Harlequin Romantic Suspense May 2018 Box Set

by Regan Black

  Again, silence. Rico got in, started the vehicle and pulled away from the curb.

  “Mr. Metez, I’m going to assume that you have good intent. But I’m not going to discuss this on the telephone with somebody that I’ve never met. Do you have Rankin’s address?”

  “Yes. On Appleton Avenue.”

  “Good. Then I will meet you at the corner of Appleton and Twenty-Ninth Street. That’s two blocks away from his house. Ten minutes.” The detective hung up on him.

  What the hell? The man had said don’t go there and then arranged to meet him at the end of the block. It didn’t matter. All he knew was that he was going.

  He put his phone on the seat, willing it to ring. Still hoping that Laura had walked away on some kind of errand.

  But knowing that wasn’t the case. She would never do something that would worry him unnecessarily.

  But how the hell would Rankin have known that she was back in Nashville? It made no sense.

  The only people who knew were Jennie and Paddie and his family.

  He trusted them all—well, maybe not all of them—implicitly. He didn’t trust Peter. Never had. But there was no way for Peter to be connected to Rankin. He and Laura hadn’t even told his family the truth about Hannah, that she was Laura’s niece.

  It was all a damn scrambled mess in his head.

  He drove fast, weaving in and out of traffic. His phone had said it would take eighteen minutes but he made it in thirteen. Still, when he pulled up, there was a man standing next to a black four-door sedan. He held up a badge that Rico couldn’t read, of course, but it was enough that he knew it had to be Detective Phillips.

  He parked and jogged over to the detective, keeping his hands visible.

  “I’m Rico Metez,” he said.

  “Detective Phillips. Do you have some identification?”

  “I’m going to reach into my pocket,” Rico said, and waited for the man to nod. He pulled his license and his business card.

  The detective nodded. “I looked your name up and Wingman Security popped up.”

  He wasn’t interested in networking. He wanted Laura. “Why are you watching Hodge Rankin’s house?”

  “Because we think Hodge Rankin is a bad guy. And I don’t like to let bad guys have the run of my city,” Detective Phillips said.

  “He killed his wife, didn’t he? And Laura’s brother. And probably his fiancée before that. And the woman who watched Hannah.”

  Detective Phillips held up a finger. “We think you’re right about the first three. But we believe Mrs. Gloria Wise and the unlucky woman who happened to leave the yoga class at the same time were shot by Casandra Scale.”

  Seth had not mentioned another victim which made Rico think that he hadn’t known. And he also had not disclosed the shooter’s name. Maybe that had been kept purposefully quiet by the police. “What do you know about Casandra Scale?”

  “We know she’s Hodge Rankin’s girlfriend.”

  He thought about making some smart remark about the woman’s life expectancy but he was only concerned about one woman’s life. Laura’s.

  “Have you been in touch with your people? Do they have a visual on Rankin?”

  “They do. He’s out by his pool. Has been sunning for the last hour.”

  “That’s not possible,” Rico said. “Wait, go back to the girlfriend. Are you watching her, too?”

  “Yes. And I might add, it’s costing a boatload of money. But when innocent people get gunned down, suddenly the checkbook is open. She is also accounted for.”

  Rico rubbed his forehead. “Why didn’t Rankin report Hannah as missing?”

  “That’s complicated,” the detective said. “And I can’t really tell you much except that while Hodge Rankin is a dirt wad, we believe he got bested by bigger dirt wads. Rankin was indeed negotiating a price for Hannah. She would have been out of the country by noon the following day. The buyers were part of a large trafficking ring and they ran a pretty complex operation. They teamed up with people on the inside, people who work at various daycares, and they paid these people to find children who are in circumstances where an acquisition could be negotiated.”

  “Mary Margaret,” Rico said.

  The detective looked surprised. Rico held up a hand. “When Laura talked to her boss earlier this morning, the woman said that Mary Margaret had quit the same time that Laura was absent from the daycare. Acted like it was a big inconvenience. I’m suspecting she has no idea that she was employing a child trafficker.”

  “No. But we have Mary Margaret. She’s made a full confession about her role in the transaction. She had never met the potential buyers until they came to the daycare. She didn’t like them and became very concerned about Hannah. In the end, she did the right thing by going to the police. She was also trying to protect Hannah.”

  “Why don’t you just arrest Rankin and his girlfriend?”

  “Unfortunately, no money changed hands over the sale of Hannah. And Rankin has been careful about covering his tracks in the other deaths. Our evidence is more circumstantial. His girlfriend was less careful and we have street camera footage of her with the gun. What we don’t have, besides one witness who won’t hold up well under cross-examination, is anything that ties the two together. But we believe the witness who worked with Casandra at a bar and said that Rankin used to meet Casandra in the alley, after the bar closed. Since the Wise shooting, the two of them have had no contact. But they’re going to make a mistake. And when they meet up, we’re going to be there. We think they’re both going to be willing to point the finger at the other in order to help themselves and in the end, they’re both going to prison for a long time.”

  It was wonderful news. Laura was Hannah’s closest blood relative and she could petition the courts for custody. But where the hell was she?

  * * *

  Laura would have kicked her own butt if she could have reached it. But since they’d tied her wrists together in front of her and each ankle to the legs of the desk chair and left her, she couldn’t very well do that. And they’d put a piece of tape over her mouth so screaming wasn’t going to work.

  She’d have taken her chances with them, would have tried to fight back, even against a gun, versus getting in their car, but then they’d called her by name and said that they had Hannah, too. And she wanted to call their bluff, to tell them that there was no way, that Hannah was safe in Colorado with Jennie and Paddie, but in the end, she simply couldn’t take the chance.

  “Where is she?” she’d asked.

  “We’ll take you to her,” they’d said. “She’s been asking for you. Wants you to make her some more macaroni and cheese like she had at the hospital.”

  And she’d felt her heart crack.

  She’d started to reach for her purse and her phone but they’d told her to leave everything, to just hurry and get into their car. She’d done what they said. They seemed very nervous and she was terribly afraid the gun was going to go off by mistake. Had assumed they were associates of Rankin. Who else in Nashville would know who she was and that Hannah was important to her?

  They’d put her in the front seat of their car. The man had driven and the woman had sat behind her, holding a gun to her neck. Laura had demanded to know why they were doing this, had told them that they were fools to do Rankin’s dirty work, that he’d simply kill them when their usefulness came to an end.

  And that’s when she’d gotten her first indication that maybe she was wrong. Because the look the man driving had given to the woman in the back was very easily read. What is she talking about?

  The woman had told her to shut up and she did, thinking it might be smarter to listen than to talk. She needed to figure out who these people were. They’d driven her to a hotel on the outskirts of Nashville. It was a two-story, not all that different than the motel that Hannah and she had almost s
tayed at in Moreville. Once inside, she’d realized it wasn’t as clean but none of that mattered. What mattered was that she hadn’t immediately seen Hannah. And when she’d demanded, the woman had laughed. Taunted her that they never had Hannah but that they’d known that was what would make her do whatever they wanted.

  Then they’d tied her up, taped her mouth and left her in the hotel room.

  She didn’t know them. But they knew her, knew enough about her to know that Hannah was her life.

  She didn’t think the two were married. She’d studied them in the car and was confident that they were brother and sister. There was a strong resemblance. And they didn’t talk like they were from Nashville or anywhere in Tennessee.

  After leaving her tied in the room, they’d left but she’d immediately heard the door to the right open and close. Then loud voices. She could make out a word here or there but they were talking over one another and yelling.

  “Stupid to bring her…”

  “…can identify…”

  “…have to kill…”

  It was definitely the woman and it seemed as if there were two different male voices. She had to assume that one of them was the man who’d been with the woman. He’d never said a word the entire time she’d been in the car.

  If they weren’t working for Rankin, why did they have any interest in her? Who would benefit if something bad happened to her?

  And then she realized that she was asking the wrong questions.

  Who would suffer if something bad happened to her?

  Rico. Rico who might have had a drone flying over his cabin. Rico who had people coming to his sister’s house, making up stories about class reunions to get his address. Rico who suspected that his skiing accident hadn’t been all that much of an accident.

  Mora. That had been his client’s name. And she had three children. Two males and one female. Rico had said the one man rarely spoke. She closed her eyes and thought of the conversation when they’d first discussed them. She’d made light of their names. Duggar, Gilly, and Tributary. Duggar had pulled the fire alarm, Gilly rarely talked, and Tributary was the only one not still living with Mom.

  By now, Rico would have found the SUV, would have seen her stuff still in it and would know that something was very wrong. He’d be worried sick. Would assume that it was Rankin.

  How would he ever connect all of this to Mora and her three children?

  CHAPTER 21

  Rico looked at his watch. Laura had been missing now for more than thirty minutes and he was no closer to finding her. And Detective Phillips was staring at him, as if he still wasn’t 100 percent sure that Rico wasn’t going to make a break for Rankin’s house.

  But there was no reason to. It wasn’t Rankin.

  Who else could it be?

  Something random? No, he didn’t believe it. But if not random, then how would they have known that Laura was in that vehicle, parked on that street?

  There was really only one way. He ran back to the SUV. It took him less than a minute to find the tracking device in Laura’s big purse.

  He realized that Detective Phillips had followed him and was now staring at the device. “I assume that’s Laura’s purse and you didn’t know it was there.”

  He was quickly sorting through the options. It had to have happened before they left Colorado. Jennie or Paddie could have done it. But why? They were helping them in every way possible. Where else had they been? At the hospital. Laura had spent the night at his mother’s house. Again, it just wasn’t feasible that his mom or Charro would do anything to hurt him.

  Peter. Peter who had joined them for lunch and then unexpectedly returned later in the afternoon, ostensibly to visit his dad but had left before doing so.

  Left with Laura. Walked out to his car at the same time.

  But why would he have done this? Why would he have wanted to track Laura and then abduct her? What the hell did he intend to do with her?

  Peter was a lazy, cheap son of a bitch, but Rico didn’t think he was a criminal. But he might have done something to make a quick buck.

  Rico realized his hand was shaking as he dialed his phone. His brother-in-law answered on the third ring. “Hi, Rico.”

  “I found the tracking device that you put in Laura’s purse,” he said.

  He could hear the man suck in a breath. But he said nothing.

  “Laura is missing. I need to find her, Peter. And you need to tell me what the hell is going on.”

  Still, the man said nothing.

  “Peter, I will bankrupt myself making sure that you never, ever see your son or daughter again.”

  “This isn’t about Laura,” Peter said. “Nobody cares about her. It’s about you.”

  “Who?” Rico demanded. “Who has her?”

  “I don’t know. It was the two guys who came to the house that one day, looking for your address. I talked to them for a while. The one guy never said a word but the other guy, well, he and I sort of connected. I got the impression he wasn’t your biggest fan.”

  And that would have appealed to Peter.

  “He said that if you were ever in the area, that I should let him know. Said it was worth a grand to them. When Charro told me you were coming to see your dad, I gave him a call.”

  “Who are these men?” he demanded.

  “I really don’t know. When I got home from lunch at the hospital, they were at the house. Said that they wanted to mess with you a little and that all I needed to do was put the tracking device in your vehicle and they’d up the offer by another grand. That’s all they said. Mess with you a little. I didn’t know anything about taking somebody. This is not my fault.”

  He wanted to wring his brother-in-law’s neck. “So you put it in Laura’s purse.”

  “Yeah, well, I couldn’t figure out a way to get it in your car because it was locked, but I figured the next best thing was to drop it in Laura’s bag. She was going to be in your car. Same difference.”

  If he’d hated before, he’d never hated anyone the way he hated his brother-in-law.

  “Hey, I’m sorry if things aren’t going well. If it helps, I did hear the one call the other one Gilly.”

  * * *

  Laura heard the door next door open and shut and sure enough, in seconds, the door to her room was opening. Tributary came in. She had her gun.

  Laura made a head motion toward the bathroom and opened her eyes wide, to give the woman a sense that it was an emergency.

  The woman sighed but then pulled a small utility knife from her pocket and freed just her legs. “Make it snappy,” she said. “We have to get out of here.”

  Laura tried to talk but the tape on her mouth made it impossible. She kept going, making a series of unintelligible sounds. She could tell it was irritating the woman.

  Tributary reached up and ripped off the tape. “What?” she demanded.

  “I was wondering if your mother, Mora, knows what’s happening here,” Laura said.

  She could see that she’d shocked the woman. But she recovered fast. “Gilly doesn’t say much but I guess when he does, he’s right. We are going to have to kill you. And we can’t do it here because these rooms were rented under our names.”

  There was no way she was going anywhere else with these people. Her best shot was to get outside, attract some attention from another guest. And it was easier to fight one person than three. Now was her opportunity.

  Laura bent forward and rammed her shoulder into Tributary’s middle, knocking the wind out of her and propelling her back onto the bed. The gun clattered to the floor but didn’t go off. She turned, ran for the door and fumbled just a second too long with the knob because out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tributary behind her, holding a lamp.

  Then it felt as if her head was splitting apart when the woman hit her with it.

/>   * * *

  Rico hung up from his call with Peter and immediately dialed Mora Rambeilla’s cell phone. When she answered, she seemed like a washed-out version of the woman he’d known. Her voice was tiny, almost timid. “Yes,” she said.

  “Mora, why did you call the Wingman Security offices and leave a cryptic warning that I needed to be careful.”

  “I didn’t do that,” she denied.

  “I know it was you, Mora. And I need to know why.”

  “There’s just stuff going on.”

  “The woman I love was taken from a vehicle that she and I were driving. I think your children did it, Mora. I need you to tell me if I’m right.”

  “Oh, God,” she sobbed. “I’ve been so afraid. None of them are answering their phones. They’re so…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Keep talking,” he said.

  “They’re so angry. I found out that they were behind the threats. My three greedy children. It wasn’t enough that I was basically supporting all of them still, they wanted more. They wanted control of the business. They thought if I got scared enough, I’d want to walk away from it. And it would be theirs. I confronted them. Told them that they were all off the payroll—that the gravy train had pulled into the station and was parked for good. Told my sons to get their things and move out.”

  Rico now understood her sudden cancellation of the security contract. But it still didn’t make sense. “Why are they angry with me? I had nothing to do with any of this.”

  Mora was silent. “I think it’s because I told them that I’d learned a great deal by spending time with you. That they would never have the fortitude, the drive or the values that you possessed. I told them that I was sorry that you weren’t my son but that instead, I’d been saddled with them.” She sobbed. “It was a horrible thing to say but they’d done a horrible thing. I wanted to hurt them.”

  “Mora,” he said.

  “I know, I know. But they’re like their father in so many ways. So vengeful. They were driving the boat that caused your skiing accident.”

  Spawn of Satan. The whole bunch.

  “I called your office because they’ve all disappeared. I had to warn you but I didn’t want you to know it was me.”