“I don’t believe you. I know exactly the kind of lengths you and your team will go to to get what you want, Vincent. Why should this be any different?” If he hadn’t read that file, he wouldn’t have known about the one thing that’d kept her from giving herself over to him fully, that’d resurrected her fear of him walking away every time she’d wanted to tell him the truth. Smoke burned her nostrils, sweat building at the base of her spine as the embers continued to consume the plant. Everything inside her ached, head pounding in rhythm to her pulse. She’d trusted him, had started to imagine a future with him, believed him when he’d said he’d never turn his back on her. He’d taken that trust and used it against her. Same as her ex-husband had when she’d found him in bed with his assistant, just before he’d walked away with her son. Same as her family and friends had before deciding she wasn’t worthy of their help or love. “Was that why you requested me as your partner all those months ago? Because you thought you could use my mental health in order to leverage me to cooperate?”
He took another step toward her, but this time she held her ground. “What? No. I would never—”
“Don’t lie to me.” She wouldn’t let him see how much it hurt. Instead, Shea gave in to the familiar explosion of rage she’d tried to keep locked away. Anything to help her sever the connection they’d forged over the last few days, to keep herself from admitting how hard she’d fallen for him. The muscles in her jaw ached as she steadied her gaze on his. “How long have you known?”
“I had an idea of what you’d been struggling with that night in the ranger station. You kept trying to convince me you weren’t the woman I thought you were, and I didn’t want to believe you. Nothing you said lined up with what I saw during our joint investigations.” Vincent’s voice deepened, his throat working to swallow. “But Kate confirmed it in the hospital when she confronted me about how I feel about you. She said you might not ever be in a position to love me back.”
Shock of his admission rolled through her, but she did everything she could to make sure her expression didn’t change. He loved her. But that wouldn’t alter the fact that she couldn’t trust him—or his team—ever again. Her fingernails bit into her palms as loss tore her apart from the inside, a distraction to keep the tears at bay. She’d wasted enough time. Wells was still out there. Alone. Afraid. Clearing her throat, Shea kept her head high when all she wanted to do was sink onto the floor as the power plant collapsed around her. She stepped into him, ignoring the rush of heat his body elicited inside, and drove her hand into his jacket pocket to extract the SUV’s keys. She clutched them harder than necessary, forcing herself to stay in the moment, then looked up at him. “Kate was right. I won’t ever be in a position to love you, Vincent. Not as long as I can’t trust you.”
“Shea, don’t do this.” He locked his hand around her arm. “If you go after Wells alone, they’re going to kill you, and I won’t be there to stop them. Please. Let us help you find him.”
“I’ve always been alone.” That’d been a truth she’d accepted until she’d crash-landed in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness with a forensic technician who’d given her a glimpse of real happiness. But as she’d come to realize too late, it’d been a fantasy all along. She ripped her arm out of his grip, her skin burning where he’d touched her. “Grillo gave me the chance to walk away, and as soon as I recover my son, I’m taking it. I’m sure your team can give you a ride back and help you bring down his organization without me.”
Shea maneuvered around him and headed for the hole blasted into the side of the power plant. Tendrils of fire climbed around the edges but not hot enough or dangerous enough to stop her from escaping. The weight of his attention on her back crushed the air from her lungs. The tears fell then, but she wouldn’t turn back. There was nothing to go back to. Wrenching the SUV’s door open, she caught sight of him positioned where the door she’d gone through used to stand. Heat waves distorted his features, his intensity burning hotter than the flames around him. It must’ve been difficult for him to charge into that fiery building for her after what’d he’d already been through, but right now, she couldn’t let herself care. She climbed inside the vehicle and hit the button to start the engine. Dirt kicked up behind the SUV as she sped from the scene, entirely focused on the road. Elizabeth had messaged them a list of all of the stash houses the network analyst and Lieutenant Lara Richards had narrowed in on as part of Grillo’s operation. She’d hit every single location until she found her son.
Lieutenant Richards... Shea hadn’t seen Vincent’s former CO since she’d breached the power plant. Lifting her foot from the accelerator, she let the SUV slow to a crawl before turning onto the main road that’d take her to the next location. Had there been another operative stationed at the power plant, one who could’ve gotten to Lara while Vincent had torn Shea’s heart from her chest? She hesitated at the thought of turning back around, of facing the man who’d betrayed her after what’d just happened, but Lara deserved better. The lieutenant had helped them every step of the way with the investigation, handed them leads Blackhawk Security wouldn’t have been able to find, offered to run testing on the casing she and Vincent had recovered from the warehouse...
Shea stepped on the brakes, her weight shifting forward as the SUV skidded to a stop. Leather protested under her hands as she tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Lara Richards had been at the warehouse last night, arriving within moments of Grillo’s men closing in, and shot two corrupt officers with a .38 Smith & Wesson without hesitation. So why hadn’t NYPD dispatched homicide detectives or IAB investigators to get her and Vincent’s statements about what’d happened? Why hadn’t Lara called it in?
Lara’s weapon was standard issue for the NYPD, and the lieutenant had admitted to taking a keen interest in the organization’s movements over the last few months. To the point she seemed to know more about Grillo’s crew than the NYPD did. What if her involvement in the case was more than an attempt to make up for turning her back on Vincent before the fire? He’d theorized the killer who’d shot the four original victims and the IAB officer must’ve had forensic experience. As a lieutenant, Lara Richards would have authority over Grillo. She could’ve ordered him and his team to bring down her and Vincent’s plane, to take care of loose ends.
Shea swallowed around the tightness in her throat. Only problem was everything running through her head right now would be viewed as circumstantial evidence, but if she was right, Lara Richards had means, opportunity and motive to take out both her and Vincent.
She had to go back. She had to at least explain the possibility to Vincent. Slamming the SUV into Reverse, Shea hooked her arm around the passenger-side headrest. And gasped.
“Hello, Officer Ramsey.” Cold metal pressed against her temple as Lieutenant Lara Richards straightened from the second row of seats. Dirt was caked to her leather jacket and jeans, the collar of her white T-shirt underneath crusted with blood from the wound across her forehead. Blonde hair slid over her shoulder as she leaned in closer, close enough for Shea to catch hints of smoke and perfume. “Hand over your sidearm, please.”
Her breath sawed in and out of her chest. She shifted her attention to the weapon Vincent had given her back at the safe house, fingers tingling. Could she get to it fast enough? “I should’ve seen it sooner. You’re not investigating Grillo’s organization. You are Grillo’s organization.”
“This isn’t how or when I wanted to reveal myself, but you and Vincent just wouldn’t leave well enough alone. Not even after I tried to have you killed.” Lara reached over Shea’s shoulder, unholstering the weapon herself, before setting it on the back seat beside her. “No one has gotten as close as you and Vincent. I’d normally take care of the problem myself, as I did with all the others, including IAB Officer Walter, but you have something I want.”
The casing. Lara was trying to clean up her own mess. “And you have my son.”
“I’ll make you a deal.” Lieutenant Richards pushed the barrel into Shea’s temple, breaking skin. “You tell me where Vincent is keeping the casing he recovered from the warehouse last night, and I’ll let you see your son again.”
Chapter Thirteen
He didn’t know how he was going to win her back, but he sure as hell was wasn’t going to lose her. Vincent stepped away from the nearest explosive device, gun in his uninjured hand. Blocks of C-4 had been wired to detonate when triggered above every door and window of the plant. But as far as he could tell, this location had never been used as a stash house or a place Grillo’s organization would use to hold a nine-month-old boy hostage. Warning settled between his shoulder blades. One signal. That was all it would take to make it so the best medical examiner in the state couldn’t identify his remains, but rigging one of their own places to blow didn’t make sense.
Unless it’d been a setup from the beginning.
He bit back the curse on the tip of his tongue. Shea was out there on her own trying to track down her son. He’d screwed up. Even if he hadn’t read her department psych eval directly, he’d given her mistrust weight by not telling her his employer had access to it in the first place. She’d trusted him, and all he’d done was prove she was right about him, about his team. Sullivan Bishop had founded Blackhawk to take cases the police couldn’t or wouldn’t prioritize, asking his operatives to do whatever it took to protect the client. Including skirting the law as Shea had accused. Vincent had solved dozens of cases over the past year by living up to that standard. He’d made a difference he hadn’t been able to as an NYPD officer, but in the end, the same principle that’d given him purpose—that had saved so many lives—had driven her away.
She deserved better. Better than him.
She’d survived the worst kind of mental torture he could imagine for a new mother to suffer through, but now, looking back, he understood it wasn’t the fact that Blackhawk had access to her psych eval at all. Her desperation to fight for custody of her son, her determination to lose herself in her work, the walls she’d built to keep everyone out. It was all part of the fear that everyone would know—that he would know—how weak, worthless, she’d convinced herself she’d become. But Vincent knew the truth.
Underneath that fear of failure, past her invisible defenses and the guarded expressions, there was a woman who’d never backed down from a challenge, even when she’d lost everything that mattered to her. She was charming, intelligent, authentic and gracious and had more ambition than anyone he’d come across. She wasn’t weak. She wasn’t worthless. She was everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d needed to keep him going these past few months. She was...the woman he needed in his life.
She’d brought out the best in him, kept him from isolating himself even further, from losing all contact with the people he cared about in the name of protection. By working at his side, she’d kept him in reality when all he’d focused on the past year was the case that’d almost gotten him killed. He loved her. And it didn’t matter if she couldn’t love him back. He owed her his life. That would be enough for him.
Vincent moved farther along the atrium floor, kicking rubble and garbage out of his way. Scaffolding lined the walls, an impressive collection of cogs courtesy of the Philadelphia Alfred Box & Co. The crane demanded attention from above, rust and buildup clear from thirty feet below. Grillo’s organization might not be holding Wells here, but the officers involved had been here. They’d rigged every entrance and exit with explosives and left a man behind to detonate. It was Locard’s principle. Everyone left a piece of themselves behind and took something with them from a crime scene. Fingerprints, fibers, DNA evidence. Which meant there had to be something here.
This was what he’d been trained to do. Search for the evidence, analyze the scene, find the suspect. He cleared a set of stairs leading up to the second level but slowed. “Evidence.”
Holstering his weapon, he pulled the warped casing he’d collected from the warehouse from his jacket pocket. Sunlight reflected off the bronze, even through the plastic evidence bag. He’d left his forensic kit back at the warehouse, but there were other ways to lift prints from evidence in the field. Vincent wound his way back into the atrium and out through a side door facing the Hudson. Collecting a handful of fine dirt, he settled on the edge of an old set of stairs that protested under his weight. A light breeze pushed his hair into his face, his throat burning from the instant drop in temperature. Perfect conditions.
He ripped the adhesive section from the evidence bag, keeping it close, but froze. The second he touched the casing without gloves, it’d be inadmissible in court. Whatever defense attorney would go to bat for these bastards could argue the evidence had been tampered with, and in a case like this, where a large part of the NYPD could possibly be linked to Grillo’s organization and charged with a slew of felonies, he’d land behind bars right beside them.
Then again, he wasn’t part of the NYPD anymore, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to protect Shea and her son.
He extracted the casing with his index finger and thumb, keeping contact with the metal to a minimum. His shoulder protested as he tried to grip the evidence, but this was the only way to prove what his instincts had been telling him since he and Shea had barely escaped with their lives from the warehouse last night. He picked up the dirt with his free hand and held it above the casing. Then let it go. The wind did exactly as he’d hoped, redirecting most of the sand away from the casing, but the few grains that’d made contact with the bronze clung tight to the oils that whoever’d handled the evidence had left behind. Fingerprint ridges formed in arcs, whorls and loops, but abruptly stopped at one edge as though the print was only a partial.
Just like the fingerprint he’d recovered from the gas can the night of the fire.
Whoever’d loaded this casing into their weapon’s magazine and been at that scene the night he’d lost two teammates to the fire. Maybe had even lit the match. The smooth surface of the print on that side meant one thing: whoever’d started the fire that night in the warehouse had burned themselves badly enough they’d lost half of their fingerprint.
His own scars tingled as though remembering what that kind of pain had felt like, which was impossible. He’d lost feeling in almost all the nerve endings in over 30 percent of his injury site. Except when Shea had run her hands over his skin. Hell, he’d never meant to betray her trust. He had to get her back, had to prove he was the one person in this world she’d be able to count on.
But first, he had to bring down the organization Grillo worked for. Dropping the casing inside the evidence bag, he shoved it back into his pocket and retrieved his phone. Every rotation he forced his shoulder to make shot pins and needles down to his fingers, but nothing—not even a gunshot wound—would stop him from getting to Shea. He brought the phone to his ear, and the line connected. “Elizabeth, I need you to send me the location of my SUV and a replacement vehicle to the Glenwood power plant.”
Making his way around the side of the building, toward where he’d parked their rental SUV, Vincent scanned the landscape. Where was Lara? He’d left her right here. He dropped the phone away from his ear and spun full circle. No movement. No body.
“Vincent?” Elizabeth’s voice barely reached his ears over the rush of wind coming across the river, and he brought the phone back to his ear.
“Yeah, I’m here.” Two sets of footprints led away from the plant, but he only recognized one of them belonging to Shea. Dark drops of blood peppered the second set. Had to be Lara. She’d suffered a laceration across her forehead after the explosion. From where the SUV’s treads indented the ground, he traced her to the back passenger seat of the vehicle. Confusion rushed through him. Lara wouldn’t climb into the back seat in order to catch a ride with Shea. She’d take the front. He gripped the bullet casing in his pocket, the muscles in his jaw ticking with his heartbeat. Something wa
sn’t right. Shea had every reason to get the hell away from him, but Lara? She wouldn’t have left him out here without a good reason. “Have you heard anything from Lieutenant Richards or Shea Ramsey?”
“Let me get this straight. You need a replacement SUV because yours suddenly went missing, and you lost both of the officers you took with you?” Keyboard strikes filtered through the line. “I think this is going to put a strain on the relationship Blackhawk has with law enforcement.”
He searched the area again to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, but there was no sign of either of them. “It’s a long story.”
“Only Sullivan has checked in. He recovered Bennett at one of the addresses Lieutenant Richards gave us for possible stash house locations,” Elizabeth said. “They did a number on him before leaving him to die, but he’ll pull through. Autumn is flying in from Anchorage as we speak. Still waiting for Kate and Elliot to call with what they’ve found at the other two addresses I gave them.”
Damn it. Which meant Anthony Harris was still out there. Without him, they might not be able to ID the bastards who’d taken Shea’s son. He unclenched his hold from around the evidence bag. Unless... Vincent had already come into contact with the suspect. “I’m going to have to call you back.”
He ended the call, studying the footprints in the dirt. Lara’s wound hadn’t been bad enough that she should’ve climbed into the back seat of the SUV. Pocketing his phone, he dropped to one knee, his shrapnel wound screaming in protest. He’d recovered the same print from both the gasoline can the night of the fire and the evidence from the warehouse. The suspect had been at both locations, but unless Grillo’s organization had been surveilling the murder scene of that IAB officer, which was possible, no one in the NYPD had known Vincent and his teammates were investigating the case on their own. No one except their commanding officer. He scanned the property again. The lack of tire tracks, the explosives... They’d been lured to this location.
The Line of Duty Page 14