away from her mouth.
The Santa hat bobbed. White gloved fingers gripped the steering wheel. She saw his face in her mind, had to swallow the fear in her throat before she could utter his name.
When her vocal cords finally cooperated, the best she could do was whisper a soft, “Dylan?”
“I’M TELLING YOU, JACOB, the word’s not out yet,” O’Keefe shouted at him on his static-filled cell phone. “Harris is keeping a lid on it for now. Mayor’s orders.”
“Someone’s got her, Mick.” Jacob shoved through the door to the underground lot where he’d parked. He dug for keys as he ran. “Shera Barret said he was wearing a Santa suit.”
“Shera? Dammit, Jacob, her husband knows the mayor…”
But Jacob stopped him. “I ran into Barret in the lobby. It’s not him. It has to be Hoag. Motive, means, opportunity-he’s got it all. He’s had it all from the start. And there’s no reason to think he’d know what went down between Critch and North tonight.”
O’Keefe went silent. Jacob yanked open his door, started the engine and peeled out. He didn’t notice the red envelope on the passenger seat until it fell over. Swearing, he put his phone on speaker and hit the brakes.
“What?” O’Keefe demanded.
Jacob tore into the envelope and drew out the card. It was a drawing of a woman with a rough-cut photograph of Romana’s face pasted to it. She was lying in the snow surrounded by mistletoe leaves. The bullet hole in her chest spurted blood. A red arrow indicated that he should open the card.
“What is it, Jacob?” O’Keefe shouted. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you.” Eyes glued to the bloody scrawl, Jacob read the words. Then he tossed the card aside and hit the siren. He responded to O’Keefe’s repeated demands with a grim, “I know where he took her.”
“AND SO WE WAIT, ROMANA, at the scene of the crime.”
The tip of Dylan’s Santa hat stood straight up thanks to a wind that managed to blow in all directions at once.
Romana’s teeth chattered so hard she could scarcely form words, let alone sentences.
“Scene of the crime,” Dylan spat again. “Not where Belinda died, although that was one hell of a crime scene, but where Warren should have killed Knight. Where you stopped him from doing it. Where you aided and abetted Belinda’s murderer, Officer Grey. The crime that predicated the crime that took my sister’s life.”
“Jacob didn’t shoot her.”
He’d tossed her down on a snow-covered trash can. For five long minutes, he’d been storming back and forth in front of her. Now his contempt spewed out in a bark of laughter. “Jacob didn’t do it,” he mimicked. “Jacob didn’t do it. Say It Until You Believe-is that your motto? Man, you’re going to wind up so dead.”
Was there any point telling him about his brother-in-law?
Romana’s lips felt numb. So did her wrists where the ropes dug in.
“Phone the hospital. Better yet, phone Jacob’s captain. He’ll tell you that both Warren Critch and Patrick North have been arrested and are under police guard.”
“Lies. Total bull. You’re trying to save yourself and that murdering lover of yours.”
She willed her teeth not to clack together. “Critch told me he sent only four cards. He told me that, Dylan, while he was lying shot on the floor in Patrick North’s house.”
“He wrote four cards,” Dylan corrected, “and sent them to me. I rewrote them, drove to Kentucky and mailed them to you. The last two were entirely my own.”
“But don’t you see, Critch stopped writing them because he suspected…”
“He didn’t suspect anything. He wimped out. Prison broke him. Okay, fine, that happens, but it wasn’t going to end because his balls up and deserted him.” Whipping out a hand, Dylan grabbed the front of her coat and yanked her face up into his. “Tune in, Romana. You’re going to die here. Don’t let the last thought that ever runs through that pretty head of yours be one of stupid, blind denial.”
Behind him, in the region of an ancient market wall, Romana sensed a movement. Didn’t see it-even the best eyes couldn’t hope to penetrate the curtain of swirling white flakes-but felt certain something within the white shifted position.
“You’re right,” she agreed before he could release her and turn. “I should have handled the situation differently. But it was my job to help him. That’s what we were taught at the Academy, right? Always help an officer in trouble.”
“You helped him, all right,” he snarled into her face. “You got Warren to back down and made it possible for Knight to kill Belinda two days later. She phoned me after they had lunch. She told me Knight wanted her dead.”
“She didn’t mean that literally, Dylan. Jacob wouldn’t get her a restraining order, so she got angry and…”
“We were a team, Belinda and me.” He spoke through his teeth now. Fury and sorrow mingled. Fury won as he gave her a head-snapping shake. “She was all the family I had. I protected her, my beautiful baby sister.”
Step-sister, Romana almost said, but held her tongue. Truthfully, it was the only part of this tragedy that had a touching aspect. Belinda had been family. And she’d been taken from him.
The shadow within the snow curtain moved again. Obviously Dylan expected Jacob to show up here. Just as obviously he hadn’t expected him to do it so soon.
He shoved her away in disgust, but only executed a half turn.
Romana wriggled forward on the trash can lid. Dylan hadn’t bound her ankles, only her wrists behind her back. If she could draw him close again…
Wind slapped at her cheeks and blew her hair around like wild streamers. Dylan paced, a caged animal once more. The movement behind the snow stopped.
“You did all of it, didn’t you?” she said. “Critch hid out while you threatened us. Did he even know?”
Dylan cast her a scathing look as he passed. “Warren is a damned ostrich. He saw what he chose to see and did what I, his concerned brother-in-law, encouraged him to do. South America was his best option, better than endless years of parole. Trade a ball and chain for the freedom of his youth. Make a fresh start. Leave the past behind.”
“You talked him into jumping parole?”
“And waiting for the false documents I would happily provide.”
“He was suspicious of you.”
“Oh, more than suspicious. I think he followed me the day I slipped the sixth card into your purse. He never said anything, but then why would he? It wasn’t like he could turn me in. Okay, I impersonated him. I was only building on what he’d started. When that prison door clanged shut behind him six years ago, he wanted you and Jacob dead.”
“But he mellowed.”
“No, he melted. He went all soft and gooey. Didn’t matter, I was there to take up the slack. It’ll all come out as it should when Knight gets here. You die, he dies, Warren escapes to South America and I go on-the grieving brother who wasn’t stupid enough, despite what his Academy instructors believed, to let himself be followed or his tapped phone rat him out.”
Romana caught a glimpse of Jacob then, in her peripheral vision. It had to be Jacob. She knew how he moved. She also knew that Dylan was pumped on adrenaline and not about to be taken down easily.
She wriggled forward a little more, knew she was close to the edge of the frozen can.
Keep talking, she told herself. Forget fear and pain. Think of Jacob. Think of something.
She pitched her voice low while still pretending to shout. “Aren’t you worried that someone will see you here, Dylan?”
“What?”
“What?” she called back.
Pent-up frustration made his movements jerky. He swung toward her at the exact moment she gave her butt one last twist on the lid.
“What are you…?” he began, then growled as the can toppled sideways and sent her tumbling onto a snowy mound.
When he reached down to snatch her upright, she rolled onto her back and planted her foot squarely in his groin.
