The lawyer's eyes rounded with shock. "You…"
"I'm finished with my shower," she whispered.
Lily looked up and saw nothing. Jesse was apparently still standing in her bedroom, trying to grow a big enough set of balls to burst into the bathroom and kill her. Or figure out how to turn the damn gun safety off.
Claire opened her mouth as if to scream.
"Don't or I'll slit your throat. I swear to God I would take pleasure in doing it."
The woman whimpered. She appeared dazed, in pain, and, judging by the amount of blood at her feet, badly wounded. Yet she'd still managed to orchestrate Lily's murder, to cock her weapon-Jesse-aim it, and send it up the stairs to finish the job.
Lily should have shoved the woman down, grabbed Wyatt, and dragged him out of here. But he was badly hurt. The steps down to the driveway were long, to the beach even longer, and Jesse had Wyatt's gun. He could catch up with them and shoot them down easily. So instead, she grabbed Claire by the front of her shirt and pulled her, hard, to the floor. She reached for the phone, which sat on the closest table, lifted the receiver, and heard nothing but dead air. The cut cord on the back of it explained why.
"Thanks. I can use that," she snarled, yanking the longer part of the cord out of the wall. Moving quickly, she wound it around Claire's hands, binding her tightly.
A quick glance up the stairs confirmed Jesse's continued indecision. Lily took the opportunity to check on Wyatt. His shoulder gaped open-she could see the bone-but the blood loss wasn't critical yet. A quick check of the bloody lump on his head led her to believe he'd been struck, not shot.
"You're going to be okay," she whispered. "This will all be over with in a couple of minutes." She considered rooting through his pockets to look for his cell phone, but didn't want to risk moving him, and also didn't want to keep her back to the stairs any longer. "I'll take care of Boyd, then get you some help." She reached down to gently brush his dark hair off his brow. "I love you."
Returning to the base of the stairs, the knife in her hands, Lily crouched and listened for any sounds from above. When Jesse pounded down those stairs, he was going to get one heck of a surprise.
"I need an ambulance," Claire whispered weakly.
"Fuck you."
"I mean it. I'll die. It was never personal, you know, never against you."
Lily ignored her, unable to believe the gall of the woman who'd come here to kill her.
"Roger called me for help that night," she whispered. "Me, of all people, I was the one he turned to. I'd loved him all those years and he was finally turning to me."
Okay, the woman was obviously sick.
"I didn't know about you, or that other agent. He just told me he'd gotten in trouble and needed help getting rid of the van. I knew nothing else until I saw the news the next day. He'd made me an accessory after the fact to murder and I had no idea."
"Poor you, now shut up." Lily cocked her head, listening, still no sound from upstairs. What the hell was Jesse doing, taking a nap on her bed?
Claire continued speaking, her whisper weak and pathetic. "I tried to talk to him all week, then finally ended up following him. He went to the old shack on the beach."
Her whole body recoiling, Lily finally gave the woman her full attention. "And you saw me?" Saw me and did nothing?
The woman nodded. Her eyes held no apology, only anger. "We argued."
The unknown woman. Had Lily heard Claire and mistaken her for the ghostly voice of her twin sister?
"I told him to kill you, but he refused. He was keeping you. He wanted you for himself." Claire sniffed, as if heartbroken. "There was always someone else. Why were you so special?"
"I wasn't exactly thrilled about it," Lily snarled.
"He told me we'd talk later, that we had to act normal. That night, after dinner, I snuck into his house and confronted him. Asked him why. Why everyone else? Why Judith, why children, why you? Why not me anymore?"
The very twisted nature of the question-why did he want children and not her?-didn't seem to occur to the woman. Nothing did. Claire Vincent was crazy. Maybe it wasn't the technical term, but as far as Lily was concerned, the woman was just fucking nuts.
"I told him I would satisfy him more than anyone else if he'd only let me." Her eyes narrowed and for the first time, she began to show some sign of normal emotion. Anger toward the man who'd caused all of this.
"What did he say?" Lily asked, drawn almost against her will into the woman's story.
"He told me he'd used me. That my own brother had been a better lay than I was."
God in heaven.
"I don't much like Philip anymore, but I did when he was a little boy. And when Roger told me what he'd done, I just lost it. I picked up the wine opener, stabbed him with it, shot him with compressed air. I guess it hit a vein and an air bubble went to his heart."
Lily didn't follow, but she didn't need to. The woman had just confessed to killing Roger Underwood. It was the first thing she'd said that actually made Lily's opinion toward her go up a notch.
"I went back to the beach to finish you off, sure you'd seen me or heard me that afternoon, but you were gone. I've been waiting ever since for you to show back up."
"Which is why you started killing those other men, hoping to make me look like a killer."
The woman shuddered, her eyes closing as she whispered, "Yes. And because those other men were all just like him, and killing Roger only once hadn't been good enough. He raped my baby brother. And he broke my heart."
None of the rest of the evil things he'd done seemed to matter to this woman, who let out a guttural groan as she appeared to drift into unconsciousness.
"Hey! Ms. Vincent? You there?" a voice called from above. "She's gone-the screen's inside the bathroom- she musta climbed out the window and run down to the beach!"
Thankful Jesse hadn't grown a brain since she'd last seen him, Lily tensed and prepared to attack. Jesse's footsteps pounded as he came down the stairs, and Lily, the small knife in her hand, knew she had to disarm him the minute he came into view. She could take the bastard, but not if he kept the gun.
"Ms. Vincent?" His foot appeared.
Now.
She launched, hoping to either stab him in the arm or else surprise him into dropping the weapon, but she wasn't that lucky. The swipe of her knife missed him by no more than the width of a single hair. He was bulkier than she'd remembered, but his reactions were faster than she'd expected, and he spun out of her reach. Lily followed, throwing herself at him before he could bring the gun up and aim it.
They both fell to the floor; she landed right on top of him. Jesse drew back his arm to punch her off his chest, but Lily curled in a ball and rolled off by herself, kicking with all her might as she avoided his fist.
He grunted in pain. "Bitch," he snapped, out of breath from the foot she'd just jabbed into one of his lungs. But instead of fighting back, he slid forward, his fingertips finding the gun he'd dropped. He snatched it up and swung it around toward her before she could get at him. And for the second time in her life, Lily found herself literally staring down the barrel of a gun.
This time, there was no way the shot would miss.
She swallowed, not closing her eyes, glaring at him with all the hatred she felt for the man. Steeling herself for the impact, she was shocked when there was a flash of movement, low, to Jesse's right. Then something swung up from the floor. A thud, a crunch of bone, a man's scream, and then a gunshot.
It missed.
"Wyatt!" she cried, seeing him kneeling beside Jesse Boyd, who was writhing around the floor, screaming about the pain in his leg.
Small wonder, considering an ax protruded from it. The murderous duo had apparently stopped to gather supplies from the garage.
"Lily?" Wyatt whispered.
She launched toward him, wrapping her arms around him to catch him before he could topple over. His arm dangled at his side, the wound bloody and vicious, and she couldn't i
magine the pain he was in. Yet he'd still managed to swing that ax, to save her life.
"It's going to be okay," he mumbled, sounding dazed, barely conscious.
"I think that's what I'm supposed to be telling you," she replied, unable to stop kissing his face, stroking his hair. "Let me get your cell phone so I can call an ambulance." Glancing at the two other people who lay on the floor, she muttered, "Or three."
Considering Claire Vincent had stopped moving, had stopped whispering, and hadn't reacted at all to the brief but violent confrontation, maybe one of those would be a hearse instead. Meanwhile, Jesse's screeches had diminished to low whimpers, and when he looked down and saw the ax, he actually passed out. Lily took the precaution of tying him up with a lamp cord.
"Come on," she told Wyatt, not wanting to leave him here, close to the couple who'd nearly killed them both. "Let's call 911. I need to get some pants on, and then we'll wait for the ambulance on the patio." Shaking her head, she admitted, "I could really use a cigarette."
Though the local police wanted her to stay at the scene to answer their questions, Lily insisted on riding with Wyatt in the ambulance. Good thing. Wyatt didn't think he'd be able to let her out of his sight anytime soon. Not without descending into the shakes at the memory of seeing a gun pointed directly at her face.
"You okay?" he asked.
"I think I should be asking you that."
"I'm fine. Hurts, but I'll be fine."
She reached up to wipe at her eyes, not for the first time. "Thank you for saving my life."
"Are you joking? You saved mine, too."
"Does that mean we're now responsible for each other, for the rest of our lives? Isn't that the old saying?"
He turned his head, looking away. Because as much as he wanted her to be part of his life from here on out, he knew she shouldn't be. She'd been thrown into a pit of darkness and tragedy a couple of years ago, but all that was coming to an end. Now she should be with someone who smiled and laughed, someone who'd give her kids, then toss a football around with them in the backyard. Someone who'd charm her and tease her out of an occasional bad mood. Romance her. Grow old together happily.
That wasn't him. None of it. He was serious and intense, didn't want the life he envisioned her having. And while he loved her enough to give it a shot, knowing he would never be what she wanted, or what she really needed, he just couldn't put off the inevitable.
"You're okay; it's all over," he whispered. "You can go now, be free, start over. Live like the past couple of years never happened."
Her voice strained with sorrow, she said, "The past couple of years have changed who I am forever, Wyatt.
They've defined the woman I'm going to be for the rest of my life."
He gripped her hand. "They don't have to. You don't have to let them."
"I can't wave a magic wand and go back to who I once was. Nobody can."
"You deserve some happiness."
She kissed his hand. "As long as I'm with you, I'm happy."
Though it pained him, both physically and emotionally, he slowly shook his head. "No. You don't need to be stuck with me."
"You're not getting rid of me."
He leaned up a little, wishing his head would stop spinning. And while there were better times and better places to have this conversation, he knew he had to tell her the one thing that might convince her that he wasn't the big, wonderful hero she'd painted him to be in her head.
"It's my fault, Lily. All my fault."
"Are you crazy? You saved my life. Not just tonight, not even just back in January. But every single day since." Her voice shook. "You gave me the motivation to get out of bed each morning, to keep working out with Sarge when I thought the pain would drive me insane. Even fighting with you, being mad at you, sending you away, treating you like crap when you came back-all of those things happened because you made me feel, Wyatt, when I once thought I would never feel anything again."
Maybe. That didn't mean she needed to live the remainder of her days based on feelings she'd had during her darkest ones.
Swallowing, his mouth dry, he told her what he'd been unable to tell her before. "When I say it's my fault, I mean, I am responsible for Boyd's release."
She stared down at him, confusion swimming in her blue eyes. "He got out because I wasn't around to testify and keep him in."
"The evidence that was thrown out," he insisted, "was tossed because of me. Because I exposed what was going on in the crime lab."
She sucked in a small, surprised breath.
"The DNA, the fibers, everything. It was all processed in the FBI lab right before I blew the whole place wide-open."
Her mouth in a small circle, she whispered, "Oh."
It was obviously sinking in, but he made it even more clear. "He never would have gotten off, could never have come after you, if not for that. Lily, I am entirely responsible for the release of your nephew's murderer."
"Ma'am, we're about to pull up to the emergency room. You'll need to move out of the way," a man's voice said before Wyatt could even hope for a reply.
"I'm sorry," he murmured. "So damn sorry."
Then a paramedic appeared above him and he could no longer see Lily's face, couldn't gauge her expression.
And had no way of knowing if she'd be there when he woke up.
He was trying to push her away.
Now that she was safe, now that they would, hopefully, be able to return to Washington and take up their lives again, Wyatt had decided she was better off without him.
Lily couldn't pretend surprise. She'd known this day would come. Wyatt had told her many times that he was a loner, an intense man who had never had room in his life for anyone else and liked it that way.
"Well, too bad, mister," she whispered as she paced the waiting room of the hospital. He'd been in surgery for a couple of hours, the doctors trying to save his arm, repair all those ripped muscles and tendons. Her heart broke when she thought of the pain he'd been in and all the pain yet to come when he had to rehabilitate that arm.
She knew a really good therapist. And she'd be right by Sarge's side in urging Wyatt on. Because Lily wasn't going anywhere.
If he had told her he didn't care about her, didn't love her, maybe she'd have thought twice. But since she wouldn't have believed him, maybe not. She probably would still have argued it with him.
He hadn't said that, however. He'd merely tried to drive her away by confessing something that had obviously been racking him with guilt. How utterly Wyatt. Tormenting himself because he'd done the right thing and it had just happened to have an effect on her life.
He just didn't get it. Doing the right thing despite all the obstacles, and the possible repercussions, was one of the things she loved most about him. Just like he'd done the right thing in saving her life, hiding her, keeping her alive all those months when he had known what it would eventually cost him.
A lot.
But they'd deal with that later, with what would happen to Wyatt for the decision he'd made to help her. For now, she was doing as much as she could to lessen the impact. Lily had already managed to get a message to the director's office, going over Crandall’s head entirely. Though of course she hadn't spoken with the director himself, especially late on a Saturday night, she had gotten a few assurances from one of his assistants. With the local police backing every word of her story, she'd been promised her case would be handled fairly and that she could return to Washington to turn herself in tomorrow.
Tonight, she had other things to do. Namely, keep a quiet vigil during the long hours when Wyatt was in surgery. Finally, at around four a.m., a doctor came in to inform her it was over. Lily, who'd been dozing on an uncomfortable couch, leapt to her feet immediately, asking only the most important question. "Is he going to be okay?"
"Yes, fine. Time will tell how much use he will regain of his right arm."
"Fortunately, Doctor," she said, already heading for the waiting room door, "he's a le
fty."
Not letting anyone get in her way, Lily headed to the recovery room. A nurse pointed to the curtain, and Lily yanked it back, seeing him lying in the bed. Bandages covered his neck, arm, and shoulder. And while he should probably have been woozy from anesthesia, his blue-eyed stare was sharp as he watched her enter.
"You stayed."
She walked to the bed and kissed his forehead. "Of course I stayed. And I'm going to keep on staying."
"I'm not the right man, Lily."
"You are the only man. The only one, ever."
"You're so young."
"You're crazy-I'm thirty years old. Definitely old enough to know what I want, and that is you, Wyatt Blackstone. Only you."
He shook his head wearily. "It's a bad idea. I can't give you what you need. A normal life, a family…"
She frowned. "I want you to be my family. Just you, nobody else, ever. And you should be aware of that up front."
He stared up at her, and she knew he realized what she meant.
"I'm not kidding, not reacting hastily. I know what I want and what I don't." She lowered her voice, reaching to tenderly brush his dark hair back from his handsome face. "And what I want is you and me, forever. You are the only one who sees me as I really am. Not the pretty, gentle girl I was, but the strong, tough woman I've become."
He lifted a shaky hand and touched her cheek, then slid his fingers through her hair to the scarred ear. "You're beautiful."
She tilted her cheek into his hand. "I know I am, in your eyes. What's even more important, you can see the darkness in me and still think I'm beautiful. And I know you can help me live my life around that darkness, not expecting to plow straight through it, but always skirting it, careful and alert to its borders, respectful of its dangers. But not mired in it. Do you understand?"
He hesitated, then nodded once. Of course he understood. He'd been living his life the same way since he was a little boy.
"I love you," she said simply, baring herself entirely. "I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you,"
He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again, she saw pure, unguarded warmth. Tenderness. Emotion. "I love you, too, Lily."
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