“Agreed,” I say. “And I’d bet money that he has a spotter watching us right now.”
The sound of the back door of the bar opening has Luke eyeing the monitor. “Savage.”
I rotate to face the doors as they open, and Savage leans in to talk to us. “How is she?” He eyes the powder on me. “How the hell are you?”
“It’s baby powder,” I say. “Where is Ju-Ju now?”
“I had to let him go or they were going to call the police,” he says, “and I didn’t think my cover would hold if that happened. And I didn’t think you’d want Sierra to talk to the cops. Tell me someone has eyes on him.”
“Jacob,” Luke interjects. “He just sent me a text confirmation.”
“I have to get back,” Savage says, “but I grabbed this.” He holds up a phone. “The only photos on that phone are Sierra’s. No calls. It’s clean. He had his day-to-day phone but there were no photos.” He hands it to me. “I’ll update the team when I can.” He pulls back and shuts us inside.
“I have to go to the apartment,” Sierra says. “Stay the course.” She focuses on me. “We can fight over what just happened. Kara is there waiting on me, but we have to finish the night.”
“No,” I say. “You won’t go back in that bar. You won’t go to the apartment. He knows we’re watching him.”
I look at Luke. “Tell Blake and Kara to be careful, but Sierra is out. I’m taking her home.”
“I don’t blame you, man,” Luke says. “I’ll have Smith shadow you.”
“No,” I say. “Ju-Ju is outsmarting us. I have Sierra. Just stay on Ju-Ju.”
“This could have been a distraction for another kill,” Sierra warns.
And with that grim note, I take Sierra’s hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
She doesn’t argue, and when we step onto the street, I don’t speak. We don’t have back-up. I need to focus and her silence says that she understands. The walk is short, but feels like forever before we are safely inside a subway car with four other people.
We can’t talk, but the realization that she could be dead right now is punching all kinds of holes in me for the entire ride. I grab the pole and pull her to me, and she sinks against me, trembling, as if it’s just hit her that she battled with a serial killer. Incredible, she not only battled, she survived and wanted to keep fighting. I look down and her purse is unzipped, her weapon a reach from being pulled. I leave it that way and just hold her until we arrive at our stop.
Once we’re street-side, the walk is short to the apartment. The walk through the lobby to the elevator even shorter. Inside the elevator, I punch our floor and pull her to me, tangling fingers in her hair. “You scared the shit out of me, woman,” I say, and I kiss her, a deep, drink-her-in, I-almost-fucking-lost-her kiss that I don’t end until the ping of our arrival. Then and only then do I part our lips, take her hand and lead her to the apartment.
The instant we are inside and locked up, we walk side-by-side up the stairs to the bedroom, and straight to the bathroom and the shower. Before we ever undress to wash off all this powder, Luke calls. I answer on speaker. “Sierra and I are here,” I tell him.
“He went straight to his house,” Luke announces.
“Are you sure it’s him?” I ask.
“We’re sure. I talked to Blake. He hacked the security system at Ju-Ju’s apartment and upon inspection, found a loop.”
“A what?” Sierra asks.
“A disruption that makes you think you’re looking at present time footage, but you’re not,” I explain. “Which means he hired a hacker or he has skills we didn’t know he had.”
“Whatever the case,” Luke says. “We know now. We have eyes on him. You two can have some peace with that.”
“He’s done with me,” Sierra says. “He’ll go underground now. He won’t kill anytime soon. He’ll wait until you give up.”
“We never give up,” Luke says. “Not on something like this, even if our client does. You two try to get some much-earned rest.” He disconnects, and I set the phone on the counter, and step into Sierra, cupping her face. “He made you. You can’t go back. You know that, right?”
“Yes. Now that I’m coming down from the high of it all, I know that.” Her fingers curl on my chest. “I was scared and that seems to be my trigger to do that overthinking thing. I could have killed him. I should have killed him. If I get the chance again, I will kill him.”
I wake the next morning to no change in the news on Ju-Ju, and needing an outlet. Asher and I go running, and then spend two hours at the firing range. When we finally shower and head to the office, we enter the lobby to come face-to-face with a massive man with a scar down his face.
“What are you doing here, Savage?” Asher growls.
“Trying to catch an asshole,” he says. “But I need sleep. I’m leaving.” He looks at me. “I’ll kill him if I get the chance, don’t you worry.”
“For the record, Savage,” Asher says. “I still don’t like you, but I no longer hate you. Badass assist last night.”
“I still hate you, motherfucker,” he says, “but I got your back.” He looks at me. “Your back before his.” He steps around us and starts walking and I turn to call after him.
“Thank you for last night!”
He lifts a hand and exits the office. “What’s the story between you two?” I ask, glancing at Asher.
“He’s an asshole. I hate assholes.”
Royce heads out of his office and toward us. “The baby shower is delayed. Lauren wants to have it after the baby is born in February.”
“Isn’t it this weekend?” I ask. “Aren’t there guests coming over?”
“Yes,” Royce says, “But Myla is in Europe with Kyle, and pretty upset that she can’t be here. The only way I could keep her off the plane yesterday was to tell her and Kyle the truth. The bottom line here is that Kyle has time to chase this Alvarez rumor and we don’t.” He looks at me. “We’re going to keep you, Savage, and a field team on Ju-Ju right now. You’ll earn a bonus for taking on more responsibility. The rest of us are powering through the Devin Marks situation.” He looks at Asher. “I assume you’ll work both cases, but as of now, unless either of you have an objection, I’m on board with your plan to move this Marks plan forward quickly and I’ll throw the resources at it we need.”
“We have six total targets, and any spawn they lead us to,” Asher says. “If we take one down a week, at least disrupt their world, we can force Marks into a corner by Christmas. Merry fucking Christmas from Walker Security.”
“I’m on board,” Royce says. “Let’s make it happen.”
My heart is now racing at the idea of this particular Christmas gift, but I’m nervous, too. We’re dealing with Devin Marks and no one knows his variety of evil more than me.
***
I spend the afternoon at one end of the conference table, researching any detail to nab Ju-Ju while listening to the rest of the team work on the battle with The Beast. I offer random tips and thoughts to help them while making calls related to Ju-Ju’s father. Looking for anything to take him down before he’s so dormant that we may never link him to any of the murders. By early evening, Savage is the only insider we have at the bar, while his field team runs surveillance. Ju-Ju doesn’t show up, which is no surprise to me. Asher and I stay at the office until two in the morning, and then head home.
Friday morning, Asher and I repeat Thursday, jogging, grabbing breakfast, and then hitting the firing range, where I am showing improvements. Savage and I have no luck digging up dirt on Ju-Ju or his father, but the Devin Marks team, is pleased with their progress.
Friday evening, Ju-Ju not only stays away from the bar, he goes out to dinner by himself, and then to a movie. By Monday, Royce pulls Savage’s undercover role, and he’s about to scale the Ju-Ju case back to field surveillance, which Savage and I fight. Out of options, ten days pass, and Ju-Ju seems to fade into the background, while Asher becomes my world. I wake up in his arm
s and fall asleep the same way. And as we all focus on Devin Marks, the arrests and scandals begin to post on our wall. Each step we take, each move we make, makes the fall of The Beast feel a little more possible.
But on day eleven since the baby powder incident, I wake up with a gasp that has Asher jerking to a sitting position, because apparently, I’m sitting up. “Nightmare?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, my mind flashing back again to that dinner party, and then the garden, where I’d heard The Beast plan to kill a man, and use me as payment. “Very much a nightmare.”
Asher lowers me to the bed, and rolls us both to our sides, facing each other. “About The Beast?”
“Yes and no. Yes, it was about him but it’s really about me not doing enough fast enough to save lives. I want to work on the Ju-Ju case again today.”
“Tell me about the nightmare, Sierra.”
“You don’t want to hear this.”
“Yes. I do.”
And so I tell him and he just listens, his jaw hard and getting harder. When I’m done, he inhales and gets out of bed and, still naked from the night before, walks into the bathroom. I blink, confused, and sit up. The shower comes on and I don’t know what to think. Is he turned off by what I’ve told him? By the fact that I stayed after that? Or that I wore that dress? I don’t know but I have to know. I climb out of the bed and rush into the bathroom. He’s in the shower and I stop beside it.
“Do you think less of me now?”
The door immediately opens and he pulls me inside, his lips coming down on mine in a kiss that is angry and almost brutally passionate. And then he presses me into the corner, his hands on the wall above my head. “Did that taste or feel like I think less of you?”
“You said nothing. You walked in here and said nothing.”
“I’m in love with you. I love you, Sierra. Don’t tell me it’s too damn soon because that won’t change two things. I love you. And I’m going to kill him.”
“You will go to jail.”
“You still underestimate me. It will look like an accident, which considering he kills just that way, is poetic justice.”
I press my hands to his chest. “I don’t want to be the woman who made you kill.”
“You aren’t. He’s simply the man who deserves to die. Tell me you love me, Sierra. I really need to hear it.”
“Oh God, yes,” I say, despite the fact that I haven’t let myself think it until now. But I do. So much. “You know I do,” I add.
“Say it,” he orders.
“I love you, Asher. I love you more than I thought possible and I—”
He slides his hand under my neck and drags his lips to mine. “Show me.”
I smile against his lips and then he kisses me again and we are wild and crazy and perfect. But there is anger under his surface, so much anger that I have to control because killing to save a life is different than murder. Murder will change him. Murder will always be between us and because of me.
I can’t let that happen, and the only way I know to stop it right now is to kiss him deeper, touch him everywhere, and just hold onto him.
Hours later, at the office, Asher is driving everyone to push the timeline forward on the takedown of Devin Marks’ minions. He’s intense and I sense that I just have to let him ride this out for now, work through the anger and come down a bit before we can talk this out. Besides, I’m feeling pretty intense over the news we were met with today on Ju-Ju. Apparently, he’s taken a job at his father’s old stockbroker firm, a killer hiding in clear sight just like Devin, and that idea fires me up. I start watching the hours of surveillance footage on him, of him, looking for what we have missed. By evening, I’m focused on the many reels of diner footage, when my eyes go wide and my heart skips a beat.
“I think I know this man,” I say, pausing the footage on the fiftyish man with gray, wavy hair. “This man who was in the diner with Ju-Ju. He’s familiar.”
Asher, Luke, Kara, Blake and Savage are instantly behind me. “He bought from Ju-Ju several times,” Blake says. “I remember him.”
“I know him, too,” Savage says, “and not from the bar or the diner. I saw his picture.”
He walks back to his seat, sits down and begins punching keys on his computer. “Grant Miller,” he says, glancing at us. “He was the tech guy at the brokerage firm Ju-Ju’s father worked for. He retired two years ago.”
Asher kneels beside me and turns the computer in his direction while Blake walks back to his seat and focuses on his keyboard as well. “He lives in Westbury, Long Island,” Asher says. “It’s a rental house. And there is no credit card activity in a week.”
“His light bill is a month past due,” Blake adds.
“No bank account activity,” Asher says. “Fuck. It was drained two weeks ago, like he was planning to run.”
“I got the address,” Blake says, standing up. “Let’s go.”
Asher faces me, his hand on my leg. “Stay here. Don’t leave the office, but go tell Royce what’s happening.” He eyes Savage.
“Nothing would please me more than to stay with your woman.”
“Don’t push your luck, Savage,” Asher says, kissing my hand. “I’ll call you soon.”
He stands and exits the room, and Savage and I look at each other one beat before we both turn back to our computers. “Look for anything that might help them,” he says.
I pull the video footage back up and I watch the interaction Grant has with Ju-Ju in slow motion. “Oh wow,” I breathe out.
Savage’s gaze jerks to me. “What do you have?”
“Ju-Ju doesn’t sell him drugs. He hands him a small, bulky envelope.”
“Like it has a phone with a picture on it inside,” Savage says, following my thoughts exactly. “Call Asher. They need to look for those phones.”
It’s me, Luke, Blake, Kara, and Smith, crowding into the Escalade in the Walker parking garage, with Blake and his control-freak ass behind the wheel. We’re barely out of the drive when Sierra calls me with the news about the envelope exchange. “I think he’s the keeper of the souvenirs.”
“Got it,” I say. “We’ll find them if they’re there.” I end the call. “Sierra thinks Ju-Ju handed off his picture phones to Miller.”
“Fuck,” Blake growls. “We spooked the jerk-offs. We know where this is going and it’s nowhere.”
We all fall into silence, focused on the mission ahead, aware that when a man is cornered, he does insane things, even kills himself and tries to take others with him. Forty-five minutes later, we pull to a stop a few houses down from Miller’s. “I don’t know about the rest of you,” I say. “But I don’t plan on knocking.”
“I do,” Blake says. “As in knock the fucking door down.”
“Sometimes I think I love you,” I say as I pop the back door open.
“Don’t feed his attitude,” Luke grumbles. “We’ll all pay the price.”
On that note, we all exit the vehicle and I take the lead, motioning Blake and Luke to the left while myself and Smith go right, just before we split up to ensure we don’t scare the neighbors. Once we’re at the house, Smith and I draw our weapons and scan the windows, only to find the drapes are too thick to offer a visual inside the property. We round the corner to the back yard, going slow. “Watch for booby traps,” Smith says. “I’ll go first. This is my thing.”
When an ex-Green Beret, who specialized in setting booby traps wants to go first, you let him. I wave him forward. He motions for me to wait. I scan while he clears our path and finally, he motions me forward. There is no back porch and we both flatten on the wall by the door. I give him a nod and kick the door open. He steps to the entrance and checks for wires, then slowly enters the house. I follow to find it empty, but the danger of a bomb or trap still exists.
Luke enters through the front door, Blake at his heels. Smith motions for us all to wait. For ten minutes we stand there while he clears the top level, then gives us an all-clear sign. He motions to a
stairwell leading to the basement and I follow him, patiently waiting as he does his thing, and clears our path. Finally, we reach the bottom of the stairs. “Holy fuck,” I murmur as I find a wall of pictures, all familiar since they are the victims killed by our serial killer.
I stand my ground until Smith says, “All clear and what the fuck?”
“Down here!” I shout, and Blake and Luke hurry down the steps, both cursing to various degrees.
The five of us stand there, staring at the photos and I try to take comfort in the fact that Sierra’s isn’t there. Either she’s now taken off the list, or she’s not on it yet because she’s not dead. “He left this as a taunt,” I say. “A message.”
“Agreed,” Luke says. “But what’s the message?”
“It could be a kiss my ass goodbye,” Blake says.
“Or a promise that he’ll kill again,” Kara says, “and we didn’t catch him now and we won’t then.” She turns to face me. “The FBI will get involved. Ju-Ju will be interviewed and Sierra might come up, at which time I’ll claim that is me.”
“But there are pictures he took of her that could show up,” I say.
“He has money,” Kara says. “His attorney will keep his mouth shut.”
“Our six-week plan to take down Marks just turned into four,” I say, looking at Blake and Luke. “I need Devin Marks ended and ended now.”
“We’ll come up with a plan in the morning,” Blake says, tossing me the keys. “Get your woman. Tell her she did good and keep her away from the offices until the FBI storm passes.”
I nod and head for the door, and I don’t stop until I’m in the Escalade. Once I’m on the road I dial Sierra. “What’s happening?” she asks, sounding nervous.
“He’s cleared the house but left the photos behind.”
“Oh,” she breathes out. “Were there…photos of me?”
“No. Not of you. Just the victims. We called the police. Ju-Ju and even Terrance will be questioned. If anyone brings you up, we’ll play dumb and point to Kara. And you need to know that the FBI will be called in, probably tonight. You’re going to want to keep a low profile until the storm passes.”
Pulled Under: a standalone Walker Security novel Page 25