THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

off the edge before he got to the glass doors.
    He slammed into the rail and stared in horror as she fell to the canal. Blood rushed through his head, he couldn’t hear past the roaring in his ears, couldn’t think.
    Her slender frame disappeared into the water.
    A lifetime dragged by until she popped up, yards out from where she’d entered the canal clean as a knife.
    Zane clutched his chest. His heart pounded against his breastbone like it wanted out. His breathing slowed as he watched her stroke across the canal.
    Angel climbed out on the other side, kneeled on the grass, her body heaving.
    She stared up at him and shook her head “no.” 
    He understood. She still contended he was wrong. As she stood up and jogged away, Zane wondered if he might be.
    All the bones in his body had turned to rubber. He staggered back into the room trying to absorb what had happened.
    Then it dawned on him where she was headed.
    The boat.
    He snatched up his bag and phone, running to the door.
    Mason was out there. The beast who had kidnapped her was out there. And the Feds had a bead on her.
    He had to get to her first.
     
    Chapter 54
     
    Zane ran down the block like he was on fire and hopped into his truck, gunned the engine, and slid a corner leaving the apartment complex where he’d parked the night before. An old couple, literally on a Sunday drive, in a powder blue mid-1980’s land yacht got in his way.
    Unable to pass against the steady traffic coming toward him, he ground his teeth.
    He made the turn onto Sunrise Boulevard and drove toward the bridge he had to cross to reach the beach highway. Heedless of getting pulled over this time, he whipped through traffic.
    Any law enforcement would just have to chase him to the marina.
    Cars slowed to a stop just as he started up the bridge incline. Sirens screamed in the distance.
    Ah, hell, a wreck.
    “Dammit,” he swore in disbelief.
    This would take forever.
    On the seat beside his leg, the cell phone began chirping. He cast a furious glance at the evil messenger then snapped it open and roared, “What?"
    “Whoa, bud. Just thought I’d give you, as an old radio announcer used to say, the rest of the story ,” Ben answered.
    “You’ve told me enough to hang her. What else is there?”
    “I’ve actually got something good to tell you.”
    “Oh?”  Good news would be a welcome change.
    “Here’s the rundown. She was a high school champion track star and long distance runner, Olympic material. Fifteen or twenty top universities offered her a scholarship, but Stanford won out, then reneged after she was arrested.”
    “I’d figured something along those lines,” Zane interjected.
    “She spent her summers working as a bicycle courier in New York,” Ben continued. “Her mother died of alcoholism. Doesn’t look like she knew her father dealt drugs. Her arrest was the only instance when she’d ever been involved in anything illegal. There’s speculation that she got railroaded by the DA and the detective, some questionable circumstances. Something about the whole case was predicated on one fingerprint.”
    No wonder she meticulously wipes her prints away.
    Red taillights glared at Zane all the way up to the span of the bridge. Throwing himself from the pinnacle of the steel structure was a consideration, but too kind for what he deserved. He’d never really listened to Angel’s side once he’d gotten Ben’s first report, just assumed the worst.
    She must hate him.
    Join the club . He hated himself.
    “One more thing.”  Ben interrupted Zane’s self-abasement.
    Zane cut him off. “I don’t know which is irritating me more right now, your voice or this damn phone that brings it to me.”
    “Hey, bud, you’ve got to hear this. That 1933 Saint-Gauden’s Double Eagle gold piece is from the Boston heist.”
    “She claims she wasn’t involved in the heist.”  But he hadn’t believed her. Not hands down the way she’d expected. She’d still believed in him even though she’d known since yesterday that he hadn’t given her his real name. The belief humbled him to his toes.
    He hadn’t deserved it. Still didn’t.
    “She might be telling the truth,” Ben said, moving on with his damned report. “She doesn’t sound sophisticated enough to be the original thief, because we’re talking only a handful of people in the world who could have gotten past that security. Whoever she took it from is probably very unhappy. Add that to the FBI and she