Criminal Promises (25 page)

The hallway light flicked on. Blinking
rapidly to adjust her sight, her hands shook when Adalia stepped
into the doorway holding a gun at her side.

Still beautiful, but more sadistic looking
than when she’d been sentenced to life—she’d lost weight and her
eyes were empty—cold and without a flicker of conscience. Prison
rehabilitation had failed.

Jutting out her chin, Maggie stiffened her
spine. She would not cower.

“At last, I officially
meet the cherished Mrs. Sullivan.” Adalia flipped on the overhead
light. “Or are you hoping to make it Mrs. Harte? You’ve been very
chummy with the detective.”

“At last, I meet the
cowardly Adalia Wood.” Oddly, her pulse settled and her racing
brain slowed. She had been
chummy
with Harte. Nothing Adalia said would defile
their time together. “Hiding behind games. Too afraid to face a
cop.”

“Your cop can’t help you
now.”

“I don’t need a
hero.”
Come on, Burke. I need you!
“You might need a savior though.”

“Nah. That little crash
you heard has taken care of Harte and Harrison. But should they get
out of it, I have another surprise for them.”

Her partner. Where was he?
What had she done to Burke and Craig? They couldn’t be hurt. Or
worse. They had to be on their way. “So you’re a desperate coward
unable to finish a job on your own?” That her voice sounded calm
while her brain raced and her heart thundered with fear was a
massive miracle.

How far could she push this? How was she
going to get away?

“I saw your kid’s
picture.” Adalia moved into the room and stood on the opposite side
of the bed from Maggie. “I know you have the papers.”

“That’s nothing more than
a pretty picture of a really cold place. And the papers are scrolls
written in an ancient language. Pity Mike’s dead. He could’ve
translated them.”

“Your husband had time to
translate them and find out where the diamond is.”

“Diamond? Why would
scrolls talk about diamonds? And neither will do you any good in
hell.” Maggie snapped her fingers. “Wait…there was something to do
with the North Pole. I saw a movie once… The Earth is hollow and
you get there by going through a portal at the North Pole. Do you
believe that? Is the diamond your key?”

Laughing, Maggie scanned the room for
potential weapons. Burke’s laptop and the desk lamp were the
closest. Not exactly something she could grab on the sly. And they
weren’t very effective against a gun.

“
And I thought you were
smart.” Adalia took another step. “The papers lead to the Gryphon
Diamond. It’s far more valuable than any kind of science fiction
crap.”

“Right.”
Think, Maggie. You can do this.
“What girl doesn’t want an awesome diamond, but
isn’t the Gryphon Diamond supposed to be an extraterrestrial
diamond? Doesn’t that strike you as a little science
fiction-like?”

“Clearly Mike translated
some of the scrolls.” Adalia cocked her hip and lowered the gun
slightly. “That diamond is a powerful conductor.”

“What are you going to
conduct with it?”
Come on, BD.
Maggie relaxed a little, hoping Adalia would
follow suit.

Adalia rolled her eyes. “I
thought you read the papers.”

“Translations of ancient
languages take longer than translating something written in a
currently spoken language.” Maggie shrugged. “Mike didn’t finish
with the scrolls. I’m not exactly the expert he was.”

“The diamond landed at the
North Pole thousands of years ago during a meteor
shower.”

“So it’s worth a lot of
money.”

“Well, yeah.” Adalia waved
the gun in the air as if brushing off some stupidity. “But it
magnifies nuclear power by untold measures. I want to know who hid
it and where.”

“Oh, well since you seem
to want to wipe out the world…” Maggie pointed at the bedside
table. “It’s in that drawer.”

Adalia glanced toward the nightstand.

Did this woman really take her for an idiot?
Mike hadn’t finished the translation, but he’d done enough to put
Maggie, BD and Craig—with the help of a few military contacts,
including one of their captain's—on the right path.

The Hyperboreans had discovered an
extraterrestrial diamond. A Greek god had foreseen it as a
destructive force that could destroy all life, so the Hyperboreans
encapsulated the stone into the heart of a Gryphon—the mythical
creature of protection—statue carved from marble. Thousands of
years later, the military had gotten hold of the diamond and used
it during some nuclear weapons testing in the forties. The
destruction during those tests had been too great, so they disposed
of the diamond. Good to know Big Brother had some scruples.

They’d found nothing to tell them where it
might be today. Even if Mike had translated the scrolls completely,
the location wouldn’t have been in them given the timeframe. The
trouble lay with the secret group hunting the diamond.

“If an ancient people had
this diamond,” Maggie went on, “why do you think it has anything to
do with nuclear power? That’s not exactly something that’s been
around forever.”

“It was like a
prophecy.”

“And here I thought you
didn’t buy into science fiction or paranormal type stuff.” Gripping
the laptop, prepared to hurl it at Adalia’s face and end this,
Maggie caught BD’s spicy scent. “There’s no mention of the
diamond’s location.”

Adalia shrugged and raised
her gun. “The scrolls may not tell where the diamond is now, but
they will chronicle who the Hyperboreans gave it to and how to use
it. I’ll track it down.”

“How can you know about
the diamond but not know who had it?” Holding her makeshift weapon
behind her back, she stepped away from the desk. Closer to the
bathroom, to Adalia, and hopefully closer to BD where he would come
in through the hallway.

“My grandfather told me
about it.” She rolled her eyes and waved her gun. “But he was out
of his mind thanks to old age and disease. He said the scrolls led
to the diamond.”

“You need to know who it’s
been passed to so you can trail it to the hiding place.”

A grunt behind Maggie had
her turning to see a strange man—Adalia’s partner—climbing in
through the window.
Damn.

Choking back fear, ignoring the slippery grip
of her sweaty palms, she assured herself she could do this. Throw
the computer at Adalia, dive into the windowless bathroom away from
her partner, and run like hell out the other door.

“You won’t have any of
it,” Maggie retorted. An almost silent hiss came from the bathroom
beside her. BD was there.
Thank you,
God!
“We’ve re-hidden the scrolls and the
translations.”

“I’m not wasting time with
you.”

“Give her the papers,
bitch.” Adalia’s partner demanded. “Harte isn’t here to save you
this time.”

Telling herself to stay
calm, Maggie turned to Adalia’s partner. “Tell me. What’s it
like?”

“What’s what
like?”

“Deluding yourself into
thinking you’re doing the right thing by helping her murder
innocent people? How does it feel to know you’ll never measure up
to a real man?”

“That’s why he drinks and
beats his wife.” BD stepped out of the bathroom with his weapon
trained on Adalia. “It’s the only way he can feel powerful. Hello,
Pritchett.”

BD! Yes. He’d kept his promise.

Craig stood in the hallway slightly out of
Pritchett’s view. His gun was trained on Adalia’s back.

“You’re wrong, Harte.”
Pritchett pulled his gun and pointed it at BD.

“I should have known you
were the one helping Adalia.” BD shifted his aim to Pritchett and
stepped farther into the room. “I do know that while the scrolls
would be a tremendous academic discovery they will remain
officially undiscovered.”

Keeping her gaze steady on Adalia and the
weapon still pointing at her own heart, Maggie sidled closer to BD
and slightly out of the crossfire path.

Adalia and Pritchett remained oblivious to
the gun pointed at the back of her head.

“You know, I’ve had about
all the fun I can stand for one night.” Maggie stepped closer still
to BD. He took her hand and pulled him behind her. Now he had
Pritchett and Adalia’s guns trained on him.

Adalia took a step closer and pointed the gun
at BD’s forehead. Pritchett lowered his to BD’s chest. Maggie’s
heart slammed her ribs with knowledge. He wouldn’t survive
this.

She widened her eyes and
stared over Adalia’s shoulder at Craig.
Do
something!
Craig stood frozen. Unmoving.
Unreadable.

“Mags, bathroom.” Totally
grateful to have BD there to be demanding and arrogant, she wasn’t
able to obey. She’d claimed she didn’t need a hero, but as he
backed her toward the bathroom she loved knowing she had
one.

“Oh, screw this,”
Pritchett sneered.

In surreal slow motion, he and BD squeezed
their triggers. Five pops resounded through the room followed by
two more. BD jerked backward knocking Maggie into the bathroom.

Blood splattered her face. She screamed.
Burke stumbled and took her to the floor. Two other thuds hit the
floor—one in the bedroom, one in the hall beyond—before a buzzing
silence reigned.

Maggie struggled to get out from under Burke.
Her slamming heart plummeted at the sight of his blood covering his
shirt.

“Mags.” He tried to push
her back, but his hands fell away.

Craig leapt to Adalia’s
side and kicked her gun away. Pritchett came into the bathroom.
Craig was on his heels. Tense, but otherwise stone-faced. “They’re
dead.”

“Good.” Burke’s voice,
raspy and strained, was followed by a gasp.

Hot tears rolled down Maggie’s face as she
knelt at his side. Blood poured from his shoulder, staining his
shirt and the white carpet.

“We need to move him to
the bedroom so we have more room to work.” Craig reached for him.
“You with me, BD?”

“Yeah.”

After thirty seconds of cussing, groaning and
more bleeding, Craig and Pritchett had Burke on the bedroom floor.
Maggie focused her vision on him, trying to block the other two
bodies from her peripheral.

“I’ll deal with the
bodies,” Pritchett said.

“Bodies?” Burke’s voice
was fading with his color.

“It was Cap,” Craig said.
“He stopped the dispatcher from calling Mac.”

“Craig, towels.” She
couldn’t care about who lay in her hall or other details with Burke
bleeding in her arms. He couldn’t die. “Burke, stay with
me.”

“Ambulance.”

“I know.” She pushed a
hand against the chest wound and grabbed her phone with the other
to dial 9-1-1. He’d be fine. He had to be fine. She pushed on his
chest to stop the blood flow and propped the phone between her ear
and shoulder. He moved away from the pain. “Damn it! Don’t move.
You’ll be all right.”

The seconds of waiting for a dispatcher to
pick up dragged like hours. Burke was going to bleed to death if
they didn’t answer.

“Mags…safe.”

Her throat closed. Her
stomach and chest lurched with the effort to breathe.
Stop it!
She ordered
herself to calm down before she hyperventilated. He’d been shot,
but all he worried about was her safety.

“I’m here. Shh.”
Apparently taking her at her word, he passed out.

“9-1-1. What’s your
emergency?” He was still alive. He wasn’t going to die.

“An officer’s been shot.
In the chest near his left shoulder.” Craig stepped up beside her.
She yanked the towel from him and shoved it against Burke’s chest.
She would
not
break down now.

“Ma’am, what’s your
address? I’ll get you help.”

She rattled off her address.

“How much blood has he
lost?”

“I’m not exactly measuring
it. He’s as white as my carpet was.” Belatedly, she remembered the
speaker feature on the phone and, after pushing the button, laid it
on the floor. With both hands free she could be more
help.

The dispatcher’s irritatingly calm voice
sounded tinny over the speaker as he repeated questions and
instructions.

“Maggie, you’re shaking
too badly. Let me.” Craig covered her hand, applied steady pressure
to Burke’s chest, and handed her a smaller towel to wipe her hands
off. Keeping pressure on Burke’s chest, he took over dealing with
the operator.

She pushed Burke’s hair off his forehead,
worried at how white his normally tan skin was turning. The
metallic stench of the blood, the slickness of his life on her
hands and splattered on her face, threatened to take her out.

Swallowing the rising bile, she ran her hands
over the man she loved. He’d ended the threats she’d faced, but
he’d risked his own life. It had likely been a replay of the scene
with Samantha, only he was the one with the bullet.

Sirens sounded nearby. He paled more. His
breathing grew shallower with each dragging minute.

“Stay with me, Burke.” She
brushed the hair away from his forehead and leaned close, resting
her cheek on his. He was passed out, but she couldn’t stop talking.
She whispered in his ear, hoping he could hear her. “The ambulance
is close. You’ll be fine.”