by Jami Alden
David pressed his thumb and forefinger to his eyes, feeling like the top of his head was going to blow off.
“We spoke to our contact here and they’re circulating the report that Flynn killed Armstrong and has taken Slater hostage. Law enforcement across the state is on it. Once they have them in custody we’ll be able to take care of it.”
“You better hope they pick them up soon.” Thank God for small favors. There were a lot of people as motivated as he was to ensure Slater and Flynn didn’t unwind the thread that connected him to Nate Brewster.
His phone beeped, signaling another call. He grimaced when he saw who it was. Another interested party who wanted to make sure Slater in particular was taken care of. “I have to take another call,” he told Richardson.
He disconnected the call with Richardson and clicked over.
“You told me your man can handle it.” The thickly accented voice made David’s lip curl. He could picture the big Russian, cigarette smoke coiling around his head, his light-brown hair slicked back from his high forehead. The slightly almond-shaped eyes with a flat, dead expression that reminded David of a snake.
“Yeah, well it sounds like your guy was the one who fell down on the job.”
“If you let them just shoot in the head, straightforward like, we wouldn’t have this problem. You do this crazy thing, like James Bond movie, too many chances to escape.”
David rolled his shoulders and grasped for patience. He’d explained the subtlety necessary in taking out Slater and Flynn. “I told you, now that word is out that she’s been investigating Nate more closely, if she and Flynn show up murdered, there are going to be a lot of questions.”
Karev made an exasperated sound. “And you have all this power to make sure no one asks these questions, nyet? You telling me maybe my business is not as secure as you say?”
“You walked away from a murder charge two days ago,” David replied. “Did you forget I’m the one who called the judge?” The Honorable Judge Terence Phillips was more than happy to throw out key evidence in exchange for having a video featuring him being serviced by a beautiful young Asian remain hidden.
“Good, so everything is clear for shipment next week? Is very important.”
“Yes,” David snapped. Damned if he was going to let this headache with Slater and Flynn interfere with business.
Karev rang off with his usual warning: “If anything goes wrong, I cut off your `khu i and feed it to a pig while your wife watch, da?”
David hung up without a reply. Karev’s threat might have been humorous if it hadn’t been dead serious. He ran his fingers through his hair, grimacing when he saw the amount that came off in his hand. He sank back into the chair, feeling tired and suddenly really fucking old.
Working with Karev was a huge risk. The guy was batshit crazy, snake mean, and loyal only to himself. But the last few years of financial turmoil, combined with his wife’s determination to buy herself a senate seat, had taken a serious toll. As dangerous as Karev was, the partnership had been immensely lucrative for both of them, and as long as that remained the case, he’d stay in bed with the Russian.
The Russians didn’t operate by any rules but their own. If things go south, you have way more to lose than they do, his nephew Nate had warned. They have no loyalty and no qualms about turning on you, disappearing, and letting you take the fall.
Ironic that Nate had been the voice of reason when he was the one to blame for their current turmoil. David went over to the desk and pulled a picture from the drawer. A brunette woman with big brown eyes smiled into the camera, cheek to cheek with a blond-haired, blue-eyed toddler as she cradled a dark-haired baby girl in her other arm.
David had lost most of his sentimentality eons ago, but his heart twisted as he thought of what had happened to the mother and children in the picture.
His sister Heather, lost to alcohol and drugs, murdered by a boyfriend who abused her and her children. His niece, Sarah, whom he’d only met once, died when she’d accidentally locked herself in the trunk of a car on a hot summer day, hiding from her mother’s boyfriend to avoid being raped.
And Nate, the sole survivor, forever twisted from seeing his mother killed and stabbing the boyfriend to death in self-defense.
He knew it wasn’t his fault—that his sister made her own bad choices, that leaving his name and his past behind was necessary for him to integrate into the upper echelons of wealth and power.
Still, he never got rid of the guilt over the fact that while he’d been making money hand over fist and marrying into one of Seattle’s wealthiest families, the money he’d sent Heather had run out and she was living in that shitty house in a desolate part of eastern Washington, drinking herself to death, dating that lowlife who ended up bringing them all down. So even though he couldn’t claim him publicly, David couldn’t turn his back on his orphaned nephew.
He’d discreetly supported him, made sure he had a place to live and money for clothes, schools, and anything else he wanted.
And when Nate’s bloodthirsty streak had reared its head, David had done everything he could to channel those urges and cover Nate’s ass the few times it had been necessary.
This is what he got for trying to do right by his nephew. Sweating bullets as he and his stepson Carl worked to cover the tracks that led from Nate to them. Doing whatever was necessary, including ordering a hit on a prosecuting attorney, in order to keep the dark underbelly of his business hidden, to maintain his hold over everyone who mattered to make sure his business—and Karev’s—continued without interference.
Chapter 7
Krista jerked awake as the car slowed to a stop and she instinctively reached out to brace her hand against the dashboard. Her head ached and her heart thudded in her chest as for a split second her disoriented brain replayed the moment Sean’s truck came to a jarring stop against the tree.
“Where are we?” she said, blinking as she looked around the parking lot. She looked at the clock. Twelve fifty-two. She’d been asleep for only a little over half an hour, but it felt like hours.
“Walmart,” Sean said matter-of-factly. He clicked on the dome light and was writing something down on a piece of paper. When he finished, he handed it to her, along with a baseball cap he’d found crumpled on the floor when they’d first taken the truck from the parking lot of the bar. “I want you to use some of the cash to pick up these supplies. And wear the hat in case someone in there has been watching the news.”
Krista’s stomach clenched. Before she’d succumbed to the adrenaline hangover and dozed off, she’d heard several more news bulletins alerting everyone within earshot to be on the lookout for her and Sean. As disguises went, a baseball cap wasn’t much but it would have to do.
“Wait, why am I going in alone?” she asked. Her eyes narrowed. “You’re going to ditch me, aren’t you?”
“Of course not!” The offended look on his face seemed real, and he had stuck with her through some pretty hairy stuff tonight, but she didn’t know Sean well enough yet to gauge his acting ability. Despite his earlier words of assurance, sending her into the store alone would be the perfect opportunity for him to ditch her to fend for herself.
“Then come in with me.”
“I would but I don’t think this will go unnoticed, even in Walmart.” He lifted his right leg so she could see it in the glow of the dome light. Below his knee, the faded denim of his jeans was stained dark with blood.
Krista started to reach out and then jerked her hand back. “Oh my God, why didn’t you say anything?”
Sean shrugged her off. “It’s just a graze. The bullet didn’t even penetrate—”
“You were shot?”
“Those sure as shit weren’t squirt guns those two had.”
Krista struggled for calm. Sean didn’t seem fazed, and he was the one who’d been shot. Still. “That’s a lot of blood. We should get it looked at—”
“Nothing a good scrubbing and some butterfly bandages can
’t fix. That’s why I put them on the list.”
Krista glanced down at the rest of the supplies he’d listed. Prepay cell phones, pants, size 33W x 36L. Butterfly bandages. Antibiotic ointment.
“I barely know first aid. If we go to a hospital, they can help us—”
Sean cut her off with a curt shake of his head. “They have to report all gunshot wounds to the police. We can’t have that.”
Krista chewed her bottom lip. “It’s the middle of the night. No one knows where we are. It’s ridiculous to think they would be able to get to the cops here.”
“They managed to get to a sheriff’s deputy in bumfuck nowhere in the space of a few hours. What makes you think they haven’t sent out the alert all over the state?”
She hated to admit he was right. But there had to be a way to deal with this that didn’t leave them so completely to their own devices. “Okay, I’ll patch you up and then we’ll drive straight through to Seattle. We’ll go to Mark’s house—”
Sean held up his hand. “Assuming he’s not involved, you really want to lead these assholes straight to him? Anyone who helps us now might as well paint a target on his head.”
Sean’s weary sigh echoed through the car. “Look, you want to take your chances with the cops, you go ahead. But remember, you came to me. You want my help on this. We’re on our own until we get a better handle on exactly what the hell is going on here. You just have to trust me on this.” Even in the dim light she could see his stare, challenging her.
Krista gave a reluctant nod, her stomach churning. “I trust you.”
Something flashed in his face, a softening around his mouth and eyes that was gone so quickly she thought she’d imagined it.
“There are security cameras on these lights,” he said, pointing at the parking lights spaced evenly among the rows of cars. “And all over the store. Try to keep your face off them without being too obvious.”
Krista nodded. The chances of having been tracked here so quickly was slim but they couldn’t be too careful.
She reached for the door handle and he stayed her with a hand on her wrist. “If I’m not here when you come out, it’s because the cops made me and hauled my ass away, not because I ditched you.”
Krista flashed him a brief smile.
Krista made it out of Walmart with their supplies without incident. Sean drove another forty-five minutes before insisting they switch cars again. The older SUV’s door was unlocked—probably because the owner never imagined the car would be stolen—saving Sean the added step of breaking a window. Krista knew better than to protest, and while she hot-wired her second car of the night, Sean switched out the license plate of the SUV with that of a car parked down the street.
Still, it was hard not to worry about whether she’d have a career after this—assuming they made it through alive. She didn’t imagine the people of King County would be willing to excuse one of their prosecuting attorneys from boosting cars, no matter how necessary it was at the time.
Finally, a little after two-thirty a.m. they pulled into the parking lot of a hotel on the outskirts of Richland, about three hours outside of Seattle. Richland was somewhere in between a big town and a small city, just the right size for them to pull into a squat little motel after midnight without causing too much of a stir.
Krista left Sean in the car and went to register. Her stomach knotted as she approached the door. Between her involvement in Sean’s high-profile release and the news of tonight’s activities, Krista’s face was probably all over the news. But so far the police were portraying her as Sean’s hostage, so maybe people wouldn’t be on the lookout for her to walk into a place alone.
Krista pulled the ball cap down so the brim shadowed her face. The clerk slowly roused himself at the sound of the doorbell and Krista felt a spurt of relief when she saw the TV above the counter was tuned to a Korean soap opera. Hopefully that meant he hadn’t been watching the late local news.
“Sign your name here,” the clerk said, passing over the registration card without so much as looking in her direction.
Krista’s brain stuttered. Dummy, of course she needed an alias. What was that formula for figuring out your porn name? First pet’s name plus street you lived on? She carefully signed the name Mandy Lockwood on the card, handed over the cash, and hightailed it back out to Sean before the clerk decided to look up.
Sean parked the car on the other side of the hotel so it wouldn’t be visible to the street and carried their stuff to the ground-level room.
He unlocked the door and snapped on the light. Her lip curled as she took in their accommodations. The carpet was dingy, the furniture looked like it had been cycled through Goodwill a half dozen times, and she didn’t even want to think about what a UV light would reveal on the avocado-and-orange synthetic bedspreads.
“About what you’d expect from a no-tell that takes cash without questions,” Sean said at her disgusted sniff. But she noticed he also removed the bedspread and tossed it on the floor.
“And you’re so familiar with these kinds of places?”
“I’ve stayed in some dumps that make this place look like the Hilton.” Sean’s mouth curved in that half smile that got sexier every time she saw it. She mentally scolded herself, telling herself any reaction she had to him was because of the extreme events of the evening, the adrenaline rush and crash that had her thoughts and emotions all over the place.
Sean pulled the phones out of the Walmart bag and plugged them into the wall to charge. Krista eyed the phones, but didn’t push it. Sean needed to deal with the wound on his leg. She could push the issue of contacting someone who could help them later.
Next he grabbed the bag containing the first-aid supplies and went to the bathroom. “Come here,” she heard him call over the noise of running water.
She joined him in the bathroom, trying her best to avoid brushing against him in the tiny space. “What is it?”
He’d washed the blood from the gash over his eyebrow off his face, but there were dark reddish-brown stains around the collar of his T-shirt. As she stepped around the toilet, he took her chin in a hand that was slightly damp and smelled of soap. She tried not to flinch. Not because his touch was unpleasant but because the opposite was true.
“I want to look at that bump on your head.” As he tilted her face up to the light, she fought the urge to rub her cheek against his palm like a cat demanding to be petted.
Krista had never been an especially touchy-feely person, and in her testosterone-laden line of work it was important to maintain physical boundaries. Krista had gotten the back off body language so down it was like second nature. It was essential for the job but hell on her dating life as it became almost impossible to let down her guard in front of anyone, even a date.
Sean didn’t hesitate to touch her now any more than he had earlier, and it was disconcerting how much she liked the feel of his hands, the way he wasn’t put off by any don’t touch signals she might be sending out.
And if that wasn’t a sign of how this night had messed her up and turned everything upside down, she didn’t know what was.
He brushed the fingers of his opposite hand over the area above her eyebrow. She winced as he probed against the knot that had formed there.
His mouth tightened in sympathy. “Yeah, you’ve got a goose egg there but I don’t think it’s fractured. And I missed this before.” In the mirror, he indicated an inch-long scratch on her cheekbone that was crusted over in blood. It was nothing, especially compared to the gash above his eyebrow and the wound she had yet to see on his leg, but Sean took a washcloth, soaped it up, and washed the scratch. Next came a gentle smear of antibiotic ointment and a Band-Aid. “Good as new,” he murmured as he studied his handiwork.
“Let me help you,” Krista said belatedly as she gestured at the gash over his eyebrow. He was the one with the real injuries.
“I got it,” he said, waving her away. “And I’ll need some room to deal with my leg so…”<
br />
Krista took the hint and got out of the bathroom. Probably better all around, since just the soft brush of his fingers on her face was almost enough to forget why they were stuck in this dump of a hotel room.
It all came back into focus as she grabbed a pair of cotton pajama pants and a tank top from her bag and quickly exchanged them for her sweat-and-dirt-crusted jeans and T-shirt. She topped the tank with a fleece pullover and sat on the end of one bed, racking her brain as she tried to connect the dots between Nate Brewster, Jimmy Caparulo’s so-called suicide, and the men who had tried to kill them tonight.
Someone had secrets to hide, but who? And who could pull the kind of strings it would take to get a cop to turn in less than forty-five minutes? No way they could have set that up ahead of time.
And what if Sean, as he claimed, really had no information to share about Jimmy, Nate, or any of it? No knowledge that put the killer’s interests in danger.
The lead ball at the bottom of her stomach got heavier as she became more and more convinced that that was the case. There was nothing Kowalsky had unearthed, nothing Jimmy Caparulo had said, that pointed her specifically to Sean. Just a gut reaction telling her that maybe Sean, as the third man and the one betrayed by the friends he’d once called brothers, would know something that might shed light on whoever was working with Nate behind the scenes.
So far he’d given her nothing to support that. Yet he’d saved her life and patched up her wounds, ignoring his own until he’d taken care of hers first.
It was a side of Sean she would have never imagined had she not witnessed it herself. And only extreme fatigue and emotional stress allowed her to admit to herself it was incredibly attractive. Krista was used to being in charge, taking care of herself, getting herself out of any hairy situation that might rear its head.