Deadly Exposure

by Linda Turner

  Holding her breath, Janice didn’t think he was going to answer, but then he laughed. “What the hell. What can it hurt? It’s not like you can go to the police and turn me in, is it?” Laughing at that, he said, “The name’s Sly Jackson. But you can call me Mr. Death.”

  Janice didn’t wait to hear more. Her heart in her throat, she snatched up the office phone on her desk and quickly punched in Tony’s cell-phone number. Tony picked up a second later. Not wanting her voice to carry to the cell phone that Quentin had called her on, she said in a hushed voice, “Tony, Quentin’s in trouble. I just got a call from him on my cell phone—”

  “Where is he?” he asked sharply. “I’ve been worried sick about him and Lily.”

  “A man named Sly Jackson has them. He’s taking them to his grandmother’s farm somewhere on the outskirts of Arlington, where he’s going to kill them and dump their bodies down an abandoned well. You’ve got to do something, Tony! This bastard’s not fooling around. He’s going to kill our baby!”

  “I’m going to do something, all right,” he said grimly. “I’m going to catch the son of a bitch and make him wish he’d never been born. What else did Quentin say?”

  “He didn’t say anything to me. He must have just dialed my number, then kept it out of sight when I answered. I can hear everything being said.”

  “You mean he’s still on the line? Are you at the office? I’ll be right there!”

  The drive to Janice’s office would have normally taken twenty-five minutes. Sick with fear for Quentin and Lily, Tony made it in ten minutes flat. Racing into the parking lot of Janice’s law firm, he pulled up at the front door just as she rushed outside with her cell phone.

  “I took notes of everything they said,” she told him and handed him a notepad. “You should have heard Quentin. He was so brave. He kept making comments to the creep who kidnapped them about where they were going, and he even told him he’d be in big trouble if he wrecked Lily’s SUV.” Tears flooded her eyes. “He wanted us to know what vehicle they were in. You’ve got to find them, Tony.”

  Scared to death for his son, Tony wrapped his arms around Janice and gave her a fierce hug. Regardless of their differences, they both loved their son and they were in this together. “He’s going to be okay,” he said huskily. “Just hang tight and pray.”

  Taking her cell phone, he held it up to his ear and could barely make out his son’s voice as he said, “My dad says there’s a lot of speed traps in this part of the beltway. Are you sure you don’t want to go through town? The Fourteenth Street bridge is coming up…”

  Pride swelling his heart, Tony told Janice, “I’ve got to go. They’re coming up on the Fourteenth Street exit.”

  Her face as white as snow, Janice gave him another hug, then stepped b. “I know you’ll keep him safe. Call me as soon as you know anything. I’ll instruct the receptionist to put any calls from you through immediately.”

  Hurrying to his patrol car, Tony hit his lights and siren, then pulled out of the parking lot with tires squealing. His eyes on the road, he grabbed his radio and called for backup. “The suspect is driving a red 2003 Ford Explorer, D.C. license-plate number AGH–113, and heading south on the beltway near the Fourteenth Street exit. His name is Sly Jackson, and he’s believed to be heading for a farm outside of Arlington that belongs to his grandmother. He’s holding two kidnapped victims hostage—a nine-year-old boy and a thirty-three-year-old woman. He’s considered armed and dangerous.

  “He intends to kill them,” he told the dispatcher. “Make sure you pass it down the line to everyone to be careful not to do anything that will set this bastard off. My son’s in the car with him and so is the woman I love.”

  It wasn’t until Tony heard the words that came out of his mouth that he realized just how true they were. He loved Lily. Stunned, he didn’t understand how he could have been so blind. He’d tried to convince himself it was lust, but lust didn’t make a man’s heart ache, it didn’t make him dream of her laugh and the way her hair glinted in the sunlight. It didn’t make him think about her at all hours of the day and night and long to be with her, even if that meant doing nothing more than sitting at one of Angelo’s patio tables and watching the world go by.

  He just wanted to be with her…for the rest of his life.

  Stunned, he didn’t know how she hadn’t gotten past his guard, but it no longer mattered. He loved her more than he’d ever thought possible and just the thought of losing her and Quentin sickened him.

  His radio crackled and the unemotional voice of the dispatcher said, “Attention all units in the vicinity of the Fourteenth Street bridge. The red Ford Explorer, D.C. license-plate number AGH–113, has been spotted crossing the Fourteenth Street bridge and heading south. Proceed with caution. Suspect is armed…”

  Tony didn’t need to hear more. Flattening the accelerator, he raced toward Fourteenth Street, praying all the while that he’d make it in time to save the two people in the world he loved most.

  “Please don’t do this,” Lily pleaded as Sly Jackson reached the outskirts of Arlington and took a quick turn onto a dirt road that led back into a thick stand of trees. “I’m not a threat to you—neither is Quentin. We’ll tell the police that you were wearing a disguise. Please—”

  Lightning quick, Sly jerked the gun up and pointed it in her face. “Shut up.”

  He didn’t scream it, as he had earlier. In fact, he was cold and calm and totally in control of his emotions, and somehow, that made him even more frightening. Chilled all the way to the bone, Lily didn’t dare look in the back to see how Quentin was faring—she didn’t want him to see her despair. Had he been able to call for help? She wanted to believe that he had, but she hadn’t seen a police car since she and Quentin had been abducted, and she was starting to lose hope. They’d left the main road and were now traveling down a dusty private gl path that seemed to disappear into the trees. How was Tony ever going to find them back here in the middle of nowhere when he had no idea where to even begin looking for them?

  Swallowing a sob, she was forced to accept the inevitable.

  They were dead unless they could find a way to save themselves. The question was…how? He had a gun, and she had a child to protect. Would Quentin understand what she was trying to do if she created some kind of distraction? Sly wouldn’t give her a chance to talk to him in private, to warn him. She could pretend to be sick and faint…or trip, anything so Sly’s attention would be on her, and Quentin would have a chance to escape. Would he leave her alone with Sly and run for help? He had to. Otherwise, they’d both be dead for sure.

  Her stomach knotting at the thought, she felt her heart stop as the dirt road they were on came to a dead end at an old house that look as if it hadn’t been lived in in decades. The yard was knee-high with weeds, the wooden porch was rotted and leaning, and even as she watched, a bird flew through a hole in the roof. Surrounding it for as far as the eye could see was nothing but trees. There didn’t appear to be another house for miles.

  It was the old well in the clearing to the right of the house, however, that terrified her. She took one look at it and felt her stomach turn over. He hadn’t been lying, she thought, nauseated. He really did intend to dump their bodies down the well.

  “All right, boys and girls,” he said with sadistic cheerfulness. “We’re home. Everybody out. It’s time to die.”

  His siren and lights off, Janice’s cell phone pressed to his ear as he used the cover of Sly Jackson’s dust to race down the dirt road after him, Tony swore at the other man’s words. Bastard! He wanted to scream at him, to tear him apart, but then the phone went dead and so did Tony’s heart. “No!”

  Jackson couldn’t have found the phone, he told himself. He would have said something before it went dead. Quentin must have turned it off and put it in his pocket so it wouldn’t be discovered. That was the only logical explanation. He was just playing it smart. Damn, he was proud of him! And he’d get the chance to tell him that, he
vowed. And Lily…God, he couldn’t wait to hold her and tell her that he loved her.

  But first, he had to take care of Sly Jackson.

  Through the dust, he could just barely see the brake lights of Lily’s SUV light up as the vehicle was brought to a screeching halt. Reaching for his radio, he growled softly, “This is it. They’re getting out of the Explorer right now. This is where he’s going to kill them.”

  He didn’t have to say more. The line of patrol cars behind him followed his lead and pulled over and cut their engines, then quickly, soundlessly, the other policemen fanned out into the woods with their guns drawn. Taking the lead, Tony had never been more afraid in his life. If he was too late…

  Later, Lily couldn’t have said when or how she knew they were no longer alone. Brandishing the gun at them, Sly forced her and Quentin to walk the short distance to the well, and over the thunder of her heartbeat, she couldn’t help but notice howerily silent the surrounding woods were. Even the birds were quiet. Was Tony out there somewhere, waiting for just the right moment to save them? Frowning, she quickly searched the surrounding woods, but nothing moved. Still, she knew Tony was out there. She could feel him.

  Quentin felt it, too. He didn’t say anything, but as he walked beside her, she saw his eyes darting to the woods. When he glanced back up at her, she could see in a single glance that he wasn’t nearly as afraid as he had been. He knew, as well as she did, that Tony was there.

  They couldn’t, however, underestimate Sly Jackson. He meant to kill them and he wasn’t going to let anyone get in his way. Even if Tony fired at him at the same time he shot at them, there was a good chance that one of them would be killed. They couldn’t wait to be rescued—they had to save themselves.

  “Turn around,” Sly called out coldly. “Even I won’t shoot someone in the back. I have my standards, you know.”

  “I’m going to trip, Quentin,” she whispered hurriedly. “When I do, I want you to run straight for the woods. Don’t look back. Understand?”

  Wide-eyed, he said softly, “Dad’s here—”

  “I know. Do as I say.” Not giving him a chance to argue, she started to turn. A heartbeat later, she pretended to stumble. “Run!”

  Caught off guard, Sly Jackson screamed, “No!” Lightning quick, he jerked his gun up, aimed and fired.

  The bullet slammed into her shoulder like a runaway train. Screaming at the pain that ripped through her, Lily fell backward and hit her head hard on a rock. Before she could do anything but whimper, bullets were suddenly flying overhead.

  Where was Quentin? she wondered, panicking. Had he made it to the trees? If something happened to him, Tony would never forgive her. Tears flooding her eyes, she tried to crawl behind the well, but she felt as if she was moving in slow motion. Blood seeped from the wound in her shoulder in a steady stream. Dazed, she collapsed face first in the dirt and could do nothing but lie there and wait to die.

  Livid, Tony saw Lily fall a split second before he shot Sly Jackson in the wrist. Dropping to his knees, his gun falling out of his reach, he grabbed his wrist as blood dripped from his fingers. Tony couldn’t have cared less. All he saw was Lily lying face first on the ground. Her blood was already turning the dirt underneath her body red.

  “Lily!” Later, he didn’t remember shouting her name. Running toward her as the rest of his fellow officers rushed to take Sly Jackson into custody, Tony stopped in his tracks as his son threw himself into his arms. Sending up a silent prayer of thanks, he hugged him fiercely. “It’s okay,” he said huskily. “Everything’s okay, Quentin. You’re safe. He’ll never hurt you again.”

  “I knew you would come, Dad. I knew it. Lily did, too. Is she okay?”

  “She has to be, son.” Quickly striding the rest of the way to Lily’s side, Tony set Quentin back on his feet, then dropped to his knees beside Lily as Sam Taylor, one of the other officers who’d responded to his call for help, carefully rollher back. The second Tony saw her ashen face and blood-drenched shirt, fear tightened like a noose around his heart.

  “An ambulance is already on the way,” Sam told him as he pressed a hand to a pressure point to stop the flow of blood oozing from the bullet wound. “She was lucky, Tony. It could have been a hell of a lot worse.”

  Tony hardly heard him. Kneeling at Lily’s side, he took her hand and tenderly cradled it in his. “Wake up, sweetheart,” he said huskily. “You’re going to be fine. Do you hear me? There’s an ambulance on the way, so just hang on, honey. Okay? Lily? Sweetheart? Say something.”

  Pale as a ghost, she didn’t respond by so much as a flicker of an eyelash, and that scared the hell out of him. “She should be conscious, Sam,” he said worriedly, glancing up at the other man. “Something’s wrong. She must have hit her head when she fell. Where’s the damn ambulance?”

  In the distance, the high whine of ambulances carried easily to them in the silence of the woods. Five minutes later, two ambulances pulled up, but it wasn’t soon enough for Tony. He was losing her, he thought, and that terrified him. Helpless, he stood with Quentin at his side as the EMTs worked on Lily, quickly bandaging her shoulder, then checking her vital signs as she was carefully loaded onto a stretcher and into the ambulance.

  Thirty feet away, the EMTs from the second ambulance bandaged Sly Jackson’s wrist while two other officers stood guard, ready to shoot him again if he was stupid enough to make a break for it. He wasn’t. Leaving his co-workers to take care of the paperwork and booking Jackson after he was treated at the hospital, Tony told Sam, “I’m going to the hospital with Lily. I’ll report back to the precinct when she’s out of danger.”

  “I’ll cover for you,” his friend said. “Go.”

  He didn’t have to tell him twice. With Quentin buckled up in the back seat of his patrol car, Tony switched on his light bar and raced after Lily’s ambulance, praying all the while.

  While Quentin called his mother from the hospital emergency room to let her know he was all right, Tony put in a call to Lily’s father. He knew Lily probably wouldn’t be happy with him when she discovered what he’d done, but he’d just have to take that chance. He’d just come damn close to losing his own son, and as far as he was concerned, Kenneth Fitzgerald had a right to know just how close he had come to losing his daughter and that she still wasn’t out of danger. If he chose to turn his back on her because he was still angry with her for not making the choices in her life that he thought she should, then that was his loss. At least he could look at his own son and know he’d made the right decision.

  “Hello,” a cool male voice said on the third ring.

  “Mr. Fitzgerald? This is Tony Giovanni, a friend of Lily’s. We spoke several weeks ago.”

  “You’re the police officer with the District of Columbia. Is she all right?” he asked sharply. “Why isn’t she calling me, herself?”

  “She’s in surgery, sir. She was shot in the shoulder, but she’s going to be fine. I thoughtou should know.”

  For a moment, Kenneth Fitzgerald didn’t say a word, and Tony was afraid he was going to just hang up. Then he said, “What happened?”

  “Apparently, she unwittingly took a picture of a man who had just killed a prostitute in the park.” He gave him the story Quentin had told him, explaining how Sly Jackson had seen his picture hanging in the gallery and decided that Lily had to die because she was the only one who could place him at the scene of the murder. “She’s safe, sir. We have the shooter in custody, and trust me, he won’t be released any time soon. If I have anything to do with it, he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.”

  “Good.” Silence fell, then he added huskily, “Will you tell Lily when she comes out of surgery that we spoke, and I hope she’s feeling better? When she’s up to it, I’d like to come and see her.”

  For a man who up until then had appeared not to lack for confidence, he sounded surprisingly unsure of himself. “I’ll tell her, sir,” he promised, and quietly hung up.

  At his side, Quent
in leaned against him. He hadn’t been two steps away from him since he’d run into his arms at the edge of the woods after Lily was shot. “Is Lily really going to be okay, Dad? What’s taking so long? She’s not going to die, is she?”

  “No, son,” he said, hugging him close. “The doctor said they just need to repair the damage to her shoulder.”

  “But she didn’t wake up.”

  “The paramedic said she came to in the ambulance,” he said. “She hit her head really hard when she fell, but she’s going to be fine.” Tightening his arm around him, he ruffled his hair. “Did I tell how proud I am of you for what you did today? If you hadn’t called your mom and left the phone on so she could hear what was going on, I never would have known where you and Lily were.”

  “It was Lily’s idea,” Quentin told him, grinning. “She slipped the phone to me when he wasn’t looking, then she talked real loud so he couldn’t hear me dialing Mom’s number. I would have called you, but you always said don’t call you at work because you might be in court and not have your phone, so I called Mom.”

  “It’s okay,” Tony said, ruffling his hair again. “I’m glad she was there for you. Just for the record, though, you can call me anytime there’s an emergency, son. I don’t care where I am or what I’m doing, you call me when you’re in trouble. I’ll always come running.”

  “I know,” Quentin said, reaching up to return the favor and ruffle his hair. “I knew when I called Mom, she would find a way to get in touch with you and you would find us. He was really going to kill us, wasn’t he, Dad?”

  “Yes, he was.” Wanting to get his son’s mind off of it, he corralled Quentin around the neck. “C’mon, I’ll buy you something from the snack machine. How about some hot Chee•tos?”

  “Yeah!”

  Whenstepped into the waiting room, she stopped short at the sight of Quentin sitting next to Tony, his head propped against his father’s shoulder as he popped chips into his mouth. Tears stung her eyes, shocking her. She never cried! Or at least, she never had until today. But then again, she’d never come so close to losing her son.