He wrestled a log from the stack with his one good arm. Carrying it the few feet to the hearth, he let it fall with a thunk and punched it into place with the poker. So far so good.
He added another log, then another. A few scraps of kindling tucked here and there. Then he reached for the paper.
Something nudged his side. He pulled himself from his thoughts. Jason. The little guy was sitting on the hearth next to him, snuggling into his side. He looked down into those big blue eyes and gave his son the most smile he could muster. “Where’s Melissa?”
“She’s gone, Buddy.”
“She’s erranding?”
Nick let himself smile. Brilliant kid, his son. He needed to tell the little guy the truth. There was no point in letting him wait for her to return. “Not today. Melissa isn’t coming back, Jason.”
He scrunched up his brow. “Did she die? Like Mommy?”
“No, she didn’t die. She just had to go back to the city.”
“I like the city.”
He knew it was just an observation on Jason’s part, but it stabbed into him all the same. “I know you do.”
“You’re sad.”
“Yes, I am.”
“’Cause Melissa is gone?”
“Yes.”
His lips turned down and his eyes grew red around the edges. “I miss her.”
Nick ruffled a hand in Jason’s wavy hair. “I miss her, too, Jason.” Something caught in his throat, and for a moment, he couldn’t speak.
Jason stared out the cabin’s window at the snow falling and nodded. Then he looked back up into Nick’s eyes. “I don’t want you to be sad.”
“Thanks, Buddy.”
“I’ll stay here with you.”
Nick’s eyes burned. Jason was a good kid, just making the offer because he didn’t want Nick to be sad. Little did he know how much that offer meant. “Thanks. That is really nice. I know you like the city.”
“I like the horses, too. Like at your ranch.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
Jason shrugged his little shoulders. “I like to be where Melissa is. But I like to be where you are, too.”
His words hit Nick like a hard kick to the head. What an idiot he’d been. He’d told Melissa he was the ranch, but that wasn’t true. All along he’d expected her to change as he’d expected Gayle to change. It was him who was obsessed with a certain place, a certain life. If he really thought about it, wherever Jason was was exactly where he wanted to be. And if he really wanted to see if he and Melissa had a future together, after all this was over and Jason was safe, he needed to be where she was.
He slipped his arm around Jason and hugged his warm little body close. “You’re brilliant, do you know that?”
“Brilliant?”
“Yes.” He kissed the soft hair on the top of his head and pushed himself up from the hearth.
So much for moping around feeling sorry for himself. Being with the people he loved was more important to him than his location or his lifestyle or anything else. It was even more important than being able to explain away rejection. It was everything. And it was time he proved that to Melissa. It was time he proved it to himself.
If he was willing to take a chance, maybe she would be willing, too. At least he had to try. “I have to call Melissa.”
“Are you going to tell her she has to stay here with us?”
“No. You and I are going to go on a little vacation. How does that sound?”
Jason’s forehead scrunched low.
“And after that, I’m going to tell her we want to come back and stay with her. Does that sound better?”
Jason beamed as brightly as if it were Christmas morning. “It’s great.”
Nick located his suitcase and rummaged through it for his cell phone.
“Daddy?”
A thrill shot through Nick’s chest at the sound of that word coming from Jason’s lips. Just like it did every single time. It took a second for him to register the distress in the little voice.
He whipped around to see the boy staring at the newspaper Nick had been crumpling to help kindle the fire. “What is it, Buddy?”
Jason looked up. His little face crumpled. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
“What’s wrong?” Nick crossed the room in two strides. He knelt down by Jason’s side and gathered him close. His son’s arms wrapped tightly around his neck.
Nick looked down at the paper Jason had been staring at, expecting to see an old story about Gayle’s death. Nothing but a smattering of headlines about the upcoming elections met his gaze. “Jason? What has you so upset?”
Jason pushed back from his shoulder. “He yelled at Mommy. He made her cry.”
Nick scanned the paper again. “Who did?”
“Mommy’s boyfriend.” He extended a plump little finger and pointed directly at a photo of Deputy District Attorney Seth Wallace.
Chapter Sixteen
Despite walking forever through a mountain of snow before she could get a phone signal to call for a cab, Melissa thought she reached the office early, before anyone else would be there.
She was wrong.
“I trust you brought Raymond and his son?” Seth leaned on the doorjamb of his office. His suit was perfectly pressed, his shirt white, his tie its usual assertive red. But the dark circles under his eyes testified he’d gotten about as much sleep as she had the past few days.
“Seth…”
“You didn’t bring them in.”
“I told you. Nick doesn’t trust the system.”
“And I told you that you wouldn’t have a job.”
“Then fire me.”
He glanced away.
Strange. She’d never known Seth to make empty threats. If he played chicken, he won. In the courtroom and in life. Even if that meant he crashed and burned. “What’s going on, Seth?”
He shook his head. “This whole thing. I thought I could manage it. But wherever I turn, someone is screwing things up. Never counted on one of those screwups to be you.”
“If you’re after a neat and tidy witch trial for Jimmy and a witness who might end up dead under our protection, I suppose I am screwing things up.” She knew she was taking a risk, talking to him like that. But she didn’t want to hold back. Seth had to see what he was doing here. This everything-for-politics course he was choosing couldn’t go on. “Is someone looking into Essie’s background? Who she knew? All that?”
He didn’t answer.
“Seth?” She pulled in a breath, trying to calm herself. The stress must be getting to Seth as it was to her. Both of them needed to mellow out and take this investigation step by step. “You remember what we talked about last night on the phone, don’t you? You said you’d pass it along?”
“Yes, yes.” He waved the back of his hand at her as if shooing a fly.
“So you called the P.D.? Or is someone in the office looking into it?”
“I sent it over to the gang unit.”
Okay. So why hadn’t he said that right away? “Are you okay, Seth?”
“Okay? Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You seem…stressed.”
He gave her a dry look. “And you’re as relaxed as some kind of Zen master.”
He had a point. The past few days had been hard on them both. “Did you call in that partial license plate?”
Again, no response.
What was going on with him? “You didn’t call it in, did you?”
“It was a partial, Melissa. And you don’t even have any witnesses to the vehicle going after you.”
“Witnesses?” Was he serious? “How about Nick Raymond? How about me?”
“You and Raymond? Witnesses? As if the two of you are impartial observers?” He rolled his eyes. “Next you’re going to be basing a whole case on that four-year-old kid, pretending he’s some kind of witness.”
Four-year-old kid? Witness? She shook her head. Whatever was going on with Seth, he wasn’t making any sense.
Or was he?
“Seth, why are you bringing up Jason Raymond as a witness?”
He tilted his head back. “Oh, for God’s sake. What kind of tangent are you off on now?”
“Not a tangent. It’s what you said.” His words shuffled into place in her mind. “You told me Jimmy was the target of the drive-by shooting. Why did you say that?”
“Because he was.”
“Was he? Why? Why do you think that?”
“Calhoun explained it to you.”
“I know what Calhoun explained. He explained his theory of what happened. But he had pitiful little evidence to back any of it up.”
“He has evidence.”
“What evidence? What evidence do you have that Jimmy was the target? Why not Essie? Why not me? Why not Jason Raymond?”
He shuddered a little when she said Jason’s name. Not a conscious reaction. Nothing like that. It was something purely physical.
“Did Jason see something, Seth?”
“The kid? No. I mean, what would he see?”
The murder? No. Jason showed some signs of trauma, especially when they’d first found him. But it was nothing that would suggest he’d seen something as horrible as his mother’s murder. So what did Jason see?
“Her boyfriend. Jason saw Gayle’s boyfriend.”
Seth nodded. “Jimmy Bernard.”
“No. Not Jimmy. It couldn’t be. Jason was around Jimmy afterward. After the murder. That was the first time he’d met Jimmy. I was there.” Why hadn’t she thought of this sooner? How could she have just blindly swallowed the story Seth and Calhoun had force-fed her? “The landlord said the guy was tall, older, good-looking. Jimmy wasn’t the only man who fit that description, Seth. You fit it, too.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Jimmy wasn’t Gayle’s boyfriend. It was you. You were the one having an affair with Gayle.”
Seth shook his head, disgust twisting his mouth and furrowing his brow. He circled behind his desk and sat down. “You really are set on screwing things up, aren’t you? And I thought you were one I could count on.”
Count on? She’d counted on Seth. She’d taken what he’d told her as fact. “You killed her. You killed Gayle Rodgers. Why, Seth? Was she going to tell your wife? Was she going to tell the press? Was she going to ruin your bid for D.A.?”
Red suffused his face. “I worked too hard. I couldn’t let her do it. I couldn’t let her…”
“So you killed her? Because she was going to tell?”
“It was an accident. She was threatening to go public unless I got a divorce. I just got so angry. I didn’t mean to.”
No. That wasn’t right.
The room whirled around Melissa. She gripped the back of the chair, desperate to maintain her balance. Gayle’s murder and the framing of José Sanchez couldn’t possibly be explained as an accident. His fingerprints were on the decorative statuette that had killed her. Somehow Seth must have planted them there, maybe even before the murder.
Melissa’s chest constricted, making it hard to breathe. Gayle wasn’t the only one Seth had killed. He’d recruited the four gangster wannabes. He’d staged the drive-by. “You hired those men to kill Essie and Jimmy, too. Seth? Didn’t you? You tried to kill Nick and his son.” She reached for her gun…and touched her empty hip.
He stood up from his desk, his fist in front of him. In his hand he held her gun. The barrel pointed straight at her chest.
Her cell phone rang in her bag, the muffled tweet barely audible over the pounding of her heart.
She had figured it out. Finally. But she’d done it far too late.
Chapter Seventeen
Melissa’s phone rang four times before it switched Nick to voice mail. Where in the hell was she? He left a message for her to call him and hung up.
“Where’s Melissa?”
He glanced into the rearview mirror. “I’m trying to find her, Buddy.”
He squinted through the smeary windshield at the Denver skyline. She’d said she was going to the office. Precisely where Seth Wallace would presumably be headed this morning. Nick had hoped to head her off, to warn her before she met with her boss.
He prayed he wasn’t too late.
He pulled up the Denver directory on his hand-held and punched in the number for the district attorney’s office. The phone rang forever, it seemed. He was about to hang up and just race down to the building and bust in when a receptionist picked up. “Denver district attorney’s office. How may I direct your call?”
“I need to speak to Melissa Anderson.”
“Ms. Anderson is not in yet this morning. If you like, you can leave her a voice mail.”
“I already have. Thanks.” He paused for a moment. The move was tricky. The last thing he wanted was for Wallace to know he was on to him. But if it was the only way he could reach Melissa, he had to take a shot. “Melissa said she would be meeting with Deputy District Attorney Seth Wallace this morning. Can you tell me if he’s in?”
“He is. And he’s been in a meeting since before I arrived. So that might be where Ms. Anderson is. I’ll transfer you.”
“Wait.”
The phone clicked over.
Nick gripped his BlackBerry hard enough to make the casing creak. He’d expected her to ask who was calling before switching him over. The fact that she hadn’t had him worried. He’d never thought about it before, but he’d wager the D.A.’s office had caller ID. She hadn’t had to ask. One look at her phone readout, and she’d known who was on the other end of the line. No doubt soon Seth Wallace would, too.
Nick hadn’t had time to catch his breath when Wallace’s voice boomed over the line. “Raymond. Glad to hear from you. Where are you? I’ll get some deputies out to you right away.”
And not gangster wannabes? Nick bit back the response. “Is Melissa with you?”
“Yes. She is.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“Not at the moment. What is this about? How can we help make this easier for you?”
Turn your murdering scumbag self in? Nick had to think. When he’d called, he’d been so focused on telling Melissa the truth about her boss, he hadn’t planned any further ahead than that. “I have some papers here. Papers my ex-wife sent to me. Melissa said you needed them to help with the prosecution of her murderer.”
“Yes. Yes, we do. Where are you? I’ll send someone to pick them up.”
“Not necessary. I’ll bring them to you.”
“Here? To the office?”
“Can you put Melissa on the line?”
“Tell you what. I believe Melissa mentioned to you that we have a few issues regarding security. I don’t want to put you and your son in any kind of danger. So why don’t you stay put, and Melissa can come and pick up the papers? She can also bring some extra security to make sure you and your son stay protected.”
Him and his son. All along Melissa and he had both assumed Nick was the one who was in danger. That Jason was too young to be a witness, too young to be a threat. And all along, Jason was the one who could identify Wallace as Gayle’s boyfriend.
Anger rifled through Nick. Right this minute, he felt as if he could storm into that office and take Wallace out with one bare hand.
He forced his breathing to slow. He couldn’t let emotion get the best of him. Not now. “I’d like to talk to Melissa.”
“Sorry. She just ran out of the office. It’s crazy around here this morning. But I’ll give her the message immediately. Where are you?”
Something had happened to Melissa. Wallace had done something. Nick knew it. She would be picking up her phone otherwise. He couldn’t quite believe Wallace would hurt her. Not right there in the office. But if he could get her somewhere else? Nick wouldn’t put it past him.
Think.
“Raymond?”
He could meet with Wallace. Choose a safe place. Maybe even find a way to call in Detective Marris or someone else to help. Find a way to make them belie
ve the chief deputy D.A. was a murderer. A cop killer.
A weight settled into his stomach. It would be a hard sell. Maybe impossible without any evidence except a story about his four-year-old recognizing a photo in the newspaper. Lord knows, he’d have trouble buying it.
His son. He glanced into the rearview.
Jason stared out the window, thumb in mouth and fingers twirled in hair.
He had to find a safe place for Jason. That was the first thing. No matter what happened next, Wallace was not going to get his hands on Nick’s son. “Okay. Tell Melissa I’ll meet her.”
“Good, where?”
He scanned through his limited knowledge of Denver. He’d seen very little of the city besides the hotel where the shooting took place and the McDonald’s playland. But years ago he’d been here with Gayle. He remembered a bookstore. The Tattered Cover, if he recalled correctly.
No. He didn’t just need a crowd of people. He needed more. Some kind of law presence. A bookstore wouldn’t cut it. “The train station downtown.”
“Union Station?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’ll have Melissa meet you at the Wynkoop Street entrance. She can be there in twenty minutes.”
Too soon. He had too much to do before then. “I will be there in ninety.”
MELISSA DIDN’T KNOW if Seth hadn’t thought about the construction going on at the train station, or if it was part of his plan. But either way, the area around Union Station was a mess. Seth wove his Mercedes slowly through construction barriers and snarls of traffic. She sat in the passenger seat, her cuffed hands in her lap, and stared out the window, searching for any sign of Nick.
Her mind was still whirling with what she’d figured out about Seth. That he’d killed Gayle with his own hands, paid those men to kill Jason, only Jimmy and Essie had gotten caught in the cross fire. “Tell me, Seth. Was Jimmy one of the people who screwed things up for you? Was he getting close? Is that why you had to unleash Calhoun in an attempt to discredit him?”
A Rancher’s Brand of Justice Page 15