Page 66 of Perfect Vengeance

Gina pressed Anna face-first into the seat cushion just before the rear window of the Charger shattered.

Anna and Margo screamed.

Gina risked a look through the rear window—the one that was no longer there. Behind them, the dim glow of headlights turned onto the main road. “Punch it, Kins!” They had a good head start, but like the Charger, that Caddy had a lot of horses under the hood.

“You got it.” Kinsey’s voice was strained and higher than usual, but she kept her cool and gunned the vehicle north on Ocean Avenue.

Gradually, the distance separating them from Tino’s oncoming headlights grew until she could no longer see them.

Kinsey blasted onto the ramp for the Garden State Parkway. Cold air swirled into the car through the busted window. The vehicle swerved, and they nearly drove off the ramp.

“Kinsey, be careful.” Margo shot her a worried look.

At first, Kinsey didn’t answer. She gunned the Charger onto the highway. “Is he following us?” she asked in an unsteady voice.

“Kins?” Gina leaned between the headrests. In the dashboard glow, Kinsey’s mouth was pinched, her knuckles white where she gripped the wheel. “Pull over,” she ordered. Something was wrong with her friend, and it wasn’t just fear.

Kinsey slowed the Charger and braked to a stop on the shoulder. Gina punched on her penlight, twisting the top to switch over to white light. “What’s wrong?” She aimed the flashlight beam at Kinsey’s face, then her neck and chest, and⁠—

Gina gasped. Blood poured from an open wound just below Kinsey’s rib cage.

She’s been shot.

Chapter Sixteen

Jack burst through the ER doors. All he could think was that Gina was lying somewhere in this hospital bleeding to death.

Given that it was Sunday and nearly midnight, the waiting area was quiet. A grand total of three people sat in the rows of plastic chairs. The only things Meat had told him was that a woman emptied out Tino’s safe, and there’d been shots fired. He’d known instantly it had to be Gina and her friends, and his head had nearly exploded. She’d gone and done precisely what he’d warned her not to.

He’d driven to her apartment and waited for over two hours. While he’d sat in his SUV, he’d wavered between wanting to arrest her for obstruction of justice and paddling her bottom until she couldn’t sit down for a week. By midnight, she still hadn’t come home, and his anger had bled out, morphing into something else. Worry and stark cold fear.

He stormed to the reception desk and flashed his badge. “A woman was brought in with a GSW. Where is she?”

“Third floor. Surgical unit.” The woman pointed. “Elevators are down the hall.”

He strode to the elevator bank and punched the up arrow. He wished his instincts had been wrong, but they weren’t. After Meat contacted him about what had gone down at Tino’s shore house, he’d called the Sea Bright PD, inquiring if neighbors had called in shots fired near the house. There’d been no such reports made, but there had been a mandatory GSW report made to the PD and State Police.

When the elevator doors opened, he stepped in and hit the button for the third floor. It seemed to take forever to get there. When the doors opened again, he followed the signs to the surgical unit. Outside the unit sat three women in sweat suits, one on a hard chair with her arms wrapped tightly around her belly. Gina.

His throat tightened. He’d come to like all of Gina’s friends, but the instantaneous relief that it wasn’t her who’d been shot nearly sent him to his knees. Slowly, she raised her head, her red, watery eyes locking with his.

“Oh, Jack,” she whispered. “It’s all my fault.”

Words still wouldn’t come. What he ought to do was arrest her. What he wanted to do was take her in his arms and hold her so tightly he could feel her heart beating against his, verifying she was really alive.

Her body began to shake violently, and he didn’t hesitate. He scooped her into his arms and sat on the same chair, holding her, rocking her while she sobbed openly. Every cry and every tear that slid down her pale cheeks was a slice to his heart. Despite everything, he’d come to care way too much for the thief in his arms.

Knowing there was nothing he could say to ease the soul-wrenching guilt she must be experiencing, he kept his mouth shut, absorbing her tremors as her body shook. He stroked her hair and kissed her forehead, not caring that her friends were watching. Over Gina’s head, he glimpsed Margo and Annabelle holding hands, their expressions tight with worry. Silent tears trickled from their eyes.

“Are you going to arrest us?” Margo asked, releasing Annabelle’s hand to drape her arm protectively over the other woman’s shoulders.

“What I need are answers.” Any minute now and Sea Bright officers, the New Jersey State Police—or both—would show up to investigate the GSW. In fact, he was surprised they weren’t here already.

“Gina,” he whispered, then glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone else was in earshot. “What happened?”

She took a shuddering breath. “I didn’t listen to you. I should have. Kinsey got shot.”

“I know.” Using his thumb, he gently wiped away her tears, but it was no use. They just kept coming. “Tino was there, wasn’t he?”