After a few minutes of pleasantries, the chief said, “I thought I would give you all an update here.”
Matt said, “What’s the judge’s story now? Is he still claiming to be the victim of a home invasion?”
Mona snorted. “That’s ridiculous. He’s going to get away with it, isn’t he?”
The chief shook his head. “Not a chance. As Matt pointed out to us yesterday, he ended up doing himself in.”
Emily looked at him, eyebrows raised.
The chief said, “We know that he wasn’t kidnapped or the victim of a home invasion—and that he, in fact, shot Mona—because we spent the better part of the night looking at security footage from inside the home.”
Emily let out a long sigh. “Of course, thank God for that. And thank God for the safe room, although I didn’t think so the first time he put me in there.” She swallowed, looked up with steady eyes. “Who killed Amber and why?”
Cameron said, “Amber was killed by hit men, on orders from Harold MacDonald.”
“Why?” Emily seemed composed, ready to accept the news.
“We got some information from MacDonald late last night, after we showed him some of the incriminating video. Amber found out about a corruption scheme operating out of the courthouse. She got suspicious when her lawyer, Joel Ackerman, kept pushing for a higher settlement. We think MacDonald was pushing the judge in her case to approve it. The plan was for MacDonald and Ackerman to pocket some of that money, about fifty thousand dollars. That’s above the fees the lawyer would get.”
The next question came from Mona. “Is Ackerman admitting this?”
“Not yet, but he’s in custody and the feds have taken over the investigation. They’ll get to the bottom of it. It sounds like there’s at least one other lawyer involved.”
Emily said, “How did Amber find out?”
“Celia Williams suggested Amber use Ackerman as her lawyer. Celia had a DUI charge that Ackerman and MacDonald got rid of. Amber found out about that.”
Mona snorted. “I knew something was going on with Celia. She was acting so strange.”
Matt exchanged a look with Emily, who gave a quick roll of her eyes.
He said, “What will happen with that charge?”
“That’s up to the prosecutor, but the case will have to be looked at again. We don’t know yet how much she paid them, if at all. But to get back to Amber, it sounds like she had suspicions about her insurance case, and then when she found out about Celia’s DUI it all started to fall into place. She refused to go along with it, even though she would have gotten more money in the settlement.”
Emily said, “So who exactly killed her?”
“MacDonald had a couple of guys working for him. One of them is his son-in-law.” He turned to Mona. “His name is Philip March. He’s an ex-cop. Do you know him?”
She said, “I met him once, a couple of years ago when they came for a visit. He’s a big guy, bigger even than Harold. He and his wife, Sylvia, Harold’s daughter, live in Chicago.”
The chief said, “He’ll soon be living in a prison cell and I’d be surprised if he ever got out.”
Emily and Matt exchanged another look. Big Guy. It would be nice to see him behind bars.
Mona looked at the chief. “What will happen to Harold?”
The chief looked at her closely. “If he’s convicted, he’ll go to jail. Right now, he’s cooperating to beat a conspiracy to murder charge, but the corruption alone is enough to put him away for a very long time. It will take a long time for the feds to get to the bottom of all this. They’ll have to reopen a lot of old cases. A lot of them are small. He’d take a couple of hundred bucks to change somebody’s probation terms so they could report monthly rather than weekly.”
Matt said, “How did they find out where Emily was hiding?”
The chief looked at Emily. “Apparently, you did a search on your mother’s computer. MacDonald looked at the search history, found a link to the resort, and put two and two together.”
Emily nodded. “Of course. That was stupid of me.”
Matt said, “Don’t beat yourself up about that. You had no way of knowing.” He turned to the chief. “Do you know who attacked Emily?”
She said, “I know it wasn’t this Philip March. He’s too big. And three men found me at the cabin.”
The chief said, “The feds will sort that out. They won’t get away with it.” He looked at Mona. “Shall I wheel you back?”
She nodded, looked at her daughter. “I’ll likely be discharged this morning. The doctor says I’m well enough to go home.”
Emily got to her feet. “I’ll make sure you get home.”
Mona stopped her with a gesture. “That’s okay. Frank has that covered.” She smiled warmly at the chief.
Emily walked over and kissed her mother on the cheek and they thanked the police chief.
The door shut, he said, “I think there may be something going on between the two of them.”
“I think you’re right. I just hope he doesn’t move in with her.” At his puzzled look, she said, “Celia wouldn’t be able to sell him that house.”
He smiled. “That will be the least of her worries. I have a feeling she’ll be under a lot of scrutiny.” He made a mental note to follow up on the pictures he’d taken of the hit men chasing Emily, see if there was anything the police could use.
“I’m just wondering how much the chief let my mother cloud his judgment about Amber’s murder investigation. And I feel bad, too, because maybe Amber suspected the judge but didn’t want to say anything because of my mother’s relationship with him.”
His breakfast came. She watched for a second while he tried to eat, then grabbed the spoon out of his hands to feed him herself.
He was swallowing a mouthful of runny egg when his cell phone rang. It was on the night table. She picked it up, handed it to him in his left hand. He put it on speakerphone. It was a call from his work in Boston.
Emily slipped out of the room, returned five minutes after he’d finished the call, and sat down on the bed. “Is everything all right?”
“The construction supervisor and one of the foremen are having a disagreement over excavation at a fourplex we’re just starting. It’s nothing that can’t be sorted out, but I do have to get back. There’s a lot of really expensive equipment sitting idle. I’m going to see about a flight out tomorrow.”
Something dark flickered in her eyes and they began to shimmer. “So I guess you’ve forgotten what you said last night?”
“I was pretty groggy. What did I say?”
“Nothing important.” Standing up, she walked to the window and looked out, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
He said, “What will you do?”
When she turned around, she’d lifted her chin and composure masked her face. “I have to think about that, but I do know I want to get out of Riverton.”
He said, “You need a plan.”
That mask slipped a little, revealing a glint of anger. “Right. Well, I guess I should get going, get working on that.”
He smiled at her. “You’re getting ornery again.”
“Ornery? That’s a new word.” Her tone was clipped.
“Lucky for you that I have a thing for ornery people.”
She arched an eyebrow.
“Some of my memory is coming back from last night. I seem to remember you saying you would consider a move to Boston.”
She pushed away from the wall, a small smile flitting on her lips. “I don’t quite remember agreeing to that.”
“Well, how about it? I hear Boston has a couple of good law schools.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I thought you’d forgotten—”
“You think I would forget about that? Not a chance.”
She came toward him, sat on the bed, and maneuvered her way into his arms. “I love you, Matt Herrington. Not from first sight—it’s more like you’ve grown on me.”
“Do me a favor?�
�� He looked into those eyes, bright and soulful, and knew he would never tire of them. He would never tire of her.
“What?” She drew her face close enough to see the faint freckles on her nose.
He kissed her, slowly, deeply, moved his lips down over her jaw to that soft, creamy neck before stopping to nibble on an ear. “Go lock that door,” he whispered.
Please see the next page for a preview of the next book in Alex Kingwell’s Chasing Justice series!
CHAPTER ONE
Nicky Bosko didn’t see the beat cop until it was too late. She was thirty steps from the intersection, and he was tucked in around the corner, his eyes tracking a homeless man pushing a shopping cart in front of her down the rain-slicked sidewalk.
Her heart constricted, as if someone had reached in and grabbed it. The girl walking beside Nicky followed her gaze, froze.
Nicky grabbed the girl’s arm. “Keep walking.” She pitched her voice low.
They had no choice. A cold drizzle had emptied the sidewalks, and the cop would notice them for sure if they turned back or tried to cross the street. They had to keep going and pass by him.
The girl had that deer-in-the-headlights look, her eyes as wide as saucers. “He’ll see me.” The words seemed to catch in her throat.
“No, he won’t.” Nicky tried to sound confident even as her stomach twisted into a hard knot.
The cop, his hands hooked behind his back, was ruddy-faced, stout, and wore a dark rain jacket. He stood under an awning, partially protected from the rain, which a west wind drove down at a slant toward him.
The homeless guy stopped to peer into a mesh garbage can, parking his cart at an angle that blocked the sidewalk.
Stuck behind him, the knot in Nicky’s gut tightened. Forcing herself not to look at the cop, she focused on the homeless guy. Fat raindrops slid down the green garbage bag he wore as a poncho.
The girl’s eyes darted around, as if looking for an escape route. Nicky tightened her grip on her arm as the homeless man finished inspecting the garbage can. Straightening, he wheeled the cart to the left, having decided to take the cross street. He waited at the curb for a green pedestrian signal.
Nicky and the girl kept going straight ahead. Just as they reached the curb, the pedestrian light flashed yellow. They could cross with the homeless man, who was now in the intersection, but it seemed better not to backtrack. Not to do anything that might draw the attention of the cop.
She bit the inside of her cheek, cursed under her breath. Cars and buses cruised by, their tires hissing on the wet road and spitting up water. Wiping rain from her forehead, she glanced to the right, past the cop and up the side street. Dark clouds hung low in the bleak sky. On the other side of the drugstore was an office building, then a four-story parking lot. On the next block, a patrol car pulled to the side of the road. She held her breath until two officers got out and walked into a building.
There were two ways this could go. They could run now in any direction. The cop would call for help, give chase and chances were one or both of them would be caught, possibly before they got farther than a block or two. Or they could keep walking. Hope the cop didn’t recognize the girl. She wore Nicky’s navy rain jacket and a ball cap pulled down low over her forehead, but her picture was everywhere and, since her father was a cop, there’d be extra incentive to catch this runaway. A vivid memory surfaced, something she hadn’t thought about in years. She’d been fourteen, a terrified runaway huddled on a city sidewalk, begging for change. A cop had taken her to a shelter. That wouldn’t happen with Michelle. This cop, any cop, would deliver her back to her father.
If this cop recognized her, then they’d run.
She shot another glance at the girl. Her name was Michelle Stafford and she was five foot six, almost Nicky’s height, thirteen years old. Her soft, tiny facial features were still that of a child, but a somber guardedness in those gray-blue eyes suggested she’d already witnessed too much of life’s dark side. That and the large bruise yellowing on her left cheek.
Nicky tightened her fists as a sudden fierce resolve coursed through her. She felt like a mama bear protecting her cub. The cops wouldn’t get Michelle, not if she could help it.
Four people now waited with them to cross the street. She snuck a glance back at the cop. He caught her eye, gave her the onceover. Looking away, she sucked in a ragged breath, and caught a whiff of wet cement that reminded her of running track in high school. Practicing sprints and hurdles in the chill fall air. She’d been fast, probably still was. The girl would be, too.
The cop didn’t look fast. But maybe he wouldn’t need to be.
Holding her breath, waiting for him to shout at them to stop, she kept him in her peripheral vision. Ready to run if he moved a single step.
A car honked its horn. She jumped, swallowed hard. Beside her, a woman in hospital scrubs spoke loudly into a cell phone. Somebody had botched the grooming of her dog. Coco now had an eye infection and the woman wanted everybody in Riverton in on that little tidbit. Across the street, a woman in red running shorts bounced up and down on her toes, impatient to cross.
The girl didn’t say anything, just stood, her body rigid, staring straight ahead.
At last the light changed. Starting across the intersection, Nicky kept a steadying hand on the girl’s arm and forced herself not to hurry, to go with the flow. Not until they were on the other side of the street did she let out a heavy breath.
A tear escaped Michelle’s eye and flowed down the middle of her bruised cheek. Nicky squeezed her hand. “Just a couple more blocks, Michelle. You’ll be okay.”
She scanned the sidewalk. A young guy in a jean jacket and baggy pants stared at her as he walked toward them. He wasn’t looking at Michelle, but Nicky kept her eye on him until they passed. Paranoia strikes deep.
Michelle had arrived at the shelter last week, brought in by another kid after two nights on the streets. This morning, they’d convinced her to see a doctor. Nicky thought about what the doctor had told her, while Michelle was using the bathroom. Her throat soured. No wonder she’d run away. But that was a whole other worry.
A block from the shelter, the sun broke through the low clouds, and flashed off car windshields. More people spilled onto the sidewalks. That was good and bad. She and Michelle weren’t as exposed, but it’d be harder to tell if they were being followed. Not that she had any skills on that front. She was a youth worker, not some covert operator.
Her eyes swept the length of the street, taking in the four people in a bus shelter up ahead. And just past them a woman in a tight cobalt-blue dress was leaning against a door, smoking a cigarette. Across the road, a man walking a muscular dog stopped to read a menu posted outside a new pizzeria. Cars streamed by. Nobody slowed or seem to take any interest in them.
Rolling her shoulders, she tried to shake off some of the tension. She felt sweaty despite the September chill and her damp hair and clothes.
The cigarette smoker ground the butt into the sidewalk, smoothed her dress then vanished inside a shoe shop.
Nicky pointed out a department store just past the shoe shop. “They have a section for teens upstairs. We could go check it out if you’d like.”
The girl brightened. “Oh, please. I hardly have any clothes.” Her voice was soft, surprisingly low-pitched. “One of the girls lent me a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, but they’re too big.”
Nicky smiled. Those were the most words the girl had strung together in two days. It’d been hard to tell if she was naturally quiet or had switched off because of everything she’d been through.
Two minutes later, they turned the final corner before the youth shelter. The tan brick building was on the other side of the street, down half a block. Out front, in a no-parking zone, a man leaned against a dark gray sedan. Tall and broad-shouldered, he wore a light shirt and dark pants.
Nicky stopped short. Something needled at the edge of her brain. It took a second more to process what it was. The kids w
ere all inside, not hanging out in the sunshine on the front steps.
The man was a cop.
Her heart pounding against her ribs, she reached into her shoulder bag, fished out her cell phone and shoved it into Michelle’s hand.
The cop looked in their direction. Seeing them, he uncrossed his arms, pushed himself away from the car, then pulled out his wallet and flashed a badge.
She said, “Call the shelter tonight. The number’s programmed in there.” Her eyes searched the girl’s face. “Promise?”
Michelle glanced at the man, then back at Nicky. She nodded as she clasped the cell phone. She was already up on the balls of her feet, just waiting for the go-ahead.
Nicky said, “Remember that department store? Go in there. There’s an exit at the back to the next street over.” She pressed some bills from her wallet into the girl’s hand. “Hide out for a couple of hours, then phone. Don’t use your own phone. Promise?”
Michelle’s lips trembled and her eyes flicked between Nicky and the cop. “Promise.”
The cop stood by his car watching them, swinging his arms.
Michelle turned, bolted up the street. She slowed for a second to hook the knapsack on both shoulders but didn’t look back. She was fast, all right. Her long legs flew over the pavement.
Nicky turned back to the cop. He was halfway across the street, a hand outstretched to stop cars. His mouth was open in surprise, his eyes locked onto her.
A glance up the street showed her Michelle had disappeared. Nicky felt a sudden lightness. Michelle was the main thing. If she got away it’d be a bonus.
Nicky set off in the opposite direction Michelle had taken. Holding the shoulder bag with one hand against her chest, she raced to the next corner, catching a glimpse of the cop sprinting up the sidewalk before she rounded the corner of a smaller side street. She bolted down the street, nearly tripping, weaving in and around people, not bothering to look back now. A woman pushing a stroller swore at her.
Up ahead was a park. Darting through open wrought-iron gates, she ran down a set of concrete steps, jumped the railing near the bottom and landed heavily on her feet on a patch of grass. She crouched down next to the concrete, and tried to catch her breath.
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