Sandra Brown: Lethal

Yeah, this sucked really, really bad.

These were silly thoughts to be entertaining when he should be trying to figure out something. Something just beyond his grasp. Dammit, what was it? Something important, but teasingly elusive. Something winking at him like that last holdout star that he could see in the lightening sky just beyond Janice VanAllen’s head. Something he should’ve caught before now. Something-

“How’d you know?” Not until he gasped the question did he realize what that something was.

Janice VanAllen looked down at him. “What?”

His breath soughed through his lips. He blinked against the collecting darkness of unconsciousness. Or death. “How’d you know I was at the tracks?”

“Tom told me.”

That was a lie. If Tom had told her anything before leaving for that meeting, he’d have told her that he was to meet Honor, because that’s who Tom had expected to be there. Tom hadn’t been around later to tell her differently.

She’d learned it from somebody else. Who? Not the agents who would have been sent to notify her of her husband’s death. They wouldn’t have known. Even Hamilton hadn’t known until about a half hour ago when Coburn himself had told him what had transpired at the railroad tracks.

The only people who could have told her were the ones he’d spotted near the tracks, the ones who’d planted the bomb and who’d been there to make sure it did what it was supposed to-obliterate Tom VanAllen and Honor.

Honor was begging her to call for help. “He’s going to die,” she sobbed.

“That’s the point,” Janice VanAllen said coldly.

“I don’t understand how you can blame Coburn. He’s a federal agent like your husband was. Tom was only doing his job, and so was Coburn. Think of your son. If Coburn dies, you’ll go to prison. What will happen to your boy then?”

Suddenly Coburn sagged forward and groaned through clenched teeth.

“Please, let me help him,” Honor implored.

“He’s beyond help. He’s dying.”

“And then what? Are you going to shoot me, too? Emily?”

“I won’t harm the child. What kind of person do you think I am?”

“No better than me.” Saying that, Coburn cut a vicious swath with Stan Gillette’s knife, which he’d slid from his cowboy boot while hunched over. It connected with Janice VanAllen’s ankle and, he thought, probably had sliced through her Achilles’ tendon. She screamed. Her leg buckled, and when it did, he found enough strength to topple her with a push from both his feet.

“Honor!” He tried to shout, but it came out barely a rasp.

She practically fell out of the car, seized the pistol that Janice had dropped while falling, and aimed it down at her, ordering her not to move.

“Coburn?” she asked breathlessly.

“Keep the gun on her. Cavalry’s here.”

Honor realized that squad cars were speeding toward them from a dozen different directions. The first to reach them bore the sheriff’s office insignia. Stopping the vehicle, the driver laid rubber on the pavement. He and his passenger, Stan, were out of the car in a flash. The uniformed man had his pistol drawn. Stan was carrying a deer rifle.

“Honor, thank God you’re all right,” Stan said as he ran up to her.

“Mrs. Gillette, I’m Deputy Crawford. What happened?”

“She shot Coburn.”

Crawford and two fellow deputies took over guarding Janice, who was writhing on the pavement, clutching her ankle and alternately groaning in pain and cursing Coburn. Others who were now out of their cars ran over to Doral’s corpse.

Stan reached for Honor and hugged her. “I forced Crawford at gunpoint into bringing me along.”

“I’m glad you’re here, Stan. See to Emily, please. She’s in the backseat.” Honor pushed herself free of his hold and shouted for the EMTs scrambling out of the ambulance to hurry, then dropped to her knees beside Coburn.

She touched his hair, touched his face. “Don’t die. Don’t you dare die.”

“Hamilton,” he said.

“What?”

He nodded and she turned. Two black Suburbans were disgorging officers wearing assault gear, along with a man who looked even more intimidating than they, although he was dressed in a suit and tie.

He made a beeline for her and Coburn, although his eyes darted about, taking in the various elements of the grisly scene. “Mrs. Gillette?” he said as he approached her.

She nodded up at him. “Coburn is badly wounded.”

Hamilton nodded grimly.

“Why aren’t you in Washington?” Coburn growled up at him.

“Because I’ve got a pain-in-the-ass agent working for me who won’t follow orders.”

“I have it under control.”

“I beg to differ.” His tone was querulous, but Honor could tell that the seriousness of Coburn’s wound was obvious to him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here in time to stop this. We were at her house,” he said, nodding toward Janice, who was being attended by other paramedics.

“We found evidence that she was going to skip out. Even leave the country. We found notes, texts on various cell phones, indicating that she had a vendetta against Coburn over what had happened to Tom. I contacted Crawford, who had just received word of gunshots in this area. I left one man behind to stay with her son and got here as quickly as I could.”

“Let go,” Coburn snarled up at the paramedic who was trying to get an IV into his arm. He wrestled with the EMT and won, managing to slip his hand inside his pants pocket-the khakis that had formerly belonged to Honor’s father, now soaked with blood.

He took out a cell phone and held it up where Hamilton could see. “Doral’s. Moments before he got out of his car, he made a call.”

While speaking in starts and stops, his voice growing increasingly weak, Coburn had used his bloodstained thumb to work the phone. He depressed a highlighted number and said, “He called The Bookkeeper.”

Seconds later, all heads turned toward the sound of a ringing cell phone coming from the pocket of Janice VanAllen’s windbreaker.

For Honor the next hour and a half passed in a blur. After making the startling revelation that Janice VanAllen was The Bookkeeper, Coburn lost consciousness, which made it far easier for the EMTs to see to his immediate needs and get him into the CareFlight helicopter that had been summoned.

Honor considered it a miracle that Emily had slept through the entire traumatic event. On the other hand, a sleep that deep was worrisome. She was transported to the ER via ambulance.

Honor was allowed to ride to the hospital with her, but once there, her insistence on remaining with Emily was overruled.

While she was being examined by a pediatric team, Honor and Stan waited anxiously with cups of tepid coffee he bought from a vending machine. There was an awkwardness between them that had never been present before.

Finally he said, “Honor, I owe you an apology.”

“Hardly. After what I did to your house? After leaving you bound to a chair? After letting Coburn take your ‘magic knife’?”

He gave her a quick grin, but apparently he had something he wanted to say. “You tried to explain your motivations. I didn’t listen. I dismissed them out of hand.”

“It was a lot to take in.”

“Yes, but my apology goes beyond what’s happened over the last couple of days. Ever since Eddie died,” he said uneasily, “I’ve held you in strict control. No, don’t try to deny it when we both know it’s true. I’ve been afraid that you would meet a man, fall in love, marry, and I’d be ousted from your lives. Yours and Emily’s.”

“That would never have happened, Stan,” she said gently. “You’re our family. Emily loves you. So do I.”