“No, don’t!” Another voice? Alvarez’s? “Pescoli, don’t!”
But she ignored the warning. Leveling her gun at Padgett Long, intent on killing the woman who had dared steal her son, she watched as the creature, with the tables turned, started to cry and push herself back, scuttling away.
Pescoli flipped off the safety with difficulty but she aimed at the broken, terrified woman staring at her.
“Don’t! Regan!” Santana yelled. “I’ve got him. Regan, please. I’ve got Tuck!”
I want her dead.
But she glanced over at her husband and son. They were safe. Tuck was safe.
All the breath rushed from her body and her arm went limp. The gun fell from her hand.
The world spun off its axis.
From a far distance she heard, “Regan . . . Regan!” Santana. It was Santana.
She tried to say something.
No words came and she felt as if she were drifting above herself, leaving her body. But it was okay. Santana had Tucker . . . nothing else mattered.
She was floating, looking down, and saw Alvarez appear, her service weapon drawn, aimed straight at the cowering woman. “Padgett Long,” Alvarez said with authority. “You’re under arrest.”
Epilogue
Two weeks later, Pescoli said, “I feel like an old woman,” as she sat in Santana’s recliner after being released from the hospital.
“You are. Forty’s right around the corner,” her husband reminded. He was on the floor in front of the fire, playing airplane with a giggling Tucker and in clear danger of being drooled on. Fortunately Cisco was nearby, ready to clean up any of the baby’s messes.
“Don’t remind me.”
He didn’t. Nor did he bring up how lucky she was to be alive. She’d been gut shot by Padgett Long that horrible night two weeks earlier and she’d nearly lost her life. As it was she’d been life-flighted to a Missoula hospital and survived, though she’d lost her spleen and her ability to ever conceive another child.
She could live with that.
No bones had been damaged, no vital organs destroyed, and she had her boy back. That’s all that mattered.
Padgett Long had been arrested and would never be released into society again, and Ivy Wilde was back in San Francisco dealing with the court system, her father and stepmother—a just punishment on its own to Ivy’s way of thinking, or so Jeremy had related to her. His short-lived infatuation was over and he’d wanted to take up with Becca Johnson again, but so far Becca had refused.
Pescoli didn’t blame her.
Detective Tanaka, that hard-ass, seemed intent on getting the DA to prosecute Ivy as an adult. Sarina was having a fit about it. Sarina was also lobbying to come to visit Pescoli again as Pescoli had missed the dual memorial service for Brindel and Paul, but so far it hadn’t happened and Pescoli was grateful for that. If she heard one more story about “You Know Who,” she might just puke.
Meanwhile Bianca was waiting until she turned eighteen and then she was going to stick it to her father and change her name legally. And as for Lucky, it turned out he hadn’t done anything illegal, this time around, had just responded to a Facebook inquiry made by Garrett Mays and together they had discovered Garrett’s connection to the Long family. Of course he was in it for a cut, but what else could you expect from her ex-husband, the con man’s con man?
And yes, it was true, she thought as the fire crackled and the dogs slept. Garrett Mays was indeed the son Brady Long hadn’t known existed. What that meant to the Long estate and Padgett’s share was anyone’s guess as Mays was already hooked up with an attorney and making his claim.
Pescoli didn’t care much how it turned out.
She glanced at the window, saw the reflection of the cozy room, and felt an inner peace. The feeling of malevolence, that something evil was hovering across the lake, was gone. Finally.
She had experienced an epiphany the night she’d come so close to viewing heaven from the other side of the pearly gates—that is if heaven was actually where she would have ended up; she wasn’t so certain of that—and that was why she couldn’t give up her job.
Some people had expected that her near-death experience and near loss of her infant son would have made her retreat into the safety of her own home, and increase her need to spend more time protecting her family. But she’d gone the other way. She’d chosen to be proactive. No mother should ever have to suffer the terror she’d gone through, and thank God the police were there to save them all. If it hadn’t been for Pete Watershed telling Alvarez where Pescoli had gone, things might have turned out differently. But between what Watershed conveyed and what she’d learned from Ivy Wilde, Alvarez had driven to the museum, taken stock of the situation, and sneaked into the laundry facilities through an unlocked back door. Santana had seen her and known help was there, but Regan had kept fighting to take Padgett down.
They’d all been lucky.
Pescoli owed her life as well as her son’s to Alvarez and the sheriff’s department.