“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Joel watched as the ambulance’s lights whirled in a sickening blur.
“Ask you what?” Chloe stood next to him.
“Was I going to try and save Morgan…or drive the scalpel in deeper?”
“I don’t need to ask.”
He slanted a glance down at her. “No?”
“No.”
Gordo was wheeled out of the building. He was on a gurney, too, only he wasn’t strapped down. His hands were waving frantically and— “Joel!” he yelled. He spied Joel and motioned desperately for him.
“Your cue,” Chloe noted.
Joel ambled forward. “You need to settle your ass down,” he warned Gordo.
Gordo grabbed his hand. “You saved my life.”
“Saving your life also saved me and Chloe, so, yes, I guess I—”
“You’re a liar,” Gordo breathed. “You came here to save me. You’re…you’re not what I thought.”
That was what he’d told the prick from the beginning.
“Uh, sir?” From one of the EMTs as he pressed his hand down on Gordo’s shoulder. “We need to get you checked out.”
Gordo let Joel go. The EMTs pushed the shrink toward another waiting ambulance. More lights flashed. More sirens wailed.
“Is it over?” Marie wanted to know as she strolled away from the side of a nearby building. Reese shadowed her movements. “Or will another bad guy pop out and attack us?”
“It’s over.” Chloe’s words were confident, but when her gaze darted to Joel, he caught the uncertainty in her stare.
It’s over. Those words had better be about the case, and not about them.
Chloe tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “There’ll be questions to answer. I’m sure the FBI and the NOPD will need to grill us. The FBI is certainly not going to like the fact that one of their own was a killer. Every case that Paul worked will be called into question.”
“How many?” Reese asked gruffly.
“How many cases did he work?” Chloe lifted her brows. “I can’t say for—”
“How many victims do you think he had?” Reese clarified.
Chloe swallowed.
Joel knew Paul’s body hadn’t been brought out. Not yet.
After a moment, Chloe answered her brother. “I-I fear there were a lot. He didn’t just start with Joel. You don’t wake up and suddenly attack someone that viciously without a build-up.” Her stare fell. “You start when you’re younger. You work your way up. Your confidence gets stronger. You develop a methodology. You get bolder with every success.”
“Unless you’re stopped,” Joel pointed out.
Her gaze lifted. Met his. “Yes.”
Reese slapped his hand on Joel’s shoulder. “Then it’s a good thing you stopped him.”
Joel held Chloe’s gaze. “How many times did I fire?”
“The gun jammed after the seventh bullet.”
He’d known that she was counting.
He extended his hand toward her. She stared at his fingers. Then reached out to him. When his fingers twined with hers, Joel slowly exhaled.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Machines beeped all around him. A steady, monotonous beep that pulled him from sleep. Morgan opened his eyes and squinted at the brightness that filled the room. He tried to lift his hand up to shield his eyes, but something tugged on his wrist.
“That’s a handcuff. Cedric cuffed you to the bed.”
His head turned to the left—toward the voice with the slight British accent. Chloe.
She smiled at him. “There’s an IV in your other arm. Try not to pull it out. I’m afraid you are quite in need of the drugs that are being pumped into you.”
“You…care.” His voice was rusty, and his throat hurt like hell.
Chloe leaned closer to him. “I care…that you stay healthy enough so that you can fully enjoy the life that waits for you.”
His eyes swept over her face. “You’re beautiful.”
“And you’re on a great batch of drugs. I do hope you’ll be able to remember the words I tell you now.”
“Don’t get any closer to him.”
Chloe glanced over her shoulder. “I won’t, officer. Promise.” Then she looked back at Morgan. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
He wasn’t dead. That truth had penetrated the drug euphoria around him. And if he wasn’t dead…
“You trusted the wrong man. You don’t usually make mistakes like that. I suppose you thought…what…the enemy of your enemy could be your new best friend? Did the two of you first connect when you were down in New Orleans the first time?” She didn’t wait for his answer but shook her head. “Paul never intended to help you disappear. He just wanted you to be his fall guy.”
“I…didn’t want to disappear…not without you.” Didn’t Chloe get it? He’d come back, for her. She was the only one who’d ever understood him. She was the only one who knew what it was like to feel the darkness inside and to know it wanted out.
“I realize you tailed Stephen to the cemetery. You killed him. Not because of anything he planned to do to me, but because you wanted to do it. Then, you and Paul sealed me inside the vault with Stephen. After that, you ran the whole elaborate play where you attempted to run down Paul outside the cemetery. Clever. That made him look as if he had no involvement with you.”
“I clipped him…for fun. That had not been part…of the original plan.” Not a hard enough clip to do permanent damage, but enough so that Paul would realize Morgan wasn’t one of his experiments.
“The original plan. Right.”
“You are so f-fucking gorgeous. I have missed—”
“Morgan, you put me in a grave with a dead body. I read the autopsy report that Ruben prepared. He thinks Stephen Wakefield was actually alive when you sealed us up. He died in the vault with me. His blood was all around me. On me.”
Morgan started to smile.
“You knew I hate blood. And you still put me through that nightmare.”
“W-wanted you to see…nothing to fear.”
Her eyebrows climbed. “You think you made me face my greatest fear? Oh, no, not even close. That’s not what I fear the most.”
It…wasn’t?
“You also thought you’d make Joel leave. You tried scaring him away before, but it didn’t work. This time, I supposed you believed that by threatening me, you could get him to walk away?”
Yes, he had. Morgan’s greatest wish…was that he could have killed Joel Landry.
“It won’t happen.” Chloe stared straight into his eyes. Made him almost think she could somehow read his mind. “You will never hurt him. You won’t even see him. Not ever again.”
Oh, she shouldn’t be so sure of that. He was a fantastic criminal defense attorney. He wasn’t sure what all Chloe might think the cops had on him, but—
“Your DNA was beneath his ring. Stephen must have fought you when you attacked him. I gave his ring to Cedric, and he had it analyzed. You’re tied to Stephen by that ring. And Gordon Jennings will testify that you kidnapped him. That you threatened to kill him. As for Wendy Hyde—oh, she’s quite beside herself now. She is begging for a deal.”