Caught

by Tessa Vidal

  “Just chill a little. There's no reason to shoot anybody,” I said, at the same time Ronnie said, “Matt, think about what you're doing. You know we're not going anywhere with you. Don't make yourself into a serial.”

  “You're right. There's no reason to shoot anybody because you're not going to give me a reason.” He sounded so smug. So certain he'd come out on top. “You're all coming along nice and friendly. Now, let's go. It's time to take a ride.”

  In how many scripts had I stared down the barrel of somebody's gun? I could do it all day. A thrust of the chin, a flash of my green eyes... I knew how to do this. I even knew how to do it with a smile. “How do you think this ends for you? There's three of us, and one of you. You might get one of us, but then you're dead too.”

  The smile was what got him. He couldn't take his eyes away from my performance. That was my magic.

  “The fuck you think this is? The cameras aren't rolling, this isn't a movie, and I'm not negotiating with you. I'm telling, not asking. You can walk out of these woods, or I can carry you out. Those are your options right now.” At last, he forced his gaze from my eyes to Ronnie's Glock. “Ronnie, you can't stand there and tell me you see a way to shoot me without me shooting her. You're too damn smart for that. You have two choices. Walk or get carried. What'll it be?”

  “I vote walk,” Taylor said.

  “He's hopelessly outgunned, Tay.” I squeezed his arm. “You and Ronnie both have weapons.” Matt didn't need to know Taylor's weapon was a fake. Or where it really was at the moment. “And I have Yukon. If he hurts me, that dog isn't letting him go anywhere.”

  “The dog is not an issue. He's out of the equation as of right fucking now.” Matt shifted to fire at Yukon. The bang seemed to echo around the green walls of the surrounding forest.

  And Yukon somehow wasn't there to be shot. He was in the air on my signal and then he had his big jaw grasped tightly around Dauphin's lower arm.

  Dauphin tried to fire again.

  Somehow missed again.

  At last, he looked at the weapon in his hand. Really looked at it. “The fuck is this!” he screamed. “The fuck is this!”

  Yukon kept worrying his arm, and he flapped his hand in a weak gesture to fling the useless toy to the ground.

  “Seems like you're firing blanks,” I said sweetly.

  Taylor's eyes croggled out of his head. “Wait, what. That's my fucking gun, dude!”

  Dauphin, still screaming, had dropped to his knees. “Call this fucking dog off. I'm an unarmed man.”

  “Uh huh,” Ronnie said. “I suggest you get on your belly, unarmed man, and then we'll call off the dog.”

  He glared. Yukon shook his arm some more.

  “You were right, Clary,” Taylor said. “This is just like Tuesday's Thursday. The old gun switcheroo.”

  Sure, if Tuesday's Thursday was set in rural Louisiana instead of Rome. And if one of the co-stars was a dog.

  “You know damn good and well Yukon is capable of a crippling bite if I give him the signal,” I said. “Don't make me give that signal, Mr. Dauphin.”

  Dauphin, groaning, had no choice but to slowly and reluctantly drop to his belly.

  Ronnie handed off the Glock to me. “Don't hesitate to shoot if he tries anything. I need to go in and cuff him, and I don't want him making a last-ditch grab for a weapon. That's how good people get hurt.”

  Yukon would make sure Dauphin didn't try any last-ditch grabs. But I nodded.

  Tay patted himself down for his phone, then remembered I'd tossed it. He settled for lighting up a cigarette. “This would have looked so cool for my Instagram Stories.”

  I signaled Yukon to let go, but he stayed close and ready to re-engage until Ronnie finished cuffing Matt's hands behind his back. When he started to sit up, she put a foot on his shoulder to stop him. “You stay there. The dog is watching. And my Glock isn't firing blanks.”

  Dauphin slumped.

  As he smoked, Taylor kicked around the meadow until he found Dauphin's service weapon. It was farther out in the weedy grass than I thought it would be.

  “This is amazing,” he said. “I never felt my gun go. I never saw the switch.”

  “I never saw it either.” Although I'd worked pretty hard to provide the distraction for it. “Never even realized she'd done it until I really looked at the weapon pointed at my heart.”

  Dauphin grunted. He'd be haunted forever trying to figure out the exact moment when his real service weapon was lifted right out of his hand and deftly switched with a prop. You chewed over that stuff hour after hour, that life-changing moment of distraction when somebody took the real thing and replaced it with the fake. That memory you couldn't remember created enduring nightmares.

  I knew exactly how it went. I'd had twelve years of wondering how the trick was done. How the real stone walked off my neck. How I never felt it go. How it felt impossible, how it felt like I was going crazy. The stone was against my bare neck. Against my skin. How did I miss the switch?

  He had a life sentence ahead of him wondering about that gun. He'd had it in his fucking hand. He wouldn't be able to stop wondering. He wouldn't be able to stop blaming himself for that one tiny moment of inattention.

  Did my green eyes contribute to that? I liked to think so, even though I knew Ronnie did the hard part.

  Was it wrong of me to smile?

  Was that revenge or justice? And did I even care?

  “How did you fucking do it?” Taylor asked again. “I never felt a thing.”

  “A good magician never tells.” Ronnie kissed me on the side of the mouth. “Let's just say I had a little help.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Ronnie

  Cleaning up Matt's mess was a massive multi-jurisdictional nightmare. FBI, LAPD, NOPD, and the Louisiana State Police all wanted their piece of the action. Our story was confusing, and it took days for the appropriate investigators to clean up the fine details.

  At first, Matt claimed we'd kidnapped him and sicced a dog on him to force him to turn over FBI files in the Malory Maine case. Big tough FBI Special Agent in Charge or not, his story had problems. The trace evidence of the dynamite he'd used to light up the gazebo was still in the van. Not to mention the various tarps and restraints he planned to use to secure us until we reached our final destination, one of any number of ponds, lakes, or bayous in the region. It might have been years before we were found.

  It might have been never.

  A cold shiver ran down my spine, and Clary snuggled closer on the couch. “You did it,” she said. “You got him.”

  “We got him. I couldn't have done it without you.”

  Having my phone and the counterfeit alexandrite in his pocket didn't enhance his credibility. Nor did the fact that New Orleans Parish Prison employees identified him as the man who'd gained access to Clary at the jail by posing as her attorney.

  He'd gotten away with so many things for so many years he thought he'd get away with everything forever. The scope of his organization amazed me. The various law enforcement agencies were still rounding people up from his extended team. Bailey and Matt must have hoped to recruit me, at least in the early days, but they watched me and they worked with me and then they changed their mind.

  What they saw made them realize they couldn't induct me into their high-dollar bling ring. In fact, once I was beyond the training stage, they'd scaled down their crimes considerably. They had to if they didn't want to get caught.

  I earned that much respect from the two of them.

  “Who was that on the phone?” Clary asked.

  “The deputy director wanted to give me a heads-up before the shit really hits the fan in the media. We have a confession, although the details are still being worked out.” I hugged her tighter. “It's all over but the shouting. Matt's going to cooperate.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “He admitted it? How far back?”

  I knew what she was asking. “Twenty-eight million dollars for th
e DeWitte.”

  It should have been enough. More than enough. In fact, Matt was now claiming he'd only intended to do one crime one time. Bailey, conveniently dead and in no position to contradict him, was the one addicted to the action.

  “She was never going to let me quit. She left me with no choice.”

  Hell. Maybe it was even true.

  “I can finally breathe again,” Clary said. “I figured he'd stonewall forever. I didn't think a cop killer would be able to negotiate any kind of deal.”

  “Yeah, well, there are innocent people who deserve to have their names clear. And Louisiana's a death penalty state. They're never letting a cop killer go, but the FBI can persuade the state to take the death penalty off the table if he cooperates.”

  Our eyes went back to the television screen on the wall in front of us. Taylor Tercelle's poreless face filled the fifty-two-inch monitor.

  “That FBI chick's got magic hands. Somehow, and I still don't know how she did it, but she switched that dude's real gun with the prop. I never felt a...” He remembered he was on network television. “I never felt an effin’ thing. Slick, dude. Real slick.”

  He was making the late-night TV circuit where he burbled on to anybody who would listen about what action stars we all were. Even asleep in the next room, Yukon must have recognized his voice, because he snuffled ever so quietly.

  And Tercelle wasn't the only one. Everybody who was anybody was taking the opportunity to grab the limelight. Even Shelly Guidry, the woman who wasn't sure she remembered loaning me the Toyota Tundra, got into the act.

  “Agent Rales said it was all very hush-hush and undercover and I couldn't tell anybody until it was all over. Her official FBI vehicle would be far too conspicuous.” Shelly slurred her words only once or twice during her interview, but “conspicuous” was definitely a challenge. “Of course, I was happy to do my part to bring down a dirty agent.”

  Her memory of our brief encounter was influenced by the fact I'd arranged for her truck to get a brand-new paint job. At that, I got away cheap. Tercelle repaid the woman who loaned him the Ford by agreeing to escort her daughter to senior prom.

  I snuggled more tightly against Clary's sleek figure. “You sure you don't regret not doing more interviews yourself?”

  She chuckled into my collarbone. “Let Tay have all the fun. I'd rather lay low until the public gets bored with the news I used to be Malory Maine.” She turned serious. “I still don't get Patsee's case. It was different from the others.”

  “It was different because Patsee is the one who swapped Patsee's stone. She's actually guilty.” Although her attorney had managed another delay. Matt's involvement in the case had created enough confusion the FBI would have to offer her a deal after all.

  “But he had the fake.”

  “He had a fake, not the fake. His own counterfeiter made the stone he planted on you. The original counterfeit commissioned by Patsee Easton has turned up in a Los Angeles boutique consignment store. And, wait for it. Her fake was all properly labeled as a costume piece. And you know who it came from?”

  Clary's jaw dropped when she got it. “Patsee sold the fake to a consignment store? Instead of tossing it altogether?”

  “I never said hers was an intelligent crime.”

  She kept shaking her head into my collarbone. “Matt and Bailey didn't know where the real fake was, so they decided to get a second fake to switch out for the real alexandrite in the evidence locker.”

  “Correct. Actually, Bailey decided. Apparently, that's one of the reasons Matt concluded he needed to dispose of her. They already had millions, and he didn't like taking more risk, especially with a stone involved in such a high-profile case. But to her it wasn't about money. It was about what she could get away with. Classic thrill-seeking behavior.”

  “She was never going to stop. Until somebody stopped her. So he decided to kill her and drop the stone on one of us to implicate us in her schemes.”

  “If only I figured it out sooner. If only I'd stopped her by arresting her. She'd be alive.”

  “Even I couldn't figure it out, and I knew I wasn't guilty. You had no reason to look deeper. Not for years and years and years.”

  Her forgiving arms were warm around me. We had so much lost time to make up for.

  Tercelle's moment ended. The talk show host introduced an indie band I'd never heard of. Clary hit the remote, and the screen went dark.

  “Malory Maine is officially in the clear,” I said. “Are you planning to go back to using that name?”

  “Clarissa Stanton is too famous now. I built a career as Clarissa Stanton.” She moved on top of me, her full lips inches from mine. “I fell in love with you as Clarissa Stanton.”

  “I fell in love pretty hard with Clarissa Stanton. So hard. I love you so much. You're beautiful, brilliant, and you never give up.”

  She kissed me. “And I have the best dog.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Clary

  We never had all the time we needed. Until we did. This dance we did, descending from the couch to the floor, our fingers and lips on each other's clothes to reveal each other's bodies bare...

  Such a simple dance, but a dance that had been denied us for far too long.

  “I love you,” I said, at the same time she said, “I love you.”

  “So much.” Again, we both said the same thing in the same moment.

  “I feel like I've known you all my life,” one of us said, “and yet I haven't come close to spending all the time I need to know you at your core.”

  “I feel the same,” said the other. “But we know the important things. That you never give up.”

  “That you aren't afraid of the truth.”

  “That we're meant to be together,” I said, at the same time she said, “That we're meant to be together.”

  Our voices didn't create the only duet. Our bodies in motion were pure harmony too.

  The urgency we felt was more delicious because we had the time to take our time. We could dash and run into the nearest bedroom at any moment, but for once in our lives, we could indulge in the luxury of delay. Tumbling across the thick carpet felt like a rare privilege. The expensive fibers tickled me in silly places when I was on the bottom, and I didn't even care.

  We began to kiss pressed together full-length. Her mouth was hot and sweet, and I inhaled the faint woodsy scent of her skin, a fragrance more intoxicating than anything bottled in Paris.

  Would we have loved the same, as hard, as deeply, if we had gotten our chance twelve years ago? I was twenty. Maybe puppy love was still on the table at that age. Maybe we would have had our glamorous Hollywood fling and our glamorous Hollywood moment, and then we would've gone our separate ways.

  We'd never know.

  Fate brought us back together at the time of its own choosing. Maybe the perfect time.

  We'd been tested under fire― the kind of searing fire that seals your bond until there isn't so much as a seam visible at the join.

  The kind of fire that proves there's nothing you can't do if you only do it together.

  We tumbled easily together. Ronnie was now the one on her back, her small firm breasts lifted high, her nipples pointed. I couldn't stop sucking at her beautiful mouth, so I used my own nipples to spank playfully into hers. Our bodies slapped, not hard, but assertively, with a certain tantalizing insistence. Our damp thighs slipped and tilted, and then we were locked into a slow, sweet grind, her neatly trimmed triangle working hard against my slick waxed delta.

  Electric sparks zinged invisible flame up and down my spine.

  The long muscles of my thighs gripped hard against her thigh. The long muscles of her thighs gripped mine. We did a slow bump and grind, our bodies shifting to the precise angles needed to tease our swollen lower lips. Our clits too were swollen. They felt thumb-sized where they pulsed into each other's flesh. It would be so easy to trigger a fast popping climax, but we relished this chance to move at a slower, more ind
ulgent pace.

  Her eyes went wide and glazed. Her mouth gasped against my mouth.

  I rode harder, grinding with more efficiency... and yet not too much efficiency.

  No hurry now. Not anymore.

  We have all the time in the world in front of us.

  She gasped louder. So sweet. Her gasps were my music.

  “Come,” I said. “Come now.”

  “But...”

  “No buts. We'll come now, and then we'll come again. Again and again, as many times as we want to. We have all the time in the world to make up for the time they stole from us.”

  Her next gasp was wordless. Mine too. Our pussies collided again and again, the slickness of our juices letting the easy rhythm speed up more and more. Unable to delay a second longer, we came in convulsive waves. Hot and fast and together.

  And then she flipped me. Her long body slipped down, her tongue stopping at my erect nipple, her hand going lower to probe between my slickery lower lips. My own hands and tongue flailed a moment or two, and then I caught my breath. Impatient fingers came into play, smoothing here and probing there. We were turned around all anyhow, the better to suck and lick each other's firm boobs while our hands kept playing much further south.

  Two determined fingers insinuated their way into my depths. A third one soon joined them. My sensitive inner passage opened just enough to embrace those exploring digits. My own fingers returned the favor, slipsliding at a teasing pace into Ronnie's slick, warm depths.

  Sometimes, it can be difficult to set the right rhythm for a double-fuck, but Ronnie and I were perfectly in sync. She found a hidden nerve ending inside me at the same moment I found a hidden nerve ending within her. The delicious shock went straight to my clit, which was already throbbing again.

  We came and tumbled around and took aim from a different direction and came again. It didn't feel like such a long time before we remembered about the invention of such things as beds and mattresses, but we were probably rolling around down there for an hour.