by Marie Force
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
He looked her over to see if she was up to something before he gestured for her to go ahead. “Hurry up, and no bullshit. I want to get this over with and get the fuck out of here. Leave the door open.”
Her face throbbing from where he’d hit her, Juliana did as she was told. It took all her fortitude to get through the motions of going to the bathroom. She was terrified he would take advantage of her half-dressed state to make good on his threat to rape her, but this was her only chance to save herself.
Slowly, so she wouldn’t attract his attention, she reached up to the tiny cabinet above the toilet paper roll. She remembered Michael laughing when he showed her the phone the previous owner installed in this and every bathroom in the house. Relying only on her sense of touch, she lifted the receiver and dialed 911.
Hearing the operator say, “911, please state your emergency,” she put the phone down and flushed the toilet. With adrenaline coursing through her, she pulled her pants back up and willed her shaking hands to button them. Only when she had her clothes back in place was she able to breathe again.
“What the fuck are you doing in there?”
“I’m coming.” She forced her trembling legs to move and prayed to God the 911 operator had done her job and notified the police.
Escalada grabbed her.
She whimpered at the feel of a cold metal edge resting against her throat.
He ground his erection into her back. “Mmm, mmm, mmm, I sure do wish I had time to have me some of you,” he growled against her ear. “Your boyfriend’s going to come home to a big mess tonight. No more saucy piece of ass for him.”
“Freeze!”
Juliana shifted her eyes to find three cops in the doorway with their guns drawn.
Escalada tightened his hold on Juliana. He backed them up to the sliding door and opened it with his free hand.
She felt a burning sensation against her neck and realized he had cut her.
“Let her go, Escalada,” one of the cops ordered.
He dragged her outside to the lower deck.
The cops followed them.
Her shirt became wet as a warm, sticky trail of blood accumulated in a pool at her collarbone. The combination of the cold and the fear had Juliana shaking even as she fought to remain still against the knife.
“Let her go!” the cops ordered again.
“Back off or I swear to God, I’ll kill her!”
A shot rang out, and Juliana screamed when Escalada slumped over her, knocking her down as the knife fell from his hand and clattered onto the wood deck.
He landed on top of her.
Shrieking, she clawed at him.
The cops moved quickly to free her. One of them gathered her into his arms and carried her inside while another radioed for paramedics.
“It’s okay, Juliana. We got him. You’re safe.”
She slumped against him and lost consciousness.
Chapter 27
Michael was having lunch with his colleagues at a deli across the street from the courthouse when Officer John Tanner rushed over to tell him that a 911 call had been made from his house.
He jumped up. “Juliana,” he gasped, running with Tanner from the restaurant to a cruiser outside. “What happened? Is she all right?”
“We don’t know yet. All I know is there was a call, but the caller didn’t say anything. Her detail was going in when I came to get you.”
Michael got into the car with John who flipped on the siren to make a path through heavy midday traffic. During the interminable ride, they heard snippets over the police radio that had Michael paralyzed with fear: gunshots reported on Chester Street, a call for paramedics, two victims.
Oh God, please. Please.
John’s cell phone rang with a call from a member of Juliana’s detail asking if he had Michael. “We’re on our way to the scene,” John replied. He was told Juliana was being taken to Hopkins.
“How bad it is?” Michael urged John to ask.
“They don’t think it’s life-threatening.”
Michael sagged into the seat, his stomach roiling with nausea. They don’t think it’s life threatening. That meant they didn’t know for sure. Please, God. Please don’t let her die.
They arrived at the hospital at the same time as the ambulance. Michael was out of the car before it stopped. He raced over to the ambulance and for a second time fought the urge to pass out at the sight of a ghostly pale Juliana covered in blood. This time, though, she was unconscious, and the cut on her neck was still bleeding profusely. There was something else all over her that looked an awful lot like brain matter.
“Oh,” he whispered. “Oh, God.”
John pulled Michael back so the paramedics could get her inside. They hustled her down the hall and into one of the trauma rooms. The nurses stopped Michael outside the door.
“What the hell happened?” he screamed when two of the cops from Juliana’s detail rushed into the hallway.
“Escalada. We figure he came down from the roof deck. It’s close enough to the house next door that he could’ve jumped.”
“But the alarm was on,” Michael said. “How did he get in? How did he get to her?”
“The alarm was off.”
Michael shook his head. “No way. She wouldn’t have shut it off.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Maguire. I don’t know what to say. It was off when we went in after the 911 call. Somehow she managed to get to a phone. There’s no doubt that saved her life.”
Based on what Michael saw a minute ago, he had considerable reason to wonder if her life had in fact been saved. He sat down hard in a chair in the hallway. “Where is he now? Escalada?”
“He’s dead. One of our guys got off a shot from the roof next door.”
Michael felt a brief moment of relief at that news. At least their other problem had been solved. “Where was Juliana when they shot him?”
The cop looked down at the floor, his face tight with tension.
“Where was she?”
“He had her, with a knife to her throat. That’s how she got cut.”
“Oh my God.” Michael put his head down to stop the rush of nausea that struck when he realized how easily the cop could have missed Escalada and hit her instead, or even both of them. Michael kept his head down and prayed like he never had in his life. Even when Tom Houlihan came in and sat next to him, Michael kept his head in his hands and never stopped praying.
“Should you call her family, Michael?” Houlihan asked.
Michael shook his head and ran a trembling hand through his hair. “She wouldn’t want them here. You’ve got to keep her name out of the reports, Tom.”
“It’s already taken care of.”
After what seemed like hours to Michael, a doctor finally emerged from the room where Juliana was being treated. Michael jumped up.
“Are you with her?” the doctor asked.
Without hesitation, Michael said, “She’s my fiancée.”
“We’ve got the bleeding stopped, and I’ve called in a plastic surgeon to suture her.”
“She’ll be all right?” That was the only thing the doctor failed to say and the only thing Michael needed to hear.
“She lost quite a bit of blood, but she should be fine in a day or two. One millimeter deeper and we’d be telling a different story. She got very lucky.”
Tom shook the doctor’s hand. “Thank you.”
When his legs failed him, Michael sank down to the chair.
Juliana opened her eyes in the dark room and tried to figure out what was pinching her finger. She raised it to discover a medical device clipped to it, and realized she was in the hospital. Attempting to turn her head, she winced when the wound on her neck burned in protest.
Michael’s head rested on the hospital bed next to her arm. She raised her hand to run her fingers through his hair.
His head whipped up. “Juliana… Oh God…”
Juliana
held out her arms to him, and he crawled right up onto the bed to hold her as deep sobs shook both of them.
“Are you all right, baby?” he asked when he could finally speak again. Running his hand over the bruise on her face, he brushed back her hair. “Does anything hurt?”
She tried to shake her head and winced.
“Don’t move your head.” He kissed her cheek, her lips, and her neck, just above the large white bandage that covered the wound. “Thank God you’re all right.”
“Is he dead?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s my fault,” she said with a fresh burst of tears.
He brushed them away. “How can you say that?”
“I turned off the alarm so I could go see what was thumping on the deck. I thought the lounge chairs had blown over, and I went up to get them. I shouldn’t have shut off the alarm.”
“So that’s why,” Michael said with a sigh. “None of us could figure out why it was off. Honey, no one imagined he’d try to get in through the roof. It’s not your fault. If anything, we all think you’re amazing for figuring out a way to make the 911 call. How did you do that?”
“I told him I had to go to the bathroom when I thought of the phone in the cabinet.”
Michael released a ragged deep breath. “I almost took the phone out of there when I first moved in. I thought it was so dumb to have phones in the bathrooms.”
“I remembered you telling me that.”
He caressed her bruised cheek. “What happened to your face?”
“He hit me when I tried to get away from him. He said he wanted…”
Michael’s hand froze. “What?”
She looked away from him, her face burning with embarrassment. “Some of what you’ve been getting.”
“Baby, did he, I mean, Jesus…”
“No. He just did a lot of talking about it.”
He held her even more tightly. “You must’ve been so scared.”
“I thought I’d never see you again, Michael,” she whispered. “I just wanted to see you again.”
“I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I knew it wasn’t safe to keep you with me, but I’ve been so selfish. I’m so crazy in love with you that I was greedy for whatever time I could get with you. It didn’t even matter that I’d put your life in danger.”
She stroked his face. “We were both greedy for the same things. It’s not your fault. You tried to get me to leave a bunch of times. It was my choice to stay. It still is.”
“You’re not staying after this. No way. I’m putting my foot down.”
She smiled. “We’ll see.”
“I mean it, Juliana. This is it.”
“Okay.” She would fight that battle later.
Michael managed to fend off the police who wanted a statement from Juliana. He told them she would talk to them in the morning but not before. No fewer than four cops stood guard in the hallway outside the room where Michael slept on the hospital bed with Juliana in his arms.
He woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat after dreaming that Juliana had been killed instead of Escalada. At some point, a nurse must have covered him with a blanket. Because he was shaking and breathing hard, he got up so he wouldn’t wake Juliana. After he splashed cold water on his face in the bathroom, he sat down in a chair, dropped his head into his palms, and gave in to the need to weep.
When he thought about all the things that could have happened… she might have forgotten about the phone in the bathroom, Escalada might have raped her—maybe even more than once—or cut her throat. The cops could have shot her instead of that animal Escalada. Each scenario was more chilling than the last, and they ran through his mind like a horror movie.
“Hey,” she whispered from the bed. “Where’d you go?”
He wiped his face and got up to go to her. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
She took his hand to bring him back on the bed. “What is it, Michael? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong as long as you’re all right. I love you.”
She curved her hand around the back of his neck to draw him down to her. “I love you, too,” she said, touching her lips to his. “So much.”
He held her as tightly as he dared, his face buried in her fragrant hair.
“Michael?”
“What, hon?”
“I’m worried about work. I won’t be able to go in tomorrow, not with my face all banged up… I was already out last week and now this. I’m going to get fired—”
“Shh.” He kissed her. “Don’t worry. I called the salon. I told them you’d been in a car accident, and they said to take as much time as you need.”
She released a sigh of relief. “Thank you for thinking of that,” she said, reaching for him.
Thrilled that she felt well enough to even care about work, he fell into the kiss. She was everything, and she was still right here with him. For now, for this moment, she was his and she loved him.
“Is there a lock on that door?”
“I don’t know.”
She kissed him again. “Why don’t you check?”
“You need to get some sleep.”
“I’ve had some sleep.” She nibbled on his ear, her hand moving to his chest. “Now I want you.”
He groaned as she pushed open his shirt. “Juliana…”
She pressed her lips to his chest. “What?”
“Sweetheart,” he hissed. “Come on. You’re killing me.”
She laughed. “Then stop resisting.”
When she reached for his fly, he grabbed her hand. “All right. That’s enough. Time to sleep.”
“Michael?”
He took a deep breath to slow the frantic beating of his heart. “What, hon?”
“I need…”
Turning on his side to face her, he said, “What do you need? I’ll get you anything you want.”
“I need to feel like I’m still alive. Is that weird?”
“No,” he said, kissing her with a burst of passion that took them both by surprise. “It’s not weird. It’s normal after what you went through.”
“Make me feel like I’m still alive, will you? Will you, please?”
“Right now?” he asked, startled. “Here?”
She bit her lip. “Yes. Right here, right now.”
“What about the nurses?”
“They were just in a little while ago.”
“I slept through that?”
“Uh huh.” Giggling, she added, “They said you were awfully cute all curled up to me in the bed.”
He studied her for a long moment before he got up to discover there was no lock on the door. “I don’t know about this, Juliana. . .”
“I’m willing to take my chances,” Juliana said with a saucy grin. “What’ll they do? Kick me out?”
His heart pounding and imaging the headlines should they be caught, Michael shrugged off his shirt and dropped the suit pants he had put on almost twenty-four hours earlier. “I had no idea you were such a risk taker.”
“I’m just full of surprises,” she said, pulling the covers over them.
“This is definitely a first,” he whispered.
She replied with a hot kiss that robbed him of all rational thought. Her arms went around him, urging him over her.
“Does your neck hurt?” he asked, pushing up her hospital gown to find her naked underneath.
She caressed his back. “No.”
Concerned about hurting her, he trembled from the effort to contain overwhelming urges.
“Love me, Michael.”
With only the slightest of movements he slid into her. Not wanting to cause her pain, he kept up a slow, easy pace that somehow affected him more than any other time with her ever had. All the anxiety and emotion and love from that long day—not to mention the fear of getting caught—had him on the verge of losing control in a matter of moments. “I’m not going to last long, baby,” he whispered through gritted teeth, reaching under her to h
old her tight against him.
“You won’t have to,” she said in a breathy voice that told him she too was teetering on the edge.
He tightened his hold on her to keep her still so her climax wouldn’t hurt her.
With a gasp, she clutched him from within, dragging him over the edge with her.
“Did it work?” he asked when he had caught his breath. He could very safely say that making love with her in a hospital bed, after nearly losing her, had been the most erotic experience of his life.
She laughed. “Oh, yeah. I’m very definitely alive.”
He kissed her forehead and then her lips. “Yes, you are. But we’re both going to be dead if we get caught like this.” He disentangled himself from her and found his clothes. After he got dressed, he said, “There. Now I can breathe again.”
Juliana smiled when he lay down next to her again. “Thank you.”
“Believe me, it was my pleasure.” Kissing her softly, he added in a teasing tone, “I want to be the guy who’s there for you in your time of need.”
She linked her fingers with his. “You are.”
His smile faded. “Except that you’re in this bed tonight because of me.”
“Don’t do that, Michael. You didn’t cut me.”
“In the morning the cops are going to want your statement.” He brought their joined hands to his lips. “Do you think you’ll feel up to it?”
“What do I have to tell them?”
“Everything that happened from the time you first heard something on the roof until he was shot.”
She looked away from him.
“What?”
“I don’t want them to know he said that other stuff about, you know…”
“I think you could leave that part out since he didn’t actually do anything.”
“He might have if the cops didn’t show up when they did. I think that’s why he didn’t kill me right away. He wanted something else first.”
Michael stopped breathing. “Did something else happen, Juliana?”
Her cheeks flushed with color. “He was…”
“Tell me,” Michael urged.
“Turned on,” she whispered.
“How could you tell?”
“He pushed it against me when he put the knife—”