Cancelled Vows

by Lauren Carr

  Mac tried not to scoff. “Audra Walker found out about your mistress?”

  “More than that,” Preston said in a low tone.

  “How is it more than that?”

  “I married her,” Preston hissed. “We have two children together.”

  Mac felt his jaw drop open.

  “She thinks my name is Blake Prescott,” Preston continued. “I make regular trips out to the West Coast, and”—he stopped to drain the glass of water—“she thinks I’m an insurance salesman.”

  “You have two families?” Mac asked with a gasp. “Why?”

  “I don’t know!” His eyes wide, Preston Blakeley started to blubber. “It just happened!”

  “Were you drunk in Vegas?”

  “How did you know?”

  To save time, David took a wad of cash from Dallas and went to the men’s clothing department to purchase new clothes while she went to the ladies’ department. They had arranged to meet in one hour at Café SFA—that is, Café Saks Fifth Avenue.

  David had never spent so much money on clothes in such a short amount of time. The lean male clerk dropped a tidbit about aspiring to be a fashion designer and then wasted no time in dressing David up like he was a male fashion doll. David tuned him out when he started admiring his slender hips and tight buttocks.

  While the look the clerk had assembled was not in keeping with David’s usual tossed-together style, it served his purpose of changing his appearance from a casually dressed visitor from rural Maryland to an upscale big-city slicker. Within an hour, David was clad in a brown suede jacket, a soft brown sweater, and slacks. The look was finished off with matching boots and a wide color-blocked scarf that the clerk had insisted upon. When David stepped out of the dressing room, the clerk was waiting with a brown felt fedora that he’d gotten from the hat department to add “one last touch.”

  “I just love a man in a hat,” he told David with a wink.

  In that instant, David spotted the security camera high above them in the ceiling.

  “They say hats are making a comeback.” Taking the fedora, David turned his back to the camera and placed the hat on his head, careful to wear it forward with the wide rim down over his forehead to conceal his eyes from the camera.

  “Oh, that’s just perfect,” the clerk gushed.

  Minutes later, David was sitting at a corner bistro table trying to erase the memory of Officer Sauer’s face and of how the silver badge he’d been wearing on his chest had shone in the sun.

  Why did you make me have to kill you? You had to have taken the same oath I did to protect and to serve, Sauer. Why? What did they offer you that was so great that you turned on your brothers in blue?

  David search his mind for terrorists he had killed while on missions in the Middle East or as a police officer—for every time he had pulled his gun and been forced to fire. He had never felt so much guilt over shooting anyone as he did for killing those two men with police badges pinned to their chests.

  “Hey, To-nee!”

  Startled by the loud Jersey accent, David almost knocked over his coffee. He looked across the café into the store and saw a striking brunette with long, silky straight hair making her way toward him. She was wearing a multicolored leather poncho, and her long legs were encased in chocolate leather pants. Underneath the pants, she was wearing high-heeled ankle boots. Between the straight hair and the bold makeup, David vacillated between thinking she was indeed Dallas Walker and thinking she was maybe a high-fashion runway model who had just completed a massive shopping spree and had mistaken him for someone else.

  They had agreed that she would refer to him as Tony and he would call her Angelina while they were on the run and in public.

  Directly behind her, two uniformed police officers were walking in the direction of the café. With an appreciative grin, one of them took in the sexy gait of the beauty in front of them.

  David rose from his seat while Dallas, who was grinning broadly at her makeover, made her way through the tables without knocking anything over with her armload of shopping bags. “Sorry to keep you waitin’, sugar, but you would not—”

  Throwing his arms around her, David cut her off by covering her mouth with his.

  She resisted him until he whispered into her ear and pressed his body against hers. “Police behind you. They’re looking for a man and a woman, not a couple,” he said. Once again, he locked his mouth over hers while fighting to conceal his face with the hat.

  Dropping her shopping bags, she wrapped her arms around his neck.

  The scent of her hair reminded him of the fresh, clean scent of Deep Creek Lake first thing in the morning. The taste of her mouth on his made his heart race. Forgetting about the two police officers nearby, his mind filled only with thoughts of her and of the feel of her body in his arms.

  He wanted to be closer to her—and to never let her go.

  “Can I help you?” David heard a server ask a customer at a nearby table.

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” an elderly man chuckled.

  “I never,” an elderly woman said in response to his laugh.

  “I know,” the old man shot back.

  Jolted back into the present, David released her. Shaking the fog from his head, he swallowed and looked around. There were no police officers nearby—at least not any that he could see. A couple of tables away, an old man shot him a thumbs-up while his wife, who was sitting across from him, looked disgusted by their public display of affection.

  “I think we’re safe now,” David murmured while adjusting the hat back on his head.

  “Are you sure?” Dallas replied in a dreamy tone.

  David eased her into a chair. Taking his seat next to her, he paused when he noticed a dazed expression on her face. “Are you okay?”

  She sighed. “Never better.”

  “We haven’t eaten since breakfast,” he said. “You should eat something.”

  “Food is the last thing I want right now.”

  He cocked his head at her wicked grin. “We need to move on. I hate being out in public like this. Get ahold of yourself while I take a look at what’s in that envelope you took from ZNC.” He patted the space on the tabletop between them. “Where is it?”

  “Why don’t you search me to find it?” she suggested with a playful tone.

  Unamused, David rummaged through the collection of shopping bags containing their old clothes until he found her shoulder bag. After finding the envelope, he slapped it on the tabletop and read the front. In black marker, it was addressed to Yvonne in care of Crime Watch at ZNC. The return address read simply “Roberts.”

  “Who’s Roberts?” David asked before remembering a conversation he and Mac had had with Yvonne the day before. “Oh yeah—he was the former chief detective investigating your mother’s disappearance.”

  “Caleb Roberts,” Dallas said with a nod of her head. “He retired last year. That was when Hopkins took over the lead in the case.” She paused before adding, “He was murdered yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. On the same day that my mother’s body was found. He was shot in the head hours after agreein’ to let me see his notebook. It was made to look like a suicide, but I’m not buyin’ it.”

  “Yvonne was killed the same day. Can’t be a coincidence.” David squeezed the padded envelope. It contained something that was rectangular in shape. He ripped the envelope open, thrust his hand inside it, and pulled out its contents, which consisted of a small black notebook and a thick manila folder.

  Dallas snatched the notebook from his hand. It had a note clipped to the front cover.

  “He must have had a bad feeling that he wasn’t going to live long enough for the meeting, so he decided to drop this in the mail to you—I mean Yvonne.” He opened the folder, which contained copies of poli
ce reports and witness statements. “What does the note say?”

  “‘Don’t trust anyone,’” she said.

  “We already know that,” David said.

  “It also says to ask Officer Milt Sauer ‘bout his honeymoon to Australia—and ’bout who asked him to mail the postcard.” Dallas looked up to lock her gaze with David’s.

  “One of the police officers I shot was wearing a nameplate that read Sauer,” David said in a hushed tone.

  “Damn!” she hissed.

  Clasping her hand, he shot her a confident smile. “Don’t worry. I’ve been in tougher spots than this.”

  She flashed him a toothy grin. “They say not to mess with Texas for a reason, sweetheart.” She gestured at the folder under his hands. “What’s that?”

  “Roberts’ bootleg copy of his case file on your mother’s disappearance. I guess he wanted you—I mean Yvonne—to have it.”

  “What’s in it?” She reached for it only to have David move it out of her reach and tuck it back into the envelope.

  “Not right now. We need to keep moving.” He took one of the burner phones she’d given him out of his pocket. “I need to call Mac to tell him about Roberts and his note and to find out if he’s gotten any info for us.”

  “We’re only a couple of blocks from the Four Seasons.”

  “That’s the last place we want to go,” David said in a low voice. “That’s where I’m registered. They’ll expect me to go back there. We have to go someplace else.”

  He became aware of her gazing at him with her cognac-brown eyes, which were then framed with thick, long lashes and bold colors. The touch of blue on her eyelids made her brown eyes more striking. Her expression was different from how she had looked at him before. Lust had been replaced with something softer—deeper.

  David swallowed down the wave of emotion rising up inside him. “Any ideas?”

  “Some,” she said. “You look great in that hat, by the way.”

  “You look great too,” he said while writing down some notes on the back of a napkin. “That poncho suits you.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I knew you were a great kisser. I just knew it.”

  A slow grin came to his lips as he handed the phone to her. “You’re not so bad yourself,” he said with a wink. “You do a pretty good Jersey accent. Can you do Australian outback?”

  Effortlessly, she switched to an Australian accent. “What’d you want me t’say, mate?”

  David slid the note in front of her. “You need to say this to Mac. It’s in code.”

  Keeping her voice low, she said, “We’re usin’ a burner phone, so they won’t know if we call—”

  “As soon as ballistics matches the bullets I put in those policemen to my gun, they’ll get a warrant to trace Mac’s phone calls. We believe Hopkins or someone on his team is in on this.”

  Nodding her head, she said, “And if he’s listenin’ in on Mac’s calls, he’ll know we’re on to him.”

  “Exactly,” David said as he wrote out Mac’s phone number across the top of the napkin. “I’ll be timing you. You can’t talk for more than thirty seconds.”

  Reading through the script David had written out, she frowned. “You want me to say a lot in less than thirty seconds.”

  “Any longer and they’ll be able to narrow down our location.” David was collecting their bags. “Just in case we need to be ready to move as soon as you hang up.”

  Sucking in a deep breath, she pressed in the phone number David had written out and listened to the phone ring on the other end. Mac answered on the third ring.

  “Good-eye, mate,” she said. “Just wanted to let you know that I got that note Harold Fitzwater mailed to me.”

  “I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.”

  “Don’t you lie to me again, you little traitor,” she said. “I know he’s covering for you. Bob told me everything. What’d you give him to be your fall guy today?”

  Finished, she disconnected the call.

  Checking the time on the phone, David grinned. “Seven seconds to spare.” After pocketing the phone, he handed her an armload of bags and stood up. “Now we need to move.”

  “Do you really think Mac got anything from that?” she asked, hurrying after him.

  “Harold Fitzwater was a lieutenant Mac used to work with in homicide in Washington,” David told her in a low voice while they hurried to the main exit. “He took a bribe to allow a murderer Mac had arrested to escape on a private jet to Europe. The cockney accent and your reference to the note tell him that you’re referring to the postcard your mother allegedly sent from Australia. The fall guy tells him that one of the cops I shot had something to do with that postcard, and ‘Bob’ telling you everything tells him that we got this information from Sergeant Roberts.”

  Keeping his head low so the rim of his hat covered his face, David led her out onto the street.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Shivering against the bitterly cold autumn wind, Ed Willingham warmed himself with the hot apple cider he’d purchased from a street vendor while waiting for Lieutenant Abby Gibbons to casually bump into him in Central Park during her afternoon run.

  “We need to stop meeting like this,” she said while pausing to stretch her legs on an arm of the bench. She searched the surrounding area for any sign of someone she knew who might see her talking to the lawyer.

  “A couple of hours ago, two New York City cops were found dead along the East River,” Ed said with a casual tone. “Were they two of your Dirty Six?”

  Standing up straight, she placed her hands on her hips. “Yes.”

  “The shooting was self-defense,” Ed said. “The gun used to shoot them is in the national database.”

  “Care to tell me which client did the shooting?” she asked.

  “Not until you tell me who sent your dirty cops to kill my client.”

  She uttered a deep sigh. “As far as the good cops doing their jobs know, some thug from out on the street took out two of their brothers in blue while they were on a lunch break. Your client will be safer if he turns himself in.”

  “So that the surviving three of the Dirty Six can finish the job?” Ed asked in an undignified manner. “Or better yet, maybe the one behind the hit order will decide that if he wants something done right, he should do it himself. I don’t think so.” He stood up. “I’m here as a courtesy to let you and your police department know that those cops were killed in self-defense. My client is not a cop killer. Now if you don’t want his innocent blood on your police commissioner’s hands, your department needs to step up your game and identify who’s been calling the shots in this muscle-for-hire enterprise that’s been operating within your department. A little bird told me that Sergeant Caleb Roberts, the detective who originally had the lead in Audra Walker’s disappearance, was murdered yesterday.”

  With a shake of her head, she said, “That was ruled a suicide.”

  “Oh,” Ed laughed. “The lead detective in Audra Walker’s case commits suicide the same day her body turns up, disproving Lieutenant Wayne Hopkins’ claim that she took off?”

  “Because of the postcard, Wayne had every reason to believe that that was a voluntary disappearance.”

  “Oh,” Ed said. “That’s right. I forgot all about the postcard mailed from Australia to an acquaintance of Audra Walker. Tell me, Officer Milt Sauer—”

  “One of the cops shot down by the East River,” she said.

  “My contacts in the State Department tell me he was traveling in Australia.”

  Abby’s eyebrows furrowed. “For his honeymoon. I thought at the time that it was a rather expensive and lavish wedding and honeymoon for his salary. I was told it was a wedding present from a relative.”

  “Or a killer,” Ed said. “And how long did it take Lieutenant Hopkins to close Audra Walker’s cas
e when that postcard arrived here in the States?”

  “Wayne had the handwriting on the postcard authenticated,” Gibbons argued.

  “So did the Walker family. They went public saying that their expert claimed the handwriting was not Audra Walker’s, and her body sealed in that wall at the News Corps building proves Hopkins’ expert was wrong—or lying.” The lawyer moved in close to her. “How about if you and I go talk to this expert and ask him which it was?”

  “Our forensics experts aren’t perfect,” she said. “They’re humans, and while the science is perfect, humans are flawed.”

  “Oh, only your cops are dirty,” Ed shot back at her. “If Lieutenant Hopkins wasn’t involved in Walker’s disappearance, or at least in the cover-up, why didn’t he get a second opinion from another expert when the Walkers said the handwriting on that card was a forgery?”

  Lieutenant Abby Gibbons backed away from Ed. She was sputtering when she said, “Wayne is not dirty.”

  “If he’s not, someone on his team certainly is,” Ed said. “My client, David O’Callaghan, is the chief of police in Spencer, Maryland. According to him, those two dirty cops knew that when they took him and Ali Hudson out to the river to murder them. The only way they could have found that out was from Lieutenant Hopkins, who he told while giving his statement after the Harding murder—or a member of his team.”

  Her face grew pale. “Anyone running a background check on O’Callaghan could have found that out. Journalists have sources—”

  “True,” Ed said. “But do they have access to dirty cops?” When he stepped toward her, she backed away. “You told Faraday and me this morning that these goons seem to be one step ahead of you. Have you ever thought to ask yourself why that is? Isn’t it obvious? It’s because of someone in the department who has access to you and your office.”

  She swallowed.

  “Lieutenant Hopkins was Roberts’ partner,” Ed said. “He’s hungry for fame. Every suspect in Walker’s and Harding’s murders has the power to give that to him … and he has access to the Dirty Six, who can help the killer cover his or her tracks.” A grin came to Ed’s lips. “But the Dirty Six have underestimated my clients. Now they’re down to three. If they’re not careful, they may end up down to zero by the time this is over.”