Catherine Coulter - The Target

Service. Murdock liked that word. He wished he could service women the way Mr. Shaker did. Maybe if he lost the six pounds, they'd come around him a little more here the way they had in Germany. Of course they'd wanted to use him to get close to Louey Santera, the little slime.

"He believes in transgressions, all right," Rule Shaker said. "Just not in his own. Let's just wait and see.

Tell Rudy to keep alert. I'm going to have my helicopter fly out over the desert now. It's time to scatter Melissa's ashes."

"That's what she wanted, sir?"

Rule Shaker said, "Melissa was twenty-three. She didn't even know there was such a thing as death."

THERE WERE SIX bodyguards on duty around the clock, three shifts, one man always in the hospital room with Mason Lord and another outside his door. Mason Lord didn't trust the cops to do the job.

He said to Detective O'Connor, "If I'm not paying someone, then I can't be sure he's working for me."

"Fine by me," Detective O'Connor said. "It'll save the taxpayers some money. In Chicago, the good Lord knows they need a break."

The mainstream media finally got bored and left, but some paparazzi, hoping for another strike on Mason Lord, stayed on speculation of blood and gore. They were like a plague of locusts only not as benign, said one of the hospital administrators. They camped out at the Lord mansion, too. One of them got a shot of Emma sitting in the shade of a big rhododendron bush in the garden of the estate, playing her piano. It was taken from a goodly distance, a bit on the blurred side, from magnification, but it was still clearly Emma. She'd been labeled as the Granddaughter of Crime Lord.

When Mason Lord saw the photo, he said quietly to Gunther, "How clever the play on words is. Isn't it odd? It's this photo that has broken my patience, my indifference. Get the name of the paparazzo who took the picture."

JUST after lunch that day, Eve Lord came out of the living room into the grand foyer to hear Ramsey say to Molly, "There's no reason to stay longer. Your father is over the worst. We all know who likely shot him and there's not a thing we can do about it. As to the actual person who pulled the trigger, the cops are on it. Chances are slim we'll ever know. This could mean that the violence will escalate. I don't want us here if it does, particularly Emma. Let's get married. Let's go home."

And Molly, frumpy plain Molly with her wild red hair and too-skinny body, gazed up at the big man whom Eve would take to bed in a minute, stared up at him like she wanted to eat him, and she probably did. Then she laughed and jumped into his arms. She clearly caught him off guard, but he was fast, managing to catch her and bring her tightly against his chest, his arms locked around her. She wrapped her legs around his waist. Then he laughed and swung her around. "Home," she said, kissing him once, twice, a half dozen more times. "I like the sound of that."

Slowly, he slid her down the front of his body. When she was standing, staring up at him, laughing, he leaned down and kissed her mouth. Molly's hands were on his shirt. She looked ready to rip it off him.

Eve cleared her throat. "I see there's more going on here than a little friendship."

"Yes," Ramsey said, lifting his head, releasing Molly slowly. The taste of her was still fresh, still drawing on him, the memory of her body was still warm against him. "You can congratulate us, Eve. Molly and I are going to be married." They hadn't told her before. It felt a bit on the indecent side to tell that to a woman who'd nearly been made a widow.

"Congratulations," Eve said. She looked down at Molly's waistline. "You pregnant already?"

"No, I'm not," Molly said. "Getting in that condition would be kind of hard, what with Emma sleeping in the same room, don't you think?"

"I would say that in my experience, men always find a way. My former fiance nailed me once in the coat closet with his family not six feet away."

Ramsey laughed. "Then he deserves to be a former." He hugged Molly to his side. "Is Emma eating chocolate-chip cookies in Miles's kitchen?"

Eve pulled on soft pale cream leather gloves that matched her silk dress. "Not chocolate chip, but her new favorite-peanut butter. Mrs. Lopez was chattering about it. I'm going to see your father, Molly.

Does he know about this?"

"Yes, we told him last night."

"I see. So I'm the last to know. Will you two be here when I get back?"

"Depends," Ramsey said. "You want to bring back something to celebrate?"

"Sure," Eve Lord said, then called out, "Gunther, I'm ready!"

IN the Chicago Sun-Times, on the bottom of page ten of Section A, there was brief mention of a man who had been found just off Highway 88 between Mooseheart and Aurora by a passing motorist. The man had been beaten severely, but was expected, in time, to make a full recovery. His cameras had been crushed and left beside him. The newspaper called him a freelance photographer, but bottom line, what he was, was a paparazzo.

"I think we should pack our meager belongings, grab Emma, and hop a plane to Reno. I was thinking Las Vegas, but Rule Shaker's there, and I can't quite handle getting married anywhere near to where he is. I don't want any more magazines or tabloids with pictures of Emma. She saw the one in the National Informer. She'd made out some of the words before I managed to get it away from her. I just pray she hadn't gotten to the part about her playing the piano as well as her murdered father, Louey Santera. Can you begin to imagine the field day the media will have if we get married either here or in Harrisburg at my folks' place? They always find out, no matter how careful you are."

"Oh, God!" Miles came running out of the kitchen, a dishcloth in his hands. "Thank God you're both here.

I just don't believe this. Somebody just tried to kill your daddy again, Molly. Oh God. Where's Gunther?

Where's Mrs. Lord?"

"Is he all right, Miles?"

"Yes, he is. That was one of the guards we hired to protect him in the hospital. The guy fired from the building across the way-a good hundred and fifty yards-right through the window. He wounded a nurse who was taking your father's blood pressure."

"That's an enormous distance," Ramsey said.

"Is the nurse all right?"

"Took off a lot of her right ear; she bled all over everything, which made everyone believe that your father had been shot, but yeah, she's fine."

Ramsey squeezed Molly's hand. "I guess we'd better get to the hospital. Miles, will you make certain Emma is never out of your sight?"

"No problem, Ramsey." He'd been wringing his hands, but now at the mention of Emma, her need to be protected, he instantly calmed down. By the time Ramsey and Molly were out the front door, Miles had pulled himself together. Emma stood beside him. He was holding her hand.

Detective O'Connor from Oak Park and two detectives from the CPD were in Mason Lord's room when they arrived.

"Show them in," Detective O'Connor said. Introductions were made quickly. Miles was right. There was blood everywhere.

"Ears bleed like stink," one of the CPD detectives said. He pulled on his own ear and Molly realized the bottom part was gone. He'd never be able to wear pierced earrings. She nearly laughed. She was losing it.

She slipped her hand around Ramsey's. He looked at her briefly, saw her too-bright eyes, and slowly, very slowly, pulled her closer. "It's all right," he said quietly, his mouth nearly touching the top of her head. "It will be just fine. Breathe slowly, that's it."

The hospital window was shattered. Two technicians were busy very carefully extracting the bullet from the wall just about ten inches off the floor. The woman was using tweezers.

Detective O'Connor looked tired and harassed, but that wasn't anything new. She felt tension between him and the other cops. He told them in his concise way, "Nurse Thomas was standing right next to your father, taking his blood pressure. Suddenly he seemed to weaken and fall back against the pillow. Nurse Thomas immediately leaned over him, holding on to him, when the shooter fired. If your father hadn't gotten suddenly weak, if the nurse hadn't pressed him down even more, shielded him, all those things, then the chances are good that your father would have gone down this time, Mrs. Santera. At the very least he would have been wounded. The bullet went through Nurse Thomas's earlobe, downward. The bullet slammed into the wall less than a foot above the floor."