Caballo Security Box Set

by Camilla Blake

  I pressed my foot harder against the accelerator.

  “Kinsley—”

  “Please don’t make me put a gag on you.”

  He shot me a hard look. I would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so grave.

  We drove for almost an hour in absolute silence. I kept telling myself this idea was insane, but the more I ran it around in my mind, the more it seemed like our only option. When we arrived, it was so dark that I had to leave my car headlights on in order to see the front of the narrow, neglected house. My nightmare resided here. I’d sort of hoped it had fallen down at some point over the past ten years, but it was still standing, still as solid as it had ever been.

  “What is this?” Ox asked. “Where are we?”

  I got out, leaving my door open as I slowly approached the place. The grass that never grew when I’d lived there was tall in the front yard, browned by the summer heat. There were probably snakes and mice living in its depths, but I couldn’t let myself think about that right then. I approached the front door with caution, not so much because I thought someone would mess with this dilapidated place, but because of the memories that had once been my reality.

  I could see my father, standing in the doorway, his face red as he screamed words with such anger that I couldn’t make them out. He’d called me a bitch, I think. Told me to come back to him, unaware of how good it felt to me to finally be free.

  I shook myself, the memory fading.

  There was a key on my key ring. I hadn’t used it since it was given to me, hadn’t ever expected to. But there was no better place to hide because no one would ever connect me to this place. The girl who once lived here no longer existed. I’d changed my name, wiped away all connections to this place except for the place itself, this one solid reminder of where I’d come from. No one, not even Chad Lindsay, could trace this place to Kinsley Salazar.

  I unlocked the door and stepped inside. Dust and the terrible odor of decay immediately overwhelmed me. I stepped back a moment, covering my mouth and nose. When I turned again, I realized the odor was just part of my imagination. The place was clean, kept in order by a caretaker paid through an anonymous trust fund.

  I flipped on a light and the shadows quickly receded. Just as I’d remembered, there was a single, large room that included a simple kitchen, a small bit of furniture, and a full-sized bed that creaked whenever someone sat on it.

  I heard the creak in my dreams.

  I shivered as I looked around, suddenly cold clear to my bones. I quickly turned away, no longer interested in being there all alone. I walked back to the Edge and opened the passenger-side door.

  “Kinsley, you can’t do this. You can’t ignore an arrest warrant!”

  “Get out,” I said after I’d reached across to unhook his seatbelt.

  “Kinsley—”

  “Get out!”

  I was on the edge, not sure if I was going to pull my gun or burst into tears. I backed up, my gaze falling to the ground because I couldn’t stand to see the fear and confusion on his face. I really needed him to go into the house, needed him to let me do what I knew was right.

  After some hesitation, he slowly turned and slid off the soft, leather seat. He stopped, presenting himself to me like some sort of servant. I grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the front of the building, aware of his feet dragging on the ground as if he were a child who didn’t want to go home after a day of play. There were a limited number of places where I could sit him. The bed was an obvious choice, but the idea of hearing that creak again after all these years… it made my spine stiffen. Instead, I tugged him into the kitchen and sat him on a stool, releasing one wrist and snapping it onto a copper pipe that ran from the outer wall to the space under the sink.

  “So, you’re kidnapping me?”

  “I’m keeping you from doing something stupid.”

  “What’s that? Obeying the law?”

  “Do you know who’s behind the warrant?” I met his eyes for the first time since we left the car. “Do you know what some detectives do to suspects they don’t know? Do you know what they might do to someone who made them look like a fool in front of the brass?”

  “They wouldn’t dare! Not when people will notice. Not when the brass would know that it was them.”

  “Do you really think there aren’t cops high in the department who would turn a blind eye to anything someone might do to you? Not every cop believes everyone is innocent before proven guilty, and not every cop who worked months, sometimes years, on a case only to be outdone by a security firm is honest enough not to overlook a few bruises, a few broken bones. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  A tightness appeared in his face, causing a muscle to pop high on his jaw. “My father was a cop for twenty years. I know.”

  “That’s another thing: do you know how many cops are willing to turn a blind eye when a cop killer is mysteriously injured while in custody?”

  “Okay, I get your point. But I’m pretty resourceful.” He waved his free hand in the air to indicate his fit body. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Yeah? With both your wrists and your ankles shackled?” I raised an eyebrow as I studied him. “Even a contortionist would have difficulty with that one.”

  “Kinsley—”

  “I’ll run to the store and get you some food, a pillow, whatever else you might need.”

  “You’re just going to leave me here?”

  “I’m going back to Caballo and I’m going to get your team on this. We’re going to do what you refused to do: fight for you.”

  “While you leave me shackled here? You really think your bosses aren’t going to put out an APB for me? That they won’t have everyone associated with me watched? How long do you think it will be before they figure out what you’ve done?”

  “It probably won’t take long, but I figure we have twenty-four hours. We can do a lot in that amount of time.”

  At least… I hoped so.

  “This is insane! You’re only making things worse for both of us.”

  I nodded, agreeing with him. If I couldn’t find proof that what those witnesses were saying about Ox wasn’t true, if I couldn’t prove within the next twenty-four hours that he didn’t kill his father, and if Chad Lindsay did his job properly and found him here, Ox would be arrested anyway, perhaps another charge added to the warrant for fleeing the jurisdiction. And if they found Ox here, they’d probably find proof of my presence. That would mean I wouldn’t just lose my job, but I’d probably see a little jail time myself.

  But this was his only option. If he wasn’t going to fight for himself, someone had to do it.

  Chapter 3

  Ox

  The buzz from the whiskey began to fade the moment Kinsley put the cuffs on my wrists, and continued to dissipate as she led me to the car. But when she turned away from the jail and threatened to gag me, that’s when it really disappeared.

  What the hell had I allowed to happen here?

  I tugged at the handcuffs, testing the strength of the pipe she’d cuffed me to. It seemed solid, but this looked like an old house, one that was much better kept on the inside than the out. Who owned this place? How did she know it was here? How did she know no one would find me here?

  I pulled with as much strength as I could, but the pipe wasn’t budging. My wrist, on the other hand, now had a deep groove in it from where the cuffs dug in. This wasn’t going to work.

  Grumbling under my breath, I looked around. The cupboards were all empty. The fridge was cold, but there was nothing in it. In fact, it smelled a little, like it had been empty for a long time. There was no oven, just a narrow stovetop with two burners on it. It was like the fishing cabin my father had once nearly bought from a buddy. Not really designed for long-term occupation, but comfortable enough for a weekend getaway.

  Was this Kinsley’s? Did she like coming out here? She’d never struck me as a country girl, but this was about as country as you could get. It was
about sixty miles south of San Antonio, about halfway between Poteet and Tilden. Halfway between nothing and more nothing.

  There was a nice big bed on the other side of the room with a door that clearly led into a bathroom. I wondered why she hadn’t put me over there. It seemed more convenient. If I were to hold someone hostage—no matter how long I intended to—I would put them close to the toilet so I wouldn’t have to clean up any messes. It only seemed logical.

  Obviously, this wasn’t very well thought out. I was still confident I could talk her into letting me go when she came back with food and… what else had she said she was getting? Oh, yeah, pillows.

  So well thought out.

  I couldn’t believe this was happening. I’d prepared myself for the eventuality of a warrant being issued. I hadn’t quite expected it to come so quickly, but I’d known it would come. I’d done all I could to protect everyone, done what I could to prepare Caballo. I would be damned if this thing, if all these secrets and lies and schemes would bring down what I’d built up over the past four years! All those people, my friends, who depended on the firm for their income. Hell, it wasn’t just a business, not to everyone working in it. We were close; we were… Could I really call it a family? Maybe. Or maybe there was a better word for it than that. Family had never been a word that conjured warm fuzzies for me.

  Family was a nightmare where I’d come from. Hell, it had gotten me here, hadn’t it?

  We weren’t that bad—at least I’ve heard people say it. I don’t remember happiness. All I remember is darkness.

  Everything changed when my older sister, Odette, died. It was an accident, a faulty filter system in the neighbor’s pool. We’d gone over for a birthday party and no one had noticed when her hair got sucked into the filter. She was pulled underwater where she struggled, unnoticed by the many adults hanging around, until it was too late. By the time they pulled her out, her little seven-year-old heart had already stopped.

  My father was devastated by Odette’s death. I was six when she died, so I don’t really have that many memories of her, or of my family before her death tainted it. Oliver was even younger, only three. He was the baby. I did have memories of my mother clinging to him even as he grew older, even when he would squirm in her arms, wanting to get down and play. And I had memories of loud, violent fights. There were also the memories that were still a reality to this day, of Mother losing herself in the bottom of a bottle of vodka, sometimes going on benders that caused her to disappear for days at a time. Once she’d been gone nearly a full week.

  She was a literary professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio before Odette died.

  Father had hired a lawyer and sued the neighbor, the company that serviced the pool, and the filter company. He’d claimed they were all responsible for Odette’s death. Eager to keep the whole mess out of the newspapers, the filter company had settled for a very large sum. A year later, our modest income had become a bank account with six figures. Father quit his job and opened Caballo less than six months later. He ran it for a decade, pouring money into it, hiring his buddies, making them all partners, creating a business I’d always thought was something special, something honorable. He’d taken what had been a horrible family tragedy and turned it into something good, a firm designed to help people, both through offering jobs to former cops and assisting businesses that came to him for added protection.

  Honorable? Hardly!

  I’d learned so much about my father since taking over Caballo four—almost five—years ago. Things I wished I could unlearn. And this lawsuit—this bogus, waste-of-time lawsuit!—was revealing even more: things I never imagined and never wanted to know.

  No one is who you think they are.

  Kinsley came through the door again, pulling me from my thoughts. She was one of a few women who were truly capable of doing that.

  I’d been struck by her beauty from the first moment we’d met. She’d come strutting into the room—a little over a year ago—wearing these dark slacks and a pink blouse tucked in and buttoned all the way to the throat, a mode of dress I’d always found unattractive on women until that moment. She had this thick head of brunette hair that shimmered with golden highlights in the right light—and brown eyes that were almost like the amber we studied in elementary school, the kind that froze fossils in perfect condition. And when she’d turned those eyes on me… I knew I was lost. It wouldn’t have taken me nearly as long as it did to show her the spell she’d placed over me if not for her damn adherence to professional courtesy. Every time I started a conversation with her, she was very careful to keep it on the case at hand no matter how much of my animal magnetism I attempted to lay on her. I’d never met someone so resistant to my natural charms.

  Kinsley Salazar was certainly a woman in a category all her own.

  “Sorry,” she said, dropping a couple of Walmart bags on the counter. “I had to practically drive back to San Antonio to find a store that was open.”

  “I imagine people around here settle in pretty early.”

  She busied herself putting cans of stew and beans in the cupboards near to where I was handcuffed, making it easy for me to get to them. She stowed some fresh fruit, milk, juice, and water bottles in the fridge. At least she’d thought of my general health!

  “What’s your plan, Kinsley? Are you going to keep me tied up here forever? What about practicality? What if I need to go to the bathroom?”

  She glanced at me, this startled expression on her pretty face. I wasn’t sure if she was more startled by the question or my tone of voice. Then her eyes cut to the sink and I was shaking my head before she could even form the thought.

  “I’m not using the sink to take care of my bodily functions!”

  “What would you do if I let you go?”

  “I’d go back to the city. Turn myself in.”

  “Why?”

  The question was plaintive, begging for an explanation that would make her feel as though she weren’t fighting a losing battle here.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Are you guilty?”

  I lowered my head, refusing to answer that question, as I’d done before. Earlier it had bothered me that she’d felt the need to ask, thinking she should trust me more than that. But now it was because the answer was more complicated than I knew how to explain.

  “You see, I know that you’re not guilty, but I think you’re protecting someone or hiding something that you don’t want to become public. I don’t know what, but I know you’re the kind of guy who’s willing to go to prison for something you didn’t do if it means keeping someone else safe. I mean…” she sighed, waving one hand a little restlessly through the air, “…you are related to your brother, after all, and we both know he went to prison on a manslaughter charge that he didn’t deserve.”

  “How do you know that? Why would he plead guilty if—”

  “Don’t play games with me, Ox. I know you’ve talked to the prosecutor about getting the conviction reversed. There’s not a lot that happens in the law enforcement corners of that city that most cops don’t hear about, one way or another, especially when my lieutenant and one of the detectives in my unit have a beef with you!”

  I tilted my head slightly as I studied her. “What secret do you think I’m hiding? What makes you think I’m not capable of murder?”

  “Oh, I know you are capable of it.” She crossed her arms over her chest as she studied me. “I’m a careful girl. I do my own research. You and your minions are not the only ones capable of investigating a person’s background.”

  “Yeah? You ran a check on me?”

  “I know about Odette,” she said, her eyes slowly moving over my face. “Another detail you never bothered to divulge. And I know about the lawsuit. I knew about your mother. You can’t get that many drunk-driving charges reduced—or made to disappear altogether—without leaving some sort of trail.”

  “Brilliant investigating. You learned pretty
much everything that’s public knowledge about me.”

  “You get mean when you don’t get what you want.”

  She turned her back on me, but quickly turned again, putting her back to the big bed sitting unobtrusively on the other side of the room. Her eyes fell to the floor, her expression filled with horror for a moment before she regained her indifferent gaze.

  “What else do you know about me?” I asked, as much to distract her from her own thoughts as anything else.

  She was quiet for a moment, long enough to make me think she wasn’t going to answer. But then she began, her voice lowered an octave or two.

  “I know you graduated high school the year before your father died. You were attending UT in San Antonio when it happened, living off-campus. According to the police report, you were at home to attend a family dinner the night it happened. I would guess it had more to do with checking in on Oliver than it was enjoying a home-cooked meal.” She glanced at me, catching the dark cloud I was sure crossed my features. “You moved back home after his death, taking charge of your mother and brother for the next three years. After that, you went into the military, serving two years with the marines. Might have served longer, but you fractured your elbow and were given a medical discharge.”

  She stopped, studying my face to see if she was right. I shrugged, gesturing for her to go on. “Might as well finish.”

  “After the marines, you traveled for several years while your brother was serving with the Navy SEALS. There’s not much on that time period. And then the man who took charge of Caballo after your father’s death, Walter McDonald, decided he wanted to retire, so you and Oliver—who’d just been discharged from the navy—finally took the reins. Together, you began expanding the business, moving into more than just security-guard jobs. You added the combat support division, the investigative division, and whatever it is you call what James was doing the other day when she was stolen off the streets of our fine city.”

  I lowered my head as a show of respect. “You are thorough.”

  “I’m a damn good cop.”