Dirty Rotten Scoundrel (Romantic Mystery) (J.J. Graves Mysteries)

by Liliana Hart

  “I know that, Jack. You’re a damned hero.” It didn’t exactly come out as a compliment. “But I’m just asking you to not take unnecessary chances. We’ll cross the bait bridge if and when we get to it.”

  He leaned against the island and the corner of his mouth twitched. “I was expecting more of an argument.”

  “Maybe later. It’s been a long day. Besides, I worked out most of my frustration on Agent Greer. I told him we were getting married in two weeks and you’d better be there alive or there’d be hell to pay.”

  It wasn’t often I caught Jack off guard, so it was nice to see the genuine shock on his face before a slow smile took over.

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah. Is that okay?”

  “That’s perfect. I know we talked about eloping, but even with that there’s planning involved. I suggest we pass the whole thing over to my mother to organize while we’re dealing with this.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t want a big wedding. I thought we’d just go somewhere and sign some papers. I don’t need a big ceremony or dress or anything.”

  “Maybe you could wear your prom dress from junior year,” Jack said, waggling his eyebrows.

  “You promised you’d never bring that dress up again.”

  “Sometimes it’s hard not to. That dress is burned into my corneas for eternity.”

  “It would serve you right if that’s what I showed up in.”

  “And yet, I’d marry you anyway. That should say something.”

  “Fine, your mother can handle whatever details need to be handled. But I’m serious about not having a big crowd of people. It would be embarrassing to show up for a wedding where everyone is sitting on the groom’s side.”

  “How about my parents and our closest friends? Not more than ten or fifteen people. Very small and intimate. All you have to do is show up.”

  “Deal,” I said, holding out my hand to shake on it like we were back in grade school. He took my hand and then pulled me into his embrace.

  “The big kids seal it with a kiss.”

  “Oh, well then—” and when his lips touched mine we were both laughing.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “It’s about time,” Ben Carver said once Jack and I finally made an appearance in the front office. “Some of us have been working in here instead of making out in the hallway.”

  “You must have eyes in the back of your head, Carver,” Jack said, moving to stand in front of the two long whiteboards that took up most of the room.

  Ben Carver was probably a couple of years older than Jack, and they’d been friends for a lot of years. Carver was just under six feet and stocky with it. His hair was sandy blonde and his eyes a soft green that sparkled with good humor. Laugh lines spread out from his eyes. He still wore his holster and weapon just like Jack, even though we were safe inside the house.

  “Good to see you, J.J.,” he said. “You just get prettier and prettier every time I see you. You ready to leave this loser and run away with me?”

  “Not if you’re going to bring your wife along. I like to have my men all to myself. I’m selfish that way.”

  His expression was deadpan but I could see the humor lurking in his eyes. “Weirdly enough, she said the same thing last time I proposed a three-way. You women are all the same.”

  I nodded soberly. “Heartless bitches, each and every one.”

  “Your man is in a mess here. I leave him alone for a few days and this is what happens.”

  “You’re about to be in a mess once I rearrange that pretty face of yours. Now stop busting my chops and flirting with my woman.”

  “I’m sorry? Did you really just call me your woman?” I leaned back against the edge of Jack’s desk and raised my brow.

  “You’re a woman. And you’re mine. Thus, my woman. When we get married, I’m going to call you my wife, so you should probably be prepared for that.”

  “Hey,” Carver said, grinning from ear to ear. “You guys are getting married? It’s about damned time. Can I get an invite? Do you know how many years I’ve had to listen to stories about you from this lovesick fool?”

  I hid my smile behind my coffee cup. “You’re a good friend to my man, Carver.”

  “Your man?” Jack asked.

  “Just trying it on for size. I figure after we’re married I’ll be calling you asshole instead of my husband. At least according to Martha.”

  “You’re going to pay for that later,” Jack said, tugging at the back of my hair.

  “I sure as hell hope so.”

  “You guys are making me uncomfortable. I haven’t had sex in weeks. Do you know how long you have to go without after your wife has a baby? It feels like forever and a day.”

  “We don’t want to hear about your sex life, Carver. I feel sorry enough for your wife as it is. Let’s talk about murder instead.”

  “My second favorite topic of conversation.” Carver pointed to the long whiteboard on the left side of the room. “Jack and I were setting this all up before you got here. We’ve got the crime scene photos of the ten men under Jack’s command, their TOD and COD listed below. Below that we have family members and financial reports. Wolfe’s body hasn’t been found yet, so I’ve got him over to the side along with all the same data.”

  Carver maneuvered a smaller whiteboard so it stood next to the victims. I didn’t recognize the men in these photographs, but I had a feeling they were the men responsible for the heist that started this whole ball rolling.

  “Seven men went inside the bank that day. One man was already on the inside—Eric Lieber. He was the bank manager and had keys and passcodes. The other five men trickled in over a period of forty-five minutes, dressed in suits and each holding a briefcase. Five o’clock came and the guard at the door locked them so no new customers could come in. At the same time, Lieber shut down the emergency security that would alert the authorities in case of robbery. He had to override it, and eventually someone would have been sent out to see if it was a glitch, but it bought them a few minutes.”

  “The other five men drew their weapons and started firing. They had no plans to take hostages. Their goal was to kill anyone inside and move on. But one of the victims managed to dial 911 and leave the line open while everyone was being slaughtered.”

  “Then we got the call and suited up,” Jack said. “Even in an emergency it takes us time to coordinate. The local police cordoned off the area, not that it would’ve done any good with the underground escape they’d planned on using. Another fifteen minutes for us to grab our equipment and for me to brief the team on the ride over. Everyone inside was already dead and they were already finessing their way through to the vaults when we arrived.”

  “What do you mean finessing?” I asked. “I thought Lieber had the keys and passcodes.”

  “He did, but not in their entirety. No man or woman would be given access to every part of the bank. You give your trusted officials portions of the whole, just enough to get into the smaller vaults and a partial code and retinal scan for the giant vault where most of the gold was kept.”

  “Lieber’s brother, Karl, was the computer whiz, and was able to recreate the other parts of the passcodes to get into the main vault, including forging the retinal scans of the two other members needed to open the vault. Karl Lieber was more than a genius. I’ve never seen or heard of technology that sophisticated before, and the Pentagon swooped in and confiscated every bit of it before it could leak. We’re talking technology of the future, and we’ve got nothing in place to defend against it.”

  “You sound envious,” I told Carver.

  “You have no idea how badly I want to get my hands on those files.” Carver blew out a breath so the hair that had fallen over his forehead fluttered. “Anyway, both Liebers were single, but they left behind grieving parents who had no idea what their children were up to. They moved to London for a while because the embarrassment was so great. Apparently they’re rather well to do in the up
per crust. They do still maintain a New York residence though.”

  “Moving on, we’ve got Adam Boxer. He served three tours in Afghanistan before he came back to civilian life. He had a high aptitude for chemistry and math, and so the army thought he’d be a good fit for explosives. They were right about that. While the rest of the team was killing the hostages, he was wiring the building with explosives. Very sophisticated in nature. He left behind a wife, no children. His parents are also deceased.”

  “Next we have Peter Anderson. Born and raised in Chelsea, he was the British partner of the security firm of Anderson Parker Security. The Parker being for Jordan Parker, who headed up the U.S. Branch. Anderson and Parker brought in the nifty gadgets used during the heist, some of which they’d created themselves, including that very awesome laser saw they used to slice through the floor like it was hot butter. There’s also a childhood connection between Anderson and the Liebers.”

  “Then there’s Martin Stark. It’s just fucking dumb luck that he was caught in the fray. His day job was spent as a strategist for Wall Street, but he was better known for strategizing heists in Berlin, Dubai, Malta, and New York just to name a few. He was a master of organizing a team and teaching them how to maneuver with almost military precision. He was never caught, only suspected of the crimes, but we all know that’s bullshit. The crazy thing is all of those jobs were done with a different crew—from as small as four to as large as twelve. That’s unheard of, but Stark took his time in the planning. He spent years between jobs, as many as six or eight, while he trained his men and worked out logistics.”

  “And then there was John Elliott,” Jack said. “He was the outsider they brought in. All of these other guys came from money. Stuff like this was a game to them and they kept upping the stakes. But John was desperate. His daughter was dying and he would have done anything to give her the treatment she needed, and they exploited that and probably never planned that he’d take part of the cut. Elliott was the fall guy whose body would be left behind when they made their escape.”

  “I never noticed anything was off.” Jack touched the picture of Elliott that was a duplicate of the one on the other board that held his team. “Ever since Katie was diagnosed he was always more tense, more worried, and we hashed it out over beers a couple of times. But I never saw anything like this coming. The thing about Elliott, all my men, was when they were focused on a mission, they were stone cold. If you ever question or doubt while you’re in the middle of an op then you might as well put a bullet in your brain before someone else does. The situations are too dangerous, and the lives of your brothers are on the line.”

  “You can’t blame yourself, Jack.” I rested my hand on his lower back, hoping I could comfort him. “You couldn’t have seen any of this. No one could have.”

  “It sure as hell doesn’t feel that way.”

  “This was all information uncovered during the initial investigation,” Carver said. “What we’ve got to do now is connect the dots. Try to find the thread that connects those men to whoever is killing off the SWAT team. We’ll need to reinterview all the families. We’ll also need to see if we can find who’s been hired for the hits. Whoever’s in charge isn’t getting their hands dirty with the killings. They’re doling out money and giving orders. But the killers are professionals. They’d have to be to take out men with that kind of training. The list shouldn’t be all that long.”

  “Greer was going to talk to Jane Elliott tonight,” Jack said, referring to Detective Elliott’s wife. “I’ll need to go see her tomorrow. She shouldn’t have to do this by herself, and more than likely the media will be camped out on her doorstep before too long.”

  “What will happen to her?” I asked.

  “She’ll lose her widow’s benefits,” Carver said. “And she’ll be requestioned. It’ll be rough on her and her girls. What are they, eight and ten now?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “Eight and ten. Old enough to have their illusions shattered about their father and know what it means.”

  “Can you look over all of the autopsy reports?” Carver asked me. “You won’t have the bodies, but maybe you’ll see a similar killing style between the victims. That might help us narrow our search a bit. I’m going to tell you both right now that Greer and Ms. Rhodes have an agenda. You can use them to find the truth, but don’t trust them. If this doesn’t turn out right, they’re going to need someone to blame, and you’re the only one left alive to shoulder it all.”

  “We’ll be working parallel with each other. We’re going to share notes and findings and interviews, and Greer has agreed to let the two of you help with the investigation. Though between you and me, he didn’t have any choice because I outrank him and could make things very difficult. You’re going to owe me a room full of strippers and a case of Glenfiddich when this is all said and done.”

  “If we get out of this and your wife okays the strippers, then you’ve got a deal,” Jack said.

  ***

  Two hours later my eyes were crossing over autopsy reports. It was past midnight, and I’d been up for almost twenty-four hours with nothing but a catnap in between.

  “I’m not going to do you any good anymore,” I said, stretching my arms above my head and feeling a couple of pops along my spine.

  Jack and Carver were spread out at their own tables, poring over paperwork and making notes to follow up on a few things. Police work was mostly tedious, sifting through paperwork and reports—truth and lies. Every once in a while, one of them would get up and add something to one of the boards.

  “I’m about done for too,” Carver said, tossing down his pen. “We can start fresh in the morning.”

  “Do you have an appointment with Mark Mosely tomorrow?” Jack asked.

  I nodded. “Eight-thirty.”

  “I’ll go with you to the funeral home, and then we can go pay a visit to Jane Elliott. I don’t want to wait too long. And maybe she’ll remember something that Greer wasn’t able to get out of her.”

  We trudged up the stairs and Carver peeled off toward the guest room. “Thanks for letting me crash here,” he said. “The B&B I stayed at last time I was here creeped me out. I kept getting the feeling that old woman who runs it was spying on me and going through my things. And I think she put a sleeping pill in the hot milk she brought me every night.”

  I raised my brows but wasn’t all that surprised by the accusation. Wanda Baker was a curious sort. Carver was lucky he didn’t wake up with Wanda’s single daughter lying beside him in bed.

  Jack closed the bedroom door behind us and dimmed the lights. The protective coating on the floor to ceiling windows kept people from seeing in, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t shoot into the room at random and get lucky. Of course, since the bedroom was on the top floor they’d have to climb a tree to get a shot off.

  I kicked off my shoes and stripped out of my clothes. I probably would have left them on the floor and fallen face first into bed if Jack and I weren’t still at the newly living together stage. Jack was a neat freak and liked everything in its place. I put things in their place, but I wasn’t in as big a hurry to put them there as Jack was.

  I picked the clothes up and tossed them in the hamper and grabbed an oversized T-shirt to slip over my head while I was still vertical. I crawled under the covers and felt the mattress dip as Jack got on the other side and pulled me into his arms.

  “Love you,” I mumbled, and then fell asleep.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The first thing I noticed when I woke the next morning was the smell of coffee. I couldn’t function without it, and I held my hand out from under the covers and heard Jack chuckle as he wrapped my fingers around the cup.

  I managed to take a few sips without spilling it down my front, and I slowly felt the cobwebs clear away from my mind. The second thing I noticed was the added weight on my left hand. I nearly bobbled the cup and what was left of the coffee at the sight of the ring on my finger.

  “Je
sus Christ, Jack. This is the Lawson ring?” A ruby the size of my thumbnail sat in a delicate antique gold setting, and tiny diamonds flashed around the ruby. It was beautiful. And terrifying. “What if I lose it? Or it falls into a body?”

  “I’d say maybe we should get a chain so you can wear it around your neck so we don’t have to worry about that. I wonder if any other man has heard his fiancée utter those words?”

  “This is like a real ring. A grownup ring.” I still hadn’t managed to take my eyes off it. My hand looked stately and official—important—when I wore this ring. I hoped I could live up to it. “I need a manicure, but I know I’d just mess it up, so I won’t bother.”

  “A ring like that deserves some grownup attention to the man who gave it to you.” Jack slid his hand beneath my nightshirt and things started to get very warm. “It might even call for special sexual favors.”

  “Oh, yeah?” My eyes wanted to roll back in my head as his fingers slipped beneath the cotton of my underwear. “How special?”

  “I figure since you’re a doctor and all, you might know more about special than the average person. I’ve got to tell you my expectations are pretty high.”

  I looked at the clock and saw he’d woken me up half an hour before I’d set my alarm to go off. Pretty sneaky.

  “I need a shower.” I got out of bed and headed toward the bathroom. I stripped my nightshirt over my head and looked over my shoulder to make sure I had Jack’s full attention, and then I shimmied out of the underwear.

  “Are you coming?” I asked.

  “Not yet.”

  I laughed and headed into the bathroom. “I bet I can fix that. I’m a doctor after all.”

  “I can’t argue with that logic.”

  ***

  My meeting with Mark Mosely didn’t take long. Leanne had been very specific in what she’d wanted as far as the burial and service went, and she’d had it all planned out just in case. By the shell-shocked look on her husband’s face, she’d made the right decision to take it out of his hands.