by Dana Mentink
She’d been praying with all her being that Bradley would catch Randall’s trail. But he hadn’t been able to rescue her, not this time. How would he feel knowing that he’d been tricked? It would eat away at him and the thought made her angry. Bradley should not have to shoulder any more grief. “You have no right to do this.”
Randall jerked as if she’d surprised him. “I have every right. Your parents messed up my life. I saved you from them and you repaid me with betrayal, just like they did. You, your brother, your parents. The whole lot of you are a bunch of snakes who deserve to die.”
She glared at him. “How exactly did we mess up your life? So my parents came to their senses and changed their mind about the robbery. You could have gone ahead without them.”
His face went scarlet. “I did go ahead, and because your parents tipped off the cops anonymously, I almost got arrested. I had to lay low for two days and you know what happened in that time? Huh, Penny? Do you have the slightest clue what they cost me?”
She saw the rage simmering below the surface of his irises.
“My wife left me,” he snapped. “One too many times I’d let her down. She warned me the next time I didn’t come home, she’d hit the road.” He shook his head. “I tried to phone, but she wouldn’t take my call.” His voice dropped. “On her way out of town she got in a wreck. Killed on impact.” He took a knife from his pocket and pointed it at her. His fingers were gripping it so tightly, his knuckles went white. “That’s on your parents. She’s dead because of them.”
Penny shook her head. “They didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“You were four years old. How could you possibly know what kind of people they were?” His eyes rounded. “I told you the truth, and you still defend them, like they were great people. It’s unbelievable. They were dirty double-crossers who never cared for you. I saved you from that, and what did you do? You double-crossed me, too. Told the world I was a monster.”
She pressed down the words bubbling up in her throat. Confrontation wasn’t going to get her out of the situation. Instead she forced a conciliatory tone. “I’m sorry about your wife. That must have hurt you very much. I can understand why you feel angry.”
“You understand?” For a moment, she thought she detected a softening in his face, but then he tipped his head back and laughed. “You looked just like your mother for a minute. She thought she could sweet-talk me, too.” He bent close to her, the knife now inches from her cheek. “Know what that got her?”
Penny swallowed. She did know. It had earned her mother an execution. For the first time, Penny admired her parents for standing up to Randall the best way they could, for trying to make a better choice for themselves and maybe for her and Bradley. They’d failed as parents, but at the end it was possible they’d attempted to change. She longed to tell Bradley about her epiphany. Would she live long enough to share her thoughts? Her only option was to stall for as long as she possibly could.
“Why did you kill the Emerys? What did they do to you, Randall?”
He shook his head. “Not that again. Stop talking.”
“Are you having trouble justifying why you orphaned Lucy Emery? Did you think you were saving her, too, by murdering her parents?”
He edged the knife closer. “I told you to stop talking. You’re giving me a headache.”
But talking was the only thing keeping her alive. “You don’t have to kill me. I understand now why you’re so angry. I didn’t know about your wife, but now that you’ve explained it, I’ll talk to the press and tell them your side of the story. They won’t think you’re a monster anymore after I tell them the truth.”
Slowly, he shook his head, then grimaced. “It’s too late. It’s a matter of time before I’m sent to prison. You and your brother are the last two items on my to-do list. Or should I say, my to-die list?” He laughed again.
So much for the soft approach. Randall was obsessed with his mission. There was no point in pretending she understood his evil. She shrugged. “So you’re just a coward, aren’t you? It doesn’t take a big man to shoot two unarmed people and kill a woman with her hands tied behind her back.”
He glared at her. “Like you said, I’m not a man, I’m a monster.”
She stumbled back several steps as he advanced.
He snapped his head to one side. “Did you hear something?”
She could only detect the harsh sound of her own breathing until somewhere in the back of the warehouse a door slammed open. Her pulse thundered.
“Police!” a familiar voice shouted. Randall swung around.
Penny didn’t wait. She darted into the shadows of the warehouse, almost falling over a low pile of rope. Catching herself in time, she raced down a row of shelves.
Randall was right behind her. “I’ll kill you,” he shouted. “It won’t do you any good to run.”
But she’d recognized the voice of the police officer who’d slammed through the door.
Tyler Walker was here, for her.
And she was going to do everything she could to keep herself alive long enough to make it to him.
EIGHT
Protocol dictated that Tyler should wait for backup, but that wasn’t going to happen, not with Penny’s life on the line. “Randall, it’s all over,” he hollered. A clatter from deeper in the warehouse indicated Randall, or perhaps Penny, was on the run.
He took cover behind three enormous fuel barrels and shouted again over his thundering adrenaline. “There’s no way out of here. Give it up and let her go.”
There was a crash from somewhere to his left. Tyler surged forward, sheltering himself next to an upside-down boat with a freshly painted bottom. He waited, straining to hear. The tiniest squeak—the sound of a rubber sole on the cement floor—alerted him. Randall must be at his three o’clock, moving quickly.
Tyler erupted from behind the boat. Past a pile of netting, he saw a flash of black. He pursued, skirting a rusted engine and a crate full of batteries. Motion ahead. Sprinting forward, he rounded a boat in the process of being refinished and stopped short.
Ten feet away he caught sight of Penny. She was half crouched, hemmed in a corner by piles of neatly stacked lumber. Her body was rigid with fear, and awkward posture indicated her hands were probably bound behind her. She snapped a look at Tyler.
He saw her mouth open as if she was about to shout to him, but a rustle from behind a pile of sailcloth snatched his attention. He aimed his weapon.
“Nowhere to go, Randall. Let me see your hands,” he shouted.
Randall catapulted from behind the sailcloth. He sprinted toward Penny, his arm raised, gripping a knife.
“Stop,” Tyler shouted as Randall charged. Penny screamed, twisting her body away. She created just enough of a gap between them. Tyler fired. Randall grunted, dropped the knife and clutched his side. A bloom of red appeared through the fabric of his shirt.
“Stay where you are,” Tyler roared, but Randall ducked behind a row of shelving. Penny stood, eyes enormous with shock. Her gaze darted between Tyler and the spot where Randall had been a moment before.
He kept his voice quiet but commanding. “Penny, it’s okay. Come toward me.”
She walked as if she was on a pitching ship, each footfall a little unsteady. Everything in him wanted to crush her to his chest, but the situation was far from secure. He kept his weapon trained in case Randall appeared and tried to attack her again. When she got close enough, he took her wrist and guided her behind him toward the exit door, still searching for Randall. He felt her shudders go right through him. What could he say to comfort her? It was only by God’s grace that he had gotten to her in time. But if he could take down Randall, right here, right now, it would finally be over. Freedom for Penny and Bradley.
Another cop was already through the door. Tyler handed Penny into his care. “Get her out of here.”
/>
The officer quickly escorted Penny away. Tyler could have called in Dusty to track, but as he edged around the shelves, he saw the trail of blood. As silently as he could, he whispered an update into his radio and crept forward. Following the droplets led him to a tiny office, the door ajar.
From far away outside, he heard the sound of barking, low and intense, but not Dusty... It was Bradley’s dog, King. He eased open the door with his boot. A puff of sea breeze on his face sent his nerves skittering. He darted through the door. The office was small, a desk and a file cabinet jammed tight. Papers littered the floor. A small window above the desk had been slid open. A bloody handprint on the sill showed him Randall’s escape route.
Smothering his frustration, he reversed course, radioing again as he went. He burst back outside, into a maelstrom of noise and activity. Penny was safe, he noted, sitting in the back of a squad car and guarded by two officers.
In the opposite direction, down by the water, Bradley was holding onto King as a cop tended to someone on the ground. Yes, we got him, Tyler silently crowed with satisfaction as Dusty joined him. They jogged to the dock. The closer they got, the more his instincts blared at him. Something wasn’t right. His spirits sank as they neared. The prostrate figure wasn’t Randall. It was a skinny young man, no more than a teen probably, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. An officer pressed a cloth to the man’s bicep. Blood stained through the compress.
“The guy came out of nowhere and demanded my boat,” the young man said, a look of outrage on his face. “I told him no way, and he cut me. Can you believe that?”
Boat? Tyler groaned as he saw the tiny motorboat growing smaller and smaller as it plowed through the choppy waves of the bay. He felt like shouting. This could not be happening. Randall could not be slipping out of their grasp again.
“Already called it in,” Bradley grunted. Anger flamed in his eyes. “But he’ll probably ditch the boat as soon as he can. Harbor Patrol is deploying and a chopper’s en route.”
Like Bradley had already noted, Randall would no doubt dump the boat within minutes to avoid being spotted from the air, so they were back to a ground pursuit. This time, they had an advantage, he thought grimly. “He’s wounded. I shot him. There’s a blood trail. I’ll inform all the local clinics. He won’t get far bleeding like that. He’ll have to stop somewhere for medical attention.”
Bradley’s nod was curt as he locked gazes with Tyler. They both knew how close Randall had come to keeping his murderous promise to kill Penny. They made their way back to her. She bolted from the car when she saw Bradley and locked him in a tight hug. Then she wrapped Tyler in a similar embrace.
He clasped her tightly, feeling her tears on his neck, the wild beating of his heart, or was it hers? He could not tell. There were so many emotions tumbling through him he did not trust himself to speak.
“You’re okay,” she mumbled. “He didn’t hurt either of you.” She sounded as if she was trying to reassure herself.
“We’re fine.” Tyler moved her back into the car and eased her onto the seat again. Her cheek was bruised, blood trickled from the corner of her brow. The knee of her pants was torn and bloody. “Tell me how you’re doing.”
She turned a stricken face to both of them. “I’m—I’m okay, I think. Is Mrs. Lawson all right? Randall said he hurt her.”
Tyler nodded. “Lani said she’s very upset, but fine otherwise.”
Penny bit her lip and looked at her brother. “I’m sorry, Bradley,” she said, tears caught on her lashes. “I thought it would be okay to get the tarp from the basement. I should have suspected...”
“None of this is your fault,” Bradley said savagely. Tyler nodded in agreement.
“As a matter of fact, you showed some real smart thinking, kicking out the taillight and shoving the mask through.” Tyler was going for encouragement, but his cheerful tone rang false even to his own ears. He was still reeling at what could have happened. Randall with the knife ready to plunge into her heart.
A look of utter defeat stole over her face. “I guess if I was real smart, I wouldn’t have let him get to me in the first place.” Her voice wobbled and she wrapped her arms around herself.
Bradley moved away to get King settled as another wave of cops arrived. Tyler knelt next to her.
“That’s on us, Penny. We should have moved you to a safe house before this, insisted on it.”
“But I don’t want to...” She trailed off, defeat clouding her features. “You’re right. It’s the prudent thing to do.” Her chocolate gaze met his. “But I can still work, right? My job...it’s everything to me.”
He heard in her question a mountain of desperation, the passionate need to hold the threads of her life together. Reaching out, he gently touched the soft skin of her forearm. If he’d been a moment later... Cold slithered along his spine. The best course of action was to settle her in a safe house, keep here there, and avoid the office since Randall knew all about her job. He looked up to find Gavin standing nearby. He must have heard Penny’s question, because he gave Tyler a slight nod.
Tyler looked at Penny again, closely this time, past the fright. He realized at that moment that Penelope McGregor was, quite simply, beautiful. Not in the common way of television models and movie stars, but in the earnest curve of her mouth, the delicate sprinkle of freckles, the way her eyes shimmered with an intensity that made his breath hitch just a little. He swallowed the feelings and took her hand.
“If you want to work, we’ll talk to Gavin and make that happen for you.”
She sagged a bit, her fingers ice-cold in his. “Thank you.”
He paused, weighing his words as he considered what she’d been through. Locked in a trunk, bound and helpless, almost murdered. Lord, help me to be delicate here. “There are people connected to the department, really good doctors I mean, who can help you...process what you’ve just experienced. They specialize in trauma.”
“I know all about doctors who specialize in trauma, Tyler.” She looked away from him for a long moment before she turned back. “They can’t help me feel safe again. I will never feel safe again until Randall is caught.”
He fought the growing desire to tear the city apart brick by brick until he got his hands on Randall. “You are a strong person, there’s no question about it, but if you change your mind, all you have to do is say the word. I’ll take you myself and—and I’ll stay with you through it, if that would help. You wouldn’t be alone unless you wanted to be.”
For a moment, she was silent, clenching his fingers. She brought his hand to her face and rested her cheek against their twined fingers. He held his breath, hoping she would feel his determination, the tide of emotion that welled up inside, the ferocious need to protect, the fear at what might happen if he failed.
And there was something more. It was as if she touched some soft spot inside him, opened a vault down deep in a place he’d kept locked in shadow since Diane had left. He pressed his mouth to her knuckles and kissed her. “I am so sorry this happened.”
After a final squeeze, he let go of her hand and stood, breaking the connection between them as a medic arrived.
It was a connection he could not afford.
Not now, not ever.
* * *
The safe house was not actually house, but a second-floor room in a boxy six-story redbrick hotel in Bay Ridge. Penny tried hard to banish the feelings of defeat as she surveyed her new residence. Bradley, of course, had wanted to stay here with her, but it would be foolhardy to place both targets in the same spot. To make matters worse, she was not convinced her stubborn brother was safe at their home, even with his devoted police dog, but there was no changing his mind about leaving. She wondered if he was secretly hoping Randall would show up again. The thought chilled her.
The hotel decor reflected a depressing beige color palette. One corner hosted a minifridg
e, a microwave and tiny coffeepot. The two double beds filled the rest of the space—one for Penny and the other for Brooklyn K-9 officer Vivienne Armstrong. Her border collie, Hank, slept on dog bed in the corner. Hank had better manners than Penny’s exuberant companion. Scrappy wasted no time in jumping up on the bed as if testing the waters.
“Same rules here as home, Scrappy,” she said, ordering him off the bed and onto a squishy dog cushion Tyler had brought from her house.
Vivienne looked around. “Not exactly the Ritz, but we’ll make do, won’t we?”
Penny gave her a bright smile. She knew Vivienne would probably rather be anywhere but a cramped hotel room, so Penny wanted to be as amiable a roommate as possible. “It will be just fine. I appreciate you staying with me.”
Vivienne lifted a shoulder. “Happy to do it.”
Penny endured a very long Sunday filled with cooking-channel shows, reading time and taking Scrappy and Hank out for supervised outdoor time. She sadly missed going to church, but she did some Bible reading on her own.
When things got particularly dull, she spent time peeking through a crack in the curtain at the crawling traffic below. Tyler called regularly to check in, but he did not ask to speak to her directly. The night passed in an agitated haze. Her sleep was peppered with snippets of terrifying memories. Once she awoke panting and crying, fearful that she’d been locked in Randall’s trunk again. Scrappy dispensed with the rules and leaped onto the bed, trying his best to lick away her nightmare.
Vivienne comforted her and fixed them both a cup of midnight tea until Penny was able to try to sleep again. Resolved not to awaken Vivienne a second time, Penny focused on lying still, staring at the ceiling and trying desperately to keep her mind on open-house details. Her brain would not stay on track. It was only when her thoughts drifted to Tyler and Rain and their joyful dinner party that she finally relaxed into sleep.