by Becky McGraw
A still photo of the black van, obviously taken by the security cameras flickered up on the screen, followed by an unflattering photo of her from her driver’s license. “If you see Ms. Winters or have any information on her abduction, please call the Dallas Police. Her father Phil Winters was out of town and unavailable for comment.”
“Holy shit, they think I’ve been kidnapped,” Ronnie said putting a hand to her mouth. Thank god, Lou Ellen was the only one who went inside to check in at the desk downstairs last night. The rest of them had snuck in through the back door.
“And they think Dave and I kidnapped you,” Trace said gravely.
“No, they don’t. They think you’re dead, and that photo of Dave was so blurry there’s no way they’ll identify him from it. They have no idea who kidnapped me.”
“Okay, so what do you think this means? Do you think Talmedge went to Leland?”
“I don’t know. His guards couldn’t say we were going to jerk her up by her hair and drag her to the dungeon at the mansion. They had to say something. People saw what happened. Maybe Talmadge talked to Leland, and he is just covering his ass as usual,” she said with defeat. “I gave Talmedge a deadline of noon today. It’s after that now, and he isn’t going to call, so that’s probably the case.”
Her plan had been stupid. Dave was right. Thinking Talmedge Bartlett would switch sides to save himself was a pipe dream. That he would trust her to save him was stupid. The man was loyal to Leland and Leland probably could get him out of his problems by pulling a few strings. A lot easier than she could.
Those diaries on the table meant nothing. Right now, all they had was speculation and shaky evidence against people who didn’t really matter. Extortion, bribery, election fraud were not capital murder, drug dealing, human trafficking and horse thievery. She was sure the feds had proof that was going on out at the Diamond Bar Ranch, but she was also certain that they couldn’t connect that to Leland. And neither could she at this point.
Would their notes, these coded diaries and their files be enough leverage to convince Susan Whitmore to drop the charges against Trace? Ronnie didn’t know, but she had to try. She knew one thing. What they had right now wasn’t enough to bring down Leland Rooks.
She sighed and met Trace’s eyes. “I have enough evidence for the feds to get search warrants to look for more on Judge Jennings, Seemus Nichols, and Talmedge Bartlett. Bribery, extortion, witness tampering, and election fraud are about all it amounts to. I don’t have enough for them to risk taking on Leland though for the other stuff at the Diamond Bar ranch. I’m not sure that what I have is going to be enough to cut a bargain with Susan Whitmore to drop the charges against you.” Ronnie dragged her eyes from his to stare at her hands, which rested on her knees.
“You’ve done the best you could, Red,” Trace said, dropping his arm over her shoulders and squeezing her to him. “I couldn’t ask for more. Thank you for trying.”
Ronnie heard the sound of defeat in his tone too. Trace was going to leave town, leave his mother and leave her. She heard it as clearly as if he’d spoken the words. She’d never see him again after today. Panic settled in her chest and she looked up to see Allison staring at them too. She had tears in her eyes and her lower lip trembled.
“Thank you for trying too, Mama,” Trace said. He lifted his arm from her shoulders and stood to walk over to Allison. She stood, let out a keening wail, then threw her arms around his waist. Ronnie could see Trace struggling to hold back emotion too. His nostrils flared and he stared at the ceiling, while he rubbed his mother’s back trying to console her.
Ronnie’s heart felt like it was a lead weight in her chest, and she felt like bawling too. Instead she stood there and watched Trace push his mother away from him and wipe her tears away with his thumb. He leaned down and kissed the top of her head, then stood to smile down at her. “I love you, Mama. Stay away from Leland and take care of yourself.”
Her eyes filled again. “You’re really leaving?” she whispered.
“I have to. Those federal charges aren’t going away, and I’m not going back to jail. I promise to check in now and again though to let you know I’m okay.”
Allison tried to put her arms around him again, but he pushed her away. ‘Mama, please don’t make it tougher for me to go.” The door of the bedroom across the room slammed back on its hinges and Lou Ellen filled the doorway in her furry pink robe, with two curlers holding up her bangs, and a sleep mask around her throat. In her hand was a mean-looking hand gun.
“What the hell is all the caterwauling about?” she asked sourly waving the gun around for emphasis. “I thought a damned herd of goats had gotten in here.”
“Trace is leaving,” Allison said brokenly and ran across the room to throw herself at Lou Ellen. She caught Allison with one arm, and her eyes flew to Trace. “You ain’t going a damned place, boy,” she said angrily. “And close that damned house robe. Nobody wants to see your pecker,” she said roughly. Looking at Ronnie, she waved the gun in her direction and said, “Except her maybe.”
Trace pulled the sides of the robe closed and yanked the ends of the tie. “I’ve got to leave, Aunt Lou,” he said firmly.
“Bullshit. You still owe that one a few days,” she said with a nod at Ronnie. “And you owe it to the rest of us for trying to help you. Don’t be a yellow-belly coward. We’ll figure out something to take that asshole daddy of yours down.”
“Aunt Lou you’re a stock broker. Stock brokers don’t talk like you do. Where the hell do you come up with that shit?” Trace asked shaking his head.
“I was raised on a farm. In the country. And I’m proud of it. I’m not slick, but I damned well know money. People trust me. And I know how to take down a slimy weasel. Just give us a few more days. What else have you got to do?” she asked eyeing him intently.
Ronnie turned her back, discreetly wiped her eyes with the hem of her robe then sucked in a deep breath and turned back around. “He’s right to want to leave.”
Trace’s eyebrows shot up and Allison and Lou Ellen gasped.
“It’s not running,” Ronnie said with a glance at him. “He can’t go back to jail.”
Ronnie knew firsthand what the last stint in jail had done to him. She wasn’t going to ask him to have faith she could keep him free, when she didn’t have any herself. She was not going to join the women in trying to keep him with them and be the cause of him going to jail again. “I let you out of your promise, Trace.”
His eyes looked sad when he nodded. He walked over to his mother and kissed her cheek, then kissed Lou Ellen. “I told Mama that I’m going to check in now and again to let ya’ll know I’m okay. But you can’t tell anyone.”
“We won’t,” they both said in unison.
Ronnie followed Trace into the bedroom and closed the door. He dropped the robe and grabbed his folded clothes from the dresser, and her eyes drank in his delicious body. He slipped on the jeans, and Ronnie knew it was now or never. She peeled her tongue from the roof of her mouth preparing to say something that wouldn’t matter now, but needed to be said. Something she’d never said to another human being in her life. Not even her parents. But last night she realized it is exactly how she felt about this man. “Trace, I lo—“
His body jerked, his eyes flew to hers, and Trace dropped the shirt he was about to put on to rush over to her. He pinched her face between his hands. “Don’t say it,” he said gruffly. He put one of his hands at her waist and pulled her against him.
“But I—“ she started again. Trace’s mouth cut off her words as he slammed it down over hers, kissing her like he wanted to eat her alive. She wanted to soak him up, absorb him inside of her, memorize how he smelled, what his skin felt like beneath her fingers. How good she felt when his arms were around her. Warm wetness slid down her right cheek, as he continued kissing her like there was no tomorrow. There wasn’t going to be one for them, she realized, and another wet drop slid down her left cheek.
His thum
b stroked away the tear, but more followed. Finally, he pulled back from her and jerked his shirt off of the dresser to wipe her tears. “Damn, Shark Lady, I think you sprung a leak,” he said with an emotion choked laugh.
Ronnie laughed, but her heart was breaking into a million pieces as she stood still and let him mop away her tears. “I’m sorry,” she said in a broken whisper. He tilted her chin up and placed a soft gentle kiss on her lips.
“Nothing to be sorry for, sweetheart. You can’t win them all, Shark Lady. You tried. That’s what matters. And you gave me fair warning, before you quit this time.”
“I’m going to miss you,” she said. “And worry.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be good, I promise.”
Her eyes welled up again and he kissed her tenderly again, then pulled her to his chest to hug her. “You’re the one you need to worry about. Call and let someone know you’re not kidnapped. This might be a ploy so if you’re found dead, it won’t tie back to Leland. Do it, Red. For me.”
“Who should I call?” she asked.
“Call Susan Whitmore. Give her the information you gathered, and tell her what you suspect first thing tomorrow,” he said looking into her eyes. “Just don’t tell her you’ve seen me since the ranch.”
Ronnie tried to control the wobble in her lips. It was tough with the emotions swirling inside of her. “I won’t. You just run and keep running and stay safe. I don’t want to have to come for conjugal visits for the next twenty years,” she said with a watery laugh.
“I’d go to federal prison just to have those visits, Red.”
“I hear it’s like Club Med,” she teased. “A helluva lot better than where you were.”
“Anyplace would be better than there. But bars are bars, no matter if they’re real or imaginary. I need to be free.”
Ronnie nodded and sucked in a deep breath. Ronnie knew about those imaginary bars. She had lived behind them all her life. Done exactly what her daddy expected her to do, lived in a way she thought would make him proud. It was time for her to break free of those bars too. As soon as this mess was over, that is exactly what she was going to do. Ronnie would be free too. Free to do whatever she pleased. Whether her father liked it or not. She wasn’t living for him anymore. Or worrying about what he thought.
Too bad she would never be free from Trace Rooks. He was a master thief. Without her permission, or even knowledge, he had stolen her heart and there would be no recovering it. He was taking it with him wherever the wind blew him now. Ronnie sucked in a breath, and tried a smile. “I guess this is g-goodbye then.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. You never know what tomorrow holds.”
He might not know what tomorrow held, but Ronnie did. Loneliness and more of what she’d had for thirty-one years now. Not a single person in the world who gave a shit about her. She’d deal with it like she always had. She would crawl back behind the shield she built to combat the meanness in the world, put on her big girl panties and deal with it.
“Call Susan in the morning, Red. Promise me,” he said again.
“I’ll call her. But I am going to try and get her to drop the charges against you. I didn’t go through all of this for nothing.”
“You can tell her what you want. Just don’t tell her I’m still alive. I dropped you off somewhere and Conner picked you up. You took a leave from work to deal with the emotional trauma.” He hugged her again, then kissed her forehead. “Think you can call Dave and get him to loan me a van, while I finish getting my stuff together?” Trace asked.
“Yeah,” Ronnie said and picked up his phone off of the dresser to call.
She glanced at the screen and her eyebrows slammed together. Trace grabbed his shirt off of the dresser and shrugged into it, and began buttoning it from the bottom.
“Um, Trace?” she asked.
His fingers stopped buttoning and he looked at her. “Yeah?”
“How long has your phone been dead?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Trace walked over to Ronnie and grabbed his phone out of her hand. It was dead, he thought with a sinking feeling in his stomach. Other than calling the hotel, that was the only way Dave had of communicating with them. He had helped Trace bring the files they’d stolen from Leland’s mansion up to the room last night, and that was the last time he’d talked to Dave.
“Fuck!” he shouted just as there was loud pounding on the main door of the hotel of the hotel suite. Trace grabbed his boots and shoved his feet down in them. “Get dressed, Red, hurry!” he said.
“All I have is the black dress in here.”
“Put it on!” he said, and she scrambled to pick it up from the corner where she’d dropped it last night.
The pounding got louder, then he heard Lou Ellen holler, “Freeze, Asshat!” in her best Dirty Mary voice. “Make a move and I’ll make Swiss cheese out of your ass,” she growled.
Trace groaned and picked up the only pistol he had from the dresser. He left the rest of the weapons in Dave’s van last night so they didn’t attract attention when they walked through the halls of the hotel.
“Keep your head down, Red,” he ordered as he racked the weapon and palmed it. “Open the door, then shut it behind me.”
“I’m not sitting in here to be trapped like a rat if that guy takes you out,” she said.
“Don’t argue!” he hissed.
Ronnie grabbed the knob and twisted it then stepped back, Trace braced then swung around the door frame aiming at the front door. It was open, but nobody was standing there. He scanned the room and saw his mother huddled with her hands over her head under the table, but he didn’t see Lou Ellen. His body tense, Trace walked toward the table, his glance alternating between the doorway and his mother. When he got closer to the table, he looked over it and saw Lou Ellen. On the floor, sitting on Talmedge Bartlett’s back with her gun pointed at the base of his skull.
Trace heard footsteps in the hall and swung his aim back to the doorway, just as Dave walked inside. “Sorry, I was downstairs talking to my men. We need to get out of here quick,” Dave said shortly, stepping inside to close the door behind him.
Trace flipped the safety back on his weapon and dropped his arm to his side. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve been trying to call you since early this morning. Where’s Ronnie?” he asked.
“In the bedroom.”
“Let’s get all this together. We’re going to my office to figure this out,” he said as his eyes swept the books spread on the conference table. “Talmedge had a change of heart when Leland tried to have his goons take him out to the woodshed and kill him this morning. He figured out playing both ends against the middle wasn’t going to win him friends.”
“What happened?”
“Get off of me, you old bitch,” Talmedge growled and Trace heard Lou Ellen pull the hammer back on her revolver.
“Aunt Lou, stand down. Get off of him,” Trace said walking around the table. “I’ve got him.”
Lou Ellen huffed out a breath, then pushed down on the center of his back to stand. “Give me a reason,” she said gruffly and uncocked the gun. Her face was flushed, and her eyes glittered with intent. If Lou Ellen wasn’t a financial genius, she had definitely missed her calling as a cop. The Amarillo police could use her on the force. She would have criminals quaking in their boots. He could tell that Talmedge Bartlett sure was.
“Did he tell Leland about his conversation with Ronnie last night?” Trace asked Dave, but kept his eyes on Talmedge.
“He did that and more. He told him that Allison stole the files. Leland decided his good friend had become a liability because he waited until this morning to tell him that, and decided to get rid of him.”
“How did he get away?” Trace asked.
“I rescued his dumb ass from the two goons. He called my phone from the trunk of the car they had him stuffed in. I had my assistant track the pings, and kept him on the line until I found them on the interstate. He’s damned lucky De
lia is a whiz kid and his phone didn’t die or he would have too.”
“Sounds like you’ve been busy this morning.”
“Come on ya’ll get dressed. My guys are waiting in the parking lot. I had them meet me here.”
“That black satchel on the table has a GPS tracker in it,” Talmedge said suddenly.
“Holy shit!” Dave and Trace said at once.
“That’s why I had to tell Leland about the files. He knew. He suspects you’re still alive too,” he said looking at Trace. “Ronnie Winters wouldn’t be going to all the trouble she has gone to if you were dead. And he knows that she was out at that ranch. He put two and two together when Conner Lucas started pulling those files, and she took a sudden vacation from the firm.”
Trace shivered, as a cold chill zipped down his spine. They were damned lucky. Ronnie had walked into that party last night, and she could have died. If there hadn’t been so many people there, witnesses, Trace felt sure she would have. And his mother could have too. Leland knew everything and she had waltzed right in the middle of his lair. Handed herself over to him. “Why that satchel?” Trace asked gruffly.
“It has all the records from the transactions at the ranch. The horse sales, the drug shipments, the women…his contacts.”
The key to the whole operation, Trace thought, as he laid his gun on the table, and grabbed the handle of the satchel.
“Wait!” Talmedge yelled.
Trace dropped the handle. “What?”
“There’s an acid pack inside. It will explode if you don’t have the right combination. The files will disintegrate and so will your skin.” Talmedge sat up and a smug smile eased up the corners of his mouth. “I won’t give that combination to anyone unless I’m guaranteed immunity.”
The bedroom door swung open and Ronnie walked into the room. She folded her arms over her chest, and Trace had never seen her look more fierce. “You’ll give it to us now, unless you want us to tie you up and leave you in this room with it for Leland’s goons to find you.”