by Jenna Night
The sheriff nodded. “Where you stay is your decision to make. I’d probably make the same one. We’ll be following up on the information you gave Sergeant Cruise earlier today. And we’ll get the security video from Your Family Store and see if Daltrey or Bunker did go in there to buy a burner phone. If they did, we might be able to get some useful information. The clerk who rang them up could have noticed something helpful. Maybe we’ll be able to see them meet up with someone else inside the store.
“We’ll get a record on the calls on the pay phone at Rizzoli’s, too. I don’t expect that to help us find the bad guys in the short term, but if we can find proof of conversations between them and other members of their crime syndicate while they were fugitives from justice, that might help with substantial organized crime prosecutions later.”
“When you’re on the hunt for somebody, you never know which small detail will ultimately lead you to the capture,” Martin said.
The sheriff nodded. “Agreed.” She tapped her hat lightly against her leg. “I need to get back to work. We’re stretched a little thin with everything going on right now.” To Daisy she said, “I’m glad to see you’re doing all right. Get some rest.”
The sheriff said her goodbyes and left. And the admin got everything taken care of that she needed for Daisy to be released. A few minutes after she left, an orderly arrived with a wheelchair to take Daisy out of the hospital. Martin went to pull his truck up to the front entrance, then he hopped out and held her arm, ignoring her protests that she could do it on her own as she moved from the wheelchair to the passenger seat of his truck.
It was dark outside now, and fall was most definitely in the air. Moving from the warmth of the hospital into the cold outside had Daisy shivering until the air blowing out of the vents inside Martin’s truck finally heated up and took the edge off. Outside, the chill breeze sent dried leaves cartwheeling across the parking lot.
“Here.” Martin reached into the glove box, pulled out Daisy’s phone and handed it to her. “This was recovered at the warehouse. The jerk who grabbed you probably has your gun. It wasn’t found on the scene. Same with your pepper spray and cuffs.”
“Thank you.” The phone battery was dead and the screen was cracked. She plugged it into a charging cord on the truck’s console. It immediately started chiming with notifications.
“How about we turn that off for right now?” Martin said, taking a good look around before pulling away from the parking lot and into traffic. “Let your brain rest a little bit.”
Martin cared about her, Daisy reminded herself. He looked out for her. He was here right now when she needed him most. Shouldn’t that be enough?
She glanced over at his profile, visible in the light from the truck’s control panel and from the widely spaced streetlights they passed under on their way to the bail bond office. He had sharp, aquiline features and deep-set dark eyes. He might look intimidating to anyone who didn’t know him. At least until he flashed that boyish smile that always tempted her to smile back. Even when she didn’t want to.
She was stuck between two worlds when it came to Martin. She couldn’t turn off her feelings for him, and she couldn’t possibly give up their friendship in the hope that that would help her let go and move on.
“You’re right. I think ignoring my phone for a bit might be a good idea.” The people she was most concerned with hearing from would know that she was with Martin, and would contact him if there was an important reason they needed to talk to her. She powered off her phone while it continued to charge.
“Wait, did you just admit I was right about something?” Martin teased. “Let me hit the record button on my phone and say that again. Just so I can preserve the memory.”
Daisy rolled her eyes, even though she knew he couldn’t see her, and hid a grin as she glanced at the side mirror to see if they were being followed. Martin made a few random turns, also keeping an eye out for anyone trailing them. It wasn’t a secret that she worked and lived at the bail bonds office, but there was no reason to make it easy for anyone to find her precise location right now.
She glanced over at Martin again and saw that he’d quietly taken his gun out of his holster and placed it on the seat beside him where he could grab it in an instant. True to form, even when he was joking with her, he was also serious and aware of the situation around him. The combination could be frustrating and fascinating.
And she knew that leaning into him emotionally, relying on him for comfort and strength, would come with a price. She would pay it when all of this was over and they went their separate ways. But for right now, what other choice did she have?
She had bad guys to capture. And apparently these guys weren’t just going to try to avoid being captured by Daisy and skip town, like normal fugitives. They were going to try to kill her first.
* * *
Martin called Millie while he and Daisy were still a few miles out to let her know that they would be arriving outside the office’s back door shortly and to verify the office was secure and there were no clients in the building. He wasn’t taking any chances with Daisy’s safety. Millie told him there weren’t any customers in the building and that she and Alvis would immediately do a check of the entire building and double-check the locks on the exterior doors. With professional mob hit men coming after Daisy, they couldn’t be too careful.
Her assurances should have made Martin feel better, but they didn’t. Not because he doubted Millie, but because Daisy could have very easily been killed today. Or yesterday, for that matter, when bullets were flying in her direction on two different occasions. She had chosen a risky occupation for her life’s work. She had every right to do so, and the fact was, she was good at it. But the situation now was entirely different from anything she’d faced before.
This bounty hunt had started on the assumption that Beau Daltrey and Ivan Bunker had come to Montana because they thought it would be easy to hide here and it offered the additional benefit of being a long way from their home base in Miami. Now, it was looking like the situation was more complicated than that. The hit men apparently had a support network in Jameson. How could a Miami mob organization have a presence in town and no one in local law enforcement know about it?
Beside him, Daisy continued to keep an eye on the side mirror, watching for anyone tailing them. She was slouched in her seat, with her chin tilted slightly downward and the collar of her jacket pulled up. Like she was hiding. That posture was so unlike Daisy, who was normally on the edge of her seat, bold and ready to take on whatever challenge came her way. The last few days had taken a lot out of her. Understandably. Maybe he could convince her to stay home for a couple of days and rest. Let someone else do part of the legwork to find their two fugitives. He had to trust the cops to find the kidnapper from the alley. Unless it turned out that that slimeball was a bail jumper, too. In which case Martin would be very happy to help bring him to justice.
“I’ll call Cassie tomorrow morning,” Martin said. “Ask her to send Leon and Harry for a couple of days. Adding two more bounty hunters to the party might speed up the capture.”
“We don’t have any solid leads for them to chase down,” Daisy said. “It doesn’t make sense to ask them to come until we do. They don’t live over here and neither one of them has any kind of an informant network in Jameson. I know that’s true because any time they chase somebody over in this direction they ask me for my help.”
She had a point.
She rolled down her window to adjust the side mirror, and cool air rushed into the warm truck.
“I’m keeping an eye on the vehicles around us,” Martin said. “You seem glued to that mirror. Do you think I’m not doing my job?” he teased.
Actually, Martin was a natural at being vigilant. In the household he grew up in, he never knew when one or both of his parents would be set off by something that aggravated them. Sometimes, their tempe
r seemed to be triggered by absolutely nothing. But if he didn’t want to be in the pathway of some object thrown in aggravation, or if he didn’t want to get smacked by a grown-up looking to let off a little steam, he needed to pay attention and know when to get out of the way.
“It’s not that I don’t think you’re doing your job,” Daisy said. “It’s just that you’re not as good at it as I am.” She turned to him, flashing a slight, sly smile that lifted a heavy weight off his chest. “I am the person who originally trained you to be a bounty hunter, you know.”
It was true; his original training had come from helping her track down people when she was just starting out bounty hunting. But he liked to think he might have learned a thing or two on his own since then. There’d always been a bit of a competitive streak between the two of them. It was part of what made it fun to be around her.
They arrived at Peak Bail Bonds and he sent a quick text to Millie letting her know they’d made it. Alvis opened the door for them, standing beside it with a gun in his hand.
“You don’t look like you’ve got much trust in humanity right now,” Daisy commented dryly as she walked past him.
Alvis smiled at the comment, but Martin could see that the smile didn’t reach the older man’s eyes. And instead of looking at Daisy as she walked by, he’d kept his gaze on the dark tree line at the back of the building until everyone was inside and he could close and lock the door.
Millie and Alvis had found out the basic facts of what had happened today when Daisy called asking for some clean clothes to be brought to the hospital.
In the lobby, Millie gave Daisy a light hug, careful of her shoulder injury. “I’ve sent Justine and Steve home for the day and we’ve got everything closed up so it’ll be nice and quiet. I want you to just go on up and go to bed.”
In Martin’s opinion, that was exactly what needed to happen.
“I am exhausted,” Daisy said. “But before I head up to my apartment, we need to talk.”
She walked over to her desk in the office area and dropped down heavily into her chair. Martin felt his neck and shoulders tense with worry that she was going to push herself too hard as he followed her over in that direction, along with Millie and Alvis.
“I realize that you generally know what happened to me today,” she said to Millie and Alvis. “But what you might not know is the Miami mob that Daltrey and Bunker are connected with has put an assassination hit order on me.”
The couple’s faces, which had already looked concerned, immediately turned pale.
“I don’t know if that means only Daltrey and Bunker have been ordered to kill me, if there are other mob-connected people in town who will be attempting to kill me or if the mob is looking to hire local freelancers to do the job. I have earned my share of criminal enemies over the years, so they probably wouldn’t have much trouble finding someone who is willing to help them.”
Even though this wasn’t news to Martin, her words, spoken in a tired, monotone voice, turned his blood cold.
“This new development places everyone around me in a very dangerous position. Especially you, since I live and work in your building.” She cleared her throat. “If you want me to leave, I understand. The last thing I want to do is put you in any danger. And don’t worry, I have places to go.”
Like North Star Ranch, Martin thought. That was the horse ranch in Idaho where his boss, Cassie, lived. People had gone there for protection before.
Alvis crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, his voice gravelly. “You’re staying here.”
Millie nodded forcefully, her graying curls bouncing on her shoulders. “He’s right. We decided a long time ago that we weren’t going to let bad people intimidate us out of doing good.”
“Thank you.” Daisy’s voice sounded whispery, and almost as if she was going to cry.
Which made Martin feel like he could cry. Daisy was tough. If she was nearing her breaking point, she was really hurting.
She gestured toward the laptop on her desk. “Tomorrow I want to make sure I’ve got my entire confidential informant list updated. And then I want to start talking to some of the informants, find out who leaned on them and told them not to talk to me.” She glanced at Martin. “And I’m going to start with Louis at QuickStop.”
“You sure you don’t want to take a break for a few days first?” Martin asked her.
“That would give the bad guys time to rest up, too,” Daisy said. “Maybe regroup and get better organized. That would put us all in greater danger. No, I want to keep the pressure on them so they’re too busy looking over their shoulder to plan an attack.”
Yeah, Martin wasn’t going to be able to talk her into hiding out at the ranch. No way.
She stood up a little unsteadily. “Okay, now I’m ready to go lie down for a while.”
Martin hurried over to wrap an arm around her and help her up the stairs. Alvis and Millie followed.
While Alvis and Millie continued up toward their third-floor apartment, and the excited yips of their homely rescue puppy, Martin walked Daisy into her apartment and had a quick look around. Just to be sure it was safe.
She looked so tired that he resisted the temptation to sit down on her small sofa and keep her company for a while. Because really, he’d be doing it for himself. Instead, he wrapped an arm around her good shoulder and pulled her as close as he dared. When she dropped her head down to the base of his neck, her warm breath light against the surface of his skin, he felt a lump in his throat. He knew that despite her bravado, she was scared. He was scared, too.
He waited until she pulled away from him before he said good-night. He stepped into the hallway and made sure she locked her door after he closed it behind him.
He kept his own door open so he could hear if anyone walked down the hallway outside her apartment. They were dealing with professional assassins. Anything was possible. And he had no doubt that the dangerous situation Daisy had been facing over the last couple of days was going to get worse.
SIX
“This is him. This is the man who grabbed me in the alley.”
Martin leaned over Daisy’s shoulder to get a better look as she tapped the mug shot of a narrow-faced man, in his late twenties or early thirties, with a wispy goatee. The guy didn’t look at all familiar to him.
“So who is he?” Daisy asked, pointing at the photo while shifting her gaze from the tablet screen to the cop standing on the other side of the table. “What’s his name?”
As promised, the sheriff, as head of the joint task force with the police department, had made certain there was an array of mug shots for Daisy to look at first thing this morning. Martin had tried to get Daisy to allow the cops to come to the bail bond office with their photos so that she could stay home and continue recovering from yesterday’s ordeal, but she had insisted they come here to the sheriff’s department office. Her reasoning had been that any time they spent in one of the law enforcement offices offered the chance to see or overhear something that could help them in their pursuit of Daltrey and Bunker.
Detective Stu Gerber, who’d taken over the case, reached for the tablet and pulled it toward him, nodding to himself. “This would be Tony Valens. He’s been arrested for drug possession and possession with intent to sell several times down in Missoula. Did some time in lockup, then surfaced here about a year ago. He’s a known associate of a couple of dealers we’ve busted, but we haven’t had any solid reason to grab him and lock him up. Until now.”
Gerber called a deputy into the room and showed her the tablet. “Tony Valens.”
“All right, I’ll send this out to all the patrol units right now. Then I’ll look up his last known address so we can move on him.” The deputy gave Daisy and Martin a brief nod of acknowledgment before turning on her heel and leaving.
“So you know where to find him?” Daisy
asked.
“He probably didn’t go home after he grabbed you and then fled the scene at the industrial building,” the detective said. “Although you never know, offenders have done stranger things. But based on his criminal record and known associates, we’ll have some places to start looking. And then there’s the digital trail we can follow as soon as we track down his phone.” He nodded. “We’ve got a good chance of finding him.”
Martin’s heart started to beat a little faster, prodded by the hope that the quick capture of Valens would lead to the recovery of Daltrey and Bunker. At which point this nightmare would be over and Daisy would finally be safe.
Gerber sat down at the table and tapped out something on his tablet.
Impatient to have all of this wrapped up and over with, Martin remained standing. What he wanted to do was go out with the deputies who were—hopefully—about to bust Tony Valens. But that, of course, was not possible. And he reminded himself that the law officers were perfectly capable of doing their job without him. He just wished he could be there to help.
“Do you have any idea how Valens is connected to Daltrey and Bunker?” Martin asked. “Or any idea how Valens could be connected to the mob in general?”
Gerber finished what he was doing on his tablet, looked up and then leaned back in his chair. “There’s nothing specific in his record that points to any connection to organized crime. The main reasons we put him in the photo lineup are that he fit the physical description and he’s a known criminal. We suspect he’s dealing drugs in Jameson, but we haven’t been able to prove it. He’s got to have some kind of connections to get his product, but the idea of a big-time Miami organized crime syndicate having a connection to Jameson, Montana, is hard to believe. It’s unsettling to think they could have a presence here without us knowing about it. But maybe that is the source of his drugs.”
“Maybe all of this started recently,” Daisy said, her voice fainter than usual.