Dangerous Sanctuary

by Shirlee McCoy

  “Radley,” she said, grabbing his shoulders, staring straight into his eyes. “I just want you to know that I’m sorry. This is all my fault. I also want you to know that you really are an epic hero. If I were the kind of girl who was looking for one, you’d be exactly what I’d want to find.”

  The words slipped out, and she couldn’t believe she’d said them. She hadn’t even realized she’d been thinking them.

  His mouth twitched but he didn’t smile.

  “Thank you,” he responded, his lips brushing hers. Tenderly. Sweetly. The contact such a surprise, she almost forgot they were about to die.

  He stepped back, climbed onto the wall and touched a metal rung that had been screwed into the cement.

  “The fire escape is going to be slippery, but if we’re careful, we can make it down. Be careful,” he cautioned, extending his hand and helping her up.

  “Fire escape?”

  “I don’t go anywhere that doesn’t have an exit,” he replied.

  She looked down. Saw cars and pavement and puddles gleaming in the exterior lights. “I have told you I’m clumsy, right?”

  “You’re beautiful and accomplished, and I’m not going to let some insane cult leader shoot you,” he replied. “Let’s go. One rung at a time.”

  She had no choice.

  She knew that.

  If she refused, Absalom would find them.

  Radley had a gun. She knew he was a good shot, but Absalom would shoot, too. And there was no guarantee of whom the bullet would hit.

  She lowered herself over the side of the building, her feet finding the fire escape. It was metal attached to the cement and it wobbled as she put her weight on it.

  “That’s it. Easy.” Radley said, a note of something in his voice. Worry, maybe. “Keep going, and you’ll be down before you know it.”

  “Do I have a choice?” she muttered. She couldn’t feel the metal through the thick bandages on her hands, and she wished she’d removed them. Too late now, she was clinging to the fire escape, moving like a snail. She didn’t dare look up or down, didn’t dare think about Absalom looming over the edge of the building, aiming his gun. She expected to feel the structure shake as Radley joined her.

  She waited, taking one step after another, praying silently each time she moved a foot or hand.

  It took her a minute to realize Radley wasn’t coming. It took her another to realize he hadn’t planned to.

  He’d helped her escape, and he was going after Absalom.

  Because, of course, if they were both on the fire escape and Absalom saw them, he’d shoot them down like skeets from the sky.

  She should have thought about that before she’d started her descent.

  She reached the third-story landing, which was nothing more than a wide metal grate. There was a door in the façade of the building, and she tried to open it. It was locked. She banged on it, hoping someone would hear. She needed to get inside, she needed to call for help.

  Somewhere above her, a man was calling her name, the sound shivering up her spine and lodging in the base of her neck.

  “Honor? I know you’re up here. Don’t be afraid. You are the chosen one. The living sacrifice.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that, and she backed up against the door, hoping that if he looked down, he wouldn’t see her.

  “Your friend is gone. It’s just the two of us now.”

  That sounded even worse, and she couldn’t imagine it was true. There was no way that Absalom had silently taken Radley down. She knew that, but she still felt the urge to call Radley’s name, make sure he was okay.

  The metal shook, and she looked up, saw Absalom’s face staring down at her. He was grinning, his eyes still dead and cold.

  “There you are,” he said, pointing a gun straight at her head. “You’ve been way more trouble than you were worth.”

  She braced for the impact of the bullet, prayed Dotty would be okay without her, wondered whom she’d see first when she arrived in Heaven. Her parents? Her grandfather? Some distant relative she didn’t remember meeting?

  She thought she heard a man shout.

  And then the world exploded.

  * * *

  The first bullet made contact, and Absalom went flying, the gun clattering across concrete as he slammed into the wall of the roof.

  He was still alive. Radley hadn’t taken a kill-shot, because any death was a tragedy. Even the death of a guy like this. Plus, he wanted to know what was going on, why Absalom was so determined to kill Honor. Someone was calling the shots, and he didn’t think it was this scrawny, strung-out addict.

  “Don’t move,” he warned as he approached.

  Blood spurted from Absalom’s wrist, the shattered bone showing through the skin. He’d probably lose the hand, and Radley couldn’t find it in himself to be sorry.

  “You shot me!” Absalom said, staring at his wrist as if he couldn’t believe it had happened.

  “I warned you to put the gun down.”

  “You shot me,” he repeated, his left hand shifting, something about the way he moved warning Radley seconds before he lunged. The blade of a knife flashed as it arched toward Radley’s face. He jumped back, firing a shot that slammed into Absalom’s gut. The guy just kept coming, head-butting him, left hand on Radley’s wrist as he tried to wrest the gun away.

  Radley shoved him back.

  “On the ground. Belly down. Hands where I can see them!” he commanded, but Absalom was hopped up on something, his eyes wild, his mouth stretched in a wide grin.

  “What’s the matter? Can’t handle what I’m bringing to the game?” He snatched his gun from the ground, and Radley would have fired, but Honor suddenly appeared, her head popping over the top of the wall. She climbed onto it and launched herself at Absalom, hitting him square in the back.

  They both went flying, and then, Absalom was up again.

  Radley shouted another command for him to stop, firing as the man whirled in his direction.

  Absalom flew back, slamming into the wall, nearly falling over it before crumbling to the cement, bloody rainwater dripping onto the roof.

  Radley kicked the gun away, his attention focused on making sure the threat was neutralized.

  “Are you okay, Honor?” he called, not glancing in her direction. Whatever Absalom was on, it seemed to have muted his pain receptors. The guy’s eyes were still wide open, his mouth twisted in a ghastly smile.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Is he?”

  “I’m the chosen one. I’ll never die,” Absalom replied.

  “Maybe not,” Radley replied, checking Absalom for weapons and then helping him lie prone. He shrugged out of his jacket and pressed it against the abdominal wound. There was one in the shoulder, too, bleeding sluggishly. He’d have called for help, but he could hear people racing out of the building, the metal rungs rattling as they climbed onto the roof.

  “You’re losing a lot of blood,” Radley continued, feeling the pulse in Absalom’s neck. It was thready and weak, his breathing shallow. “I hope whoever paid you to come after Honor made it worth dying for.”

  “Like I said, I’ll never die,” Absalom gasped, his eyes closing. “And I didn’t take money. I was repaying a favor. One good deed deserves another, right?”

  “A favor to who?” Radley asked as Wren and Henry raced toward them.

  Absalom didn’t respond.

  Radley checked his pulse again. Still thready and weak.

  Doctors and nurses were streaming across the wet roof, running with gurneys and medical supplies.

  “Absalom?” Radley tried one more time. “Who were you doing the favor for?”

  “My mom called me Kenny,” Absalom said. “I never liked the name.”

  The medical team was there, and Radley moved back, letting them do what they
could to save him.

  It was still raining, blood mixing with the deluge and streaming across the cement. He could almost see Absalom’s life streaming away with it.

  “You did what you had to,” Wren said, patting his arm. She knew what he was thinking, knew the sorrow mixed with relief that he felt. She’d stood in his shoes, held the weapon in her hand that had killed a person, and she understood in every way the weight of that responsibility.

  “Just so you know,” he responded. “This is my least favorite part of my job.”

  “I think it’s all of ours. If it isn’t, then we shouldn’t be in this line of work.”

  He nodded, turning from the fallen man.

  Honor was a few feet away, watching him, her expression somber.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish I could have saved you both.”

  “For the record,” he replied, pulling her into his arms because she was shivering, “that was one of the most foolish things I’ve ever seen. It was also probably the bravest. Thanks for coming to my rescue.”

  “As if I did. You had things under control.” She leaned into him just long enough for it to feel like she’d always been there—her head beneath his chin, her arms around his waist. Then she stepped back, brushing hair out of her face, the bandages on her hands slapping against her wrists. “I heard what he said about repaying a favor. Do you think he was talking about Mary Alice?”

  “It would make sense.”

  “If we go with the hypothesis that she fed him information about my hospital room, it does. But, I still don’t believe she did that.”

  “You don’t want to believe it.”

  “I can’t believe it. We’ve been friends since our first day of kindergarten. She wouldn’t betray me like that.” He heard the doubt in her voice, but he didn’t hone in on it. He wasn’t going to force her to accept something that they hadn’t proven was true.

  Even if it was eventually proven, he wouldn’t try to convince her. She had to come to her own conclusions, make her own peace with the situation.

  “You may be right, Honor. Your friend may be totally innocent of wrongdoing. I plan to speak with her as soon as I return to Boston. I’m curious to hear what she has to say,” Wren said, joining the conversation.

  Henry was still standing near the medical team, speaking into his cell phone. Probably filling Officer Wallace in on what had happened. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take long to give statements and satisfy whatever questions the state police had.

  Radley was ready to return to Boston. Being in Vermont had made him lose sight of important things—like how much he enjoyed being single, how nice it was to not be involved with a coworker, all the reasons why repeating the error he’d made with Mackenzie would be a bad idea. He needed to put some distance between himself and Honor, because she was too smart, too vibrant, too bright.

  And even in the midst of terrible circumstances, she made him smile.

  You really are an epic hero. If I were the kind of girl who was looking for one, you’d be exactly what I’d want to find.

  But she wasn’t looking for a hero, and Radley didn’t want to be one. He’d been there, done that, lived to regret it.

  And yet, when she’d said the words, his heart had responded as if he’d been waiting his entire life to hear them.

  So he’d kissed her.

  Not the kind of kiss that could ever mean anything, and somehow, it had felt like everything.

  That was a problem.

  A big one.

  And as far as he was concerned, the only way to solve it was to go back to Boston, get back to work and forget he’d ever spent twenty-four hours trying to keep Honor alive.

  TEN

  Her alarm went off at 4 a.m., and Honor couldn’t remember a time when she’d been so happy to hear it. She’d been lying in bed for an hour, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the old farmhouse creak and groan. The alarm was an excuse to get up and get moving. She was going to work today, and she wanted to beat rush-hour traffic. It had taken three weeks for her hands to heal enough for the doctor to clear her to return.

  Three torturously long weeks.

  She’d spent them on the farm with Dotty, listening to her grandmother wax poetic about Radley.

  He’s such a gentleman!

  He’s so handsome!

  He knows how to saddle a horse, fix a tractor, plow a field. He loves his folks, too. Did you hear the way he talked about his mother?

  As far as Dotty was concerned, Radley could probably design a machine capable of orbiting the sun and diving to the bottom of the deepest ocean crevice. In one day. With six hours to spare. He was just that good.

  It was tiring and tiresome.

  Especially because Honor knew Radley had only visited the farm reluctantly. Absalom Winslow, AKA Kenneth Allen, had succumbed to his injuries, but the Bureau had opened a case against three of his coconspirators: Dr. Silas Proctor, Edmond Standish and Dr. Ruth McMurry. A resident of The Sanctuary had admitted to hearing them conspiring to drug Honor. Another resident claimed that Dr. McMurry had sedated Honor because she was too high-strung and needed to relax in order to truly align herself with the will of the universe. At least two witnesses had seen Edmond Standish carry Honor from her cabin. That was enough for the three to be brought in for questioning. All had lawyered up and were refusing to cooperate with the investigation. The judge might have been convinced to release them on bail if the Vermont State Police hadn’t discovered a cache of cocaine hidden behind a faux wall in the meeting hall. Narcotics dogs had found traces of the drug in shipping crates used to transport clay pots to art dealers around the globe.

  Apparently, The Sanctuary had been a front for a drug trafficking organization that had laundered money through the resort. Most of the residents had been unaware of the scheme. A few had suspected the truth, but none had been arrested.

  The FBI had bigger fish to fry.

  Radley had been assigned the case, and he was working closely with other agents to try to bring it to a close. So far, he’d found no connection between Absalom and Honor. He’d talked her through the time at The Sanctuary, probing for detail, challenging her to recall conversations and gut feelings. He’d been to the farm several times because Wren preferred interviews be conducted face-to-face rather than over the phone, and the doctor had ordered Honor to stay home.

  Several times?

  More like eight times.

  Honor knew, because she’d counted.

  Worse, she had looked forward to Radley’s visits. He was a breath of fresh air after days listening to Dotty’s paranoid ramblings. Since Honor’s return, Dotty had worried about the farm being sold out from under her, about being forced to move into a retirement home, about losing the place where she’d spent fifty years of her life. No matter how often Honor assured her that none of those things were going to happen, no matter how many times she promised, Dotty remained obsessed with the thought.

  It had gotten so bad that Honor had taken her to the doctor and asked for an evaluation. To her surprise, Dotty had passed the memory portion of the exam with flying colors.

  Apparently, she wasn’t suffering from dementia.

  She was just plain ornery.

  “What did you expect?” Bennett had asked when she’d told him about the medical exam. “Mom has always been cussed. She’ll probably outlive both of us, but she still shouldn’t be on the farm by herself. She can’t maintain it, and neither of us have the time to help her.”

  He had said it as if Honor hadn’t been spending every weekend of the past few years doing just that.

  And now she’d spent three weeks of recovery doing the same. Mucking the stalls. Feeding the hens. Mowing the lawn. She’d fixed the leg on the kitchen table and applied beeswax to the old hutch. Her hands had healed more slowly because she’d done chores when she should ha
ve been resting.

  She didn’t mind. Not really.

  She enjoyed the quiet nights and the peaceful mornings. She loved collecting eggs and watching as Dotty scrambled or fried them. But she needed to get back to work, back to having her mind humming with things other than farm life and Radley.

  And Mary Alice.

  Honor had reached out to her friend every day for a week, and then she’d stopped trying. According to Radley, Mary Alice continued to insist she’d had nothing to do with Absalom’s plot. There’d been no phone records linking them the day of the attempted murder, nothing that indicated she was lying.

  There was also no proof that she was telling the truth.

  Until Honor could trust that she was, it was better to keep her distance. The loss of the friendship was a physical pain, a throbbing ache in her stomach that only seemed to dissipate when Radley was around. He really was a good distraction, asking questions and taking notes and then helping with chores that Dotty not-so-subtly mentioned.

  You really are an epic hero. If I were the kind of girl who was looking for one, you’d be exactly what I’d want to find.

  She’d said that to him on the rooftop.

  She’d meant it.

  And she really wished she could take it back.

  Every time she looked him in the eye, those words were between them. Every time his arm brushed hers, or their hands accidently touched, or he leaned in close, she was reminded of his gentle kiss. They’d both been caught up in the moment, and she’d wanted to tell him that; just throw everything on the table and demand they both look at it. She didn’t know how else they’d ever move on.

  How she’d ever move on.

  Radley seemed to be doing just fine.

  She frowned, climbing out of bed and grabbing a suit from the closet. She tried to be quiet as she showered, dressed and pulled her hair into a high ponytail. She didn’t bother with a blow-dryer. She didn’t have the time or the energy to waste. If she got on the road too late, she’d be stuck in traffic for hours.