The Cradle Will Fall by Price Maggie

Author:Price, Maggie [Price, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Suspense
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2004-09-25T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

After briefly chatting on the phone with her brother, Grace slept—deeply for two hours, then fitfully as the dream closed around her: The night was clear and frigid; she walked out of the restaurant where she and Ryan had met for dinner and found her husband lying beside his patrol car. The bullet wound so close to his badge—his heart—pumped blood across the front of his uniform shirt.

“No!”

Frantic, she dropped to her knees, pressing her palms against his chest while a river of crimson oozed between her fingers. No matter how much pressure she applied, how fervently she prayed, she couldn’t stop the flow. Couldn’t slow the speed of the warm gush over her hands. Couldn’t help her husband when he gasped her name, then took his last agonizing breath.

She woke with a start, fighting for air while nausea ground in her stomach. She pitched upright in the ocean-size bed at the same time consciousness slammed the door shut on the nightmare. There was a band around her chest; air heaved in and out of her lungs in hot, ragged gasps. Cold sweat plastered her T-shirt to her skin.

The blinds over the balcony door were levered partially open, allowing the glare of neon lights to leach in. Her gaze darted across the large bureau that loomed against the wall opposite the bed, then over the tapestry-covered sofa and chairs that faced the marble fireplace. The nausea began to fade when she saw she wasn’t back in that frigid, harshly lit parking lot, fighting futilely to keep her husband alive. She was in a ritzy Las Vegas hotel suite. On assignment. Working undercover.

“God.” She scrubbed her hands over her face, then plowed her fingers through her sweat-damp hair.

Why now? she asked, bringing her knees up close to her chest. Ryan had been dead for three years; it had been over a year since she’d last had the nightmare. Why all of a sudden had her subconscious zapped her back to the night that called up memories too terrible for words?

She had met Ryan on his dinner break because she’d been too excited to wait until he got home to tell him about the baby. That she was pregnant. Even now, after so long, she could still feel the press of his palm against her cheek. See his dazed wonder at the prospect of being a father. At that instant she had known their impending parenthood would finally close the emotional distance her past with Mark Santini had put between herself and her husband.

Moments later Ryan was dead.

She would forever question how that night would have ended if she hadn’t taken a side trip to the restroom. If she had walked outside to the parking lot at the same time as Ryan. If there’d been two cops instead of one who’d surprised the gun-wielding auto burglar flying high on meth.

Maybe then, Ryan would be alive. Maybe her system wouldn’t have been so weakened weeks later when she caught the virulent case of flu and wound up in a hospital.

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