The Next Widow: A gripping crime thriller with unputdownable suspense (Jericho and Wright Thrillers Book 1)

by CJ Lyons

  “She had us all fooled.” Ray paused. “Well, maybe not Harper.”

  They pulled in behind the other vehicles at their secluded staging area behind the old church down the road from Broderick’s place. From where they were positioned, they could see the house without being seen in return. They watched as McKinley gathered his men for a final briefing.

  Because of the weather and road conditions, their caravan had arrived a little later than they’d hoped. Luka noticed that Broderick’s house was less than two miles from Nellie Quinn’s house where Harper had been attacked earlier tonight. Luka’s vision filled with a memory of the first time he saw Leah. How could he have been so wrong about her?

  The tedium of waiting set his mind adrift. He imagined Tanya out in the cold, lying in some frozen Baltimore alley, oblivious. He blinked, opened his window, the frigid air shocking him back. There was nothing more he could do for Tanya, he told himself. He had to save his energy for this case. Because as soon as he had both Broderick and Leah Wright in custody his job would be to break them.

  Finally, the ERT team deployed. He and Ray waited inside the comfort of the SUV, watching the video feeds from the body cams on Ray’s laptop as McKinley and his men did their jobs. The team deployed swiftly and silently, surrounding and converging on the house.

  “Thermal isn’t giving us good readings,” one of the ERT whispered over the radio. “Visual shows a motorcycle matching your actor’s in the carport, no visible presence in living room or kitchen, a child’s bed in the southeast corner bedroom, and blackout curtains in the room on the northeast corner. Proceeding with caution in case the child is in the room with subject. Do I have a green light?”

  “Green light, proceed,” McKinley ordered.

  A moment later the team surged toward the house. The plan was for the first group to provide a diversion by taking down the front door, while the second entered through the window into the bedroom where Brody was presumed to be. Luka felt a thrill of adrenaline surge through him as the first group with their battering ram approached the front door.

  Three loud thuds sounded, echoing through the SUV like thunder.

  Forty-One

  As Leah waited on the mansion’s porch, she realized that Andre Toussaint was right: she did live in a small world. What the trauma chief had been wrong about was that she didn’t want or need a larger world—not a big house, not a job at a more prestigious trauma center, not more money. All she needed was her family, safe. Just that one small thing that she could guard and hold steady in her heart.

  Except, she’d failed them. She wasn’t strong like Ian, who’d given everything to protect their daughter; she wasn’t as resilient as Emily, able to both cope with the horror she’d lived through and still find joy in the world. Leah felt as if she were drowning beneath the weight of her pain. She had to regain control of her life—for Emily. Starting here and now.

  She pounded the side of her fist against the thick door one more time. This time it opened.

  “Leah,” Jessica Kern said with a smile. She wore silk slacks, a tunic with deep pockets, and a long silk robe. With the foyer’s chandelier scattering light from above and behind her, the older woman practically shimmered as if wearing a halo. “Please, come inside.”

  Leah stood her ground, knowing that she needed to get going. “No, thank you. I’m just here to pick up Emily. Thank you for watching her, but we’ll be going now.”

  Jessica frowned—even that slight creasing of her forehead seemed drawn from Doris Day pique rather than expressing true consternation. “Now? It’s the middle of the night and there’s a snowstorm. I’ve already made up a room for you. Plus, Emily’s sleeping—I’m sure you don’t want to disturb her, not after everything she’s been through. Come in, we’ll talk, wait for the weather to clear.”

  Everything Jessica said was perfectly rational. But Leah did not feel rational; she felt as if her world was ready to explode and she had one chance to escape. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for us, Jessica. But we need to leave. Now.” The last emerged clipped and so loud it startled both of the women.

  Jessica blinked and nodded. “All right, if you insist. At least come inside where it’s warm while I go get her.”

  Leah walked forward as Jessica closed the door behind her. The marble-floored foyer was larger than her living room with not one but two grand staircases gracefully curving up to the second floor. Leah started toward one staircase, her shoes dripping melted snow onto the marble, but Jessica stopped her.

  “No, this way.” She led Leah through an arch at the side of the foyer into a traditional living room, then through it down a narrow hallway to a smaller den with comfortable recliners, plaid wallpaper, and one large wall dominated by a flat screen TV.

  “Are you there, yet?” Jessica asked, turning to face Leah. Below the façade of carefully applied makeup, her eyes were shadowed and lines creased the corners of her mouth, making her appear brittle. “The pain. The feeling like you’ve been catapulted into a world where nothing makes sense? Your insides torn apart every time you think of him? Every time you remember his face, his touch, his smell? It’s a pain like no other. Nothing dulls it, nothing can make it stop. Or silence the voices in your head, tormenting you. You’re all alone, nowhere to turn, no one to trust, and you can’t help blame yourself.”

  Leah jerked her chin up. She knew Jessica was describing the pain that had tormented her after her own husband’s death, and it rang true. “Yes,” she whispered, not trusting her voice beyond that single syllable that emerged strained, shredded with grief.

  “Good.” Jessica grabbed a remote, whirled to face the TV, and turned it on. “Because that’s what I’ve lived with for the past three years.”

  There was no sound coming from the TV, but Leah didn’t need any. She stood, shocked and confused, staring at the image: Emily lying in Ruby’s lap, sleeping, both sitting on a concrete floor, Ruby stroking Emily’s hair even as she glanced wide-eyed around the room, obviously terrified. The walls behind them were stone, appeared old, very old, and to one side of the frame was a shelf with curved racks designed to fit bottles.

  “Jessica.” Leah whirled on the other woman. “Where are they? What have you done with my daughter?”

  Jessica smiled as if Leah had just given her a happy surprise. She touched a small earpiece concealed by her blonde tendrils. “Do it,” she whispered, her tone urgent.

  A shadow edged into the frame, looming over Ruby and Emily. Ruby’s fear turned to panic, and she slid Emily off her lap, standing to place herself between her granddaughter and the new threat.

  A hunting knife was visible in the man’s fist.

  “No, wait!” Leah shouted. “Stop! Don’t hurt them.”

  Jessica gazed at the screen, pupils dilated.

  Leah grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. “What do you want? Why are you doing this?”

  “Get your hands off of me,” Jessica snarled.

  The man took another step toward Ruby; now Leah could see the length of his arm, his face still out of frame.

  “Please,” Leah pleaded, dropping her hands to her sides and backing away. “Stop.”

  Jessica whispered something Leah couldn’t hear, and the man retreated. Then the screen went blank. Somehow that was worse. Leah pulled both fists into her belly, trying to quash her need to vomit, to run to Emily—except she had no idea where to run to—to strike out at Jessica. Instead, she pressed one hand against the other, deeper, harder, the pain forcing her to focus.

  “Please. I just want my daughter back. Please. I’ll do anything.”

  “Just like I’d do anything to get my husband back.” Jessica slid open the drawer of a side table, emerging with a small tablet in one hand and a large pistol in the other. She aimed the pistol at Leah.

  Leah stared at the gun. Jessica’s husband? He died in Chicago—at least that’s what Jessica had told Leah. Had Jessica lied?

  Feeling as if she were skidding
on black ice, spinning out of control, Leah hesitated, unsure of how to connect with this madwoman. Empathy? “I’m sure you miss him desperately.”

  “You have no idea. Gordan was a genius—much more so than your husband. Think of how many lives are better because of his work. Work that impacted real people in the real world, not just imaginary zeros and ones like your husband’s fiddling on the computer.”

  Leah wanted to defend Ian but knew Jessica was baiting her. “You must have made the perfect team.”

  “We were,” Jessica said wistfully. “We were. But you destroyed all that.”

  Did she mean Leah personally? No, impossible. She’d never met Jessica’s husband. She remembered Jessica’s work with the military and how passionate she was about it. “You wanted to use your husband’s work to do more than program prosthetics, didn’t you?”

  Her guess hit home. Jessica’s face flushed and her grip on the gun tightened. “That’s why we were outside arguing in the parking lot, instead of inside watching the movie. He found out I’d given his designs to the army, said I betrayed him, accused me of—” She shook her head, stray bits of hair escaping their carefully coiffed French knot. “He would have seen the light, if I only had more time. But you stole that from me. He would have agreed with me, this is the best way to prevent what happened to our son from ever happening again. But then—”

  Her gaze sharpened, an eagle homing in on its prey. “Now it’s too late. All because of you.”

  Forty-Two

  It was all over in a matter of moments. Luka watched on his laptop as ghostly figures of men with weapons surged through the house and searched each room.

  As Luka and Ray waited for McKinley and his men to finish securing the house before they began their own search, Luka’s phone rang. Krichek. “Just wanted to let you know the staties caught Cochrane,” he said. “Brought him here to sober up. He’s talking about some woman who paid him to post those videos and go after Leah Wright.” He paused. “A woman doctor.”

  “You’re not questioning him, are you?”

  “Course not, he’s impaired. But we are taping him in the holding cell—for his safety, of course. And he keeps muttering about how he never should’ve listened to her, that it was her fault he was going to get sent back to prison, lose his kid for good. I think he’s talking about Leah Wright. I think she paid him to help make her look more like a victim—while setting Cochrane up as a possible suspect, to take the heat off her.”

  “Has he mentioned names?”

  “Nah. I’m wondering if he even ever met her or knows who exactly paid him, but we’ll need to wait for him to sober up to be sure.”

  “Keep an eye on him. And start prepping warrants for his house and electronics.” Luka hung up as McKinley waved to them. He and Ray climbed out of the warm SUV, hurried through the wind and snow to Broderick’s house.

  “Guess our guy rabbited,” McKinley said when Luka met him in Brody’s front room. Ray joined McKinley’s men, who had lowered their weapons and were now executing the search warrant, looking for evidence that tied Broderick with the Wright killing.

  “What about the kid?” Jericho asked.

  “Come see for yourself.”

  Jericho followed McKinley into a bedroom at the rear of the house. It was decorated with photos ripped from magazines of kids’ toys and cartoons and amusement parks and movies. The dresser was painted red, white, and blue with race car knobs on each drawer. Toys of all shapes and sizes filled plastic buckets and spilled out of stacks in the corners of the room. The bed was shaped like a race car with a race car themed quilt pulled up high over the pillow.

  “Guy must’ve spent all his dough on this shit,” McKinley said, toeing a bucket of wooden cars.

  “His kid’s sick,” Luka said, somehow feeling defensive of Broderick—or at least of his kid. Charlie, Harper had said his name was. “Has cystic fibrosis. I don’t see any breathing machines or medicines.” He opened the closet doors. Empty except for the toys piled along the bottom. He yanked out the dresser drawers. Also empty. “They cleared out.”

  “Looks like it.” McKinley’s radio sputtered and he left Luka to answer the call.

  Luka stood in the center of the room, turning slowly in a circle. Made sense. Broderick realized they were on to him and ran with the kid. And yet… The room didn’t feel like it had been hastily abandoned—it felt as if it had never been lived in at all. He pulled back the race car quilt. The mattress below it was naked, no sheets, still sheathed in its original plastic wrapping. But on top of the mattress, smiling up at Luka was a large doll, the size of a toddler.

  McKinley returned. “You mentioned your other suspect has a kid—think this was for them? Maybe he was prepping it as a hideout or something, getting ready to snatch them?”

  Luka shook his head. “Leah’s daughter is a girl. This wasn’t for her.” Since when had the widow gone back to plain Leah? “If Broderick is this obsessed and delusional, there’s no telling what he might do.”

  “Are you saying she’s his partner or his victim?”

  “Not sure. Leah and her daughter are at Dr. Kern’s. We need to warn them and get some men out there to protect the daughter and other civilians until we get some answers.” He slid out his phone and dialed her number, but it went straight to voicemail as did Kern’s.

  “Give me the address and my guys will come up with a plan,” McKinley offered.

  “Hey, you guys are gonna want to see this,” Ray said, motioning for them to follow him. He led Luka and McKinley out to the carport where one of the ERT guys stood beside a black motorcycle. He had flipped open the storage compartment below the seat. Inside was a stainless steel hatchet, covered in blood.

  “We got him. This is definitely our guy.”

  Luka grunted in response. Broderick might be their guy, but they didn’t have him. Not yet. He dialed both Leah and Jessica Kern again, leaving voicemails warning them. Some might argue that he shouldn’t alert a possible suspect that they were coming, but he couldn’t in good conscience not warn the women at Kern’s house that Broderick might be targeting them. Not given how unhinged Broderick appeared to be.

  McKinley was also on his phone. “ADA refuses to get a no-knock warrant for Kern’s. Says unless we have proof that Broderick is there and is endangering lives, she can’t.”

  Luka understood the ADA’s reasoning—sending armed men charging into a civilian’s house, a respected physician no less, without adequate evidence could be a career ender. But damn it, he knew in his gut that was where Broderick had gone.

  “Ray, stay and finish the search,” he ordered as he turned to leave.

  “Can’t hear you with all this snow,” Ray said, striding fast to catch up to Luka. They both got into the SUV.

  Kern’s place was up the mountain, less than three miles away. Luka programmed the route into the SUV’s nav system. He didn’t have much of a plan other than protecting Emily Wright and the other civilians. If Broderick wasn’t at Kern’s, he’d apologize for waking everyone and drag Leah and Emily to the station house where they could safely wait for their damn lawyer and straighten all this out one way or the other. It was the logical thing to do.

  But logic did nothing to quell the sudden feeling that time had already run out.

  Forty-Three

  Confusion added to Leah’s panic. She’d barely met Jessica before today, never met her husband at all.

  “You’re such an idiot,” Jessica told her. “You still don’t see, do you? You have no idea the pain you caused, what I’ve suffered.” She tapped her earbud, whispered something. A few moments later, Brody appeared in a doorway at the rear of the room.

  “Brody?” Then Leah saw the knife in his hand. He was the man from the TV. It took everything she had to shove down her rage and fear. If Brody was delusional or psychotic—why else would a grown man be threatening a little girl with a knife? She had to remain calm, find a way to reach him on his level. “Is Emily all right?”

/>   Brody’s gaze was distant, as if he were listening more than seeing what was right in front of him. The overhead lights sparked off the array of electrodes covering his shaved skull, giving him the appearance of a modern-day Frankenstein’s monster. He wore a tight-fitting tank top revealing an implanted device beneath the skin over his collarbone.

  Leah recognized it as a drug delivery system. With it, Jessica could pump him full of anything—including the designer drugs that were used to torture Ian. She could dull his senses, fill him with psychotic rage, even wipe parts of his memory. His expression remained totally blank. He might not have any idea what he was doing now—or what’d he’d done last night. To Ian.

  Jessica had reduced him to a drone, a puppet, capable of anything she commanded. Leah’s body flooded with chilling terror as she realized two things. Jessica Kern was insane. And she’d had Ian killed.

  When Brody remained silent, unable to answer her questions, she turned away from him to stare at Jessica. “What do you want? I never knew you or your husband. Why do you hate me so much that you’d take my daughter?”

  “Maybe it’s not about you,” Jessica snapped. But then with the next breath, she regained composure. “At least not all about you. You gave Brody a second chance at life. Do you know what he did with it?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You saved the wrong life when you decided to play God and bring Brody back from the dead. What did you think Brody would do with the second chance you gave him? Did you think he might change? Reform himself, do something with his life? You have no idea what you did, the consequences, the pain. My pain. It’s your fault, what I’ve had to endure!” Jessica was shouting now, her words ricocheting from the hardwood floors and high ceilings like bullets. “Do you know what he did? Do you?”