Lisa Jackson - Malice

We’re dying, she thought, floating upward. My baby and I…we’re dying.

The lights went out just as Bentz and two rescuers from the Coast Guard entered the hold. He caught a glimpse of the two women struggling, separated by the horrible cage, Olivia trapped inside, Corrine on the outside. Blood diffusing in the salty water.

“No!” His voice ricocheted through the dark, cavernous hold as he raced down the stairs, his feet splashing in water covering the lower rungs.

“Hey, wait up, man,” one of the divers said, flipping on a flashlight that gave the interior of the listing bolt a weird, macabre look.

Bentz sprang, diving into the water, thrusting himself toward the cage, guided by the eerie light. He was vaguely aware of the others behind him, rescue workers with flashlights and crow bars and floatation devices.

A horrid gash cut across Corrine’s forehead, still oozing blood as she looked up at him. “Bentz,” she said with a ghastly smile. “You son of a bitch. This is all your fault…she’s going to die, her and her baby, because of you.”

“No way,” he growled and pulled her away, flinging her toward one of the divers. “Arrest her!”

“No! You can’t!” Corrine was sputtering, blood coming up with her spittle.

Bentz ignored her, reaching for Olivia, who was drifting away from him, so blue and cold…He pulled Corrine away, then reached for Olivia through the bars. “Livvie!” he cried, holding her face above water. “Olivia!”

The boat let out a long groan, like a whale in death throes. “Let’s move it!” One of the rescue workers switched on a high-intensity under water light, illuminating the hold, showing Olivia floating inside her cage, her hair a golden mane on the waters’ surface.

“We’ve got her, sir!” one of the divers said as he found the keys and unlocked the cage. The other diver had dealt with Corrine, dragging her up the stairs, bracing himself against the wall as the boat sank deeper, shuddering. “Let her go…we’ll take care of it.”

“No!”

“Sir, please!” the order was sharp but Bentz ignored it. Olivia was his wife. She was barely breathing, but alive. He carried her up the stairs and she coughed.

“Olivia?”

She coughed again, a deep, racking cough, and he held her tight while she spewed salt water all over him as the boat shuddered, a horrid cracking sound ripping through it.

“Let’s get out of here now!” The divers pushed them forward, across the steep deck.

“Hold on,” he said, feeling the seams of the vessel, giving way.

“NOW!” With the help of the rescuers, Bentz helped Olivia into the cutter, just as the Merry Anne, with a final horrifying groan, cracked apart, timbers and glass sliding into the sea.

A medic attended to her while another worker wrapped Corrine in blankets in the next berth. She was barely breathing, her eyes fixed. “She’s still got a pulse,” the medic said, though Bentz didn’t care.

He was only concerned about Olivia and the baby…isn’t that what Corrine had said, that she intended to kill both his wife and unborn child?

“Rick?” Olivia whispered as they stripped off her wet clothes and wrapped her in blankets. She was blinking against the bright lights, her hand searching for his, lying on a bunk only six feet from where Corrine lay, handcuffs surrounding her wrists.

“Right here, honey,” he said, his throat thick, his eyes hot from the threat of tears.

“I…I lost the baby.” She looked up at him and swallowed hard. “I was pregnant. I should have told you.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He clung to her hand. “You’re all right. That’s what counts.”

“But the baby…”

“There will be others, Olivia,” he said, bending down to kiss her lips. “I promise.”

Olivia opened her eyes slowly, against soft lights that seemed impossibly bright. She was in a hospital room of sorts and there was someone in the room with her, a glow near the window.

You’re going to be all right, the emanation said to her without making a sound. You and the baby, you’re going to be fine.

“Excuse me? Who are you?”

But the figure only smiled.

“Olivia?”

She blinked. Bentz’s voice jarred her back to reality.

“Did you see that?” she asked, turning to the window that was now just a view of pink sky streaked with orange and lavender as the dawn rose.

“See what?” he asked, glancing at the window.

“There was someone…something…” But when she caught the look on his face to see if she was pulling his leg, she shook her head. “I think I was dreaming.”

“How’re you feeling?”

“Like I need to get out of here.” She’d been in the hospital for two days now, under observation for the ordeal she’d been through, but the baby was still viable, and she had suffered nothing more than trauma.

“I’ll see if I can spring you.”

“Please use all of your powers of persuasion.”

“You got it.” He leaned over and kissed her on the lips, a sweet lingering kiss that promised more to come, once they were home in New Orleans again.

She couldn’t wait to get back, to plan for the baby, to put the trauma of Los Angeles behind her. “City of Angels,” she muttered sarcastically, then looked at the window again, wondering about the spirit that she could swear had been there.

According to Bentz, Corrine’s attack was recorded on the camera that was found on the Merry Anne just before it had sunk. No doubt she would be in prison for the rest of her life.

In the two days since then, details about the deranged woman had emerged in the newspapers. Olivia glanced over at the L.A. Times on her night stand, which had published an updated piece today.

Apparently Corrine had faked an injury to get a desk job at Parker Center-a way to gather information about new cases and about former LAPD Detective Rick Bentz. There was now evidence linking O’Donnell to the murders of Shana McIntyre, Lorraine Newell, Fortuna Esperanzo, and Sherry Petrocelli.

“O’Donnell wrought a trail of death and anguish,” the article stated, “which included the kidnapping of a New Orleans woman who is married to O’Donnell’s former lover, New Orleans Police Detective Rick Bentz.”

Poor Hayes, Olivia thought. He’d been duped. He’d repeatedly told Bentz that he’d been a fool not to have seen the signs and that he was swearing off women for the rest of his life.

“Won’t last long,” Bentz had predicted.

Montoya had already returned to New Orleans to be with his wife and the Los Angeles Police Department was returning to a routine without the agitation of Rick Bentz. Though Fernando Valdez and Yolanda Salazar seemed to have been duped, rather than participants in Corrine’s grand plan, the LAPD was taking another look at them as well as Jane Hollister.

As for the Twenty-one killer, Bledsoe, with the help of two female detectives as decoys and a lot of searching Internet chat rooms, had run a sting operation and caught someone who fit the profile-Donovan Caldwell, older brother of someone the LAPD had thought might have killed his sisters. It looked like he was their guy. The speculation was that the return of Bentz to L.A. had set him off and that he loved all the attention he was getting.

Corrine had been adamant that she hadn’t been a part of his vicious attacks against twins, so the LAPD was treating the case as if it had nothing to do with the string of murders perpetrated by Corrine O’Donnell, one of their own.

Still, Corrine’s killing spree was more than another black eye on the department.

She was alive, in a hospital, under police custody, and the most anyone could speculate was that she was paying back Bentz for dumping her twice, and for the fact that after the second time, her mother, Merry Anne, had been killed on the way to consoling her daughter. Hayes said that Corrine, who had been an orphan and suffered through a string of foster homes before being adopted by the O’Donnells, hated being alone, feared growing old by herself, though she’d put on a pretty good act of independence. She’d admitted to him once that after her adoptive mother died and her father, who’d been having an affair for years, married his second wife, she’d felt alone and abandoned.