At any other time, Scout would have admired his skill, but the thug wasn’t out. She saw him reach for his phone, tap a couple of keys.
Nicco must have also seen the action and come to the same conclusion she had. “They’re not alone,” he shouted. “Run.”
* * *
Nicco grabbed Scout’s hand, inadvertently causing her to drop the gun. They didn’t dare stop for it, and he pulled her along with him. Her shorter legs couldn’t match his stride.
“Go,” she said when the heavy footsteps behind them grew closer. “It’s me they want.”
He ignored that and picked her up—she weighed less than the tactical pack he’d routinely carried as a Ranger—and ran as though their lives depended on it. Which they did.
His gaze landed on a faint depression in the wall of a warehouse. He pushed Scout inside, flattened her to the cinder-block wall, then pressed against her back, sheltering her body with his.
Smells, dank and putrid, rose from the ancient wood.
She trembled, the fine bones of her body so fragile he feared he’d crush her. “Nicco—”
“Shh.”
Boots pounded close, too close. Nicco tensed. If the men spotted Scout and him... He didn’t allow his thoughts to go any further. He could take two men, possibly three, but he’d counted four sets of footsteps.
In the Rangers, he’d fought off four tangos more than once, but he had Scout to think of. Her safety came first. If he went down, she’d be at the mercy of the men. Despite his order to the contrary, she’d stayed and fought at his side. Though she was only a little bit of a thing, she had some pretty fancy moves.
The fading slap of feet told him that their pursuers had run past them. He waited. Listened. “I think we’ve lost them.”
Her breath came in little pants.
He cupped her shoulders, turned her to face him. “Hey, it’s all right.” He pressed her head to his chest and held her, just held her, until her shaking subsided.
She lifted her head, her gaze warm on his. “How long did you think you could run carrying me?”
“As long as it took.”
“You Rangers are a breed apart.”
* * *
A breed apart. Scout had spoken only the truth. Nicco had risked his life for her with no thought of himself. How did you thank someone for such a sacrifice? Words were inadequate, but still she tried. “Thank you.”
The reassuring words she’d expected didn’t come. Instead it was a harsh order. “Don’t ever tell me to leave you again. And the next time I tell you to move, you move,” he all but growled as they walked back to where he’d parked his truck. But she knew it wasn’t anger that prompted the words.
“I wasn’t about to leave you there alone.”
“You’re the target. I can take care of myself.”
“Oh,” she said, light scorn working its way into her tone. “When did you become bulletproof? Those men chasing us had guns, in case you didn’t notice.”
Nicco scowled. “You’re going to be hurting by the time you get home.”
“Too late. I already am.” The step she took was wobbly, but she kept walking until he took her arm and pulled her to him.
“You all right?” he asked, and she knew he was inquiring about more than aches and pains.
“Yeah.” After he helped her into the truck, she huddled in the corner of the passenger side. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well, you should be.” The gruffness of his tone was tempered by gentle concern. “Did you think I’d have left you to face those thugs yourself?”
“I wasn’t thinking.” That was honest. She hadn’t been thinking at all, her only thoughts on surviving.
“No. Just like you weren’t thinking when you insisted on going to meet your CI in a part of town that anyone with brains goes out of their way to avoid.”
Enough was enough. She’d apologized. What more did he want? “You were right, okay?” Anger splashed through the words.
“I’m trying to keep you alive.” His voice had lost its hard edge.
“He set me up.”
Scout couldn’t keep the hurt from her voice. Though she and Bug weren’t friends, she’d thought they had a working relationship of mutual respect. She’d been wrong.
“Someone got to him,” Nicco agreed. “Used him.”
Tim Anderson, the relief agent, met them at the house. After checking out the house, Nicco motioned her inside, then talked in a low voice to the other agent before joining her in the kitchen where she was making tea.
“You’ll be safe for the night. As long as you stay inside.”
She heard the warning in his voice. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The impatience in his eyes softened, and when he spoke again, it was with warm concern. “You sure you’re all right?”
She summoned a smile. “Go. I’ll be fine.”
His gaze moved over her, and she knew she hadn’t fooled him.
“I’ll be fine,” she repeated.
“So you said. Why don’t I believe it?” His chin dipped to her hands, now balled into fists at her side.
Flushing under his astute gaze, she opened the hands she hadn’t known she’d clenched and loosened her fingers one by one. She gave him a gentle shove toward the door. “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
After Nicco left, she plugged in the thumb drive, unsurprised when she discovered it blank. Bug hadn’t expected her to live long enough to look at it.
Her nightly prayers took longer than usual as she asked for the strength to forgive.
Exhausted as she was, sleep didn’t come easily, and when it did, it was restless and disturbed.
The nightmare returned, brutal in its clarity. It yanked her from sleep and beat her up mercilessly. Her tormentors chased her through a rain-darkened night, laughing gleefully at her fear. She wouldn’t let them win. Wouldn’t let them break her.
When she woke, it was with the sheet tangled in her legs, her breathing short and choppy. A vicious headache beat at her temples.
Good. That meant she’d fought the men who had killed her parents. She hadn’t given in. She looked up, saw that daylight lined the edges of the window shades and was grateful that it was almost time to get up.
She was no wimp. She’d trained at a dojo and could take down men twice her size. Though, no matter how strong she was, no matter how much she trained, she couldn’t kick the nightmares. She did visualizations, and, most of the time, she controlled the fear. If it caught her off guard, though, like last night, the fear controlled her.
Her struggle with the imaginary assailants had left her exhausted, with painful memories of when she’d been helpless to do anything to save her parents hot and fresh in her mind.
Harshly awake now, she dropped her head into her hands, trying to shake off the pain, the fear, the helplessness. Weary of trying to deny the memories entrance, she let them in. They had been celebrating that night, she and her parents, upon the publication of her first story in the city section of the paper.
On the way home from the restaurant, a detour had taken them through an unfamiliar area where two men had carjacked them. The gunmen had killed her parents in front of her, then put a bullet in her lower shoulder, believing her to be dead just as her parents were. Somehow, she’d lived through it.
And then wished she hadn’t.
People told her she was fortunate to be alive. A bullet in the shoulder didn’t feel fortunate. Nor did the nightmares that had plagued her ever since. All of that on top of losing the two most important people in the world to her made her feel distinctly unfortunate. She hadn’t even been able to attend her parents’ funeral because she’d been in the hospital recovering at the time.
After saying a prayer, she took a few minutes to go through the relaxation exercises a therapist had
suggested. Breathe. The familiar directive steadied her, and she felt her heartbeat gradually slow to a more normal pace even as her soul cried out to her parents in protest.
Why did you have to be taken so soon? Why did we have to take that route home? Why? I wasn’t ready to lose you. Either of you.
Granted, she was an adult, but there was never a good time to lose parents, never a good time to become an orphan, never a good time to say goodbye.
Memories of her mother flowed through her mind. An English professor and a writer, Georgette had loved books with a passion surpassed only by the love she had for her family.
Wearily, Scout pushed herself out of bed and made it to the shower. Hot water and soap, prayer and work, were her recipe for getting through the day after a long night. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, she was feeling the effects of last night’s fight. For the second time in only three days, she ached all over. Her own fault. She could have run as Nicco had ordered.
But that wasn’t who she was. No, she silently amended. It wasn’t who she wanted to be.
As was her routine, she flipped on the television to a twenty-four-hour news channel. She brewed coffee and poured three cups, knowing Nicco would arrive shortly to change places with the other operative. She offered a cup to Anderson, who accepted it with a grateful smile.
When Nicco arrived, she gestured to the coffee.
He frowned when he looked at her, then helped himself to a cup. “Bad night?”
“You could say that.”
“Nightmare.” It was a statement, not a question. She nodded, wanting to leave it there, but he pumped her for details. “Have them often?”
“No. Maybe. A couple this week. Last night...it brought things back.”
“Tell me.”
The simple command caused her to stop and consider. Outside of her counselor, she’d never shared the nightmares with anyone, not even Olivia. Why was she even considering talking to Nicco about them?
“Sometimes I’m running, like last night. Other times, I’m fighting. Trying to save my parents. Except I can’t.” Her voice thickened, and she coughed to clear it. “Everything seems bigger than life. The men who...who shot my parents are giants.”
Nicco took her hands in his.
“They loom over me, laughing. I try to take the guns from them, but they throw me against a wall.” A laugh came harshly. “Of course, none of that is true. The men aren’t really giants. And they didn’t throw me against a wall. They shot me, left me for dead in the car.” Her breathing grew fast and shallow as she found herself back at that night.
His grip on her hands tightened. “It’s all right. You’re here. With me.”
Breathe. “Here. With you.” She held on to the words as she would a lifeline. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For being here. For listening.” Needing a distraction, she pointed to the empty drive, intending to tell him about it, but he hitched his chin at the TV.
“Look.”
A picture of Bug filled the television screen.
“Terrence Howard, a known informant, was found dead in the southeast section of the city last night. More to follow.”
She flipped through the other news channels, looking for more information on the story. Details were scarce. Either the police didn’t know much, or they weren’t sharing. Probably both.
This was no coincidence. She knew it, and from the hard set of Nicco’s mouth, so did he.
“They didn’t want to leave any loose ends,” he said.
“Who is ‘they’?” she asked, though she knew. They were the people who wanted her dead.
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
Knowing someone hated her enough to kill her was surreal. A bolt of fear ripped through her chest. She fought it, but the intensity of it mocked her efforts. How long could she keep pretending that she wasn’t afraid? She was Scout McAdams. Intrepid journalist. Fearless seeker of truth.
She was a fraud.
When people found out that she wanted to run and hide, they’d despise her. Almost as much as she despised herself.
SEVEN
Nicco didn’t like the shadows under her eyes any more than he did the bruise that blossomed on her cheek, a mute reminder of last night. If she’d stayed behind him as he’d ordered... He shook his head at the futility of the speculation. That wasn’t who Scout McAdams was.
Her courage notwithstanding, she had an innocence that some might mistake for naivete. He knew she was anything but naive. Having witnessed the murder of her parents, she had had a crash course in the dark side of life. Still, she managed to look at the world with optimism and a determination to make it better.
After some discussion, he and Scout agreed to tell her coworkers that she’d been receiving threatening letters and that he was there to keep an eye on her. It was best to stick as close to the truth as possible in such situations.
He drove her to the paper, found a corner from which he could both watch her and set up his laptop and did a FaceTime consult with Shelley, who was now back in Atlanta. Using the shorthand of S&J operatives, he filled her in on what had happened. As she was friends with both Olivia and Scout, Shelley had a personal interest in the case.
“You’ve been busy,” his boss said after listening to his account of the three attempts on Scout’s life.
“Someone really wants our girl out of the way.” He frowned at his use of the phrase our girl and was relieved when Shelley didn’t comment on it, though she did raise a brow.
“Sounds like it. Knowing Scout, I don’t expect her to bow out of the investigation gracefully and leave it to us.”
He tapped his fingers on the battered desk where he’d set up shop. “Right the first time.”
“Do you think she’s right and this goes back to her parents’ murders? And what about the union? Is it connected, like she believes?”
“Someone thinks she’s close to finding the truth. How the union and Crane fit into it, I don’t know. Yet.”
“But you’ll find out.”
“You can count on it.”
Nicco spent the first part of the morning digging up stories on the union murders and learning as much as he could. They were grisly affairs with the victims’ necks slashed. Rumors of graft and corruption shrouded Savannah’s unions. No wonder Georgette McAdams had decided to base a book on them.
Next, he looked at the newspaper’s coverage of Scout’s parents’ murders. Since her mother was a celebrity, the stories were extensive, but after the first few days, they had rehashed the background about Georgette and Ron McAdams. Nicco knew what that meant: the police had run out of leads and there was no new information.
If a murder wasn’t solved in the first forty-eight hours, it was likely to go unsolved. Though the McAdamses’ case was still officially open, Nicco understood that it had been put on the back burner. Unless something broke, it would remain there. No wonder Scout was so determined to find the truth.
* * *
Scout slipped on a sundress splashed with giant poppies. She was meeting Olivia Santonni for dinner. The two friends made it a point to have dinner together at least once a month. Since Olivia, a busy lawyer, had married, her free time was limited, but she always made time for their dinner.
Scout was especially grateful they could get together tonight. Over the last week, she and Nicco had settled into a kind of routine. His presence was both comforting and unsettling, and she needed a dose of Olivia’s special brand of friendship to ground her.
In between covering the Duchess’s events, Scout continued her investigation into her parents’ murders, but even she had to admit that it was stalled. All she had were her mother’s suspicions about Crane, hardly enough to take to the police.
No new letters had arrived, nor had any more attempts been made on he
r life. She wanted to believe that the threat was over, had said as much to Nicco, but he wasn’t convinced. He’d voiced his displeasure at tonight’s outing, but she pointed out that Anderson would be nearby and that she’d be fine. In addition, Nicco needed sleep. No one, not even a Ranger, could go indefinitely without sleep.
The restaurant was a new one, specializing in Bolivian food. Always eager to try something unfamiliar, Scout looked forward to ordering an exotic dish.
After cheek-bussing, she and Olivia slid into a booth. Scout sent her friend an admiring look. “You’re glowing. Marriage agrees with you.”
Olivia dipped her head. “Love agrees with me.” A soft blush spread across her cheeks.
“It shows. Something’s different.” Scout studied her friend, trying to identify what it was. “You’re pregnant.”
The blush deepened. “I just learned yesterday. How did you guess?”
“That glow. It says everything. What did Sal say when you told him?”
“He’s over the moon. He’s already planning on adding a nursery to the house and is making noises about buying a miniature football.”
Scout grinned at the thought of Olivia’s husband, big and tough, and at the same time incredibly gentle. “He’s going to make a great father. And you’ll be a wonderful mother.”
“What about you? Is there a new man in your life?”
To Scout’s chagrin, a picture of Nicco flashed through her mind. “No,” she said at last.
“Really?” Olivia raised a skeptical brow. “That ‘no’ sounded pretty weak. As in, you have met someone and you don’t want to tell me.” She eyed Scout shrewdly. “You haven’t said anything about Nicco. I expected you to tear into me about hiring him behind your back. Now I’m wondering why you haven’t.”
“I was getting to it.”
“Were you? Or were you slow in bringing him up because you like him?”
“What’s not to like?” Scout countered with a lightness she was far from feeling.
“Nothing that I can see. The Santonni men are pretty irresistible.” Olivia laughed merrily. “I ought to know.”
High-Risk Investigation Page 7