Bridegroom Bodyguard

by Lisa Childs

  Or he was actually a killer, and the rookie hadn’t been able to bring himself to actually kill. That was why he had missed. Not out of incompetence but decency. At least she hoped he had some decency. She had no such hopes for Sharpe.

  Scared that he was about to pull the trigger now, Sharon screamed. “Wait!”

  The detective paused and focused on her, waiting for her argument. She had hated the mock trials in law school. Put on the spot, she had always choked. Maybe that was why she hadn’t passed the bar; anytime the pressure was on, she failed. Except for last night...

  She had cut Parker out of his seat belt and helped him escape the wreckage. But the bravest thing she’d probably ever done had been making love with him and falling in love with him. And because she loved him, she would do anything to protect him. “Don’t you know that Brenda always made several backup copies? I’m sure her lawyer received one upon her death.”

  Sharpe shook his head. “I already talked to her lawyer. How do you think I found out about you getting guardianship of her kid?”

  “You looked that thoroughly for her flash drive,” Parker remarked.

  And she knew what he was thinking. If Sharpe had looked that hard, he would have found it—if it were to be found.

  “You wasted your time,” Sharon said.

  “You just said she backed up everything,” Sharpe reminded her.

  “Yes, but if she only made one flash drive, I already have it.” It was obviously what everyone thought, or there wouldn’t have been a reward for her murder.

  “Give it to me, then,” Sharpe ordered, and he turned the gun on her.

  As she stared down the barrel of his weapon, she swallowed her nerves and continued her bluff. “I have given that flash drive to someone else,” she said.

  “Who has it?”

  “Logan has it,” Parker answered for her. “And if anything happens to either of us, he’ll open it.”

  Sharpe laughed. “Nice try. You wouldn’t have been here looking for the flash drive if you actually had it.”

  “If we don’t have it,” Parker said, “why has someone put out the hit on us?”

  Parker had flustered the young officer again because he kept glancing from Parker to the detective as if he didn’t know whom to believe or whom to trust. Sharon tried to catch the kid’s attention, so that she could silently implore him to help them. But like most of the men she’d met, he never looked her way.

  Sharpe shrugged. “Maybe because they think you know something about the book she was writing.”

  Sharon exchanged a quick glance with Parker. She had been right; it was all about the book. She nodded. “Of course I know about the book,” she replied. “Brenda asked me to proofread it.”

  “So you read it?”

  She hesitated because she had never been able to lie. But she could stall. “She’s not done with it yet.” And if that were true, it would never be finished now. “She started it on her maternity leave and just took vacation to complete it.”

  “Have you read it?” he repeated.

  “Not all of it,” Sharon lied. Not any of it. “But I had the flash drive, so of course I looked at it.”

  “What is the book about?” Sharpe asked.

  “It’s Brenda’s memoir,” she replied. “It’s about her life...and the people who’ve crossed her path over the years.”

  “Which people is it about?”

  She hesitated again. Should she say cops or criminals?

  She glanced to Parker, but he only shook his head.

  And Sharpe cursed. “You don’t know a damn thing. You haven’t read the book. So you don’t have the flash drive, either—that’s why you’re here now. You’re looking for it, too.”

  “Wh-what do we do now?” the young officer asked in a nervous stammer.

  “I kill her and you kill him,” Sharpe replied just before he pulled the trigger.

  Sharon flinched again—waiting for the flash of pain, waiting for death...

  There was no time—no time to tell Parker that she loved him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  While Sharpe had pulled the trigger, he hadn’t done it as quickly as Parker had. The detective dropped to the floor. And instead of Sharon screaming, the young officer screamed and tried to steady his gun to fire.

  Instead of shooting him, Parker just leaped forward and knocked the kid to the floor beside the detective. The kid screamed again and lost his grip completely on his weapon. Parker pulled it from his grasp and handed it to Sharon. He trusted her more with the gun than he did the kid.

  She also bent down and retrieved the detective’s weapon. She hadn’t needed to worry about it. He was dead. But if Parker hadn’t shot to kill, Sharpe might have struck Sharon with his bullet. Instead it had fired into the floor when Parker had dropped the detective.

  “I—I thought he shot me,” she murmured. And she was trembling but only slightly. She was tough. And smart. Her bluffing had bought them some time.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” she said. “He didn’t hit me.”

  Parker knew a bullet hadn’t hit her. But she had to have been shaken by how close she had come to getting shot.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “No, I’m mad as hell,” he said. “I’m sick of getting shot at.” The kid squirmed beneath him, and Parker tightened his grasp. The kid began to sob, his tears wetting the sleeve of Parker’s shirt, as he held his arm beneath the young cop’s chin. “Tell me who’s behind the hits on me and Sharon.”

  He shook his head, or tried to, but Parker kept the pressure against his jaw. “Sharpe told me I had to help him, that I had to...”

  “Kill me?” Parker asked.

  He tried to nod.

  But Sharpe had no reason to kill him—unless he had just needed the money. “Who was paying Sharpe?”

  The tears kept coming, and the kid just shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know....”

  Parker believed him. The rookie officer wasn’t going to be able to help them find out who was behind the hits. So Parker eased back a little, still keeping the kid on the ground. Then he took out his cell phone but hesitated before punching in 911. Could he trust them?

  But he had no choice. He wanted the young officer arrested. Maybe the kid would reveal more to authorities than he had revealed to Parker. But he doubted that the young man knew anything else. So he punched in the numbers and said, “I want to report a—”

  Before he could get out the words, the door burst open and armed officers rushed into the mansion. Sharon held the guns. “Drop them,” he told her, just as a bald-headed officer did the same.

  They might use her holding the guns as an excuse to shoot her. She bent over and dropped them onto the ground next to the detective’s body.

  “On the ground! On the ground!” An officer shouted out the order.

  Parker dropped onto the floor, too, and Sharon lay down next to him.

  “Hands behind your heads!”

  He locked his fingers behind his head, and Sharon followed his example. But maybe he shouldn’t have obeyed any of the commands. No matter how many officers had rushed the house, maybe he should have tried to fight them. Because now he was down, and helpless to protect Sharon and himself....

  And if these cops were as dirty as Sharpe and the rookie, they were dead for certain—execution-style....

  * * *

  ON THE OTHER side of the bars, Logan shook his head. “I always knew it would come to this someday,” he said. “I knew I’d wind up bailing you out of jail.”

  Parker glared at him. “If you bailed me out, why haven’t they let me out yet?” He rattled the bars.

  “I paid the bail,” Logan insisted. “So you bette
r show up to court.”

  “For what charges?” Parker scoffed. “Defending myself? Sharpe was going to kill Sharon.”

  “Then it wasn’t self-defense,” a deep voice remarked.

  Parker and Logan both turned toward the person who walked down the aisle between the holding cells. In the dim light, he looked like Cooper, but his hair must have grown out some. Had he bailed out Parker, too?

  “It wasn’t self-defense,” Logan agreed. “It was defense of another person. He was protecting his wife.”

  “A court will determine that,” the other man said.

  It wasn’t Cooper. His hair couldn’t have grown out that much. But he had the exact same blue eyes, the exact same features, and he was probably about Cooper’s age. Maybe younger because he didn’t have as many fine lines on his face but a deep furrow between his dark brows.

  “You’re not Cooper,” Logan said, and his eyes widened with shock. He must have done the math, too. If this man was younger than Cooper but obviously a Payne...

  “Who the hell are you?” Parker asked. He hoped a figment of his imagination. This guy couldn’t be real. It wasn’t possible.... He reached through the bars and pinched Logan to see if this was real.

  And Logan yelped and glared at him. “What’s wrong with you?” But from the look of shock on his face, the same thing was wrong with him. He was as floored as Parker was.

  But just because the man looked like them didn’t mean that he was really related to them. The theory was that everybody had a twin in the world; of course, Parker already had one. So who was this guy?

  Ignoring their interaction, the man replied, “Federal agent Rus.”

  “Russ?” Parker asked. “Don’t you have a last name?”

  “Rus is my last name,” the agent replied. “Nicholas is my first name.”

  Their father’s name...

  The guy couldn’t look that much like him and Logan and Cooper and not be a Payne. But their father had been an only child. So this guy couldn’t be a cousin. Then that made him evidence of something Parker would have never believed: his father’s betrayal. He couldn’t deal with that right now—not with everything else going on in his life. Not with his life and Sharon’s being in imminent danger.

  “Who the hell are you?” Parker repeated.

  “I’m here to investigate the River City Police Department,” he said. “I’m acting as IA.” Internal Affairs.

  “Then you should know that Sharpe was dirty,” Parker replied. “If I hadn’t killed him, he would have killed me and my wife.”

  “As I said, a court will determine that, Mr. Payne.”

  “So you’re not dismissing the charges?” he asked, incredulous. “That rookie cop was bawling his eyes out and announcing his guilt to everyone who would listen.” That was why he was surprised that he and Sharon had even been arrested and booked. There should have been no charges. “You wanted us arrested,” he realized.

  “There can be no appearance of favoritism just because you’re a Payne.”

  “Are you?” Logan asked, his voice gruff with dread and outrage. He had obviously come to the same realization that Parker had: their father had betrayed their mother. Their mother, who had loved and mourned the man for so many years...

  “My name is Agent Rus,” the man repeated.

  “But are you our father’s biological son?” Logan persisted.

  The man shrugged. “I don’t know. And I don’t care. It doesn’t make any difference to me.”

  But Parker suspected that Agent Rus cared very much and had made this persecution personal. He probably resented the hell out of his father’s legitimate children. Pain grasped and twisted his heart.

  How could his father have done this to their mother? It would destroy her to learn of his betrayal.

  “I paid my brother’s bail,” Logan said. “Why haven’t you released him?”

  “I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “You wanted to rub it in our faces,” Logan remarked, his usual cool composure slipping.

  “Rub what in your faces?”

  The fact that their father had not been the man they had always believed he’d been. How could he have betrayed his loving and loyal wife?

  Parker was glad now that he hadn’t confessed his feelings to Sharon. Knowing what he knew now about the man he had spent his whole life idolizing and respecting, he had proof that he couldn’t be a good husband or father—not when Nicholas Payne had failed at it.

  Sharon deserved better than him. She deserved better than a Payne.

  * * *

  SHARON HAD THOUGHT she’d met all the Paynes. And they had all been so nice. But this man—despite looking so much like Parker—was nothing like him. He wasn’t warm and protective. He was accusatory and cold.

  “Who are you?” she asked, confusion muddling her mind. She wrapped her fingers around the bars, gripping them. “I don’t know you....”

  All the Paynes had been so warm and welcoming to her. This man’s eyes—the same sparkling blue as the rest of the Payne males—were icy. He looked about Cooper’s age, but his hair was longer and his face meaner.

  “My name is Nicholas Rus,” he replied. “I’m a federal agent on loan to the River City Police Department.”

  He was the man that Sharpe and the young officer had mentioned—the one sent to clean up the police department and flush out the corrupt cops.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good. You know, then, that Sharpe was a killer.”

  “Who did he kill?” he asked.

  “Well, I don’t know for certain but maybe Brenda Foster’s bodyguard.” She gripped the bars more tightly to still her sudden trembling. “And he would have killed me if Parker hadn’t shot him first.”

  “Parker Payne has shot a lot of men over the past couple of days,” the agent remarked as if making a casual observation. But there was suspicion in his blue eyes.

  “Men who were trying to kill us,” she said in defense of her husband.

  “The convicts, maybe,” he said with a nod of agreement, “but a detective and an officer...?”

  “Sharpe was a criminal, too,” she said. “And so is that young officer.” The kid wasn’t dead. In fact, he had confessed his involvement and Sharpe’s guilt to the other officers who had arrived at the scene.

  “Isn’t that why you’re here?” she asked. “To investigate the police department?”

  He shrugged his shoulders, which were as broad as Parker’s. He looked exactly like a Payne. Who was he really? Was it Cooper or Logan playing some game with her?

  Could she trust anyone anymore? She couldn’t trust the police—Detective Sharpe had proved that to her. And this man made her wonder if she dared to trust a Payne. How could he look so much like them but act as cold as a stranger?

  “I’m here to ask you some questions,” he said.

  “I’ve already been questioned.” And then she had been booked and charged on suspicion of everything—murder, manslaughter, interfering in a police investigation. Would she ever get out? Would she ever see Ethan again?

  Her arms ached to hold her little man. But he was not the only one her arms ached to hold....

  She shouldn’t have insisted she and Parker go back to the judge’s house this morning. She should have stayed in bed with her husband, in his arms...

  She had been afraid then of falling in love with him and embarrassing herself. But she’d already learned twenty years ago that there were far worse things than embarrassment. There was death. And she and Parker had barely survived this latest attempt on their lives.

  “I’m here to ask you about the flash drive that Brenda Foster gave you,” the agent continued.

  She had been right not to trust him. All anyone cared about was that damn flash drive. �
�If Brenda gave me a flash drive, it’s been destroyed.”

  But had it been destroyed? If Brenda had given her a flash drive, she would have put it where she thought Sharon would find it. And suddenly she knew exactly where it was. Brenda hadn’t just referred to Ethan as a package; she’d included his things.

  The man tensed. “What do you mean?”

  She couldn’t trust him with the truth, especially not when she might endanger more innocent people. And no one was more innocent than Ethan and Mrs. Payne.

  “It would have been in my things,” she said, “my things that blew up in the hospital parking lot after someone detonated a bomb in my car.” But there was one thing she’d had with her in the hospital—one thing that hadn’t blown up. It had to be there....

  He nodded, as if he remembered hearing about it. Or maybe he remembered setting that damn bomb. “So there’s no way of knowing what the judge actually wrote—what might have been on her laptop or the mysterious flash drive?”

  Sharon shook her head. “I don’t know. She asked me to proofread it when she was done, but then she sent me away to hide with her son. And I never saw any of her book.” She glared at the man. “So nobody has any reason to try to kill me or Parker Payne.”

  The man’s mouth curved into a very slight smile, which would have been unnoticeable except for the faint warming of his eyes. “I’m not here to kill you, Ms. Wells. I’m here to release you. Someone’s paid your bail.”

  Parker. Or his family. They hadn’t forgotten about her. But she didn’t see any of them when the holding-cell doors slid open. Instead, she saw an older man waiting for her in the hallway. The agent walked away without another glance at her or at the stranger who had paid her bail.

  “Sharon,” the older man greeted her. “It is so wonderful to see you again.”

  Again? When had she seen him last? She cocked her head, trying to place the man with the iron-gray hair and dark eyes.

  “The last time I saw you was at your grandfather’s funeral. I am—I was—a friend of his as well as a colleague.” He extended his hand. “Judge Albert Munson.”

  She nodded. “Of course. It’s great to see you again.” Heat rose to her face with embarrassment that she’d been arrested. Her grandfather would have been mortified. “Well, maybe not under these circumstances.”