A Rare Chance

by Carla Neggers

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Darrow thought he understood. How many times over the years had he counted on Cam when he didn’t know what the hell else to do? Not anymore. He’d seen to that.

  “Anyway,” she said, “it’s all for naught now. I failed. You’re bringing me back to Joshua.”

  Darrow studied her as the boat bounced over the waves, every minute bringing them closer to Reading Point. Even exhausted and scared and unwashed, Lizzie Fairfax carried herself well. As if she had a damned good place in the world and deserved to be in it. Her affair with Joshua, at least, hadn’t destroyed that natural grace, that easy, inoffensive sense of superiority.

  He shook off the thought. He hated when he got analytical. Just do what you got to do and get on with it.

  He said to Lizzie, “Did I say I was taking you back to Joshua?”

  “But that’s where we’re headed.”

  “So?”

  But before he could explain, he heard, felt, a movement in the cabin below.

  Hell.

  He turned, but he knew he was too late.

  Joshua Reading was there, one of his guns pointed at his ex-fiancée and Pete Darrow. A Browning nine millimeter. It was even legal. Darrow cursed himself for not being more thorough. The bastard must have followed him to the yacht club and snuck below while Darrow was getting the boat out of dock, then bided his time before making his move. Darrow had underestimated him.

  Lizzie gasped, grabbing hold of Darrow’s arm and steadying herself. She didn’t say a word.

  Although calm, Joshua looked ragged around the edges. “Well, well, my errant fiancée and her rescuer.”

  Darrow hoped he wouldn’t fire the damned gun by mistake. “You can put that thing down,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  Joshua gave him a nasty smirk. “You’re not calling the shots, Mr. Darrow. I am. I will shoot you.”

  Probably, Darrow thought, he would, even if he wouldn’t like seeing the blood.

  Lizzie’s fingers dug into his arm. “Joshua, don’t do this. We can work this out.”

  “There is no ‘we,’ Lizzie. You saw to that.” She recoiled at his harsh tone, the hatred in it, and did not let go of Darrow’s arm. Joshua turned his attention back to Darrow. “Reading Point, I believe, is your destination, Mr. Darrow.”

  “I’ve got the pictures of your arsenal, Joshua. I’ve got Lizzie’s journal. You do anything to us, the cops’ll find out. Guaranteed.”

  “You’re wrong. You see, I searched your quarters this morning after you left. I have the journal, and I have the photographs.”

  Lizzie cried out as if he’d hit her.

  Joshua smiled nastily at his fiancée, enjoying her pain. But Darrow knew there was nothing he could do, at least not yet. Getting himself killed wasn’t going to help Lizzie—or himself.

  He continued north toward Reading Point, just as Joshua suggested.

  Titus Reading rose from his desk when Gabriella burst into his office. He gave her a wary look. “Gabriella?”

  His demeanor suggested he was long past humoring her. She no longer cared. She knew she smelled like a sea marsh at low tide, knew she must look half crazy. She could feel Cam’s steady presence in the doorway behind her.

  “Titus, do you have any idea where Joshua is? I need to find him. It’s important.”

  Titus’s brow furrowed, and a spark of worry flashed in his eyes. “Gabriella, what’s going on? Where have you been? Is my brother in any danger?”

  She took a breath. “He’s in danger of doing something really stupid. I think he’s after Lizzie.”

  “After Lizzie? What is that supposed to mean? You talk as if he’s some sort of lunatic, a criminal.”

  “I found Lizzie, Titus. She was hiding on Pettit Island. She broke her engagement with Joshua and ran away out of fear. She hoped he would let her go and trust that she would keep what she knew about him to herself. But he—”

  Titus shot from behind his desk. “Gabriella, I think the strain of the past few days must be taking its toll.”

  “Titus, please. If I have to, I’ll call the police. I’ll—”

  “Or perhaps,” he said coldly, “it’s just having your father back and listening to his crazy, paranoid ideas. I want you to leave, Gabriella. Now.”

  She ignored him. “It’s not my place to go into the details—Lizzie will have to do that—but while I was on Pettit with her, Pete Darrow found us. Lizzie diverted his attention and I managed to get away. If he takes her to Joshua, she could be in serious danger. We need to find him.”

  “Gabriella, I’ll have you thrown out if I must. Lizzie Fairfax is hysterical and Pete Darrow is obviously looking after his own interests. I expect Joshua is attempting to understand the dynamics of the situation and resolve it without further embarrassment to himself or to me and this company.”

  “Embarrassment? Good God, Titus, who gives a damn about embarrassment? Lizzie was hiding from Joshua.”

  Titus strode past her and snatched his door, which was already open, and almost tore it off its hinges. He glared at Cam. “You must be Cam Yeager.”

  Cam gave a mock bow. “Nice office.”

  “You have to believe me,” Gabriella said quietly, tense, rigid, trying to control her mounting sense of urgency. “Joshua has hurt Lizzie before. I don’t know what he’ll do now.”

  Titus looked back at her, his gaze pure ice. “I won’t listen. Good day, Gabriella.”

  “Do you have any idea where he is?”

  “No. He’s my brother. I trust him. I don’t keep tabs on his every move.”

  She inhaled. She darted Cam a quick look, but his face was impassive. This was her show. “Titus, someone needs to stop Joshua now, before he does something he can’t hide or keep under wraps with payoffs. Before he gets so desperate he sees no other way out but through hurting someone.”

  “No, Gabriella, I believe you’re the one getting desperate. I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know my brother. I suggest you find someone else to blame for your friend’s odd behavior.”

  Gabriella gave it up, not saying another word as she stormed past Titus Reading. Cam eased behind her, silent and composed.

  Once they were out in the hall, Titus, still with a tight grip on the door, said, “As of this moment, Gabriella, you are no longer an employee of this company.”

  She didn’t respond. She was shaking with anger and fear, and the last thing she cared about was her damned job. Pete Darrow had snatched Lizzie, Joshua might not be above harming her or both of them, and Titus Reading could think of nothing else to do but fire her?

  “I ought to punch him out,” she ground out through her teeth.

  “No time,” Cam said.

  She glanced at him, feeling the color drain from her face as she took in his grim expression. “What is it, Cam?”

  They were descending the stairs of the beautiful nineteenth-century offices of TJR Associates, moving fast. “Joshua’s self-absorbed and amoral, Gabriella. If he’s trapped, he’ll do what he has to do to protect himself. If it means killing Lizzie and Pete and setting it up to blame everything on Darrow—”

  “Then that’s what he’ll do.”

  “And Titus knows it.”

  The muscles twisted and tightened in Gabriella’s stomach, and she stifled a wave of nausea as she and Cam came to the first-floor entrance. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. He wasn’t telling you he trusted his brother. He was telling himself. The guy’s scared shitless Joshua’s everything you know he is. He figures if he denies it, it won’t be real.”

  “But it is,” Gabriella said.

  Cam gave her a faint smile, pushing open the door. “That’s one of your charms, Gabby. You look reality square in the eye.”

  “Sometimes I wish I didn’t.”

  “Understood.”

  They returned to his car, double-parked out front. Gabriella sank back in the passenger seat, feeling wrung out, wanting to run and hide
and pretend she’d never opened Lizzie’s package, had never been out to Pettit Island. Yet she’d never been one to run and hide.

  “When I was out on the water,” Cam said, pulling out onto the street, “I got to thinking about boats. Joshua owns a yacht, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, he and Lizzie were planning to take a cruise south for their honeymoon.”

  “Where’s he dock it?”

  “At a yacht club on the North Shore, but only for the winter. He’ll keep it up at Reading Point for the summer. He plans to build a boathouse. Why?”

  “I’m playing out a hunch.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  “Gabriella—”

  “Either start trusting me now, Cam, or stop this car and let me out.”

  He sighed. “Joshua has to have stashed his weapons collection somewhere. I doubt it would be in his house, and I looked all over Reading Point. It would have to be somewhere he’d take Lizzie. So I think it might be his yacht.”

  “His yacht?”

  “I said it was a hunch.”

  But before she could argue with him, she noticed that instead of turning north on the expressway, Cam had cut onto Memorial Drive. “Where are you going?”

  “Scag’s. It’ll only take a couple minutes.”

  “For what? He doesn’t know anything about Joshua’s guns or where Darrow’s taking Lizzie.”

  Cam’s mouth was a thin line. “I’m dropping you off, Gabriella.”

  She stiffened. “Don’t I have any say?”

  “I don’t need a partner.” He kept his eyes pinned to the road. “This is something I know how to do. If I need backup, I’ll get it. Right now I want to go in quiet, not escalate things unnecessarily.”

  “Are you implying I’d go in blazing like some kind of crazy woman?”

  He glanced at her, his eyes hooded, his expression impossible to read. “Let me do this, Gabriella. Know your limits.”

  She slumped back in her seat, her arms crossed on her chest. As if she had any damned choice. She was a jumble of conflicting emotions and overstressed nerves. She wanted to do the right thing. Whatever it took to protect Lizzie Fairfax and nail Joshua Reading’s hide to the wall, she wanted to do. She didn’t want to get in the way. She didn’t want to muck things up.

  But Lizzie was counting on her. Lizzie had given her the chance to escape. If not for Lizzie, Gabriella would be with her and Pete Darrow. She’d known Lizzie since the third grade. Lizzie had helped her out of countless scrapes, had helped her father. They’d always counted on each other to be there.

  Scag was waiting out on the front porch of his rooming house when Cam drove up. Apparently they’d had this little scenario worked out in advance. “The effrontery,” Gabriella muttered, sliding out of the car.

  She didn’t get a chance to wish Cam luck. He directed his attention only to Scag, ignoring her. “Keep her here.”

  “Yeah, right,” he replied. “Like keeping the tide in.”

  When Cam had departed, Gabriella glared at her father.

  He leaned on his cane, not looking as old and feeble as he was trying to look. “How long you staying?”

  She’d made up her mind. When it came down to it, she had no choice she could live with if things went wrong. “Long enough for him to think I might follow his orders.”

  Chapter

  Seventeen

  You’re one sick son of a bitch,” Pete Darrow said.

  Joshua pulled the rope around Lizzie Fairfax’s midsection even tighter. “I’m perfectly sane and you know it. That’s what scares you.”

  Actually, he was right. Darrow sat on a wooden box of grenades. They were below deck on Joshua’s yacht, in a wood-paneled game room off the galley where he kept his stash of illegal weaponry. Darrow recognized the painting on the wall from Lizzie’s Polaroids. Fat lot of good it’d do him now.

  The yacht was anchored off Reading Point, everything cleaned and ready to go for the summer season. Joshua and Lizzie had planned to take it on their honeymoon. Darrow preferred smaller boats. The big ones made him seasick. Joshua had had Lizzie go aboard first, then Darrow. He’d had a split second when he could have kicked Joshua into the ocean, gun or no gun, but he’d hesitated. Too worried Lizzie’d get shot or he’d get shot and then Lizzie’d have to deal with Joshua on her own. Thinking too damned much. Yeager would have acted. No question.

  Joshua tied one last knot. He’d already gagged Lizzie and bound her wrists together. A couple of weeks ago, Darrow might have figured they were up to one of their kinky sex things. But this time he knew better.

  He made himself look at her. Her eyes widened with terror, and he tried to smile to show her he hadn’t abandoned her, which maybe wasn’t very encouraging. He couldn’t do her or himself any good if he didn’t get away. He assumed Joshua planned to shoot him. Then he’d kill Lizzie, maybe blow up the whole damned boat, and blame the entire tragic mess on one dead ex-cop. People would believe him. He was Joshua Reading. He had Lizzie’s journal, he had her pictures. All would be well.

  What the hell, Darrow thought. Stay here and get killed for sure. Try escaping and maybe get killed.

  He caught Lizzie’s eye, and behind the terror, he saw that she knew what he was planning, what he needed from her.

  Suddenly she lunged sideways, knocking Joshua off-balance. He swore viciously, stumbling, grabbing for the Browning tucked in his waistband.

  Darrow moved. He couldn’t get to Joshua before Joshua got to his gun. So he had no choice. He lunged for the doorway into the galley.

  But he caught a parting look at Lizzie. Saw her resignation and disappointment. Her wide, tortured, beautiful eyes said she’d been a fool to trust him, a fool to trust herself. That she knew he was running to save his own skin.

  Maybe he was.

  He plunged up the narrow stairs above the deck. There was no time for the cruiser, not even for a dinghy. He could hear Joshua shouting, cursing, coming after him, swearing he was dead. “Goddamnit, you’re dead, Darrow. Dead!”

  Probably, Darrow thought, and jumped over the side.

  The frigid water almost killed him. Pain and cold shot through him and he yelled, gulping in seawater. So this was it. This was going to be how he died. Christ, he should have let Joshua shoot him.

  But his arms moved, his legs, and he came up through the icy depths of the North Atlantic, gasping for air, coughing saltwater, alive.

  He got himself oriented, picked the shortest distance to shore, and breast-stroked rapidly in that direction. His legs were already numb with the cold. His arms were leaden. He could do it. He had to do it. The bastard still had Lizzie.

  But he heard the plunk of the dinghy into the water behind him, the creaking of oars. He heard Joshua yell, “You’re dead,” and he knew he had enough guns and ammo to take on the city of Boston, never mind one poor dumb bastard swimming in the ice-cold ocean.

  Darrow kept moving, rolling with the tide, half praying that the undertow would get him and end it, end the worry and the guilt and the regret that had started eating at him when he’d first felt the strange, twisted urge to help Lizzie Fairfax, never mind that she could destroy him and could never, ever want him. She knew what he was. You’re going to blackmail him, aren’t you?

  Yeah, Darrow thought. That was the plan.

  His mind conjured up the picture of her eyes, terrified and certain no one would be there for her, not now, not anymore, and he propelled himself another few yards.

  He rode a wave toward shore, almost knocking himself out on a rock. His arms flailed around, and he grabbed hold of it, ignoring the sting of the barnacles as he heaved himself up and over, going with another wave, like a dolphin beaching itself.

  He flopped onto the rocks, spent, frozen, aching.

  Behind him, Joshua yelled into the wind, “The boat’s rigged, Darrow. There’s nothing you can do. It’s going to blow up and Lizzie’s going to die and you’re going to take the fall.”


  Fuck! Darrow thought, and he peeled himself up off the rocks. Only hatred—of himself, of Joshua Reading—kept him going.

  “You’re both going to die,” Joshua shouted over the sounds of the wind, the gulls, the pounding surf.

  Definitely, Darrow thought, he should have made his move before Joshua had tied Lizzie’s hands to the chair. At least then she’d have had a chance.

  Hindsight. A big help it was.

  He lunged to his feet, dripping, shaking with the cold and a rage that seemed to come from a different place than it always had before. This time it wasn’t the rage of envy and deprivation and want, that desperate need to fill the empty spaces inside him.

  Joshua slammed the dinghy onto the rocks and leapt out, looking wild and half crazed.

  But he’s not, Darrow reminded himself. Joshua Reading was cold-blooded, he was calculating, and he was sane.

  And he had his Browning.

  On this side of Reading Point, there were no boulders big enough to hide behind, just smaller rocks and tufts of tall grass.

  Joshua scrambled over the rocks toward him. Darrow appraised his situation with professional detachment, considered his options, even as the rage held its grip on him.

  Lizzie…

  The stupid fuck’s going to blow her up.

  His muscles tensed, he felt a heat surge through him, and instead of running, dodging, pleading, anything to avoid being shot, Darrow turned and faced Joshua Reading.

  “When did you decide you had to kill me?”

  Joshua grinned, his features contorted with his frenzied energy and sense of betrayal and paranoia. “You’re not quite as stupid as I thought, Mr. Darrow. I decided I had to kill you once I realized how much you knew. I couldn’t take the risk of you blackmailing me, could I?” His wild grin broadened. He was soaked up to his thighs, breathing hard. “That was your plan all along, wasn’t it?”

  Darrow shrugged. “Yep. I guess I couldn’t land on the right figure. How much would you have gone for? A couple hundred grand anyway, right?”

  “Not a dime, you inferior pig.”

  That was just the opening Darrow needed. He didn’t hesitate, just exploded forward, and dove for Joshua, hoping to throw off his aim, get him on the ground, startle him into making a mistake, knock his goddamned head on a rock. Anything.