by Dana Nussio
Sarah shivered over the violation, though she suspected she would learn details that were so much worse that day.
Larry rubbed his hands together. “Well, let’s get on with it. You’re going to love this, Maria. It was your husband’s ingenious idea to make you the key...”
“The key to what?” she asked.
“The money.”
“Stop. Now.”
Larry jerked his head to look Michael’s way, and found a gun pointed right at him.
“What the hell, Michael? You don’t point that at people. What’s wrong with you?”
“You’ve got a big mouth. You’ve always had a big mouth.”
Larry lifted both his hands in a defensive move, but he was too late. A single shot to the forehead dropped him to the ground.
Sarah was too shocked to scream. She couldn’t even look at the body. She sneaked a peek at Aiden, who was curled up next to Ted, the older man wisely tucking the boy behind him to limit what he witnessed and, she suspected, get his help in loosening the tape on his hands.
“Now, where were we?” Michael said, as he tucked the gun back in the waistband of his pants.
Sarah swallowed, aware that he had been carrying it all along and could have used it on any of them whenever he chose. She was relieved that Jamie wouldn’t be able to find them. Her ex had nothing to lose. He would have no qualms about putting a bullet through Jamie’s head, as well.
Clint, whose face had paled, chewed his lip. “We were talking about splitting the money two ways.”
“Or maybe just one.”
The other officer closed his eyes, waiting.
But Michael only chuckled until Clint opened them again.
Sarah cleared her throat. “This money... I don’t know anything about it. Well, not much anyway. And I don’t need to know any more about it. You two can just head off in one direction, and I’ll go in another. Please. I’ll never tell—”
Michael shook his head to interrupt her. “It can’t be that way, Maria. The money was for us, so we could make a new start.”
“Like someone said, you’re the key,” Clint chimed.
This time, instead of reaching for his gun again, Michael nodded. He took three steps closer to Sarah and reached for her throat. Her thoughts flashing to Tonya, Sarah steadied herself and hoped it was quick.
Instead, Michael took hold of her locket and yanked it from her neck. He opened it, popped out the black-and-white photo of Sarah’s grandmother and flipped it over. On the back were the numbers 3, 46 and 17. No hyphens between them.
Sarah leaned in and took a closer look. “What is that?”
“It’s a safe combination,” Michael said.
“And I’ve had it all along?”
He nodded. “I had to put it in something I knew you’d never get rid of. You never took that damn thing off.”
“That’s why you’ve had your friends hunting me for six years?”
He shook his head, smiling. “Of course not. That’s only part of it. I had to bring my family back together.”
“Now the album?” Clint asked.
Michael held out his arms until his partner cautiously set in it in his hands. Immediately, he opened the book to the back, pulled up the glued binding and lifted out a small key. He tucked it and the combination in his pocket.
“It was there all along, too?” she asked.
“You always held the keys to the money and my heart. Now you can have both.” He nodded as if that settled the matter.
“If the combination and the key are here, then where’s the safe?”
“That’s the best part of all. It’s in the last place your parents would look. You always said it would take a backhoe to get all of the stuff out of their overstuffed basement, and an act of Congress to get them out of that house, so I took you at your word.” He shrugged. “All that money, and it’s right there waiting for us.”
Sarah didn’t miss the irony that he’d placed not only the keys but the safe itself in locations connected to her family. He’d forced her to forfeit a relationship with her parents to be with him, and with this, Michael had given them one more giant middle finger.
“Well, this is all real romantic and all,” Clint began, drawing their attention back to him, and the gun that was suddenly in his hand, “but for me, it’s not personal. It’s always just been about the money. And two shares really do look better than one.”
Michael lifted his left hand. “Now, Clint, you want to think about this. So far, you haven’t killed anyone. If you get caught, you’ll go to prison, but you won’t die there. Are you brave enough to take a life...or four, since we’re all witnesses?”
Clint held his gun steady for several seconds and then started to lower it, but just as he did, Michael pulled out his, aimed at the officer’s head and fired.
“I didn’t think so.”
Sarah made an involuntary sound in her throat, her gaze shifting from Aiden to Ted as she tried to determine who would be next. There was no way she would let it be either of them. This was her fight, not theirs. Michael had been her mistake alone. She’d escaped from him before, but she was done running. She would stop him from hurting the others, today, or she’d die trying.
* * *
Jamie had been moving as quickly as he could through the grove of trees, trying to get in position, just as the sniper and two other officers were doing, farther down. But when a gunshot broke the silence a second time, he couldn’t keep from racing forward. Brooks was running out of victims before he started on the people Jamie cared about. Even with the heads-up from Ted and the later one from Sarah, they weren’t moving fast enough. They were almost out of time.
“Please, Sarah, don’t do anything stupid,” he whispered as he neared an opening. Anything else, that is, when she’d already done enough today.
He would try to follow his own advice. Already he was acting with more sense than he had from the day Sarah had passed him that note. He’d called for backup, and with all the troopers, off and on duty, helping out, they’d already covered more ground than he ever would have been able to on his own.
One trooper had gathered descriptions of the two men in the cargo van for the Amber Alert on Aiden, someone else had pulled Brooks’s mug shot, and another trooper had followed up on the call from a concerned neighbor about two cars that had pulled onto a nearby property, helping them to get a more exact location.
Now all he had to do was keep from rushing in too quickly and getting one of them killed.
As he reached the edge of the clearing, he crouched low, drew his weapon and waited, hoping the other officers were in place. Beyond the trees, he had more backup from patrol cars that had come in silently, but from where he stood, it looked as if he was going in alone.
Aiden was the first one to notice him as Jamie crept to the back the cargo van. He touched his index finger to his lips, and the boy turned back without acknowledging him. With two victims already down, Jamie couldn’t afford to make a mistake and end up causing a third.
Sarah saw him, too. He knew it from the way her shoulders lifted just the tiniest bit, and she purposefully didn’t look his way as she continued the conversation she’d been having with her ex.
“...and we could go open the safe at my mom’s, take the money and go anywhere you want, just the two of us. We can disappear. For good this time.”
“That does sound good, doesn’t it?” Brooks said.
Something looked odd about Sarah’s mouth, and Jamie couldn’t help but watch it for several seconds. When he realized her lips were swollen and turning blue from being hit, and that red line was dried blood, it was all he could do not to rush in and kill the guy himself.
Brooks moved the weapon—probably a .40 mm Glock—from hand to hand as if testing the weight of it.
“So, let’s go right now. We’
ll just leave those two behind and start out on our own adventure,” Sarah told him. “No kids.”
This time he looked from the weapon to her. “Until you don’t think it’s fun anymore.”
She shook her head. “Now why would you think that?”
“Because that’s what you always do. When something happens, you blame me instead of admitting that you made me do it.”
“I promise I’ll be different now.”
“And leave Andy? What kind of mother leaves her kid?” Brooks asked.
“One who’s tired of all the work and just wants to have some fun.”
A mother who was prepared to give her own life to save her son’s. Jamie’s chest ached over Sarah’s bravery, but the risk she was taking made his hands sweat. He would have time later to dissect what else he thought about her and the way she’d betrayed him today, but now he had to make sure that she didn’t have to make good on her promise to her child.
He crept farther forward, coming up with a plan to disarm Brooks. But the suspect must have heard something, for he suddenly shifted and started scanning the area beyond the two vehicles.
Before Jamie could move, Aiden scrambled up off the ground and walked right up to Brooks.
“Are you my daddy?”
Brooks barely glanced down. “Of course, I am. But you would know that if your mother hadn’t hidden you from me.”
He shoved Aiden out of the way as he passed, causing the boy to trip and fall to the ground.
Jamie couldn’t help it. He lunged forward and aimed his weapon at the man who’d taken so much from the woman he loved, and who would do the same from that precious child if given the chance.
Brooks bent and yanked Aiden in front of him, holding him beneath the chin, and pointed his gun at Jamie.
“My wife’s little police lover has come to play the hero. Where’s your uniform, Officer? And what are you going to do now? Can you risk missing me and hitting the kid?”
Jamie refused to lower his weapon. “Are you talking about your son? The child you’re using as a human shield?”
Sarah rushed toward Brooks from his left, stopping only when he waved his weapon her way.
“No, Michael! Please! I told you I’ll go with you. I’ll do anything you want. Just let them go.”
“Maria, sweetheart, do you notice that your cop boyfriend has a gun pointed at me, too? I don’t hear you pleading with him for my life.”
Aiden tilted his head back and looked up at his father. “You leave Mr. Jamie alone.”
“Shut up, Andy,” Brooks warned.
“I’m Aiden.”
Brooks shifted the gun to his son’s head. “Look how you’ve brainwashed him. I would drop that gun if you want to see this kid walk away.”
“You will...let him walk? Let all of them go?”
“Sure, why not. I’m feeling generous.”
Jamie’s instinct told him it was a mistake, that the man had no honor, but he had no choice. He lowered his weapon to the ground and kicked it away from him as instructed.
When he stood vulnerable, with his hands up, Brooks smiled at him.
“You’re a fool to think you can just swoop in and take my life from me. He’s my son. And she’s my wife.”
Well, this might be the end for him, but he wouldn’t go without a fight. As the other man lifted his weapon and aimed, Jamie lunged for him.
“Aiden, duck!”
What he hadn’t counted on was that Sarah would dive in at the same time, putting herself in the line of fire.
Two shots rang out, so quickly that Jamie wondered if he’d imagined the second one. Time seemed to freeze as a surreal haze enclosed them, a momentary gift before the cruel truth set in.
“Mom!”
At Aiden’s shout, Jamie’s mind cleared. He lifted his head and found Sarah crumpled on the ground not ten feet away. The woman who’d stolen his heart had just risked her life for him. Maybe given it. He’d landed on his stomach, his forearms thumping against the hard earth, but he scrambled to his feet and stumbled over to her.
“Is she alive?” Aiden asked, his voice catching on the last word.
Jamie needed to check, but his limbs felt heavy, as if they needed him to delay the answer that could kill him. He was vaguely aware of Brooks’s body another fifteen feet beyond, blood seeping from a hole in his chest, and he would get to him, but Sarah came first.
Finally, he gathered the courage to rest a hand on her shoulder, but just as he reached farther to check for a pulse, she turned her head.
“Ouch! That’s...going to leave...a mark.”
“Mom, you’re okay.”
“No, but she will be.” Jamie hoped that saying it out loud would make it true.
Both he and Aiden came around her, so they could see her face. Jamie swallowed when he caught a glimpse of just what would be leaving that mark.
A red stain was spreading on her right shoulder. He pulled off his shirt, balled it and pressed it against her wound.
“Sorry,” he said when she hissed in pain. “But we need to stop the bleeding. What were you thinking, jumping between him and me like that? You could have been,” he paused, glancing at Aiden, “hurt.”
“I know it was stupid.”
“At least we can agree on one thing, but thank you,” he said, smiling.
“You’re going to be okay.” He didn’t know whether he was saying those words to himself or Sarah. Even if he couldn’t be with her after this, she had to be all right. “The ambulances are already on their way.”
As it to confirm his comment, an ambulance and a fire-and-rescue vehicle started up the long drive toward them. Sirens in the distance suggested there would be more.
“Ambulances, plural?”
Because her real question wasn’t the one she’d spoken aloud, he stepped over to Brooks, whose body lay outside her line of vision. He looked as though he’d fallen straight back with no attempt to soften his landing. And now the blood on his shirt had spread to cover it from a telltale sniper wound to the center mass of his upper chest. Jamie checked unnecessarily for a pulse. The threat had been eliminated.
He resisted the temptation to close the man’s eyes for his son’s sake and drew Aiden away from the body instead.
“The suspect is deceased,” he told Sarah, when he reached her.
“Does that mean dead?” Aiden asked in a shaky voice.
“Yes, it does.”
“Jamie, I’m so sorry,” Sarah called out in a pain-roughened voice.
“Don’t try to speak. We can talk later. We need to get you to the hospital first.”
“Will we?” She paused, wincing. “Talk, I mean.”
“Sure.” But he wasn’t sure at all. What could he tell her when he didn’t believe they had anything left to say?
He was relieved when the EMTs rolled a gurney over, so he could put distance between them. He needed to get some perspective. He had allowed himself to love Sarah and Aiden, and he could have lost them that afternoon.
But because he still had to get through this day and the inevitable questions that would come about what he knew, when he knew it and why he’d never told anyone, he stepped back to Aiden. The boy was watching too closely as the EMTs zipped Brooks into a body bag.
Aiden pointed to the gurney. “He was my dad. He didn’t know my name.”
“Yes,” Jamie said, confirming both statements.
“He and those other men were bad.”
“Sometimes people make poor choices.”
“Like Mom jumping in front of the gun? And Mr. Ted trying to cover me once he got the tape off his hands?”
“No, those were risky choices.”
“I started talking to him, so he wouldn’t see you.” He pointed to the man in the body bag.
“That was really ris
ky. But brave, too.” At the boy’s confused look, Jamie explained, “Sometimes risky things are also brave.”
He had to force himself to calmly answer all of Aiden’s questions. Like him and Sarah, the boy would have to learn to live with a tragedy from his childhood. Jamie could only hope the great kid never believed that any of it was his fault.
“He hurt my mom,” Aiden said, after a long pause.
“Yes, he did. But he won’t anymore.”
Chapter 25
Jamie stood outside Sarah’s hospital room, a bouquet of flowers in his hand, but he couldn’t bring himself to go inside. Even forty-eight hours and reams of paperwork later, he still had no idea what he would say to her, especially if she asked him again to forgive her.
He’d already forgiven her for lying to him, if it had all been a lie, or just fear, which he had no doubt was part of it. Either way, there was a difference between forgiving and forgetting. And he couldn’t forget.
Figuring he couldn’t stay in the hallway forever, Jamie entered the hospital room, a single, though it was small. Sarah was asleep, her shoulder bandaged following surgery to remove bullet fragments, and an IV drip was attached to her arm.
For the longest time, he could only stare at her from across the room. She looked so frail, with her skin paler than normal and her hair curling around her face. But he would never again think of this woman who’d stepped in front of a bullet for him as fragile. Now trust was a different story. She still trusted no one but herself.
He watched her for several more seconds and then started to back from the room. That was when her eyes fluttered open.
“Hi.”
He cleared his throat. “Hi. How are you feeling?”
“It’s not too bad. Thanks for coming. Are those flowers for me?”
Jamie glanced under his arm, where he’d tucked the bouquet. Though he’d forgotten all about it, he pulled it out now and set it on her dining tray.
“Thanks.”
He stepped to the window and scooted the visitor’s chair closer, but not too close.
“Has Aiden been by to see you?”
She nodded. “Last night with Nadia. Ted came by this morning. I felt so bad about those cuts on his hands.”
