Deep Cover

by Rachel Butler

  With all its problems, this life was far better than the one she’d left behind. Once her work for the feds was over, it would be even better.

  If she survived.

  “So what now?” she asked flatly.

  “You convince Long that you’re taking over and you need his help. Once he agrees, you’ll get him out of jail.”

  “And how am I supposed to convince Long that I can get a judge to let a suspect in multiple homicides out on bail?”

  “No one knows better than Long how many corrupt people hold positions of authority in this country. He’s paid off more than his share over the years. If your act is believable, he’ll believe.”

  If she delivered the right words with the right attitude. “And then?”

  “He’ll be released in the morning. That’ll give us today and tonight to get settled in the Davis house, just as soon as Mrs. Hamilton gets her stuff out.”

  Selena paused in rising. “Mrs. Hamilton?”

  “Davis’s sister. Kathryn Hamilton. Lives in Alabama.”

  The pretty blonde in the photograph Selena had found while snooping through William’s closet a few weeks earlier. In fourteen years he’d never admitted to having any family besides Selena. In the aftermath of his injuries, she’d learned of Kathryn’s existence, had even known she was in Tulsa; but she’d given the woman little thought.

  “Is she returning to Alabama?” she asked, her tone level, uninterested.

  “No, she’s staying in town a while longer. Stay away from her.”

  She graced Robinette with a sardonic smile. “I’ll have enough to keep me busy just talking to Long.”

  “We’ll clear your visit through the jail. Meet us at Davis’s house—your new house—around one.”

  She thought of the imposing white mansion on Riverside Drive with all its treasures . . . and all its memories. If it was really hers, she would burn it to the ground, then leave the place to grow wild. She wouldn’t voluntarily set foot inside. But it wasn’t hers, and neither was the choice. “I’ll be there,” she replied. Then she walked out of the room before the shudders rippled through her.

  4

  The correctional center, located downtown, served as jail for both the Tulsa Police Department and the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office. Selena had never been there before, though she’d been threatened with it a time or two in recent weeks. As she sat in the parking lot, gazing at the fence, the high walls, and the small windows, another shudder washed over her. Because the jail reminded her of those desperate hours she’d spent years ago, locked in a cramped, dark cabinet, pleading with her mother’s husband until she was hoarse, clawing at the door until her hands bled? Or because Damon Long awaited her inside?

  If she’d had a love/hate relationship with William, her feelings for Long had been simpler: Distrust. Suspicion. Revulsion. He’d beaten her in his futile attempt to rape her two years ago, and more recently had been party to William’s plan to kill her. Was she really going to walk inside the jail and offer him the freedom to make good on that plan?

  The obvious answer made her laugh, though there was nothing humorous about it. She tucked her weapons under the seat, drew a warm, heavy breath, and got out of the car. Inside the correctional center, the guard she spoke to tried to turn her away, insisting that visitation days for the prisoners in Long’s pod had already passed, that she would have to come back some other time. But after a whispered conversation with a second guard, he escorted her to an interview room to wait.

  The space was small enough to trigger her claustrophobia, and the idea of being locked in it alone with Damon Long didn’t calm her nerves any. She would rather be a hundred other places, facing a million other people. Someday, she reminded herself, she would have that freedom.

  The door opened and Long walked in, unshaven and surly. Surprise flashed across his face when he saw her, covered instantly by the smile that had once charmed her and that now reminded her of a snake at its most dangerous. “Well, well,” he said, shuffling forward and sliding into the chair opposite her. “This is my lucky day.”

  Pain twinged in her arm when her fingers tightened.

  “What do you think of the nose job you gave me?”

  Tilting her head to one side, she studied him. He’d always been something of a pretty boy, whether his hair was brown or blond, long, or short and spiked. Even at that moment, looking every bit as disreputable as she knew him to be, there was a certain appeal to him that the crook in his once-straight nose couldn’t diminish. “It adds character,” she said at last.

  He laughed. “Which I sorely need?” His handcuffs clanked as he rested his hands on the tabletop. “So what brings you to jail? I’d figure getting even this close to the cells would give you the heebie-jeebies.”

  “Would you also figure that you’re the last person I’d want to see?”

  “Actually, I’d think next-to-last. Ol’ William’s probably got me beat there.”

  Not by much. William existed in a vegetative state. He couldn’t hurt her. Long could.

  “So . . .” That quickly, his entire persona changed. Gone was the friendly, smiling rogue, and in his place was the cold-eyed killer. The shift was so sudden, so complete, that it made Selena’s skin crawl. “What do you want?”

  “I have a deal to offer you, Mr. Long.” She hesitated an instant over his name. She couldn’t call him by his first name. It was too friendly, too intimate. While she couldn’t keep her distance from him physically, she could keep him at arm’s length emotionally. Additionally, the formality would serve as a regular reminder that she was now his boss.

  “What kind of deal?”

  “You give me what I want, and I’ll get you out of here.”

  For a time the room was utterly silent as he stared at her. There was nothing to read on his face or in his blue eyes—literally nothing. No hint of hope, skepticism, suspicion. Just icy blankness. Finally, he shifted, his chair creaking. “I’m listening.”

  “It’s very simple. You have information I want. If you give it to me, I’ll get you released into my custody.”

  “The court has already denied bond.”

  “I can change the judge’s mind.”

  “How?”

  She shrugged. “William had a fondness for blackmail. He kept excellent records on people in authority. Of course, bribery is an option, as well.”

  He showed no surprise, no disbelief. When you grew up working for the most powerful drug dealer in four states, who also happened to be one of the most powerful police officials in those states, the idea of a judge for sale was easy to accept.

  “You get me released, and for that, I tell you . . . what?”

  “Everything you know about the business.”

  He considered that a moment before asking the question she’d been waiting for. “Why?”

  Either he would believe her or he wouldn’t, but either way, he would accept her offer. With freedom came hope, and his situation was too tenuous to turn that down.

  Selena smiled coolly. “Because I plan to run it.”

  Damon had always figured his death would come quickly—a hit gone wrong, betrayal by an associate, revenge carried out by some fuckup who worked for him. He’d never imagined himself strapped to a table in the state prison with a goddamn needle in his arm, but lately that had become a distinct possibility.

  He’d been sitting in jail for two weeks, minus the couple days he’d spent in the hospital, and other than the lawyer he was paying out the ass for, he hadn’t had any visitors that mattered. No local cops assigned to the case, none of the feds now also working it, no one from the DA’s Office. Nobody gave a shit that he was sitting in a cell going stir-crazy, not even the goddamn lawyer. Nobody wanted to make a deal. Nobody wanted to give him a chance to save his hide.

  Except Selena, sitting there all prissy and calm and feeding him a line of pure bullshit. She and William had fought for years about her getting involved in the business. No freakin’ way was h
e going to believe she’d done a complete one-eighty simply because the old man was out of the picture.

  Sitting back in his chair, he rested one ankle on the opposite knee. “What happened to, ‘Thank you, Uncle, but I’m not interested’?”

  “Do you believe everything people say?”

  Her implication that he was gullible made him bristle. “I believe that. For six freakin’ years you told him no. It was the only thing he wanted from you, and you refused to let him have it.”

  “For fourteen years, I gave him everything he wanted. I talked the way he wanted me to talk. I dressed the way he wanted me to dress. I acted the way he wanted me to act. He controlled every aspect of my life—where I went to school, where I spent vacations, what subjects I studied, what grades I made. I lived and breathed for him, and all I wanted in return was his love. But he refused to give it. So I refused to give him the one thing he truly wanted.”

  Her smile was elegant, similar enough to William’s to give Damon a chill. If he managed to overlook it, she really was a beautiful woman, though damaged, as the old man had liked to point out. Damon didn’t trust any woman—fuck, any man either—but he trusted Selena less than most.

  “Now William’s out of the picture,” she continued, “and I fully intend to take control of the business that was so damned important to him. He groomed me for it, and I want it.”

  Was it possible all her refusals had merely been for spite—one small rebellion, a way to get back at the old man for withholding his affection? William had been good at making people resent the hell out of him. He’d done pretty much the same for Damon that he had for Selena—taken him off the streets, given him a home, clothes, money, an education, though of a vastly different nature. He’d been Damon’s mentor, his father figure, the most important and influential man in his life . . . but given the chance, Damon would have killed him without so much as a qualm.

  “I want the Cézannes and the Monets. I want the house, and the money, and the power. Most of all, I want the satisfaction of knowing that what I denied him in life, I’m now enjoying in his death.”

  “He isn’t dead yet,” Damon pointed out.

  Another elegant smile. “He might as well be.”

  Damon shifted in his chair with the clink of chains. “So it was all a game, and now that you think you’ve won, you want your prize.”

  “Come now, Damon,” she said chidingly. “You would have killed him and taken over yourself if you’d had the chance . . . and the nerve.”

  Annoyance tingled along his spine. He had wanted William dead. But it wasn’t lack of nerve that had kept him from taking action. The time had never been right. But now that William was as good as dead, someone was going to take over. Someone was going to gain control of those millions. If not he and Selena, then someone else who’d worked for the old man. At least he’d earned it. He’d busted his balls for the bastard for twenty fucking years.

  And he could get rid of Selena far easier than William.

  “What about Detective Ceola?”

  Something flashed in her eyes, gone too quickly for him to identify. Guilt? Regret? “What about him?”

  “Having an honest cop boyfriend will interfere with running an international drug operation.”

  “Detective Ceola isn’t a concern any longer.”

  Did that mean he was out of the picture? Ceola was honest. He would never forgive his godfather for wanting him dead. He wasn’t likely to forgive Selena for attempting to carry out William’s plan, however unwilling she’d been.

  And just how unwilling had she really been? Had her reluctance to carry out the hit merely been another way to spite William?

  He wasn’t sure he believed a word that had come out of her mouth, but that meant nothing. All that mattered was that she could get him out of jail. Once he was free, he could take care of a few things—add some cash to the three mil stashed away in the Caymans. Retrieve his backup documentation from the safety-deposit box in Dallas to be consistent. Ensure that William’s network stayed intact long enough for him to set up in his new location with his new identity and get back to business as usual.

  Rising from the chair, he walked to the door and signaled to the guard, then faced her once again. He gave her his big ol’ shit-eating grin, then winked. “Contact the judge and you’ve got yourself a deal, boss.”

  At least, until he found an opportunity to kill her.

  Kathryn Hamilton took up residence at a bed-and-breakfast a few miles away from her family estate. The house was an old oil estate, built of massive stone blocks, with tile floors, elaborate moldings, and an unfortunate trend toward what some decorator had likely dubbed Oklahoma chic: table bases made of antlers, shelves supported by steers’ horns, cowboy prints framed in weathered barn boards, curtain tiebacks fashioned of rusted barbed wire. It was overwhelmingly tacky, and exactly the sort of thing Grandpapa would have put in his house if Grandmama hadn’t refused.

  Kathryn finished unpacking in the master suite, then took her lunch—black coffee, a salad, and fresh fruit—onto the tiny patio, along with her cell phone. She’d already tried to call her son, Jefferson, but got only his voice mail. Work and an active social life kept him busy, though he made an effort to call her at least once a week. Sometimes she nagged— gently—for more of his attention, but usually she was grateful for what she got. After all, God and nature had conspired to keep her childless. She had looked on Jefferson as a blessing when he’d come into her life all those years ago, and still did.

  Now it was time for her regular call home. It would be like all the other calls: The housekeeper would answer the phone and locate Grant in his office, where he spent the bulk of his time. He would come on the line, clearly distracted, and they would have an excruciatingly polite conversation before saying good-bye.

  To be fair, Grant had been distracted most of the thirty-four years of their marriage. In the beginning, it had seemed sweet, the fact that when he concentrated on something, the rest of the world slipped past unnoticed. In the beginning, though, she had been the thing he’d concentrated on. Then one day she’d become the rest of the world. Unnoticed.

  Unwanted.

  Making an effort not to grind her teeth, she pressed the SEND button and listened to the telephone ring. On the second ring, Nell answered. She spent a few moments on chitchat—How are you? How is Mr. Henry? I’ll get Mr. Grant—then put Kathryn on hold.

  Since discovering that photograph in Henry’s bedroom, she felt as if she’d been living on hold. She didn’t know what to do, what to say, what to think. For twenty-eight years— half her life—she’d believed a lie. She didn’t know how to accept the truth, or how to make things right.

  It was all Henry’s fault, damn his soul.

  Grant came on the line, sounding distant. She could close her eyes and see him at the partner’s desk that had belonged to his great-great-grandfather, his computer looking out of place on the gleaming antique, files spread around him. She’d married a lawyer who, in the tradition of Southern lawyers, had done very well for himself. They lived in the Hamilton antebellum mansion, they still owned the thousands of acres that had made Greenhill one of Alabama’s most profitable plantations, they were among the South’s social elite, and yet they were as estranged as two people living the same life could be.

  All Henry’s fault.

  “Hello, darlin’,” she greeted as if she had every right. Having been married to him thirty-four years, didn’t she? “How are things at home?”

  “Oh, they’re fine.”

  She restrained a snort. The house could fall down around him, and he wouldn’t notice as long as the four walls of that damned office remained intact. He didn’t care about the two-hundred-year-old mansion, or the thousands of acres, or the Hamilton legacy. These days he didn’t care about much of anything.

  “How is Henry?” he asked, only because it was expected. In the beginning, he’d tried to impress Henry, because after all, he was courting Henry’s on
ly sister. Because they’d had things in common—their upbringing, their intelligence, their interest in law—she’d expected them to become friends. It hadn’t happened.

  “The same. I go to the hospital every day, hold his hand, talk to him. The nurses say he can probably hear me, so I remind him of better times.” What a shame that she had to go back decades in their lives to find those better times. Not that she believed the nurses, anyway. She thought they were being overly optimistic. Everything that had made her brother who he had been was gone. The body in the hospital bed was just the shell that remained. “The doctors tell me it’s time to consider transferring him to a long-term-care facility. They say there’s not much more they can do for him.”

  “Hm. Well, that’s good.”

  No, she wanted to scream. That’s not good. Listen to me, damn it. Don’t shut me out. But she didn’t. She’d quit trying to get through to him twenty-eight years ago.

  “Have you seen any old friends?”

  She poked a hundred holes in the slice of cantaloupe on her fruit plate before setting the fork aside. “A few. There have been the obligatory dinners, a few lunches . . . But so much time has passed. So much has changed.” She was an entirely different person than she’d been when she’d lived in Tulsa. Back then, she’d been excited, ambitious, full of life and hope, and happy. She’d thought she could have anything, everything. Time, and Grant, and Henry, had proven her wrong.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re having a good time. I’d better get back to work now.”

  Kathryn’s mouth tightened until she had to force the words out. “You do that, darlin’. And if you talk to Jefferson, tell him to call his mama. Love you. Bye-bye.” She always said good-bye like that, in a rush— loveyoubyebye—to avoid the awkward pause when he had nothing to offer in return. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d said I love you, but she damn well remembered the only time he’d said I don’t love you. Those four words had changed her life and his, as well as the lives of everyone close to them. Little words to hold such power, to wreak such destruction.