His frown deepened. “Tori…” He said her name in that warning tone that let her know not to push him too far.
“I let Trudy know I was going out.” Trudy was their sixty-something live-in nanny, and like them she had been a CIA agent in her former life. There was no doubt in either of their minds
that their three offspring were in safe hands. Trudy was known to kill first and ask questions later.
“Now will someone tell me what’s going on?” Reese asked again, clearly annoyed and impatient.
“I will, but first, like you, Reese, I want to know why Lovell is here,” Alex said, giving the man a long, measured look.
It seemed everyone in the room did. Lovell kept his guard up, but then he finally met the gaze of the man who’d not only hired him but had treated him with dignity and respect since he’d come to work for the Tall Oaks ranch. He drew in a deep breath and said, “I heard about Ms. Cummings and what happened to her over the police scanner.”
Alex nodded. “And what’s it to you?” he asked curiously. “Do you know her personally?”
Lovell studied a painting on the wall for a long moment and then he looked back at Alex. “I met her yesterday.” He paused a moment and then said, “She and her little girl made an impression on me.”
“And where did this meeting take place?” Trevor wanted to know.
“Out at my ranch,” Reese spoke up, and said. “Lynette Cummings is a friend of Kenna’s and we invited her and her little girl, Aleena, to come to the ranch. Aleena is fascinated with horses and Lovell took the time to give the little girl pony rides.”
“Oh, I see,” Alex said, really seeing the whole picture, although he knew the others didn’t. Lynette Cummings and her little girl had probably touched a spot within Lovell that he’d thought had been destroyed when he’d lost the family he loved.
“My patience is wearing thin, Alex,” Reese warned.
Anyone knowing Reese knew that he could appear calm and composed on the outside but was not one to cross. “Introductions are in order, then.”
He looked at Lovell and held the man’s gaze. “I think you
need to be up front with everyone now because there might be a couple of people here that have gotten it into their minds you might be the Shoe Killer. It would be in your best interest to convince them that you’re not.”
Alex wasn’t one of them that believed it, but felt it was up to Lovell to convince everyone otherwise. “You already know Reese. Well, these others—Trevor, Ashton, Drake and Tori, like you are former Marines, Special Forces, and the meaner of the four, Drake, along with his beautiful wife, Tori, were also CIA agents.”
Alex didn’t miss the look of admiration in Lovell’s eyes. “Everyone, I want to introduce you to a man who has gone down in history as breaking up more crime rings as an FBI agent than anyone. Clark Lovell, by the way, isn’t his real name. It will be up to him if he wants to share it with you,” Alex said
Now it was admiration that shone in the others’ eyes. “So, are you here working undercover?” a more relaxed Reese asked.
Lovell shook his head. “No, I resigned as an agent with the Bureau a little more than five years ago.”
“Why did you leave?” Ashton asked.
The room got quiet, and Lovell’s gaze concentrated on the picture hanging on the wall. “The brother of one of the men I sent to prison, the head of a drug cartel, ordered a hit on me and my family.”
He didn’t say anything again for a minute and then said. “I was supposed to be in the car with my wife and newborn baby girl that day on our way to my parents’ place for Thanksgiving dinner, and I got an important call about my next assignment and told them to go ahead.”
His voice got choked when he said, “I didn’t know they had set the car to blow the moment someone turned the ignition.”
“Oh my God!” Tori exclaimed, and turned and smothered her face in Drake’s chest.
Lovell turned to look at Ashton. “I decided after that my life
wasn’t worth living, so I left the Bureau and since then just been moving from place to place.”
The room got quiet again, and then Drake asked in a voice filled with rage, “But you did get the bastards responsible, right?”
Lovell shifted his gaze from Ashton to Drake. “Every last one of them.”
A slow smile eased onto Sir Drake’s lips. “Good.”
Alex was about to say something when his cell phone went off. It was Christy. “Excuse me, I need to get this,” he said quickly and excused himself from the room a minute to go out in the hallway.
“Christy? What’s up?”
“I ran that report like you asked, and you’re going to find all this rather interesting.”
He frowned. “What?”
“There were ten people living in Houston who chew that brand of gum and have worked with their employer for less than a year. I then narrowed the list further to see where they’d lived before moving here. Three were from the Midwest. I then concentrated on those three to see where they lived before the Midwest. One actually lived in Miami a year before.”
All sorts of red flags suddenly went up in Alex’s head. “I do find that interesting. Anything else?”
“Yes, the one I’ve singled out used to be in the military. He worked as a military police officer for a while and was honorably discharged ten years ago. But it gets even more interesting.”
“In what way?”
“He’s a doctor who works right there at Park Plaza.”
“Damn.”
“I’m texting you his home address now.”
Alex drew in a deep breath. “Thanks, baby. I owe you. Go to bed and get some rest.”
A few moments later Alex quickly entered the room to rejoin
the others. “Sorry to interrupt this party, but we’re going to have to finish our chat later. Thanks to Christy we now have a prime person of interest. I got an address, and we need to pay him a visit tonight along with the police with a search warrant.”
“What makes him a prime suspect?” Trevor asked, already on his feet.
“He hit all the points we’d established in our earlier meetings. He was once military police, which can explain his proficiency in using handcuffs and being so attentive to detail as to not leave behind a single clue. And we can link him to the gum wrappers, and he lived and worked in both Miami and the Midwest before moving to Houston. A doctor by the name of Wendell Thomas.”
“Wendell Thomas?” Reese said, totally shocked.
Alex glanced over at Reese. “Yes, you know him?”
“He was invited to that party Alyson hosted for Kenna at her place a few weeks back. I didn’t care for him at the time, since he was coming on to Kenna.”
“Well, like I said, I have a strong suspicion he might be our Shoe Killer, and we need to find him now,” Alex replied.
“No need to leave the hospital,” Reese said. “While I was downstairs in the lobby waiting for you to arrive, Alex, I saw Dr. Thomas arrive. He didn’t see me but I saw him, and he caught the physician elevator.”
“Damn, we need to make it up to Ms. Cummings’s room,” Ashton said in a voice filled with panic, moving toward the door. “I have a feeling he’s here to finish up what he intended to do earlier, since he leaves no survivors.”
“Hell!” Reese said as cold fear seized his heart, causing him to rush out of the room ahead of everyone.
“Kenna’s in that room!” he hollered back over his shoulder. “She’s up there with Lynette!”
Chapter 30
K
enna forced a smile and shook her head, thinking for a moment she’d completely forgotten Wendell’s egotistical nature. “Sorry, I stand corrected,
Dr.
Thomas.”
“And you are forgiven, Ms. James,” he said, crossing the room to Lynette’s bed to review her chart.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” he said, without looking up.
Kenna chuckled. “I’m surprised to see you here as well. The last doctor who came in over an hour ago said no one would be returning until morning and that she would be resting most of the night.”
He then looked up and glanced over at her, and Kenna didn’t know if she was imagining things or not, but his eyes looked as if their depths were simmering in rage. She shrugged and figured he must have had a bad day.
“As an esteemed physician at this facility, I can come and go as I please.”
“I’m sure you can,” she said, deciding she hadn’t liked the sting of his words and was liking him even less.
“So, has she come out of it to tell you anything? I assume that’s why you’re here, to get a description of her attacker.”
She hugged her arms around her. For some reason the room felt extremely cold all of a sudden. “No, she’s been resting peacefully like the last doctor said she would.”
“That’s good, and I intend to make sure she continues to rest peacefully.”
It wasn’t what he said but how he said it that made the hairs on Kenna’s nape rise for some reason. And then as she watched him, he pulled a needle and syringe out of his jacket. She found it odd he was the one administering the medication when the nurse had mentioned earlier Lynette wouldn’t be receiving any additional dosage of anything until morning. However, the last thing she would do is question that he knew what he was doing.
“Now that that’s taken care of,” he said, smiling over at her with a look on his face that sent chills up her spine. “Now I can concentrate on you.”
“Excuse me, come again?”
He chuckled as he reached into his jacket and pulled out something else. This time she blinked, not believing what she was seeing. He was holding a gun and it was aimed straight at her.
Reese raced to the elevator with Alex right on his heels. Ashton, Lovell and Trevor had taken the stairwell and Tori and Sir Drake were in the physician elevator. Alex was on the phone alerting the police.
“He’s stupid to think he can get away with anything,” Reese said, thinking the elevator wasn’t moving fast enough.
Alex placed the phone in his pocket. “Look, Reese, I’m aware of how well you can handle a gun, but I much prefer for you to stay out of harm’s way and let us handle this—”
“Like hell, Alex. I can’t do that. That’s my woman whose life might be in danger. I might not have the same expertise with firearms the rest of you have, but there’s no way I’m not going to try and protect what’s mine. And what happened to all those cops that were supposed to be surrounding this place?”
Alex drew in a deep breath. “Someone deliberately sent a false alarm saying the killer was spotted across town that sent everyone scrambling in the wrong direction. We don’t have to wonder who’s responsible for that.”
The elevator finally came to a stop and the two men rushed off.
Kenna backed up. “If this is some joke, Dr. Thomas, then—”
“No joke, Kenna. She’s number five and you’ll be number six, and don’t you dare consider screaming or I’ll put a bullet in you here and now. I’d rather not make the mess, but I will if I have to. Besides, there’s no one around to assist you. I’ve taken care of them already. Even that guard who was stationed outside your door.”
“But—but you’re a doctor. Why would you want—”
“To kill?” He chuckled again. “A long story, and I’ll make sure I’ll tell it to you later. Everyone hears it before they die, and then they understand.”
He looked down at Lynette. “I’ve made her the exception. She’s dying and hasn’t heard it. Her loss. But then it’s mine, too, because she’s not wearing any shoes. She was nothing but a lot of trouble.”
“Do you honestly think you’re going to get away with this? Reese is downstairs. He’ll think something when I don’t call him in a minute to let him know how I’m doing.”
“Then you better hope he doesn’t, or I’ll be forced to kill him as well. Come on, we’re wasting time. The doctors have a special elevator we use, and we’re going to take it so no one will notice us leaving.”
Kenna knew she had to do something. If he thought Lynette had been trouble, then he hadn’t seen anything yet. He had injected something into Lynette’s IV. She had to do something before it could seep into her veins.
“Fine, let’s go then,” she said, walking toward him.
She saw his smile that made her skin crawl, and then when she reached the side of the bed she deliberately kicked the IV pole, which sent everything to the floor.
“Why, you bitch!” He grabbed at her, and before she could get away he grabbed her arm. “You want to save her from dying, then you will die with her, here and now.”
The hospital room burst open and men with guns burst in. Kenna’s gaze went immediately to Reese. Even he had a gun. And why was Clark Lovell there with a gun, too?
“Let her go, Thomas!” Alex ordered.
“No, I won’t,” he said, holding up a needle and syringe and placing it mere inches from Kenna’s neck.
“At least that woman will die slowly, but all I need to do is puncture Kenna’s skin and she’ll be dead within seconds with this stuff. Is that what all of you want? What about you, Madaris?” Thomas snarled. “Is that the way you want your supposedly
best friend
to die?”
When no one said anything, but continued to stare at him while holding their guns on him, he smiled. “I thought you would see it my way, since I have nothing to lose by killing her now. My life is ruined now, thanks to that bitch lying there.”
“Let her go, Thomas!” Alex shouted again.
“It’s Dr. Thomas to you, and I want all of you to back off. Now.”
“Let her go, Thomas,” Reese said. “Take me, instead.”
Thomas looked amused. “Why the hell would I want to take you instead of her?”
“Because if you harm her in any way, you’re a dead man,” Reese said in a lethal tone.
“And she will be a dead woman, just like the others. Now I plan on leaving here peacefully with her as my ticket. So I want all of you out my way.”
The way Reese was looking at her alerted Kenna that something was about to go down. And when he called out and said, “Okay, Dr. Thomas, if that’s the way you want to tango, then—”
Tango.
With that single word that Kenna knew was her cue, in perfect precision she snapped her head around away from the needle. That unexpected move was all that was needed, and several shots rang out by the time Kenna had dipped her body almost to the floor.