Ella walked to the SUV, and the driver held the door for her. Sam grabbed one of the bags at his feet. “She’s even more gorgeous in person,” Sam commented. “The pictures don’t do her justice.”
“Hands off. She’s mine.”
“I got that loud and clear by the way she looks at you. Is she moving to Montana?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. We haven’t gotten that far yet.” Frustrated, Gabe changed the subject back to the matter at hand. “How long is this going to take?”
“If she’s got the evidence she says she does, not long at all. We’ll wrap this up tomorrow, once everyone is in custody. Charges will be filed, and depending on how many cut deals and plead guilty, it’s only a matter of letting the system work over the next couple of months. Her part will be done once we arrest everyone, and she turns over the evidence.”
“Will she have to testify?”
“Depends on the evidence and if he pleads guilty or innocent. Her testimony will sway any jury to convict.”
“She told you what happened.”
“The whole gruesome tale. I talked to her for about an hour this morning. I’ll go with you to her place and look over all the evidence. We’ll all go to the police station in the morning and question her uncle.”
“Is this a problem for you, working this case with the NYPD?”
“They’ll get the credit for the bust. They’re happy I’m handing this to them, especially since it involves several corrupt cops.”
“Is she in danger?”
“Not with you by her side, knocking out bad guys. Plus I’ve brought some other agents as added security.”
Gabe stared at the big man, putting the boxes of evidence into the back of the SUV. “Good. I don’t want anything else to happen to her.”
“Come on, let’s get this show on the road. I’ve got a bad guy to take down.”
“I kind of hoped to do that myself,” Gabe admitted.
“We need to do this by the book. We’ve got a long list of charges against him. I want to nail his ass for every single one of them.”
“Gabe,” Ella called from the car. “Are you guys coming, or what? Let’s go.”
“Bossy,” Sam teased, smiling at him.
“A woman on a mission.”
“Let’s see if we can get this done.”
“I’m pretty sure she can do anything she sets her mind to.”
“When you’ve got her kind of money, I don’t doubt it.”
Gabe never really thought about her money in terms of anything bigger than the massive ranch she owned. He thought of her working for the business, but not in terms of the wealth she held.
“It’s not a competition. You two live very different lives,” Sam said, reading his expression.
“Get out of my head.”
“Screw it on straight. She is who she is. You are who you are. If you two really have something together, all the rest doesn’t matter, unless you make it matter.”
“I live in Montana. She lives here.”
“Why can’t you live in both places?”
“The ranch, for one.”
“Seems to me your brothers are taking care of that while you’re away. It’s not like that has to be a onetime deal.”
“They have their own lives.”
“Yeah, but you’ve got men who work for you to oversee things when you’re gone.”
“Seriously, you two, time is ticking by while you two have a tea party and play catch-up on the tarmac,” Ella called out to them again; this time she stood next to the SUV, hip cocked, hands on her hips.
“God, she’s something.” Gabe stared, a slight smile on his face. Why couldn’t they live in both places? Maybe it wasn’t the way he pictured his life, but she wasn’t exactly the kind of woman he pictured living that life with him. Maybe neither of them had to give up everything to be with the other? Maybe all they had to do was find a middle ground they could both live with?
Ella picked up Gabe’s hand again and checked the time on his watch. The press set up twenty minutes ago. The podium and microphones were in place on the steps of the courthouse. Reporters eyed the SUV with the black-tinted windows, wondering who might be inside. Well, they’d come for a show and she planned to give it to them. She’d revel in seeing her uncle’s face when Sam arrested him.
“I cannot believe your uncle is holding a press conference, naming you the suspect,” Gabe said for the third time.
She smiled and shook her head. “I can. This press conference is as much to name me the suspect in my sister’s death as it is to draw suspicions away from him even more. Too many people are asking questions. Reporters are wondering why none of my friends believe I killed my sister, or can come up with a single occasion that we fought, let alone argued about something.”
Gabe held up several recent local papers. “Your friends defend you vehemently and are asking for further investigation.”
“My friends and the people they know have a lot of influence. If they make enough noise, someone in the police department is going to question Detective Robbins’s investigation. My uncle can’t let that happen.”
Gabe nodded toward the window. “The bastard is ready to start the party.”
“Good thing I brought the fireworks.” She put her hand on the door to exit, but Gabe reached across and stopped her before she got out.
“Are you sure about this? How do you know he’s not armed?”
“I don’t.” Ella opened the door and stepped out.
She smiled at Gabe’s descriptive string of swearwords, but didn’t wait to find out if he’d really, “Stuff her pretty ass back into the SUV,” as he’d threatened.
“You can play with my ass later,” she teased.
Gabe growled under his breath, but shot back, “Damn right I will as soon as I get you alone.”
“Looking forward to it. Oh, and honey, if it comes to it, I’ll bail you out again.”
Gabe laughed. “Damn right you will.”
Several reporters spotted her coming. They swatted at their camera crews to turn in her direction. Photographers snapped pictures of her and Gabe.
Her uncle stood at the podium, looking over the eager crowd, though he hadn’t spotted her yet. The family lawyers, Detective Robbins, several other high-ranking officers, and the medical examiner stood around him, looking important, waiting to take their turn to prove she’d done the unthinkable.
“Ella Wolf has been missing since Lela’s death—” Her uncle began his string of lies, but she cut him off.
“I’m not missing, Uncle,” she called out across the lines of reporters with their recorders in hand.
She took Gabe’s hand and led him straight through the throng to her target. With six-foot-two of solid muscle beside her, she stopped next to her uncle.
The shocked look on his face disappeared so quickly she wished she’d snapped a picture to replay it later and gloat. That was probably the first time his face contorted into any kind of honest expression in years. He’d miss his dermatologist in prison. She wondered what he’d really look like in another year when his face unfroze. Maybe she’d send him a gift basket of wrinkle cream from her new cosmetics line just to piss him off.
She had to give him credit, he recovered from the shock quickly. “Ella.” Her uncle’s eyes darted to the reporters hanging on every word. “The police want to talk to you. They know you killed your sister.”
“You paid them to falsify evidence and point the finger at me. You killed her.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, my dear. You’re confused.”
“I stood outside the library door, and I saw you murder my sister.”
“Ella, why would I do that? I loved her like my own child.”
“You wanted what will never be yours. You tried to take it once before, but just like this time, you failed. You killed my father, you greedy son of a bitch, and Lela found the evidence to take you down.” She took the recorder from her pocket,
pushed play, and set it on the podium in front of the microphones.
“What happened to your wife?”
“Phillip Wolf killed her . . .”
She let the recording play to the now hushed crowd of reporters standing stunned with their recorders in hand raised to capture every damning word.
“Those are lies. You fabricated the tape. You killed Lela.” Sweat poured down the side of his face. His mouth drew back in a tight line. He grabbed her by the front of her coat and hauled her up against his chest and got right in her face. His eyes were filled with fear and fury. “You’re sick. You need help.”
“This isn’t the first mistake you’ve made.”
Gabe swung his arm down onto Uncle Phillip’s hands and broke the hold he had on Ella’s coat. Sam pulled her back a few steps for safety, and Gabe grabbed her uncle with one hand and punched him in the face with the other, sending him to his ass on the ground in front of everyone. “Keep your fucking hands off her.”
Photographers and reporters crushed in, snapping photos of her uncle on the ground holding his bleeding nose and asking questions over one another.
“I’ll have you arrested for assault,” her uncle bellowed through his cupped hands.
“Won’t be the first time today,” Gabe shot back, making Ella laugh.
Agents rushed forward and took her uncle into custody, bringing his arms behind his back and arresting him.
“Read him his rights.” When the agent finished, Sam said, “You’re under arrest for the murder of Lela and Stuart Wolf, a string of other murders, fraud, embezzlement, art theft, and any number of other things I have yet to unravel.”
“Detective Robbins will tell you she killed her sister. The rest is her drug-induced imagination.”
“Look around you, Uncle, Detective Robbins and some of his cohorts are also under arrest. Wait until they get him in an interrogation room. He’ll probably sing like a bird about what you did, how much you paid him to do your bidding, and name names of all the other people you’ve got on your payroll using my money.”
“You have no proof.”
“Lela discovered you killed the airplane mechanic’s wife and set up our father’s plane crash. I bet it pissed you off that we weren’t on that plane too. I found the so-called accidental deaths of Wolf employees.” His eyes went wide with undiluted fear. “Bribes. Embezzlement. Falsified records.” She made a tsk, tsk sound and shook her head. “You’ve been busy. I wonder what I’ll find in the penthouse vault.”
Uncle Phillip ducked his head like a mad bull and tried to come after her again, but the FBI agents restrained him. Camera flashes went off like a strobe light, blinding him and everyone around them.
Ella grabbed the recorder off the podium, handed it to Sam, and turned her back on her uncle. She walked toward the car with a throng of reporters crushing in on her, yelling questions, Gabe by her side, an FBI agent covering her back, and her uncle yelling obscenities.
A woman fought her way through the crush of people and blocked her path. Ella stopped. Gabe stepped in front of Ella to protect her.
“Wait. Please. You can’t do this.”
“Who are you?” Gabe asked.
“I am Rose. Phillip’s girlfriend.”
“Rose, leave now,” her uncle barked.
Rose, short for Rosalind. Her mother’s name. Her father had called her Rose affectionately, but she never permitted others the privilege reserved only for her beloved husband.
Something about the woman bothered her. Ella stared, not caring that it made the other woman uncomfortable. She resembled her mother, with her dark hair hanging in waves past her shoulders to the middle of her back. The wind whipped and made her coat flap open, revealing a gorgeous green beaded dress Ella remembered her mother wearing long ago. Eyes narrowed, she scowled at her uncle, then looked back at the brunette, studying her closer. Yes, the resemblance was there, but it was more the clothes, the jewelry. All her mother’s. He’d found a way to re-create what he’d lost.
Could his jealousy toward her father have run deeper than his success? Maybe he’d killed her father over a lot more than money. The thought turned her stomach. Another item to add to her uncle’s list of sins. You shall not covet your brother’s wife.
“You’re sick, you know that. You’ll get what’s coming to you. I’ll make sure of it,” Ella vowed.
Her uncle’s eyes blazed with rage that she’d discovered yet another of his secrets. Again, she ignored his obscenities.
“Wait. You can’t do this. What will I do now?” Rose asked. “Phillip, you swore you’d take care of me.”
Ella turned to Sam. “Arrest her. She’s wearing my mother’s clothes and jewelry. Get a search warrant for her place. I bet you’ll find more of my mother’s things there.”
“I haven’t done anything,” Rose pleaded.
“We’ll see about that,” Ella shot back. If Rose was associated with her uncle, no doubt she was guilty of something.
Agents moved the press back nearly fifteen feet to give them space.
Gabe wrapped her in his arm and close to his side and walked her to the car. He slid in beside her. The agent closed the door and stood guard, though that didn’t deter the reporters and photographers from yelling out more questions and taking photos of them through the dark glass, since they were now well away from the FBI agents completing their arrests.
“He’s really pissed.”
“How’s your hand?” she asked concerned about his bruised and swollen knuckles. She pulled the makeup wipes out of her sister’s purse and wiped away the smeared blood.
“Not so bad. I’ll live. Unfortunately, so will your uncle.” Gabe flexed his hand, stretching and clenching his fingers before he settled it on her thigh. She covered it with hers.
“You have a real gift for breaking noses.”
“I got into a fight when I was about seventeen with this really big dude at school.”
“Let me guess, over a girl.”
“Can I help it if she preferred me to the dickhead? Anyway, no matter how many times I hit the guy, he kept coming at me. I punched him hard in the face, broke his nose, and it stopped him cold. Lesson learned. Someone comes at you, pop them in the nose. Hurts like hell and bleeds like a son of a bitch. Makes it hard to breathe with all that blood pouring out your nose and dripping down your throat.”
“Okay, yuck. Stop talking.”
“Good idea.” He turned into her, cupped her face, and leaned down, kissing her with such tenderness and love that tears stung the backs of her eyes. “I am so proud of you.”
“I’m not done yet. There’s still so much to do.”
“It’s getting late. Aren’t you tired?”
“We’re heading over to the penthouse once Sam gets here. He’ll execute a search warrant and try to find the evidence from Lela’s murder.”
“Your uncle is one twisted sick bastard.”
“Tell me about it. Want to see my house?”
“Is it anything like your ranch?”
“Our ranch. You own part of that now, you know?”
“I’m still getting used to it.”
“You belong there.”
Gabe went quiet on her. He always did when even the hint of their future came up, as if he didn’t want to say anything to upset the balance between them.
The look on his face when he saw the jet, the lights when they flew over New York City, the SUV and the man she’d hired to drive her. Just a small glimpse of her life and already he felt uncomfortable and out of place.
“The penthouse is nothing like the ranch. It’s extravagant, which is why Uncle Phillip loved it. My father used it to impress business associates. My mother liked to dabble in decorating. Lela and I grew up there and to some extent simply didn’t notice that we lived differently than others.” Gabe didn’t say anything. “You’ll like the staff—Mary, Lee, and Felicity.”
“You mentioned Mary.”
“She’s been with us for years.
Amazing cook. Great listener. Doles out advice with dessert.”
That made Gabe smile. “Did you pour your heart out to her about boys who did you wrong?”
“Always.”
“Let me guess, she told you they were all wrong for you and if they didn’t like you it was their problem.”
“No. She told me to stop being so picky and orchestrating everything to my liking. Boys like to be in charge. I’m not very good at that.”
“I got that when you made me sign a contract for part of your ranch and told me to take care of the thousand head of cattle that started arriving this morning, along with my brother and the cattle I already bought.”
“Are you complaining?”
“Not at all. I got what I wanted, right?”
She nodded, but wondered why it didn’t sound like he was very happy about getting what he wanted. She wanted to ask him, but Sam opened the car door and got in.
“The detective is in custody and trying to make a deal before your uncle sells him out. We’ve got the lawyers who executed the update to the will in custody. They will make a deal and probably pay you a huge settlement for withholding information. We’ll have to wait and see if they get disbarred. Thanks to your evidence and IT guy, we’ve got several of your executive staff and a couple managers in custody.” The car pulled into traffic and headed toward Central Park. “Once we cleaned house, you’ve got fourteen employees we’ve linked to illegal activity connected to the embezzlement and another nine we found to be loosely connected, but they didn’t necessarily do anything illegal.”
“In other words, they followed directions from the fourteen when they should have questioned what they were asked to do.”
“In most cases, they went along in order to keep their jobs. They felt coerced to help.”
“Either way, they’re all fired.”
“That’s up to you,” Sam said.
“Great. I’ll take care of it. Probably need to bring extra security to the office and make some kind of announcement to the staff.”
“No doubt the press and paparazzi will be at your building before we get there,” Sam pointed out.
“Great,” Gabe said, not looking happy at all.
“I’m sorry. I should have thought about that.” Ella touched his arm and stared up at him. “Hey, you’ve punched out two guys today, why not a few more paparazzi to add to the mix.”
At Wolf Ranch Page 25