Dead Heat (9 page)

“He’s not my brother-in-law,” Lucy said.

Yet
, Sean thought.

“And I haven’t even met him,” Lucy added. “Why?”

“Nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing. “How do you know Kane?” Sean asked.

“An op I was on a few years ago.” Donnelly didn’t elaborate, nor did he ban Sean from the briefing room. He said, “We’re waiting on the ME. No way it can be done tonight, but he’s expediting first thing in the morning.”

“No cameras?” Lucy asked.

Ryan shook his head. “Not in the holding cells for arraignment. There’re cameras on the corridors and common areas, but not individual cells.”

“What about his lawyer?”

“He didn’t ask for one until tonight, to go over the papers the AUSA drew up. A public defender. So far clean, only met briefly.”

Nicole approached. “Sanchez’s meds indicate he has a severe shellfish allergy. He was served hamburger, an apple, and milk.”

“Do you have the food?” Lucy asked.

“What was left has been bagged,” Donnelly said. “This isn’t my first rodeo.” He took a deep breath. “Sorry.”

“We’re all frustrated,” Nicole said.

Donnelly continued. “We kept him isolated because we knew he’d be in danger as soon as word leaked he was turning state’s evidence—but there should have been no way that anyone could have known he was helping us yet. The public defender is clean, though we’re going to look deeper.”

Ryan said, “The raid tipped them.”

“No one knew Sanchez gave us that information.”

“It’s deductive reasoning,” Ryan said. “Maybe not many people knew about the hardware storefront. They could have learned real quick that Sanchez is in custody. We snatched him before eight this morning. If he was poisoned he could have been poisoned anytime today.”

“Not if it was anaphylaxis,” Lucy said. “A severe allergic reaction is going to show up within minutes. Thirty, tops.”

“We don’t know if that’s what it was,” Donnelly said.

“He would have felt something, known he was having a reaction,” Lucy said. “None of the guards noticed anything? Heard anything?”

“Maybe,” Sean suggested, “it wasn’t a food allergy, but a more deadly poison.”

“We have everything bagged and tagged and I’ll flag the allergy for the ME,” Donnelly said. Whether he was irritated with Sean for his comments, or just frustrated with the situation, Sean couldn’t tell. “I have my team running deep backgrounds on every guard on duty tonight, everyone who had access to his meal. Because it was after hours, the food was brought in, not made on-site.” He rubbed his face. “Dammit. He was cooperating!”

“Maybe it was natural,” Rollins suggested.

“Twenty-nine-year-old healthy adult male dying spontaneously of natural causes on the eve of turning state’s evidence against a notorious criminal?” Donnelly pointed to Lucy and Ryan. “I need a complete time line from the minute we took custody of Sanchez until he died. You weren’t alone with Sanchez, Quiroz, but Kincaid was. I need to know who talked to him, who was in the room, anyone who might have had an opportunity to slip him something. We cover all the bases here. It may have been in his food, it may have happened earlier. I’m not ruling out suicide, either.”

“Guilt,” Lucy said. “He might have had second thoughts about turning on his brother. Realized he’d dug a hole and thought killing himself was the only way he wouldn’t talk.”

“I’m getting a lot of heat over this, as should be expected. If it was someone else losing a key witness, I’d be giving them shit, too.”

“You need to put a guard on Mirabelle Borez,” Ryan said. “If Sanchez was targeted because of the threat of him spilling his guts, then she may be in danger.”

Donnelly pointed at Nicole, and she left the room. “Done.” He handed Lucy a file. “This is everything on Sanchez from the sweep this morning until his death. I need you to double-check my facts and the time line, and include your own. I want every minute of his day documented.” He glanced from Lucy to Sean. “Sorry to ruin your date night.”

“Every night is date night,” Sean said.

Donnelly nodded. The subtle exchange was between him and Sean. Lucy didn’t see it, but Brad got it. Lucy was off-limits.

How Lucy could be so clueless that men found her attractive, Sean would never understand.

“I’ll bring in the coffee,” Sean said.

“There’s coffee here,” Donnelly said.

“I’m sure it’s not edible,” Sean said. “There’s a Starbucks down the street. My treat.”

Lucy smiled at him. That was all the thanks he needed.

*   *   *

It was well after midnight when Jaime got word that his brother was dead.

He sat in the back of a bar off an alley with no name, a place he’d hidden before when the heat got too hot. It was a place where people killed and people died, but no cops ever walked through the door. The bodies were moved and dumped, far away, so this place became a sanctuary, of sorts. Unless you were one of the dead.

But Pablo, the owner, was getting jumpy. Because the 39th Street store had been taken down by the feds. The feds had arrested Pablo’s brother-in-law. He was afraid they could track Pablo down here, and Pablo didn’t want the cops anywhere near him. George and Mirabelle were in prison.

Correction: Mirabelle was in prison. George was at the morgue.

Jaime drained another shot of cheap tequila. Damn George. He should have come with him to look for the kid. Jaime was pissed; he thought George didn’t lock the rat up proper. He’d warned him, time and again, that the kid couldn’t be trusted, but George had a soft spot.

He poured another shot and raised his glass. “To George!”

“To George!” tired, drunk voices repeated.

He drained the shot, no longer feeling the fire in his belly after so many. He needed to be thinking clearly. But how could he think about anything when his big brother was dead.

The man slipped onto the stool next to him, nodded toward the bottle.

“You heard.”

“I loved my brother.”

“Blame the feds. They worked him over.”

George was weak. Jaime knew he’d cave under pressure. But he’d held up so well last time, Jaime thought—hell, he didn’t know
what
to think anymore. “He was my brother.” He glanced at the older man. “Who’s in charge?”

“Donnelly.”

Jaime scowled. That fed had been a fucking problem from day one. Putting his fat, self-righteous nose into every damn business Jaime had. “He killed George?”

“Might as well have.”

“Who else? I want all their names.”

“Slow down,
amigo
. Vengeance must wait. There is too much at stake to go after a federal agent right now.”

“Donnelly, maybe.” He was high-profile. Taking him out now would bring in far too much attention. “Someday I’ll have his head.”

“I’m working on that. It’ll take a while, but he’ll be at the wrong place at the wrong time.” He shrugged. “Right place, right time, depending on how you look at it, and who ends up dead.”

“Is there someone else? Someone who would hurt the bastard?”

“There’s a new Latina working with Donnelly. Pretty. Smart. He thinks highly of her, what I’ve heard.”

“New? Rookie new?”

“Seems that way. She might be the weak link.”

“They doing the dirty?”

The man shrugged. “Won’t matter. Not with Donnelly’s past.”

Jaime agreed. Young, female, rookie. Definitely the weakest. And it would get under Donnelly’s skin. Jaime had done it before. Well, not him, personally, but his people had taken out one of Donnelly’s rookies and watched the results. Donnelly made mistakes, lost his focus. Grief and anger clouded the fed’s judgment. Back then, it gave them time to regroup, reorganize, solidify their operation.

It could work again.

“I know what you’re thinking. Stop.”

“Someone has to pay for my brother’s death.” It wasn’t George’s fault that he was manipulated; he’d always been trusting. And dumb. But he was Jaime’s brother, he was
blood
, and Jaime promised his mother on her deathbed that he would always take care of the family.

His partner said, “Wait, Jaime. We need a backup plan. They have the ledger.”

Jaime barely resisted the urge to throw the half-empty tequila bottle across the room. “Fuck. Stupid idiots.”

“No one is talking. They know better.”

George should have known better. “Maybe we don’t kill her. Just scare her.”

“I don’t know if she’ll scare easily.”

“Then don’t try for easy.”

“First things—the girls know too much. You have to bring them back into the fold. Especially Bella. The general will not be pleased if we lose her.”

“I don’t know where they are.” He fidgeted. He knew he had to turn Bella over, but he didn’t have to like it. Mirabelle wouldn’t forgive him. But dammit, it was Mirabelle’s fault that they were aligned with the general in the first place! She should have some humility over her part in this clusterfuck. If she lost her kid, so what? She made her bed, she damn well needed to lie in it.

“Leave that to me. Just be ready when I call. We can’t afford any more screwups, or the general will have our heads, too. And I’m not ready to die.”

*   *   *

Because the bar was a haven for criminals, crime lords, drug dealers, and other scum, no one paid attention to the janitor with the jagged scar marring his old, weathered face. He’d been working here longer than many of them had been alive, and most thought he was mute.

He was neither mute, nor deaf.

CHAPTER 7

Lucy stretched in bed early Sunday morning, dawn cutting through the windows of the master bedroom she shared with Sean.

“Good morning, princess,” Sean said and kissed her neck.

She snuggled into him. Sean’s nearly naked body generated intense heat. How did he do that? She could wear flannel pajamas and be freezing. The best thing about living in San Antonio was the weather. It would be too hot in the summer but she’d take the heat of Texas over the cold of DC any day.

“I have to go into the office this morning.”

“Not for a couple hours. It’s only six.”

She groaned. “Why is it that no matter how late I’ve been up I can’t sleep past six?”

He pulled her to him and grinned. “We don’t have to get up.” He nuzzled her neck, planting light kisses over the sensitive skin behind her ear, down her neck, until his mouth reached her breast and she sighed.

“I feel decadent,” she whispered.

“You feel perfect.”

Lucy closed her eyes as Sean woke up her body. Slow, easy morning sex was exactly what she needed to feel alive.

But it was more than the comfortable merging of her body with Sean’s; it was
him
, the man who’d seen her at her best and her worst, the man who loved her unconditionally. Who had moved cross-country for her, who had captured her heart when she didn’t even know she had a heart to give. One look, she melted. One touch, she sighed.

“Sean,” she murmured, her breath catching, as their rhythm, so perfect, so in tune, brought them both up and over the edge.

He held her close to him, his hard body wrapping her tight. “I could go back to sleep about now,” he whispered.

“Me, too,” she said. “Don’t let me.”

She held him as he held her, and she savored the few moments of peace they had before the day officially began.

Her stomach growled.

“Lucia Kincaid!” Sean exclaimed.

She buried her face in his chest, halfway between laughter and mortification. “I can’t believe you heard that.”

“The neighbors could hear that grumble.” He rolled her on top of him and kissed her. “Go, shower, I’ll make breakfast.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she began.

He lightly slapped her naked bottom. “It’s an order.”

“Bossy now, aren’t we?”

He kissed her again, longer, teasing. “Go, before I keep you in bed all morning.”

She smiled and crawled out of bed, stretching. He watched her, his head propped up on his hand, grinning. “You look at me like that and I won’t get the breakfast you promised.”

“You stretch again like that and neither of us will care.” He got up and kissed her again, his hands molding her body like clay. “Go. Now,” he said, his voice rough around the edges.

She reluctantly pulled away and went to shower. When she stepped back into the bedroom, Sean wasn’t there. She dressed in black slacks and a simple white top with black blazer, pulled her thick hair back into a wide clip, and put on just a touch of makeup. She carried her low-heeled black boots downstairs, her stomach growling again at the aroma coming from the kitchen. “Your cooking skills have improved,” she commented as she walked in.

Sean was wearing a blue-and-white-checked apron and nothing else.

“Dear God, Sean.”

“You like?” He grinned mischievously as he set a plate of scrambled eggs with ham and cheese in front of her.

“A half-naked man cooking for me in a beautiful house after good morning sex?”

He frowned. “Just good?”

She kissed him. “Very good. Extremely good.”

“Hmm, we’re going to have to work on that. Tonight.”

He poured her coffee, then helped himself to a plate of eggs. Lucy loved watching Sean. Not just because he looked like the Irish version of a Greek god, but because he enjoyed life. From the little things like cooking for her to the big things, like his work.

“Are you okay?” she asked, surprised that she’d spoken out loud.

“Okay about what?”

“I don’t know—you’ve done everything for me since we’ve moved here, and I haven’t given you anything in return.”

“You just gave me ‘very good’ morning sex.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Are you happy?”

“Where is this coming from?”

“I don’t know. Just—last night—you were in your element.”

He blanched. “I was
not
in my element. I was surrounded by cops.”

“But you were helping. Your instincts—they’re right on. And then I was thinking about Patrick, and how good you and he worked together, and then—”

He put his hands together in a time-out gesture. “I’m happy. I wake up every morning with you. This is exactly what I want.”