Armed and Devastating

by Julie Miller

  “Is there a problem, detective?” asked Fierro, his voice too low for Brooke to hear.

  “I’m wondering how you got this meeting with Miss Hansford.”

  “It’s a reintegration-into-the-community program. I’ve done odd jobs before for the company redoing her house. Haven’t had any complaints. What are you, her secretary?”

  Atticus pulled back the front of his jacket and propped his hands at his waist, giving Tony Smart-Mouth a clear view of the badge clipped to his belt, as well as the gun holstered there. “I’m a friend. A good one.”

  Fierro met Atticus’s probing gaze, then turned his eyes beyond him to Brooke. “Relax, friend. All I’m after is the job. If you want to see my references, I’d be happy to give them to you, too. Otherwise, get out of my face. I need the work.”

  “What would you like to eat?” As Brooke held the business card in triumph, she dropped the journal into the bottomless pit of her bag. Their silence must have been a dead giveaway to the tension brewing between the two men because Brooke’s smile quickly faded. Her eyes wide with concern, Brooke ushered Fierro into one of the chairs and, with a light touch at his elbow, nudged Atticus out into the hallway.

  “Sorry. This is business I need to take care of. I won’t forget about the journal. I promise.”

  “Brooke, wait.” Atticus braced one hand against the door when she would have shut him out. His bold insistence surprised him almost as much as the propriety grip he held on her upper arm.

  She looked up expectantly. What was he supposed to say? Don’t lock yourself in with this guy. Don’t hire him. Stop wasting your smiles on him. But Brooke was a grown woman, perfectly capable of making her own decisions about men, be they dates or employees or ex-cons, as he expected Fierro to be. It was probably just brotherly concern—looking out for his kid sister and all. Or maybe he was feeling antsy about the possibilities hidden in the journal that seemed forever lost to him in the bottom of the bag. What if this loser stole her purse? Trusting her judgment for the moment, Atticus released her. “When will you be finished with your meeting? I’d like to take a closer look at that item you showed me.”

  Her expression shuttered. “About forty-five minutes, give or take.”

  “I’ll call you in an hour, then.” Over the top of Brooke’s head, he directed a pointed look at Fierro. Yeah, buddy, I’ll be checking to make sure that she’s safe and sound after you leave.

  With a nod that didn’t necessarily mean he’d heed the warning, Fierro turned and settled back in his chair. “Nice to meet you, friend.”

  Atticus watched Brooke close the door, shutting herself in with the potential trouble. What could he do beyond a fit that would embarrass Brooke and make him come off like some kind of Neanderthal? Cramming his fists into the pockets of his slacks, Atticus headed back to the detectives’ squad room on the main floor in the opposite direction.

  Bravo for her willingness to give a man a second chance. That took a lot of heart and a lot of guts. But he wasn’t quite ready to give Fierro the benefit of the doubt.

  Atticus returned to his desk just long enough to run a check through the KCPD database. The information on Anthony Fierro was sketchy enough to raise a red flag. He’d served a dime in Jefferson City for robbery and related arms and assault charges. No rape or molestation charges against women or children. No murder.

  That should have been a relief.

  He glanced down the hallway toward Brooke’s closed office.

  “ARE YOU in?”

  Antonio lowered the weights for one more rep and pressed the bar up and onto its braces before sitting up. Late at night was usually his time, when he was off the clock and could be himself and not have to answer to anybody. But tonight, his employer had stopped in for an unexpected visit. He couldn’t tell if this meeting had to do with impatience or distrust. Either one smacked at his ego. He wasn’t just good at what he did. He was the best.

  “I’m in.” Swinging his legs over the side of the weight bench, Tony reached for a towel and mopped the sweat from his forehead and sensitive eyes. “The bitch feels sorry for me. Thinks she’s giving me a second chance. She completely trusts the recommendation from McCarthy. And he trusts yours.”

  He had to laugh. Brooke Hansford was naive about the world, a rare quality for a woman in her late twenties. She lived in a church with two spinster aunts for damn sake. She was anxious to help and eager to please, which made her putty in his manipulative hands. She wasn’t much to look at—nothing wrong with her, just nothing to catch a man’s eye. But he’d bet the six-figure paycheck he was making on this job that she was a virgin.

  And plain or not, that added a fresh allure to the woman that he found mighty damn tempting. He dragged the towel slowly across his lips. Mighty tempting, indeed.

  “Covering up your…indiscretions…was an expensive investment. As if you weren’t already freak enough.” The jab at his albino genes jerked him away from his lascivious imaginings as if his employer could read his thoughts. “Don’t disappoint me.”

  Where the hell do you think those freaky genes came from? He wanted to shout. But that wasn’t how this relationship worked. Out loud he kept things purely business. “I said I got the job. Despite a little interference from another one of those Kincaid boys. I start tomorrow morning. If it’s at her house, I’ll find it. I have a plan for expanding the search elsewhere, as well.”

  His companion maintained a noticeable distance while Antonio wiped the sweat from his chest. “Don’t be so damn cocky. Kincaid’s sons are turning out to be an unpredictable threat. Instead of taking a leave of absence and following departmental rules, Sawyer Kincaid made that whole April fiasco personal—and I had specifically handpicked those men to carry out my orders. It’s not an easy thing to break a man out of prison. I thought Ace Longbow could handle Sawyer Kincaid for me, but I underestimated his obsession with his ex-wife.”

  A rare mistake for a plan that had been nearly thirty years in the making. “I’ve been your go-to man for a lot of years. You should have trusted me, not the new blood from prison. I had to take Longbow out myself. He was about to tell the cops everything he knew about us during that hostage standoff. Instead of eliminating the problem, he became the problem. All because of a woman.”

  “Yes, that was most unfortunate. I could have used a man with Longbow’s skills.”

  Antonio’s hand fisted around the towel with the urge to either throw it or loop it around the boss’s neck and squeeze until the criticisms stopped. Where was the loyalty? Antonio Fierro had provided those very same skills—reconnaissance, interrogation, intimidation, even murder—for six years. Just like his old man before him. Had the operation grown that large? Or was he, like Longbow and the two other prisoners they’d helped escape from a courthouse in Jefferson City earlier in the spring, expendable?

  He forced himself to open his crushing grip and drop the towel, understanding that losing his temper with the boss was not something many people walked away from. Still, it rankled that he’d had to prove himself to the organization time and time again. So he had a little sideline that got him into trouble on occasion. He’d never failed an assignment.

  He pushed away from the bench and moved to the rack of dumbbells, where he took his time selecting a challenging enough weight. “I wouldn’t worry about this other Kincaid brother. He’s not romantically involved with Brooke Hansford. He’s a badge through and through. I can work around that. I’ll find it.”

  “We’re not even sure what we’re looking for yet. A disk? A notebook? Even a video or tape recording. John Kincaid was right to suspect that we were still in business, and his inside information could destroy us.”

  His boss’s paranoia was growing tiresome. But then, how did one survive—and succeed—for so many years without detection unless there was some degree of constant suspicion involved? He had to respect the success—and the opportunity to make enough money to buy himself a tax-free retirement in the Caribbean.

>   “What if the Hansford chick doesn’t have it?”

  “She must. Even if she doesn’t know it. Kincaid took a keen interest in her purchase of that house and in the woman herself, more so than any employer typically would have. That has to mean something.”

  “Maybe they were having an affair,” Tony suggested, “and the house was going to be their love nest. She was crying at the funeral.”

  The idea seemed to be a source of amusement. “Not John. The age difference probably isn’t an issue these days, but you can take one look at her and know she’s not a mankiller.” Antonio grinned. Maybe Kincaid had been into virgins, too. But the boss was talking, so he made an effort to listen. “He made a cop’s salary, so you know she wasn’t a gold-digger. And I knew John Kincaid. He was ridiculously, boringly, completely married to his wife. No fun at all.”

  Another possible explanation for Kincaid’s interest in Brooke Hansford hit uncomfortably close to home. “What if she’s his daughter? It wouldn’t be the first time a parent refused to acknowledge an illegitimate child. I know others who—” he slid a glance across the room “—look out for their children without ever claiming them.”

  There was not even one flicker of recognition in that expression. His boss was one cool customer. “She is Leo and Irina’s daughter. John would have known that. Perhaps that’s the key. He took her under his wing since he was responsible, in part, for what happened to them. Poor John had a guilty conscience about leaving her an orphan.” The boss smiled behind steepled fingers. “That makes me more certain than ever that he’d want to clear that conscience before he died.”

  “Whatever.” Antonio started his biceps curls while his visitor pulled out his Smart Phone and touched the stylus to the screen, probably completing a transaction someplace across the world that would make millions of dollars with a single stroke of a pen—or maybe handing out an assignment to another employee. Yeah, he was mixin’ it up with some pretty influential company these days. He deserved to be a part of this.

  With the message sent, the electronic device went back inside the tailored jacket. “I’ve exhausted every other avenue where Kincaid might have kept that information. My sources have come up with nothing. Do what’s necessary to press Miss Hansford and find it.”

  Squeezing his biceps until his audience lost interest, Antonio resumed the conversation. Each dumbbell hit the rack with an ominous portent. “All right. Say Kincaid did write down the details—and I find them. The Cold War has been over for a long time. Is there anybody left who really cares?”

  “I care.” The boss rose and headed toward the gym’s exit where a bodyguard was standing watch. “I always wanted my name exonerated. And since that can never happen, I at least want the people who forced me into this double life to pay.”

  John Kincaid had paid with his life. So had others. There were plans for more. Tony had no intention of joining the list. “I have a stake in this, too. When Irina Zorinsky died, my birthright died, too. Somebody has to pay for that.” Antonio moved closer, dared to bring his sweaty, smelly self into his boss’s personal space.

  But if he expected to get a rise, he was dead wrong. This was one cold customer. Without even a blink, the order was reconfirmed. “I want that information.”

  Antonio wisely retreated a step. “Understood.”

  His employer buttoned and smoothed an already neat jacket. “And I want answers before you find your satisfaction.”

  “Don’t worry. She’s not my type.”

  “She’s female, isn’t she? Aren’t they all your type?”

  Eventually. If he wanted them to be. Antonio headed for the showers. “The girl’s not gonna be a problem.”

  Chapter Five

  Looking through his binoculars from the driveway at the end of the street, Atticus watched the idyllic summer scene unfold behind Brooke’s stone house. “Now there’s irony for you.”

  He was in the doghouse for butting his nose into Brooke’s business yesterday—at least that’s what he believed the finger pointing over his roast beef sandwich and breathless, You… you… I’m a grown woman. You don’t have to…oh, just stay away and let me make my own decisions! meant.

  Meanwhile, Tony Fierro seemed to be the golden boy. The ex-con was leaning on a shovel in Brooke’s backyard, laughing over something her Aunt Louise said. And her Aunt Peggy was serving them glasses of lemonade—probably the really cold stuff, more tart than sweet—while Atticus sat here, parched, with beads of sweat trickling down the small of his back.

  He could turn on the engine of his silver SUV and crank the air conditioning, but a running vehicle drew more attention than a parked one, and the open windows gave him a clearer view of Fierro and Louise digging in the weedy garden. And since he didn’t imagine that being caught spying on Brooke a second time—even if she was at work this morning and he was only, technically, spying on her house—would earn him points toward forgiveness and a chance to sit down with her and read that journal, he opted for flying under the radar rather than being cool and comfortable.

  The soaring temperature on the cloudless day wasn’t the only thing fueling the warmth in his veins. He kept replaying that little scene outside her office.

  He’d been amused at first by the uncharacteristic show of defiance. Her words had tumbled out faster than her temper, and her cheeks had colored a healthy shade of pink, adding fire to her lecture and vibrancy to her entire posture. But when he realized that she saw his concern as interference—maybe even an insult—and that this unfamiliar independent streak meant he wasn’t meeting with her or the journal that afternoon, then Atticus countered with a pithy comeback. Maybe if you showed better judgment in the men you want to spend time with, then I wouldn’t have to babysit you.

  So he’d never been privy to the easy charm that Holden and Sawyer enjoyed. He knew better than that how to talk to a twenty-nine-year-old woman.

  Babysit. He’d been idiot enough to actually use that word with Brooke.

  He could have sworn she wanted to slap his face.

  Not one of his finer moments.

  He’d never imagined that Brooke Hansford had a temper. He’d never dreamed that, of all people, she could make him lose his.

  He was paying for that slipup today.

  Figuratively cooled off after twenty-four hours, Atticus settled back into the familiar role of a detective. Brooke and her aunts were like family. They’d decided to hire an ex-con to fix their garden and who knew what else. It was out of a sense of duty that he was following up to make sure Tony Fierro had reformed enough to deserve their trust.

  All the red flags were there to say otherwise. The get-out-of-my-face attitude yesterday. The bandanna covering the bad hair job today. And even from this distance Atticus could see that, stripped down to a white T-shirt in deference to the heat, Fierro’s tats were definitely prison issue. Apparently, he’d been a petty criminal in his life before prison, and minor thefts and burglaries had escalated into a series of convenience store armed robberies. Whether those were the extent of his crimes, or more serious charges had been pled down in order to secure a conviction, the records didn’t say.

  The records didn’t say much about Fierro before his life of crime, either. Another red flag.

  Atticus raised the binoculars again when the back door opened and another man came out of the house. Atticus recognized him as Truman McCarthy, the contractor overseeing the church’s remodelling. McCarthy and his men were working inside this afternoon. But now he jumped off the edge of the unfinished deck and walked over to shake Fierro’s hand. Atticus had checked him out, too. Reputable businessman. Self-made success. He often hired former convicts or teen offenders for non-union labor on his building projects. His way of giving back to the community, Atticus supposed. Though he couldn’t tell what they were saying, McCarthy’s body language indicated a comfortable, familiar relationship with Fierro. The boss merited a glass of lemonade, too.

  Damn, it was hot to be working surveil
lance today.

  Atticus lowered his binoculars, unbuttoned his collar and loosened his tie. Maybe the cases he’d worked over the years, along with Hayley’s betrayal, had made him just too damn cynical. His father’s unsolved murder made him look at everyone as suspect. McCarthy was a respected member of the community. If his approval of Fierro was enough for Brooke, it should be enough for him. He was worrying too much about this guy, trying to prove his instincts were right and Brooke’s were wrong.

  Besides, Brooke was safely at work downtown, surrounded by dozens of cops, working under the very watchful eye of his superior, Mitch Taylor. He didn’t even have a good enough excuse to sit here and watch over Brooke’s aunts. With McCarthy and his men in and out of the house from sunup to dusk, there would be plenty of activity here to keep Fierro on his good behavior. And if he continued to work outside, there’d be no opportunity at all for him to help himself to anything of the Hansfords. Atticus was just being overly cautious because if something happened to Brooke’s journal, then he’d never get a look inside the pages to see if his father really had been trying to send a message to the future.

  Deciding to give Brooke and Fierro the benefit of the doubt—for now—Atticus started the engine and adjusted the air conditioning to its highest setting. He was pulling into city traffic when the phone on his belt rang.

  He checked the number, then flipped it open. “Hey, Sawyer. What’s up?”

  Big brother didn’t waste time with any greeting. “I heard Kevin Grove is bringing in the witness who called in Dad’s murder for another interview today. That may mean there’s been a break on the case. Marcus Henry is running the camera in the recording booth. I convinced him to let us sit in and watch. I’ll round up Holden, too, if he’s not on a call. Can you meet me there?”

  Atticus was already in the passing lane, pushing harder on the gas. “I’m on my way.”