But though his shoulder screamed in pain, some part of him realized Stephano’s gun hadn’t gone off. His eyes widened as the mobster clutched his shin and dropped to the floor.
Then Roxanne appeared from around a row of crates, her arms extended as she pointed her gun at Stephano. “Drop that gun, creep, before I shoot you again.”
Obviously in agony, Stephano let go of the gun and flopped onto his back, now clutching his leg with both hands. Blood seeped through his fingers.
As Roxanne scooped up the pistol, two of Stephano’s men—who must have heard the shots—raced around the boxes.
Gage dived for his own gun, scooping it off the table and squeezing off two quick shots.
The two henchmen went down like felled trees.
Now with a gun in each hand, Roxanne whirled to them. “Oh, God. Gage?”
“They’re not going anywhere,” he assured her, watching the blood flow from their bodies. Everything inside him revolted at the idea of her seeing such a sight. He’d exposed her to this mess, this danger.
She rushed toward him. “Are you all right?”
“Got my shoulder. I’ll live.” He set aside his revolver and took Stephano’s pistol from her, keeping the gun trained on him. Pain pumped through his veins as surely as blood. His head swam as he knelt next to Mettles.
The front of the engineer’s shirt was soaked in blood, but he had a pulse—for the moment anyway.
“It doesn’t look good, does it?” Roxanne asked, her green eyes bright with worry as she crouched next to them.
“No.” He worked up the strength to smile at her. “Nice shot, partner.”
“It felt kind of empowering, as if that isn’t weird.”
“Makes perfect sense to me.”
“Could we call in the cavalry now? I think I’m going to fall apart real soon.”
“You’ll be fine.” His stomach rolled. Sweat trickled down his spine. “My cell phone. Hit redial.”
She laid her hand against his cheek. “Dammit, Gage, you’re turning white.”
“Shock.”
As her gaze jumped to his shoulder, she grabbed the phone and pressed a button. “Be still. I’ll get something to make a compress with.”
When she rose, Gage noted Stephano limping away. “Hold it,” he commanded.
“You won’t shoot me in the back,” the mobster responded, still moving. “Too much paperwork.”
The hell I will. For touching Roxanne alone he’d like to—
“I’m not a cop,” Roxanne said. “I can shoot you in the back.”
Stopping, the mob boss twisted to face her, his cold blue eyes spewing resentment. “I’ll never stop hunting you down. I’ll avenge this humiliation.”
“Yeah, yeah, send me a postcard from Walla Walla.”
Gage couldn’t help a burst of pride.
She hooked the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she gathered an armful of uncut counterfeit bills, rushing back to his side. “Who is this?” she said into the receiver as she folded bills, pressing them against his shoulder.
Gage grit his teeth against the pain, even as he grabbed a stack of bills and pressed them into Mettles’s chest.
“Thrilled to meet you, Colin,” Roxanne continued. “I need an ambulance out here at this warehouse pronto.”
“You crazy woman!” Stephano shouted, his face red and sweaty. “Those bills are worth millions.”
She ignored him and directed her comment to his father. “Gage has been hit in the shoulder. He’s conscious, but I need help. And I’ve got four other victims.” She paused. “Yes, four. Two beyond hope, I think. Another with a GSW to the chest, another GSW to the leg.” She paused again. “Yes, gunshot wound.” Another pause, then a sigh. “No, I’m not a cop. I’m an accountant.”
Sweat continued to roll down Gage’s face. His mind was fuzzy. His arm had gone numb. But he fought to stay conscious as he listened to Roxanne. He had to keep Stephano at bay while she called for help, and he certainly didn’t want to miss his tigress going toe-to-toe with his father, who knew exactly who she was and what she did, but his description of her as quiet and shy was probably throwing the man off, considering the bloodshed.
“Actually, he’s one of the wounded.” She paused, rolling her eyes. “Look, Colin, I really don’t have time to explain. You could always get your in-charge butt on a plane and come down here yourself. The ambulance will take us to St. Michael’s.”
She pressed a button and glanced down at him. “He’s a real stuffed shirt.”
Gage worked up a smile. “The best.”
She shook her head and dialed again. “Nine-one-one,” she explained to him.
His father had no doubt connected with the local authorities and medical personnel the moment he’d gotten her call, but Gage was so impressed with Roxanne’s calm, quick reasoning he didn’t mention this.
“I need an ambulance and police at 86 Royal.” She continued to explain to the operator about the injuries and that an officer was down. She again explained she was an accountant, not a cop, giving Gage the strength to fight back another wave of dizzying pain. “No, I won’t disconnect.”
But she laid the phone beside her as she knelt next to him, running her fingers through his hair. She was worried. But if she was scared, she was hiding it well. “Hang on, Gage.”
“I am.” He propped his good arm on his bent knee, the barrel pointing toward Stephano, who sat on the floor fifteen feet away, holding his injured leg. His eyes were still cold, but his skin had turned pasty, and a pool of blood had formed beneath his foot. “See what you can do about him.”
She kissed his forehead. “I love you.”
His heart jumped. He searched her eyes for something new, some sense that things had changed, that their future could be forged together. But she seemed only sad. And resigned. “Is that enough?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.”
He hadn’t expected any more. He shifted his gaze to Stephano and said nothing.
She sighed, picked up the phone then grabbed another stack of bills as she crossed to the mobster. She stopped a few feet from him and tossed the paper at his feet. “Use that before you pass out.” She turned away just as quickly, speaking into the phone. “Still here.”
Hooking the receiver between the side of her head and her shoulder, she took over applying pressure to Mettles’s chest, whose pulse, Gage noted with a quick check, was growing weaker. That traitorous SOB Stephano was going to be booked on murder charges if help didn’t arrive soon.
Another minute or two passed, with neither he nor Roxanne saying a word. He silently acknowledged his case was most certainly over. She’d told him earlier she wanted him to move his stuff out of the house. His big declaration of love hadn’t changed a thing, it seemed. Had he really expected it to?
Yes, he had.
Sirens screamed in the distance. Dizziness washed over Gage. His hand, holding the gun, wavered. Stephano blurred before his eyes. He wanted to lie down, just for a minute, to get his strength back. But in the distance, he heard Roxanne still speaking to the 911 operator. He had to hold on, just for a few more minutes. He had to protect her.
Then suddenly he felt the cold concrete floor against his back.
Roxanne’s face appeared above him. “Gage?”
Blood trickling down his arm, he reached up, working his fingers beneath the edge of her wig. Body and spirit weak, he needed to see her, the real her at that moment.
She helped him pull off the wig, then scrubbed her hands through her real hair to release the pins holding it back. The curly red strands brushed his cheek as she pressed her lips softly to his. “You’re going to be fine. I won’t leave you.”
Not right now anyway.
But he’d lose her.
Very soon.
“DAMN YOU, Gage! Don’t pass out on me now.” Roxanne held his jaw, moving his head from side to side. She really wanted to panic. Tears hovered at the back of her throat and behind her eyes.
His injuries were much more serious than he’d let on. He might die.
And she’d told him love might not be enough.
Her stomach pitched. She really thought she might throw up, but she knew she had to be strong for Gage.
As the sirens grew louder, she glanced at Stephano—this time trying to crawl from the room. Sick inside and her patience long gone, she simply fired a shot in his direction. The bullet slammed into a crate behind him. “Stay where you are, jerkface.”
He rolled to a sitting position, slumping against the crates, probably not wanting the cops to find him on his knees in front of a woman—even one holding a gun.
“You’d better ask the cops to put you in maximum security,” she said through a tear-thickened voice, “because if anything happens to him, I’m coming after you myself.”
“Crazy broad,” he muttered.
“Yeah. You remember that.”
She heard a door slam open. “Fire department!” shouted someone from the gallery.
“Back here!” she called back, not letting go of Gage’s hand.
Up until that moment, since she’d first heard Stephano’s voice, time seemed to crawl. Now everything happened with amazing speed. Firefighters appeared with their axes and thick yellow coats. Paramedics rushed in with stretchers. Police with drawn guns and Kevlar vests quickly rounded up the bad guys and confiscated her gun. Only the fact that several of the people from both the fire and police departments recognized her kept her from a visit to the station for questioning.
She shook her head at their curious looks and murmurs of comfort, moving just far enough away from Gage to let the medics go to work. When they loaded him onto a stretcher, she followed them through the warehouse and gallery and out into the humid night air, where a crowd had gathered along the sidewalk. She jumped into the back of the ambulance, sinking to the floor at the foot of the stretcher while the medics continued tending Gage.
A couple of tears leaked from her eyes, but she felt calm somehow. Or maybe she was just in shock.
As they rolled down the street, she made another call on Gage’s cell phone. When the commanding, serious man on the other end answered, she had to swallow before she could speak. “Daddy, I need you.”
12
ROXANNE SHIFTED her backside in the orange plastic waiting-room chair. With worry lines wrinkling their foreheads, the two medics who’d brought Gage to the hospital stood in front of her. She’d gone to high school with one, and the other played poker on Thursday nights with her brother.
“You sure you don’t want some coffee?” Alan, her brother’s poker buddy, asked.
She linked her numb hands together in her lap. “No.”
“You’re…uh, that guy…is he the one you’re marrying?”
Roxanne glanced at the bare finger on her left hand. She bit her lip and nodded.
He stood there next to his partner, that awkward look of bafflement on his face that every man produced when a woman was upset, and he had no control over fixing things.
She hadn’t said anything about Gage to anyone other than to tell the admissions nurse his name. And even that she regretted. She had no idea what the Treasury Department wanted, but she was certain the less said, the better.
The outside world had intruded on the Hollywood soundstage her life had become. She had even less idea how to deal with Gage’s secrets here.
A hand gripped her shoulder. “Roxanne?”
She glanced up into her father’s worried face. She rose and turned, wrapping her arms around his waist, laying her cheek against his chest and breathing in the familiar scent of Old Spice.
“How is he?” he asked, stroking her hair.
“In surgery. The guys think he’ll be okay.”
Behind her, she heard the medics exchange greetings with her father. He suggested they go get something to eat, though he didn’t encourage them to leave. Violence had hit close to home in their community, and they’d band together through the worst. Her father had sat in hospital emergency rooms more times than she could count, waiting on word of a fellow officer, firefighter or one of their family members.
“Yes, sir, Captain,” Alan said. “Let us know if we can do anything.”
When they were alone, her father asked quietly, “You want to tell me what happened?”
She looked up, meeting his gaze, his brown eyes so like hers. At least normally.
Those familiar eyes narrowed. “What are you wearing?”
She clasped his hand. “I need some air.”
As they walked through the waiting room, she could feel his gaze measuring her, her Frederick’s of Hollywood outfit, fake tan and heavy makeup no doubt confusing him. She wondered how much he’d been told about the shootings. He had to know who Stephano was, and word of the counterfeiting equipment was sure to have raced through the grapevine like wildfire. But since she’d said nothing to the local police except pointing out the bad guys, she had no idea how much they’d figured out about her and Gage.
She couldn’t worry about all that. She was about to break some major rules. Gage wouldn’t be happy about it, though he would understand. The Treasury Department would really not like it and was probably in the process of sending people to the hospital so they could be the first ones to question the survivors. She hoped they’d at least send Steele, so she’d have a familiar face to deal with.
For now, though, the government would have to wait. She had to talk to someone about all that had occurred in the last day and a half, and she didn’t much care if that pissed somebody off.
Outside, she led her father away from the ambulance bay and driveway to a low brick wall that sat on the corner of the emergency wing. He swung her onto the wall as if she weighed nothing, as if she were a little girl again, waiting for news of her gravely injured mother. They’d sat in this exact spot, she remembered suddenly. Her, her father, Nicole and Ryan had waited in vain for good news. She prayed the same wouldn’t be true today.
He jumped up beside her. “Did you pick this spot on purpose, baby?”
She stared at the silvery moon. “I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“Do you want to talk about why three teams of NOPD officers, a station of firefighters, plus four federal agents that I know of found you and your fiancé in Joseph Stephano’s warehouse full of counterfeiting equipment and several hundred thousand dollars in fake money?”
Her dad, Mr. Straight-to-the-Point. The thought made her smile. “Mmm. I’ll get around to that.”
So, in quiet, as calm as possible tones, she told him her story, beginning with Toni’s suspicions at lunch yesterday and ending with her shooting Stephano in the leg, then later telling the jerkface he’d better stay where he was—hey, she had to throw herself in some kind of good light, since she figured her dad was going to be boiling mad at her for involving herself in a federal case uninvited and without a shred of experience.
When she finished, he gripped her hand in his. “You know, Rox. I think I’m a little relieved. There’ve been times I thought you were adopted.”
She slapped his arm lightly. “Daddy!”
He squeezed her hand, his gaze zeroing in on hers. “And I’m also ticked as hell you insinuated yourself into a federal counterfeiting case with a notoriously dangerous mobster. You’re an accountant, for God’s sake, not a cop.”
Hell, she’d been telling people that all night.
The idea forced a giggle past her lips. And once she started laughing, she couldn’t stop. Part of her knew she’d become hysterical, battling misery and confusion with a smile and hoping desperately everything could just be the way it was before. The rest of her, the practical side she’d always embraced, knew her life had changed, irrevocably, forever. And this emotional outburst was just a release of tension. She’d have to deal with the changes soon. Back up some difficult decisions.
Her dad handed her his handkerchief. “Damn, Rox, the least you could have done was pay attention during my shooting lessons, then you’d hav
e disabled Stephano a lot easier. You should have aimed midbody.”
She rolled her eyes. He sounded just like Gage. And she wasn’t about to admit she’d aimed midbody and just luckily caught him in the leg. “What about Gage? Aren’t you mad at him? He’s the one who lied and tricked us all.”
“Honey,” he said in his patient, I’m-the-parent, let-me-handle-this tone, “that’s his job. I’m upset for you, that he hurt you. He shouldn’t have involved you in his life, and he’ll hear from me about that, believe me. But you can’t fault him for not telling you about his work.”
“Oh, yes, I can. I can’t marry him. I won’t live that way.”
“But you love him.”
She paused before admitting, “Yes.”
He said nothing for several long moments. “This is about your mother.”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
He looked up toward the moon. “Do you know how many nights I laid awake, blaming myself for her death?”
They’d had this talk a few times, when her grief had gotten the better of her and she’d said horrible, accusing words in her anger. She couldn’t have spoken if her life depended on it. She hadn’t intended to resurrect his grief, to open old wounds.
“Without you kids,” he went on, “I probably wouldn’t have made it. I would have drank myself to death or gone crazy. She was my life,” he whispered. Then he cleared his throat. “But I knew Hope believed in me. She believed in what I did and who I was.” He turned his head, and his watery gaze met hers. “She would have been disappointed if I’d given up, either before or after my job cost her her life.”
“Daddy, I didn’t mean—”
He kissed her forehead. “I know you didn’t, pumpkin. I just want you to understand before you make a decision you could regret for the rest of your life.” He held her by her shoulders, obviously fighting to bank his own regrets. “The guilt from losing her was incredible. Still is sometimes. But I knew I couldn’t let evil and doubt and fear win. That’s what you’re doing, Rox. You’re letting fear keep you from what, from who, you love most. You know I’ll love you regardless, but I hope you consider carefully what you’re throwing away.”
Private Lies Page 16