Zach was with him.
“What does your father say, Paige? Who did you see?”
Emergency alarm bells clanged inside her head. She’d lost Zach once. She’d lost him once to this man. She would not do it again. No no no no!
The camera. It was honed in on her. Zach could see her. But O’Neill watched, too. How could she signal? Let him know the danger? Oh God oh God oh God.
Her mind raced. Her blood was rushing so fast inside her she thought she’d collapse. She could barely hear her own words through the cacophony of her roaring heartbeat. Striving to appear dazed when in fact she had never felt more alert, all she could think of saying was, “I should button up my sweater.” A heartbeat. Two. God, he didn’t remember, he didn’t understand. “I should button up—”
Wood splintered as the door came crashing down.
Zach filled the doorway, gun drawn, and Paige would never forget the wild, love-filled look in his eyes.
She wanted to fling herself at him, say, “I love you! I’ve been quietly fighting to come back to you!” but she was paralyzed by her terror.
Sob catching in her throat, she pointed toward the figure of O’Neill looming behind him, now raising something gloomy and glinting to Zach’s head. “It’s him.”
CHAPTER 7
THE MELLOW OVERHEAD lights dimmed in Zach’s eyes as if a cloud had passed over them. Dread, ice-freaking-cold and paralyzing dread, slammed over him.
O’Neill.
Lieutenant O’Neill.
Every face he’d seen that day in the hospital seven years ago flashed across Zach’s mind— mocking him.
He’d seen Paige’s friends. Her mother. The doctors. Nurses. The cops. The old lead investigator, Lieutenant O’Neill, who’d interrogated Leticia Avery that day along with two other detectives, had been there.
Son of a bitch! No wonder O’Neill had never allowed him to reopen the case. He’d never let anyone reopen it because he’d killed the judge.
And he’d tried to kill Paige.
Her skin had lost all color, and her eyes were wide and pleading on his. “Zach,” she said in a strangled whisper, horrified by the sight of O’Neill’s gun jammed into the back of his head.
Zach stared at her, a thousand conflicting emotions rushing one after the other.
They’d been trying to frame him. All those years ago and now. Using the one thing, the one thing, Zach gave a shit about. Using her against him.
Once, he’d had a death wish. Once, he’d physically welcomed any pain that could even reflect the pain he’d had inside him. But at this moment, when he had never in his life wanted to live so badly, he was stunned by the force of his fear. Fear of failing her, fear of losing her, fear that after O’Neill shot him, she was next.
“Drop the gun.”
Fuck.
His Glock clattered to the floor.
Sue Ellen jumped to her feet, shaking her head as she clasped her hands to her chest. “Please, no! Larry, you said no one would get hurt!”
“Sue Ellen, yes. This can still work.” O’Neill shot the distraught woman a desperate smile. “He did it. He has no alibi, and we caught part of her testimony on tape. His car was used to run the judge off the road. Tangible evidence. I know where that sucker is hidden. He killed the judge, and when she remembered, he shot her. I had to shoot him to defend you and myself. It can work!”
Sue Ellen cried, “Larry, you said you only wanted to know how much she knew, for me to help confuse her, nothing else!”
“They can talk, Sue Ellen.”
“So what if they do!” Anguished, Sue Ellen covered her face with her hands, her cry muffled by her palms. “It’s gone on long enough!”
O’Neill pressed the barrel of the gun harder against the back of Zach’s head. “Nice and slow, Rivers, lean over and take out the backup piece and drop it.”