A Dangerous Widow (A Dangerous Series) (26 page)

At that moment, a shadow stretched across
her face.
 
And when it did, I knew
that everything was about to change.
 
The Widow reacted to it with a flinch—and then started to turn.

Time slowed.

Seconds turned into minutes.

The Widow swung around and got off a shot
just as Ben’s gun went off.
 
A
bullet tore into her shoulder, she cried out in pain—and then her gun
sprung free from her hand and fell to the ground just as I heard what had to be
Ben hitting the floor somewhere in the living area.
 

I needed to get to him.
 
And so, before the Widow could recover,
I punched her so hard in the nose, I heard it break.
 
She staggered backward from the blow and
nearly tripped.
 
As quickly as I
could, I scooped up her gun and pointed it at her face.
 

Her nose was bent to the right, and she was
bleeding profusely from it.
 
Her
eyes were alive with rage, calculation, and hatred.

“Laura, help Ben!” I said.
 
“Move!”

Laura rushed past both of us and ran down
the hallway.

“Is he alive?” I asked while keeping the gun
trained on the Widow.

“He’s unconscious.
 
Still breathing, but he’s bleeding
heavily.
 
He’s been shot in the
chest, Kate.
 
He needs help now.”

“Get something to stop the bleeding!
 
Call 911!”

“Oh, look, Kate,” the Widow said tauntingly
to me.
 
“Your man is about to die.”

“The hell he is.”

She wiped the back of her hand beneath her
nose, looked at the blood smeared across it, and then flung it off as she
smiled at me.
 
“I just took another
one away from you.
 
First Michael,
now Ben.
 
Tell me how it feels…”

I pointed the gun at her forehead.
 
“This is for Michael,” I said.
 
“But it won’t be for Ben—you won’t
take them both away from me.”

“But haven’t I?”

“You haven’t.
 
So, fuck you, bitch.
 
You’re going to hell.”

Before I could press the trigger, she jolted
forward, dived onto the floor, and started to spin toward me as if she were
some sort of bowling pin gone mad.

Startled, I fired the gun at her—and
missed.
 
She was crossing the
distance between us so quickly, I could barely keep her in my sights.
 
I aimed at the thickest part of her body
and fired the gun again.

Tried to fire the gun again.
 

For some reason, I couldn’t pull the
trigger—the gun was jammed.
 

Stunned, I looked at her just as she leapt to
her feet and bolted toward me.
 
She
was about to tackle me when I reared back and hurled the gun as hard as I could
against her face.
 

I heard bones break when the gun slammed
against her cheek.
 
The Widow
wheeled backward from the blow.
 
Her
hip connected with a side table, and suddenly she was sent off balance.
 
I saw my moment and lunged at her, threw
myself on top of her, and seized her throat in my hands as each of us landed
hard onto the floor.
 

When I fell on top of her, she coughed up a
fresh rush of blood into my face and eyes.
 
And then she fought.
 
She
writhed beneath me, clawed at my arms with her fingernails, and tried to strike
my face with her fists.
 
But despite
it all, I’d found my grip on her throat, and I started to squeeze it with everything
I had within me.
 

With her life on the line, I felt the
Widow’s adrenaline surge as she became a bucking, heaving force of nature
thrashing against me.

“Die!” I screamed at her.

As blood poured from her nose and onto her
neck, it became increasingly difficult to maintain my grip on her.
 
My hands were slipping, and from the
look in her eyes, the Widow knew it.

Hold on to her
, I thought.
 
Squeeze!

In an effort to contain her, I straddled my
legs against her and clamped her body between them in a vice grip.
 
She continued to thrash beneath me.
 
She kicked out her feet, and beat my
body with her fists, but as she did so, her eyes started to bulge in their
sockets and her face started to turn a bright, fiery red.
 

Knowing that death was upon her, I bore my
thumbs even harder against her throat, and as I did so—as I pressed the
life out of her—all I could see was Michael.
 
Mark Dodd might have hired this bitch,
but
she
was his murderer.
 
She’s
the
one who took him from me—and perhaps she’d taken Ben, too.
 
And with that knowledge fueling me, I
lifted her head up toward me, spit in her face, and then slammed her head down
so hard against the marble floor that her eyes quickly became dilated pools of
black.
 
A clotted gasp escaped her
lips, her body relaxed beneath mine, her jaw hung slack—and with a sense
of certainty, I knew that the Widow was dead.

But what about Ben?

I turned to look at Laura, who was kneeling
in a pool of his blood and crying so hard, she was heaving.
 
My skin went cold at the sight—Ben
was just lying there, on his stomach, unmoving.
 
As I pushed myself off the Widow and
stood, Laura lifted her ruined face to mine and said, “I’m so sorry, Kate.”

And then the world twisted in on
itself—and everything went dark.

EPILOGUE

One Month Later

When I woke, it was with a start.

I’d just seen the Widow running toward me
again—her teeth bared, her eyes wild with rage, and blood spooling from
her nose in impossibly thick rivers of red as she leaped into the air and
tackled me.
 

It was the same recurring nightmare I’d been
having ever since I’d killed her.
 

For a full week following her death, I had
woken up from that nightmare screaming, certain that she
had
just attacked me.
 
But that no
longer was the case—I finally was at the point that when I woke, I knew
it had been nothing more than a bad dream, which suggested to me that her
stranglehold on me was starting to weaken.

It was cool in the bedroom—I could
hear the quiet hum of the air-conditioning system and the faint din of the city
beyond the windows at the foot of the bed.
 
I blinked up at the ceiling, took a breath, and slowly let it out in an
effort to calm my nerves.
 

You won’t control me
forever
, I
thought.
 
I
won’t let that happen.
 
I’ll get
beyond this.
 
Ben and I both will.

I turned onto my side and looked at Ben, grateful
that I hadn’t woken him up.
 
He was
lying on his back with his right forearm draped across his forehead, and he was
breathing soundly.
 
Peacefully.
 
For several weeks, he’d struggled with
sleep every bit as much as I had, but the horror of what she’d put us through
was starting to leave him as well.

Looking at him now, I felt a swell of love
for him.
 
I’d nearly lost him.
 
Those first few days after he’d been
shot were so touch and go.
 
But Ben
had fought through it, he was healthy now—and I took none of it for
granted.
 

As far as I was concerned, I was his for as
long as he’d have me—which hopefully would be for the rest of our lives.

When he woke, he parted his eyes and caught
me smiling at him.

“What are you up to?” he asked.

“Just looking at that handsome face of
yours.”

He pointed a finger at his face.
 
“You mean this mug?”

“Yeah—I mean that mug.”

“You think this mug is handsome?”

“You bet your ass I do.”

“Would you kiss this mug?”

“In fact, I would.”

“Here’s the thing—I’m not so sure that
I would…”

“Then you’re a fool.”

“Not entirely, because you have to take into
account that I would kiss your mug.”

“Would you now?”

“I would.”

“How about if I call you out on that?”

He furrowed his brow at me.
 
“You want me to kiss you?”

“I do.”

And with that, he swept me into his arms, and
lowered my body onto his.

I could feel his erection pulsing against my
abdomen.
 

“Where else would you like my lips?” he
asked.

“Why don’t you surprise me,” I said.

And he did.

*
 
*
 
*

Later, after Ben had his way with me in what
could only be described as a tour de force of lovemaking, I rolled off him and
fell back onto the bed.
 
“That was
incredible,” I said.
 
“You just sent
me to the moon and back.”

“Which was my intent.
 
And by the way, thanks for coming back.”

“My pleasure.”

“About your pleasure,” he said.

He slipped onto his side and took my right
nipple in his mouth, which made me want to run screaming out of our apartment
and through Central Park because every part of me was so sensitive to his
touch, I couldn’t handle any more.
 

“I can go again, you know?” he said.

“Look,” I said with a laugh.
 
“You might be a machine, but I’m a woman
of a certain age.”

“You’re thirty-five, Kate—and probably
in the best shape of your life.”

“If I am in the best shape of my life, it’s
only because of you.
 
Ever since
your doctor said it was safe for you to have sex again, I think I’ve lost ten
pounds.
 
So, yeah, I probably am in
shape.
 
And here’s why—where
haven’t we done it in this joint since you were given the green light to free Willy?
 
First it was in the shower, then it was
against the bedroom window for the whole world to see, then I think it was in
the living room, the kitchen, and at one point, we even did it on my office
floor.
 
I mean, think about that for
a moment.
 
My office floor, for
God’s sake!”

“I made you come three times there,” he
said.

“You’re a sex addict.”

“Lucky you.”

“True enough.
 
Because I’ve got to give you this, Ben
Cade—you certainly are attentive.”

“Former SEAL and all that.”

I curled up next to him.

“I’m glad that you moved in.”

“I’m also glad—but we need to find our
own place soon.”

“We do.
 
After what happened here, I want out of this place, if only because of
the memories it evokes.
 
And now
that it’s wildly apparent to me that you’ve fully recovered, I say we go
apartment shopping this week, especially since your own apartment is on the
market.”

“Where do you want to live?”

“Doesn’t matter.
 
I just want to be with you.”

“I love you, Kate—I always have.”

“And I love you more than you know.
 
It’s because of you that Mark Dodd is in
jail.
 
If you hadn’t urged the
police to seize his computer and his cell phone, they never would have found his
email conversations with the Widow.
 
And now he’s been indicted for murder and for conspiracy to commit
murder because of them.
 
I’ll never
be able to thank you enough for what you did for me—and also for
Michael.”

“We did it together.
 
When Dodd’s tried in court, he will lose
and spend the rest of his life rotting in prison.
 
The evidence against him is too
damaging.
 
You’ll see.”

“I don’t know what to expect when it comes
to any of this.”

“But your man does.”

“And so you do,” I said when I kissed
him.
 
“So, how about if I make us
some coffee before we tackle the day?
 
Tonight, we have dinner with Laura and Jack, Jennifer and Alex, Nick and
his wife, Sharon, and Rhoda.
 
It’s
going to be our first night out in a month, and I want it to be epic.”

“Oh, it will be epic,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“You’ll see.”

 
*
 
*
 
*

Later that evening, at eight sharp, Ben and
I exited the taxi we’d taken to JoJo, one of my favorite restaurants on the
Upper East Side.
 
The place was
small and intimate, the clientele had nothing to do with tourists and
everything to do with the local community, and the food was sublime.

It was one of the city’s hidden gems.

We’d dressed up for the evening—Ben
was in a black suit with a blue tie, and I was wearing a pale yellow dress with
pretty matching heels.
 
When we
stepped inside the restaurant and introduced ourselves to the host, he led us
through a curtained partition and into a private dining room that held our
friends.

“Hello, gorgeous,” Laura said as she stood
up to give me a kiss on each cheek.

“Hello, hotness,” I said as I kissed her
back.

“Mama needs in on this action,” Jennifer
said.
 
“And so do Rhoda and
Sharon.
 
Come on girls—get on
your feet.
 
Air kisses for
everyone.”

As the men shook hands and exchanged greetings,
I couldn’t believe my good fortune.
 
I was blessed to have such amazing friends.

“How are you, Ben?” Laura asked.

“I’m great.”

“But it’s only been a month.
 
Are you sure?”

“Trust me,” I said.
 
“Ben is beyond on the mend.”

“Oh,” Laura said as she widened her eyes at
each of us.
 
“Now we’re talking in
code—and I hear you, lovey.
 
Good for each of you.”

“You have no idea.”

“Anyway,” Ben said as he cleared his
throat.
 
“Let’s just say that Kate
has been a very attentive nurse.”

“I’m sure she has been…” Laura said with a
shot of mischief in her eyes.

“Poor Ben,” Sharon said.
 
“Look at him—blushing.”

I’d first met Sharon when she came to visit
Ben in the hospital, and because of how caring, concerned, and gracious she
was, I knew that we’d become fast friends.
 
And we had.
 
She wasn’t just
a hot, saucy Latina, but she was also strong willed and whip smart, which I
responded to at once.

“I am not blushing, Sharon.”

“If that’s the case, then you might want to
have your blood pressure checked…”

“Let’s just say he had it tested this
morning,” Rhoda said.
 
“And that all
is well and good.”

“Do you see everything?” I asked her.

“Well, not
everything
…”

“Why do I doubt that?”

“No idea.
 
But I will say this, Kate—congratulations.”
 
She winked at me.
 
“Well done.”

A waiter approached our table.
 
“Can I interest any of you in a drink?”
he asked.

“Martini for me,” I said.
 
“No olives—just a twist.”

“Same for me, but without the twist.
 
I’ll take mine with olives,” Laura said.

“I’m also a martini girl,” Jennifer
said.
 
“But I’m with Kate—just
the twist.”

“Champagne for me,” Rhoda said.
 
“Tonight, we celebrate.”

“Sharon?” I asked.

“Whiskey,” she said in a seductively low
voice.
 
“Neat.
 
Because I want to feel the burn now, and
hopefully even later.”

“Oh, honey,” Laura said.
 
“You just won the night.”

“We’ll see,” she said as she nudged Nick’s
arm.

After the men had ordered their drinks, we
all fell into conversation.
 
When
our drinks arrived a few minutes later, it was Nick who took the lead.

“Here’s to you, my friend,” he said to
Ben.
 
“And to you, Rhoda, because
you’re a miracle.
 
We never would
have ended this so quickly without you.
 
So, thank you.
 
And finally
to you, Kate and Laura.
 
Without the
teamwork you showed when that bitch decided to take you on, things could have
turned out very differently.
 
But
they didn’t because all of you worked together and in the end, you won.
 
I say cheers to that.”

“Cheers!” everyone said as we reached across
the table to touch glasses.

“I’d also like to say something,” Ben said.

“Speak!” Jennifer said as Rhoda reached for
her glass of champagne.

But he didn’t speak—at least not at
first.
 
Instead, he stood, moved his
chair to the side, and then smiled at me before he got down in front of me on
one knee.

No way,
I thought
.
 
This can’t be happening…

In shock, I looked down at him as the room
suddenly became abuzz with what was unfolding at our table.
 
Ben reached inside his jacket pocket and
removed a small black box, which he held in front of me.
 
Before he opened it, he said, “Kate, I
fell in love with you when I was sixteen years old.
 
And despite all of the years that have
passed between us since that first date, I’ve never stopped loving you.
 
Fate brought us together again, and it
did so for a few reasons.
 
Nick is
right—we did win when it came to getting justice for Michael and
Lydia.
 
But now I’d like to take
that win to another level.”
 
He
opened the box, inside of which was one mother of an engagement ring.
 
It was a massive diamond solitaire that
caught the light—and tossed it right back at me.