Her Last Chance

by Toni Anderson

  He reached over and transferred the knife to his other hand, blood pouring into his mouth and dripping onto her bare skin. Revulsion turned her stomach but she saw excitement stir in his expression. His hands shook.

  “I wonder how long it’ll take you to die if I stab you here?” Pain exploded like a firework as he plunged the knife deep into her shoulder. She arched off the bed as agony flashed through her body, tore through her brain.

  It hurt so freakin’ bad she was definitely going to die. Blood flowed from her body in a hot wet rush. Thoughts of Marsh invaded her, calmed her. She loved him. And he loved her. She’d gotten one thing right. She knew that now.

  Now that it was too late.

  She felt herself zoning out into a much better place. Maybe one day Marsh would get over her and meet someone else. Someone to give his mother those grandchildren she craved. It was a pity it couldn’t be her.

  He slapped her cheek. “You’re not slipping away that easily.”

  She spat at him and it landed smack on his lips.

  Fury burned in his eyes and he raised the knife as if to finish this thing once and for all. Finally.

  An explosion jerked him away from her. A warm spray of blood hit her face before he dropped onto the hard wooden floor.

  Relief was so profound she almost stopped breathing.

  “FBI. Put down your weapon or I’ll shoot.” Marsh walked across the room, his gun in a two-fisted grip. He didn’t look at her as he walked around the end of the bed to the monster bleeding out on the floor.

  A sound gurgled in the monster’s throat. It sounded a lot like ‘Help.’

  “Is he still alive?” Josie whispered.

  “Not for long.” Marsh told her, ignoring the injured man as he undid her bonds. “Are you okay?”

  Josie remembered she was stark naked, her shoulder bleeding like crazy. The naked part didn’t matter right now. Her voice was high pitched and frightened. “He drugged me with something, but the only damage is the cuts you see.”

  Marsh’s eyes flicked nervously over the stab wound in her shoulder. It was a little bit more than a cut, but she wasn’t going to think about it that way. She did not intend to die. Not now. The guy on the floor groaned again. Her gaze flashed to the edge of the bed.

  Dancer cuffed him. “He’s going to bleed out long before the ambulance gets here.” The grim satisfaction on his face told its own story. So many people had suffered so much at this man’s hands.

  “I hope so.” She wanted him dead.

  “Even if he lives he’ll never hurt you again,” Marsh told her, freeing her other wrist. For once she believed him. “I, for one, wouldn’t mind him paying for his crimes.”

  Finally she was free but too weak to lift her arms. Everything already hurt. “How did you find me?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “How’s Vince?”

  Marsh touched her hair and kissed her brow. “He’ll live. You will too.” He ripped off his t-shirt and padded it hard against her shoulder. Crap! She wanted to touch his face but didn’t have the strength. He tugged the sheet around her and lifted her in his arms. “Let’s go.”

  “I’ll watch him until the locals turn up,” said Dancer. His eyes looked tired and bleak. Whatever he saw in Marsh’s expression made him say, “Don’t worry, I won’t do anything stupid. I’m happy to watch him suffer.”

  Marsh gathered her against his chest and she felt safe and secure, but her shoulder screamed with pain, and her head felt like it was floating two feet away. “I’ve got you. We need to get to a hospital.” He strode out of the room and down the stairs, each step jarring and making her grit her teeth against the pain.

  Love and tenderness mixed with stark fear in his eyes.

  “I’m not going to die, Marsh. I’ve got too much to live for.” She’d survived. She was bleeding and battered, but she’d left that dark ugly place and gone instead to a place filled with hope. “I love you,” she admitted, free of the fear that had stalked her life. Not just the killer who lay upstairs bleeding, but the fear of getting close, getting hurt.

  She needed to live.

  He squeezed her harder. “I love you too.”

  She could hear the sound of the surf, and something else. A deep thrum. And a fierce blast of wind and sand. She pressed her face into his chest. Marsh tucked the sheet tightly around her body and then hugged her hard against him. “Ever been in a helicopter before?”

  “No, and I hate flying,” she admitted through gritted teeth. Pain radiated through her body in a single throbbing pulse. Shivers raced over her as a cold wind pierced the thin shroud covering her.

  She was jostled and jarred and then laid flat across two seats. She felt that weightless sensation as they took off but she couldn’t enjoy it. Strong warm fingers gripped her hand, then pressed hard against the wound in her shoulder. At first it was agony before slowly easing into numbness. She clung to those fingers, clung to the pain. She wasn’t losing the battle now. Marsh had beaten the Blade Hunter and she’d faced her demon and survived. She drifted into unconsciousness as the loud throb of rotors pounded through her blood.

  ***

  She woke up in the hospital, her shoulder tightly bandaged and a dull ache radiating all the way up to her neck and down her back. Marsh gripped her hand so firmly her fingers tingled, but she liked it.

  “Hey.” Her voice cracked. “Can I get a drink, please?”

  Marsh leaned over and poured her a glass of water from a jug beside the bed. He raised her up with the automatic control and kissed her gently.

  Placing the straw between her lips she took a sip of water and relished the cold freshness that cooled her throat. His hazel eyes locked onto hers. “How do you feel?”

  “Alive?” She laughed and almost sobbed as she remembered her ordeal. “Did he make it?”

  He shook his head. Relief swept through her in a massive wave. Good. He was dead and that was good.

  Marsh was smudged with dirt and blood, and wearing running shoes with dress pants and a dark green scrub top.

  Not the smart, dapper Marshall Hayes she was used to.

  “Where’s Dancer?”

  “Checking on Vince.”

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  Marsh nodded and took the cup from her.

  She closed her eyes in relief and sagged against the pillow. “I thought Vince was dead when that car hit him.” Tears ran down her cheeks and unable to stop them she drew up her knees and sank her face into the pillow. The bed sagged as Marsh gathered her in his arms. He pulled a handkerchief out of nowhere and she laughed, but then sobered at his expression.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “There’s something I never told you and you’re not going to like it…”

  Everything inside her froze. Maybe he didn’t really care for her. Maybe he’d fed her a line as part of the job.

  Lines of tension radiated around his eyes and mouth. “You asked me how I found you, at the beach house?”

  “It doesn’t matter—”

  “Yeah, it does.” He scrubbed a hand over his hair then looked her in the eye. “First of all I need you to know that I do love you. Nothing will ever change that. God knows, I tried.”

  “Okay, I think.” She laughed nervously. Movement hurt but he loved her and nothing could be as terrible as losing Marsh again. Whatever he had to say couldn’t be that bad.

  “When I tracked you down back in April and drugged you, I, er, did something else.” He stood and started pacing, not at all the self-assured man she’d come to know. “I implanted a tiny transmitter into your shoulder. It’s still active and that’s how we were able to pin down your location so quickly.”

  “What?” She sat up a little straighter, frowned. Why would he do that? It explained the itch she sometimes felt there. Then she got it. No way. “You always planned for me to get away from your cabin in Vermont so I could lead you to Elizabeth.” His eyes told her she was right. Her jaw dropped
. “All that time I felt guilty for drugging and deceiving you, and yet my escaping was part of the plan all along.” Anger started to build, hot and furious in her gut.

  “Yes and no.” He held up his hand, palm out. “You drugging me and us having sex were never part of the plan. Me waking up naked, handcuffed to a bedpost was never part of the plan. Leaving you unprotected for any length of time was never part of the plan.” His voice rose, words vehement.

  Memories of being grabbed out of her rental car in Montana bombarded her. Andrew DeLattio’s hands stroking her skin as if he could do with her as he pleased. She’d thought he was going to murder her. A bullet in the head after he’d finished using her body for his own gratification.

  Marsh’s hazel eyes were shockingly dark against pale skin. “If I’d have known DeLattio was going to escape custody and get hold of you, I’d never have let you leave.” He was trembling. Hands fisted as if he tried to hold everything inside.

  All the emotion of the past days and months swirled in her mind, but the biggest feeling that overtook her was relief and gratitude that Marsh was here with her now. That they’d found their way back to one another despite everything they’d gone through. Sure she was angry but she’d get over it, especially if it stopped her feeling guilty about what she’d done to him six months ago.

  “Is it still in there?” She looked toward her shoulder but it throbbed too painfully to examine.

  He shook his head, pulled something miniscule out of his pocket and handed it to her. “I asked the surgeon to remove it.” He swallowed audibly. “Can you forgive me?”

  She examined the tiny capsule in her palm. “Considering it ended up saving my life I think I can forgive you. But next time you want to stalk me just track the cell phone, okay?”

  He leaned over and kissed her, stroking her hair off her cheek. “There better not be a next time. You took a decade off my life last night; I want to spend all the days I have left being with you.”

  “Did I remember to thank you? For saving me?”

  He leaned his forehead against hers. “All part of the service.” He kissed her and she wished she wasn’t lying in a hospital bed. After a moment he pulled away. “I better go see how Vince is doing.”

  She struggled out of his grip, swung her legs over the side of the bed.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” His voice was a growl that told her not to push it.

  She stood and wobbled. “I’m fine, Marsh. Get me some clothes. I’m going to see Vince too.”

  “No.” His raised voice had the nurses looking over and then striding toward them.

  She planted her fist on her hip. “I need to do this. Please, don’t try to stop me.” The nurses bustled around her, clucking and trying to make her sit while they checked her vitals. “Go find me something to wear.” She flapped her hospital gown at him, revealing a lot of flesh. “Scrubs, pants, anything. I’m going to visit Vince if I have to walk naked through the halls.”

  “Fetch her a wheelchair from behind the desk, too,” a dark-haired nurse told him with a grin. “What are you waiting for? Go do what the lady asks.”

  Epilogue

  __________

  It had been a long hard week. They IDed Josephine’s mother through dental records and Marsh was arranging a proper burial. Prudence was being buried today—as a victim rather than an accessory—a concession to Brook Duvall’s position and Director Lovine’s wishes. Steve Dancer was on enforced leave, until Marsh and the departmental shrink deemed him well enough to return to work.

  Gloria Faraday had been released from custody, with no proof of her involvement in the crimes. Marsh didn’t know what to make of that. The painting that had been the catalyst behind the whole thing had been reluctantly donated to the National Gallery by all the parties involved. It wasn’t much consolation but it gave him some satisfaction that no one person would walk away rich from such a terrible situation.

  Josephine was slowly regaining movement in her shoulder, but she was not a woman who took immobility gracefully. Thankfully, Vince was recovering well enough to have left the hospital yesterday with only a broken leg and the rapidly healing scar from an emergency splenectomy to show for his near death adventure.

  They’d all survived and right now that was all that mattered.

  “What are you doing?” Marsh watched Josie sling the rucksack over her good shoulder. “I can carry that for you.” But she shook him off.

  She looked up at him, blue eyes bright and alive. He’d been so certain he was going to lose her when he’d raced into that damned beach house.

  “I need to say goodbye,” Josie said quietly, making his pulse pound.

  “Goodbye?” he asked her warily.

  “Not to you.” She pulled a face. “I’m moving out of NYC.”

  Did this mean…? His heart stopped beating. “Where exactly are you going?”

  Fingering the strap of her rucksack, she rocked back on the heels of her Doc Marten boots. “I’m moving to Boston to live in sin with a hot FBI agent, though not with his parents.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He took a step until his body brushed up against hers and caused all sorts of short circuits to his brain. “Who said I wanted to live in sin?”

  Her smile was wicked. “Trust me, you want to live in sin.”

  “No, I don’t.” He took her hand and leaned down, parting her lips for a deep kiss.

  She wrapped her good arm around his neck. “What do you want then?” She planted a kiss on him that stopped his breath, not the kiss itself, but this newfound confidence to treat him like he was hers. Because he was hers.

  “I want to take a cab up 5th Avenue to Tiffany’s and pick out the biggest diamond ring you’ve ever seen.”

  She laughed, but he caught a glimmer of happiness lurking in her eyes.

  “Diamonds are so cliché.” She faked a yawn.

  “How about the tab off a can of soda?” He interlinked their fingers and grinned. She hadn’t said no.

  “Not that cliché.”

  “So where are we going to first?” he asked as they got down to the lobby.

  “We’re going to say goodbye to somebody very special.” She lifted the flap on her bag and showed him the urn for Marion’s ashes.

  Ah.

  He bent to pick up an old newspaper that had dropped out of someone’s recycling box.

  “Hey! What is that?” Josie’s tone turned icy as she pointed at the paper.

  He looked down and there he was on the front page of The NY News with his tongue down Detective Jenkin’s throat.

  “That was Plan A, before you were kidnapped.” He looked at her furiously jealous face and suddenly everything in his world righted itself. Even when she drove him nuts, she was what he’d been searching for his whole life.

  Then he kissed her, dragged her back up the stairs to her apartment and even though she bitched at him the whole way, he knew that this was going to work. They’d go scatter ashes and buy rings later. Right now he finally had her where he wanted her. In his life. In his heart.

  Want to know more about how Marsh and Josie first met? Read the opening scenes of...

  HER SANCTUARY

  ©Toni Anderson

  New York City, March 31st

  Elizabeth Ward eased back the blinds and peered into the quiet street that ran alongside the apartment building. Rain streaked the windowpanes, drops running together and fracturing in the orange glow of the streetlights. A dark-colored Lincoln crouched like a shadow next to a squat, black and silver hydrant. Her former colleagues from the FBI’s Organized Crime Unit sat in that car. Watching. Waiting. Her so-called protection.

  Betrayal burned the edges of her mind like battery acid.

  The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed five times, making her jump.

  Five a.m.

  Nearly time.

  Her fingers gripped the edge of the window frame. Night’s gloom clung to the red brick of the Victorian tenements opposite, its weak edges and
cold breath eating into what should have been springtime.

  A drunk wove his shopping cart down the back alley, searching for a safe spot out of the killer wind. Even Midtown’s exclusive neighborhoods were scattered with down-and-outs, hunched behind dumpsters, curled up between parked cars. A community of desperate souls, listless, gaunt, and stinking like the dead.

  She envied them.

  She wanted to be that invisible.

  Swallowing past the wedge in her throat, she counted to ten and slowly inhaled a lungful of air. She’d done her job, and done it well, but it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.

  She sat at her computer in the darkened room and signed in to an anonymous email account. Wrote two messages.

  The first one read, Terms of contract agreed. Proceed.

  There was more than one way to skin a cat.

  Her teeth chattered, but not from cold. A rolling shake began in her fingertips and moved up through her wrists—whether from rage or fear she didn’t know. She clenched her hands together into a hard fist, massaged the knuckles with her interlocked fingers, grateful for the unyielding gold of her signet ring that bit into her flesh.

  Pain was a good reminder.

  She pulled her shoulders back, typed carefully, Beware the fury of a patient man.

  Baiting the tiger, or the devil himself.

  Bastard.

  A tear slipped down her cheek, cold and wet. She let it fall, blanked the searing memories from her mind.

  Elizabeth logged off. Reformatted her hard-drive, erasing every command she’d ever received, every report she’d ever sent. Letting the computer run, she headed into the stylish bathroom of the apartment the FBI had leased for her undercover alter ego and prepared for the final chapter of her New York life. She leaned close to the mirror and put in a colored contact lens.