Steven slammed the door shut on the memories that instantly tried to surface. Kent’s comment didn’t require an answer. His chief was well aware of Steven’s feelings about Hammond. He hated the bastard for more reasons than one, but he wasn’t going there now. It had taken Steven a long time to learn to handle his hatred for the man…he had to hang on to that control now.
“We have one shot here, Barlow,” the chief urged. “We might never have a chance like this again. We have to stop him.”
Steven stared directly at the chief, allowed him to see exactly how he felt before he spoke. “You’re right. This is our best shot at stopping him. But we have female investigators in Metro. Using a civilian isn’t necessary.”
The chief heaved a sigh and leaned back in his chair. “It’s so easy for you, isn’t it, Barlow?”
Since he wasn’t sure what the chief meant by that remark, Steven kept his mouth shut.
“You see everything as black or white. Play by the rules. Never deviate.”
Steven shrugged. “Isn’t that what we’re here to do?” What was so wrong about doing the right thing? Making the best choices? He knew that most of his peers took the other route, bending the rules and stepping on toes as necessary to get the job done. He supposed that was why he wasn’t very well liked around the bullpen. He refused to bend the rules, rejected even the possibility of presenting himself in a way that disrespected the gold shield he carried.
Chief Kent’s expression hardened. “I’m not going to play that holier-than-thou game with you. Yes, we have female detectives, but none of them can read lips. None of them has the power to put Hammond at ease in this way. Miss Walters wants this opportunity. Hasn’t she made that quite clear? You can make this happen, Barlow. I know you. If there is anyone in Metro who can do it, you can.” Kent smiled knowingly. “You’ll make it happen and you’ll keep her safe. I have complete faith in you.”
For several moments Steven couldn’t speak without fear of blasting the chief. Yeah, he would do everything within his power to keep the woman safe. That went without saying. The problem was, outside of a miracle straight from God, he doubted anything he or anyone else did would be enough.
Merri Walters had agreed to walk into her own death trap.
Chapter 6
I
dropped my bags to the floor and looked around the large sanctuary.
“Is this a church?” I asked the question but I already knew the answer. I knew a church when I saw one.
Detective Steven Barlow paused alongside me and turned his face toward mine.
It used to be. Now it’s a sanctuary of another sort.
“A safe house?”
He shrugged.
Sometimes. Other times we use it for a special operations base or training facility.
Taking a deep breath I looked around again. Stuffy. The air reeked of age and disuse. Whatever the Metro cops had used the place for, it still smelled like an old church.
The entry vestibule and main sanctuary led to one big open space, like a gym. No pews or pulpit. Lots of workout equipment, including a punching bag and a few pieces I didn’t recognize.
Barlow tapped my arm. When my gaze reached his he jerked his head to the right.
This way.
I picked up my bags and followed him across the expanse of hardwood floor. I wondered if our steps echoed in the cavernous space. My imagination conjured up the remembered sound. A soft thwack thwack. Like that. Yeah. Probably. My attention then settled on the broad shoulders of the man, Detective Barlow.
He’d picked me up at my house at the crack of dawn this morning. We’d driven around for almost an hour, to lose any possible tail he’d explained, before arriving here. Last night when Sarah called to quiz me about my meeting with the chiefs I’d given her the same story I’d given my parents. An opening at a school in Knoxville had come available and Chief Kent had thought of me. He understood my desire to work in investigations so he’d considered this three-week course in cold-case profiling the perfect answer.
The family had swallowed the bait.
My attention shifted back to the man who’d brought me here.
Not married, I decided. He didn’t wear a wedding band, but that alone was not definitive proof. I had asked Helen the last day we worked together. She had laughed. Almost wet her pants before she managed to stop. According to Helen, who had worked at Metro for half a lifetime, Steven Barlow was married to the job. No mere woman would ever have a chance snagging the handsome detective. It would take a very special woman, she had insisted, to break the man’s fierce focus on his work.
Since I wasn’t in the snagging market or particularly special it really didn’t matter to me. I was simply curious. Given that I would be working closely with him on this case I needed as much information as possible. My life, to some degree, depended upon him and his reliability. From all accounts I didn’t have anything to worry about, reliability-wise. My research indicated Steven Barlow was one of the finest detectives employed in any Metro division.
Barlow led me into a short hall off the sanctuary. He indicated the four doors lining the hall.
The kitchen and two bedrooms.
He glanced at the fourth door.
Bathroom.
The living area that once served as home sweet home to the priests assigned to this church, I concluded. I followed my new mentor through one of the doors into a sparsely furnished bedroom. Narrow wooden cot, a modest dresser and night table with lamp.
Barlow placed the bag he carried for me on the cot.
I’ll take the room across the hall.
He moved back to the door.
When you’re ready, join me in the gym.
A spiritual sanctuary turned workout gym. I sure hoped this old church would give me an extra in with God. According to Barlow, this was a suicide mission and I needed all the support I could get. I stared at the door he had closed behind him. We had our work cut out for us. That’s what he’d said on the way here.
He didn’t have very much faith in me. I found it ironic as hell that he’d brought me to a church to train me. Then again, I don’t know that the place was his choice. I surveyed the room again. Well, I liked it.
I didn’t take the time to put anything away. I wouldn’t actually be here long enough to bother with unpacking. And I definitely didn’t want to keep Barlow waiting. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail. Checked the ties of my sneakers and headed for the sanctuary…gym. I’d worn sweatpants and a T-shirt since he’d suggested I come prepared for a workout.
Barlow waited at the front of the room, where the pulpit would have been, near a long metal table. The table and a couple of metal folding chairs were the only pieces of actual furniture in the large room.
He pointed to one of the chairs.
I’d like you to study these photographs and the name that goes with each.
I nodded and took a seat. A dozen photos were spread across the tabletop, and each was labeled with a name and brief history. Barlow left the room. I didn’t have to turn around, I felt his withdrawal. Unable to quell my curiosity, I turned around just to make sure I was right. Good. I was working hard to focus on the details in an effort to maintain a keen awareness of all my remaining senses. I needed my working senses as sharp as possible.
Turning my attention back to the business at hand, I surveyed the photos, none of which meant anything to me until I reached the final one.
Luther Hammond.
He was younger than I had expected. Mid to late thirties, around the same age as my detective mentor. And he was quite good-looking for a mobster. Not that I’d ever met any mobsters, but he didn’t look anything like the ones portrayed in the entertainment business. He looked like the typical, elegantly dressed businessman one would meet on the street with briefcase in hand.
Dark hair, gray eyes. Hardly any lines on his face. Tall. The photo wasn’t just a headshot. It was of Hammond in a restaurant I didn’t recognize. In the past couple of years I hadn’t gotten out much. He faced the camera and was talking to another man, while a number of others stood around him. His posse? I looked through the other photos to see if any of the faces matched the ones in the photo with Hammond. Only two. Mason Conrad and Victor Vargas. His bodyguards? Both stood close, maybe one or two steps behind him. Now, these two men looked dangerous.
Barlow reached past my shoulder and tapped Conrad’s photo. I just about jumped out of my chair. My hand went to my throat as I fought to catch my breath. So much for sharper senses. When my gaze finally latched on to his, Barlow said,
Hammond’s second in command and personal bodyguard.
So I had been right about Conrad. Almost as tall as his boss but younger, Conrad had dark hair and eyes. At least I’d done something right. I inhaled another deep breath and then nodded for the detective’s benefit.
You seem a little jumpy this morning.
Barlow was right. I was jumpy. I’d had hardly any sleep. Who could sleep on the eve of a step this big? “Didn’t sleep well,” I offered in hopes of derailing the suspicion I saw in his eyes.
He was proving every bit as perceptive as I had suspected he would be. He studied me a moment longer before turning back to the photographs and pulling up the other chair.
Now we work.
Again his gaze held mine for a beat too long after he’d made the statement, ultimately ratcheting up my tension another notch.
For the next hour we reviewed the photographs. I memorized each name and face while Barlow explained how each man and the one woman factored into Hammond’s dirty life. The woman, Cecilia Woodruff, was an au pair. Somehow I had missed that part. Barlow explained that Hammond had an eight-year-old daughter named Tiffany. The mother, Heather Masters, a woman to whom Hammond had never been married, had died four years ago from a drug overdose. Barlow rummaged around in a folder and withdrew a photograph of a beautiful child. Long dark hair and the same gray eyes as her father. Looking at the child made me sad. She would be the one to suffer in all this. If this operation proved successful she would lose her father.
Don’t do that.
I shifted my gaze from Barlow’s lips to his eyes in an attempt to read the motivation behind the statement. The only thing he let me see was the intensity that occupied those analyzing eyes more often than not.
Hammond has to be stopped. Sympathy for his daughter can’t get in the way.
“I know that,” I admitted, though my heart ached for the child. “Is there a relative she can stay with once her father is out of the picture?”
Barlow shrugged, though I felt certain he knew the answer. He simply had no intention of sharing it with me. I let it go. We had a lot of ground to cover. Getting caught up on this one issue was a bad idea.
By noon I understood why few others in Metro liked Detective Barlow. He was relentless and unfeeling.
Mathers, who is he?
The demand hadn’t come out any nicer the second time than it had the first. The ability to hear wasn’t necessary. I could see the lines of tension in his face, the tightening of his mouth.
I looked away from him and started to pace once more. I’d given up on keeping a seat an hour ago. I didn’t know who Mathers was. I couldn’t remember. He wasn’t one of the men in the photographs. I had those down. He…I scrubbed at my forehead. I just didn’t know.
A tap on my shoulder jerked my attention back to my taskmaster.
Hammond’s West Coast contact. Mathers is his West Coast contact.
“Why do I need to know who he is? It’s not like I’ll see him!”
Barlow stared at the floor a moment. Judging by the tension radiating through those broad shoulders I’d say he needed to get a firmer grip on his emotions the same as I did. I forced myself to take three slow, deep breaths. I had to calm down. Getting angry wasn’t going to help.
That blue gaze collided with mine once more.
You’re right,
he said. He’d calmed down considerably if his relaxed expression was any indication.
You most likely won’t see this guy. But I need you to be aware of all that you read on the lips of Hammond and his associates. There are names and phrases that signify crucial elements related to this case. You need to be able to recognize the relevance of the intelligence you gather.
“Mathers,” I muttered, “his West Coast contact.” I nodded and took a deep breath. “Who’s next?”
Let’s take a break,
he said.
We’ll resume our work after lunch.
Unbelievable. I watched him walk away. The man was human after all. Required food for fuel. I chastised myself for being so unkind. I should give Barlow the benefit of the doubt. Just because I knew he didn’t want me on this case and I’d heard all the rumors about how he didn’t have any friends was no excuse to judge him harshly.
It was up to me here to get our relationship off on the right foot. The least I could do was try.
With a ham and cheese sandwich, complete with pickle spear and chips, and a nice big glass of iced tea, I was ready to chow down. Barlow, showing his gentlemanly side, waited until I had seated myself at the small kitchen table to join me. He didn’t, however, wait for me to begin eating.
I took a moment to consider that today was the first time I had seen him in anything other than a suit. Though he didn’t wear sweats like me, he did have on faded jeans and a plain gray T-shirt. He’d traded in his Italian leather shoes for sneakers. Though he looked far from relaxed, he did look nice. I shouldn’t have been surprised. A guy as handsome as Barlow would look good wearing most anything.
“Do you have family, Detective?”
He paused in the devouring of his sandwich. Barlow was just as intense about eating as he was everything else. I wondered for a time whether or not he intended to respond before cleaning his plate.
My family is in St. Louis.
A Missouri boy, huh? “You grew up there?” Who knew? All this time I’d thought Barlow was most likely a born-and-bred Tennessee boy.
Yes.
Well, that was certainly the short answer. “Any brothers or sisters?” I persisted.
Two sisters.
Okay, now there was something we had in common. I was the only girl in my family and he was the only boy. “Older or younger?” I intended to have all the details. He might as well admit defeat now.
Younger.
Aha. I would bet this week’s powerball lottery offering that growing up with those two younger sisters had forged some of that brooding, overprotective persona. I barely managed to keep the smugness off my face.
“Where did you go to college?”
He pushed his empty plate aside and stared at me with something like tolerance.
Is all this going somewhere in particular?
Touchy. “I…” I shrugged in an attempt to play off the ferocity in his eyes. “I was just curious.”
I graduated from the University of Missouri. I’ve never been married, haven’t even been close. I call my family a couple times a month but rarely get home for a visit. I date from time to time but I don’t bother pretending I want a relationship. Sex is good but I’m not interested in strings or attachments. Any more questions?
I shook my head and redirected my attention to my lunch. My appetite had pretty much vanished, but I forced myself to eat just the same. No way was I going to let him see that his attitude bothered me. I realized that’s exactly what he wanted. He figured if he humiliated or frustrated me I’d give up and let it go. Well, Detective Barlow didn’t know me very well. I had no intention of giving up on anything. Not this case, not myself, not even him. I shivered as his words echoed inside me. He wanted the world to believe he felt nothing, needed no one, but I had a sneaking suspicion that his “back off” growl was more about self-preservation.
Someone had hurt him. Really badly. I wondered why Helen hadn’t known about that. Of course I was only speculating, but the one thing I had always been good at was reading people.
A cold, hard reality settled onto my shoulders. If I’d been so good, why hadn’t I realized the man I was supposed to marry wasn’t all I thought him to be? As soon as the going got tough, he got going. Walked out on the plans we had shared…away from us.