Against the Edge (The Raines of Wind Canyon) (34 page)

Epilogue

Two Weeks Later

B
en carried a box out of Claire’s apartment and loaded it into the back of the Denali. Trace shoved a box in after it, Alex piled a suitcase on top and Jake shoved in a basket filled with household cleaning supplies.

“That’s about it,” Jake said. “I think we got the last of her stuff out of there.”

Most of the furniture had been put into storage until they found a bigger house. At the moment, Claire was so wrapped up in making wedding plans they hadn’t had time to look.

It had been two weeks since their return to Houston. Ben had wanted to get married right away, but a big wedding took time to plan. Claire had picked Valentine’s Day, corny but, hey, the lady was a romantic, and anything she wanted was fine with him.

All Ben wanted was to put the wedding band that matched her engagement ring on her finger so that a-holes like Pete Bragg would know damned well she belonged to him. Ben was going to be grinning ear to ear on his wedding day, looking as besotted as Alex Justice had on his.

Ben no longer cared. Deep down, maybe he had known Claire was the woman for him the morning he had first seen her waiting impatiently on his front porch. She had come into his life and changed everything. Because of Claire, he had a woman and a son he loved, a family who loved him in return.

She walked out of her apartment, turned and locked the front door. “That’s everything. Jake got the last of it.”

“You ready to go?” Ben asked. Sam was staying with Mrs. McKenzie while they packed the last of Claire’s things. Claire would be staying in his house until the week before they were married. Then she’d be staying with her parents while they were in town for the wedding. Ben was already dreading the week without her.

“Let me check my mailbox one last time.” She went over and unlocked the glass-windowed box along a row that belonged to other tenants, looked curiously down at the six-by-nine manila envelope she took out, and walked back to him. The envelope, dog-eared and covered with postmarks, looked as if it had traveled cross-country.

“This went to my California address,” she said. “It was forwarded to my apartment. It took a couple of weeks to get here.”

Ben moved closer, looked over her shoulder as Claire ripped open the envelope and took out a piece of paper. “It... It’s from Michael. The note says, ‘Call me when you get this.’” She turned the envelope upside down and a plastic flash drive slid into her hand.

“Oh, God, Ben, this must be what Diego Santos was looking for.”

Jake walked up just then. “What is it?”

“Might be the information Santos tortured Michael Sullivan to get.”

Alex whistled as he joined them. “Let’s take it down to the office, see what’s on it.”

“Good idea,” Trace agreed. He, Jake and Alex headed for Trace’s Jeep Cherokee, piling in while Ben and Claire climbed into the Denali.

Being a Saturday, the office was closed. They all poured through the front door, and Ben led Claire over to his computer, started it up and plugged in the flash drive.

There were three files on the drive. Ben clicked on the first one. They watched as the screen filled with numbers.

“What is it?” Claire asked.

“Ship names and arrival dates,” Ben said.

Alex’s blue eyes fixed on the screen. “Looks like merchandise coming in from Colombia.”

“Colombia would fit,” Claire said. “Michael was down there for months doing a magazine feature on drug trafficking. He said he came to Houston to continue the work he started down there.”

“There’s a product list for each shipment,” Ben said. “Could be drugs.” Ben clicked on the next page.

“It’s drugs, all right,” Jake said. “Cocaine and plenty of it.”

Ben opened another file.

“Whoa!” Trace’s eyes widened. “Will you look at that?”

Ben leaned back in the chair. “Account numbers in the Cayman Islands. And look whose name is on them.”

“Congressman Ted Reynolds,” Jake said.

Alex peered down at the screen. “Wasn’t Reynolds the head of the Longshoremen’s Union before he got elected?”

“Sure enough,” Trace drawled. “Which would give him the kind of connections he’d need to pull off a shipping operation this size.”

“Michael knew Reynolds,” Claire added. “He mentioned being invited to his home for a party. I didn’t even think of it until you mentioned his name.”

“Maybe that’s how Sullivan got the info,” Ben said. “Went into Reynolds’s home computer and downloaded his personal data.”

“Michael was good,” Claire said. “One of the best investigative journalists in the country. If he had any idea Reynolds was involved in a drug operation, he would have looked for a way to get the information.”

“So Sullivan downloads the info and Reynolds finds out,” Jake said. “Then he hires Santos to get the flash drive back.”

Ben thought of Michael Sullivan’s bludgeoned face. “Maybe Sullivan gives Santos the one he had, but he was smart enough to have made a copy and sent it to Claire.”

“Maybe he sent the drive to the old address on purpose,” Trace said, “figuring it would take a while to get back to Houston. Give him some time.”

“Or he was in a hurry,” Claire said, “and my old address was the only one he knew without having to look it up.”

“Could be,” Alex agreed.

“Either way, we need to call Richard Haskins,” Jake said. Haskins was head of the DEA in Houston, a man Jake and Ben had both worked with before. “We need to get this to the Feds before Reynolds hires another hit man to come after Claire.”

Ben’s stomach knotted. He wanted Claire safe. He wasn’t about to lose her again. “Call him,” he said darkly, and Jake picked up the phone.

* * *

By the end of the following day, Congressman Theodore Reynolds was in custody. Though the man had been released on a ten-million-dollar bond, Reynolds now knew the police had the disk Sullivan had made, which meant Claire was no longer in danger.

“I guess it really is over this time,” she said that evening after supper. Sam was already in bed for the night, and the two of them were sitting together on the sofa. “I think Michael is resting easier knowing he didn’t die for nothing.”

“And I’m resting a helluva lot easier knowing you’re safe.”

Claire turned and slid her arms around his neck. “I love you so much.”

Ben pulled her into his lap and kissed her. “I love you, too, angel.” He was surprised how easily the phrase slid off his tongue. Thanks to Claire and Sam, he was a different man than he had been—freer, more at peace with himself, his world a far brighter place than it had been before.

He thought of the morning Claire had shown up on his porch desperately needing him to help her find his son. The son he hadn’t known he had, by a woman he had both loved and hated.

Ben looked at Claire and thought how much he loved her, thought of his son and knew what a lucky man he was to have found him. He thought how the two of them had helped mend his heart, and silently thanked Laura for the gift she had given him.

Ben wished her peace in her eternal slumber.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from
Against the Odds
by Kat Martin.

Author’s Note

I hope you enjoyed Ben Slocum and Claire Chastain in
Against the Edge.
I really enjoyed writing their adventure. Later this year,
Against the Mark
will be out. Johnnie Riggs’s friend, former Marine, Tyler Brodie, first appeared in
Against the Night.
You met him again in these pages.

In
Against the Mark,
Ty meets his match when Haley Warren comes to him for help in solving her father’s murder. It’s a fast-paced, high-action tale I’m hoping you’ll enjoy.

If you haven’t read the other books in the series, look for the Raines brothers in
Against the Wind, Against the Fire
and
Against the Law,
as well as their friends in
Against the Storm, Against the Night, Against the Sun
and
Against the Odds.

Till next time, very best wishes and happy reading.

Kat

The Raines of Wind Canyon Series

Intrigue. Romance. Suspense. Kat Martin’s New York Times
bestselling series delivers it all.
These unforgettable stories are
available wherever ebooks are sold!

Against the Wind
Against the Fire
Against the Law
Against the Storm
Against the Night
Against the Sun
Against the Odds

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One

“M
r. Justice! Mr. Justice, can you give us
a moment of your time?”

Sabrina Eckhart stared at the news broadcast on KTRK-TV. She
had watched the segment run on an earlier edition, but found herself watching it
again.

The reporter, a small man with dark hair and a determined
expression, hurried to keep up with Alex Justice’s long strides as he walked out
of the downtown Houston Police Department building. “Mr. Justice!” At the sight
of several TV cameras, Alex’s steps reluctantly slowed.

“Everyone in the city is grateful for what you did,” the
reporter said. “People are calling you a hero. What do you think about that?”
The man thrust a microphone into Alex’s handsome face. Six two, dark blond hair
and blue eyes, always dressed as if he’d just stepped out of a
GQ
magazine, Alex Justice was an amazing-looking
man.

“I’m a private investigator,” Alex said. “I did what I was paid
to do—find evidence that would identify the killer of a ten-year-old girl. I was
lucky enough to make that happen. There’s nothing heroic about it.”

“It’s been said you’ll do anything to catch your man. Is that
true?”

Alex just kept walking. There wasn’t a glimpse of the deep
dimples bracketing his mouth that Rina remembered so well. She hadn’t seen him
in more than six months, not since the day her best friend, Sage Dumont, married
Jake Cantrell, one of Alex’s best friends.

Rina watched him stride away until he disappeared offscreen,
then the camera cut to the reporter, who relayed the story of the little girl
who had been abducted, sexually abused and murdered three years ago.
Ten-year-old Carrie Wiseman’s killer had never been found—not until Alex Justice
had come up with DNA evidence that directly linked the girl to a neighbor who
lived down the street from her home.

Two days ago, the neighbor, Edward Bagley, was arrested, which
took at least one killer off the streets.

As the newscast came to an end, Rina hit the button on the
remote, turning off the TV. She crossed her living room to the delicate antique
French writing desk in the corner. Her apartment was a mixture of comfortable
contemporary furniture and French antiques: rosewood armoires, gilt mirrors and
marble-topped tables, many pieces from the sixteenth century.

The apartment was softly feminine but not crowded, and it
suited her personality perfectly.

Reaching down, she picked up the pile of bills from the desk,
began to sift through the stack. In the six months since she had last seen the
handsome private investigator with the amazing dimples, a lot had changed.

She had broken up with her live-in boyfriend, Ryan Gosford, and
moved back into her own apartment. She had liked Ryan; she just hadn’t loved
him, and things were beginning to get sticky.

During those months, her finances had dropped sharply. The
stock market had taken another dive and this time wiped out the last of the
money she had invested in her retirement account. Her job as a stockbroker at
Smith Barney Morgan Stanley had become more and more difficult as her clients
pulled their money out of the market and put it into gold and silver, real
estate bargains and anything else they considered a safer bet than wildly
fluctuating stocks.

Alex’s image popped back into her head as she sorted through
the bills—utilities that would start to soar as summer approached and the heat
rose into the hundreds in Houston, the tax payment on her mother’s small house
in Uvalde that Rina had taken over paying several years back; miscellaneous
bills just to pay the costs of living in Houston. In a week, the rent would be
due on her uptown apartment.

At the bottom of the pile was a white nine-by-twelve envelope
from Delaney, Dennison and Smith, Attorneys at Law, the contents of which she
had examined a dozen times. Papers finalizing an inheritance from her late uncle
Walter, the probate settled and the estate officially hers: three thousand acres
of dry, barren land in the middle of nowhere—or, more accurately, the middle of
somewhere in the West Texas desert.

It was probably worthless, as her mother and the rest of her
family kept telling her, and yet...

The land was the reason she kept thinking of Alex Justice, and
seeing him on TV had finally been the catalyst she needed to push her into
taking action. Alex was a former navy pilot, a jet jockey with a cocky attitude
and an ego that was out of control. Also, like his friend Jake Cantrell and the
rest of the men at the Atlas Security office, Alex was a typical macho man who
exuded testosterone and buckets of male sexual appeal.

He was the kind of man females lusted after.

All except Rina. Or at least she did her very best not to.

Still, there was one thing about Alex Justice she couldn’t
deny. The man was good at his job.

Beyond that, and for reasons she couldn’t completely explain,
she trusted him.

A knock sounded at the door. It was the moment she had been
dreading all morning. The man standing on the porch was wearing an expensive
suit, his light brown hair combed straight back. He was in his thirties, a man
most women would find attractive, but he looked a little too slick for her.

“Ms. Eckhart? I’m Nathan Billings. I’m here about the car?”

“Of course. I’ve been expecting you, Mr. Billings.”

He gave her a winning smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Ms.
Eckhart, and it’s just Nate.”

Rina slung the strap of her handbag over her shoulder. “Fine,
just Nate, let’s get this done.” Walking him outside, she pointed to the little
red, two-passenger Mercedes SLK convertible that was her pride and joy. A car
she had worked sixty hours a week since she’d started her job as a stockbroker
to earn. Six years of hard labor and counting, and now even her car was
gone.

She handed Nate Billings the keys. “It’s all yours. I hope you
enjoy the car as much as I have.”

Billings smiled and looked covetously at the Mercedes. “I’m
sure I will.” His gaze returned to her, took in her jeans and a lemon-yellow
sweater that showed a hint of cleavage. He opened his mouth to pursue a
conversation, but Rina impolitely stared down at her wristwatch—not the ladies’
Rolex she had sold last month, but a nice, practical Timex—hoping he would get
the drift that she wasn’t interested.

He cleared his throat. “Well, then, thanks” was all he said.
She watched him climb into her car and start the powerful engine, a smooth,
throaty purr that always made her heart beat faster.

She waited until the car drove away, then walked over to the
light blue 2007 Toyota Corolla she had purchased last week with most of the
money from the sale of the watch. Sliding behind the wheel, she cranked up the
much smaller engine and drove out of her apartment complex onto Post Oak Park.
From there, she wound her way through the streets till she reached the
single-story brick building in the University District that housed Atlas
Security.

She knew where it was. Jake Cantrell, her best friend’s
husband, worked there. As she pulled into the lot in front, she spotted Alex
Justice’s dark blue BMW M3 coupe in one of the parking spaces, a gorgeous car
that reminded her how much she had loved driving her flashy red Mercedes and
gave her a soft little pang.

At least he was there. Hiring him wouldn’t be cheap, she knew,
but she had the rest of the money from the assets she had liquidated, a little
savings left in the bank, and she was willing to take the risk that in the end
it would be worth it.

She grimaced at the thought, since it was that kind of thinking
that had caused her to lose most of her retirement fund.

Now came the hard part.

She and Alex had never really gotten along. Alex was always
baiting her and she was always trying to dodge the unwanted physical attraction
she refused to admit she felt for him. At the moment none of that mattered.

Rina took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and headed for
the front door of the office.

* * *

Alex ended his phone call and settled back in the chair
behind his desk. The office was busy, considering it was getting close to noon
and things had usually slowed down a little by now. Annie Mayberry sat behind
the front desk, a once-blonde, now gray-blonde woman in her mid-sixties with the
personality of an overprotective bulldog. She was the office manager and
receptionist, currently fielding unwelcome phone calls from the media that had
been hounding him all morning.

Sol Greenway, the Atlas Security computer whiz kid, sat behind
an oversize monitor in his glass-enclosed office. Trace Rawlins, the owner of
the company and one of Alex’s closest friends, worked in the glass-windowed
office next to Sol’s.

The office decor was masculine, with heavy oak desks, dark
green carpet and photos of Texas ranches hanging on the walls. Alex sat at a
desk in the main room of the office, a place to return phone calls and keep a
few supplies. Most of the work he did was in the field.

A few feet away, dark-haired and blue-eyed ex-SEAL Ben Slocum,
another freelance investigator, sat with a phone pressed against his ear. The
other P.I., Jake Cantrell, was out on a protection detail for the next few
days.

Alex checked his gold wristwatch. He was almost ready to take
off for an early lunch when the bell above the front door started jingling. He
glanced up to see a petite redhead in a pair of jeans and a sleeveless yellow
knit sweater talking to Annie. Great body, he thought, nice full breasts and a
round little derriere.

He was smiling when she turned and started toward him, a smile
that turned into a flat-out grin.

Alex rose as she drew near. “Hey, Red. Haven’t seen you in a
while.”

Her pretty mouth tightened a little at the nickname, which he’d
given her because she reminded him of a little red fox—though he’d never told
her that.

She paused in front of his desk. “I saw you on TV this morning.
That was a good thing you did.”

His smile slid away. “I would have taken that case for free.”
And practically had. Finding the evidence to put away a murdering pervert was
something he’d enjoyed doing. Besides, money wasn’t something he needed. Alex’s
family was East Coast, old-money rich, and his grandfather had left him a
bundle. It was the work he loved, doing something productive. He liked it almost
as much as flying.

“I know I should have called,” she said, “but I was...I was
hoping you might have a minute to talk.”

“You don’t need an appointment, Sabrina. You want a cup of
coffee or something?”

“No, thanks, I’m fine.” She sat down in the chair next to his
desk and he returned to his seat.

“So...what have you been doing with yourself for the last six
months? Besides keeping good ol’ Ryan entertained.”

One of her dark red eyebrows arched up. “‘Good ol’ Ryan’ and I
broke up. It was a mutual decision.”

He doubted it. Ryan Gosford was pretty well gone over the
feisty little redhead. He was a computer geek, a good-looking guy but dull as
dirt, while Sabrina was anything but. It was hardly a match made in heaven.

“Who’s the lucky guy taking his place?” he couldn’t resist
asking.

“Nobody. I needed a break for a while. I’m not seeing anyone.”
She eyed him with a hint of challenge. “How about you? I doubt you’re sitting
home alone at night.”

“I’m not a eunuch. I’m seeing a couple of people. No one in
particular.”

“Of course not,” she said, as if she could have guessed.

His grin returned. “So you’re not dating anyone. Does that mean
you came by to see me because you’re lonely?”

Sabrina stiffened. “Your ego never ceases to amaze me.” She
came up out of her chair. “I knew this was a bad idea. I should never have
come.” She started to walk away, but Alex caught her arm.

“Take it easy, Red. I was only kidding. I promise I’ll behave
myself.” He tugged her back to his desk and she reluctantly sat back down in her
chair. “So tell me why you’re here.”

Sabrina smoothed the front of her crisp blue jeans. “Well...the
thing is I...umm...inherited this land out in West Texas. I’m not really sure
what’s there or what it’s worth, so I want to take a look. I figured you could
fly me out and help me locate the property, take a look around.”

He leaned back in his chair, giving himself a little time to
assess the situation. “Your hair’s longer.” His gaze ran over the shiny red
locks that now curled softly along her jawline.

Trace had always been drawn to redheads. Alex had never
understood the attraction, but looking at those heavy curls his fingers itched
to touch, for the first time he thought maybe he did.

A little self-consciously, Sabrina smoothed the tempting
strands back from her face. “A good salon costs a fortune these days. It was
cheaper just to let it grow.”

He noted the remark, thought it was an odd thing for her to
say, considering what a successful stockbroker she was.

“I mean, I just thought I’d try it this way,” she corrected,
making him wonder again.

“Looks really good,” he said, and a hint of color washed
beneath the faint spray of freckles across her cheeks.

He cleared his throat. “Okay, so you want to see this property
you inherited. Why don’t you just fly commercial and rent a car when you get
there?”

“Because the closest town is Rio Gordo and it’s miles from an
airport that handles commercial flights.”

“Rio Gordo? Hell, that’s five hundred miles away.”

“That’s right. And even after I get there, I’m not exactly sure
where the property is. I mean, I know where it is on Google Maps. I’ve located
the land on satellite photos, and I’ve got county plat maps of the property, but
I can’t find a road. There’s a place to rent a helicopter in Rio Gordo. I was
thinking once we get there, we could rent the chopper and you could fly me
around the area until we locate the site.”