Deserves to Die Part 34

"They needed to die, so that you would be blamed."

"Me? But how? I had nothing to do with them."

"Didn't you?"

"Of course not." She inched backward, still trying to figure out how to save Ryder, save herself. "I didn't even know them."

"Oh, but Anne-Marie, there's the problem." Calderone wagged the gun a little and her eyes were fixed on the muzzle. Was it her imagination or over the whistle of the wind did she hear the faint shriek of sirens?

The police!

Ryder had called 9-1-1!

Had they come up with the right location?

Hurry, hurry, hurry!

"You can't prove it though, can you? That you'd not met those women," Calderone was saying, so caught up in his own story, in his bragging, that he hadn't heard the sirens as he stood confidently behind her SUV.

He couldn't prove it-yet. But he would. He wouldn't be so outwardly c.o.c.ky if he hadn't made certain of that fact. Oh, how her fingers itched to grab Ryder's Glock.

"You know, it looks very suspicious that those women happened to die just about the time you arrived in town, don't you think? And then, oh dear, evidence points to you."

"What do you mean?"

"Your fingerprint, Anne-Marie. Your f.u.c.king telltale print showed up on the victims' personal effects."

"But I never-"

"I guess you just got careless."

"What? No! You're bluffing," she accused. But she knew him too well to believe her own words.

The glint of satisfaction in his eyes, and his cold, cold smile convinced her he wasn't lying. To prove his point, he kept the gun trained on her with one hand, while with the other, he unzipped his jacket to expose a chain that he lifted and she saw something withered and dark and . . .

Her stomach dropped and she retched, fighting the urge to throw up. "Oh, G.o.d."

"That's right. A little keepsake from my dear wh.o.r.e of a wife."

"You s.h.i.t!"

His eyes flared. "So let's end this," he said harshly.

The sirens were getting closer, but Calderone didn't seem to notice the noise over the wind, so intent was he on killing her. "Go ahead and try for the gun," he said smoothly. Confidently. Always the supercilious egomaniac. "I know you've got one, but, trust me, Annie-girl, you'll never reach it, aim it, and fire before you're dead."

So much for the element of surprise. She saw him level the gun straight at her heart and threw herself backward into the open doorway.

Blam! Calderone fired.

Wood splintered.

She hit the floor, rolled over, reached around her back.

A big engine roared to life.

What the h.e.l.l?

Blam! Another shot, the bullet whizzing into the cabin.

The engine raced louder, a truck spinning its tires in the snow.

Looking through the doorway, she saw Calderone turn, his face a mask of horror. Suddenly his aim was no longer on her or the open doorway, but on the huge truck, Ryder's Dodge, churning forward, gathering speed, heading straight at him.

Blam! Calderone fired again.

The Dodge's windshield shattered.

Ryder's body jerked.

Blood sprayed.

The horn blared.

"Nooooo!" Anne-Marie screamed, rolling to her feet, yanking out her weapon from the back of her jeans and swinging her arm around. "No! No! No!" She started firing wildly, all of her pent-up rage forced into pulling the trigger.

But the truck didn't stop.

Calderone stepped back, a bullet grazing his shoulder. For a second, he forgot the truck. When he looked up again, it was too late. The Dodge slammed into him, pinning him against the back of her SUV. In a mash of shattering bones and crumpling metal, he howled in agony. His voice rose to the heavens. Writhing. Screaming. To no avail. Calderone dropped the gun and frantically pushed on the hood of Ryder's truck as if he could shove it off him. But the wheels kept grinding, churning in the snow, mangling him, twisting the lower half of his body into a pulp of bone and tissue and blood.

"Oh, G.o.d!" Horrified, Anne-Marie threw herself off the porch and ran to the truck. Snow was blowing inside the cab. She yanked open the door as the engine continued to turn over, trying to drive the Dodge's spinning wheels forward, still crushing the man pinned in the contorted metal.

"Troy. Ryder!"

His body spilled into her waiting arms, blood everywhere.

"Don't die," she said to him, though he was obviously unconscious. "Don't you dare die on me!" With all her effort, she reached across him and yanked out the keys. The engine died, the wheels stopping suddenly.

Tears filled her eyes and she didn't bother dashing them, just fumbled with the d.a.m.n 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 h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sports 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. G.o.d 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 a.s.sured her.

"Really? You don't care?"

"Don't you know me by now?" His dark eyes flashed in that s.e.xy way that always made her throat catch and she couldn't help but grin. "I'll take you any way I can get you, Regan Pescoli. Any d.a.m.n way you want." And then, to seal the deal, he kissed her so hard, she nearly swooned.

Yes, she thought, this time I finally got it right.

HOME.

Along the sh.o.r.es of Oregon's wild Columbia River,

the Victorian mansion where Sarah McAdams grew

up is as foreboding as she remembers. The moment

she and her two daughters, Jade and Gracie, pull up

the isolated drive, Sarah is beset by uneasy

memories-of her cold, distant mother, of the half-

sister who vanished without a trace, and of a long-ago