Authors: Patricia; Potter
Cold Target (52 page)
They exchanged glances, then Gage took out his cell phone and dialed DeWitt. He should have done so last night, but they both had been exhausted.
“Sanders,” he said. “What have you heard?”
He listened for a moment, then asked, “Could it have been a suicide?”
Gage nodded as DeWitt obviously asked a question. “Yeah, we found out a lot. We found Matthews's daughter. Two men had been sent to kill her. One's dead. The other was wounded. He's talking.” Another pause. Then, “Can you wait before printing anything? I don't want Randolph to get away as well. Okay. Will you pick us up at Meredith's office? She has to retrieve something there.”
He listened for a moment, then grinned. “Yeah, bring Beast.”
He folded the phone shut.
“Let's get a taxi and go by your office to get the envelope your father left you. DeWitt will meet us in the parking lot. He's chomping at the bit.”
An hour later, DeWitt was waiting for them in the parking lot of her building. Beast was taking up the whole backseat.
“I'll get in the front,” Meredith said as the dog made moaning sounds at seeing them. She watched the dog slobber all over Gage as he tried to squeeze inside. Then she took a look inside the envelope and stiffened.
The date was the same as her father's death.
She quickly ran through the three-page document. It was a confession as well as a letter. She read it silently, feeling the guilt within the letter. Her father had been devoured alive by it.
She silently handed it to Gage and ignored DeWitt's quizzical looks. He would have to read it for himself.
They arrived at Gage's house and went inside. He made coffee while DeWitt read the letter. Her father had meant for it to be read. That much was obvious.
“My God,” DeWitt said, and put it down on the table.
It was all there. Matthews's desperation for a child when he was sterile, Marguerite's parents desperate to hide a pregnancy that her father thought might destroy his career. To keep the secret they had to destroy a young manânot only destroy him but to do it in such a way that Marguerite would never speak to or of him again.
There was so much more. Young Prescott was a gambler. He'd been paid to frame Dom, then got greedy and tried to blackmail both families. Charles Rawson had been an ambitious young man in the law firm ruled by Marguerite's father. Charles had lusted after Marguerite and was seen as a perfect match for her. He'd sold his soul to make that happen and had helped frame Dom, then murder Prescott.
The final wound was the deepest. Marguerite had been forced into the marriage. If she didn't do what was asked, Dom would never leave prison alive. His life for hers. Rawson had always loved her, always wanted her, and she hated him for what he had done. She agreed to a marriage without love. She wouldn't sleep with him.
Until he raped her. Meredith was the result.
He never touched her afterward. They both had punished each other until the last day of their lives.
Gage reached over and touched her. “I'm sorry,” he said.
“I know now,” she said. “It's always better to know.”
But a tear dropped on a page.
“They gave me you,” he said. “And I am grateful to them for that.”
She smiled through the tears.
And then they prepared a case to bring Randolph Ames to justice.
Together. Just as she knew they would always be together.
B
ISBEE
S
IX MONTHS LATER
“It's over, darling,” Doug said after getting off the telephone. “They found him guilty.”
Holly looked outside at Harry playing with Caesar in Doug's yard. She had been staying with him since arriving back from New Orleans. They had left New Orleans immediately after she was released from testifying. She hadn't wanted Harry there when the verdict came in.
And she'd wanted to go home. Doug
was
her home.
She'd testified for one long day. Randolph's attorney had tried to destroy her. She had known that going in, but she had withstood the barrage. And was stronger for it.
Randolph had refused to grant her a divorce but Meredith was working on it.
As for Meredith ⦠they had become very good friends in the past six months. The DNA had confirmed that they were sisters, and Meredith had directed half her mother's trust fund to her. It was a considerable amount.
Holly hadn't wanted to take it. She was finally convinced to do so only after being told it was her mother's dying wish. But she planned to give much of it to charityâa large chunk to Dom's shelter and another for a shelter in Bisbee. The rest would go for Harry's education.
She relaxed against Doug, wondering how life could have gone from so bad to so good within a year. Harry was five now. He'd had nightmares for a while after the incident at the cabin but they had faded.
Doug took her hand and led her outside to watch the sun set.
They sat on a porch step. Then Doug unexpectedly dropped to his knees and she looked at him in surprise.
He fumbled in his pocket, then took out a box and gave it to her.
Hands shaking, she opened it and looked at the ring. It was a sapphire. A blue that matched her eyes.
“Will you marry me?” he asked. “I didn't want to ask until this was over, but, well, dammit, I can't wait any longer.”
Her heart ached with love for him. “The divorceâ”
“Meredith said she can expedite it. She and Gage are getting married in June. Would you ⦠I mean, every woman wants her own wedding, I suppose, but I thought ⦠maybe you two, ah ⦔
He was babbling. Doug never babbled.
He knew how happy she was at finding Meredith, at having a sister. He was asking her if she wanted the moon as well as the sun.
“Yes,” she said simply.
He kissed her for a very long moment, then they looked up at the sunset, hands entwined.
“It's so beautiful here,” Holly said.
“It pales in comparison to you. When I first saw youâ”
“In my glasses and brown hair?”
“I thought you were the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.”
“I was plain.”
“You've always had a glow about you.”
Her fingers tightened around his. “It's our glow,” she said.
And she knew it would be there forever.
epilogue
B
ISBEE
The double wedding took place in Bisbee, in the church that Doug and now Holly attended.
There had been an easy agreement in the location.
Holly had only bad memories of New Orleans, and Doug had friends throughout Cochise County.
Neither Meredith nor Gage cared where they married. They just wanted it done.
But the four of them did want to do it together. Hatred and destruction had brought them together. Now love bound them togetherâa new family forged by respect and trust and caring. They wanted to celebrate that together.
And Meredith and Gage had become enthralled by the funky town with a big heart, though not enough to move there. Gage liked being a cop in a big city. He liked the action. He liked the energy. Meredith wanted to continue her work in domestic abuse.
Their jobs remained in New Orleans but they were fast considering Bisbee their second home.
Half the town seemed to be at the wedding. The four had debated over which bride should come first, then decided Meredith as the younger would.
Both men stood at the altar with their best men. Clint stood next to Gage. Harry, bursting with pride, was a pint-size best man for Doug.
Jenny led the procession as flower girl, and Marty was Holly's maid of honor.
Gage watched as Meredith walked down the aisle, followed by Sarah, her one attendant.
She hadn't wanted white. She hadn't wanted a veil.
She was beautiful. She always had been to him, but never so much as at this moment. Her eyes were luminous. A sky blue princess-style dress floated around her body as she walked toward him.
He couldn't bear to think how close he had come to losing her.
When she reached him, her hand folded into his, and she turned to watch her sister, who started down the aisle on Dom's arm.
Holly was struck-blind gorgeous. Gage watched with amusement as the groom next to him blinked several times. Gage had come to like Holly very much, particularly her wonder at everything and her total lack of awareness of her own beauty.
Yet it had always been the prickly attorney who made his heart race and his blood turn warm. Warm, hell. Hot. Steaming.
His hand tightened around hers and they exchanged secret smiles. As always, they seemed to know what the other was thinking.
He'd moved into her house, renting his own to Clint. The rent was darn little in the beginning, but now Clint had stayed in his job in computer troubleshooting for six months, had even been promoted already, and spent his spare time at Dom's shelter, helping kids.
He was going to make it.
The minister spoke the words. Gage knew them. He had been to weddings. But the words had never really meant anything to him.
Now they did.
“In sickness and in health â¦
“For richer or poorer â¦
“'Til death do you part.”
And then came the best part. “You may kiss the bride.”
His
. She was now his. And he was hers. That was the best part. They were friends, lovers, partners.
His lips took hers possessively. For a long moment. Maybe two.
A few twitters came from the congregation.
He glanced at the couple next to them. They had not quite finished their kiss.
Well, he had always been competitive.
He returned to the kiss, still wondering how this miracle had occurred, how one person could be so supremely happy and content. It had all started with violence and deception followed by more of the same. He knew there would be future obstacles. There always were. But for the first time in his life, he believed in happy endings.
The twitters became louder and he reluctantly drew away, just as Doug did. They glanced at each other and grinned. Doug lifted Harry up in his arms, and Jenny and Marty hugged Holly, then Meredith.
It was done.
There was a celebration waiting. A huge one.
A celebration of love and life and family.
He offered his hand to Meredith.
An ending. A beginning.
He was ready.
About the Author
Patricia Potter is a
USA Today
âbestselling author of more than fifty romantic novels. A seven-time RITA Award finalist and three-time Maggie Award winner, she was named Storyteller of the Year by
Romantic Times
and received the magazine's Career Achievement Award for Western Romance. Potter is a past board member and president of Romance Writers of America. Prior to becoming a fiction author, she was a reporter for the
Atlanta Journal
and the president of a public relations firm in Atlanta. She lives in Memphis, Tennessee.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 by Patricia Potter
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0415-2
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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