Cut and Run

by Lori Ryan

  Cut and Run

  Sutton Capital Series Book Nine

  Lori Ryan

  Copyright 2016, Lori Ryan.

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

  Contents

  The Sutton Capital Series

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  The Sutton Capital Series

  Legal Ease

  Penalty Clause

  The Baker’s Bodyguard (A Sutton Capital Series Novella)

  Negotiation Tactics

  The Billionaire’s Suite Dreams

  The Baker, the Bodyguard, and the Wedding Bell Blues (A Sutton Capital Series Novella)

  Her SEALed Fate

  The Sutton Capital Series Boxed Set (Books One Through Four)

  The Sutton Capital Series Boxed Set (Books Five Through Seven)

  Cutthroat

  Cut and Run

  Cut to the Chase

  Acknowledgments

  As always, I am indebted to several friends and experts who took the time to answer my questions and share their expertise. The generosity of those I’ve reached out to always amazes me. I couldn’t write these books without the help of a lot of people!

  Any errors or changes due to creative license are my own.

  I’d like to thank D. P. Lyle, Jon and Shari Bartholomew, and Garry Rodgers for your expertise. The way you take time out of your day to help me is humbling.

  Scott Silverii, thank you, thank you, thank you for answering my endless texts and emails. Maybe someday, I’ll run out of questions. But probably not.

  Thank you to Steve Statham for editing and proofing for me. I always know my final product will be clean when you’ve had your eyes on it.

  Melanie, thank you a million times over!

  Ehlane and Cathy, I just love you guys. Cathy, I couldn’t have figured out this plot without the twenty-two phone calls we had. You rock!

  Chapter 1

  The buzz and bustle of the busy Step Up Homeless Shelter Clinic had once been a source of pride for Carrie Hastings. Now, it was a constant source of worry. She watched the waiting room and wondered how long it would be before the police came to question them all.

  She only hoped they found answers that would clear the clinic and keep them open. If the doors to the clinic closed, a major health care provider for the city’s homeless population and for people hovering around the poverty line would be gone.

  A major source? Carrie huffed. Try the major source. When she’d begun this project six years ago fresh in her job as the Director of Fundraising and Giving for the shelter, she’d worried she might not be able to reach the lofty funding goals they’d set. She’d reached and exceeded them, surprising several people who hadn’t said so aloud, but whom she knew doubted her ability to do the job.

  Now, she was the shelter’s Assistant Director and she was planning a major expansion of the clinic. But that wouldn’t happen if they couldn’t figure out why people connected with the clinic were dying.

  “Carrie?”

  She turned to see the director, Reggie McKinney, coming toward her down the hall.

  She offered him a weak smile. She and Reggie had always been close. He was the one who’d believed in her when nobody else thought she could do this job.

  “Have you heard anything new?” Reggie’s face reflected the same concern and worry she felt.

  “I keep expecting them to show up in riot gear with warrants, but I guess I’ve been watching too much television.” She grinned, happy to talk to somebody who understood how she was feeling. “Detective Harmon called and said he and Detective Rylan would be coming in soon to talk with us again.”

  She was numb. One of their most committed doctors had been violently murdered. He’d volunteered three days a week at the clinic, more than any of their other doctors.

  “Did you tell them we’ll cooperate as much as we can?”

  “Yes. They know we can’t give out any patient information or information on drug trials without a warrant. I told them we would make the staff available to answer questions, though.”

  Reggie nodded. “Good. That’s good.” He paused. “How did we not see this?”

  His face fell as he asked the question and Carrie understood. The police believed Dr. Coleman was killed because he was testing drugs on his patients—their patients—without FDA oversight.

  She understood Reggie’s confusion and guilt. They should have seen that something was wrong. She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that, and I just don’t know.”

  Reggie squeezed her shoulder and walked off down the hall.

  There had to be something they could do other than sit and wait. Some way to clear the clinic. Her thoughts jumped immediately to Detective Harmon. Would he be able to help the clinic or would his only interest be in shutting them down? When he’d come to question her a week ago, he seemed like the kind of detective who wanted to get to the truth. He didn’t seem like he wanted to close the case and move on, no matter what the truth was.

  She looked again at the people gathered to see a doctor or physician’s assistant in the waiting room. She needed to find a way to get him to see what she saw. To understand what she knew about this clinic; that it was crucial to the people of this community, however unimportant those people might seem to others. They mattered.

  Jarrod Harmon sat in his car watching the clinic, a small building next to New Haven’s homeless shelter. It was where his current case had all started. As he waited for his partner to join him, he reviewed what they knew about the case. Not much, as it turned out.

  This case had begun as nothing more than the odd fact that too many homeless people in New Haven seemed to be dying from heart attacks. Homeless men, to be precise. They didn’t know if that was significant, but they’d filed it away to look into later.

  All had had a connection to this clinic.

  Connecticut had dramatically reduced its homeless population recently, a fact that made this case all the more frustrating. A lot of good people had been working hard to get people off the streets. Changing lives. Making a difference in this state.

  Now, he not only had the six dead men they’d connected to the clinic, he had a doctor from the clinic who’d been shot and killed, two women who’d been kidnapped, and a hired thug sitting in a coma in the hospital, unable to tell them a damned thing. Thankfully, both women had been unharmed.

  Jarrod drained his coffee cup and wished for more. Some days, the job got to him. This was one of thos
e days. Talk about a case with no leads.

  Jarrod looked through the printouts of all the people connected to the clinic, stopping at Carissa Hastings. The tall willowy blonde had been in a number of shots on the shelter website. Every event they held to raise money and awareness, she was front and center. He was distracted by the dazzling smile and eyes that somehow seemed to sparkle even in the black and white printouts.

  “Ridiculous,” Jarrod said, reminding himself to go get laid. Only he knew that wasn’t the problem. He shoved the thoughts aside and got back to reading. His reaction to Carissa had been pissing him off since he first laid eyes on her. To say nothing of the fact he’d been starting to realize his friends seemed a lot happier now that they were in committed relationships. He’d been ignoring the pangs of jealousy he’d been feeling and he planned to keep that up.

  He saw Cal’s car pull into the lot and got out of his own, shutting his door just as Cal stopped beside him.

  “You look like shit.”

  “Thanks.” Jarrod’s partner was always blunt with him and most of the time he appreciated it. At moments like this, not so much.

  Cal laughed. “Just sayin’.” He rolled up his window and locked his car.

  They walked through the entrance of the shelter and followed the directions the receptionist gave them down to Carissa Hastings’ office. As they approach the office door, Cal put a hand on Jarrod’s arm, stopping him.

  “Seriously, you okay?”

  “Yeah. Just up late. Tommy called.”

  “Ah. And what did little brother need this time?” Cal was all too familiar with his brother’s late night calls and the crap he pulled.

  “Nothing major. Just wanted me to make a DWI disappear.” Jarrod didn’t need to lace his tone with sarcasm. Cal knew he’d never seriously consider making a DWI disappear nothing major.

  “Are you shitting me?” Cal’s voice was raised, and Jarrod looked around to see who else might’ve heard that. Most of the office doors around them were shut, at least partially.

  “No. And the kicker is, I honestly think he thought I’d do it.”

  Cal shook his head. “He didn’t have TJ in the car with them, did he?”

  “No, Val is too smart for that nowadays. She doesn’t let him drive with TJ anymore. She shuttles him back and forth for visits or arranges to meet somewhere.”

  Cal shook his head but didn’t say anything else. There wasn’t much more that could be said. Jarrod’s younger brother had never really cared how his choices affected other people. It had always been like that. Jarrod had learned a long time ago that covering for his brother and trying to fix his mistakes would lead to nothing but trouble. He’d understood the concept of enabling by the time he was twelve or thirteen, even if he hadn’t known the word.

  Someone on the outside looking in might think Jarrod was cold where his brother was concerned. That he didn’t care enough about him to help him out. What an outsider couldn’t know, though, was that Jarrod had grown up watching Tommy hurt his mother again and again and again. There came a time where Jarrod had to harden his heart to his brother and focus on his mom and her feelings. Not that she’d ever harden herself to Tommy. She didn’t have it in her. So, Jarrod did his best to insulate her from Tommy’s actions.

  “Does he know you’re coaching TJ’s Little League team?”

  “Nah. I didn’t feel like I needed to offer the information, and I doubt Val will either. He sure as hell isn’t gonna ask.”

  “So how did this lead to you being up all night?”

  Jarrod rubbed a hand on his face. “Because he called back five times.”

  “So I take it he wasn’t in lockup when he called?”

  “No. Apparently, this happened three days ago and he convinced my mom to post bail for him. He’s just now getting around to telling me about it.” Jarrod had to fight to keep calm as he thought about his brother weaseling more money out of his mother.

  Cal didn’t ask if she had the money to afford to do that. He knew the answer was no. He also knew Jarrod would pay his mother’s rent for her this month if she was short. What it all boiled down to, essentially, was Jarrod getting his brother out on bail even if his mother had been the one to write the check.

  Carrie stood frozen in front of the door. She was sure the two men outside her office were the detectives she was supposed to be meeting with this morning. She talked with one of them two weeks ago; the deep voice was one that stuck with her.

  She was also sure they had no idea she was in the copy room listening in to what seemed to be a private conversation. Very private. Listening in wasn’t exactly the right phrase. She hadn’t intentionally listened. There simply was no way to avoid it in the closet-sized room she was in, with the men standing right outside the door.

  Should she walk out the door and act like she hadn’t just listened to their entire conversation? Or maybe she should wait for them to knock on her office door and then walk out of the copy room like nothing happened?

  At the moment, the men were right outside the door and she could hear their conversation clearly.

  The decision was taken out of her hands when her cell phone rang. Perfect.

  She glanced at the screen and hit the answer button. “Thanks, Gina,” she whispered to her assistant, “I think they just found me.”

  “Sorry.” Gina sounded not the least bit sorry. She thought the detectives were cute. Most likely, she had watched them walk down the hall before calling to let Carrie know they were coming. More than once, she’d commented on the view when the detectives were in the building.

  Carrie hung up and opened the door. Warm brown eyes met hers, and she saw amusement there, rather than offense or irritation. She let out a breath.

  “Detective Harmon, Detective Rylan.”

  They exchanged greetings before Detective Rylan reached to answer his ringing phone. He looked up and apologized. “I’m sorry, I need to take this.” He gestured over his shoulder down the hall and looked to detective Harmon. “It’s the medical examiner’s office.”

  Carrie took advantage of the distraction. “Can I show you something before we begin, detective?” She gestured down the hall, hoping she could find a way to make him see what she saw when she looked at the clinic.

  Carrie led him down the hall to the clinic’s waiting room. She’d always heard that police officers and detectives and so forth were constantly aware of their surroundings. That they took stock of everything around them, always. She hoped Detective Harmon would do that right now.

  The patients ranged from young to old; some Carrie knew and some she didn’t. Before she lost her nerve, she walked through the waiting room with the detective by her side. They got to the other side of the room where she opened the small office the staff used for making calls to patients and flipped on the light, leading the way inside.

  She wasn’t surprised to find the space seemed to have shrunk by half. He was a large man. A large, powerfully muscled man. Dark eyes burned into her and she fully understood the meaning of chiseled jaw now.

  She tilted her head back to meet his gaze, then took a slow steady breath. They were close together.

  Very close together.

  She plowed on. “What did you see out there, Detective?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “They always show these detectives on television who see everything in the room. Who know exactly how many people are out there and what they were wearing and where all the exits and entrances were. Did you notice anything out in that room?”

  He nodded, and she realized he was all business. He was listening to her, not simply paying lip service.

  Lip service. She let her gaze wander for the slightest of seconds to the full lips of the man in front of her. Her eyes snapped back to his as she realized she was letting their closeness affect her a lot more than she wanted to. What’s wrong with me?

  He smirked, but played along. “I think you’ve been watching a little too much TV, but for what it’
s worth, there were approximately ten to twelve people in the room.” He stilled for a moment as if thinking. “Twelve. There were Twelve people in the room. There was the hallway we entered from and a double glass sliding door on the right-hand side. There were five people I would consider, if not elderly, then older. Let’s say, older than fifty. Along the left side of the room there were three children. Two of them with one parent, one with what looked to be a grandparent. The rest of the patients were middle-aged. There were two women in scrubs behind the desk at the front of the room.”

  Carrie took a step closer, hands on hips. “I knew it. You see data. Numbers, ages. Social status. Race. But what you need to understand is that there’s so much more out in that room.”

  She struggled for the right words to describe what she’d seen in the waiting room.

  “Ella-Mae always sits in the back, in the farthest corner she can get to. I think maybe on some level she knows nobody wants to come close to her, and that breaks my heart. She talks to herself quite a bit, and waves her arms in the air like she’s having a conversation with somebody. Most people give her a wide berth, but she needs us. She needs to come in at least once a week for the doctors to check her blood sugar. She studied theater in school. If you ask her to, she can recite anything from Shakespeare. Anything at all, no matter how obscure the passage. On a good day, at least. She doesn’t always have good days, though.”

  Jarrod’s eyes studied her, but she couldn’t make out what he was thinking. Probably that she was crazy. Carrie knew how a lot of people saw her. She was the rich spoiled girl who was playacting at living in the real world. The people who didn’t travel in the same social circles as her parents thought she was slumming it. Those who did know her family, or had grown up with her, often thought she was a freak for wanting to work when she could be out drinking or flying off to Milan for a shopping trip. At thirty-eight she still knew people who did that. They lived off their family money and partied almost every night.