hands. There was the agonizing squeal of metal on metal as the passenger side ground along the guardrail, and a spray of sparks lit up the night like a million stars. Then there was Emily’s scream. And finally the gut-wrenching crack as the rail gave way, hurtling the tiny car into a headlong somersault down the earthen slope.
Mitch remembered little after that. Not until the blipping of hospital monitors and support machines. It could have been hours or days that passed before the detectives came. Time meant nothing once he’d been told of Emily. Eventually he’d been presented with a photo lineup, and now, after months of safe houses, Mitch wished to hell he’d never pointed out the man he’d witnessed firing the gun.
He had never actually seen a photograph of Sergio Sabatini until he’d picked him out of the photo array. But he’d certainly recognized the name the instant one of the detectives uttered it: Slippery Sabatini. What resident of Chicago hadn’t heard of the notorious mob kingpin who’d spent the past fifteen years slipping through one judiciary crack after the next, evading every last criminal charge the Chicago Police Department tried to pin on him?
As though life without Emily hadn’t been bleak enough, from that moment on, Mitch’s life had literally disintegrated. First there had been the weeks of recovery in hospital under heavy police guard. And then, when Sabatini’s slick, high-priced lawyer managed to convince a judge that his client was established in the community with a family that depended on him, and was, therefore, in no way a flight risk, Sabatini easily met the million-dollar bail. On that same day, Mitch was moved to the first safe house. And the next. And the next. He’d lost count after the twelfth or thirteenth, in the same way he’d lost count of the number of trial delays and the D.A.’s excuses for each one.
Now, ten months later, it was easy to lose sight of the real reason he’d subjected himself to it all—Emily.
With numbing fingers, Mitch drew his wallet from his back pocket. He ignored the razor-sharp wind that cut at his frozen hands as he flipped the leather wallet open. The one-inch photo behind the crinkled plastic was several years old, but Emily’s beauty had never changed—from the day he’d met her in college her eyes had never ceased to shine, and her smile had only brightened over the years.
Mitch caressed the plastic over the photo with the pad of his thumb before closing the wallet and returning it to his pocket.
He was doing the right thing. In the end, in spite of everything he’d been through, it was the right thing. Only he could avenge Emily’s death; only his testimony could put her murderer behind bars. There was no one else. Just him now. Up until three months ago, the D.A. had had two others lined up to testify against Sabatini, two witnesses who had seen the cars force Mitch’s off the ramp that night. But now they were dead, or at least presumed so after their mysterious disappearances, which were currently under investigation by the CPD.
No, a conviction in the Sabatini trial lay solely in Mitch’s hands. And yet how many times had he caught himself wishing he’d died along with Emily that night? So what if Sabatini went to prison for consecutive life sentences? It couldn’t change the past. Emily was dead.
Mitch wiped the melting snow from his face and turned to look back at the safe house.
After all the safe houses, and after the trial, even after a conviction…what kind of life did he really have to go back to, anyway? Without Emily, it was hardly worth it.
He tilted his head and leaned against the fence, gazing up at the whirl of snowflakes. But it was images of Emily that swam before his mind’s eye.
And it was at that moment, the instant he’d started to straighten from the fence, intending to head back to the house, that the frigid silence of the late afternoon was shattered. One second there was quiet, and the next the world was ruptured by a violent explosion. It tore through the flimsy structure of the safe house, ripping it into a million fiery pieces that spewed out in as many directions.
Instantly the air was thick, churning with the heat of the blast, alive with the hiss of the inferno that consumed the small house. Flames licked at the heavy sky, their heat blistering along Mitch’s skin as his lungs took in the first wave of acrid smoke.
It was the second blast that knocked Mitch off his feet. It hurled him back against the fence under another shower of burning debris, and pitched him into utter blackness.
MOLLY SHOULD HAVE expected the mass of reporters and media vans camped outside Police Headquarters. Coverage of the explosion that had destroyed the safe house in Huntington was all over the news.
She’d been numb from the second she’d stepped out of the shower this morning, padded into her bedroom and seen the photo of Mitch flash across the TV screen. She’d been numb as she drove through the city and parked her car in the police garage around the corner; numb when she’d shoved change into the slot of the newspaper box and taken out a Tribune. She was still numb as she elbowed her way past the media and up the steps to the doors of Headquarters.
Even sitting down at her desk in the far corner of the Homicide unit, Molly was still in a haze of disbelief. Ignoring the chaos of phones and other detectives around her, she shrugged off her suit jacket and unfolded the paper. The front page of the early edition offered even less information. At least the TV report had suggested only three bodies were recovered from the late afternoon blast that had ripped through the Huntington bungalow. And unless Witness Protection was working under a new rule with less officers posted, that could mean…could mean there was still one survivor. Which one, though?
Her gaze scanned the rest of the page, scrutinizing the photo of the wreckage and finally stopping at the black-and-white image of Mitch. It wasn’t a good photo. Grainy and blurred. He looked directly into the camera, his lips curved in the same sexy smile that touched the corners of his eyes. And in spite of the poor quality of the photo, there was no mistaking that something in his eyes—a light, a spark. She’d never been able to describe that look, but it was the same one that had always managed to trip her pulse and bring that rushing swell to her heart. It was the same look she had felt so certain would forever be reserved for her, and her alone.
Molly gave herself a mental shake. How was it possible that twelve years couldn’t erase that sensation? Especially when the romance had lasted barely a quarter of that time? Then again, who was to say that at age seven she hadn’t already been in love with “that Drake boy” down the street?
Mitch Drake, the much-celebrated architect behind the new Carlisle Office Complex and now a protected witness for the prosecution in the upcoming murder trial against Sergio Sabatini, is among those presumed dead in the Huntington explosion. Police are withholding comment until investigators have assessed the scene, and the medical examiner’s office has identified the remains….
Molly swallowed the bitterness of bile threatening to rise to her throat. He couldn’t be dead. Not Mitch.
She needed answers. Glancing across the squad room to her sergeant’s office, she wasn’t surprised to see his door was shut. With officers dead, the brass would be all over this case, and no doubt Sergeant Burr was either on the phone or in conference.
She stared again at the newspaper photo of Mitch. How was it possible for him to look even better than her memory made him out to be?
It was the same photo the Tribune had already used countless times in reference to the upcoming Sabatini trial. In it Mitch’s hair was longer, and he sported a mustache and a trimmed beard. Molly had seen the combination on him only once, when he was nineteen, back from Boston after his first year of college. She hadn’t had to say anything about the new look. Mitch had known almost immediately by her expression that she didn’t like it, and he’d shaved
