by Rita Herron
She closed the cigar box, then dug through another box. Parker’s favorite football jersey, an autographed baseball, Boy Scout badges, then his certificates from the police academy and a framed photograph of his captain giving Parker an award.
Nothing odd there.
Marginally relieved, she moved to box number three. This one held a few of Parker’s books on criminal behavior, Parker’s guitar and the army jacket Petey had insisted he would wear some day. She pressed the worn leather to her cheek, nostalgia overwhelming her at the familiar smell of leather and Parker’s musky cologne.
Determined to stay focused, she folded it and set it aside, but a day calendar fell out of an inside pocket. Curious, she flipped it open and began skimming the dates and times, trying to understand the notations.
One initial kept popping out at her. D.M.
Meeting times and places scribbled in red.
D.M.?
The name of Parker’s phone log flashed in her mind.
Dasha?
Anger railed inside her as she counted the numerous times he’d met the woman. All late night rendezvous. All bars and motels.
Her heart throbbed painfully. She had been right.
Parker had been having an affair.
Maybe he’d planned to use the money in the bag to start his life over when he left her and Petey behind.
Chapter Eight
Colt showed his ID to the security guard at the gate and explained the reason for his visit. The guard radioed to the prison warden who cleared him to enter, and Colt rolled through the gates and parked in a visitor’s spot.
The prison was a maximum-security facility housing the more dangerous criminals, with a wing dedicated to death row inmates. It resembled a castle, had been built by granite quarried outside the prison’s east wall, and was situated on twenty-nine acres of land, enclosed by a double wire fence with razor ribbon on top.
Colt locked his weapon inside the dashboard of his SUV, then strode to the front of the visitor’s center and entered. He stopped at the check-in desk and showed his ID, then was issued a numbered, laminated pass to wear into the main building. An elevator took him to the visitation center where a guard led him to a spacious room filled with numbered individual booths to offer privacy. Today wasn’t one of the regular visiting days, so it appeared that he would have Rouse to himself.
Colt claimed the visitor’s chair and watched as a guard opened the door and led a handcuffed and chained hefty guy with a shaved head and muscles twice the size of his own toward the opposite side of the Plexiglas. Rouse’s leg chains rattled and clinked on the linoleum floor as he shuffled to his seat.
Scars crisscrossed the man’s beefy arms and hands, his nose had been broken recently, and some kind of tribal tattoo snaked along the length of his right arm and up his throat to his chin.
Colt was a big man but this guy towered over him, and probably weighed three hundred pounds. The cold, lethal look in his brown eyes also indicated the man was just plain mean.
“My name is Colt Mason,” Colt began. “I came to talk to you about Stover’s murder.”
Rouse simply glared at him as if Colt had interrupted something important he’d been doing. Maybe Rouse was planning which prisoner to kill off next. For a man on death row, what was one more murder on his hands?
“Two days ago, his wife was arrested for murdering a man named Lyle Rice.” Colt watched for a reaction, but Rouse’s body language signaled nothing.
“While she was in jail, her son, Stover’s little boy, was kidnapped.”
A brief twitch of Rouse’s eyelid confirmed he’d snagged the man’s attention. “I believe that Stover’s alleged murder/disappearance and this kidnapping are all connected.”
Rouse didn’t move a muscle.
“You confessed to murdering Parker Stover?”
Rouse finally reacted with a slight shrug.
“I want to know the details. Why did you kill him?”
Rouse grunted. “Listen, mister, can’t you read? It’s all in the file.”
“I know what’s in the file,” Colt said, jaw clenched. “You shot him in cold blood. What I want to know is the reason.”
“File says that, too.”
“It says you were paid, but not why the man who paid you wanted him killed.”
“Didn’t ask.”
Colt knotted his hands. “Who paid you, Rouse?”
Rouse made a clicking sound with his teeth. “Don’t know his name. Sent me ten grand in an envelope before the hit. Ten after.”
“You never met the person who ordered the hit?”
Rouse grunted. “Don’t work like that.”
Colt crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “In light of this little boy’s kidnapping, I thought you might grow a heart and remember something you forgot about at the trial.”
Rouse cut his gaze sideways for a second, but when he looked back at Colt the dead, cold look had settled back into his eyes. “Nope. Can’t remember what I never saw.”
Colt’s patience snapped. “So the person who hired you never indicated his motive for wanting Stover dead?”
“That’s right.” Rouse met his gaze. “Why should I care? Twenty grand is twenty grand.”
“Did it have something to do with a drug deal?” Colt asked.
Rouse slammed his fists on the table. “I told you, I don’t know.”
The warden was right. Rouse was one cold bastard.
Colt chewed the inside of his cheek. “How about Rice? Did you know him? Could he have been the man who paid for the hit?”
Rouse’s handcuffs clinked as he clenched his hands together. “Never heard his name.”
Colt removed a printout of Rice’s aliases and altered appearances, and held it up to the glass. “You may have known him by a different name. He’s used several aliases. Did some time for fraud. Stover was his arresting officer.”
Rouse growled. “Stover was a cop. Ain’t no one in here too worked up over his death.”
Colt racked his brain for something to offer Rouse in exchange for information, but what could he offer a man waiting to die? Especially a cold-hearted jerk like Rouse.
“So you’re saying another inmate might have framed Stover’s wife for murder and kidnapped her son as revenge? But why go to the trouble when the husband is dead?” He waited to see if Rouse would mention the money, but he didn’t bite.
Instead he flattened his gaze.
Colt barely controlled his rage at the man’s indifference. “Look, Rouse, if you know something about Stover or Rice or the person who framed Stover’s widow and kidnapped the little boy, spit it out. You may not care about his father or helping his widow, but think about the kid.”
For a fleeting second, Colt thought he detected a softening in Rouse’s bleak eyes. Then the look disappeared and the anger returned.
Rouse pressed his face closer to the Plexiglas divider, then spoke in a low voice. “You’re looking in the wrong place,” Rouse said stonily. “Stover didn’t get killed over no drugs.”
Colt frowned. “Then what was he into?”
A vein throbbed in Rouse’s forehead, accentuating a nasty scar. “Don’t know, but heard some guys talking. Somethin’ bigger’s goin’ down.”
“What?” Colt asked.
Rouse stood, chains rattling. “Do your job and find out. I got stuff to do in here.”
“Like what?” Colt asked, furious. “You’re just waiting to die. Maybe you could save your soul if you helped this child.”
“What are you, deaf?” Rouse shot him a condescending look. “I told you, find out what Stover was really doing and you’ll find the kid.”
SERENA STUDIED her husband’s day calendar, circling the dates and times he’d met with D.M. Most of their rendezvous took place at night in bars, strip clubs and motels. Most in seedy locations.
Why would Parker have resorted to having an affair? Had she not satisfied him in some way? Was her love not enough?
; Or had he just grown bored with her?
Stop jumping to conclusions.
Maybe D.M. was a man. But Dasha was not. Serena had heard her voice.
She could have been a drug dealer, though…
But why would the woman hang up when Serena had answered the phone if she wasn’t Parker’s lover?
The very idea that her husband had lied to her, that on all those nights while she’d waited on Parker, worried about him, trusted him, and loved him, he’d been screwing another woman, infuriated her.
Her phone jangled, and her pulse jumped. She raced to answer it, but checked the caller ID first. Another news station.
She’d already had three calls from newspapers across the States, and two from other clients. Disappointed, she let the message machine pick it up and paced to the mantel.
She studied the family photo of her, Parker and Petey, again wondering if the happy family she’d believed she’d had had been a figment of her imagination. When she’d lived on the streets, her experiences had taught her not to trust.
Yet she had trusted him. Had she been a complete fool?
Had Parker’s undercover work taught him to lie so well that he’d tricked his wife?
DM. Dasha.
What if this Dasha woman had kidnapped Petey? Perhaps she’d wanted a family with Parker and decided to steal the son that had been left behind?
Worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, she paced across the room again, contemplating that theory. But if Dasha had wanted what was left of Parker, why wait two years after his death to steal her son?
Her bones throbbed from fatigue and lack of sleep, but her mind refused to rest. Petey had been sheltered from the streets because she’d wanted to spare him the cruelty that others could inject upon those less fortunate or weaker.
Where was he now? Would he survive this ordeal? And if he did survive, would he be emotionally scarred for life?
COLT CHECKED IN with GAI as he neared Sanctuary. “Rouse suggested that Stover was investigating something other than drugs,” Colt said. “I’m going to track down Stover’s former partner and see if he can give us some information.”
“Good idea,” Gage said. “I’ll call my buddy with the Bureau and find out if he has an idea what Stover had stumbled into.”
“I looked into Rice’s former cell mates,” Ben interjected. “His first cell mate died in the pen. Second one was released on probation and has disappeared. A third one was killed two weeks ago in a boating accident off the coast of Florida.”
Colt frowned. “Two dead and one in the wind? Sounds suspicious.”
“Tell me about it,” Ben mumbled. “Slade offered to interview the other prisoners who knew Rice. Maybe he’ll come up with a lead.”
“Thanks. I’m headed to Rice’s house to search the premises. Maybe I’ll find something the cops missed.”
“It’s possible,” Gage commented. “Especially since they thought they had the killer in Serena and might not have dug too deeply.”
“Any tips from the hotline worth checking out?” Colt asked.
“Not yet.” Gage sighed. “We’ll keep you posted.”
Colt disconnected. Nearing Sanctuary, he took the turn toward the condo Rice had rented. Crime-scene tape glimmered beneath the moonlight as he approached, and he slowed, scanning the streets and perimeter for officers assigned to guard the scene, or curious spectators interested in a murder in Sanctuary.
Another possibility niggled at him. The murderer might return to the scene in search of evidence he’d left behind.
Or a lead to the money, if that had been part of his motive.
Colt parked down the street from the condo, tucked his gun inside his jacket for protection, then walked briskly between the rows of units, and circled to the back of the condo. A privacy fence encompassed a tiny yard. He scaled the wood railing, dropped to the bottom and crept toward the back entrance. Darkness shrouded the interior as well as exterior, but he removed a flashlight from inside his pocket and shined it on the lock, then picked it and slipped inside.
The temptation to turn on an overhead light or lamp to speed up his search was strong, but he couldn’t chance a passerby spotting it and calling the cops.
He shined the flashlight across the kitchen. An L-shaped design with built-in appliances, but no evidence of food or recent use. A Formica table and two chairs occupied one corner, minimal furnishings that looked unused, as well. No family photos, personal touches or signs of Rice and his life in clear view.
The man had been in hiding. Probably methodically planning how to worm his way into Serena’s life and exact revenge—and/or the money in the attic—from her. But his plan had backfired and he’d ended up dead.
A few bloodstains dotted the cheap linoleum, but Colt knew the worst was upstairs. Still, he needed information and began to dig through the kitchen drawers and cabinets, searching for a clue as to Rice’s plans and who might have killed him.
Maybe an old girlfriend’s number or something indicating a partner.
The kitchen drawers were stocked with cutlery, and the pantry held three cans of soup, a can of beans and some stale bread. The refrigerator was even more bare, the only item inside a piece of leftover pizza in a cardboard box.
He moved to the den, methodically scanning the room. A plain brown couch and chair, one end table and a small desk. He searched the drawer in the end table, but found it empty. The coffee table was stained with coffee cup rings, and a few magazines lay on top. The first three were finance magazines—had Rice used them as research to plan a new con?
The second magazine was a publication on coastal living featuring south Florida real estate.
Hmm, had Rice been planning a trip south?
He flipped through the pages searching for some indication of Rice’s interest, maybe property that had been circled, but nothing stood out. Except hadn’t Ben said that one of Rice’s former cell mates had died off the coast of Florida recently?
He crossed the room and rummaged through the top desk drawer, but the only items inside were an assortment of take-out menus. The bottom drawer was empty. A blank notepad lay on top with a pencil beside it, but there were no notes or names or phone numbers listed. He checked the trash, but it had been emptied.
He wondered about Rice’s car but assumed the police had impounded it. Maybe Gage could find out if they’d discovered anything inside. If he’d had a computer, they’d probably confiscated it.
Although Rice was a con artist, and Colt doubted he would have left a paper trail on his computer or evidence of his plans lying around.
Frustrated, he inched up the stairs. One bedroom, one bath. The double bed had obviously been stripped of the blood-soaked sheets and taken to the lab, but bloodstains still dotted the floor. He strode to the dresser and searched through the drawers. Socks, T-shirts, and three packs of unopened boxers were stacked neatly inside. The middle drawer and bottom drawers were empty. Moving to the closet, he noted three suits lined neatly in a row. He searched the pockets and linings in case Rice had sewn something inside, but again came up with nothing. Two pairs of dress shoes sat on the floor along with a pair of work boots.
Something about those boots niggled at his mind, and he checked the size. Twelve.
A frisson of unease hit him. The boot prints outside Derrick’s house had been a male’s, size twelve.
Size twelve was a common size, but still it seemed too coincidental not to examine further. He flipped them over and noticed leaves and dirt stuck in the grooves of the soles.
Was it possible that the kidnapper had worn these boots? If so, why bring them to Rice’s apartment?
Other suspicions materialized as he analyzed the situation. Rice was a con artist. He’d tricked dozens of people out of their life savings, committed fraud, altered his appearances, created aliases and disguises and elaborate ruses to thwart the cops.
Could he have faked his own death, then framed Serena for his murder?
SERENA WAS
ANTSY to hear from Colt. Maybe Parker’s killer had given him a lead.
Or maybe he’d find something helpful at Rice’s apartment.
The phone jangled and she clenched her jaw, praying it was the kidnapper, not another reporter. Or hopefully it was Colt with information. It trilled another time, and she raced over and glanced at the caller ID box.
Unknown.
She dropped her head into her hands and stifled a scream. It was probably a salesman.
Then again, it might be the man who’d stolen her son.
Nerves gathered in her stomach as she grabbed the handset. “Hello.”
“Mommy!”
Serena’s breath caught at the sound of her son’s tiny voice. “Petey?”
“Mommy, help,” Petey cried. “Please come and get me!”
She tightened her grip on the phone. “Where are you, honey? Are you all right?”
“Mommy…”
Footsteps pounded, then a loud bellow. “Give me that phone, kid.”
“Petey, where are you, honey? Tell me, baby—”
Petey wailed, and she realized the man had wrenched the phone from him.
“Who is this?” Serena shouted. “What have you done to my son?”
The sound of Petey’s cry reverberated over the line, and Serena’s heart shattered.
“Please,” she begged, “I’ll pay you, give you whatever you want, just bring my son back.”
But the phone went dead in her hands.
Serena sank onto the couch in despair. If the kidnapper wanted money, why hadn’t he answered her?
Unless he’d never intended to ask for ransom money or bring Petey back at all…
Chapter Nine
Could Rice have faked his own death?
Once the idea wiggled its way into Colt’s brain, it wouldn’t leave. If Rice were alive, it would explain why the police hadn’t found a body.
Other details ticked through his mind. Rice had been in Serena’s house so he could have stolen her underwear, and the kitchen knife, and lifted prints from a cup or glass to plant at his house. He also could have planted those emails on her phone.