And yet, if he made things official with Natalya, if he followed what he felt, there would be no smaller versions of him or her. No sons who wanted to play ball, no daughters to love and protect.
Nothing to it turned into everything to it.
He felt overwhelmed. Not so much betrayed as devastated. And confused. Very confused.
“I need some time to think,” was what he finally said.
Natalya wanted to throw herself in front of the door, to talk him out of whatever it was he was thinking. Wanted to change whatever it was that tilted the scales away from her and made him walk out of not just her door, but her life.
A thousand incoherent words flew in and out of her head, but never made it to her tongue. Because she’d only sound like a babbling idiot and she’d rather his last memory of her be not without dignity.
So she said nothing.
And he walked out of her apartment.
Chapter 15
Natalya waited, holding her breath. Willing Mike to come back, to say he’d made a mistake. To say that they could work things out somehow.
Her eyes focused on the door, waiting for a knock, a ring. A voice echoing through the wood.
When first five, then ten minutes had gone by, she knew she was waiting in vain.
Moving like someone caught in a dream set in slow motion, Natalya got dressed again. With effort, she tried to lose herself in the mechanics of what she was doing and disengage her mind totally.
She couldn’t think now, couldn’t let herself feel.
One foot in front of the other, that was the best she could hope for right now. Later she could begin a recovery program. If she even attempted it now, she knew she’d fall all to pieces without so much as a prayer of pulling herself together. She had patients who depended on her, a family that loved her. She couldn’t fall apart. She’d be no good to any of them if she did that.
The emptiness that hovered and grew threatened to overwhelm her. Throwing her shoulders back, Natalya went through the entire apartment, turning on every television set, the main one in the living room and the smaller sets that were in each of the three bedrooms. She needed noise, needed the comfort of the rainbow of lights that flowed from the monitors. Needed to fill the silence, the emptiness.
Moving from room to room, she set each monitor to the same channel and then went to the kitchen to clean counters that were already gleaming and scrub pots that already shone.
Natalya was on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor, fighting back tears that refused to abate, when she felt it. Felt the press of cold metal against her skin. The slim barrel of a pistol was against the side of her neck.
She hadn’t heard him enter, his steps muffled by the noise that surrounded her.
“Where is it?” the deep voice demanded.
Reflexes had her fingers digging into the oversized, soapy sponge she’d been using to clean the floor. But before she could swing around and throw it at the intruder’s face, she was being roughly jerked up to her feet.
Her arm felt as if it was being yanked out of its socket. Air whooshed out of her lungs. Natalya found herself looking up into a face obscured by a black ski mask. There were only slits for a mouth and eyes.
Intense, steely, piercing blue eyes that looked as if they could effortlessly vivisect her at a moment’s notice.
“Where’s what?” she shot back.
Numbed and devastated by Mike’s abrupt departure, there was no emotional strength left over for fear. But what she was capable of feeling was anger. There was more than a little beginning to bubble up inside her.
Her retort earned her a backhanded slap across her face that made her stumble backward. The force was so great, there was no telling how far back she would have gone, if there hadn’t been a sink at her back. The sudden, abrupt contact was painful. It was like receiving a quick, sharp jab to her kidneys.
Instead of cowering or backing off, Natalya straightened, furious at this invasion. Furious at Clancy’s death. And furious at loving a man who apparently couldn’t love her back.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded hotly, her very stance challenging the intruder. It was almost as if she didn’t even see the gun in his gloved hand.
Rather than answer immediately, the intruder cocked the revolver. When he spoke, his voice was deadly cold. And mocking.
“Look very carefully at the gun, Dr. Pulaski. You’re not in any position to do anything but give me what I want.”
Inexplicably, she suddenly thought of her underwear drawer. Kady hadn’t gone through it, this monster had. She was sorry now that she hadn’t attached any weight to that. There had been someone in the apartment, looking for something. Not money, because he wouldn’t have come back. But then what had he been looking for? What had made him come back a second time?
She had to get him to tell her.
Natalya raised her chin defiantly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her heart stopped as she saw him raise his gun, aiming the weapon at her head.
It couldn’t end here, she insisted silently. It couldn’t. She had too much to live for, too much she still had to do.
“Don’t play dumb, Doctor,” the man snarled. “I’m out of patience and you’re out of luck.” Getting hold of himself, he enunciated every word. “Now where is the camera?”
The camera. Clancy’s camera.
Natalya felt something sharp skewer her belly. The intruder knew about the camera. Which meant he knew about the photographs.
He was after the photographs.
Suddenly, she looked at the eyes again. Recognition came riding in on a lightning bolt.
“Jessop.”
Rage filled his eyes as the intruder swore roundly at the sound of his name. Still pointing the gun at her, he tore off the ski mask with his other hand, exposing his face.
Dark brown hair peaked in unruly tufts as Ralph Jessop stuffed the mask into the pocket of his sheepskin jacket. “No more games,” he shouted. “Where the hell is the damn camera?”
He obviously must have found out that Clancy had taken photographs, but from the desperate look on his face, he didn’t know that there was nothing in them to implicate him.
Did that buy her a little time, or seal her fate?
She couldn’t allow herself to start giving in to fear now.
“With the police.” She tossed her head defiantly. Her anger was almost at an unmanaged degree as another realization came to her. Asking for confirmation was just a formality. “Did you kill Clancy?”
He didn’t seem to hear the question. What came before it had the whole of his attention. His eyes narrowed into blue lasers. “You’re lying. The police don’t have the camera.”
Was it desperation, or hope, behind his declaration? She had no choice but to brazen it out.
“Why? Because they haven’t been by to arrest you yet? They’re busy exhuming bodies so that they can put the final nail in your coffin. They’re probably at your office and home right now, armed with a warrant, ready to drag you off to a cell.” She could feel her pulse accelerating, moving faster and faster. “If you give yourself up, it’ll go easier on you.”
“What?” He spat out the word contemptuously. “Life in prison without parole. Sorry, not interested.”
He’d given her an answer. Another wave of rage rose up in her throat. She could taste bile.
“You did kill Clancy.”
The doctor didn’t seem to see a reason to deny it. The very mention of Clancy darkened the look on his face, making him appear even more malevolent.
“The arrogant son of a bitch had the gall to confront me. Who would have thought someone like him would have had the brains to make the connection?” he scoffed. “Or the morals to care.”
The pieces began to come together in Natalya’s head. “You couldn’t bribe him to keep quiet.”
He was less than two feet away from her, the threat of his weapon growing larger by the heartbeat. “I’m not here fo
r a dialogue, Doctor.”
He might not be, but she wanted answers. And maybe, if she kept him talking, she could catch him off guard and get the gun away from him. “Why did you do it? You had a good practice, prestige, money—”
He cut her off angrily. Jessop was not a man who put up with being questioned. “Not enough. Not when you owe money to a man with a long reach and no patience.” For a split second, Natalya thought she saw weariness, regret, in Jessop’s eyes. “No one was supposed to get hurt. Nobody cared about those people and it wasn’t as if they were murdered for their organs. They were all already dead. A perfect victimless crime—”
Through the din of background noise, she thought she heard her name being called.
In the next moment, Jessop cut the remaining space between them. He grabbed her, holding the gun barrel to her temple. Cursing, the radiologist jerked her around in front of him, using her as a shield as he turned toward the source of the voice.
“You didn’t answer the door,” Mike’s voice grew closer. “If you didn’t have all these damn TVs on—” Reaching the kitchen, he stopped abruptly. His hand went to his weapon.
“Hold it right there,” Jessop shouted the warning as if there were yards between them instead of just feet. “One more move and she’s dead.”
Mike’s eyes darted toward Natalya. His expression gave no indication of the fear he felt. “Are you all right?”
Natalya’s mouth was bone dry. It had begun to dawn on her that she might not walk away from this.
“I’ve been better,” she allowed, then curved her lips in a quick, spasmodic smile. She didn’t want Mike taking any chances on her account. Jessop looked desperate and probably thought he had nothing to lose. Desperate people did terrible things.
“Very touching,” Jessop snarled. He waved his weapon at Mike. “Take the gun out of your holster, Detective, and put it on the floor.”
“No,” Natalya cried, her eyes widening as she looked at Mike. “Don’t listen to him.” She felt Jessop’s grip tighten on her arm. She bit down on her lower lip to keep back any involuntary sound.
“Do as I say,” Jessop told him, “or you can watch her die.”
She could feel each one of Jessop’s fingers digging into her flesh. “Mike, you do and he’s going to kill us both.”
But Mike slowly shook his head, never taking his eyes off Jessop. “I can’t risk it, Natalya.”
“You’re being very sensible,” Jessop jeered. “The gun,” he prompted.
Making an elaborate show of taking the weapon out of its holster with his fingertips, Mike cleared it of the leather, then began to bend his knees in order to place the gun on the floor.
Once that was out of his hands, she just knew Jessop was going to shoot. There was nothing in his way and he’d already killed once. Maybe more.
“Mike,” Natalya pleaded. Their eyes met for a moment.
The weapon was almost on the floor when Mike shouted her name. She ducked her head a split second before he fired.
The bullet found its target, burrowing into Jessop’s forehead right above the bridge of his nose. He jerked backward and fell, his fingers now in a death grip on Natalya’s arm. Unable to steady herself, Natalya went down on top of the man who was dead before he hit the floor.
Mike was at her side the same moment, bringing her to her feet. He enfolded her in his arms, holding her close, not saying a word. She felt his heart racing against her own chest.
They stood like that for a long moment before he finally released her just enough to look down at her face. He searched for signs of stress, of fear, and saw none. Hell of a woman, he thought.
Still, he asked, “Are you all right?”
Very slowly, she nodded her head. “He didn’t hurt me.”
He couldn’t wrap his mind around that concept. It held too much fear, too much emotion, for him to deal with. “If he had—”
His voice was trailing off. A hint of gallows humor curved her mouth. “You would have killed him twice?” she asked.
He laughed with relief, with nerves that were yet unspent, and hugged her to him again. Grateful that he could and that she was whole.
“I was going to say I wouldn’t have been able to stand it.” Mike allowed himself one kiss before he returned to being a detective instead of a man. Stepping back, he squatted over the body to assure himself of what he already knew. Jessop was dead. He spared Natalya a glance. “No confessions coming from him.”
She stifled a shiver. “I’d say his being here was confession enough.”
There was something in her voice that caught his attention. Mike rose to his feet again. “Did he say anything?”
“Enough to make me think that he was the one running the show.” Otherwise, he wouldn’t have said what he had about thinking of what he did as victimless crimes. “He killed Clancy.”
She said it with such conviction, he didn’t think to question her about it. That would come, by and by, when they took her statement at the precinct. For now, it was enough that she was alive and unharmed. “Probably Tolliver, too.”
He saw the look on her face. As someone dedicated to curing people, she undoubtedly had a difficult time understanding how people could willfully destroy life. “But why?”
He gave it his best guess. “He was probably afraid that Tolliver would testify against him in exchange for immunity, or at least a more lenient sentence. First one with his hand up gets the deal.” He looked down at the dead man. The mayor is going to want to be briefed, he thought. “We’ll investigate this as far as it’ll go.”
Taking out his cell phone, he put a call into the coroner’s office, requesting a van be sent over, along with a forensic team. When he ended the call, he looked up to see Natalya looking at him.
“What?” he wanted to know. Had he overlooked something?
The small smile on her lips widened until it seemed to take over her face. “You came back.”
And for that, Mike thought, he would be grateful to his dying day. “Lucky for you,” he commented.
She paused for a moment, debating if she was pushing her luck by asking. And then she decided she needed to know. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but why did you come back?”
He wasn’t given to lying, but neither was he accustomed to wearing his heart on his sleeve. But they had both looked death in the face just now, so he made an exception. “Because I didn’t need a week to sort things out.”
Each word came out slowly, as if she were holding her breath as she asked. “And what is it that you sorted out?”
His eyes met Natalya’s. “That the most important thing about having kids is to give them a loving home with parents who really love each other.”
Maybe he didn’t understand her before, or maybe he was in denial. As much as she wanted to be with him, as much as she loved him, she couldn’t allow any sort of misconceptions to linger. “But Mike, I told you that I can’t—”
Mike gently pressed a finger to her lips, stopping the flow of words. He needed her to understand that without her, nothing else mattered.
“I’m not an egotist, Natalya. The children we’re going to have don’t need to have my blood in their veins to be mine. Besides—” he cleared his throat as he dropped his hand to his side “—we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves.”
Natalya stiffened. She knew it. He was telling her that she’d leaped to conclusions about their relationship. They might never get to the stage where her being able to have children even mattered. She could feel her cheeks burning as she looked down at the floor. “Right.”
“First, I’m going to have to take you home to meet my parents.”
Her head shot up. “Excuse me?”
“Was the gunshot too loud?” he asked innocently. Lowering his head, he whispered against her ear. “I want you to meet my parents.”
Natalya felt numb all over again. But it was a good numb. She wanted to throw her arms around him, but instead, she deadpanned, “Why?”
“Well, I’m not sure how it goes in your culture, but a good Italian boy always brings the woman he intends to marry home to meet his mother.”
She’d thought about it, wanted it, mourned it when she thought it was no longer a possibility. But to hear him actually say it made her almost lightheaded. “Marry?”
Amusement echoed in his voice. “That gunshot really did wreak havoc with your hearing, didn’t it?”
“But you didn’t ask me,” she pointed out in her own defense.
“I just did.” And then he blew out a breath, feigning resignation. He took her hand in his, then pressed it against his chest. Against his heart. “Natalya Pulaski, I love you and I want you to marry me. It doesn’t have to be soon,” he added, not wanting to crowd her, “but it does have to be.”
Natalya looked at him innocently as the sound of sirens in the distance became audible. “And I have no say in it?”
“Only if it involves the word ‘yes.’”
She smiled, lacing her arms around his neck. He slipped his around her waist. “Then lucky for you, that was the word I was thinking.” The sirens grew louder. “Your people are fast. I’d better go and make sure the door’s unlocked,” she told him, assuming that he’d shut it in his wake when he’d walked in.
She glanced down at the man who had wanted to kill them both. It was over, Clancy was avenged. She felt a weight lifted from her heart.
Mike made no effort to release her.
“Not before I make this official,” he told her as she turned her face up to his.
Just before he kissed her.
Set in darkness beyond the ordinary world.
Passionate tales of life and death.
With characters’ lives ruled by laws the everyday world can’t begin to imagine.
NOCTURNE
It’s time to discover the Raintree trilogy…
New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard
brings you the dramatic first book Raintree: Inferno.
Diagnosis: Danger Page 16