Authors: Karen Rose
Sean sighed. ‘Dad, I just heard something on the police radio you need to know about.’
Ken sank down to sit on the edge of his bed, pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘What?’
‘An unidentified woman was found in a cheap motel about twenty minutes ago. The front desk says they have no record of her having checked in, that she broke into the room, OD’d on a sedative and went to sleep. Description matches Reuben’s wife, Miriam.’
‘She’s dead, right?’ Ken had given her the sedative himself and Burton had taken her to the motel to die.
‘No. Unconscious, but not dead. The chatter said the police were responding to an anonymous 911. Just thought you should know.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Ken pinched his nose harder. ‘She got picked up twenty minutes ago? But she should have been dead hours ago. I gave her enough sedative to take down Reuben, for God’s sake, and she weighs half what he does. If he’s still alive,’ he muttered. ‘If Miriam is alive, somebody pumped her stomach.’
‘Or made her throw it all up.’ A pause, then a tentative ‘Didn’t Burton drop her off?’
‘Yeah,’ Ken said flatly. Burton who hadn’t wanted to kill her to begin with. Reuben’s second-in-command had history with Reuben’s wife. Burton hadn’t allowed her to die. He’d arranged for her to be saved, putting them all in jeopardy.
Especially me
. Because Ken had forced Miriam to drink the damn sedative.
‘Do you want to buy me out?’ he asked Sean abruptly. ‘Alice said the two of you did.’
‘Maybe. We’d have to clean house.’
Ken huffed bitterly. ‘If we keep on losing people, cleaning house won’t take too long.’
‘Do you want me to find Burton?’ Sean asked quietly.
‘I know where he is,’ Ken said. ‘And I know that you’re aware of my phone trackers.’
‘I wouldn’t have been a very good IT person if I hadn’t known,’ Sean said reasonably. ‘I don’t hold it against you.’
Ken was quiet for a long moment. ‘Can you handle Burton? He’s a big guy.’
‘No, but Alice can.’ It was said with no bitterness or ego. Sean actually sounded proud of his sister, who’d gotten the lion’s share of Ken’s athletic genes.
‘She’s not . . . you know . . .
with
Burton too, is she?’ Ken asked with a grimace. ‘Not like she is with DJ.’
Sean chuckled. ‘You really want me to answer that?’
Ken shuddered at the image. ‘No. Just get Alice, find Burton and bring him here. I’m not sure where she is. She said she was going to finish off O’Bannion.’
After ending the call, Ken kicked off his shoes and lay on his bed, too weary to take off his pants. The image of Stephanie Anders doing it for him flashed in his mind like unexpected fireworks.
‘No thank you,’ he whispered to himself. Stephanie Anders was not anyone he would ever take to his bed – and on top of the day he’d had? Ludicrous.
But maybe that was his subconscious trying to tell him it was time to get out. Once he fixed this mess, he’d take his personal bank accounts, along with those of Demetrius, Reuben and Chip Anders and he’d retire.
Once he fixed this mess.
Twenty-five
Cincinnati, Ohio
Tuesday 4 August, 11.30
P.M.
Marcus rubbed his mouth, his lips still tingling from that kiss in the hospital parking lot. Finally, he thought. After nine months of telling himself that he’d only drag her down with him, he’d finally silenced that voice in his head.
There was only one small wrinkle – she hadn’t asked him about the kidnapping and Matty. He wondered if she’d had a chance to Google what he’d told her to. She’d been a tad busy, after all. Maybe she hadn’t had time. He didn’t want to ask. He didn’t want to know if she had. Because if she hadn’t and if by some chance she had forgotten, he didn’t want to bring it up.
Except that she had a right to know. He couldn’t keep something like that from her. He’d tell her after all this was over, after he’d had a chance to get to know her completely. After he’d had a full night with her and had woken up with her at least once. He’d have something to take away with him then.
Or maybe he’d tell her and it wouldn’t matter. It was possible. She’d taken the
Ledger
activities with a surprisingly open mind. But that was different. His team at the
Ledger
was like a modern-day
Mission: Impossible
team. They’d never actually killed anyone, although he and Diesel had come close a few times.
But what he’d done after Matty died was very, very different. He had killed someone – even if his finger hadn’t been on the trigger. He stared down at the gun in his lap. It might have been a murder weapon –
the
murder weapon, even. He simply didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.
But he did know that every time he carried it, he put himself at risk. When it’d just been himself to worry about, that had been okay. Hell, it might even have been part of the allure. But he didn’t just have himself to worry about anymore. Scarlett had put her career on the line for him. She’d stood with him.
He’d have to put the gun away, in his safe where it wouldn’t cause her any trouble. He took it from the pocket holster and ran his thumb over the barrel. It was not lost on him that he’d caressed Scarlett’s skin the same way a few minutes ago.
The gun had become more than a mere weapon long ago. It was a talisman, just as his knife was, but for very different reasons. Using a different gun would take some getting used to, he thought. But if it uncomplicated even a portion of their lives, it was a small price to pay. Because now that he’d held Scarlett in his arms, now that he’d tasted her lips and watched her face as he made her come . . . and now that he’d felt her hold him so tenderly that he’d thought his heart would club its way right through his chest . . . He knew that he was not letting her go.
He slipped the gun between his seat and the car door, where he could get to it if he needed it, then took his laptop from its case and opened the threat list. He cleaned it up, removing any references to his staff or the more questionable things they’d done, then emailed it to Scarlett.
A noise had his head jerking up and his hand going for the gun next to his seat, but he relaxed when he saw Scarlett knocking on the passenger window. He unlocked the doors, and she slid in, wearing a tactical vest over her T-shirt, her jacket draped over her arm.
‘Sorry I took so long.’ Her skin was flushed, a light sheen of sweat on her face.
‘Were you running?’
She tossed the jacket in the back seat. ‘Just a little. Didn’t want you to worry about me.’
He poked at the thick, padded bulletproof vest. ‘Where were you hiding this?’
‘I wasn’t. Lynda gave it to me, just in case someone takes a potshot at me too.’
He frowned. ‘You should have been wearing this when we went into and out of the hospital. Why weren’t you?’
‘I left mine at home after we . . .’ She shrugged, a blush coloring her cheeks. ‘After we had sex on my sofa. I think I was pretty rattled.’
‘Don’t get that rattled,’ he said, angry with himself for not noticing. ‘Why don’t you wear Kevlar under your clothes like I do?’
‘A, because it itches; b, because none of my clothes will hide a vest; c, because they make me roast, and d, because
I
didn’t promise my mother I would. I’d rather wear the vests over my clothes. Besides, you’re the target, not me.’
‘Promise me,’ he said fiercely. ‘Promise
me
you’ll wear one.’
She met his eyes, growing serious. ‘I promise. Until this guy is caught, I promise.’
‘We’ll renegotiate after this guy is caught,’ he muttered.
She smiled at him. ‘You can start the engine anytime,’ she said, pointing at the keys he’d left dangling in the ignition. ‘In fact, why didn’t you keep the AC going? You could’ve roasted too.’
‘I served two tours in the Gulf,’ he reminded her dryly, closing his laptop and laying it on the floorboard behind his seat. He started the car. ‘I can take a little heat.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘So can I, Mr Macho, but I choose not to.’ She cranked up the AC and leaned her face into the air. ‘Did you finish with the list?’
‘Yes. I emailed it to you.’
‘Must have been after I left my desk.’ She settled into the seat and checked her phone while he drove them out of the garage and on to the street that led from the city to her house on the hill. ‘I got it.’ She took a few minutes to scan it, tapped her screen, then put the phone in one of the pockets of the vest. ‘I forwarded it to Isenberg. She’ll get it to whoever’s doing the analysis.’
He glanced at her from the corner of his eye. ‘I thought you weren’t going to your desk.’
She made a face. ‘Isenberg called me while I was in Ballistics. Deacon and Agent Coppola had just come back from your apartment building, and Adam Kimble, the detective who was leading the search for Mila and Erica, had just come back from the field. We did a mini-debrief. I got away as soon as I could.’
‘And?’
‘And the security tapes showed the killer leaving about five minutes after he entered with Phillip and shot the security guard.’
‘What time was that?’
‘Forty minutes after eight.’
‘Shit. He left only a minute or two before I got there. I may have seen him. Phillip said he was big and African-American.’
‘The camera didn’t capture his face. He had a ski mask hidden under his cap and pulled it down as he entered the lobby. He was also wearing gloves. The only skin we saw was around the perimeter of the mask’s eye holes. His skin was darker than Caucasian, but that’s all we can say.’
‘We’ll ask Phillip more when he wakes up,’ Marcus said firmly.
‘We will,’ she agreed with a hard nod. ‘When the shooter came out of your apartment, he went down the stairs, made sure the coast was clear in the lobby and then slipped out the front door. He had a towel wrapped around his arm and the knife still sticking out, just like Phillip told you.’
‘He didn’t want his blood spurting everywhere.’
‘But the towel had already soaked through. Phillip got that blade deep.’
Marcus thought of Edgar and Phillip, both fighting for their lives. ‘Good,’ he said coldly.
‘I agree. Agent Coppola talked to everyone in the building. Nobody saw or heard anything. He must have used a silencer.’
Marcus frowned. ‘Silencers for the Ruger are hard to come by. He may have had it custom made.’ His frown grew deeper. ‘But he didn’t use one in the alley. Why?’
‘Good question. But he did use a silencer on his rifle when he shot at you and Agent Spangler in back of the Anders house.’
There was a thoughtful quality in her voice that made him look at her. ‘What?’
‘The surgeon said that the shooter shot Phillip three times. Arm, side and abdomen. Arm was a through and through, but Coppola and Deacon didn’t find the bullet, just the casings. The surgeon said the shooter dug the bullet out of Phillip’s side and tried to dig the one out of his abdomen but gave up.’
‘Because the shooter was bleeding too. He didn’t want the bullets found. He left bullets behind at the alley and didn’t want the ones in Phillip connected through ballistics. The gun he used on me and Agent Spangler this afternoon was a rifle, so there wouldn’t have been a match anyway.’ He frowned harder. ‘But that doesn’t make sense. Why would he go to the trouble of digging the bullets out? He has to know that we know he’s the same guy.’
‘Do we?’ she countered. ‘Tala knew her attacker. I saw it in her eyes.’
‘So did I,’ he murmured. ‘When I watched the video later. So you’re thinking maybe it’s
not
the same shooter? Maybe the two
aren’t
related?’
‘But someone wants us to think that they are.’ She shrugged. ‘We’ll know soon enough. The ballistics tech was on her way in to do the test. They don’t usually work nights, but for something like this they get called in.’
‘You mean because a federal agent was killed,’ he said flatly.
‘No,’ she said forcefully. ‘Because we have a human trafficking murderer out on the streets. Nobody’s complaining about the extra hours.’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘It’s all right.’ She slid her hand over his thigh and squeezed. Comforting him again, he thought. ‘Some of the time that’s true. But not this time.’
‘Why did the search team come back in?’
She sighed. ‘They lost the scent. Looks like Mila and Erica hitched a ride. We got their visa pictures and those of the husband and son from Immigration and have distributed them to all the officers on patrol now, and they’ll be passed out at the shift meeting in the morning. Officers are being told to approach the women with care and to show them photos of the husband and son and one that Children’s Services took of Malaya. Isenberg had her clerk caption all three photos with “They’re alive and safe” in both English and Tagalog.’
‘Hopefully that helps. I just hope they don’t go under. We might never find them.’
‘I know,’ she murmured, sounding troubled.
He stopped at a red light and turned to study her profile. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I just keep thinking about how none of this fits. It doesn’t make sense and it’s giving me a headache.’ She pointed at the traffic light. ‘It’s green.’
He turned his attention back to the road. ‘Wait till the ballistic report comes back,’ he suggested. ‘At least you’ll know if the same gun was used on Tala and Phillip.’
‘You’re right,’ she said quietly, but he could tell she hadn’t let it go.
Neither had he. He kept rerunning the events at his apartment building through his mind. ‘I’m trying to remember if I saw anyone that matched Phillip’s description of his attacker, but I’m coming up empty.’
‘Deacon is good at helping people remember things,’ she said, surprising him.
‘Deacon? How?’
‘He’s been trained to do hypnotism to calm you down, help you find things your mind’s filed in weird places. I watched him do it the first time with Faith nine months ago. Since then he’s helped three other victims recall things they either couldn’t remember or were afraid to. Don’t worry,’ she said when he grimaced. ‘He won’t make you cluck like a chicken. It’s just a relaxation technique.’
‘I don’t think that would work on me. It comes too close to an interrogation, or brainwashing even, and . . . well it probably just wouldn’t work.’ He left it at that.
‘You were trained to resist interrogation and mind control techniques when you were in the military?’
He frowned over at her. ‘I never said that.’ It was exactly right, though.
‘Come on, Marcus. Give me a little credit here. You move like a damn ghost. I’m good at being aware of people coming up from behind me, and you’ve snuck up on me twice now. Either you’ve had training or you’re secretly Batman.’
He snorted a laugh. ‘Okay, fine. You caught me.’
‘You mean you really are Batman?’ she teased.
He turned onto the road leading to her house and downshifted, making the Audi cough and rattle. ‘You may wish I were if this thing dies on us. We may end up scaling the side of the hill with a grappling hook.’
‘Big baby,’ she chided. ‘I run this hill every day when I’m training for a race.’
‘Really?’ He considered it, grateful for something to think about other than death and bullets and missing, frightened women. A glance over at her showed she’d accepted the momentary reprieve as well. Her eyes were alert and her mouth was curved in a smile that he wanted to see when he opened his eyes in the morning. ‘I want to see you run. Especially if I’m running behind you.’ The very thought made his mouth water.
‘Tomorrow morning,’ she challenged. ‘Crack of dawn. I triple-dog dare you.’
He shook his head slowly, a very different activity in mind. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘You’re refusing a triple-dog dare?’
He pulled into her driveway, turned off the engine and shifted in his seat, resting his forearm on the steering wheel. ‘I would never back down from a triple-dog dare. Game on, Bishop.’ He reached for her when she grinned, releasing her seat belt with one hand and catching her around the back of her neck with the other, then pulling her close for a kiss that left them both breathless. ‘But I think that tomorrow morning I’m not going to want to waste my energy on running that damn hill.’