Page 19

F ireworks crackled and thundered. Their lights sparkled across the path to L Building, illuminating her escape route in intermittent bursts.

She melded into the manicured hedges and cacti that lined the path, willing the rocks under her feet not to give her away. She’d lost her other heel. The sharp edges of stones bit into the undersides of her feet. She didn’t slow. With her knowledge of Mariposa, she could locate help before he found her.

There was blood in her mouth. She’d bitten her tongue when he’d mashed her face into the wall. She swallowed it and kept going. Something dripped across her lips. She licked them and tasted blood there, too. Reaching up, she swiped the space above them. It came away wet and warm.

Her nose was bleeding. The pulse of pain around the bridge alerted her to the damage there.

Her fist was still knotted around Allison’s bracelet. She hadn’t lost it in the altercation.

She wouldn’t lose it, she determined as she pushed on. The roof of L Building was visible through the foliage. She could see the lights of the pool. Her heart lifted. She was almost there. Someone would be there. Someone had to be.

First, she had to cross the open pathway. She glanced around. Hearing no footsteps, she made a break for it.

A cut on the bottom of her foot slowed her, but she half sprinted for the shape of the first pool cabana—the one where they’d found Allison.

Before she could reach it, fingers dug into her arm. She fought them, reaching for escape.

Doug shoved her off the path into the rocks on the other side. Her hands and knees scraped across them.

He covered her mouth before she could scream. “You couldn’t leave it alone, could you? Couldn’t live and let live?”

His hand covered her nose. She fought for air, her nails digging into his hand. Desperate, she threw her head back into his face.

He grunted. His hold loosened.

She turned over, scrambling away from him. Her back met the long stalk of a cactus plant. Its fine needles dug into the exposed skin of her back.

Doug was on her in a flash. She did scream now—before he could silence her.

He struck her across the face. The shock of the blow silenced her, as did the fingers he wrapped around her throat. The pressure he exerted made little rockets of flame blossom before her eyes. Her ankles kicked against the rocks. The stones scattered, preventing her from gaining purchase. Again, she clawed at his hand. The bracelet dropped.

He glanced down at it, then back up at her. “I don’t like killing,” he groaned as he watched her struggle. He shook his head to emphasize the point. “I never meant to kill anyone. If she’d been willing...if she’d just spread her legs for me...I wouldn’t have had to subdue her. I wouldn’t have given her too much.”

Her lungs burned. Her eyes went blind.

“It was such a waste,” he muttered. “Wasn’t it? I hate thinking about it. Just as I’m going to hate thinking about you, Ms. Colton. Such a beautiful waste.”

She fought to stay conscious. She fought to see something other than the whiteout she found when her eyes rolled back. Still, her kicking slowed and she hooked her hands over his arm because they’d fallen away from his fingers. The ocean roared in her ears. It was so loud, it drowned his words.

His grip fumbled away from her. His weight lifted. She gasped, choked, wheezed and coughed. As she fell sideways across the rocks, she reached for her neck, where the phantom hold of Doug’s fingers stayed even as she took a breath that raked across her airways.

In the light from the path and the stunning bright lights screaming into the sky—the fireworks’ grand finale—she saw two figures, one on top of the other, struggling on the ground.

Her hearing sharpened with the whistle and boom of rockets overhead and shouting. The haze around her vision broke and she realized what she was seeing.

Noah, his face a mask of fury, arced his fist down to meet Doug’s face again and again.

Someone else—Detective Fulton—raced forward to pull Noah off. Noah fought him. Fulton didn’t let go.

Doug stayed on the ground, curling in on himself. His face was a mess of blood. He didn’t get up.

Noah shrugged Fulton off him. Rocks slid underneath his feet as he scrambled over them. He crouched, his hand going to the back of her head. “Laura.”

She was afraid to speak. Her throat felt bruised. Sucking air in and out in careful repetitions, she watched his features sharpen.

There was fury there. But more, there was desperate fear. “Hey,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

She gave a faint nod.

He blew out a breath, then cradled her to him. She closed her eyes because the cold had gone deep into her bones. She didn’t know if it was the temperature or nearly being choked to death, but she lay still, absorbing the heat of him as he held her.

He pulled away. His gaze seized on her throat. “I need to get you to the hospital,” he said gruffly.

She opened her mouth, but the words got trapped behind the pain. Looking around over the rocks, she fumbled a hand over them, searching.

She found the little braided cord and lifted it.

When she offered it, he took it from her and raised it to the light. At the sight of the evil eye, he stilled. “Where did you find this?” he asked.

Afraid, she locked her lips together.

He searched her face. Then he shook his head. “You didn’t.”

She lifted her chin in a half nod. A tear slipped past her guard. She wished she could look away. Then she wouldn’t have to watch his disbelief meld into disappointment.

“Laura,” he said. “You promised. You promised me.”

His voice broke and her stomach twisted. I had to , she wanted to tell him.

His grimace was complete. It went through her. As he looked away, closing his hand around the evil eye, she felt it as keenly as a knife.

Noah spent an hour at the police station, watching Doug DeGraw be questioned, booked and processed. Even if he couldn’t be the one leading him through it, he needed to watch, just as he needed to hear the bars roll into place as the man who admitted to killing Allison was locked in a cell.

An accident, he’d claimed. Allison had shown up at his bungalow after dark for his private yoga lesson. When she didn’t respond to his attempts at seduction, he dosed her with fentanyl and waited for the drug to take effect before having his way with her.

“After, she didn’t come around like the others do,” Doug had claimed. “She just lay there. She didn’t breathe. I checked and realized her pulse wasn’t right. It was too slow. I tried to make her come around. She just lay there. Lay there and died.”

“You handled yourself well,” Captain Crabtree told Noah after they both watched Doug sign a confession.

“He’s beat to hell,” Noah pointed out, surveying the damage he’d done to Doug’s face.

“You saved Laura Colton’s life.”

And nearly killed the man who’d almost taken it. If not for Fulton, Noah knew he would have done worse. Each of the knuckles of his right hand ached like a sore tooth from the impact with Doug’s nose, jaw and cheekbone. “I’ve still got a job on Monday?”

“You closed the case,” Crabtree noted.

Noah had spent the entire day on the phone, tracking victims in the wind. He’d finally found one—a twenty-three-year-old colleague of Doug’s who had quit her job a year ago and moved to Tallahassee to live with her folks. She’d been reluctant to talk, and Noah had thought he would have to fly to Florida to speak with her face-to-face. But then she’d broken, and the story had come out. Doug had drugged and raped her, too, similarly.

There were others, Noah knew. A half-dozen women Doug had sedated and terrorized. Noah would find them all. He would bury the man for hurting them, for killing Allison and for nearly killing Laura.

“He tried to frame CJ Knight,” Noah said. “He assumed calling him away from Mariposa soon after Allison’s death would throw suspicion on him. It might have worked, too, had Erica Pike not come forward.”

“Knight was here while you were in interrogation. He confirmed he was with Ms. Pike during the time in question, but not much more.”

“What did he have to say about his manager being the killer?” Noah asked.

“He was in shock. He didn’t seem to know what to say.”

“I should’ve seen it sooner,” Noah muttered. “It was Doug’s office who refused to return my calls, not Knight directly.”

“You were pretty deep in the reeds on this one,” Crabtree said knowingly. “But Fulton didn’t see it any faster than you did. I’d like to give you both credit for the arrest.”

“All that matters is that this scumbag is going away forever.”

“Now you can focus on laying your sister to rest. And you’ll take some time off.”

Noah closed his eyes. He needed to let Allison go. He knew that. And Crabtree was right. It was time. “Yes, sir.”

The hospital was five minutes from the SPD. Despite the cold and the sleet that fell sideways, he walked there.

“Laura Colton,” he said to the woman at the information desk.

“It’s after visiting hours.”

He dug into his pocket before placing his badge on the desk for her to see.

She frowned. “One moment,” she said before tapping the screen in front of her. “Ms. Colton is in recovery. Room twenty-four.”

“Thanks,” he said before exiting the atrium and following the corridors to the Recovery ward. She wasn’t in surgery, he consoled himself. Or the ER. Which meant she was going to be okay.

He’d heard her scream. As he’d followed Fulton across the pool area on the way to Bungalow Two, he’d heard her call for help. At first, he’d thought it had been coming from the pool cabana.

Like Allison, he’d thought, frantic. Then he’d discovered the couple grappling in the dark off the path behind it. He’d seen Doug on top of Laura, his hands around her throat, and he’d nearly screamed himself hoarse.

Noah passed the door to number twenty-four. He halted and backtracked, the soles of his boots squeaking on the clean linoleum.

Through the window, he could see her brothers, one on either side of her. Joshua was hunkered down beside her in bed. Her head nestled on his shoulder while Adam sat on the bed’s edge, his arm across the top of her pillows, head low over hers.

Noah thought about walking away, leaving them alone. They were family. A proper one. And a proper family took care of their own.

He watched as his hand rose to knock.

Adam lifted his head as the others stirred. He motioned for them to stay where they were as he stood and crossed to the door. When it opened, he looked at Noah. More, he looked through him before blinking and seeming to come to his senses. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”

“Can I come in?” Noah asked.

Adam ran a hand through his hair. It wasn’t as neat as it usually was. “Are you here on police business?”

He should have said yes. What came out was “No.”

Adam nodded and stepped aside.

Joshua sat up as Noah entered. Noah looked past him to Laura. She had raised herself up on her elbows. He could see the cut on her mouth, the red mark around the bridge of her nose, the fading bruise on her temple, and the shadows of hands on her throat that would soon fly their colors, too. She looked weary around the eyes, but clarity rang true in them.

Joshua rose and moved into Noah’s path to the bed. When Noah only sized him up, Joshua offered him a hand.

“What’s this?” Noah asked cautiously.

“I’d like to shake hands with Allison’s brother,” Joshua said.

The others must have told baby brother everything, Noah realized. He reached out and took Joshua’s hand.

The man squeezed his. “If you hadn’t gotten to her in time...”

Noah had thought along the same lines. If he and Fulton had been a minute behind... If he’d spent any longer on the phone tracking Doug’s victims...

“You lost your sister,” Joshua said, “and saved mine. I won’t forget that.”

“Nor will I,” Adam added. “We owe you an immense debt of gratitude.”

He didn’t want their gratitude. He didn’t want Joshua’s idea of a truce. He’d spent the better part of the evening chiding himself for working after hours. If he’d been with Laura at the party, she wouldn’t have felt compelled to run off into the night and...

He saw Doug’s hands around her throat again. He heard her choking. His hands balled into fists and he felt the quaver go straight through as fear lanced him.

“May I speak with her?” he asked. “Alone.”

“She’s tired,” Joshua began.

“It’s all right, Josh,” came the small, hoarse sound of her voice.

Joshua reached up to scrub his temples. Then he turned and went back to the bed. “A few minutes,” he allowed, leaning down for a hug. “Then we all need to get some sleep.”

“You don’t have to sleep here,” she told him. “Either of you.”

“You don’t have to talk,” Adam replied as he, too, came forward. Joshua stepped back and Adam lowered a kiss to the top of her head. “Rest your throat. We’ll be right outside the door.”

“Definitely not listening,” Joshua said with a half-hearted, ironic twist of his mouth.

Noah waited until they’d both left. When the latch clicked shut behind them, he approached the bed. Then he halted, conflicted. “I have a couple of questions.”

She sat up a bit more. Wincing, she lay back on the pillows.

It nearly broke him to see her struggle.

She spoke haltingly, fighting the rawness of her throat. “You are here on police business.”

“Your brother’s right,” he said. “Don’t try to talk.”

She tilted her head. “Questions require answers.”

“Just nod,” he told her. “Or shake your head. That’s all the answer I need.”

She sighed and, slowly, subsided into a nod.

“Ariana Fitzgibbons has been located. It seems Doug was just yanking your chain when he claimed he’d done something to her. She left Mariposa for Sedona after lunch with a friend she made during yesterday’s trail ride. They spent the afternoon shopping and caught dinner after.”

Laura’s lips folded as she spun the hospital band on her wrist. She tried clearing her throat and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, there was a pained, wet sheen over them. “I’m glad she’s all right.”

It was a miracle Laura was, he thought. Digging in his pocket, he pulled out Allison’s bracelet and held it up. She watched it swing from his hand.

“Did you find this in Doug DeGraw’s bungalow?”

She hesitated. Then she inclined her head.

“You went to his bungalow?” When she nodded, he wanted to stop. He didn’t want to know—didn’t want to have to replay it in his head repeatedly. “Did you go there alone?”

Laura’s eyes were heavy-lidded with fatigue and swimming in regret as she nodded again.

“Did you find anything else in Doug’s bungalow?” At her nod, he said, “Drugs?” She nodded once more. He wanted to raise his voice as the storm inside him built. Desperate, scared, angry storm clouds he couldn’t lasso. He had to work to keep his next question cool and flat. “Do you remember last night?”

Tears came into her eyes again. For the first time, she turned them away from him.

He gripped the bottom rail of the bed. “I need your answer.”

She nodded.

“You remember promising me you wouldn’t put yourself at risk?” he asked. “You remember looking me in the eye and giving me your word before you took me home with you and made love with me for the rest of the night?”

Lips taut together, she nodded. A tear slipped down her cheek.

His heart twisted. And it hurt. It hurt so much, he couldn’t breathe. “I trusted you,” he said in a whisper.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered back. “I thought... I thought he hurt her. Like Allison.”

He wanted to go to her. He wanted to slip inside the bed with her and hold her all night—until the storm quieted. Until he could breathe right again.

The early bruising on her throat glared at him. She’d made a promise. He’d needed her to keep it. He’d relied on her word. She’d broken it and nearly died before he could get to her.

He turned away.

“Where are you going?” she asked as he made a break for the door.

He wrapped his hand around the handle. Christ, he couldn’t breathe. It was exactly as it had been in the autopsy room when he’d viewed Allison’s lifeless body for the first time. He felt a part of his mind detach, float away. He wanted to follow it. But his body anchored him. His lungs strained, his chest felt tight and his head spun. Panic sank in. “I need some time.”

“I’m okay.”

He looked back and felt the quaver go to his knees. He heard the pounding of his heart in his ears. “You’re not,” he argued. “I can still see him choking you and hear you fighting for air. And I can’t do this. Not until that gets quieter. I need time.”

“How much time?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied. He looked away from the tears falling freely down her face now. He had to get out of there before he split in two. “I don’t know,” he said again, at a loss. He snatched the door open.

“Noah,” she called.

“Get some rest,” he replied. Then he was out the door. He bypassed Adam and Joshua and their questions, needing to walk until he could no longer feel fear locking up the muscles around his lungs.