Elsbeth McCamy blinked, looked momentarily confused, then shook her head so hard her ski cap fell off. “He was my dearest mentor, a great man who had God’s ear and made me scream with pleasure when he made love to me. And you sent him to his death.”
As she flexed her finger around the trigger of the Beretta, Katie brought up her derringer and fired its two shots point-blank into Elsbeth’s chest.
Elsbeth stumbled backward, but she didn’t go down. “My God, you shot me! You miserable bitch, I won’t let you kill me like you did my husband!”
Katie threw herself at Elsbeth’s knees. She heard a gunshot close to her head. She could smell her singed hair burning as she used all her strength to shove Elsbeth down.
The front of Elsbeth’s coat was drenched with blood now. She raised the gun and fired toward Katie again, wildly now. Katie rolled into Elsbeth, pushing hard against her legs, throwing her arms up to dislodge the Beretta. She knew that at any moment a bullet would smash through her flesh.
There was a single shot, only one. Katie, her arms still pressing against Elsbeth’s knees, looked up and saw a frown of faint surprise on Elsbeth’s face. The frown was frozen in death. Slowly, she fell backward, landing hard. Katie jerked back and leaped to her feet. Her hip burned, and her heart was pounding.
She looked down at Elsbeth McCamy, surely dead this time, her eyes open, staring at nothing at all. Her beautiful hair spilled around her face. She looked very young, innocent even, without any evil or madness about her, just lying there on the ground, the front of her coat soaked with blood and the back of her head ruined.
She heard the sound of the cascading water and the wind whipping between the monuments. She heard the water running fast in the tidal basin, not fifty feet away. And her own harsh breathing, so deadened with relief that she couldn’t move.
She heard running feet. Katie turned to see the two FBI agents, panting, their guns still drawn. “You okay, Katie?”
“Yes, I am, Ollie. I’m very glad you came when you did. That was an excellent shot. I’m also very glad that you’re both all right. I didn’t know if she’d killed you.”
Agent Ollie Hamish shook his head, looking embarrassed and angry at himself.
Agent Ruth Warnecki patted his arm. She said to Katie even as she nodded over at Elsbeth, “She did something much smarter than try to kill us. She came right up to us, knocked on the window, and when Ollie here rolled it down, his hand on his gun, mind you, she told us she was your sister-in-law, that she had to speak to you about Sam, and she promised to keep a sharp eye out for anyone suspicious. We didn’t think anything of it. You’d think after all our years of being suspicious of anything that walked on two feet-but she was so believable, so young and nice-looking. We bolted out of the car when we heard the shots.”
Ollie Hamish pulled out his cell phone and dialed. “Hello, Savich? We’re here at the FDR Memorial. You’ll want to get down here real fast. You’ll want to call Detective Raven, too.”
“And Miles Kettering, please,” Katie said. She looked again at Elsbeth, then slowly sank down to the ground, clasped her hands around her knees, and bowed her head.
43
D etective Raven rose. “You guys like to live on the wild side, don’t you?”
Katie couldn’t move because Miles was holding her so tightly against his side she could barely breathe. “Oh yeah,” Katie said. “I live for excitement. This time though, I think I’d like to just lie in the sun for a good long while and not think about anything but my husband’s beautiful body.”
“Hmm,” Detective Raven said, startled. “Not just yet, okay? There’ll be more questions, more discussions, particularly with the D.A., so check with me before you go off to find a nice white beach.”
When he was out the door, whistling, Katie realized that Miles was holding her even more tightly and he was shaking. She was surprised, somehow, despite everything that had happened. She lightly touched her fingers to his face. “I made a small joke, Miles, just for you. It’s over now, really, it’s all over.”
He pulled her so close she could hear his heart pounding against hers. She raised her face and kissed him, and was kissing him a second time when he said into her mouth, “When I got that call from Savich I was so afraid I nearly passed out. Here we’ve been worried about the kids, and I guess-”
“I know. We’ve been so worried about them that we didn’t stop to think about how all this was affecting us.” He was still shaking. She kept holding him tight, kissing him until she felt him relax a bit. She smiled. “Do you want to know something, Miles?”
“No, not unless it’ll make me want to sing and dance. I can’t take any more bad stuff for a while.” He pressed his face against her neck. “Don’t tell me, Keely wants Sam’s room.”
“Oh no, we’ve made hers even more girlie girl now and I don’t think we could get her out if we tried. Just maybe, I hope, it is something that will make you want to dance and maybe hum a tune.”
She could feel his mouth grinning against her. “Okay, Cracker’s found a boyfriend and is moving out this afternoon?”
“Could be, but she hasn’t said anything to me about finding a guy and moving. Nope, it’s something else entirely.”
“All right, tell me.”
She said slowly, her voice dead serious now, “When I was facing Elsbeth and I knew she could raise that Beretta and shoot me just like that”-Katie snapped her fingers-“I knew for sure the last thing I wanted was to never see you or Sam or Keely again. I guess the bottom line here is that I love the kids and I love you, Miles.”
He was silent as a tomb, didn’t so much as flinch. He didn’t do anything at all. She couldn’t even feel his heart against her chest any longer.
She fidgeted, tapping her fingertips on his shoulder. “Miles?”
“Yeah?”
“Does that make you want to dance and sing?”
More silence, heavy winter silence.
“Miles? If you don’t say something, I’m going to have to toss you to the floor and sit on you.”
“That might be a good start,” he said and bit her earlobe.
She pushed away from him to see him grinning like a thief who’d just lifted Bill Gates’s wallet.
“Sit on me, Katie, do whatever you like. I don’t want to sing or dance right this minute, what I do want to do is strip you naked and do everything I can think of to your injured body.”
“My very serious declaration makes you horny?”
“Let me tell you what it makes me. I’m going to very gently help you upstairs to the bedroom, and then I’m going to feast. I’ll set the alarm for about the time Sam and Keely come home from school.”
As he carried her up the stairs, just like Rhett Butler, he whispered in her ear, “I love you, too, Katie.”
Since Miles forgot to set the alarm, when Sam and Keely came running into their bedroom, they stopped in their tracks and looked at each other. They looked at their parents, sound asleep, Katie on top of Miles, the blankets, thankfully, drawn up to their ears.
“Hey, Papa, why are you home this early?” When Miles mumbled something, and waved a hand at them, Sam and Keely jumped onto the bed, laughing.
EPILOGUE
Hey, Sheriff, where you been? You’ll freeze your butt out there.”
Sheriff Katie Kettering pulled off her gloves and tossed her cream-colored straw hat onto the small table next to Linnie’s station, given to her by Sam for Christmas after her old one was destroyed in November. “It’s cold but the butt isn’t frozen yet,” she said, rubbing her hands.
