by Jami Alden
“Just tell me who Nate was working with, and it will finally be over.” She could hear the frustration in Jack’s voice, imagined his big hand gripping the phone till his knuckles turned white.
“We’ve been over this a hundred times, and I told you, it’s not going to do you any good. You’ll never get to him, and you’ll only put yourself in danger.” It was a sore spot with Jack that she’d never given up David Maxwell’s name in all this time. She didn’t know all the details, but she knew Maxwell’s reach went deep, deeper than Jack ever could imagine.
After all Jack had done for her and her sister, she wasn’t about to risk his life by squealing. “You’ve already done so much to help me and Rosario,” she said, feeling her anger at his sneak attack ebbing. “This is my part to keep you safe.”
“You let me worry about myself. This is about nailing this asshole—whoever he is—for good so that you and Rosario can get on with your lives.”
At the mention of her sister, Talia had to ask, “But Rosario’s safe, right? Nothing has happened to her?” Her heart thudded against her ribs. Maxwell could do whatever he wanted to her, but the thought of him getting to Rosario terrified Talia.
“She’s fine. But this isn’t good for her, and it isn’t good for you.”
“As long as Rosie’s safe, that’s all that matters,” Talia said as she ran a frustrated hand through her hair. But she knew Jack was right. Safe or not, Rosario shouldn’t have to live under the shadow of maintaining a secret life, of worrying that she was going to slip up and use her real name. Of knowing that if she did, there were people out there waiting to hurt her.
“And what happens if she slips her cover?” Jack said, feeding into Talia’s fear. “She’s sixteen, not an age known for keeping secrets. I already had to warn her twice to take down her Facebook page.”
Talia’s stomach flipped over. “Please tell me she didn’t post any pictures.”
“I wish I could. Luckily we were able to get them down and erase any trace, but she’s a kid. No matter how closely we watch her, there’s a huge risk she’ll spill her guts to a friend. You know there’s no way we can keep this arrangement long term. All you have to do is give us a name.”
“There’s no way to get this guy, no matter what I tell you.”
Jack bit out a curse. “There’s no way we’ll know unless you tell us!”
“He will do anything to protect himself, no matter whom he hurts. If he thinks his cover’s at risk, he will hurt you—”
“I’ll take that risk.”
“He will hurt your family. He will hurt your friends—they know you work with Danny Taggart and they’ll go after the whole company—”
“They’re professionals. They can take care of themselves.”
“What about me? You have no idea what he’ll do to me—”
“How would it change anything for you? You’re already in hiding now and you’ll stay there until this plays out. I can keep you safe—”
“You made that promise before,” she snapped and fingered the raised scar just beneath her ribcage.
Several seconds of dead silence hung on the other end of the line. It was a cheap shot, and part of her felt ashamed. But there was no way she wanted to back a desperate David Maxwell into a corner. There was no limit to how far he’d go to get even.
“Danny and his whole team will keep you safe,” Jack said, practically spitting out the words. “You trust them with Rosario, and they’ve kept you safe this long.”
Talia didn’t respond.
“Why are you protecting him?” Jack finally shouted. “Do you care about him? Is this some twisted shit where you love him even though he wants you dead?”
“No!” But she had once, and she shuddered in revulsion at her own stupidity. “I’m not protecting him. I’m protecting everyone else.”
“Krista and Sean don’t feel that way. Neither does Cole Williams, who had to take his fiancée into hiding because of her connection to this case. And I bet Rosario doesn’t either, having to be in a strange town, strange school, reminding herself every morning to use the right name because her life depends on it. You keep hiding, he wins. He lives his life and gets away with everything. We can end this right now, Talia. One phone call. One name. And I will make sure you and Rosario go so deep underground, I won’t even be able to find you. When this is done, you and your sister will be free.”
Chapter 15
Between traffic and taking back streets to avoid traffic cameras and the police, the drive to Ibarra’s took nearly an hour. Sean didn’t say much, though Krista caught him looking at her a couple times with a thoughtful expression on his face.
Her brain was too busy stewing on what they’d discovered about her father and what Jack Brooks might reveal—if anything—to dwell on what might be going through Sean’s mind behind those pensive looks.
Sean pulled into Ibarra’s garage. After he disarmed the alarm system, they entered through a door that connected to the house’s small living room. She tossed the files they’d taken from her father’s house on the low coffee table while Sean updated Ibarra on the scant information they’d gleaned from Brooks.
“So far he’s a dead end, but that could change.”
Just like the files, Krista thought morosely as she stared down at the thin pile of manila folders. Other than revealing that her father was involved with people willing to kill her to keep their secrets safe, she didn’t think they’d offer up any great clues.
Krista scanned through Nate’s file one more time as she rubbed her temples. On the surface it was a business transaction, completely clean and for all intents and purposes seemed aboveboard. But her stomach churned as she wondered how much her father knew. Did he have any knowledge, even an inkling, that when he was working with Nate he was representing a cold-blooded killer? Did he even think, for a second, that after Nate was exposed as the Seattle Slasher, he should reveal his dealings with him?
“That’s good at least, but who knows how soon before they put two and two together?” Krista followed his voice into the office where Sean was talking to Ibarra. They were side by side by the open picture window, their massively powerful frames silhouetted against the late-afternoon light. Sean turned, showing her his profile. His hand lifted to his chin, his fingers brushing back and forth against the grain of his goatee.
For a split second Krista had a memory of those long, strong fingers brushing over her skin, delving between her legs, sinking deep…
As though he felt her stare, his eyes flicked to her face. After the day they’d had, this was so not the time to let her hormones take over.
Again.
“What’s up?” she said, turning her attention to Ibarra. Handsome as he was, for whatever reason she didn’t lose herself in daydreams of tying him to his bed every time she looked at him. She kept her eyes pinned on Ibarra’s face to keep herself from getting distracted by Sean.
“A little good news,” Sean interjected. “The cops showed up at your father’s house because the neighbor’s housekeeper called it in.”
“Esmerelda,” Krista gave herself a mental asskicking. It was a measure of how fried she really was that she didn’t remember the Johnsons’ hypervigilant housekeeper. “She busted me both times I tried to sneak out after curfew.”
“Only twice?” Sean cocked a dark eyebrow and gave her a look like she was the biggest nerd on the planet.
Krista shrugged. “I got busted both times and cut my losses. Why is that good news?”
“She wasn’t able to identify either of us.”
Krista felt a little tension leave her shoulders. “Hopefully our luck will hold, because I’m afraid our next move is going to be breaking into my father’s office.”
“You think he has the files there?” Sean said. “I thought you said he keeps anything sensitive at the house. Why would he change that?”
“I don’t know!” Krista said, exasperated. “Maybe he’s changed up how he does things. God knows I’ve discovered thing
s I never expected about my father today.”
Sean and Ibarra exchanged a look.
“I’m going to make myself a sandwich,” Ibarra said, giving Krista a sympathetic pat on the arm as he passed her on the way to the door.
She closed her eyes against the sting of tears. But God, she was so tired, so wrung out by everything. “I know it’s probably just another dead end, but I don’t know what else to do—”
Her voice caught in her throat as strong hands slid over her shoulders, thumbs kneading at the tension as hot tingles shot down her spine. “Hey, why don’t we take a breather, relax and give ourselves a minute to think on our next move?” Sean said, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath ruffling her hair.
Before she could open her mouth to protest, he continued. “You’ve had a hell of a day, finding out that shit about your dad and standing up to a bad-ass like Jack Brooks.”
Despite herself, Krista felt a smile pulling at her lips. “He wasn’t that bad.”
Sean gave her shoulders a firmer squeeze. “I have a bruise on my back that proves you wrong. I’ve never run from a fight in my life, but I even I have to admit the dude’s intimidating. But you stood up to him like you were channeling Wonder Woman.”
She tipped her head back to look at him. “Amazing how desperation can motivate you.”
A smile quirked his full lips. “Whatever it was, I was impressed. That’s some spine you have.”
“Thanks,” she murmured, unable to take her eyes off that full mouth, more sensual now that it was framed by the whiskers of his goatee. Dark and thick, she wondered how they would feel brushing against her skin.
And then she didn’t have to wonder, because Sean was turning her in his arms and bringing his mouth down on hers. He whispered something at the last second that sounded like “Idiot.” Probably aimed at himself, but it applied to both of them. That’s what this was. Idiocy, craziness. Yet as his tongue stroked hers and the brush of his whiskers against her cheek sent a thrill straight to her core, nothing had ever felt more right.
The sat phone shrieked, and Sean gave a frustrated groan as he reluctantly untangled his tongue from hers. As though he couldn’t help himself, he pressed one last, lingering kiss on her cheek before he reached for the phone.
Sean studied the display, his face grim. “It’s not a number I recognize.”
The heat from Sean’s kiss was gone in an instant. The only person besides Ibarra who had the number was Jack Brooks.
Unless…Don’t panic. Even if someone else had gotten hold of the number, the phone was untraceable. And if they’d somehow made the connection to Ibarra, well, Krista had all the faith that he could take care of himself.
Still, her stomach flipped over as Sean pressed the ANSWER button and held it to his ear. “Yes.” His shoulders relaxed a little. “Hold on, let me put it on speaker.”
Sean placed the phone on the desk and pressed a button. “Are you there?”
“Yes.” Jack’s deep, familiar voice filled the office. “And I have Talia Vega on the line.”
Chapter 16
Wait, that’s not possible,” Krista said, snapping straight and stepping back from the desk as she reeled from the bombshell Talia had just dropped. “David Maxwell?” Krista felt like she’d taken a blow to the stomach. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“Honestly, after having my diaphragm perforated and my liver almost cut in half, I don’t have much of a sense of humor left,” Talia’s voice crackled over the line.
“I told you this was stupid, Jack,” Talia said. “No one will ever believe that it’s him.”
“Talia,” Krista said, trying to keep her tone less combative. “I know you’ve been through a lot and I’m sorry if I don’t sound sympathetic, but it’s just hard for me to believe that a member of one of the city’s wealthiest and influential families could be a part of this.” She tried to make sense of it. Thanks to her father’s dealings, she’d known Maxwell since she was a teenager.
His wife, Margaret Grayson-Maxwell, came from one of Seattle’s most prominent families, which had made their fortune in manufacturing but had since branched out into everything from financial services to electronics. The family had been involved in local and state politics for decades, and now Margaret was trying to make her mark in a run for the state senate, funded by the millions David had made through his own business ventures.
Somehow she just couldn’t picture the roughly handsome David Maxwell, with his shrewd blue eyes, being involved in something like this.
“Maxwell is known as a philanthropist and his wife is running for state senate, for God’s sake,” Krista said.
“Yeah, well the money for all that has to come from somewhere, and I’m telling you, most of David Maxwell’s is dirty.”
Hours later, Krista was still reeling from Talia’s revelation that David Maxwell was behind everything that had happened to Sean. The biggest issue was that Talia had no evidence to back up her claims about Maxwell. Talia knew only two things with total certainty. First, that she had been David Maxwell’s mistress for four years, up until the day she was kidnapped and attacked by Nate Brewster.
Second, that David Maxwell had pulled strings in social services to get Talia custody of her younger sister, who had been in foster care up to that point, and had given Talia a big fat promotion and a raise at Club One in exchange for one simple thing: come forward as a witness and testify in a court of law that Sean Flynn had been stalking Evangeline Gordon in the weeks before she was murdered and that she’d seen Evangeline leave with Sean the night of her death, not entirely voluntarily.
But impossible as it all seemed, Brooks’s colleagues back at Gemini Securities headquarters had been able to connect Maxwell through banking transactions to the maze of shell corporations they’d uncovered.
“He must have covered up Nate’s murder of Evangeline Gordon because he knew it could be tied back to him,” Krista said with a shiver. “But it still doesn’t explain how he got started working with Nate in the first place.” As far as they could tell, Maxwell’s dealings with Nate had predated Maxwell’s relationship with Talia by at least a few years. Both Ibarra and Jack’s colleagues at Gemini Securities were digging for links but hadn’t been able to uncover anything.
Outlandish as it sounded, it looked like Talia was telling the truth. She might not have been privy to all the details, but she alone could provide the missing link to get them pointed in the right direction.
Which had led them here, in the industrial section of Seattle, breaking into a warehouse adjacent to a shipping lot owned and operated by Maxwell’s transportation company, where they hoped to find more information to back up Talia’s claims.
“Okay, what you want to do now is key in this combination.” Krista could hear Ibarra through her earpiece as he talked Sean through resetting the building’s alarm system.
She looked over her shoulder at every little creak and scuffle that rang through the darkness, listening for any sign that the handful of security guards who were monitoring the shipping lot were alerted to their presence.
Talia had claimed that the transportation and shipping company was one of Maxwell’s last legitimate businesses, and while it brought in hefty revenues, it hadn’t been nearly enough to pull Margaret out of debt and build their bank accounts back to the current levels.
For that, David had had to get creative, Talia claimed. And even though the shipping business itself was legit, many of the activities and transactions that went down in the shipping yard, she suspected, weren’t.
Despite what they’d uncovered, for Krista it felt like a gigantic leap of faith to take the word of a questionable witness and use that as her excuse to break into private property.
Again.
And this time it wasn’t owned by Jack Brooks who would call it good after a few punches. Unlike her father’s house, she couldn’t rationalize this away with the excuse of if she used a key, it wasn’t really illegal.
&
nbsp; This time they were breaking into a place owned by one of the wealthiest, most influential men in the Pacific Northwest. A man who would ruin her life and her career if they didn’t find what they needed to nail him to the wall.
Oh, who are you kidding. After everything you’ve gotten yourself into in the past three days, you’ll barely get a chance to kiss your career good-bye as it swirls down the toilet.
“I can’t believe it,” Sean said as he keyed in the combination Ibarra gave them. “It’s been fifteen minutes and you haven’t whined once about committing another felony.”
“I’m too busy calculating how many years I’ll be doing when all this is over,” she snapped.
There was a high-pitched beep and a click. “Door alarm should be disarmed,” Ibarra, who was parked near the lot entrance to keep watch, spoke to them through the earpieces both she and Sean wore. Talia had briefed them on the security systems installed at the warehouse in an earlier phone call.
“He always thought I was stupid,” Talia had said, bitterness evident in her tone. “But I watched everything. Unless he’s changed the codes, you should be able to get in.”
Ibarra assured them that even if that was the case, he would have no problem working around the security system. Still, no plan was foolproof, and Krista held her breath as Sean turned the handle, bracing herself for the shriek of an alarm.
The door swung open.
“Looks like the codes Talia gave us are still good. Stay close to the front of the building,” Ibarra’s disembodied voice commanded. “You’ve still got the internal motion sensors to contend with.”
Sean swept the interior of the warehouse with the beam of his flashlight. Though it was completely dark, from what Krista could see, the warehouse was exactly as Talia had described. What looked like a beaten-down abandoned warehouse on the outside was a fully finished, luxuriously furnished space.
“Go to the east wall and walk about ten paces,” Ibarra’s disembodied voice commanded.
“Stay right with me,” Sean said. In the darkness, his gloved hand sought hers and he placed it on his shoulder. Only inches separated them as Sean moved carefully along the wall. Though the warehouse was cavernous, according to Talia the downstairs had been partitioned to make a sitting area combined with a kitchen and a private office.
