by Anne Woodard
Chapter 14
T hey didn’t see anyone along the road, and so far as Maggie could tell, no one saw them. Even though they weren’t dressed like runners, they tried to make it look as though the two of them were just out for a little hard road work by jogging the whole way.
By the time they ducked into the trees that screened Taublib’s cabin, Maggie was breathing fairly hard. Hoenig hadn’t even started to sweat.
“You need to get more exercise,” he said as he studied the small cabin that was their target.
“I’m getting plenty just by sneaking up on houses around here,” Maggie shot back, annoyed.
She scanned the house and the trees around it. “Is that Jerelski’s SUV parked around the side of the house?”
Hoenig nodded. He hadn’t glanced at her once since they’d left the road. “One door at the front. Maybe another around the back. Two bedrooms, right?”
“Right. I figure it’s those two small windows on the side. The bathroom would be where that even smaller window is between them. My guess is the rest is a combined living and dining room with open kitchen. That’s the usual arrangement in places like this.”
“Agreed.” This time he glanced at her. “You want the front or the back?”
“Back. But we’ve got another ten minutes until Rick can work his way around.”
Hoenig recognized the warning in the comment but chose to ignore it.
“I’m not waiting. Dornier’s a biologist, not a cop. You and I are trained for this sort of thing. He’s not.”
He pulled a small and very deadly looking gun out of his pocket, then turned to scan the silent house once more.
“Every minute we wait is another minute that Tina is at risk. I’ll give you five minutes to get in place, then I’m going in the front.”
With that he was gone, moving fast and keeping low.
Maggie gave herself the satisfaction of one heart-felt curse, then pulled her gun and started around the other side.
There was a back door. From her vantage point in the woods behind the house, Maggie couldn’t tell if the door was locked or not. But she could see movement in the room beyond.
The windows on this side of the house weren’t very big. With the lengthening late afternoon shadows it was hard to tell exactly what was going on since no one in the house had been thoughtful enough to turn on a light.
Heart pounding, ears straining for any sound that could tell her what was happening inside, Maggie took a chance and dashed across the empty ground to the corner of the house. She paused to see if anyone had noticed an intruder, then cautiously stood to peek in the first window. A bedroom, just as she’d suspected, and empty. It didn’t look as if anyone had used it for a long time.
The door to the living area was shut so she couldn’t see anything else, but she was close enough now to catch the sound of an angry male voice. The words were indistinguishable.
She ducked down again and moved to the next window.
This one gave her a clear view of the open living area she’d expected to find.
What she saw brought her heart into her throat.
She took one good look, then ducked back down, out of sight, her thoughts racing.
Jerelski was there, and he was definitely angry. His back had been turned to her, but his whole body radiated an almost uncontrollable fury as he’d paced the floor in front of his two captives.
Tina Dornier was kneeling on the floor in front of the couch. She definitely looked frightened, but there’d been an alertness about her that made Maggie hope she’d be able to react intelligently to whatever was going to happen next.
What Maggie hadn’t expected was the cringing figure huddled on the sofa that Tina was trying to comfort.
Grace Navarre. A drugged-out and badly battered Grace Navarre, if what little Maggie had seen was any indication.
That would definitely complicate things. On the other hand, Grace’s presence complicated things for Jerelski, too. He had two possible hostages, but he also had two people who would be desperate to escape at the first opportunity.
Moving even more carefully than before, Maggie crept to the back door. Three rickety wooden steps led up to it, but she could still reach the knob from where she stood. And thank all the gods, it was unlocked.
Unfortunately, the door swung outward, not in, but one of the first things they taught you when you were studying to be a cop was that you couldn’t have everything your way. She would cope.
She would have to.
Scarcely breathing, she moved back to the window. There was no sign of Hoenig, but she had not the slightest doubt that he would be coming through that front door sometime in the next sixty seconds and to hell with whatever he’d been taught.
Back to the door. When he burst through the front door, she was a heartbeat behind him.
“Freeze!”
They both shouted the order. They both had their guns up and Jerelski in their sights.
And neither one of them moved fast enough to stop Jerelski from yanking Tina to her feet and around in front of him as a shield.
Maggie’s heart stopped beating altogether.
Hoenig tightened his two-handed grip on his gun. His eyes had gone murderously black.
Jerelski shifted his grip, pulling Tina’s arm up behind her until she cried out at the pain. He had a gun in his hand now, a small but undeniably deadly looking black gun. He pointed it at Fritz.
“Hoenig, isn’t it? Fritz Hoenig?” he said. “We met at that conference in Denver a few months back. Remember?”
“Let her go, Jerelski. It’s over. You can’t gain anything by this.”
“I don’t think so,” Jerelski said. “Not just yet.”
Dragging Tina with him as a shield, he edged toward the front door.
Maggie’s heart was pounding, but her grip on her gun was rock still and solid. Her mind was racing, weighing alternatives. There were several. None of them were good.
Rick’s unarmed. Please, God, don’t let him walk in on this.
She should have let him bring his pistol. She should have known that Hoenig’s feelings for Tina would get in the way of his judgment. She should have grabbed a bullet-proof vest, and made Hoenig and Rick take one, too. She should have—
“Give it up, Jerelski,” she said. “There are other officers out there in the trees. You can’t get away, and there’s no place to go even if you could.”
“Actually, there is. You’d be surprised what comfortable arrangements can be made when you have a few million dollars to pay for them.”
He was almost to the door. Tina stumbled, then whimpered and arched back in pain when he twisted her arm higher still. Her eyes were wide and swimming in tears, her body shaking, but in spite of everything, she hadn’t given in to her fear.
Reluctantly, but without lowering his own gun, Hoenig backed up to give them more room.
“Oh, Fritz!” Tina cried. “I’m so sorry! I know you said I shouldn’t leave the house, but—”
“It’s all right, Tina,” Hoenig soothed without taking his attention off Jerelski.
“I was in the trees. I was being really careful,” Tina insisted tearfully. “Really I was! But I guess I was closer to the road than I thought because Grace spotted me and—”
Jerelski’s thin lips curled in an ugly sneer. “Stupid bitch has her uses every now and then.”
On the sofa, Grace groaned, then curled into a tighter ball. None of them paid her any attention.
“If either of you puts one foot out this door, I’ll shoot you,” Jerelski said. He took another step backwards to stand in the open doorway, Tina still held securely in front of him. His gaze flicked from Hoenig, who was closest, to Maggie, then back again. “I assure you, I’m a very good shot. I—”
The crack of a rifle cut off whatever he’d meant to say next. He arched back involuntarily, bringing his gun hand up, too, so that when he pulled the trigger, the bullet went in the ceiling, not Hoenig’s heart.
>
Tina gasped, then jerked away. Jerelski tried to bring the gun up again, but couldn’t. He staggered, shook his head as if trying to shake off a fly, then collapsed, face-down in a heap in front of the open door.
Only then could they see the large, cylindrical metal dart that was lodged in the muscles at the base of his neck.
A moment later, Rick stepped through the doorway, a rifle in his hand. He spared one glance for the unconscious man at his feet and another for his sister, who stared at him, then at Hoenig, then threw her arms around Hoenig’s neck and collapsed, sobbing, on his chest.
Rick didn’t seem to care. After that first glance, his gaze had riveted on Maggie.
Slowly, heart pounding, she lowered her gun.
“You all right?” he asked.
She nodded, but couldn’t get any words out past a throat gone suddenly tight.
“Thank God!”
Maggie thought she’d never heard a more heart-felt prayer.
And then he stepped across Jerelski’s body as if it were no more than a rug haphazardly tossed down on the floor. In three strides he was across the room. And then he wrapped her in his arms and kissed her and Maggie stopped thinking at all.
Grace was taken to the hospital. She would probably be there awhile. Between the drugs and Jerelski’s battering, she was in pretty bad shape. Maggie suspected she would be forced into a drug treatment center after she was released from the hospital. With luck and a lot of help, maybe she’d eventually turn her life around. Maggie hoped so, though she wasn’t planning to bet too much on the possibility.
Jerelski, too, was taken to the hospital, but he went under guard. As soon as the doctors confirmed he’d totally recovered from the effects of Rick’s tranquilizing dart, he would be given a room at the jail courtesy of the town of Fenton.
Representatives from the police, DEA and District Attorney’s office were already hard at work to make sure he wasn’t granted bail. With all the material they’d found in Taublib’s cabin, there was a good chance he’d eventually be granted a lifetime residence in Colorado’s most secure prison.
Maggie wasn’t interested in the details right now. Eventually, no doubt, she’d be dragged into the preparations for the trial. It was a hundred percent certainty she’d be required to testify. But all that was for the future.
Right now, the present was suddenly a whole lot more difficult to handle than she would have liked.
When Tina had refused to accept any medical treatment, the four of them—Rick, Hoenig, Tina and herself—had been brought to the Fenton police station. Rick’s rifle and the tranquilizing dart he’d used had been confiscated and might be held as evidence in any inquiry. Given Grace’s condition and Tina’s testimony, Maggie suspected that there might not even be an inquiry, or that if there was, it would be no more than a formality.
Since she’d drawn her gun, too, Maggie knew she’d have a million forms and incident reports to fill out. Those could wait until tomorrow. Right now she was far too tired to string two coherent sentences together, let alone manage anything bigger.
Tina and Hoenig were off in some room somewhere, giving their statements. It would have been easier to pry George Washington off Mt. Rushmore than to have separated those two, so no one even tried. The last Maggie had seen them, they’d been sitting shoulder to shoulder, their hands laced together, heads bent and close so that no one else could catch their whispered, intimate conversation.
Maggie figured the wedding would be scheduled for the day after Tina’s graduation next spring. She hoped she was invited.
She tried to tell herself it wasn’t envy she was feeling, but she wasn’t having much luck.
Those few, frantic minutes in the cabin and later, outside, had brought with them an entirely different perspective on life and on her life choices. They’d also driven a wedge of uncomfortable silence between her and Rick that had only grown wider and seemingly more unbridgeable with every passing hour.
After that wild, frantic kiss—a kiss, she realized now that had been driven as much by knee-wobbling relief as any deeper passion—they’d reluctantly pulled away from each other, and they’d been moving farther and farther away ever since.
She remembered the kiss. Most of the rest was a blur. The eventual arrival of their backup. Jerelski’s arrest. The arrival of yet more police, then DEA agents who happily started an inch-by-inch search of the house even as they requested a warrant for a similar search of Jerelski’s home, business and college office.
She and Rick had each given their statements. Separately, in separate rooms, to different recording clerks. Maggie didn’t remember a lot about that, either.
They hadn’t talked about what had happened. They certainly hadn’t talked about how they felt about it. And they’d carefully avoiding meeting each other’s gaze since they’d climbed into different squad cars for the ride back to town.
Bursey had been furious, of course, and roaringly delighted with Jerelski’s capture. With luck, her boss would overlook all those rules and regulations she’d broken and just be happy with the fact that she and Rick and Hoenig had brought the man down. She might end up with a mild rebuke, maybe a single somber note in her next glowing evaluation, but that would probably be it.
There was even a small chance that she would end up with a commendation, maybe even a medal. One of the DEA agents had informed her there was a betting pool starting on which way it would go. He’d offered her a chance to join the pool. She’d declined. He hadn’t believed her when she’d said she didn’t care, one way or the other.
But she’d told the truth—reprimand or medal, she really didn’t care which she got because either way, it really didn’t matter.
What she cared about was Rick and what was starting to develop between them. No, what had already exploded between them, no matter how hard they’d tried to stop it.
What she cared about was this confusing tangle of feelings inside her. She didn’t like being confused. She didn’t like feeling lost, either. But right now, with Rick keeping his distance from her, she was definitely feeling lost.
And that was making her mad.
Just where did he get off ignoring her like this? How in the hell could he possibly pretend that just because they’d gotten Tina back, the rest of it, everything that had so quickly grown between them, no longer mattered?
She had a good mind to go over there and tell him so, too. At least then he couldn’t just keep standing there, staring out that window as if she weren’t even in the room.
Her increasingly angry thoughts were interrupted by the opening of the door.
For a moment, Bursey just stood there in the open door eyeing both of them as if deciding which one he was going to rake over the coals first.
“You mind shutting the door?” Maggie snapped. “All that noise out there is annoying.”
Bursey frowned, then shut the door and crossed the room to stand in front of her.
Maggie bristled. The last thing she wanted right now was another fight, but if Bursey wanted to fight…
“You want a job, Manion?”
Her jaw dropped. “I’ve got a job.”
“Not with me. I can offer you less pay, fewer resources, the same long hours and the chance to fight with me on a regular basis.” His grin was almost as startling as the offer. “How can you possibly resist?”
Work for Bursey? Stay in one place for more than a few months? Have a real home for a change, maybe learn to build a real life for herself? Make some friends who had absolutely nothing to do with her job? Go all out, maybe, and adopt a cat?
Her head spun at the thought. A week ago, she would have laughed at the thought. Now…
The yearning ache that started somewhere near her heart and rapidly spread outward caught her by surprise. Her stomach pitched. Her knees turned wobbly. And just like that, her anger vanished, replaced by utter wonder.
Beside her, she could hear Rick shift on his feet, but she didn’t dare turn to look at h
im.
A job with Bursey? A home here in Fenton? The whole idea seemed absurd. Ludicrous. But she had to admit it had a certain appeal.
Was that what she wanted? A regular job? A regular life? Someone—well, something to come home to?
She’d never permitted herself to think about that sort of thing before, but now that Bursey had offered…
Colorado was a whole lot closer to Montana than Washington, D.C.
Maggie glanced at Rick. Say something, she pleaded silently.
He was watching her. She couldn’t read the expression on his face, but she could feel the tension that suddenly gripped him.
Because of that tension in him, some of the tension in her eased. Her answer mattered to him. Really mattered. Which was crazy, because they hadn’t known each other a whole three days.
Three days of arguing and worrying and running around trying to find a sister he hardly knew.
Three days of watching him move, watching him smile or frown or glare, and of knowing he was watching her.
Three days of being so aware of him that she would have known what he was doing, almost what he was thinking, just by closing her eyes and letting that awareness bleed through to her very bones.
A few hours of making love to him until they both nearly keeled over from the mind-blowing wonder of it.
As good as a lifetime, she thought.
Besides, she’d never been one to second guess what her own instincts told her to do.
“No, thanks,” she said to Bursey. She deliberately didn’t look at Rick when she said it. “I really appreciate the offer, but…no.”
He actually looked a little disappointed, which was flattering, but not nearly flattering enough to make her change her mind.
“Oh,” he said. He shrugged. “Well. I didn’t really think you would, but it was worth a try.”
He thrust out his hand. Maggie didn’t hesitate to take it.
“You’re a good officer, Manion. A real know-it-all pain in the butt, but a good officer. If you ever decide to you want to come back to Fenton…”
She smiled. “If I do, Chief, you’ll be the first to know.”