Dimitri Gideon.
The cops, the ones reveling at this moment, made sure to walk them in the front of the building, and that would work to their advantage.
Hopefully, Delilah would be watching the news.
Hopefully, she’d see this.
Greyson doubted that they were going to be getting their one call anytime soon.
As soon as they were flaunted in front of the media, the cops more than happy to tell them that they were arrested for murder, they were led to a room.
And shoved into chairs.
Greyson and Dimitri were left there.
And it began.
“What the hell?” Dimitri stated.
Greyson was beginning to work it out in his head. This was why it wasn’t adding up. This was why it was being screwed with.
“We have bodies that someone jacked with the TOD. We have a tongue that led us to a hooker’s name, and gave us a piece of the puzzle,” he stated.
Dimitri listened.
He tried to stay calm.
This was bad.
“We couldn’t figure out why Zachary Lipton was so worried about someone seeing him at The Hidden Pearl. Now I know why,” he said.
Dimitri wished he’d share it.
“We were set up.”
Greyson didn’t get to say anything more. The doors opened, and the Commissioner came in with the Captain of Homicide.
“Mr. Croft, you were found illegally in the home of a murdered woman with your name on a bag and your associate’s initials on the wall in the dead woman’s blood.”
Yeah, he was aware.
“Only, the person who set this up didn’t know that Ethan told you we were working on something,” he said.
The man nodded.
“Give me your wrists.”
He unlocked the cuffs.
“What’s going on?” Leo asked. He and his captain, Horatio, were taking some major heat.
“We are working that case with the bodies in the bags,” he stated, telling him everything. He started at the beginning, and he read him in.
Detail by detail.
It took twenty minutes, and by the end, both men were sitting there and confused as hell.
“What do you think is going on?”
“That we’ve been the end game,” he stated. “We thought we were trying to get justice,” he stated, “but I think we were played from the start.”
At the knock on the door, Riley and Delilah came in, and she was in a suit and heels. She had that look on her face.
“I’ll vouch for them,” Riley stated. “They’ve been secretly helping me with this case. Whoever killed the women must have known they were.”
Yeah, everyone got that.
“You have no evidence to hold my clients,” Delilah stated, sitting between the two men. “Charge or release.”
“Hold your horses,” Leo Markum stated. “Mr. Croft was filling us in. Who are you?” he asked.
She laughed.
“I’m Attorney Delilah Fleur, and they are my clients.”
Leo looked over at his detective.
“And she’s your…?”
“Wife.”
He laughed.
“Jesus. This can’t be easy. You’re married to the woman defending public enemy number one in Vegas?”
Yeah, he was.
“They didn’t do it.”
“Son, chill. We know they didn’t. We have someone following the Crofts. Director Aria Goodwin put an agent on them. We know they were inside all-night, and then there.”
Greyson had never been so happy to be tailed in all of his life. He was sending Aria a fruit basket.
Their bacon was saved.
“What we need to do is figure this out,” Leo Markum stated. “In here, you have some cover.”
“What happened?” Riley asked.
“Nine-one-one received an anonymous call about Mr. Croft and Mr. Gideon killing someone.”
Fuckers.
Greyson was going to kill whoever was behind this.
“As soon as that came in, we braced for it. Whoever is trying to frame you thinks they’ve won. You need to figure this out. Now.”
He was aware.
Greyson knew enough that it was going to be that one thing that kept tripping them up.
“We need to make some calls,” he stated, pulling out his phone.
“To who?”
“Call Neptune. Do you have video conferencing equipment there?”
“Yes, in the office. There’s a computer.”
He called the business and got his brother on the second ring.
“It’s me.”
“Grey, what the hell is going on? We just saw you and Dimitri being dragged into the LVPD. Are you okay? I’ve called Delilah.”
“Yeah, we’re good. I need to video call you, and I need a waitress who works there. Her name is Karina.”
“Okay,” he said, motioning to Steele to get her.
“What’s up?”
He told him about the bodies, the bags, and the initials on the wall.
“That’s a total setup.”
“I know. It was over-the-top. Had whoever did this left the tag off the bag, and the initials off the wall, it would have looked legit. This made it look like a frame job.”
Steele came in with Karina.
It was time.
Delilah pulled a tablet out of her bag and handed it to Greyson. He hung up on Dante, and called back on the tablet, right to Dimitri’s computer.
“Karina, we need your help,” he said, addressing the woman directly.
“Mr. Croft, what’s going on? I’ll help in any way I can. We all will.”
Good.
That was perfect.
He knew this wasn’t going to be Zachary Lipton. Someone had tipped him off with the setup. This was going to be about the things they couldn’t answer.
The odd questions.
Someone was hooking up with call girls and trying to be on the DL with it, and they couldn’t answer who was Tommy Shepherd. That was going to be the keys to this.
Once they figured that out, it was wide open.
“I need you to look at a picture. Is this the man who was in there with Nate Collins? I think this is going to be Tommy Shepherd. Picture him with hair, a mustache, or changing his appearance.” Greyson knew he wouldn’t just look like he did every day. He wouldn’t be that dumb.
She waited for Dante to open it.
When he did, she stared at it.
“Oh wait! If I picture him disguised, that’s him. If I add in some of the other things I saw him wearing, it’s him. His face structure is the same. The guy would always come in wearing a mustache and toupee. I never thought he’d wear a disguise. I’m sorry I didn’t notice it was him when you showed me him the first time.”
Bingo.
Greyson opened the same file so they could see it.
It was a picture of Jeffrey Raye.
“Dante, pull up Zachary Lipton’s financials. I need any BIG money transfers in the last month.”
He did.
“What are you saying, Croft?” Horatio Lewis asked.
“I’m saying that eighteen months ago, who came to town?” he asked.
“The new police commissioner.”
“His wife was missing, and he started a new job working for the LVPD as the head cop.”
“Okay,” Leo stated. “I need more.”
“Our first victim disappears then.”
“Okay,” Horatio stated. “I don’t see what’s going on.”
“Our victims were washed clean with the same sanitizer used in your morgue. That victim, Susie Clark, went missing then, and she stayed missing.”
“But why?”
“I think this has been about me the whole time. Jeffrey Raye is a master manipulator. He plays a game. He’s been gunning for me from the get-go. He hired Thomas Christ to mess with my wife. He set up the attack on her brother, Gage, and to try to destroy Riley by s
mearing his reputation as a cop. Riley has worked for me, and he was my inside man.”
“Off the record,” Delilah stated.
The men nodded.
“Then he put into play Heath Spencer, who tried to frame my company by leaving drugs behind.”
They listened.
“Heath came after Emma and stabbed her in the chest. She nearly died.”
Greyson laid it all out.
“Jeffrey Raye has been playing a game. Each time we meet, he tries to take me down.”
“Okay, and?”
“It’s been a distraction. He’s had that body for eighteen months. I’m willing to bet that he’s playing Harold.”
The commissioner sat up straighter.
“The call was anonymous, but he did say his name was Harold. I didn’t tell you that.”
“Harold is dead. I didn’t tell you that. He had his throat cut a couple of days ago.”
They sat there.
“Who would kill Harold, and still mascaraed as him?” he asked.
Dimitri knew.
“He’s sick. He’s leaving bodies, and he knew Claude Black, the man he hired to kill Poppy, had used that method to dispose of the bodies.”
“Off of the record,” Delilah stated.
The commissioner was confused.
Greyson had no choice.
He told them about Claude Black being hired. He left out that he’d killed him and his companion.
He liked being out of jail.
Off of the record or not.
“Zachary Lipton used Claude to cleanup. I’m willing to bet that Jeffrey found out that Zachary was heading to Neptune to pickup women, and he began trying to embed himself in that life to use it later.”
Dimitri didn’t understand.
“What do you mean?”
“We couldn’t figure out why Harold was picking up women at your club, at the no-tell motel, and then the school. What if Jeffrey Raye was the man who picked up the call girl at the school and the motel and used the guise of Zachary’s guy’s name to hide his identity. He pointed me right at Zachary, and I fell for it.”
He did.
The man was an evil genius.
“He knew I’d chase the obvious trail, and I’d eventually find out that Zachary was trolling at Dimitri’s club. He assumed I’d find out about ‘Harold’ trolling and connect it to Zachary.”
The commissioner was appalled.
“He has issues.”
“We know Claude Black couldn’t possibly have killed anyone past the three bodies. He’s dead. Raye screwed-up. He got lost in his own mess.”
Greyson would bet on it.
Dante cleared his voice.
“I have money transfers.”
The commissioner and captain didn’t ask how he got access to a person’s private financial records. The less they asked, the better.
“And?”
“We have two. There’s one last week on Thursday.”
“That’s a couple of days before Claude Black went after Poppy,” Dimitri stated.
“When was the other?”
“Yesterday.”
“How much?” Dimitri asked.
“Five hundred thousand,” Dante offered.
“This makes Zachary look like he hired two hits,” the commissioner stated.
“Holdup,” Curtis stated.
Greyson waited.
“I heard bank transfer, and I was itching to get my fingers into it, Dad. I’ll have something in five seconds. It’s running.”
He knew what.
“He’s tracing the login,” Greyson stated.
There was a beep.
“It came from a private cell phone. While our person transferred it, he didn’t use a burner phone. I have the number,” he offered, rattling it off.
“That’s Jeffrey Raye’s,” the commissioner stated. “It was on his business cards that I threw out.”
BINGO.
“We have a man who is framing another man so I’d be focused on him, all to take me down. Those women were part of his plan. All the while, I thought he was coming at me half-assed. I thought I was winning. Those were the games. This is the game. He’s planning something, and he wanted me in jail.”
That’s when it hit him.
“The second deposit,” Dimitri stated before he could. “If you and I are out of the way, who would he go for to make you really bleed?” he asked.
He knew who.
“Emma.”
Dimitri began dialing Chris.
She couldn’t leave Sky Villa.
NO MATTER WHAT.
* * * G R E Y S O N C R O F T * * *
Sky Villa
Thursday Noon
Emma had the TV off, and she, Poppy, and Chris were working. Something about this case was bothering her, and she wanted to dig.
Yeah, something was off.
She was running the man who worked for Dimitri. Neptune seemed like an odd part of this. Why that place?
Then, it hit her.
What if they were off a little? What if it was the person and not the place?
So she ran Nate Collins.
That’s when it popped.
“Guys, look,” she stated, pulling it up online so they could both read it on the big screen.
“He was arrested by Jeffrey Raye when he was still a cop in the next town over.
“Yeah, he knew him.”
Emma thought about it.
“The first body dated back eighteen months. Jeffrey Raye began his bullshit in Vegas around that time too. Could that be connected?” she asked.
Chris didn’t know.
Poppy either.
Before he could say anything, his phone rang. It was Dimitri.
“What’s up?” Chris asked.
“You are not to leave that building. Got it?” he asked. “Keep Emma and Poppy with you.”
He stared over at the women.
“What’s up?”
He told him about the second money transfer.
“We’re going to get there as fast as we can. Under no circumstance are you to leave the building,” he said again.
The lights flickered.
All three of them looked up.
“Uh oh,” he said, as the place went dark.
“What?” Dimitri asked, putting the phone on speaker.
“The power just went down. I thought…?”
He didn’t get to say anything more. The whole building rocked as there was an explosion somewhere downstairs.
“Get here! Someone’s trying to get into the building,” he said, running toward the balcony. As soon as he did, the glass around him was hit with a shit load of bullets from across the parking lot.
Chris took one to his arm, and he kept moving to get to Emma.
“I’m hit!” he shouted, putting the phone down. “I have to get them safe. Get here!”
More bullets hit the windows, and while they were made of bulletproof glass, that didn’t make it less scary.
“We’re on our way!” Greyson shouted, his heart in his throat.
Chris’s arm was dead. He couldn’t feel his fingers. With his good hand, he grabbed Emma.
“Poppy, there’s body armor in Greyson’s closet. Get it on and grab a gun. He has a safe in there. It’s unlocked,” he said, tugging Emma toward the room.
The woman ran off.
They were going to have to make a stand on the top floor of Sky Villa.
Great.
Emma gasped.
“What?” he asked.
“My water broke. I’m in full labor,” she said, grabbing her stomach.
Oh, they didn’t need this.
“Greyson!” he shouted, hoping the man was still on the phone.
“What?”
“Emma’s in labor! Get here!”
Jesus!
Could this get any worse?
He got Emma into the bedroom. Poppy was there with Greyson’s spare body armor. She helped him into it, and then ti
ed a t-shirt over his wound.
“We don’t have time. They know where we are. Emma, I want you in that closet. I want Poppy with you, and I’ll stay out here.”
She grabbed her stomach.
“Chris!”
“GO! They’ll be coming for you and Poppy—not me. I’m going to go out there and slow them down. There’s only one way into the condo. They can’t get here any other way but that door.”
Poppy took her hand and then handed him two spare clips.
“We have two more, and I’ll keep Emma safe.”
They knew she was the most vulnerable. She was bent over and holding her stomach. Already, this was bad.
Add in a birth…
Yeah, this sucked.
“I have you,” he said, staring into Emma’s eyes. “You’re not going down. I swear on my life.”
He tucked the clips into his cargo pants and headed out.
It was time to take a stand.
Dimitri had a full police escort there.
The commissioner and captain led the way, officers blocking traffic as they headed toward Sky Villa. There were already calls coming in about an explosion, and they knew why.
This was bad.
As they got there, the place was pinned down by someone sniping from the opposite building. They couldn’t get to the doors.
That was not going to be good.
Whoever was doing this was now trapped inside the building, and that meant they had NOTHING to lose.
Emma and Poppy were trapped with only Chris there.
“We have to get into that building,” Greyson stated.
They knew what it meant.
Someone had to take out that shooter.
“Get me a gun,” Greyson stated, pulling off his suit jacket. “I’ll do it.”
The commissioner shouted to a cop.
He was given a look.
It said, ‘don’t miss or the media will have both their asses when this is done’.
Greyson got it.
He grabbed the gun and looked around.
“I’m going into that building there,” he said, pointing. “As soon as I take the shooter out, you get in there,” he stated. “I’ll get you some cover if I can.”
Dimitri saw Heath and Nikita heading their way. The cops stopped them at the tape.
“I need them.”
The commissioner waved them in, and they met up with the man.
Greyson began carrying the gun toward the building, and Dimitri knew they didn’t have a lot of time.
No Justice_A Croft Mob Family Book Page 50