“Okay, sure. We already know he’s not from here. He’s from the neighboring country of Kasov.” Hank tapped through to the green screen for a secure connection with deeper files and typed in Mashchenko’s name. The man had a healthy portfolio…but sketchy info on his youth. He’d certainly made something of himself from very little past, but then many did. Still. Hank went back to his original gut feeling about the attack being somehow tied into the crèche. “Where did you say the crèche came from?”
“An auction in New York City.
“Before that.” He eyed the velvet bag in her lap
“The auction house had papers that traced it to a village outside of Berlin. I thought since it was a German piece, it would be nice to dedicate it to this chapel and return it to the same general area.”
“Papers can be forged.” He gripped her arm and began hauling her out of her chair. “This ceremony is officially over—”
A gunshot ricocheted off the stone alter, just missing the crèche.
“Run!” Hank shouted.
As he ran with Ginger, he searched the crowd to check on their children. Alicia and her husband scrambled to safety with the baby, while Darcy’s husband covered his pregnant wife.
Ginger’s boys and Hank Junior were all currently being restrained—looking none too happy about it as they struggled to get to Ginger, but Hank couldn’t think of that now.
His earpiece blared with a multitude of voices blasting conflicting instructions and reports. Ginger sprinted along with him to the side as people scattered. The crowd shrieked and dashed in mayhem, clearing the chairs and stage. Damn it. He could only guess where to turn for safety.
The stone altar. He could tuck her into the nook in the back and they would be protected on at least three sides.
Four more pops of gunshots launched another round of shouts. Followed by a bullhorn—and a loudspeaker. “Everyone halt. We have the gunman.”
The words repeated in German, again in French and in Russian, until slowly the frantic mass of humanity calmed. A secret service agent inched toward Hank and Ginger. People rose from their crouched positions by chairs and columns. The echo of a mishandled instrument—some kind of string instrument—twanged. A baby whimpered.
Still, Hank kept Ginger tucked behind the stone altar as one of the Christmas trees crashed to the ground. He wasn’t risking anything until his gut said to.
The voices in his earpiece slowly quieted to only two or three speaking at once. In the mishmash he did hear the distressing news of a sniper down.
His body curved around Ginger’s. Their breaths mingled in the small enclosure. He could feel her heart pounding against his chest, until slowly, his synched-up with hers and he had this sappy romantic image of the two becoming one right here at the altar.
What was the deal with that? An old salty warrior like him thinking something so sentimental? But he couldn’t deny what he felt in his gut as much as his heart.
He loved this woman. It didn’t take anything away from Jessica, or anything away from Ginger. He was just a freaking lucky man to have such an incredible love twice in a lifetime.
No way did he intend to let her go.
From his hidden position, he forced himself to listen to the settling situation outside. Yes, there was a sniper down. From what he could tell, the other didn’t have a clear shot behind the altar if things went bad again, if there was more than one gunman.
Hank used his peripheral vision and found a secret service agent tackling a man with a weapon. Shouts sounded from the pile. Slowly the words became intelligible.
“I’m not taking the fall for this. It’s him. It’s all his doing.” The gunman pointed at Igor Mashchenko, the vice-chancellor of Kasov who’d been hitting on Ginger earlier. “He hired me to shoot the crèche and destroy it,” he continued to babble, thrashing away. “My people have been trying to take it since she landed on European soil, damn it.”
Mashchenko stood between the gunman and Hank, the vice-chancellor only ten feet away. “He is talking crazy nonsense.”
“I am not an idiot,” the young gunman said, his racing voice beginning to slow, a cunning edge cutting the night air. “I videotaped all of our communications—and our monetary transactions.”
Hank didn’t like how close Mashchenko stood to Ginger and began scouting for an alternative place to take cover just as—
An ominous click, click sounded.
Mashchenko had trained his weapon on them. “Maybe one of your security men can shoot me, if they are good enough, but I will pop a shot off first.” He lifted his head to shout, “Does everyone hear that? I have a weapon strong enough to pierce through the General and kill the lovely senator—that is, if I don’t hit her anyway.”
Hank held tight, but it didn’t matter, damn it, because the bastard already had a gun pointed toward Ginger’s head and the sharpshooters weren’t an option any longer.
“Why, Mashchenko?” Ginger’s voice didn’t even shake as she tried to shrug her way free of Hank, but he wasn’t budging. “Why are you doing this?”
“You have brought that nativity back out in the open.” The older man moved closer, the lethal weapon all the closer. “The crèche would be back where it originally belonged. I tried to simply steal the crèche back, but Senator Landis never let it out of her sight. As time drew near, I’ve had to resort to desperate measures. Now that it is out there, where people in this part of the world can examine it, I will be ruined.”
Back where it belonged. But the precious art collection in the chapel had been destroyed by a fluke fire.
Or not.
Ginger gasped. “You burned down this chapel during a storm—after looting the place to sell the invaluable treasures on the black market.”
“You’re a smart woman,” Mashchenko replied. “I was only sixteen but I had dreams and a plan.”
Hank couldn’t help but fill in the blanks. Talking would buy time, and damn it, if the guy managed to squeeze off a shot…“The money financed your rise in government.”
“Enough talk.” He waved his weapon, obviously relying on firepower to overcome what he lacked in strength due to age. “There’s no reason why we all can’t end this day happy. If I kill you, I’m a marked man for life. I just want out now. I can hide. Come quietly until I can get to my connections.”
Fat chance.
Hank decided that age didn’t have a thing to do with any of it. He’d never felt more honed than at the moment as years of experience blended with training and a deep-rooted need to protect the woman he loved.
As if sensing his intent, Ginger gripped his clothes tighter; with those snipers out of commission, he couldn’t afford to hesitate.
The second he saw that Mashchenko’s weapon wavered and was only pointed at him, Hank leapt, not far at all. The weapon discharged. Ginger screamed. Hank couldn’t afford to hesitate. He forced himself to focus on the mission.
Take down Mashchenko.
Save Ginger.
Muscles bunched, Hank landed on the older male—a man who obviously worked out. Still, Hank gripped the bastard’s gun hand in a relentless grip, banging it against the rocky remains of the floor again and again. Praying the villainous thief wouldn’t get another shot off.
The thought of losing Ginger was inconceivable.
Even the notion caused a fresh pulse of adrenaline to surge through him, managing to mask most of the pain in his hand as he battered the villain’s arm against the ground. He slammed Mashchenko’s wrist against a sharp stone one last time.
The weapon skittered away along the cobblestones.
Hank’s fist followed as quickly across the man’s jaw, knocking him out a second before the secret service descended, Ginger’s sons leading the pack to rush them. A swarm of activity buzzed all around them, but his focus was only on one woman.
Where it belonged.
He pivoted to find Ginger already launching toward him—his feisty Carolina angel—blessedly safe and unharmed. He opened his arms to have her fall against his chest where he now knew she belonged.
For a lifetime.
Three hours later—which felt like a lifetime, so much had happened—Ginger stood with Hank under one of the tents erected for the dedication ceremony. After the shooting, it had been changed into a questioning center for the police to collect data, but most of the crowd and media had cleared away now.
A paramedic was just finishing splinting Hank’s two broken fingers from when he’d grappled with Mashchenko to pound the gun from the villain’s hand. Her pugnacious general insisted he would go to the hospital in the morning. Tonight, give him some tape and a Tylenol. He just wanted to be with his family—the Renshaws and the Landises.
She couldn’t stop the warm spread of joy over his words, even if they had been spoken with a grumpy-bear growl.
She hoped the secret service would let their children come over sometime soon. At least no one had been seriously injured. The sharpshooter had been hit in the shoulder and was reported to be doing well in surgery.
The stray bullet from Mashchenko’s gun, as he and Hank struggled, had struck one of the aircrew—who’d been with them from the start of this trip—in the arm. A superficial wound, thank God.
The injured sergeant was already being lauded by the press as the hero of the day as he’d helped carry an elderly woman to safety during the fracas.
Ginger sank back in the chilly metal chair and stared up at the moonlit sky, stars shining through clearly as midnight approached for Christmas Eve to pass away into Christmas morning.
While she was so relieved everyone would be all right, still she couldn’t help but be sad that she’d missed the chance to donate her crèche as planned. Such a silly thing to regret when she considered the larger implication of what could have happened, but as she sat here next to Hank, she couldn’t deny the truth any longer.
Giving away that family nativity, something that had been an integral part of her life with Benjamin from their first Christmas together, had been her way of saying goodbye. Because, finally, she was ready.
Ready to let go. Ready to love again.
Ready to love Hank.
Once his hand had been bandaged, Hank waved away the offer of a hypodermic needle that apparently held something with a little more kick than Tylenol. Her heart pounded faster as she thought of the two of them getting swallowed up by the media again, then their families, then their jobs. It seemed as if there might never be another chance for them to talk.
If nothing else, tonight she’d learned to grasp every moment.
She turned her chair to face his as the medical technician reluctantly stashed her needle back in a supply case and stalked away. Ginger took in the powerful set to Hank’s shoulders in his uniform, the slight dampness from snow and his injured hand the only signs he’d almost lost his life trying to save hers.
She refused to let the lump welling in her throat steal her ability to say the words hammering at her heart. “We probably only have a minute or two before the security folks unleash the kids on us, so I’m going to talk fast because I don’t want to wait another second to say a few things that should have been said a long time ago.”
“Okay.” He settled back into his seat, warding off a circling police officer who obviously wanted a word with him.
Her heart pounding, hopeful, she gasped in a deep breath of the icy night air. “You asked about me being afraid. About my feelings when I lost Benjamin. What happened out here tonight made me remember that there are no guarantees of tomorrow. This is a scary world we live in—whether it’s a terrorist, a crook or a fluke of fate.”
“Where does that revelation leave us?”
“Oh, Hank, it made me realize I’m an extremely brave woman. Sure I’m scared. Who wouldn’t be? But you’re more than worth the risk. We’re worth the risk.”