Covert Complication (Badlands Cops Book 2)

by Nicole Helm

  “From what we figured out through the guys Jamison arrested, the man...” Cody stopped himself from saying shot in the barn in the nick of time. Brianna and Gigi didn’t need to hear the full details even if they had to live through them. “The man in the barn was Andy Jay. Junior.”

  Gage swore under his breath.

  “Obviously he blames the Wyatts for his father’s death. It’s not clear if Ace had twisted him to use him against us, or if he was using Ace to get to us. But either way, the lawyer was getting messages to Andy, who was leading parts of the Sons in Ace’s absence.”

  “So... Nina shot the new head of the Sons?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Mom? You shot someone?”

  He heard Nina’s strangled response, which wasn’t words so much as the sound a person makes when they don’t know what to say.

  “Brianna, can the adults have some time to talk by themselves? Is there something you and Gigi can go play?” Cody asked.

  “I’ll take them. Jamison can clue me in later,” Liza said.

  Brianna slid off his lap, and Cody knew he’d be having to talk to her about when it was appropriate to shoot someone, but first he needed to tell his brothers and Nina what they’d figured out.

  Once he thought they were gone, Cody continued. “Andy Jay wasn’t the new leader. They don’t have a new leader. In fact, it sounds like the Sons are on shaky footing. I heard the two guys out front talking before they noticed me. The Sons are waiting for Ace to name a successor, and he hasn’t. Infighting. Power vacuums. They’re self-destructing.”

  “Well, then it’s not a bad thing Andy Junior and his cohorts will be in jail for quite some time,” Dev said gruffly.

  “And with all three being taken care of, and Brianna occupied, I’m going to take Cody to the hospital,” Nina announced.

  “I don’t—”

  “You need a doctor,” Grandma Pauline interrupted. “Let your woman take you to the hospital.”

  Your woman. He couldn’t see, but he grinned in what he hoped was Nina’s direction. “You going to take that label?”

  “I’ll take it,” Nina replied, and her slim hand wrapped around his arm and tugged him back to his feet. “All the way to the hospital.”

  He grumbled, but he let her lead him outside.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know. I know I need a medical professional, but one of my brothers—”

  “I’ll take you. Because I love you.” She stopped, brushed her mouth against his. “We’re safe, Cody. And together.”

  “And we will be.” He’d make sure of it.

  Epilogue

  It took a few days of rest, to the point he was going near crazy, but when he woke up a few days later his sight was back just as the doctor had predicted.

  Not just the blurry in and out he’d had the first few days of healing, but full-fledged seeing.

  His head injury had only needed to heal, and then his sight would too. And so it had. Thank God. He was really tired of being led around, even by the people he loved most in the world.

  He sat up, looked around. Nina was curled beside him, clear as a picture underneath the big blue comforter. She was sound asleep.

  Gorgeous. His.

  Brianna bounded in, as was her current routine. She jumped right on the bed and grinned at him. “Can you see yet?”

  “Looks like today’s the day, B.”

  She gave a whoop of triumph, then launched herself at him.

  Nina rolled over and yawned. “Now, you two. You still have to be careful. Healing takes time.”

  So much time. Time he was tired of. “You know, Jamison and I had a long talk last night.”

  “About bad guys?” Brianna asked, bouncing.

  “No.” He pulled Brianna onto his lap, slid his arm around Nina and brought her close. “See, Jamison and Liza and Gigi they all live in a town called Bonesteel. It’s a short distance from here, not far. Liza’s going to homeschool Gigi, and she thought your mommy could help her. So, you and Gigi would be in school together, taught by Aunt Liza and Mom.”

  Brianna’s eyes got big as saucers. “I could go to school with Gigi?”

  “And what will you do?” Nina asked, frowning up at him.

  “Jamison said there’s a computer repair store for sale. Owner would sell the building, the supplies, outright. I’ve got some tech skills.”

  “You’re going to run a store?” Nina asked skeptically. “In Bonesteel?”

  “A store. A front for some other things. Potato. Potahtoh.”

  She snorted out a laugh, and it was like in this very moment his world righted. Nina and Brianna were his. He had a plan for what he could do to help bring down the Sons—without being involved in North Star, though he planned to offer his services when they were needed.

  And he could keep his family safe, because they were a family. “We could buy a little house. Have some slice of normalcy. Stability. Together.”

  Nina looked up at him, a considering look on her face, so he gave Brianna the signal they’d practiced, tapping his nose three times.

  She let out a little squeal, then scooted off the bed and ran out of the room.

  “What are you up to?” Nina asked, skepticism still in place.

  Cody dropped a kiss to the tip of her nose. He enjoyed the skepticism, Brianna’s excitement, and as much as he didn’t plan to do anything so sedate as run a computer repair business in a tiny town, he liked the idea of stability.

  Of family.

  Brianna scooted back in.

  “You got it, B?”

  Brianna nodded excitedly and jumped on the bed again. “Here, Mama.” She shoved the box at Nina.

  Who stared at it, eyes wide, much like Brianna had looked when he’d mentioned going to school with Gigi.

  “Well, open it.”

  She flipped the lid, and there it was. The ring he’d bought all those years ago. Because Nina had always been right, and they’d already lost enough time.

  “I love you. Both. With everything I am. We lost seven years. I don’t want to lose a second more.”

  Nina looked up from the ring, tears swimming in her eyes. “I don’t either.”

  “So. Marriage. House. Settle down in good old Bonesteel, South Dakota. Keep each other safe.”

  Nina reached up and cupped his face. “And happy,” she said, as a tear slipped over.

  “A family,” Brianna shouted exuberantly, flinging her arms around both of them.

  Because they were finally a family, just as they always would be from this moment forward.

  * * *

  Look for the next book in

  the Badlands Cops series

  by Nicole Helm,

  available May 2020

  wherever Harlequin Intrigue

  books and ebooks are sold.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Hostile Pursuit by Juno Rushdan.

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  Hostile Pursuit

  by Juno Rushdan

  Chapter One

  For a year Lori Carpenter had stayed indoors, under constant watch, cut off from family and friends and everything familiar, in hiding.

  Dread ate away at her every day. There was nothing she could do besides prepare. But it still wasn’t enough, and now her time was up.

  The arm lodged against her throat tightened.

  “You let your guard slip,” he whispered in her ear, his elbow locked under her chin, blocking off her airway.

  Her lungs strained, clogged with fear as she flailed.

&n
bsp; “Show me what you are,” he growled.

  Prey or a predator.

  Adrenaline shot through her bloodstream, her heart beating like a snare drum. Survival instinct kicked in and the lead weighing down her limbs evaporated.

  Lori thrust her elbow back into his ribs, once, twice. All the drills repeated day after day for fifty-five weeks came rushing to the forefront of her mind. To break away, she had to flip him. She slammed her heel down onto his foot. As she shrugged her shoulders, she hooked her foot behind one of his legs, seized the arm locked around her throat and bent at the knees.

  His body rotated, going over her shoulder. Perfect execution of the maneuver.

  But he grabbed her, taking her down hard with him to the concrete floor of the empty two-car garage. They rolled. Their arms and legs tangled.

  She landed on top of US Deputy Marshal Nick McKenna and jammed her forearm against his throat. “I asked you to give me a challenging lesson. Not try to actually kill me.”

  Nick was tough, deadly. There was a darkness to him. The kind bred from dealing in the worst sort of violence. She appreciated that about him; it bolstered her confidence that he’d be able to keep her alive. So far he hadn’t disappointed. But there was another side to him she preferred.

  He tapped her arm, giving the cue their self-defense session was finished even though he was lethally capable of maneuvering free of her grasp.

  Part of her wondered why he had let her flip him to the ground. No way she could’ve tossed him unless he’d allowed it. Besides the fact that he was powerfully built, he had years of training and experience she couldn’t compete with.

  She took her arm off his larynx, put her hands on his muscular chest and kept his body pinned with her legs, straddling his hips. Her belly fluttered with raw awareness, so close to him, pelvis to pelvis, their lips a breath apart. He took up all the oxygen in the room.

  Rubbing his throat, he stared up at her with those intense, bourbon-colored eyes that seemed to see everything. Her fear, her pain, her loneliness.

  Everything except her desire for him.

  His devastating dark looks were even more tempting dotted with facial stubble and covered in a sheen of sweat. “I’m pretty sure attempted homicide is not part of my job description.” The overheated gravel of his voice teased an itch that hadn’t been scratched in a long, long time.

  He flashed a heart-stopping smile that sent a tingle shooting straight to her thighs.

  “You were right. I have been too easy on you and that’s not doing you a favor.” He swept a long lock of her hair that’d slipped from her ponytail away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. The brush of his fingertips, his touch lingering seconds longer than it should’ve, made her stomach bounce as if she were still a naive girl who believed in true love and the magic of chemistry, instead of the older, wiser thirty-two-year-old woman she was today. “You need to know what the fear and the panic would feel like in a real-world scenario so you can think and fight your way through it.”

  Nick had been an anchor during the bleakest months, her sensei, teaching her to punch, kick, throw a proper headbutt. And he had become a dear friend. A smart, steadfast, sexy friend she couldn’t stop thinking about crawling into bed with.

  Ted Zeeman crossed the threshold, strolling into the garage while typing on a laptop. Good ole Ted always popped up before Nick and Lori slipped across the line of propriety, like he could smell their pheromones from the next room.

  Lori stood and offered Nick a hand up from the ground.

  He took it, putting his palm on hers even though he didn’t need her assistance, climbed to his feet and dusted himself off. Standing shy of six feet with broad shoulders and streamlined muscles that hinted at his leashed lethality, he wasn’t a huge guy, but his magnetic presence dominated a room. Or perhaps he simply dominated her attention.

  She dismissed the ridiculous crush she had on Deputy Marshal McKenna. If she liked him, then beneath the suits and badge was a quintessential bad boy.

  In her experience, bad boys equaled heartbreak. Every man she’d been attracted to had left scars. She wasn’t in the market for another festering wound.

  “Are you nervous about your big day tomorrow?” Ted asked.

  Big day.

  Weddings, funerals, your child being born...those were big days. Testifying in federal court against her in-laws’ financial firm for laundering millions was inevitable once she’d discovered what Wallace Capital Management—WCM—had been up to.

  After she took the stand tomorrow, marshals she’d never met would give her a brand-new name and whisk her off into a brand-new life in a brand-new city.

  Hopefully, not one in backcountry nowhere.

  “Yeah, a little.” More like a lot. As in terrified.

  “I’m about to file the morning report,” Ted said to Nick. “Anything you want me to add?”

  “Did you annotate our excursion?” Nick asked.

  “Yep. You betcha.” Ted nodded. “I reminded the boss, but I did the paperwork, too.”

  One hour a day, Lori was allowed off the premises. She usually relished the time jogging through the adjacent woods, but not today.

  Ted slapped the classified US Marshals Services laptop closed. “I’m going to haul the trash out while you two get cleaned up so we can go shopping.” He rolled his eyes.

  Lori might’ve been living in yoga pants, jeans and T-shirts since her mad dash out of San Diego after spilling her guts to the FBI, but she’d be damned if she was going to face her no-good, cheating ex-husband and his lying, criminal family in anything less than the best professional armor.

  “Fifteen minutes and we’ll head out.” Ted tucked the laptop under his arm. “Tomorrow can’t get here soon enough. My last assignment will be done, and I can finally retire.”

  “Are you going to get a little hut on a powdery beach like you want?” Nick asked him.

  “Boy, I wish. It’s a one-bedroom condo in the Keys for me. You’ll have to visit.”

  “Better believe it,” Nick said. “We’ll be out front in fifteen.”

  Ted strode back into the country house that was isolated on two acres of land.

  “How are you holding up?” Nick’s gaze found hers again, warming something inside her like it did whenever he looked at her that way. “It’s the homestretch.”

  She should’ve been relieved. By noon tomorrow this nightmare would be over, but tension threaded through her, tightening her muscles. “My father-in-law, Sam, begged me to look the other way, keep my job at WCM and to forget everything.” Lori almost kept talking, almost dared to unburden herself of the secret she’d been carrying.

  One stupid mistake had pulverized her life like a sledgehammer crushed a walnut.

  It wasn’t as if she could hide it forever. The truth would come out in her testimony, but what would Nick think of her when he found out?

  “Of course he did.” Nick ran his hands up and down her arms. “Without you, there is no case. We’re talking about millions of dollars a year. Billions. I’m sure whoever they launder money for are dangerous people and only care about their bottom line.”

  A shiver raced through her. Nick had no idea how dangerous, but she knew all too well. “Sam told me there’s no way to win. That I’m going up against Goliath.” And her father-in-law hadn’t been talking about WCM. “He swore I wouldn’t live long enough to testify.”

  The shiver deepened to a chill that seeped to her bones. The firm’s biggest dirty client was violent and ruthless, had endless resources and people everywhere.

  It was a miracle she’d lived this long.

  “Goliath is big and ferocious. But not invincible. David beat him and so will you.” Nick took both of her hands in his and held her gaze.

  The gesture was small, but heated her cheeks and chased away her goose bumps. The space around the
m seemed to shrink, due to his proximity and the quiet strength he radiated. At times his tall, dark and brawny package was menacing, but he could also be...gentle.

  “No matter what, I’ll protect you and get you to court safely. Do you believe me?”

  She believed he’d risk his life for duty and for any witness. “Yes.”

  Nick had kept her safe for three hundred and eighty-six days. What could possibly go wrong in the next twenty-seven hours?

  * * *

  NICK’S GAZE FLICKERED up to Lori’s reflection in the rearview mirror of the car as he drove. Tension radiated from her slender body. Her expression was strained, her big brown eyes looking haunted. With her long chestnut hair loose and the flush of their workout gone from her cheeks, her fair skin was paler than normal. Somehow making the almost ethereal beauty about her more enticing.

  The enormity of the transition she was going through wasn’t lost on him.

  He could tell she was doing her best to hold it together and not let nerves derail her. For a year he’d studied her. Paid attention to her body language and every nuance.

  Witnesses tended to get antsy in protective custody, especially over a long period of time, and sometimes they made bad decisions. Tried to bolt when they should’ve stayed put. Deviated from protocol instead of adhering to the strict rules.

  Buddying up to them helped him keep his finger on the pulse of the situation, anticipate if things might go sideways because an informant was on the verge of unraveling.

  What he hadn’t counted on was falling for a witness.

  Lori had totally blindsided him. Several hours a day, seven days a week, watching her, talking to her, touching her during their self-defense lessons, was winding him up tighter than a watch spring. He’d never been so viscerally attracted to a woman. Everything about her excited him—her voice, those doe eyes staring at him, her silky hair he wanted to feel sliding across his belly, the knockout body he wanted to—

  “Finally, we’re here,” Ted said, intruding on his thoughts.