A Rare Chance (30 page)

Scag was waiting out on the front porch of his rooming house when Cam drove up. Apparently they'd had this little scenario worked out in advance. “The effrontery,” Gabriella muttered, sliding out of the car.

She didn't get a chance to wish Cam luck. He directed his attention only to Scag, ignoring her. “Keep her here.”

“Yeah, right,” he replied. “Like keeping the tide in.”

When Cam had departed, Gabriella glared at her father.

He leaned on his cane, not looking as old and feeble as he was trying to look. “How long you staying?”

She'd made up her mind. When it came down to it, she had no choice she could live with if things went wrong. “Long enough for him to think I might follow his orders.”

Y
ou're one sick son of a bitch,” Pete Darrow said.

Joshua pulled the rope around Lizzie Fairfax's midsection even tighter. “I'm perfectly sane and you know it. That's what scares you.”

Actually, he was right. Darrow sat on a wooden box of grenades. They were below deck on Joshua's yacht, in a wood-paneled game room off the galley where he kept his stash of illegal weaponry. Darrow recognized the painting on the wall from Lizzie's Polaroids. Fat lot of good it'd do him now.

The yacht was anchored off Reading Point, everything cleaned and ready to go for the summer season. Joshua and Lizzie had planned to take it on their honeymoon. Darrow preferred smaller boats. The big ones made him seasick. Joshua had had Lizzie go aboard first, then Darrow. He'd had a split second when he could have kicked Joshua into the ocean, gun or no gun, but he'd hesitated. Too worried Lizzie'd get shot or he'd get shot and then Lizzie'd have to deal with Joshua on her own.
Thinking
too damned much. Yeager would have acted. No question.

Joshua tied one last knot. He'd already gagged Lizzie and bound her wrists together. A couple of weeks ago, Darrow might have figured they were up to one of their kinky sex things. But this time he knew better.

He made himself look at her. Her eyes widened with terror, and he tried to smile to show her he hadn't abandoned her, which maybe wasn't very encouraging. He couldn't do her or himself any good if he didn't get away. He assumed Joshua planned to shoot him. Then he'd kill Lizzie, maybe blow up the whole damned boat, and blame the entire tragic mess on one dead ex-cop. People would believe him. He was Joshua Reading. He had Lizzie's journal, he had her pictures. All would be well.

What the hell, Darrow thought. Stay here and get killed for sure. Try escaping and maybe get killed.

He caught Lizzie's eye, and behind the terror, he saw that she knew what he was planning, what he needed from her.

Suddenly she lunged sideways, knocking Joshua off-balance. He swore viciously, stumbling, grabbing for the Browning tucked in his waistband.

Darrow moved. He couldn't get to Joshua before Joshua got to his gun. So he had no choice. He lunged for the doorway into the galley.

But he caught a parting look at Lizzie. Saw her resignation and disappointment. Her wide, tortured, beautiful eyes said she'd been a fool to trust him, a fool to trust herself. That she knew he was running to save his own skin.

Maybe he was.

He plunged up the narrow stairs above the deck. There was no time for the cruiser, not even for a dinghy. He could hear Joshua shouting, cursing, coming after him, swearing he was dead. “
Goddamnit, you're dead, Darrow. Dead!”

Probably, Darrow thought, and jumped over the side.

The frigid water almost killed him. Pain and cold shot through him and he yelled, gulping in seawater. So this was it. This was going to be how he died. Christ, he should have let Joshua shoot him.

But his arms moved, his legs, and he came up through the icy depths of the North Atlantic, gasping for air, coughing saltwater, alive.

He got himself oriented, picked the shortest distance to shore, and breast-stroked rapidly in that direction. His legs were already numb with the cold. His arms were leaden. He could do it. He had to do it. The bastard still had Lizzie.

But he heard the plunk of the dinghy into the water behind him, the creaking of oars. He heard Joshua yell, “You're dead,” and he knew he had enough guns and ammo to take on the city of Boston, never mind one poor dumb bastard swimming in the ice-cold ocean.

Darrow kept moving, rolling with the tide, half praying that the undertow would get him and end it, end the worry and the guilt and the regret that had started eating at him when he'd first felt the strange, twisted urge to help Lizzie Fairfax, never mind that she could destroy him and could never, ever want him. She knew what he was.
You're going to blackmail him, aren't you?

Yeah, Darrow thought. That was the plan.

His mind conjured up the picture of her eyes, terrified and certain no one would be there for her, not now, not anymore, and he propelled himself another few yards.

He rode a wave toward shore, almost knocking himself out on a rock. His arms flailed around, and he grabbed hold of it, ignoring the sting of the barnacles as he heaved himself up and over, going with another wave, like a dolphin beaching itself.

He flopped onto the rocks, spent, frozen, aching.

Behind him, Joshua yelled into the wind, “The boat's rigged, Darrow. There's nothing you can do. It's going to blow up and Lizzie's going to die and you're going to take the fall.”

Fuck!
Darrow thought, and he peeled himself up off the rocks. Only hatred—of himself, of Joshua Reading—kept him going.

“You're both going to die,” Joshua shouted over the sounds of the wind, the gulls, the pounding surf.

Definitely, Darrow thought, he should have made his move before Joshua had tied Lizzie's hands to the chair. At least then she'd have had a chance.

Hindsight. A big help it was.

He lunged to his feet, dripping, shaking with the cold and a rage that seemed to come from a different place than it always had before. This time it wasn't the rage of envy and deprivation and want, that desperate need to fill the empty spaces inside him.

Joshua slammed the dinghy onto the rocks and leapt out, looking wild and half crazed.

But he's not,
Darrow reminded himself. Joshua Reading was cold-blooded, he was calculating, and he was sane.

And he had his Browning.

On this side of Reading Point, there were no boulders big enough to hide behind, just smaller rocks and tufts of tall grass.

Joshua scrambled over the rocks toward him. Darrow appraised his situation with professional detachment, considered his options, even as the rage held its grip on him.

Lizzie
…

The stupid fuck's going to blow her up.

His muscles tensed, he felt a heat surge through him, and instead of running, dodging, pleading, anything to avoid being shot, Darrow turned and faced Joshua Reading.

“When did you decide you had to kill me?”

Joshua grinned, his features contorted with his frenzied energy and sense of betrayal and paranoia. “You're not quite as stupid as I thought, Mr. Darrow. I decided I had to kill you once I realized how much you knew. I couldn't take the risk of you blackmailing me, could I?” His wild grin broadened. He was soaked up to his thighs, breathing hard. “That was your plan all along, wasn't it?”

Darrow shrugged. “Yep. I guess I couldn't land on the right figure. How much would you have gone for? A couple hundred grand anyway, right?”

“Not a dime, you inferior pig.”

That was just the opening Darrow needed. He didn't hesitate, just exploded forward, and dove for Joshua, hoping to throw off his aim, get him on the ground, startle him into making a mistake, knock his goddamned head on a rock. Anything.

He heard the shot, felt the immediate, burning pain in his right shoulder as he slumped down. He swore, knowing he was going down.

“Lizzie.”

 

Cam crashed through the security gate that marked the start of Reading Point. He estimated he had a ten- or fifteen-minute head start on Gabriella and only hoped she wouldn't bring her father with her.

His mother had always told him the woman who got him would be the very last woman he expected.

Gabriella Starr.

He screeched into the parking area by the detached garage, pulled on the emergency brake, grabbed his gun from the glove compartment, and leapt out.

“Darrow!”

He shouted for Joshua Reading, for Lizzie Fairfax. Nothing subtle in his approach. Let them all know he was there. Let Joshua think twice before doing something stupid.

He raced up the gravel path, bounded up the stairs to the sprawling house. He kicked open the side door, yelled some more. He ran through the living room. Where the hell was Joshua Reading? But nobody was home. He burst out onto the deck over the water.

Out to the north of the point, he saw the yacht. An expensive cabin cruiser was anchored alongside it. A dinghy bobbed in the water close to shore, abandoned.

And Gabriella Starr was scrambling over the rocks, right in the thick of the action.

So much for his head start.

 

Gabriella knelt on the rocks beside Pete Darrow, trying not to panic. He was bleeding from the shoulder, white-faced, struggling to sit up. In spite of his pain, his dark eyes focused on her, lucid and angry. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Saving your life, it looks like. How bad are you hurt?”

“Bad enough. Hell. Never mind me. Lizzie—the yacht's going to blow! Call the cops. No—
wait, goddamnit!
”

But Gabriella was already racing over the rocks, sure-footed from growing up by the ocean, from her years doing just this sort of thing with Scag. She splashed into the incoming tide and grabbed one end of the abandoned dinghy, leaping into it. Using one oar, she pushed it off the water-covered rocks and out toward the yacht.

She could see Darrow still struggling to come after her. He was badly injured. He needed medical attention. But she didn't think he was in imminent danger of dying. Even with a bullet in his shoulder, he was trying to get himself to his feet and come after her.

Sea gulls wheeled and cried overhead as the wind, already strong, picked up.

Gabriella dipped the oars into the water, her shoulders still aching from paddling Lizzie's kayak. But the dinghy was moving over the choppy water, and she kept rowing.

There was no time to wait for the police, no time to find Cam.

She couldn't watch Lizzie Fairfax get blown to pieces.

“She's in the game room,” Darrow yelled to her, apparently resigned to Gabriella going out to the yacht. “She's tied up. You should have a couple minutes. Joshua'll want to get out of here first.”

His next words were lost to the wind. Gabriella glanced behind her, making sure she was still rowing in the right direction. The yacht wasn't far off. She could make it.

She had to make it.

Darrow was right, she was sure of it. Joshua would want to be somewhere else when the yacht blew, and not just for the sake of an alibi. He wouldn't be able to stick around and watch. At his core, Joshua Reading was a coward. His arsenal wasn't about courage. It was about cowardice and self-doubt, about trying to prove to himself he wasn't what he knew he was.

Her arms and shoulders throbbed, her lungs were bursting. But she didn't slacken her pace. She centered herself, focused on her breathing, the position of her back, as if she were in a weightlifting class. She had the endurance. She had the strength. She could make it to the yacht.

Should she have found Cam first before plunging ahead?

Where the devil was he?

A fresh dose of adrenaline surged through her so fast and hard it hurt. Joshua. He was armed and he'd already shot Pete Darrow and tied up Lizzie, and now he planned to blow her up. If he ran into Cam, he'd shoot him too.

She shut off the thought, the near-overwhelming sense of loss.
Stop. Focus. Do what you can do.

Cam Yeager could handle himself. He was an experienced police detective. He knew he was dealing with a desperate, dangerous man and would respond accordingly.

The dinghy bumped against the yacht, startling her. Gabriella worked it around to the ladder. She missed twice, losing an oar before finally grabbing hold of the ladder and swinging up onto it.

The game room, Darrow had said. She'd been aboard the yacht a few times during her year with TJR Associates and knew her way around. She scrambled down through the galley, trying not to think about the boat exploding, disintegrating beneath her. She had time. She had to have time.

She grabbed a knife from the galley and pushed into the game room.

Lizzie had turned her chair over and was struggling, fighting to get free, sobbing, beyond panic.

“Lizzie! Hold on, kiddo, I've got you.” Gabriella felt her knees go out from under her, stumbling as she dropped beside her friend. She started on the rope around Lizzie's wrists, ignoring her clammy hands, her near-uncontrollable shaking. “Hang on, Lizzie. Just hang on. This won't take two seconds.”

Her eyes were wild.

“I know about the bomb,” Gabriella said quickly, slicing through the twine, not worrying about nicking Lizzie or herself, just determined to get the job done. “We've got a few minutes.”

She sounded so confident, but she had no idea how long they had.

“The second I've got you free,” she said, “we're going to run like hell and go over the side. Got it?”