Jim and Hank and Charlie found the house. Big stone walls. Gates leading to the front walk and the driveway — the driveway gate was open. One small break, Hank thought.

Hank got out of the car. He touched things Teri would have touched: the gate, the mailbox. And he felt the mind of the killer wrap around him. This was her lair — this was a place of death, and he could see it, smell it, hear it, feel it. Could taste it like poison on his tongue. Could hear the obscene laughter of a gloating killer everywhere: in the shadows and the way the light fell through the ancient live oaks and glinted off the koi in the fishpond. The killer’s plans shivered beneath his skin; the images bored into his brain. Now that he was on the property, he could feel where Teri had taken her other victims. And he could feel where she would take Jess.

What he didn’t know was how much time remained. If any.

Teri might have had an hour and a half alone with Jess. She’d probably had less; he had to hope she hadn’t caught any breaks in traffic on her way home. How much of a hurry was she in to kill Jess and leave?

Hank jumped back into the car and pointed Charlie down the brick drive to the left. “That’s the way she went,” he said. It was a blind left — trees and azalea bushes and a lot of fat Christmas-tree pines blocked the view of what lay ahead. After they’d made the turn, though, the driveway straightened out, and terminated in an attractive little wooden cottage that lacked either a garage door or any windows, but that featured a van blazoned with Goldcastle advertising backed against the doorway.

“Ram it,” Hank yelled. “Teri keeps the door barred when she has someone in there with her. The only way we’re getting in there in time is by going through a wall.”

Jim shouted, “Do it!”

“What the hell — it’s only a pension,” Charlie said, and — the next instant the front of the Crown Vic smashed into the front of the van, and the rear end of the van crashed through the front wall of the building. Hank was moving before the car came to a complete stop, yanking off his seat belt, kicking his door open, jumping free, running for the van and the hole it had made. He went up and over the still-sliding van, threw himself onto his belly to squeeze under the hole in the wall, and dropped to the ground to one side before the police cruiser’s other door had even had a chance to slam.

Charlie would be right behind him. But Hank’s gut insisted that every second was going to count.

The van came to rest with its rear end angled against the front of the stage.

Hank caught a flash of Jess — warm blonde hair and stark-naked body — handcuffed to a stripper’s pole. Falling. Struggling back to her feet. Still alive.

And a woman with long black hair, skin-tight jeans, and a lacy white blouse, holding a syringe in one hand and pointing a gun at Hank with the other.

That would be Teri, he thought, as his world narrowed down to the gun and what he would have to do to control it.

He heard the brunette say, “I recognize you. You’re the one she’s been fucking.” The gun barrel moved from him to Jess. Teri’s voice stayed calm. “Don’t move or I’ll kill her now.”

Hank judged distances and angles between himself and the gun. A diversion would help — of course, Charlie or Jim bursting through the wall and shooting the murdering bitch would help a hell of a lot more.

Without warning, Jess kicked high, her long leg arcing through the air with incredible speed, connecting with the gun and the hand, and

—muzzle flash—

—explosion—

—the brunette staggered—

—the inertia from the kick or possibly the impact from a bullet cost Jess her balance and she went down hard onto the stage —

—and Hank launched himself across the wreckage of the wall and whatever had been in the place before the van and the cop car landed there, and sprang onto the stage in one vault, bellowing to get Teri to focus on him and draw her fire away from Jess, because he had no time to think, to weigh, to measure; he had time only to act. Behind him, he heard Charlie shout, “Drop the gun and put your hands in the air.”

And Teri swung the gun around, shot Charlie, no hesitation, and Hank heard a cry of pain. Charlie. Hit.

Jim yelled, “Get down!” Only Hank couldn’t get down to clear the shot for Jim. The bitch’s gun pointed dead at him.

He threw himself into a flying tackle. His body remembered that same move once before, hitting his team member on the battlefield, and again he felt the weight of one body toppling, heard screaming again and couldn’t tell if it was then or now, him or someone else. He felt like he was two places at once — once as a grenade went off and the pain fought with the shouts of the other three Rangers running in to get him out, get him to safety. And the other — this moment, facing a killer with a gun and a huge, gleaming needle.

He ripped the gun away from her, flung it toward the stage and Jess, rolled away to clear a shot for Jim.

Teri lunged at him. Screaming. That massive hypodermic syringe in her hand.

Coming straight at him, her teeth bared in a feral grin.

And Jess shouted, “Mine,” and Hank felt the bullet go over him, and Teri jammed the needle into his right shoulder at the same instant that her face disappeared in a circle of blood.

Teri flopped, dead, on top of him.

Hank pulled away from her and she toppled back, and he felt the syringe yank out of him.

But fire already burned inside of him. He stared at the syringe. Half-empty. Which meant that half of whatever had been in there was in him.

He crawled to Jess, ignoring spreading fire. She lay on the stage, naked, with her service weapon once again in her hand. Blood covered her face, and she stared up at him.

“You got her?” Hank asked.

Jess growled. “Yeah. I got her. Decent throw you did there. Gun landed in my reach. She was going to kill you with whatever was in that needle.”

Hank smiled at Jess, ignoring the pain, knowing that Teri had killed him, and that he simply hadn’t fallen down yet. But Jess had done everything a human being could do to keep that from happening. “It was a good shot,” he said.

And she told him, “I didn’t think you would find me.”

“I had to find you,” he told her. “I love you.”

She stared up at him, and her face was a wonder. “I love you, too. With everything in me. I will love you forever.”

He wanted more time. He wanted to hear her tell him that again, but the burning in his blood was getting worse, spreading through his body. He nodded to the handcuffs. “Where’s the key?”

“I don’t know.”

Most handcuff keys were interchangeable. Jim would have one. Charlie would have one. One of them ought to work.

And then Hank remembered Charlie. Almost to his twenty, wanting to get out and be with his family. Shot. Hank could still hear him groaning, so Charlie was still alive. But how badly was he hurt? “I’ll be right back,” he told Jess, and jumped off the wrecked stage, and clambered over bits of wall and fallen roof to Charlie. Shot through the arm, bleeding heavily, with Jim beside him, calling for backup. Hank breathed a sigh of relief. Charlie didn’t look too bad.

“Handcuff key, Jim,” Hank said. “Fast. And an ambulance. Bitch hit me with whatever poison she was going to kill Jess with. I don’t know how long I’ve got. Jess is okay, though.”

Jim fumbled for the key while he kept the pressure on Charlie’s wound.

Charlie said, “I can get my key, Jim. Just tell Dispatch what happened.”

So Jim passed on the news that Hank had been poisoned.

Hank saw dismay on both Jim’s and Charlie’s faces.

“You’re going to be okay, aren’t you?” Charlie asked.

Hank, whose whole body felt like it was on fire, said, “Probably used up my last life this time.” He managed a left-shoulder shrug, though even that hurt like hell. Charlie pulled out a handcuff key and handed it to him.

Hank went back to Jess. When the handcuffs fell off her wrists, Jess collapsed. Hank caught her and pulled her close and sagged to the floor with her, and she said, “I’m all right. Have to get out of these shoes, that’s all.”

He turned Jess around to face him. “She poisoned me,” he told her. He was having a hard time breathing, and his stomach was starting to churn, and his skin felt like it was bubbling off his body. “I wanted to thank you. For everything. For... bringing the light back to my life.”

“No. You can’t die,” she told him. “You can’t.”

He slid out of his shirt and wrapped it around her. “Not much I can do about it,” he said. “Or you, either. Just hold me until it’s over.”

“No,” she said. “You can’t die. I won’t allow it.” She wrapped her arms around him, and buried her face against his chest. He stroked the back of her hair.

Last mission, he thought. But that was okay. He’d done his part and Jess had done her part. The killer was dead in a corner. He was going to follow the bitch into oblivion, but what mattered was that the good guys had stopped the killer. They’d won. And Hank wasn’t dying alone. Jess was with him, holding him, and he loved her, and she loved him. He could have lived with that if he’d gotten to keep her. He could die with it too.

He’d lived so that he mattered. So had she. They’d done all right.

He kissed her.

“Stay with me,” she said. “Hold on.”

“I’m right here.” The pain was horrible. It was like being doused in gasoline and lit with a match, but he could hear the scream of sirens, and they were getting closer.

Sounding close.

Right on top of him, in fact. Any minute, he thought, I’m going to keel over dead, and Jess is going to be stuck with the irony of help being so close.

Then paramedics were wrapping Jess in a blanket and Jess was clutching Hank’s hand and her eyes were full of tears.

* * *

And they were riding in the back of the ambulance, with one paramedic starting an IV on him and putting an oxygen mask over his face and marking the place where Hank said the needle went in.

Pain ate him alive; the angels hovered over him singing something sweet and shimmery. Jess, glued to his side, hung on to his hand. He kept from screaming in agony only by reminding himself that he didn’t want that to be the last thing Jess remembered about him.

Still dying.

But still not dead.

And the pain was hell. He’d never felt worse. But it wasn’t changing. He couldn’t feel it intensifying. He couldn’t feel himself getting numb and fading away, either. And, for that matter, he couldn’t see any tunnel or any white light, and the angels started to sound suspiciously like some sixties girl group singing under the wail of the sirens.

“Jess,” he said as they pulled up to the emergency entrance, “I think that bitch might have mixed up a defective batch of whatever it was in that needle of hers.”

And then he and Jess were inside, with lab techs everywhere and a guy with a portable X-ray machine and a doc doing a local on him and then sticking a big-ass needle attached to a big-ass syringe into the same spot the bitch had hit — a particularly tough bit of scar tissue — and Hank was by that time suspicious of the whole dying thing, even if he did feel sick as hell.

The doc waved the syringe — half-full of brownish liquid — in his face and said, “Bet you’ve never been grateful for these scars before.”

“Not really,” Hank said. “Can’t say I ever got much pleasure from them.”

“They saved your life today,” the doc said. “Encapsulated the poison, kept almost all of it out of your bloodstream, assuming the syringe the paramedics brought in with them was completely full when she hit you with it. Lab’s going to be hours getting a complete breakdown on everything she had in there, but what they’ve called up to us so far would have been enough to kill you three times over, had it been able to go anywhere.”

Jess stood beside him, holding his left hand. Smiling. It was the sort of smile that would see a man safely through hell and lead him all the way to heaven. And she said, “See, I told you that you couldn’t die. We’re supposed to be together.”

Hank could still hear those angels somewhere in the background. They didn’t sound so much like Patti and the Blue Belles anymore. They seemed to be cheering. Or maybe that was Jim and Charlie and the handful of paramedics on the other side of the curtain.

“We are. So marry me already.”

She said, “I thought you’d never ask.”

* * *

As weddings went, it was odd. Jess wore an emerald-green dress — one she had to consider, at last, part of a dream come true. Her bridesmaids were strippers, Hank’s groomsmen were martial artists, and Jess’s mother was the only family member either of them had there. But Jim gave her away. Jess was almost certain that Jim was hitting on her mother, something Jess was trying hard not to think about. And the bride’s side of the chapel had a record turnout of men in dress uniform. Her colleagues were celebrating one of their own at the same time that they were saying good-bye.

Hank’s side of the little chapel held his employees, grateful students, friends from the Rangers — and more cops. His family and her family, such as they were.

At the reception, one of Hank’s students caught the garter. Jess didn’t toss her bouquet, though she did pull a flower from it and throw that.

And then they were finished. “You ready to get out of here?” Hank asked her.

“I’ve been ready since we got here.”

They were on their way to the airport, but before the honeymoon, Jess had one final stop to make.

Hank pulled the car into the cemetery and they both got out, Jess carrying her bouquet.

They walked hand in hand to a new grave with a little metal marker where the stone would one day be.

Jess knelt beside the grave and pressed the bouquet’s plastic handle into the freshly laid sod.

“You should have had one of these, too,” Jess said to Ginny. “So you can have mine. I miss you so much, and I would never have found him without you. But I would never have found you without him, either.”

She rested one hand on the sod. “It’s over, and the monster who did this has had as much justice as she ever could have had. If some part of you is still here... know that it’s done. And I’m moving on, now. I did what I set out to do. I brought you home. Now I’m... going to find out if I can be a mother. If I can’t, maybe teach little kids to dance. I can’t pick up where you and I left off, but I’ve found out that I wouldn’t want to. Hank is better than any life you or I could have imagined for ourselves when we started out. And I would never have met him without you. And would never would appreciated him without everything that had come before.”

She stood, and Hank stepped behind Jess and wrapped his arms around her.

Hank said, “Thank you, Ginny. From both of us.”

They stood there for a while, not moving, watching the breeze blow the bouquet’s ribbons around.

And then Jess and Hank turned and slowly walked away, into the bright future they had bought and paid for with a past of shattered dreams.