They reached the cement wall that edged the riverbank, a place where, in warmer weather, people sat to enjoy the sun. The numbness had spread, disconnecting her from her body. With the arm strength that had served him so well over his career, he hoisted her onto the walkway and pulled himself up next to her.
They collapsed together, him holding her shivering body. She’d never been so cold.
“Don’t ever . . . do that again,” he said nonsensically.
She clung to him. The diadem she’d worn around her forehead was gone, along with her shoes. She heard someone groaning. Not Thad.
He came to his knees. Willing her arms to work, she pushed herself up far enough to see the hulking shadow of Norman Gillis curled on the grass beyond the walkway. He lay there moaning, as if he were coming out of unconsciousness. He wasn’t alone.
“You incompetent fool!” Kathryn Swift bent over the body of her son, grabbing at his clothes. “You’re just like your father. You can’t do anything right.”
Somehow Olivia made it to her knees, but Thad was already on his feet, his wet tuxedo shirt and dark trousers clinging to his body. “Step away from him, Mrs. Swift,” Thad said, in a voice accustomed to commanding obedience.
Kathryn ignored him and continued searching through her son’s clothes.
“I said get back!” Thad barked out the order.
Kathryn straightened. In one hand, she held Olivia’s Egyptian cuff. In the other, a purse-sized pistol.
“R-really?” The word, barely audible, crept through Olivia’s chattering teeth. Why did Kathryn have a gun and Olivia’s bracelet?
“Quiet, Liv,” Thad said softly, undoubtedly remembering how she’d lost her temper with their mysterious limo driver—a man he now suspected was Norman Gillis.
Norman staggered to his feet, whimpering in pain, but instead of standing by his mother, he hobbled toward the loading dock area. Kathryn ignored his desertion, as if he were no more than an irritant. Instead, she kept the gun trained on Thad. “This was a gift to myself when I turned seventy. I had Swarovski crystals embedded in the grip.”
“You’re a real trendsetter,” Thad said.
If Olivia’s tongue had been working, she’d have suggested a nice pair of diamond earrings instead. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Norman staggering into a car he must have stashed there ahead of time.
Thad, with his wet clothes and the frigid breeze, had to be just as cold as she was, but he stood steady. “Your son is going to survive.”
“Probably,” Kathryn said bitterly. Behind her, Norman’s car peeled from the building. “He’s always been a disappointment to me.”
Thad moved ever so slightly to the left, working to put his body between Kathryn and Olivia, but no way would Olivia let him take a bullet for her. Willing her legs to support her, she came to her feet. With her sandals gone, it was like standing on blocks of ice, and her skin prickled with gooseflesh under her drenched white gown.
She’d drawn Kathryn’s attention, just as she’d intended. “Men make messes,” Kathryn said to her, “and I have to clean them up. First Eugene and his carelessness. And now Norman.”
“What kind of messes, Mrs. Swift?” Thad deliberately drew her focus back to himself.
“This bracelet!” She gripped it tightly in one hand and turned the gun on Olivia. “He was so ridiculously infatuated with you.”
“What’s so special about the bracelet?” Thad said quickly.
“Enough questions!” She made a sharp gesture toward Olivia with her gun. “Into the river with you both.”
“Stay right where you are, Liv,” Thad ordered. “Mrs. Swift, neither of us is going into the river. Now drop that gun.”
She gave a harsh bark of laughter. “You think because I’m old, I don’t know how to use this? My daddy took me hunting before I was six years old.”
“A tender memory, I’m sure, but let me point out that putting bullet holes in the bodies of two of the city’s more famous people—because that’s the only way we’re going in—is a very bad idea. The police will be relentless.”
“Chicago can be a dangerous city.”
“The police aren’t stupid.”
“No one would ever suspect me. Now move!”
Olivia could read Thad’s mind. As surely as she knew anything, she knew he intended to go after Kathryn and take the bullet himself.
The riverbank was deserted. No one inside the Muni would hear if she screamed, and her strength was sapped. She could sense Thad getting ready to spring, and Kathryn could, too, because she pointed the gun directly at his chest, right at his beautiful heart. If Olivia could make Kathryn drop her guard for a few seconds, he might have a chance of disarming her. But Olivia had nothing to distract her with. No pebbles of glass from a broken limousine partition. No shoe to throw. All she had was her voice.
The idea was ludicrous.
But it was the only idea she had.
Thad tensed his muscles, waiting for his moment. Garnering her strength, Olivia pulled in every molecule of air she could collect—opened her chest, her throat, her soul—and sent Brünnhilde’s Valkyrie battle cry out into the wild night.
“Ho-jo-to-ho!”
A punch of furious, ear-shattering sound. The roar of the earth cracking open. The scream of the universe exploding.
“Ho-jo-to-ho!”
The high was strident, the middle broke. She was a mezzo. She didn’t have the voice for Brünnhilde, but the Valkyrie’s battle cry did its job, startling Kathryn Swift into jerking her head around and lowering her pistol just for a moment.
Just long enough for Olivia to rush at her with every bit of strength she had left.
Thad, of course, got to her first. He grabbed the old lady’s arm, forcing her to drop the pistol.
“Everybody freeze!”
Brittany stood thirty feet away, her service revolver at the ready.
Is everybody in this city armed?
Kathryn let out a pitiful shriek, puny compared to Olivia’s battle cry, and collapsed to the ground.
*
The Muni’s docking area filled with flashing red lights and emergency vehicles. The EMTs wrapped Olivia and Thad in Mylar blankets and checked their vital signs while Brittany phoned in the information about Norman Gillis. The Egyptian bracelet was already tucked away in an evidence bag.
Some of the crowd exiting from the gala grew aware of the commotion. With umbrellas over their heads, they huddled in the parking area and watched Kathryn Swift being hauled away in a squad car.
Thad gazed at Olivia from his Mylar cocoon as if he expected her to disappear at any moment, but he said nothing, and she had a shocking glimpse of how he would look as an old man. Still handsome, but tired, the cares of a lifetime etched in his face.
She wanted to rest her head against his shoulder, but he’d erected an invisible barricade she had no right to cross.
*
The EMTs urged them to go to the hospital, but they both refused. Thad watched Olivia being helped into a squad car that would deliver her home. He couldn’t go with her. He couldn’t be with her now.
He drove himself home and took the longest, hottest shower of his life. As the remnants of the Chicago River eddied down the drain, he wished he could send the images swirling in his brain along for the trip. That moment when he believed he’d lost her would be seared in his memory forever . . . Believing that this brave, smart, funny, ambitious heartache of a woman was lost to him forever had been the worst moment of his life, worse than sitting on the bench, worse than playing backup, far worse than knowing he’d never be number one.