by Cassie Miles
He came up with…nothing. No bargaining chip. No leverage. No believable threat. Nothing. Nada. His entire focus was on Rachel. He had to get her out of here. Somehow, he had to save her.
The man behind him shoved him against the wall in the hallway, yanked his arms down and cuffed his hands behind his back. Then, he did a thorough pat-down. When he was satisfied that Cole had been disarmed, he stepped back. “Turn around and walk into the bedroom. I’d advise you not to make any sudden moves.”
Cole rooted himself to the floor. No matter what happened to him, he wouldn’t leave Rachel alone with these two. “She comes with me.”
“Don’t you worry none. She’s going to be with you. Until death do you part.”
The man holding Rachel moved toward them. His arm at her throat was tight.
They went through Jenna’s bedroom into the master bathroom. As soon as they were inside, the door closed.
They weren’t alone.
Agent Prescott curled up on the floor beside the freestanding bathtub. When he heard them, he opened his eyes and struggled to sit up. Blood from a head wound caked in his hair.
He croaked out one word. “Sorry.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rachel’s nurturing instinct should have sent her running across the bathroom toward Prescott. The man was clearly in need of first aid.
But she wasn’t a paramedic anymore. She was the one in imminent danger. She turned toward Cole and placed the flat of her hand on his chest. Until death did them part? They weren’t going to get out of this alive. The guys who nabbed them were the same merciless bastards who mowed down the gang at the Shadow Mountain Lake house. “Why didn’t they kill us when we walked in the door?”
When he looked down at her, his gaze was so warm and full of caring that her heart ached. “Murder leaves a mess,” he said. “That’s why we’re in a bathroom. If they kill us here, they can swab down the tiles and get rid of the evidence.”
“That can’t be right.”
“Why not?”
How could she be discussing the circumstances of her own death? With ridiculous calm, she said, “There’d still be evidence. The CSI shows on TV always find traces.”
“I seriously doubt the Grand County Sheriff’s Department has a mass spectrometer or instant DNA analysis.”
“But you and Prescott are FBI. You guys have all the forensic goodies.”
He gave her a sad smile. Then he looked at Prescott. “You’re in the Denver office. Do you think they’re good enough to figure out who killed us?”
Using the edge of the tub, Agent Prescott forced himself to stand. His breathing was shallow. Even from a distance, she could tell that his pupils were dilated. “You’re in shock,” she said. “You’re probably concussed and should be in a hospital.”
He reached up and touched the wound on his head. His fingers came away bloody. “Tell me about Goldie. Is my baby girl safe?”
His baby? “You’re Goldie’s father?”
“Son of a bitch,” Cole muttered. “I underestimated you, Prescott. I thought you were nothing more than a scumbag traitor, but I was wrong. You’re the big man himself. You’re Baron.”
Prescott wiped his bloody hand across his mouth, leaving a streak of crimson. “Not by choice.”
Cole looked down at her. “Get the lock picks from my jacket pocket and put them in my hands. I need to get out of these cuffs.”
Moments ago, she’d been complaining about the fact that he carried tools for a break-in. Now, she was glad. “Tell me how to do it. I can help.”
“It’s faster if I handle it myself. This isn’t the first time I’ve been in this position.”
When she reached inside his jacket, her physical connection with him was immediate and intimate. She couldn’t deny their chemistry. Not that it mattered. Even if she forgave his deception and admitted how much she cared about him, they were going to be dead. “What’s going to happen to us?”
Prescott answered, “They’ll load us in a car, drive to the mountains, kill us and bury our bodies. We won’t be found until the spring thaw. By then, Jenna will be long gone.”
She placed the picks in Cole’s hands and turned toward Prescott. He seemed to be regaining strength. From experience, she knew that head wounds were unpredictable. He might have a surge of coherence, might even appear to be making a recovery. Or he might collapse into a coma.
“You’re Baron,” she said. “Why can’t you stop them?”
“I don’t call the shots. Jenna is in charge. She’s always been the boss. Ever since I first met her.”
“Was that when you came to the high school in Granby to lecture about the FBI?”
“Before that.” He winced. “Jenna lived in Denver. We were engaged.”
That explained the ring she still wore. “After you broke up, she moved to the mountains.”
Rachel understood the need for a change of scenery. She’d done much the same thing when she joined Rocky Mountain Women’s Clinic as a midwife. Like Jenna, she’d been searching for a place to start over.
Prescott said, “She invited me to Granby to talk to her class. That’s when I met Penny. Poor, sweet Penny. I was attracted to her right away, but she was a high school kid. Too young. I wooed her. Gave her presents.”
“A diamond tennis bracelet,” Rachel said.
“I picked it up at a pawn shop, but she didn’t know that. She thought I was her true love, her soulmate. All that lovey-dovey crap. And here’s the funny part.” He inhaled and straightened his shoulders. “I felt the same damn way. I waited until she was ready. I swear to God, I didn’t make love to her until she was eighteen.”
“Real decent of you,” Cole muttered. “How did you get hooked up with Jenna again?”
“She pretended to be my friend. And Penny’s. But she was scheming. Spinning her web. Like a spider. A black widow spider. A poisonous creature who…”
His words faded, and she could see him slipping toward unconsciousness. If he passed out, there was a good chance he wouldn’t wake up. She went toward him, grabbed his arm and shook him. “Stay with me, Prescott. Tell me about Jenna.”
“She’s smart. Cunning. Has a master’s degree in economics. She put together the whole robbery and money-laundering scheme.”
“Interesting,” Cole said. “Her logistics were complicated but kind of genius. How did she pull it off?”
“Untraceable email. Throwaway phones. She pretended to be a secretary and invented a boss nobody saw. Baron.”
“How did you get involved?”
“She needed to hide behind a frontman. So she set me up with fake deposits to an account in my name. When we were engaged, she handled my bills, got my social security number, all my passwords. By the time she told me about it, there was enough evidence against me to destroy my career and my life.”
“You should have turned her in,” Cole said.
“I wanted to. But she had Penny on the hook. If I didn’t do what Jenna said, Penny would pay the price.”
The long confession seemed to invigorate him. Instead of growing weaker, his voice sounded determined. “When I found out that Penny was pregnant, I started making plans to run away with her. We could have had a decent life. Could have raised our baby. Could have—”
A burst of gunfire echoed from the other room.
Cole broke free. The cuffs dangled from his left wrist, but his hands were separated. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
She didn’t see an escape. The only window in the bathroom was glass bricks—the kind you can’t break without a jackhammer.
“What’s happening?” Prescott demanded. “Who’s shooting?”
“We brought backup,” Cole said. “But I don’t trust them to be effective. We’ve got to get out of the bathroom. If those guys catch us in here, it’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel.”
He eased open the bathroom door. Over his shoulder, he whispered, “I don’t see a guard.”
If she’d had
time to think, she would have been terrified, but everything was happening too fast. Cole grabbed her hand and pulled her behind him into Jenna’s bedroom.
She scanned the room, looking for a place to hide. Under the king-size four-poster bed? In the closet? There was a lot of large, heavy furniture in dark wood. Floor-to-ceiling curtains hung beside two windows. Both had decorative security bars on the outside.
Shouts and more gunfire echoed from the front of the house. Cole peeked into the hallway and came back to her. “If we go that way, they’ll see us.”
He pulled her into the walk-in closet and closed the door. The closet was as big as a bedroom. A scent of cedar and cinnamon hung in the air.
Cole turned on the overhead light. The closet system combined hanging racks, drawers and shelving. Against the back wall were shoes, hats and a shelf with three wigs—black, blond and auburn. Jenna’s disguises. Nothing was out of place. Everything was meticulously organized.
It seemed almost sacrilegious when Cole scooped the clothes off a low rack and took the pole where they had been hanging. He did the same with another pole and handed it to her.
“Weapons,” he said.
Wooden dowels wouldn’t be much use against bullets, but it was better than nothing. He pulled her to a position beside the door and whispered, “I need to explain about my wife.”
“Not now. It’s not important.”
“This might be the last thing I ever say to you, and I want you to know that I’m not a liar or a cheat. The marriage was years ago. I was investigating the illegal gambling scene in California, and I had a female partner. There were problems with our undercover identities. Somehow, we ended up going through a wedding ceremony and signing papers that I suppose are still legal. But there was never anything romantic between us.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“I never had to mention this phony marriage to you. But I’m trying to be honest. To tell you everything.”
“So, what happened with this partner of yours?”
“She transferred back east. Neither of us bothered with a divorce. I didn’t see a need. There wasn’t anyone else in my life. Not until now. Not until you.”
She heard more gunfire from the other room. There was no way out of this mess.
“That’s a mighty strange story,” she said.
“It’s the truth.”
A fake marriage to a partner? An unconsummated marriage? Not bothering with a divorce? If she hadn’t gone through the past days with Cole and seen how many twists and turns his life involved, she would have dismissed his story. But she knew his life was complicated. Crazy. Wild. “I believe you.”
“I love you, Rachel.”
Her arms closed around him. She wanted to be strong and brave, didn’t want to cry. But tears spilled down her cheeks. “I love you, too.”
This might be the last time they embraced. She’d found love only to lose it.
“When we get out of this,” he said, “I’ll get a divorce and marry you.”
“That’s a hell of a way to propose.” She scrubbed the moisture from her face. “What if I say no?”
“That’s not an option.”
The shooting stopped abruptly. She heard voices from the other room.
Cole turned off the overhead light in the closet and stepped in front of her. “Stay back,” he said. “No matter what happens, stay in here.”
The voices came closer. One was a woman. Jenna?
The closet door whipped open. Cole reacted. He swung hard with the dowel, striking the gun of the man who opened the door. He dropped his weapon. Cole dove, trying to reach the gun.
He was out of her line of sight. She heard shots being fired.
Then silence.
Panic roared through her. Without thinking, she charged through the open door with her dowel raised to strike.
The scene before her was a tableaux. Cole stood between Prescott and a mousy woman in a button-down shirt, striped vest and gray slacks. They both had their weapons aimed at him.
On the floor in front of Cole, another man lay bleeding.
“Drop your weapons,” Prescott ordered. “Both of you.”
Cole glanced at her and gave a nod as he dropped his dowel on the floor. “It’s okay, Rachel.”
“No.” She refused to give up. “It’s not okay.”
“We can negotiate,” Prescott said. “Nobody else has to die.”
Rachel pointed her dowel at the woman. “I want to hear from her. Jenna Cambridge.”
Jenna looked down her long nose. “Don’t be stupid. I might decide to let you go after you’ve served your purpose as a hostage. I don’t particularly want to kill you.”
“Not like Penny?”
Jenna’s dull brown eyes flicked nervously from left to right, but her gun hand remained steady. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
“Convenient for you that it did,” Rachel said. “With Penny out of the way, your former fiancé can come back to you.”
“I told you once not to be a fool,” Jenna said in a teacherlike voice. “I won’t tell you again.”
“You won’t get away with this.”
“I’m a good planner.” She glanced toward Prescott.
“We’re going away together. We’ll have a new life with enough money that we won’t ever have to work again. I’ve worked hard and I deserve that much, don’t I, darling?”
Prescott crossed the room and stood before her. “You deserve something.”
“There’s only one thing I’ve ever wanted,” she said with a simpering grin. “Your love.”
“Sorry, Jenna. I already gave my heart.”
He shoved his gun against her rib cage and pulled the trigger. She gasped. And fell.
She was dead before she hit the floor.
He tried to turn the gun on himself, but Cole was too fast. He wrenched the weapon from Prescott’s hand. With surprising gentleness, he guided the wounded agent to the bed.
Prescott sat with his head drooped forward. “She would have killed you. Couldn’t let that happen.”
Cole patted his shoulder. “You came through when I needed you. I won’t forget that.”
“My life is over.”
“Not yet,” Cole said. “You have a baby.”
“Goldie.” He lifted his head. “Penny’s baby.”
“You need to see her and hold her. But first, you’ve got to get us out of this mess. The cops still think Rachel and I are fugitives.”
“I’ll take care of it.” Prescott rose. He wavered for a moment before he straightened and walked toward the front of the house. “The police should be here any minute. As soon as I got out of the bathroom, I put in a call.”
Eager to leave the carnage in the bedroom, Rachel followed him. She didn’t get far. In the hallway, Cole caught hold of her hand and spun her around to face him. His hands rested at her waist.
He smiled down at her. “When you came charging out of the closet, you scared me.”
“I think you have that backwards. I was scared.” She remembered how he’d told her that eventually the trauma would fade. “I guess our road trip to California is off.”
“Hell, no. I’m not letting you out of my sight.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “The world is a dangerous place. I need to protect my bride-to-be.”
There were a million details to work out, but nothing seemed important. They were together. They were safe, and she wanted to keep it that way forever.
Epilogue
Nine months later, Rachel draped her wedding gown over her swollen belly. Turning sideways, she admired her profile in the full-length mirror in her bedroom. Pregnancy suited her well.
After a quick tap on the door, Cole slipped inside. She was too big for a normal embrace, but he managed to wrap his arms around her. “How’s my bride?”
“Good.” She’d felt a bit of cramping earlier. It might be a good idea to hurry. “And my groom?”
“Never better.”
&n
bsp; Given the fact that he was an uncompromising man, he’d been incredibly cooperative about making changes in his life. After the betrayal by his handler in California, Cole didn’t want to return to the Los Angeles office of the FBI. He still loved the sun and the beach, but he decided that being a mountain man wasn’t so bad.
Prescott’s arrest had left an opening in the Denver office, and Cole stepped in to fill it. He still did undercover assignments, but much of his workload fell under the category of investigation. He was considered a rising star because he had not only put the Baron theft ring out of business but had also recovered the stolen cash.
She had also made concessions. Granby was too far from his work, so she moved closer to Denver and opened a new branch for the Rocky Mountain Women’s Clinic. When they bought their house in Idaho Springs, Cole had one stipulation. Twice a year, they would vacation on a beach.
Everything seemed to be working out neatly. Except for the wedding. She’d wanted a small ceremony, but things had gotten out of hand. All of her huge family was there as well as Cole’s brother’s family, his mother and his silver-haired gambler father, who was one of the most charming men she’d ever met. Cole’s dad was making quite an impression on Pearl, who had full custody of Goldie the Miracle Baby.
As they made plans, the guest list multiplied. They couldn’t leave out the people she’d worked with and the parents of the babies she’d delivered. Nor could they ignore Cole’s coworkers. And then there were friends, including Xavier, who had gotten off with little more than a slap on the wrist for his involvement with Baron. She didn’t resent the casino owner. How could she? He and his men had provided the gunfire and distraction that had saved their lives.
She kissed Cole on the cheek. In his black suit and white shirt, he was so handsome. Was she really getting married to this gorgeous man?
“How’s the crowd?” she asked.
“Restless,” he said. “Most of them have already left for the church. I should be going, too. But I wanted to see you one more time before we say our vows.”