The guard walked in front of them down a wide hallway lined with doors spaced at even intervals. Other than the concrete floor and walls and dim sconce lighting, this could be a regular office building.
“Here we are,” the guard said. “Do you want to go in alone, or shall I accompany you?”
“Alone,” Markus said quickly. “You first, Yvette.”
The guard threw open the door, and complete darkness was all she saw. Markus jabbed her side with the pistol and gestured with his head for her to reach for, presumably, a light switch.
Everything happened all at once.
She reached with both hands for the wall, Markus shoved her inside and then the guard jumped for Markus. She stumbled and fell as the door slammed shut behind her, landing on her knees and then pitching forward. She rolled and hit the floor with her right shoulder, disoriented.
Markus swore violently in the complete darkness, and she rolled away from the sound of his voice hastily. The light switched on, and she was in a small room, perhaps six feet wide and maybe ten feet long. A single table stood in the center of the room and she lay curled up next to one of its legs. Markus was pointing his pistol at the door with both hands.
She grabbed the table leg in both hands and hoisted herself to her feet. She stared at the contents of the table. It was covered in tall stacks of cash, bundled into rubber-banded packets of twenties and hundreds. She guessed at a glance that at least a couple of million dollars was stacked there. One corner of the table held two passports with New Zealand covers, and an assortment of jewelry—a couple of diamond rings, a gaudy gold watch, a necklace with an impressive emerald in it and a tangle of other pieces.
Markus tossed the duffel bag at her. “Put everything in that.”
She commenced awkwardly shoveling the cash off the table into the big bag as Markus pressed his ear to the door. He swore aloud at whatever he heard.
“Okay. Here’s how this is going to go down. You and I are walking out to the parking lot together and getting in my car. You’re driving me to the airport, where I’m going to get on a charter plane that’s waiting for me. If you don’t mess this up, maybe you get to live. Otherwise, I’ll blow your head off.”
Not while she was driving the car, he wouldn’t. If she was incapacitated, she would crash the car, he wouldn’t get to the airport and he might get hurt. Once they reached the airport, though, that was another story.
Shoving her in front of him, he forced her to crack open the unit’s door a few millimeters. “I’m coming out!” he shouted. “Any funny business, and the girl is dead!”
“Understood,” a familiar voice called out.
Reese? He was out there? A wash of warmth went through her trembling body.
“Open the door wider,” Markus ordered, pressing his pistol to the back of her head. The barrel was hard and cold against her skull.
Nervously, she did so, praying there wasn’t a hair trigger on his weapon. One slip of his finger, and she would be dead. Of course, it was also possible the snipers outside would accidentally take her out in the course of trying to stop Markus from leaving.
“I’m coming out first,” she called. Her ad-lib ticked off Markus, who jabbed her neck painfully with the weapon.
“Let’s go,” he snapped, shoving her forward.
The hallway was lined with men in full tactical gear. Kansas City SWAT, if she had to guess. All of their weapons were trained in her and Markus’s direction, and it was the scariest sight she’d ever seen. All those hard, emotionless faces pressed against eye sights, staring back at her. As she’d suspected, Reese had called in all the law enforcement in this part of the country.
“All of you, stay in front of me,” Markus ordered.
It was a slow procession, waiting for the various tactical officers to move ahead of them toward the exit in an ever-increasing crowd of black uniforms and weapons. The parade spilled outside, and Markus’s car had been repositioned at the side door.
She slid across the passenger seat with Markus’s pistol pressed to her neck, just below her right ear. She crawled awkwardly over the center console, and lowered herself carefully into the driver’s seat of Markus’s car while he climbed in after her, never taking the pistol’s aim off her. He seemed to know that the second he gave all those cops outside even the slightest opening, one of them would take him down. He slouched down below the level of the windows as she started the car, his shoulder against her side and his pistol still maddeningly aimed at her head, now pointing up at her jaw from underneath. She knew all too well that would be a lethal angle from which to take a bullet.
An escort of police patrol cars led her out of the parking lot slowly and drove toward an airport. Their lights flashed, but blessedly, their sirens were silenced. She counted four police cruisers in front of her and a dozen or more trailing behind in a slow-motion parade of flashing lights. She didn’t see the big SWAT vans, but she suspected they’d gone another route to the airport, racing to get there and get set up before she arrived. The cop cars in front of her drove well under the speed limit, lending credence to the idea of giving the tactical folks time to get into place.
Markus was agitated beside her, and the more nervous he got, the more nervous she got.
They were escorted directly out onto the tarmac and up to a low, sleek business jet. This was it. If Markus was going to kill her, now was the time. He could just as easily use the pilots as his hostages. Her usefulness to him would be done the moment he set foot on that airplane.
* * *
“You good, Detective Carpenter?” the SWAT officer asked him after tugging Reece’s shirt collar up a little higher.
“Yep. Let’s do this.”
He jumped out of the tactical van and stepped around it. The Learjet Markus had chartered was parked on the tarmac with its front hatch open and steps folded down. A pair of FBI agents sat in the cockpit, dressed as pilots.
The gray sedan pulled to a stop in front of the jet, and he spied the petite form seated at the wheel. Surely, Markus would use her as a human shield and not shoot her until he got inside that plane. The guy was smart enough to know the cops would take him out the moment he killed Yvette.
Yvette’s door opened. From his vantage point, Reese saw Markus practically lying on her lap. Very slowly, she climbed out of the car, her hands clasped behind her neck.
Reese stepped forward and she spotted him.
Their gazes locked, and for a moment, everything around them fell away. There was no crisis, no madman with a gun pointed at her, no SWAT team. Just the two of them. Here and now. In love.
And apparently in sync, for she shook her head slightly in the negative, as if to tell him not to do what he was about to.
He’d had to argue and ultimately beg to be the guy to make the close approach to Yvette and Markus. Through sheer cussed stubbornness, though, he’d prevailed and convinced the crisis team leader to let him do this.
He walked forward slowly, his hands held well away from his sides.
“Stop right there!” Markus shouted at him. “Don’t come any closer. I’ll shoot!”
“Hey, Mr. Dexter. How are you doing, sir? I’m sure you remember me—I’m Reese Carpenter of the Braxville Police Department.”
“What are you doing here?” Dexter demanded.
“Well, you’re from my town. I thought you might be more comfortable talking to somebody you’ve met before than to a total stranger.”
“What do you want?”
This was a good sign. The man was rational enough to follow the conversation and ask logical questions.
“Well, I’d like to make a trade with you, Mr. Dexter. Myself for Miss Colton.”
“No!” she cried.
He smiled ruefully at her and continued, speaking over her protests. “I’ll be your hostage in her place. Let her go and you can have me. Sh
e’s a civilian and has no part in all of this.”
“Like hell she doesn’t,” Dexter sneered. “She’s the one who kept turning up evidence that closed the net around me. First that damned arsenic thing, and then those bodies. Nobody was ever supposed to find those. But Fitz. He wouldn’t listen, would he? Had to renovate. Couldn’t be satisfied with the building he had. Always wanted things to be bigger and better. The man’s ambition knows no limits.”
Reese made a sympathetic sound. “I have to admit, it was really satisfying to arrest Fitz Colton and take him down a peg. Did you happen to see that on TV?”
Dexter devolved into a rant about how overdue the arrest had been, and Reese let him vent to his heart’s content. And while Markus monologued, Reese eased closer and closer until he was practically within arm’s length of Yvette.
He saw the pistol against the back of her neck, jerking and sliding around as Markus raged. Terror tore through him that Markus’s finger would slip and pull that trigger, ending the life of the woman he loved.
No more time to wait.
No, she mouthed.
Trust me, he mouthed back. Dammit, her life depended on her letting him help her in this moment. She had to let go. Just once in her life. Let him take care of her.
“Yvette, step to your right so I can take your place,” he said easily.
“No!” Markus yelled.
Reese made eye contact with her, silently begging her not to question him. To trust him. To do exactly what he asked of her.
She nodded very faintly.
He said merely, “Drop.”
* * *
Yvette relaxed all her leg muscles at once and let gravity take over. She plunged toward the ground, falling without warning. Time slowed as the tarmac rushed up at her, and all she could think was that with her body out of the way, Markus would have a clear shot at Reese.
A scream started in the back of her throat, and by the time her body slammed into the ground, it burst out of her in a piercing shriek.
A gunshot exploded above her head at extremely close range deafening her and vibrating through her almost as if it had hit her. Reese grunted in front of her, staggering back. A blackened hole in his white shirt, directly in the center of his chest told the tale. Markus Dexter had shot him at point-blank range.
“Nooo!” She screamed. Rolling to her hands and knees, she launched herself forward at Markus’s knees as hard as she could spring.
She slammed into his legs, knocking him backward just as the pistol fired again. Markus fell backward hard, slamming down to the tarmac with her sprawled across his legs. She scrambled to push up, but something big flashed past her, moving fast.
Reese. He landed on top of Markus, both of his hands gripping Markus’s wrist just below the butt of the pistol. The two men wrestled for control of the gun, and she rolled to one side to get out of Reese’s way. On her knees, she looked for an opening to help, and when Markus rolled away from her with Reese still plastered to his front, she slammed her fist forward as hard as she could at the spot just over Markus’s kidney.
He groaned, and she punched him again. He jerked his hands down and the pistol disappeared between Markus’s and Reese’s torsos. It exploded once more, this time the report of the gunshot muffled.
Both men collapsed with Markus on top of Reese.
“Nononononono…” She moaned as she lunged forward, grabbing at Markus’s shoulder and yanking at him with all her strength. Reese couldn’t be dead.
She’d just found him. He couldn’t be dead.
They hadn’t had enough time together. He couldn’t be dead.
She wanted so much more with him. He couldn’t be dead.
She would die without him. She was already dead…
CHAPTER 17
Pain.
As if someone was splitting his chest open.
Unable to breathe. Unable to speak. Unable to move.
And then there were hands. So many hands, lifting away the massive weight from his chest. Picking him up. Standing him on his feet. Tearing open his shirt.
A SWAT guy saying jovially, “Good thing you had a vest on, man. That bullet would have gone right through your heart. Reese looked down, and a flattened disk of lead was half embedded in his Kevlar vest.
“That must hurt like hell,” the SWAT guy continued casually. “Close-range shot like that. You’re lucky it wasn’t any bigger caliber of pistol or a shot like that could’ve busted a few ribs. As it is, I’ll bet you get a wicked bruise on your chest.”
“Yeah. No doubt,” he managed to gasp past the pain.
And then something new barreled into him, warm and soft and fierce.
Yvette.
“Hey, babe,” he managed before she half choked him to death with her arms wrapped around his neck too tightly for him to breathe.
“A little air,” he gasped.
Her arms loosened. But not much.
There was a flurry of activity as the SWAT guys climbed off Markus, handcuffed him and hauled him away, escorted by a bunch of armed police.
“Don’t you ever scare me again like that,” Yvette declared against the side of his neck.
He turned his head and captured her mouth with his. Ignoring the pain in his chest, he wrapped his arms around her and held her so tight he actually lifted her off the ground.
“I died when you told me to drop,” she confessed. “You were going to sacrifice yourself for me.”
“Yes, but I knew I was wearing a vest and you weren’t.”
“But what if he’d shot you in the head?”
“Yvie, Markus Dexter is a lot of things, but a good shot is not one of them. During one of his interviews with the district attorney, Fitz griped at length about what a crappy hunter Markus was and how he scared away all the wildlife because he was such a lousy shot.”
“Still—”
He cut her off gently. “I’m fine.”
“You are not fine! You just got shot and are going to be seriously bruised!”
He grinned down at her as he let her slide down his torso until her feet touched the ground. “Now you know how I feel when you tell me you’re fine.”
“All right. We’re agreed that neither of us will ever be fine again, then?”
“Deal,” he replied, laughing.
* * *
The next few days were a whirlwind of activity for Yvie. She had to give a statement to the police, a statement to the FBI and more statements than she could count to the press.
Markus was arrested and being held by federal authorities. After Mary testified that it was her husband’s intent to flee the country, a judge declined to set bail for him, so he was cooling his heels in a prison cell in Kansas City.
He was forced to give a new DNA sample, and when confronted with the confirmed DNA evidence that Gwen Harrison was, in fact, his daughter, he finally confessed to having had an affair with Olivia Harrison.
Yvie was able to use Markus’s own datebooks to show assignations with Olivia over the span of three years. He claimed that Olivia insisted on getting married, but that Mary wouldn’t grant him a divorce.
Mary, no longer interested in protecting her husband, confirmed that Markus had, indeed, asked for a divorce right around the time Olivia Harrison was murdered.
As for Olivia’s and Crane’s bodies ending up hidden in walls, Yvette and Reese went through Dexter’s files again and found orders for fake construction delays in Markus’s own handwriting. Those delays would have emptied the job site and allowed him to sneak the bodies into the building and hide them in the walls.
When confronted all the evidence, Markus finally broke down and confessed to killing Olivia Harrison and hiding her body in the wall of the Colton warehouse.
Given that Fenton Crane’s cause of death was identical to Olivia Harrison’s, it wa
sn’t difficult to get Markus to admit to killing the private investigator, too.
On top of all of that, Markus was formally charged with attempted murder in the shooting of Tyler Colton. Seemingly broken by the earlier confessions, he admitted to shooting Ty immediately when asked about it.
Practically the first chance Yvette had to be alone with Reese was when he picked her up in his truck two weeks after the kidnapping to drive to Kansas City, where they attended a touching memorial service for Olivia Harrison. Yvette’s brother Brooks made a moving eulogy about Olivia and the wonderful daughter she’d given the world.
After the service, Yvette noticed Brooks having an earnest conversation with Gwen’s grandmother, Rita. At the end of it, the two exchanged a warm hug. Yvette murmured to Reese, whose arm she hadn’t let go of since they got out of his truck, “I’ll bet Brooks just got approval to propose to Gwen from her grandmother.”
“Good for him,” Reese replied warmly. “I was annoyed with him when he kept butting into the murder investigation of Gwen’s mother, but I get it now. The man was drowning in love and so dumb with it he couldn’t help himself.”
“Is that why you decided to take a bullet for me?” she asked tartly. “You were dumb in love?”
He grinned unrepentantly. “Guilty as charged.”
No surprise, at the conclusion of the gathering, Brooks got down on one knee and proposed to Gwen—who tearfully and joyfully accepted. Everyone applauded, and it was a happy note to end a somber event on. Yvette was delighted for the two of them. After everything Gwen had been through, she’d surely earned a happy-ever-after. And Brooks couldn’t quit beaming. She’d never seen her brother happier.
The congratulations and socializing wound down, and while Gwen and Brooks elected to spend the night at her grandmother’s house to start the more joyful project of planning their wedding, the rest of the Colton clan headed back to Braxville for a family supper.
Harlequin Romantic Suspense December 2020 Box Set Page 47
