Gilded Craving: Cowboy Justice Association (Serials and Stalkers Book 3)

by Olivia Jaymes

  Gilded Craving

  Olivia Jaymes

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  About the Author

  1

  Ryan Beck loved his family - his sister, his mother, his father. Hell, he even loved the current family dog, a laidback mutt named Chance that his mother had rescued from a shelter.

  But loving his family didn't mean that he wasn't aware that he and his parents were extremely different people. They were a million miles apart in their worldviews so he'd always found it best to spend as little time as possible with them now that he was an adult. For the most part he managed fine, limiting contact to Christmas and maybe the Fourth of July.

  His younger sister Liza, on the other hand, he loved spending time with, but as grown-ups with busy lives they didn't get to hang out with one another very often. It didn't help that they lived in different states. Even finding time for a chat on the phone was difficult, which was why he was talking to her during a regular workday on the way to question a witness. His friend and work partner Luke Brewster was driving the car and playing with the radio, trying to give Ryan a bit of privacy, which was basically impossible in the enclosed space.

  "I just don't think that I can make it," Ryan said, juggling his phone and a paper cup filled with scalding hot coffee. He hadn't slept well the night before but that wasn't anything new. "I'll send a nice gift."

  Liza had told him that she was throwing a huge party for his mother's sixtieth birthday, and of course, she wanted him there.

  "What's your excuse this time?" Liza challenged, impatience in her tone. "Work? A last-minute colonoscopy? Drug rehab? Your excuses are getting increasingly lame every time, big brother."

  Had Ryan's excuses become more unbelievable? He'd put some time into thinking of them but his sister had caught him off guard this morning. He'd have to do better going forward. Liza was too smart for any of his half-assed efforts.

  "I'm very busy," he explained. "There's always a crime to be solved and bad guys to put behind bars."

  "Then they can wait one night," Liza replied promptly. "They'll be there when you get back."

  "I really–"

  "Don't even go there. I'm tired of all of this. I get it. You and Dad argue. Mom makes you feel guilty. Whatever. They're our parents and it's Mom's damn birthday. So you're going to be there or I'll hire two big thugs to kidnap your ass and drag you here. And you know I'll do it too, so just deal with it."

  It was much more than arguing and feeling guilty. Of all people in the world, Liza should understand that. She'd been a witness to most of it.

  "You know it's not that easy."

  "I know that you're a grown ass man," she shot back. "But you're not acting like it. The very definition of adulthood is doing shit you don't want to do. I'm sure it's easier to ignore your family, but is that who you really want to be?"

  He really didn't want to go. Every time he was home, he argued with his parents. They hated his job and almost everything else about his life. If his dad had his way, Ryan would have done exactly as he was told and lived by the Beck family rules.

  I wasn't going to do that. Ever.

  "I may be a grownup but I don't get treated that way when I go home," he replied defensively. "Mom and Dad act like I'm a child that doesn't know not to play in traffic."

  "Just ignore it. That's what I do. You take everything far too personally, Ryan. That's the way our parents are and they aren't going to change. Were you planning to never see them again?"

  No...but he'd been hoping for far bigger chunks of time between visits. The fact was it made him crazy to have to admit that this was one conundrum that he couldn't solve.

  The Mystery of the Beck Family Craptastic Attitude. Why couldn't Jack and Patricia Beck respect his decisions and butt out of his life?

  "Of course not, but I do have a demanding career, Liza. I can't just fly off whenever I want to. People depend on me."

  "I'm depending on you too. I want you to be there at the party and make a toast for Mom's birthday. I don't want to pull the guilt card here but you have to know without me saying it out loud that Mom would be heartbroken if you weren't there."

  It really all came down to that. Hadn't he always known how this phone call was going to end? He wasn't a bad son, per se. Yes, he was a disappointment to his parents but he hadn't ended up in prison or rehab.

  He didn't want his mother to be sad or even worse...cry.

  "I'll see what I can do about my schedule," he finally said. "But I can't make any promises."

  "You'll be there," Liza replied confidently. "I know my brother and you'll make it happen. This is important, Ryan."

  "You only think you know me."

  Liza thought she knew everything. Or at least she had when they were kids. For the youngest in the family, she'd been quite the know-it-all.

  "I have to go," she said. "I'm having lunch with Mariah."

  Mariah Campbell. His sister didn't have to say the last name. In Ryan's world, there was only one Mariah. His fingers tightened on the cell phone in his hand, the knuckles turning white. His good mood was rapidly dissolving from this conversation. Liza knew where to hit him.

  Right in the heart.

  She meant well. She'd never given up on Ryan and Mariah as a couple. He had, though, long ago, but that didn't mean he'd forgotten. How could he? At one point in his life she'd been the most important thing in the world.

  "Good for you. I don't need to know anything about it or her."

  "But you want to, right? I don't think she's dating anyone."

  Mariah had never lacked for male companionship if she wanted it. If she was single, it was by choice.

  "Once again, good for Mariah. Now I have to go. I'm supposed to be working. Talk to you soon."

  He hung up before Liza had another chance to fill him in on his ex-girlfriend's life news. He didn't need to know because he didn't care. She was the past. His career was the present and future.

  "So you're going to a birthday party?" Luke asked, glancing in Ryan's direction and then returning his eyes to the road. "Your mom?"

  "My mother's sixtieth and it's rude to listen in to other people's conversations."

  Ryan was just busting Luke's balls. He didn't care that his friend had overheard.

  "Excuse the hell out of me," Luke joked back. "It was hard not to hear unless I wanted to drive from the hood of the car."

  A mental image of Luke doing just that had Ryan chuckling.

  "I was only giving you a hard time. That was my sister Liza and she wants me to attend my mother's birthday party."

  "And you don't want to?"

  Ryan's friend was aware that he had issues with his family, he just didn't know what those issues were.

  "It's...complicated."

  Luke glanced at him again. "Okay, I won't pry. It's none o
f my business anyway. Now, do you want to tell me who Mariah is? Because I've never heard her name before. Is she someone from your murky past?"

  Ryan didn't even know where to begin when it came to Mariah.

  "Mariah and I dated on and off for a long time," he finally replied. "Then we broke up. It's been years now. She got married eventually but I heard they divorced. Liza won't give it up, though. She's constantly trying to talk to me about Mariah and tell me the latest going on in her life. They're best friends and Liza always wanted them to be sisters."

  "But you're not the marrying type?"

  "Something like that."

  "So you'll see this Mariah when you go home for the party?"

  Absolutely. Ryan's parents adored her as if she was one of their own children.

  "Yes, but it's not the big deal that Liza makes it out to be. It was all a long time ago. I doubt Mariah even thinks about me anymore."

  "No shrine to her first love?" Luke chuckled.

  "Hardly. She's not the shrine type."

  "What about you? You don't spend evenings paging through your old yearbook thinking about what might have been?"

  "I don't even know where my yearbooks are. Mariah's a wonderful person but she and I never could have made it work. We're far too different."

  "I guess Liza is destined to be disappointed then."

  "I guess she is. She's a big girl. She'll get over it. I'm not ever getting back together with Mariah."

  Luke didn't reply to Ryan's declaration, instead parking the car in front of a bungalow on a residential street. They were supposed to try and speak to a witness from a cold case they were both working on. The murder had happened twenty years ago and this witness had been able to give a vague description to the cops but the killer had never been found. They were hoping that the witness might be able to tell them more information than was in the case file. As with so many cold cases, the notes and some of the other reports had been lost or misplaced.

  Darren Campo was the man they were looking for and hopefully he lived here. According to their research, he lived at this address with a girlfriend. He worked nights as a security guard and according to the girlfriend he would be willing to talk to them after his shift. If they'd time this correctly, Campo would have returned home about thirty minutes ago.

  Luke knocked and the door swung open revealing a middle-aged woman around forty or so. Ryan was bad at guessing ages. She might be younger but she had that world-weary expression that said that she hadn't had a good night's sleep worry-free in a long time.

  "You must be the detectives that called yesterday."

  Ryan pulled out a business card from his breast pocket. "Investigators, actually. We're helping the police with a cold case. I'm Ryan Beck and this is my associate Luke Brewster. Is your partner home? We'd like to talk to him."

  She accepted the card and stepped back. "He is. He just got home and he's in the kitchen eating breakfast. I'll tell him you're here."

  They waited in the foyer for the woman to return. She was only gone for a few moments and then she was back beckoning them to move farther into the house.

  "He’s right this way. Come on in."

  They followed her to the kitchen at the back of the house but no one was there. On the small table there was a half-eaten plate of food. The coffee was still steaming in the cup. The woman frowned and looked around.

  "He was just here a moment ago..."

  Ryan had an inkling. "Ma'am, when we called yesterday did you tell him that we were coming?"

  She shook her head. "No, I didn't think he'd mind."

  The sound of an engine firing up had Ryan and Luke heading back to the front door. A sedan shot out of the driveway and into the street, tires squealing.

  "Shit," Ryan mumbled under his breath. "Let's go."

  Luke was already on his way with Ryan on his heels. They jumped into their car and then remembered that they weren't cops anymore. They couldn't go on a high-speed chase. Ryan could only call it in to the local cops.

  They were dead in the water.

  "Fuck," Luke said. "Just...fuck."

  That pretty much summed up the situation.

  "I have a feeling that Darren Campo might not be the innocent witness and bystander that we thought he was," Ryan observed. "In a way, we got lucky. If his girlfriend had told him last night that we were coming here he'd probably be out of the state by now."

  They might have broken open the case.

  "Let's call the local police and then get back to the office," Luke said. "We need to let Reed know what's going on."

  Ryan also needed to ask for some time off for his mother's birthday party. He didn't want to go but this was one family obligation he couldn't say no to.

  And not one good thing was going to come from it.

  2

  Ryan was sitting at his desk a few hours later when his boss Logan Wright stuck his head out of his office.

  "Beck, do you have a minute?"

  Closing the file he'd been perusing, Ryan picked up his can of soda. "Sure thing. I'll be right there."

  Luke looked up from his laptop. "When you're done, do you want to get some lunch? Chris and Knox said that they're thinking of that barbecue place that has the great garlic toast."

  "Sounds good. I'm starving. I doubt this will take long."

  Logan wasn't a long-winded sort of person. Ryan would probably be in and out fairly quickly. The door to the office was open so he stepped in and settled into the chair across from his boss's desk. To his surprise, Logan stood up and closed the door behind them. Was this something that the rest of the office couldn't hear? Shit, was he being fired?

  "I closed the door because I didn't want anyone to interrupt us," Logan said, reading Ryan's mind. His boss was spooky like that, always two steps ahead of anyone else. He could only hope to be half the lawman someday that Logan Wright was. "I'm sure you haven't heard yet because there hasn't been an announcement to the public, but a body was found in Chicago. An old building was being torn down and that's when they found it. The identification process took a little while due to decomposition but it's done now - Bradley Harrington, twenty-one years old."

  Ryan was thirty-four but with one mention of that name he was a teenager again. He and Brad had grown up together, their families life-long friends. At the end, they hadn't been best buddies but they'd run in the same crowd, going to the same parties, and hanging out at the same places.

  "Brad? Are they...sure?"

  It seemed impossible. It had been thirteen years ago.

  "They're sure," Logan replied, handing over a manila file folder. "The identification details are in here along with the information about the area where they found the body."

  Numbly, Ryan accepted the file but didn't open it. He was still stunned, to be honest. After so many years, he'd been sure that they would never find out what happened to Brad.

  "You knew Bradley Harrington," Logan said when Ryan didn't respond. "You were friends?"

  "Kind of. We were good friends when we were kids but you know how it is as you get older. We went to different colleges and sort of grew apart. We had the same friend group, though, so during holidays and summers we would all get together." Ryan shook his head. "Sorry about this. I'm just...blown away. It's been years and we never heard anything else after about six months from when he disappeared."

  "What do you remember about the case?"

  That it had almost been too bizarre to be real. Even now it sounded like something out of a movie or book.

  "We were all partying that night, bar hopping and generally being wild-ass kids. We'd all finished our junior year and we hadn't been home long. A few weeks? I remember thinking that I shouldn't stay out too late because I had a flight out of O'Hare at noon the next day. We all did, actually. We were going to celebrate the end of the school year with a vacation in Hawaii."

  "Is that what you did? Go home early?"

  Ryan grimaced at the memory. He and Mariah had almost misse
d their flight. They'd made it by the skin of their teeth.

  "Not as early as I should have. We overslept the next morning but made it."

  "And Brad wasn't there?"

  Logan obviously had more information about the case than he'd let on in the beginning of this conversation.

  "No, but we weren't worried. We figured he’d overslept like we did and missed the flight. We assumed he'd be on the next one."

  "But that didn't happen."

  "He never made it to Hawaii."

  Even then Ryan and his friends hadn't been all that concerned. Brad had always been a wild one, doing his own thing. It wouldn't have surprised any of them if he'd met up with someone and spent the week drinking and partying. To Brad there was no such thing as a stranger; he made friends wherever he went. Ryan had tried to call him several times and there was no answer, but they'd all laughed and said that Brad must be having one hell of a time not to pick up his phone.

  "When was the last time you saw him alive?"

  Swallowing hard, Ryan rubbed at his chin. "At the bar. We were doing shots."

  "From the police report that was the last time anyone saw him. The security cameras showed him entering the bar but never leaving it." Logan pointed to the file folder still in Ryan's hand. "They found the body in the lot next to that bar. It had been under construction at the time of his disappearance. The police theory is that your friend got drunk, stumbled out the back door, and fell into a hole or ditch."

  Already shaking his head, Ryan finally opened the folder. "That couldn't have happened. The back exit was one of those fire doors. If anyone opened it an alarm went off. A loud one. Ask me how I know. He couldn't have gone out that way without everyone knowing. As for that lot, it was under construction but there weren't any holes or ditches that I remember. They were almost done with the building."