Deep Burn (Station Seventeen Book 2)

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “Yes, you are,” she whispered, flattening her hand over his chest, her own heart tripping as his pounded against her palm. “Your brain might never rest, Capelli, but your heart doesn’t either. You’re just too smart to see it. That’s okay, though. I see it. I see you, and I know you’re a good man.”

  Shifting her hands to cup his face, she leaned forward until she was close enough to feel his shaky exhale on her cheek. Yet she’d never been more steady or sure of anything in her life.

  “Look at me, James Capelli. Know what I’m telling you. You’re a good man.”

  And as he pressed his forehead to hers and let her fold her arms around him to hold him close, Shae knew he believed her.

  Just like she knew she was in love with him.

  Chapter 21

  Capelli stood on the sidewalk in front of the Thirty-Third and waited to be overcome by the urge to vomit. A minute passed, then another, with nothing but the muted rush of nearby traffic and a whole lot of business as usual, and he released a slow exhale into the mid-morning sunshine.

  “You good, Starsky?”

  He returned Shae’s brows-up, sassy smile with one of marginal doubt. “I’m still not a cop, you know.”

  “I’m not either. But if the badge fits…” She stepped in front of him, her hands in the pockets of her dark brown leather jacket, her eyes so bright and beautiful, it almost hurt. “We’re going to catch Vaughn. He’s going to go down for everything he’s done. And you’re still nothing like him. You know that, right?”

  Capelli paused. It defied all logic, but the fact that Shae saw goodness in him made him want to be good. He didn’t even know if he’d ever truly been good before; at least, not in the way of anyone truly decent. His brain always unraveled things, pared them down, stripped them all the way to their lowest common denominators and basest, barest parts. But when Shae looked at him, all of that shifted, and suddenly there was a chance—however slight—that he might have a shot at redemption.

  “Yeah,” Capelli said slowly, testing the idea out in a brain that had known a different reality for so long. “I know.”

  Just like he knew what he had to do right now.

  Pressing forward to place an essentially chaste kiss over her mouth first, Capelli turned toward the building. He and Shae hadn’t spoken much since he’d unloaded the story of his past on her last night. Then again, they hadn’t needed to. He’d pretty much splattered his feelings all over the place, leaving no messy, horrible details left unsaid.

  And rather than running like she should have, Shae had not only listened, but held him tighter for it.

  They walked up the steps in front of the precinct, side by side. The lobby was fairly empty—not a huge shock considering their nine o’clock-on-a-Saturday-morning timing. But as they went through security and made their way up to the second floor, the dread Capelli had been expecting to fill his belly and send ice through his veins was strangely absent.

  They were going to catch Vaughn. He’d do whatever it took to make it happen.

  “Oh, hey!” Hale was the first person to see him and Shae cross the threshold into the intelligence office, where the rest of the team was already unsurprisingly hard at work. “You two okay? You feeling alright, Shae?”

  “I’m totally fine,” Shae said, pairing her answer with a smile that backed it up. “Thanks for asking.”

  Hollister looked up from his laptop screen, leaning back slightly in his desk chair. “Close call, McCullough. You had us worried for a second, there.”

  Although the detective’s expression was pretty much unreadable—even Capelli had to admit Hollister had a killer poker face when he chose to trot it out—enough concern carried through his tone to give him away.

  Concern Shae must have heard loud and crystal clear, because she made sure to give up a full twirl before saying, “I’m in perfect working order, which I’m sorry to say means you’re all stuck with me helping on this case until my next shift at Seventeen. How are the two contractors who were pulled from the fire?”

  “Serious but stable,” Maxwell said. “They both inhaled a lot of smoke, but with some breathing treatments, they should pull through. And you were right.” He looked at Capelli. “Substantial amounts of sufentanil turned up on both of their tox screens.”

  “If you want to fire up the crime scene board, we can get you caught up on the case,” Isabella offered, just as Sinclair appeared at the back of the room by the now-open door to his office. While Shae nodded and went to sit in her usual spot at the far end of his desk, though, Capelli’s feet remained rooted to the spot where he stood on the linoleum. His heart conspired against him, tripping faster in his chest. The part of him that had buried the past warned that this would make him vulnerable, that it was too dangerous, too personal to share.

  But the other part of him belonged here, in this intelligence unit. And for the first time ever, that part knew it was way past time to tell his teammates the truth.

  “Before we do that, there’s something you all need to know.” Capelli pulled in a large breath. Held it for just a second. Then went with the facts. “I know Conrad Vaughn.”

  Isabella was the first to break the stunned silence. “You know him,” she said slowly, her shock clearly mirrored by Hale, Hollister, Maxwell, and even Sinclair. While a not-small amount of surprise had also flown through Shae’s gaze when he’d first spoken the words, her lips curved into a smile that led the truth right on out from the space where he’d kept it hidden for eight long years.

  “I do.”

  Capelli opened his mouth and didn’t stop talking until the whole story was out, from his upbringing to his history with Vaughn to his arrest. Sinclair stood at the back of the office, his face revealing nothing as Capelli spoke, but the rest of his teammates’ expressions made up for it tenfold.

  “Jesus, man. That’s a lot to keep bottled up,” Hollister finally said after Capelli had finished. “Not that we don’t all have skeletons we don’t want to dig out of the closet,” he added, his normally laid-back persona slipping into surprisingly serious territory for only a second before he tacked his easy-does-it poker face firmly back in place. “But how come you never said anything until now?”

  “Lots of reasons,” Capelli replied slowly. In truth, there were hundreds of them, but finally, he stuck with, “I guess it was just hard to get my head around being the only criminal among a bunch of cops. I was worried…” He broke off for a breath. “I committed a lot of crimes. My brain is kind of hard-wired for it.”

  “Bullshit.” Moreno’s answer was unequivocal enough to stun Capelli into place on the floor tiles. “Your brain is hard-wired to figure things out. That might’ve made you a good criminal once,” she admitted. “But it makes you an irreplaceable part of this team now.”

  His deep-seated instinct kicked, clearly not wanting to ease its grip on him so easily. “I stole from people. Cheated. Lied.”

  “And the DA wiped your slate clean,” Maxwell said, crossing his arms over the well-muscled expanse of his chest. “If there’s one thing I can promise you, it’s that none of us in this unit are angels.”

  If anyone was qualified to make the statement, it was definitely the rough, gruff detective with more tenure as a cop than anyone save Sinclair. “It took balls to come clean about this. I respect that. If Sarge stands by you, I stand by you,” he said, and Hale nodded her agreement.

  “Me too. I know I’m the baby of the unit, but I’m proud to work with you, Capelli.”

  Capelli released the breath he’d only just realized he’d been holding. “Thanks.”

  “I am too.” Isabella’s nod sent another flare of relief through Capelli’s gut. “If there’s one thing this job has taught me, it’s that we’re a team, all of us, together. Nothing that’s happened in your past changes that.”

  Speaking of which… “I want you to know that I’d never jeopardize an investigation,” Capelli said, and God, despite all his instincts to keep the side of himself t
hat belonged to the past well-hidden, he meant it. “I never withheld anything that would’ve helped us catch Vaughn, not in the DuPree case or this one. I do know him, and he knows me, but I haven’t had any contact with the guy in eight years.”

  Hale’s shoulders hit the back of her desk chair, her dark blond brows knitting together beneath the heavy fringe of her bangs as she gestured to the laptop on her desk. “Consider yourself lucky in that regard. It looks like he’s culling his list of friends. Including, apparently, Mayor Aldrich—who not only had his house burn down last night, but seems to have a penchant for bikini models who aren’t his wife. At least, according to the less than virtuous video that was leaked to all the major news outlets about an hour ago.”

  “Whoa. Talk about a plot twist,” Shae murmured, and damn, Capelli had to agree. “No way that timing is a coincidence, right?”

  He shook his head. “If Vaughn was also trying to shake the guy down? It’s extremely unlikely.”

  Shrugging out of his jacket, Capelli moved over to his desk and booted up both the array and the crime scene board. He might not be great (or, okay, even passably decent) at emotional disclosure. But processing the facts and probabilities, even when they related to a subject as potentially pothole-laden as Vaughn? Now that, he could do.

  “At first glance, the mayor doesn’t seem like he’d be on the list of Vaughn’s usual suspects, and we’re not quite sure how the video fits in with things yet,” Hollister said. “But the M.O. for the blaze fits the other two crimes. No way are they not related.”

  “Extortion and blackmail. Vaughn’s stepping up his game,” Capelli realized out loud, the variables falling into place in his mind. “Which means he’s either pissed or getting desperate for a payday. Maybe both.”

  “What have we got to work with from last night’s fire?” Shae asked, the question as natural as if any other member of the team had voiced it, and Sinclair stepped over toward the crime scene board at the same time Capelli pulled up the case files for display.

  “Arson and CSU are still working the scene, but preliminary reports corroborate Shae and Slater’s statements that large amounts of gasoline were present and likely used as an accelerant.”

  Shae shook her head in thought. “Dousing the mansion in gasoline is pretty brash. Vaughn really is ramping things up if he’s not even bothering to hide the fact that this is arson anymore.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s still slippery as hell,” Moreno said, frowning as she gestured to the photos Capelli had just posted of last night’s crime scene. “The canvas didn’t turn up a single witness who could put Vaughn anywhere within a mile of the scene. Hollister and I are still going through the footage from the city cams though.”

  “The two contractors aren’t much help either.” Maxwell’s add did nothing for the knot in Capelli’s gut. Well, except make it bigger, anyway. Damn it.

  “They don’t remember anything at all?” Shae asked, eyes wide in surprise, and Maxwell shook his head.

  “They were working in different rooms, doing overtime at the mayor’s request.” The tone the detective slung around the last word made it clear the mayor’s “request” hadn’t involved the option of saying no. “Both men said their assailant snuck up on them from behind, they felt the needle stick, and the next thing they remember is waking up at Remington Memorial.”

  Confession, physical evidence, witness… Capelli flipped to the next logical variable most likely to yield a lead. “What’s Aldrich saying?”

  “Nothing yet. We haven’t been able to reach him,” Hale said.

  Sinclair planted his hands over his hips, and—oh shit, the glint in his steel-gray stare was a serious harbinger of Very Bad Things. “That’s about to change. Maxwell, you and I are going to go have a chat with the mayor and find out what he’s been up to when he thinks nobody’s looking. In the meantime, I’ll have the DA subpoena his financials for the department’s forensic accountant to start going over. Let’s see if Aldrich is as slick on paper as he is with his constituents.”

  Unyielding, Sinclair turned toward the crime scene board, where Capelli had just posted the mayor’s headshot. “He’s the key to nailing Vaughn, and it’s past time for the Shadow to go down for his crimes. I don’t care if we have to go all the way back to Aldrich’s third grade report card. Kick over every rock you can to prove these two are connected. Phone records. Bank statements. Campaign donations. I want everything under the microscope.”

  “Actually, Sergeant, there’s no need for all that digging.”

  Capelli’s heart pumped out a steady stream of what the hell at the sound of the unfamiliar feminine voice coming from the doorframe of the intelligence office.

  Sinclair—along with everyone else in the room—swung his full attention toward the woman, who was accompanied by a uniformed officer on one side and a man Capelli had never seen before on the other.

  “I’m sorry, you are?”

  Capelli placed her before Sinclair had finished asking, and holy shit. What was a defense attorney from one of the best law firms in Remington doing in their office?

  “Tara Kingston,” she said, her glossy black corkscrew curls bouncing over the shoulders of her suit jacket as she crossed the linoleum to offer Sinclair a handshake that looked firm as hell upon delivery. “Glad to finally have the pleasure. I’ve cross-examined a few of your team members at various criminal trials. You run quite the sharp unit.”

  “Thank you, but something tells me you didn’t come all the way out here to blow sunshine up my skirt.” Sinclair kept his expression as neutral as possible while still retaining all of his hard edges. Not that it seemed to faze Kingston much.

  She lifted a brow. “Right to business. I like that. I represent Jack Kinsey, the mayor’s senior aide.”

  Kingston gestured to the man still standing in the entryway who, despite his impeccable charcoal gray suit, looked like the poster boy for Insomniacs Anonymous.

  A fact that surely hadn’t been lost on Sinclair, or anyone else on the team, all of whom were watching the exchange intently. “And how is it that I can help you and Mr. Kinsey, counselor?”

  Kingston offered up a smile that was all teeth. “You can start by calling the DA. My client has a boatload of information that’s going to interest you, and he’s willing to make a deal.”

  “That shit-sucking son of a bitch!”

  Vaughn glared at the breaking news update flashing over his laptop for a heartbeat, then another before slamming the thing shut. Given the level of the threat, he’d been a little surprised—not to mention a whole lot pissed off—that old Brad hadn’t paid up last night like he should have. But come the fuck on. Now his senior aide was singing to the police like a goddamn canary, and Vaughn was wanted as a “person of interest” in the investigation?

  He’d been sold out by Kinsey? The mayor’s handler?

  “Oh, screw this.”

  Vaughn shoved to his feet, prowling a path over the crumb-laden carpet in his stolen, fancy-ass apartment. So maybe he hadn’t predicted Kinsey’s balls would shrivel up and he’d go to the cops like a little bitch. According to the news, Aldrich wasn’t corroborating whatever intel Kinsey had given up, and anyway, Vaughn was still smart enough to strategize a way around this little moronathon.

  After all, he did still have a hell of an ace up his sleeve when it came to the RPD.

  An idea formed in his brain, taking shape with speed and enough malice to make his dick hard, and yes—fucking A, yes, this was perfect. Reaching for the latest burner phone in the sloppy pile of them on his kitchen counter, Vaughn moved back to his laptop and pulled up a cell phone number he’d squirreled away for a situation just like this one.

  Blast, meet past.

  The phone at the other end rang twice, three times, and Jesus, how typical that James would try to figure out “Unknown Caller” even though Vaughn knew there was a zero percent chance the guy could track so much as what country the call originated from.

  “Hello
?”

  “James! Long time no see. Tell me, how’s life with the lemmings?”

  Ah, the pause. Christ, it was so full of emotion and tension, it was practically goddamn delicious.

  “Vaughn. I’ve been wondering when you’d call.”

  “Wondering, or worried? You’ve got a lot of secrets locked away in that vault of yours,” Vaughn said, wanting to draw blood quickly.

  Surprisingly, James had grown thicker skin since they’d last spoken. “This isn’t really about me,” he answered, not even skipping a beat. Oh, fine. So the guy was prepared. Vaughn was still smarter.

  “Actually, it’s totally about you, you lucky bastard. But you can do yourself a favor and stop trying to trace this call.” He didn’t even need to check his signal-blocking software to know every move James was making right now. The guy was more reliable than Old Freaking Faithful. “I’m pinging my signal off every cell tower between here and Singapore. I figure that’ll give us a minute or two to catch up.”

  “Great,” James said. The telltale click that said he’d put the call on speakerphone followed, and ha! Just like clockwork.

  “Aw, speakerphone. Now it’s a party. Let me guess…” Vaughn paused for the sake of drama. “Your sergeant—who has a lot of skeletons in his own closet, just FYI—I’m sure he’s listening. Say hi, Sergeant.”

  “Vaughn.” Sinclair’s voice cut through the silence, and Vaughn grabbed the upper hand with a laugh that held no joy.

  “Ah ah ah, that’s the Shadow to you. And your girlfriend, Firefighter McCullough. It wouldn’t be a soiree without her.” Time to test the water a little. “She’s a little brash for my taste, but hey, I’m sure you’ve figured out a way to put that mouth of hers to good use.”

  “Screw you, asshole,” McCullough said, proving his point with startling predictability.

  Vaughn laughed. God, this was going to be all too easy. “So now that we’re all here, let’s get down to business. I’m sure you think you can catch me now that you’ve listened to Kinsey’s song and dance, but I’m here to tell you, that’s not going to happen.”