Kansas City Christmas

by Julie Miller

  Edward shook his hand, thanking him for his support, promising to think hard on his future career at KCPD. Then he went and joined his brothers in the observation room.

  Knowing that KCPD’s raid on Caldwell Technologies had been a bust didn’t help convince him he was ready to be a working cop again. Despite the lead from Jamal, and his pal Freddie’s vague description of a shapely woman in dark coveralls with long red nails and a tattoo on her wrist, Edward’s investigative instincts were off.

  On his advice, a warrant to search the CT labs had been secured. But Detective Grove and his crew had turned up nothing. The boxes of high-tech ammo Edward had found the night of the company’s holiday party had been cleaned out. Not only was Blake Rivers’s storage locker completely empty, but the shipping manifest he’d produced for Grove indicated that the order to ship the batch of “fishing weights” had come within the last twenty-four hours. He’d been behind every step of the way in his efforts to help his brothers and make good on the promise he’d made to his mother.

  Bring his father’s killer to justice and return John Kincaid’s badge to her.

  He hadn’t been able to save his own family from André Butler’s revenge—and he’d worked undercover at Butler’s side for months, had known him as well as he knew his own brothers. Why did he think he was cop enough to track down a stranger from his father’s past and make things right for what was left of his family?

  Maybe he’d better crawl back into his hole and let the professionals handle this.

  “Must have been a rush order for the holidays.” Detective Grove managed to keep his voice in a level tone when Edward’s would have been laced with a good dose of sarcasm. “Tell me, is there a large market for fishing weights this time of year?”

  Blake Rivers sat up straight in the interview chair beside his lawyer. “Different hemispheres of the world have different seasons, Detective Grove. The fish are biting in the South Pacific this time of year, and the industry there relies on our weights for their nets.”

  Unbelievable. The lying son of a bitch actually said that with a straight face. Edward scraped his palm over his jaw and shifted his weight off his right knee. What he’d found—what someone had nearly killed Holly for—wasn’t any kind of fishing equipment. Unless some South Pacific islanders were taking up shooting fish for dinner. Grove better ask the right follow-up question, or this quest for answers would wind up just as fruitless as the empty storage locker.

  Grove slowly leaned back in his chair. “You’re telling me that a company as advanced at Caldwell Technologies is spending money manufacturing chunks of rock to keep fishing nets from floating away?”

  “Nice one, Grove. Went right over his head.” Edward’s brothers were watching the questioning, too. Holden was shaking his head. “Do we really figure this Rivers is smart enough to be creating and shipping weapons and other technology through Caldwell Tech?”

  “Think of what the alternative would mean.” Atticus voiced what all of them were thinking. “If Rivers isn’t bright enough to pull this off, then the only other person with access to the research labs, shipping schedules and inventories is Bill.”

  “No way could Bill Caldwell be behind anything that would hurt Dad.” Sawyer voiced what they wanted to think. “He wouldn’t hurt Mom.”

  “Unless he wanted Mom for himself,” Holden suggested. Even Edward swung his gaze across the room and glared at that comment. But Holden wasn’t backing down from his older brothers or his opinion. “He’s been a widower for a long time. I never did like how fast he started putting the moves on Mom. Dad hasn’t even been gone a year. Now Bill’s at her house almost every night, or he’s taking her out to some fancy place. I caught him kissing her one time—Edward, you saw that. Back in October at the house?”

  He’d been clearing some of Cara and Melinda’s things from the cabin that day, taking them to their mother’s for a church rummage sale. It was the first time he could recall Bill Caldwell actually calling him “son.” He’d used that term again the night of the holiday party. “I remember.”

  “And it wasn’t a friendly peck-on-the-cheek kind of thing, either.”

  “She’s a grown woman.” Atticus attempted to insert a little reason into the emotions filling the room. “We can’t decide who she likes or doesn’t, just like we can’t decide how long she’s going to grieve or not.”

  “She’s not done grieving,” Sawyer insisted. “She still wears her wedding ring. She and Bill are just good friends.”

  Holden shrugged. “Does Bill know that?”

  The voices on the other side of the glass were getting a little agitated as well.

  Kevin Grove leaned forward. “You mean to tell me you’re not bright enough to know what goes on in your own department?”

  Blake Rivers shoved the paper work back across the table. “If the shipping order says fishing weights, then they were fishing weights. I don’t know anything about these…disintegrator bullets you’re talking about. Mr. Caldwell doesn’t pay me to design weaponry like that.”

  “But he does pay you to design fishing weights?”

  “No.”

  “Does he pay you to store boxes in your lab and not ask any questions? Because I’ve looked at your bank accounts, Rivers, and you’ve come into quite a bit of money recently.” Grove inched in even closer. “Are you the smart guy who’s running the show? Or the fall guy who doesn’t know he’s being used?”

  Edward wouldn’t have thought slow-talking Grove could push a suspect’s buttons like that. But he had Rivers squeezing his fists on top of the table. Rivers’s attorney whispered something into his client’s ear. Then Pretty Boy took a deep breath and relaxed his hands. “My trust fund was recently activated,” he answered on a calmer note. “That’s where the influx of money into my accounts is coming from, not because of some illegal payoff or smuggling operation.” Rivers turned his gaze toward the mirror. “Just because you have a renegade cop running around, sneaking into places he doesn’t belong and making accusations against my character, doesn’t mean you have a legitimate reason for holding me here. I know those Kincaids are out on some kind of vendetta, but I’m not the man they’re after. And if they don’t leave me alone, I may sue the department for harassment.”

  Renegade cop? Edward had called himself a lot worse.

  “Harassment? Doesn’t he know who—” When Holden jumped in to defend him, Edward put up a silencing hand. There was still something about Rivers that bugged him. Maybe it was just the fact that he’d been a jerk to Holly’s sister, but he wanted to study him until he figured it out.

  Unfortunately, they didn’t have that kind of time.

  “So, Detective Grove.” Rivers stood and buttoned his suit jacket. “Are you going to charge me with something, or am I free to go?”

  Grove stood on the opposite side of the table, his heavyweight wrestler’s size making more than two of Rivers. Edward nearly smiled. He could have worked with a man like Kevin Grove. Deceptively smart. Tough. Hard to rile and harder to intimidate. “Of course, you’re free to go, Mr. Rivers. I appreciate your willingness to answer my questions. Just don’t leave town until we settle this issue of the missing fishing weights.”

  Rivers’s cheeks reddened with a burst of temper and Pretty Boy didn’t look so pretty anymore. “I have plans to travel to the Bahamas for the holidays.”

  “Change them.”

  Grove shuffled his papers back into his file and left. A minute later Blake Rivers stormed out, followed closely by his attorney and a warning that this was neither the time nor the place to blow off steam.

  Feeling frustrated, weary—and like he just might want a drink—Edward inhaled a deep breath that seemed to take in all the air in the observation room. “This is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle without having any picture to go by. Caldwell Technologies, the disintegrator bullets, Holly’s attack.”

  Atticus came up beside him at the window. “Dad’s journals, the fact that Brooke’s
mother, Irina Zorinsky, isn’t the body we found buried beside her father.”

  Sawyer joined them. “The trail of dead bodies. Former operatives, all with the same tattoo or signature ring.”

  Holden wouldn’t be left out. “Liza’s eyewitness testimony places a woman, two of those dead operatives and an unknown man at the warehouse the night Dad was murdered.”

  “The pieces are all there, but we need some kind of reference so we know how to put it all together.”

  Edward felt all eyes looking at him.

  “You’re the leader of this family now,” his mother had said. It was a responsibility he hadn’t wanted. But he felt the weight of it squarely on his shoulders right now. His brothers had made headway in finding their father’s killer, but someone needed to close this case. Someone needed to end this unjust hell and give his family peace.

  Guess who?

  The idea of an ice-cold beer to numb his throat and a few of his brain cells was sounding better and better with each passing moment.

  “You guys will all be with Mom on Christmas Eve?” Edward asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good.” Edward turned and walked out the door. He had a pretty good idea of what needed to be done to make this happen.

  But it would upset a family dynamic that had been with them for years, one that had given their mother inordinate comfort these past months since losing the love of her life. And it might just cost these good men that he loved their badges.

  Edward wasn’t sure he had one to lose.

  BLAKE RIVERS’S SCOWLING FACE was not the one Holly had hoped to see when she stepped off the elevator of the Fourth Precinct’s fourth floor.

  “Oh, great. Just great,” he whined when his blue eyes locked on to hers. “You just made my day, lady.”

  “Blake.” Holly acknowledged him and stepped aside, eager to track down Edward and tell him about the DNA reports and that a supposedly dead woman was still very much alive.

  But Blake was in a temper about something, and walking away from him apparently wasn’t an option. Before she could get around him, his arm clotheslined across her chest and he backed her up against the wall beside the elevator. “You know, I’m trying to put my past behind me and lead a successful, normal life that my father would be proud of.”

  “Blake…” An older gentleman, most likely his attorney, tapped him on the shoulder. “I remind you, you’re in a police station.”

  Blake shrugged him off. “I’m not touching her.”

  Indeed he wasn’t now. But with his hand braced on the wall beside her head, the sleeve of his wool coat brushed against her hair. And the blockade of his arm and body meant she wasn’t going anywhere unless she pushed him aside. In fact, from an outsider observer’s point of view, it might have been a romantic stance between two lovers. If the words weren’t so vile.

  “It’s always some uptight prick like you who brings up the drugs and the battery charges—which were all dismissed—”

  “Pleaded out or reduced charges,” she argued. “Just because you got community service instead of jail time doesn’t mean you weren’t guilty.”

  “—and ruins anything good I’ve got going on in my life.”

  “I’m sorry you’re having a bad day, Blake.” Holly didn’t know why he was at the precinct office with a lawyer. She was pretty sure she didn’t care, unless he’d done something to Jillian again. And she was certain she had neither the time nor the desire to stand here and bear the brunt of his temper. She flattened her hand at the center of his chest. “The day my sister came home with a black eye after spending the night with you is the day you lost any kind of consideration from me.”

  She pushed. He didn’t budge.

  His lawyer had his hands up in the air, as though he didn’t know how to handle his client’s childish behavior, either. A frisson of panic quickened Holly’s pulse and she tried to peek around Blake to get the attention of the woman working the sergeant’s desk. But she was managing both the phone and a pair of visitors. Cubicle walls blocked her from the activity she could hear from the detectives’ desks on the opposite side.

  “Blake, we need to go,” his attorney advised.

  But Blake was on a tear and he needed to spew. “What kind of poison did you put into your sister’s head? She used to be fun.”

  “You mean she used to cater to your every whim. She’s healthy now. She stands on her own two feet. Jillian doesn’t need your money or any of the drugs you supplied her anymore.”

  He pushed against her hand. “Sounds like slander to me, lady. I’m not that man anymore. I like Jillian. I bought tickets for us to take a vacation together.”

  “She won’t go.”

  “You won’t let her!”

  The attorney tried one more time. “Blake, technically, you can’t go, either.”

  “Shut up!”

  All at once, Blake jerked back. Through a flurry of grunts and curses, she saw Edward behind him. Before Holly could do more than gasp, he had Blake shoved up against the wall, his neck pinned and his right arm trapped behind his back.

  Edward put his mouth right up to Blake’s ear. “You stay away from Holly and her sister. Understand?”

  “Who the hell—”

  “Understand?”

  After a sharp twist pushed his face into the wall, Blake nodded.

  Holly breathed a little easier after the unexpected rescue. “Edward. I’m so glad I found you.”

  But he wasn’t listening to her. She wasn’t quite sure what he was doing. Keeping Blake pinned with his body, Edward yanked up the ends of Blake’s coat and suit sleeves.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Blake demanded.

  Edward answered by grabbing him by the collar and turning him around. “You’re lucky you don’t have a tattoo on your wrist.”

  “Why would I…?”

  Edward’s youngest brother, Holden, startled her when he gently pulled Holly away from the confrontation. He pushed the elevator’s call button and the doors split open. “May I help?”

  Edward nodded and pushed Blake toward his attorney. “Get him out of here.”

  Holden grinned. “I’d love to escort them down to the parking lot.”

  Blake straightened his clothes as he swung around. Holly instantly felt a grip on her arm and found herself standing behind the protective jut of Edward’s shoulder. “I am reporting you for police brutality,” said the angry younger man.

  Edward opened the front of his coat. “Do you see a badge on me?”

  With Holden walking toward them, the lawyer pulled Blake inside the elevator. “At this point I’d advise you to shut your mouth, get over yourself and come with me.”

  Holden waved, a grown man delighted with the task given him. “See you later, bro. Doc.”

  After the doors closed, Holly grinned. “That lawyer actually said something I agree with.”

  “He should have intervened sooner.” The vise holding her wrist softened. As Edward turned to face her, he ran his hands up her arms to her shoulders, hunching forward ever so slightly to look her in the eye and study her face. “Are you all right? What about your head?” His warm hands moved to the sides of her neck and tenderly cupped her jaw. “You didn’t reinjure—”

  “I’m okay.” Holly reached up and wound her fingers around his wrists, trying to reach the concern she saw in his deep gray eyes and ease it from his expression. “I promise you, I’m okay. His arrogance annoys the heck out of me, but he didn’t hurt me.”

  He eyed her a moment longer, not quite believing her. “Good.” Then he leaned in and pressed a quick, hard kiss to her lips and pulled away before she could properly return the favor. “Now what are you doing here? I thought I told you to stay at home and rest.”

  Holly pulled his hands from her face and laced their fingers together between them. “You said if I went somewhere that the patrolman had to come with me. He drove me to the lab and n
ow he’s waiting downstairs with some friends of his.”

  He tugged on her hands to pull her aside as the elevator doors opened and a trio of uniformed officers stepped out. “Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to do my job when I’m worried about you?”

  Holly smiled at the hidden message she heard. He wouldn’t be so worried if he didn’t care about her. Maybe more than he even knew. But she’d called and deduced and tracked him here because she needed to talk business right now. Forcing him to admit that this was a real relationship growing between them would have to wait.

  Letting go of his hands reluctantly, she reached into her purse and pulled out the copies she’d made of the lab reports. “I brought these to show Kevin Grove, but I want you to see them first.”

  “What are they?”

  “Proof that Irina Zorinsky Hansford is still alive and that I think I know how to bring her out of hiding.”

  “No.” His gray eyes bored into hers. “I will not agree to anything that puts you in more danger.”

  Holly pulled away entirely and crossed her arms in a defiant stance. She was the one still wearing the official credentials here. “I wasn’t asking for permission. You can either work with me or you can work against me. Now I have a feeling that we’d do much better as a team, but I’ll let that be your call.” She wanted to touch him, throttle him, beg him to understand that the answers to an eight-month long investigation were within their grasp. “We can crack this case, Edward. We can put your father’s killer away.”

  His mouth thinned into a grim line. “Don’t do something crazy, Holly. I may not be able to protect you. I have a lead myself I want to pursue—”

  “On your own? Can I come with you?”

  “No. Absolutely not.” He raked his fingers through his hair, leaving a sexy disarray that her fingers itched to smooth back into place. “It’s personal. I need to do this on my own so it doesn’t come back to bite any of my brothers in the butt. Or you.”

  “If it’s something that can get you into trouble, you should let me see what I—”

  “No! I want you to go home, lock yourself in your apartment and be safe. Let me take care of this.”