Justice for All

by Wayne, Joanna

  The prayer and the phone went unanswered.

  THE SCENE AT THE HOSPITAL bordered on bedlam despite the presence of a dozen police officers, some working inside the area bound by yellow police tape, others keeping back the media camera crews and the curious.

  Callie climbed from the police car. She was still having trouble breathing, but the familiar setting of the hospital gave her a sense of control. She headed toward the nearest entry, a back door used for deliveries.

  Once inside the hospital, she was surrounded by a group of nurses, all of them red-eyed. One woman Callie knew only by sight was sobbing openly.

  “He killed her. The rotten bastard finally killed her.”

  Callie put her hand to the wall for support. “Who?”

  “Her husband. He wouldn’t let her go. They were legally separated, but the sick, demented bastard wouldn’t let her go.”

  Husband. Callie sucked in a breath of ammonia-scented air. “Is there a positive identification of the victim?”

  “The victim is Sally Raye McManus, a third floor R.N. who works the second shift.”

  Callie spun around at the sound of Max’s voice. He was standing in the doorway she’d just entered, his broad shoulders blocking most of the glare from the setting sun. Relief flooded her senses, quickly followed by guilt. Sally Raye McManus had obviously been a friend of these nurses, even as Mikki was her friend. Sally was also someone’s daughter, maybe a sister. Maybe a mom.

  “Thanks, Max. Thanks for the information.” She started to go to him, then felt the constraints of watching eyes and settled for letting their gazes meet.

  “Your assistant is on the way,” Max said. “He wants you to stay right where you are until he arrives.”

  It took Callie a second to understand that he was talking about Ted Gravier, the cop assigned to protect her. She nodded and swallowed hard. The nurses believed that Sally’s husband had killed her, but it could have been the Avenger. Maybe Sally had taken Callie’s spot as number eight.

  Was Callie now number nine or ten or eleven? Who knew how many more people would die before the man who meted out justice met his own.

  MAX SAT IN THE EASY CHAIR that provided a view to the back of Callie’s property and the rolling ocean beyond. Pickering had deserted his mistress and fallen asleep at Max’s feet. Every so often he moved his head back and forth and tapped the floor with his tail, probably dreaming he was chasing birds along the beach and wondering why he was being walked by a neighbor’s son these days instead of Callie.

  Max slipped his Smith & Wesson from his shoulder holster and ran his thumb along the grip. Another murder in Courage Bay. This one was not related to the Avenger. The victim’s estranged husband had already confessed to the crime.

  The number of murders was climbing in a city that had previously had the lowest murder rate per capita in southern California. Courage Bay. Max’s town. The one he had sworn to protect.

  Today’s killer was behind bars, but the Avenger was still on the loose, and Max was no closer to arresting him than he had been a month ago. The only real evidence pointed toward Henry Lalane. Henry was being tailed twenty-four hours a day, and Max had men investigating every corner of his past, determining if Henry had ever learned to handle a gun with the accuracy the Avenger had demonstrated.

  Max pointed his own gun toward the window, holding it steady, as if he were aiming to fire. Pickering roused and nudged his nose a little closer before going back to sleep.

  Max laid the loaded pistol on the table beside him, toed off his shoes and leaned back, letting his head relax against the pillow. He was already drifting off to sleep when he heard Pickering growl. A low sound deep in his throat.

  Jerking awake, Max reached for his weapon. Pickering was on his haunches now, looking toward the window.

  “What is it, boy? Did you hear something?”

  Pickering barked and ran toward the back door. Max’s veins burned from the rush of adrenaline as he followed the dog. The moon was bright and Max could see most of the back deck. There was no sign of movement there or beyond. Even Pickering settled down again.

  A false alarm. Still, Max wouldn’t rest until he was sure. He opened the back door slowly and stepped outside. And that’s when he heard it.

  Tick. Tick. Tick. Like a clock.

  Or a bomb.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  PANIC ROARED in Max’s head, drowning out everything but the low, menacing threat of the ticking bomb. Options flew at him from all sides, darting around in his mind like ricocheting bullets. He had to get Callie away from the house before the bomb exploded.

  He yelled for her as he rushed back inside. He took the steps three at a time, adrenaline pumping so fast and furiously he didn’t feel the exertion. He caught her just as she reached the landing. She was barefoot, still poking her arms through a blue silk robe that trailed behind her.

  She practically fell into his arms. “What’s wrong?”

  “We have to get out of here,” he ordered. “Fast.” He took hold of her hand and raced with her down the rest of the stairs.

  “What’s happened? Why is Pickering barking like that?”

  “I think there’s a bomb planted somewhere on your deck.” His voice cracked like his nerves as he dragged her toward the door. “Don’t ask questions, Callie. Just run.”

  “I can’t leave Pickering…” Callie broke from Max’s grasp and dashed toward the back door. Max tried to catch her, but she was too fast. By the time he reached her, she was already pushing onto the deck and screaming for Pickering.

  Max spotted the retriever rooting around a large bush at the edge of the pool. The ticking seemed deafening to Max, and sweat streamed down his brow and into his eyes. He yelled at Pickering to follow them as he swooped Callie up in his arms and began to run with her, away from the house and toward the pounding surf.

  “Ohmigod!” Callie screamed and went rigid in Max’s arms.

  He glanced behind them. Pickering was a few feet away, a wood and metal contraption dangling from his mouth. Pickering was following, but he was bringing the bomb with him.

  There was no way to outrun the retriever. No way to outrun the bomb.

  “Run to the water, Callie. Please, just run and don’t look back.” He set her feet on the sand and tried to catch Pickering as he raced by. But it was all a game to the retriever. He dodged Max and began to run in circles, still holding tightly to the bomb.

  And then Max heard Callie’s voice, too close, shaky, but probably as calm as she could make it. “Hand it to me, Pickering. Good dog. Hand me the toy, and we’ll play catch.”

  Pickering stopped running, studied Max for what seemed like an eternity, then shuffled over and dropped the bomb at Callie’s feet. Max swooped down, picked it up and hurled it down the beach as far away from them as he could. There was no way to know if it was far enough.

  He grabbed Callie’s arm and started running. This time she kept up with him, and so did Pickering, yelping as if Max had stolen a prize possession.

  They didn’t stop until they reached the rolling waves of the ocean. Callie’s feet tangled with Pickering, and she fell to the sand, dragging Max down with her.

  The cold waves washed over them, splashing into their faces and drenching their clothes. They rolled away from the water, holding on to each other as an explosion rocked the ground and sent a dark pillar of smoke into the air.

  Max couldn’t speak, wouldn’t have known what to say if he could. All he knew was that he’d died a thousand deaths when he thought he might have failed Callie.

  So he just held her while his insides slowly shook back into place.

  IT WAS AFTER 2:00 A.M., hours after the bomb had exploded on the beach without delivering major damage, but Callie was still wide-awake, her nerves shot to hell and back, her system revved from the pot of coffee she’d downed since arriving at Max’s apartment.

  “Be good if you can get some sleep,” said the young cop assigned to protect her. “I�
�ve got everything under control.”

  “I’m too wired.” She walked over to the counter where the officer was smearing some peanut butter on a slice of white bread. All she could remember of his name was Bo. “Do you think Max will be much longer?” she asked.

  “Hard to say.” He slapped on another slice of bread and tore off a paper towel to use as a napkin. “He’ll probably stay right there with the crime-scene unit. And they won’t leave until they’ve gathered every smidgen of evidence. The bomb team’s probably still there, too. It’s just one big party.”

  “A party?”

  “Just an expression,” he assured her. “They’re plenty serious. They are with every case, but they’ve got the chief breathing down their necks tonight. That’ll really keep them on their toes.”

  Callie stepped over Pickering, who was stretched out in the middle of Max’s tiny kitchen, fast asleep.

  “I may lie down awhile,” Callie said, “but if I fall asleep tell Max to wake me when he gets here.”

  The cop swallowed and dabbed at his mouth with the paper towel. “I’ll give him the message. And don’t you worry. I may sound a little country, but I know what I’m doing.” His gaze went to the pistol on the table. “I’m the best shot on the force two years running.”

  She nodded, sure he was as good as he claimed. Max had specifically requested him and had pulled the officer from his regular assignment to come stand guard until Max returned.

  She went back to Max’s bedroom, still not ready for sleep but thinking she’d at least lie down. She’d missed work yesterday, and tired or not, she had to see patients and keep her administrative appointments today.

  The apartment was like Max, she thought. Sparsely furnished with nothing but the necessities. Clean, functional and understated.

  The bedroom even smelled of Max. A faint scent of aftershave, musky, like walking in the woods on a summer day. All man. That was Max. Unreadable at times, yet tonight, when he’d held her as they’d breathed in the ocean air in pure relief, she’d felt closer to him than she’d ever felt to any man.

  It had been far more intimate than the sizzle Mikki talked about. More intense than the hot need that Callie felt stirring her blood whenever Max touched or kissed her. And totally different from anything she’d felt with his cousin Tony.

  But this was not the time to be thinking of any of this. Or maybe it was, she decided, walking to the bed and collapsing on top of the crisp white sheets. She and Max had come within seconds of losing their lives tonight. The killer who had targeted her had almost destroyed both of them. Life was precious, and it came with no guarantees.

  Life could be lost in a split second, the way it had probably been for Mary. One minute she’d been full of life. The next she’d been dead.

  Callie trembled as tears stung the back of her eyelids. She did need some rest. The emotional roller coaster of the past week and tonight’s brush with death were wearing her down. She scanned the room for a box of tissues. When she didn’t see any, she slid open the top drawer of Max’s bedside table.

  Her own image stared back at her. Stunned, she picked up the photograph and studied it closely. She couldn’t remember when it had been taken, but it was years ago, when she’d been married to Tony.

  Reaching back into the drawer, she picked up three more photographs, all of her. Her mind whirled for a second, the fatigue and caffeine combining to confound her. Old photographs of her in the drawer by Max’s bed. Why?

  Unless…Unless, as Mikki would say, he had a real thing for her—and it had been going on for a long, long time.

  If so, he’d never acted on his feelings, never given him and Callie a chance to see if things might work out between them. She wanted that chance—and she didn’t want to wait until this nightmare with the Avenger was over. She wanted to be with Max tonight. Tomorrow was a gamble at best. The present was all they could be sure of.

  She wanted to make love with Max now, and this time she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN you don’t know where he is?” Max demanded. “We had a 24/7 on Lalane.”

  “He left his house at 11:08. We followed him down to San Moritz Avenue, then lost him when he cut into a line of traffic on the freeway approach. We tried to pick him up again, but he just seemed to disappear.”

  “So where is he now?”

  “Boating, it seems. We located his car at a marina on Ocean Drive. We’re just sitting here in the marina parking lot waiting on him to get back.”

  Max muttered a couple of choice curses under his breath. Henry Lalane didn’t have a boat of his own. Max had checked that out long ago when they’d first started running profiles on dozens of potential suspects. But the attorney could have rented one or borrowed one. Over half the population of Courage Bay owned some kind of watercraft.

  With the right kind of boat, the guy could have docked near Callie’s house but down the beach and out of sight. From there it would have been fairly easy to sneak onto her deck, plant the bomb and then disappear behind a neighbor’s house until the path was clear for him to escape.

  He’d have had to work out all the details in advance, but when hadn’t the Avenger done that?

  The Courage Bay district attorney as the Avenger? As far as Max was concerned, the possibility became more likely with every passing second. And even if tonight’s crime scene didn’t net them any new evidence, the fingerprints on the note with Callie’s name on it and Lalane’s untimely disappearance were sufficient to bring the D.A. in for a formal interrogation.

  That is if he reappeared. Frustrated, Max walked back to the crime van, which the team was loading up. He talked with the officers for a minute, then crawled behind the wheel of his own car. The second he did, Callie slipped back into his mind, not that she’d ever been totally out of it.

  Max had walked into dangerous situations more times than he cared to count, and the most he’d felt was a rush of adrenaline and sometimes a quickening of his pulse. But he’d come close to losing Callie to a deranged killer tonight, and his whole being had become one giant ball of panic and fear.

  He had to keep her safe. He couldn’t think beyond that right now. Couldn’t think about wanting her. Couldn’t think about tasting her lips. Couldn’t let himself start fantasizing about what it would be like to make love with her.

  He was closing in on the Avenger, and he had to keep his mind and priorities crystal clear. Making love with Callie was out of the question.

  CALLIE WAS LYING in Max’s bed in the dark but still wide-awake when Max returned. She heard his voice mingling with Bo’s, then the sound of the door opening and the click of the dead lock sliding into place when Bo left. Seconds later she heard a squeak and saw a rectangle of light sneak in around the partially opened bedroom door.

  “I’m awake,” she murmured.

  “It’s almost 3:00 a.m.”

  “I drank lots of coffee. How did the investigation go?”

  “We’ll know more when we get reports back from forensics and the bomb team, but it looks as if the bomb was a serious weapon, enough that if it had exploded on your deck, it would have likely taken out most of the house and sent the rest into a ball of flames.”

  “The Avenger?”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “I’d like to hear all about it in the morning.”

  “Good. You need to try to get some sleep. I need to shower.”

  She hadn’t planned it that way, but now that Callie thought about it, the shower idea sounded perfect. “Do that,” she said. She waited until she heard the sound of running water, then slipped her legs over the side of the bed and tiptoed into the bathroom.

  Max’s naked body was a mere silhouette behind the curtain, yet she trembled and held her breath.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked, his hands clutching the soap and washcloth against his chest.

  “Too many things,” she whispered. She opened her arms and let the cotton robe she’d brought with h
er slip from her shoulders. “That’s why I need something in my life that’s totally right. I need you.”

  She heard the catch in his breath and knew he wasn’t prepared for this. But she wouldn’t be daunted. Not by speeches of more appropriate timing and duty. And not by some unwritten cop rules that made no sense to her. Not when Max had photographs of her next to his bed. Not when she wanted him so badly that her body seemed to be melting at the core.

  She pushed back the shower curtain and joined him. For a second he just stared at her, his gaze roaming her body, a look of stunned amazement on his face.

  “Callie.”

  Her name sounded more like a cry when it crossed his lips. She stepped under the spray and placed her hands on his soapy chest. “Let me do that for you,” she whispered, taking the soap and cloth from his hands.

  “You shouldn’t…We shouldn’t…” His words dissolved in a low moan as she took the cloth and ran it over his abdomen, dipping so low that her hand brushed his erection.

  “We should,” she whispered. “We’re lucky to be alive. And I want you so very, very much.”

  And then she was in his arms, his lips on hers, their bodies slick and soapy as they slid against each other, the warm water cascading over them. The hesitancy Max had exhibited before dissipated in a whirl of steam and heat and passion.

  He devoured her, starting with her lips, but moving down her neck to her pebbled nipples. He cradled her breasts in his hands as he sucked and nibbled, then took her in his arms again and lifted her so that her intimate places pressed against his arousal.

  “Oh, Callie, tell me this is real and that you’re not going to disappear the way you always do in my dreams.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, Max Zirinsky.”

  Only she was. She was flying right toward paradise. Her body tingled on the outside and ran hot and golden on the inside. He ran one hand between her legs, and her own moisture mingled with the water from the shower.