by Lisa Childs
“I have what you want,” Parker said.
“I thought she was lying,” the judge admitted, “when she said you had it....”
Had Parker found it? Or was he bluffing like she had earlier?
“Sharon would never lie,” Parker said. “She doesn’t have it in her. She’s a good person who’s already been through too much in her life. She is the granddaughter of your friend. Don’t hurt her.”
“Looks like I have what you want, too, Payne,” the judge replied with a sly glance at Sharon.
“You do,” Parker said.
But he must’ve still been lying. He couldn’t want her—not for more than the night before. He couldn’t want her forever.
“Then perhaps we can work an exchange,” the judge offered, as if he was being magnanimous. “Meet me at my estate in an hour, Payne. Alone.”
“I won’t give you anything if she’s already dead,” Parker warned him. “You better not hurt her....”
“I won’t.” The judge offered what for him was a pithy promise. Then he hung up the cell. “I won’t kill you,” he assured her, “until your husband brings me that flash drive. Then I’ll kill you together.”
He acted as if he were doing them a favor. But then, maybe he was. Sharon had spent so much of her life alone. But she would still rather die alone than have Parker die with her. But it was too late; she had no way of warning him that he was about to walk into a trap.
Chapter Eighteen
If only Parker had been able to figure out where the real flash drive was...or if it even still existed. There had been so many explosions; it could have been destroyed in any of them. But because he hadn’t been able to find it, he walked into the judge’s mansion with a blank one and hoped like hell he could bluff as well as Sharon had.
He held tightly on to it, refusing to give it up like he had his gun and his knife and his phone to the guards at the police station. Guards? He recognized some of the men as officers from the police department but most of them, like Garek had said, from Wanted posters. Or men who’d been on those posters previously...
How had no one else figured out what Brenda had? That Judge Munson had to have been taking bribes all this time. How many criminals had he thrown out cases against or set free before they had served their sentences?
Several of them surrounded the estate. Too many for him to overpower alone.
Judge Munson’s estate was four times the size of Brenda Foster’s, and an assortment of antique and classic cars were lined up in the circular driveway. The judge had obviously been living beyond his means, so he had found a way to supplement his income.
Two armed men pushed Parker down a wide hallway, lined with an Oriental runner, to a room in the back of the mansion. It was some type of solarium filled with plants and wicker furniture. Tied to one of those wicker chairs, Sharon looked fragile and fearful.
Rushing forward, Parker dropped to his knees beside her. “Are you all right?”
“She’s fine,” the judge answered for her. He stood in a corner of the solarium, a gun in his hand. With his iron-gray hair and complexion, he could have been a statue—he was that rigid and unemotional. “Where’s the flash drive?”
“Don’t give it to him,” Sharon said. “He’s going to kill us anyway.”
The judge chuckled but didn’t deny her claim. He obviously thought he had set a trap for Parker. “So you might as well give me the flash drive and get this over with.”
Sharon shook her head. “Not yet. You were my grandfather’s friend,” she said. “So have some mercy. Let me talk to my husband.”
“I wasn’t really a friend of your grandfather’s,” Munson admitted. “In fact, I hated the man so much I only showed up at his funeral to gloat.”
“He wasn’t a good man,” Sharon admitted. “He was rigid and disapproving. It was not easy being his granddaughter.”
“Trying to get my sympathy?” Munson asked with a heartless chuckle.
Parker suspected that she was actually telling the truth—that her grandfather had not been an easy man to live with or please. And she had been a traumatized, vulnerable young kid when she had come to live with him and her grandmother. His heart ached for all the pain she had endured at such a young age. He wanted to hold her.
“Let us have a minute,” Parker implored him. He wanted to talk to her, too, to assure her that he would figure a way out for them—that he already had a plan in place.
“Now, your mother I have always liked,” the judge admitted. “Penny Payne is a good woman, when so few women are really good.”
She was a better woman than Parker had even realized because she had spent the past fifteen years mourning a man she knew had betrayed her. With Carla...
“Then do it for my mother,” Parker said, “since you’re going to break her heart.” Not that her heart hadn’t been broken before—more times than he had ever known.
“Give me the flash drive,” the judge demanded. “And I’ll let you talk....”
Parker hesitated for just a moment before handing over the blank drive. The judge closed his hand around it and tightened his grasp on his gun. But then he took the flash drive and headed over to where a laptop sat open on a small table in the corner of the sun-filled solarium.
Parker crouched down next to Sharon and reached for the thin rope binding her wrists to the arms of the wicker chair. If only they hadn’t taken his knife...
“I want you to know something,” Sharon said.
Was she going to tell him how she felt about him? His heart quickened. But his attention was divided. Once the judge realized the flash drive was empty, he might start firing. Parker had to protect her; he struggled harder with the ropes, trying to loosen them. But he was only cutting the strong, thin rope into her delicate skin.
She flinched. “I want you to know how much I love...”
She drew his attention from the judge to her beautiful face. Her eyes were so full of fear and distress and another emotion.
Love?
She finished, “...Ethan.”
Of course she loved the little boy whom she had cared for since his birth. Of course she wanted Parker to know that.
“I love him so much,” she continued, “that I never even minded lugging that diaper bag everywhere with me.” And her eyes spoke to him, passing the message along....
The flash drive—the real one—was in the diaper bag. The diaper bag that his mother had taken along with the baby.
The judge glanced up. “What a touching goodbye.” Then he cursed. “There’s nothing on this damn flash drive. You brought me an empty one!”
“You really thought I was stupid enough to bring you the real one?” Parker asked. “I know you intend to kill us. You wouldn’t have put out the hit on us—and upped the reward—if that hadn’t been your intention all along.”
“Trying to get a confession out of me?” the judge scoffed. “I had my men check you for a wire. You’re not wearing one. Do you think either of you are actually going to survive to testify against me?”
Parker shrugged. “If we don’t get out of here within the hour, the flash drive will go to someone I actually trust in the police department—someone you can’t buy.” He didn’t know if there was anyone he could trust within the department anymore—not after he had learned his father’s partner had betrayed him. And now that he had learned his father had betrayed his mother...
The judge snorted in disbelief of Parker’s claim. And he narrowed his eyes and studied Sharon. “Why did you tell him about the diaper bag? Is that where the flash drive is?”
The man was smart. Too smart.
“That diaper bag was in this house,” he said. “Penny brought it with her when she got me to waive the waiting period and issue your marriage license.” He stood up and turned to
ward the door, probably to summon one of his henchmen to send after their son.
Sharon gasped in fear, and she struggled against those ropes even harder.
“It’s not in the diaper bag anymore,” Parker said. “I found it already and took it out.”
The judge shook his head. “Nice try. I don’t even have to send someone to get her. I can call your mother and summon her here to show off that grandbaby of hers again. She’ll be happy to do that—happy to bring along the bag.”
Parker shook his head. “And you’d be wasting your time. I took it out already and I read everything that was on the flash drive.”
“Prove it,” the judge challenged him. “Tell me what’s on it.”
“I know that Brenda wrote about your taking bribes to throw out cases,” he replied, “or at the very least to reduce sentences.”
The judge tensed and the color of his face turned grayer than his hair; Parker’s bluff was actually on the money. Because the judge had been all about the money....
“You saw it,” the judge conceded. “You have it.”
“Not on me,” Parker said. “I gave it to my brother, who’ll turn it over to someone we trust.”
“That’s the problem,” the judge said. “You can’t trust anyone.” And he lifted his gun again. “I don’t trust you, Payne. I’m not sure if you really read what Brenda wrote about or you just guessed it. Either way, you and your bride are going to die.”
* * *
THE JUDGE WAS going to kill them. Sharon knew it now. She had hoped that somehow Parker would save them as he had so many times before, but she shouldn’t have relied on him to protect them. She should have protected him and Ethan; he had already missed so many milestones in the boy’s life—his first smile, the first time he had rolled over, his first crawl. He didn’t deserve to lose any more.
Sharon whispered to Parker, “I’m sorry.”
“You have no reason to be sorry,” he assured her.
She had regrets, though. Regrets that he had come to her rescue—or tried. But that was the only thing she regretted about her time with Parker Payne.
“I know it’s too late,” she said. There was so much she wanted to tell him, that she wanted to share with him. But now whatever chance they might have had to make their marriage work was gone—like they would soon be.
He shook his head and squeezed her hand, offering her comfort right until the end. His efforts with the ropes had loosened them some but not enough for her to tug her wrists free. “Shhh, it’s going to be okay.”
But it wasn’t. They were going to die. At least Ethan would have family, though—family who loved him like she loved him and his father.
Tears stung her eyes so painfully that she couldn’t blink them back. She could only let them fall, like she had fallen for Parker Payne. “But I want you to know that I love you.”
“Now, that was touching,” the judge bitterly remarked. “Are you going to say the words back to her, Payne?”
Parker ignored the older man and stared at her. His blue eyes, those gorgeous blue eyes, filled with regret.
She had known he hadn’t returned her feelings. But seeing it on his face...
She was so embarrassed and scared and disappointed that she couldn’t look at him anymore. She closed her eyes.
“Sharon—”
But whatever he had been about to say to her was lost as the shooting began....
The shooting outside the estate distracted the judge enough that Parker managed to step between Sharon and the gun pointed at her.
Parker flinched, waiting for the gun to go off. But the judge just continued to hold the weapon. Maybe he was more used to others doing his dirty work than doing it himself.
“What the hell’s going on?” he asked. But he wasn’t even looking at Parker; he obviously didn’t expect him to know.
But Parker knew that the gunfire throughout the estate was Payne Protection Agency coming to his and Sharon’s rescue just as he and Logan had planned. They must have overpowered Munson’s motley mix of dirty cops and convicts by now.
The judge glanced toward the door and gasped. Parker followed his gaze and gasped, too. The man standing in the doorway with a gun wasn’t a Payne—at least not a legitimate one—although he looked exactly like one.
“Agent Rus,” Parker murmured. “What the hell are you doing here?”
The judge tightened his grasp on the gun, obviously uncertain whose side the federal agent was on; he wasn’t the only one.
The agent grinned, an expression of which Parker wouldn’t have thought him capable. “I’m here to collect the reward,” he said.
And Parker’s guts tightened with dread. “What?”
“They’re both still alive,” the judge pointed out.
The agent held up a small piece of plastic. “The flash drive. I suspect this might be worth more than the two of them combined.”
“What do you know?” the judge asked.
“A few days before Payne here killed him, Detective Sharpe told me everything,” the agent replied. He snorted derisively. “Not sure how such an idiot made detective in the first place.”
The judge’s eyes widened in surprise. “Sharpe talked?”
“You didn’t think he would?”
“Given the amount of money I was paying him, I thought he would keep his damn mouth shut.” The judge sighed. “I should have known better than to trust him. I should know better than to trust anyone.”
And it was obvious he didn’t trust Agent Rus yet.
“Where did you get that?” the judge asked with a suspicious glance at the flash drive. He probably thought it was as empty as the one Parker had brought him.
Parker was afraid that it wasn’t. And his guts twisted with fear over how the agent might have come to possess it.
“Mrs. Payne walked into the police department and handed it right to me,” Rus replied. “She found it in her grandson’s diaper bag.”
That was why his mother had come down to the police department—not to bail him out, but because she had found what everyone had been looking for. Of course, she probably hadn’t known it was what everyone was looking for—just that it was suspicious to find in a diaper bag. Or, knowing his mother’s curiosity, she may have opened and read the files on it.
“Did you hurt her?” he asked. He didn’t care that the bastard was armed; if he’d hurt his mother any more than his mere existence already had, Parker would take him out with his bare hands like the bodyguard had Brenda.
Rus shook his head.
“Did she see what was on it?” the judge asked.
Rus shook his head again. “She has no idea what’s on it.” His grin flashed again, making him look even more like Cooper. But he was nothing like Parker’s marine brother, who had put his life on the line for years for his country. “But I looked at it,” he said. “I know what’s on it.”
Parker had always thought the dirtiest cops were the ones who investigated other cops—like Rus was doing for the feds. At least he hadn’t been wrong about that.
His eyes narrowed with suspicion, the judge asked, “What was all the shooting we just heard? What happened out there?”
The fed uttered a condescending chuckle. “You didn’t think Parker Payne would really come here alone, did you?”
It obviously hadn’t occurred to the judge that Parker hadn’t walked alone into his trap. He wasn’t the idiot that Sharpe had been. Regrettably, neither was Nicholas Rus.
“That family travels in a pack—” Rus snorted “—like wild dogs.”
Parker silently cursed the loss of his weapon because he wanted to use it on Rus. Badly.
“His brothers are out there?” Munson asked.
He nodded. “They were. Even the little sister was—she m
ust have trailed after them.”
Nikki had tagged along to the estate even though Parker hadn’t wanted her along. And neither had Logan. But she had insisted on helping, and he hadn’t wanted to waste time arguing with her. Now he wished that he had....
Horror and fear struck Parker’s heart, and Sharon gasped, choking on a sob. She hadn’t known them long, but she had obviously already come to love his family like her own. They had been hers—for a little while.
They had been his all his life. His mother had already lost his father; she couldn’t lose all of her children, too. Maybe Rus was wrong; maybe his family had survived. Parker had to get to them, had to figure out how to help them.
The judge was concerned, too—about himself. “How are we going to clean up the mess?” he asked Rus.
“What about the guy you hired to place all those bombs?” Rus asked. “Can’t he set up another little explosion?”
“There were actually a couple of guys that set those bombs,” the judge replied. “But he—” he gestured toward Parker “—killed them in the street.”
Rus shrugged. “I have a military background. I was deployed in Afghanistan.” Like Cooper had been, but Cooper was a hero. Rus was a killer. “I’ll set the bomb.”
“Not here,” the judge vehemently replied.
“You have to,” Rus insisted. “You’ll never clean it up enough that a crime tech couldn’t find blood or DNA.”
Sharon gasped again, as if she couldn’t breathe. She wept for his family.
Parker felt sick. He wouldn’t have involved his family if he hadn’t believed that they would all survive. This was his fault—all his fault.
The judge’s voice cracked, as if he was close to tears, too, as he said, “I’ve worked too hard for my estate— everything I’ve done I’ve done to keep this place.”
“It’s just a house,” Rus said dismissively. If he didn’t care about possessions, why had he killed for money?
“It wasn’t just about the house,” the judge said. “It was about the money and prestige, which I needed to keep my wife.”