Mac's Angels: The Last Dance: A Loveswept Classic Romance Read Online Free PDF Page A

started toward the door. He’d shot Mr. Eldon. He was about to escape. She had to stop him.
    “Help,” Sterling screamed, flung the stack of prospectuses toward the killer, and whirled around.
    Later she remembered that she’d heard the sound of gunfire. Her body jerked and she collapsed crazily, but she felt nothing. Only the sensation of falling. And then everything went black.
    That had been the beginning of many days of darkness, of a deep void that had surrounded and consumed her.
    “And the man?” Mac said softly, drawing her back to the present. He still held her hand, and she clasped his tightly in return. “He was the man in the airport, Sterling, the one in the gray suit?”
    “Yes, Senator March’s aide. He’s the thief. He’s the man who killed Mr. Eldon. He’s the man who shot me.”
    “Whoa!” Mac let out a deep breath. “This is pretty serious stuff. You’re telling me the senator’s aide is a murderer?”
    “He wasn’t the senator’s aide back then. Well, he might have been. I don’t know. Nobody got a lookat him but me, and I was unconscious for a long time. When I came out of it, I couldn’t give them a good enough description, except for the eyes, and there were no fingerprints.”
    “How can you be so certain now?”
    Sterling jerked her hand away from Mac’s grip. It was beginning all over again. The questions. The disbelief. “His eyes. They were this close—” She held out her hands, measuring twelve inches between them. “I’d never forget.”
    “He was alone?”
    “So far as I know.”
    “How much money did he get?”
    “Over a million dollars in unregistered bearer bonds. They were never recovered and he was never found.”
    Mac nodded. “So the thief became the millionaire he pretended to be, got away with murder, and left you … injured.”
    “He left me paralyzed. When I fell I hit my head. They never knew whether or not that caused the coma, but I couldn’t remember anything for months. The press had a field day. The only witness, me, suffered from amnesia and paralysis.”
    “Of course the real millionaire never contacted your boss in the first place,” Mac said.
    “No. It was all an elaborate hoax. Mr. Eldon knew, even if I didn’t, that keeping the bonds in his office was forbidden. But he needed, wanted to prove he was still as good as the other partners. And he took a chance that got him killed.”
    “What about the security guard in the building—Smitty?”
    “Smitty never saw what hit him. Mr. Eldon was dead, and I was in the hospital for over a year. Even though I was only an intern, the firm was still forced to pay my expenses. All the newspapers made me front-page news—for a while. Surely you heard about it. Everybody else in the world did.”
    “I seem to remember reading the story,” Mac said. “I should have followed up on your situation. Maybe I could have helped you.”
    “Nobody could have helped. They even suspected that I was involved. That and my long illness cost me my future as a financial planner.”
    Mac lifted his eyes in question. “They thought you were involved?”
    “Yes. I wasn’t, but the police never quite believed me. They kept a check on me for years. It took a long time for me to take control of my life again, to find another job. If it hadn’t been for Conner …”
    “Conner never mentioned how you came to work for him.”
    “He came to the rehabilitation center to see one of his army buddies, who worked out at the station next to me. We talked and he offered me a job. I wasn’t certain I could live away from the hospital. He convinced me that I could. Now I guess I’ll be back to square one again. Unemployed.”
    “Sterling, Conner won’t fire you over this.”
    “No, he won’t. But I’ll have to move. Either that or the senator’s aide will find me. I still have a bulletlodged near my spine as a reminder of the first time he got to me. The next time he does, I won’t be able to get