But Jocelyn never had a chance to execute what she clearly intended to do. Grabbing her from the side, Jackson grappled for the weapon with the woman.
A shot went off, digging into the far wall as he managed to elevate the deranged Jocelyn’s arms. A second shot went wild, hitting the ceiling.
There was no telling where the next one would have gone if Jackson hadn’t swung a right cross directly to Jocelyn’s chin, knocking her unconscious. Damien’s criminally deranged, jealous sister crumpled to the floor as Jackson finally pulled the gun out of her hand.
Almost beside himself, Winston cried, “This—this isn’t what it looks like, Detective.” He was all but gasping for air as he looked down at his daughter, anticipating the depth of the scandal that was to come.
“Oh, we think it’s exactly what it looks like,” Brianna informed the billionaire.
Sweat was popping up along Winston’s high forehead. It was obvious that he was frantically looking for a way to perform damage control. “Look, there’s still time to fix this. To make it right,” he cried, close to begging. He grabbed Brianna’s arm. “If you just—”
Brianna yanked her arm away. She didn’t want to hear it. She knew the way the man’s mind worked, and she was not about to listen to talk of bribes, monetary or otherwise, tendered in order to bury this scandal as deeply as the bodies of all those poor victims had once been buried.
“I suggest you just stop talking, Mr. Aurora,” she told him coldly. “You’re only going to make this worse for yourself and your homicidal offspring.”
“You won’t get any of it to stick!” Winston cried frantically. “None of it! I’ll make you sorry you ever crossed me!”
“I wouldn’t bet the farm on that,” Jackson told him as he put handcuffs on Damien as well as Damien’s unconscious sister. “Or whatever it is you’ll have left to bet after the board at the Aurora Corporation is finished voting,” he added.
Brianna called the precinct for backup, then closed her phone and looked up at Jackson.
“I don’t remember ever seeing you smile that widely before,” she commented.
Jackson was about to shrug off her observation and say something flippant in response when he took a closer look at her. There was blood on her forehead. And it was alarmingly fresh.
“Hey, you’re bleeding,” he cried. He examined her left eyebrow, where there was a small trickle of blood. “Did the bullet graze you?” he demanded, framing her head with his hands for a closer look.
“I don’t know. I guess it must have,” Brianna answered, although in all the excitement, she hadn’t felt anything.
“How do you feel?” he asked, taking out a handkerchief and dabbing at the blood on her forehead.
“Honestly?” Her grin couldn’t be any wider. “On top of the world.”
Winston laughed nastily. “Well, brace yourself, girlie. It’s a long way down from there,” the billionaire warned her.
With the sound of approaching sirens growing louder, Brianna offered the man a phony smile. “You ought to know, Mr. Aurora.”
“I can buy and sell your family,” he shouted into her face. “And I will! And then destroy it!” he vowed, turning almost beet red.
Brianna caught Jackson’s arm before he could defend her with a well-deserved swing at the man. In this day and age, doing something like that would cost him more than it would ultimately cost Aurora, and she wasn’t about to let that happen, as much as she would love to pummel the man herself.
Summoning inner strength, Brianna appeared utterly unfazed by the patriarch’s threat and looked up at the man whose family was essentially responsible for creating the city and developing it.
“Prepare to be very disappointed, Mr. Aurora,” she told Winston. “My family doesn’t lie down and play dead—ever.”
“We’ll see about that,” Winston retorted as police officers came pouring into the library.
“There’ll be nothing to see after I finish telling them about Great-Grandpa, Dad,” Damien announced. It was a gleeful threat delivered by a man who felt that he no longer had anything to lose.
“Okay,” Jackson declared, turning the people he’d handcuffed over to the police officers. He saw the chief of Ds coming in with the others. The situation was under control, Jackson decided. He turned his attention back to Brianna.
“Time to take you to the hospital,” he told her in a no-nonsense voice.
“I’m not going to the hospital,” Brianna informed him firmly.
Jackson’s eyes narrowed. “The hell you’re not. You have a head wound.”
“I have a head scratch,” Brianna argued, “which can easily be dealt with using a Band-Aid.”
Jackson gave her a look that said she wasn’t going to win. “Too bad you can’t be dealt with that easily,” he told her. “But I’m learning,” he promised. “I’m learning. Now get into the car, O’Bannon, before I carry you into it. We’re going to the hospital.”
“The hell we are,” Brianna said, digging in as they left the mansion.
Brian caught the exchange between his niece and Jackson as they left the premises. He smiled to himself.
“This shows promise,” he murmured under his breath, nodding with approval as he watched the pair disappear.
Epilogue
It took nearly a month of intense, diligent work to finally identify all the women who had been entombed in the walls of the Old Aurora Hotel and tie them to George Aurora, or to his granddaughter, Jocelyn.
“Apparently,” Brianna told Brian Cavanaugh as she and Jackson sat in the chief of Ds’ office, giving him a final summation of what they had uncovered, “there was a diary. George took special delight in documenting the ‘clever’ way he lured unsuspecting, clueless young women into trusting him. A lot of them came from out of state, would-be starlets wanting to be discovered. He was the ‘kindly benefactor,’ who was there, offering to help,” she said, the words leaving an awful taste in her mouth. “Until he wasn’t.
“According to his diary, he felt he’d found a perfect way to satisfy both his lust and his
