by Gina Wilkins
Eyeing the complicated-looking electronic equipment that took up most of the otherwise-impoverished interior of the motor home, Page mused that Phillip Wingate probably did have a genius-level IQ—as his father had. She couldn’t help but be saddened that Wingate, Senior, had also passed down his emotional instability.
“I didn’t ask Gabe to find me,” she tried to explain again. “He searched for me on his own. I begged him to go away and leave me alone, but he wouldn’t If you let me go now, I’ll disappear again. I’ll hide so well that he’ll never find me. That’s what you want, isn’t it? For me to be alone?”
“You’ve already been there,” Wingate snapped, patting the gun he’d stuck into the waistband of his dirty jeans. “Now I think it’s time for you to find out how it feels to watch someone you love die.”
Her stomach clenched in fear. “I won’t let you hurt him,” she whispered. “You’ll have to kill me first.”
“You know, Page, I really don’t care,” Wingate said with a shrug. “You first, or him. Either way, you’re both dead. Your friend, as well. It comes full circle tonight, doesn’t it? A husband, a wife, and an innocent bystander. All shot because of you.”
He was insane. And he was fully prepared to kill—and to die.
There would be no reasoning with him, Page thought sickly. Nothing she could say would change his mind now. He was trapped in the horror of his own past, intent on reliving the nightmare of his parents’ deaths. And he planned to end it tonight
She’d heard the call Wingate had made to Gabe, using the cellular phone he’d stolen from Blake. And she knew Gabe would come for her, regardless of the danger.
She drew more tightly into herself, desperately searching her mind for a plan. She would do whatever it took to guarantee Gabe’s safety—even if it meant sacrificing her own.
WINGATE HAD THE GUN in his hand when he opened the side door to the motor home in response to Gabe’s knock. He looked from Gabe to Blake, who stood close by.
“You made good time,” he commented. “Fifteen minutes to spare. Come in. Oh, and I suppose I should add the usual warning for you both to keep your hands where I can see them, and to make no sudden moves.”
Gabe spotted Page the moment he stepped into the rank-smelling camper. She was sitting on a tattered couch, her hands in her lap, her eyes huge and apologetic. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed.
He nodded and, satisfied that she was unharmed, turned his attention back to Wingate.
The young man was gazing from Gabe to Page with a strange smile crooking his mouth. Gabe wondered who Wingate was seeing when he looked at them. His parents? Gabe had never been this close to insanity before, and the expression in Wingate’s eyes chilled him.
Gabe felt a ripple of panic deep inside him, but he ignored it. One way or another, this had to end now.
Wingate had backed against a cluttered counter in the confined space, the gun uncomfortably steady in his hand as he faced Gabe, Blake and Page. Page stood slowly, her hands outstretched, and moved closer to Gabe. Wingate watched her, but didn’t protest. He was still wearing that peculiar smile with which he’d greeted Gabe and Blake.
Gabe broke the eerie silence. “What now?” he asked.
“I’ve been waiting for this for four years,” Wingate replied. “Forgive me if I take a moment to savor it.”
“Let Gabe and Blake go,” Page said, sounding desperate but not very optimistic. “They aren’t a part of this. They’ve done nothing to you.”
“Innocent bystanders,” Wingate murmured. “Just as my mother was. As I was. We’d done nothing, either. But she’s dead. And I’m alone. You know how it feels to be alone, don’t you, Page? It’s hell.”
“I’m sorry about your family, Phillip,” Page whispered. “But there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. I wasn’t even in Alabama when it happened. I’d already moved to Texas.”
“You made my father fall in love with you,” Wingate snarled. “You made him obsessed with you. He couldn’t forget you, even after you destroyed him and then left town. My mother tried to make him forget you, but he wouldn’t. He killed her because she wasn’t you.”
Gabe felt Page shudder. He reached out to take her icy hand in his own, never taking his eyes from Wingate.
“You blame Page for destroying your father,” Blake said, as still and watchful as Gabe. “Yet you’ve let her do the same to you. You’re as obsessed with her as he was. Why don’t you forget her? Get on with your life. Nothing you do now can change the past.”
The expression on Wingate’s face made Gabe’s blood run cold.
“Life?” Wingate murmured. “I don’t have a life. My father killed me the day he shot my mother. That’s why there’s nothing any of you can do to stop me now. Unlike the rest of you, I don’t really care if I’m still breathing by morning. But I can guarantee you that I’ll take at least one of you with me.”
Wingate pointed the gun at Page, though Gabe knew he was watching all of them for the least sign of movement. Any provocation would set him off.
“What’s it going to be, Page?” Wingate asked. “You were only thinking of yourself when you destroyed my father. You left him to die. Here’s your chance to do the same with this poor fool. Show him how stupid he’s been to love you all this time.”
From the corner of his eye, Gabe watched as Page frowned and shook her head. “I don’t understand what you mean,” she said.
“I’m telling you to go,” Wingate explained lightly. “Run. Save yourself. You can leave, right now, and I won’t do a thing to detain you. I’ll kill these two, of course, but what do you care about that? There will be other men who’ll fall under your strange spell. Assuming, of course, that I’m not there to stop them.”
“You’ll let her leave?” Gabe asked skeptically. “Just like that?”
Wingate nodded. “She can go. Or she can stay and die with you.”
Gabe exchanged a quick, questioning look with Blake, who looked as baffled as Gabe felt.
Wingate jerked his chin toward the door. “Last chance, Page. Take off. Run. You’re so very good at that.”
“Go, Page,” Gabe urged, hoping that Wingate would keep his word. “Blake and I can take care of ourselves.”
Page didn’t move. “I’m not leaving.”
“Gabe’s right, Page,” Blake murmured. “We’ll be all right. He’s giving you a chance to get out. Take it.”
“I’m not leaving,” Page answered fiercely.
She glared at Wingate, her eyes narrowed, her face pale but determined. “Do you really think I’ve spent all this time running to save myself?” she demanded angrily. “You can shoot me now, if you want But I won’t let you hurt Gabe.”
Wingate’s laugh was short, incredulous. “You won’t let me? How do you plan to stop me?”
“Any way I can,” she challenged.
Gabe swallowed a groan. He sensed that Blake had gone tense. Ready. “Page—”
“I love you, Gabe. I always have, more than my own life. And I’m not leaving you now.”
He accepted her flat refusal with mixed emotions. High among them was an unexpected serenity that came from knowing, at last, that she really did love him. Now—and the day she had left him.
He knew, now, exactly how it felt to be willing to sacrifice his own life for the one he loved...just as Page had for him two and a half years ago.
He moved to stand in front of her, his eyes on Wingate, fully prepared to use his own body to shield her. “Let’s talk about this,” he suggested, feeling the tension mounting in the air.
“I’m tired of talking,” Wingate snapped. “Tired of hurting. Tired of all of it. It’s time for it to end.”
He raised the gun.
Even though he’d been warned what to expect, Gabe was startled when a knife suddenly sliced through the air, slamming into Wingate’s right shoulder.
Wingate staggered. The gun wavered.
Both Gabe and Blake threw themselves forward.
>
Gabe heard Page scream when the gun went off, so close to him it nearly deafened him. And then he had Wingate beneath him, fists and feet flailing, the air filled with shouts and curses.
The doors to the motor home crashed open. More bodies poured into the already cramped space. Electronic equipment shattered.
Something hit Gabe in the back of the head, hard. He attributed that hit to the weakness that was suddenly overtaking him.
Someone pulled him off Wingate. Gabe hadn’t realized he’d wrapped his hands around Wingate’s throat until a beefy police officer pried them away.
“We’ve got him,” the officer said. “Move over there, out of the way. We’ll—hey, you’re bleeding pretty bad.”
“Gabe?” Page was at his side, kneeling next to him on the filthy carpeted floor. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten onto his back, but he seemed incapable of rising.
“Oh, my God,” she gasped, placing a hand on his chest. “Oh, Gabe, no.”
Blake looked over Page’s shoulder. He hissed a curse from between his teeth and started unbuttoning his borrowed shirt.
“Here,” he said, shrugging it off and bundling it into Page’s hands. “Keep this pressed to the wound. I’ll make sure an ambulance is on the way.”
Wound? Gabe wondered where, exactly, he was hurt. He seemed to be numb below the neck, though he sensed that pain hovered just out of reach. And that, when it hit him, it was going to be major.
There was a great deal of activity going on around him. A lot of noise and confusion. The motor home was too small for all the commotion. It rocked dizzyingly as people bustled in and out
Gabe reminded himself to congratulate the police on getting there so quickly, handling everything so efficiently. He knew he and Blake hadn’t given them much to go on with the hasty call for help they’d made on the way here.
He’d have to compliment Blake, too. That knife trick had been truly amazing.
“Gabe, talk to me. Can you hear me?” Page sounded as though she’d been speaking to him for a while.
He tried to concentrate on her face, which hovered so close to his own. She was pressing hard against his chest with both hands, tears running unchecked down her cheeks. He frowned.
“Don’t cry,” he said, finding it surprisingly difficult to form the words. “I’m okay.”
“He shot you.” Her breath caught “Oh, Gabe.”
He lifted a hand to her face. It felt as though his arm weighed a ton.
“I’ll be all right,” he promised.
He hoped he told the truth. The feeling was returning to him now. He could almost imagine that Blake’s knife had sliced into him rather than Wingate, and that the wound had been filled with burning embers. Something told him he was just beginning to experience the full extent of the pain yet to come.
He glanced downward, then wished he hadn’t. The shirt Page held pressed to the right side of chest was rapidly becoming soaked with blood.
“Looks like I’ll have a scar,” he murmured, trying to ease the agony reflected in her eyes. “Blake says they’re devastatingly attractive to women.”
Page tried to smile. “You’re devastating enough already.”
And then her weak attempt at a smile faded into a sob. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I tried so hard to prevent this.”
“I know,” he murmured. “That was why you left me. I understand that now.”
“I wanted you to be safe,” she whispered, her words barely audible above the turmoil around them. “I couldn’t bear to have anything happen to you because of me. And now it has, despite my efforts.”
“I’ll be... okay,” he murmured, but his voice was fading, his vision blurring. The pain was beginning to overwhelm him. He focused intently on Page’s face, unwilling to let her out of his sight again.
Now that he finally had her back, he didn’t want to think about how close he’d come to losing her.
Page pressed harder on his chest. “Gabe, please. Hold on,” she pleaded, her voice thick with tears. “I love you so much.”
“Love you,” he managed to whisper. “I...never stopped.”
He closed his eyes.
“Gabe!”
“Okay, ma’am, move aside. We’ll take over from here.” The voice was a strange one, deep and brusque.
Gabe felt hands on him, people around him. “Page?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“I’m here, Gabe,” she assured him, her voice sounding further than before, but still close.
“Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t,” she promised. “I’ll never leave you again.”
Satisfied with her answer, he let the pain engulf him.
BLAKE SLIPPED an arm around Page’s shoulders and pulled her out of the way of the medics and police officers swarming through the motor home. He seemed oblivious to the chaos, and to the evening chill that permeated the metal walls, wafting across his bare chest.
“We should go outside,” he murmured. “Give them room to work.”
Her eyes were locked on Gabe’s bloodless face. “I promised I wouldn’t leave him.”
“We’ll only step outside,” he assured her. “You’ll probably be allowed to ride with him in the ambulance, once they get him ready to transport.”
She looked at him through tear-glazed eyes. He was battered and bruised and still obviously in pain, but his only concern now seemed to be for her. “You saw him, Blake. Do you think he’ll be all right?”
She didn’t like the doubt that flashed through his shadowed blue eyes before he forced a smile and nodded. “Sure he will.”
Her breath caught in a sob. “If he’d only stayed in Austin, this never would have happened. He would have been safe.”
“I saw him in Austin,” Blake reminded her gently. “He was the most miserable guy I’d ever met Nothing on earth could have kept him from finding you, Page. And I refuse to believe he went through all that only to leave you now. He’ll pull through.”
Page watched as Gabe was lifted carefully onto a narrow stretcher. She allowed Blake to lead her outside, out of the way of the paramedics and the police officers who hovered nearby, practically bristling with questions that Blake refused to answer until later.
Wingate had been taken away to have his own injuries tended. Page neither knew, nor cared, what would become of him.
Her only thoughts now were for Gabe...just as they had been for the two and a half years she’d spent away from him.
Epilogue
GABE DROVE his pickup into the double garage of his three-bedroom home, nodding in satisfaction when he saw the new maroon minivan parked in its usual space. After all this time, he still occasionally felt a mixture of pleasure and relief when he came home to find it there.
He climbed out of the truck, then reached in for the long white box that had been lying on the seat beside him. A faint scent of roses tickled his nose when he tucked the box under his arm. He’d bought a dozen long-stemmed blooms in strawberry red.
It was his fifth wedding anniversary, though he and his wife had actually lived together only a little more than two years, all told. And, while they’d had their share of problems to work out—as all married couples did—Gabe still considered himself a very lucky man.
He was greeted just inside the door by a gray cat, which meowed a welcome and wrapped itself around Gabe’s ankles.
“Hello, B.J.,” Gabe murmured, reaching down to tickle the cat’s ears. He’d brought the kitten home to Page a few weeks after they’d returned from their ordeal in Springfield. She’d immediately burst into tears, which had worried him until she’d explained that the tears were in response to the thoughtfulness of his gesture. She’d named the cat “Buddy Junior”—B.J., for short.
“Where’s Page?” he asked the affectionate cat.
As if in answer, B.J. yawned, turned, and walked lazily toward the den. With a chuckle, Gabe followed.
He found Page sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor. She look
ed up to greet him with a radiant smile.
He smiled back, pleased to note that the shadows were all gone from her sky-blue eyes now.
She’d had nightmares for a while. They’d disappeared when she had finally convinced herself that Gabe would always be there to comfort her when she woke.
He bent to press a lingering kiss on her soft lips, immersing himself in the familiar taste and scent of her.
“Happy anniversary,” he murmured when he reluctantly pulled back for air.
He handed her the box of roses. He could hardly wait for Page to open the gift he was saving until after dinner. He’d purchased airline tickets to Hawaii, and had booked a suite in a five-star hotel in Maui.
He’d been saving for a long time to finally give Page a real honeymoon.
“Oh, Gabe, thank you,” she murmured, opening the box of roses with beaming pleasure. “They’re beautiful. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Gabe said easily.
And then he turned his attention to the six-month-old baby who lay on his back in front of Page, and was making an eager grab for B.J.’s temptingly close tail. Gabe reached out to lift his son into his arms. Stephen Blake Conroy squealed in slobbery delight when Gabe tickled his chubby tummy.
Gabe didn’t mind in the least that their son would be going along with them on their honeymoon—and he knew Page would feel the same way.
Gabe’s sister had volunteered to baby-sit, but Gabe had politely declined. He liked having his family close by, he’d explained a bit sheepishly. Maybe someday he and Page would take a few days off to themselves, but for now Gabe was perfectly content to be part of a happy threesome. Four, counting the cat
Gabe brushed a kiss against his son’s impossibly soft cheek. And then he wrapped an arm around his wife’s shoulders and pulled her snugly against him. Life was good, he thought contentedly.
He and Page had been given a second chance at having it all, and they would spend the rest of their lives celebrating. Together.