In the next instant a bullet ripped a small hole right between his eyes, and a much larger one found its way out the back of his head. Before my eyes Andros fell backward like a giant side of beef, hitting the ground with a dull thud and splattering my shoes with his blood. I stared as a thick pool of the dark red stuff formed more quickly than I’d imagined it could, leaking out to soak the pavement by my feet.
Just then, to my right, Sal jumped behind me, using my shoulder to steady his gun, and fired off a shot, the sound sending a cannonlike shock wave through my ear-drum as gunpowder burned my cheek. I ducked down from the sound, but Sal dragged me back up, pulling me to his chest and crossing his left arm over my shoulder and across my sternum to grip my right arm tightly in a binding embrace. Out of my peripheral vision I could see him raise his gun again, and it occurred to me that I was now a human shield.
For some reason I didn’t seem to care, and a feeling of disconnectedness settled over me like a gentle blanket as my eyes drifted hypnotically back to the pool of blood growing bigger around Andros. As I gazed at the shocked expression frozen in place on his face and forming his death mask, all I could feel was an odd sense of relief. He was dead. “Good riddance,” I muttered at his corpse even as gunfire exploded all around me. I couldn’t hear most of it; my sense of hearing was oddly off balance as the ringing in my right ear became more intense and vibrated through my head.
Finally, when I’d had my fill, I looked away from Andros just in time to watch as, off to my left, Gargoyle went down in a wild display of bullets and blood, beating Goblin in death by mere seconds as I watched him fall too.
From behind me Sal continued to fire away at police as they ducked behind cars, but periodically I could see an officer peeking up to rifle off a few shots in our direction. Meanwhile, Demetrius continued to snake his way backward toward our three cars, dragging his hostage with him. Suddenly, a mere ten yards from us, his captive gave him a solid elbow jab to the ribs, which bent him double while she dove out of the way. In the next instant he took a bullet to the shoulder and one to the leg and was down for the count.
I continued to watch in my sort of hypnotic trance, held tightly by Sal as men on both sides dove for cover and fired off shots, comprehension of the imminent danger I was in slow to make its way to my brain. I seemed disconnected from everything—it was too surreal for me to grasp—and I kept asking myself if all this was really happening.
Then, out of nowhere, something huge and heavy barreled into me, knocking both Sal and me to the ground. As the force hit us I tried to break my fall, but Sal had hold of my arms and all I could do was squeeze my eyes shut and brace for the impact. A second later my head hit the pavement with a thud and I went out like a light.
Chapter Eighteen
The ringing wouldn’t stop, and the world was spinning around and around like a top. I wanted to open my eyes, but it was really, really hard. I pushed my hand out to stop the spinning motion, and it met the warm flesh of another hand. One eyelid fluttered open, and the searing pain in my head intensified. “Owwwww,” I moaned, quickly shutting the eye.
Someone stroked my cheek, and a moment later I felt a featherlight kiss on my forehead. I struggled again to open my eyes, and this time managed to peer through one eye long enough to see who was showering me with love.
Midnight blues looked worriedly down at me, and I fought to comprehend who they belonged to. “Hey, Edgar,” came a husky baritone.
I blinked the one eye, and with great effort got the other to open as well. I stared at a face I thought was lost forever, and then it dawned on me how this could be. I must be dead.
“I didn’t know there was pain on the other side,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, sorry about that, babe, but you were just standing there in the line of fire, and I had to do something to get you out of the way.”
I blinked at him; I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. “What?”
“You hit your head pretty hard. Just try to lie still. The ambulance is on its way.”
“There are ambulances over here?” I asked. “God, this is just like earth!”
Dutch laughed at me and leaned forward again to kiss me lightly. “I think we may have scrambled your brain a little, honey. Just lie still, okay?”
“Why is everything spinning?” I asked. I didn’t like the fact that I couldn’t make the world stop whirling around and around like some sort of carnival ride.
“You’ve probably got a concussion. Just close your eyes and we’ll get you to the hospital, okay?”
“Where are my grandparents?” I asked. I really wanted to see them. I’d missed them so much when I was alive.
“Your grandparents?”
“Yeah! They’re supposed to be here,” I insisted.
“Uh, I’m not sure, Abby. Do you want me to call them?”
“Dutch, you silly,” I said poking at him, “all you have to do is think about them and they’ll appear. See, watch,” I said, pushing up to a sitting position so that I could concentrate better. But the moment I sat up the world went dark as night, and I went out like a light . . . again.
The sound of a siren pounded in rhythm with the ache in my head. Something was covering my mouth, and there was movement all around me. With great effort I opened my eyes and people in blue jackets came into view. “Wha’s going on?” I said groggily.
Someone by my feet tugged on my shoe, and I looked down toward the feeling and saw Dutch sitting uncomfortably in the cramped space of the inside of an ambulance as we raced across town. “I’m here,” he said.
Even prone, I was incredibly dizzy, and my eyes fluttered as the darkness threatened to overtake me. I closed my eyes again and tried to ride it out. Who knew heaven was so much like earth? And then it hit me—what if this weren’t heaven? What if I’d ended up at the other end?
Certainly I deserved it; after all, I’d purposely led Andros to his death, and I was hardly remorseful. After I’d read the police report in my hotel room I realized that Demetrius was the rapist, and his father had known the truth and had let him continue. With no one else suitable enough to inherit the family business, Andros had kept silent about his son’s extracurricular activities, and would have died allowing a serial rapist to prey on more innocent women just so his illicit businesses could continue.
That was why Goon had been killed; Andros was afraid he would reveal the truth about his son and ordered him shut up permanently especially given Goon’s tragic childhood. It also explained all of the clues I’d gotten in the beginning of the investigation, like the connection to Vegas—it wasn’t Las Vegas, the place; it was the casino connection that had been the clue.
There was also a skiing connection that I hadn’t hit on until reading the police report. The family owned a ski lodge in Vail, and if I’d just connected the dots from my reading with Ophelia’s new husband, I could have put that together much sooner too.
I remembered the expression on Dora’s face when I’d talked to her yesterday morning. She’d been horrified that her son had turned into such a monster, but admitted that even as a child he’d seemed disturbed. With great remorse and guilt she’d agreed to help me bring them both to justice. I’d given her my cell phone and told her when the call would come through. I’d also told her that Andros believed he might have a fourth son, and that this could be useful in convincing him to meet with her. She’d stayed in Texas, and the ruse had worked.
I’d also called Milo from my hotel, and left him a rather cryptic message on his voice mail. I’d told him how the rapist was reliving a day twenty years ago when his mother had abandoned him after running her errands. His mother had taken him grocery shopping first, then to the post office and lastly to the drugstore, where she’d disappeared. I knew then that Demetrius would show up at the same place he’d been left some twenty years previously, looking to take out his twisted rage on his mother’s look-alike just like he’d done to the other five women who’d reminded him of Dora. The
Perry Drugstore had been bought out years later by the Rite Aid Corporation, but every other element was still exactly the same. I’d been a little nervous when Demetrius was ordered by his father to head over to the casino, but when he agreed with his father, my lie detector had gone haywire. Then, when he’d brushed up against me, I’d felt his barely controlled rage, and knew he’d completely ignore the order—leading him right to Milo, who was ready and waiting for the trap.
In all honesty I’d set Milo up as well. My last words on his voice mail had been, “Bring plenty of firepower, Milo; he may have some backup with him you’ll have to be careful about.”
I’d had a vision just before I’d made that phone call to him, and I’d seen very clearly the shot that would take Andros down permanently. It was my ambition all along.
And now I’d paid the price. I was here, in hell, with my equilibrium spinning and a horrible pain in my head—but at least I had Dutch beside me. This thought made me curious, and I opened my eyes back up. What had he done to deserve coming here?
Just then the ambulance stopped abruptly, and the back doors were pulled open. I was lowered by several helping hands, and my vitals were run off like an auctioneer rattling off bids. My head swayed from side to side as I was wheeled down a brightly lit corridor. I glanced to my right and saw several doctors hovering over a figure covered in blood; one of them was administering chest compressions. I caught a glimpse of the man and I realized it was Sal. Yes, out of everyone he definitely deserved to be here.
My gurney came to a stop behind a small curtained enclosure, and a doctor and nurse came over to assess my injuries. I could see Dutch hovering nearby, looking anxiously at me, and I gave him a small smile. God, he looked good. I had really missed him.
My eyes were pried wide open then, and a blinding white light was shone into both pupils, sending a shock wave of fresh pain through my head. It hurt so bad my arm came up reflexively and pushed the penlight away. “Pupils responsive,” the doctor said.
“That hurts!” I grumbled, and squeezed my eyes shut, refusing to cooperate. I heard a voice order a CT scan—stat—and within moments I was on the move again.
Several hours and dozens of tests, scans and X-rays later I was back in my curtained area sucking on ice chips from a paper cup. By now it was sinking in that I wasn’t actually dead, but the way my head was pounding I still felt like hell.
I hadn’t seen Dutch since I’d been back, and worriedly I wondered if my concussion had caused my grieving brain to create him. As I waited to be admitted overnight for observation, the curtain parted and in stepped six feet, two inches of gorgeousness. “Hey, Edgar,” he said.
Tears formed in my eyes, and a sob burbled in my throat. I was so relieved to see him it was all I could do not to leap off the bed. “Hey, yourself,” I said hoarsely. “I thought you were dead,” I continued, getting right to the point.
Dutch smiled sadly and answered, “You heard the news about Joe then?”
“I read in the newspaper two days ago that two agents were executed in their hotel room. I thought one of them was you.”
“No, not this time, and actually I have you to thank for it,” he said, coming close and sitting on the edge of the gurney.
“Tell me,” I begged.
“Well, after you called Milo with some sort of weird message about “trouble in Holland,” he got a hold of my office with an urgent message to contact him. I told Joe I had to meet someone, and I’d be back in a couple of hours. She took advantage of the time to call her boyfriend, Agent Donovan, also a new recruit to the Bureau, and have him over for a romp in the hay.”
“I thought there were strict rules about dating a subordinate....”
“There are. She was sloppy and took chances, and it cost her and Agent Donovan their lives. She and Donovan were in the middle of things when Andros’s man walked in and shot them point-blank. We knew Andros had ordered it, but we didn’t know who had tipped him off.”
“It was Bennington,” I said quickly. “I saw him leaving Andros’s study the night before Joe was killed with a fat wad of money and a big smirk on his face.”
Dutch’s mouth fell open. “You’re shittin’ me,” he said.
“No, really, Dutch, I saw him,” I insisted.
Instantly Dutch pulled out his cell phone and got up to walk away, stabbing at the buttons in furious anger. He exited the area, but I could hear him just down the hall, speaking urgently. After a couple of minutes he came back to my bed and explained: “That was the captain. Turns out Bennington took an unexpected vacation. He’s somewhere in the Florida keys and won’t be back till Monday. The captain’s already starting the paperwork to investigate his bank account, that son of a bitch!”
“I’m sorry about Joe,” I said, reaching out to touch his arm.
Dutch patted my hand and answered, “It’s okay, Abby. She wasn’t a good agent, and somehow she got away with all kinds of crap. It sucks that it cost her her life, but that’s the chance you take when you’re in this line of work. Anyway, thank you for getting a warning to Milo. We figured you were trying to warn me about something, but we didn’t know what until I got back to the hotel.”
“So tell me how you got the meeting with Andros in the first place,” I said curiously.
“Well, the Bureau’s been after both Andros and his cousin Nico for years. Nico got sloppy on last year’s tax returns, and that let us in the door. He practically begged us to let him set up Andros, so Joe and I went to Florida posing as arms dealers. At the time we didn’t know Andros was so suspicious of his cousin; I mean, he’d mentioned there had been a small rift in the family when Andros’s wife had disappeared, but he never let on that the rift was so close to hatred. He let us come back up here thinking that his cousin would greet us with open arms, and it caught us completely off guard when Andros hauled us into his study, smelling a trap.
“And I gotta admit, when I first saw you in Andros’s study I thought I’d been set up,” he said, looking at me sternly.
“That’s the problem with you and me, Dutch—you just don’t trust me,” I said testily.
He smiled mischievously and replied, “Oh, and the fact that my partner happened to be a girl never brought you a second of doubt?”
He had me there. . . . “That was different,” I insisted.
“I see,” he said, still mocking me.
Being the grown-up that I am, I answered by sticking my tongue out at him and grumbled, “I should have stayed in Texas.”
“Yeah, about that—how the hell did you get out of here without being seen?”
“After the fire I took a bus to Toledo and flew out from there.”
Dutch nodded in an “aha” gesture and said, “I gotta tell you, Edgar, you really scared the crap out of us with that house fire. We thought you’d bought the farm.”
“How’d you know I hadn’t?”
“Well, for one thing firefighters couldn’t find a body. We combed all over that place, and there was no evidence that anyone had been inside. Of course, we didn’t tell that to the public—my feeling was that if you weren’t there then you must be somewhere else hiding out, and I’d just have to wait to spank you until you popped up again.”
“Spank me?” I said indignantly.
“Yeah, little lady, spank you,” Dutch said sternly. “Didn’t I tell you to stop dealing with the Kapordelis family? Didn’t I tell you not to chase after Andros’s wife? Didn’t Milo tell you to take a long extended vacation?” he asked, his brow darkening like that of an angry father reprimanding an errant child. “What the hell were you thinking? This time you really could have been killed!”
I had no defense that Dutch would listen to, so I scowled up at him and lay back on the pillows. I didn’t have the energy to argue with him anymore anyway, and I was suddenly exhausted.
“Listen,” he said, softening as he saw my tired expression, “why don’t you try to get some sleep now, okay? They’re going to admit you for the night,
right?”
“Yeah,” I said, sighing heavily.
“Okay, so I’ll check in with you in the morning and drive you home. . . .”
He let that last sentence fade to an uncomfortable silence as I visibly blanched. Obviously I had no home left to go to. With an expression that I knew meant he was mentally punching himself, he leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the lips. “I’ll see you in the morning, Abby, and don’t worry—we’ll work everything out.”
Dutch left me just as an orderly came to wheel me to my room somewhere upstairs, where the staff gave me a two-hundred-dollar aspirin and advised me to try to get some sleep. The advances in modern medicine are simply astounding.
The next morning right before I was discharged there was a knock on my hospital door, and then a welcome face peeked in. “Abby?”
“Kendal!” I called excitedly from my bed. “I wondered when you’d show back up.”
Kendal came in through the door holding a gigantic bouquet of roses in one hand and a beautiful blond in the other. “Hello, sugar,” he said as he came to the head of my bed and bent down to kiss me on the forehead. “I heard you were in a fire, and rushed back up here to make sure you were okay.”
“Uh, okay . . .” I said. If that was the story that Kendal heard, then I was okay with letting him believe it. I didn’t really want to go into all the gory details. “Who’s this?” I asked, pointing to the blond bombshell in the corner.
“Abby, this is Steve. My mother introduced us down in Tampa, and we’re talking about moving in together.”
“Hi,” Steve said shyly, coming over to shake my hand.
“Hi, Steve. Wow, Kendal, looks like you’ve had quite the couple of weeks. Tell me all about it.”
Kendal and Steve pulled up two chairs and began to tell me about their love affair. I was so glad Kendal seemed to be over Rick that I didn’t care how quickly these two seemed to be moving forward.
Finally Kendal got up and squeezed my hand. “Listen, you’re probably tired, and we need to be going. Rick’s moving his stuff out, and I want to make sure he doesn’t take anything of mine.”