Dade

by Delores Fossen

  The adrenaline was playing havoc with her body and memory so it took her a while to remember Misty’s number. She began to press it in when she heard Robbie. Not crying, but he was making fussy sounds, and those sounds were getting closer. Kayla looked at the stairs and saw her nanny, Connie, making her way toward them. The petite brunette looked completely weighed down with Robbie in the crook of her left arm and a suitcase gripped in her right hand.

  Kayla stopped the call so she could go help, but Dade motioned for her to finish it. Instead, he hurried to the stairs, took the suitcase himself and set it on the floor. Robbie was rubbing his eyes and fussing when his attention landed on Dade. The fussing stopped, and much to Kayla’s surprise, her son mumbled something indistinguishable and reached for the lawman.

  Her surprise grew to shock when Dade reached out as well and eased Robbie into his arm.

  “I have two other suitcases upstairs,” Connie let him know, and she looked at Kayla. The nanny’s eyebrow lifted to verify if it was all right for Dade to have hold of her son.

  It wasn’t all right, and Kayla moved to do something about that.

  Just as her call to Misty went straight to voice mail.

  “I’ll get the suitcases,” Grayson offered. “Show me where they are,” he directed to Connie, and the two started up the stairs.

  “Misty,” Kayla said when the voice mail instructed her to leave a message, “call me immediately. I have to talk to you. It’s important. I need to know if you told anyone where I’d be staying.”

  And with that done, Kayla hurried to Dade and practically wrenched Robbie away from him. That didn’t make her son or Dade happy. The baby immediately started to cry, and Dade winced when she bumped against his wounded arm.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled. Kayla eased Robbie’s head against her shoulder and began to rock.

  Dade gave her a flat look after he was done wincing. “I wasn’t going to kidnap him.”

  “I know. It’s just…” But she had no idea how to finish that explanation. At this point it would sound petty if she admitted that she didn’t want her son in a Ryland’s arms. “Misty didn’t answer her phone, so I left a message.”

  Dade waited a moment, his stare drilling through her, and she earned another of those impatient huffs. “You do realize I’ll be around the baby and you while you’re in my protective custody?”

  Kayla was sure she blinked. “But you’re injured. I thought someone else would guard us.” Preferably someone who wasn’t a Ryland.

  “No….” He stretched out the word. “This isn’t an injury. It’s a scratch, and it won’t affect my aim if I need to take out another gunman.”

  Another gunman. That sent an icy chill through her. Thankfully, it was a chill her son didn’t seem to notice because he finally calmed down and started to go back to sleep. But Kayla knew there would be no sleep for her in the immediate future.

  And she knew who to thank for that.

  “I need to make another call,” she told Dade, and she didn’t wait for his permission to use his cell. Nor did she have to try to remember this particular number. She’d seen it countless times on her own phone.

  Charles Brennan answered on the first ring.

  “Dade Ryland?” Charles greeted, though he sounded more amused than concerned. “Why would the deputy sheriff be calling?”

  “No, Charles. It’s me,” Kayla informed him.

  Dade rolled his eyes and reached for the phone, but she moved away from him and held on tight to both Robbie and Dade’s cell.

  “Did you send someone to kill me tonight?” she demanded from Charles.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  She listened for any differences in his voice. Anything that would confirm that he was behind this attack. But he sounded like his normal arrogant self.

  “Someone hired a gunman to come after me,” Kayla clarified, even though she was certain he already knew what she meant.

  “And where are you exactly?” Charles asked. Still no change in his inflection.

  Even though she doubted Dade had actually heard Charles’s question, he got right in her face, and his scowl intensified. Something she hadn’t thought possible.

  “I’m at a place where I won’t be much longer,” Kayla answered. “And I want you to stop this now. Robbie could have been killed tonight.”

  “What?” Charles barked, and it had a cold, dangerous undercurrent to it.

  “You heard me. The idiot you hired could have killed us all. Call off your dogs, Charles, and take your punishment like a man.”

  “I wouldn’t have sent an idiot after you.” And there was the change of inflective. It sounded as if he were telling the truth.

  Sounded.

  But Kayla had learned the hard way that Charles was capable of deception in its purest form. He certainly hadn’t denied that he’d hired a hitman.

  “The gunman phoned one of your goons,” Kayla informed him, even though Dade gave her a have-you-lost-your-mind look. “I want you to call whomever it takes to make this stop.”

  Charles didn’t answer right away. “I’ll get back to you.” And he hung up.

  Dade threw up his hands and winced again. “Did it occur to you to ask me before you made a call to our number-one suspect?”

  “I thought I was your number-one suspect,” she snarled and thrust his phone at him.

  He opened his mouth, probably to confirm that she was, but he didn’t. Dade just shook his head, snatched his phone from her hand and stuffed it into the front pocket of his jeans. “That call accomplished nothing.”

  “Well, it made me feel better,” Kayla fired back. It didn’t. Nothing would make that happen, not with her bodyguard dead and the body of a hired assassin on her front porch.

  Dade mumbled some profanity. “Don’t do anything else that might end up helping your father-in-law, understand?”

  Oh, that stung. She would never help Charles. Never. “Look, I know you don’t believe me, but we’re on the same page when it comes to my late-husband’s father. It’s possible Charles was responsible for your sister-in-law’s death. Likely, even. But you couldn’t possibly want him in jail more than I do.”

  Dade met her eye-to-eye. “Wanna bet?”

  Kayla didn’t dodge him. She held her ground. “As long as Charles is free, I’m not. And neither is my son.” Because she needed it, she brushed a kiss on Robbie’s forehead. “It’s not my fault that Charles isn’t behind bars. If you want someone to blame, blame the cops who investigated Ellie Ryland’s murder.”

  Dade didn’t flinch, but it was close. Probably because his brother had been in on the investigation. Heck, all the Rylands had, even though it hadn’t been their jurisdiction. In fact, the case had gone to the FBI when the lead investigator had uncovered some evidence of Charles’s money laundering that was linked to a federal case.

  “The FBI’s search warrant was screwed up. It didn’t include the storage facility at his estate,” Dade reminded her. “And that meant all those files and records that were seized there couldn’t be used to convict Brennan. To add insult to injury, there was no more proof to arrest him, much less get a conviction.”

  Kayla knew all of this by heart because she’d read the reports too many times to count. “Then blame the FBI. Blame Charles’s team of lawyers who challenged the warrant in the first place. But know this—if I get the chance to put Charles away, I’m taking it. Not for you. Not for your late sister-in-law. But for my son. When are you going to believe me?”

  The fit of temper and energy went as fast as it came, and Kayla felt beyond drained. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t heard Mason come back into the house. And he wasn’t the only one to reappear. Grayson was at the top of the stairs, a suitcase in each hand, and all of them were staring at her again.

  “Maybe we’ll believe you when there’s proof that you’re innocent.” That came from Mason—the dark and dangerous Ryland. The one who made her more nervous than even Dade. “Your phone wasn�
��t in the car. I searched every inch of it.”

  Kayla wearily shook her head. “Then I must have lost it or left it at the condo where I was staying.”

  “Convenient,” Mason mumbled.

  “No, it’s not,” she argued, knowing it wouldn’t do any good. “I wish I could produce the phone so you’d know I had no part in this.”

  “Call her cell,” Grayson said, making his way down the stairs. “The number is there on the dead gunman’s phone.”

  Kayla huffed and was about to tell any Ryland who would listen that calling her on the missing phone would be useless. She didn’t have it with her in the house, and she honestly had no idea where it was. But she decided just to let them have their way.

  Mason lifted the gunman’s phone so he could see the numbers through the plastic bag, and he used his own cell to make the call.

  Kayla’s heart nearly stopped.

  Because the moment that Mason finished pressing in the numbers, the sound shot through the foyer.

  While the rest of them watched and while Kayla held her breath, Mason followed the sound.

  He didn’t have to go far.

  Just a few feet away from her.

  There, under the foyer table, at the edge of the pool of blood, her missing cell phone was ringing.

  Chapter Five

  Dade listened to Grayson’s latest request and silently cursed.

  Yeah.

  This was going to be fun.

  He snapped his phone shut, dropped it on the console between Kayla and himself and continued the drive to the safe house.

  “We need your fingerprints so we can compare them to those on the cell we found in your foyer,” Dade relayed to her. He whispered so he wouldn’t wake Robbie.

  Both the baby and the nanny, Connie, were asleep in the back seat of the SUV, and Dade wanted it to stay that way. They were less than ten minutes from the safe house, both clearly exhausted, and he’d have to wake them soon enough.

  When Kayla didn’t answer, Dade glanced at her. She was leaning against the window, her attention fastened to the side mirror. No doubt looking for another gunman who might try to follow them. Dade had done the same thing since he’d started the half-hour drive from her estate to the old Wellman ranch and had thankfully seen nothing but a coyote and a deer on the narrow country road.

  “Fingerprints,” she mumbled. “I have a juvenile record. You can probably get them from that.”

  “A juvenile record?” Dade hadn’t meant to sound shocked, but he was.

  “I was fifteen and stupid. I went for a joyride with a boy and didn’t know he was driving a stolen car. When the cops stopped us, he told them we stole the car together.”

  All right. He had to think about that a moment. “I’m surprised a rich girl like you couldn’t hire a good lawyer and get the charges thrown out.” Dade hadn’t meant it to sound so callous, but he had seen it happen too many times.

  She gave him a look that could have frozen hell. “You know nothing about me. Nothing.”

  That was true. Until tonight Kayla had been the woman married to the mob. The daughter-in-law of a slimeball killer. And now she was Dade’s responsibility.

  Among other things.

  She was also a woman, and he kept noticing that. Like now, for instance. Even though she was giving him that hell-freezing look, he could also see the fear and the weariness. Oh, and her hot body. He didn’t want to think for one minute that it played into this, but he was afraid it did.

  So did that little baby sleeping in the car seat behind him.

  Dade might have been a bad boy with a badass reputation, but that kid had nearly turned him to mush when he’d reached for Dade in the foyer. The kid had something his mom didn’t—complete trust that Dade would take care of him.

  “My fingerprints will be on the phone,” she reminded him. “Because it belongs to me.”

  “Yeah, but Kenneth’s shouldn’t be on it. Should they?”

  “No.” She paused a moment. “I’d been looking for my cell right before you arrived, and I’d just asked Kenneth if he’d seen it. He said no.”

  Well, that was a start. “So, if his prints are on it, then it could mean he was in on the attack.”

  Kayla shook her head before he even finished. “That doesn’t make sense, either. If the gunman had called my cell and Kenneth had the phone on him, I think I would have heard it.”

  “Maybe it rang when you were upstairs with your son.” And maybe Kenneth hadn’t wanted her to hear it because he wanted to set Kayla up, to make her look guilty.

  She shook her head. “If Kenneth and the gunman were both working for Charles, then why didn’t Kenneth just kill me before you arrived? He had plenty of chances. And then why would the gunman have killed a fellow hired gun?”

  Dade didn’t have answers to her questions, but he hoped to remedy that soon. His laptop was in his bag, and he intended to spend most of the night working.

  “The dead gunman’s name is Raymond Salvetti,” Dade told her. “Ring any bells?”

  She sat up straighter in the seat and repeated it several times. “No. He has a record?”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s why Grayson was able to make such a quick ID.”

  Kayla blew out a long breath. “Did you connect him to Charles?”

  “Not yet.”

  And maybe never.

  Because Brennan would have known there was potential for the hired gun to be caught, he could have hidden the paper trail that would connect him to a possible killer. Still, that didn’t mean they couldn’t link Brennan to the dead bodyguard or to Danny Flynn, the other man the gunman had phoned. Flynn hadn’t been at his residence when SAPD had checked, but his name and picture had been sent out to law-enforcement agencies throughout the state. Plus, Kayla could recognize the moron if he showed up.

  Dade took the final turn down the ranch road and drove the last quarter of a mile to the house. He watched Kayla as she took in the place. It didn’t take her long because there wasn’t much to see—a simple wood frame house and two barns surrounded by acres of pasture and trees. There was no livestock, no other people, and there hadn’t been since Pete Wellman died three years earlier. He’d had no heirs, so Grayson had bought the place as an investment.

  “Wait here a second,” Dade ordered. He brought the SUV to a stop directly in front of the porch and the front door. Mason had already been out to put things in order, but Dade wanted to be sure.

  He got out, went to the front door and unlocked it. Dade was pleased to hear the security alarm kick on. He disarmed it temporarily and did a walk-through. A living-dining combination. A kitchen. Three bedrooms. Two baths.

  Tight quarters.

  Especially because Kayla had a unique way of reminding him that she was around.

  When Dade was satisfied that the house was indeed safe, he went back to the SUV to grab the suitcases. There were five total, and by the time he’d gotten them all inside and in place, a drowsy-looking Connie had already taken Robbie to the room that Kayla and the baby would share. Dade’s room was in the middle. Not by accident either. He wanted to be able to hear if anything went wrong.

  Once they were all inside, Dade didn’t waste any time resetting the security system. He was certain they hadn’t been followed, but he didn’t want any surprise visitors in the middle of the night. Just in case, he left on his shoulder holster and gun.

  “Does the bandage on your arm need to be checked?” Kayla asked.

  Dade was in the process of removing his jacket. And wincing. That’s probably what had prompted her question. “No, it’s fine.”

  He’d slathered the wound with antibiotic cream and bandaged it at the sheriff’s office when they’d stopped to pick up the SUV and other equipment.

  Kayla stared at him as if she might challenge him and then fluttered her fingers toward the bathroom. “I need to take a shower.” And with that, she walked away.

  Dade watched her.

  In fact, he couldn’t mak
e himself look away. Well, until she glanced over her shoulder at him. Then, his attention flew to the bag he’d put next to the sofa. Time to get his mind on the investigation and off Kayla’s backside. But man, the woman had some curves.

  Dade grabbed a soda from the fridge that Mason had stocked, took out his laptop and sank onto the sofa. There were already emails and reports about the shooting. Of course, with two dead bodies there would be a lot more to follow.

  He fired off an email to Grayson to let him know about Kayla’s juvenile record and the possibility of getting fingerprints from that. Grayson answered almost immediately with a thanks.

  Dade scanned through the rest of the reports until he got to an attachment with Kayla’s name. It was the file with everything Grayson and the San Antonio police had gathered on her. Because Kayla and he would be joined at the hip for the next few days, Dade opened it so he could find out more about this woman who had his body zinging.

  Kayla Wallace Brennan was thirty-one, four years younger than him. Born in Houston. Parents divorced when she was a kid. One sister, Misty. Kayla married Preston Brennan when she was barely twenty-four, and their marriage had lasted nearly six years. Six years was a long time to be under the influence of a mob family. A woman could pick up all kinds of nasty habits.

  Dade scrolled down.

  And his fingers froze on the keys.

  There were pictures of Kayla. Not the cool, rich ice queen with a great butt. There were police photos taken three years ago. Her hair had been pulled back, no makeup, and the camera had gobbled up a dozen or more images of the bruises on her face and upper body. Her right eye was practically swollen shut. Her bottom lip, busted open.

  Dade got a rock-hard knot in his stomach.

  He skimmed through the report that followed the pictures, and that knot in his stomach tightened. Kayla hadn’t been mugged. According to the report, her husband, Preston, had done this to her during a domestic dispute.

  A day later, Kayla dropped the charges.

  Hell’s bells.

  Dade had seen that happen before, but he hadn’t thought this had gone on with Kayla.