The Survivor (13 page)

Affection.

Tears burned in her eyes and she determinedly blinked them away.

Time was something we didn't want to waste back then,
Vernon had said. And she didn't want to waste any more of it, either.

A strange noise reached her ears and she leaned back and looked at Lex.

A frown furrowed his brow, then comprehension dawned and his gaze slammed into hers. “Yeager's phone,” he said, scrambling forward.

Bess moved quickly out of the way and, not bothering to grab a towel, hurried after him into the house. She found Lex in the kitchen, completely nude, Yeager's cell phone next to his ear.

“It was his mother again,” Lex said. “She's left a voice mail.”

She watched his expression go from alert attentiveness to lethal. “She's helping him,” he said, swearing
hotly. “She's in Alpharetta, on her way to Roswell, and wants to know why he hasn't checked in.”

Bess frowned. “Roswell?” Dripping wet, she grabbed her map off the kitchen counter and started comparing it to her client list. Judith Henkins, Bess thought and an image suddenly loomed large in her mind. The counter, the Coca-Cola sign. It had been in her old store next to her house.

Oh, God.

He disconnected. “Bess?”

“I know where it is and she's going to get to it first.”

“Oh, hell, no, she isn't,” Lex said. “Call your contact now and let them know what's going on. Evidently she's been extremely nice, telling people that she was your grandfather's sister, and no one has asked any questions. She just ridiculed her son's conspicuous approach and told him to call her immediately. I'm going to contact the police and see if I can get them to delay any phone call he might make to her so he can't alert her to the fact that we've got him and are now undoubtedly aware of her. If she feels cornered, who knows what she might do.”

Bess nodded and grabbed her phone, then quickly dialed Judith's number and swore when she didn't get an answer.

“Dry off and get dressed,” he said. “You can keep
calling her from the car and we'll alert the police over there, as well.”

She was so upset she knew she wouldn't have thought of that. Her nerves stretched to the breaking point, Bess made quick work of getting back into her clothes and didn't bother trying to do anything to her hair. Three minutes later they were in the car, Honey looking mystified, and headed toward Roswell.

“How long does it take to get there?” Lex asked her.

“About twenty minutes if we don't have any traffic issues.”

“And from Alpharetta to Roswell?”

She felt sick. “About ten to fifteen.”

He muttered a hot oath.

“We're not going to make it in time, are we?” she said, frantically dialing Judith again. “We're going to be too late.”

Lex practically stood on the gas, grim determination in every line of his face. “Not if I can help it.”

E
VEN THOUGH HE KNEW THAT
it wouldn't have made a difference if they hadn't been at her house having sex, Lex nevertheless felt a bit guilty all the same. Logically, he knew that until that call had come in, they'd had no idea that Yeager's mother had been in on the scheme with him, or that she'd been going around, canvassing the northern part of the state. No one had called because she'd been nice, nonthreatening and polite.

In between frantically dialing Judith, Bess had made a few calls to some of her other clients and they'd all confirmed that an older woman, who'd claimed to be her grandfather's sister, had been coming by. She'd given the same “rare books” spiel as her son, but she'd delivered it with a jar of homemade strawberry preserves and a smile.

Lex hadn't met her—yet, he qualified—but any
one who was capable of canvassing an area with the intent to steal something of value from someone who didn't know its worth was a particularly nasty kind of thief. She wasn't any better than her low-life scum of a son, Lex thought.

Bess growled an angry sound and disconnected her cell phone, then hit Redial again. “I can't get her,” she said. “But I have to keep trying.”

“We're almost there. Just a few more minutes.”

“She's not answering because she's not in the house. The bitch has already gotten there. Oh, Lex. What if we're too late?”

“So long as she's not hurt, it'll be fine, Bess,” he reassured her. “We know who the woman is, we can find out where she lives. If we miss her here, we'll make sure to get her at some point between here and her house.” In fact, he'd call Payne now. He should have already done that, but was afraid his boss would wonder what they'd been doing with the downtime between dropping Yeager off and now, and he really didn't want to go into it while Bess was in the car.

He would have to at some point, he knew, but…not in front of her.

He dialed Payne and quickly brought him up to speed on the situation. “We're about two minutes out, but Bess can't get Mrs. Henkins on the phone and suspects that it's because Yeager's mother has already arrived and they've gone out to her shop. I've
called the local police and alerted them, but would like some Ranger Security backup en route now to Mrs. Yeager's house.”

“Done,” Payne told him. “Anything else?”

“No, that should get it.”

“Update me when you can,” he said. “And tell Bess I said we'll make this right no matter what.”

Meaning that he'd personally give Mrs. Henkins the value of the book if he botched this. Lex whistled low and had a whole new dimension of respect for his boss. He told Bess what Payne had said and, to his horror, saw her bottom lip tremble.

Oh, God, no. Not tears. Anything but tears. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said soothingly, reaching over to put a finger against her lip to quell the quiver. “It's going to be okay. We're going to take care of this. Do you believe me?”

“I want to,” she said. “But I'm so afraid that this psychotic woman is going to do something horrible and hurt Mrs. Henkins.”

“Bess, she's managed to charm everyone else. She's wily enough to know that you get more flies with honey than you do vinegar.”

“I know, but—”

“So she's not going to change her MO now. It's working for her. Mrs. Henkins is going to be fine. I promise you. I have a gut feeling about this.”

That cracked a smile. “You and Elsie,” she said
with a weak eye roll. “I'm surrounded by amateur psychics.”

“I've never claimed to be psychic,” he said. “I just try to pay more attention to my instincts. If I'd listened to them in Iraq I wouldn't have taken those hits to the shoulder and nearly died.” There. He'd told her. She'd heard it at Vernon's, of course, but that was different. That wasn't him trusting her enough to share it directly.

“You don't have to tell me anything, Lex,” she said. “I know you don't want to talk about it.”

“It's not easy,” he admitted. “I thought for sure that I was going to die, was completely convinced that my life was over.” He swallowed. “And you want to know the terrible part? When they told me I could medic out, that I could leave, I was
happy
. I was relieved.” He swallowed. “Because nearly dying had made me a coward.”

She whirled on him, her eyes rounding with outrage. “A coward? Are you insane? Nearly dying didn't make you a coward! It made you appreciate life enough to want to take yourself out of the line of fire! It made you want to live! That's not cowardly, you fool. That's called self-preservation.”

He wished he could look at it that way, Lex thought skeptically. It would be so much easier to live with what had happened.

“Let me ask you something, Lex. How long were
you in the military? How many years? How many tours of duty?”

“I spent four years in ROTC, then eight years in active service. Four tours of duty in that time.”

“Because we've been at war. Because your country needed you. Did you ever at any time turn around and run from your enemy? Did you hide and watch other people die to save yourself?”

He recoiled, horrified. “No,” he said. “Of course not.”

“Do you know why?” she asked. “You know why you didn't do those things? Because you're not a coward, because you are a man of honor who fought for his country and sacrificed a part of himself for it.” She shook her head and a tear slipped down one cheek. “Don't ever call yourself a coward again, because that's not who you are at all.” She was quiet for a moment. “You know who was a coward? A selfish coward?” she asked him, and he knew what she was going to say, thanks to Vernon.

“My mother,” she said. “I told you that my parents were dead, but I didn't tell you what happened.” She released a small breath. “My father died in a car accident when I was seven. A year later, to the day, my mother put a bullet through her brain. Because she was too afraid of living on her own and too wrapped up in her own grief to care about me. She was a coward, a weak selfish one who was sick,
I know, but it still applies.
She
was a coward. You, on the other hand, simply wanted to live.” She smiled sadly. “And there's no shame in that.”

The pain in her voice, the sadness in her eyes would have brought him to his knees had he been standing. No wonder she didn't let herself get attached to people, Lex thought. Because people, even her grandfather when he'd died, always let her down. That's why no one had ever snapped her up. That's why she hadn't married. That's why she'd put him off with her I-don't-have-any-expectations speech.

Because she didn't.

And she never let herself hope that anyone was going to be different—even him—because in her life it had never happened.

He didn't know when he'd felt this helpless. He didn't know how to comfort her. Didn't know how to make it right for her.

But he wished he did.

“Turn here,” she said, gesturing to a long rutted driveway on his left. She peered ahead. “The white car is Judith's. The blue one I don't recognize, so it's probably Yeager's mother.”

Anticipation spiked as he pulled in behind the blue car, deliberately blocking it so the driver would have a hard time pulling out.

“Are you armed?” she said.

He nodded. To his shock, so was she. She pulled
a pistol from her purse and slipped it beneath the waistband of her jeans. “Bess, where did you get that? You—”

“I know what I'm doing, Lex,” she said, and there was a cool assurance in her voice that told him it was the truth.

He shook his head. Was there anything this woman couldn't do?

“Let's go,” she said. “I'm sure they're in the shop.”

Determined to do some part of his job correctly, Lex took point and put himself between Bess and the shop. Honey, of course, did the same thing for him. He really should have left her in the car, but didn't have the heart. She could sense his tension and had been nosing his elbow the entire way here.

“Mrs. Henkins?” Lex called as he walked carefully into her shop.

“Yes,” the older woman called.

Bess came around him, ducking beneath his arm. “Judith, I've been trying to call.”

Judith looked momentarily confused. “Bess?”

The woman with her—Mrs. Yeager—whirled around and smoothly pulled a gun from her purse. “Well, well,” she said. “You couldn't leave well enough alone, could you? You just had to interfere.”

Seeing the gun in Mrs. Yeager's hand, Judith gasped. “Mrs. Ogletree! Put that gun away at once!”

“I wouldn't have had to draw it at all if they hadn't
shown up.” She glanced at Bess. “Now someone is going to get hurt and it's going to be all your fault.”

 

B
ESS'S HEART DROPPED
to her feet and, for one terrifying moment, she thought she might faint. Then Lex found her icy fingers and gave them a squeeze and the comfort from that one gesture restored her in a way she would have never believed. A peace came over her like a long shimmering veil.

“I've got this,” he whispered, and she knew it was true. She knew in that instant that everything was going to be fine.

“Mrs. Henkins, my name is Lex Sanborn and I'm with Ranger Security. My firm was hired by Bess after someone broke into her shop and stole the external hard drive from her computer.”

“It doesn't matter why you're here,” Mrs. Yeager sneered. She held up the book and wagged it significantly. “I've already got it. It's too late. She's going to sell it to me.”

“I never said that—” Judith protested.

Mrs. Yeager whirled on her and wagged the gun in her face. “Whether you sell it to me or not, I'm taking it.”

“No, you are not,” Bess told her. “Your son is already in jail and the police are en route here now. In the event that you manage to evade them, then Ranger Security—who don't operate with the same
set of rules as regular law enforcement—will follow you to the ends of the earth. You will
never
be able to sell that book and you'll
never
see a penny of the money.”

Judith frowned. “Money? What money?” she asked. “It's just an old Bible.”

Mrs. Yeager cackled madly. “See?” she said. “She doesn't deserve the money! She doesn't even know what it's worth!”

“But it's still hers,” Lex pointed out. “Now put the gun away and set the book down. I really don't want to hurt you.” But the lead in his voice said he would if he had to.

Evidently smart enough to take him seriously, but not intelligent enough to do what he said, Mrs. Yeager turned and aimed the gun right at Judith's head.

Bess gasped and her friend's face went white with fear.

“You move over against the back wall,” Mrs. Yeager told Judith, indicating the space farthermost from the door. “And you go with her,” she said to Lex. She looked at Bess. “You're coming with me.”

Bess frowned. “What?”

She gestured angrily with the gun. “You're coming with me,” she repeated angrily, then sneered at Lex. “Insurance to keep him from doing anything stupid.”

Honey growled and crouched low.

“No, Honey,” Lex told the dog, and, though it was clear he didn't want to follow the woman's order, it was also clear that he didn't see an alternative. Reluctantly, he and Bess did as she said, Honey growling all the while. The hair was standing up on the back of her neck and Bess knew the only thing that was keeping the dog from attacking Mrs. Yeager was Lex's command.

“That's it,” Mrs, Yeager said. “Do what I say and no one will get hurt.”

With the gun still firmly aimed at Bess, she started inching toward the door. “Come on,” she said. “In the event he tries to be a hero, I want you between me and him.”

“I don't understand,” Judith called desperately. “Why do you want that book so badly?”

“Because it's a Wicked Bible, you old fool! Ever heard of it?”

Judith shook her head. “No.”

“It's also called the Adulterous Bible and the Sinner's Bible.” Seemingly unable to resist showing her superiority, Mrs. Yeager carefully opened the book to the right place and held it up for Bess to see. “Look there,” she said. “Read it. Exodus 20:14.”

Bess did, not seeing a choice.

Judith gasped. “That's not right,” she said. “It's a mistake.”

Mrs. Yeager smiled malevolently. “That's a hundred-
thousand-dollar mistake,” she said. “And I am very much looking forward to cashing in on it.”

If possible, Judith paled even more. “A hundred thousand dollars? You're telling me that old Bible is worth a hundred thousand dollars?”

“I am,” she said, then dragging Bess with her, turned and darted out the door with more speed and agility than Bess would have imagined, given her age.

Once they were outside, Mrs. Yeager turned and shoved Bess to the ground, then ran. Bess immediately bolted up and gave chase. She could hear Lex behind her, gaining ground.

Bess withdrew her gun and trained it on Mrs. Yeager's retreating back. “Stop or I'll shoot!” Bess yelled.

Mrs. Yeager turned and, upon seeing the gun, fired a shot in Bess's direction. Time slowed to a crawl and suddenly everything went into slow motion. Mrs. Yeager's eyes widened with anger and, seemingly incensed that Bess would point a gun at her, fired again. The shot rang out, and with a furious shout, Lex jumped in front of her, shoving her to safety. At the same time, Honey leaped in front of Lex.

“Honey!” Lex bellowed as the dog yelped.

“I'll take care of her,” Bess told him. “Get that bitch!”

Lex put on a burst of speed and tackled the old
woman to the ground before she could get to her car. Another shot rang out, scaring more years off Bess's life, but there was no gasp of pain. Seconds later, Lex had wrenched the weapon away from Yeager's mother and jerked her to her feet.