by Laura Kaye
Rixey gave him the code and disconnected. “Gimme a minute. I have someone who can answer that question better than me.” He crossed to the apartment door and opened it. Miguel’s footsteps echoed in the stairwell as he made his way up. “Thanks for coming out so late,” Nick said when the older man hit the landing, a leather case in hand.
“Sorry I got hung up.”
“Don’t worry about it. Come on in. Got some people I want you to meet.”
“Hold up, Nick. Something you need to see before we’re in mixed company,” Miguel said, hanging back in the hall. Rixey let the door fall shut as his friend popped open his case. “After you left, I made some calls from Becca’s office while I waited for the locksmith. I found this partly buried under a pile of papers and files that had toppled over on the desk.” He handed Nick a brown paper bag.
Frowning, Nick opened it and peered in. He pulled out the first item, a black-handled military knife with a nasty curved blade in a plastic bag. The second plastic bag was lighter, smaller. Nick lifted it out. “What the everliving fuck? Is this a finger?” His hackles raised so high they were barely attached to his body.
“Yeah. Pinkie, judging by the size. Nail’s been torn off. Cut was nowhere near clean. When I saw it . . .” Miguel shook his head. “Times like that I wish I’d never given up the cigs.”
“This was on Becca’s desk?”
The older man nodded, concern etching into the lines on his face. “Knife had it pinned to the surface. Think maybe the papers fell over later, because this was meant to be seen.”
Rixey stared at the severed finger. Jesus. Didn’t take two guesses to surmise who it likely belonged to. And if he was right, it answered the question of whether Charlie had been kidnapped or gone on the run. Ice ran down his spine. How the hell was he going to tell Becca? “Was there a note or a ransom demand?”
“Nothing.” Miguel snapped his case closed.
“What’s the fucking message, then?” Just general threatening menace? Together with the level of destruction at her house, it all seemed aimed at terrorizing. If Charlie had found information related to Merritt’s extracurriculars, maybe it all meant his captors were frustrated they couldn’t get the intel out of him? Or maybe this was meant as a diversion from their efforts to capture Becca, too? Damn, and was it coincidence that the blade was military grade?
“Good question. And I’ve got more intel, too.”
Rixey blew out a long breath. “Come on in. I invited a few of my Army buddies over in case we needed more boots on the ground on this, which seems pretty frickin’ obvious now. They should hear whatever you have to say.”
Miguel nodded and followed him in. “Oh, here’s the new keys to your girl’s house.” Rixey mentally refuted the words your girl as he pocketed the ring of three keys.
As soon as he learned what other shit was raining down on them, he’d have to let Becca know what’d happened. But how the hell was he going to tell her the fuckers who destroyed her house and tried to kidnap her had—assuming all three incidents were connected—also dismembered her brother? Especially when he couldn’t say what the calling card was supposed to mean. Was Charlie dead? The attempted abduction could play either way—either they’d killed Charlie and needed Becca for . . . something, or Charlie wouldn’t talk and they wanted leverage. Both soured Rixey’s gut.
His teammates all turned to see who Rixey was bringing into the fold. He and Miguel stepped up to the bar. “This is Miguel Olivero. Ex-BPD. Now a private investigator. He’s a good friend and trustworthy.” The guys nodded to the older man. “Miguel was helping me at Becca’s today when we found it’d been tossed. After I left to get her, he found this stabbed into her desk.” He settled the bagged knife and finger onto the counter in front of him.
Sitting closest, Beckett lifted the smaller bag to examine it.
“Well, fuck me running,” Shane said. “Her brother’s?”
“Presumed,” Nick said. “He’s the only one that makes sense, anyway. I’ll have to see if Becca can ID it.” Man, he’d do anything to keep her from having to see this, from having to bear the weight of it. “Apparently, this isn’t all Miguel learned today.” He turned to his friend and nodded.
Miguel braced his hands on the counter. “You guys don’t know me from Jack, but I used to be a Baltimore City cop. Still got friends on the force. Sticks in my craw to say it, but something’s way off with how this case is being handled. No reports have been filed, despite three separate incidents and dispatches. Did crime scene techs come to Becca’s after the first break-in?” Nick nodded. “Well, no evidence in the system, either. My contact couldn’t even find who the lead investigators were for any of it. On a hunch, I had a dispatcher friend run Becca’s phone numbers against the nine-one-one logs.”
The arrow on Nick’s oh-shit-ometer pushed hard into the red.
“There’s no record of her ever calling nine-one-one from either her house or cell phone numbers.”
“Sonofabitch,” Rixey bit out, the blood heating in his veins. “I know she called nine-one-one after the first break-in, because police and ambulance responded to the call.”
“I’m not questioning you or her.”
Miguel let the statement hang there, his meaning clear. Miguel Olivero, decorated veteran of the BPD, thought the police were dirty on this. Rixey had to agree. He looked from Beckett to Easy to Shane. “This is why we can’t hand Charlie’s disappearance over to the authorities. This stinks of a cover-up.” And damn if that smell wasn’t too fucking familiar.
Miguel nodded, his whole face frowning, an unusual look for the usually gregarious man. “You said someone tried to grab Becca from a staff break room at the hospital?” Rixey nodded. “That means uniforms, credentials, knowing schedules. Operation like that requires planning, resources, know-how, and brass balls.” Murmurs of agreement rose up around the bar. “Add that to all these missing records, and this is big time.”
Shane tugged his fingers through the top of his hair. “So, you’re talking about running a kidnapping investigation and hostage rescue operation? Completely off the books.”
Rixey braced, his stomach muscles going tight. “Yeah.”
“We don’t even know whose yard we’d be pissing in,” Shane said. Despite the negativity of the words, there was a note of consideration in the man’s voice. “But I guess that’s where we’d start.”
Nick’s gaze flashed to Shane’s, hope surging that he was on board. From the expressions on everyone’s faces, he wasn’t the only one looking at the numbers and seeing that one plus one plus one seemed to add up to five, too. Didn’t matter if that shit didn’t make any sense. It just meant they didn’t have all the factors relevant to the equation. Yet. “Does that mean you’re in?”
Shane stared at him a long moment. “This whole thing is nuttier than a squirrel turd, but my gut’s telling me that yours just might be right. And if that’s true”—he glanced to Miguel like he didn’t want to say too much in front of an outsider—“we might find some other useful info, too. So, yes, I’m in.”
Rixey nodded, when inside he was fist pumping all over the place.
Easy scrubbed his hands roughly over his bald head, then looked up. “If there’s a chance here to clear our names, you can be damn sure I’m in.” He was obviously less concerned with what Miguel heard.
“Beckett?” Rixey asked.
The man’s cold blue eyes glared at him. “I sure as hell ain’t letting you three get yourselves killed or arrested without me, and Easy’s right. This could be our best shot at setting things right. I’m not missing out on that. So, let’s do this.”
Relief melted the tension out of Rixey’s neck. “Okay, good. And thank you for hearing us out.” Heads nodded around the bar. “First, goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway as a reminder: Becca’s on a need-to-know on the backstory of all this, right?” Knowing glances flashed back at him. No way any of them could forget about the goddamned NDA. “Okay, so, Shane’s c
orrect. The first step would be finding out who we’re up against. We can start by searching both their houses for clues and canvassing Charlie’s last known whereabouts for witnesses.”
“What did the perp at the hospital look like?” Miguel asked. “Any identifying features?”
Rixey tried to resurrect the man’s image in his mind’s eye, but the clearest details were of his hand over Becca’s mouth and his knife in her side. “Tall, African American, early twenties, lots of tats and brands on his arms.”
“Get a good look at any of the ink?”
Rixey shook his head. “No, but Becca might’ve.”
“Well if the guy was any kind of organized crime—mafia, jailhouse, or local gang—there are some online databases of tattoo identifications. These won’t help if he’s a lone wolf, but if he’s running with any of these outfits, there’s a chance. I might be able to get her a look-see at some mug shots, too, and I got a friend who’s a genius sketch artist,” Miguel added.
Nick nodded. “Good. Plus whatever computer magic Marz can work when he gets here tomorrow.” Derek DiMarzio was a god among men on all things computers. Maybe he could even trace Charlie’s digital trail.
Beck’s gaze whipped up. “You invited Marz?”
Aw, shit, here we go. “Fuckin’ A, I invited him,” Nick replied, his tone making it clear he thought this a no-brainer.
A storm rolled in over Beck’s features. He swung off the stool and rounded the bar toward Rixey. “Christ, Nick, the guys’s got a—”
“He’s part of the team, Murda. Simple as.”
Fact that the man had lost the bottom half of his leg to a grenade made no friggin’ difference to Rixey. Marz deserved to be part of this gagglefuck of a reunion if he wanted to be. And he did. Of all of them, he’d been the most readily receptive to the meeting and the mission. The man’s amputation was no different than Rixey’s back being shot to hell or the loss of acuity in Beck’s right eye. It wasn’t just about Marz’s amputation, though, and Rixey knew it. It was more the fact that he’d lost the leg saving Beck’s life that day.
Limp aside, Beckett was up in Rixey’s face in about two point six seconds. It was like an eighteen-wheeler barreling down on him. “You really think you, of all people, should be talking about our team?”
The unresolved agitation from the day’s events banked in Rixey’s gut caught fire, heating his blood and sending him another half step closer to a man common sense generally told you not to antagonize. Huge, grim-faced, and lethal beyond measure, Murda was the kind of guy instinct had you crossing the street to avoid. But Nick had his own killer arsenal to draw from, fueled by a sea of rage that roiled just below the surface. “I fought for it. I bled for it. Damn straight I can talk about this team.”
Just when Nick was sure Murda wasn’t gonna back down, he did. Shaking his head, he turned and scoffed on a laugh. “Right. You just didn’t care about it enough to keep us together.”
A flash fire ripped through Nick’s veins. He’d agonized every goddamned day of the past ten months over what had happened to these men. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“You heard me, Rixey. You acted all gung ho brotherhood when things were good, but five minutes after we were stateside”—Beckett shoved him—“it was out of sight, out of mind.”
It was the contact that did it. Something inside Nick’s brain snapped and sent a roar of aggression flooding through him, deadening his hearing and dulling every sense that wasn’t focused on defending his honor against the accusation.
Rixey charged.
They clashed in a wall of muscle and a battle of wills. Nick took an uppercut to the gut that rearranged more than a few of his organs, and he dished out a jab to the throat that had Beckett choking and rasping for breath. Rixey’s conscience dripped acidic shame into his chest cavity over the fact that he had withdrawn from the team once they’d all returned stateside, but his sense of loyalty and honor infused his spine with steel because, while he might’ve been fucked in the head—he’d own that every day of the week and twice on Sunday—he’d never once given up on any of them or surrendered to the bullshit that had so unjustly stripped them of everything they’d once been. Out of sight, out of mind? Jesus, there were times he would’ve gotten on his knees for five minutes of reprieve from the guilt and the loss.
Another hit landed against the kidney on his bad side and he flew back against the steel doors of the fridge, his head glancing off the metal and his lower back screaming at the jarring impacts.
Beckett came at him swinging, brute strength his biggest asset. But Rixey had speed and agility, and a carefully timed dodge earned Murda’s knuckles a hi-how-are-ya with the immovable freezer door.
Raised voices sounded and tugging hands touched as if from a distance, but he and Beck were caught up in an exorcism of demons that had to play out to its brutal end.
“Stop it! Oh, my God, stop!” Becca.
Her voice hauled his conscious brain out of the fog of war and he rebounded into himself. Struggling to focus, he blinked and scanned the kitchen, looking for her. His gaze finally latched onto hers at the precise moment Beckett’s elbow connected with his face.
BECCA FLINCHED AND gasped at the force of the impact. Nick’s head whipped to the side, sending his whole body careening into the edge of the breakfast bar. The groan that ripped out of him when his side hit the granite had her struggling out of Shane’s grip and lunging toward Nick.
She wrapped her arms around his back and shoulders, hunched over the bar. “Jesus, Nick, are you okay?” Beckett hovered just behind them, his face twisted with anger. She nailed him with a glare and said, “Whatever the hell this was is over. Back off. Now.”
“Fuuck,” Nick groaned under his breath as he forced himself upright. Bleary eyes cut to Beckett’s retreating form and made a circuit around the room before turning to her. He grimaced, and the muscles down his left side spasmed, judging by the way he held himself.
Fierce protectiveness squeezed her heart and bloomed into outright fury. But taking care of Nick was all that mattered right now.
“Come sit down,” she said, tugging an empty stool closer and guiding him onto it. His face. God, his right cheekbone was split wide, blood streaming from the cut and the skin already puffing up the whole way to his eye. “You got a first-aid kit?”
“Under the sink in my bathroom,” he said, his words sounding like they’d been dipped in sandpaper.
“Would someone see if you can find it? His room is the last door at the end of the hall.”
“Sure, kid.” The older man—Nick’s PI friend?—double-timed it out of there.
Shane grabbed the roll of paper towels, wet a few, and laid out a stack of damps and dries on the bar next to her.
“Thanks,” she said, angry as hell at the lot of them but appreciating the gesture.
Nick pushed her hands away from his face. “I’m fine,” he said in a voice that told her he still wasn’t drawing full, deep breaths.
“You’re about a million miles from fine.” She purposely echoed words from earlier in the day. His pale green eyes cut to hers and she arched an eyebrow. “Honesty, remember?” When her point registered in his gaze, she let it go. “Take your shirt off.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to examine you. Your breathing’s shallow and you’re protecting your side.”
His face went a shade paler as he removed the cotton over his head, and she didn’t miss for a moment that he performed most of the action with his right hand, his left still shielding whatever was hurting him.
“Turn,” she said, gesturing for him to swing his knees around so his left side was in front of her. “Can you hold your arm out of the way, please?”
The puppy whined and paced at Becca’s feet.
“Go lay down, baby. Go on,” she said. The dog curled up a short distance away, her eyes locked on them. Becca’s gaze scanned over Nick’s ribs and lats, down to where a mass of scars disappeared under h
is waistband. Her hands gently followed. “Tell me where it hurts.” Man, you could’ve heard a pin drop as quiet as the room had gotten. And, good. ’Cause if one of them uttered a single smart-ass comment, she was likely to lose her shit. Sparing about four seconds, she took a moment to glare at his so-called teammates, all collected around the far end of the bar watching her. Shane and Edward’s expressions were somber and serious, and Beckett’s head was hanging on his shoulders. “Somebody get some ice for Beckett’s knuckles.”
The big guy’s head whipped up, and he studied her as Shane made for the fridge.
Softening her touch, Becca palpitated the edge of the scar tissue. Nick sucked in a breath through his nose, and his muscles flinched and clenched.
“What happened here?”
“Gunshot wounds times two, one penetrating, one not. Fractured pelvis and perforated bowel that healed. Lingering nerve damage,” he said as if by rote. And she guessed it was. “It’ll be okay.”
She nodded, swallowing down the heartache and stream of comments that might embarrass him in front of his guys. You don’t look okay. You can’t even take a deep breath. I’m so sorry you got hurt. And, geez, not just hurt. That litany of injuries would’ve required multiple surgeries, a lot of pain, and a difficult rehabilitation. “Just gonna clean up your face.” At the sink, she scrubbed her hands thoroughly.
Shane found a plastic bag, filled it with ice, and tossed it to Beckett, who caught it in the hand that hadn’t had a head-on collision with a steel box.
The older man returned with a white metal kit in hand. “Found it,” he said.
Drying her hands, she gestured to the bar. Miguel set it down and opened it for her. “Thanks,” she said. “Are you Miguel?” Average height, he was a bit full in the middle, with graying dark hair and warm-toned skin.
“Yeah. I’m sure sorry about this whole situation, Becca,” he said, a kindness about him that drew her in.
If Nick trusted the man, so did she. “Me, too. But I appreciate that you helped Nick today.”
Unexpectedly, Shane stepped up and laid out everything she’d need—gauze, alcohol wipes, and a few packages of Steri-Strips. He opened a package of gloves for her and held it out. “Thanks,” she said, donning the gloves and appreciating that his actions allowed her to keep her hands sterile. Way he was looking between the supplies and Nick’s blood, it was like he wanted to help.
