Chapter Seventeen #3
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” He chuckled derisively. “Unfortunately, you don’t have a say in the matter, one way or the other. Now out!”
Lexi might have dared him to shoot her right there in the vehicle.
But she didn’t wish to tempt fate. Or give him an excuse to murder her before she had any chance to escape death.
And the special projects administrator who would see her dead, rather than have her expose him and have to face justice for the other murders under his watch.
Lexi opened the car door and slid out—as he exited from the passenger side—while wondering if she was about to breathe her last breath. And without ever getting the chance to express her true feelings to Cooper and what she had wished for in their moving forward as a couple.
WHEN COOPER GOT the word that Lexi’s car had been spotted on Sonoran Desert Drive, he feared that Jacquin might have planned to force Lexi into the Sonoran Preserve and hoped to get rid of her on one of its trails—before trying to engineer his escape.
I can’t let that happen, Cooper thought, behind the wheel in his car, while thinking of all the ways that he needed Lexi to have a long and fulfilling life. As he wanted for himself. Unlike their late spouses.
As he neared the Keely Pointe housing development—still under construction, but not being worked on at the moment—Cooper saw Lexi’s vehicle parked on the dirt. Not far away, he eyed Gilbert Jacquin pointing a gun at Lexi as he led her farther into the construction zone.
Knowing that every second counted—or out of the question for him to wait for backup, in spite of notifying other law enforcement of the situation, dire as it was, and after requesting medical assistance—Cooper exited the car and removed his Sig Sauer P239 for what was likely to be a decisive showdown with everything on the line.
LEXI FEARED THAT there might be no reprieve from a man who wanted her dead. Should I make a run for it? she asked herself. Or would that only be playing into his hands for what would amount to target practice?
As she contemplated her rather precarious predicament, realizing that she was past the point of reasoning with Gilbert, who was still holding the gun on her, Lexi caught some movement from behind him.
It was Cooper. He had his own firearm out and pointed in their direction, while silently signaling not to tip her hand that help had arrived.
I need to distract him for a bit, Lexi told herself. She regarded Gilbert and said, “It doesn’t have to be this way, you know. Maybe you and I could still work something out where we can both walk away from this without either of us getting hurt.”
Gilbert seemed to take a moment to at least consider the thought in his warped mind, before responding, “Good try, but I think not. I’m afraid that one of us has reached the point of no return. And that person is you, Lexi.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Cooper’s voice boomed from behind him. “Drop the gun, Jacquin.”
Gilbert whipped around instinctively, aiming the gun at Cooper. In that instant, all Lexi could think of was losing him. Finding the thought unbearable, she thrust her hand toward Gilbert’s face and clawed her nails as hard as she could across his cheek, drawing blood and a bellow from his mouth.
Before he could shake this off and take aim at her, Cooper fired a shot. It ripped the gun out of Gilbert’s hand. A second shot shattered his kneecap, and he went down like a house imploding.
Cooper was on him like a lion capturing its prey, making sure Gilbert was in no position for further aggression, before putting his gun away.
Then Cooper quickly removed zip ties to handcuff Gilbert behind his back, while ignoring his eerie wailing from pain and stating to him in no uncertain terms, “Gilbert Jacquin, you’re under arrest for kidnapping, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, carjacking resulting in murder, public corruption… did I leave anything out?”
Lexi laughed humorlessly. “I think that covered most of his crimes.”
Cooper gave her a crooked smile. “I thought so, too.” He climbed to his feet while warning Gilbert to stay down. Moving up to her, Cooper asked gently, “Did he hurt you?”
“Not nearly as much as he evidently had in mind.” Lexi drew a breath and glanced down at her former captor, who was still moaning in agony. “Honestly, I’d say he got the worst of it.”
Cooper chuckled. “That we can agree on.” He turned serious, gazing into her eyes. “If this had gone south, I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
“It didn’t, though,” Lexi said thankfully. “If that had been the case, I might never have gotten the chance to do this again.” She cupped his cheeks and laid a kiss on his hard mouth.
Cooper kept the kiss going for a long moment, then said, “I’m glad that chance did come around—and I promise you it will happen again and again, if I have anything to do with it.”
She flashed her teeth. “I think that’s something I can live with—and very much want to.”
“Same here,” he assured her as FBI agents and police detectives arrived on the scene, along with an ambulance.