The Golden Girl (15 page)

That left Madison and Bing, who were now wrestling on the ground.

He had his hands clasped around her throat, on top of her. Madison knew there was no way they could shoot him without risking the bullet traveling through him and hitting her. Taking her fingers, she gouged his eyeballs, and he let out a high-pitched squeal.

Rolling off her, Bing grabbed Katherine’s gun, which had fallen to the ground right by them. He couldn’t see, but he felt for Madison, who was rolling away from him. He grabbed her hair and brought the gun toward her. At that moment, the SWAT team had a clear shot—and took it…

Just as Madison’s uncle Bing pumped two shots into her—one just below where the vest protected her…and one in her thigh.

Madison felt as if she’d been punched with fire. The world started going black, the sky turning to stars.

The last thing she saw as she turned her head was Bing, his body moving as it was riddled with bullets, and then Troy…saying, “Hang in there, Madison!”

And then…

Nothing.

M
adison next woke up three days later in the hospital intensive-care ward. Morphine clouded her brain and she had no recollection of anything. She felt pain, but it was softened by the morphine. She felt fear, because she saw the machines around her.

And then she saw John’s face.

She relaxed a little at the sight of him. He stroked her face, and said something like, “You did it…they got them…. Don’t talk…I love you.”

And then blackness.

The next time Madison awoke, she felt stronger. She still didn’t remember much. She could recall Charlie and the limo blowing up, and Bing…and being wired. But the precise way she got shot was a blur.

Her father was there, looking ashen, next to John. “Darling…don’t speak. You’re getting the best medical care money can buy.”

Madison’s eyes focused, and she saw three private-duty nurses around her. If she could have, she would have laughed. She couldn’t move—what did she need three nurses for?

Her father said, “Bing and Katherine are dead. Claire’s murder solved. I’m cleared…but at what price?”

She mouthed the words “How bad?”

“Your vital signs are stronger now. You lost a lot of blood. But you’re a tough one. Of course, anyone who has seen you in action in the boardroom knows that. And you were lucky. The bullets missed major organs. And the one in your leg missed your femur.”

Madison trained her eyes on John and smiled.

Her father said, “He hasn’t left the hospital. He’s a good man, Maddie, love…I’m very happy for you. So now you’ve got to pull through and get out of this damn bed and home where you belong.”

Madison grimaced as pain started coursing through her spine.

“Nurse!” her father shouted protectively. A nurse appeared with a syringe…and Madison fell backward into space into a sweet morphine oblivion.

The next person she saw was Troy.

“I sent John to a hotel to shower and get some sleep,” he said. “Your father is having a press conference right now. Everything’s going to be okay, Madison.”

She nodded. She felt more alert. “Thanks,” she whispered. “Water?”

Troy looked over at a nurse, who approached the bed with some ice chips, which she spooned into Madison’s mouth. The soothing cold wetness trickled down her throat.

Troy looked at the nurses. “I need five minutes with her.”

They nodded and left them alone.

“The Governess is really grateful on this one, Madison. Really grateful. If you weren’t undercover, trust me, you’d have a drawerful of medals.”

“Just…glad…it’s…over.”

“Sure. Me, too. I guess you can retire to your penthouse now.”

She shook her head. “I’m going to…walk,” she croaked. “Then kick your ass.”

He winked at her. “We’ll see, tough girl, we’ll see.”

Madison looked over at the windowsill. Huge flower arrangements, spectacular showy ones, stood in crystal vases.

“Ryan Greene, CeCe Goldberg—of course, she wants an exclusive, Anne Kelly…Christ, the president, Renee, Ashley. You got so many flowers, we started sending some to the cancer ward…try to brighten a few patients’ lives a bit.”

“Good.”

Madison smiled. She was going to be fine. She knew it. And the hell with anyone if they thought this meant she was going to quit the Gotham Roses secret spy division.

T
roy called Madison at work a couple weeks later.

“Hey…is this my old partner?”

“Oh, my God, Troy…how are you?”

“Fine. Assigned to a new case but missing my old partner. I keep bugging Renee to find us something new to work on.”

“That would be great.”

“How’s the office?”

“Feels good to be back, even if I’m still recovering from the ordeal. But I was going crazy cooped up in the hospital and then at home. On the bright side, my father is CEO again and I’m second-in-command. Stock is healthy…we’re building, climbing…doing great, Troy.”

“And John?”

“Wonderful.”

“You two set a date yet?”

“Sometime next summer when he has off from school. We want to marry in Tuscany.”

“Some guys have all the luck.”

Madison fingered the medal she still wore around her neck.

“Troy?”

“Yeah?”

“I still have your medal. I need to get it back to you.”

“Nah…you keep it. I want you to have it to keep you safe.”

“Thanks.”

“Listen, this isn’t an entirely social call. I need for you, your father and John to meet me somewhere.”

“Why do you need them?”

“You’ll see.” He sounded mysterious. “Renee actually has a surprise for you. But I need to deliver it to keep your real relationship with Renee a secret.”

“All right,” she said cautiously. “Where?”

“Drake Hotel. The restaurant. Eight o’clock on Friday. Reservations will be in my name. Table for five. Just sit and order a cocktail and wait for me. Don’t be late.”

“But—” she said, but found herself listening to dead air.

How odd,
she thought.

On Friday, she and John and her father took her father’s limousine to the Drake. As she sat in the back with them, she couldn’t help smiling. “Out with my two favorite guys.”

“Well, we’re with our angel,” John said. He wore a Hugo Boss suit she bought him for his birthday. Her father came in his suit from the office, and she wore a simple black suit by Calvin Klein with a cream-colored blouse. In her hair was an antique comb John had bought her at a street fair they went to in Greenwich Village. Filled with marcasite and emerald stones, it had tiny art deco–looking butterflies.

They arrived at the Drake at a nudge before eight o’clock. As Troy had said, there was a table waiting for them in the back. The maître d’ said, “This is the table that was requested. Very private.”

Their waiter, with an elegant French accent, took their drink orders, and they sat back and looked at each other. Madison assumed they were all thinking the same thing. What the hell were they doing there, and why was this FBI agent acting so…well, downright cloak and dagger?

At eight-fifteen, Madison checked her watch. “Okay,” she said aloud what was on her mind. “The suspense is killing me.”

Five minutes later, the three of them—they had all sat with a view of the entrance to the restaurant—saw Troy walking in with a tall gentleman.

Troy approached the table—and he was beaming.

“Thanks for coming,” he said. “I’d like to…well, the hell with dragging this out. I’d like to present to you your uncle, Madison…your uncle William Pruitt.”

Madison’s father nearly choked on the water he was sipping. John dropped his bread knife. And Madison felt that if she stood, her legs would fail her.

“What?” Her voice was tremulous.

The tall man—who did look remarkably like her father—leaned down and pecked her on the cheek. Then he shook John’s hand, and walked to the other side of the table and stared at Madison’s father.

“Jack…” he said hoarsely. “It’s true.”

Jack stood and embraced him, fiercely, overcome with uncharacteristic emotion. The two of them stood there for several long minutes. Then everyone sat down and Madison said, “Troy, what’s going on?”

Troy and William smiled, while her father—perhaps for the first time in his life—looked understandably shaken.

“Well…while you were laid up, Madison, we went through Bing’s and Katherine’s apartments with fine-tooth combs. But even before that, something was…well, as the expression goes, ‘sticking in my craw.’ Remember how Katherine, when confronted, pretty much admitted everything?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well…one thing she wouldn’t admit, didn’t admit, was her father’s guilt in the murder. She said he had kidnapped the baby, but the child was supposed to go to his nursemaid who loved him like a son.”

“I assumed it was a woman who refused to believe her father was capable of the ultimate evil.”

Troy shook his head. “I don’t know. It seemed like more than that to me. So I started digging. And digging. Madison, Jack…I am telling you that I never worked so hard on anything in my life. Dead ends, false leads…but eventually, I found him. With my boss,” he looked at Madison meaningfully, “pulling some strings.”

Troy looked over at the man next to him.

“Are you…sure?” Jack asked hesitantly.

“Yes. Despite him being a dead ringer, we ran some DNA tests using Madison’s blood from the hospital. He’s your brother.”

Jack covered his mouth with his hand and started weeping. “I’m sorry…this isn’t like me. It’s just that…”

“I know,” Troy said calmly. “It’s a little overwhelming. I’ll let William tell you what he knows.”

William cleared his throat and fiddled with his linen napkin. “I was too young to remember anything, of course. I only knew that my mother loved me dearly—my adoptive mother. My nursemaid did take me in, but whether from fear or guilt, after just a month or two, she allowed me to be adopted by a wonderful family—a college professor and his wife in Vermont. Lovely people, who had no idea who I was or where I was from. The adoption was handled privately. The nursemaid had a fake birth certificate claiming I was hers. She said she was a single mother whose parents disowned her and she felt I would be better off with two parents.”

“And you had no idea?”

“None. I knew I was adopted. Mom told me when I was seven. They never had any more children, and to be honest, they doted on me so much that I didn’t feel like I was overly curious. When my father passed away—I idolized him, such a wonderful man, so revered at the University of Vermont, taught history—I started thinking about it some more. My mother and I tried to find my birth mother. But some things didn’t add up. The birth certificate, we discovered early on, was fake. So it seemed like we were at a dead end. I just…let it be. I assumed it was just the way it was.”

“Then, when I showed up,” Troy said, “it all fit together.”

Madison and Jack began peppering William with questions. Was he married? Did Madison have cousins? Was his childhood happy? What did he do for a living?

Madison was delighted to discover her uncle was a professor at New York University—in the history department like his father before him. He specialized in the history of Europe in the twentieth century. He had, he said, a very happy life, other than occasionally looking at the starry sky and asking those big questions, like
who am I
and
where did I come from?

His wife was also a professor—she taught English, and specialized in medieval literature and Chaucer. He had a daughter Madison’s age who was a schoolteacher like John, and a daughter three years older than Madison who was a stay-at-home mother of a little boy.

“What do they think of all this?” Madison asked.

“They’re so grateful I’m at least getting the opportunity to meet…you all.”

Then he looked down, suddenly somber.

“What?” Jack asked. “We didn’t scare you off with all our questions, did we?”

“No…I just…well, it’s important to me that you know I’m not interested in the Pruitt fortune. Money’s not important to me. I just wanted the opportunity to know where I came from. Honestly.”

Madison’s father waved his hands. “Look, William, after all I’ve been through watching Madison in that hospital bed…I’m determined that we build a relationship. I’m still stunned. Still…overwhelmed, frankly. But I’m also telling you that your daughters will want for nothing in life. Your grandson will have a trust. They can do nothing with the money, or they can donate it, or they can enjoy the good life for a while. You and your wife can continue teaching…or she can go to England and spend the rest of her life haunting medieval monasteries researching old manuscripts. The money is yours. It’s your birthright. But we’ll let the lawyers figure all that out. For tonight—” he raised his glass “—we celebrate.”

Madison, John, Troy, William and Jack all lifted their water glasses or wineglasses and clinked.

Madison looked around the table. Pruitt-family secrets very nearly killed her.

But now…now she believed that Pruitt-family secrets just may have opened up a whole new world to her.

One she couldn’t wait to start exploring. She couldn’t believe the twists and turns her life had taken recently. As her father and William tried to catch up on lost years, Madison’s cell phone chimed. She kissed John on the cheek and excused herself to take the call in the hotel lobby.

“Madison?”

“Renee?”

“Do you like your surprise?”

“I don’t even know what to say. I can’t believe it.”

“The Governess pushed hard to find him. She—and I—are delighted with your hard work and this was one way to say thank you. You’re an asset to the organization and we’ll use your skills again, you can be sure. Until the Duke is locked away, the Roses aren’t safe.”

“Count me in. Only next time I could do without the gunshot wound,” Madison said wryly.

“Ah, that Type A personality. Somehow, Madison, I knew you’d want to work with us again.”

“Never challenge a Pruitt. We don’t like to lose.”

“And neither do the Roses. Take care, Madison. Go enjoy your dinner.”

Madison said goodbye and closed her cell phone. Renee was New York City’s keeper of secrets, and Madison was certain of one thing: the Duke—and anyone on the wrong side of the law—had better not underestimate the power of the Roses.