Justice Hunter

by Jennifer Morey

  Then he opened the back door and got in, tugging her after him. The driver pressed the gas and raced away with Rachel’s feet still partially out the door.

  Lucas fired his gun through the broken window as they raced away.

  When the gunfire ended, Rachel saw the driver rise up in his seat and felt the sedan steady. Lucas looked down. She lay flat on her back, his knee between her thighs, his other on the floor.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  Oh, God, so sexy. His voice, his face, the urgency in his eyes. How could she get hot over him now?

  “No.”

  Relieved, he moved off her. She sat up, pushing her skirt down as Lucas sat beside her. When her feet were inside, the driver maneuvered a turn to pull the car door shut.

  “Okay, that was exciting.” She tried for humor but it fell a little flat.

  “Why is someone trying to kill you, Rachel?” Lucas asked.

  “He thinks I know something,” she said. “Just like you do.”

  “You know enough. Tell me everything. Start with the night you had sex with Jared in the conference room. Don’t leave any detail out.”

  Rachel looked at the driver. Wind whipped through the jagged front window even though they were no longer going very fast.

  “He’s cleared. Highest security level.” Lucas nodded up at the driver, looking at him in the rearview mirror. “Isn’t that right, Bernie?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve worked for your father for twenty years. He’s a good man.”

  He may say that if he had to.

  “Bernie is a loyal member of Joseph’s closest staff,” Lucas said.

  As though directed, Bernie rolled up the privacy glass, and only the wind coming through the broken back window disturbed them now.

  “Like I said...loyal.”

  Rachel didn’t mistake his pointed look.

  “After the conference room. What happened?”

  Rachel turned to watch the landscape go by. She didn’t feel safe revealing this to anyone, her deep, dark secret.

  But the time to make things right had come. And one thing Lucas had said, she clung to. She had him now.

  “I told you. I saw Luella in Jared’s office.” She met Lucas’s eager face, his intense eyes. “I didn’t know she was Jared’s wife. I didn’t know her.”

  “And then what? Keep going.”

  “I confronted Jared a few days later. He told me not to tell anyone about us. That made me mad, so I told him what I heard about the fraud. Then he showed me some files that he said were on my computer. They were evidence of a fraudulent insurance policy.”

  “He blackmailed you?”

  “His last parting words were, Think twice before interfering.”

  “Interfering in what?”

  “In his personal affairs, in Luella’s murder. He thought I knew about his fake policies.”

  “You did know.”

  Rachel turned her back, guilt pressing her down. “No. I didn’t. He said he had my computer and everything on it. I worked for him. I handled a lot of his transactions. It’s possible I sent some things I shouldn’t have.” She hadn’t paid much attention to what she sent. The business dealings of insurance policies were boring. If he’d actually had her send fraudulent documents, she didn’t know for certain. She couldn’t imagine he would risk involving her, but what if he had?

  “Did Jared plant the files on your computer?”

  “I can’t prove it.”

  “I can.”

  “Jared isn’t the one who shot at us.” He had to be made aware of that.

  “He may as well be the one. He could pay someone to do that, and to threaten you, but that doesn’t make him innocent. I can protect you. You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

  Rachel leaned her head back without moving her eyes from Lucas. He made her feel so safe...and warm...and...hot and tingly. Was she a stupid woman to allow this sweet softening?

  He noticed, his manly, fiery gaze taking her face in, connecting with and heating the energy between them.

  “You should have told someone.” He said it as though doing so would put a wall up to keep him from going to her, taking her into his arms and kissing her.

  Every time the glow of love ignited, reality stopped it. He would never let himself be with her that way, especially not now. Closing her eyes, she turned toward the window. “You’ll get no argument from me on that.”

  Chapter 9

  Lucas tried not to be angry with Rachel. She had done what she’d done out of fear and blackmail. Now someone tried to kill her, and him, too. The threats four years ago were no longer just threats, and Lucas had to be the reason why. He’d come with serious backing to solve his sister’s case. The killer knew what he was up against.

  The security camera on the northwest corner of the HealthFirst building came into the crosshairs of his rifle. He sat in the back of a windowless van, a small square cut out of the side for this very purpose. Rachel sat against the metal wall beside him. She’d been quiet since her confession. He felt her distrust. He doubted she’d trusted anyone since discovering Jared’s treachery.

  He pulled the trigger, and a quiet shot took out the security camera. Setting the rifle down, he opened the back door. Rachel stepped out behind him and he led her along the edge of the parking lot, following a path only the corner camera could see—if it worked. At a side entrance, he took out a badge he’d stolen the day he’d been here.

  “Where did you get that?” Rachel whispered.

  “A cook from the cafeteria dropped it as he was getting into his car. I planned on returning it.”

  “Unless an opportunity arose?” Rachel asked with a note of cynicism.

  “Of course.” The door unlocked and he pushed it open.

  She entered first. At nearly ten, the lights had been dimmed, and no one walked the hall.

  Lucas stopped at the entrance to the stairwell. He led Rachel up to the sixth floor and carefully peered into the hall. Brighter lights illuminated the reception area of the executive offices. Jared’s office was dark.

  Stepping out of the stairwell, Lucas made sure the door closed silently. Then he and Rachel walked toward the offices. Hearing someone in Eldon’s office, Lucas stopped. A janitor emerged, turning off the light.

  Rachel gripped Lucas’s shirt and tugged him back into a cubicle.

  The janitor pushed a wheeled cart by, and Lucas leaned forward to stay out of sight, pressing into Rachel, who’d backed up as far as she could against the desk. The janitor passed, and Lucas looked down at Rachel’s upturned face.

  Her eyes flashed in the dim light, alive with awareness. Now wasn’t an appropriate time to be thinking about kissing her.

  The ding of the elevator signified the janitor would take it to another floor. Lucas moved back from Rachel, shaking off the heat to focus on the task at hand.

  Taking her hand, he led her to Jared’s office. The door was locked. He took a pick and tension wrench from the small tool pouch clipped to his belt. Inserting the wrench into the keyhole, he applied pressure in the clockwise direction. Feeling the cylinder stop firmly, he turned the wrench the other direction. The cylinder turned and stopped, but felt less firm. Next, he inserted the pick and felt the pins, lifting each to set them in position. When he set the last pin, he turned the wrench, and the door unlocked.

  “You’re frighteningly good at that,” Rachel said as they entered.

  “I locked myself out of my apartment during college so much that I had to learn.” He shut Jared’s office door and closed the blinds on the window facing the reception area.

  “Was it cloak-and-dagger fascination that led you to want to join the navy?”

  He handed her desk keys that Jared foolishly left in his center office draw
er. “No. I liked blowing things up as a kid.”

  She took the keys and knelt before the two file drawers in the desk. Lucas sat on the office chair next to her and went to work on the computer.

  “Detective work came later,” he said.

  “Narcotics.”

  “And then SWAT. The explosives got the best of me.” He grinned and saw her smile back before bending over the files.

  “Will you stay at Dark Alley after you solve your sister’s murder?”

  He liked how confident she sounded. When he solved it, not if. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. I think maybe I’ll take a break for a while. Figure out what I really want to do with the rest of my life.”

  “You don’t want to be a cop? A detective?”

  “I wanted to be a navy SEAL.” That still made him bitter.

  “You can’t blame that woman the rest of your life. You said it yourself. You both made a decision. She didn’t make the decision for you to quit.”

  “No, but the truth would have helped me make a wiser one. She tricked me into marrying her.”

  “Does that make you...?” She didn’t want to choose the wrong word. “Skeptical with other women?”

  “Skeptical?” He took out a USB device from his tool pouch. “Wiser.”

  “Distrustful,” she said.

  “Careful,” he countered.

  “Okay, careful. But you must realize that not all women are liars.”

  He inserted the drive and started searching for files, not liking the way her comment made him compare her to his ex. Rachel exuded a sense of integrity, whereas his ex had just been fun to be with. He hadn’t looked beyond his ex’s looks and the good sex they had. Rachel had more substance. But she’d also lied.

  Or withheld the truth.

  He’d lied to her, though, so how could he hold that against her? He began copying file folders. As he waited for the save to complete, he noticed Rachel had gone still. She held a notebook and stared at the contents.

  “What is it?”

  “This name... I’ve seen it before.”

  Lucas leaned over to read the name. Angie Johnson had been written down, along with a date and time. Lucas faced the computer again and opened Jared’s calendar. Going back several months, he found the date and saw the time had been blocked for a meeting with Angie Johnson. She must have come to see him. The letter by itself didn’t incriminate, but details of her account might. And whatever the topic of their meeting had been.

  “Who is she?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I just remember the name, that’s all. I think it was on some documents Jared asked me to send for him.”

  So Jared hadn’t been lying when he’d threatened her. He’d deliberately routed the fraudulent files through her, making it appear she had knowledge of the transactions. What Lucas wanted to know was how Jared expected Rachel to get back together with him after threatening her. Maybe he thought he could trust her. She hadn’t gone to the police in four years, after all.

  He searched the email account, but any record older than three months had been deleted. He started saving the sent folder when a light came on outside the office.

  Lucas removed the USB drive and shut down the computer.

  Rachel stuffed the folder back into the drawer and stood with him. He took her hand and brought her to the wall beside the front window. Peering through a crack in the blinds, he saw a security guard walking in the reception area. And he headed right for them.

  Lucas looked around the office and saw a small red dot blinking. Motion detectors. Silent. Damn. He hadn’t had time to prepare for that level of security, not that it would have mattered. He’d have come here anyway.

  He searched for a hiding place. Jared’s office was open and didn’t offer much. He couldn’t shoot his way out of here, not against an innocent security guard.

  The man reached the office door. Lucas and Rachel ducked out of the way of the window as he peered inside, or tried to. Then he used keys to unlock the door, only to discover it already unlocked. The guard became instantly alert, going for his radio and gun at the same time. While he took the safety off his pistol, he spoke into the radio.

  “Code 22 in Jared’s office,” he said, his voice muffled but audible in the quiet building.

  Code 22 must have been the security staff’s communication for a break-in.

  The officer pushed the door open.

  Rachel gripped the back of Lucas’s shirt, preventing him from making his move right then. The guard saw him and began to turn the gun. Lucas swung his arm, connecting his forearm with the other man’s wrist hard enough to knock the gun free. Then he grabbed the man and hauled him into the office, sending him falling toward the desk.

  Rachel ran out of the office ahead of him, but the ding of the elevator stopped her. Lucas took her hand again and ran faster to the stairwell. They reached it as the elevator doors slid open.

  “You! Stop!” one of the guards shouted.

  There were four of them. One of them saw their coworker getting up from the floor, having hit his head on something when he fell. “I’m okay, go! Go! Go! Go!”

  Lucas pushed Rachel ahead of him on the stairs and raced down after her. Footfalls and squeaking shoes and shouts chased them down to the fifth floor. He let her fly down another floor before grabbing her arm and taking her through the door. He ran through a maze of cubicles. A late worker stood up from his lonely, poorly lit desk area.

  “There they are!” a guard shouted from behind.

  The office worker cringed back into his cubicle as they raced past, mouth slack in shock and eyes wide.

  Lucas veered to the left and then right through the cubicles, coming back out to the main hall toward the stairs. Careful to avoid the late worker, he crossed to more cubicles, crouching so his height wouldn’t expose their location. At the wall encompassing the elevator shaft, he slowed and crept along. Not hearing the guards, he figured they were in stealth mode, too.

  Bobbing his head out into the hall, he spotted the guards with their guns drawn, making a slow approach, one of them signaling for two of them to go the direction Lucas and Rachel had just gone. He leaned back against the wall and glanced at Rachel.

  “We have to surrender.”

  “What? No!”

  “It’ll be all right. I can get us out of this.”

  “We broke into this building. We’ll be arrested.”

  “But not charged. Come on.” He took her hand.

  She resisted. “Lucas, no. I can’t. Not with my record.”

  Her intense fear stopped him. Only then did he realize how much her past shaped her future, why she went to college, why she sought professional men.

  “Trust me,” he told her.

  Just then, a guard appeared from around the corner of a cubicle. “Don’t move! Don’t move! Hands in the air!”

  Lucas turned, raising his hands.

  Rachel did the same.

  * * *

  Rachel fumed over how easily Lucas had given up. She’d gone with him willingly to Jared’s company, so she couldn’t blame him for her part in the break-in, but how could he be so blithe about this? She waited in a windowless room, sick with the repeated echo of the police officer reading her rights. The handcuffs. The ride in the police car. She’d tried so hard to change the course of her life, to avoid ever being in this situation again. Now here she was, right where she’d striven not to be.

  The door opened and an officer entered, holding a file folder.

  “Ms. Delany.” The man stepped to the chair across from her and sat. “I’m Detective Suarez. I’m here to ask you a few questions about what happened tonight.”

  He’d waste his time if he thought she’d talk.

  “You’ve got quite a history.”
He put the folder down and opened it, making a show of checking the contents. But surely he must have already read it. “Haven’t changed your ways, it would appear. All those times in jail didn’t change you?”

  Rachel slapped her hand down on the table. “I have changed my ways. And I was arrested twice as a teenager.”

  “And you were arrested now, as an adult.” He looked up from the file. “Why don’t we talk about that.”

  Rachel kept quiet.

  “What were you doing in the HealthFirst building?”

  “I don’t have to answer any of these questions.”

  “We could clear this all up in a matter of minutes,” he said. “All you have to do is cooperate.” He looked down again. “It says in here that you cooperated. Why not continue that trend? This will go a lot easier for you if you do.”

  “I can’t tell you why I was in that building,” she said.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because if I do, I’ll be killed.” Someone was already trying to kill her. She could talk to this detective, tell him all she knew about Jared. But that left her with breaking and entering charges. Nothing she said would make that go away, and anything she said would be held against her.

  “Who will kill you?”

  “The only way I say more is with an attorney present.” She leaned back against the chair and met the detective’s savvy gaze. “We can sit here all day and I won’t say a word until I have an attorney.”

  “No, if you want to request an attorney, I can arrange for you to call one.”

  “I can’t afford one, so you’ll have to appoint one to me.”

  “Very well.” He sighed as he leaned back. “Are you sure you don’t want to do this the easy way and just tell me all about what happened?”

  “Easy for whom?” she asked.

  A knock on the door interrupted. A tall, lean black man in a suit and tie leaned in.

  “Let her go.”

  “What?” Detective Suarez dropped the page he held and looked incredulous.

  “We received a call from Chief Williams. Let her go.”

  Detective Suarez turned to Rachel. “The chief? Why’d he call on her behalf?”