Final Stand

by Lisa Phillips

  Mark helped him get Victoria to the ambulance. He gave a statement to the cops who’d shown up. The injured officer had been taken away in the same ambulance as Victoria, having suffered a serious head injury.

  There was nothing Mark could do but pray for the guy. And yet, how powerful a weapon the believer wielded. Moving things in the heavenly places simply by talking to his Savior. He was never powerless when he had the means to pray over a situation.

  The cop shut his notebook and eyed Mark. “You need a ride to the hospital?”

  Mark shook his head and winced at the slice of pain. Mental note: head shaking not a good idea.

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea for you to drive.”

  “I’ll be okay,” he said. “My car is here, but I won’t drive if I’m not able. I’ll call someone.”

  Niall. Josh. Normally he’d have called Victoria first but that didn’t work under the circumstances.

  Mark got a few side glances from first responders. He knew they all wanted the full details on why a bomber had blown himself up in the park on a Sunday morning.

  He hardly understood what had happened himself, given Victoria’s grandfather had been missing. Presumed dead. Now he’d shown up here. And Mark hadn’t heard all of what he said, but the guy hadn’t seemed upset about it. Not that he’d been eager to blow himself up. It just seemed like he was perfectly fine with this turn of events, prepared to do what Langdon wanted as though he didn’t have a better idea for the rest of his life, so he’d figured, “why not?”

  Mark climbed in the driver’s seat of the car and just sat there for a moment.

  They were all alive, so far. Her grandfather’s fate wasn’t something Mark would lose sleep over. Not when he hadn’t stood up to Langdon at all. And didn’t seem to care that he hadn’t. A man like that didn’t deserve his grief.

  Mark tossed the keys in the cup holder and dug out his phone. He just needed a minute, and then he would head to the hospital. He figured it was nothing more than shock but didn’t want to risk losing it on the road.

  He called the one person who might actually have the skills to hunt Langdon. Someone they should have called days ago, and would have if he hadn’t still been mad at Victoria. Now things had gone too far. It was time for the whole team to step up.

  “Alvarez.”

  He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “It’s Mark.”

  “I know, I have caller ID.”

  “You don’t… It’s…” He didn’t even know where to start.

  “Is she still alive?”

  “Barely.” They’d escaped that explosion with only a fine line between them living to tell about it and being blown to smithereens.

  “Where is she?”

  Mark told him the name of the hospital.

  “Go there. Stay with her.”

  Mark started the car engine. “You think Langdon will target her? Isn’t he busy with the scientist?” He realized Sal didn’t know any of this. “I mean to say, he’s kidnapped this—”

  “I know, bro. I’m up to speed.”

  Maybe his brain wasn’t working right. “What?”

  “I’m in town. I’ve been here for days, trying to find Langdon. And I’ll tell you now, this guy is slippery. It’s beyond frustrating.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Not what I thought you’d say. But don’t thank me until I find him. So far I’ve managed to come up with zilch.”

  “Us, too.” At least, that was how he felt. “Her grandfather said something to her right before he blew up.” Mark cleared his throat. “She hasn’t told me what it is.”

  But she’d told Mark that she loved him, just like he loved her. Knowing that helped—the same way their friendship and the fact they’d always been there for each other had helped over the years.

  But it didn’t solve all their problems.

  “Find out. We need that information.” Alvarez paused. “And she needs you, just like she needs the rest of us but refuses to admit it.” There was no trace of bitterness in his tone.

  “She needs us, and you just forgive her?” Maybe at another time he’d have been able to say it more eloquently, but he’d nearly been blown up, had hardly slept in two days, and it was barely nine in the morning.

  “Yes, I have. She has her reasons for doing what she did, though I haven’t excused her actions,” Sal said. “What I’ve done is figured out there’s no way I can stand before God when I can’t forgive her. I had to, so I did.”

  “How?”

  “Part of forgiveness is that conversation with God where you admit you don’t want to forgive. That you don’t know how. That’s the start.” Alvarez hung up.

  Mark sighed to the quiet in the car as he pulled out and drove to the hospital. When was the last time he’d been the only one in a car? He felt strange being alone. Overwhelmed. In shock.

  He gripped the wheel and concentrated, but it didn’t help the itch between his shoulder blades. As though he was being targeted. The way he had been when that sniper took a shot at him.

  He’d saved a life that day, but it had cost him weeks in recovery. Mark wasn’t sure if he could go through that again.

  Only for Victoria. He knew that much.

  She was the only one who rooted for him to succeed. Even if his promotion had only been because she wanted an ally sitting behind his desk. He was who she’d come to when she needed someone in her corner.

  Mark parked and strode through the hospital doors, straight to the desk. “Victoria Bramlyn. She was brought in by ambulance.”

  The elderly man typed with two fingers on the keyboard, and frowned at the screen. “She hasn’t arrived yet.”

  “It’s been at least an hour.” He’d given a statement and talked to several first responders. Not to mention the call with Alvarez.

  …there’s no way I can stand before God when I can’t forgive her. I had to, so I did.

  She was the one who needed someone in her corner now. And Mark knew that the foundation of what they had was strong enough to weather anything.

  “Can’t help you.” The man shrugged one shoulder. “She isn’t here.”

  Chapter 31

  Seattle, WA. Sunday 9.03a.m.

  Victoria’s body swayed with the motion of the ambulance. Every time she closed her eyes, all she saw was the EMT’s face. The surprise. The flash of the gun, and the way his body jerked as he fell backward.

  The rear door had a hole in it now. She didn’t even want to look at it, or she’d see the blood that wouldn’t leave her mind’s eye.

  “Did you have to do that?” She lifted her gaze at him.

  He gripped the wheel with those thick fingers. EMT jacket, ball cap. Like he was one of them. He wasn’t. He was the corrupt FBI agent, Colin Pinton. And the wanted criminal Oscar Langdon.

  A man who led a double life, playing both sides of the fence, until those two lives turned on each other. He’d made his break in the chaos.

  “You should have just disappeared.”

  He spoke then. “Look over my shoulder for the rest of my life? Expecting to turn any corner and see you standing there, holding a gun on me.”

  “I wouldn’t bring a gun.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  She shifted, her bruised body stiff against the hard dividing wall between the rear of the ambulance and the cab. “You didn’t need to dump that guy’s body.”

  Only he probably figured he’d had no choice. Like he’d had no choice to kill Pacer, and General Hurst—all the others who had died, while she’d managed to fight off her attackers and live to tell about it.

  “And you didn’t need to involve my grandfather.”

  Langdon barked a laugh. “That guy was a hoot. Told me stories about you as a kid for hours and managed to drink me under the table.” He chuckled. “Haven’t had a night like that in years.”

  “So you strapped a bomb on him and cuffed him to that gazebo?”

  “His idea.” Langdon sniffed as he turne
d a corner, making the whole ambulance sway.

  How long before someone noticed she’d never made it to the hospital? Until the EMT’s body was discovered where it had been thrown out of the back of the ambulance onto the side of a deserted road?

  Now he wanted her to believe her grandfather had chosen to die like that? Part of her wanted to scream in frustration, determined to refuse to believe it. But a bigger part of her knew very well that it could be the truth. Her whole life with the old man had been complicated, never knowing what he was going to do or say. What he would find unacceptable. What he would allow. What he would berate her for.

  Now he was gone. All the family she’d ever had who had paid her any attention at all. Given her any “care” at all. Done. Dead.

  All she had left was…

  No. She couldn’t think about him. Right now she needed to focus. Get out of these bonds, get Langdon subdued, and get him to tell her where the nuke was. That was her only job right now.

  Victoria looked around again for what seemed the millionth time. No weapon had appeared since the last time she surveyed the interior. Medical instruments had all been put away. She had her shoes on, but would Langdon see if she pulled one off to strike him with it? Probably. Victoria knew his skills almost as well as she knew her own.

  What she needed was to keep him distracted. “Where is the scientist you took?”

  “Found the kid, I assume?”

  “Did you think my team wouldn’t find him?”

  Langdon shot her a grin. “Always put too much stock in your friends. It’s easier to go it alone.”

  “You don’t think I should have trusted Genevieve, is that it?”

  He shook his head. “Different.”

  “So I should ditch everyone I’ve ever brought into the fold and go it alone?” Maximum damage. Maximum carnage. Langdon would want a splash—because why else would he need a nuke? Talk about overkill, his plan to murder so many with this bomb he had. He would also want everyone to know it was him.

  She said, “If I did that, then it would be just me. Swinging in the breeze.”

  “Think I’ll get hung? Not likely.”

  “I found you, didn’t I?”

  “Under the circumstances,” he said. “I’d like to think it was obvious that I found you.”

  “Unless that was my plan all along.”

  He barked a laugh again, the harshness of it echoing in the cab. Victoria slid the lowest drawer out with the toe of her shoe and looked inside. IV bags. That was a bust, unless she could find a tube…

  Victoria knew of more ways to kill a person than anyone ever should, that was for sure.

  “Did you kill the scientist?” Had he finished the bomb?

  “What do you care? You’re here, I’m here.” He paused, probably thinking through the sale and whether she would buy whatever line he came up with. “Things could be good.”

  “Kill me now.” There was no way she would go with any other option.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Try me.” She waited, but he didn’t take her bait. “Or better yet, I’ll kill you. Yes, that would work.”

  “Don’t be like that. I’ve got more reason than you to be mad. You’re the reason Genevieve is dead.”

  “I’m not responsible for what happened to her.”

  “You were there,” he said. “You could’ve stopped it. Saved her.”

  “From the men you sent.” Now Oscar Langdon’s woman was dead. And the man just kept driving the ambulance, dry eyed and irritated that she was dead. “She probably knew where money was stashed, am I right?”

  She figured it was worth a guess for the sake of having a few more seconds to keep searching these drawers one by one.

  “You were supposed to stand down.” His voice rang through the cab. “Instead, you fought back, and now she’s dead.”

  “We both loved her.”

  “Funny way of showing it. But don’t worry.” He glanced back and sneered at her. “I have plenty of ways you can make it up to me.”

  Yeah, no thanks.

  He chuckled, then looked back at the road. Sure, she’d broadcast how she felt about his “invitation” all over her face. He knew she didn’t want anything to do with that kind of thing between the two of them.

  Langdon was like a child whose toy had been taken away, or broken. Now he was acting out, but he had access to much more dangerous means of retaliating.

  The man she’d fallen for was nothing like this guy, sitting in the driver’s seat of an ambulance that might as well be carrying the nuke he planned to use. Colin Pinton had been a good man. A good federal agent, or so she’d thought. Long enough to be fooled into allowing her feelings to be part of the picture.

  Victoria tried not to have too many regrets in her life. Things she wished she’d done differently, or not done at all. Colin Pinton was the one time she couldn’t deny she’d willfully ignored all those tiny, niggling signs and jumped in anyway.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  When she was in love with Mark and always had been?

  “Then you die when the bomb goes off.”

  “Fine.” Much better than the alternative.

  “And everyone will learn that you were in league with me the whole time. All about our sordid past, and how you died for the cause just like you intended to.”

  Victoria’s stomach tensed. “Jakeman will never believe that.”

  “Welvern will,” he fired back. “I’ll make sure he regrets every day he did anything for you, and every feeling he ever had for you.”

  She didn’t even want to think what would happen when—or if—Mark found out she was with Langdon. As though she’d ever give up her life to go with this guy and live on the run.

  “Why tarnish my reputation? Because of Genevieve?”

  “Partly.” He pulled the ambulance to a stop. She couldn’t see where they were or what kind of buildings surrounded them. Just a gray stucco wall. He said, “But also because while everyone’s unpacking your life, they’re spending less energy trying to find me.” He shifted in the seat and turned to her. “Maybe I’ll make it look like I died too.”

  A nuke would obliterate everything. The fallout would be chaos, and yet he wanted the rhetoric to be about a spy gone bad?

  Victoria would have taken up that fight had it been about anyone else. Just like she was certain her counter-terrorism task force would never accept it. They knew her. Not everything about her life, and what she’d done, but she had been real with them. Genuine. They knew her.

  “Either way, I’m gone and your fate has been decided.”

  Victoria had never been a fan of that assessment. About as much as she was a fan of allowing some all-powerful creator to have control over her life.

  A few times she’d wondered if giving up that control might have helped her get out of a jam, but she’d always managed it alone. By the skin of her teeth. She was capable of a whole lot, and not helpless if she could ever prevent it. Who wanted to be?

  Mark was all about humility and kindness. And catching bad guys. He was the epitome of what all good cops strove to be, and it went right to his core. She knew him enough to know he was the opposite of her. Victoria could handle a lot more gray area than Mark would stand for. Thus the source of the conflict between them, the reason they’d been unable to figure out how to have a real relationship that went deeper than friends.

  Langdon climbed between the two front seats, into the back where he’d tossed her onto the floor.

  He bent his head towards the cord he’d used to secure her to the leg rail of the bed.

  Victoria whipped up her hands, let the tube drop so it was slack, and wound it around his neck. She pulled it tight.

  Langdon jerked in surprise. He grabbed her neck and squeezed his fingers around her airway while she tried to constrict his with the tube. Both of them gasped. Evidently this was what the end would be. Locked together like this. If she was going to die anyway,
maybe she could at least take him with her.

  She squeezed tighter.

  So did he.

  Langdon’s lips pulled back to reveal gritted teeth, a gleam in his eye. She didn’t like that look. “You’ll never—” He gasped. “Find it.”

  She squeezed harder.

  “Boom.”

  Black spots flashed in the edges of her vision. If she lost consciousness, Victoria would never know. She’d condemn hundreds, possibly thousands, to their deaths. And for what? The satisfaction of knowing she’d killed him?

  She loosened her hold on the tube.

  He gasped. “Kill me and you’ll never be able to stop the bomb.” He didn’t let up on her neck. He just kept squeezing.

  Victoria reached up and grabbed his hands, trying to pull them away from her neck so she could breathe.

  He didn’t let go.

  He wouldn’t allow her to pry his fingers from her. No matter how hard she scratched at his hands. His arms.

  Langdon’s grip finally loosened, and she managed to suck in air. It hurt. But he hadn’t let go because she’d made him do it.

  His breath wafted over her face, and he spoke close to her ear. “I’ll let you know when I’ve decided that your time on this earth is done. That’s when you’ll know it’s the end.”

  Chapter 32

  Seattle, WA. Sunday 10.24a.m.

  Mark heard his dog bark as soon as he got out of the car. Just that sound reassured him, for whatever unnamed reason, that things would be okay.

  He twisted the key in the lock and stepped in, dumping his backpack on the bare floor of the hall. Bear raced over.

  Mark gave his dog a rub down. “Is she here?”

  No, that would be too easy. Still, he couldn’t help but hope. The kind of hope that had nothing to do with what was possible, and everything to do with what was not possible. The kind of business God seriously loved to do.

  Mark straightened to listen and look around for evidence of her.

  Carpet would be down in a couple of weeks.

  He shook his head, dismissing that unhelpful thought. It figured that his brain didn’t want him to embrace reality. Hadn’t helped when he had launched his father off Victoria and onto the corner of the coffee table. When the sheriff declared his father’s death accidental, Mark had swallowed all that he had to say and pushed every feeling down.