Striking Distance. Debra Webb
Chapter 1
No matter the legacy a man left behind, ultimately it was his death that defined him.
Chicago’s Rosehill Cemetery was something of a tourist attraction with its medieval castle-like entrance of Joliet limestone and dozens of brooding mausoleums ranging in architectural styles from Egyptian to Gothic. The inhabitants, Civil War generals and soldiers as well as vice presidents, all lay in perpetual slumber in a place so blatantly filled with pomp and circumstance that even the soft tread of footsteps seemed an intrusion.
However well landscaped and adorned with lush shrubbery and graceful trees, this city of the dead with its foreboding Celtic cross and shimmering lake was still just a cemetery. Row after row of markers, whether mere headstones or more elaborate structures, represented lives that existed no longer.
His seeking gaze settled on one plot in particular where a woman stood quietly, probably reminiscing about the life long since laid to rest there.
The date of death engraved on the cold granite headstone indicated little about the man interred...but the name inscribed on that same glossy black surface said all that one needed to know.
James Colby.
Beloved husband and father.
Another epitaph should have been added: Ruthless butcher and marauder.
The great James Colby had been shot down and killed like the worthless bastard he was and not a minute too soon. But, even in death, his presence still lingered among the living. His essence kept alive...his work continued by a woman who was no better than he had been. Though she’d been warned, she persisted in her self-ordained, lofty endeavors. Just like her husband, nothing would stop her.
Except death.
And now her time was close at hand.
From his vantage point fifty meters away, well within striking distance, he read her every expression, watched her every movement through the crosshairs of his high-powered tactical scope. It was a face he had come to know intimately with the use of advanced technology and unending patience.
Looking weary and resigned the woman peered down at the elegant headstone as she no doubt struggled with the overwhelming silence around her...felt dizzy with the stifled senses of the dead and buried. The smell of damp earth would fill her nostrils with each breath she drew into her lungs, a sickening reminder that the rich, sodden soil perpetually cloaked her long-dead husband in its cold, relentless embrace.
Nothing could change the past.
Victoria Colby, he knew, had slowly come to realize that only she had the power to change the future. He’d waited a very long time for her to come to that understanding.
And yet she was powerless to deter him from his course.
She would die.
Soon.
The decision had been made long ago. His mission sanctioned even before he became a man.
He zeroed in to where her black heart beat beneath the tailored navy suit she wore. His finger curled around the trigger as his respiration ceased entirely. The bipod held the rifle steady, its precision aim a work of master craftsmanship.
He could kill her now...this instant...and nothing or no one could stop him.
Certainly not the crippled excuse for a man who stood a few meters to her left, watching, his senses so keen, his internal alarm so sensitive that he recognized some unknown threat even now. Smelled the danger in the very air. His rigid posture broadcasted a status of elevated alert.
But Lucas Camp had nothing to fear today.
The venerable Victoria Colby remained safe for the moment.
Oh, she would die.
But only one knew the day and the hour that death would come.
And it damn sure wasn’t God.
Chapter 2
Victoria Colby knelt before her late husband’s headstone, uncaring that the waning October sun had yet to dry the morning’s heavy dew from the grass. She traced the deeply gouged lines in the sleek surface that formed the letters of his name...the date of his passing. A heavy breath caught in her throat before it raggedly slipped past her trembling lips. How she missed him still.
Fifteen years had passed since she’d watched his body lowered into this grave. Since then the life she had once known had ground to a sudden and vicious halt. Without the help of her dedicated friends and colleagues at the Colby Agency, the private investigations firm her husband had nurtured like a child during his final days on this earth, she would surely not have survived his murder.
Her friends had gathered around her, united in strength and loyalty by the heinous tragedy, and held her up when she would otherwise have fallen. With their help she had risen from the ashes of devastation and forged ahead with her husband’s dream, making the Colby Agency the very best in the business of private investigations. She had reached that goal, surpassed it, even. James would be very proud. The Colby Agency employed only the finest in the fields of investigation and security. The reputation she had garnered with the help of her outstanding staff was unparalleled.
As proud of that accomplishment as she was, fifteen years was a very long time to devote oneself to nothing but work. In a few months she would turn fifty. That milestone would be reached with nothing to show for her half century on this earth other than her esteemed agency. For some that might be enough, but not for her. She needed...wanted...
She glanced at the man who respectfully waited a short distance away. His presence made her all the more aware of how much more she wanted. He had been there for her through it all. Had waited patiently for his time to come.
Lucas Camp had served the United States government in one capacity or another for his entire adult life. Most of that dedicated duty had been spent working covert operations that only the president and God knew about. Not once had he hesitated, not even when his own life was at grave risk, when assigned a mission. It was that same man’s selflessness that had saved James Colby’s life in Vietnam and had shored up her resolve on too many occasions to name when she had felt ready to give up...to crumble beneath the weight of seemingly perpetual agonies. He had showered her with an unending source of friendship and kindness, of encouragement and belief in her ability to go on.
For some time now she had known that Lucas