Money Shot (35 page)

Then Einar dropped his right hand. Just a bit. But Rush had noticed that he always dropped his right just before striking with his left, leaving his midsection completely unguarded for the space of two deadly heartbeats.

The right hand drooped, and Rush danced into the deadly circle of his reach, his blood singing for the kill. Einar’s eyes went hot and vicious and he slashed out with his blade.

And met nothing but air, because Rush was already under his arm. He slid behind his cousin’s back, twisted the guy’s off hand up into the socket-popping range between his shoulder blades and kicked away the knife as it clattered to the stone floor at his feet.

Maria reeled under the truth of Yarrow’s accusation like it had been an open-handed slap to her face. Then a calmness flooded her, a serenity that welled up from utter certainty. Because suddenly she knew exactly what she was doing here. She knew exactly why she’d walked the path she had, knew exactly why life had taken her to just this place.

Everything she’d lived through, all the mistakes she’d made, the sins she’d committed, the years and years of penance she’d performed for those sins. Falling in love, rediscovering the woman she might have been, struggling to accept even the possibility of a happy ending. All of it had led her to this. To being present at—no, being absolutely crucial to—a life-altering decision faced by one very troubled young girl.

She raked her heart for the words, any words, magic words. Words that would break the lock under which this child had imprisoned her will to live. She’d already tried telling her own story and had had about as much success as she should have expected. How many people had tried to comfort her when she was Yarrow’s age by talking about themselves? It didn’t work then and it wouldn’t work now. The only thing that had ever worked for her was Rush.

Rush, dropping his love like a rope into the black well of her self-hatred but refusing to climb it for her. Rush, forcing her to face herself, to own her desire to live, to love. Rush, calmly informing her to stop feeling sorry for herself. To figure out what she wanted and choose it. Rush, reminding her of a dream she’d suppressed for so long she’d forgotten it was even there. A happily-ever-after.

Yarrow would have to choose, too. She’d had so many choices taken from her by so many people, well meaning and otherwise. The only way Maria could possibly prove to Yarrow that she had worth was to treat her as if her worth were a foregone conclusion. To act like she had a brain in her head, a soul in her body. Like Maria trusted her to make good decisions and take care of herself.

It was a dangerous thing, giving a kid with Yarrow’s track record a free hand with her future, but it was that or not have a future to be free with.

Maria’s heart jumped into her throat, but she deliberately opened her hands and released Yarrow’s wrists. The knife Rush had kicked away from Einar moments before lay on the ground near her knee. She picked it up and handed it hilt first to Yarrow.

Yarrow snatched it from her and stared up at Maria with suspicious eyes. Maria eased off the girl’s body and sat back on her heels. “You want the gloves off? Fine.” She threw a layer of stoic briskness over her breaking heart. “Your life is fucked up. Bad. Some of it was rotten luck, but most of it you did all by your stupid, selfish self.”

“Nice pep talk. Is this what they teach you in Secret Service school?”

“That’s the bad news,” she went on. “The good news is you can totally get things back on track and achieve a happy ending all your own.” She put a finger in Yarrow’s face to forestall commentary. “If I can, anybody can.”

Yarrow put her mouth in a sulky line.

“So let me bottom-line it for you, okay? You want to die? Fine. Do it.” She waved a casual hand at the knife in Yarrow’s fist. “But know this—it’s a choice, and a cowardly one at that. Happiness is out there. Forgiveness, second chances, redemption, the whole deal. They’re expensive but they’re out there. All you have to do is pony up the courage to ask for it. To believe in it.”

“Happiness.” Yarrow tried to sneer it, but the word came out with a plaintive edge that nearly snapped Maria’s control. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Open your ears, kiddo. I’m telling you where to start. With a choice.” Maria caught Yarrow’s eyes with her own. The pain and rage shining there thudded into her soul like a flaming arrow, but she managed to keep her voice deliberate and steady. “Dark or light. Love or hate. Will your life mean something, or will you throw it away like so much trash? Nobody gets the final word on that but you, hon, and we’re out of time here. What’s it going to be?”

 

EINAR GAVE a cry and dropped to his knees.

Rush tried very, very hard not to give in to instinct and dislocate his cousin’s shoulder. It would be a nice way to ensure the guy would go down and stay down, yes, but he knew that wasn’t why he wanted to do it. What he really wanted—wanted quite desperately—was to hear him weep with pain.

But he didn’t want Maria to see that in him. Didn’t want her to see him glorying in the physical destruction of a fellow human being, no matter how well that fellow human had earned the pain.

“It’s over, Einar.”

“Is it?” Einar didn’t fight the ruthless hold Rush had on his arm, only swept out with a foot. He sent a handful of candles on the floor tumbling, and they rolled flickering into a pile of rags against the far wall.

For a moment, there was silence, like an indrawn breath before a scream. Then fire roared up from the rags, and flames licked hot and hungry at the ancient wooden beams that kept the earth from burying them all.

Einar laughed and lashed out with his other foot. He sent a few more candles tumbling toward what Rush now recognized as piles of gas-soaked rags against the other wall. The wall where Maria crouched, silent and still, her fingers knotted between her knees, her eyes tight on Yarrow and the knife the girl had pressed against her own wrist. Shit.

In one tense motion, Rush threw Einar toward the altar and whipped off his jacket. He threw it on the rags closest to the women and stomped on it, killing whatever flames he could. He didn’t know what the hell Maria was doing, but whatever it was, she’d just run out of time to get it done.

“Maria!” The smoke was already thick and suffocating. “Get Yarrow out of here!”

 

MARIA IGNORED Rush. She ignored the flames licking up the wall behind her, too. She ignored everything but Yarrow. The girl’s eyes were squeezed shut, her lips peeled back with the effort to make her bleak choice. Maria’s own heart crumbled under the weight of the girl’s pain, her own remembered pain, the struggle not to snatch the knife away and pull Yarrow out of that smoky cave by her hair and shake some sense into her.

But this wasn’t Maria’s choice to make. It was Yarrow’s. If she was going to get better, if she was going to have any chance at all, she needed to commit to life. And Maria couldn’t do that for her. Nobody could. It was now or never.

The muscles bunched and shook in Yarrow’s thin arms as she hunched over her own wrist, the blade trembling against her skin. Maria rocked in silent despair, but still she sat.

Please
, she thought.
Please. Let it have been enough
.

With a broken cry Yarrow flung the knife aside and Maria scooped the girl into her arms like a rag doll. “Oh, sweetheart,” she said, tucking the girl’s head under her chin, wrapping her arms around her bare shoulders. Their tears ran together and soaked Maria’s jacket. “Oh, my brave, good girl.”

“I couldn’t do it,” Yarrow wept. “I couldn’t. Not if there’s even a chance I could be—” She broke off into a wretched sob.

“Happy.” Maria’s throat ached. “You will be,” she said. “I promise.”

Then suddenly there was fire. Everywhere. The little tongues she’d been vaguely aware of during Yarrow’s life-and-death struggle had multiplied into roaring rivers that devoured the ancient beams holding the mountain off their heads. Einar was on his knees in front of the altar, his face contorted with rage and pain as he cradled his shoulder. Rush stamped at snakes of fire that slithered across the floor and up the walls while smoke gathered heavy and dark on the ceiling.

Maria scrambled to her feet and reached down for Yarrow. Then pain exploded on her scalp as Einar twisted his hand into her hair and yanked her aside. She skidded across the dirt floor like a skipped stone and watched in horror as Einar lifted a booted foot and drove his heel into Yarrow’s temple. The girl crumpled to the floor without a sound, blood a thin trickle down her pale cheek.

Einar turned to Maria then, one arm folded across his chest, the other holding it in place, pain etching deep ugly lines into his handsome face.
Score one for Rush
, she thought.
I hope he fucking broke it
.

“Lights-out for you next, pretty Maria.” He smiled as he advanced on her, a chilling baring of perfect white teeth. “Nothing personal. Just something to keep Rush occupied while I get out of here.”

She scrambled to her knees and yanked the SIG out of the waistband of her jeans, where it had miraculously remained.

Einar froze, though his smile didn’t slip. “Oh, dear,” he said. “So prepared. Such a Boy Scout, my cousin.”

“Yeah. I love that about him.” She leveled the barrel at his chest. “I believe this one’s loaded.”

“For all the good it’ll do you.” He smiled. “Yarrow told me about your little phobia, Maria. You can’t pull the trigger. Don’t pretend you can.”

She gave him a tight half smile. “Who says I’m pretending?”

Smoke filled the air with a choking heat, and flames licked greedily up the walls to the ceiling beams, but Maria didn’t shift her gaze from Einar. She saw Rush in her peripheral vision give up on the flames and scoop up his rifle from the ground. He took it by the barrel, Louisville Slugger style, and every tense line of his body announced his intention to knock Einar’s skull out of the park.

Then his eyes met hers and she saw the grief in them. The sorrow and the regret that crouched down beside the cold determination to take out whoever and whatever threatened her and Yarrow. Up to and including this man who’d been a brother to him.

Since the moment she’d met Rush, she realized with a vicious pang of regret, she’d been concerned with one thing and one thing only—protecting herself. It hadn’t occurred to her that
she
could protect
him
. That he might need her to. She wondered if he’d let her. She certainly hadn’t earned his trust. She’d been too busy accepting his. Regardless, it was time to find out.

She caught his eye and gave her head a single, short shake. He went suddenly and perfectly still, then took two steps back. Just like that, he gave her the shot. With full knowledge of her weakness, with his life, her life and Yarrow’s life all on the line, he could still believe that she’d be able to aim, fire and hit the correct person before it was too late.

He
trusted
her.

He’d said it so many times but she hadn’t believed it. It wasn’t that she hadn’t believed him capable or sincere. She simply hadn’t believed herself worthy. Like Yarrow, she’d needed the proof. And now she had it.

Einar smiled at her hesitation. “Good girl,” he said, and stepped toward her.

Gratitude bloomed in Maria’s chest like a rising sun, like spring after a hundred-year winter.

And then, her hands perfectly steady, she pulled the trigger.

AFTER MARIA calmly drilled a textbook flesh wound through the meaty part of Einar’s upper thigh, Rush helped her wrap Yarrow in whatever they could find in the mine that hadn’t caught fire yet. Rush carried the girl outside and placed her in Maria’s lap to sleep off her concussion.

Then he carried Einar out, too. Less gently. Einar cursed bitterly, of course, but Rush wasn’t overly concerned about him. Between the dislocation—whoops—of one shoulder, the bullet in one thigh and Rush’s absolute willingness to put another one in his ass if necessary, Einar had run out of options. He sat sullenly in the snow while flames leaped greedily for the moon and a pillar of smoke climbed into the sky like their own personal bat signal.

It didn’t take long for reinforcements to arrive.

Harris, whom Rush had rightly pegged as the handy sort, commandeered the urgent care’s emergency snowmobile to transport a stable but foulmouthed Einar to the island’s airstrip. A Coast Guard chopper medevaced him to the nearest medical facility, where—considering the quantity of supernotes Harris and his search warrant had discovered in Einar’s plane—he was very likely handcuffed to the bed.

Yarrow had begged to stay with Lila instead of going to the mainland hospital herself. Rush and Maria saw her safely into her grandmother’s waiting arms before they returned, by silent and mutual consent, to the Ranger Station.