“I marry them,” Nash barked. “I give them the perfect gown, and the perfect ending. Then, I preserve them in the perfect moment. Forever.” He ground his teeth and made a feral sound. “I created a legacy, and you ruined it!” A line of spittle landed on Marissa’s soft cheek.
Blake winced. His stomach churned. Marissa was paler than before. She barely moved. The fight was gone from her, and that was scarier than anything Nash could say. Blake needed to speed this up and get her off this mountain. “The first one you took to the chapel was your fiancée.”
“That’s what I said.”
Blake shook his head. The obvious finally clicked into place. “She’s the one I didn’t recognize.” Nash hadn’t begun killing immediately after her death, he’d taken her body to the chapel for her preservation in his “perfect moment.” When that didn’t satisfy him, he did it again, and again. “How did you do it? Steal her from the funeral home?”
“I made a donation to the grave digger’s college fund.”
Marissa’s small mouth bowed down.
Blake inched closer, keeping the distraction going. Enticing Nash to stay focused on him instead of his captive. “Why are you doing this now? You’d stopped for so long.”
Nash heaved an angry sigh. “First, you promised to kill me. Then, you chased me for five years. Five. Years. I couldn’t stop moving. Couldn’t settle in or make a place for myself anywhere, then one day you just quit. You moved on. What did you think would happen when you did that? Did you think I’d get a new hobby? Collect trains? Build ships in bottles?”
So, it was Blake’s fault that Nash was at it again. He’d had a hand in the jogger’s murder and Marissa’s continued agony. His heart ached at the helplessness. At his utter inability to go back and change anything. He couldn’t make those things right. But he could end this. “If this is between us, then let her go.”
Nash shook his head. “No. You gave me time, and I got to know her. We fell in love.” He spread his fingers wider across Marissa’s ribs, skimming the pad of his thumb over her breast until Blake longed to break the digit off. “I knew the first moment I saw her that she had been worth waiting for,” Nash said. “I got a little overzealous and took a subpar substitute last month when this one changed her routine.” He made a droll face. “Plus, I was a little rusty, but again, that was your fault. Not mine.”
Blake’s fingers twitched with the need to pull his hidden weapon and fire. “You’re not getting out of this alive, Nash. Backup is on the way. It’s only a matter of time.”
“I don’t expect to get out alive,” he said flatly. Nash lowered the knife and used dirty fingers to part his jacket at the zipper, freeing the material from between his body and Marissa’s. A blood-soaked patch clung to his side. Nash raised his eyebrows.
“Looks like someone shot you,” Blake deadpanned. “You should probably get that looked at.”
“It’s infected. That’s a point for you. I can’t go to a hospital. You’ve put my face and my truck all over the news. More points for you. You got ahead of me this time, but the game’s not over.” His brows furrowed and his mouth bent down in contempt. “I am taking this one before I go. I see how you look at her. I’ve seen you touch her. I know you want her, but she’s mine.”
Blake’s gaze slid to Marissa. He hadn’t had a chance to tell her how he truly felt about her. That he’d fallen in love with her. That he needed her in his life because she made him want to be a better man, a better agent, and generally more than he thought was possible without her. If he screwed up again, he’d never get that chance.
Marissa’s fierce expression set him off balance. Where he’d expected to find fear and agony, there was resolute determination. She narrowed her eyes on Blake and lifted one finger from Nash’s arm, where she clung for balance.
Blake flicked his gaze to the seething killer, and Nash repositioned the blade against her ribs, ready to cut.
“Say goodbye,” Nash demanded.
Marissa lifted a second finger from his arm and began to suck and puff air in a wild show of panic.
Nash turned his attention to her as she lifted a third finger from his arm and buckled her knees. He struggled to catch her weight with both hands, but she was limp and falling. A beautiful, brilliant dead weight that had completely broken Nash’s concentration.
A deafening roar blasted through the cave as Blake’s finger connected with the trigger of his hidden gun. Nash’s head thrusted back, and the walls of the cave rattled. Nash landed on Marissa in a shower of rock and debris from above.
Blake dove to her side, tossing rubble and throwing Nash’s body away from hers. He kicked the hunting blade through the cave’s open door, and hoisted Marissa into his arms. “I’ve got you.”
She tied her hands around his neck and pressed her lips to his cheek. “You did it,” she whispered before resting her head against his swelling chest. “I knew you would.”
A barrage of frantic voices beat against the wind, echoing and reverberating in the hills. The gunshot had surely drawn his team’s attention. Blake strode carefully through the cave door and into the rain. His men and a mass of deputies jogged along a plateau several yards up. “Agent Garrett,” someone called. “We heard gunfire.”
“We need a medic,” Blake called back. He adjusted Marissa in his grip. “She needs stitches and an IV. Warm blankets. There’s a possible broken ankle, multiple lacerations. Extensive bruising and probably head trauma.” Her legs dangled over the crook of his arm.
“Was she shot?” West called, running full speed along the plateau above.
“No.” Blake shook his head. “Nash is dead. He’s in the cave.”
Blake’s men continued past him
