They caught the elevator up. Cece pushed the button to the floor they needed over and over again, as if that might speed things up. It didn’t, and as the doors whooshed closed, her grip tightened on her weapon. Her palms were sweaty, and she was breathing a bit rapidly.
Calm down, she cautioned herself. Just routine search and seizure.
She eyed the glowing button she’d just pressed…and her spine stiffened.
“What was Curt Tanner’s car number?” she blurted.
“Does anybody remember?” She stared at the man she’d met at Blain’s house. Mike was his name. “I remember seeing it in our research last night.”
“Forty-one,” Mike said. “It’s my age. You think—”
Cece nodded. “I do.”
Her two partners nodded in turn.
When the elevator doors opened, they headed for suite 41, calling down to Thurman for reinforcements.
Cece’s pulse pounded as Mike inserted the key. Right away she knew something was different. The previous suites they’d checked all had voices coming from the other side. Not so this one.
Mike glanced over at them, nodding just before he swung the door wide.
The first person Cece saw was Blain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“TAKE ANOTHER STEP and I’ll let this thing fly.”
Cece froze, her gaze moving left. Matty Tanner sat in the second row, her shape hidden from probing eyes below by the empty seats in front of her, a rocket launcher balanced on her shoulder.
Granny had a rocket launcher.
For a second the whole situation seemed ludicrous. The woman was almost seventy years old, and yet there she sat, holding the heavy tube on her shoulder like a parasol.
“Put it down,” Cece ordered, darting a glance at Blain.
“Shoot me and the last thing you’ll see is me pulling the trigger.”
“That would be a big mistake,” Cece said. Mike pressed up against the wall, one hand holding his weapon, the other a radio into which he softly spoke.
“Matty, in less than five minutes our helicopter will be here and a sniper will have you in his sights. He’ll take you out the moment he sees your finger tighten on the trigger.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to blow this joint before then.”
“Matty, don’t say that,” Blain said. “I’m telling you, this isn’t the way to get even with Barry Bidwell.”
“Bullshit,” Matty said. “This is the best damn way to make those bastards pay, and you know it. The fat man up in smoke. My heart rejoices at the thought.”
“Look, Matty,” Blain said. “Like I told you earlier, if Curt were alive, he’d disapprove.”
“If Curt were alive, we wouldn’t be here,” Matty said, her aim never wavering. “So you can thank that no-good bastard driver of yours for the little fireworks display I’m about to set off.”
“Randy is dead,” Blain said. “There’s no reason for anyone else to die.”
“Yes, there is,” Matty said. “There’s plenty of reason. Those bastards let my son’s killer go unpunished. Told everyone it was an accident. It wasn’t an accident. We both know that, and today that bastard Barry Bidwell will go up in flames like Randy did.”
And that was when it hit Cece. She met Blain’s eyes, knowing he’d reasoned it out, too. Probably before her. Matty hadn’t been trying to kill race fans, or Blain, or her. She’d been targeting Barry all along. Barry and the sport he was such a huge part of. Barry, the man who’d let her grandson’s killer go unpunished. Barry, who’d left Daytona to come to Atlanta, thanks to her machinations. Barry, who’d fallen right into her trap—he was scheduled to award the trophy personally in a public display of bravado.
Son of a bitch.
“Red flag the race,” Cece ordered Mike.
That got Matty’s attention. For the first time the old woman moved—well, flinched was more like it. She kept the rocket trained on the infield, but she cocked her head a bit to look at Cece. “Do that and I swear to God I’ll target the fans.”
“And the minute you move, I’ll put a bullet through your head.” But Cece motioned to Mike to wait a second nonetheless.
“Not before I squeeze the trigger.”
“There won’t be time to squeeze.” Cece tried to bluff. Actually, there would be. Shit, a sniper shot might cause the woman to flinch, to pull on the lever that would launch a rocket.
“Matty, please.” Blain tried again. “I came here to reason with you.”
“You came here to save your girlfriend’s life.”
“Cece can take care of herself,” Blain said.
“Then why didn’t you call her and tell her you knew where I was?”
“Because I was trying to save your life.”
Matty Tanner glanced at Blain. “My life’s over, Blain.”
“No it’s not, Matty.”
“You think I stand a chance of surviving prison?” the old woman said with a derisive snort. “C’mon, Blain, I always figured you for an intelligent man. You had shitty taste in drivers, but I never held that against you.”
Out of the corner of her eyes, Cece saw Mike motioning. “Sniper,” he mouthed. They had a man in position. Before the end of the race, Matty Tanner would be taken out…unless they could get her to surrender.
Footsteps sounded in the hall, but Cece didn’t look over her shoulder to see who’d arrived. If she moved, she might set Matty Turner off, and she didn’t want to risk that. Not yet.
“Look, Matty,” she said. “We understand why you did what you did. Hell, race fans all over celebrated the day you took Randy out.”
“Damn straight,” Matty agreed.
“The man was a putz. Huge ego, bad attitude, dirty driver.”
“You got that right.”
“But you’ve done what you set out to do. You took him out. It’s over. There’s no need to take this to another level.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Matty said. “Because just look at what’s happened so far. I took out a whole grandstand yesterday. An entire structure. And did it scare anybody off? No. Because the fans believed Bidwell’s lies—they believed the threat was over, believed the fat man would protect them. Well, I’m here today to prove that nobody’s safe, not even the president of the stock car racing association.”
“And when you’re taken out,” Cece said. “When fans hear you were killed seconds after you launched your rocket, do you think they’ll believe the threat is over then? Because it will be, Matty. You’ll be gone. The fans will realize that. They’ll come back.”
“Yeah, but the industry will suffer. Attendance will drop off. Revenue will go down. They’ll be made to pay, just as my daughter and I paid when Curt died—paid with our hearts.”
And what about your daughter? You going to leave her behind to absorb the fallout of your actions?” Cece asked.
“My daughter would be the first to tell me to pull the trigger.”
And that was when Cece realized they were fighting a lost cause. The woman didn’t care. She’d checked out. Cece had seen it before—serial killers who made last stands. Cult leaders who took their members out with them. Drug dealers who just didn’t care.
Blain must have realized it, too, because he started walking toward Matty.
“Don’t you come near me, Blain Sanders,” Matty said just as Cece was about to call out a warning.
“I’m coming near you because I can see from here that your arms are about to give out from the weight of that thing.”
“No, they’re not.”
“And because I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t mind blowing up a couple hundred innocent bystanders in your quest for revenge.”
“I don’t care,” Matty said. “At this point, I don’t care about anything.”
Cece glanced at Mike. Agent Ashton stood in his place.
“We’re taking her out,” he mouthed.
They had no choice. “Blain, do as she says,” Cece war
ned.
He didn’t listen.
“Listen to your girlfriend,” Matty said.
Agent Ashton began to count down with his fingers. Five…
“Put it down, Matty,” Blain warned.
Four.
“No.”
Three.
“I can see the thing shaking from here. You’re not going to make it until the end of the race.”
Two.
“Watch me.”
Blain lunged. Cece cried, “Abort, abort, abort,” into her radio at the same time she dove for Blain. But it happened. Glass shattered. Matty Tanner cried out. So did Cece when she hit Blain dead center. Pain burst through her injured shoulder.
The launcher!
Cece looked up from her sprawled position on the floor. Matty Tanner’s head lay against the back of the chair, motionless. But it was the launcher that caught her attention. It was sliding off her shoulder, tipping backward, Matty’s hand still on the lever. And as the thing tipped back, Cece knew instantly what would happen.
No!
She covered Blain, covered herself.
Pop!
A flash of heat. They should be burned. But they weren’t. She would remember later finding that odd. And then she heard noise. An odd sort of groaning that she thought might be Blain. She rolled off him, got to her hands and knees.
“Cece—”
Pain. Her back.
“Cece.”
It was the last word Cece heard.
“IT’S NOT GOOD,” Dr. Martin Washburn told Blain. “But it could be worse.”
“How bad is it?” Blain asked, trying to disguise the shaking of his hands by clenching them into fists.
“She broke the bottom two vertebrae. From what we can tell right now, it’s an incomplete paralysis probably caused by a contusion to the cord. She responds to stimuli, but she can’t move. The movement might come back, but I think you should prepare yourself for the worst.”
Dr. Washburn’s face blurred.
“You going to be okay?” the doctor asked.
No. Blain wasn’t okay. He gasped in a breath, tipped his head against the wall and struggled to retain control. It’d be okay. She hadn’t severed her spinal cord.
And all the while the doctor gazed at him, the look of compassion and sympathy on his face making the tears spill from Blain’s eyes.
She’d walk again. “She has to walk again,” he said aloud, trying to make them understand that they had to fix her. “Being an FBI agent is her life. If she can’t walk again…”
He let the words trail off.
“We’ll do the best we can,” Dr. Washburn said. “I wish I had better news. I really do.”
Blain put his head on his knees, just concentrating on breathing in, over and over again. The doctor slipped away as, a few doors down, Cece slept behind a door—an artificial sleep, brought on by the drugs and painkillers they’d given her.
“Blain,” a male voice said. He looked up and saw Agent Thurman. “What’d he say?”
“She broke her back,” he told the man.
“Will she walk again?”
“It’s too soon to tell,” Blain told him.
But Blain could see the fear in Thurman’s eyes. They’d both watched the launcher fire, had seen it hit the wall, severing a beam on its way out. The missile hadn’t exploded, but it might as well have as far as Cece was concerned. The damn beam had fallen right on top of her.
“She has to walk again,” he heard himself repeat.
“I don’t know,” Thurman said. “I really don’t know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CECE WOKE WITH THE WORST taste in her mouth. Must have been sleeping with my mouth open, she thought.
And then she remembered.
She tried to sit up.
And she couldn’t.
For a moment, she thought it was one of those really horrible dreams you had every once in a while when you couldn’t move. Your eyes opened, your mind raced, but nothing worked.
Only she could move her arms.
And when she did, she saw the IV strapped to one, saw the hospital ID bracelet. Then she registered other things—white curtains and blue vinyl chairs—furnishings that seemed obligatory for hospitals. In the left corner of the room was a door, closed, its aluminum handle catching a beam of light so that she had to squint for a second.
And then she saw Blain.
“Wha—?” But she never finished the question. In a flash she remembered. The racetrack. The launcher.
The pain.
She looked down. A cast encased her torso. She couldn’t move.
Horror made her heart pound. The frantic beep-beep-beep echoed on the heart monitor.
“Blain?” she moaned, the word part question, part panic as she tried to move her toes.
“Hey, Cece,” he said, grabbing her hand. She could feel that. Could feel his warm palm engulf her cold one. But she couldn’t feel anything below the cast.
“I can’t—” But she couldn’t finish.
“I know,” he said.
Maybe drugs? Had they sedated her somehow so she couldn’t feel…?
And then she saw the look in his eyes. No, what she saw was redness, and the shimmer of tears.
Oh, no…oh, God, no…
She tried to move her legs again. Tried so hard it sent spasms of pain up her back and into her shoulders.
“Don’t move,” he warned, his hand tightening, his other hand covering the first. “Cece, please. Don’t move. You’re injured.”
The beam. It had fallen.
On her back.
“How bad?” she asked, the sound coming from a long, long way away.
“Not bad,” he answered, his hand lifted to the side of her face. “You’ll be walking in no time.”
But she could tell he didn’t actually believe the words. She could tell by the way he all but prodded a smile onto his face, a smile that started to wobble. “Cece?” he asked.
But she turned her head away. That caused the world to spin, and Cece welcomed the darkness, welcomed it with a fervor that made her wish for oblivion to follow. It did.
SHE WOKE AGAIN a few hours later, and this time Blain pressed the call button immediately. By the time Cece’s eyes got more lucid, a nurse was already there, injecting a sedative into the IV. Within seconds Cece’s eyes went glassy, but she didn’t go completely under. Instead she stared at him, and Blain’s heart broke into a million little pieces.
“Permanent?” she asked in a groggy voice.
“They don’t know,” he said.
But she must have seen the fear in his eyes because she blinked.
“Cece, don’t think that way,” he said, squeezing the hand he’d never let go. “It’s too early to tell anything yet.” And his heart nearly broke all over again at the way she swallowed, at the way she gave him a brave half smile.
Oh, Lord, why’d this have to happen to you?
He almost started crying. Instead he gave her a brave smile, too.
“Hey, if you’d wanted some time off, you could have just asked instead of letting a beam fall on you.”
But the smile had started to wobble and Blain knew her brave heart was about to take a beating, knew the eyes filling with tears weren’t going to stop crying. Not now. Maybe not for a while.
And so he did what he’d done a hundred times in the past few days. He leaned forward and softly, gently kissed her. And as he did, Cece’s breathing changed. She started to cry. To be honest, they both did.
BLAIN INSISTED ON TAKING her home when it came time to leave. The dining room she’d once shared with four FBI agents became her bedroom. Ramps were put on the front door and back. Cece gained strength by wheeling herself around the lake, all the while reminding herself it could be worse. The accident could have happened in San Francisco, where she had no family and very few friends. What would she have done without Blain? Blain, who’d been such a rock. Blain, who couldn’t stare at her without pity, because
the truth of the matter was—she wasn’t getting better.
They’d talked about what had happened, talked about why he hadn’t called her to let her know where Matty Tanner was. He’d been trying to protect her, he’d said. Unspoken was the admission that he hadn’t done a very good job.
The only perk of her invalid condition was her new role as darling of the racing world. The first time a famous driver came by to visit her, Cece had been filled with awe. Too bad that awe had faded to embarrassment when she’d seen the pity in his eyes. She didn’t want to be pitied. She wanted to walk again, dammit. And so, while she appreciated the racing crowd’s support, she didn’t necessarily want it. All she wanted was to get on with her life.
So that’s what she tried to do in the weeks that followed, all the while ignoring the fear that Blain’s constant reassurances that he loved her stemmed from guilt. But that fear was nothing compared to the one that she might lose him.
They hired someone to help her—though she’d gotten good in recent weeks at taking care of herself—and had found a good therapist. That therapist had been preparing her for the worst. Actually, it was Cece who always pushed the issue. She needed to prepare herself for the chance that she’d never walk again.
Her one bright spot each week was Lance’s Monday visits. Blain’s driver always made her laugh, never failing to amuse her when he came by. She expected no different one sultry August night.
They were sitting on the back deck, a bug zapper doing its thing behind them. The sun had just sunk behind the lake so that the trees along the horizon looked like jagged inkblots, the sky above a conch-shell pink. It was Cece’s favorite time of day, a time when she could inhale the thick air and think about how much her life had changed…and how much she’d lost.
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