Harlequin Intrigue June 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: To Honor and To ProtectCorneredUntraceable

by Debra

  The whole feeling-better thing gave way to waves of nausea. “Why do you want me?”

  “I’m going to have to insist you all disarm...unless you want to hear her scream.”

  Cam held up his hands. “Fine. You win this round.”

  “What are you doing?” The shock came through in Shane’s voice.

  She wondered the same thing. There were three of them. Even if reinforcements lingered out on the property somewhere, these guys had the advantage.

  Cam glanced at Shane. “I won’t let him hurt her. We’re fine without them.”

  “That’s sweet.” Ray waved his weapon. “All the guns. Now.”

  She heard a series of clicks and thuds as they took off the firepower. Holt and Cam wore three guns each. Shane unpacked for what felt like forever. By the time they were done, the area in front of them was littered with weapons.

  “Come here.” Ray pointed at her.

  She didn’t move, but Cam clamped a hand over her arm anyway. “She stays with me.”

  “I’m afraid not.” Ray used the side of his foot to move the guns. Shifted them out of the direct reach of the Corcoran men. “You see, I have a need for her.”

  Her stomach flopped. “What does that mean?”

  “You’re useful.” He reached for her. “Be grateful.”

  Everything happened so fast after that. She shrank back from his touch at the same time Shane kicked Ray in the hand. Bodies moved and she tried to keep track of Ray’s gun, but she lost sight when Holt and Shane moved in.

  She heard a yell akin to a battle cry. She wanted to close her eyes and hide, but she watched. Saw Cam let his knife fly and Ray squealed when it sliced through his shooting hand. The gun dropped and Shane jumped on it as Holt tackled Ray to the floor.

  When the chaos calmed, Holt had Ray pinned, but he didn’t notice. He was too busy rolling to his side as he cradled his hand.

  Then Cam’s face appeared in front of her. “Are you okay?”

  She tried to draw enough air into her lungs to breathe. “That was the plan?”

  Cam shot her a smile. “He only asked for the guns.”

  “And we wanted him alive.” Holt stood and pulled Ray up beside him.

  He was cursing and trying to roll into a ball. “You will all pay.”

  He sounded wild and out of control. His words slurred and the blood continued to flow. The guy needed medical help and a prison cell. She didn’t think the order mattered.

  While Holt and Shane dragged him out, she tried to reboot her brain. She felt raw and exposed and not prepared to do anything but slide to the floor in a heap.

  Cam’s arms came around her. “It’s going to be okay.”

  She said the first thing that came into her mind. “I want to see Sandy.”

  Cam’s shoulders stiffened, but he placed a gentle kiss in her hair. “Me, too.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Two hours later Ray was in the hospital with Holt by his side. He hadn’t started talking, but it was only a matter of time. Finding the trucks took a little longer. Kreider or Ray or whoever had played that one smart, which ticked Cam off. Didn’t try to remove the trucks from the island. Just hid them and waited.

  No doubt about it, someone with smarts led this drug ring. Cam still didn’t believe it was Kreider.

  Sandy let the refrigerator door close and turned around to the counter with a water in each hand. He handed one to Julia and Cam took the other.

  “Kreider’s a drug dealer?” Sandy shook his head as he twisted off the cap to his bottle.

  “Was.” Julia shivered. “He’s not anything now.”

  Cam slipped his hand over her leg and gave her knee a squeeze. She’d been thrown around and injured, so he almost hated to touch her. Except for the other part of him that was desperate to touch her.

  Sandy continued as if she never spoke. “Either way, it doesn’t really make sense.”

  Cam didn’t think so, either. He sat on the bar stool in Sandy’s kitchen and tried to make the pieces fit together, but they wouldn’t. Nothing in Kreider’s demeanor suggested he’d worked with Ray in the drug trade. Kreider had acted as if he thought the other man was a legitimate law-enforcement officer.

  There was no evidence in Kreider’s finances or history to support his being some drug kingpin. Even though he wasn’t the greatest police chief, everyone agreed he worked long hours. He liked to hang out in his uniform and visit with people. That hardly left a lot of time to run up to the shipyard and oversee production.

  And then there was the comment about the ownership of the shipyard now. Connor and Joel were working on that pile of shell companies and business names right now, but Cam thought he could find the answer in a much easier way. “Who purchased the shipyard from you?”

  Sandy slowly lowered the water bottle. “Excuse me?”

  “Julia told me a company bought it and then ran it into the ground.” If they knew who, maybe they could trace the whole thing back to Kreider and put it to bed.

  Until then, as far as Cam was concerned, the case was not over. Many of the people who could explain were dead. Kreider was supposed to be the boss, but no matter how many times Cam turned that over in his head he couldn’t make sense of it.

  Julia finished off the bottle and clunked the plastic container against the counter. “It was a Canadian outfit. I remember that much from my father’s complaining.”

  Cam didn’t want to go down that road and open up those memories again. She’d already made it clear she hadn’t trusted her dad. Anything that raised his name or even for an instant made her tie him to her father was a no-go for Cam.

  “Do you remember the name?” he asked Sandy.

  “It doesn’t matter, because it was sold again.” Sandy went back to the refrigerator. This time he pulled out a plate of food with foil over the top. “Hungry?”

  The whole scene struck Cam as surreal. Julia was out of it, almost comatose. She’d been through threats and pain and shootings and fires. She needed to recuperate for more than a few hours to be back on track.

  And Sandy didn’t seem to care about any of it. A civic leader who didn’t have a single reaction to the idea of drug runners taking over the business he had once nurtured and built. Not when he was hungry.

  The ticking at the back of Cam’s neck kicked up again. Nothing had felt right about this assignment since he walked onto the island. The supposed resolution of the case being the biggest question mark for him.

  “I need to head over to the clinic.” The words came out before Cam could even think them through.

  She stopped in the middle of reaching over to steal his water bottle. “Why?”

  “Ray Miner is awake and talking.” In truth he was awake and staring at the ceiling. He insisted he was the boss and it was his operation now that Kreider was gone. He implicated the dead man and then clammed up.

  It was too convenient. Though it didn’t make much sense to Cam that a man with Ray’s ego would take part of the fall for anyone else. It was possible his hubris drove him to claim more responsibility than he had. His personality might just not let him be seen as a simple employee. Either way, he was going to prison, which was a good thing for everyone.

  “That’s good, right?” Julia shook her head as the memories played across her face. “That guy should not be out among people.”

  Cam wanted to stay and comfort her. Guilt smacked into him at the thought of opening this door with her one more time after she’d been so clear and so broken when he broached it before.

  But Cam kept playing the role. If Ray really was the boss, no harm could come from this. But if he wasn’t, this might draw the real boss out. “He’s not happy with how things ended for him. Apparently he thought he should be the boss, and that bitterness should work for us.”

  Cam stared at Sandy until he finally piped up with a response. “Good.”

  “I’ll go with you.” Julia slid off the bar stool.

  “You need to stay here
and get some rest.” He was deadly serious about this. There wouldn’t be an argument or a battle. He was winning this round. If Sandy made a move on Ray, she should be here, out of the fray. “She injured her ankle.”

  Sandy frowned. “What?”

  “It’s fine.”

  Before she could downplay it, he made it clear she was not okay. “You should stay off it. I’ll be gone for a few hours, and then we can figure out what’s happening with the ferries and return to Seattle.”

  The remaining light left her eyes. “Cam, I’m not ready to talk about that yet.”

  He wasn’t, either. The idea of leaving her, of walking away and letting some other man get to know her, made Cam want to rip Sandy’s expensive house down stone by stone.

  “I was thinking I could use a break and some time in Seattle. Thought you might have some ideas on how I could spend that time.” Though if his hunch was right she was never going to want to see him again.

  He pushed that thought away and concentrated on getting through the next hour and the assignment he’d given himself. He kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll step out and be back.”

  “Let us know what’s happening,” Sandy said in his usual voice.

  That wasn’t going to happen, but it was time to plant as many seeds as possible. “Do I need to know anything for the alarm system to get back in?”

  The older man didn’t say anything. Didn’t offer up a number or a detailed account of how to get around the system. Enough time passed that Julia noticed. She joined Cam in looking at Sandy while the answer came to him.

  Julia glared at him. “Sandy?”

  “I don’t like giving it away,” he said.

  This guy had an obsession and Cam thought he knew why. “Understandable, but I don’t like sleeping on the porch.”

  Sandy took a piece of paper out of one of the drawers and wrote a number on it. “Here.”

  Cam wasn’t convinced whatever was written on that paper would do anything. But for Julia he would try. Try and hope he was wrong so they could avoid talking about this topic ever again.

  * * *

  A SHORT TIME later Cam pulled into the clinic’s parking lot and went inside. There were people lined up against all the walls. The coughing echoed through the space until Cam was sure he’d come back out of the building with a disease.

  He flashed his ID downstairs and then again on the assigned floor to get by the guards Connor had set up. After calling, Holt met him in the hall.

  They walked side by side, but Holt started talking. “I thought you’d be in bed.”

  “I’m not tired. Too wound up.” The exhaustion would hit him but it hadn’t yet.

  Holt chuckled. “I didn’t mean sleeping.”

  Since the guy had handed him a box of condoms this last time, Cam knew Holt was on top of this subject. But Cam wasn’t in the mood to talk about anything personal. “Is he talking?”

  Holt didn’t pretend not to understand. “No.”

  “I need him to.”

  “Yeah, well.” Holt shrugged. “We all want that.”

  Looked as if he needed to spell this out a bit more. He was trying to remain vague in case they got questions. He didn’t want trouble to roll over to Holt. “No, I need people to think he’s talking. Naming names.”

  “Why?”

  Damn, he was going to insist on details. That was probably fair, since for this to work Cam needed the assistance of the guards and some of the staff. “You know why.”

  Holt’s eyes narrowed but a spark of understanding showed in his eyes. “You sure.”

  “I think so.” The longer Cam thought about it the more clear the idea of Sandy being in the middle of this mess became.

  Holt let out a low whistle. “This is a dangerous game for you.”

  Cam didn’t care about the physical danger, but he knew that wasn’t what Holt was talking about. He referred to how this could rip him and Julia apart. They’d had such a fragile relationship so far. The sex was great, but they both tiptoed around more and threw up trust concerns now and then.

  Hell, Cam didn’t know what he wanted with her or even what he could handle. He just knew that the idea of not seeing her after being in this intense relationship with her would crush something inside him. In a short time she had wrapped her life around his and he didn’t know how to break them apart again...or if he even wanted to.

  If he removed her, took her face and that body out of the equation, forgot all about her strength and the comfort in being with her and boiled her down to this person he was not connected to, the lingering question about Sandy would remain.

  That meant he couldn’t let this drop. Cam knew he had to dig and poke and risk her wrath. “But if I’m right about—”

  Holt was already shaking his head. “You still lose because Julia is going to be furious. I was there when we delivered you guys to Sandy’s house a short time ago. They have a connection.” Cam had seen that, too. A pseudo father-daughter bond.

  A genuineness of affection behind the gruff exterior. Still, Cam said, “Something is not right.”

  “Could you be jealous?” Holt said the words carefully, hesitating over each one.

  The delivery didn’t stop the rush of angry heat that breezed through Cam. “Julia isn’t involved with the guy.”

  “I meant emotionally.”

  “That doesn’t really sound like something I’d know about.” But now he did. He got the idea of a connection. He’d experienced the sensation of having someone else’s happiness mean more than anything—his needs, the job and everything else.

  “You’re not you when you’re with her.”

  Cam knew exactly what his friend meant and dodged the comment. “It’s only been a few days.”

  “It’s about intensity, not actual time together.”

  “I know.” But the words sounded weird coming from Holt. He was this big bruiser of a guy who had never had a serious girlfriend so long as Cam had known him. And here he was, talking about romance in a way that sounded like poetry.

  Holt exhaled. “She’s going to hate you.”

  “I know that, too.” That was the part that kept stopping him even though he knew it was selfish. She needed him to do that right thing even when doing the wrong thing was too easy.

  “Is this worth losing her? I can play the bad guy. If I’m wrong it won’t matter.” Leave it to Holt to offer.

  But that was never going to work.

  “If I can’t live with myself, we don’t have a future anyway.” That was the closest Cam could get to admitting she might mean something. That if they made it through the fallout with Sandy, she might.

  Holt made a hissing sound between his teeth. “You’re stuck.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Julia sat curled up on the edge of the sofa in Sandy’s impressive family room. The bed called to her, but she wanted to stay up until Cam got back. Something about the idea of snuggling under the covers with him sounded so good. After all they’d endured and survived, she wanted to touch him and kiss him and feel his heat. But he had to get back here first.

  Sandy had gone into his home office over an hour ago. She hadn’t heard a word since. She thought he’d come out and talk to her, maybe take her mind off everything. Even with Ray caught and Kreider gone, the path of destruction cut through Calapan was hard to ignore. Shattered lives and so many questions.

  She got up and walked into the kitchen, thinking a second snack wouldn’t be totally out of line. On the way in, the alarm panel in the dining room caught her attention. The red light beamed at her. If she was going to stay here a few days—and that was the plan in light of the questions she needed to answer—she needed to be able to come and go. That meant knowing the security codes. The one she had didn’t work, which meant she didn’t have access.

  With her mind in a whirl she knew the chances of her forgetting were pretty high. She decided to fix the problem now before she was standing ou
t there one day in a rainstorm.

  She dumped off the coffee mug and empty water bottle and made her way to the front door. She just wanted to double-check. The alarm pad was all lit up, but the only light that flashed was red. No green light here either, which made sense in light of a drug ring being run right under their noses.

  Her feet padded against the hardwood as she went back to Sandy’s office. She hated to disturb him, although Cam had raised a good question about Sandy not actually having any work right now.

  Still, she was respectful. She held the knob in one hand as she knocked with the other. No one answered. Since she’d seen him go in an hour ago and since there was not a door in and out of there other than the main one into the hall, he had to be in there.

  She looked at the knob and knocked again. She’d never burst into this room. She viewed this as his private space and didn’t violate that sanctuary.

  But something pulled hard at her tonight. She wanted to peek in and see what he did when he was alone and when he worked.

  Inhaling a deep breath, she twisted the knob and pushed the door open. She saw the empty chair and the walls lined with bookshelves. But no Sandy. She tried to remember if she’d dozed off and maybe missed him. She doubted it.

  She went to the house intercom system and called for him. Nothing there, either.

  As she stood there she felt the walls close in. It was an odd sensation and not one based in reality, but she knew the red light meant no way out. She’d have to break a window or risk the alarm. The latter wouldn’t be too bad except that the new system actually didn’t let you accidentally set off the alarm. If the system was on and you didn’t have the code, you were trapped in that room.

  That suddenly seemed like a terrible idea. So did the thoughts going through her mind about Sandy’s desk. It was right there. She could look through some of the paperwork, if only to let Cam know his initial suspicions were truly wrong.

  And she might be able to clear up some of those questions about the shipyard’s ownership. She couldn’t believe Sandy didn’t know. He was a man who knew everything down to the penny. But then, nothing had been normal about the past few days. They all wanted this episode over, except her, who wanted the part with Cam to linger.