by Mary McBride
“I’ll be glad when this is over,” she said, rubbing her arms against a sudden chill, wondering how Joe coped day after day, year after year, with this terrible tension. It had to take a toll on him somehow. “We’ll celebrate. I’ve got a bottle of Dom Pérignon I’ve been saving for a special occasion.” She gave a mournful little laugh. “Of course, I didn’t know the occasion was going to be the downfall of the South Side Ripper.”
“Count on it, babe. We should have Junior printed and booked and stashed in a holding cell at the precinct by midnight, if not before. I’ll tell you what. I’ll put on my tux and take you out dancing. There’s a—”
It was probably the look on her face that cut him off so abruptly. Sara could feel it herself—the way her mouth gaped and her eyes grew large. A fright mask. Tears began to puddle in her eyes.
Joe cursed softly. “I’m sorry, Sara. I wasn’t even thinking.” He sat beside her on the couch, drawing her into his arms. “Hey. We’ll dress up and dance here while we get bombed out of our minds on champagne. Then we’ll...”
She shook her head against his shoulder, the flannel of his shirt damp with her tears. “No, it’s me who’s the sorry one. This is just plain pitiful.” She sniffed. “Maybe you should just shoot me and put us both out of our misery.”
“I’m not miserable,” he said with slow emphasis.
“Well, I am!” she wailed, hating herself for falling apart, especially with the Ripper practically at the door. The last thing this man needed was a weepy wuss on his hands. She jerked upright and began to swipe at her eyes just as the cell phone in Joe’s shirt pocket let out a little chirp.
He pressed a finger to his lips, cautioning Sara to be silent, before he answered it with a brusque, “Decker,” then listened patiently to whoever was on the other end of the call. When Sara raised a curious eyebrow, he covered the mouthpiece with his hand and whispered, “It’s Cobble. Looks like we’re right on schedule. He’s doing a pretty good job of chewing my ass for not being able to baby-sit his prize witness tonight.”
Until that moment, this whole plan had seemed unreal to her, but suddenly Sara, the prize witness, felt more like a prize wedge of cheese in a mousetrap. She sat back, letting her breath whoosh out audibly.
The conversation was short and mostly one-sided. Joe closed the phone and slipped it into his pocket. For a moment his expression seemed cold and inscrutable. Then one of those wonderful smiles careened across his lips. “I’d say we’ve got about an hour, babe. Why don’t you go put that champagne on ice?”
Something was wrong, although Joe couldn’t have said exactly what. After Sara had gone in search of their champagne, he put another log on the fire and eased out on the couch with his eyes closed, trying to puzzle it out. In spite of what he’d told Sara, plans usually didn’t come together quite this well. There was always a hitch, a bump, a screwup somewhere.
Of course, he’d never worked a case where the perp was his captain’s son, either. Damned if he understood why Frank had sat on his suspicions for as long as he had. Denial, maybe? An unwillingness to believe his own flesh and blood was responsible for so much spilled blood?
Since he wasn’t a father himself, Joe couldn’t pretend to understand all of Cobble’s motives. But he knew his own father wouldn’t have covered up for him one minute after a suspicion arose in his head. Hell, when his dad had found a six-pack of beer under his bed when he was fifteen, he had hauled Joe, and the six-pack, to the station house on Harris Street and left him there in the drunk tank overnight. Maybe Frank Senior had been letting Frank Junior off the hook all these years. Who knew?
The captain didn’t want his son hurt, either. He’d made that absolutely clear. “You shoot him and I’ll not only have your job, Decker, I’ll have your head. Literally. If you kill him, I’ll kill you. Is that clear?”
Cobble already had it all planned out. His son was going to plead guilty by reason of insanity. Then Frank was going to see that he received decent treatment at the state hospital. When Joe had wondered out loud whether Junior would go along with that, Frank had snapped, “He’ll do what I tell him.”
Maybe. Maybe not. Joe slipped his gun out of its holster and checked the clip one more time. It was a habit, a nervous twitch, whenever something like this was about to go down. Sara, he thought, hadn’t exactly cornered the market on compulsiveness.
Sara. Just the thought of her made him want to touch her, so he hauled himself off the couch and followed the trail of her sensual perfume into the kitchen. It was almost five and getting dark outside, but she hadn’t yet turned on the lights overhead. The only illumination came from the open refrigerator door where she was bent over, head and shoulders inside the appliance and her shapely backside poking out.
Joe’s body reacted instantly and inappropriately, considering the time—not much—and place—a trap waiting to be sprung. He sighed, deciding he’d have to be content for the moment just leering at those luscious curves. But later...
She backed out of the refrigerator, straightened up, then gave a little gasp. “You startled me. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“You better stay on your toes, Campbell.” He flipped on the overhead lights. “At least for the next few hours, because after that—” he grinned “—I can pretty much guarantee you you’ll be on your back.”
“Promises, promises, Decker,” she said with a laugh. “Our champagne’s chilling, by the way.”
“Good. Did you remember to unlock the back door?”
She blinked. “Unlock?”
“Maybe I forgot to tell you,” he said, heading around the island and toward the door. “No sense having Junior break it down. Besides, it controls the situation, knowing where he’ll come in.”
“Oh. Right. That makes sense.” In contrast to her words, however, her expression said, What? Are you crazy?
“Come here,” he said softly, opening his arms to her, then holding her close. “You’re not going to be anywhere near here when it happens, Sara. That’s already been worked out.”
“What do you mean?” Her question was muffled in his shirtfront, warm against his chest.
“I mean Frank’s going to give us a heads-up when Junior is a couple blocks away. He’ll snoop around, see you at a window or two, then make his move. But when he comes in the back door, Maggie’s taking you out the front door. You won’t even be here for the grand finale.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
He smoothed his hand over her hair. “I didn’t want you to have too much time to worry about it.” He tipped her chin up, seeking the green depths of her eyes. “You would have, you know.”
“Worry? Me?” She did her best to smile, but it was barely more than a thin, wavering line.
He kissed each sweet corner of it and would have gladly tasted the center if his phone hadn’t started to ring, vibrating softly in his pocket between them.
“It’s Maggie,” he said, reading the ID window before answering with a brusque, “Yeah, Mag? What’s up?”
“There’s a problem,” she told him. “Cobble’s here. He wants you to come out so he doesn’t have to explain it twice.”
“What problem?” Joe asked. “What the hell’s going on, Mag? Where’s Junior?”
Maggie blew one of her irritated Irish sighs into the phone. “Will you just do what the boss wants for once in your life, Decker? I’m parked just up the street. Now come on.” She clicked off, not bothering with goodbye.
He cursed, shoved the phone in his pocket, then cursed again. When Sara asked what the matter was, he was too steamed to answer. Instead, he stalked out of the kitchen in search of his jacket for Cobble’s little meeting outside. A meeting, for God’s sake. Outside in twenty-degree weather. He knew this had all been going too smoothly to be true. Leave it to a fussbudget like Frank to want a meeting just minutes short of the zero hour.
“I should have known,” he muttered in the foyer, jamming his arms into the sleeves of his coat and rep
ositioning his shoulder holster, then ripping his fingers through his hair. He felt like a sprinter who’d just been warned to pull up short.
“Joe, what on earth is the matter?” Sara had followed from the kitchen, close on his heels. She caught his arm. “Where are you going? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” he snapped. “Cobble wants to talk to me. Maybe he’s having second thoughts about taking down his son.”
“He wouldn’t,” she exclaimed. “He couldn’t. The Ripper has to be stopped.”
Joe’s hand was on the big brass handle on the front door. “I’ll be right back. This isn’t going to take long. Lock the door behind me, okay?”
“Okay. Hurry back.”
He stepped outside, pulled the door closed behind him, then turned his collar up against the bitter cold, cursing Frank Cobble with a steamy cloud of breath that turned amber in the porch light. It was dark. He could just make out the parking lights of Maggie’s unmarked car half a block east on Westbury. She and the captain were probably running the heater full blast while they waited for him to trek the snowy distance from the house.
“Hell of an idea, Frank,” he muttered as he reached into his breast pocket for his penlight, hoping its fragile beam would at least keep him from slipping on a patch of ice and breaking his neck. Rather than leave his prints on the pristine lawn, Joe trotted down the shoveled sidewalk and driveway, then continued east along the snow-packed sidewalk that bordered Westbury.
Headlights of passing traffic bounced off the front and rear windows of Maggie’s car, silhouetting her in the driver’s seat. There was no sign of Cobble in the car, though. Joe cursed again. What now, dammit? Back to Plan A?
Nearly at the car, he started to lose his footing on the slippery sidewalk but shot out a hand just in time to catch himself on the front fender. Finally, after a few more treacherous steps, he reached for the handle of the passenger door. Not only was it cold as dry ice, it was locked. Joe rapped his knuckles on the passenger window, hard, then tucked his freezing hands under his armpits and moved from foot to foot while he waited for Maggie to lean across the seat and open the door.
When she didn’t, he called out irritably, “Come on, Mag. It’s freezing out here.”
The door didn’t open.
Great. He sighed a roiling, aggravated cloud of breath. Locking each other out of the car had been a running gag of theirs ever since they’d partnered up, but what was funny in September and October wasn’t so damned funny now.
“Maggie.” He tapped on the glass with the butt of his penlight. “Maggie. Dammit. This isn’t funny. Open up.”
His fingers were so cold and stiff that he dropped the light when he attempted to turn it around. It plunked into the snowbank at the curb, then promptly went out, necessitating a minute or two of numb pawing before he found it again.
“I’ll get you for this, Mag,” he muttered as he shook the bulb to life, then aimed it into the car.
The first thing he thought was that Maggie had covered herself with a blanket because of the cold. It seemed to penetrate his brain slowly—by centimeters—by seconds that somehow felt like years—that the blanket was red, and it wasn’t a blanket at all that covered her. His partner was covered with blood.
He jerked the beam of light to her throat. Jesus, Joseph and Mary. His vision blurred and his knees nearly buckled and it took all his will to keep from retching. And then, even before he knew he had turned around, Joe was staring at the brightly lit front door of Sara’s house.
Locked. Yes, he knew that. He had heard her turn the bolt. But not the back door. Not the back. The back.
“Leave the back door open,” Frank had said.
Chapter 15
In the foyer, peeking out one of the frosted glass sidelights of the door, Sara couldn’t see a thing except the vague, almost jewel-like impressions of headlights and taillights on Westbury. But she was almost certain she heard Joe call to her to lock the door, which made no sense at all because he’d been standing just outside on the porch a few minutes ago when she had locked it.
She was positive she had locked it. Just to reassure herself, though, she glanced at the brass knob of the dead bolt again. Sure enough, it was vertical. Locked up tight. So why in the world was he yelling at her to do it again?
Then, with a slap of her palm to her head, Sara answered her own silent question out loud. “The back door, you idiot. He wants you to lock the back door.”
She whirled, raced down the long hallway and skidded barefoot into the dark kitchen. At the same moment she flipped on the lights, she seemed to recall not turning them off when she’d followed the grumbling, growling Decker out of the kitchen earlier. Maybe she had, though. It didn’t matter, anyway. No sense worrying about lights when she was supposed to be worrying about locks. She gave a tiny shrug, then quickly advanced to the back door.
The floor was wet! Wet and cold. It felt like melted snow beneath her bare toes. Now how in the world...? Who...? Sara’s gaze snapped to the door. Joe had unlocked it earlier. She knew that because she’d watched him do it. He’d practically made a federal case out of it. But now the door was locked. The dead bolt had been thrown. How could that be when she was the only one in the house?
A cold prickle of fear traveled from the top of her head down the length of her spine, and she stood there frozen for a moment, unable to move or to think, staring at the lock. Then, without a sound, the doorknob began to turn.
Sara screamed.
The knob jiggled furiously and Joe’s voice sounded from the opposite side. “Sara! It’s me. Open the door. Hurry.”
No sooner had she turned the bolt than he was reaching in to grab her wrist and pull her onto the back porch.
“Joe! Oh, I’ve never been so glad to—”
He hushed her with a hand over her mouth. “Listen to me. I lost my phone in the snow. Run to a neighbor’s. Call nine-one-one and tell them an officer’s down and another one needs assistance. Then stay there, Sara. Don’t come back.” He grasped her shoulders and gave her a little shake. “You stay there. Do you hear me?”
She nodded, even though his words barely registered. Rather, it was the look on his face—fierce, warriorlike, lethal—that made her understand on a purely instinctive level that she had to do exactly what he told her. Only she didn’t want to leave him. Ever. She was safe when she was with him. Something had gone ternbly wrong and she wanted to help him.
“Joe, I...”
“Go,” he ordered, whirling her around, pointing her toward the house next door, then giving her a push. “Now, Sara. Run.”
She ran, her bare feet stinging in the snow, her teeth clenched against the bitter cold. Only once did she turn to look for Joe, but he wasn’t there anymore. The back door was closed.
Joe doused the kitchen lights, allowing himself only a second to be blessedly relieved that Sara was safely out of the house and that she hadn’t given him an argument when he’d practically tossed her out in the cold without much explanation. That’s my girl, he thought, before he slipped cautiously into the dark hall that led to the foyer. His automatic tight in his grasp, he edged sideways with his back against the wall, trying to make himself as small a target as possible, fighting against the natural instinct to move fast when in pursuit.
Both sides of the long corridor were decked with framed artwork, he remembered, so he doubled his caution for fear of dislodging an etching or a lithograph and sending it crashing to the floor. He practically held his breath for the entire thirty feet. Then, just as he was nearing the hallway’s end—where the carpeted floor gave way to marble—he was aware of a distinct change in temperature. In fact, all of a sudden, it felt damned cold. Almost as if...
He shoved off the wall, peered into the foyer, then swore out loud.
“Son of a bitch.”
The front door was open. Wide. Beyond the snowy expanse of lawn, he could see the passing traffic on Westbury. An icy breeze hit Joe almost like a slap across the
face. The bastard wasn’t in the house, after all. He had come in the unlocked back, hidden, probably waited until Joe sent Sara off, and then slipped out the front. To get Sara!
He swore again, then turned to retrace his steps down the dark hall, only faster. He had to get his rifle with the night scope. He’d stashed it in the little bathroom off the kitchen, knowing it made Sara nervous, thinking he’d never need it anyway because the plan was all supposed to go down in the house. Dammit. He should have figured that a twisted mind would turn the whole thing into a maze.
Almost running, his momentum carried him around the corner into the dark kitchen. Then there was only half a heartbeat to react to the lunging shadow and to deflect the angle of the blade.
Her neighbors, the Carsons, hadn’t been home, and it had taken Sara far too many precious minutes to convince their non-English speaking maid that she had to use their phone. The emergency dispatcher had told her to stay calm and to stay on the line, but Sara couldn’t do either. She hung up and started back to her own house, not knowing exactly what had gone wrong or what she was going to do about it but knowing she couldn’t camp out next door while Joe was in trouble. Other than the sound of her bare feet crunching in the snow, the night was eerily quiet.
She tilted her head, hoping to hear the sound of a distant siren, the flash of oncoming lights. Nothing. Oh, God. She should have done as the dispatcher told her, she thought. She should have stayed on the line. Maybe it was some sort of test. Maybe the nine-one-one people relegated all hang-ups to the crank file.
She stood there a moment, not knowing which way to go—back to the Carsons’ to call for help again or on to her house to help Joe in any way she could. Back, she decided. She had to call again. She turned as fast as her frozen feet would permit, then the rest of her body froze.