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“He has Natalie. ”
She looked at the message over the door. Nodded. Looked back down at Chloe and molded the girl’s bloody fingers around the cell phone. “They’re on their way, love.
You just stay put. ” She could already hear the sirens. She had to go.
But a thought crossed her mind, making a crack in the frigid wasteland of her soul.
It didn’t surprise her that the only thing that could get through at this moment was Tyler. He’d been able to break through the constraints of her past time and time again, where no one else had.
She bent back down. “Chloe, can you remember something for me? It’s important. ” Chloe looked up at her through a haze of pain.
“Tell Tyler I loved him enough to live for him. Can you remember? It’s incredibly important. ”
“Marguerite…don’t. ”
She brushed a kiss over her friend’s forehead. Her friend. For the first time she realized that you didn’t have t
o believe someone was your friend for that person to be one. But she couldn’t look back and didn’t as she snatched up what she needed and sprinted for the car.
When she roared out of the neighborhood, she passed the ambulance. The red lights glinted briefly across her vision, washing crimson over the pale skin of her hands, tight on the wheel.
Let’s finish it.
Chapter Sixteen
The damn roses sensed his mood, knew to be defensive. That was the only reason Tyler could figure he had pricked his fingers three times in less than fifteen minutes. He never wore gloves, preferring to woo his thorny ladies with careful touches. He had his ear tuned to the phone, the portable and cell within easy reach. He was no better than her assessment of herself, acting like a lovestruck teenager.
She wouldn’t call tonight, he was fairly certain of it, for all that. He knew her well enough to know she needed to think. Needed space. But she had kept the ring.
Violet and Mac had left only an hour before, headed for home, Violet had been scheduled for a weekend work shift, so the sound of a motorcycle pulling up in the driveway surprised him. Mac was the only friend he knew who regularly used one. The ring of the cell phone jerked his attention away from that puzzle in a blink. Snatching up the phone, he recognized Violet’s cell number, squashed his disappointment.
“Tyler, where are you? Are you still in the city?”
“Yeah. ” Mac, apparently having gotten his whereabouts from Sarah, came through the backyard, a grim set to his mouth. “Mac just got here. What’s going on?”
“Tyler, someone broke into Tea Leaves. They beat up Chloe pretty badly. She’s on the way to the hospital. Marguerite—”
Her next words came as quickly as the first, but for Tyler there was an abyss between her name and that moment, as if he was teetering on the edge, straining for that opposite side but knowing that eternal darkness yawned beneath him. He was cognizant of Mac at his shoulder, the look in his eyes. “—wasn’t there when it happened. She called it in, though. Mac picked it up on the dispatch radio at home. ”
“All right, I’ll head right over there—”
“There’s more. The perp kidnapped a little girl Chloe was watching named Natalie Moorefield. Chloe’s a tough kid. She wouldn’t let them put her in the ambulance until she told them all she knew. Marguerite’s gone after him. ”
“What? How the hell does she know—”
“Chloe said he wrote something over the doorway. ‘Let’s finish it. ’ Marguerite took one look at it, left Chloe her cell phone and was gone. Mac called me. I sent him to you right away but I went with a hunch and called the prison where her father was. They’ve released him, time served. ”
“But she would have—” Tyler broke off, remembering Marguerite’s behavior when he’d called her from Cape Cod that day. How she’d been so standoffish and prickly, then suddenly desperate in the dim quiet of her bedroom.
He doesn’t know where I am.
How many women had said that? Believed it? Died believing it.
“Bank of Florida building. I’ll bet my life on it. We can be there in two minutes from my place. ”
It was ten miles from his house but Violet wasn’t going to argue it. “I’ll call it in. ” Tyler broke the connection, headed into the house. Going to his office, he unlocked the gun safe, pulled on the dual shoulder holster and fitted it with his nine millimeter and his Desert Eagle. He slipped the licenses to carry the guns and extra clips into his jeans’ pockets. “Don’t say a fucking word to me about being a civilian. ”
“Wasn’t going to. ”
