The General had used Michael Ricco and others like him as pawns to conduct numerous inhumane experiments, all in the name of science. The problem had been that Michael and the others never gave their permission. They were taken, used, and killed in the name of science.

  Collateral damage. According to the General they were doing a great service to their fellow man.

  Michael's escape had led to the General's capture and an end to the program. But then Michael had volunteered, this time to let the Department's scientists use what the General had done. The General's researchers had cared nothing for what pain they inflicted on their subject. Now Michael gave only his blood.

  Somewhere along the line, Maggie, security agent and member of the research team fell in love with the farm-boy from Virginia. The last two years had brought her more happiness than she thought she deserved. Michael learned how to smile again. He told her he loved her, and she believed him. She loved him more than she thought she could love anyone, and now he was leaving her.

  He lifted a hand and wiped a tear from her cheek. "Don't cry."

  His voice was so weak. He sounded nothing like her Michael. As soft-spoken as he normally was, his words were never empty. When he spoke it was always worthwhile to listen. She'd learned more from listening to Michael Ricco in the last two years than she'd learned in her entire time before him.

  She sniffled and tried to smile. The result, she knew, was a little scary. "Sorry, can't seem to help it."

  His breathing was getting worse, but Michael had refused to let them do anything more for him. They put him on a morphine drip to deal with the pain, but that was all he would allow.

  Doctor Eugene Connelly, the program's medical director, motioned to her from the doorway. "Margaret, a word please." She was always Margaret with him, never Maggie, never ever Maggs.

  She didn't want to leave Michael, but she needed to hear what he had to say.

  She leaned over, placing a whisper-light kiss on Michael's lips. "Be right back."

  He gave a small nod and closed his eyes.

  God, he looks so tired. She joined Eugene, out of Michael's hearing.

  Eugene looked directly into her eyes. "We've done everything we can for him, Margaret. I'm sorry, but it's just not going to be enough."

  She knew it was true, but shook her head. "No! I mean, his immune system could still kick in, right? Dakota's always does just when we count him out."

  The doctor shook his head. "This is not about his immune system. This is about a one hundred-and eighteen year old heart calling it quits. His body's letting him know it's had enough. He's in full-blown congestive heart failure, Margaret. We've made him comfortable, but I can't fix this. He is working on a ten percent ejection fraction. His heart is failing."

  The tears came in earnest now and she didn't care who saw them. "How long?"

  Eugene shrugged. "I can't tell you that, but not long. His body can't take much more."

  "You won't let him suffer?"

  "No, he's had too much suffering in his life. The least we can do is make sure he has none when he dies."

  "Thank you for that."

  "Go be with him, Margaret. Go be with your husband."

  Maggie went back to sit with Michael and wait for the last word, the last look, the last moment she would ever spend with him, and felt her heart break in too many pieces to be put back together again.

  "Still crying," Michael whispered to her.

  She wiped her eyes, and then took his hand and kissed it. "No, I'm not."

  "Liar." He smiled and closed his eyes. "Maggs?" She could tell it was difficult for him to even speak now. "I need you to do something for me, a couple of things."

  "Anything, name it."

  "I want to be buried with my family, in Virginia. Next to my daddy."

  "Michael." She knew he was dying, but she couldn't bring herself to talk to him about it. It was too much like giving up.

  "No, there's no time for this, Maggs." His voice rose, and his face twisted in pain.

  "Do you need something more for pain?" She edged closer to him, afraid every moment might be his last.

  He controlled his breathing, and his face relaxed. "Just listen, okay?"

  "I'm sorry, okay. Virginia, yeah, sweetie, I can do that for you. Count on it."

  "I know I can count on you, Maggs. The next one is a little harder though, but a lot more important." He seemed to fight for every word, every breath.

  "Anything, Michael."

  He opened his eyes and focused on her. "You need to let Dakota go."

  "Michael."

  "Don't tell me you can't. I know better. Maggie, don't turn him into another lab rat. It will kill him. He's not like me. Let him go. He'll come back when he can. You'll learn more from him if he wants to come back, not if he's forced to."

  "Michael..."

  "Call off your dogs, Maggs. Let. Him. Go."

  "I don't know if I can." She had to be honest.

  "Well, convince whoever has the power and let him go. Maggs, please, promise me."

  "I promise, Michael." She would have promised him anything at that moment.

  He seemed to relax a little at her words. "Good. Okay, one last thing."

  "Michael, you need to get some rest." She knew how useless her words sounded, but couldn't help saying them.

  He seemed to understand and smiled. "Time enough for rest later. I only want to say one last thing. I need you to remember something for me, never forget it."

  "I can do that."

  "I love you, Maggie Riley. You have made the last two years the best of my life. Don't be sad. I have lived longer than most people have a right to. It's time and I'm more than ready, but I will miss you, love."

  "God, Michael, I just got you. It's not fair."

  "We had two years we were never meant to have, Maggs. You can only cheat fate for so long."

  "I love you, Michael."

  The monitor sounded its alarm. Michael's heart rate had slowed down. The blip on the screen became farther apart.

  His slight nod was the only indication he had heard her. His breathing became irregular. His face creased in pain as he struggled for each breath.

  Before she could ask for help, Eugene was there. He increased the morphine drip, and Maggie saw his face relax once more.

  "Michael?" She squeezed his hand a little harder.

  He was no longer responding.

  "I can help him go peacefully," Eugene told her quietly. "No pain. Just a gentle nudge over the hump."

  "I'm not ready." Her vision blurred as Eugene reached up to silence the alarms.

  "Maybe not, but he is."

  The words hit her like a blow. They showed her how selfish she was being. But letting him go was more difficult than she could have imagined.

  Michael made the decision for her. His heart rate slowed dramatically to twenty, then fifteen beats a minute.

  Maggie looked at his face and saw peace.

  On the monitor, the line went flat.

  What would she do now? How was she going to live the rest of her life without him? She pressed a hand on her still flat belly and wondered if she should have told him. She'd planned to tell him about the pregnancy she'd only just discovered, but when she found out how he'd helped Dakota, the news had seemed less important in the light of her anger at him.

  Then he had collapsed and Hey honey, guess what? I'm pregnant! didn't seem appropriate. Now she was left with missing Michael forever, and the prospect of raising their child alone.

  She took a deep breath and did what she always did in a crisis: she pulled it all together and did what had to be done. She opened her eyes and, still keeping his hand in hers, holding on as long as possible, said, "I need to tell his family. I want you to make arrangements to have his body sent to Virginia. I'll let you know the details after I speak with his family."

  "You can stay here with him for a while if you want."

  Maggie bent down and kissed his lips one last time. "No, Michael's not here anymore, Eugene, and I have work to do."

  Anyone else might have thought the words were callous, but he understood. "I'll take care of him, Margaret. Let me know where I need to make arrangements."

  She gave Michael one last look and wiped her tears. She turned to her staff, waiting quietly just outside the door, and put on her game face.

  Their faces showed grief and pain almost as raw as her own. These people were Michael's family too. She might have lost a husband, but they lost a friend, a brother of sorts. Once she'd acknowledged their loss, there was no more time for the luxury of grief.

  "We need to get in touch with the team sent after Dakota."

  Tess, her team coordinator, stepped forward. Maggie could tell she picked her words carefully as she spoke. "Look, I don't mean to be indelicate here, but with Michael gone, Dakota is all we have left. Without him there is no program. We need him back. Every moment he's gone we are losing valuable information."

  "Don't you think I know that?" She paused to collected herself. "Michael was right, you know. If we don't let Dakota go, we're no better than the psychopath who tortured Michael for all those years. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell do not want to leave that as my legacy. I signed on to help people, not hurt them.

  "I promised him, Tess. I'm calling the dogs off. I believe Michael was right, that Dakota will come back on his own. But if we force him, we'll be no better than the General. I won't do that to him. Will you?"

  "I don't like it," Tess said.

  "I don't like a lot of things right now, but it's the right thing to do and you know it. Do it." Maggie walked calmly to her office down the hall. She kept her steps even, measured. It gave her some illusion of control to keep everything in check, when all she wanted to do was run screaming out of the building, to collapse in hysteria. To weep about losing her Michael.

  She sat behind her desk and folded her hands in front of her, as much to complete the illusion of control as much as to stop them from shaking. Her husband lay dead down the hall, and she had discussed the benefits of human decency in a world where individuals usually looked out only for themselves. Before she'd met Michael Ricco, she had been one of them. He had changed her. He changed everyone he touched.

  After a deep breath, she acted to fulfill her final promise. She found the number she needed in her phone. Before she could make the call, Eugene appeared in her doorway.

  "Are you doing okay?"

  She tried to smile. "No, Eugene, I most decidedly am not doing okay. But it doesn't matter. Right now I have a mess to clean up and a husband to bury."

  "Margaret, I need to do an autopsy on Michael. I'm so sorry to even have to ask it of you, but as legal next of kin, I need you to sign some papers." He handed her the forms.

  Maggie took them but didn't look at them. "What? Why?" She shook her head. "No, Eugene, he doesn't deserve that, no autopsy." She knew an autopsy would be needed, but the thought of having Michael cut open and once again studied had her saying no before she could think about it. She tried to hand the papers back.

  "I'm sorry, but it's not up to you. It's not even up to me. Michael was admitted to my hospital and died less than twenty-four hours later. It is a federal mandate that an autopsy is done to determine cause of death."

  "But we know what killed him. You told me it was his heart."

  "I know, but honestly, who can say for sure what finally did him in? The things that were done to him, his body chemistry... Margaret, I hate to sound like a scientist, especially now, but think of what he could teach us through his death. He agreed to be part of this program so that we could learn from him. Don't you think he would want us to learn as much as we can and find out what caused that incredible body of his to finally shut down?"

  Maggie looked from the forms in her hands to Eugene. She knew he was right and tried to shelve her personal feelings and do the right thing. The right thing. God! She was beginning to hate that phrase.

  She went through the papers, and one by one signed them.

  "You promise me he will be treated with dignity and respect?" She was fighting to keep the tears at bay. Tears would only make her weak.

  "I would have it no other way. I admired the man more than I can say. Trust me to take care of him."

  "I'll hold you to that, Eugene. I was just about to call his brother's grandson. I'll have all the arrangements for you in an hour or two."

  "I should have most of the results from the autopsy by then. If you want to talk, you know where to find me." He waited as if for a response. When none came, he simply gave her a nod and left.

  Maggie sat at her desk and tried to remember what life had been like before Michael. She found she couldn't conjure up the memories. Her attention drifted to a photo on her desk. Their wedding picture.

  She remembered the day with perfect clarity. She'd worn a simple white linen shift. He'd placed flowers in her hair, honeysuckle because he liked how they smelled. She had bought him the only suit he had ever owned, let alone worn.

  Not a lot of need for suits on a dairy farm, he'd reminded her when they went shopping. He didn't complain. He even smiled as she made him try on suit after suit until she finally settled on the very first one.

  They both looked so happy in that moment frozen in time. It had taken her so long to find the smile he saw fit to grace her with. So long for her to find her way through the years of indifference and pain, to find the man somewhere underneath. He told her that she saved him from himself. Now he'd asked her to save Dakota from becoming like he was.

  It might get her in trouble, but screw them all. She would do it. She would do it for Michael. Just in case Tess had a change of heart, she picked up her phone and dialed her chief of security, somewhere in the air on the way to Nevada.

  Jason Peters answered.

  "Jay? Listen, we've have had some developments here. I need you to have the pilot bring you back."

  She kept the news of Michael's death to herself. He would likely have the same reaction as Tess. "Look, I don't want to hear any excuses, I'm giving you a direct order. Come home. As of this moment I am cutting Dakota Thomas free, and before you say another word, yes, I am taking full responsibility for this action. So don't fear for your precious job.

  "I'm calling you back, Jay. Come in." Knowing he would do as he was told even if he didn't like it, Maggie hung up and put her head in her hands.

  Sudden anger flared to life inside her. Anger at Michael for leaving her to deal with all of this alone. She picked up the wedding portrait and pulled her arm back, intending to fling it against the wall. But she couldn't do it.

  She hugged the picture to her chest and let the tears come. Deep, racking sobs shook her body and she felt a loss she was certain had no equal.

  "When you get to that heaven of yours," she said through the tears, "you just better tell that Emma you're taken. I don't give a crap about all that till death do we part bullshit. You are mine, Michael Ricco, and I do not share well, even with former fiancées." Maggie set the picture back down in its proper place on the corner of her desk.

  She picked the phone up and dialed a long distance number to a place she had only visited once. They had meant to go back but somehow never got around to it.

  "Hello?" The word was accented with a soft Southern drawl she found comforting. The voice was very much like Michael's. Even after all the time away from his roots, he had never lost the accent.

  "Matthew?"

  "Yes? Who is this?"

  "Matthew, this is Maggie Riley, Michael's wife."

  "Maggie! Oh hell, yeah, I recognize your voice now. How are you? How's Michael?"

  "Matthew, I don't know how to tell you this..." She wasn't sure she could actually say the words out loud.

  Matthew made it easy for her. Maybe he could hear it in her voice, or maybe he knew there would be no other reason for her to call. "Oh, God, Maggie, it's Michael, isn't it? Something has happened to Michael."

  Her voice cracked but she kept it together. "I need to bring him home, Matthew. He told me he wanted to come home. Can you help me?"

  "I knew something was wrong. He called me last week, told me he wanted to make sure he had a plot next to his daddy when the time came."

  Maggie let out a little laugh. "He never told me he called," she said, more to herself than to Matthew. How very like him to save her the trouble of making arrangements.

  "Bring him home, Maggie," Matthew told her. "Bring him home so we can say goodbye."

  Goodbye.

  Maggie wasn't sure she had the strength to say that, but she had no choice. Michael Ricco, after over ninety years, was finally going home for good.

  Chapter 9

  On the second day after his bail was denied, Montana's cell door clicked open at 7:00 a.m., along with every other one on the block. Time for breakfast.

  It wasn't the time that worried Montana. He had already been awake for hours, but his meals had, up until today, been delivered to his cell. After his conversation with Jose, he'd begun to suspect that Stone Kale's influence reached into the legal system, perhaps even as far as a federal court judge.

  As a P.I., Montana had sat in on arraignment hearings. There was no reason he could see for him to have been denied bail.

  Kale did not intend for Montana to live long enough to be tried for murder.

  "Come on, lover boy, up and out," the guard said. "Room service has been discontinued."

  Montana knew better than to comment. He got to his feet slowly.

  The guard slapped his baton in his hand as if waiting for an excuse to use it. "You want to eat? Get moving."

  "Don't suppose staying here is an option?"

  The guard just laughed.

  "Kind of what I thought." He walked out of the cell and fell into line.

  Jose stepped in behind him. "Hey, pretty boy," he whispered, and laughed softly as the guards herded them toward the cafeteria.

 

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