by Karen Rock
Because you haven’t told her you love her, idiot.
True. He’d planned on confessing his feelings once the case was solved, but now she might not speak to him again.
He replaced his suit coat with a leather jacket, stowed it in his chopper’s storage compartment, donned his helmet and headed into downtown Dallas, zigzagging through traffic, driving aimlessly. Everything was slipping away. Coach Lewis, probably the steroids ringleader, his promotion…and Reese.
Losing her mattered most of all, he realized with a jolt. His desire for the promotion was nothing compared to how much he wanted Reese in his life. In fact, now that he knew Reese’s would-be rapist headed the Criminal Investigations unit, he’d never join the group.
He’d thought if he earned a spot in the department, he’d finally belong to his father’s world. But that didn’t seem important anymore.
Crazy how, with Reese, he didn’t feel like the lost boy of his youth. Was it because of her ability to love someone unconditionally, like the way she loved her father, no matter if they were good or bad? She didn’t need to pick a side like he did. Didn’t judge, which shrank the shadows inside him that whispered he wasn’t better than his birth parents, didn’t belong among decent people because, deep down, how could you ever be worthy if your own mother rejected you?
Dumped you?
Had wished you weren’t born?
Around Reese, he didn’t have to prove anything. He could be himself, the person she helped him to know—a man worthy of her admiration and maybe even her heart.
If he lost her, he’d lose himself. He’d be living a half- life without her, one where he’d go through the motions without any of it mattering, as isolated, as alone as ever. He couldn’t let that happen.
He idled at a light, the exhaust mingling with the oppressive heat, clogging his lungs along with his mind. He needed to conclude this case, fast, then return to his real priority. Reese.
What had he missed in his investigation? Blake racked his brain, trying to think of anything he might have overlooked, any threads he had yet to tie up. Who belonged to Briarton LLC? Who shot Pete? Who took the white Escalade from the impound lot? He suspected the officers he’d arrested, but Coach Lewis seemed to be its main driver. Too bad the CCTV footage had been corrupted, its back-up lost…evidence of a cover-up he’d missed earlier.
He drove by the impound lot, thinking hard as he passed the booth and, just a half block further down, a lone gas station.
Then it hit him.
Gasoline.
The Escalade’s owner mentioned the vehicle had been on empty when he’d briefly parked it in a No Parking zone. Had the person who’d stolen it stopped for a fill-up? He halted and stared up at a camera above the door.
Bingo.
He hustled inside and asked the owner for the footage. Luckily the man hadn’t erased it yet, and led Blake to a break room in back. They located the video for the correct date and time and ran the footage. Minutes ticked by, then dragged by, then hung suspended, motionless, it seemed, as he held his breath, waiting, hoping this last-ditch effort would pay off.
Suddenly a white Escalade swerved on screen and stopped at the pump closest to the camera. He leaned forward, elbows on jittering knees, eyes trained on the grainy image.
A man eased from the driver’s side, swiped a credit card and lifted the pump’s gas nozzle. He squinted up at an inflatable waving tube man while filling the tank, and Blake glimpsed his face.
Officer Tim Carter.
Blake’s cheeks blew out with the force of his breath. Nothing new there, although it did tie him to the vehicle. Not a total loss.
Doggedly, Blake continued watching the officer, not even sure what he expected to see. He wouldn’t stop the tape until the Escalade disappeared from the frame and he’d exhausted this piece of evidence. His father once told him a good detective was like a Rottweiler. Once you clamped down, you didn’t let go. Blake supposed the description fit him. In fact, he didn’t need the promotion to know he was worthy of his badge. How could his father not be proud of him?
He was a fool for doubting it.
In the video, Tim leaned over and seemed to be talking to someone on the passenger side. Blake’s pulse accelerated. Another person. Someone he didn’t know?
Tim pointed at the convenience store and the passenger door opened. A male, dressed in a white polo shirt and slacks, slid out of the SUV.
Who?
The man rounded the Escalade, head down, as he approached the store’s door and its camera.
Look up… look up…
A woman overloaded with bags shoved out the door, her young son racing ahead of her. The boy careened into the man’s legs. Blake’s suspect stumbled back and momentarily raised his head for a clear, picture-perfect shot.
Blake sucked in a harsh breath.
Holy shit!
Tom Landon. Reese’s uncle.
Not the person he expected.
Not even close. Yet it all fit. Every single piece. As a booster for TMU, his alma mater, where he’d been a star running back, he had every motive, besides making lots of cash, to enhance the team’s performance with steroids to ensure winning seasons for his beloved college. And as a member of the hiring committee, he’d offered a position to exactly the right person to help him, a coach rumored to have supplied the drug to players in a former job. Tom’s younger brother, Pete, had been shot on Route 77, a road close to Tom’s ranchette. Had Tom discovered Pete’s informant status and tried to kill him?
How had Blake missed this?
Reese accused him of a black-and-white perspective that caused him to overlook possibilities—like the police involvement in the steroids ring early on, and now this.
He’d been so focused on Coach Lewis, Cherie, Bill, lost so deep inside the story in his head, he hadn’t seen past its walls to other possibilities. Those walls shifted and started to waver with a rumble that shook his bones from the inside out.
Reese. He had to find her. Warn her. Now.
He grabbed the footage, thanked the clerk, and raced outside.
Pick up, pick up… He swore when her cell automatically forwarded him to voice mail.
Out of range.
He accessed the satellite GPS tracker he’d placed on her phone and pinpointed her location. His jaw dropped.
Jesus.
What the hell was she doing on the ranchette?
She was walking straight into a viper’s nest and didn’t even know it.
He hopped on his bike and tore out of the lot, cutting off motorists as he raced through an intersection, his speedometer needle rising.
His preconceived notions, his inability to even consider something that didn’t fit his black-and-white mold, had put Reese in grave danger.
If anything happened to her, if he didn’t reach her in time, he’d never forgive himself.
Chapter Eighteen
“Uncle Tom?” Reese called as she walked by the horse stables, fanning her flushed face.
A bay mare bobbed her head and nickered as Reese passed. Free-range hens shivered their way into a patch of dirt a few feet away, ruffling their feathers and wiggling, sending up little clouds of dust. Where was everyone? Save for the animals, the place appeared deserted. Luckily the gate had been open, and she’d driven straight through. If not for Uncle Tom’s Lexus in the drive, she would have doubled back, fearing she’d missed him when he’d failed to answer her knock at the main house.
Her sandals kicked up dust as she trekked down the dry dirt path back to the rear barns. Perspiration beaded her brow and pooled at the base of her throat. As she strode by pastures, longhorns picked up their heads, eying her dispassionately as they chewed sweet-smelling hay from overflowing feeders. Water lapped bucket brims. Someone had passed through here recently, so where’d they go? And where were the pit bulls
? The hairs on the back of her neck rose.
Maybe her uncle wanted to double-check some fences, she guessed, seeing as he’d be away for a while. She peered inside one of the outbuildings.
Nothing.
Though it sure was cooler in there.
She breathed the shadowed air for a moment before forcing herself back out into the blistering sunshine. Not a cloud interrupted the wide blue sky. Everything seemed still. Paralyzed. Even the air was too sluggish to move, sound too overheated to carry. Not a bird sang or a fly buzzed. Her ears picked up only her thudding heart.
Dread pricked the back of her neck and made her skin crawl. Dad could be awake and facing Blake’s questions alone right now. As much as she needed answers to the documents she’d discovered, her father came first. If she didn’t find Uncle Tom in the next ten minutes, she’d turn around.
She reached the top of a small knoll and was ready to double back when a white vehicle beside a ramshackle building caught her eye.
The Escalade!
Her heart slammed. Coach Lewis. He must be picking up his students, students who might have been a part of her brutal parking-lot attack.
The need to flatten herself to the ground, the way a rabbit does when a hawk’s shadow passes overhead, seized her. Move, she ordered her limbs. A rabbit ran from Dallas twelve years ago, but a lion had returned.
She grabbed her phone to alert Blake. After failing to get a signal, she pulled her gun from her purse, raced to the lone building, then ducked around back. Crouching below an open window, she homed in on men’s voices mixed with loud, metallic bangs and thumps.
Stealthily, she rose, peered over the windowsill and blinked. Then blinked again. Rubbed her eyes and stared some more.
Young men dressed in TMU gear buzzed around the large space dismantling machines and packing crates with liquid-filled vials.
Steroids? Which meant this was the ring’s conversion lab, and the football players working her uncle’s ranchette ran it—most likely for him, making Uncle Tom the ring’s leader. Something cold and hard settled in her stomach.
“Hurry up!” Coach Lewis hollered inside, his voice pinging around the space. “We need all of this out of here yesterday!” He peered into crates, writing down totals. Counting the stock… where were they shipping it to? She had to tell Blake.
And document this before it disappeared.
She snapped photos and sent them to his cell, hoping for a signal, then began recording video. Something moved in her peripheral vision, and she jumped. A hand clamped around her mouth before she could scream while an arm wrapped, python-tight, around her middle.
“Got you now,” gloated a familiar voice in her ear, one she’d only heard in her nightmares since she’d left Dallas twelve years ago. “And this time, your Daddy’s not around to save you.”
Officer…no. Captain Bates.
Reese’s senses scrambled. White noise raged in her ears. With every heartbeat came a sharp longing to fight, but she couldn’t move, his grip only tightening, nooselike. His acrid aroma—stale coffee, tobacco, and leather—rose around her, transporting her to one of the lowest points in her life.
“Or her boyfriend,” chortled someone else. “She ain’t getting away this time.”
Stinging pain exploded up the side of her face as someone backhanded her with a large, sharp ring. “That’s for the love bite you gave me in the parking lot, which I would have appreciated more under different circumstances.”
She peered through the red dripping in her eye, and her mouth dropped open. “Bryan?” Dallas Heat’s bartender. She shook her head to stop the roar, like hundreds of bees buzzing, in her head.
“With a y, ’cause there’s no question about me, right? I’m a sure thing…”
“You-you’re—fired,” she spat. “I should have let you go the first time you used that cheesy line on me.”
“Guess you’re not getting employee of the month,” Chuck Bates guffawed.
Then they dragged her, kicking and screaming, into the barn and threw her into a chair. A hush fell over the group inside, and Chuck wrenched her arms behind her back as she flailed.
“Grab me one of those zip ties off the powder bags,” Chuck barked as she struggled, glimpsing his familiar bulky muscular frame: clipped hair that’d turned gray and stubble on a weak jaw, a nose like a knife and assessing black eyes, just as sharp, a smirk twisting his mouth—like he knew a joke you weren’t in on.
Her breath came in fast, desperate gulps. I could scream, she thought, wildly, trying to hear her own thoughts over the rush of blood in her ears. She’d left Dallas, traveled the world, yet deep down, despite the distance, she’d almost expected she would eventually meet her attacker again.
Dreaded it.
And prepared for it, too.
“Reese!” She stilled at her uncle’s voice. “What are you doing here? And who’s supposed to be watching the surveillance cam?”
“I-I am,” one of the football players confessed. “She must have drove past it when I stepped outside for a smoke. Sorry, boss.”
“Not much we can do about it now,” Uncle Tom muttered. Wearing a carnation-pink polo shirt paired with white linen pants, he looked so familiar, so achingly dear. For a brief moment, she almost forgot herself and begged him for help.
“I came here to talk to you.” The juxtaposition of the man who’d been like a father to her and a ruthless drug dealer made him waver before her eyes. It reminded her of one of those trick pictures, like the one where you think you’re seeing a young, bonnet-wearing girl until someone points out she’s really an old crone.
“Hold out your hands,” commanded Captain Bates, and then he yanked her arms hard enough to nearly pull them from their sockets. “Keep them steady.”
“I advise you to follow his advice, Reese,” her uncle warned, his voice soft, his expression hard. He angled his head and his eyebrows, thick and arched, rose. “He can be a very dangerous man.”
“I know,” she bit out, furious he’d reminded her of one of the most painful moments of her life.
She glared at him and obligingly extended her hands behind her, fists clenched and pressed together to make them bigger, to give herself some wiggle room, the way she’d been taught in self-defense class. She’d prepared for years after her attack for exactly a moment like this. Would it work?
Please let it work.
“Is this why you advised me to leave Dallas twelve years ago, Uncle?” she demanded. “Why you gave me the money? Were you paying me off to protect your buddy Bates?”
“What do we do with her, boss?” interrupted Coach Lewis.
He stood with his feet planted apart, chewing viciously on a toothpick, Bryan beside him. The rest of the football players seemed frozen in place, staring at her. After securing the zip tie hard enough to cut off circulation, Captain Bates joined them. A painful numbness pricked her fingertips.
“I’m thinking,” her uncle snapped, pacing. He stopped before her chair. “Why didn’t you go back to New York like I told you to?” he demanded, as if this was all, somehow, her fault. “The last thing I ever wanted was for you to get hurt.”
“Too late,” she blurted, outrage torching her fear, licking suddenly in her veins. “You’ve been working together all this time, haven’t you?”
She unclenched her fists and turned them so her palms faced each other. A bit of space, the tiniest amount, opened, and the ache in her fingers eased slightly. Would it be enough? And even if she freed herself, what chance did she have against all these men?
She stared hard at Captain Bates. No matter what, she had to try. He’d taught her that. She wasn’t going down without a fight. At least, if anything happened to her, Blake had the evidence she’d left at the precinct and, possibly, the pictures of the lab she’d sent him.
“Now look what you’re going to make m
e do,” her uncle continued, as if he hadn’t heard her, a humorless twist to his mouth. “I’m very disappointed in you, Reese.”
“Ditto,” she bit out. The understatement of the year.
“You were my favorite niece.”
“I’m your only niece,” she finished their old joke wearily.
Captain Bates unsheathed a large knife and Reese held herself still despite the deep shudder rattling her gut. A few of the football players scuttled toward the door. No help there; not that she expected any.
Maybe Blake had it right, and the world was black and white, right or wrong. No in-betweens. Seeing the world in shades of gray had blinded her to the truth—a fog that’d kept her from seeing who the bad guys really were. She’d been blindly loyal to her family, when Blake, who’d always been her white knight, her cavalry, deserved her loyalty.
She should have trusted him more.
“Want me to take care of her out back?” Captain Bates’s eyes swept to Reese’s toes then rose, the slow drag of his gaze making her skin crawl.
Calm yourself. Concentrate on filling your lungs, draining them. Filling them again and again and again, she silently chanted, centering herself with a self-defense mantra. She wriggled her hands, trying to slip one out. She could only imagine what Bates would do to her before he killed her. Her teeth ground together. He’d be in for a nasty surprise if he tried.
Uncle Tom bit down on his lip. After a long moment, the smallest slice of a nod. “I suppose you’ve left me no choice, my dear. Remember that,” he said—not brutal, just quiet and simple, as if the time they’d spent together, the blood binding them as family, made no difference to him. She was a removable piece of his plan. He turned to Captain Bates. “Get her out of here.”
His easy dismissal tracked ice cold right down into her stomach.
“Are all of you part of Briarton LLC?” she asked, desperate to stall. She squirmed her hands, keeping her shoulders still, and the opening widened by a quarter inch.
Her uncle whirled. “Where did you hear about that?”