Her Last Chance

by Toni Anderson

  Last time she’d seen him, she’d acted like a brat and told him she couldn’t stand him. He’d helped rescue her from a hostage situation, and had feigned ignorance to protect her best friend Elizabeth Ward from being arrested. Instead of thanking him, she’d been a bitch. And she’d spent every day since regretting her actions.

  Butterflies the size of vultures took flight in her stomach. Marshall Hayes looked as slick as ever, but thinner, the lines around his mouth cut sharper, deeper. His hazel eyes pinned her and for a moment the relief she saw there staggered her. But then the cold hard mask of law enforcement slammed down over his features and he blanked his expression until she wasn’t sure of anything anymore, except someone had tried to kill her.

  She swayed slightly, her tongue welded to the roof of her mouth. She couldn’t swallow. Panic began to build and she started to tremble. She’d tried to lock her reactions up inside, needed to survive the police interview so she could get the hell out of NYC. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d gone on the lam.

  “I came to see Ms. Maxwell.” Marsh was speaking to the tall fed, Special Agent Dickwad, though his eyes never left hers. The second fed, the cute one whose name she’d already forgotten, hovered on the stairs beside her trying to persuade her to come down to FBI HQ to make a statement.

  She’d rather stick needles in her eyes.

  “You two know each other?” asked Special Agent Dickwad.

  Marsh smiled. She looked at his calm features and envied his cool authority. Marshall Hayes drew power around him like Superman wore a cloak. Arrogance and integrity shone from the lean lines of his face—Mr. By-the-Book. But he was more than that. Much more.

  He returned her gaze unflinchingly, those intense eyes looking deep inside her soul as if searching for something…

  What had the cop asked? Did they know each other? Reacting instinctively, knowing she’d shatter if Marsh showed her the slightest kindness, Josie laughed, wincing inwardly at the brittleness of the sound.

  “Oh, we know each other, all right.” She flashed a suggestive smile, knowing the effect it had on most men. Except Marsh. He was immune to her charms, suspicious of anything except her barbed tongue.

  The NY detective grinned, spreading his moustache in a wide arc. Special Agent Dickwad colored up and fed-number-two coughed up his sleeve. Marsh stared at her as if she were a small child whom he was patiently waiting to behave. Anger rose inside her, frustration and fear coalescing into anger. Anger was good. Sure beat the hell out of being scared out of her tiny mind.

  “You want the keys to your handcuffs back, Hayes?” Propping one hand suggestively on her hip, she grinned at him, super-confident, super-sexy. The last thing she expected was the savage flash of anger that flared in his eyes. Involuntarily she took a step back, and banged her heel on a riser.

  “Cut the bullshit, Josephine. Tell me what happened.”

  Alarm bells jangled as her survival instincts took over. She shivered. He was more dangerous than most people realized. She’d never forgotten that about him. Had never forgiven him for not falling for her act.

  “I don’t think Ms. Maxwell knows much, sir,” Special Agent Dickwad whispered in an undertone that suggested she was a simpleton. As she’d spent several hours fostering that image, it shouldn’t annoy her so damn much.

  The fed’s manner turned even more obsequious and she rolled her eyes. “The victim—a woman called Angela Morelli—was found dead in the ground floor apartment. We believe Ms. Maxwell disturbed the killer as he was leaving the building. Maybe he figured he’d risk taking a second vic, but one of the neighbors came home and raised the alarm.”

  She sucked in shallow little breaths to hide her distress, but was dismayed when tears blurred her vision. A woman had died here tonight and this guy spoke like she was just another data point.

  She used both hands on the banister for support and closed her eyes. Is it my fault? If she hadn’t been back late from her appointment would he have left Angela Morelli alone? Except, being an artist, she didn’t have a fixed schedule. The bastard had been hiding in the stairwell waiting to ambush her, but he’d already butchered Angela in cold blood.

  She wanted to run and hide but everywhere she turned there was someone in her face, pushing at her for answers she refused to give. She sensed Marsh standing close. After all these months she still recognized his scent; his heat. Her mouth went dry and her heartbeat raced. She opened her eyes, nerves exploding, all her panic buttons screaming to get the hell away from him because he was one of the few people with the power to hurt her.

  “You fought him off? This experienced serial killer?” Marsh’s hazel eyes swept over her with disdain. “With these?” He poked her bicep and she jumped.

  Rubbing her arm, she pinched her lips over words too dangerous to say. Anger boiled beneath the surface of her skin, circling like a shark looking for a kill. She was stronger than she looked and the sonofabitch knew it. Never the model of restraint or propriety he was trying to goad her into making another mistake. They had too much shared history for her to con him and she’d treated him too badly for him to swallow a single word she said.

  She should never have drugged him all those months ago. She’d planned to kiss him until he passed out and she could escape, but that plan had blown up in her face. They’d had sex, once, blisteringly hot sex. But he hadn’t seen her naked, didn’t know the secrets carved into her skin. No one knew except the man with the knife.

  “Leave me alone.”

  Detective Cochrane sniggered. The two feds supposedly running the show looked at each other with raised brows and a great big question mark. Marsh went to touch her again, but she flinched and one side of his mouth twitched, telling her how much she’d given away with that one small movement.

  Backing up a step, she addressed the second fed, who’d questioned her in the apartment. “I’ve told you everything I know. I’m done here.”

  Marsh followed. “Is that right?”

  His eyes were so intense they glowed. He grabbed her around the waist and she gasped in shock at the contact. Somehow he turned her around in his arms, slid her effortlessly in front of him like she weighed nothing at all, her feet dangling uselessly over the step.

  “Get off me!” She struggled, kicking and hitting, but her fists bounced off him with no real effect. His scent enveloped her, crisp expensive cologne over strong healthy male. The sensation of his hands burning a familiar path over her skin excited and infuriated her all at the same time. But after what she’d been through tonight, the last thing she wanted was some guy manhandling her like a freaking doll.

  Through her fury she watched the stunned expressions of the men below her. Then she realized Marsh was lifting her sweater.

  No. No. No. Dammit!

  She panicked, grabbed onto his forearms, felt the strength in those muscles. She twisted harder, but his arms were a vise, holding her to him.

  Cold air caressed bare skin for the second time that night. His arm shielded her nudity, one hand cupping her breast like it belonged there. His absolute determination burned through her struggles and she went rigid with fury.

  So much for honor and integrity.

  “Did you mention these, Josephine?” Anger brushed the shell of her ear.

  She didn’t need to look down to see the long silver scars that lined her abdomen in diagonal crosses. Rage heated until it was a white-hot mist as Marsh exposed her biggest secret—her greatest shame—to the whole world. The shocked expressions on the cop and feds’ faces should have been comical, but the obvious repugnance and pity she saw there made her stop fighting.

  “You have blood on you, miss.” Detective Cochrane’s eyes were troubled now and Marsh’s grip tightened, driving the air from her lungs.

  “It’s nothing.” She hadn’t had time to clean up after that sonofabitch had attacked her, but she hadn’t told the cops that. She hadn’t told them that he’d hurt her or what he’d said. She looked over her shoulder into Mar
sh’s grim, unsmiling face. “Let go of me or I’ll rip out your fucking throat.”

  Fire lit his eyes, but his voice was soft. “You don’t scare me, Josephine. At least, not that way.”

  Marsh lowered her to the stair, held her securely while she regained her balance and jerked her sweater back into place. Fury and pride demanded she hurt the bastard, but when she turned to face him, he showed an impressive display of psychic ability, and took a step away.

  Tears swam in her eyes. She bit her lip. How did he know about the scars? Despite his badge, she’d never doubted his almost overbearing sense of honor.

  Now she wasn’t so sure.

  “Let’s go.” Special Agent Dickwad grabbed her arm like he’d solved the case and hustled her toward the door.

  Jerking out of the idiot’s painful grip, she glared over her shoulder about to curse Marshall Hayes with every foul word she’d ever learned, but her anger evaporated as quickly as it had come. Something about his haunted expression tore at her. He looked like she felt—as if he’d been in a fight for his life and had barely escaped alive.

  ***

  His toes tingled painfully with cold. Transferring his weight from one foot to the other helped, but if the cops didn’t give a statement soon, he was leaving. Job or no freaking job.

  A cup of Starbucks helped ward off the chill. He sipped the creamy sweet brew and noted it too was beginning to cool. He was too old for this crap. Twenty years on the job and the crime-beat still sucked.

  Nelson Landry glanced around the crowd, noticed small huddled groups whose breath rose as a cloud of steam through the sodium vapor of the streetlights. They reckoned serial killers got off watching the action from the sidelines. He peered closer. Were any of these guys the Blade Hunter? His gaze ran over the figures but no one stood out as a sadistic psycho and he grew bored looking at those young eager faces.

  The guy to his right looked respectable enough, but who knew what that overcoat hid or what the guy’s fingers were jangling deep in his pockets. Nelson huffed out a laugh at the image he’d conjured. God help him, he’d been doing this way too long.

  Cops and feds began pouring out of the building like ants on a mission. Stretching his five-foot-five frame to the limit, Nelson peered past an NBC cameraman’s shoulder. Cops were loading up cars and trucks with evidence bags and equipment. The body was long gone.

  One of the feds was coming across the street to give a statement. Heaving a sigh of relief, Nelson took the digital recorder out of his pocket, shifted his weight, thankful he’d soon be in the comfort of his own bed. The G-man moved like he had a poker shoved up his ass, almost on tiptoes. Out of the corner of his eye, Nelson spotted a blonde being escorted to a black Lincoln sedan.

  Who the hell is that? A real looker. A model or film star he wouldn’t wonder.

  “Check out the list of residents,” he spoke into his voice recorder and raised his Nikon with his other hand, reeling off a few shots of the fed. Then he turned the camera toward the blonde, and centered the shot through the viewfinder. One of the men walking beside the woman made his lips draw back over his teeth.

  SAC Marshall Hayes.

  The man who’d gotten him busted back down to the crime-beat only a couple of years from retirement, because he’d written an article about a cover up over the death of some curator from the Museum of Modern Art.

  Asshole.

  The guy worked art fraud, so what the hell was he doing at a murder scene? On autopilot, Nelson thrust his recorder toward the guy giving the official statement and watched the man who’d wrecked his life lean up-close and personal to the blonde before climbing into a Beemer parked further along the street and speeding away.

  Marshall Hayes hated the press. Loved making their lives as difficult as possible. The world clicked into place in a serendipitous moment and Nelson grinned. He was about to return the favor.

  Chapter Three

  ________________

  Back at the FBI New York field office, Marsh watched the interview through the one-way mirror. Josephine flashed an award-winning smile and sipped delicately from a cup of coffee Special Agent Sam Walker had fetched her—in a china cup, no less.

  She had that effect on men.

  Long blond hair was tied into a messy knot on top of her head. Her lips were pink and sweetly bowed, her face pretty enough to make you believe any lie you told yourself to justify those unprofessional thoughts about getting her naked.

  He hadn’t realized exactly how badly he’d missed the irrational, foul-mouthed vixen until he’d seen her again. And it was galling to know that this woman, who loathed him with a passion, was the only one he wanted in his bed.

  He rubbed the muscles jammed tight in his neck.

  “So why didn’t you mention that this man cut you?” Walker asked, placing a hand on her elbow, trying to inspire trust. Mr. Benevolent. Playing good cop to Agent Nicholl’s scowling bad cop.

  Studying her closely, Marsh saw Josephine freeze for that fraction of a second before she laughed self-deprecatingly and forced herself to relax. She put both hands flat on the table in front of her, probably to stop her body language giving her away when she lied her ass off.

  If they thought they were going to get anything out of her this way, they were as dumb as she made herself look.

  “I didn’t even know he’d cut me, until Marsh, Agent Hayes…” Her voice grew husky and she glanced at the mirror, “…flashed you all like that.”

  Color crept into her cheeks and he frowned. Everything about Josephine’s façade was highly polished deceit except her embarrassment about those scars. They weren’t pretty, but unfortunately, they weren’t a turn off either.

  His cell phone buzzed against his hipbone.

  “Dancer, what have you got for me?” God help him, he still had an art-theft investigation to run.

  “Philip and Gloria Faraday are siblings. Born in England,” Dancer reeled off. “Parents deceased. No police record, no suspicion of dealing under the table.” He gave a big yawn that reminded Marsh it was well after midnight.

  The one-way glass was smeared with handprints and the effect was like looking through a soft focus lens. Josephine made a big show of checking her statement. Sentence by sentence as the agents quizzed her. Walker leaned over her like some proprietary wolf and Marsh gritted his teeth.

  Dancer carried on. “The lab agreed to send a crime scene tech to us because of the unusual circumstances. Once they’re done, Aiden can examine it for authenticity and get the paint analyzed. There aren’t any field agents available to help out at the gallery. The SAC said tonight’s homicide got priority.”

  Marsh had no problem with that. Human life was more important than art or money and this case had been cold for years. “Go back to the hotel and get some sleep. I’ll meet you at the gallery at nine to interview the Faradays again. See if we can shake something coherent out of Gloria this time.”

  “Is it true this serial killer attacked Josephine Maxwell?” Dancer asked.

  Marsh sighed. They’d worked together for years and Steve Dancer knew him better than anyone. Dancer also knew Marsh and Josephine had shared one night of sex that had led to deep-seated mistrust on both sides.

  “Yeah. He killed another woman in her apartment building, and then attacked Josephine in the lobby. Lucky for her they were interrupted and he fled the scene.”

  Lucky…

  Clamping his molars together, Marsh fought the urge to retch. The bastard had actually cut her; he’d had his hands on her flesh and it was a miracle she wasn’t dead.

  Shit.

  There was a long beat of silence on the other end of the line.

  “But how did you know? In the bullpen…” Dancer cleared his throat. “I mean the way you ran out of here when you saw those pictures…how did you know?” One of Dancer’s greatest strengths was uncovering classified information, but Marsh had never told anyone about Josephine’s scars. Tomorrow, he’d be lucky if they weren’t national he
adlines.

  So what difference did it make if he told Dancer?

  She’d hate him, but then she already hated him.

  “This doesn’t go anywhere else. Josephine was knifed as a kid. Cut up bad enough that the cops didn’t think she’d make it.” Marsh closed his eyes against the graphic images still engraved on his memory from the photographs he’d seen. “I had that evidence file copied to me when we were looking for Elizabeth.”

  He’d also seen Josephine’s scars in the flesh when he’d drugged her and injected a tiny transmitter below her shoulder blade. He’d used her to track Elizabeth Ward, her best friend, and his undercover agent who’d gone missing last spring. Josephine didn’t know about the transmitter and he’d do his damnedest to make sure she never found out. Their relationship had taken an unexpected turn when she’d used those same tranqs on him, with startling consequences for both of them.

  “She has the same pattern of scars the murder victims have.”

  Dancer was silent, though Marsh heard the other man pulling all the threads together and forming an unbreakable weave. “So you think this is the same guy?”

  “Maybe, I don’t know. Josephine isn’t talking.” Switching tracks, Marsh asked, “Have you notified Admiral Chambers we found his painting yet?” Another political string-puller, his father’s buddy was going to be delighted they’d finally found that piece. Especially if experts reappraised it as a Vermeer.

  “I figured you’d do it.” Dancer’s tone turned hopeful.

  Normally, Marsh would have called the admiral immediately, but Josephine’s safety was more important than anything else. Through the window, he watched her smile get more strained. The grip on her pen was so tight the tips of her fingers were bloodless.

  His own fingers tightened around the phone because he knew whatever she was writing down wasn’t the whole story. Josephine had a problem with telling the truth. Hell, maybe they both did. “You let him know ASAP.”