Chapter 12
Everything in him went cold and still. And then he moved, rushing forward as he heard her boots on the floorboards in the hallway. Joe called to him from the van but he didn’t bother to answer. He should have.
He should have told Joe to cover the front door because Dane realized with sickening dread that’s where Shana was headed as he reached the empty hallway. He rushed to the living room and saw her at the front door, yanking it open with bloody hands.
She looked up with venom in her flashing eyes.
They seemed to reach out and sting him with accusation.
And he felt it. The momentous shame of what he’d done to her, to the love of his life, fell on him then like a giant anvil of guilt and regret.
He froze, feeling like lead had taken over his bones.
“You forgot to disarm me, you no good idiot,” she spat. Then she was out the door and running, still dressed in her motorcycle gang outfit and moving fast.
“Goddamn it to hell.” She’d cut her plastic ties and kicked the door open. And he should have known better than to lock her up in the first place. Maybe in some deep recess of his consciousness he had known better, maybe that’s why he’d done such a piss-poor job of it.
He took off after her, not thinking of anything else now but protecting her from Whitey Nash and begging for her forgiveness. As he ran across the yard, tracking her about a hundred yards ahead of him, his mind spun into gear. He knew where she was headed and he knew a shortcut. He could catch her.
Joe screeched to a halt in front of him.
“She got away so quickly?”
“Knife.” He was panting, more from fear than exertion. “Go back up Ronnie. I’ll catch her before she gets to the church.”
Joe saluted, but his eyes looked more sad than serious, more sympathetic than determined. Then he took off. And so did Dane.
He turned left and jogged down the road at as fast a clip as his forty-year-old bad knee would let him. But he had the advantage in spite of Shana’s relative youth and enraged determination. He knew the island like he knew his own balls. And he had the determination of desperation.
The church was only a mile from Cap’s place, so it was only a matter of a few minutes before they’d reach it.
Dane prayed like he never had in his life that Cap already had Whitey in custody by the time they got there.
But he wasn’t waiting to find out. He slipped his phone from his pocket and called Cap.
“What’s the status?”
“Why are you out of breath? What’s wrong?”
“She’s on the run and headed your way.”
“Shit. No sign of Whitey yet. Eulogy is in ten minutes.”
“Don’t wait. Do it now. Whitey will come out from his corner for that.” He paused a beat while he squeezed through some bushes to cut through a yard. Old Mrs. Pearl wouldn’t mind. He’d been helping her with groceries for years. “I hope you’re wearing Kevlar.”
“Don’t worry about me. We’re expecting him to be armed. You just make sure you catch up with Shana before she gets here.”
Dane didn’t bother with goodbyes. He shut the phone down and slipped it back into his pocket.
Then, checking his watch, he took off in an adrenaline-inspired sprint.
After he emerged from Mrs. Pearl’s yard at a stampeding pace he ran for three more blocks, then he spotted her.
They weren’t far from the church and he needed to catch her before she turned the corner where the church was, where Whitey Nash would be.
The horror of the notion that Whitey might spot her if he was in the area sizzled through him as he turned up the pace of his sprint.
Lasering in on her back as she ran, he closed in on her as they reached the home two doors from the corner.
She turned and saw him. He was close enough to see the emotions thundering through her expression. The hate stood prominent. His fiancée, his beloved Shana, despised him. And he couldn’t blame her one single bit.
The turn cost her a beat too many and even though she tried with a spurt of speed to escape him, Dane caught her.
He tackled her to the ground and rolled with her into the bushes.
Knowing she had at least one knife on her, he pinned her hands over her head and held her down with his body.
He only hoped that she didn’t spit in his face.
She gasped for breath and so did he as he lay on top of her.
“Get off of me you damn son of a—” “
“Shana. Stop. It’s okay. I get it. We’ll get to the church.” He paused and bore his gaze into hers. “Together.”
Tears popped into her eyes and the sob that wrenched from her throat made him close his eyes in excruciating pain. To hear it damn near made him cry.
“Shana, please. I’m sorry. I-I needed to protect you—”
“And now? You don’t need to protect me anymore, you big hero, you asshole, you—”
“Stop. I’ll always need to protect you. But I need to,” this was hard for him as he envisioned the sliced-up, grotesque face of Whitey Nash, “I need to trust you, to respect you and to let you protect yourself. Because I know you’re not helpless.
I want to go into that church side by side.
” And if anything happened to her, he may as well be a dead man because he’d never forgive himself.
“Why, Dane?” she whispered. She’d stopped crying.
“Because you’re afraid of Whitey. I saw it. That made me afraid for you. Hell. It made me more afraid of anything than I’ve ever been in my life.”
“We have to get him, Dane. Get off me so we can get him.”
He took a long look at her, staring deep into her eyes. The hate was in abeyance, the anger slowed to a simmer. It wasn’t gone. But she was giving him a chance.
For now.
“Don’t worry,” he said as he let go of her wrists and pushed himself up off her. “Cap told me he wasn’t there yet.”
As they both got to their feet, Dane’s phone rang. It was Cap. She crowded him so she could hear as he slipped it out and answered it.
“Give me the status,” Dane said.
“Nash just walked in. Alone.”
Shana breathed hard and he automatically put an arm around mer. She jerked away from him as if he were a poisonous snake.
“Any weapons?”
“Hard to tell. But according to surveillance he left the house an hour and a half ago. No telling where he went and what he did with all that time. We had someone on him, but only one guy. He lost Whitey downtown. We would have had back up if you hadn’t—”
Dane saw where he was going, straight to blaming him when they’d both agreed to be cautious. He cut Cap off. “Why am I just hearing this now?”
“You’re not on my staff last I heard. Joe said you had surveillance of your own.”
Dane tamped down on his flare of anger. Either Joe had been otherwise occupied or something went wrong with their camera.
“We’re coming in now. Both Shana and I. You ready?”
“You’ll both be covered like scales on a fish. Come in the back door.”
Dane was about to hang up when he got another call—from Joe.
“Hold on. Joe is on the other line.” He switched over.
“What is it?”
“Whitey’s partner is still at the house. He’s still watching Sassy.” Dane wanted to ask for more details, but something about Joe’s tone made him pause.
“I need you to back me up. ASAP.”
There was no mistaking the urgency of Joe’s words. Dane met Shana’s eyes as she registered the same message as he did.
“You need to go. Save Sassy,” she ordered.
“You’re not going into that church alone.
Where you go, I go,” he said. She hadn’t needed to be told.
She knew that would be what he said. Her chest tightened with unbearable anxiety, anger, frustration, and some love at the bottom of it all.
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to keep the tears inside, the heartache from shaking her.
But when he pulled her into a soft warm embrace, tender in its passion, she couldn’t hold it in, couldn’t tamp down the love and anger and fear welling all at once.
“Damn you,” she rasped through her tears. Breaking from his arms, she looked up at him as she swiped her tears away, got control of her emotions, got herself into battle mode. “You know I hate you as much as I love you in this moment?”
He stared at her and said nothing, but nodded and she saw the turmoil in his eyes, the longing, the determination, the love and the fear. That was okay. It was the fear that would keep them both rational and on their games.
Finally, she said, “Let’s do this.” It was impossible to be in two places at once and, deep down in her heart, she didn’t want Dane to go without her, wanted to be by his side wherever he went into danger. Needed to back him up as much as she needed him to back her up.
He nodded. “You know we have to go to Sassy’s to get her. We can rely on Cap and his men to take Whitey. They’ll arrest him and bring him into custody.”
“Then they’ll ship him back to Australia,” she whispered, not knowing how she could allow that. Not knowing how she could stop it.
“Maybe not. Peter has sway. Maybe we’ll keep him here to face kidnapping charges with intent to murder.”
“Tell him. Tell Cap before I change my mind,” she said. She turned away while Dane made the call.
“We’re going to Sassy’s to back up Joe and Ronnie. We’re on our way now. You arrest Nash now on kidnapping. We’ll swear out an affidavit as witnesses later. That should be enough to hold him.”
“You’re sure? Shana’s in agreement?”
She heard Cap’s disbelief and felt a twinge of shameful guilt, knowing how far she was from honorable right now, that she still plotted in her mind how she would bait Whitey into doing something so that she could kill him.
Shana wanted Whitey and it was the hardest professional decision she’d ever made to not run inside that church and gun him down. Not exactly professional.
Dane held the phone away from his ear so she could reassure Cap. “We’ll convince Whitey’s partner to turn on him. The kidnapping and attempted murder charges will stick.”
Cap signed off with his agreement and said he’d send police backup to Sassy’s as soon as they asked for it, as soon as it was safe enough to not endanger her life. He’d have someone in the neighborhood waiting in the meantime.
Dane held her hand as they trotted through the church parking lot toward the small rectory where the minister lived. “It’s too bad. I was kind of looking forward to hearing my eulogy,” he said.
She rolled her eyes because she couldn’t help herself, but she didn’t smile.
“How the hell are we going to get to Sassy’s? It’s too far to run.”
“Stick with me.” They headed to the driveway next to Reverend Hall’s home and approached an old Chevy Malibu.
“I promise I’ll make it up to him, but we’re going to need to borrow the Reverend’s car.
” Dane opened the door as if he knew it was unlocked and then proceeded to pull the key from under the floor mat.
“How did you know—never mind.”
She wasn’t ready to give any credit to Dane. Not even the fact that he was a clever—or lucky—SOB. Not yet. She had too much to think about, too many emotions to work through.
In the next minute, they were driving the minister’s car at breakneck speed through the quiet streets of Vineyard Haven to Sassy’s house.