“I’m going in,” he said. He yanked out his earpiece and dove.
Silence enveloped him. He swam hard, reading the current, feeling for movement, sensing her trail.
She surfaced—and he was right there.
She screamed. “Agent Harris? Oh my God—someone was chasing me! I think Garrett’s trying to kill me!”
“Save it,” he snapped, grabbing her arm.
She kicked out, aiming for his groin. He twisted just in time to avoid the worst of the pain, but her heel hit the sensitive area between his groin and leg. Pain flared, but he grunted and held tight.
She struggled like a wildcat, trying to break free while also trying to drag him under. “You’re drowning me!” she shrieked. “Let me go!”
He held fast, even as she dove again, slippery and vicious. Her nails raked his face, then his shoulder, her hands pushing him down with surprising strength.
He broke the surface, gasping.
Then—she went limp. A dead weight.
It was almost comical. Like a toddler pretending to faint to avoid bedtime.
She was easier to tow that way. He hauled her onto the bank, soaked and silent. The two deputies arrived just as he dropped her onto the grass.
She lay still, eyes closed.
“No one believes the act, Clara,” Michael said. “You’re under arrest.”
She bolted up and tried to dive back into the channel.
Michael lunged, caught her mid-motion. The deputies handcuffed her as she screamed, “I want a lawyer! You can’t do this! I want a lawyer!”
Michael stared at her, wet, bleeding, and breathing hard. He felt a grim sense of satisfaction knowing the killer was finally in custody. But beneath that, anger simmered, a deep ache for the lives she had taken.
He read Clara Dolan her rights.
Saturday
42
Kara rarely slept in, but the sun was already streaming through her blinds and the smell of coffee filled her small house when she woke up Saturday morning.
Coffee. Someone had made her coffee.
She climbed out of bed and pulled on her pajama bottoms that were tangled in the bedsheets. Her leg itched and there was still lingering pain, but she walked almost without a limp. She’d have a nasty scar, but Kara honestly didn’t care. It wouldn’t be the first scar on her body.
She brushed her teeth, then followed her nose all the way to the kitchen, where Matt handed her a steaming cup of rich-smelling coffee.
“Yum,” she said and sipped. “The first sip is always the best.”
He leaned over and kissed her. “I would have made breakfast, but you have no food.”
“When did I have time to shop?”
“We’ll fix that today.”
They’d returned to Virginia Thursday morning, leaving theteam split between South Carolina and Florida to deal with the paperwork and the jurisdictional nightmare that the case had become. Yesterday they both had follow-ups with their respective doctors and were told light duty for two weeks, then another checkup before they were cleared. Kara surprisingly wasn’t all that angry about being sidelined. She needed the break.
Then the debrief with Tony Greer yesterday, which went better than she expected. There hadn’t been much they’d done wrong—being shot with tranquilizer darts took decision-making out of their hands—though he was displeased that they’d joined the team on the raid in South Carolina when they hadn’t been cleared by medical. And he wasn’t happy that the FBI was getting a bill from an ambulance company for a three-hour ride.
