Expired Refuge

by Lisa Phillips

  Meena glanced away.

  “You can have a clean slate.” She squeezed her sister’s hand. “I know. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen people who didn’t believe it was possible to start again do exactly that.”

  “Not people like me.”

  “You don’t know some of the people I’ve met.”

  “Criminals rolling over on their bosses to get into witness protection?”

  “Some of them,” Mia said. “Others were good people who just made some bad choices. One day, they woke up and realized they were so far in over their heads they were drowning.” She touched her own throat, where that guy had held her. She could still feel the squeeze of his fingers. “Feel like you can’t breathe?”

  Her sister shifted again.

  She couldn’t tell if she’d said anything right. Couldn’t tell if her sister had even heard a word she’d said, let alone been persuaded to leave behind her allegiance to Ed Summers. To make a new life for herself.

  “You probably feel like that, too,” Meena said. “What with this guy after you.”

  “Ed’s guys have been working for Anthony Stiles. Doing favors for him. And then Stiles kills them instead of paying up?” Mia said, “I guess Garrett didn’t know what happened to the first man. He didn’t know to be cautious.”

  Mia realized they were talking about Meena’s boyfriend now and added, “I really am sorry for your loss. I didn’t mean for my problems to cause all this.”

  Meena’s eyes were dry. “You brought this guy here?”

  “I think he’s recreating the events that led to his brother’s death. But he got stalled out at the death part. He tried to take me once, and you saved me from that.”

  A muscle twitched in Meena’s jaw.

  “Now he’s killing others instead of me. Now he’s got dad.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “He’s still trying to get to me, or so I believe.”

  “Watching you. Waiting for the chance.” Meena’s voice was hollow.

  Mia nodded. “Yes. I feel like he’s been watching me since I got to town. Like any moment now he’s going to close in, and I’ll have a hand around my throat again.”

  “Who is he?”

  Mia looked at her hands. They were dirty. She wrung her fingers together, aware of feeling slightly naked without her gun and her badge. “The man I killed. Anthony Stiles is his brother.”

  “What does he want, money?”

  “No. He’s a psycho, and he wants revenge.” Mia looked at her sister and saw something different in her eyes. “He wants to kill me because I killed his brother. Maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am. What else could he want?”

  The man was a psycho. He tormented people, particularly women. She’d seen it on Conroy’s computer. How many ways would Stiles make her suffer for killing his brother?

  Meena shifted and stood. She walked to the door and pulled it open. “He just wants to kill her. Nothing else.”

  Ed Summers stood beyond the door, waiting. His eyebrows rose. “Well, then. Problem solved.”

  “We just give her to him.”

  Ed said, “You don’t want your dad back?”

  Meena shrugged one shoulder, the sharp angle of her shoulder blade visible under her shirt. “He got shot of me a long time ago, just kicked me out. Why do I care if he buys it, too?” She shrugged. “He’ll be dead.”

  Mia tried to stand. Her legs gave out, and she collapsed to the floor.

  It took a few tries to get back up, while Meena turned and stared down at her with a sneer on her face. Eventually Mia got to her feet. “What did you do?”

  Meena laughed.

  “They beat you up!”

  “Yeah,” her sister said. “Because I told them to.” Meena set one hand on her hip and cocked her foot out. “Now we know what we need to know, and I’m back in. Conroy doesn’t have jack. He’ll never find you or dad. Or Stiles. We do our deal. Stiles is done here, and he walks away. We don’t lose any more of our men and the chips fall…wherever they may.”

  “With dad and me buried in a shallow grave.” Mia swept her arm out, encompassing the wooded hills to the west of town.

  Everyone said they were haunted. She’d never believed it before. Not until now, when the possibility that she might end up buried in them seemed more and more certain.

  Meena walked out. “I’ll make the call.”

  Ed stepped in, closing the door behind him so they were alone. Her whole body shivered.

  He grinned. “That’s what I’m thinking, too. But there’s no bed in here, and I’m not a fan of hard floors.” His knowing eyes glinted as he shook his head.

  Mia pressed her lips together, swallowing the bile back down.

  “We’ll have some time before Stiles makes the meet to get you.”

  “And what do you get in return?”

  Ed shrugged. “That man out of my county. Then maybe my men will quit dying.”

  “But you don’t care enough to kill him? You just want him to get what he wants so that he leaves.” She didn’t get that. Not when two men were dead.

  “You think Conroy won’t pin it on me if I kill him? Regardless, whether I’m the one who pulls the trigger or not, he’ll find a way to make it stick. The man’s had it out for me since…” His words trailed off, and he waved a hand.

  “Since you killed Mara.”

  He rubbed a spot on his chest. “Only person I ever killed. Sorry about that. She was fun.”

  “Fun?”

  “It was high school and she put out.” He tipped his head to the side. “At least, she did once I persuaded her to dump Conroy and that Jesus-loving thing he had going on and get with me so we could have some actual fun. Been turning all the good girls since.”

  “Like Meena?”

  “Your sister was never good. Not one single day in her life.” He said, “What we have is an arrangement.”

  Mia didn’t want to think of her sister like that. She didn’t want to believe anything Ed Summers said. After all he’d taken from her? She wanted to launch herself at him. Scream. Maybe claw his eyes out with her fingernails that needed to have been filed like a week ago. It’d come in handy now.

  “You look like you’re plotting my death.”

  Mia said nothing.

  Ed Summers laughed.

  “I don’t forgive you for what you did to my family.”

  He kept laughing.

  She leaned forward and screamed, “I hate you!”

  He grabbed her arm and dragged her from the room. Practically shoved her down the hall to where her sister waited in the entryway.

  Meena said, “Done already?”

  Ed shoved Mia forward. “Like it would even be worth it. I’d get frostbite.”

  Meena laughed. “Ain’t that the truth?”

  Two men, one with the spider web tattoo, dragged her out to a car. They opened the trunk and shoved her in.

  “Hey. Wait—”

  “Shut up. Just shut up.” Spider web guy slammed the trunk shut, closing her in darkness. Why did he look irritated? That was just bizarre.

  Then she realized she was alone. They were taking her to Anthony Stiles.

  Mia kicked and hit the trunk, screaming her head off. She tried to kick out the tail lights by aiming at the corners of the interior. Nothing happened.

  She screamed in frustration.

  “Shut up!” The voice was muffled, from farther away. Inside the car.

  She didn’t care.

  Mia screamed again.

  Music blasted through the car. She clapped her hands over her ears and whimpered, but couldn’t hear the sound of her own distress.

  They drove. She cried, great sobs rolled through her and she just let it flow. Why not? She was going to die just as soon as they handed her over to Anthony Stiles.

  The car stopped.

  Doors slammed.

  Her dad was there. She had to believe that, otherwise she had no interest in what was about to happen.

  There
was nothing for so long that she thought they might have forgotten about her. Then a door slammed again and the car began moving. She had no idea how long it was before the car stopped again. The trunk opened, and there he was.

  Stiles reached over with something in his hand. She gasped as electricity rolled through the stun gun and into her body.

  With dried tears on her face, Mia’s world descended into black.

  Twenty-Nine

  Conroy strode up to the house, hand itching for his gun. He was ready to reach in and pull it out. Only when his fingers glanced over his badge did he remember himself. Who he was. He’d never considered soul searching to be a thing until he found himself doing it now. Conroy was a lieutenant. He was a follower of Jesus.

  Not just a man who wanted to know the whereabouts of the woman he cared for. Though that last one stoked the fire in him like nothing else had in his life.

  Ed Summers emerged from the house just as Conroy started up the porch steps. Conroy grabbed the man’s T-shirt with two hands and shoved Ed against the siding beside his front door. “Where is she?”

  Two other men stepped out and moved to stand by Conroy’s elbows. Close enough they could stab him, and he’d never be able to defend himself. He didn’t look at them.

  “Tell me.”

  It had been a couple of hours since she was taken from the police department. There was no sign of Mia, Tate kept calling—if the buzz in his pocket was anything to go by—and everyone here seemed—something. His guys were on edge. Summers was definitely hiding something.

  In fact, as Ed’s gaze roamed over his face, Conroy saw an answer there. He just couldn’t discern what that answer was.

  Then his expression shifted and all Conroy saw was that cocky know-it-all he’d once called his friend. That was a long time ago. Conroy hated that look.

  “Tell me,” he roared in Ed’s face.

  “Or what?” Ed lifted his hands as though he was the injured party here. “You’ll shoot me? Arrest me?”

  He shoved at Conroy, who let go and took a step back. The guys on either side of him stepped back as well, and they formed a loose group of four.

  Conroy fisted his hand and punched Ed in the face. Knuckles to the man’s cheekbone. Ed slammed back against his house with the force of it and clutched his cheek.

  Two sets of hands hauled Conroy back, shoving him against the porch rail. He ignored the way his hip bone glanced off the splintered wood.

  “No.” Ed held out a hand to his men and stared down Conroy. “You get one freebie. For old times’ sake.”

  “How nice of you.” Conroy wanted to do that again. Only his hand hurt now. A lot.

  He wanted to tell Ed that wasn’t the way things worked. But Conroy was the law in Last Chance County. He wasn’t an Old West, win-at-all-costs kind of lawman. He had to run things by the book. Toe the line in the way that justice would stick, and he’d still be able to look himself in the mirror. See something he was proud of, something his father always told him was the most important thing for a man.

  Honor.

  Truth.

  “You took Mia from my house. Where is she?” Tate had told him this was where she was.

  “Not here.” Ed lifted his chin.

  Conroy’s phone started up again, vibrating in his pocket. “You had her. If she’s not here, then you won’t mind me looking around your house. Just to be sure.”

  “Not without a warrant.” That was one of the men beside Conroy, to his right. The guy had a spider web tattoo on his neck. “We know our rights.”

  “Like your right to storm a police station, shoot two officers, and kidnap a woman—alongside stealing evidence?” Conroy said. “Rights like that?”

  Spider web guy folded his arms across the expanse of his chest in a way that made Conroy feel like a little kid surrounded by bullies. He shoved off the feeling. Or, tried to.

  Conroy said, “I’m happy to come back with a warrant. Then your life will be wide open to police search.”

  Which of course meant they would scramble as soon as he left. Destroy any evidence, and then clean up the whole place so there was not even a gram of something illegal left lying around.

  “We’ve all gotta do what we gotta do.”

  Conroy didn’t disagree. He turned to Ed. “I will find her.”

  Ed said nothing.

  “Where’s Meena?”

  “Salon, probably. She had a manicure appointment.”

  Conroy didn’t like how quickly Ed came up with that answer. He took half a step back. “You’re going to let Mia die, too? Haven’t you done enough damage to that family?”

  “You’re still stuck on that? Seems to be going around.” Ed sniffed. “Whole lot of people in this town all about the past. Rest of us are trying to move on with our lives.”

  Conroy’s phone quit vibrating with the incoming call.

  And then an additional single vibration. He lifted his watch and pulled back the sleeve of his coat. A text from Tate. It beeped in succession; several texts in a row.

  “Guess you should be going now.” Ed pushed off the siding.

  “I’ll be back.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  Conroy pulled out his phone as he walked. Before he could return Tate’s call, the man called him again. He swiped his thumb across the screen, feeling the three men—maybe more—staring at his back. Though it was tempting to glance over his shoulder, he didn’t.

  “Barne—”

  Tate cut him off before he could even finish. “I thought you were gonna kill that guy.”

  “Didn’t.” Not until he got her back. And her dad, too.

  Probably not even then, if he was honest. He might want to. But that didn’t mean “want” had a right to override good sense. It would destroy his career, his life. Every relationship he had and his standing in the community.

  “You know…” Tate was quiet for a second. “If you did want something like that, I might have this friend of a friend. If you know what I mean. You wouldn’t have to…uh…get your hands dirty.”

  Wilcox’s voice rang out in the background of the call. “You did not just say what I think you just said.”

  Conroy agreed with her. “You’re not going to have him killed.”

  “Just saying.”

  Whether Tate was talking to him, or Wilcox—who was apparently with him—Conroy didn’t know. He said, “There are things about the private investigator life that you might want to keep to yourself. An association with hit men is one of them.”

  “What did he…” Wilcox’s voice faded off. “Give me the phone.”

  Tate said, “Back off, Savannah.” Like her name was an insult.

  Conroy didn’t have time for their bickering. “Where are you guys?”

  Up ahead he saw them both move around the car and into view. Conroy hung up and jogged over so he could get to the point quicker. “Whether she was there or not, she isn’t now.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Wilcox looked as worried for Mia as Conroy was. He knew they’d become friends in the short time they’d known each other. Savannah didn’t have many women in her life who she trusted to have her back. But when they got Mia home, he knew with certainty that she’d be the kind of woman Savannah could rely on.

  Something that was in short supply in both of their lives.

  Conroy turned to Tate. “What have you got?”

  “Now you wanna know?” Tate asked. “Or are there more people you want to shake down first and take your frustrations out on.”

  Conroy took half a step toward the private investigator. Savannah slapped a hand on his chest. “Don’t.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Want me to sweep you up along with all of Summers’s people? Obstruction of justice charges.” Conroy folded his arms. “For starters.”

  Tate shrugged. “It’ll get me closer to my contact in Ed’s organization. So…maybe.”

  Wilcox spun to him. “What contact?”

  “Guess what,
Sweetheart,” Tate said. “You don’t know about everything I’ve got going on.”

  She strode away. Tate glanced at her back and the muscle in his jaw twitched. Conroy had no intention of getting in the middle of it. Except for the fact it seemed Wilcox was more hurt than anything else over the antagonism she was getting from Tate.

  Conroy said, “Easy.”

  Tate got the message. He looked back and forth between them and that muscle twitched again.

  “Do you know where Mia is?”

  Tate said, “I know where Stiles was. At one point.”

  “I know. We were at the rental house.”

  Tate shook his head. “This is a campground.”

  Conroy moved to the car. “Let’s roll. And I’ll forget how you could have told me that three minutes ago when I first ran up to you. We could have been halfway there already.”

  He pulled open his car door.

  Tate said, “Wilcox, you riding with me or the boss?”

  She got in Conroy’s car.

  He said, “Lead the way.”

  Tate nodded and climbed in without another word. He drove onto the highway, and Conroy pulled out behind him.

  He glanced at Wilcox. “How’d Tate even find us?”

  “Those secret private investigator ways, I guess.” She had her attention on her phone in a way that didn’t invite him to ask her what the deal was. “As long as he gets us to Mia, I don’t care.”

  Conroy nodded. “Exactly.”

  It still sounded like Wilcox planned on having nothing to do with the man after her friend was found. Maybe that was for the best, since Tate clearly had his own agenda. But given Conroy had recently received the gift of a possible future with someone special, he wasn’t so sure that shutting things down was in her best interest.

  Admittedly, there could be a host of things neither of them knew about him. Context to what seemed like foolhardy decisions.

  Right now they needed to find Mia and Rich, and Tate’s information was the best lead they had.

  He decided to go for it. “Sometimes working to put aside your differences can be the best thing. It could even be the key to something great.”

  “Did you just—yeah, did. You just got all sentimental.”