Trouble with a Badge

by Delores Fossen

  “You’re not getting anywhere near her,” Levi said, taking the words right out of Alexa’s mouth. Even if Scottie wasn’t a killer, he was a stalker, and Tasha had been afraid of him.

  “I don’t want to hurt the baby,” Scottie insisted.

  “You’re sure about that?” Levi snapped. “Because you seemed obsessed with her when you were at the ranch day before yesterday.”

  “Because I thought if I had the baby it would help me get Tasha to listen to reason and come back to me.”

  Yes, he was definitely obsessed. Alexa was thankful Violet was safe and far away from him. Away from Marcos, too. Even though Marcos didn’t have anything against Tasha and Violet, Alexa didn’t want the baby caught in any more crossfire.

  Alexa leaned out to check on Jericho. Still no sign of him, but the diners were hurrying out, so maybe that meant Jericho was having a chat with the waitress and busboy. A conversation where they could prove they hadn’t tried to poison her.

  “Have you found Tasha’s killer yet?” Scottie asked, using his shirtsleeve to wipe away his tears.

  “No. But you’re a suspect,” Levi reminded him.

  In the blink of an eye, Scottie went from tears to rage. “I didn’t kill her! I loved her.”

  “Maybe you killed her to prove to her just how much you loved her,” Alexa suggested, not bothering to hold back any of her sarcasm.

  Oh, that didn’t help Scottie’s temper, but the movement at the front of the diner had them all shifting their attention in that direction. Jericho came out, his hand gripped on the arm of a petite brunette waitress, and he was leading her toward the sheriff’s office.

  “You recognize her?” Levi asked no one in particular.

  “No,” Alexa answered. Though she hadn’t spent any time at the diner in the past five months. But both Jax and Levi indicated that they didn’t know her either.

  “She must be new,” Mack agreed.

  After Jericho came through the door Alexa realized the woman was handcuffed. Mercy. Did that mean she’d admitted to doing this?

  “Who are you?” Alexa asked her, and she would have gone closer to the woman, and Scottie, if Levi hadn’t held her back.

  “I’m Joni Tipton.” She didn’t look at Alexa. The woman kept her head low and her gaze fixed to the floor.

  “She confessed,” Jericho explained. “She did put something in the coffee. She claims she doesn’t know what it was, but that someone paid her to do it.”

  “Who paid her?” Alexa demanded.

  Still no eye contact.

  “I don’t know. It was all done through a courier. A guy we called Mouse. Don’t know his real name, but the cops at SAPD will probably know him. He called me, said I’d get paid if I did this job. And when I agreed, he brought over the money.”

  Mack hurried to the phone, no doubt to make a call to SAPD. Maybe it wouldn’t take them too long to find and question him.

  Jericho put her in the chair next to one of the desks, cupped the woman’s chin and glared at her. “Joni, you’re in a boatload of trouble. Conspiracy to commit murder will send you to jail for a long time.”

  The woman didn’t seem to have a reaction to that. “I’m already going to jail for a long time. My trial’s next week. Drug trafficking. It’s my third offense, so it’ll be a maximum sentence.”

  “How the hell did you get a job at the diner with that kind of record?” Levi snapped.

  “I lied. Used a fake ID. Said I’d work for free the first couple of days so the boss could see that I’d do good work.”

  And it’d apparently gotten her hired. “Did you just wait until you had the opportunity to try to kill me?” Alexa asked.

  Joni, if that was her real name, nodded. “I was supposed to get the job done by today, and if you hadn’t ordered anything, I was to put it in some coffee, bring it over and say it was on the house.”

  Judging from the profanity Levi and Jericho used, that might have worked. She knew they ordered takeout from the diner all the time, especially when in the middle of an investigation.

  “I couldn’t go through with it.” Joni whispered it so softly that it took a moment for Alexa to realize what she’d said. “I was about to come over and tell you what I’d done.”

  “Sure you were,” Jericho snarled.

  “I was,” Joni insisted. “I told Todd I was going to tell.”

  “Todd?” Jax questioned.

  “The busboy,” Jericho provided.

  “What about the busboy?” Jax asked Jericho. “If she doesn’t know who hired her, then maybe he does.”

  Jericho shook his head. “According to the ID he used to get hired just yesterday, his name is Todd Menger, but he’s disappeared. No one saw him leave, and his shift isn’t over for another four hours.”

  “I’m on it,” Jax said, taking out his phone. “I need a description.”

  “Black hair, like I said,” Scottie readily provided. “About six feet tall and really skinny and pale. He has a lot of acne on his face. He was wearing a black plastic apron when I saw him in the diner.”

  “Stay here,” Levi told her, and he hurried to the back to check the exit. It was locked, as Alexa had figured it would be, but it was the urgency in Levi’s movements that revved up her heartbeat even more.

  “Joni Tipton is her real name,” Mack called out. “And she’s on bail. I’m not coming up with anything on Todd Menger.”

  “I’ve told you the truth,” Joni insisted.

  Jericho got in her face again while Jax and Levi kept watch. “How much did you get paid?”

  “Ten thousand.” Not much money considering Joni was basically being paid to turn a blind eye to possible murder. “I have a kid. A little boy only two years old, and I needed it for him. My mom said she wouldn’t look after him when I’m in jail if I didn’t give her money to help take care of him.”

  Part of Alexa was glad the woman was trying to help her son, but ten grand wouldn’t last long, and the grandmother might ditch him after the money ran out. She made a mental note to make sure someone checked on the child.

  “Take her to lockup,” Jericho instructed Mack. Then, he turned.

  Jericho drew his gun.

  Both Jax and Levi cursed, and when Alexa leaned out to see what had caused that reaction, Levi pushed her back into the observation room. But not before she got a good look of the man making a beeline toward the sheriff’s office.

  He was tall, black hair, and his face was covered with acne. He matched the description to a tee that Scottie had given them of the busboy.

  Except for the apron.

  He was wearing a white cotton T-shirt and no coat, which made it easy for Alexa to see what he had strapped to his chest.

  Sticks of dynamite.

  And he held a grenade in each hand.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What the hell?” Levi grumbled, and he, too, drew his gun.

  Levi hadn’t thought this day could get any worse, but he’d obviously been wrong about that. This definitely qualified as worse.

  “Don’t shoot him,” Levi warned the others. “If he falls the grenades could go off and set off the other explosives.”

  Something like that would almost certainly kill Todd Menger, but it could also blow the entire area to smithereens. Levi had no idea how much firepower was in those explosives. The sheriff’s office was reinforced with steel inserts in the concrete blocks, but Levi didn’t want to test that reinforcement.

  “Get down on the floor underneath the table,” Levi reminded Alexa.

  “Be careful,” Alexa said, her voice all breath now.

  He hated the fear he saw in her eyes. Hated even more that there was a reason for the fear, but he couldn’t take the time to reassure her. He had some experience i
n hostage negotiation and suicides, and while this wasn’t a textbook case, he might be able to talk this nut job out of doing something stupid.

  “Try to get Marcos and his lawyer out the back exit,” Levi told Mack. “Scottie, too.”

  “Are you crazy? It’s too dangerous for us to go out there,” Scottie protested. “Those explosives can go off at any minute.”

  Tough. Levi didn’t want to have to watch two of their top suspects while trying to stop this potential disaster.

  “Should I go out back and try to come up from behind Todd?” Jax asked.

  “No.” Levi didn’t even have to think about that answer. “If he sees you, he might get spooked and let go of those grenades.”

  Jax nodded. “I’ll call the diner. They can evacuate through the back of their building.” He started the call. Jericho made one, too. Probably alerting other nearby businesses so they could clear out, as well.

  Good.

  He hoped the evacuations would end up being overkill, but Levi wanted people as far away from this as possible. Too bad he couldn’t get Alexa out of the building, but this could be another trick to draw her out. She could go right from the frying pan and into a very hot fire.

  Levi opened the door just a fraction. Thankfully, the busboy wasn’t coming any closer. He was literally standing in the street halfway between the sheriff’s office and the diner.

  “Todd?” Levi called out. “Is that your real name?”

  He nodded. He was hardly more than a kid. Twenty if that, and he was shaking from head to toe. Of course, it was cold, but Levi figured the bulk of Todd’s shaking was from nerves.

  Not a good sign to have a spooked kid packing explosives.

  If his hand started shaking too much, he might drop one of the grenades before Levi got the chance to talk him out of this.

  “My last name’s not Menger, though,” Todd volunteered. “It’s Dawson. I want you to know that so somebody can call my family when things are done here. They’ll need to know.”

  Levi didn’t have to tell Jericho to do a quick background check on Todd. His brother would. Maybe something would turn up in that check or in something Todd was going to say that would help Levi diffuse this.

  “You can’t talk me out of doing this,” Todd added. “I’m not like Joni, just needing money for her kid. I got to do it. I got no choice.”

  “You’re wrong. You always have a choice. You can put the pins back in those grenades and surrender. That way, you get to live.”

  Todd frantically shook his head. “No. I’m dying. HIV. It’s just a matter of time. I got no life insurance, no money, just a lot of medical bills. This way my girlfriend gets some cash.”

  Whoever had hired him and Joni must have chosen them because they were both desperate. Well, Levi was desperate, too.

  Behind him he could hear Mack ushering out Scottie, Marcos and the lawyer. Scottie was still whining about how dangerous it was to go out there.

  “What kind of idiotic plan is this?” Marcos shouted. “Are you trying to get me killed?”

  Levi didn’t bother to acknowledge Marcos. Instead, he moved a step farther out the door, but Todd jerked back his right hand in a defensive posture, so Levi didn’t press it. He stayed put.

  “Todd, who’s paying you to do this?” Levi asked.

  “Don’t know. Don’t want to know, either.” He fired some nervous glances around him. “Mouse brought half the money, and the other half will be delivered to my girlfriend when this is over.”

  Levi wanted this to have a much better ending than the culprit behind this had planned. To do that, he had to try to gain Todd’s trust, because he couldn’t disarm him unless Todd cooperated. Levi only hoped there weren’t other hired thugs in the area waiting to finish the job if Todd didn’t.

  “There are people inside this building,” Levi told him. “In other buildings, too. You don’t want to hurt them.”

  “Collateral damage. That’s what it said in the note that Mouse gave me. That I was allowed some collateral damage, and that means it’s okay if other people get hurt or killed. People other than Alexa Dearborn.”

  Everything inside Levi went still. Of course he’d known this probably had something to do with Alexa, but it felt like a punch to hear it spelled out by a man loaded with explosives.

  “Why are you supposed to hurt Alexa?” Levi asked.

  Another frantic headshake. “I’m not supposed to hurt her. I’m supposed to make sure she’s dead.”

  Levi mumbled some profanity. There it was, all spelled out for him. Alexa, too, probably, since the observation room door was open and she’d likely heard every word Todd had just said.

  “Think,” Levi pressed the man. “Who’s Mouse working for? Who wants you to kill Alexa?”

  Todd looked at him. Finally, eye-to-eye contact, but Levi didn’t like what he saw there. Yeah, Todd was shaky all right, but that was determination Levi was seeing. He needed to do something about that—fast.

  Behind him, Levi heard someone open the back exit, and Jax immediately pivoted in that direction.

  “It’s just me,” Mack called out. “I put Marcos and the others in a cruiser, and I told them they’d better not get out.”

  It wasn’t ideal, but nothing about this was.

  “You said you had a girlfriend, right?” Levi didn’t wait for Todd to answer. “Well, Belle, who owns the diner, is someone’s girlfriend, and she has a daughter. Only six years old. You want to make that little girl an orphan by killing Belle?”

  Todd didn’t answer for several long moments. “It doesn’t matter. I have to kill Alexa.”

  “All right,” Alexa said.

  Levi knew from the sound of her voice that she was no longer in the observation room. And she wasn’t. She was coming up the hall directly toward him.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Levi snarled at her.

  “Possibly, but I’m not going to hide while the rest of you put your lives on the line for me.”

  Both Jericho and Jax hurried to get in front of her, but she just came up on her toes and looked over their shoulders.

  “Can you kill me if you’re looking at my face?” she asked Todd. “Can you?”

  It wasn’t a taunt or a challenge. Just the opposite. There was sympathy in her voice, and Levi didn’t expect that sympathy to get through to Todd.

  He was wrong.

  Todd fixed his stare on Alexa while she stared back at him, and by degrees Levi saw some of Todd’s determination fade. He clearly wasn’t a trained killer like the hired guns Levi had already encountered and probably hadn’t thought he’d have to look his target in the eyes.

  Still, Levi didn’t want Alexa anywhere near Todd.

  “Stay back,” Levi warned her.

  She didn’t listen. Alexa kept her attention nailed to Todd, too. “Does your girlfriend want you to die today?” she asked.

  Judging from the groan Todd made, the answer to that was no.

  “I’m betting she’d want to spend every possible minute with you,” Alexa continued. “The money won’t mean anything to her if she doesn’t have you.”

  It was risky because the girlfriend could indeed want the money, but Todd lowered his head until his chin was practically touching his chest, so Alexa had obviously hit pay dirt after all.

  Or not.

  Todd’s head whipped up, and Levi heard a swishing sound. Without warning, Todd dropped face first to the ground.

  “Oh, God,” Alexa said, and she clearly understood what that fall meant. They could all be dead within seconds.

  Cursing, Levi turned, slammed the door shut and dragged Alexa to the floor so he could try to shelter her body with his. He did the only thing he could—brace himself for the blast.

  But it didn’t happen.

/>   No blast, only silence.

  “Todd’s been shot,” Jax told them. He scrambled for cover beneath one of the desks.

  Levi looked up and saw the blood. Hell. Yes, Todd had been shot all right, in the back, and the swishing sound that Levi had heard meant someone had fired the bullet from a gun fitted with a silencer. Todd wasn’t moving, but Levi wasn’t sure he was dead, either.

  “You see the shooter?” Jericho asked, taking out his phone.

  Levi didn’t see anyone, but it was possible the shot had come from one of the alleys near the diner or even from a roof. No other shots came, but that wasn’t Levi’s big concern right now.

  It was the explosives.

  They apparently hadn’t gone off because Todd still had the grenades gripped in his hands. That might not last, though, because all it would take was a slight movement from Todd.

  “The county bomb squad unit is on the way,” Jericho relayed to them when he finished his call. “But it’ll be a while before they get here.”

  They didn’t have a while.

  “We all need to get out of here now,” Levi insisted, and no one argued with him about that.

  “I’ll get the prisoner,” Mack volunteered, and he hurried in the direction of the holding cell where he’d left Joni.

  Levi helped Alexa to her feet, and with his brothers right behind him, they ran toward the back exit. When Levi reached the door, however, he didn’t just bolt outside. Not with Scottie, Marcos and a gunman out there. With his gun ready, he glanced around.

  And Levi saw something he didn’t like.

  The doors of the cruiser were wide open, and he didn’t see anyone inside. Definitely not a good sign, since that was where Scottie and Marcos were supposed to be waiting.

  Had they gotten scared and run?

  Levi couldn’t blame them, but he would have preferred to have eyes on both those snakes. Of course, it was possible they were on the floor of the cruiser, but if so, why had they left the doors open?

  Mack came hurrying toward them, and he had a cuffed Joni in tow. The woman looked terrified. Later, Levi would demand that she tell them how much she knew about all this, but that would have to wait.