A Fine Specimen

by Lisa Marie Rice

  “Gotta go to the bathroom.” His voice came out thin and shaky. “Gotta barf.”

  The cop looked him up and down and made a big song and dance about getting up. “Okay,” he said, giving Ratso a shove toward the corridor. “Let’s go.”

  “Thanks.” Ratso kept his voice low and his eyes to the ground, the very picture of submission. Lieutenant Cruz’s door was wide open now. Ratso knew he had only seconds to make his move.

  He shuffled forward down the aisle between the desks, toward the corridor, keeping his head tucked low, eyes darting constantly, aware of the pig behind him with every fiber of his being.

  They were approaching the little cop party.

  With a swift look over his shoulder, he saw Cruz still in his office, talking to a big guy with graying red hair. In a minute he’d be in the squad room.

  Now!

  Lightning-fast, Ratso’s right hand snaked out and snatched Roscoe’s Glock from its holster while wrapping his left arm around the pretty blonde girl’s neck. He dug the barrel of the gun into her right temple.

  “Nobody move!” he shouted. “Or she gets one right through the head!”

  At first Alex couldn’t make any sense of what was happening. All he could see was a thick wall of blue backs. All of his officers were shouting “Freeze!” over and over, their voices raised over the sound of a hysterical man screaming. His officers had their weapons out.

  He pulled his own gun from his shoulder holster. Some dumb fuck was actually trying to shoot his way out of the cop shop. Alex smiled slowly.

  No way. Not while he was here.

  Alex inched forward, sideways so as to present as small a target as possible, gun held in both hands and pointed at the ceiling.

  “Put your guns down! Down! Or I’ll shoot! I swear I’ll shoot!” a man was screaming. “You’ll be cleaning her up with a spoon!”

  The officers dropped their arms and guns clattered to the floor. Several moved to the side—and Alex got a clear view of what was happening.

  His blood froze in his veins. The nausea of panic came at him with a sickening rush.

  Somehow Ratso had acquired a gun and he was holding it to Caitlin’s head. And he was choking her. Even from ten feet away, Alex could hear Caitlin wheezing, trying to bring air into her agonized lungs.

  Ratso was dragging her, almost a dead weight, toward the door. Caitlin clutched his arm, trying to pull it away from her throat.

  Caitlin saw Alex and her eyes widened in recognition. She gazed entreatingly at him, eyes huge in a pale, shocked face, fingers scratching at the wiry arm locked around her throat, cutting off the windpipe.

  Ratso was beyond feeling scratches. Sweat was pouring down his face as he moved backward, dragging Caitlin. He screamed at the officers over and over again. “Don’t move! Don’t nobody move or I’ll shoot. I swear I’ll shoot! Blow her brains out all over the wall!”

  Alex finally broke out of his paralysis. As a rookie cop, he’d faced down a three-hundred-pound biker high on angel dust. Three hundred pounds of violent craziness, wielding a knife. The biker had ended up facedown on the ground, cuffed. Alex hadn’t broken a sweat.

  He thought his childhood had inured him to fear. When you’ve faced death and degradation in your own family, what could scare you?

  He feared nobody and nothing. He’d thought.

  Right now he was so terrified he couldn’t breathe. Watching Ratso screw the muzzle into Caitlin’s temple made him shake with terror. The gun’s safety was off. Ratso was sweating so hard it looked like he’d just come out of a shower. His hands were slippery with sweat. Alex’s heart gave a huge thump of terror when he saw Ratso tighten his grip on the weapon, finger in the trigger guard.

  The gun had a four-pound pull, about the strength it would take to pull the tab on a can of beer. Nothing. A slip of his finger and the bullet would travel at twelve-hundred feet per second straight through Caitlin’s head, exiting in a spatter of bone and brain and blood so intense it would send up a pink mist, and Caitlin would be gone, forever.

  Ratso wanted her alive as a hostage, but he was scared and he wasn’t an operator. He’d always been a petty criminal at best. Right now the chances were very good that he’d shoot Caitlin by mistake. He’d never make it downstairs dragging her with him. He was growing more agitated and sweaty by the second.

  The instant he shot Caitlin, he’d be taken down by at least twelve shots. Suicide by cop.

  And Caitlin would be wiped off the face of the earth, as if she’d never existed. She’d crumple to the ground like a broken doll, bloody and torn. All that loveliness and light, the beauty and the good humor, the affection and softness…all of that gone, snuffed out like a candle.

  Alex had seen a lot as a cop. He knew exactly what the bullet would do, exactly what Caitlin’s lifeless body would look like.

  Like heartbreak.

  While Ratso and the officers screamed at each other, a blinding truth exploded in Alex’s chest, complete and whole. He didn’t have to think it through, it just was, a central fact of his life, as much a part of him as his hands and feet. As incontrovertible as the fact that he breathed and moved. That the sun rose in the east and set in the west.

  He loved Caitlin Summers.

  He loved her with all his heart. He had been only half a man, only half alive before she had come into his life. She had given him happiness and hope and the promise of love. If Ratso put a bullet through Caitlin’s brain, he would be putting a bullet through Alex’s heart at the same time.

  All that bullshit about not wanting a committed relationship was just that—bullshit. He’d spent the most miserable night of his life last night, in bed with Caitlin but not touching her. The anonymous, emotionless sex this morning—the kind of sex he’d had all his life—had nearly ripped his heart out. He had touched her as little as possible because the temptation to simply grab her, hold her tight, never let go, ask her to stay with him forever, had been so strong he’d had to grit his teeth to resist it. He’d been so terrified. Terrified of watching her go, terrified of asking her to stay.

  More bullshit. That wasn’t terrifying. This was terrifying, watching a man crazed with fear hold a gun to Caitlin’s head. Every cell in his body was locked down in dread and horror, making his fear of commitment of a few hours ago seem ridiculous.

  The pistol slipped in Ratso’s sweaty grip and he tightened his fingers. At the same time he tightened his arm around Caitlin’s neck. She struggled for air, lips already blue.

  “Easy, Ratso,” Alex murmured, moving unobtrusively forward. “You’re choking her. She won’t do you any good dead.”

  “Back off, Cruz!” Ratso shifted his grip and dug the rim of the barrel harder into Caitlin’s temple. “All of you back off! I want a car with a full tank of gas waiting for me downstairs. If I so much as sniff another car trailing me, I’ll shoot her in the head and dump her by the roadside. Is that clear?” He dug harder with the gun and Caitlin’s mouth opened in agony. Her eyes were starting a slow roll to the back of her head. Ratso’s chokehold would kill her before they made it downstairs. “Is that clear?” He trembled and sweated. “Huh?” he screamed. “Is that clear?”

  Alex didn’t dare look away from him to see what his men were doing. He stared into Ratso’s eyes, gauging. The instant he thought Ratso was going to shoot or that Caitlin was suffocating, he’d take the shot. A small hope was better than none.

  “You won’t get far, Ratso.” Alex knew his voice was calm and his face expressionless. Only he knew his heart was pounding. Only he knew how sick he was with fear. “And now we’ll have to add assault and kidnapping to the charges.”

  “I won’t be around!” Ratso gave off a hysterical, high-pitched giggle. “You won’t get me and Lopez won’t get me. I’ll disappear off the face of the earth. I should have done it days ago!”

  “Ratso, listen to me.” Alex took a chance and stepped forward casually. “You can’t—”

  “Get back!” Ratso screame
d, scrambling backward, pulling Caitlin with him. She was paper-white, feet scrabbling for purchase on the linoleum floor.

  Then time slowed down and events unfurled in a deadly, slow-motion dance. Alex knew there were people shouting but he heard nothing, saw nothing.

  The only thing he saw was Caitlin’s foot catching on a chair leg, her slow fall, Ratso’s grimace as he felt her weight sag in his arms, Caitlin’s leg caught between his, Ratso’s slow-motion fall to the floor…

  A gunshot sounded and time sped up again.

  Alex felt the blood drain from his body and wondered dimly how he could still be standing when his heart had stopped.

  The officers moved in a disciplined rush, weapons whisked from the floor and ready. They surrounded the area where Ratso and Caitlin had gone down. Alex couldn’t see anything except their backs and for a moment he was glad. For one more second, he would allow himself the thought of Caitlin alive. Alive, and not bloody and still on the squad-room floor. One more second and—

  The officers parted and, like a miracle, he saw Caitlin rise, torn, bloody, unspeakably beautiful.

  With a cry she ran toward him and he caught her, crushing her fiercely to him, his heart pounding so hard he thought it would pound its way out of his chest.

  “Alex!” Caitlin was crying, her arms wound tightly around his neck. She was trembling and sobbing. He didn’t even feel the tears coursing down his own cheeks until he noticed that he was wetting her hair. His weapon clattered to the floor and he didn’t know if his legs could bear their combined weight.

  “Hey, boss.” Kathy put a gentle hand on his shoulder. Her eyes were full of compassion. “Why don’t the two of you go into your office for a while?” She threw a contemptuous glance behind her. “Let us clean up the garbage.”

  Alex nodded blindly, picked Caitlin up in his arms and carried her into his office. He slammed the door shut with his foot and walked over to his chair. He sank down with Caitlin still in his arms. He didn’t know if he’d be capable of letting her go. Not yet. Not for maybe another hundred years.

  He caught her face between his hands. She was dead white, her cheeks still wet with tears. A trickle of blood ran down her right cheek from a shallow scratch.

  She had never looked more beautiful.

  He kissed her, wildly, crushing her to him as if to absorb her very essence into his skin. His hands speared her hair, ran over her shoulders, dug into her back. He kissed her endlessly, tasting her, reveling in the fact that she was alive, alive and with him.

  Forever.

  Alex lifted his head, cupping hers between his hands. “You’re not going anywhere, do you hear me?” he said fiercely. “You’re going to stay with me!” Caitlin nodded, eyes locked with his. “You’re going to call up that red-headed harpy and tell her you changed your mind about the apartment and you want to break the lease. If necessary we’ll pay a penalty. You’re going to tear up that lease and stay with me. Because I love you.” He gave her a little shake. “Is that clear?”

  Caitlin barely had time to whisper, “Yes, Alex,” and then his mouth descended on hers again.

  Alex’s chest swelled with an emotion that was so big and so new it took him a moment to recognize it as happiness. He lifted his mouth from Caitlin’s and laughed.

  “What?” She smiled up at him, eyes gleaming, lips rosy and slightly swollen. A little color had come back into her face. Her smudged glasses had slid to the end of her nose. “What’s so funny?”

  Alex carefully took her glasses off and placed them down on his desk. His eyes circled her beloved face and he knew that the second half of his life, the better half, had begun.

  He sighed theatrically. “I’ve just realized that I’m going to have to rent two tuxes for our wedding. One for me to get married in and one for you to spill the cake on.”

  Epilogue

  Grant Falls

  Captain Ray Avery put down the phone with an enormous grin on his face.

  He looked at the beautiful woman sharing his bed. She blinked and opened her eyes, the pale blue of a summer sky. Her glorious golden hair, streaked with silver, flowed over her shoulders. “Who was that, darling?” she asked sleepily.

  He put his arms around her and nuzzled her neck. He would never tire of holding her in his arms. He blessed the day he’d met Linda Summers, a fellow professor at St. Mary’s. She was the love he’d been looking for all his life. He pulled away and smiled at her. She was in her fifties and she was the most beautiful woman in the world. In his eyes, she grew more beautiful every day.

  Ray envied Alex the years he was going to spend with her daughter, Caitlin. He wished he’d had them with Linda.

  From the moment he’d met Linda’s daughter, he’d known she would be perfect for the man he loved like a son. And now it looked as if he’d been proven right.

  “That was Alex,” he said and winked.

  The sleepiness disappeared. Linda’s smile broadened. “And?”

  “And…our plan worked.” Ray brought her hand to his lips. “What would you say, me darlin’, to a double wedding?”

  The End

  About Lisa Marie Rice

  Lisa Marie Rice is eternally 30 years old and will never age. She is tall and willowy and beautiful. Men drop at her feet like ripe pears. She has won every major book prize in the world. She is a black belt with advanced degrees in archaeology, nuclear physics and Tibetan literature. She is a concert pianist. Did I mention the Nobel?

  Of course, Lisa Marie Rice is a virtual woman and exists only at the keyboard when writing erotic romance. She disappears when the monitor winks off.

  Lisa Marie welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email addresses on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.

  Tell Us What You Think

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  Also by Lisa Marie Rice

  Christmas Angel

  Midnight 1: Midnight Man

  Midnight 2: Midnight Run

  Midnight 3: Midnight Angel

  The Italian

  Print books by Lisa Marie Rice

  A Fine Specimen

  Midnight 1: Midnight Man

  Midnight 2: Midnight Run

  Midnight 3: Midnight Angel

  Port of Paradise

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing

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  A Fine Specimen

  ISBN 9781419922077

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  A Fine Specimen Copyright © 2009 Lisa Marie Rice

  Edited by Kelli Collins

  Cover design by Syneca

  Cover photography by conrado/shutterstock.com

  Electronic book publication March 2009

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