“Do they have keys to your place?” When she reached for the phone, he held it out of reach and repeated, “Do they have keys to your place?”
“Yes,” she snapped.
Shit. Anyone in Kathy’s house was in danger.
“Do they use those keys? Do they let themselves into your place?”
“No. But they’re the only ones who have a key.”
He let go of his fear that one of Kathy’s friends was mixed up in this. Chances were the caller was one of Lorenzo’s men. Had they had time to get to Kathy’s and find her cell number? He mentally tallied up the time and realized that, hell yeah, they might have. If they had someone working with the authorities, a phone call would have gotten them all the intel they needed.
“Give it to me.” She motioned to her phone. “I’ll call and find out.”
“No,” he said in a calm voice. “The phone can be traced.” He switched his focus back to the road.
He heard her say something. Her words bounced around his head, but instead of listening, his mind chewed on the consequences of Lorenzo’s people tracing the phone.
She tried again to snag it.
“Stop, Kathy.” He shut the phone off and pressed a little harder on the gas.
“It’s my phone,” she said, as if he didn’t know. She folded her arms over her chest and glared at him. Her hazel eyes shot fire, her mouth pinched, and the haughty way she tilted her head spoke volumes about her mood.
“I know it’s your phone, but considering they already have the number, they could have also gotten a trace on it.”
Her expression hardened even more. “You used it a few minutes ago.”
“And maybe I shouldn’t have.” He glanced back at the phone and then focused on her. “If they’ve got your number, chances are they got a trace on it. They could have someone on their way right now to find us.” The thought had him speeding up the van. Maybe he should even reconsider an attempt to get them out of town. But, again, he knew that’s what they would expect him to do.
His mind raced. He’d purposely driven the back roads—less traffic, less chance of being spotted—but if Lorenzo’s men knew their location, it would also be easier for them to be taken out with no witnesses.
“Please!” Kathy rolled her eyes. “A trace on my phone? That’s…that’s ridiculous.”
She seemed to be thinking clearer, even if she was wrong. Good, he needed her clearheaded. “It’s not ridiculous.”
“I want my phone.”
“Sorry,” he said.
He watched her fall back in her seat and glare out the window. Let her get mad, he told himself, you need to concentrate on getting her out of this mess. Damn, she doesn’t deserve this.
For the last few years she’d been the one joy in his life here. When he’d accepted the job to go undercover in Lorenzo’s operation, he’d said yes because at the time he thought there wasn’t anything to live for. In less than two years his dad had died, his sister and her kids were in a fatal car crash that he could have prevented if he’d gone with them as they’d asked. Top that off with learning his wife had aborted his child and, when he confronted her, filed for divorce…well, he’d lost everyone he loved. His life sucked. Going undercover had seemed like a way to escape.
Looking back, in the beginning he hadn’t been too concerned if he lived or died. When he’d gotten out alive with proof that could put an end to the operation, Lorenzo’s men were taking out witnesses left and right. The top dogs working the case decided to place him in protective custody. But there was no way in hell that Luke was going to be babysat for months on end. So there was only one other option: temporarily placing him in WitSec. Most people hated walking away from their lives. Luke hadn’t flinched. He hadn’t thought he had a life to go back to. It wasn’t as if he’d be missed. The few friends he’d had, he’d walked away from while trying to deal with his grief. He hadn’t come to Texas expecting anything that would make him see his life or circumstances any differently. But Kathy, with her wholesome, picture-perfect love for her little boy, her sassy wit and sexy body, had given Luke something to believe in, something to look forward to, even if she hadn’t known it.
“It’s my phone,” she muttered again under her breath.
“I know you’re pissed, but you’re going to have to trust me.”
She didn’t look at him.
He’d never really seen her angry before. Oh, she’d put up barriers to keep him from getting close. And while he hadn’t understood her reasons, and that annoyed the hell out of him, it hadn’t stopped him from coming back. He’d found reasons to see her. Just being in the same room had him looking at life differently. He liked that.
The fact that he wasn’t the only one to enjoy their time together made things even sweeter. He knew damn well she’d invented plumbing problems just to have him drop by. Not that he complained. Hell, he’d taken to ordering flowers for all his clients as a thank-you for their business. A plumber who sent flowers! He’d never heard of such, but ordering them was a reason to stop by Kathy’s place once a week. Those stop-bys were never short, either. He’d always ended up spending hours there talking and laughing.
As for those condoms she’d accused him of having for Claire…Shit. He inwardly cringed. The first pack had been bought on an off chance that Kathy would change her mind about his offer of dinner and a memorable night. He’d become the proud owner of the second pack when she’d called him one Friday afternoon with another faux plumbing problem, and he hadn’t had any on him. So now he had two packs of condoms. And not a damn one of them used.
“Taking something that belongs to someone else is rude,” she snapped.
He studied the phone again. He really needed to call Calvin, but he’d have to find a different method.
“You know what?” she seethed. “I don’t have to put up with this.” She held out her hand. “Give me my phone or else!”
He shot her a quick glance. Or else what?
Joey darted forward and managed to get his hand around the blonde’s mouth before she screamed. She started squirming, but he held her against him and dragged her to the back of the trailer and into a bedroom. Once he had her away from the windows, he yelled out the bedroom door, “No one’s here, Donald! Why don’t you try the other trailer?” He hoped Donald heard. Hoped even harder Donald believed.
With his hand still locked over the struggling woman’s mouth, Joey opened the closet door. Before he released her, he spoke low in her ear. “You can’t scream. If you scream, he’ll kill you. Just stay in here and hide. Wait awhile before you come out. You understand me?”
“Open the fucking door!” Donald’s shout shattered the little peace Joey had.
The blonde’s gaze shot to the bedroom door. Then her eyes, still round as half dollars, slapped back to Joey.
“I’m trying to help you,” he whispered. “You and your baby don’t need to get mixed up in this.”
Tears fell from her frightened eyes and leaked onto his hand. She released her hold on his arm, and her hands moved protectively to wrap around her belly.
“That’s right. Think of your baby. Just hide and it’ll be okay.” He knew she was worried sick about her unborn child. And she should be.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
The sound of the back door being kicked in caused the woman to flinch. Joey’s heart thudded. “Promise me you won’t scream!” he whispered. “Because I really don’t want to see you get hurt. You got that?”
She nodded and sniffled.
Donald’s angry voice boomed through the trailer. “Where the fuck are you?”
Joey moved his fingers from around the woman’s mouth, felt terrible when he saw his handprint on her pale cheeks. “Get in there now,” he whispered. She looked ready to bolt.
“Joey!” Donald’s voice boomed closer.
“Hide.” Joey gave her a nudge.
The woman hesitated for one second. But when the sound of footsteps in the hall ec
hoed, she bounded into the closet, pulling the door shut behind her. Joey wasn’t sure, but he could swear he heard a thank-you before he took off.
Donald stood in the hall, his back to Joey. “Hey,” Joey said, and Donald swung around, gun drawn. “Whoa! It’s me! Just checking the bedrooms. No one’s here. Why don’t we check the other trailer?”
“You sure no one’s here? There’s a car parked outside.”
“Check for yourself,” Joey said, afraid he’d give himself away if he said anything different.
For some reason, his grasp on his gun tightened. Then the realization hit with a thud in Joey’s chest: If Donald walked into that bedroom, Joey would shoot him. He’d kill the asshole before he let an innocent woman and her baby get hurt. Was it because the woman was pregnant? Or was it because she didn’t have anything to do with all this? Not that the reason mattered. He just knew she shouldn’t have to die. The same way Freddy shouldn’t have died—wouldn’t have died if Joey had only spoken up. And if Donald found her, he’d kill her as thoughtlessly as stepping on a roach.
The tension in Joey’s broad shoulders eased when Donald started down the hall. Joey followed, but not without noticing the pictures lining the walls. In the frames was the redhead. Beside her stood a young redheaded boy, smiling ear to ear. The kid looked happy, loved—like a kid should look. Kathy Callahan was a mother.
Joey’s gaze shot around the trailer. It looked lived-in but clean and sported all sorts of feminine touches. He passed the bathroom and saw the toilet adorned with those fuzzy covers on both the seat and tank lid. Joey had never lived in a house with a covered toilet seat. Not that he thought he’d like it. The damn thing would get splattered with piss the first time he took a good leak. But for some reason, a covered toilet seat lid seemed homey.
His focus shifted from the john to a bright green basket by the tub. The thing was filled with kids’ toys: plastic cars and army men, even a water gun. Joey wondered what it would have been like to have had a mother who kept toys beside the bathtub. To have grown up with someone who cared about him more than she cared about her next high. His own mom hadn’t cared if they ever took a bath.
He remembered the picture of the happy boy, and Joey’s toe started throbbing again. His gut twisted and…damn! Just like that, Joey knew that he couldn’t stand by and watch scum like Lorenzo’s men kill the boy’s mother. But could he stop them without getting killed himself? When Blondie in the closet went to the cops with her story, Lorenzo would hear about it. He’d hear about it and tell Donald to do to Joey what had been done to Freddy.
Joey continued down the hall but stopped when Donald saw the portable phone on the floor. “You sure no one is here?” Donald asked.
“Blast you!” Kathy seethed, reaching again, not really caring if she sounded rational or not. She wanted her phone, damn it!
“Sorry!” he said again, holding the phone away. “We can’t use this anymore.”
“It’s my phone! I paid a killing for it! And I would like for you to hand it over…now!”
He ignored her? How dare he ignore her! She counted to three, not sure what she would do then, but it made her feel as if she was doing something.
He examined the phone more closely. “Does it have a GPS?”
A GPS? Why was that important? Why was any of this important? They had killers after them, so why was getting her phone so important to Kathy right now? Maybe it was the principle of the thing. Maybe shock was making her loco. She didn’t know. Didn’t care. She just wanted her phone.
“Does it have a GPS?” he repeated.
“Yes. Now give…” Her words faded. She stared in disbelief as the obstinate, bullheaded man tossed her phone out the window. Her phone! He’d just tossed the one toy she’d allowed herself in the past five years out the window. “Are you bat-shit crazy, or does it just look that way?”
“It just looks that way,” he answered.
She continued to stare. “I really should have shot you when I had the chance.” She slammed back against her seat and let out a frustrated yelp. Damn him!
“When you calm down and are able to listen, I’ll explain.”
“I’m listening,” she said, and noticed he was driving about eighty-five miles per hour. Speeding.
He cut his gaze back to her. “But you’re not calm.”
“After the day I’ve had, that might not happen again in this lifetime.” She dropped her face into her hands and moaned.
“You hearing the bullets again?” he asked.
“No!” She pulled her hands away. “What I’m hearing is me kicking your ass!”
He grinned, and that made her even madder. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.
“What you’re feeling is normal. It’s shock, but I need—”
“This isn’t normal,” she said.
“Normal for what just happened. But I need for you to focus. To be reasonable.”
She continued to stare at him. He kept his eyes on the road. Was she being unreasonable? Her mind nipped at the question and somewhere logic intervened and said, Maybe. Maybe she was being a tad unreasonable. “You seriously think these people would have put a trace on my phone?” she asked. “That those guys are already at my place?”
“Yes, on both counts.” He glanced at her.
She shook her head. “I thought only cops or FBI could do things like that.”
“Well, you thought wrong. But then again, they’ve got plenty of powerful people in their corner. It could be a cop pulling the strings.” He paused and his mouth tightened. “Even an FBI agent.”
“My God, who are these people after you?” she finally asked.
“They’re a crime organization that smuggles everything from guns to drugs into our country. But unlike common criminals, these guys are smart. They’ve spent years building their organization from the ground up. They’ve got politicians and law officers in their corner. They know how to break the law and get away with it.”
“You make them sound like the mob,” she said.
“You could call them that,” he replied.
“And how did you get involved?”
He looked at her as if debating whether to tell her the truth. Why would he be keeping something from her? Besides her being unreasonable. “Oh, gawd, please don’t tell me you used to work for those goons?”
“No. Well, yes. But—”
“You’re a drug dealer?”
“No.”
“Gun smuggler?”
“Do I come off like a gun smuggler?”
“I’ve never met a gun smuggler, so I wouldn’t know.”
He frowned. “I worked for their accountant.”
Wonderful. Her ex was an accountant. She tried to visualize Luke sitting at a desk all day crunching numbers. It didn’t fit. Although she had to admit he hadn’t quite fit into the plumber category either. He’d never had the beer belly or the jeans that hung too low in the back, showing his profession’s famous crack. She knew because she’d checked that out many times. Many times.
“So you’re really an accountant and not a plumber.”
“Sort of.”
“Just what does ‘sort of’ mean?”
“It means it’s complicated.”
She watched him run a palm over his face in frustration. “Didn’t you say you were under the witness protection program, and that you were supposed to testify?”
“Right.”
“So did the authorities catch you doing something illegal with these people’s taxes and offer you a deal to testify?”
“Not exactly.”
When he didn’t offer a further explanation, she glared at him. “You ask me to trust you, but you’re not telling me why all this is happening.”
“I did tell you why it’s happening. I’m supposed to testify, and they want to make sure I don’t.” He took a sharp turn and the van bounced. “You should buckle up.”
“Why are you driving so fast?”
Hi
s right eyebrow arched. “Why do you think I’m driving so fast?”
“Are they back?” Her gaze shot to the side mirror.
“Not yet. But if they got a trace on the phone they’ll know our vicinity. And I’d rather not be here when they arrive.”
She buckled her seat belt. The sound of the buckle clicking brought on the sound of the gunshots, and with that came the image of the bloody man on the bathroom floor. She flinched and tried to refocus on the conversation.
“You’re still keeping things from me,” she said. “And yet you want me to trust you. That falls in the ‘really bad manners’ category. Don’t you think?”
“No. I think it falls into the ‘this isn’t something I can talk about’ category.”
“I don’t like that category.” She clenched her fist. “You can’t expect me to just go along with everything you say and not understand why I’m doing it.” She crossed her arms over her chest. Another wave of cold shot up her spine. She fought the chill and focused on seeing the passing scenery—not the bloody images flashing in her head.
Chapter Seven
Jason Dodd, Detective for the Houston Police Department, had finished giving his “Say No to Drugs” speech at one of Piper’s junior high schools and was heading home early. He picked up his cell and called his wife, Sue, to see if she wanted him to pick up Chinese for dinner. With his wife being pregnant, he never knew from one day to the next what she would or wouldn’t eat. Not that he cared. Hell, she was the one who carried around his kid in her belly—a fact that had him both sweating bullets and feeling giddy. Accommodating her likes and dislikes was the least he could do.
When she didn’t answer the home number, he dialed her cell phone. It went straight to voice mail. Probably a rundown battery. She was famous for forgetting stuff like that when she was writing a new book.
He was leaving a message when his line beeped. He checked the name on his Caller ID: Kathy Callahan. One of Sue’s good friends. That meant it was probably Sue. Kathy wasn’t…Well, except for a nod and a casual conversation about the weather, the woman kept her distance. He would call her a cold fish, but Sue wouldn’t like that.
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