The Perfect Couple

by Brenda Novak

  “Would you rather I’d hit your wife?” she gasped.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Come on, Colin.” Zoe licked her lips, drew enough breath to speak again. “You can have me, do what you want with me. But first you have to let her go.”

  “She can’t leave even if I do let her go. And I don’t want you anymore. You’ve always thought you were too good for me. But you’re no better than my sister or my mother. I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that. I want my wife. I want to go home.”

  “Then go home, Colin. Leave us here to die and go.” Zoe didn’t much like that option, but at least it would buy her some time—time to continue working at the ropes, time for Jonathan and the police to find them.

  “Shut up,” he snapped. “My head hurts too much to listen to you.”

  “But—”

  “Shut up!” Squatting next to them, he grabbed Sam by the hair and put his knife to her throat.

  Sam came to long enough to open her eyes, but she didn’t fight him or cry out. She didn’t look like she had the energy.

  Her gaze settled on Zoe in a silent good-bye, and Zoe’s heart began to pound harder. “Not her, Colin. Kill me instead. Please!”

  “I’m not letting you off that easy,” he said. “She’s what you love. So she’s what I’m going to take from you.”

  With an agonized scream, Zoe fought the ropes, struggling to stop what she had no power to stop. Then she squeezed her eyes closed because she couldn’t bear to watch. She thought it would all be over, that Sam would be dead in an instant. But then a gun went off somewhere near the doorway, and it was Colin who dropped.

  The deafening blast seemed to echo for several seconds as Colin lay writhing on the floor. “What the hell?” he cried.

  Zoe blinked, once, twice, three times. She expected a man in a uniform, or maybe Jonathan, to be standing in the doorway. But it was neither. A middle-aged woman with an attractive haircut and dark, tortured eyes slumped against the wall.

  “God, that hurts!” His breath coming in short gasps, Colin rolled over to see who’d shot him and started to laugh. “It’s you,” he said, the words as bitter as any Zoe had ever heard. “My own mother. Who would’ve thought you’d trouble yourself to come all the way from L.A.?”

  Petite and well-groomed, Tina Bell could’ve walked out of a Nordstrom ad, except that she wasn’t carrying a fashionable purse to match her shoes. She was holding a pistol. “I came as soon as Sheryl called me.”

  “I guess I owe her one.” His breath rattled in his chest. “How’d she know where to send you?”

  Tina put down the gun. “She told me Tiffany said you were on your way to Tommy’s cousin’s house.”

  Tiffany had betrayed him? He couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t believe it until he’d had a chance to talk to her. “And you remembered our families having Thanksgiving here.”

  “Yes. For my own peace of mind, I tried to stay away, but I couldn’t do it. I’m your mother, Colin. I will always be your mother.”

  “So you came to kill the monster you created?” He attempted another laugh but couldn’t quite manage it.

  Tears filled Tina’s eyes as she sank to her knees. “I didn’t come to kill you, Colin. I came to save you from yourself. I’ve been trying to save you all along. But now—” her gaze shifted to Zoe and Sam “—now I can see I’m too late.”

  Using the wall for support, she pulled a cell phone out of her jacket pocket and called 9–1-1, but it didn’t take more than two minutes for the police to arrive. And, to Zoe’s relief, Jonathan was with them.

  * * *

  Zoe’s daughter was in the same hospital bed she was in. After what they’d been through, she couldn’t let Sam out of her sight, even though she was safe and would be fine.

  Smoothing her daughter’s hair, she managed to kiss her temple despite a broken jaw. The morphine she’d been given numbed the pain. The doctors were planning to wire her mouth shut in the morning so it could heal properly; they’d already set her hand in a cast.

  It would be a while before she was back to normal, but she was alive. She had Sam. And Jonathan sat sleeping in the chair by her bed. She had no idea what would happen, but there was something between them—something that hadn’t been there with anyone else.

  “Mommy?” Sam murmured.

  “What, baby?”

  “Where’s Colin?”

  “He’s in a different hospital.”

  “Will he live?”

  Zoe hoped not. Colin didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as other people. Not after what he’d done to Toby and Sam and those other children—and to his own father. Fortunately, Toby was doing better. The doctors expected a full recovery. The same was true for Sam. But the other two children…

  “Probably. You were in treatment earlier, when Detective Thomas came in, but he said the bullet missed Colin’s heart.”

  “Because he doesn’t have one,” Sam grumbled.

  Zoe chuckled softly. “That’s true.”

  “So…will he go to prison?”

  “For the rest of his life, baby.” She didn’t mention the death penalty, although she believed it would be a possibility. “You don’t have to be afraid of him anymore.”

  “What about Tiffany?”

  “Tiffany’s dead. She drove her car over an embankment. They found her maybe an hour ago.”

  “I don’t know how to feel about her,” Sam said.

  Zoe stared up at the ceiling. “Neither do I.”

  “Do you think Colin will be sad?”

  “Detective Thomas said he cried like a baby when he heard.”

  “So maybe he loved her after all.”

  “As much as he was capable of loving.”

  Sam snuggled closer. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “I couldn’t have settled for that.”

  “Where’s Anton?” she asked as if she’d only just noticed he wasn’t around.

  Zoe considered her answer. A lot had changed in the past ten days. She’d seen Sam’s real father, spoken to him, accepted money from him and thought she might tell Sam about him someday. She no longer needed his money for a reward but she had a feeling he’d want her to keep it. She planned to talk to him about it. Besides everything that had changed with Franky, she’d also broken off her engagement to Anton, moved out…“I guess he’s at home.”

  “He’s not going to come see us? He doesn’t care that we’re here?”

  “Unless it’s already been reported on the news, he doesn’t know. We—we’re not together anymore.”

  Sam lifted her head. “You broke up?”

  Zoe nodded. “After what happened to you, I realized that we weren’t…what we should’ve been.”

  Sam didn’t react right away. “Does that make you feel sad?” she asked tentatively.

  Zoe shifted her gaze to Jonathan and saw that he was no longer sleeping. His eyes were heavy lidded, but he was watching them, listening. “No, that doesn’t make me feel sad.”

  “Good. So it’s just us again?”

  “For now,” she said.

  She laid her head back down. “Does that mean I can have another dog?”

  Zoe hugged her tighter. “Yes. And I’ll never take him away from you again.”

  “I’m sorry about Anton. I—I know you wanted to marry him. I tried not to screw it up for you, but—”

  “You didn’t screw it up. It’s better like this. But we should probably have someone call and tell him you’re okay. Or maybe we’ll do it ourselves, in the morning. Make sure he’s heard.”

  When Sam fell silent, Zoe thought she’d drifted off to sleep. But then she spoke again, in a whisper this time. “Your P.I. friend seems nice.”

  Zoe met Jonathan’s steady gaze—and his smile. He was sitting near the window, had Sam’s back to him. “He is nice.”

  “I love the way he looks at you,” she said.

  Zoe loved the way he touched her, too. Just seeing him there
made her crave physical contact, if only the brush of their hands. “How does he look at me?” she asked.

  Sam’s voice sounded dreamy. “Like he thinks you’re beautiful…”

  * * * * *

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  If you enjoyed THE PERFECT COUPLE, don’t miss the next book in Brenda Novak’s The Last Stand series THE PERFECT LIAR

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  PROLOGUE

  Travis Air Force Base

  Fairfield, California

  Sunday, June 7

  “You’re here why?” Wearing only a hastily donned pair of jeans, Captain Luke Trussell stood squinting at the man and woman, both from base security, whose knock had just dragged him out of bed.

  “We’re responding to a complaint filed by Sergeant Kalyna Harter.”

  There had to be some mistake. He didn’t even live here. He’d lent the use of his off-base apartment to two female cousins visiting from out of state. In the mean­time, he’d temporarily moved into a friend’s place be­cause it was empty while that friend and his family were on leave. “Against me?” He raised a hand to his bare chest.

  One of the officers, Sgt. E. Golnick according to her name tag, let her gaze range over his upper torso. Al­though female attention had little to do with why he worked out, it was a fringe benefit. But her expression revealed more contempt than appreciation. He could tell she was taking note of his size and musculature, thinking how easy it would be for him to overpower a woman, any woman, even a woman like Kalyna, who was five-ten and lifted as regularly as he did.

  “Yes, you,” she responded, her eyes shifting to his face. “You know her, right?”

  “Yeah, I know her. She’s in my flying squadron, has been since she was transferred here three months ago.” Which was how they probably knew where he was stay­ing. She must’ve told them.

  “She’s claiming you raped her last night, Captain. From the look of her, it was a brutal attack.”

  A brutal attack? Kalyna had been perfectly fine when he left her apartment only—how long ago? He glanced at his wrist, then remembered that she’d removed his watch when he started saying how late it was. She hadn’t wanted him to leave her bed. Was this her revenge for doing so, anyway? Or had she been hurt by someone else—badly enough that she didn’t know what she was saying? “Is she going to be okay?”

  “She’s got some nasty bumps and bruises,” Sgt. P. Jeffers, Golnick’s counterpart, chipped in. “It’s nothing life threatening, but she’s spent the past five hours at Northbay Medical Center being examined for sexual assault.”

  Luke shook his head. “This doesn’t make sense. If she was assaulted, someone else did it.”

  “That’s not her story.”

  A rush of anger burned away his sleepy confusion. “She must be out of her mind, delirious.”

  “She’s perfectly coherent,” Golnick said.

  “Then she’s lying!”

  One eyebrow slid up. “They’ve extracted semen from her body. Are you telling me it won’t prove to be yours?”

  “I don’t see how it can.”

  Golnick folded her arms. “You didn’t have sex with her?”

  Luke rubbed his neck. He hated discussing such per­sonal matters—especially when all he wanted to do was forget—but he had to explain fast and be frank. If he didn’t, there could be more trouble. “We had sex, yes,” he clarified. “But it was consensual.”

  “Consensual means you both agreed.”

  He gave her what he hoped was a withering look. “I know what it means.”

  She stood her ground. “The fact that you didn’t use a condom might suggest otherwise.”

  “I did use a condom,” he insisted. “I wouldn’t… I mean, I’m not that reckless.”

  “Then how do you explain the semen?”

  He couldn’t. But it wasn’t as if last night was a com­plete blur. It was just that he remembered some details more than others. And it didn’t help that he was hung-over. “Maybe it broke…” He hadn’t noticed anything unusual, but he’d drunk more than he had in years. And once he started sobering up, he’d been anxious to get home. “I didn’t hurt her. I can promise you that. I’m sorry if someone else did, but I’ve never struck or forced a woman.”

  “You keep mentioning someone else.”

  “Because it wasn’t me.”

  “So what do you suggest happened? Are you assum­ing someone came in after you left?”

  “That has to be the case,” he said. “It isn’t as if I’m some predator out trolling for women. I wasn’t the one who wanted to hook up last night. Kalyna got into my cab and gave the driver her address. I thought we’d al­ready said good-night.”

  “Some men might think that means she’s asking for whatever she gets.”

  He could easily recognize the trap in that statement. “Some men, but not me. Quit trying to twist whatever I say. I’m just telling you how we got together. If I was a rapist, don’t you think I’d be the aggressor?” That was how he pictured rapists, but Kalyna had been chasing him for weeks. She managed to bump into him all over the place, even when they were off work and off base. He’d been able to feel her interest from the moment they were introduced, could still remember how her smile had widened at the sight of him, how she kept trying to en­gage him in conversation.

  “She said you asked to go home with her and she re­fused but later relented.” Jeffers added this with some doubt in his voice, so Luke appealed to him.

  “That’s a lie! I didn’t even ask her to dance with me. I’ve never been attracted to Kalyna.” In his opinion, Kalyna was too masculine—at least in the light of day. And he’d been able to tell from very early on that she was too controlling. He avoided her if he could, but it was im­possi
ble to avoid her entirely. She was his crew chief, which meant she performed preflight, through-flight and postflight inspections and fixed anything that went wrong with his jet.

  “If you weren’t attracted to her, why’d you have sex with her?” Golnick asked.

  Luke hadn’t planned on touching Kalyna. She was the one who asked him to dance and kept rubbing up against him, whispering in his ear: You make me so hot… When you gonna show me what you’ve got in your pants, Captain? Even then, he hadn’t been tempted until later on, after he had a good buzz going.

  “To be honest, I don’t know,” he admitted with a sigh. He’d just let the sultry promise in her voice overcome his better judgment.

  Golnick peered behind him, into the Craigs’house, as if she might see something there that would provide proof of his guilt. “Why don’t you get dressed?” she said. “We need you to come down to the squad room to make a formal statement. We’ve notified your com­mander. He’s meeting us there.”

  Formal statement rang like a death knell in Luke’s head. They were taking him in. This was serious. After all the bad press such stories had received in the past, the military had grown very intolerant of any kind of sexual misconduct. A wink or a nod or even a smile could be termed sexual harassment and ruin a guy’s reputation, maybe his career. And here he was, accused of much worse. It didn’t matter that he was innocent. He’d look guilty. To anyone else, the chances of a second person coming in after he’d left Kalyna had to seem minute; he’d been with her until three in the morning. Beyond that, he was bigger and stronger than she was, which meant pub­lic support would remain firmly in her favor. This was the one situation where, even in America, a guy was guilty until proven innocent.

  He opened his mouth to plead his case. But a neighbor who’d spotted the security car was watching to see what would happen next, and Luke was reluctant to put on a show. Still hoping this was a terrible mistake that would be resolved quickly if he cooperated, he ducked back into the house and yanked on the rest of his clothes.

  He’d had a feeling Kalyna was bad news, but he’d dis­counted it. He hadn’t realized how much damage she could inflict if she set her mind to it. He’d never had rea­son to fear a woman. What could she do to him?