Junior turned to his assassin. “I don’t care. I can bury that motherfucker and his company. I’ll handle it.”
“Like you handled me?” She needed to push Junior a little further. He could go over the edge. Chaos would be her friend.
“I handled you fine,” he shot back. “The way I handled my delusional father. I found the right doctor and now you don’t get a dime.”
“Your father wasn’t senile.” She’d always known Junior had paid the doctor. If George had lived, they would have been able to prove it.
“Of course he wasn’t,” Junior conceded. “But he proved he wasn’t worthy of everything he had because he was stupid enough to fall under your spell. Bill, do what I paid you to do or we’ll have a problem.”
Bill had gone still. “I don’t know. I believe her. This is going to be more trouble than it’s worth.”
“More trouble than a half a million,” Junior argued.
Something moved behind Bill, the door to the big bathroom flying open and a whirl of motion coming out. There was a loud scream and then something hard smacked against Bill’s head.
Bill went straight to the floor.
Ruby stood there, the heavy toilet tank lid in her hand and a wild look on her face. “I’m sorry. I still had the key and I needed…”
They didn’t have time to talk it out. Vanessa started for the door. “Come with me.”
She jogged out of the door, Ruby behind her.
“You ruin everything.” Junior was screaming as she got Ruby in front of her.
She wasn’t about to let Ruby get caught.
“Go to the front,” Vanessa ordered. “We have to get outside.”
They would run and hide somewhere, hide until Michael could find them.
“I hid when I heard the men,” Ruby said as she ran. “I just needed to be alone for a while.”
“Move or we’ll be alone for a long time.” Though she did seem to have gotten Bill out of the picture. That hadn’t been a little tap. It had been rough, and he’d hit the floor hard.
There was a loud boom as they made it to the living room, and Vanessa felt fire along her arm.
Ruby turned down the foyer.
“I won’t let you get away, bitch,” Junior shouted.
Vanessa stumbled, her knees hitting the hardwood floors, pain flaring through her, but she could hear sirens in the distance.
She’d fallen right in front of the foyer. She could see the door, see how Ruby was rushing to get it open.
But something was wrong with her arm. She tried to use it to push herself up but pain bloomed.
Ruby threw open the door, and the late afternoon sunshine blasted through. She heard Ruby cry out.
“Go. Run.” Vanessa tried to force herself up, ignoring the pain in her arm. She managed to turn over and get to her knees.
Junior was right there, and he kicked her chest, forcing her on her back.
He looked like a monster standing over her, wielding that gun. “I don’t care who finds me. I’ll tell them what you did to my family, and no one will convict me.”
He pointed the gun at her, and she knew she was about to die and all she wanted was Michael. The moments with him flashed through her, every one precious. Even the hard ones because they’d been a part of their story.
She loved him. She would love him always.
A shadow moved across the door, and then there was a loud crack. Junior frowned, and his arm fell to his side before he slumped down and hit the floor.
“And I won’t let you hurt mine.”
Michael. He was standing in the hall, a gun in his hand and an implacable look on his face that fell the minute he looked down at her. Her big, strong guy paled and rushed toward her. “Baby.” He fell to his knees. “He shot you.”
Ah, that’s where all the blood was coming from. And the pain. It didn’t matter because he was here. She reached up for him. “How did you find me?”
He took her good hand in his. “A combination of sneaky things I might have done to keep track of the person I love most in the world.” He glanced back. “Kyle, tell the cops we’ve got one dead.”
“And there’s a guy in the garage, and I think Ruby might have killed a guy in the bedroom.” She had to tell him everything because she was getting a little woozy.
She watched as a big guy moved toward the garage. Deke. She was pretty sure it was Deke.
It didn’t matter because Michael gingerly picked her up and started moving out of the house and into the sun. She felt it warm on her face, and she cuddled close to him.
She was safe.
Chapter Twenty
“All right, so let me get this straight. Junior planned on staging Vanessa’s drug overdose,” Kyle began, a frown on his face. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”