At Close Range

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  But if there was one thing he knew, it was that Cynthia…Amanda would protect her son at all costs.

  She’d once told him she’d do anything for Joseph. He got that now.

  She’d been warning him.

  “No sign of them.” Brian heard the shout and couldn’t believe what was happening. An entire state of trained officers and one woman manages to get away with a hostage and small child in tow.

  And then it dawned on him. Amanda Blake wasn’t magic. She was just a very smart woman. Smart enough to know that the best way to escape was to stay right where she was. While the hunters looked in the distance, she was under their noses. In plain sight. At close range.

  It was her standard MO. She’d done it every time. Living with one of Bobby’s followers for an entire year, right under her hunter’s nose. Living with Brian while she framed him for murder.

  The ditch by the side of the road was deep. Officers had shined lights up and down it, but unless the beam touched exactly where the bodies lay hidden, they wouldn’t have been seen. No one expected them to be there.

  And there was a cactus bush that, if one was alert enough to move at the right moments, would easily hide two women and a child.

  A child who’d been trained to keep silent. And a woman who, even injured and threatened, was strong enough, savvy enough, to stay alive.

  They could be there, just a couple of feet from him, and be overlooked.

  No one would expect a fleeing person to be so stupid as not to run.

  He crept closer to the Lexus—coming in on an angle to get a closer look at the ditch behind the bush, while the uniformed masses spread out through the desert on either side of the road. They were all so busy doing their jobs, no one seemed to notice him standing there. And he didn’t dare alert them.

  If Amanda knew she was trapped, she might do something crazy. Like shoot Hannah.

  There was no movement in the ditch. No breath of air to touch a branch of the bush, and no insects. No one gave him any hints. But Brian knew they were there.

  Turning his back, he gazed at the car, his ears tuning out the chase around him, focusing only on the space behind him. If he heard the slightest sound…

  He could hardly see for the flashing bulbs from all the cop cars in the area. But he took a casual step backward. And then another.

  His heart calm, frozen, he thought about getting Angelo’s attention, warning someone, but knew he couldn’t. Doing that would tip off his target, as well. Staring at the ground now, praying for night vision that would allow him to distinguish shadows, he almost stepped on Joseph’s hand.

  He stopped. Crossed his arms over his chest. Gazed out at the desert beside him. At the cars in front of him. For a full minute he didn’t move. He couldn’t give away that he’d found them.

  Somehow he had to figure out which body behind him was Hannah’s. He was only going to get one chance. Amanda would be moving soon, making them move, probably crawling through the ditch to places that had already been searched. And then away.

  Hell, in this darkness, she could make a run for it, stopping whenever a spotlight came near, and still get away.

  An hour’s walk and they could be over the border.

  He would have no second tries.

  It took several minutes, but he finally saw shapes in his peripheral vision. So faint, he might have imagined it. But he knew he hadn’t. There were three bodies. Hannah would be the one on the end. Next to the bigger body in the middle.

  She was just to his left. About a foot, if he calculated correctly.

  And he couldn’t be wrong, or Hannah would very likely end up dead. Or with a gun to her head as Amanda used her hostage to force them to let her go.

  That was why she’d taken Hannah to begin with.

  William Horne had told them what little bit he knew as soon as he’d seen Amanda get in Hannah’s car that afternoon—his sign that she was done with him. Brian wanted to sympathize with the guy, with the suffering he’d been through as he was forced to hurt the woman he loved in exchange for his son’s life, but he couldn’t.

  The bastard made him sick.

  Unfortunately it had taken half an hour for William to get through to Angelo. Amanda had warned him that if he made any calls, she’d kill Hannah on the spot. Thank God the man had finally decided not to listen.

  And it had taken them another two minutes to get her cell phone number and track it.

  Voices were growing closer. The officers were coming back.

  His guess was, with Joseph’s hand just to the right of him, and Hannah to the left of Joseph, Amanda was directly behind him, next to her son, but keeping her hostage with her as well.

  Light beams from the officers in the desert were growing closer. They’d be calling to him soon. Bringing attention to where he stood. Causing Amanda to act.

  He was out of time.

  Unarmed, untrained, Brian did the only thing he could think of. Like the games of trust he’d played as a kid, he fell backward, stiff as a board, aiming at the body that was most likely armed.

  If a bullet shot through him, so be it. That meant it didn’t hit Hannah.

  “Can I go home now?”

  It was three o’clock in the morning and Brian opened his eyes when Hannah sat up among white sheets and beeping machines in the hospital emergency room. “I feel better. I want to go home.”

  “Lay down, or I’ll lay you down,” he grumbled from the chair beside her bed. The woman would be the death of him yet.

  “It’s true what they say, you know.” Somehow amusement filtered through her exhaustion.

  “What is?”

  “Doctors make lousy patients.”

  “Yeah, well, we make pretty good bodyguards so I wouldn’t complain if I were you.”

  The hospital staff had talked about admitting both of them for the night, but Brian intended to sleep in his own bed.

  With Hannah.

  Just as soon as the CAT scan came back and he could be certain there was no dangerous swelling in her brain.

  They’d already put five stitches in the cut on the side of her head, compliments of Amanda’s pistol.

  His broken wrist was set. He’d be sore in the morning, having held Amanda down by sheer force of will until Angelo got to them, but there was nothing wrong with him that a shower, his bed and, mostly, the woman he loved couldn’t cure.

  With that thought, the pain medication they’d slipped in Brian’s IV took effect and he fell asleep.

  “Let’s go, cowboy.”

  Dizzy, leaning against the back of the bed in which she sat, Hannah still managed a smile as she watched Susan help the nurse get a very sleepy Brian out of the hospital lounger and into the wheelchair that would take him out to her JA’s car.

  “You sure I can’t talk you two into staying here tonight?” Dr. Anita Lansing, their emergency room physician, asked from the door.

  “Uh-uh,” Hannah croaked. “As you’ve said, there’s nothing wrong with either of us that a good rest won’t cure, and trust me, Doctor, we’ll sleep much better at home than we would here.”

  It was the longest sentence she’d managed all night.

  “And besides,” Susan said, coming over to gently help Hannah into the chair that had been waiting for her. “I’d hate to be you if Dr. Hampton woke up and found himself here after giving such express orders to be removed from the premises at once.”

  It was only one of the things that Brian had said in the past hour as the medication he’d been given kicked in. The nicest thing.

  And while Hannah knew that narcotics had powerful effects on people, she also knew that Brian was suffering, as she was, from burnout. The fight to survive had been exhausting.

  The past weeks had changed them both.

  They had a lot of healing to do.

  But she also knew that they’d be doing it together.

  Forever.

  From that point forward she and Brian would walk side by side, for the rest of
their lives.

  “Ready, Judge?”

  “Ready,” Hannah said, and then put her foot down to stop the chair from moving.

  “I…Susan, I…” She and Brian weren’t the only ones who had healing to do. She had a very dear and loyal employee, a friend, whom she’d hurt badly.

  Perhaps irreparably?

  “Shh, Judge. Don’t. I understand.”

  “I…”

  “Please, don’t say anything. You were in an impossible situation. Scared out of your wits. Forced to choose between your boyfriend and an employee…”

  “You were never just an employee.”

  Susan knelt by the chair, looking Hannah straight in the eye. “I’d have made the same choice, Judge.”

  Hannah had never been at such a loss for words and felt tears of frustration, grief and sorrow fill her eyes.

  “Stop,” Susan said, wiping away the tears before they trailed down her face. “You called me tonight,” she said softly. “You have other judge friends, lawyer friends, and you called me to come get you. That’s all I needed.”

  Nodding, Hannah smiled and squeezed her assistant’s hand.

  “Oh, and one other thing,” Susan added, an achingly familiar sparkle in her eye.

  “What’s that?”

  “My job?”

  “That’s a given,” Hannah told the young woman, looking for the first time to the immediate future beyond Brian’s bed.

  But she thought about the future as Susan wheeled her out into the predawn light and helped her into the car. She thought about it as her assistant walked behind her and Brian as they entered his house, as Susan saw them settled in Brian’s bedroom.

  She thought about it as Susan insisted she’d spend the night on the couch.

  And after her best friend who’d somehow become the man of her dreams pulled her into his arms and fell asleep kissing her good-night, she thought some more.

  The world was always going to carry some darkness.

  But the world also held love. And hope. Kindness. Susans.

  And Lilas. The nurse had called Brian’s cell phone the night before, after seeing the news. She was as eager to get back to work as Brian was to have her.

  And for Hannah, there was Brian.

  Would they marry? Or continue as best friends, supporting each other, but never quite joining completely?

  Would she ever have another child?

  Would she ever know the magnitude of love she’d seen shining in Amanda’s eyes as she lay dying of Boyd’s gunshot wound on the side of the road, using her last breath to tell her son that he was a good boy and she loved him very much?

  Hannah didn’t know.

  But she hoped so.

  Epilogue

  T he room held a hundred people, and every chair was filled. Arizona’s governor was there. As was the attorney general. And the immediate past attorney general. And the one before her, too. Every senator in the state had arrived, including George Moss, who was rumored to be retiring after his term ended next year. Representatives from neighboring states were there. Judges filled in the peripheral seats. Among them was William Horne, there at Hannah’s invitation. She would never forgive him for Callie’s death, but she could partially sympathize with the motivation behind his hideous act.

  A parent would do anything to save his child.

  Just when the buzzing of the crowd seemed deafening, Supreme Court Justice Adam Sammon stood at the dais at the front of the room.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re glad you could all be here today for this very unusual but happy occasion. We debated over the order of today’s program, but decided, since judge swearing-in ceremonies are boring to the young, and to the young at heart…” he paused while laughter erupted “…to get that over with first.”

  He read. Others read. A couple of people spoke. And then Hannah Montgomery was asked to join the Supreme Court Justice on the dais.

  He asked her to raise her right hand. And to take the oaths he administered. And then, finally, Brian heard the words he’d been waiting for, mostly because he knew how badly Hannah needed to hear them.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, by the power vested in me by this great state of Arizona, I present to you our newest Supreme Court Justice, Hannah Montgomery Hampton.”

  Hannah stepped up to the microphone, but Brian couldn’t hear a word she said over the thundering applause. He didn’t need to. She was looking straight at him, and the promise, the determination, the love in her eyes told him all he needed to know.

  This new job came with risks. She’d be in the limelight now. There could be more threats.

  But life was risky. A car accident could take her from him tomorrow. Or him from her.

  What life would never take from either of them was the love they felt for each other.

  That was going to see them into eternity.

  “And now, on to the second part of today’s program,” Justice Sammon said and called Brian up to join his wife at the front of the room. Looking to his left, the judge motioned to someone off to the side. A door opened. And Susan came in, holding Joseph’s hand.

  Hannah’s lips trembled as she watched the nearly five-year-old boy, dressed in the tux he’d chosen for this most special occasion, march with his head held high to join her and Brian.

  And a few minutes later, she didn’t even notice the tears of joy that streamed down her face as Justice Sammon changed Joseph’s last name to Hampton and made her and Brian the proud parents of the most amazing little boy.

  The Sun News caught it all, picture after picture, word for word. And ran a special story later that week. A tribute to the good people in the world. To love.

  And to happy endings.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-2484-5

  AT CLOSE RANGE

  Copyright © 2008 by Tara Taylor Quinn.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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