by JoAnn Ross
“Hello?” the deep voice repeated.
She closed her eyes and pressed the receiver against her chest, thinking how easy it would be. He could be here in ten minutes. With just what she needed.
And then what? the little voice piped up. Next time he beats you up—and you know there will be a next time—you could die. Is that really what you want?
Two weeks ago, she might have said yes. But that was before Molly. And before she’d managed to stay straight for the longest period of time in years.
With an unsteady hand she hung up the phone.
Jason looked down at the caller ID unit attached to his phone. He’d known she wouldn’t be able to hold out. The cunt needed her pills like a baby needed milk.
“And I’m going to make certain you get them, sweetheart,” he assured her as he retrieved the throw-away pistol he kept in the box beneath a loose floor-board in his bedroom. “All the pills you need.”
A quick call gave him the address she’d called from. When it turned out to be less than ten minutes away, Jason decided this was definitely his lucky day.
“I’m sorry,” the ER clerk who answered the phone said, “but Molly’s off today. Can I take a message?”
“No.” Tessa took a deep breath and assured herself she could hold on. Just a little longer. “Thank you, anyway.” She pressed the Lucite button down and dialed Information again, this time getting the central number for the LAPD.
It took a while to track him down. When he answered, Dan’s voice revealed impatience. “Yeah, this is Detective Kovaleski.”
His voice was so curt, Tessa almost hung up. Reminding herself that this man might be her last chance, she said, “Dan?”
“Tessa?”
“It’s me,” she answered in a frail fractured voice nothing like the smartass one she’d used with him the last time they’d been together. “You know that Twelve Step lecture I said I didn’t want?”
There was a brief silence. Then, “Yeah…I remember.”
“Well—” she drew in a ragged breath “—I think I’m ready.”
There was another pause. “You’re not at the clinic, are you?”
She shook her head, then realized that there was no way he could hear the gesture over the phone lines. “No,” she said finally. “I’m at Molly’s.”
She was vastly relieved when he didn’t yell at her for running away from Phoenix House or lecture her about breaking the rules.
“I’ll be right there.”
She felt as if fires were sparking beneath her skin. “Please hurry.”
“I’m on my way.”
She replaced the receiver on the cradle. Then prayed Dan would get here in time to save her from herself.
“Are you certain you don’t want to come in?” Molly stood on the sidewalk, her back against Reece’s parked car. They’d spent a leisurely morning making love, then had passed the afternoon at the beach with Grace, who’d proven a natural surfer on her new Boogie board.
“Of course I do.” He leaned against her, playing idly with her hair. “But if I don’t get that script written…”
“I know.” Her smile held not an iota of regret. “I shouldn’t have kept you from your work all day.”
He smiled back and, mindless of the fact they were on a public street, brushed his lips against hers. “I’m just going to have to learn some self-restraint where you’re concerned.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist. “Not too much, I hope.”
“No. Not too much.” The kiss lingered, warmed. “I have to go.”
“I know.”
Neither of them moved.
“I need an incentive.”
“How about a paycheck?”
“Won’t work. I’m already obscenely rich, remember?”
“That’s right. I keep forgetting.” His warmth was turning her to wax. Molly wondered why, after all those years working ER, she’d never known it was possible for a human body to melt. “How about I promise to show you the new things I bought from Victoria’s Secret…when you’re finished?”
He leaned back far enough to look at her. “You went shopping at Victoria’s Secret?”
“The day after we first made love.” She’d known that once he’d had time to get used to the idea of them together, he’d be back. And she’d intended to be ready.
“What did you buy?”
“Oh, a little bit of this and that. The underwear you said you liked today. A nightgown.” Her eyes danced with a blend of newly tapped sensuality. “And a teddy.”
The mental vision of Molly scantily clad in a satin-and-lace teddy was enough to make him hard. “Ah, sweetheart,” he groaned, covering her smiling mouth with his, “if you’re trying to convince me to go back to work, you’re going about it the wrong way. How about we go inside, you can give me a fashion show, then I’ll get back to work?”
“And have me be responsible for another week of reruns?” She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed. “The sooner you get the script finished, the sooner I can show you my new garter belt.”
“Oh, Lord. I never realized you were such a cruel woman, Margaret Mary McBride.”
“I never realized it, either.” Her grin was that of a woman who’d discovered a secret weapon with which she could rule the world. She went up on her toes and kissed him again. Hard. “Call me when you’re finished.”
“You’ve got a deal.” He kissed her again, longer, ignoring the wolf whistle of a kid riding by on a mountain bike. Then he reluctantly got into the car and drove away, vowing to finish the damn script in record time. It was the last one of the upcoming season. Once he’d completed it, he could take a long hard look at his life and make some important decisions.
Molly was still floating on air when she walked into her condo. At the sight of her sister sitting on her couch, white-faced and trembling, she came crashing down to earth.
“Tessa?”
“Oh, Molly.” It came out on a wail. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Having learned a great deal about addiction from Dan, Molly was not overly surprised by her sister’s lapse. “It’s okay, honey,” she assured her. “You made it ten days. That’s a good start.”
“I wasn’t talking about that,” Tessa said on a sob.
“Then what—”
“I believe she was referring to me,” a calm male voice offered.
Molly turned toward the voice. As she saw the man pointing the gun toward her, she had a vision, like an acid flashback, of another armed man.
And in that fleeting moment, although she had no idea how she would get out of this dangerous situation, Molly vowed that this time things would be different. This time she was not going to end up a victim.
Instead of returning to work as he’d told Molly he intended to do, Reece drove to the cemetery. Unlike the first time he’d come and failed to find comfort, subsequent visits had brought, if not peace, at least acceptance.
As he walked across the emerald green grass he passed a group of mourners gathered for a funeral. A distant pain stirred, but Reece tapped it down. Today was not about endings, he reminded himself. But beginnings.
In the distance he heard the drone of a mower’s engine. The scent of freshly cut grass mingled with the tinge of salt on the slight breeze from the sea. When he reached Lena’s grave, he knelt down, took the bright tulips from their green tissue paper wrapping and placed them in the sunken cup beside the marker, then filled the cup with water from the plastic bottle of Evian water he’d picked up at 7-Eleven.
He ran his fingers over the name etched into the pink-hued marble, just as he’d done that first day he’d garnered the courage to come here. And although he knew it was only his imagination, Reece thought his wife’s name warmed beneath his touch.
“I suppose you know why I’ve come,” he said finally. In the beginning, when he had first talked to her, his words had been born of anger and a feeling of betrayal. These days the conversations centered around more mundane iss
ues—a story he was working on, Grace’s ballet recital, Molly’s work at the ER, and most recently, the surprise discovery that Tessa was living right here in Los Angeles.
“I also suppose, being a woman and more in tune with things like this, you figured out long ago how I feel about Molly. I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he said, unknowingly echoing Molly’s earlier sentiments. He dragged his hand through his hair. “Hell, I don’t even know when it happened. But it has. And I just need to know that you’re okay with it.”
More nervous than that long-ago day when he’d first proposed, he absently plucked at the crimson flower petals. Pollen from the stamen stained his fingers bright yellow.
“I thought I would die when you left me,” he said gruffly. “I wanted to die. But I didn’t. And Alex and Theo and most of all, Molly eventually managed to convince me that I had an obligation to Grace…to our daughter…to keep on living.
“So I did. And eventually I could go hours, then days, without thinking up suicide scenarios.”
He sighed heavily, finding those dark days painful to think about. Putting aside the hurt, Reece concentrated on the hope.
“You’ll always have a very special place in my heart,” he assured the woman he’d fallen in love with at first sight. “And it’s not that I love you less, Lena, because that could never happen…. It’s just that I love Molly now.”
There. He’d said the words out loud without being struck by lightning. And the sky hadn’t fallen in.
While he sat there in quiet contemplation, thinking of Lena and Molly and Grace, and how their lives were so inextricably interwoven, Reece felt something brush against his cheek, then ruffle his hair.
It’s only the breeze, he assured himself. Coming in from the coast. Even though he willed himself to believe that logical explanation, as he walked back to his car, Reece imagined he detected Lena’s scent wafting on the sun-warmed air.
A phalanx of police cars was parked out in front of Molly’s condo. Klieg lights lit up the area, making it as bright as day. Behind the police barricade, spectators stood in groups, talking about the action as if they were watching a taping of “NYPD Blue,” while video crews from every television station in the city were jockeying over the best vantage positions.
“That’s a rogue cop holding those women hostage,” Dan Kovaleski reminded the members of the SWAT team who’d arrived to try to take out one of their own. “He knows the drill.”
If only he’d been a few minutes faster. He’d sensed something was wrong the minute Molly had answered the door and told him that Tessa wasn’t there. Then she’d politely thanked him for his interest and assured him that her sister was bound to show up. Eventually. But he’d seen the fright in her eyes and when he’d found Jason Mathison’s motorcycle parked on the next street, Dan’s fears had been confirmed.
“We’ll need a clear shot,” the SWAT commander said. “I sent my best man up on the roof across the street. Two others are behind the van. And a third’s at the back of the place, just in case he tries to make a break for it.”
The team had been instructed to stand by when Dan had first called in the hostage situation. Since Mathison was still refusing to surrender, they appeared to be the last chance. Dan could only hope that they were as good as they claimed to be.
“What the hell are you going to do?” Reece demanded. He’d driven like a bat out of hell to get here when Dan had called him at home to break the news. “If they shoot Molly—”
“They won’t,” Dan said, wishing he could sound more confident. The unpalatable truth was, whenever a hostage situation ended in a shooting, it was more than likely that one of the hostages, or one of the cops was going to end up bleeding. “They’re good, Reece. Really good.”
Reece wasn’t taking comfort from that. All he could think about was Molly’s face when he’d tried to explain why he couldn’t love her.
“Christ, if anything happens to her—”
“She’ll be okay.” Dan could not allow himself to think otherwise. He also couldn’t forget that he’d been the one to bring Tessa into Molly’s life in the first place. It had seemed like a happy coincidence. But if Molly ended up getting killed because of his need to play the hotshot cop, he knew he’d never forgive himself.
“How the hell did Mathison find her anyway?”
“I’m guessing that after she left Phoenix House, Tessa called him, trying to score some drugs. Then changed her mind.”
“But Mathison traced the call.”
“Even civilians can do it these days if they’ve got caller ID and a reverse directory,” Dan pointed out. “You’ve written the scenario yourself.”
“Shit.” If the cops managed to get that scumbag out of the house alive, Reece would personally strangle the guy with his bare hands. “Goddammit!”
“It’ll be okay,” Dan said again.
The men exchanged a grim look. It had to be.
“This isn’t going to work,” Molly said, schooling her voice to a calm she was a very long way from feeling. Only years of ER experience kept her from revealing that she was on the verge of screaming. Or fainting.
“Why don’t you shut the hell up?” Jason said.
Molly managed, just barely, not to flinch as he spun away from the window, and pointed the 9 mm pistol at her head. “I’m sorry,” she said carefully. “It’s just that I’d hate to see anyone die.”
“Too bad. Because you and your cunt sister are at the top of a very short list to do exactly that.”
Her heart was pounding in her ears, making it difficult to hear. Molly wished she was braver. She wished she wasn’t afraid to die. She wished she could go back in time to this morning, when she was lying in bed with the man she loved.
If wishes were horses, she remembered her mother saying. Beggars would ride. Karla McBride had, unfortunately, been an authority on unfulfilled wishes. And terrified though she was, Molly had no intention of ending up like her mother.
Although she was sitting down, Molly’s knees were shaking. At the other end of the couch, Tessa was curled into a tight, miserable ball, looking like a pound puppy terrified of being kicked again.
“You might have gotten away with it, if only Dan hadn’t come over here when he did,” she said, trying to make some sort of contact with him.
She remembered one of Reece’s television programs, when a woman being held hostage managed to befriend the man who’d kidnapped her. If she could only keep him talking long enough to figure a way out of this. Or to buy time for Dan to do something….
“Yeah. And who do we have to thank for letting the fucking cat out of the bag?” Jason’s handsome face turned ugly. “You tipped him off somehow, didn’t you?”
“You were standing behind the door,” Molly reminded him. “You know I didn’t say anything.”
“The hell you didn’t!” He bent down and screamed into her face. “You bitch, this is all your fault!” He swung, hitting her on the cheek with the pistol. The same bone that had been shattered all those years ago by the rapist.
“Don’t you dare hit my sister!” Amazingly, Tessa sprang to her feet like a wildcat, threw herself onto his back and buried her teeth into his neck.
“Goddammit!” Roaring in pain and fury, Jason tried to shake her off, but her legs were wrapped around him in a vise grip, her hands were pounding on his head and her teeth had drawn blood. “You fucking cunt whore! I’m going to kill you!”
Although shocked, Molly was not too stunned by the unexpected attack to take advantage of any opportunity. She picked up a flowered vase from an end table and brought it down hard on his head.
“You’re going to die, too!” he shouted as the shards of pottery fell over his shoulders and the gash at the back of his head began to bleed.
While he was staggering from that blow and still trying to shake a determined Tessa off his back, Molly raced into the kitchen, rushed back with a heavy cast-iron skillet, lifted it up with both hands and hit him again with all her stre
ngth.
The cursing was replaced by a muffled oof. Jason stared at her, his eyes glazed.
The gun fell out of his hand and went skittering across the floor.
Then finally, like a grizzly who’d finally realized it had been shot, he went tumbling down on top of the coffee table, which shattered beneath his weight, taking Tessa with him.
“Are you all right?” Molly asked frantically as she tried to extricate her sister from the broken wood and unconscious man.
“I’ve never felt better.” Tessa’s unnaturally high voice was tinged with a hysteria Molly recognized all too well since she was feeling it herself. “You’d better get that gun. In case Sleeping Beauty wakes up.”
“Good idea.” Molly gingerly picked up the deadly weapon with shaking hands.
She and her sister stared at each other, looked down at the man sprawled at their feet, then wrapped their arms around each other and began to laugh.
Time seemed to take on a slow-motion quality as the front door of Molly’s condo slowly opened.
Every rifle rose to firing position.
Nerves stretched to the breaking point, Reece heard the squeak of the door, then Dan’s sharp, indrawn breath.
“Hold your fire,” Dan shouted as he viewed the two women standing in the doorway.
“What the hell is Mathison up to now?” Reece asked, fearing for the worst.
“I don’t know.” From what he knew of his former partner, Dan didn’t believe he’d let his hostages go without a fight.
“Is Molly holding a gun?” Reece asked in disbelief.
Dan zeroed in on the pistol she was holding between visibly shaking hands. Several possible scenarios flashed through his mind, none of them pretty.
“Aw, shit…Molly,” he called out, “put the gun down, honey. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“Of course it is,” Tessa yelled back. “Because my big sister knocked the son of a bitch out.”
“Only after Tessa jumped on his back,” Molly tacked on.
Dan and Reece exchanged a brief, disbelieving look, then as Molly bent down and carefully placed the pistol on the lawn, they took off running toward the house. Behind them, the commander instructed the SWAT team to continue to hold fire.
