Riley yanked the door wide open and saw that Scarlatti hadn’t bothered to fasten his seat belt.
She grabbed him by the arm and dragged him, cursing and struggling, out of the car.
He was a big man, and stronger than she’d expected. He pulled loose from her and raised his fist to punch her in the face. But Riley was faster. She hit him hard in the solar plexus and heard the wind burst out of his lungs as he buckled forward. Then she hit him in the back of the head.
He fell flat on his face on the pavement.
Riley retrieved her gun from where it had fallen and put it back into her holster.
By then, several security guards were scurrying around her. Fortunately, one of them was the man she’d faced inside the terminal.
“It’s OK,” the man yelled to the other guards. “She’s FBI.”
The worried guards obediently kept their distance.
Now Riley heard Jilly yell from inside the car …
“Mom! Open the back!”
When Riley stepped over to the vehicle, she saw that the woman, Barbara Long, was sitting in the front passenger seat, looking terrified.
Without a word, Riley touched the unlock switch that controlled all the doors.
Jilly threw the hatch open and climbed out of the car.
Barbara Long opened the door on her side, looking as if she hoped to slip away. But one of the guards stopped her before she could take two steps.
Looking utterly defeated, Scarlatti was trying to crawl back to his feet.
Riley wondered …
What should I do with this guy? Arrest him? And her?
It seemed like a waste of time and energy. Besides, she and Jilly might be stuck here in Phoenix for days pressing charges against him.
While she was trying to make up her mind, she heard Jilly’s voice behind her …
“Mom, look!”
Riley turned around and saw Jilly holding a small, big-eared dog in her arms.
“You could just let that old ex-dad go,” Jilly said, with a mischievous grin. “After all, he did bring my dog back. Wasn’t that nice of him?”
“That’s …” Riley sputtered in astonishment, trying to remember the name of the puppy Jilly had talked about.
“This is Darby,” Jilly said proudly. “Now she can go home with us.”
Riley hesitated for a long moment, then felt her face break out into a smile.
She looked around at the guards and said, “Deal with this guy however you like. And his girlfriend too. My daughter and I have got a plane to catch.”
Riley led Jilly and the dog away from the perplexed-looking guards.
“Come on,” she said to Jilly. “We’ve got to find ourselves a pet carrier. And explain this to the airline.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
As their plane descended into DC, Riley sat with Jilly snuggled against her shoulder, napping. Even the little dog, nervous and whiny at the beginning of the flight, had settled down quickly. Darby was curled up and sleeping quietly in the carrier they’d hastily bought from the airline. Jilly had explained to Riley that Barbara Long had approached her outside the restroom and convinced her to go with her to get Darby, claiming she hated dogs and wanted Jilly to have her. When she got to the car, Barbara shoved her inside and locked the doors, and they took off.
Now that the whole ordeal was over, Riley found herself thinking again about that weird phone call from Morgan Farrell last night …
“I killed the bastard,” Morgan had said.
Riley had called the Atlanta police right away, but she hadn’t heard any news since from them, and she hadn’t had time to check back and find out what had happened.
She wondered—had Morgan been telling the truth, or had Riley sent the cops on a false alarm?
Was Morgan now in custody?
The whole idea of the fragile-looking woman killing anybody at all still struck Riley as very hard to believe.
But Morgan had been most insistent.
Riley remembered her saying …
“I’m looking right down at his body lying in bed, and he’s got knife wounds all over him, and he bled a lot.”
Riley knew all too well that even the mildest and unlikeliest people could be driven to violent extremes. It usually happened because of some twist in their own makeup, something repressed and hidden that burst forth under extreme circumstances, causing them to commit seemingly inhuman acts.
Morgan had also told her, “I’ve been rather doped up lately.”
Maybe Morgan had just fantasized or hallucinated the whole thing.
Riley reminded herself …
Whatever happened, it’s none of my concern.
It was time for her to focus on her own family, which now included two daughters—and to Riley’s own surprise, a dog.
And wasn’t it also time for her to get back to work?
But Riley couldn’t help thinking that after today’s courtroom and airport dramas, maybe she deserved a good rest break. Shouldn’t she take another day of leave before returning to Quantico?
Riley sighed as she realized …
Probably not.
Her work was important to her. She thought it might be important to the world at large. But then, thinking that way worried her. What kind of parent worked day in and day out pursuing the most vicious monsters alive, sometimes finding more than a little of a monster in herself in the process?
She knew that she sometimes couldn’t help bringing her grim work home with her, at times even in the direst possible way. Her cases had sometimes put the lives of people she loved in danger.
But it’s what I do, she thought.
And deep down, she knew that it was good work that had to be done. Somehow, she owed it even to her daughters to keep doing it—not only to protect them from monsters, but to show them how monsters could be defeated.
She needed to keep on being an example to them.
It’s best this way, she thought.
As the plane came to a stop at the concourse, Riley gave Jilly a little shake.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” she said. “We’re here.”
Jilly grumbled and groaned a little, and then her face broke into a grin as she saw the dog in its case. Darby had just woken up herself and was looking at Jilly and wagging her tail happily.
Then Jilly looked at Riley with joy in her eyes.
“We really did it, didn’t we, Mom?” she said. “We won.”
Riley hugged Jilly tightly and said, “We sure did, dear. You’re really and truly my daughter now, and I’m your mom. And nothing’s ever going to change that.”
When Riley, Jilly, and the dog arrived at their townhouse, April was waiting for them right at the door. Just inside were Blaine, Riley’s divorced boyfriend, and his fifteen-year-old daughter, Crystal, who was also April’s best friend. The family’s Guatemalan housekeeper, Gabriela, stood watching nearby.
Riley and Jilly had reported their good news from Phoenix and they had called again when they had landed and were on the way home, but she hadn’t mentioned the puppy. The whole crowd was there to welcome Jilly, but after a moment April leaned over to look at the carrier that Riley had put on the floor.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Jilly