by Addison Fox
And then there was Lilah.
Had she really tried to deal with all of it on her own?
He hadn’t waited around long, the bone-deep need to get to his mother and ensure she was safe overtaking the moment. As soon as backup had arrived at Elegance and Lace, he’d split. But he knew Lilah had battled DeWinter once. And he also knew—with absolute clarity—the red mark painting her cheek had come from the bastard.
Yet she hadn’t called him. Even after the night they’d spent together, she’d obviously tried to handle it on her own, forgoing his safety and solace.
His protection.
He pulled behind the cruiser and leaped out. His mother pointed her finger at him, her face set in angry lines. The uniform assigned to pick up Diana got out to greet Reed and he could hear his mother’s voice through the open door.
“She’s a little upset.”
“I’m sorry you got stuck bearing the heat.”
“No problem, Detective. What else can I do?”
Reed gave his mother another pointed glance. “Would you mind staying for a few minutes? I’m concerned there’s a threat that’s been made against her. As you can see, she doesn’t want to believe it, but I’d like another pair of eyes as I try to talk some sense into her.”
“Of course.”
Satisfied he had help should Tripp decide to come straight to his wife, Reed approached the cruiser and opened the door.
Where did he even begin?
“Hi, Mom.”
“Reed Edward—”
He lifted a hand to cut her off. “Hear me out. Please hear me out.”
The anger faded in full, replaced with a wash of concern. “What is it?”
“Come here.” He dragged her from the car and enfolded her in his arms. Hers banded around his waist in an immediate show of support.
She was okay. Untouched.
Now it was his job to make sure she stayed that way.
* * *
Violet and Cassidy huddled beside her on the oversize couches in the main area of the shop, their soothing words mixing in with intermittent exclamations of shock and surprise.
“I don’t believe he had the audacity to come here like that.” Violet had said the same numerous times, in various ways, since she’d returned to see their business was once again upside down.
“I’m so sorry we weren’t here.” Cassidy patted her knee, her voice soft. “That you had to deal with that alone.”
“I’m such a fool. I didn’t check the back door. I just assumed he was a delivery. It’s my fault.”
“There’s no fault.” Cassidy’s gentle pats shifted to a full-on side-armed hug. “He was an intruder. You trusted that whomever you greeted was there as part of your business.”
Whatever blame she wanted to assign herself, Lilah knew it was nothing compared to the tragedy of Steven’s choices.
She wanted to be surprised. Knew she should be surprised. But the evidence Steven had gotten himself involved in something so dark and devious wasn’t nearly as shocking as it should be.
The thought grew even less shocking when she married it up with the Charlie McCallum and Robert Barrington connection.
Had they all been that blind?
She’d struggled for years, even after leaving her marriage, questioning herself on how she could have been taken in by Steven. She knew Cassidy had battled similar questions after finding out about Robert’s connection to the attempted theft of the rubies.
The need to soothe and reassure had come on swift feet and she and Violet had both assured Cassidy that the guilt lay with Robert.
But was that all?
How had they missed something so fundamentally flawed?
Images of Reed rose up in her mind’s eye. His self-assurance and the clear, unmistakable qualities in him that proved he did what was right.
He was a good man. An honorable one.
And she’d ignored that honor in favor of hiding behind her own personal misery.
The knowledge of how that hurt him had stamped itself across his face and branded the air around him in a wash of pain and disappointment. And the only person she could blame for that oversight was herself.
The hum of activity swirled around them. Reed’s partner, Jessie, had been on and off her phone intermittently throughout the past hour. Although she’d avoided asking about Reed’s mother, Lilah had overheard Jessie giving the assurance that Diana had been picked up by a police cruiser.
His mother was safe.
Even though she was married to a monster of her own. Proof she’d never really be safe again.
Lilah eyed Jessie once more, backlit by the afternoon sun, the woman’s position near the front door and the cell phone glued to her ear ensuring she’d likely not hear the next part of the conversation.
“He’s not going to stop at this.”
“He who?” Violet asked.
“Tripp. Reed’s stepfather. He wants the stones you both have.”
“But we don’t have them. They’re hidden.” Cassidy’s gaze drifted toward the door, where one of the uniforms had stepped in to talk to Jessie. “Locked away.”
“But we have access to them.” Violet’s voice was quiet when she spoke. “And that’s all he needs. Someone with access.”
“So we go to plan B,” Cassidy said. “Make a show of it. Take them to the police and ask the Dallas PD to do a huge press conference.”
Lilah eyed Jessie’s position at the door once more before she leaned forward. “You don’t think the Dallas PD is in this?”
Cassidy followed Lilah’s gaze. “Her?”
“I don’t think she’s in it,” Lilah mused as she considered the childhood connection Reed had shared with her. “But someone. There’s no way it’s a coincidence Reed was put on this case.”
“Lilah has a point. There’s been way too much coincidence already and it would be a seriously bad move to ignore that now.” Violet tapped her lips. “But what if we can use that to our advantage?”
“Oh no—”
“How so?”
Cassidy’s protest was immediate, while Lilah leaned forward, eager to hear Vi’s ideas.
“Absolutely not.” Cassidy kept her tone low, but the push back was as loud as crashing symbols. “We tried this once already and look where it got us.”
“This is different.”
“How, Violet? Because from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t look all that different from a week ago when you convinced me to drag my ex-fiancé out of hiding to play a game of ‘what does the jerky ex know?’”
“Cass—” Lilah stopped, the idea of the three of them not in sync on something more than a little jarring.
“No, I mean it.” Cassidy maintained the low, steady voice, but even in the quiet, the icy tone was more than evident. “We put ourselves in danger. I put myself in danger. I’m not going to watch either of you do that.”
“But what if the police are behind this?” Violet asked.
“Then we give up the stones to a bunch of people who should be driven for justice instead of greed. But at least the stones will be out of our hands and away from us, where they can’t do any more harm.”
“You don’t believe that.” Lilah looked at Cassidy, then Violet. “Tell me you really don’t believe that.”
“Holding on to them isn’t helping us.” Cassidy didn’t bother to hide her frustration. “The man who died in your arms today is proof positive of that.”
They were tight. A unit. And even they couldn’t come to an agreement on how to handle the situation. With that foremost in her mind, Lilah pressed on, the bleak truth at odds with the bright summer sun that filled the shop. “If we don’t put ourselves into a position of strength, Steven isn’t going to be the last one to die
.”
* * *
Tears streamed down his mother’s face, intermittently interspersed with muttered streaks of curse words that would make a sailor blush. “Rat bastard.”
“Mom. I know this is hard to believe—”
“It’s unthinkable.” Diana sniffed hard into a fresh tissue. “And it can’t be my husband. I’d have known. I would know. What you’re claiming is just not possible.”
It had been like this for the past hour, heights of anger followed by deep disbelief, just before another wave of anger crested, swamping her. A pendulum of rage and disappointment so deep he wasn’t entirely sure a person could recover.
They were in his apartment, the only place he could think of after he picked her up, the clean beige walls encasing them in a tomb of misery and disillusionment.
And grief.
Underneath it all was bone-deep grief for the loss of her marriage and, worse, the loss of the man she believed was her husband.
“He gives to charity. He has a good heart, Reed. I’ve seen it.” A fresh wash of tears coated her face. “I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. Just last week we were at a picnic and he held Judy Stickley’s grandson on his lap. He’d played with a baby. How can that man be a monster?”
“I don’t know, Mom. Honest I don’t. But I can’t disregard what DeWinter said. He’d have no reason to lie. Especially at that point. No reason at all to accuse an innocent man.”
“But—” His mother broke off, acknowledgment registering somewhere beneath the bleakness of her gaze.
He’d brought this to her. Delivered it to her damn front door, practically wrapped up in a bow.
“I have to talk to him.”
“You can’t. You can’t go anywhere near him.”
“Reed Ed—”
He cut her off before she could continue. “You can’t go to him. He’s wanted in the shooting deaths of three people and that’s all I can connect right now. He’s possibly got connections deep inside the Dallas Police Department. He’s a danger and until I can get to the root of this, you can’t go anywhere near him.”
“He’s my husband.”
At the clear determination in her words, Reed leaned forward and grabbed his mother’s hands tight in his own. The image of what Tripp was capable of—the bodies already recovered and the sight of Steven DeWinter bleeding out on Lilah’s kitchen floor—put ice in his veins.
“You have to promise me you won’t try to contact him.”
Whatever grief had come up to now had been bad, but the shock in her eyes—those eyes so like his own—was forged in pure, hard steel.
“I...I won’t.”
“I mean it, Mom. You will get your day. I will see to it that he answers for his crimes and that he answers to you. But you can’t try to get that for yourself. Please promise me you won’t try to get that for yourself.”
He saw the sparks of rebellion vanish as her shoulders slumped. He’d like to think himself fanciful to believe he saw grief and regret there, but he knew too well—knew his mother too well—to think otherwise.
She’d already begun to process the truth and, with the determined heart she was known for, she would see this through. She’d accept the truth about Tripp and she’d accept the demise of her life.
He only hoped he could keep her safe and sound until her husband was forced to pay for his crimes.
* * *
Tripp Lange stepped through the back door, late-afternoon sun painting the kitchen in a warm yellow. Diana loved this time of day, when the sun began its descent and their evening was on its way.
He’d grown to love it, too.
Those gentle moments with his wife, when the fire in his mind quieted and he could focus on something other than the raw, blinding ambition that had driven him since childhood. He tossed his keys into the small bowl she kept near the door, then moved toward his office.
He’d meant to store the ruby at his other home, the compound a haven for his spoils, but he’d not been able to part with the stone. The feel of it in his hands and the strange, elemental tug on his soul had him holding on to it.
Hell, he’d gripped it nearly the entire drive home.
After finishing DeWinter, Alex had driven him to the compound. He’d meant to spend a few hours working through the next steps on the other two gems, but he’d been so enamored of the one DeWinter had secured, he’d gotten nothing done.
And then that subtle intrusion—the desire to see his wife and slake some of his excitement inside her body—had overtaken him and he’d headed home, the stone in hand.
“Diana!”
The house was large and he didn’t expect an immediate answer, but it did begin to register she might not be home. With an abstract stroke of the ruby in his pocket, he headed for the second floor and their bedroom.
It wasn’t unusual for her to be gone. Although she loved this time of day, her commitments frequently ran late, whatever latest charity project she was focused on taking up a large swath of time.
Larger than he liked, truth be told.
Still, he encouraged her work and the ready facade it provided him as husband to one of the city’s most well-respected matrons.
He moved through another halo of light, this one from the large window that lit their foyer and second-floor landing before heading on to the bedroom. The light held a purity this time of day, he mused, as if it washed everything clean.
He wanted to feel clean. Renewed. Reborn, even.
The past few weeks had been more trying than he’d realized, but now that he had one of the stones in hand he knew the others would follow quickly. And then he’d rest. He’d give himself over to the natural rhythms of life and take a few months for himself. For him and Diana.
That desperate urgency to possess that drove him on would relax, its fangs retracting as it slithered away to a far corner of his soul, and would give him some rest for a while.
Maybe he’d close up the compound, he thought as he moved into the bedroom. Shut it down for a while and make a real point to stay at home, reveling in what he had.
Rest was good.
It was a sign a man knew how to enjoy the fruits of his labors.
He drifted into their bedroom, his tie undone, and stopped to stare at the bed, fully dressed as Diana liked to call it. It was one of her little quirks—something he loved about her—and he had always loved coming in to a made bed.
Do something productive every day, she’d often said. Start with making the bed.
She’d drummed it into Reed with military precision. Funny how the boy had taken that knowledge and turned it into a career. His stepson was one of the most productive souls he knew. He’d made detective—one of the Dallas PD’s youngest—and he’d been maniacally focused on solving his cases.
Tripp respected him. Was proud of him. And used Reed’s knowledge of the city mercilessly toward his own gains.
Which made it that much more jarring his stepson had taken up with one of his victims.
Tripp removed his cuff links and set them down on the dresser, his gaze catching on the quick flash of light on his wife’s side of the dresser.
Her wedding rings.
The six-carat diamond winked at him, along with the band of diamonds that she wore with it.
Like a waterfall coming to life after winter’s ice, his blood rushed in his veins, pounding the panic alarm.
She never left home without her wedding set. And she wasn’t home now.
The large ruby in his pocket seemed to mock him and he settled his hand over the stone, satisfying its demand for attention.
Where was Diana?
He left the room and was headed for the stairwell when his private phone rang. “Yes, Alex?”
“Sir. A Dallas police cruiser was seen in f
ront of your house earlier this afternoon. I just got word from the captain.”
“Yes?”
“Your stepson picked up your wife, sir.”
“Where are they?”
“We’ve not triangulated yet, but chances are, his home.” Alex waited, before adding, “Would you like me to go collect her, sir?”
“No.”
“There is one other matter, sir.”
Tripp sensed Alex’s words before the man spoke. At his silence, Alex continued.
“It appears Mr. DeWinter survived the kill shot. At least for some period of time. He made it to the bridal shop, sir. His body’s there now.”
“I’ll meet you at the compound in an hour.”
“I’ll be waiting, sir.”
The harsh winds of fury blew through him and he nearly threw the phone over the landing.
Nearly gave up his ever-present control.
His wife was gone.
And his stepson now knew exactly who he was.
Chapter 15
Reed paced Violet’s living room, the lights of Dallas spread beneath them like diamonds, just as they had the night before. Only last night it had appeared as if the city was mapped with fairy lights, a bright jewel full of possibilities.
Tonight, it looked like an oasis of fool’s gold, winking promises that were, in fact, lies.
“That was my grandfather.” Max returned to the living room after stepping away to take a call. “They made it to my home in the Hill Country and the security I sent ahead met them there. They’re safe.”
“They’re as safe as we can make them,” Reed corrected.
Max frowned, then nodded his understanding before he took a seat next to Cassidy and Tucker.
Who knew how far Tripp Lange’s influence extended? Hell, who even knew what the man’s influence was? He’d begun digging but so far had turned up precious little.
Were they making a mistake?
His mother still doubted, and those doubts had made him question and requestion what he’d heard in Lilah’s kitchen. Was DeWinter lying? Manipulating one final moment to his advantage against her?
Reed had turned it over and over, always coming back to the same conclusion. Why?