The Lonesome Lawmen Trilogy

by Pauline Baird Jones

  Matt glared at him, then raised his radio to say, “Jake’s got him. Get a forensics team over here ASAP.” He looked at his brother with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm as Bryn came out the front door. “How did you do it?”

  Before Jake could answer him, Bryn said, “Let me guess. Magic?”

  Jake grinned. “Let’s take him back inside while we secure the premises.”

  Bryn signaled to a couple of men, who hustled the kid inside.

  “Don’t feed me that magic shit,” Matt said. “How did you do it?”

  “Talked to the super while I was waiting for you.” Jake shrugged. “Told me there used to be a tunnel between the buildings, so I checked it out. When the kid bolted, I figured that’s where he was headed.”

  “In other words, pure dumb luck,” Matt said with a big brother’s scorn.

  “You wish.” Jake held the door open before following him and Bryn inside.

  * * * *

  Phoebe saw Barrett Stern pushing his way toward her. Above, Harding watched from the balcony, nursing his bandaged hand. Her work here was done. She blew Harding a kiss and saw him flinch. He’d always hated to be thwarted. It was his Achilles’ heel, the pressure point they planned to jab over and over until he betrayed himself and gave them the game.

  She’d have to gloat later though. The game would be over if Stern got his hands on her. He was covering ground fast, despite the sudden surge toward the now-ready refreshment table. Phoebe picked up her pace, counting off the distance to the clubhouse in footsteps and heartbeats. There was always risk when you pulled the tiger’s tail, but she didn’t intend to be counted out just yet.

  She passed through the door with quick thanks and a smile to the someone who might have been the attorney general of the state—who held the door for her and let it swing in Stern’s face. The combination of gallantry and rudeness gave her just enough time to duck into the ladies’ room ahead of his reaching hand. A couple of shocked women kept Stern from following her inside.

  She made a face at him over their shoulders before the door swung closed, then ducked into a stall and started shedding Kerry Anne. Under Kerry’s drifting dress she wore a sleek beige number that hugged her body like another skin. Out of a pocket came a bag that she stuffed the dress into. The wig she tossed down behind the toilet. The blue contacts came out. She peeled the white surface off her shoes, turning them beige to match the dress. She made sure no sign of the dress was poking out of the bag, fluffed her hair, and stepped out.

  Three chattering women preceded her out the door where Stern waited, his thinning patience apparent in the chilling of his eyes. He didn’t give Phoebe a second glance as she passed. In a moment she was outside. The limo pulled forward and Dewey opened the door for her. She pulled the door closed behind her and answered the questioning lift of his brows with a shrug and a smile.

  “Any problems?”

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle.” She didn’t quite meet his glance and kept her hands pressed against the seat. Her heart was pounding, which made them tremble. It wasn’t fear. There’d been no time for fear. It was pure adrenaline pumping through her veins. “He was wearing our rose on his lapel.”

  “And he sliced his hand open when he squeezed his glass too hard.”

  Phoebe twisted in the seat to stare at Dewey. “You just had to watch, didn’t you?”

  “Performance art is nothing without an audience, darling. Brava.” He clapped three times, but his eyes looked worried. “He’s a lot more unstable than I realized.”

  “The guy likes little girls, beating women and killing them. Exactly what made you think stable was a word that even remotely applied to him?”

  Dewey grinned. “I guess it was that whole running-for-governor scenario. I mean, you sort of assume some level of stability, even factoring in the politician mentality.”

  “In other words, you didn’t think about it.”

  His grin was crooked. “Like you, I try not to.”

  She looked away. “Yeah. Well, what happens next?”

  “You go back to your strumming and wailing, and I go help Kevin move. I’m having intimations of impending discovery.”

  Phoebe looked down the street as they turned the corner and saw the cop-filled block ahead. “I think your intimations were a little late.”

  “Damn.”

  “How bad are we screwed?”

  “Hard to say. Kev’s new to the game, but he doesn’t want to go home. He’ll hold, for a while anyway.”

  “So, he’ll need a lawyer.”

  Dewey nodded. “Coldhearted bitch or warmhearted public defender?”

  Phoebe studied the truck mingling with the cop cars. There were lots like it, but not with the same tag as Jake’s. “Coldhearted bitch.”

  “Something in black?”

  “With a touch of red.”

  * * * *

  Matt found Jake sitting in the kitchen of the apartment staring at three ice packs in evidence bags lined up in a row on the table as if they held the answer to some cosmic, universal question.

  He looked up when Matt came in. “Everything all right?”

  “Who knows?” Matt picked one pack up by the corner. “Looks like somebody had a run-in with a door—or a fist.”

  “Yup.”

  Matt waited for more. When he didn’t get it, he added, “So?”

  “Look at this.” Jake shoved the trash can toward him.

  Matt looked inside. “Someone likes pistachios.” He hesitated, then said again, “So?”

  “Hyatt loves the things.”

  “Prints?”

  “Everywhere.” He turned back to the ice packs and rubbed his chin. “With a little luck, some will match Hyatt’s.”

  Matt stared at his brother. “I can keep trying to dig it out of you. I could pound it out of you. Or you could just tell me.”

  Jake looked up and grinned. “Sorry. I thought you could still read my mind. You always seemed to know when I was going out the window.”

  “That’s ’cause Mom could read your mind and tipped me off.”

  Jake arched his brows. “Well, I’ll be—”

  “Do I need to get Mom in here to save your ass from me?” Matt snapped. He jerked a chair around and straddled it.

  “Sorry. It’s just, this morning I saw an ice pack and pistachios in Phoebe Mentel’s kitchen.” Jake shrugged. “Could be a coincidence.”

  Matt snorted.

  The fingerprint tech stuck his head around the corner and said, “We got a match. It’s your guy.”

  Jake looked at his brother.

  Matt stood up and paced away, then turned back to his brother. “You’ll need more than an ice pack and a few shells to get a search warrant on her place, but I’ll concede, you got yourself an honest-to-goodness lead.” He picked up one of the bags again and shook his head. “Damn, maybe you are magic.”

  It was a handsome admission, but Jake wasn’t elated. He didn’t want to be magic where Phoebe was concerned. She was gutsy and sweet in a prickly cactus kind of way. Put together in a very un-cactus kind of way. This wasn’t the first time he’d felt attracted to a suspect or had regrets at taking one down. But it was the first time it felt like a betrayal. As if he were in league with whoever had put the sad in her eyes. He didn’t want to be the one to add another nail to her unhappiness coffin.

  “You okay?” Matt broke into Jake’s reverie.

  Jake pulled out his grin and tried to shake away the ache in his chest that had the same insistence as a tooth going bad. “Sure. Heard anything about the kid’s ID yet?”

  Kevin’s ID looked authentic but was probably more bogus than a hooker’s orgasm—and would take longer than one to unmask if Phagan was running true to form.

  “Not yet. I got Alice checking it out.”

  Jake nodded. “How’s the kid doing?”

  “He should be about to piss his pants,” Matt said, easing the swinging door open so they could study him.

  “Looks
pretty cool to me,” Jake observed. “Maybe he doesn’t know he’s been harboring and abetting a federal fugitive.” Jake grinned. “Let’s go tell him.”

  Matt gestured through the door. “After you, Mr. Magic.”

  Kevin watched the two Marshals approach and braced for the encounter. Stick to the script, he reminded himself, even as he felt sweat slick his body.

  The two men stopped in front of him. He had to look a long way up to see their faces and found them filled with a detached pity. They didn’t speak, just stood there looking down at him. Kevin fought a compulsion to fill the silence himself.

  Don’t speak until spoken to. Dewey’s voice in his head, coaching him, gave him the courage to return their stares without speaking. Behind his back, he flexed his cuffed hands and reminded himself they didn’t know his real name. As long as they didn’t have that, they couldn’t send him home.

  When the silence was two beats past unbearable, the one called Matt asked, “Why’d you run, kid?”

  “You can’t question me without a lawyer. I know my rights.” He tightened his lips against the other protests that wanted to leak out. Keep your cool. You can’t incriminate yourself if you keep your cool. “You should read me my rights.”

  The one called Jake rubbed his chin, then sat down opposite Kevin, his elbows propped on his knees. In his hand was one of the ice packs Dewey had used to take down the swelling on his mouth.

  “Ran into a wall,” he’d joked, his grin more crooked than usual.

  “What was his name?” Kevin had shot back.

  “You’d be surprised.” Dewey’s smile had been amused enough to make him really curious.

  The FBI agent broke in on his thoughts with a hard insistence, “We don’t have to read you your rights until we start questioning you.”

  Kevin frowned at this deviation from the script. “He asked me a question.” His nerves were jumping like a grasshopper, and his voice tried to follow their lead. He made a valiant try to smooth it out, but puberty was against him, too.

  “Well,” Matt said, “there are questions, and there are questions.”

  “We’re just making friendly conversation,” Jake chimed in. He smiled as he tossed the ice pack up and down. Up and down.

  Kevin tried not to follow the hypnotic motion, but it was like trying to stop the tide.

  “You can join in or not, whatever you want,” Jake added, snatching the ice pack out of the air and standing with a quick movement that made Kevin’s heart leap in fear.

  The three of them stared at him, their eyes relentless and unblinking. He could smell himself, smell his own fear, but he was cold, too, shuddering cold. In the silence, he heard the air conditioning switch on. He gritted his teeth when they showed signs of chattering but couldn’t stop the shudders from shaking him and the couch he sat on.

  “What—no, that would be a question,” Jake said. He looked at Matt. “Never realized how hard it is to not ask a question.”

  Both men settled down on either side of him and gave him friendly smiles that didn’t warm or remove fear. Kevin tried to relax, too, but it was hard to get comfortable with his hands cuffed behind him and his body jerking to its own rhythm. The need to shift, to move, to speak, grew in direct contrast to the utter stillness of the three of them as they stared at him.

  “Let’s just read him his rights, and then we can ask him whatever we want,” the Fed said, looking at him like something she’d like to slice up and eat with salt.

  “Not without a lawyer!” Kevin said before he could stop himself. To his annoyance his voice broke on lawyer, making him sound like a kid. He hunched into the couch and glared at them.

  Jake leaned back, relaxing into the cushions, still tipping the ice pack from one side of the evidence bag to the other, as if the wet mass was somehow critical to life on earth or something.

  Matt frowned and rubbed his chin. “I don’t know. I kind of like to know who I’m reading and talking to before I do the rights reading.”

  Kevin was trying to figure out what this meant when the bag slipped from Jake’s hands, thudding softly against the carpeted floor. Kevin jumped, heart and body. His insides twisted with the need to do something, anything but just sit there.

  They’ll try to do a good cop, bad cop on you. Try to get you to trust one of them. The nice one is as much your enemy as the mean one.

  Jake shrugged. “Matt’s got a point, Bryn. Wouldn’t want to give a lawyer a loophole to slide him through. Kid’s so puny, it wouldn’t have to be a big loophole.”

  “So,” Bryn asked, “what’s your name, kid?”

  “You know my name!” The ID was his Achilles’ heel and Kevin couldn’t stop the words bursting out. “You got my ID!”

  “This?” Jake held up Kevin’s wallet, open to his license. Kevin nodded and Jake held it out, as if comparing the photo with the real person. “It’s nice work. Almost looks real.”

  “Almost—it is real! You—” Kevin swallowed the words, his cuffed hands clenched in support of his fight for control. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  “We know you’re not Kevin Jones any more than I’m Barney Google with the googly eyes,” Matt said, rising to stand over him with his arms crossed over his powerful chest, the same way his mom’s new husband did before he popped him one.

  Kevin cowered against the couch, waiting for the blow to fall.

  “That’s goo-goo-googly eyes,” Jake corrected Matt with utter sobriety.

  “Really?” Matt looked at his brother. “You sure?”

  “As sure as I am this is crap,” Jake said, tossing the wallet onto the coffee table in front of Kevin.

  The wallet flopped open, the ID photo staring up at him. Kevin Jones it said. Your name for now, Dewey had said. Roger’s gone forever. Going forward won’t always be easy, but you never have to go back. Trust me. They are always on our heels, but if you hang on, we’ll be there to bail you out.

  Kevin looked at Jake, then at Matt. In both faces he found no mercy, but some pity. He looked at Bryn and found no mercy in her face or her eyes. She leaned forward. “We don’t want you. We just want Hyatt. Give him to us and you can go home.”

  Home. When hell froze over he’d let them send him home. Now he knew who he trusted and who he didn’t.

  “I want a lawyer.”

  Jake sat back with a sigh. They’d almost had him. He’d seen it in the kid’s eyes. Until Bryn mentioned home. He studied him, noticing now that he was looking for it, the almost faded bruises on his face.

  * * * *

  Through the window of the interrogation room, Matt and Jake watched Kevin pace around the small room. He looked nervous, but resolute.

  Matt looked at Jake, one brow cocked. “What’s scarier than we are?”

  Jake rubbed the back of his neck. “Home?”

  Matt looked less than thrilled.

  “No kidding.” Jake leaned against the wooden frame of the one-way glass. The kid was probably new to Phagan’s operation. Jake explained to Matt that besides thieving, Phagan also ran an extensive underground operation that helped runaways the way society was supposed to. This inspired an almost fanatical loyalty and made the kids impossible to turn. All they had to offer them was a trip into foster care or a return to their nightmare.

  “So the only way to crack him is to be worse than whoever was beating him?” Matt asked, sounding rightly uncomfortable. “Great.”

  “If we wait for Bryn,” Jake said wryly, “she can do bad Fed for us.”

  He heard a cough behind him. They turned around.

  “Neither of you,” Bryn said, “were spanked enough when you were little, were you?”

  Jake grinned. “I’m not spanked enough now.”

  He could see her struggle, but she did manage to hold back an answering grin.

  “Take it on the road, or let’s go crack the kid before Phagan sends in a lawyer to—”

  Before Bryn got her hand on the doorknob, Jake saw his biggest brother, Luke. He
was an older version of Matt, more weathered, but a tad softer. Not that Jake spent much time comparing his brothers. How could he when next to Luke was a…woman. No, he thought, dazed. Make that a woman.

  Dressed in sexy, slinky black, she sliced through air and space like a weapon, wearing heels so high she should have needed oxygen. Her dark hair swung on either side of green eyes and a mouth so red it made his eyes bleed just looking at it.

  “Kid’s lawyer,” Luke said, trying not to laugh.

  She was close enough now for Jake to see that she had nothing on under the power-suit jacket. He almost went up on his toes to confirm this, but his toes lacked the needed stiffness, which was all concentrated in one central place in his body.

  Jake knew he needed to say something, anything, but nothing sprang to mind except something he couldn’t say out loud. Actually, he wasn’t sure he could say anything at all. The moisture in his throat and eyes went right up in the smoke of her gaze. Nothing he could do to get it back. He felt lucky his eyes didn’t fall out and roll across the floor, where she could impale them with her heels.

  He sort of knew that Bryn was staring at him, but that didn’t stop his jaw from dropping or his tongue from trying to fall out the opening. When the lawyer passed him, he turned in concert with his brothers and watched her move through the door to the interrogation room.

  The kid looked as shocked as Jake felt, but at least the glass provided Jake with a small measure of protection—enough for his power of speech to return anyway, he thought, rubbing the back of his neck. At least he was hoping it would return.

  “I’d like to be a fly on the wall in there,” Matt said, not quite flattening against the glass but not far from it.

  “That wall.” Luke pointed to the one that would give the best view of the lawyer’s impressive cleavage.

  Jake laughed and found it helped clear his head. Bryn’s frown further boosted the process. “What I’d like to know,” he said, “is how she knew the kid needed a lawyer when he hasn’t made his call or even been formally charged yet?”

  That got Matt and Luke’s attention, but Bryn was the one with the answer.

  “Classic Phagan maneuver. We gotta find a way to block bail or we’ll never see the kid again.”