His mind froze in time, and the moment became eternal as pieces of the puzzle fell into place. The heavy makeup that was streaked… with a much lighter color. The contacts. The hair that was a shade too dark to be natural.
Because it wasn’t.
This woman was a blonde. Her eyes were blue underneath her chocolate-colored contacts. Her skin fair.
And her single dimple winked from her cheek as she stretched her lips wide in an animalistic, snarling grin. Her teeth were bared, the smile a rictus of fury.
Her face was angled to the side, showing off the bloody bandage that covered up her severed ear. The one she had cut off herself.
“Livvie,” he whispered.
His daughter.
CHAPTER 16
Reggie’s body still shook from the after effects of shooting Salazar. Staring down at the body, she flinched back from the sight she found there. The agent’s shoulder was a bloody mess, and his head had a gash on it from where he had struck the rock.
But he was alive. His chest moved up and down, proof of the breath that still moved through his body. At least she hadn’t killed him.
So why was her body still acting like it was in the middle of a 7.0 earthquake?
Had was still there at her side, stroking her shoulder, trying to calm her down. But Reggie could feel his impatience. He wanted to get over to where Joshua was.
“Should we really just… leave him here?” she asked. It seemed so callous, even with the fact that Salazar was the killer.
“Oh, you’re right,” Had answered. “Don’t want him waking up and blowing us all up.” He grabbed handcuffs from where he was keeping them at his waist. Looking around, Had mumbled to himself. “Maybe I should cuff him to a tree, or something?”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” Reggie answered back. “I was more worried that he might bleed to death out here.”
Had walked around the figure on the ground. His nose wrinkled up in apparent distaste toward the fallen BAU agent.
“He won’t bleed to death. More’s the pity.”
Reggie was more than a little shocked. This was Had she was talking to, not Joshua. Normally Had was the softie, but right now he was acting downright vindictive.
“Won’t cuffing him injure his shoulder even more?” she asked, trying to reengage Had’s pity reflex. But the young cop just shrugged, seeming indifferent to Salazar’s pain and suffering.
And then it came to her. Salazar was the one who had killed Bilal. And if there was one quality that defined Had more than any other, it was loyalty to those he considered family. Like the Pakistani driver.
“Had, I--” she began.
“Shhh!” Had said, his ears perking up. “D’you hear that?”
She fell silent, and as the noise of their conversation fell away, another sound grew to fill the air. A siren.
The cavalry had arrived.
“We’ve got to get back to the car,” Reggie said, tugging at Had’s shoulder. She glanced down at Salazar. “He should keep until we can send the paramedics in.”
Had frowned, and it was clear he was disappointed, but he fell in behind Reggie without any further complaints. They could catch a ride in with one of the squad cars to the municipal building to pick up Joshua.
This case was over.
* * *
“Livvie,” Joshua said again, louder this time.
She stopped moving, the grotesque smirk gone in an instant. For a brief second, Joshua imagined he could see a flash of a little girl before him, no more than six, begging him to stay home from work.
And then it was gone. The hardened woman was back in control. She plastered the smile back on, a mask that hid the precious glimpse of the beautiful girl she once was.
“Figured it out, did you, D… D… Daddy? Took you long enough.” She sneered at him. “Guess what? I’ve left you a present.” She pointed at the table.
Glancing over, Joshua caught sight of the explosive he had dismantled earlier. It was now placed right next to him, but the LED clock on its front was still detached.
A voice stabbed into his consciousness. That familiar timbre, the inflection that up till now had been masked by a slight Mexican accent, the pitch that seemed to go right past his brain and straight to the center of his chest. His little girl.
Not so little any longer.
“Thought you’d want a chance to understand your situation before it exploded around you.” She came around into his field of vision and smiled, the dimple digging into his soul. “Literally.” Pointing a finger at the bomb, Livvie lifted an eyebrow.
“But I dismantled it,” Joshua croaked, his throat raw.
“Please.” She flicked her wrist at the explosive. “You think your little trick with the wires really would’ve worked if that timer had been attached? The real detonator’s buried inside.” She pulled out a small black device. “And I have the remote.”
Realization flooded through him. “You’re going to leave me here to die.” It was a statement. Joshua knew with certainty the horror of which this woman, no longer his darling girl, was capable. He worked at the knot, feeling it loosen a bit more.
“Why shouldn’t I?” she barked back at him. “You did the same thing to me. Left me to die at the hands of Humpty Dumpty. Except that’s not what happened, is it?”
She leaned in close, her breath caressing Joshua’s cheek. He could smell her scent, the odor that of delicate flowers that had been left in the sun to rot.
“Do you know why I use bombs? He didn’t want me to. Fought me tooth and nail. Said it wasn’t elegant, that there was nothing left to be able to taunt you with.”
The black thread that wove its way through her tone tugged at Joshua’s heart. He felt the strings of his soul being pulled by that voice, unraveling him like an old sweater.
Her voice continued in his ear. “But I wanted something else, Daddy. I wanted the world to burn. I wanted them all to fall down. Every last one of them.” She stood back up. “And now it’s your turn.”
The knot was giving under his hands, a millimeter at a time.
She made a slapping noise against her own thigh. “Come on, Bella. Time to leave Daddy to die.”
Bella looked up at her, whimpering. But she stayed by Joshua’s side. In fact, she somehow managed to burrow even further into him.
“Bella. Come.” A note of fear had crept into Livvie’s voice. It was clear she didn’t want to leave Bella behind to die. “Please.”
Joshua watched as Bella glanced from him to Livvie and then back again. But there was no movement.
The knot was almost undone. He could feel the cord giving beneath his fingers.
It wasn’t fast enough.
“Come on,” Livvie said, her voice hardening. She made a move to grab Bella’s collar, as if to drag her out by force.
Bella growled and bared her teeth.
Livvie pulled back, her face crumpled up in pain. “Bella?”
The instant Livvie let go of the collar, Bella’s growl turned back into a whine. Her tail thumped, once, then was tucked back under.
“Fine!” she cried out, pulling her gun back out and pointing it at Joshua’s head. “If she won’t come with me, I’ll just shoot you instead.”
The knot came free.
Joshua fell to the ground as the retort from the pistol sounded in his ear. There was a searing pain in his left side as he hit the floor.
His favorite daughter had just shot him.
* * *
Crawling was getting Sariah nowhere. She glanced back at the progress she had made and was disheartened to realize that she had come less than a quarter mile in five minutes. And she was moving as fast as she could.
Berating herself for her own stupidity, Sariah turned the swearing into a litany. She never should have left the car.
Correction.
She never should have left Joshua by himself back at the car. On some level she had known that there was no way the former agent would stay put. It
had just taken her actually contacting the outside world to realize that it had been one more cop out.
And now Joshua could be in serious jeopardy.
Much as Sariah didn’t like Salazar… no, that wasn’t strong enough… much as she hated the BAU agent, it had never made sense to her that his masculine pride would be enough to open him up to murder. The bombing part hadn’t made sense to her, either.
If Salazar was going to kill, he was going to get in and get dirty. Bombs were for those that wanted to punish from afar. Make the world suffer for their pain, but without any blood on their hands. Divine retribution from on high, in a strange sense.
Salazar was far too arrogant to believe in a higher power.
Time to test the ankle again. Sariah scuttled over to the nearest tree and used the trunk to lift herself to her feet. Well, foot, anyway. Gritting her teeth, she set her injured leg down... and didn’t pass out.
That was a good sign.
But the second she put more pressure on it, the leg buckled out from under her and the pain blossomed like some hideous flower growing in her ankle. She swore again, the string of obscenities enough to wither the greenery around her. Seriously, miles of empty ground to walk, and she’d managed to find the one patch that was unstable enough to collapse under her?
There had to be a solution. She was wasting time.
Looking around the surrounding topography, Sariah spotted something that might be promising. It was a fallen tree, old enough to look dry and brittle, young enough that there were still plenty of branches attached.
If she could get over there, pull off one of the limbs of the tree, she might be able to use it as a makeshift crutch. It wasn’t a brilliant idea, but it might work.
It would at least get her to Joshua faster than the crab walk she had been using.
* * *
Grabbing for the gun still tucked into his ankle holster, Joshua came back up with the weapon raised. He touched his hand to the wound in his side. It came away red with blood, but not dripping. The bullet had just grazed him.
They stared at one another, both guns poised and ready to fire. Then Livvie began to laugh, her expression demonic. It broke Joshua’s heart.
“Please, Livvie--”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped, her laugh turning to rage in an instant. “I am not Livvie. That little girl died and went through a wood chipper.” She circled him, her eyes wide with her fury. “She’s been dead a long time.”
“But how are you here?” Joshua cried out, his soul filled with an anguish that spilled out through his voice, poured out of his heart, ran down out of his eyes.
“My new daddy sent me. He always lets me find the best new ‘projects’ for us to work on together.” She smirked, the dimple a dagger to Joshua’s heart. “Oh, by the way. He said for me to say hi.”
His stomach turned as he realized what she meant. She was talking about Humpty Dumpty, and she was describing her life with the man who had taken Joshua’s family. His wife and two daughters through murder, his baby in a way that was far more painful.
A statement flashed through his mind, an old proverb, or perhaps something he’d read in a novel somewhere. There’s only one way to hurt a man who’s lost everything. Give him back something broken.
His little girl must have been a procurer for Humpty now for years. More than a decade of being warped and corrupted by a serial killer. How had this happened? How had he not known?
“It’s disappointing, you know. To realize you’re so weak.” She sneered at his confusion and pain. “He took me to see you once, did you know? Watched you clean up after some frat boys, get drunk and piss yourself in the alley behind that bar where you worked.”
His little girl. The one who haunted his dreams, kept him awake at night, pushed him toward his goal of taking Humpty down. There, watching him soil himself as he drank away his memories of her sweet face.
The face that was looking back at him right now with deadly intent.
“You know you’re not going to shoot me, Daddy,” she said, taking a step forward. “You can’t.”
The gun wavered in Joshua’s hand. His daughter was a killer. She had slaughtered innocents all across the states, had planted a bomb in a schoolyard, had killed the law enforcement teams that had come in to investigate afterward. It had to have been her that killed Bilal, her that had planted the suspicion in their minds that caused them to suspect both the Middle Eastern man and his daughter.
She was a bad person.
But still the gun wavered.
“See?” Another step. “I told you, Daddy. You don’t have it in you.” One more step. She was almost to the desk now. “And I’ll tell you something else.”
Joshua’s body began to shake, the muzzle of the gun darting about in a random pattern. In vain he attempted to steady the weapon.
Livvie’s voice continued, the sound filled with tones that were so familiar. That must have been why Bella hadn’t attacked her. The scent, the sound, everything pointed to her connection to Joshua.
How had he not seen it?
“You’re not going to shoot me, but not for the reason you think,” she said, the dark note in her tone singing louder now, resonating throughout the entire sound. “It’s not because I’m your baby daughter.”
Another step. Joshua felt paralyzed with longing and fear, love and disgust, pain and need. If she moved any closer he would have to shoot. He would have to.
“You won’t shoot me because of your guilt. Because you know that you couldn’t take the pain of taking my life, no matter how twisted that life may be. And it is, Daddy. So much more than you can even imagine.” The darkness throbbed through her voice, reaching a crescendo of pain and fear and death.
And now Livvie was right in front of him, and she was holding the gun up to his face. She was squeezing down on the trigger, about to take his life.
He had to shoot. Had to.
A shot rang out and his daughter sank to the floor. But Joshua’s gun had not fired. He hadn’t been able to pull the trigger.
But someone else had.
Cooper stood on one foot in the doorway, her gun still smoking from the kill shot. Even as he watched, the agent dropped what looked to be a tree branch and slumped down to the ground.
A noise from right at his feet drew Joshua’s attention back to his little girl. She was coughing up blood, and a whimper escaped from her lips, along with a stream of red.
Bella was at her side, licking Livvie’s face. His daughter reached a hand out to the dog, ruffling her hair. She made the sign for I love you. Bella whined a response.
Then the hand fell back to her side and grew still.
* * *
Sariah watched as Joshua stayed there, still as stone, the life leeching out of the woman in front of him. The moment felt suspended in time, without beginning or end.
There was time enough for her to see the bloody wound on the left side of his abdomen, the lines etched even deeper around his hollow eyes, the pain in the depths of those dark, glittering orbs.
And then he stirred.
“She was my daughter,” he said, his tone not much more than a whisper.
“I know,” Sariah replied. “I know.”
At that, Joshua looked up at her, his face filled with such a combination of pain and rage and fear that she recoiled from what she saw. He rushed over to her, leaned down and lashed out with his fist, catching her on the jaw.
“You knew?” he screamed.
She held up her hands to protect her face, trying to scuttle away from him, but unable to move from the pain in her ankle. He leaned over again, his fist lifting up to strike once more.
And it was caught.
Had held Joshua’s arm in his hand, the strain of holding the former agent back clear in the taut muscles of his jaw and neck and shoulders. A vein stood out blue against the side of his neck, another at his temple. Reggie stood poised at Had’s side, ready to step in if needed.
“Don’t,” Had said, his tone direct but soothing.
“She killed her,” Joshua raged. “She killed my daughter.”
Had’s eyes widened with the sudden knowledge, his gaze flickering over to Sariah. The confirmation of what Joshua had said must have been written on her face, as Had let go and moved back. He seemed unsure of himself and of what he was to do.
But Joshua appeared to be done with the violence. His shoulders slumped.
“Why?”
The question was ripped from his soul. It was a question that deserved an answer. Sariah had one, but he wasn’t going to like it.
“It was a choice. You or her.”
“You should have picked her.”
Sariah sighed. When she had taken the shot, she had known in that instant what it would mean. What it would do. To Joshua. To her. To their relationship.
She had taken the shot anyway.
“This job is messy,” she said in response. “You taught me that. We get our hands dirty. We make mistakes. We keep going.”
“You killed my daughter.”
Sariah shook her head. “She wasn’t your daughter anymore.”
His face hardened into a knot at that, and he turned his head away from her. Had reached down to help Sariah up, and she leaned into the support.
Support that didn’t weaken her.
That had been what Joshua had been trying to tell her all along. To rely on the team, but to step in as a leader. To make the decisions that had to be made and then live with the consequences.
Men had died because of her. More had been saved.
It was what she did.
She only hoped that, in time, Joshua would remember that too.
EPILOGUE
Joshua moved one foot in front of the other, shuffling toward his hotel room, Bella at his right side. His other side ached from the bullet that had ripped through the outer layer of his flesh.
This was a walk that it seemed would never end. The hall stretched out to eternity in front of him, and he was the condemned, marching to his punishment. This was Purgatory, where he would do his penance.
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