderous bastard down.
She swallowed. Swallowed again. In a voice that quavered in and out, she said, “He threatened your grandmother . . . our grandmother. He threatened Sarah.”
Wyatt threatened everything Eli loved.
With his good hand, he grabbed Wyatt by the back of his collar. With dogged determination and a lot of sweat and agony, he dragged him over to the open door and across the deck. Bracing himself against the railing, he looked into her pale, bruised face. “Are you sure you can do this?”
She jutted her chin. “I will do this.”
“Okay, now, with your good hand—grab his belt and heave!”
Together they threw him three stories to the ground.
It wasn’t justice.
But they could only kill him once.
Chapter 50
“Tell me again how Wyatt fell out that window.” DuPey tapped his notebook with his pen and looked accusingly at El
i and Chloë as they reclined, side by side, in their bed, in their bedroom, together and home at last after two surgeries and five days in the hospital.
“We already told you all this stuff,” Eli said.
“Tell me again,” DuPey answered.
“I was hitting him. He was beating the shit out of me. Exhibit A.” Eli raised the arm with the cast that went over his elbow. “And B.” He lifted the leg with the cast around his ankle. “Did I mention I had to have surgery to have the bones in my wrist repaired? I’ve got stainless-steel pins in there, DuPey. I’ll never breeze through airport security again.”
“I know.” DuPey sounded weary. “I know.”
“Wyatt was about to do some fancy martial-arts turning kick, and while he was in the air, Chloë hit him with the marble statue thing Nonna gave me. Didn’t you, honey?” Eli turned to Chloë.
She nodded, touched her throat where the bruises left by Wyatt’s fingers shone black and yellow and ugly, and indicated she couldn’t speak.
“I got that part,” DuPey said. “But how did he go out the window?”
“He lost his balance,” Eli explained, “stumbled backward, and went over the rail.”
“A six-foot-tall man over a forty-two-inch-high rail?” DuPey asked.
“That’s the way I remember it. Isn’t that right, honey?” Eli turned to Chloë again.
Chloë nodded again, then closed her eyes as if the questioning had exhausted her.
Eli touched her blond fuzz of hair with gentle fingers. “DuPey, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave. With Chloë’s dislocated shoulder and her broken breastbone, and, of course, the damage to her throat where Wyatt strangled her, she’s still weak. The doctor recommended plenty of bed rest.”
“Hm. Yes.” DuPey might have wanted to argue, but with the evidence before his eyes, he didn’t have much to say. “You two were pretty banged up by the time we got here.”
“At least they were alive by the time you got here.” Eli’s new mother-in-law stood in the doorway looking authoritative and disapproving. “If Eli hadn’t driven like a maniac, Chloë would have been killed while her father and I were downstairs all unknowing.”
“I’ve forgotten what you said—why didn’t you hear her scream?” DuPey asked.
Lauren blushed and fussed on the side table with the bouquet of wildflowers that Rafe and Brooke had sent. “She had turned on some horrid rock music. I’ve always told her not to play her songs so loudly.”
Chloë blushed, too, and whimpered wordlessly.
Eli looked at her in surprise. Obviously he’d missed something.
“We—Tamosso and I—wasted time trying to get the alarm to turn off. It wasn’t until Tamosso found his bodyguard dead, murdered where he stood”—Lauren’s voice choked with emotion—“that we realized what was happening. When I ran up the stairs and saw that dreadful man fall over the railing—”
“You saw him fall over?” DuPey asked.
“Yes. I saw him fall over the railing.” Lauren stalked to the dresser. She plucked a wilting yellow rose from the bouquet Noah had sent and threw it in the trash. “Then I saw Chloë, collapsing in Eli’s arms, and him holding her when he could scarcely stand—”
All of Eli’s questions about Lauren had been answered at that moment in his office when she came charging in, eyes aflame, shouting for Tamosso. She had administered first aid to them both, and when the police arrived, she harangued DuPey until he abandoned his questioning and allowed Eli and Chloë to rest, gather their forces . . . and get their story straight.
That day, Lauren had been a godsend, and she was a godsend now. In her professorial voice, she said, “Police Chief DuPey, it is time for my patients’ medications to be administered. They’re just home from the hospital, and it’s time for them to sleep. When I think how badly battered they were . . .” She choked and covered her eyes with her palm.
“Mom, it’s okay,” Chloë said, her voice a rasping wisp.
DuPey shut his notebook and stuffed it in his pocket. With fine-tuned irony, he said, “I’ll move along then.”
Chloë waved a restraining hand and croaked. “Finnegan?”
“He’s going to live, but he won’t be collecting any souvenirs for a while.” DuPey stood. “There’ll be months of rehab, and that includes counseling, which I hope helps with his collection habit.”
Chloë rolled her good arm, encouraging him to keep talking.
DuPey sighed. “He targeted you because he has a true-crime novel he wants to publish—”
Chloë made a noise somewhere between a giggle and a groan.
“—and he thought if he knew everything about you, he could successfully convince you to help him. I’m sorry; I know it was unethical, and the book probably sucks rocks, and I can’t believe he went to Wyatt Vincent to interview him about his background.”
“Why did he do that?” Eli asked.
DuPey quivered with irritation and worry. “Apparently, he thought he could cleverly ask questions about Vincent’s motivations without Vincent catching on.”
“For his true crime story?” Chloë’s voice was a squeak of dismay.
“I guess,” DuPey said. “Of course, Vincent was one of the brightest agents the FBI ever had. Right away, he figured out Finnegan had seen something Vincent couldn’t have revealed. He tortured Finnegan just like he tortured you, Chloë, until Finnegan told him the truth about the photos. Then he shot him.”
“Didn’t Finnegan fight?” Eli asked.
“He went there without any weapon at all,” DuPey said.
Eli was incredulous. “You are kidding. He’d seen the guy blow up the cottage. Why wouldn’t he go armed?”
“According to what he’s managed to tell me, he thought arriving dressed in civilian clothes would put Vincent at ease, make him easier to interrogate.” DuPey looked at Chloë. “How he thinks he can be a writer when he has no idea how people think, I don’t know.”
She gave a bewildered shrug, then whispered, “He played into Vincent’s hands. Vincent loved to hurt the people who couldn’t hurt him back.”
“Apparently, Vincent never worried about playing fair. I’ve talked to the FBI in the area, and I’ll tell you this—he’s not the most beloved of their former agents. In fact, his retirement from the FBI may have been less cordial than he indicated.” DuPey looked grimly disgruntled.
“That I can believe,” Eli said.
“In the end, Finnegan’s photos of Vincent provided us with the evidence we needed to convince the legal system not to put you two in prison to await trial. We law enforcement agencies get cranky about former colleagues ‘falling out the window.’” DuPey did a terse air quote.
“All right, then.” Eli leaned back against the pillows and relaxed.
No doubt there would be more questioning, but not from DuPey.
Lauren took the bouquet of calla lilies from Francesca into the bathroom.
“Tell Finnegan”—Chloë spoke quietly—“that I’ll recommend my agent read his manuscript. After that, he’s on his own.”
“I’ll tell him. That’ll make him feel better.” DuPey nodded. “Thank you.”
Lauren came back with the vase full of freshwater and a forbidding expression on her face. She cleared her throat. “If you don’t mind, Police Chief DuPey?”
With a dip of the head, DuPey left them.
When Eli heard the front door close behind him, he said to Lauren, “Thank you.”
“Of course. Anything for the newlyweds. Can I get you something?” Lauren hurried to Chloë’s side. “Sweetheart, do you need help going to the lavatory?”
“I wish I could say no.” Chloë tried to lift herself off the bed.
Eli slid his good hand behind her back.
Together Lauren and Eli helped Chloë sit up, and Lauren walked with her to the bathroom.
The broken breastbone had had to be stapled. Pain limited Chloë’s movements and made every breath laborious, and when Eli saw tha
t, he wanted to throw Wyatt off the balcony all over again.
A few minutes later she was back in bed, her grumpy face slightly damp. “I’d kill for a shower.” Her voice was still scratchy, but not nearly as bad as they’d pretended to DuPey.
“You can have a shower when they let you out of all these bandages.” Lauren fussed with the covers and worriedly gazed at her daughter.
“She does look like an extra on the set of The Mummy,” Eli said.
Chloë laughed, then held her chest. “Don’t. It hurts.”
Would she ever laugh as freely again? Would the memory of her pain and fear ever completely leave her? Would the recollection of Wyatt kicking her, choking her, always drift through her nightmares?
Eli stroked his fingers along her jaw. He couldn’t stop touching her. Somehow he would bring the sunshine back into her face. When he thought how close he’d come to losing her . . .
Tamosso appeared in the doorway. “Eli! I wanted to talk to you.” He waved an expressive hand toward the bed. “I give my darling child into your care, and look what happens.”
Chloë groaned. “Papa . . .”
“I intend to do better in the future,” Eli promised.
“Good, because Lauren and I will have to leave you soon to go on our honeymoon.” Tamosso boomed his news, and beamed.
Eli almost choked in surprise.
“Good thing,” Chloë muttered.
Lauren’s eyes narrowed on Tamosso. “I was going to present the news more tactfully than that.”
“What? Tactful? Our marriage is not a thing to be tactful of!” Tamosso flung out his arms. “It’s a joyous occasion.”
“Perhaps we should ask Chloë what she thinks,” Lauren said primly.
“How many parents ask their daughter what she thinks before they get married for the first time?” Tamosso’s eyes twinkled, and he looked like a mad child born of a mischievous elf and the Godfather.
“I think it’s about time you did get married,” Chloë said, her voice almost normal.
“See?” Tamosso bustled to her side, kissed both her cheeks, and smiled. “She approves.”