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Tears filled her eyes and she didn’t bother dashing them, just fumbled with the damn key ring until she found the smallest key and unlocked the cuffs. As the cuff sprang open, he slithered out of the truck and his weight pulled them both onto the frozen ground.
Blood spilled, and she tried frantically to stanch it.
She had done this. It was her fault that he lay dying in her arms.
For a second, everything seemed to go quiet. The engine no longer ground and Calderone’s voice had been stilled, probably forever. She felt that in that one suspended second, she and Ryder were alone in the universe.
“Don’t you die on me,” she said to him again, sobbing, holding him close. Blood covered her hands, smearing on her clothes. So wrapped up in saving him, she barely heard the sirens or the wind or the sound of anxious shouts. “Do you hear me, Ryder? Don’t you dare die on me.” She heard him expel a rattling breath.
Then he opened one eye. Looking up at her, his lips barely moved as he said, “Wouldn’t dream of it, darlin’. Wouldn’t dream of... it.”
Epilogue
Las Vegas, Nevada
February
Never in her life would Pescoli have dreamed that she would be standing next to Santana, saying “I do” in a tiny chapel in Las Vegas, but here she was, her kids at her side, witnessing their mother getting married again.
Surprisingly, it felt right.
As if she
’d been destined for this moment for all of her life.
Okay, she knew that was the stuff of romantic dreams she didn’t believe in, but just for the day, wearing an off-white dress that almost touched her knees, Santana looking handsome as as hell in a black suit, she went with the fantasy.
It wasn’t February fourteen, but the day after. Bianca and Jeremy, if not thrilled at the hasty marriage, went with it. Santana had promised to take Jeremy target shooting in the next few days and Bianca was able to sunbathe in the bikini she’d received from her father and stepmother last Christmas. So it was a win-win situation, or as much as it could be, considering.
Less than two weeks ago, she and Alvarez had wrapped up the Anne-Marie Calderone case. Bruce Calderone had died at the scene. No big loss there. The finger found dangling from his neck matched the prints they’d found on Calypso Pope’s purse and Sheree Cantnor’s shoe and was the ring finger he’d sliced off his wife’s left hand, the proof of which she bore as a stump on her hand.
Troy Ryder had survived a bullet wound to the neck, though he’d lost enough blood to kill a lesser man. However, he was out of the hospital and in New Orleans where he, Anne-Marie, and Detective Montoya were sorting things out.
The last Pescoli had heard, Anne-Marie’s grandmother wasn’t pressing charges, but that was just the first and foremost of Anne-Marie’s crimes, now that she’d been cleared of murder. She had other nasty details, like false passports and IDs, to deal with.
Again, Pescoli was glad that was all part of the New Orleans Police Department’s problems. She had heard that Anne-Marie’s parents were filing bankruptcy and had disowned her after being exposed as trying to profit from their daughter’s notoriety.
The true killer of Sheree Cantnor and Calypso Pope had been exposed, all part of Calderone’s twisted plan to get back at his wife. Sometimes, marriages weren’t exactly made in heaven, which was a weird thing to think on her wedding day. Then again, it was her third time down the aisle, so she could be a little cynical.
She wasn’t going to think about the whole Calderone mess another minute.
That case was closed.
At least for her.
And from this moment forward, she was a bride. Again. God knew what the future had in store for her. Bianca, in a short pink dress, the maid of honor, blinked back tears. Jeremy stood tall and solemn, a man who had given his mother away to a new man he didn’t quite trust. In a suit, he resembled his father on that long ago day when Pescoli had married Joe Strand.
But that was the past. Santana was the future.
As she held Santana’s hand and thought of the baby that was growing inside her, the infant her other children knew nothing about, she felt a wellspring of hope that was unlike her. The pseudo clergyman, grinning widely, proclaimed them man and wife and Santana leaned down to kiss her.
“Just one thing,” she whispered before his lips met hers. “I’m not changing my name. I’ve done that enough.”
“You think you might have mentioned that a little earlier?”
“Probably.”
He winked at her, and she wondered how it was possible to love someone this much, especially a man she’d once considered just a fling. “It’s fine,” he assured her.
