Misha was crying. The explosion at JT’s office was all over the news. The police wouldn’t speculate as to the cause, but Misha knew. So far she hadn’t heard anything on JT’s condition but Carole was reportedly critical. As she watched the firefighters battle to save the gentrified old building, she knew he’d lied to her. He hadn’t wanted to just get back at JT, he wanted her dead, and she was appalled that she’d been the one to put the means to do so in his hands.
At that moment, Misha grew up. For years she’d refused to see Bobby with the rational mind she proudly applied to the rest of her twenty-seven-year-old life. She thought that if she wished hard enough and made herself available to him whenever he wanted, he would love her as much as she loved him. But this? To her discredit, she’d overlooked the computer virus and the threatening note, but not even a woman deranged by love could pretend to ignore bombs that sent people to the hospital. She’d been a seventeen-year-old senior in high school when she began working for JT part-time. And after she enrolled in college, JT always had an intern position waiting for her when she came home for summer vacation so she’d be able to earn enough money to pay for tuition and books when the fall semester started up. “And how do I pay you back?” she said aloud to herself.
She was sick inside. She’d paid her back with an act of betrayal so heinous and vile she could wind up on Death Row. All because of her obsession for a man who didn’t care about anything except getting to the top, even if it cost Carole’s life. What else have you lied about, Bobby? Determined to try and make this right somehow, Misha opened up her laptop and began to type.
Reese and Jason were striding urgently down the halls of the hospital. Both men were so worried, it took all they had not to run, but they managed to keep walking. They entered the waiting room to find D’Angelo and a number of other athletes on JT’s client list inside.
Reese stuck his hand out to D’Angelo. “Thanks for calling me. What are the doctors saying?”
“She’s going to be okay. Busted her left arm in two places. Has a few broken ribs and some internal bruising. Carole’s in real bad shape, though. She took the direct hit, but they’re pretty sure she’s going to pull through.”
He relaxed for the first time since receiving D’Angelo’s call. “What are the police saying?”
“The box had an incendiary device inside along with a lot of glass shards and metal shavings.”
“Meant to maim and / or kill,” Reese stated angrily.
“That’s what the police said.”
“Have you seen her?”
“Yeah, but for just a minute. They originally told us only family, but after we politely explained that we either see her or tear up the place, they gave in.”
Reese understood. “Has anybody called her mother or sister?”
“Not that I know of. I don’t have a number. I don’t think any of us do. Carole probably does, but…” his words trailed off. “Her husband’s with her. He seems to be holding up pretty well.”
Reese wondered how he’d be doing were Jessi the one in critical condition. “Who do I see about getting in?”
“Nurses at the station down the hall.”
Reese turned to Jason. “Thanks for the ride.”
“No prob. D and I thought you needed to be here. I’ll go in and see her after you’re done.”
Reese saw the seriousness in their eyes. “Appreciate it.” And he did. He left the waiting room and went in search of the nurses’ station.
With no celebrity and less muscle to throw around, he had more trouble getting past the nurses. “Ma’am, please,” he finally said, “that’s my lady. I have to see her.”
Something in his face and voice much have touched her because relented. “Okay, but the police outside her door have the final say.”
“Thank you!”
To Reese’s relief, the lady FBI agent who’d interviewed Jessi about the letter was by the door to her room, talking with a small group of agents wearing windbreakers that read FBI and ATF. Upon seeing him, she broke ranks and walked over. “Mr. Anthony.”
“Special Agent Tate. How are you?”
“I was doing okay until I got the call that someone tried to blow Ms. Blake and her assistant to smithereens.”
“Me too. Any leads?”
“Not yet. We put a rush on that letter, though.”
That was good news. “Can I see her?”
“Sure. I heard Jason Grant flew down to L.A. to get you.”
“Yes.”
“Go on in. Docs don’t want her tired out, so not too long. When you come back we’ll talk.”
Reese went in. He was pleased to see a policewoman seated inside. She nodded a greeting and he walked over to the bed. Every beat of his heart was moved by the sight of JT lying so still. There was a huge bandage swathing her forehead and a fat cast on her left arm. He couldn’t imagine how he’d have coped had she been killed. They were just beginning to explore what it might be like to be with each other long-term. He gave thanks that she would recover. As if JT sensed his presence, her eyes fluttered opened and she gave him a weak smile. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself.”
“Why aren’t you out chasing down the bastard who did this?”
He smiled. “Wanted to make sure you were okay first.”
“I’m pissed but fine. How’s Carole?”
“Surviving, from what I’m hearing.”
“Good.”
“Do you want us to call your mother?”
JT shook her head. “No. She’ll just worry. I’ll call her soon as I can stay awake long enough to talk.”
“Glad you’re okay.”
“Me too. D and Jason didn’t trash the hospital trying to get in to see me, did they?”
“No.”
“Worried about that.”
“You go on back to sleep. I’m right outside.”
“Thanks, Reese.”
“You’re welcome.”
Her eyes closed and she drifted away.
Grateful for her life, he placed a soft kiss on her cheek and quietly left the room.
Thirteen
The meeting with the FBI and ATF lasted over an hour. Everything was discussed, from the nature of the bomb and who might have constructed it to the threatening letter and Bobby Garrett.
Agent Tate stated, “I want to take a hard look at him. We don’t have enough to call for a warrant, but let’s put him under surveillance and see where he takes us.” She looked to Reese and added, “And you can’t have any official role, Mr. Anthony.”
“I know. I’m working in a nonofficial capacity on another investigation down in L.A.”
“What’s going on there?”
He told them the story.
When he was done, one of the ATF agents cracked, “For a cop who’s supposed to be retired, you’re awfully busy.”
“I know, and I’ll help out here too, if you need me. The sooner this person is caught, the better.”
“We agree,” Tate said. “For now, though, once Ms. Blake is released we’re suggesting she rehab somewhere away from the city. Might be safer.”
Reese thought that made sense, but the question would be how she’d feel about it. His phone rang. It was the tattooed clerk at the pawnshop. The music player had come in a few moments ago.
“What did the person look like?” Reese asked, trying not to get excited over what could be the first big break in the case.
The clerk described a typical teen.
“Okay. I want you to call Captain Mendes—his detectives are handling the case.” He recited the number but the clerk wasn’t buying it.
“I hate cops. Only person I’m giving this to is you, otherwise I sell it noon tomorrow.”
“I’m in Oakland right now.”
“I’ll hold it until tomorrow at two. Best I can do.”
Reese cursed inwardly. “Okay. I’ll be there before two.” Ending the call, he told Agent Tate, “Somebody just pawned the music player tied to the
Pennington case I was telling you about earlier.” He glanced at his watch. It was almost four. He didn’t want to leave Jessi, so decided to hole up in the Bay area overnight then catch an early flight back to L.A. in the morning. He took a moment to call Mendes and explain the situation. Mendes was pleased with the news and agreed to wait for Reese to return so the player could be retrieved. He didn’t want to send a detective to the pawnshop and have the clerk go dummy on them, and maybe sell the thing as a result.
Reese stayed at the hospital until late into the evening. The Fed agents and the athletes had all gone, so that left him and the policewoman inside JT’s room as her only visitors. The nurses were nice enough to let him look in on the sleeping JT once an hour, and as he sat in the waiting room eating a burger bag dinner, he got the opportunity to meet Carole’s husband Brad. As D’Angelo had noted earlier, the high school history teacher appeared to be holding up under the weight of his wife’s injuries. He told Reese it would be a few more days before the docs could determine if she’d actually turned the corner. Some of the glass and metal from the bomb had penetrated her eye and they were afraid she might lose it. A surgical evaluation was scheduled for the next day. Reese’s heart went out to him.
After leaving the hospital, Reese entered his hotel room, tired, angry, and again grateful that both women hadn’t been killed. Once he had a shower, he felt better but was no less concerned. He called Bryce and told him of the day’s event.
Bryce sounded stunned. “A mail bomb?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, we need to find this person in a hurry. I’ll lean on the Seattle kid again. Maybe he knows more.”
“Do that because we need to get whoever it is off the streets.”
“I’m on it. How’re you doing?” his brother asked with concern.
Reese shrugged. “Mad, but okay.”
“You know, if the Feds want her to recuperate someplace else, you should bring her here. We’ll watch over her. No problem. We’ve got tons of room, and nobody is going to mess with her with all of us here.”
Reese hadn’t thought about that, but it sounded like a damn good idea. “I’ll run it by her and see what she says. Let me speak to Pops.”
Bryce put Pops on the phone, and Pops immediately barked, “Is Bryce right? Did somebody try and blow up my future daughter-in-law?”
Reese chuckled. “Let’s not go there yet, Pops.”
The two of them talked for a few minutes about Bryce’s idea to bring Jessi to Michigan. Pops said, “We can help. She can recuperate here with no drama, and I dare some bastard to try and blow her up on my watch.”
“Thanks, Pops.”
The call ended a short while later, and Reese put down his phone. He didn’t know how JT would respond to the suggestion, but thanks to Bryce, at least they had a plan.
The next morning, Reese had the taxi driver run him by the hospital before driving him to the airport. He wanted to make sure she hadn’t developed any complications overnight. The nurses said she’d slept well, and that was like music to his ears. When he tipped in to see her, she was asleep. He was torn between letting her sleep and waking her so he could look in her eyes, but he knew that was purely selfish, so he opted for the former. Lord knew, he didn’t want to leave her, but he had a job to do and he needed to get going. She’d be in good hands. The medical staff was stellar, and Special Agent Tate would be keeping an eye on her as well, so he gave the sleeping Lady Blake a soft smile and left the room.
Matt Wenzel’s only concern was the welfare of his wife and their unborn child. He didn’t care about the team operations, his greedy father’s perverse plan to get them out of debt, or what might happen to him personally because of the crap he was in. Melissa’s safety was all that mattered. To that end, he’d used part of his cut from Sunday’s drug deal and sent Melissa, her two sisters, and their mother on an all expense paid trip to Europe. Ostensibly it was to celebrate his mother-in-law’s fifty-fifth birthday. He’d always liked her, if only because she’d welcomed him into her family in spite of meeting Big Bo. In reality, though, the trip was his way of putting Melissa out of Garrett’s reach. The verbal threats and the man on the roof of his garage had scared him badly. They’d be gone for a month, touring Britain, France, Spain, and Rome. By the time they returned, he hoped the situation keeping him awake at night would be resolved somehow.
Why couldn’t Garrett have been the one blown up by the package bomb sent to JT Blake? As far as he knew, the Lady Blake was just that, a lady, and the Grizzlies organization had sent her a large display of callas to show they cared. Why were the innocents preyed on while scum like Garrett were allowed to go their merry way? The fantasy of reading about Garrett’s death in the paper put a cruel smile on his face. He’d never been the type to wish death on anyone, but he did for Garrett.
According to the pawnshop’s records, the music player belonging to Gus Pennington had been pawned by a kid named Jalen Young. The tattooed clerk even had an address and a phone number. Whether the information was truthful or not, the clerk didn’t know, so after Reese brought it to the police station, Mendes sent a squad car to Compton to pick up Jalen Young for questioning. Reese and Mendes watched the interrogation from the other side of the glass. Jalen’s parents were with him, and Reese did a double take, remembering where he’d seen the mother before. Babymama drama, Garrett’s secretary had whispered. What in the hell was going on? How did Garrett’s kid wind up pawning Gus Pennington’s music player?
The young man’s voice came through the speakers in the room where Reese stood.
“I told you, my father gave it to me. I pawned it because I don’t have a credit card or the money to buy more songs and the music on it now is whack. Pawnshop gave me fifteen dollars for it.”
The detective then asked about the date and time of the gift. Jalen’s reply placed it after the date of the murder. As the interrogation continued, the anger on Kelly Young’s face was plain. Who or what she was mad at, Reese didn’t know, but she looked like she wanted to hurt somebody bad. She cut in and said, “For the record, his father is Bobby Garrett, and whatever he’s mixed up in, Jalen has nothing to do with it. He’s seen Bobby once in the past six months.”
“Bingo!” Reese whispered, pleased.
Captain Mendes nodded with satisfaction.
Reese wanted Garrett under the lights now. He couldn’t wait to hear his explanation as to how he came to possess a murdered man’s property.
Before bringing the player to the station, Reese had stopped by the Pennington home. Both his widow and grandson verified that it was Gus’s. The serial numbers matched, as did the music files Chris said he’d downloaded into it. Reese’s mind was humming like one of Bryce’s prototypes. If it could be proven that Garrett had been in the Grizzlies offices that night, who’d been with him? The elder Wenzel? The younger? Both? Matt Wenzel didn’t impress him as a killer, but it was well known that his old man was. Ursus and all the other dead animals hanging on the office walls proved that. But did Big Bo also hunt people? He was still waiting for Wenzel’s secretary to call and give up the name of the realtor Big Bo had supposedly been with the night of the murder, so he assumed Wenzel had no real alibi. Reese added that piece of the puzzle to the mix and turned his attention back to the proceedings on the other side of the glass.
The interrogating detective got up and excused himself. As he entered the room where Reese and Mendes were, he told them, “I think we have everything we need.”
Reese and Mendes agreed, then the captain added, “Let’s bring Mr. Garrett in for questioning and get his story. Kick the kid loose. He seems clean.”
The detective went back into the room with the Young family and thanked them for their cooperation. He had one last thing to say: “We advise you not to contact Mr. Garrett about what we’ve discussed.”
“Don’t worry,” Kelly replied. “Whatever Bobby’s done, I hope he fries for letting whatever this shit is splash on my son.”
An
d they left.
Reese pulled out his phone and made a call to Agent Tate to tell her about the surprising developments.
“Wow,” she said. “Okay. We’re already ramming through the paperwork so we can get started on this end. We’ll find out how busy Garrett’s really been, and who he’s been getting busy with. Thanks, Lieutenant. I looked in on Ms. Blake this afternoon. She’s doing just fine.”
“Thanks. I’ll have Mendes call you.”
“Do that. Take care.”
JT awakened and felt like she’d been run over by one of those giant asphalt pavers. Every inch of her body was sore. Thanks to the nurses, she knew why. They’d told her the extent of her injuries, and that it was going to be a while before she felt like herself again. In the meantime, they were pumping her full of pain meds in order to keep the discomfort levels down. Usually, she hated being doped up, but in this case, she didn’t mind.
Memories of the explosion and the aftermath brought Carole to mind. It scared her to know that she’d almost lost her friend. God is good. It was what her mother always said. Speaking of whom, JT had called her last night. The chat had been brief because she kept drifting in and out, but it was long enough to convince her mother that she didn’t need to cancel her long-awaited trip to South Africa, scheduled to start in two days, in order to fly to California to see about her eldest child. JT assured her that the docs had everything under control and promised to e-mail her as soon as she could with progress reports.
The thought of almost losing Carole scared her, but something else scared her too—the idea that somewhere out in the world there was a person who hated her so much that they wanted her dead. It was hard to fathom a hate that deep, especially when she had no clue as to why, but told herself Reese and the police would figure it out. Her thoughts drifted to him. She hoped he wasn’t worrying too much. She had a fuzzy memory of seeing him after they brought her to the room, but wasn’t sure if it had been a mirage courtesy of the drugs or if he had actually been there. She opted for the latter. He was her knight, and she knew he wouldn’t be very far away, no matter what.
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