Final Stand

by Lisa Phillips

  Victoria twisted the handle and pulled the door open, half expecting to find an envelope of money. “What? No payout? I figured you’d leave the chip and he would leave money.”

  “He has the chip. I get the rest of what he owes me.” The suspect frowned. “It’s not in there?”

  “There’s nothing in here.” She turned back. “You already gave him the chip?” That meant the deal was done. They were too late.

  They had missed it.

  Langdon wasn’t coming.

  Mark had that assessing look on his face. He turned to the suspect. “You were here to get paid?”

  “Where’s the chip?” She folded her arms.

  “Langdon took it yesterday.” The suspect made a face. “And he didn’t pay me, did he?” The guy broke off into a hurried spew of muttering that included some choice language that made Victoria want to wince.

  “All right.” Mark tugged on his uninjured arm and shook the guy once, just to get him out of his head. “What kind of mood was he in, what did he say?”

  “He was furious. Some chick killed his girlfriend and he’s on the warpath. Said he was going from the meet up to start his plan of revenge.”

  “Burning your house down.” Victoria pointed out to Mark.

  The suspect blanched at Victoria. “It’s you?” He turned to Mark. “Get me out of here. Dude, do it now. We can’t be around her.”

  “Calm down.” Mark shook his head. “You said he was furious. Where is he staying?”

  The suspect shrugged his shoulders, then winced and cried out. “How am I supposed to know?”

  “What kind of car did he show up in?”

  “None. He was walking.” He blew out a breath. “I can’t be around here, man. She’s bad news. He’s on a rampage.”

  “I know. My house has serious fire damage because of Langdon.” But Mark walked him to the door and pulled it open.

  “Fire? He’s going to kill us.”

  “Maybe.”

  Victoria checked the contents of the safe, which was only business papers for the gallery. They continued their conversation, the suspect pleading his case while Mark talked him down. Her team, or the FBI, would need to look into this art gallery’s business. Find out how Langdon got a contact here that was solid enough he could use their safe for a dead drop.

  That, or he’d never planned on leaving anything. Maybe it was all this suspect’s idea. Maybe Langdon only drew him here for another reason altogether. Perhaps in order to draw her out.

  Was this all part of his plan, and they’d fallen for it?

  Maybe the suspect was right, and she needed to get out. Keep them safe by drawing Langdon away to a place where she could face him down. It would be the right thing to do, except that she’d promised to stay and help Mark be safe. If she left, and that caused Mark to be targeted, she would never forgive herself.

  That was one regret Victoria wouldn’t be able to survive.

  “Done?”

  She followed him out into the hall where Josh talked on his phone, occasionally glancing up at the camera. It sounded like he was reassuring Dakota.

  “They good?”

  He shifted the phone away from his mouth. “Yeah. Nothing on the surveillance.”

  Mark said, “Let’s get this guy out of here.”

  Through her comms, Victoria heard Talia say, “Good idea. I have a bad feeling.”

  Victoria glanced at Mark, but he already had the suspect halfway to the EXIT door at the end of the hall.

  She hung back, waiting for Josh to go with her so they all left together. There was an infinitesimal tingle. Some latent instinct that sensed a coming disaster two fractions of a second before a detonation.

  Josh grabbed her before she could even react. A testament to his own instincts, being in the line of fire.

  Talia’s voice screamed across the radio.

  Victoria couldn’t make out the words. She hit the floor and the weight of Josh’s body landed on hers.

  Flames erupted around them as the hallway exploded.

  Chapter 20

  Portland, OR. Saturday 1.07a.m.

  “Mark!” Heels clacked on the tile floor of the hospital waiting area. “Mark!”

  He blinked and lifted his gaze from his shoes. “Talia.” He got up and moved to her, across the waiting area. His eyes strayed to the clock and he winced at the time, even while his entire body processed aches and pains with each step.

  She didn’t stop, just opened her arms and stepped into his hug. Her gold purse slammed against his hip.

  Mark ignored it.

  “Mason is going to come down first thing, after he checks in at the office. He’ll be here by lunch. Niall and Haley, too.”

  “Good.”

  Even in the middle of the night, her hair and makeup were professional. Her clothes had considerably fewer wrinkles than his. Talia looked like she’d worked the day, and clocked out. Not that it had been an entire day that lasted until midnight.

  She shook her head, a sheen of tears in her eyes. “We found it.”

  “The rocket launcher?”

  Talia sniffed, nodding. “Dakota made me stay in the van. She wouldn’t let me get out and go with her to make sure you were all right.”

  He wasn’t going to tell her that was the right call. Dakota had done her job and kept Talia safe.

  “So I wound back the video feed. I watched from the outside angle. The building exploded and you and the suspect were blown out the door.”

  He winced. His hip smarted, and the old wound in his abdomen, where he’d been shot by a sniper, didn’t feel much better. “The suspect was treated for the head wound and the gun shot he had. He’s been taken to the FBI office here.”

  That was the least of their problems right now, the easiest one to solve. Mark had simply required the wherewithal to coordinate that. He’d grabbed an ice pack from the first EMT and then coordinated with local police and the feds that’d shown up.

  He blew out a breath, just thinking about the burst of energy that had taken. He was so far past drained right now, he didn’t know how he was still functioning. Maybe he was delirious. Or making no sense at all.

  “Sit down.” Talia led him to a chair. He planted his backside in it and leaned his head against the wall. Artwork hung there. His head collided with the gilded frame and he frowned.

  “I’m okay.” Irritated, and tired, but that was all. He wasn’t the one hurt. Or, more accurately one of the ones who’d been hurt.

  “Victoria?”

  He rubbed his hands down the legs of his jeans, to his knees. “Still unconscious.”

  “She hit the floor pretty hard.” Talia’s voice broke on the last word.

  He looked at her.

  “I watched it. On the feed. I wound it back and watched.” She pressed her lips together, and he spotted a quiver. “The wall exploded. They reacted almost at the exact same time, fast enough it looked like they moved before the blast even happened.”

  “I’ve seen it with law enforcement. Military. Peace officers. If you know you have to react the second something happens, in order to minimize the fallout, then you develop those instincts. You know what it feels like when something is about to kick off.”

  “You?”

  Mark shook his head. “My grandfather was a prison guard. He was so fast it was instantaneous.” He didn’t have to tell her it involved him getting back handed on too many occasions. She probably knew.

  She studied him, out the corner of his eye he saw her. But Mark didn’t want to know what was on her face. Pity? Compassion? It didn’t matter. The past was the past, and he couldn’t change it. No matter how much he wanted to. What he’d done was break the cycle. He hadn’t turned into a drunk with an explosive temper. First generation sober, full-time job. He’d never been fired in his life. Stable.

  Just not the rest of it that he wanted—the part where he had love in his life, and a family.

  How long, God?

  He’d been
told so many times to be thankful for what he had, and for him it was instinctive to apologize when he was tempted to ask for what he wanted.

  But what about those verses about trusting God, about asking for the desires of his heart? The part where God gave him every good and perfect blessing.

  Well, he had that in part with Victoria in his life. But not the full realization of it.

  The abundance that he wanted.

  It could be because she hadn’t yet put her trust in Him. Maybe Mark was holding back, knowing she wasn’t there yet. But he couldn’t ignore that niggling question of whether she pushed him off on the togetherness stuff because she couldn’t fully trust him. Maybe she was protecting herself.

  From him—and the fact that if she accepted Mark, then she would need to accept God as well. The two were synonymous, at least as much as he’d figured out.

  “What is with the two of you?” Talia asked. “I just don’t get it.”

  Mark shook his head. Protecting himself, in a way. Keeping Victoria’s confidence in the pact they had made.

  “Just seems like there’s a whole lot more going on than a few months of working together and developing a friendship.”

  “We grew up in the same town. We’ve known each other for years.”

  “You’ve—”

  He got up before she could say more, moving to Dakota who had wandered in. “Hey.” He touched her elbow.

  “Hey.” She didn’t hug him. Pretty typical for Dakota, though he hadn’t spent much time with her. She connected with Victoria on a level that was particular to the two of them. He couldn’t begin to understand it.

  Talia came to stand by him. “How is Josh?”

  Dakota rolled her eyes. “They told me to get out. They’re running tests, so they politely told me to get lost. I mean, go get a cup of coffee. Like I need a break.”

  “Do you want to sit?”

  “Not when I’m waiting for my fiancé to wake up.”

  That seemed to be going around. At least Dakota had Josh’s ring on her finger. Mark wasn’t even allowed into the room, since he wasn’t family. Like Victoria had an abundance of that in her life—it was all her friends and coworkers. Not to mention Bear, who she’d latched onto when Mark had first brought the puppy home. The feeling was mutual there, and he was hardly going to complain that she spent too much time at his house.

  He didn’t want it to end. And he’d been dealing with the frustration pretty well, considering he was the root cause of all of it.

  Dakota ran her hands through her hair, then retied her ponytail. Mark glanced at Talia, who didn’t seem alarmed by this withdrawal. A moment Dakota needed to compose herself. At least, that was what he figured.

  Why were women so hard to figure out?

  Dakota said, “They’re concerned about a spine injury, but they have to wait for the swelling to go down.”

  “He took the blast to his back,” Talia said. Something all three of them knew. “He was protecting Victoria, shielding her with his body.”

  Dakota nodded.

  Mark tugged Talia against his side, hugging her shoulder with one arm. Josh was going to recover, but the lingering question was over whether he’d be able to walk. If he’d have to retire from federal work. And in the meantime, Dakota had to hang out here with her whole future in the balance. They would be together, but no one knew yet what that together would look like.

  “I sent my mom a text,” Talia said. “She’s got her whole Bible study group praying.”

  “Thanks.” Dakota gave her a small smile.

  “In the meantime, Josh was telling me all about how Mark and Victoria grew up together.”

  He started to back away, before she’d even finished. “No—”

  Dakota took a step toward him. “I can only sit around waiting for the doctor to tell me that my fiancé will walk out of here instead of leaving with a medical retirement paper. I need a distraction.”

  He shot her a look to tell her how he felt about that. The expression Dakota gave him back indicated she felt zero remorse about manipulating him like this.

  “What’s said in a hospital room at two in the morning,” Talia said, “stays in the hospital room.”

  Mark walked a couple of steps away and then turned. He scratched at the growth of stubble on his jaw. “I should be asking her if it’s all right that I tell you guys.”

  Dakota folded her arms. “I’ll tell her it was her fault for being unconscious.”

  Mark slumped into a chair.

  “None of us have anything to do.” Talia sat opposite him. “So spill. Regale us with tales of Victoria and Mark as kids, running around that small town in bare feet with fishing poles. Getting up to trouble.”

  Dakota grinned, stretching her arms above her head.

  Mark squeezed the bridge of his nose. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “So what was it like?”

  “We wore shoes.”

  Talia cracked a smile. “I knew it.”

  “She was…” Mark didn’t even know where to start. “Exactly like she is now. She’s just always been like that, and I don’t think there was ever a time in her life where she was…naive.” But she had lost something that day.

  “What day?”

  He blinked. “What?” He’d said that part out loud?

  Dakota leaned forward, arms on her knees. “What did she lose?”

  “You’re interrogating me.”

  She flipped one hand over, palm up. “Tell me you don’t have something to hide.”

  “Everything I’ve ever had to hide came out during FBI training at Quantico. The bureau has full knowledge of every secret I’ve ever kept.”

  “Because they train you to spot inconsistencies in people’s stories by having you investigate each other.”

  It worked. “I’m just saying.”

  “What?”

  She was interrogating him. Mark shook his head. At two in the morning he was off his game, but apparently Dakota never was. “Victoria… You know what? No. She’d have told you if she wanted you to know.”

  “What makes you think she hasn’t told me?”

  “Because I’d know. She would have told me, you know.”

  Dakota tipped her head to the side. “Maybe. What did you do?”

  He opened his mouth, then realized he’d been about to tell her.

  “Confession is good for the soul.”

  He stood. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  “Sit down, Mark.” Talia pointed a manicured finger at the chair he’d vacated. “What did she do?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why do you two dance around each other?” Dakota asked.

  “I’m not—”

  “Why aren’t you together?”

  “It’s not—”

  “You love her.”

  “Yes.” That wasn’t even up for debate. It was the easiest question he’d ever had to answer.

  “She loves you.”

  Maybe.

  “So why not—”

  “Because I killed my father.”

  “And it was her fault.”

  He spun around. “No!” He blew out a breath and tried to get some control.

  Talia sat, staring at him. She said quietly, “You killed someone?”

  Mark sat in the chair.

  “Start talking.” Dakota’s tone didn’t invite argument. She’d gone from pushing him over why they didn’t have a relationship, to wanting the whole story so she could decide whether he was even worthy of being in Victoria’s life.

  “It was an accident.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “No,” he said. “You won’t. Because the case is closed.” Two could use that tone. “She was waiting for me at my house. My father was there, and he was drunk. As usual. He got handsy with her, and there was no one around to put a stop to it. I came in the front door, home late from football practice. He was on top of her on the couch.”

  Tali
a looked like she wanted to throw up. Dakota looked like she wanted to resurrect his father so she could punch him.

  “They both had their clothes on, but still.” Neither argued his point. “I hauled him off. He lost balance and fell, clipped his head on the coffee table. I left him there, and we ran out. Didn’t see how much blood there was until I got home and the sheriff had already had his body hauled out of the house by the coroner. He told me a neighbor found my father, and that there had been an accident.”

  “There’s a reason why no one’s ever convicted you over it, and that’s because it wasn’t your fault,” Dakota said in a matter-of-fact tone. “How old were you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “And it’s colored everything between you and Victoria—”

  A nurse said, “Mark Welvern?”

  He turned.

  “Ms. Bramlyn is awake. She’s asking for you.”

  He started to move, but she held up a hand.

  “She wants you to call a ‘Jakeman’ for her. Do you know who that is?”

  Chapter 21

  Portland, OR. Saturday 2.49a.m.

  “He killed his father for you?”

  Victoria turned to the door, not finding the person she’d been expecting. The man she wanted to see. Dakota stood there, hands on her hips. She shut the door while Victoria sat in the hospital bed, not moving.

  Dakota hauled the chair back a foot and plunked herself down in it. “Well?”

  “He told you?”

  Dakota said, “I get there was a situation and all. But the man killed his father for you. And you’ve got him in the friend zone over it. Like it was his fault.”

  Victoria touched the bandage over her eyebrow and shut her eyes for a second.

  “And let me tell you,” Dakota continued, “I know a thing or two about killing fathers—”

  “Too soon,” Victoria snapped.

  “For who?”

  “Uh… how about everyone?” She looked at Dakota with a raised brow.

  No one’s father was perfect, but Dakota’s hadn’t just hurt her. He’d also hurt a lot of other people. He’d actually murdered her stepmother in front of her. Yes, he’d been a bad guy, and in resisting arrest and attempting to kill her, she’d been forced to discharge her weapon. She’d killed him. That had literally only been a few months ago.