by Kristi Lea
Noah walked slowly back through the maze of cubicles to his desk, sat down heavily in his chair, and loosened his tie a notch. He picked up a foam football with the NU logo blazoned in red and white and tossed it a couple of times as he replayed the whole conversation in his head.
“How did he take the report?” Cole asked, not looking up from the screen full of numbers he studied.
Noah fired the ball at Cole in response. The rookie caught it cleanly two inches from his head and immediately threw it right back.
“That well, huh?” asked Cole, grinning.
Noah grunted a reply and tossed the ball to the corner of his cube, where it slid through a pile of papers—mainly boring office memos and scratch paper that he’d not bothered to shred yet.
“Now what?” Cole was still waiting expectantly.
“Now,” Noah said slowly. “We find her.”
Chapter 6
Once, endless rows of corn had felt like prison bars, locking Jess into a life she hated. Monotonous in their drab gray-brown, they swayed in the dusty wind gusts as if mocking her love of color. Of dancing. Of change. The landscape of her childhood home had consisted of flat cornfields, flatter soybean fields, and the occasional clump of cows lazing under a lone, scraggly tree.
Growing up in Small Town, Nowhere, she had itched and strained at her world, pushing every boundary and limit, until the ropes that held her fast had shredded. Then she ran.
First to community college in Nashville. When her father had died in a car accident—alone in his pickup with nothing but a sharp curve, a steep ditch, and an open can of Bud to blame—the small support he had provided was gone. She had packed up her paint brushes and boarded a Greyhound bus for Los Angeles. In her bag was little besides her clothes and a worn and stained business card with a scrawled phone number of Rick, the man who had promised to make her rich and famous.
Infamous, maybe. The asshole had not made her rich. He had provided her with a shabby studio apartment with an itsy-bitsy closet stocked with itsy-bitsy clothes. Belly-baring T’s, skirts so short that they would be indecent on a four-year old, corsets made of satin, of leather, of peacock feathers. For two years, she had not owned a single pair of shoes with a heel lower than three inches high, or pantyhose with a crotch.
Still, he did find her work, taking a generous sixty percent cut of every paycheck. At first, he seemed to share most of it with her: in champagne, fancy dinners, in high-profile clubs. Like every bad relationship, once the shine was off of the apple, his interest in Jess waned. It could have been worse. She had a roof over her head, an ever-increasing network of contacts for modeling jobs and personal appearances, and didn’t have to whore herself to anyone but Rick.
Then she met Charles and learned what respect felt like. What love was. How it felt to have a home of her own. But marrying a rich older man didn’t save her from infamy, and here she was, running away again. Running backwards.
Once Jessica had driven away from her Hollywood home in the housekeepers’ errand car, her plan was simple: Find the bus station and leave town. She ditched the car in an abandoned lot and hoped that it would take at least days before someone towed it. Before someone guessed where she had gone.
She had changed busses twice, once in Las Vegas and again in Albuquerque. It wasn’t until the bus was already hours into its journey to Tulsa that she noticed the broken zipper on her duffel bag. Frantically, she dug through the bag’s contents. Her hollowed-out paperback book, the one hiding a stack of prepaid Visa gift cards—her only source of money—was gone.
***
It was a perfect August night in LA. Seventy-five degrees, with a light breeze that smelled of sweet ocean. Thin clouds draped the stars like bridal tulle. Or maybe it was smog. Noah sipped a triple-shot espresso and gave his head a shake, trying to stay awake.
Stakeouts were one of his least favorite pastimes. They ranked barely a notch higher than busywork, filling out papers, and searching computer databases. Important jobs, but surely there was someone who was better at it than he was. There had been an officer watching the Kingsbury house round the clock since the robbery, and no one had yet to spot anything more interesting than a stray tom cat who howled at odd hours of the night. He hated sitting still.
Wish I’d brought Cole to keep me company. But then both of them would have been snoozing at their desks the next day.
If anyone was going to carry the blame for this fuck-up of an assignment, it would be Noah. He was the one who was supposed to find the answers. He was the one who had studied every detail of her life, every photo, every press release, every change of hairstyle or facial expression. He was the one who failed to produce enough evidence to indict her. He was the one who lost her.
He was the one who wanted her, who kissed, her, who nearly wrapped her legs around his waist and buried his cock inside her like a randy teenager up on a rooftop in full view of the waiting press below.
And he would be the one to do the most boring, useless jobs left and give Cole a chance to save the day, assuming there was still a day worth saving.
Shit. Dragging his own career through the toilet was bad enough. There was nothing left here to watch, but he had no other leads to follow up on tonight. The jet was still parked in the Caribbean. Half of her crew had not yet been located. Field agents had visited three other vacation spots that Jess and her husband were known to frequent. They still could find no record of her family, and Brandon Kingsbury—the closest thing they had to a robbery suspect—had been under observation for almost as long as Jessica.
Besides, Cutlass had refused Noah’s request to cancel the surveillance and had re-assigned Noah’s backup officers to a breaking case. The man’s gravelly voice still echoed in Noah’s head. “You fucked up this case, Grayson. I have a source promising hard evidence—enough for a grand jury. You know, the same shit I expected you to find. I want your butt in that alleyway tonight, where you can't screw up anything else.”
Headlights poured through his front windshield as a car turned down the alley that led to the servants' entrance of the Kingsbury place. Well, theirs and about half a dozen more estates. Noah jotted a quick note about the make of the car and hoped that the dashboard camera got a clear shot of the license plate.
He felt like Elmer Fudd staring down the rabbit hole, knowing all the while that Bugs Bunny was long gone. He glanced at the clock. Nearly four A.M. Someone would be here soon to pull the dawn shift until a couple of uniformed officers came on the scene after eight. Only a few more hours to stay awake.
Ahead, the vines that covered the grounds' wall shimmied.
Noah blinked and raised a pair of night-vision goggles to get a better look at the spot. It was nearly halfway down the block from the rear gate. There was nothing there now.
Must be that damned randy tom cat.
He relaxed back, rubbing his neck.
And then the vines shimmied again. This time he was sure of it.
He focused the camera at the spot and snatched up the goggles again. He had walked the perimeter of that wall a dozen times, and studied satellite photos and building permit schematics of it a hundred times. There was nothing in that corner but brick wall and hedges.
When the wall seemed to shift, Noah reached for his gun and his radio with cautious movements. Maybe it was a really big possum. Or maybe there was a concealed gate in this part of the wall.
His pulse flicked strongly against the collar of his shirt and his fingers grew cold with anticipation as he waited for something else to happen.
The vines stopped moving, but the shift in the garden wall held. Had someone seen him? His car had a good vantage point, mainly hidden by an oversized trash bin belonging to the neighbors, but he wasn't invisible.
The wall moved again, and this time a dark-clad figure emerged. Between the shadows, the dumpsters, and the cars, he couldn’t tell if the figure was male or female, black or white. Armed or not.
Noah punched in a silent call to Cole r
equesting backup, and palmed his service weapon. The heft of the metal was a familiar weight in his hand and he moved slowly towards the car door.
The figure held his position, and Noah held his breath. If he made a commotion, then the perp would surely run back inside the grounds. Without knowing how to get in, Noah would be forced to knock on the front door and politely request entrance, giving the person more than enough time to hide or gather a convincing story.
After about sixty-eight breaths, give or take, the figure began to move, walking with a smooth grace and staying close to the shade of the vines.
Noah eased the car door open and climbed out, hunched down. The figure didn't stop or look back.
He crept toward the wall and made to follow, flicking the safety on his gun to off.
The hum of an engine announced a second car at the far end of the alley. Noah froze, his shoulder half buried in twining flowers and leaves against the wall, hoping like hell he wasn't visible in the sudden yellow light.
The figure ahead, he could see, was definitely a man. Average height, slim build. The guy picked up speed and began jogging toward the car. The headlights shut off, plunging the alley into deep black again, hiding the silhouette of the mystery man.
The only way he could catch the man was to step out of the shadows and run.
He never got a chance.
The crack of a gunshot rang out nearby and pain exploded in his left shoulder, knocking him off balance.
Noah tried to return fire, but the force of the impact had set him reeling and his eyes hadn't quite adjusted to the sudden loss of light. He pointed his gun at something shapeless and black that hovered over him and squeezed the trigger as the figure smashed something down on his head.
He didn’t feel his head bounce on the concrete.
Chapter 7
Jessica pulled scratchy, thin covers up to her shoulders and shivered. The motel claimed cleanliness as its primary feature. Apparently at the expense of actual comfort.
The mattress beneath her felt stiff and poky like the springs on an ancient couch and the bathroom sink was a mustard color of porcelain that had fallen out of vogue sometime in her diaper-wearing years. It was actually clean.
And way better than sleeping in another bus terminal for tonight.
She didn’t have many options besides sleeping on the streets, and she had a little cash left. Not as much as she’d counted on from the gift cards that were stolen, but enough for a few nights sleep in cheap motels while she gathered supplies for her new life.
Only a chain link fence and some weather beaten concrete separated the motel parking lot from the edge of I-55 here on the south side of Memphis. A semi downshifted nearby, the low grinding noise reverberating in the otherwise quiet room.
Jess checked the clock. Ten more minutes at least until her clothes were done in the guest washer down the hall. She snuggled into a pair of ratty old sweats, grateful to be clean and wearing anything other than the same jeans she'd had on since she left her house. What she wouldn't trade for a set of nice high-thread count sheets or her fluffy bathrobe just now.
If all went well, she would soon be in much more comfortable surroundings. If not...
She flicked on the TV.
Sappy movies, the shopping channel, CNN. With an irritated grunt, she reached up to gather her hair into a ponytail. It was a silly habit, and completely pointless now. Her fingers found empty air and her shirt collar. With a sense of wonder, she patted the curling, inch-long locks around her head.
Lindsay had shaved it short as a guy's hair, and the dye was so black that she kept swatting her bangs thinking there was a bug on her head. But the Goth-pixie look was easy to take care of. She had survived almost three days on the road without washing it, and the free motel shampoo had left it soft and shiny. Much, much easier than long layers that required a drawer full of conditioning products and a salon-style blowout every morning.
Something on the screen caught her eye and she paused to see the NBC nightly news. The bottom of the screen flashed the words “Breaking News” and in the background, she recognized the gates of her LA home.
“--was shot today in an apparent altercation with a burglar. This was the second incident in a month at the Kingsbury residence. More on that in a minute. Cheryl, how is the officer?”
Jessica's mouth went dry as the scene cut to a perky-looking brunette in a suit standing in front of her hedges with a microphone. “LAPD are not releasing many details, claiming the incident is still under investigation. But what they have said is puzzling. The perpetrator was not apprehended, though an inside source tells me that the whole incident was caught on video camera.”
Jess tried to focus on what else the woman was saying, but she seemed to be having trouble breathing.
If the burglar came back, then he must not have found what he was looking for the first time.
Chapter 8
“You're supposed to be resting.” Cole chewed on the end of a long plastic straw, looking unconcerned. He propped his feet up on the edge of Noah's hospital bed.
Noah shrugged, then winced as his shoulder both burned and itched with the motion. “No, I'm supposed to be working. It wasn't my idea to go on medical leave. They're supposed to be letting me out of here any time now. Did Cutlass ever get that testimony he claimed to have?”
Cole cocked his head. “What testimony?”
“The other night, he said he had hard evidence on the Kingsbury case.”
Cole's brow wrinkled in concentration and his lips thinned out to a hard line. “If he did, he's not showing it around. Not that I could tell you about it now. You're on medical leave. Officially off the case for now.”
“Right.”
Cole quirked a smile. “Right. Speaking of work, I got incident report from Thompson. There is a gate by that corner of the wall where you were shot. It’s pretty well hidden by all of the vines and overgrowth there. Estate security though it was padlocked shut. LAPD didn't find any padlock.”
“Huh. I guess we know how the jewel thief got in and out of the estate.”
Cole nodded. “Yeah. And surveillance camera coverage is pretty crappy back in that corner. Not enough light to see anything after dark. Still, we're going back over all the footage. There is something else. What do you think of these?”
The print on the stack of paperwork was small and they were filled with columns and columns of data. Noah frowned. “What am I looking at?”
“Prepaid Visa debit cards purchased by one J. Kingsbury.”
Noah flipped the pages, scanning dollar amounts. There were dozens of them listed, anywhere from fifty to two thousand dollars apiece. He whistled. “I thought we checked for any big withdrawals recently.”
“These were used as Christmas bonuses for the staff. They were all bought last November.”
Noah ran his fingers through his hair. “So why are we looking at them now?”
Cole grinned. “Keep reading. I said they were bought last year. But not all of them were activated.”
Noah looked. Sure enough there were a few scattered numbers that still had their full initial balances. And there, towards the end, were a few that had just been activated within the past three days. “Did you trace these?”
“Yup. One of the cards in that list just checked into the MGM Grand. While you're hanging out in your jammies with a Band-Aid on your arm, I'm headed to Las Vegas.”
Noah looked up from the last line on the sheet and cocked a brow at Cole. “You sure that's a safe bet? Vegas isn't the only hit on this report.”
“I know, but we have traced all of the other cards to various employees or people that Jessica does business with.”
Noah scanned down the list of towns where the latest charges had been made, trying to commit them to memory. Most were in the LA area. A few around New York, others at online retailers. The most recently activated were all in Vegas.
“Can I keep this?”
“Hell no.”
; Noah handed it over. “Have fun at the casinos. The travel per diem sucks, by the way. You won’t be staying anywhere near the strip.”
Cole pulled the straw out from between his teeth and balled it up. “Better a Motel 6 in sin city than this joint. Good going getting yourself shot.”
“Too bad I didn't catch the guy. Did you ID him yet?”
Cole looked away.
“Spill it.”
“Cutlass seized the tape claiming something about an internal investigation. But I have a buddy down in media, where they should be processing the recording.”
Noah frowned. “So, what?”
“Internal Affairs has it and they aren’t sharing.”
Noah sat back, feeling like he'd just had the wind knocked out of him. “What’s that about? You need to be running facial analysis on the guy. Cross-referencing it with the staff, suspects, known thugs-for-hire.”
“Yeah that’s what I thought. Cutlass about popped a vein when I asked. You know the one on his head that bulges? Anyway, at the department all-hands meeting yesterday, Cutlass went on about how pissed he is that you blew your cover on the job.”
Noah raised an eyebrow.
Cole shrugged. “I think he's trying to show off to some big-shot in the DC office. He was in meetings all morning and then started issuing orders like he was some kind of drill sergeant. I could care less if they promote him, as long as they get him out of here. The man’s an incompetent, angry asshole. Zero for three.”
Noah lowered his voice, not sure how well a voice carried through the hospital hallway. “He ordered me on that stakeout. Me personally. He wants me off the case, doesn’t he?”
“I’ve got your back.” Cole clapped Noah on the good shoulder as he stood to leave.
***
Several hours later, Noah drove himself home from the hospital left-handed. His right arm throbbed where the stitches closed a three-inch gash from the burglar's bullet, and the skin around the wound itched under the sticky bandage. He was sweating by the time he pulled into the cozy one-car garage and hauled himself to bed after downing the antibiotics that he had been given.