Love at First Flight (32 page)

Juliana began to cry as she struggled
against the iron grip he had on her arm.

He smacked her hard across the face. “Shut
up!
Shut the fuck up!
”

Falling back on the bed, Juliana saw
stars and was too stunned to cry or even scream as he paced the room. When the
haze of fear cleared a bit, she realized the cops wouldn't be checking on her
again for close to an hour. If she was going to get out of this, she was going
to have to do it on her own.

“I need to go to the bathroom.”

He looked her over to see if she was up
to something before he gestured for her to go ahead. “Hurry up, and no
bullshit. I want to get this over with and get the fuck out of here. Leave the
door open.”

Her face throbbing from where he'd hit
her, Juliana did as she was told. It took all her fortitude to get through the
motions of going to the bathroom. She was terrified he would take advantage of
her half-dressed state to make good on his threat to rape her, but this was her
only chance to save herself.

Slowly, so she wouldn't attract his
attention, she reached up to the tiny cabinet above the toilet paper roll. She
remembered Michael laughing when he showed her the phone the previous owner
installed in this and every bathroom in the house. Relying only on her sense of
touch, she lifted the receiver and dialed 911.

Hearing the operator say, “911, please
state your emergency,” she put the phone down and flushed the toilet. With
adrenaline coursing through her, she pulled her pants back up and willed her
shaking hands to button them. Only when she had her clothes back in place was
she able to breathe again.

“What the fuck are you doing in there?”

“I'm coming.” She forced her trembling
legs to move and prayed to God the 911 operator had done her job and notified
the police.

Escalada grabbed her.

She whimpered at the feel of a cold
metal edge resting against her throat.

He ground his erection into her back. “Mmm,
mmm,
mmm,
I sure do wish I had time
to have me some of you,” he growled against her ear. “Your boyfriend's going to
come home to a big mess tonight. No more saucy piece of ass for him.”

“Freeze!”

Juliana shifted her eyes to find three
cops in the doorway with their guns drawn.

Escalada tightened his hold on Juliana.
He backed them up to the sliding door and opened it with his free hand.

She felt a burning sensation against her
neck and real-ized he had cut her.

“Let her go, Escalada,” one of the cops
ordered. He dragged her outside to the lower deck. The cops followed them.

Her shirt became wet as a warm, sticky
trail of blood accumulated in a pool at her collarbone. The combination of the
cold and the fear had Juliana shaking even as she fought to remain still
against the knife.

“Let her go!” the cops ordered again.

“Back
off or I swear to God, I'll kill her!”

A shot rang out, and Juliana screamed
when Escalada slumped over her, knocking her down as the knife fell from his hand
and clattered onto the wood deck.

He landed on top of her.

Shrieking, she clawed at him.

The cops moved quickly to free her. One
of them gathered her into his arms and carried her inside while another radioed
for paramedics.

“It's okay, Juliana. We got him. You're
safe.”

She slumped against him and lost
consciousness.

CHAPTER 27

MICHAEL WAS HAVING LUNCH WITH HIS
COLLEAGUES AT a deli across the street from the courthouse when Officer John
Tanner rushed over to tell him that a 911 call had been made from his house.

He jumped up. “Juliana,” he gasped,
running with Tanner from the restaurant to a cruiser outside. “What happened?
Is she all right?”

“We don't know yet. All I know is there
was a call, but the caller didn't say anything. Her detail was going in when I
came to get you.”

Michael got into the car with John who
flipped on the siren to make a path through heavy midday traffic. During the
interminable ride, they heard snippets over the police radio that had Michael
paralyzed with fear: gunshots reported on Chester Street, a call for
paramedics, two victims.

Oh
God, please. Please.

John's cell phone rang with a call from
a member of Juliana's detail asking if he had Michael. “We're on our way to the
scene,” John replied. He was told Juliana was being taken to Hopkins.

“How bad is it?” Michael urged John to
ask.

“They don't think it's life-threatening.”

Michael sagged into the seat, his
stomach roiling with nausea. They don't
think
it's life threatening. That meant they didn't know for sure.
Please, God. Please don't let her die.

They arrived at the hospital at the same
time as the ambulance. Michael was out of the car before it stopped. He raced
over to the ambulance and for a second time fought the urge to pass out at the
sight of a ghostly pale Juliana covered in blood. This time, though, she was
unconscious, and the cut on her neck was still bleeding profusely. There was
something else all over her that looked an awful lot like brain matter.

“Oh,” he whispered. “Oh, God.”

John pulled Michael back so the
paramedics could get her inside. They hustled her down the hall and into one of
the trauma rooms. The nurses stopped Michael outside the door.

“What
the hell happened?”
he
screamed when two of the cops from Juliana's detail rushed into the hallway.

“Escalada. We figure he came down from
the roof deck. It's close enough to the house next door that he could've
jumped.”

“But the alarm was on,” Michael said. “How
did he get in? How did he get to her?”

“The alarm was off.”

Michael shook his head. “No way. She
wouldn't have shut it off.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Maguire. I don't know
what to say. It was off when we went in after the 911 call. Somehow she managed
to get to a phone. There's no doubt that saved her life.”

Based on what Michael saw a minute ago,
he had considerable reason to wonder if her life had in fact been saved. He sat
down hard in a chair in the hallway. “Where is he now? Escalada?”

 
“He's
dead. One of our guys got off a shot from the roof next door.”

Michael felt a brief moment of relief at
that news. At least their other problem had been solved. “Where was Juliana
when they shot him?”

The cop looked down at the floor, his
face tight with tension.

“Where
was she?”

“He had her, with a knife to her throat.
That's how she got cut.”

“Oh my God.” Michael put his head down
to stop the rush of nausea that struck when he realized how easily the cop
could have missed Escalada and hit her instead, or even both of them. Michael
kept his head down and prayed like he never had in his life. Even when Tom
Houlihan came in and sat next to him, Michael kept his head in his hands and
never stopped praying.

“Should you call her family, Michael?”
Houlihan asked.

Michael shook his head and ran a
trembling hand through his hair. “She wouldn't want them here. You've got to keep
her name out of the reports, Tom.”

“It's already taken care of.”

After what seemed like hours to Michael,
a doctor finally emerged from the room where Juliana was being treated. Michael
jumped up.

“Are you with her?” the doctor asked.

Without hesitation, Michael said, “She's
my fiancee.”

“We've got the bleeding stopped, and
I've called in a plastic surgeon to suture her.”

“She'll be all right?” That was the only
thing the doctor failed to say and the only thing Michael needed to hear.

“She lost quite a bit of blood, but she
should be fine in a day or two. One millimeter deeper and we'd be telling a
different story. She got very lucky.”

Tom shook the doctor's hand. “Thank you.”

When his legs failed him, Michael sank
down to the chair.

***

Juliana opened her eyes in the dark room
and tried to figure out what was pinching her finger. She raised it to discover
a medical device clipped to it, and realized she was in the hospital.
Attempting to turn her head, she winced when the wound on her neck burned in
protest.

Michael's head rested on the hospital
bed next to her arm. She raised her hand to run her fingers through his hair.

His head whipped up. “Juliana... Oh
God...”

Juliana held out her arms to him, and he
crawled right up onto the bed to hold her as deep sobs shook them both.

“Are you all right, baby?” he asked when
he could finally speak again. Running his hand over the bruise on her face, he
brushed back her hair. “Does anything hurt?”

She tried to shake her head and winced.

“Don't move your head.” He kissed her
cheek, her lips, and her neck just above the large white bandage that covered
the wound. 'Thank God you're all right.”

“Is he dead?”

“Yeah.”

“It's my fault,” she said with a fresh
burst of tears. He brushed them away. “How can you say that?”

“I turned off the alarm so I could go
see what was thumping on the deck. I thought the lounge chairs had blown over,
and I went up to get them. I shouldn't have shut off the alarm.”

“So that's why,” Michael said with a
sigh. “None of us could figure out why it was off. Honey, no one imagined he'd
try to get in through the roof. It's not your fault. If anything, we all think
you're amazing for figuring out a way to make the 911 call. How did you do
that?”

“I told him I had to go to the bathroom
when I thought of the phone in the cabinet.”

Michael released a ragged deep breath. “I
almost took the phone out of there when I first moved in. I thought it was so
dumb to have phones in the bathrooms.”

“I remembered you telling me that.”

He caressed her bruised cheek. “What
happened to your face?”

“He hit me when I tried to get away from
him. He said he wanted...”

Michael's hand froze. “What?”

She looked away from him, her face
burning with embarrassment. “Some of what you've been getting.”

“Baby, did he, I mean,
Jesus...
”

“No. He just did a lot of talking about
it.”

He held her even more tightly. “You
must've been so scared.”

“I thought I'd never see you again,
Michael,” she whispered. “I just wanted to see you again.”

“I'm so sorry. This is all my fault. I
knew it wasn't safe to keep you with me, but I've been so selfish. I'm so crazy
in love with you that I was greedy for whatever time I could get with you. It
didn't even matter that I'd put your life in danger.”

She stroked his face. “We were both
greedy for the same things. It's not your fault. You tried to get me to leave a
bunch of times. It was my choice to stay. It still is.”

“You're not staying after this. No way.
I'm putting my foot down.”

She smiled. “We'll see.”

“I mean it, Juliana. This is it.”

“Okay.” She would fight that battle
later.

***

Michael managed to fend off the police
who wanted a statement from Juliana. He told them she would talk to them in the
morning but not before. No fewer than four cops stood guard in the hallway
outside the room where Michael slept on the hospital bed with Juliana in his
arms.

He woke up in the middle of the night in
a cold sweat after dreaming that Juliana had been killed instead of Escalada.
At some point, a nurse must have covered him with a blanket. Because he was
shaking and breathing hard, he got up so he wouldn't wake Juliana. After he
splashed cold water on his face in the bathroom, he sat down in a chair,
dropped his head into his palms, and gave in to the need to weep.

When he thought about all the things
that could have happened... she might have forgotten about the phone in the
bathroom, Escalada might have raped her—maybe even more than once—or cut her
throat. The cops could have shot her instead of that animal Escalada. Each scenario
was more chilling than the last, and they ran through his mind like a horror
movie.

“Hey,” she whispered from the bed. “Where'd
you go?”

He wiped his face and got up to go to
her. “I'm here. I'm right here.”

She took his hand to bring him back on
the bed. “What is it, Michael? What's wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong as long as you're all
right. I love you.”

She curved her hand around the back of
his neck to draw him down to her. “I love you, too,” she said, touching her
lips to his. “So much.”