“Living in paradise,” she said, with a smile. “It was a hell of a lot better than working in hell with you.”
He laughed at that. “And it’ll stay that way too. Only this time you’ll go to a different little piece of heaven, so to speak.”
As he raised the handgun, she straightened and looked directly at him. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“I don’t care if you’re afraid or not.” He shrugged. “I just want you gone. You’ve been a pain in my ass for a long time,” he said. “It’s too bad you surfaced. We wouldn’t have to do this if you hadn’t.”
He raised the gun, and a shot fired. She stared, shocked as he slowly sagged to the floor. She raced over, but Bullard beat her to it, kicking the gun free. She dropped down to see that it was only a shoulder wound.
“Why did he drop like that? It’s just a shoulder wound,” she said, noting Leo was silent, mostly in shock for the moment.
“Well, I shot him in the shoulder, but Fallon shot him in the knee.” With that, she turned to see that Leo’s knee had exploded from whatever Fallon had used as a weapon. She stared at the two bullet wounds. “So he’ll live?” But then she answered her own question herself. “Yes, of course he will,” she said. “Just for a moment there I wondered.”
“No,” Bullard said. “You’re right to wonder because a guy like this? All he’ll do is cause more chaos.”
“Well, we have an awful lot about him killing his patients, so, as long as he goes to jail for the rest of his natural life, I guess I’m okay with that too. Hopefully in maximum security—or even solitary confinement sounds great to me.” She smiled and said, “Do you want to call the detective?”
“He’s already been called,” Bullard said, “and he should be coming up the elevator right now.”
She looked at Fallon in surprise, then asked Bullard, “What did you do? Go open the door and let Fallon in?”
“Sure did,” he said. “I had to leave you alone for the barest of seconds, but I counted on Leo’s ego.”
“You took a chance,” she said, staring down at Leo, who even now moaned on the floor.
He opened his eyes just then and glared at her. “You stupid bitch.”
“Yeah, why is that?”
“You should have stayed away,” he said. “None of this would have had to happen. Now I’ll have to ruin you.”
“You think so?” She looked at Bullard and said, “Have you got that recording handy?” He pulled it out and pressed Play, so the doctor heard his own words on the tape recording from five years ago.
Leo’s gaze widened. “You fucking bitch,” he roared, then groaned with pain. “Where did you get that? It will never be allowed in court!”
“Why not?” she said. “I mean, by the time I put it on the news, I’m pretty sure everybody’ll know anyway.” He started screaming for real at that point. She walked over to Bullard and said, “Can we go home now?”
“I think that’s a great idea,” he said. “Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she said, with a smile. “But it’s hard to say. You’ll have to show me what your world looks like. You saw parts of mine. At least you saw the good parts. This guy, well, he’s just part of the old part.”
“He’s history already,” he said. “Don’t even worry about him. But I’d love to take you home and show you my world.”
“Except for the fact that you just now thought about who it is who may be after you.”
At that, Fallon turned and looked at Bullard in surprise. “Do you think you know who it is?”
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “I’m hoping I’m wrong, but I’m running out of options.” He turned his head and looked at her and then at Fallon. “I have to get home and find out first.”
“And what will going home allow you to do?” she asked. “Don’t you want to make sure first?”
“Oh, I’ll start some investigation right now,” he said. “It just occurred to me a few minutes before this guy walked in. I’ll get Ice on it.”
“You won’t let any of us help?” Fallon asked him quietly. “Do you suspect us?”
Bullard looked at him in surprise. “God no,” he said. “I know it’s none of us. But in a way it’s almost closer than that.”
Fallon stared at him in confusion. “I don’t think there is anything closer than us,” he said. “Actually we wondered for the longest time if it was Deedee.”
“It wasn’t,” he said.
“At least she wasn’t part of it at the end,” Fallon said, “though we don’t know if she could have been involved in any way at the beginning or not.”
“I would hope not,” Bullard said.
“Unfortunately she’s already dead, so there’s nothing we can do about it anyway,” Fallon said.
“I know,” Bullard said, “but I’m pretty damn sure that this is somebody who doesn’t have anything to do with my business but does have a lot to do with my life, or at least he used to. But I really want to be wrong, so I don’t want to accuse him until we know for sure.”
“So how will you know for sure?” Leia asked.
“We’ll go home,” he said. “And, if I’m right, we’ll find out almost immediately when we get there.”
*
Bullard didn’t want to share his suspicions because it wasn’t fair to the person he was thinking of. But there had been just the two of them for so long that it really broke his heart to think it was even possible. But this guy had the training, he had the insight, he had the access to Bullard’s compound. And he knew Bullard’s men. He knew how to get into the schedule and to do a lot of the IT work because he’d been right there with Bullard for a long time.
And Bullard desperately wanted to be wrong. But, in his heart, he knew he wasn’t wrong, and that would be one of the hardest things for him to deal with. But he couldn’t know for sure, not yet.
Twenty-four hours later they touched down at the compound. Poor Leia looked more than a little exhausted, after she’d spent hours answering more questions for the detective, while the doctor screamed about how she tried to kill him. But the doctor could scream as much as he wanted; he’d been caught on the hotel cameras with a weapon in his hand, all dressed in black, heading to her hotel room.
And Bullard figured that, once they tracked down the money Leo got from the victims’ families, Leo would do everything he could to scream, but nobody would let him wiggle free. And, if that was how it turned out, that’s the way it should be. Bullard would just as soon have killed Leo, and maybe they should have, but, if they ever crossed paths again—if this guy ever got free and came after her—Bullard would deep-six Leo in a heartbeat. He needed her to know that she was safe from now on.
As they finally drove into the compound, the front doors opened, and women came flying out. Women and men. Bullard stopped, tears in his eyes, as Izzie and Lindsey both threw themselves into his arms. Both of them bawling. He held them close, knowing that Leia had no clue who these women were. But his family was large and expansive, and his heart was big.