Her Last Chance (3 page)

The NY detective grinned, spreading
his moustache in a wide arc. Special Agent Dickwad colored up and
fed-number-two coughed up his sleeve. Marsh stared at her as if she were a
small child whom he was patiently waiting to behave. Anger rose inside her,
frustration and fear coalescing into anger. Anger was good. Sure beat the hell
out of being scared out of her tiny mind.

“You want the keys to your
handcuffs back, Hayes?” Propping one hand suggestively on her hip, she grinned
at him, super-confident, super-sexy. The last thing she expected was the savage
flash of anger that flared in his eyes. Involuntarily she took a step back, and
banged her heel on a riser.

“Cut the bullshit, Josephine. Tell
me what happened.”

Alarm bells jangled as her survival
instincts took over. She shivered. He was more dangerous than most people
realized. She’d never forgotten that about him. Had never forgiven him for not
falling for her act.

“I don’t think Ms. Maxwell knows
much, sir,” Special Agent Dickwad whispered in an undertone that suggested she
was a simpleton. As she’d spent several hours fostering that image, it
shouldn’t annoy her so damn much.

The fed’s manner turned even more
obsequious and she rolled her eyes. “The victim—a woman called Angela
Morelli—was found dead in the ground floor apartment. We believe Ms. Maxwell
disturbed the killer as he was leaving the building. Maybe he figured he’d risk
taking a second vic, but one of the neighbors came home and raised the alarm.”

She sucked in shallow little
breaths to hide her distress, but was dismayed when tears blurred her vision. A
woman had died here tonight and this guy spoke like she was just another data
point.

She used both hands on the banister
for support and closed her eyes.
Is it my fault?
If she hadn’t been back
late from her appointment would he have left Angela Morelli alone? Except,
being an artist, she didn’t have a fixed schedule. The bastard had been hiding
in the stairwell waiting to ambush her, but he’d already butchered Angela in
cold blood.

She wanted to run and hide but
everywhere she turned there was someone in her face, pushing at her for answers
she refused to give. She sensed Marsh standing close. After all these months
she still recognized his scent; his heat. Her mouth went dry and her heartbeat
raced. She opened her eyes, nerves exploding, all her panic buttons screaming
to get the hell away from him because he was one of the few people with the
power to hurt her.

“You fought him off? This
experienced serial killer?” Marsh’s hazel eyes swept over her with disdain.
“With these?” He poked her bicep and she jumped.

Rubbing her arm, she pinched her
lips over words too dangerous to say. Anger boiled beneath the surface of her
skin, circling like a shark looking for a kill. She was stronger than she
looked and the sonofabitch knew it. Never the model of restraint or propriety
he was trying to goad her into making another mistake. They had too much shared
history for her to con him and she’d treated him too badly for him to swallow a
single word she said.

She should never have drugged him
all those months ago. She’d planned to kiss him until he passed out and she could
escape, but that plan had blown up in her face. They’d had sex, once,
blisteringly hot sex. But he hadn’t seen her naked, didn’t know the secrets
carved into her skin. No one knew except the man with the knife.

“Leave me alone.”

Detective Cochrane sniggered. The
two feds supposedly running the show looked at each other with raised brows and
a great big question mark. Marsh went to touch her again, but she flinched and
one side of his mouth twitched, telling her how much she’d given away with that
one small movement.

Backing up a step, she addressed
the second fed, who’d questioned her in the apartment. “I’ve told you
everything I know. I’m done here.”

Marsh followed. “Is that right?”

His eyes were so intense they
glowed. He grabbed her around the waist and she gasped in shock at the contact.
Somehow he turned her around in his arms, slid her effortlessly in front of him
like she weighed nothing at all, her feet dangling uselessly over the step.

“Get off me!” She struggled,
kicking and hitting, but her fists bounced off him with no real effect. His
scent enveloped her, crisp expensive cologne over strong healthy male. The
sensation of his hands burning a familiar path over her skin excited and
infuriated her all at the same time. But after what she’d been through tonight,
the last thing she wanted was some guy manhandling her like a freaking doll.

Through her fury she watched the
stunned expressions of the men below her. Then she realized Marsh was lifting
her sweater.

No. No. No. Dammit
!

She panicked, grabbed onto his
forearms, felt the strength in those muscles. She twisted harder, but his arms
were a vise, holding her to him.

Cold air caressed bare skin for the
second time that night. His arm shielded her nudity, one hand cupping her
breast like it belonged there. His absolute determination burned through her
struggles and she went rigid with fury.

So much for honor and integrity.

“Did you mention
these
,
Josephine?” Anger brushed the shell of her ear.

She didn’t need to look down to see
the long silver scars that lined her abdomen in diagonal crosses. Rage heated
until it was a white-hot mist as Marsh exposed her biggest secret—her greatest
shame—to the whole world. The shocked expressions on the cop and feds’ faces
should have been comical, but the obvious repugnance and pity she saw there
made her stop fighting.

“You have blood on you, miss.”
Detective Cochrane’s eyes were troubled now and Marsh’s grip tightened, driving
the air from her lungs.

“It’s nothing.” She hadn’t had time
to clean up after that sonofabitch had attacked her, but she hadn’t told the
cops that. She hadn’t told them that he’d hurt her or what he’d said. She
looked over her shoulder into Marsh’s grim, unsmiling face. “Let go of me or
I’ll rip out your fucking throat.”

Fire lit his eyes, but his voice
was soft. “You don’t scare me, Josephine. At least, not that way.”

Marsh lowered her to the stair,
held her securely while she regained her balance and jerked her sweater back
into place. Fury and pride demanded she hurt the bastard, but when she turned
to face him, he showed an impressive display of psychic ability, and took a
step away.

Tears swam in her eyes. She bit her
lip. How did he know about the scars? Despite his badge, she’d never doubted
his almost overbearing sense of honor.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

“Let’s go.” Special Agent Dickwad
grabbed her arm like he’d solved the case and hustled her toward the door.

Jerking out of the idiot’s painful
grip, she glared over her shoulder about to curse Marshall Hayes with every
foul word she’d ever learned, but her anger evaporated as quickly as it had
come. Something about his haunted expression tore at her. He looked like she
felt—as if he’d been in a fight for his life and had barely escaped alive.

***

His toes tingled
painfully with cold. Transferring his weight from one foot to the other helped,
but if the cops didn’t give a statement soon, he was leaving. Job or no
freaking job.

A cup of Starbucks helped ward off
the chill. He sipped the creamy sweet brew and noted it too was beginning to
cool. He was too old for this crap. Twenty years on the job and the crime-beat
still sucked.

Nelson Landry glanced around the
crowd, noticed small huddled groups whose breath rose as a cloud of steam
through the sodium vapor of the streetlights. They reckoned serial killers got
off watching the action from the sidelines. He peered closer. Were any of these
guys the Blade Hunter? His gaze ran over the figures but no one stood out as a
sadistic psycho and he grew bored looking at those young eager faces.

The guy to his right looked
respectable enough, but who knew what that overcoat hid or what the guy’s
fingers were jangling deep in his pockets. Nelson huffed out a laugh at the
image he’d conjured. God help him, he’d been doing this way too long.

Cops and feds began pouring out of
the building like ants on a mission. Stretching his five-foot-five frame to the
limit, Nelson peered past an NBC cameraman’s shoulder. Cops were loading up
cars and trucks with evidence bags and equipment. The body was long gone.

One of the feds was coming across
the street to give a statement. Heaving a sigh of relief, Nelson took the
digital recorder out of his pocket, shifted his weight, thankful he’d soon be
in the comfort of his own bed. The G-man moved like he had a poker shoved up
his ass, almost on tiptoes. Out of the corner of his eye, Nelson spotted a
blonde being escorted to a black Lincoln sedan.

Who the hell is that?
A real
looker. A model or film star he wouldn’t wonder.

“Check out the list of residents,”
he spoke into his voice recorder and raised his Nikon with his other hand,
reeling off a few shots of the fed. Then he turned the camera toward the
blonde, and centered the shot through the viewfinder. One of the men walking
beside the woman made his lips draw back over his teeth.

SAC Marshall Hayes.

The man who’d gotten him busted
back down to the crime-beat only a couple of years from retirement, because
he’d written an article about a cover up over the death of some curator from
the Museum of Modern Art.

Asshole
.

The guy worked art fraud, so what
the hell was he doing at a murder scene? On autopilot, Nelson thrust his
recorder toward the guy giving the official statement and watched the man who’d
wrecked his life lean up-close and personal to the blonde before climbing into
a Beemer parked further along the street and speeding away.

Marshall Hayes hated the press.
Loved making their lives as difficult as possible. The world clicked into place
in a serendipitous moment and Nelson grinned. He was about to return the favor.

Chapter
Three

________________

B
ack at the FBI New York
field office, Marsh watched the interview through the one-way mirror. Josephine
flashed an award-winning smile and sipped delicately from a cup of coffee
Special Agent Sam Walker had fetched her—in a china cup, no less.

She had that effect on men.

Long blond hair was tied into a
messy knot on top of her head. Her lips were pink and sweetly bowed, her face
pretty enough to make you believe any lie you told yourself to justify those
unprofessional thoughts about getting her naked.

He hadn’t realized exactly how
badly he’d missed the irrational, foul-mouthed vixen until he’d seen her again.
And it was galling to know that this woman, who loathed him with a passion, was
the only one he wanted in his bed.

He rubbed the muscles jammed tight
in his neck.

“So why didn’t you mention that
this man cut you?” Walker asked, placing a hand on her elbow, trying to inspire
trust.
Mr. Benevolent
. Playing good cop to Agent Nicholl’s scowling bad
cop.

Studying her closely, Marsh saw
Josephine freeze for that fraction of a second before she laughed
self-deprecatingly and forced herself to relax. She put both hands flat on the
table in front of her, probably to stop her body language giving her away when
she lied her ass off.

If they thought they were going to
get anything out of her this way, they were as dumb as she made herself look.

“I didn’t even know he’d cut me,
until Marsh, Agent Hayes…” Her voice grew husky and she glanced at the mirror,
“…flashed you all like that.”

Color crept into her cheeks and he
frowned. Everything about Josephine’s façade was highly polished deceit
except
her embarrassment about those scars. They weren’t pretty, but unfortunately,
they weren’t a turn off either.

His cell phone buzzed against his
hipbone.

“Dancer, what have you got for me?”
God help him, he still had an art-theft investigation to run.

“Philip and Gloria Faraday are
siblings. Born in England,” Dancer reeled off. “Parents deceased. No police
record, no suspicion of dealing under the table.” He gave a big yawn that
reminded Marsh it was well after midnight.

The one-way glass was smeared with
handprints and the effect was like looking through a soft focus lens. Josephine
made a big show of checking her statement. Sentence by sentence as the agents
quizzed her. Walker leaned over her like some proprietary wolf and Marsh
gritted his teeth.

Dancer carried on. “The lab agreed
to send a crime scene tech to us because of the unusual circumstances. Once
they’re done, Aiden can examine it for authenticity and get the paint analyzed.
There aren’t any field agents available to help out at the gallery. The SAC
said tonight’s homicide got priority.”

Marsh had no problem with that.
Human life was more important than art or money and this case had been cold for
years. “Go back to the hotel and get some sleep. I’ll meet you at the gallery
at nine to interview the Faradays again. See if we can shake something coherent
out of Gloria this time.”

“Is it true this serial killer
attacked Josephine Maxwell?” Dancer asked.

Marsh sighed. They’d worked
together for years and Steve Dancer knew him better than anyone. Dancer also
knew Marsh and Josephine had shared one night of sex that had led to
deep-seated mistrust on both sides.

“Yeah. He killed another woman in
her apartment building, and then attacked Josephine in the lobby. Lucky for her
they were interrupted and he fled the scene.”

Lucky…

Clamping his molars together, Marsh
fought the urge to retch. The bastard had actually cut her; he’d had his hands
on her flesh and it was a miracle she wasn’t dead.

Shit
.

There was a long beat of silence on
the other end of the line.

“But how did you know? In the
bullpen…” Dancer cleared his throat. “I mean the way you ran out of here when
you saw those pictures…how did you know?” One of Dancer’s greatest strengths
was uncovering classified information, but Marsh had never told anyone about
Josephine’s scars. Tomorrow, he’d be lucky if they weren’t national headlines.

So what difference did it make if
he told Dancer?

She’d hate him, but then she
already hated him.

“This doesn’t go anywhere else.
Josephine was knifed as a kid. Cut up bad enough that the cops didn’t think
she’d make it.” Marsh closed his eyes against the graphic images still engraved
on his memory from the photographs he’d seen. “I had that evidence file copied
to me when we were looking for Elizabeth.”

He’d also seen Josephine’s scars in
the flesh when he’d drugged her and injected a tiny transmitter below her
shoulder blade. He’d used her to track Elizabeth Ward, her best friend, and his
undercover agent who’d gone missing last spring. Josephine didn’t know about
the transmitter and he’d do his damnedest to make sure she never found out.
Their relationship had taken an unexpected turn when she’d used those same
tranqs on him, with startling consequences for both of them.

“She has the same pattern of scars
the murder victims have.”

Dancer was silent, though Marsh
heard the other man pulling all the threads together and forming an unbreakable
weave. “So you think this is the same guy?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. Josephine
isn’t talking.” Switching tracks, Marsh asked, “Have you notified Admiral
Chambers we found his painting yet?” Another political string-puller, his
father’s buddy was going to be delighted they’d finally found that piece.
Especially if experts reappraised it as a Vermeer.

“I figured you’d do it.” Dancer’s
tone turned hopeful.

Normally, Marsh would have called
the admiral immediately, but Josephine’s safety was more important than
anything else. Through the window, he watched her smile get more strained. The
grip on her pen was so tight the tips of her fingers were bloodless.

His own fingers tightened around
the phone because he knew whatever she was writing down wasn’t the whole story.
Josephine had a problem with telling the truth. Hell, maybe they both did. “You
let him know ASAP.”

“Yes, sir,” Dancer replied smartly.
“By the way, I still have that photograph of you in handcuffs…”

Marsh wanted to curse, but other
things weighed too heavily on his mind. “Yeah, yeah, just make the damn call.”

He hung up and stared through the
window. The clench of her jaw and hunch of her shoulders screamed nervous
tension, but he doubted she’d break. Not here. Not yet.

What was she hiding? Why the hell
was she hiding it?

But the only thing that really
mattered was she was back in his life and he had no intention of letting anyone
hurt her ever again. A hum ran through his blood, an excitement he hadn’t felt
in months and he wished to God he didn’t feel now. Josephine was in danger—he
didn’t believe in coincidence. The Blade Hunter was trying to finish a job he’d
started twenty years ago, and that
job
was murdering Josephine Maxwell.

***

The urgent need for
a shower ate at Josie’s nerves. The scent of sweat, blood and fear clung to her,
the memory of her attacker’s touch eroding her skin, gradually being absorbed
into her bones and settling there like a bruise.

She bit the end of the pen. If it
wasn’t for Marshall Hayes she’d be in her apartment right now packing.

To go where?

She hadn’t figured that out yet.
She had options. Connecticut? Montana? Or maybe she should just get on a train
with no set destination in mind.

Squinting at the page she’d
written, she put down the pen and glanced up at Special Agent Sam Walker, who
sat on the table swinging his leg, the gentle motion rocking the surface
beneath her forearms.

He and Nicholl were reading the
latest report on the murder of Angela Morelli. Discussing it quietly between
them. Her stomach clenched.

Despite living in the same building
for the last few years, Josie had barely known the woman. And now Angela was
dead because of her.

She worried a loose thread on her
jacket, snapped it off. The room was dreary and stuffy, nothing but industrial
gray and green. Walker’s gun sat on his hip, close to her elbow.

Maybe I should become a cop?
Too bad she wasn’t big on honesty or law enforcement. She wiped her fingers on
her jeans and looked at the black holstered weapon again. Guns were something
she’d always avoided—only wise guys and cops carried guns where she came from,
and she didn’t trust either.

Christ, she wanted to get out of
here. She scanned what she’d written.

I checked the mail and someone
grabbed me from behind.

The sharp blade of the hunting knife
flashed before her eyes and Agent Walker’s big black gun looked tempting as
hell.

Mrs. Lauder from number three
opened the front door and screamed. Attacker jumped up and ran away.

There were a few more details she
could add, but she hadn’t lied.

The door off the street had opened
with a rush of wind and Janet Lauder, her downstairs neighbor, had taken one
look at the scene, dropped her groceries and run shrieking into the street.

Josie had held up her portfolio as
a shield in a last desperate defense.

Mrs. Lauder’s screams had gathered
support and loud male voices had responded—if they hadn’t, Josie wouldn’t be
sitting here right now. She’d be laid out dead in the morgue. The predator had
slid the knife into his pocket and walked toward one of the ground floor
apartments. He’d paused long enough to make her a parting promise. “Next time,
you’re dead.”

Asshole
.

She signed the statement neatly
with her trademark
J Maxwell
signature. Her shoulder itched the way it
did sometimes but she didn’t try to scratch it. It seemed important not to show
any weakness in this bastion of law enforcement.

“Can I go now?” She shifted her
feet, preparing to stand. Despite fatigue that dragged at her eyelids, she
smiled. It went against her nature, but the
system
had taught her that
looking miserable got you nothing but therapy and pep talks from dumpy-looking
social workers. She was far too old for that crap.

Nicholl picked up her statement and
skimmed through it, frowned at her in that condescending way some men had.

“Madam, I think it is time you
started to tell the truth about your association with this murderer and not
some half-cocked story about running into the guy in the hallway. Are you his
accomplice? Are you helping him?”

Now they’re gonna pin this on
me? Never trust a frickin’ cop
. Rolling her eyes, she threw a look at the
mirrored window where she knew Marsh was watching.

Time for another inch of honesty.
“I don’t know what else I can tell you. I got my scars when someone attacked me
when I was a kid in Queens. There was a police report.” Holding Agent Walker’s
gaze she let sincerity shine through. “I thought he was going to kill me.”

“How old were you?” Walker asked,
frowning. He was watching her lips.

She withdrew eye contact. “Nine.”

“Where did you grow up?” Walker
crinkled his baby-blues, trying to catch her gaze again and charm her. This
wasn’t going where she wanted it. She’d wanted to deflect them away from
herself but had nothing else to give them.

“Brooklyn. I was visiting a friend
in Queens.” She rested her palms on her thighs. Held them still and then
relaxed against the hard back of the chair as she realized she wasn’t going
anywhere soon.

The room was warm so she slipped
out of her jacket and crossed her legs. Both men followed her actions in an
automatic male response. She might not be Sharon Stone, but she had moves.

Josephine glanced at the mirrored
window and knew Marsh wouldn’t be so easily diverted. Heat rose in her cheeks
as memories of exactly how she’d distracted him returned in vivid detail.
Virgins should not dabble in sexual manipulation unless they were prepared to
get more than they bargained for.

“I think I took him by surprise
being there, when I was a kid.” She frowned. She’d never really figured out why
he hadn’t killed her. Even in the darkness she’d seen the shocked expression in
his eyes. Of course, she shouldn’t have been there. Should never have been
peeping through that window from the fire escape. So she hadn’t made a sound
when he’d gathered her up—hadn’t wanted her mother or her mother’s lover to
find out she’d been sitting outside that window watching them.

She pushed down a sob that came out
of nowhere.

“How old was he? It was a
he
,
right?” Walker persisted.

Walker was a good-looking guy.
Shorter than Marsh, solid, square-jawed, there were lines at the corners of his
eyes that suggested he smiled a lot. Lucky him. She concentrated on him and not
his crane-like partner, nor the darkly intense man who exuded power even from a
room away. Hell, distance was no object for Marshall Hayes.

“It was definitely a guy.” She
conjured up old memories that were always fresh in her mind. “He had blunt
fingers, square hands.” She looked at her own tapered fingers, swallowed as she
recalled the intimate caress of his hand over the knife handle. “I don’t know
how old he was. Hell, I was nine. Anyone over sixteen was old back then.”

“Was he an adult?”

“Physically or legally? I don’t
know.” She ran her fingers through her hair, pulled. The room spun slightly
because she was so tired. “Why don’t you go get the police report? It’s bound
to have more details than I can remember.”

“We will,” Nicholl assured her with
a glare.