“How do you feel?” she asked again.
“My head feels like someone’s beating on the inside with a sledge hammer. But the rest of me feels all right.”
“What’s your name?”
“Thomas Gray.”
“Do you know what day it is, Thomas Gray?” Justine asked, still assessing his condition.
“I have no idea.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
Thomas had to think for a long time. “I had scrambled eggs for breakfast. And I don’t quite understand this situation, but if you get the chance to run, take it. Don’t worry about me.”
Justine threw a glance to Deke. “He still needs a doctor.”
“He’s awake and talking. He’ll be fine.”
“He needs to be checked out. Head injuries can be really bad, and he’s been unconscious for a long time.”
Deke took a slow sip of water. He still held his gun as he shifted his gaze from Justine to Thomas Gray. “He’s not going anywhere, so quit asking.”
“He at least needs some ice on his head,” she insisted. She should have thought of it before, but she was too busy looking for a way to escape.
“Sorry. No refrigerator. No ice,” Deke said nonchalantly. “Besides, if I had any ice, I’d put it on my balls. If you try something like that again, I’ll give that pain right back to you, understand?”
“Yes.” Justine looked around. There wasn’t even a towel she could get wet. She remembered there was nothing in the bathroom, either. She’d had to air dry after washing her face.
Thomas met her gaze. “Why’d he take you? Ransom?”
“Not quite. He thinks my husband has money that belongs to him,” she explained quickly, still unable to believe Dan could rob a bank.
But Deke piped in. “Her sweet, upstanding citizen of a husband helped me rob the Commerce Bank of Aviston almost ten years ago, remember that?”
“Vaguely. The money was never recovered, no suspects ever brought in.” Thomas looked at Justine again.
“That’s because we got away with it, or I guess I should say my get-away driver got away with it. And well, now I’m using his pretty, little wife to get my cut. We’re just waiting for him.”
“He probably doesn’t know to come here,” Justine said.
“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Deke said.
“Why don’t we call him and make sure.”
Deke let out a huff of impatience. “Fine, why don’t we? After all, I’m just a bit tired of waiting. We’ll use your phone. Do you have him on speed dial?”
Of course Justine had Dan on her speed dial.
“Oh, look,” Deke quipped, “This contact says honey. That must be Danny Boy.”
“Can I talk to him, reassure him I’m all right?”
To her amazement, he handed her the cell phone. “Sure. Call him and talk to him.” She wasted no time dialing Dan.
“Dan?” she said when he answered.
Before she could say more, Deke ripped the phone from her hand, nearly gouging her face with his nails in his haste. “She’s fine, Danny Boy. She’s just getting impatient for you. What’s taking you so long? You know where we are. Our old partying ground, in case any of your police friends are listening. Come alone if you want to see her alive.”
Deke hit the end button, smiled slyly and slipped the phone into one of his many pockets.
Justine let out a sigh of relief.
Dan was coming.
Thomas still looked at Justine. “Do you know where the money is?”
Justine shook her head defiantly. “I don’t know anything about the money. And my husband is an officer of the law, like you. He works for the Landston Police Department. He would never rob a bank.”
She had to hold on to that idea. The thought that he could have done something so horrible and hidden it from her was worse than a knife cutting through her gut.
“I don’t feel very well,” Thomas said. Then his head slumped forward and he was unconscious again.
“There’s really something wrong with him. He needs a hospital. He needs a doctor!” Justine gripped his shoulders, touched his face with her hand. At least he was still breathing. “Thomas, can you hear me? Thomas?”
There was no response.
“Help me,” she begged Deke. “Please do something. At least take the cuffs off so we can lie him down.”
“Forget it.”
She stood up and faced Deke. He was really no different than facing her most fearsome judge. Still, her knees shook. “You, bastard. Right now, you’ve got a kidnapping charge. If you don’t help him and he dies, it turns to murder of a police officer. Help me help him and I can get all your charges lowered. Do nothing, and I’ll make sure the people throw the book at you.”
“Can you get all the charges dropped, completely?”
“That’s doubtful.” She had to be honest.
“Then I might as well go for broke.” He took another large sip from the water bottle next to him.
“All right, I’ll see what I can do. But help me.”
“Oh, all right. But quit nagging.” He finally got up and drew closer. “Do you nag Danny Boy this much?”
Justine ignored him, vowing not to let him get to her.
He pulled the key from his pocket and unlocked the cuffs.
Thomas slumped forward and sideways when his hands were free from the post. He would have hit the floor with his head and probably caused more damage if Justine hadn’t caught him. It took all her strength to gently get him in a somewhat comfortable-looking position on the floor.
“Thomas? Thomas, can you hear me?” She shook his shoulders. When he didn’t respond, she didn’t know what else she could do for him. He was still breathing so at least he didn’t need CPR. “He needs help. He needs a hospital. Please.”
“What’s it worth to you?” Deke asked.
“What?”
“What will you give me?”
She stared at Deke, thinking surely he had two horns growing out the top of his head. “I don’t have anything to give you.”
One brow rose as he stared at her evenly. “Don’t you? I’m sure you do. You could dance naked for me, or something equally exciting. Because I’ll tell you, seeing you fixing the morning coffee in your undies is the hottest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Or you could fuck me. You fucked one of your husband’s colleagues. Although you were a bit too drunk to enjoy it. Actually from my vantage point, it looked as if you slept through it. Even though I think you’ve been feeling a little guilty since then. Right?”
“You really are a pig,” she said, her words hardly more than a whisper.
“Wouldn’t that be exciting to have your husband get here while you’re dancing naked or fucking me?” His voice was filled with amusement.
If Justine had any weapon just then, she thought she might kill him.
“You aren’t going to let this man—this officer—die for your own pride, are you?” Deke gloated more.
Justine’s heart turned cold, and a shiver moved up her back. This could not be happening. She couldn’t let it happen. While it was true, she was ready to do anything to save the man at her feet, she knew without doubt after she did as Deke asked, he would only ask for more. Taking off her clothes was not on her agenda.
“I feel sorry for you. You’re just jealous,” she said, forcing her voice to remain even.
“What?”
Her words seem to take him off guard.
“You’ve never known what I’ve known, and you probably never will. You’ll never know real love, the sharing of two hearts, the mixing of two souls. You can make me take my clothes off. You’re bigger and stronger, and you have the leverage. You can force me to do all sorts of things. But you’ll still never know what I share with the love of my life. I’m certainly not sharing it with you. All you’ll ever be is an empty shell, a wide open hole of nothing where all you need is your hand.”
Keep talking, she thought. Give hi
m something else to think about rather than her taking off her clothes. Especially since she was not about to do it for him. She should be able to do that, she knew she’d done it with a more than a few juries in her career. Yes, he was bigger and stronger, but she was ready to fight him for as long and as hard as she could. “What I have in my life is what makes sex more than just sex, more than five minutes of pleasure that disappears like the wind. You act like you’re someone who wants more than what life has given you, and you want to show you can think and have determination. You want to be a man with some pride. Well, if you want to prove you’re something more than a lowlife after money, wouldn’t you want more than those five minutes of pleasure? Wouldn’t you want something that can last longer, be more meaningful, be worth the effort?”
Justine kept talking and watched his eyes, watched his expression, searching for any indication that he heard and understood, that he knew where he stood with her. She found herself suddenly tense. Her entire being—her mind, body and soul—was ready to spring into action. She would fight him right now, with every ounce of her strength to keep him from touching her. If he wanted her clothes off, he was going to have to fight her for them.
His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. She was proud of her words, of the questions she’d thrown at him.
It was a pretty good closing argument, considering she didn’t have any time to prepare for it. The next ten seconds would tell whether or not her words were enough to convince him.
She stared into his eyes and waited, and saw suddenly that her words were not quite enough to stop him.
His eyes were nothing more than oceans of ice.
“Besides,” she went on, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt, “if you touch me, you’ll never get your money, and I think you know that. If you know Dan as well as you say you do, you know he’ll kill you. He certainly isn’t going to simply hand you over your money and walk away knowing you hurt me.”
“Unless he catches you dancing, how would he ever know?”
Dan was not going to catch her dancing. She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Besides, I also think a few colleagues on the force with him will stand behind him no matter what you say he did. I’m pretty sure if Dan doesn’t kill you, one of them will.” She felt stronger, but her hands and knees still shook.
“And the rest of the world will know what you did, too. When I get to add sexual assault to all the charges piling up against you. I don’t know about you, but I think you’ve got enough against you right now with the kidnapping charge, don’t you?”
She let the question hang between them and watched him still.
Suddenly, she was terrified that her ability to use words in her favor only worked in the courtroom, terrified that she was wrong when she told Dan her tactics to always twist her words in her favor worked on everybody else but him. And she tried to tell herself that she shouldn’t be.
Deke was one person. He should be easier to convince than twelve people. What made him so terrifying was the fact that he was so close. Within arm’s length. He was also desperate and had a gun. That made him more frightening, more dangerous than any jury or any other defendant she’d ever encountered, except her first solo case when she’d nearly been shot.
Deke took a deep breath and some of the tension disappeared between them.
At her feet, Thomas Gray groaned, drawing both their attentions to him.
As if forgetting Deke planned to get her clothes off, she again knelt down to examine Thomas. “He’s really looking pale. What do you think?”
She expected Deke to comment he didn’t care. Much to her surprise, Deke drew closer and stooped down, too, to look at Thomas.
Like a flash, Thomas’s hand came up and he grabbed Deke by the shirt and pulled him closer as he opened his eyes. He was apparently faking the entire time. With his other fist, he punched Deke right under the chin in one swift, well-mastered upper cut.
The blow sent Deke flying off his feet, sending him backwards to land in a heap after crashing into the chair where Justine had been sitting moments before.
Deke became the unconscious one.
It happened so quickly, Justine still stooped beside Thomas, frozen in disbelief.
With speed Justine still couldn’t believe, Thomas clambered to his feet and grabbed her arm, taking her with him. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
She didn’t need to be told twice.
It was only after she was out of the cabin, down the porch steps and out in the sunshine, running down the dirt path road that she thought twice.
“Maybe we should go back.” She half pulled against Thomas, who held her hand.
“What for, so he can tie us both up?” he asked, his words filled with sarcasm.
“No. We should cuff him so he can’t follow us and then run. You still need a doctor. And if we leave him there, by the time we get anywhere to call the police, he could wake up and be long gone. Then we’ll have to keep looking over our shoulders until he’s caught again.”
“I don’t know. If your husband does give up the money, Rynolds will have nothing to bargain with.” He continued to pull her along the path. They were surrounded by woods, but this appeared to be the only path from the cabin.
“I already told you. My husband could never rob a bank. He doesn’t have any money.” Her words were breathless from her running.
“You’re certain of that?” He didn’t look at her as he continued to move quickly.
“Absolutely. I’ve known him for more than six years. We had to scrape money together to put down a payment on a house. I don’t know anything about any money.”
He stopped so suddenly that she ran into him. She quickly found herself staring down the barrel of another gun, this time held by Thomas Gray. “What the hell?”
Chapter 24
Dan knew the way to the cabin by heart. It was the only good thing his uncle had given him and his brother. They used to spend weekends at the cabin. There was a lake nearby just full of fish wanting to be caught. Their uncle taught them how to clean fish, and they would fry their catch over an open fire.
It was the best time of his life without his parents before Dan met Justine.
It took all his patience to keep from pressing the accelerator to the floor to get there quicker. Usually it was Justine who didn’t have the patience, but today, it was Dan’s turn.
During his drive, all he had was time. Time to think, time to remember. So many things came to him, like pieces of a puzzle falling together. Two months ago, Jus had been deep in the heart of her first murder trial, defending that Madison thug. Dan had come home after finishing the midnight shift to find her sitting in their kitchen in the dark.
Seeing her sitting alone in the dark was strange enough and startling in itself. But it was the lost look in her eyes that scared him most. He remembered after that something in her changed. She’d become distant. Not really pushing him away, but not as close as she’d always been. Was that the night she’d cheated on him? Was it the guilt eating her that led her to the dark kitchen?
Now, looking back he wondered what the hell had happened. What the hell could have happened? Did she get lost in a moment with someone else? Had something happened with one of Madison’s thugs? There were so many possibilities he was afraid to look at them. But he could easily see her now, sitting in the dark.
****
Two Months Ago
Needing a drink, Dan switched on the kitchen light. He jumped and instinctively reached for his gun when he found Justine sitting at the kitchen table. “Jus, damn, what the hell are you doing down here in the dark? I thought you’d be in bed.”
She turned and looked at him as if she didn’t seem to realize he was there. It was enough to cause his heart to skip a beat with worry.
“What’s the matter with you, Jus?” he asked softly. “Not feeling well?”
She rested an elbow on the table and held her forehead in her hand. She looked down and didn’t
look at him. Only the small light over the kitchen sink behind her was on with his flip of the switch. It hid her face in the shadows. But he could have seen her eyes if she had looked up. She didn’t.
“Dan?”
He heard worry, perhaps even fear or disorientation in her voice, and he didn’t like the sound of it. Instinctively, he put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “What? What’s the matter? Are your parents all right? Your brothers? My brother?”
For the first time, she looked up at him. “They’re fine,” she muttered softly.
Good, because he’d just left a killer shift and he didn’t think he could handle another problem. Dan tried to read the emotions in her eyes, but she’d closed herself up to him. His worry doubled. “Justine, what’s wrong?” he demanded. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “I mean, I—” She stopped, seeming to be at a loss for words. That in itself was enough to scare him the most. He’d never seen her at a loss for words.
“What?”
“I…There was…”
“There was what?”
“Nothing. I think I have the flu,” she said quickly.
She looked away as she spoke. His first thought was that she lied to him. He’d dealt with enough lies in his job to recognize one. It hit him like a rush of ice water thrown in his face. The question of why followed in the same instant. She’d never lied to him. If anything, she could sometimes be too straightforward for her own good. True, she could twist words around, but they always held the truth as far as she believed it. For a moment, he was uncertain of how to reply.
She obviously wanted to tell him something other than the fact she had the flu. He could question her, force the truth from her. It probably wouldn’t have been too hard getting answers from her. Or he could let it slide, at least until he found out the reason for the lie. He thought she had to have a good reason, too. But he didn’t want to question her. He didn’t want to force answers from her. If he did, what would that make her? A suspect he needed to interrogate? What would it make him? That had never been part of their marriage, and Dan didn’t want it becoming a part of it now, no matter how much it hurt to know she kept something from him.
A Twist of Betrayal Page 16