by Dana Marton
She felt around and then up, frantic fingers searching for an opening in vain. Climbing the tall barrier would slow her down too much. The man behind her, bent on killing her, was going to catch up to her in another second.
No way forward, and she couldn’t go back.
Her brief flight for freedom was over. Trapped.
Allie screamed into the night, “Help!”
* * *
Harper heard shouting from behind Dusty’s house where a light was on, so instead of trying the door, he darted around the building.
The corner floodlight blinded him to what lay beyond its glaring circle. He hurried past and saw a shadowy figure running across the neighbor’s yard with a gun in his hand. Dusty.
Where the hell was Allie?
Then Dusty stopped and pointed the damn gun into the gap between two houses.
“Freeze!” Harper pulled his own weapon and aimed.
Dusty’s head swiveled in his direction, and then his gun did too, a second before the man fired off a round that went ridiculously wide because the idiot hadn’t taken the time to aim.
Harper did.
And he dropped his man.
He kept his Beretta pointed at the guy’s chest as he marched toward him. “Dusty Chotkowski, you’re under arrest for murder and kidnapping.”
“Help me!” The man clutched his side, wide-eyed and gasping for air, red spreading under him on the half-frozen ground. “You shot me! Help!”
His gun lay a few feet from him where it’d fallen from his hand. Harper kicked it farther away before he stepped all the way up to the man who was screaming at him, unintelligibly now, losing it.
Even over all that, Harper could hear cars squealing to a stop on the street, doors slamming. Reinforcements.
“I’m in behind the neighbor’s!” he shouted and glanced back.
Mike rounded Dusty’s garage first, gun drawn, ready to assist. “Where’s Allie?”
“Shooter down,” Harper yelled over. “Call an ambulance.”
While Mike did that, Harper crouched next to Dusty, holstered his weapon, and compressed the bullet hole with his palm, one hand on top of the other.
Then Joe Kessler was there. “Where’s Allie?”
“Haven’t seen her. Here, take this over.”
Harper wiped the blood on his pants as he stood, then took off running toward the dark gap between the houses. He could barely see anything. “Allie? You can come out. It’s safe. It’s Harper.”
“I know.” Her voice was shaky. “Give me a minute.”
He stared in the direction of the voice.
She was crouching in the bushes, a long, broken branch in her hand that she held like a sword. She gripped it hard, steady. She’d been planning on going down fighting.
He wanted to gather her up and never let her go.
“It’s all right.” He didn’t step closer, gave her that minute she needed. “He’s not coming after you. It’s done. Over.” He wished he could see her better. He had a flashlight on his belt, but didn’t want to shine it into her face. “Are you hurt?”
“Did you shoot him?” She stood slowly. “Is he dead?”
“He’s not dead, but he’s not getting up. Joe has him. Everyone’s here. You’re safe,” he repeated.
“He was going to kill me.” For a moment, she held her makeshift weapon higher, but then she tossed it away. “That rat bastard wasn’t going to trade me for the gold. He changed his mind.”
“I’d shoot him again if I could for that.” Harper walked up to her and drew her into his arms. “He’s not going anywhere near you again. He’s going to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Armed robbery. Kidnapping. Murder. Attempted murder of a police officer, since he shot at me. He’s done. Finished.”
“I tried to get help, but the neighbors weren’t home,” Allie said against his chest.
The house to his right was still dark, but more lights were coming on in some of the other houses around them. The gunshots and all the yelling had roused people. Harper could see them silhouetted in their windows.
Someone from the PD would go around to tell the neighbors what was going on, but it wasn’t going to be him.
“I’ll let Joe finish here. I’m taking you to the hospital.”
Her head came up. “I’m just scraped up. Nothing serious.”
“How’s the foot?”
She pushed away from him to show him she could stand on her own, but she winced.
He swept her off her feet, biting back a curse. She’d been out in the night, hurt and freezing, hunted. He locked his arms around her as he walked out into the open with her.
Mike was standing next to Joe. They both looked up.
“She okay?” Joe asked.
Mike said, “Ambulance’s on the way.”
“They can take dipshit here.” Harper walked toward them. “I’m driving Allie to the hospital.”
Allie had been looking at Dusty on the ground, but her gaze snapped to Harper. “Couldn’t the EMTs look at me too? Please? They could clean me up. I want to go home.”
And by that, she meant what?
Home.
Harper was clear on the concept: his place, with Allie in it. Something they needed to talk about sooner rather than later.
Dusty was staring up at the sky, blinking slowly, calm now if only because of the blood loss. He looked as if he was only half-aware of what was going on around him. Harper walked past the bastard, ignoring the urge to kick his ass.
“Fine.” He carried Allie toward his car, the nearest source of heat. “We’ll have the EMTs take a look at you. Then I’ll take you home. My place.”
“Don’t I have to give a statement?”
“If you’re up to it.” He wanted to button Dusty down, but he wasn’t going to push her.
“Some hot coffee, and I’ll be good to go,” she promised, laying her head on his shoulder.
“I should have been there.” The words tasted worse in his mouth than the worst thing he’d ever eaten—a mummified cockroach in the gym in high school, on a dare. “I shouldn’t have let him take you. I’m a freaking cop. How the hell did this happen?”
Now that he wasn’t scared to death for her, fury hit him for all that had happened to her. She’d been hurt. On his freaking watch. “It’s not going to happen again. I promise you that.”
“I’m fine. Nobody could have predicted any of this. I’m not blaming you. God, Harper…” She looked up at him. “If you hadn’t gotten here when you did, he would have…”
Harper held her closer as he carried her past the houses to his unmarked police car, letting her slide to her good foot while he opened the passenger-side door wide so he could help her in.
“Let me know when you’re warm enough,” he told her as he slipped behind the wheel on the other side and cranked up the heat.
He sent off a quick text to his mother to let her and Shannon know he had Allie safe and sound. Then another one to the captain. And then he took Allie’s hands to warm them between his. “The heater will kick in, in a minute.”
A new set of lights swept down the street. Chase pulled up behind them.
“Hold on for a sec,” Harper told Allie as he let her go and rolled down his window. “I need to talk to him.”
“Everything all right?” Chase shouted, running up. Then he reached them and he bent down to look past Harper, at Allie. “Are you hurt?”
While she shook her head, Harper said, “Banged up and half-frozen, but we got here in time. Joe and Mike are out back with the suspect. Dusty Chotkowski. I shot him. He shot at me first. Ambulance is on its way.”
Chase tilted his face up to the sky, swore, then looked back at Harper. “All right. I’ll handle the mess here, you take care of Allie. You can file your report in the morning.” He cleared his throat. “I’m filling in for the captain.”
“He’s on his way back.”
“Good. But until he gets here, I’m still in charge. Anyway, now that Alli
e is safe, he might turn back around. You were involved in a shooting. I’m putting you on admin leave pending investigation. I’m going to need your weapon.”
Harper unfastened his holster and handed Chase the whole kit and kaboodle. Any other day, he would have given Chase at least some grief about it on principle, but not tonight.
“I have something else for you,” he said and reached into the glove compartment. He pulled out the blue file Mike had returned to him. The original thin file had thickened to almost two inches.
“What is it?”
“Eleven counts of sexual harassment, some of minors. I had Mike collect statements from the victims. It’s enough to arrest Dicky Poole when he’s released from the hospital.”
Allie gasped. She took Harper’s hand and squeezed. He wrapped his fingers around hers to keep her.
Chase glanced inside the folder, but only for a second before closing it again. “Any objection to me letting Mike handle this?”
“No. He should get the case. He pulled all this information together.”
Chase carried the folder and Harper’s gun back to his car and locked them in the trunk, before he hurried back. “Where are you taking Allie after the EMTs check her out?”
“My place.” Harper braced himself for pushback, ready to fight Chase on that.
Instead, Chase simply asked, “Allie?”
“Going home with Harper.”
“All right. I’ll come over in the morning to take your statement.” He flashed a pointed look at Harper. “You two are involved. We need to do this by the book.”
Harper raised an eyebrow. “We do everything by the book.”
“Damn right. And that’s how we stay out of trouble.” Chase began to walk away, but he looked back over his shoulder. “You take care of her.”
Harper planned on doing just that. Long term if she let him, he thought as the ambulance turned down at the end of the street.
Chapter Thirty-One
Allie lay back in the hot bath Harper had drawn for her, and she let the stress of the night melt out of her body little by little. Her ordeal was over. Dusty was in custody. Captain Bing had come over, then after making sure she was all right and having a long conversation with Harper in the staircase, he’d driven back to Quantico.
Broslin had rallied around Allie, if the countless casseroles in Harper’s fridge and freezer were any indication. Every available surface on the counter was covered with boxes of cookies. Apparently, while the town had waited for news of her rescue, the women had baked. And, according to Rose, two of the churches had held candlelight prayer vigils.
The mind boggled.
Home. The word bounced around Allie’s head, and she didn’t hate it.
“Everything okay in there?” Harper asked through the door she’d left open to a crack so they could talk.
And because Allie, not ready to be alone just yet, wanted to feel near him. The kidnapping had rattled her more than she wanted to admit. “The bath is great. Thank you.”
His phone rang. He picked it up. “Okay. That’s good. Thanks for letting me know.” A pause. “She’s all right.” Another pause. “Planning on it, bro.”
“Who was that?” Allie asked when the phone beeped, telling her he hung up.
“Dusty confessed on his way to the hospital. He thought he was dying. He wanted to get it off his chest.”
She shifted lower, so every part of her but her head was under water. “That’s good, right?”
“His lawyer will probably fight to have the confession thrown out, but we have enough evidence even without it. Mike found the stolen silver coins in a half-packed suitcase inside Dusty’s front door. His gun will probably match the ballistics for the weapon that was used to murder Lamm. I’m not worried.”
“Why did he target Lamm specifically? Installing safes was Dusty’s job. He must have installed dozens, probably hundreds over the years. Presumably, they were all bought to hold valuables. Did he rob any of his other customers?”
“Not that we know of, but I’ll get a warrant for his client list in the morning and check.”
“Do you think he robbed Lamm because Lamm was old and Dusty thought he wouldn’t fight back?”
Harper said something that she didn’t catch. The door muffled his voice.
She glanced down at the water. Thank God for the bubble bath Wendy had brought over. “You can come in if you want.”
A moment of silence.
“Are you sure?”
“Unless you don’t want to.”
He was in there before she finished the sentence.
To his credit, he kept his gaze on her face even as he murmured, “You’re killing me, you know that?”
“I didn’t catch what you said before.”
He went to sit on the closed toilet, putting most of the bathroom between them.
There was a patience to him, a kindness. Shannon O’Brian’s words about her Henry echoed in Allie’s head. Harper too, she thought, enveloped in warm water. He wasn’t a soft-spoken bird-watcher, he was a police detective, but he had plenty of kindness in him. Even when he’d thought she’d been involved in murder. And he had patience to him too. She’d been living with him for a week, and he wanted her—the way he looked at her made that clear—yet he hadn’t made a single move.
“Dusty was sick of putting in safes for preppers,” he said. “Some prepper website featured that type of safe, then every prepper had to have it. Dusty was working for the Donovans for twelve dollars an hour because without a college degree, his options were limited. They kept him part-time to avoid having to pay him benefits. His girlfriend didn’t want to get married because she thought they couldn’t afford it, and she didn’t want kids because what was the point with global warming coming.”
Allie listened, trying to follow the logic and failing.
“Meanwhile,” Harper said, “there Dusty was, installing safes that cost ten grand a pop, for old geezers who were spending an obscene amount of money on prepping. The same people who caused global warming in the first place, according to Dusty, plastic bottles piled in their basements to the ceiling. It chafed at him.”
“Why Lamm? Why not one of the other preppers, if he’d done jobs for so many?”
“Don’t know. Maybe the old man left an impression. Maybe Lamm told him he needed to set aside some gold and silver. Maybe he ranted on like he did at my father a few months ago. But Dusty didn’t just wave it off. He got mad. He couldn’t afford lunch.”
“Why now? The installation wasn’t recent.”
“He got fired from his current job. He needed the money and knew where to get some. He probably thought since the installation at Lamm’s was years ago, it was ancient history, so nobody would make the connection to him.”
Allie thought about that for a few seconds. “It was a damn thin connection. Can’t believe you figured it out.”
He puffed out his chest and said a single word. “Detective.”
“Yes, you are.” She laughed, then she grew serious again. “Are you in trouble because you shot the guy?”
“If it turns out I am, you could marry me. They can’t make a wife testify against her husband. It’s the law.”
She stared at him. “Harper?”
He stared right back, his gaze heating. “Allie?”
“Did you just ask me to marry you?”
“Too soon?” He shook his head. “You’ve just been kidnapped. Sorry. I just want you to know that’s the direction my brain is heading.” He paused. Watched her. “Since you’ve been back… It’s like my life makes more sense. You know?”
“Could you please give me a robe? I can’t think naked.”
“Something to remember in the future.” He grinned at her as he got up for his robe and brought it over, held it out for her.
When she hesitated, he said, “I’ve seen you naked already.”
“I was a lot skinnier.” But she stood up.
“Had smaller boobs too.”
<
br /> “Harper!” She grabbed the robe away from him and wrapped it around herself.
He moved aside, but when she stepped out of the tub, she didn’t go past him. She stepped right into his arms and looked up at him, looked into the face of the man she loved. “Harper…”
“I don’t want to rush you.”
“We spent a decade apart. I think we’ve done our waiting.”
He swept her up into his arms.
“I could get used to this,” she told him.
“Go ahead.”
She laughed. “You can’t keep carrying me everywhere.”
“I’m not carrying you everywhere. I’m carrying you to bed. My bed.” He brushed a kiss over her lips. “I could get used to saying that.”
“I’ve been sleeping in your bed for days. Technically, you own the guest bed. It’s yours.”
“Allie Bianchi, my love, you’re about to learn the difference.”
He carried her into his bedroom, a clean masculine place with a large wood-frame bed and a gas fireplace. An antique hooked rug covered the wide-plank floor. The beams of the roof were left bare, with skylights installed for light, showing off the moon and the stars.
He swung by to turn on the fire. “My apartment used to be a hayloft. Insulation is not the best, and this room is on the north wall.”
Something told her heat was not going to be a problem that night, but she appreciated the ambiance the blue flames brought as they flickered to life. “I don’t want to talk about insulation right now.”
He laid her down on the middle of the mattress, wrapped her in his comforter, then lay down next to her, on his side. “Well, that’s disappointing, because I have a great story about fiberglass, but all right. What would you like to talk about?”
When he looked at her with that wicked gleam in his eyes, she couldn’t think. But then she did come up with a question. “I didn’t know you were investigating Dicky Poole. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Didn’t want to get your hopes up. But lecherous assholes rarely have only one target. I figured if he tried you, he tried others. Turns out he did. So now he can convalesce in jail. Sometimes the law is slow, like watching two turtles mate, but eventually, we get there.”
