Convicted (Entangled Ignite)

by Dee Tenorio

Long seconds ticked by while Carter seemed to consider it.

  “He’s not gonna go for it,” Trina whispered, shaking her head.

  Cade wasn’t sure, either. Normally, Carter’s club was more than forty members. For some reason, he’d come with less than ten and was now down to seven. This whole thing stunk of desperation. Whatever Shana took in that flash drive, Carter had to be counting on finding it to save him.

  “Fine,” Carter barked suddenly. “Give us a few to drag this asshole up there.”

  Trina gaped. “You’re seriously going to let him just drive away?”

  “First priority is getting Rick back alive. After that, we’ll see.”

  “We’ll see what?” Damn she was beautiful when she wanted to throw things at him.

  He grasped her chin and pressed a fast kiss on her lips before snatching the rifle from her hands. “Watch the viewer, make sure they don’t try anything. If one of those guys moves or shows up on any view but the east, blow ‘em to kingdom come.”

  “What about you?” There was still some worry on her face, the old worry, that he’d been too scarred by his past. Oddly enough, the painful memories weren’t blocking his survival instincts right now. He actually felt somewhat back in his element. Maybe because he understood what he was protecting. The lines had blurred too much before, watching friends he considered brothers die no matter how hard he fought for them. This time the lines were brutally clear. No one, especially not Frank Carter, was getting past them.

  “I’m fine, I swear.”

  They both heard the thump outside, likely Trelane getting dumped like a bag of bricks.

  Trina eyed him grimly, blowing out a breath as she turned her face back to the viewer. He watched her shift from one view to the next before nodding at him. Field clear.

  Slowly, nosing the gun out first, he opened the cabin door. As expected, Trelane, blood running down his face and just about everywhere else Cade could see, lay on the porch. No serious blood pools, though, which he decided to take as a positive sign. Directly in front of him stood the unlikely mastermind.

  “Evigan.” For a small guy, he was definitely powerful, like a rabid pit bull, especially in one of his rages. But his strength wasn’t what made him dangerous. No, it was when you looked into his vicious, rat-like gaze and saw the mind working behind it. Today, he had the extra touch of a barely scabbed gash over his nose and deep purple bruising all over it. “I thought we were planning to play nice here.”

  “I am. If I wasn’t, you’d be playing dead.” Really, really well.

  Carter weighed that a moment before apparently deciding to disregard it. “Tell me where that bitch and my son are.”

  Distasteful as it was to answer, Cade could keep a deal. “I have no idea whatsoever.”

  Carter’s beady little eyes narrowed. “You fuckin’ with me?”

  Not even if he begged. “I drove her down to Riverside. Where she went from there, I have no idea.”

  “You… you…” Carter’s mottled color turned dark, nearly purple as he all but vibrated like a volcano about to go off. Roaring, he threw himself at Cade, grabbing the end of the rifle, trying to wrestle it out of Cade’s hands. Surprisingly, he just about did it, until Cade shoved the stock forward, unbalancing the smaller man and cracking him in the face with it. The skin on his forehead burst, blood splashing on the gun butt, but Carter didn’t let go.

  Not until the ground beneath them literally rolled, sending them both sprawling and choking on the flying earth. Trying to clear his vision, another delayed crash split the air just before the door to the cabin opened and Trina stood there like an avenging angel of some kind. She’d put her pants back on, thank God, but both hands were extended out, each with a 9 mm, hunting for a possible target in the front yard. As the dust blew out of the way, all he could make out was the upside down truck with an uncomfortable number of bodies laid out in overturned earth and—hopefully—moaning all around it. He wasn’t sure. Both of his ears were still ringing.

  He must have managed an incredulous look of his own though, because Trina simply hitched a shoulder. “They moved.”

  Sure they did. Cade used the rifle still in his hand to roll himself back to his feet.

  “You fucking bitch,” Carter groaned, staring bleary-eyed toward the yard. He wasn’t moving, though, not after having crashed through a 4x4 railing bar. It almost seemed unfair to go over there and pin him with the rifle to his neck, but Cade had never really cared too much about fair. He cared about right.

  He leaned his weight onto the gun, making sure Carter wasn’t going anywhere. “Who’s your connection, Frank?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Cade heard the snick of the blade shuttling from the band on Carter’s wrist, just barely catching the man’s hand before he could sink it into Cade’s kidney. Instead, he arrowed it down into Carter’s own thigh. Carter screamed in pain, his body bowing awkwardly to one side. Cade noted the large smudge of blood on Carter’s flank, seeping through the shirt.

  “I guess you didn’t hear me. How are you getting the drugs?”

  Carter lurched up, face red and eyes bulging, but this time, Cade just dropped his weight entirely on the man’s wound and slammed the rifle across his chest again. When that didn’t settle the bastard, he reached back and twisted the short blade. The smaller man finally gave, dropping to the wood with a heavy thud and heavier panting breaths.

  “Shana’s already in custody. Whatever she took from you, you’re not getting it back so you might as well tell me what it was before I start dragging this little pig sticker up to your balls.”

  “Everything!” Carter finally yelled. “She took my records, my skims, my connections, my fucking bank accounts, all right? I can’t even set up my next pickup without that fucking thing. She has everything!”

  “Skims?” Trina kept the guns out, but she did look down at the two of them. “You mean you’ve been shorting the payments to the Colombians? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  Frank nodded, panting and weak as Cade always knew him to be. Without the upper hand, he was nothing more than a mewling dog. “Three million, but I earned that shit!”

  “Like hell you did. Who’s the buyer?” she yelled.

  It took another slam from the rifle, but Carter finally coughed it up. “Blu-Wood, fuck!”

  Cade frowned. “Blu-Wood the construction company? They make prefab houses or something, don’t they?”

  “It’s a front,” Carter groaned. “It’s owned by the Scarapacci family.”

  Well, there was the connection the feds were looking for.

  Trina dropped her guns entirely. “You know what? Let him go.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because that bastard is planning to go state’s evidence and I’m not going to watch decent agents die protecting his ass from the fucking mob and a bunch of pissed off Colombians. He made his bed, let him die in it.”

  Cade looked down at the vaguely smiling visage of Frank Carter, wishing he could do just that. Instead, he crashed his fist into the man’s face and had to settle for the less satisfying crunch of bone as he sent him into unconsciousness. “He won’t get it. They’ll break those records, get to that shed Shana was talking about. He’ll be lucky to get life instead of the electric chair once this town is done with him.” Cade wiped his brow. “What about the others?”

  “Five by the truck, I don’t see them getting up anytime soon. The last two showed up by the north wall. I think they’re paint stripes now.” She didn’t sound the least bit sorry about it.

  He got up, that much at least settled and headed back to Rick. “Get my kit.”

  Trina ran back into the cabin while he knelt in front of his friend.

  Rick watched him through one badly swollen eye. “Sorry I got you into this mess.” The words were mumbled through swollen, battered lips.

  “Not yet, you’re not,” Cade said, carefully taking stock. It wasn’t good. “Your arm’s definitely broken. Your hand
looks pretty fucked up, too. At least three fingers snapped. Probably the cheekbone, too. Shit, kid, what’d they work you over with, a lead pipe?”

  “Aluminum bats. And a car.”

  Which led to the internal bleeding question Cade was already moving to check. Rick’s loud groan and discolored abdomen didn’t bode well. “We need a life flight.”

  Rick’s hand gripped Cade’s, not hard, but with urgency. “You really got Shana out?”

  He nodded. “She’s safe. The boy, too.”

  Rick’s eye closed, relief in his struggled release of breath. “I’d hoped. Knew if anyone had got her out, it was you. When I found out about Red Dog… Couldn’t drag you in farther. I’m sorry.”

  “Make it up to me and don’t die, okay?” Cade took the kit Trina arrived with and sent her back in for the transceiver. “You live and you can be the best man at our wedding.”

  Trina handed him the device, waiting precious seconds while he called in on the emergency frequency. Then she handed him a pair of latex gloves. “Just so you know, that’s a crappy way to propose, Evigan.”

  “Hey, I let you blow up my cabin, got you your case settled, and even got you a weaseling snitch desperate to tell you whatever you want to hear.” He snapped them on, already looking for the best place to start. “That’s the best proposal a cop ever gave, period.”

  She grumbled, but he saw the smile on her face as she donned her own gloves. He decided to take it for a yes.

  Rick made a surprisingly derisive noise. “Could you get back to saving my life, please? Before you two make me want to kill myself.”

  “Oh, you’ll live,” Trina declared, though the tremor in her voice undermined her crankiness. She looked nervously back to Cade.

  Provided they could get him to the hospital and find out what all the injuries were, Cade had to believe his friend would come out of it okay. For now, they had to keep hope going.

  Trina went back to her pep talk. “There’s no way you get to die and leave me feeling guilty for thinking the worst of you.”

  “It’s fair. Thought the worst of you for years.” Rick’s better eye opened again, training on her. “Tried to get you out. I didn’t leave you there, Katy. I never meant to leave you there.”

  Cade forced himself to ignore Trina’s reassurances. He was busy stabilizing Rick’s neck with a stiff collar from the kit. He didn’t have much for the obvious breaks. He considered an injection for the pain, but with the internal bleeding, who knew what kind of damage that might cause. Emergency dispatch came back with a twenty-minute ETA, then all he could do was swear. Repeatedly.

  “Could be worse,” Rick noted dryly. “You could be on undocumented property, surrounded by uncuffed, possibly dead murderers and who knows how many illegal weapons.”

  They looked around at the mess on the grounds.

  “Yeah, that’s gonna be a problem,” Trina agreed.

  “Told you you had rage issues,” Cade murmured.

  “Not helping, Evigan.”

  Rick sighed and closed his eye again. “Fuck it, let the state police sort it out.”

  She bit her lip. “Got any plastic slip-ties? I can secure them while you keep an eye on Rick.”

  “And who will keep an eye on the rest of them while you’re stringing them up like fish? You stay here, I’ll check on them.” If he happened to forget to check if any were breathing, who would blame him?

  “Like that’s any better…” She kept going, saying something about both of them working together from now on, but Cade pretty much stopped listening. He had the oddest feeling. Like laughter bubbling in his chest. It was only when he noticed Trina was smiling at him, her cheeks that pink he so rarely saw on her face, that he realized he was actually doing it. Laughing.

  “You hit your head in the blast, didn’t you?” she asked, matter-of-fact, her hand gently patting Rick’s shoulder.

  “Not even once.” It was just that, for the first time in he didn’t know how long, he knew everything was going to be okay. There was going to be a lot to work out—and shit, the paperwork was going to make his eyes bleed—but he knew it. It was a feeling he never thought he’d have again.

  Katrina watched him, a slow smile spreading across that beautiful mouth. She must be able to feel it, too, he decided, because there was relief in that smile. And love. He basked in it, hoped to God she felt how much he loved her back. If she didn’t, well, they had all the time in the world for him to show her. All the time in the world…

  Epilogue

  “So, do I call you Sheriff Staff Sergeant or Staff Sergeant Sheriff?”

  Cade rolled his eyes as Trina fussed with his tie.

  “You could always call him Sergeant Pepper,” Rick called helpfully from the living room of the house they’d built last year. Brand new, with not a scrap of baggage or bad memories.

  “You two are this close to losing your invitations,” he grumbled.

  “Yeah, fat chance of that. You have no idea where they are.” She finally finished trussing him into his dress uniform. Not the deep blues he’d known for so long, but a dark green coat that felt much the same.

  “I have no idea why we have to dress up, it’s not the goddamn presidential inauguration.” He couldn’t complain too much, though. Getting Trina into a dress, especially this blue one that hugged her lush figure and swished playfully around her calves, was almost worth the rigamarole.

  Her eyes twinkled at him as she stepped around him to start out of their bedroom. Two years together and he still liked the sound of that. Their bedroom. Their house. Their anything. He followed her, the distaste at being in the public spotlight returning almost immediately.

  “The town wants to give you this award, Sheriff,” Trina reminded.

  “Staff Sergeant Sheriff,” Rick corrected as they made their way into the living room, where he waited with his cane. It bugged the shit out of him that he still needed a cane from time to time, but they all knew it was only a matter of time before even that was gone. He wore his dress uniform, too, but even with his new scars, the pretty boy looked better than Cade did.

  Things hadn’t been easy for Rick the last two years. Surgery and physical therapy to rebuild his leg had been bad enough, but letting Shana go had taken the hardest toll. She’d agreed to testify in the federal case against the Scarapaccis, provided she and Jimmy be taken into Witness Protection. It was best for her to leave the nightmare of her life in Marketta behind, Cade knew, but Rick took it hard. More than once, he’d worried it would be the last straw, but his friend had surprised him. He’d fought his way back, started over along with the rest of them.

  “So you’re going to go out there,” Katrina continued. “You’re going to take your office the way you promised you would and you’re going to like it.” She picked up her purse off the end table, fidgeting with the strap before putting it on.

  “You hate this dressing up shit more than I do,” he reminded her. His Trina lived in jeans and leather and damn if he wanted her any other way.

  “Yes, but I like that this town is doing its job and saying thank you to the two of you.”

  Nice of her to forget she was getting her own medal.

  It was still funny to him that she’d wanted to settle here in Marketta. It had been rocked by the events that had ripped Wheels of Pain out of business and out of their lives. She’d had no real love for the town, but she did have a dedication to helping it heal. Without the stain of her uncle and the truth of what she’d been doing with Rick becoming a much-publicized fact of the investigation, people had finally opened their hearts to her. She’d been wary, of course. Trina was always wary, but little by little, she’d discovered this place could truly be her home.

  After Frank had spilled his secrets to both the DEA and the feds—his decrypted flash drive doing most of the work—layer after layer of corruption had been uncovered throughout the county legislature, meaning a lot of people had to step in and help put the town back to rights. It still stung that
Frank had disappeared into federal custody, but his testimony had at least given them a roadmap for cleaning out the infrastructure.

  It wasn’t perfect and it had been a damn lot of work, but they were all finding their feet again. Cade was proud of what he saw in the town now, of what it could someday be.

  That didn’t mean he needed a fucking parade. “All I did was win an election.”

  “And trust me, they’ll be griping about tickets and graffiti and whatever annoying shit they can come up with tomorrow, when you officially take over your title. Today, the two of you are getting your asses in the truck and driving me to get my stupid medal so I can wave from the back of a fucking float like an idiot. Then, you’re buying me a steak dinner.” She strode out of the house, he guessed to wait by the truck.

  “Admit it,” Rick said, rising carefully to stand next to him. “You rile her up just so she’ll shake her ass like that on the way out the door.”

  Cade grinned. “Wouldn’t you?”

  He locked the door behind them, stepping off the porch and into the sunlight. It was warm on his face, soothing away the few traces of nightmares it used to cause. The breeze blew and sweet mountain air tickled his face.

  He put on his hat and smiled. “Ooh-rah.”

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  About the Author

  Dee Tenorio has a few reality issues. After much therapy for the problem—if one can call being awakened in the night by visions of hot able-bodied men a problem—she has proved incurable. It turns out she enjoys tormenting herself by writing sizzling, steamy romances of various genres spanning paranormal mystery dramas, contemporaries and romantic comedies. Preferably starring the sexy, somewhat grumpy heroes described above and smart-mouthed heroines who have much better hair than she does.