Harlequin Intrigue March 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Nichole Severn

  Jonah strengthened his hand around the phone. “Madison told me Pierce Cook is scheduled to announce his retirement in the next month, that he put her on the Rip City Bomber case because he wanted a strong prosecutor to see the case through to the end. But a case like this would put him down in the history books for life. What if assigning her this case hadn’t been his choice? His term is coming to an end. Madison’s been recognized by the governor for her work. It’d be easy to confirm the governor is the one who assigned Madison the case and not the district attorney as we believed. He could’ve just been responsible for giving her the assignment.”

  “I think you might be right,” Remi said. “Not only does he have the experience with explosives during his two tours with the army, but I logged into Portland Police Bureau’s database to run a background check. He requested their IT department run GPS on Madison Gray’s cell phone three days ago. Just minutes after the bombing at the courthouse.”

  “I took her phone after she was cleared by the EMTs, but he could’ve been trying to get a hold of her after he caught wind of what happened. We need something more. Something solid.” He turned to Cove as they pulled onto Highway 26. “GPS says my SUV hasn’t moved in ten minutes about a mile ahead. Watch out for her.”

  “Watson, Madison’s GPS location wasn’t the only data requested that day.” Her voice grew distant. “The DA had them track yours, too.”

  “Which means Pierce Cook knew where his target was all along. He used me to track her. All he had to do was get her alone.” His voice sounded distant, even to himself, as Jonah caught sight of red reflective taillights off to the side of the road ahead. A knot of dread pooled at the base of his spine as Cove signaled to pull behind the dark SUV. GPS confirmed his vehicle hadn’t moved, and from a cursory inspection, there wasn’t any movement inside. “She’s not here.” Blood drained from his face and upper body, suctioning him to the seat. He clutched his phone too tight. “He was waiting for her, watching her. I let her walk out that door and right into the bastard’s hands.”

  Cove didn’t respond as he shoved the vehicle in Park and shouldered out of the vehicle.

  “Reed and Foster are wrapped up in the manhunt for Rosalind Eyler,” Remi said. “Tech guys are working to find a location on Pierce Cook’s phone now. I’ll send you the coordinates as soon as they get a clear signal and join you as soon as I can. If he’s taken her, it won’t take us long to catch up. If not, we’ll find out what he was doing trying to locate a federal marshal and his witness without going through the proper channels. Either way, we’re going to find her, Jonah. This is what we do.”

  She ended the call as he hit the pavement and unholstered his weapon. With a nod, he signaled for Cove to move in, battle-ready tension pulling at the muscles in his back. Approaching the SUV from either side, he and the other marshal inspected the open hatch, noting the missing supplies he always kept on hand, and the back seat. He wrenched the passenger side door open and froze. Empty aside from the keys still in the ignition. She wouldn’t have walked away. Pierce Cook had shattered a window to get to Madison at the second scene, but as far as he could tell, there hadn’t been a struggle here. She’d vanished. No phone, no emergency supplies, no sign of her. What the hell had happened here? “Clear.”

  “Jonah,” Cove said.

  He rounded the front of the vehicle where the former private investigator stood staring down at the engine, the hood propped open above him.

  “Radiator’s completely dry.” Cove pointed to the section clearly missing a cap. “Every vehicle the USMS owns is serviced before we check them out, no exceptions, but there are a few drops of fluid on the asphalt by my feet. If I had to guess, someone took a screwdriver to the well and drained it dry.”

  “Not someone. Pierce Cook.” Jonah had no doubts now. The district attorney had tried to kill his successor—twice—and had murdered a defense attorney in the process. Now Cook would spend his retirement behind bars. Jonah would make sure of it. He shifted around to the driver’s side of the SUV, headlights of their vehicle highlighting a pristine pair of tan heels, and his world shattered. “I’ve got her shoes here.”

  Cove crossed the white line indicating the highway shoulder. “So the car overheats, and she has to pull over. She gets out, pops the hood. There’s probably smoke, but your lady is intelligent. She realizes the radiator well is empty, and she needs to refill it if she’s going to make it back to the city.”

  “She knows marshals are required to carry emergency fluids for their vehicles, but when she opens the back hatch, she discovers the supplies are missing.” Jonah could see the story playing out in his mind, and he locked his hand on the frame of the SUV. She was out here somewhere. Afraid. Alone. He’d been an idiot asking her to resign from the Rip City Bomber case, asking her to give up her one ounce of security in a life filled with uncertainty and fear. As if he’d known what she’d survived as a kid and decided right then and there none of it mattered. She’d believed in him, and he’d failed her. She was a strong, independent woman who’d taken on the deadliest offenders for a single chance to bring justice to the families that depended on her, and he loved her for it. Demanding Madison let go of her dream to become district attorney—to support their son on her own—had been like demanding he simply forget Noah. He’d regret that last conversation between them for the rest of his life. “That’s when he drives up behind her. She doesn’t have a phone or a weapon. So she kicks off her shoes—”

  “To run.” Cove stared across the highway, toward the trees on the other side. “Question is, did she run fast enough?”

  * * *

  HER FEET WERE COLD against the cement.

  She couldn’t take a full breath, as though something heavy was squeezing the air from her lungs. Madison dragged her chin away from her chest, head pounding. Small kicks protested against the heaviness around her belly. The baby didn’t like something invading his space, least of all her rib cage. The edges of her vision cleared in small increments as her eyes adjusted to a single bare bulb above her. Her shoulder sockets ached, but she couldn’t pull her hands around to her front. She’d been bound by the wrists. Pressing her toes into the floor, she tipped the chair on its hind legs, but her ankles wouldn’t move. Her abductor had zip-tied her feet to the frame. Without something to cut through the plastic, she was trapped.

  “I was starting to think I might’ve hit you so hard you were going to miss out on all the fun.” From the corner of the room, the outline of the man who’d attacked her nearly bled into the background. His shadow separated from the wall as he took a step toward her into the radius of light. No mask. Nothing to hide now.

  Her boss, District Attorney Pierce Cook, settled hard light green eyes on her, and her heart threatened to beat straight out of her chest. He ran one hand through dark brown hair peppered with gray. Thick forehead wrinkles deepened as he studied her, a handsome face she’d come to trust over the years. He’d once stood as the face of justice for the city. Now he’d become one of its worst.

  Pierce reached past her right ear and wrapped his hand around the top rail of the chair. He leaned in, too close. “Do you know how many cases I’ve prosecuted for this city, Madison? How many criminals I’ve put away over the years? How many neighborhoods I made safe by committing my life to this work? I built a legacy here. Right up until the governor forced my resignation, until he forced me to put you on the Rip City Bomber case. He took that from me, but now I can make it right.”

  That was why he was doing this? Why he’d killed nine innocent people, including Harvey Braddock, and tried to throw her off a bridge? Anger stirred in her gut as the pieces fell into place. The bombing, destroying evidence of murder at Harvey Braddock’s home, how the bomber had seemed to stay one step ahead of US marshals and police. It was all to serve his ego. “Of all the people I believed in, Pierce, you were the beacon I looked up to my entire career. You were the reason I applied
for a job in the district attorney’s office. You were legendary. There wasn’t a single case you couldn’t take on and win, and I imagined myself following in your footsteps. I’m the prosecutor I am because of you.” She tried to breathe through the weight still limiting her lung capacity, but it took effort. Twisting her wrists inside the zip tie, Madison tried to keep her expression neutral as the plastic cut into her skin. “But now you’re no better than the people we prosecute. Murderers, drug dealers, rapists. It doesn’t matter how many cases you’ve won or how many criminals you’ve kept off the streets. All anyone is going to remember you for is this.”

  A close-lipped smile slithered across his weathered face. “No, Madison. They won’t. Because in about twenty-five minutes, you won’t be alive to tell them anything other than the story I’ve come up with to explain everything that’s happened.”

  Twenty-five minutes? Why—

  The bulk on her chest registered again, and for the first time since waking, she realized why it’d become so hard to breathe. The Kevlar vest he’d strapped her into had been tightened enough to conceal the bright red digits counting down across her chest. Precious oxygen lodged in her throat. He’d turned her into a bomb.

  “You see, everything I’ve done, every bomb I detonated, every loose end I tied up, none of it can be connected back to me,” he said.

  Realization struck.

  “You took credit for those bombings in the Rip City Bomber’s name. To frame Rosalind Eyler.” She tried to swallow. “You’re the partner she made her behind-the-scenes deal with before the first attack. She gave you the list and measurements of the components she used in her devices in exchange for what? Had to be something important to Rosalind to give up that kind of information. Reduced sentencing, a chance to finish the work she started with her coworkers? She wouldn’t tell us. I think she was trying to protect her partner. Stands to reason, as her partner, you couldn’t do that unless you were the one behind the prosecution’s table to offer the deal, and that meant you had to get rid of me. You get to step back into the limelight and leave behind the legacy you’ve always wanted, and Rosalind gets a deal. Everyone walks away happy.”

  “Well, not everyone.” Pierce shook his head. Straightening, he stepped back a few feet as his voice dipped with frustration. “If that damn marshal hadn’t managed to catch up with us at the falls, we would’ve been able to put this all behind us sooner.” He drove his hands into his slacks pockets. “Of course, asking you to step down from the case wasn’t an option. We’ve only met a few times, but I’ve watched your work all these years. I see that drive I have to rise to the top in you. I know there’s nothing I could’ve said or done to make you recuse yourself from the Rip City Bomber trial, but I couldn’t let you take this from me.”

  The puzzle was starting to make sense as she read between the lines of the district attorney’s phrasing, but there was a hole in this fantasy. “There’s one problem with your plan, Pierce. You failed to consider the fact Rosalind Eyler killed thirty-two people for taking credit for her academic work, and she knows what you’ve been doing in her name. How do you think she’s going to react when she catches up with you?”

  A sincere moment of fear turned Pierce’s eyes down at the corners. So subtle she might not have noticed if she hadn’t been looking straight at him. “If Rosalind’s as smart as all those degrees and IQ tests claim, she’ll do exactly as I tell her and be grateful her last moments on this earth will be behind bars and not with a needle in her arm.”

  “Breaking her out of prison wasn’t part of the plan.” She had to keep him talking, keep him distracted. Madison pressed her wrists together inside the restraints and put everything she had into creating enough pressure to snap the zip tie. The plastic wouldn’t budge. “What about Harvey Braddock? You obviously used his garage to build your devices, but was his murder always part of this plan?”

  “Harvey had his uses. If you’d become district attorney, you would’ve learned there are some things—some people—worth sacrificing in order to win.” Pierce crossed to the other side of the room. Shadows clung to the area outside the spread of light around her, but the reflection of the bulb off the rolltop door said this was most likely some kind of storage room. The district attorney rooted through objects spread across a folding table along one wall. He picked one up, studied it, discarded it. Then another as though trying to choose the perfect torture device to threaten her with. “Harvey knew about the deal between me and Rosalind Eyler. He was on board with it. Right up until he learned you were the target. The idiot threatened to go to the marshals, said he didn’t want any part of having you killed in order to get his client the best deal.” Pierce turned back toward her, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. “He wanted to take his chances with the jury, but I couldn’t have that.”

  The countdown hadn’t stopped, red lights demanding her attention from the dark space between her chest and the Kevlar vest. “You stole the thermite to draw Marshal Watson out into the open and kill Harvey all at the same time. Two birds, one stone. You figured the marshal who’d taken me into protective custody would be forced to leave me with someone else while he was on that scene.”

  And it’d worked. Pierce had gotten exactly what he’d wanted that day, and the only reason she was still breathing was because of Jonah. Because of how far he’d gone to make sure she walked away from this mind game alive.

  “I saw the way you two are around each other. The late nights, the early mornings. I found those homemade crosswords you’d make him to keep him busy while you worked. I had to know who’d get in my way, so I looked into him, too. Luring him into the field with an explosive only he had experience with was the only way I was going to get him away from you, and that gave me the perfect opportunity.” Pierce leaned against the table, and for the first time, she recognized the dusty objects on the surface.

  Phones, duct tape, box cutter, glass vials with residue clinging to the sides. Pieces that, in the right order, could be constructed into a bomb, but this wasn’t Pierce’s original laboratory. He’d destroyed that with evidence of Harvey Braddock’s murder in the garage. The courthouse bomb and the device left undetonated inside Harvey Braddock’s home had been built with the ammonium nitrate from ice packs. Here, it looked as though the bomber had made his own, as Rosalind had revealed that day at the prison. The thickness of dust coating the table, in the air, suggested a much older lab. Could this storage container belong to the Rip City Bomber? Police hadn’t ever been able to locate it, but Pierce obviously had. Was this where he’d meant for investigators—for Jonah—to find her body in order to strengthen his plan to frame Rosalind Eyler? As far as she knew, Jonah hadn’t even realized she was in danger or that she’d been taken.

  “I know Marshal Watson is the father of your baby, Madison. I know how far he’ll go out of his way to protect the people he cares about, especially another child after everything he went through losing his first.” He pushed off from the table with the roll of duct tape and tore a piece free. Slapping it against her mouth, he ensured no one would hear her. Pierce reached high above her head—to the string beside the bare bulb—and tugged it.

  Darkness consumed the space and threw her into a frantic emptiness that reminded her of all those times she’d hidden in strangers’ car trunks to get away from her father. Panic sent numbness down her fingers.

  Footsteps clued her in to Pierce’s movement as he crossed to the rolltop door and hauled it above his head. Dim light flooded through the corridor from the other side, giving her a glimpse of row after row of storage units. The district attorney paused, his expression as dark as the shadows closing in around her. “Only he isn’t coming to save you this time. No one is.”

  He stepped back and started to pull the door down.

  “No!” Madison screamed as loud as the tape would let her, but it wasn’t enough. She tried to kick out. He couldn’t leave her here. “
No!”

  The sound of a padlock clicked into place.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “I had a ping from Pierce Cook’s phone two minutes ago on the east side of the city, but I lost it a second later. He must’ve shut the phone off as soon as he arrived, or destroyed it.” Static cut through Remi’s voice as Jonah and Cove exceeded the highway’s speed limits. Jagged rocks and boulders bled into uniform darkness before Portland came into view. “Corner of Stark Street and Twenty-Second Avenue. I’m on my way with backup.”

  “We’re five minutes out, Chief.” Cove maneuvered the SUV around a slower vehicle and pushed the engine harder.

  “Cove’s and my priority needs to be recovering Madison. Taking Pierce Cook down will have to be your job. Just make sure it hurts when you put the cuffs on him.” Jonah ended the call and scrambled to remember what was in the area of where Cook’s phone had pinged off the towers. Car parts store, apartment buildings, martial arts studio, car rental. None of those was conducive to holding a hostage...or getting rid of a body. The district attorney would need a private location. Somewhere with a reduced traffic of people in the middle of the night. Somewhere nobody might hear Madison scream. “There’s a large storage unit facility on the southeast corner of that intersection.”

  “Perfect location to make sure your victim can’t escape if locked inside.” Dylan Cove didn’t elaborate. The former private investigator didn’t have to. “Those storage places have hundreds of units, though, and we don’t have time to search every single one of them. We’re going to have to narrow this down.”

  The marshal was right. Every second Madison was missing was another second Pierce Cook had to kill her. They couldn’t waste their time focusing on the wrong areas, and time was already running out. They maneuvered into the turnout leading to the storage facility’s parking lot, met by a large gate. Cove lowered the window and flashed his badge to the security officer inside the booth positioned outside the premises. “US Marshals. We have reason to believe a victim has been abducted and hidden inside one of these units. We need to search the property.” Dylan Cove showed a photo of their perp to the attendant. “Have you seen this guy come through here tonight?”