by Debra Webb
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I wore my ready-for-battle uniform today. Black slacks, black, double breasted boxy jacket and my mandatory symbol of power, my Christian Louboutins. The only true deviation from the rigid business armor was the sassy lavender and lace camisole beneath the unisex jacket.
I hadn’t allowed Hobbs to call Dawson at home last night. Nor had I called him. Nope. He wouldn’t get a heads up. Instead, I drank two pots of coffee to clear my head. Waxed my legs and any other part of my body that needed errant hair removed. Applied a heavy duty facial mask, a root touch-up, then painted my nails (toes included) bruiser purple for combat.
Instead of sleeping I spent the night looking for anything I could find on the Dawson family, which was only that the father had been some sort of war hero and senator who’d died one year before his eldest son, step-son actually, disappeared. The mother had passed a few years later.
Dawson was basically an orphan. No one I spoke to this morning at his old precinct would say diddly-squat but it was more what wasn’t said that mattered. Hobbs had called his high school first thing only to learn that his senior year Dawson had been voted the student most likely to end up in jail. He had, apparently, walked around with a huge chip on his broad shoulders and a penchant for finding trouble.
One would think that all of the above served as sufficient motivation for being royally pissed off since Dawson hadn’t mentioned any of it and...it was. But the real kicker...the final straw that broke the camel’s back...was learning who his former fiancé had been.
Mercedes DeVille. Only the hottest supermodel currently gracing the cover of every hip magazine. Six feet tall, probably weighed all of fifty pounds soaking wet. Abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous.
The possibility that he’d considered me attractive in my naked state by any stretch of the imagination had evaporated beneath the harsh glare of reality’s runway lights.
Those commercials, don’t hate me because I’m beautiful, had immediately come to mind. And being a real woman with real flaws, I did hate her.
Still, I felt reasonably confident that I looked pretty damned good this morning. Any woman who had put herself through that much physical torture, especially the waxing, in the wee hours of the morning, and including sleep deprivation, would be dangerous in a room alone with a member of the male species. Made perfect sense since it was ultimately men for whom we women went to such extremes and suffered such immense discomfort and doubt.
Lying bastards.
Fury brimmed all over again.
Don’t get me wrong. I fully understood that Dawson had himself a whopper of a motivation for having lied to me about who he was. But, dammit all to hell, I hated deception more than any other single thing in the whole freakin’ universe.
I pivoted and strode across my office, retracing the path I’d already made about fifty times.
“Hobbs said you wanted to see me.”
I halted dead in my tracks, felt my stomach take a dive south, and turned to face the man who’d spoken. The one who’d kept me awake all night. Who’d made me utterly miserable.
If I lived a thousand years I would never forget the way Dawson looked at that precise moment. Maybe it was the personal knowledge I now possessed. But somehow I saw through the tough guy persona and super sexy exterior. Though it was difficult with him looking like he’d just rolled out of bed with his perpetually tousled hair, Yankees tee contouring to the interesting terrain of his chest beneath an open button-down shirt, and those wickedly worn out jeans gloving his lower half.
Those final moments before we both passed out in that coffin reeled through my head before I could stop it. His ragged breath...his taunt body beneath me.
I pushed the images aside, wet my lips and said, “Close the door, Dawson.” I folded my arms over my chest and decided it would be best if I remained standing. I reminded myself that his last relationship had involved a supermodel and I got mad all over again—at me, for feeling inferior.
He shut the door, hesitated before turning around just long enough to plow the fingers of one hand through his hair. My own fingers twitched to follow the trail his had taken before I curled them into my palms. In the event that I had somehow failed to notice, my traitorous brain reminded me that the man had the best ass I’d ever laid eyes on.
It just wasn’t fair. But then, life rarely was.
When he finally faced me he looked directly into my eyes with that same fierce determination he’d oozed the first time he swaggered into my office. “Just so you know, that hasn’t happened to me since I was fourteen. Some things just won’t be put off, not even for breathing.”
He thought I’d called him into my office to discuss the coffin incident. I almost laughed, emphasis on the almost. I’d bet a million bucks, if I had it, that his ex-fiance had made that happen a time or two just entering a room.
I cleared my throat and managed a firm yet neutral expression, despite the fury and jealousy eating away at my guts. “This meeting isn’t about...that.”
Confusion muscled its way onto his face, elbowing out some of that cocky determination. “I didn’t follow you last night,” he hastened to assure me. “I haven’t since you said back off.”
I wasn’t quite sure I believed that but his whereabouts last night wasn’t what I had on my mind at the moment either.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Warren Rayburn was your half brother?” Or that your ex was an alien being? After all, most models sported numerous perfect qualities that never, ever happened in clusters as a matter of nature. How much added synthetic material constituted an alternate life form?
I mentally screamed. God, I hated jealousy, especially on my part, almost as much as I did deception.
Why hadn’t I seen this coming? Not a single applicant had applied for the opening at my agency and out of nowhere an ex-cop waltzes in. And this thing that had been brewing between us from day one...it had to have come from somewhere. No matter that Rayburn’s dark alluring looks had been utterly opposite from Dawson’s blond haired blue eyed dazzle...there was something there...a familiarity that reached out to me and wouldn’t let go. I should have picked up on that.
“Not my half brother,” he corrected. “My brother. We were just as close as if we’d had the same father.” All emotion had vanished from his face. I couldn’t have read him if I’d had a direct connection to the Psychic Network.
“I told you up front how I feel about deception,” I said, laying it out clearly and simply for him. The fury that had charged me up for this confrontation was suddenly, glaringly absent, leaving me too vulnerable. I hated that feeling.
He nodded. “Does this mean I’m fired?” The flash of hurt in those blue eyes did serious damage to the flimsy shield guarding my own feelings. But with only one swoop of those long lashes his weakness was concealed as efficiently as his true identity had been from the beginning.
“Before we get to that,” I redirected, “I want to know why you came here and what really happened to...your brother.” That Dawson considered the older man a full brother spoke volumes about their relationship. That I wanted to torture information about the supermodel out of him spoke the same about me, only in a less complimentary manner. I told myself that smart people never discussed politics, religion (in Texas that would be synonymous with sports) or previous bed partners. I had to be smart...at least smarter than I’d been.
Dawson angled that handsome head and tossed out a challenge I definitely hadn’t anticipated. “If I’m fired why would I tell you anything?” That familiar gleam of determination flashed back to life. “You want the truth? All of it? Fine. Guarantee my job for at least as long as this investigation takes and you have a bargain.”
I had to bite the inside of my jaw to hold back the grin that threatened to make an appearance. How did he do that? One minute I wanted to kill him for lying to me, the next I wanted to pat him on the back and congratulate his ingenuity. Okay, now I was lying to myself. Patting him on the back was
the farthest thing from my mind, but that was a whole other issue. Since I didn’t have a couple of years to analyze it, I moved on.
“All right,” I said without hesitation, “you have my word.”
Now he was the one looking surprised. With a wave of my hand I motioned for him to take a seat.
“I’ll stand.”
“Suit yourself.” Since he didn’t sit, neither did I. I wasn’t about to give an inch of my leverage. “Start talking.”
He took a deep breath and plunged into his history, “As a kid I never felt I quite measured up to my father’s or my big brother’s superhero reputations,” he admitted.
Not exactly once upon a time, but it revealed a good deal more than I’d figured I would get, which I appreciated.
Dawson’s eyes took on a distant look. “At eighteen I decided to become a hero too so I enlisted in the Army.”
Wow, now there was a serious commitment to making it happen. I couldn’t imagine how I would have felt if my son had done something so terrifyingly permanent when he graduated. Last night’s call from Steven tugged at my attention but I pushed it away. I couldn’t deal with that right now. Besides, he was a grown man, whatever he decided would have to be okay with me.
“The last year of my military tour I ended up overseas.” Dawson shrugged. “It wasn’t a problem. I didn’t mind. Until I got back from six weeks of field maneuvers to find out my brother had been murdered.”
My chest tightened. “Your commanding officer at your duty station didn’t attempt to contact you before that?”
“What would have been the point? No body. No funeral. The fact was, at that time, Warren was considered missing...on the run.”
I couldn’t swallow that. “Impossible. The man I met that night wasn’t running from anyone or anything.” I said this before I thought, but I’d done a lot of that lately.
Dawson looked away a moment. “You’re right,” he agreed when his gaze met mine once more. “He wouldn’t have run no matter the cost.”
“What happened, Dawson?” I braced for the worst, reading his body language and knowing there was more and it was bad. His hands were balled into fists at his sides, tension radiated in his posture. This was not easy for him. And just like that, he managed another little crack in my professional armor. He’d already thoroughly breached my personal defenses.
“When I finally got stateside, DEA wouldn’t talk to me. Everything about my brother was supposedly classified. I knew the accusation that he’d gone rogue was a lie but I couldn’t prove it. For two years I tried to fight the system...then I just gave up.”
I didn’t ask any more questions. Just let him talk.
“Eventually I decided the best thing I could do for my mother and myself was to try and make a difference. So I went into law enforcement...looking for peace and maybe even still needing to live up to what my brother and father had been.
“For a while that was enough.”
I held my breath. Knew something big was coming.
“Then, about eight weeks ago Warren’s former partner contacted me. He was dying and needed to get the truth about my brother off his conscience.”
The story that Dawson told me then went all the way to the tenderest spot inside me.
Warren Rayburn had been selected for the Disposable assignment because his face wasn’t likely to be recognized in Texas. The local division was suspected of being involved, along with HPB and the Bureau. Rayburn came down to Texas posing as a Jersey thug. He quickly made a name with those who operated outside the law and ended up the right hand to the man running the Disposable operation, Peter Reagan. Things went as planned for several months leading to the arrest of two key players, Reagan and his second in command, Masters—the two suspects who were later gunned down on the courthouse steps.
“He called his partner the day before he disappeared,” Dawson went on. “He said he’d gotten himself caught up in a lose-lose situation. No way out. His cover was about to be blown if it hadn’t been already. He wanted someone to know the truth just in case he didn’t survive. For the good it did him since his partner was pressured into keeping quiet.” Dawson paused, leaving me hanging, desperate to hear more. “But he gave his partner two important keys to this case.”
I felt myself leaning forward in anticipation.
“Two names. His Bureau contact, Terrence Brooks and...” Dawson averted his gaze again. I watched his jaw work as he struggled with what he had to say next, then he looked straight at me. “My brother spent his last night on this earth with you and he knew your name.”
A kind of numbness closed in on me. What Dawson said didn’t make sense...but clearly it was true. That was what had brought him to my door.
“I sent you the photo,” he confessed. “Sent something similar to Brooks a few weeks before that but didn’t get the desired reaction. I figured if either of you had anything to hide things would start happening. The case was never really solved. There had to be someone out there who knew something. All I needed was a place to start.”
And viola, things had, indeed, started happening. Dawson had gotten his reaction as well as his starting place.
I was the one looking away then. My God...what a story. How could Rayburn have known my name? It was...impossible.
“I shouldn’t have used you that way,” Dawson said, dragging my attention back to him. “But I kept you under surveillance 24/7 just in case my actions brought unforeseen repercussions. Anyone who tried to hurt you in any way would have had to go through me.”
I rubbed at my forehead, attempting to make all that I’d heard come together in some sensible manner but it wasn’t working. Too much too fast. Emotion overload. Xanax would be good about now.
“You shouldn’t have come here.”
Startled, I looked beyond Dawson and found my uncle looming in the doorway of my office. I blinked just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things (I’d sure as hell been wishing he was here to answer a few questions.).
“I thought you were on a ship somewhere between Grand Cayman and Cozumel,” I blurted. His arrival was good though, we needed him. Hobbs had tried to call the ship again and had gotten nowhere. Nor had he been able to get through on Hank’s cell. It was a damn boat for Christ’s sake, how hard could it be to locate one man among the passengers? Maybe that was the point. Cruises were designed for getting lost from reality.
Dawson and Hank squared off for about three beats before attention shifted back to me. “I got back this morning.”
Before I could react to that announcement he cut another look at Dawson who proffered his hand. “Derrick Dawson,” he said without repentance considering my uncle’s first comment was intended for him as was the furious glare now pointed his way.
“I know who you are,” Hank said caustically. “And I know what you’ve started.” He didn’t take Dawson’s hand.
I intervened before the two could go for each other’s jugulars. Laying down a wager on which one would come out on top would be next to impossible. Hank Mercer stood six four and close to two hundred pounds decked out in his cowboy duds, but Dawson had that lean, wiry kind of body that wouldn’t go down easy and he was young and strong. Both were streetwise enough to know all the lowest tricks.
“Tell me about Disposable, Hank,” I ordered, cutting to the chase. The two could just save their pissing contest for some other time when it wasn’t wasting mine. “I want it all.”
After hearing Dawson’s story, I’d considered myself ready for anything, but I was wrong. Before my uncle had even uttered a word in response, I read the truth in his eyes. I wasn’t going to like any part of this. Well there was an original start for my day. Lately I couldn’t seem to get a break.
“Disposable was closed ten years ago,” Hank said frankly, his expression haggard or maybe reluctant but outright defensive, “there’s nothing to tell.”
“That’s bullshit,” Dawson growled.
I held up a hand, which, incredibly, shut him up. “May
be it was closed,” I allowed, “but it wasn’t finished.” I couldn’t be sure what the hell was going on with my uncle, but he was holding back big time. It seemed everyone who’d survived the case suffered from that same malady. “We’ve had two dead border crossers in the past week from the same M.O. as Disposable and both linked to me. Your old friend Special Agent Brooks of the FBI thinks someone has started another similar operation. You remember the routine?” I said, unable to keep the cynicism out of my tone. “Use a desperate Hispanic man or woman seeking the dream of living in America as a mule for drugs then dispose of them? Sure shifts the focus from the bigger border problems.” That was no doubt the goal. Tie up the cops with homicides. Gave the drug lords ample opportunity to do their business without interruption.
“All I can tell you,” Hank replied, his words guarded, “is that I was assigned to the task force. Brooks represented the Bureau and Ralph McElroy was the DEA rep. But I can guarantee you this, you can’t trust anything Brooks says.”
At least now I knew McElroy was involved. And that my uncle didn’t care for Brooks. Interesting. But, then, neither did I.
“But no one knew about Rayburn,” Hank went on, not even me. “At least, not in the beginning.” He glanced at Dawson then. “Apparently the powers that be thought someone from local law enforcement was facilitating the operation. FBI, DEA, HPD, no one was exempt from suspicion.”
I studied Dawson as my uncle spoke. Rage simmered just beneath the surface, but he kept it there. Thankfully. We needed to hear whatever Hank would tell us, whether we liked any of it or not. But I had to keep him talking until I had it all.
My uncle said to me, “I didn’t learn Rayburn’s identity until after the suspects were arraigned and a judge was selected. Hell, jury selection had even begun.”
So far he hadn’t given me anything, except the confirmation of McElroy’s involvement, that I didn’t already know. “I know my father was the judge. And you were the lead from HPD.”