When they reached the front of his house, he saw the medical examiner’s crew loading the dead gunman into their van. The guy had the two gunshot wounds to the legs that Wyatt and he had given him. But it was the gaping hole in the back of his head that’d done him in.
“Not an amateur’s shot,” Declan mumbled.
Wyatt nodded in agreement and pointed to the woods directly ahead. They were thick and dark despite the lack of leaves. “Dallas and Slade are down there having a look around.”
Because it was probably where a rifleman had positioned himself to kill the gunman.
A hit man for the hit man.
Sometimes, karma worked. But in this case, it hadn’t worked in Declan’s favor.
“Any sign of the shooter?” Eden asked.
“None.” Wyatt clearly wasn’t happy about that, either. Neither was Declan. But they’d gotten someone out to the area as fast as possible and had simply missed the guy. Of course, if he was a pro, and Declan was pretty sure he was, then he would have had his escape route well planned out.
“There are some tire tracks,” Wyatt went on. “We’ll do castings of those.”
It was all standard procedure, but standard didn’t seem like nearly enough.
“Maybe we’re dealing with two factions here,” Eden said. “Someone’s trying to kill Declan and someone else is trying to protect him.”
“Or someone didn’t want the gunman to talk,” Wyatt supplied.
Declan was leaning toward that theory. And it meant the person behind this really didn’t want his or her identity revealed and wasn’t willing to risk a hired gun running his mouth.
“I’ll do mop-up,” Wyatt assured him, and the sheriff added his nod to that. Wyatt motioned for Declan to hand him the evidence bag with the note inside.
Declan hated to leave his brothers with the chore of processing a crime scene this big, and this personal, but there were other things that needed to be done. Plus, Eden’s trembling was getting worse with every passing second, and soon the adrenaline crash would hit her hard. Him, too. But at least he had some experience dealing with it. He was betting she didn’t.
“Come on,” Declan insisted.
But Eden held her ground when he tried to help her into the truck. “My car’s on the back trail, and I need to leave to check on my sisters.”
He looked her straight in the eye. “And what happens if the gunman comes after you when you’re with them, huh?”
She flinched, then quickly recovered. “The gunman will more likely come after you.”
“After us,” he corrected. “For whatever reason, someone involved you in this, and you’re not leaving my sight until I find out why. There’s also the part about you coming here to pretend to kill me.”
She budged, but after he practically pushed her into the cab of his truck. “You think I’m lying about being blackmailed into doing this?”
Declan shrugged, got in and drove away. “Not lying exactly, but maybe not telling me the whole truth.”
“I don’t know the whole truth,” she practically shouted. She groaned, a sound of pure frustration, and she yanked on her seat belt. “I just know I don’t want to be involved with this. Or with you.”
She stumbled over the last word, causing Declan to glance at her. There was just another of those disturbing split-second glances where he saw the unguarded expression in those baby blues. There was fear in her eyes. But something else.
Great.
It was the kind of look a woman gave a man. Not one she was hired to kill, either. It was a look that smacked of attraction, and it made Declan curse.
Because he was feeling it, too.
As soon as he figured out how, he was going to make it go away. He didn’t need the kind of trouble that Eden Gray brought with her. Especially since he’d been the one to arrest her father. Even though she didn’t appear to be holding any grudges about that, maybe those blue eyes were concealing things well hidden.
She looked away from him. “Where are you taking me?”
“Since the EMTs are going to be tied up with the gunmen for a while, first stop is the hospital. You should be checked out by the doctor, and Kirby’s there. He was a little weak after his last cancer treatment, and they decided to keep him a day or two.”
“I’m sorry. How sick is he?”
“Sick,” Declan settled for saying, and it was all he intended to say on the matter. Kirby could be dying, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Maybe questioning him is a bad idea then,” she added.
Yeah, it was. Kirby didn’t need this while he was trying to recover, but there was no way to keep the news of the gunfight from him. Even while he was in the hospital. Someone would let it slip, and Kirby would be furious that he hadn’t heard it from Declan. Besides, Kirby might be able to shed some light on the note.
“I don’t need to see a doctor,” she said. She reached out and touched his chin. “But you should.”
Declan hadn’t been expecting that touch, and he actually flinched. First, from the contact. Then the little zing of pain as her fingers grazed his skin. When Eden drew back her fingers, he saw the blood.
“You might need stitches,” she suggested.
He jerked down the visor with the vanity mirror and had a look. Yeah, his chin was cut all right, but there was no way he’d take the time to get stitches. He reached over to the glove compartment, the back of his hand brushing against Eden’s jeans-clad leg, and this time she was the one who flinched.
“Good grief,” she mumbled. “What’s wrong with us?”
Oh, she knew what.
So did he.
“My advice?” He took some tissues from the glove compartment and pressed them against his chin. “Pretend it’s not there.” Since she didn’t question what it was, he figured they were on the same page.
Talk about lousy timing.
And bad judgment.
Of course, that idiot part of him behind his jeans’ zipper was a bad-judgment magnet. He had a way of hooking up with women who could give him the most amount of trouble in the least amount of time.
The most fun, too.
Still, this went beyond his fondness for bad girls whose middles names were Trouble. Because this bad girl had been sent to kill him.
“Any chance your father’s behind this?” Declan came right out and asked. He expected her to have a quick denial and figured she wouldn’t admit that Zander Gray would try to kill his own daughter.
“There’s no way he would put me at risk like this.” She paused. “But he hates you. A lot. And he blames you for his arrest.”
“He should blame himself. He’s the one who tried to murder a witness.”
“He said he was innocent and I believe him.”
Not exactly a surprise. “Well, I’m just as adamant that he’s as guilty as sin.” Declan took the final turn toward town. “Would he include you in any plan to get revenge against me?”
He looked for any signs that she’d been lying, that she’d been in on this plan from the beginning—all to help her father get back at him.
“No.” There was just a slight hesitation before she repeated it.
Maybe she wasn’t as certain as she wanted to seem. Declan sure wasn’t, and her father gave them a starting point. But before trying to track down the man who’d been a fugitive for months, he needed to deal with the note.
Well, maybe.
It was possible that Kirby would be too weak to talk. Still, he could at least have Eden checked out to make sure she was okay. He didn’t see any cuts or bruises, but she’d hit the ground pretty hard when he had dragged her off the porch and away from those bullets.
He pulled into the parking lot of the hospital and looked around to make sure they hadn’t been
followed. Something he’d done on the entire drive. The missing gunman probably wouldn’t choose Main Street for an attack, but Declan didn’t want to take any chances.
“This way.” He led Eden through a side door for one of the clinics located in the hospital. It was an entrance he and his brothers had been using a lot lately so they wouldn’t have to go through the newly installed metal detectors and disarm. With Kirby’s frequent stays in the hospital, it saved all of them some time.
Declan wound through the maze of corridors, and when he got to the wing with Kirby’s room, he spotted his brother Harlan in the hall. He was pacing and talking on the phone, but he ended the call when he saw Declan.
“My brother, Marshal Harlan McKinney,” Declan said, making introductions. “And this is Eden Gray.”
“Yeah. I just did a background check on her.” Harlan stared at her. Nope, glared. “She’s a P.I. all right, but she’s also—”
“Zander Gray’s daughter,” she finished for him. She extended her hand, waited, until Harlan shook it. His brother was intimidating with his linebacker-size shoulders and dark, edgy looks, but Eden didn’t back down. Maybe because she’d already faced worse today. Even Harlan wasn’t worse than flying bullets.
Harlan’s gaze shifted to Declan, and he took out his phone to scroll through what was on the screen. “She’s twenty-nine, single, owns the Gray Agency, but she’s the only full-time employee. Last night, she went to the prison to visit her father’s former cellmate.”
Now it was Declan’s turn to glare at her.
“I didn’t speak to him,” Eden quickly explained. “He refused to see me. But I wanted to ask him if he knew my father’s whereabouts. I wanted to find out if my father knew anything about the bogus info planted on my computer.”
Since Harlan likely didn’t know anything about that yet, Declan finished the explanation for her. “We need to get a tech into her computer system.”
She was shaking her head before he even finished. “If you do that, the info will be leaked, and it’ll cause the two opposing militia factions to come after me.”
Harlan looked at him to no doubt see if he was buying this. Unfortunately, he was. It wasn’t that hard to hack into a computer, plant info and change the password. It wasn’t that hard to rile militia groups, either. But the problem was that still didn’t give them answers about who was behind this and why. It was a lot of effort, and it’d taken money to hire a computer hacker, the photographer who’d gobbled up those pictures of him and the three gunmen.
“I need to talk to Kirby about the note on the dead gunman,” Declan said. Yeah, he was avoiding any further discussion about Eden’s innocence—or lack thereof—so he could move on to something that had to be done.
Harlan nodded eventually. But Declan could tell his brother didn’t approve. None of them wanted to do anything to make Kirby’s situation worse, and this might qualify as worse.
“And I’ll see what I can do about getting the info erased from her computer,” Harlan offered.
“Thanks. Could you also take Eden to Dr. Landry so she can be checked out?”
“Eden?” Harlan obviously didn’t like Declan’s use of her given name, either.
But Eden clearly didn’t like the checkup suggestion. “I want to hear what your foster father has to say.”
Declan would have given her a firm no, but the door to Kirby’s room opened and Stella Doyle stepped out. She was a fixture around Kirby these days.
“I heard voices,” Stella said, and her attention zoomed in on the cut on Declan’s chin. “Are you all right? Were you hurt?” And that concern extended to Eden when Stella’s gaze shifted in her direction.
“We’re fine,” Declan lied. As he’d done with Harlan, he made introductions.
“You worked at the Rocky Creek Children’s Facility,” Eden said to Stella. “I read through everything I could find about you, and the others.”
“I did work there,” Stella confirmed. “A bad place. Bad times, too.”
Harlan’s phone buzzed and he stepped to the side to take the call. A moment later, he took out a small notepad from his pocket and started writing.
Stella glanced behind her at Kirby. Declan glanced, too, and didn’t like what he saw. Kirby was hooked up to several machines, and he seemed paler than he had been lately. And he’d been pretty darn pale. His eyes were also closed, and his breathing was shallow.
“How is he?” Declan asked.
Stella studied his expression. Then Eden’s. “Not strong enough for bad news. Is that what you brought with you?”
“Maybe. There was a note addressed to Kirby in the dead hit man’s pocket. It said ‘This is just the beginning, Kirby Granger. You can’t save him. O’Malley’s a dead man.’ I need to ask Kirby if he knows what it means.”
Stella’s hand moved to her mouth, but he still heard the sharp gasp she made, and her eyes widened. For just a second. Then she cleared her throat. But Declan didn’t think it was his imagination that she was fighting to hang on to her composure along with something she didn’t want him to know.
Hell.
He was tired of people keeping things from him. First Eden. Now, apparently, Stella.
“Who wrote that?” Stella demanded. She stepped out into the hall and shut Kirby’s door.
Declan shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s why we’re here.”
“You can’t ask him.” Stella said it so fast that her words ran together, but then her demand came to a grinding halt. “If Kirby were to find out that someone wants you dead, it might break him. He’s barely hanging on now, Declan. Fighting, yes. But I don’t have to tell you that it’s a fight he might lose.”
No, she didn’t have to tell him. That fear was always there, not on the back burner but rather in the front of his mind. However, he still had the feeling that Stella wasn’t telling him everything.
But what?
He trusted her. Well, for the most part. He had yet to rule her out as a suspect in Jonah Webb’s murder. All of them had motive, since Webb was physically abusing Declan and plenty of the other kids. And with Stella working there and seeing the abuse, she might have helped Webb’s wife murder him and hide the body.
Of course, Kirby could have done it, too.
Or any of his brothers.
Still, Declan wasn’t about to press them on that subject. Webb had deserved everything he got, and if Stella had helped deliver the fatal blow, then he wasn’t going to be the one to arrest her.
“When Kirby wakes up,” Stella said, her voice a little uneven, “I’ll tell him about the note. But I’ll leave out the part about your being a dead man.”
“Thanks.”
Even though it was the best they could do right now, Eden looked as if she wanted to press matters. She volleyed her attention between Stella, him and the door to Kirby’s room. But she finally just huffed and dropped back a step.
“You look tuckered out,” Stella said, giving Eden’s arm a gentle rub. “Why don’t you have Declan take you somewhere so you can get some rest.”
Eden shook her head. “Thanks, but I don’t want to rest.”
Yeah, but Declan figured she needed it. After the hellish morning they’d had, they both needed it, but getting it probably wouldn’t happen.
“Who’s at the ranch?” Declan asked.
“None of the family,” Stella answered. “Everyone’s either tied up with the shooting or with other work. Lenora, Joelle, Caitlyn and Maya all went to San Antonio for a big Christmas-shopping trip. They took the babies with them. Won’t be back until sometime tomorrow.”
His sisters-in-law and three nephews. And it was good that they weren’t at the ranch, since that was where he might eventually take Eden to regroup and try to figure out who’d put that information on her computer. That was the star
ting point anyway.
“I should go back in with Kirby,” Stella added. “I’ll let you know what he says when I can ask him about the note.”
Declan nodded, thanked her. Her offer seemed right, but there was something a little off with the tone of her voice. Maybe because she dreaded telling Kirby about the attack. And she would have to tell him. It didn’t matter how little info Stella gave him, Kirby would piece it together, and he would demand to know everything that was going on.
Harlan finished his call, and before he made his way back to them, Declan knew something was wrong. Harlan always wore a bad-news expression, but it was even worse now.
His brother pulled in a long breath. “First, the FBI techs used remote access from Quantico and managed to get the planted information off Eden’s computer. Well, actually, they confiscated everything on the hard drive and server so it can’t be leaked.”
That was better than good news. They darn sure didn’t need the militia groups adding more danger to this already dangerous mess.
“They managed to do that fast,” Eden said, shaking her head. “If I’d called them first—”
“These men would have just hired someone else to come after me,” Declan interrupted. Besides, he didn’t want the FBI involved other than to erase the computer info. Not with so many clues pointing right back to Kirby.
And possibly the Webb murder.
“And what’s the bad news?” Declan asked his brother.
Harlan didn’t deny there was some, and his mumbled profanity confirmed it. “We have the identities of the two dead gunmen. Howard Starling and Neil Packard.”
Declan looked at Eden, but she only shook her head. “I don’t recognize either name. Who are they?”
“Hired muscle.” Harlan looked at his notes. “And they’ve worked for a variety of criminals in high and low places.”
“Anyone we know?” Declan asked.
“Yeah.” He turned the note for them to read. There were nearly a dozen names on the list, but Harlan tapped the last one. “But I think you’ll agree that this is the man who hired them to kill you.”
JUSTICE IS COMING Page 5