And now she was waiting for an answer.
He walked toward her. “No. I wasn’t a big enough fish to go into witness protection.” He was close enough to smell her scent, the scent that was pure Holly, citrus with a softer, almost powdery smell. To distract himself, he scooped up the ball at his feet, stepped out of the dugout cage, and threw it.
Holly whistled. “That’s some arm you have there, book boy.”
He turned around. “Once I could throw a ninety-four-mile-an-hour fastball strike.”
Holly linked the fingers of her right hand through the fence. “You played pro?”
He had a choice to make. Could he trust Holly with the truth? Was she here because she realized that twice her normal fee was a good deal? To negotiate more money? Or for some other reason? He surprised himself by telling her, “I signed the contract, but I never made it to spring training.” Reaching out, he curled his fingers around hers from the other side of the chain-link fence. “Why did you come back, Holly?”
She said bluntly, “I want this case. I think I can solve this murder.”
“Ambition, huh?” Wes wanted her. His life was on a greased road to disaster and he couldn’t get his brain out of her pants. He was attracted to her hot body, pretty face, and kick-ass attitude. And the need in her gaze, the need she worked so damn hard to cover up. He’d seen it the first night at his house when she’d held Monty to her chest. He’d seen how much she’d wanted the dog. Then fear had hardened her face and she’d claimed she didn’t have room for an animal or anyone in her life. She stayed quiet so Wes added, “If that little stunt you pulled back there was your negotiating method, you suck. You don’t come back less than a half hour after walking. You make the other side come to you.”
Her entire body, including her slender fingers beneath his, stiffened. “I am ambitious, I told you that. I took the case for the money, I told you that. I am honest, Brockman, unlike you. I’m not looking for more money, I’m looking for the truth.”
That feeling again—a flash of warmth in his gut. Hope. “And you came back for?”
“For the truth.” She tightened her fingers around the chain-link. “Who are you? Wes Brockman is not a lawyer in California. Was that a lie?”
Monty came trotting back with the ball in his mouth. He dropped it on the ground and barked to let them know it was time to throw it again.
Wes ignored him. It all came down to choices. He chose. “No. Nicholas Mandeville is a lawyer. Or was, at any rate.”
Chapter 8
Holly stared at Wes, feeling the warmth of his fingers covering hers through the chain-link fence on the baseball field. He claimed he was Nicholas Mandeville, not Wes. She would check it out. But if he was telling the truth, there was a story there, she could feel it. “Why are you pretending to be Wes Brockman?”
He blinked, let go of her fingers, and bent over to pick up the ball.
Monty barked and turned in circles, clearly encouraging Wes to throw the ball. Wes obliged. Then he crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ll tell you, but I need you to swear first that you won’t tell the police.”
She considered that with an edge of suspicion. “I’m not a lawyer or a therapist. I’m not going to agree to keep your secrets if you’ve broken the law. And don’t think I won’t check out your story.”
For the first time, he grinned. “I know you will. The only trouble I might be in is for the name change. But I’m willing to deal with that if I can resolve the situation that brought me here. Deal?”
Holly looked him over through the fence. He wore a pair of black sweatpants and a white T-shirt that showed his powerful shoulders and flat stomach. The late afternoon sun caught the streaks in his brown hair, and brought out the dots of yellow in his intense green eyes. Oh yeah, he was sexy. But what tightened the ball of lust low in her belly was something she couldn’t quite define, an intensity deeply ingrained in his character that he covered with easygoing charm. But she didn’t think with her libido, she thought with her brain. It was a fair deal. “Okay. So start talking.”
Monty came back with the ball. Wes reached down, scooped the dog up in his arms, and rubbed his head, careful of the healing cut on one ear. “I disappeared to protect my sister, Michelle.”
“Michelle…” She drew the word out, a memory surfacing in her mind. “Michelle Mandeville? The surfer who has been in all the magazines and on talk shows? She’s your sister? You told me this morning that you had an argument with your sister and don’t talk to her now.” She didn’t have enough pieces yet to make the puzzle fit.
A small smile of pride warmed his face when he looked up from Monty. “Yes, she’s my sister. And we did have an argument. Let’s go for a walk.”
The abrupt shift in topic took her a second. Then she nodded. She fell into step next to him as they walked from the baseball diamond toward the playground. There were a few kids running around, but it was mostly quiet. She glanced over to see Monty try to lick Wes’s face.
“No, Monty,” he said, and gently pushed his face away.
The dog rested his head on Wes’s arm. He had to be worn out from chasing the ball. They were following the sidewalk path around the park.
Finally Wes said, “Three years ago, I was married, a very successful agent for some top major league baseball players, and pretty much had a charmed life.”
Holly said, “I thought you said you were a lawyer? And what happened to your pro baseball career? Why didn’t you make it to spring training?” She knew she was trying to catch up on years of Wes’s life in minutes.
“I had an injury to my right shoulder that ended my career. So I went to law school. From there—”
Holly interrupted. “What kind of injury?”
“Gunshot.”
Holly stopped walking. She saw Wes go a couple more steps, then turn back to look at her. Monty had fallen asleep, his head thrown back and his tongue hanging out, totally trusting Wes to hold him. A thick feeling clogged her throat looking at them, so she shifted her gaze to his face. “You were shot?” She knew he didn’t like cops. Had she made a mistake about him? Maybe he’d been shot by the police?
He walked back to her until she could feel Monty’s fur tickle her arms. “Home invasion robbery at my parents’ house. The robbers didn’t know I was there. They tied up my sister and mom to keep them under control and were beating the shit out of my dad. They thought he had money because he was semi-famous.”
“Your dad the journalist?” She could feel the old anger in him.
“Yes. He had a column called Cop Scan. He exposed corruption and brutality within the police and sheriff’s department in Los Angeles. Sometimes he went on assignment to other locations. The robbers followed him home one night, came in through the garage with guns. Two of them. I was in the closet under the stairs looking for something in the boxes my mom had packed away. I called the police on my cell phone when I realized what was happening. I told them to hurry, and no lights or sirens.” He stopped talking, his gaze moving to the brightly colored jungle gym on the sand.
Holly knew he wasn’t seeing the playground, but the memories. “What happened?”
“It seemed like hours. I heard my dad explaining over and over that all they had was what was in his wallet and my mom’s purse. The robbers thought he had a safe. He didn’t. We weren’t rich, just average middle class. My dad was trying to stay calm…” Monty made a low whining sound in his sleep. Wes soothed him by gently petting his head and saying, “It’s okay, boy.”
Holly wondered if the dog had nightmares about nearly drowning. Or the people who tried to drown him. She felt pity for the dog but she was more interested in Wes’s story. “What happened when the cops arrived?”
His gaze settled on her. His eyes were the color of heavy, wet moss. “It took the police eleven minutes to get there with lights and sirens. But I’d already had enough. I went out of the closet with a bat. I tried to circle around the back of them, but the police sirens startled them
. One of them turned and saw me—he fired. The other one fired on my dad. I caught the bullet in my right shoulder. My dad was shot right through his heart. He died within minutes. Maybe seconds.”
Holly didn’t know she’d reached out until she felt his tense forearm beneath her hand. “I’m sorry.” What he had described sank in. “They came with lights and sirens? Are you sure you told the nine-one-one operator the situation?”
“I’m sure.” He bit the words off. “There was an investigation and it was deemed equipment failure. The nine-one-one operator claimed her equipment to dispatch the call had failed for a few minutes. And the lights and sirens were a miscommunication.”
“But you think it was some kind of payback against your dad? Revenge?” She couldn’t imagine that happening. Not in an emergency. Besides, if they knew who Wes’s dad was, wouldn’t it make more sense to get there as quickly as possible and prove the cops were the good guys?
Wes shrugged. “It was a long time ago. After that, my pitching career was over so I went to law school.” He turned and headed to a cement picnic table set under a tree. He sat down and shifted Monty to sleep on his lap.
Holly sat down next to him. “How did you become a sports agent?”
“I was recruited right after I graduated law school by the Apex Sports Agency. They wanted me to represent baseball players. This was my chance to get back into the game I loved. After seeing what had happened to my dad, I was determined to become powerful, so powerful that people like the cops couldn’t just ignore me.” He looked over at her “I was going to make and break careers.”
There it was, Holly thought, that intensity and determination in him. “Did you?”
He grinned. “Oh yeah. Turns out I was even better at negotiating than pitching a fastball. For years, I lived the high life. I made it to all the A-list events, I went to the best restaurants, parties, et cetera.” He turned to look at her. “Amazing how a life like that would just fall into my lap, huh?”
She knew she was wearing her skeptical expression. “Too good to be true?”
He nodded. “I was so focused on my life, on attaining more and more. I never wanted to be as devastated again as I was when my dad was killed and my lifelong dream of playing baseball shattered. So I kept collecting better and better players. I had an uncanny ability to sign the powerhouse sluggers.” He shook his head.
Holly didn’t flinch. “So what happened?” A beat of time passed, as if he had to summon up the answer from a dark corner in his mind.
Then he answered, “Conrad Nader. He was an okay outfielder, but man, that guy could hit. He was on his way to breaking homerun records. Then his wife came into my office one afternoon. Lacey was a very nice woman and good for Conrad. He adored her, and she kept his ego in check. But that day, she was in tears. She told me that she thought Conrad was showing symptoms of being on anabolic steroids. She begged me to help him before he died.” Monty snorted and snuffled in his sleep. Wes looked down at the dog, rubbed his belly, and went on. “I told Lacey that it was my job to take care of my clients and not to worry. Then I ushered her out the door.”
“You didn’t believe her?”
His green eyes were filled with guilt, regret, remorse…some strong emotion. “I didn’t want to believe it. And looking back, I think that’s why Apex recruited me. Somehow, they knew I’d let the money and power buy off my ethics.” He looked over at Holly. “I never even talked to Conrad. I told myself that I’d know if one of my players was in trouble. He died two weeks later in a hotel room while on the road. I still refused to acknowledge the truth. At the cemetery after Conrad’s funeral, I was huddled with some players, and in the back of my mind I was thinking about who I was going to replace Conrad with.”
“Jesus, Brockman.” Holly pulled back, feeling the cold cement of the bench beneath her butt. Wes was describing exactly the type of rich, powerful man she detested. A man like her ex fiancé, Brad, who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted.
His mouth went flat and hard. “Can’t handle the truth, Hillbay? I’m not telling you this to get your absolution. I don’t need your forgiveness. I knew what I had to do and I did it. Now I live with the consequences.”
Holly absorbed his words. It didn’t take any deep insight to feel his pain, grief, and regret. “How long you been hiding that chip on your shoulder, book boy?”
His shoulders relaxed a little. “Touché.”
“Go on, tell me the rest.” Holly really wanted to know.
“A couple people were escorting the widow away from the casket to the limousine when she spotted me. She shook off their support and walked over to me with her head held high. I’ll never forget it. She looked tired but dignified in her simple black dress. She said, ‘You lied to me and you failed Conrad. You’re no better than a murderer.’ That was it. She turned and walked away.” He sighed and added, “She was right. If she had screamed at me, hit me, anything else, I’d have continued in my delusion. But her quiet, dignified anger and grief broke through my denial and I knew she was right.”
Holly could almost see the scene. “So what happened?”
“I started digging around. Soon I learned that the elite trainer our sports agency sent our top athletes to was giving them steroids, sometimes in double or triple doses. Remember, this was before baseball was forced to do any real, significant testing. They were doping my players to turn them into powerhouse, record-breaking hitters. No one seemed to care that a man was dead.”
Bitterness thickly coated his last sentence. “What did you do?”
He swallowed, as if forcing down a bad memory. “I decided to turn the trainer in. My wife begged me not to, she said I would destroy our lives and it was the baseball player’s fault for taking the steroids.”
Holly couldn’t contain her own sarcastic tone. “Nice. Did Conrad know?”
Wes shrugged. “I can’t be sure. Probably at some point, he did. But the competition is so fierce, Holly. And he was just a kid, really. Besides, that’s not the point. The trainer was pushing dangerous drugs on these guys, and my agency, which was supposed to be advocating and protecting our players, sent the athletes there knowing that. Later I found out why.”
Oh boy, she could see it now. What had Wes said—amazing how he kept signing powerhouse sluggers? “Gambling?”
He blinked in surprise. “Yeah. The mob had very strong connections to the agency. But I didn’t know that then. I bypassed the local police and went to the DEA, and together we set up the trainer. And got him.”
This was the man Holly was attracted to—the one who did the right thing even at a personal cost to him. “The mob didn’t like that, I take it.”
“This is the part where it gets confusing. See, I knew nothing about the gambling or the mafia’s connection. I had a really bit part in this, just exposing the doping. I had nothing to do with the gambling and racketeering charges that followed later.”
“What about your wife? Where does she factor into this? Was she threatened or anything?”
“She left the day I went to the DEA. I had some threats, phone calls, my ex-bosses warned me I was in danger and shouldn’t testify. But I was never actually confronted by someone representing the mob. My wife was out of the picture and left the state. But eventually the mob found my sister and beat her up to send a message to me.”
Her stomach turned. “I’m sorry, Wes. That had to be awful.”
His green eyes collided with her gaze. “You have no idea. Michelle was furious and scared. She was only about twenty-two at the time. So young. She told me I’d become exactly the type of man that my dad had exposed in his Cop Scan columns, that I had abused my power and now a baseball player was dead and people were getting hurt.”
That had to be brutal. “But she came around, right?”
He took a deep breath. “I didn’t wait to find out. I had to make sure Michelle was safe. She was all I had left—our father had been murdered and our mother had died a few years before. I had f
ailed to protect my family from the home invasion, then I failed to protect my client, whom I was making a shitload of money off of, and then my sister was beat up. It was time for me to step up and take action. So I sent Michelle to Australia until the trial was over. I put enough money in Michelle’s bank account to keep her comfortable for years.” He turned back to look at the playground. “I testified. I had to. For my dead client and for his wife. The morning after the guilty verdict came in, I went surfing and purposely disappeared. Nick Mandeville was dead and I set up a new identity as Wes Brockman. I knew Michelle was going on a surfing tour for months and should be safe. I never contacted her. She probably assumes I’m dead.”
Holly’s brain had been working the puzzle as he gave her the pieces. “And now you think the mob has found you? Why would they kill Cullen in your bookstore?”
He looked over at her. “It’s possible they found me, but it seems unlikely. If the mob wanted me dead, I’d be dead. I’m sitting here now out in the open. Anyone could shoot me. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“But you are sure it was the mob that beat up your sister?” Holly wanted to clarify her facts.
“Michelle didn’t get their names and social security numbers. Mob was my best guess.”
It didn’t add up, in Holly’s mind. The mob could have killed Wes—or Nick, as he’d been back then. They hadn’t needed to bother with his sister. And he was right, if they had found him now and wanted him dead, he’d be dead. Still…“Cullen’s murder did look professional with the twin shots in the head and chest.”
He looked over. “So you think it is the mob?”
She shook her head. “No, I think it was someone who knew how to kill, someone who had some training. Besides, the victim was facing his killer. A lot of hits for show have the victim on his knees and shot from behind. Cullen didn’t leave any signs that he’d been afraid of the killer. No struggle. He’d been shot while casually standing there watching the killer come in the doorway or something like that.”
The Sex On Beach Book Club Page 10
