by Cowan, Debra
“I’ll go with you.” The brunette turned to follow him, pulling her weapon and checking it.
As they started down the hall, Ivory called out, “Parrish, tell me where you’re going so I’ll know how to direct SWAT.”
“James will be looking for a way to get out without being noticed by too many people.”
“He’ll take the stairs,” Robin predicted as they started down the hall. “He could go to the third or fifth floors and take a walkway over to the county office building.”
“Or he could go down to the concourse,” Gage said.
The detective nodded. “That connects to a parking garage north of the courthouse.”
“Got it!” Ivory was already dialing his cell phone.
When Gage and Robin reached the door to the stairwell, she volunteered to take the flight leading up. Gage headed down, panic squeezing his chest. He had to find Meredith. If anything happened to her—
He cut off the thought, putting himself on autopilot, pushing his feelings away so he could do what needed to be done.
Down one flight of stairs, he passed a door marked Storage. He paused, turning to look back. This room would make a perfect place to hide while people checked exits first. The heavy door groaned as he opened it.
Well-used chairs, discarded tables made two neat rows. Past the furniture, battered and sagging file cabinets formed a line of corners and shadows that would make it difficult to be found.
Gage reined in the urge to sprint to the other end of the room. The fluorescent bulbs didn’t provide the best lighting, but that wasn’t the reason he had to jog rather than run.
Due to his loss of peripheral vision, he was forced to move slower and look at everything head-on or risk missing something that might help find Meredith.
A couple of minutes later, he was giving thanks for that same handicap. If he hadn’t needed to make allowance for it, he would’ve missed the tip of a black shoe peeking out from behind a shadow-draped file cabinet.
Not just any black shoe. A woman’s shoe. Meredith’s shoe.
Gage knew because he remembered everything about what she’d worn to court. She looked sleek and professional in a black herringbone suit, her blond curls drawn into a neat twist at her nape. Those high heels made her legs look even better than they normally did.
Keeping his gaze on the shoe, he stopped several feet away. “Meredith?”
“Gage!” She stumbled into view, pushed from behind by Larry James.
The bastard held her in front of him with one arm locked around her torso. He towered behind her, holding a cell phone.
Meredith was calm, pale, but Gage saw the fear in her eyes. And a streak of blood at her left temple. Rage tore through him. “Are you okay?”
She nodded.
His voice was hard, vibrating with anger. “What did you do to her, you son of a bitch?”
“Nothing nearly as bad as what I’m going to.” The ex-fire investigator held up the cell phone and Gage knew what the man had planned.
He’d planted his gel blocks and intended to detonate them all at once. The courthouse had been crawling with security since last night, so it was possible James had chosen a location other than the ventilation system for his accelerant. There was no way of telling how many gel blocks the scumbag had placed.
Gage’s mouth went dry. “Let her go, Larry. There’s no reason to keep her.”
“After I kill you, I’m going to need her to get out of here.”
Alarm flared in Meredith’s eyes, then anger. Gage forced himself to keep his gaze on the other man, trying to think of a way to get his hands on that cell phone without hurting Meredith.
“The police department and a SWAT team are on their way. You’re not going to get very far.”
“With her, I can get as far as I need to.”
The man was so bitter over being terminated from his job, he was willing to take revenge against someone who had no part in it at all. “She’s not involved in this. You’ve gotten your revenge against all the men who had anything to do with you losing your job. You set them up, used a middleman to offer them bribes, which they took. All of them are locked up.”
“And I’m not joining them.”
“I wouldn’t count on that. You threatened the marshal to get him to kill me, but he died instead so you had to send your go-between, Julio Garza, after me.”
“You can’t prove any of that.” The other man tightened his arm around Meredith until she winced.
Gage barely managed to keep from going for the bastard. “Is that why you killed Garza? Because he didn’t kill me, either?”
“Who says I killed anybody?” James sneered.
“It may never be proven and you may not pay for that murder, but you’re going down one way or another.” He kept his voice level. “You left your DNA at the fire at Meredith’s house.”
The man laughed. “Bull!”
“Our lab extracted oil from a fingerprint off the gel block and from the oil, they managed to collect enough DNA to test. The sample matched yours.”
For the first time, Gage saw a flicker of uncertainty in the bastard’s eyes.
He quickly sized up the situation. Meredith still clutched her purse tightly to her chest, her other arm locked against her side by the man holding her. How could Gage get her out of the way before Larry James ignited the whole place? Neither he nor Meredith had a weapon.
“Parrish, back off or I’m going to start pushing buttons.”
No way in hell was he backing off. Mind racing, his gaze locked on Meredith. She stared intently at him, almost desperately, and he realized she was going to make a move.
Before he could warn her to wait, James said, “This is what’s going to happen. Parrish, you’re going to leave—”
Moving suddenly, Meredith dropped her purse and reached back, grabbing James’s throat.
The man choked and twisted away from her. She jerked around, chopping at his windpipe with the knife-edge of her hand. Gage lunged for the bastard and the cell phone.
Air gurgled in the back of James’s throat and his face went fire-red. Dropping the phone to make a grab for Meredith, he fell to his knees.
Gage snatched the phone and punched the off button.
Before he could breathe a sigh of relief, a loud thud had him wheeling around. Larry James lay unmoving at Meredith’s feet. Her gaze met Gage’s and all the color drained from her face.
She wobbled and he reached out, putting a steadying hand on her elbow. His jaw clenched as his gaze went to her blood-streaked temple. “What did he do to you?”
“Hit me with something.”
“You okay?”
“Yes.” The cut looked stark and darkly raw against her pale skin. “Are you?”
“I’m fine, except for my heart nearly stopping when I found out he had you.” Gage moved to plant his knee between James’s shoulder blades and reached for the scumbag’s arms. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
She nodded, gingerly fingering the side of her head.
“That was too damn close.” He frowned down at a still-motionless Larry James. “That was some move. Learn it in med school?”
“Self-defense class,” she half whispered.
Her trembling voice made him want to hold her, but he knew better than to try right now. There was still clear distance between them. Rage pumping through him, he shook James, who still hadn’t moved. “Get up, you bastard.”
Gage thought it odd that the SOB hadn’t stirred. He found out why when Meredith knelt next to him and pressed her fingers to James’s neck.
“No pulse,” she said quietly. “He’s dead.”
Chapter 12
Minutes later, they were surrounded by SWAT, several OCPD officers, Attorney General Ivory, Robin and Gage’s grandparents.
Meredith wasn’t sure how many times she repeated her story. Because she’d seen James actually planting the accelerant, he couldn’t leave her unconscious or dead. The risk was too gre
at that someone might find her body before the explosion and alert people, so he had taken her as a hostage. Thank goodness Gage had shown up when he had.
Sitting in a chair several yards from James’s body, Meredith answered questions from the Attorney General as she watched the steady activity around the scene.
Ken Ivory closed the notebook he’d been using to record her answers. “I still need to depose you about the marshal, but I can do it another time.”
“Could we go ahead? I’d prefer to finish everything now.”
The man’s gray gaze measured her. “If the paramedic says you’re okay, we’ll go back to the room we used before. Until things wrap up here, no one will be using that courtroom.”
“Thank you.”
She watched Gage talking to his retired boss as well as the new fire chief, Bill Haynes. Several firefighters passed by, all pausing to slap Gage’s back or shake his hand, disbelieving smiles on their faces.
Presenting the evidence found at Meredith’s house and the past pattern of James’s behavior at the arson-ring fires, Gage had managed to secure a couple of fire stations on standby. If James had managed to detonate those gel blocks, the fire department would’ve had a good chance of dousing the blazes before anyone was hurt.
She told herself to stop watching him.
A lanky, dark-haired paramedic approached and knelt next to her chair. “I need to check you out, Dr. Boren.”
She nodded, recognizing him as a firefighter-paramedic who often brought patients into the Presley E.R. “Are you working for Oklahoma City now?”
“No, just doing some training with their SWAT medic program.”
“I’d forgotten Presley started a program like that. It’s a good idea to take paramedics on police calls. You look familiar, but I’m afraid I can’t remember your name.”
“Walker McClain.” He gently examined the cut at her temple. “A while back, you saved my sister-in-law, Kiley, after she was shot.”
“Oh, yes, you’re Collier’s brother.” Something else about him nagged at her, but Meredith couldn’t call it to mind. “Terra Spencer, the fire investigator who works with him, is one of my closest friends.”
He nodded, moving in front of her to check her pupils. The hollowness in his eyes tugged at a memory. She felt as if she had treated him or someone with him at one time.
She knew she was focusing her attention on him rather than Gage because watching her ex was too difficult.
Then she remembered. Two years ago, she’d treated Walker McClain’s pregnant wife after she’d been beaten. Sadly, neither the woman nor the baby had lived. Her heart clenched.
He cleaned the wound on Meredith’s temple. “You don’t need stitches. I can just put a butterfly bandage on this.”
“Okay, thanks.” She gave up trying not to look at Gage.
This might be one of the last times she saw him. She swallowed past a lump in her throat, admiring his big frame, the hard muscular line of his body. Seeing him with his former co-workers filled her with a bittersweet certainty. He was back where he belonged.
Walker’s green gaze followed hers to where Gage stood with his former boss and his grandparents. “My brother’s mentioned Parrish a few times. He’s a good fire investigator.”
“Yes, he is,” she murmured. “He’s outstanding.”
And she couldn’t take that away from him. She wouldn’t. She’d been right before. Their lives just didn’t mesh. Neither of them should have to change the core of who they were in order to make their relationship work.
Walker grinned. “Just before I got to you, I heard the new chief offer him his job back.”
“That was fast.” A razor-sharp pain lodged in her chest. She looked away, fixing her attention on the floor. “They’d be lucky to have him.”
Walker finished bandaging her cut. “Okay, you’re all set.”
“Thanks.” She rose, her attention again shifting to Gage.
The current fire chief approached Gage and after a minute, drew him aside. The two men talked intensely, then shook hands. Gage was taking the position. And why shouldn’t he? Meredith asked herself. He no longer had to feel torn between his job and her. Before long, he would be immersed in another case.
Tearing her gaze from him, she found Robin and Terra waiting several feet away and joined them. As she walked away to give her deposition, she fought the urge to turn around and look at Gage one last time.
Ending things for good between them had been the right thing to do. And she didn’t know if she’d ever get over it.
A few hours later, Meredith angrily dashed away a tear as she walked into the guest bedroom at Robin’s. Her mind was filled with images of Gage, memories. Regrets. Why couldn’t she just move on? She was only making herself miserable.
She’d made the right decision. Things had turned out well for Gage and she was glad for him. Part of her wished she’d waited at the courthouse after her deposition to say goodbye to him, but hadn’t she done that already? Seeing him again would only make her pain worse. It was better for both of them that she’d left when she had. There was no need to drag things out.
She slipped off her black velvet-trimmed jacket and heels. She planned to change into jeans then go home and determine what needed to be done before she could move back in. Until her house was ready, Robin had offered her a place to stay.
“Meredith?” her friend called out. “I’m going out for a few minutes.”
“All right.” Tugging her black silk blouse out of her skirt, her mind whirled with thoughts of Gage. She wondered if he’d spoken yet to Aaron Chapman. His friend would be ecstatic to learn Gage was alive and returning to the fire department.
“Meredith?”
At the sound of Gage’s deep voice, she whipped around, her heart beating painfully in her throat. His blue eyes flared hotly as he looked her up and down.
Swallowing hard, she committed to memory how good he looked in his dark suit with a blindingly white shirt and muted paisley tie. “How did you know where to find me?”
“Robin told me.”
She frowned.
“I know. Surprised me, too.” He rubbed his nape and she noticed he was sweating.
Concerned now, she took a step toward him. “Has something happened?”
“Nothing bad. The trial has been delayed until tomorrow, because of James.”
The uncertainty on his face had tension winding Meredith’s nerves.
He cleared his throat. “I wanted to leave the courthouse with you.”
“I thought it was better to go on.” This was too much. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “You saved a lot of people today.”
“We did. We saved them. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have been able to stop that detonation.”
Meredith couldn’t work up any regret over the death of Larry James, not when he’d intended to kill anyone and everyone he could.
Gage continued, “I had to take care of some things, finish giving my statement, then walk with the fire department through the courthouse until we found all the accelerant James had planted.”
“What about security? Why didn’t anyone notice him?”
“We think he came in yesterday before the building closed and hid in the ventilation system last night and again this morning before people arrived for work.”
Gage shifted from one foot to the other. “It was hard getting away from Haynes, but I finally did.”
At the mention of the fire chief, Meredith knew what was coming. Her heart fell and she had to force her gaze to meet Gage’s. “I heard you were offered your old job. That’s great. I really mean it. No one is better at fire investigation than you are.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that.”
How could this still hurt so much? She turned away. “I should finish changing clothes and get home to see what needs to be done.”
She felt him walk up behind her, stiffened when he curved his hands over her shoulders. “Gage.”
/>
He hoped with everything in him Meredith would listen to what he had to say and change her mind about them. She had to change her mind, although he was prepared to dig in for however long it took to convince her he was totally committed this time.
“I’m crazy in love with you,” he said huskily.
She stepped away and turned, the anguish in her blue eyes tearing at him. “There has to be more.”
“Compromise on both sides.” He wanted to go after her, pull her to him, but he didn’t. “I know.”
“We’ve tried it. It didn’t work.”
“You tried. I didn’t. But I will this time.”
Her voice quavered. “The only way we can be together is if one of us is miserable.”
“No, it’s not.” He knew she truly believed that and he was determined to convince her differently. Only sheer will kept him from gathering her close.
“After the last year, I know what I can’t live without, and that’s you.” Chest tight, he refused to give in to the dread pounding through him. “I have an idea.”
She shook her head, looking confused.
“I’m going to open a private fire-investigation company. That means I can choose my clients and more important, my hours. We can accommodate your work schedule when we need to.”
“But you were offered your old job. Did you turn it down?”
She was still listening. That was good. Despite the vicious knot in his gut, he gave her a half grin. “If you’d waited at the courthouse, I would’ve told you I’d made this decision before Haynes even talked to me about my old position.”
“You can’t leave your job.”
Instead of the pleasure he’d hoped to see in her eyes, she looked horrified. “Meredith, this is a chance to start over. It’s something I want to do.”
“You couldn’t live with that! You shouldn’t have to. Quitting my job is something you would never ask me to do.”
“You didn’t ask, baby. I thought of the idea as I was talking to Gramps earlier.”