“What changed?”
“I have no fucking idea.”
Kipling slapped him again. “Watch the language.”
Jaime glared at him, but he didn’t argue with him. In fact, he sat up a little straighter, tugging at his restraints as they pulled on his arms.
“I gave Mickey the script and told him what they’d told me. He memorized it, said thanks, and left. That’s all I know, man.”
“What about the money?”
“That was the Russians. They handled all that.”
Kipling looked at me, his blue eyes questioning if I had something else. I shrugged, suddenly ready to get the hell out of there. I felt sick to my stomach, the muscles in my abdomen clenching as I continued to watch.
“You still got it?” Ingram suddenly asked.
“What?” Jaime wanted to know.
“The script. You said he memorized it. You keep it for insurance?”
Jaime turned his face away, but not before this smug looked crossed it. Ingram nodded to Kipling who turned to Donovan.
“Want to do the honors?”
Donovan immediately stepped around me and started turning over furniture, pulling out a knife to slash the upholstery.
“Hey!” Jaime yelled. “What the hell?”
“Where is it?” Kipling asked in a low, gentle voice that was intensely misleading. But Jaime got the message. He gestured with his head to a wooden box sitting on the mantle of his old—probably unusable—fireplace.
Donovan opened it and searched through the cheap jewelry and other trash inside. At the bottom, he pulled out a slip of paper that had been folded small to fit the confines of the box. He opened it, glanced over it, and nodded.
“Thanks, Jaime,” Kipling said near the man’s ear. “I hope you know that if you lied to us about any of this, we’ll be back. And we’ll do worse than the Russians and their limited imaginations could ever do.”
Kipling came to me, his hand on the small of my back, and led me toward the door.
“Hey! What about the ties?”
“They’ll biodegrade in about fifty, sixty years,” Ingram said.
“I’m sure one of your clients will be by soon enough,” Kipling called to him. “You should just relax until then.”
We could still hear Jaime yelling as we walked out to the street.
“You okay?” Kipling asked, pressing me up against the side of the SUV.
“Fine.”
I wasn’t okay. I felt sick, and I kept imagining my brother in that house, buying drugs from that son-of-a-bitch. And this anger that I’d never felt before that I didn’t fully understand was churning in my gut. And when I looked at Kipling, all I saw was that twisted, dark look that had been on his face the whole time we were inside that house.
Who was this man?
But the darkness was gone now. He was studying my face with a deep-seated concern that made his touch earlier today seem rough in comparison. It would have been easy to fall for it, to move into his arms and take the comfort he was clearly offering. But now that I knew we were still on opposite sides of the table in this fight, I knew the moments of comfort were over.
I slipped away from him and climbed into the SUV, watching as he spoke briefly to Donovan and Ingram before joining me.
“We’re going back to your mom’s house.”
I’d assumed so. I sat back and stared out the window as he drove, all these emotions rushing through me so quickly that I felt as though I couldn’t breathe. I knew it was in my head, but my chest hurt and my lungs burned.
I’d been okay with being alone in my fight to save Mickey because I knew Mickey would be there for me when it was all said and done. So I wasn’t really alone. But now…Mickey was gone. My mother was no longer part of my life. And Kipling was this dream that I had from the very beginning of this entire ordeal. He was a romantic figure who drove my childish fantasies, becoming something more substantial as time went by. I guess maybe I’d done this, I’d gotten myself into this situation because I had this noble idea that Kipling and I would team up together and fix this thing. That someday we could find the truth and save Mickey. That I could be the one to help him move beyond his past and put his grief to rest.
How naïve could I have been?
The truth wasn’t going to help anyone. It might end this decade long ordeal, but it wouldn’t free Kipling from his grief and it wouldn’t free me from the pain and the guilt and, yeah, even the grief. Kipling lost his family. So did I.
Tears burned my throat, but I refused to give into them. I’d get through this. And then? I don’t know. I’d been so focused on all of this for so long, I had no idea where I went from here. My career was stalled before it even started. And that was about all I had going for me.
Ridiculous. Until this moment, I hadn’t realized how lost I really was.
Kipling didn’t try to talk to me as we drove through town or when we got to the house. James held the door open and I brushed past him, almost laughing as I realized just how much like my mother I must have looked in that moment.
“We’re expecting guests, James. Please allow them through the gate when they call.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I could feel Kipling’s footsteps behind me, but I didn’t pause to acknowledge him. I went into the sitting room and grabbed a bottle of water from the small fridge in the minibar. I wanted a drink, but I had no idea what other joys Kipling had in store for me today. I needed to keep my head clear.
“You’re upset with me.”
I snorted. “You think?”
“We needed the information that man had. If I hadn’t done what I did—”
“It’s not about that.”
“Then what?”
I glanced at him, but I didn’t say the things that were begging to jump off my tongue. I didn’t see what difference it would make.
“Harley, we’re close to finding out what really happened that night. Isn’t that what you want?”
“Of course it is.”
“Then why are you so upset?”
“Because this isn’t…it’s not how I thought it would be. I thought we’d see eye to eye, finally, after all this time. That we were finally on the same team.”
“We are on the same team.”
I shook my head. “We’re just two enemies united against a common enemy. That’s all.”
He frowned, his blue eyes so expressive and darkening with emotion.
“I don’t understand what you—”
“Your friends have arrived,” James said as he stepped into the room. “They should be here in a few minutes.”
“You should go greet them,” I said to Kipling.
“What about you?”
“They’re your friends.”
He crossed the room, his hand sliding over my jaw. He pressed his fingers into my hair, cupping his palm around my skull as he drew me close to him.
“Don’t fall apart on me now,” he said softly. “We need each other.”
I wanted to deny those words. I wanted to be strong enough to say I didn’t need anyone, but I couldn’t. Because the truth was, I did need him. I needed to lean against him, to take strength from him. I needed to not be alone in this anymore.
“I love you,” I mouthed against his shirt as he pulled me close, as he held me against his chest for a long moment. But I didn’t have the courage to give it voice because I knew that would be the one thing that would make him turn his back and never look in my direction again. And I knew he’d never say it back, and I think that realization was the thing that really locked my jaw, that kept me from giving voice to those three simple little words.
Kipling kissed the top of my head, then turned me so that we could walk side-by-side back out to the entryway. The door was open, James standing just off to the side. We were just approaching the door when two SUVs just like the one Kipling was driving pulled into the circular drive.
I recognized Donovan and Ingram from the second SUV.
They were joined by a woman, who was about as tall as a preteen, but she was clearly a full-grown woman because her belly was swollen with the beginnings of a new life. And behind her emerged a tall man with dark hair and the same sort of carriage as Kipling and the others, the carriage of a military man.
I knew this man. I recognized him the moment he stepped out of the SUV. He was Ashford Grayson II. I’d met the Grayson boys when I was a little girl, far too long ago for either of them to remember me. That was back when my mother still took enough interest in me to drag me along to her political appearances. When the doors opened on the front SUV, I recognized David Grayson, too. The brothers looked a lot alike with the exception of their bulk. David was wiry where Ash was more of the bodybuilding, muscular type.
There was another man and woman in the front SUV. They all seemed a little dazed as they looked up at the house. But then Kipling stepped down onto the drive and they were suddenly busy greeting him. Ash in particular seemed to have a close relationship with him.
I stood back, feeling like an intruder at someone else’s holiday gathering.
David was the first one to notice me standing there. He came over and held his hand out to me.
“You must be Harley Connors.”
“And you’re David Grayson.”
His eyebrows rose slightly. “Am I wearing a name tag?”
“We’ve met. Granted, I was like eleven at the time, but we’ve met.”
“Where?”
“A couple of fundraisers in Austin, a holiday party here at the house.”
“I thought it looked familiar.” He stepped back and looked up at the façade of the house. “When we drove up, I imagined I’d seen this house with Christmas lights strung all over the front.”
“You probably did.” I stepped back. “You want to come in?”
“Of course. Thank you.”
I led the way back to the sitting room. The rest followed after a moment, the usual oohs and ahhs filling the big space. I went to the minibar to offer refreshments, but found myself watching strangers touch my father’s things as if they had every right to do what they wanted in this room. David met my eyes, surprise lighting him, when he found a photograph of my mother sitting in a silver frame on a low table.
“Abigail Grant,” he said as he came to stand beside me.
“My mother.”
“She was a colleague of my father’s. They worked together quite often on legislation in Austin.”
“You were expecting a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, right? Because of my brother’s criminal record?”
“I wasn’t sure what to expect. But not this.”
“Neither did my mother.”
“But your name…?”
“She chose to keep her maiden name when she married my father. My brother and I obviously took his name.”
He studied my face, clearly curious, but he didn’t ask anything else.
Ash called everyone together, standing at the back of the room where everyone seated on the couches could see him.
“So, Kipling, I think you know better than running off and going rogue.”
Kipling just inclined his head.
“We spent most of yesterday doing research on what Ms. Tierney could tell us from the files she’d seen. We discovered that Mickey Connors was a drug addict whose dealer was working for a Russian cartel that I know far too well…”
I was a little shocked as I stood there and listened to him talk about his encounter with these Russians as well as the encounter his operative had that led to the big showdown he participated in. And then they passed around pictures, and I realized that one of the men they’d identified as one of the lieutenants to the former leader of the group.
“His name is Ivan Petrov. Ricki did some research and she’s pretty sure that he’s trying to take control of the fractured cartel here in Texas. There is another leader, a man named Misha Bogdan, who is challenging Petrov. She spoke to a detective down here in Houston who says that this conflict has been coming to a head over the last year or so, and they believe that Petrov is winning, but barely.”
I met Kipling’s eye as he studied the photograph. He looked over at me, his jaw tight with tension.
“This one,” he said, snapping his fingernail against the picture, “was he around ten years ago?”
“He was working as a go-between with the dealers,” Ash said. “He would have been the guy who actually delivered the drugs to the dealers.”
Again Kipling looked at me.
“Shit…”
Tension seemed to dance around the room, catching hold of every person sitting there, even the ones who were looking at their phones, only partially paying attention.
“What?” David asked.
Kipling tossed the photo of Misha Bogdan onto the coffee table.
“He’s the one who set this whole damn thing up. He’s the one who told Jaime Hernandez to hook one of his addicts to confess.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because he was here this morning, wanting to know why the hell I was at the prison asking about Mickey Connors’ murder.”
Looks moved around the room.
“Jaime Hernandez told us that his supplier was the one who put him up to it. That he hadn’t mentioned an addict by name, that Jaime chose Mickey himself. But he said this supplier gave him a discount on his drugs to get someone to confess. I bet this Misha was his supplier.”
“Does that mean he was there that night?” Knox asked.
Kipling shook his head. “There’s no way of knowing. But he kept insisting that the mastermind behind the whole thing was long dead.”
“That would be Dimitri Bazarov.” Ash dug through the pile of photographs they’d brought with them and handed one to Kipling. “Mina thinks that he might have confessed to Jesse’s murder to her when they were…whatever they were.”
I had no idea who Mina was, but the sympathetic pat David gave his brother suggested she was important to Ash. His wife, maybe?
Kipling stared at the photograph, his jaw hard like stone. I could almost see what he was thinking. He was thinking that he was looking into the eyes of the man who’d tortured and murdered his wife and daughter.
What was that like? If I had a chance to look at the man who murdered Mickey, what would that feel like? Was there really any comparison?
The conversation moved on, but I needed to get some air. I slipped out of the room, walking down a long corridor at the back of the house that led to a sunroom I once loved to play in, especially on rainy days. There was something about the rain hitting all the glass in this room that was soothing. I almost wished it was raining now.
“He was your brother? This Mickey Connors?”
I hadn’t seen her follow me, but she was standing just inside the doorway, leaning almost playfully against the doorframe. She was a small woman—not as small as the other one, but small enough—blond. Beautiful.
Did Kipling make a habit of surrounding himself with beautiful women?
“Knox,” she said when she caught me staring at her. “I work for Gray Wolf Security 2.”
“Two?”
“We add the two to differentiate it from the original Gray Wolf based in Santa Monica.”
“Oh.”
“Brothers and sisters can be pretty frustrating sometimes.”
I inclined my head slightly. “Mickey was good to me. He was always there when I needed him.”
She nodded. “My sister was like that. Until I went to basic training and she hooked up with my fiancé.”
I glanced at her. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, we’ve put it behind us now. She did me a favor, really. If she hadn’t done that, I’d be miserably married and raising a whole brood of kids instead of doing what I do now.”
“You don’t want kids?”
“I love kids. I’m actually helping my boyfriend raise his girls. I’m just…I need something outside of the house, you know?”
I just nodded, wondering what any of this had to do with what was happening out in my mother’s sitting room.
“You’ve known Kipling a while?”
“We’ve crossed paths at the courthouse several times a year since all this began.”
“You defending your brother and him trying to crucify him? Must be an interesting relationship.”
“It has its difficult moments.”
Knox came over and sat beside me. “Kipling’s a good guy. If it weren’t for the whole grieving for his dead family thing, I might have made a play for him back before I met Dunlap.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t do complications. At least, I didn’t then.”
Again, I was lost. What did this have to do with anything?
“But Kipling is a good guy. A little fucked up, a little closed off. But essentially a good guy.”
“He is.”
“I’d hate to see him get in over his head with someone who was just out to hurt him.”
I looked at her, really looked at her. “You think I’m out to hurt him?”
She shrugged. “I saw the way he was looking at you. There’s something going on there, isn’t there?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“No, not now. But Kipling’s my friend. I don’t have many friends.”
I snorted, not really meaning to, but the sound just slipped out. She didn’t have many friends? I had no one.
“Don’t worry. Kipling knows what he’s getting into.”
“I hope you know, too.”
She touched my knee before getting up and leaving me alone. I watched her go, still confused.
Was she warning me not to hurt Kipling? Or was she warning me that Kipling might hurt me? I had no idea. I just…I wished this whole mess was over.
Chapter 9
Kipling
I was reading through the confession we’d taken from Jaime Hernandez’s house when Harley came back into the room. I watched her slip in through a back doorway, her hands in her pockets and her head lowered, that sophisticated bun she still had her hair twisted into beginning to come down around the sides. She looked tired when she finally looked up and our eyes met. I wanted to take her upstairs, lay her down, and sit with her until she was asleep, but there were more pressing matters down here. Someday soon we’d have all this behind us. Maybe then.
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