Beth Kery

by Sweet Restraint

  “Do you want me to move to a closer position to the entrance?”

  Shane shook his head. “Patterson should have her in his sights once she leaves. I’ll call you as soon as I know what’s going on.”

  Laura’s cry of mounting fear was cut off by the pain from Moody’s knife cutting farther into her skin.

  “Stop struggling or I’ll finish you off here and now.”

  Laura went completely still, sensing the truth of his words not only in the viciousness of his tone but the sensation of warm blood seeping down her neck.

  “That’s better. I’m going to ease up with this knife, but don’t get any ideas. I have a gun, as well.”

  Laura gasped for much-needed air when he released her slowly.

  “Now we’re going right back inside the storage facility,” Moody stated from behind her.

  Laura’s eyes sprung wide and she cried out sharply in pain when he suddenly tightened his hold on her again, the knife pressing to the cut he’d already made on her throat.

  “Drop the knife.”

  Laura flinched when she tried to lower her gaze to see who had spoken and encountered the barrier of Randall Moody’s knife. She forced her eyes down without moving her head. When she saw a stranger wearing a gray overcoat pointing a gun at them she struggled against Moody’s hold. Moody might be nearly sixty years old, but he was still strong. His forearm pressed back against her larynx, choking her, even as the knife dug farther into the side of her neck, the pain making tears rush down her cheeks.

  “Drop the gun or I’ll cut her throat.” Moody shifted her in his arms so that Laura almost completely covered his torso and head, blocking him from a potential bullet from the man with the gun.

  “I said drop the gun or she dies,” Moody shouted more forcefully.

  Laura winced in a silent agony of pain when the sharp edge of the knife dug deeper into her neck. She wanted to howl in frustration and fear when she heard the metallic sound of the man’s gun hitting the gravel.

  “Let her go. I’m a federal agent. I’m not the only one here. You’re not going to get away,” Laura heard the other man say.

  Moody’s choke hold tightened on her at the same moment she felt his hand moving behind her. He was trying to get at his gun! Something told her she had to move.

  Now.

  She elbowed Moody in the gut as hard as she could with her left arm. He grunted in pain and cursed, his body instinctively dropping to guard against the blow. His brutal hold on her gave slightly, allowing Laura to move in the opposite direction from the knife that sunk its teeth into her throat.

  A shot sounded, the noise sharp and precise in the cold night air. Laura panicked at the sudden increased pressure of Moody’s arm against her throat, choking her. Moody dragged her backward with him. She fell on the gravel pavement, gasping in pain at the impact. It was the fullest breath of air she’d taken since Moody grabbed her.

  Moody’s arm slithered down her chest. The knife slid across her coat and landed with a dull metallic sound on the gravel. She heard footsteps running toward her and tried to sit up. A wave of vertigo hit her and she fell back, her elbow hitting the gravel hard.

  “Call for backup and an ambulance.”

  “Shane?” Laura called out, immediately recognizing that voice. She tried to sit up a second time, this time with more success.

  “Keep still for a minute, baby,” Shane murmured. He knelt next to her. A vision of his handsome face creased with concern swam before her eyes. He gently moved aside the collar of her blouse, wincing when he saw the blood at her neck.

  “It’s not deep. I’m okay,” Laura assured him, her voice gruff from Moody’s strangling hold. It felt like heaven when Shane gently took her into his arms, settling her against his thighs. He dug in the breast pocket of his coat and withdrew a neatly folded, crisp white handkerchief.

  “Shhh, I’m sorry,” he muttered when he pressed the cloth to her bleeding neck and Laura cried out in pain. “I’m trying to stop the bleeding.”

  “It’s a scratch. They bleed the most,” she quoted him. God, had it really just been this afternoon Shane’d uttered those words to her after being shot in the shoulder? She cast her gaze behind her, seeing Moody’s legs sprawled on the gravel.

  “Is he—”

  “He’s not going to be threatening you again,” Shane said. “Ever.”

  Laura peered up into Shane’s face. He looked ashen but the surrounding ambience from the city and the lights in the parking lot allowed her to see the fierce gleam in his blue eyes. She saw his pulse throbbing at his throat just above his black overcoat.

  “Your shoulder . . . are you all right?” she asked.

  “My shoulder’s just dandy,” he muttered before he leaned down and pressed his lips to her temple. “You moved away from him at just the right moment, baby. I was getting closer in the shadows of the warehouse but I couldn’t get off a shot with you so close to him. Just stay still. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “Inside. There’s a room full of audiotapes and other evidence,” Laura said, her voice scraping at her raw throat. “I was going to call you about it, so you could come see it, but then Moody—” She paused, inhaling raggedly. God her throat hurt. “Take the card key and the password in my pocket. Maybe whatever is in there will vindicate Joey.”

  He kissed her again, this time more urgently.

  “The only thing I’m going to do right now is hold you until the ambulance gets here. Then I’m going to hold you some more. Whatever’s in that storage locker can wait. This can’t,” he murmured gruffly before his arms tightened around her waist. “We’ve waited long enough, Laura.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The sound of Laura’s sobs echoed in Shane’s ears even when Mavis got up and abruptly shut off the tape recording. He blinked when Mavis shoved a cup filled with water along the surface of the table. He was hardly aware that Lorenzo, Mac, and two other agents from the Organized Crime Squad got up and filed out of the room.

  “Drink, Dom.”

  He picked up the cup and swallowed automatically, not even one hundred percent sure of what he was doing. The sounds of a twenty-year-old Laura’s screams of agony as she was beaten by Huey Mays while a group of men observed—one of them her uncle and guardian—echoed repeatedly inside his head. Through a haze of shock and rising nausea, Shane wondered if he’d ever be able to shut out those cries of pain and betrayal.

  “Stay away from her neck and face, Huey, and don’t scar her. There’s no need to mar so much beauty unless she makes it a necessity. There’s no better way to bring a woman around to your way of thinking than to threaten her with a disfigured face, you know,” Moody had said to someone during Laura’s beating, his tone pleasant and conversational. You’d have thought he was chatting with friends while they watched a DVD.

  But scarring Laura’s beautiful face hadn’t been what forced her into the prison of a marriage with Huey Mays. It hadn’t been what so effectively held her tongue all these years.

  “Shane?” Mavis asked cautiously.

  He started out of the poisonous memories and tried his best to focus on Mavis.

  “It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known.”

  Shane just stared at her blankly for several seconds.

  Mavis sighed unevenly. “I know. That hardly makes it any easier.”

  Neither of them said anything for several moments, both of them staring at the tape recorder. The reels, notebooks, and photos Laura had found in the storage facility contained more than enough evidence to incriminate Randall Moody and the other members of the theft ring that hadn’t yet been caught.

  There were ten men in total, eight of them either current or former CPD officers and one a former convicted felon named Rudy Baker, who Shane was guessing Moody used for some of the dirtier jobs, two of which were likely forcing Derrick and Peter Vasquez off the road into an embankment and another taking a shot at either Shane or Laura at her gallery several days a
go. They’d found and arrested Baker in a posh Wicker Park condominium, a residence worth well over half a million dollars. Baker owned the condo despite the fact that according to the public record he’d never worked more than a year solid in his entire forty-seven years of existence.

  The tenth member of the gang had been Telly Ardos. They’d issued a warrant for Ardos’s arrest, but he’d obviously been forewarned of impending events by Vince Lazar and was currently nowhere to be found.

  “The devils keep checks on each other, don’t they?” Mavis murmured, shaking her head. “All those years Moody was master-minding the criminal activities of this little group of corrupt cops, the mob was keeping tabs on him, taping all his secret meetings, photographing them. Eddie Mercado must have had Lazar steal Moody’s notebooks, as well. Lazar was a double agent, carrying out the orders of the mob and also working for the cop theft ring. Why do you think Eddie Mercado kept such close tabs on Moody and his activities?”

  “It’s just like I told you,” Shane muttered gruffly. “The mob probably was involved because of the amount of money Moody was bringing in, not only from the theft ring, but from extorting bookies, drug dealers, and other petty criminals. They were probably taking a cut from Moody and wanted to ensure that they knew about everything he was involved in so they wouldn’t get shortchanged. Thus, the surveillance.”

  Another tense silence ensued.

  Mavis cleared her throat uncomfortably. “I’m . . . a . . . I’m guessing from your reaction to the tape just now you didn’t know the ultimate threat they used to bring Laura Mays to heel was to threaten your life?”

  Shane’s eyes clamped shut when Mavis’s words brought back the blistering memory of Derrick Vasquez’s harsh voice.

  What about your boyfriend, Shane Dominic, Laura? Did you think I didn’t realize you’ve been letting him fuck you? Would you like to have his blood on your hands? No? Then quit your squealing and listen to how it’s going to be from now on.

  Laura had sobbed then on the tape, the sound cutting at Shane even deeper than her former desperate pleas for Derrick to intervene, her curses at Huey, and her subsequent grunts and cries of pain and stark betrayal as she was beaten.

  After they’d threatened her with Shane’s death, she’d gone quiet except for those muffled, wretched sobs.

  That had been when Mavis had gotten up and shut off the tape.

  Laura’s reaction to what Derrick had said had been marked enough that Shane doubted men as vicious as Moody, Mays, and even Derrick himself would have had any qualms about reminding her of that particular threat whenever she stepped out of line. After Moody had ordered Derrick’s and Peter’s deaths, Laura must have been literally terrified into silence.

  “I never felt like I knew Derrick Vasquez as well as I did Laura’s father. I may have had a suspicion about him a time or two in regard to the theft ring, but I would have never expected he’d turn on a family member in such a . . .” Shane trailed off and shook his head. “. . . vicious manner. Derrick was her guardian. Laura was his own flesh and blood. He always seemed so protective of her.”

  “Yeah. I’m sure from the testimony she gave here yesterday she’d long ago stopped considering him as ‘family,’ even though he did stand up for her there at the end when he discovered Moody and Mays were using her little brother to threaten Laura in addition to blackmailing her with your life. No wonder she was so adamant that Joey Vasquez couldn’t be involved. Who’d want to believe that one brother was colluding with the other brother’s murderers? Her refusal to accept the evidence came honestly.” Mavis shook her head, disgust writ large on her face. “I’m glad you killed that rat bastard Moody.”

  Shane grunted in agreement. He’d checked Randall Moody’s pulse two nights ago while they’d waited for the arrival of the ambulance but he’d never found one. He wasn’t surprised. He’d been aiming for the base of the man’s skull—an area that was the farthest distance from Laura and also one of the most lethal places if pierced.

  Shane was typically an excellent shot. Once Laura had moved her head away from Moody’s he’d seen a clear target and never hesitated. He couldn’t risk merely injuring Laura’s assailant for fear of his muscles seizing up or him jerking back in pain, cutting Laura’s throat in the process.

  The only shot that would do was a lethal one to an area of the brain that shut down all muscular control.

  Instantly.

  “I, uh . . . I guess Laura is still pretty upset about her brother being on a few of those tapes, huh?”

  Shane nodded grimly. “She refused to talk to me yesterday when I told her.”

  Mavis stood from where she’d been perched on the edge of the table. “She’ll come around, Shane. People do and say things under stress they don’t really mean. Surely she’ll come to see that her brother’s involvement wasn’t your fault.”

  “After her parents died, all she had left was Derrick, Peter, and Joey. Derrick betrayed her. Moody had Peter killed . . . and Derrick, too. It’s no wonder she’s bitter over the fact that her last family member was in league with the devil, as well.”

  “She’s got her sister-in-law and her niece. She’s got you, Dom.” Mavis sighed when he didn’t respond. Shane wasn’t feeling so confident at this point whether or not Laura considered him as being someone she wanted in her corner.

  After they’d bandaged her neck at the emergency room two nights ago and they’d both given their statements about the evidence in the storage room and Moody’s death, Laura had agreed to stay with him at his condominium. They’d lain in his bed and held each other like two survivors of a catastrophic storm. She’d slept for a while, but Shane had remained awake and vigilant, thanking God for the thousandth time for the precious gift of her life.

  He kept replaying those moments in his head as he’d stealthily made his way along the dark shadows of the storage warehouse, restraining himself from rushing, from moving in haste and panic and possibly attracting Moody’s attention. The lights in the parking lot revealed the look of terrified shock on Laura’s face, the gleam of Moody’s knife . . . the blood running along the blade and down Laura’s neck. He honestly couldn’t have said what he would have done if Randall Moody had slit her throat right there in front of him.

  The only thing he knew for certain is it wouldn’t have been pretty.

  When Laura had awoken later that night she’d finally spoken to him about what had happened to her so many years ago. She’d told him about how Derrick had discovered her listening in on their meeting at Sunny Days and how they’d cowed her by threatening the lives of people she loved. She explained that the men had all turned to that patriarch of that cadre of thieves and extortionists, Randall Moody, silently asking what they should do with her. And Moody, in his infinite sadistic wisdom, seeing how Laura cringed at the sight of Huey Mays, had proclaimed that she would be tied to them through Huey.

  Laura had told him bitterly about Derrick Vasquez protesting at the suggestion that she marry Huey Mays. There wasn’t a one of them present who didn’t know the depths of Mays’s depravity and seediness, especially when it came to women. But Derrick’s protests had only seemed to fuel Moody’s decision to “give” Laura to Mays.

  Moody and her uncle Derrick had been vying for the ultimate leadership position of the gang. Laura’s discovery of their illegal activities by overhearing them at the door one night after she finished cleaning up at Sunny Days had been Moody’s excuse to trump any aspirations Derrick Vasquez may have had for heading up the group. Besides, Moody wanted her under his number one soldier’s control—Huey Mays—versus leaving her in his adversary’s domain.

  “They arranged a marriage the following day, if that’s what you want to call that farce of a ceremony,” Laura had muttered as she lay in Shane’s arms and dawn had peaked around the blinds of his room. “They said the man who presided was a priest, but I swear he was either demented, drunk, or both. I have no idea to this day if it was legal.”

  “What better
candidate for the job at hand? And it wasn’t legal,” Shane had assured her as he had smoothed his palm over her soft hair. “If it was done under duress—which it clearly was—it wasn’t a legal proceeding.”

  Afterward she’d slept again for a while. All the questions Shane had about how Huey Mays had treated Laura for thirteen years, living in the same house, had burned on his tongue, but he’d never asked her because she hadn’t offered the information.

  And maybe he was afraid of what her answer would have been.

  But when she’d awakened she’d examined him in the pale morning light. “You’re wondering what it was like between Huey and me, aren’t you?”

  He’d merely met her gaze and he knew she’d seen the answer in his eyes.

  “It wasn’t as bad as you’re thinking, Shane,” she whispered shakily. “The beginning was the worst. Huey played the part Moody wanted him to play. He’d bully me. He’d beat me on Moody’s command. He’d . . . force me to have sex with him several times . . . in the beginning.”

  Shane had winced when she’d said those words.

  “But it . . . it wasn’t like what you’re thinking, Shane. He couldn’t. He couldn’t do it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Huey couldn’t . . . perform unless a woman played up to his image . . . unless she screamed how wonderful he was. Once I got over my initial fear of him after he’d beat me in front of those other cops, he . . . he didn’t seem to know what to do with me, to be honest with you, didn’t know how to react to a thinking, breathing woman who used deodorant and had to rush to get to school or work in the morning. Women for him were just a stimulant, like liquor or drugs. He’d never lived in the same house with one. Fortunately, his reaction to the bizarre situation Moody forced him into was to essentially ignore me. In regard to Moody, Huey and I became unintentional partners. Both of us needed Moody to believe that Huey dominated and controlled me, that he kept me at heel. I wanted Moody to be convinced so I’d drop off his radar screen. The more he believed I’d come to accept my fate and had even grown attached to Huey, the less he’d consider harming the people I loved. I did my best to convince him I no longer cared about you, although I could never be sure if Moody truly believed that. Huey played along for different reasons . . . to keep up his image with Moody and the men who looked up to him.