Armed and Famous

by Jennifer Morey

  As Lincoln danced with her in a circle, she saw Tristan kissing the woman’s hand as though he were a gentleman. “That’s so disgusting.”

  He looked over at Tristan as they danced in another circle.

  “Why is he like that?” she asked, struggling to understand what made a man so despicable.

  “Some men are.”

  “He beats his wife and cheats on her. I don’t get it. Why not get a divorce?”

  “Could be any number of reasons. The kids. The status symbol of keeping a wife at home. The excitement of having affairs with younger women.”

  And flaunting it in his wife’s face after hitting her? That disgusted her even more. “He thinks that because he supports his wife, she should put up with whatever he decides to do? No matter how unprincipled and disrespectful, she’s expected to bow down to him.”

  “There you go again with that strong opinion about infidelity,” Lincoln said. “Is it Tristan or experience that makes you feel that way?”

  Both, probably. She realized how angry she sounded. The man she’d trusted to love had surprised her. Blindsided her. She’d had real feelings for Chet. Trusted him. Allowed herself to believe she’d gotten it right. To find out she’d been wrong had shaken her foundation. She and Chet had ended just before she’d taken the job at OneDefense. It could be that she was still raw over that. Or it could be an indication of what she should expect for her future.

  What once she’d considered solid was now broken and unreliable. Her foundation was flawed, and she didn’t know how to repair it. Maybe she’d end up living alone like her mother and grandmother. Maybe she was meant to. If she couldn’t choose well, she’d rather be alone. And right now she was pretty convinced that she couldn’t.

  How could she let go of her defenses after that?

  Lincoln’s gaze came into focus and she realized she’d been staring at him this whole time.

  “I can understand how your boyfriend’s betrayal makes you sensitive,” he said, amazing her again with his insight. “But you seem to take it to the extreme.”

  Did she? Chet had answered all her relationship questions correctly. Did he want a future with a woman? Was a monogamous relationship important to him? She had trusted his answers.

  “I saw what a bad choice in a man did to my mother. I thought I could choose differently.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “Because you try too hard. Why not just let it happen?”

  He was one to talk. “My mother did that, and look where it got her.”

  “If it’s for real, that kind of thing doesn’t happen. Your mother probably knew the kind of man your dad was, but she stayed, anyway. When he left, I bet she wasn’t surprised.”

  “She loved him.”

  “Did she? Are you sure? Or was she insecure and settling for less than she deserved?”

  He continued to amaze her, but her mother had been stronger than that. “If she was insecure with my dad, she wasn’t after he left. She had plenty of opportunity to ‘settle for less,’ as you put it, after that, but no one measured up.” And she’d died alone, without a man to love her.

  Another love song began.

  “Tristan and the woman are leaving,” he said.

  “Should we follow?” She craned her neck to see Tristan with his hand on the woman’s rear. “Ew. Do we have to?”

  Chuckling, Lincoln kept dancing with her. “No. I think we know what he’ll be doing for the next few hours.”

  Tristan was going to cheat on his wife tonight instead of work illegal gun sales, and it probably wasn’t the first time.

  Lowering his gaze from a disappearing Tristan, Lincoln met her eyes, and they shared a silent speculation of where this night would lead. Slow dancing. And then what?

  “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be with a man who will not only stick around but love you the rest of your life. That’s all my mother ever wanted.” And all Sabrina wanted. She didn’t need any man who wasn’t capable of giving her that.

  “Most men want that, too. There may be a few bad ones out there, but if it’s right, it’s right.”

  “You talk as though you’re looking for that.”

  “Eventually, I will.”

  “I don’t believe you. I doubt that deep down, you even believe yourself.”

  He danced with her without responding. He didn’t have a comeback for her. That intrigued her. She’d perplexed him, made him think more than anyone else ever had about his problem with commitment.

  “You need to talk about her, Lincoln.”

  She felt him tense up, his fingers on her lower back flexing and his chest muscles getting harder. And those blue eyes darkened beneath his crowding brow.

  “What was it about her that made you want to marry her?” she asked, despite his obvious resistance to the subject.

  He looked over her head. Dancing couples surrounded them in the dim light.

  “She didn’t dwell on me being Jackson Ivy’s son,” he finally said. “That’s what initially caught my attention. Well, that and she was beautiful.” His brow began to smooth as he talked. “And we hit it off. We talked. We did things together.”

  “What did she do for a living?”

  “She was between jobs.” He paused. “She waited tables, but she talked about going to school to do something else.”

  “What did she want to do?”

  “She didn’t know.”

  Sabrina found it odd that he’d be attracted to a woman who had nothing going for herself other than a lack of interest in who his father was.

  The song ended, and Sabrina was more interested in talking now than dancing close to Lincoln. She led him to the table where they’d left their beer bottles.

  “Did she know who you were when you met?” she asked as she took a seat on the stool.

  He sat across from her and drank the rest of his beer. “She recognized the name.”

  So she had known. “How long were you together before she died?”

  Putting his empty beer bottle down, he sighed and looked at her, pained to have this pried out of him and yet handling it stoically. “Seven months.”

  That wasn’t very long. Sabrina began to wonder if her death had somehow caused him to elevate what he’d actually felt for her.

  “Do you really think she was the one?”

  “I was going to ask her to marry me on that trip.”

  But they’d only known each other for seven months. It was possible that they’d fallen in love that fast. It happened. But her lack of career raised Sabrina’s suspicion.

  “Did she meet your dad?”

  “No. My mother invited us to California for a high-profile party, but I couldn’t make it.”

  “How did Miranda feel about that?”

  “She was disappointed, but she understood.”

  “Did you live together?”

  “We were looking for a place.”

  “What kind of place did she want?”

  Judging by the hardening of his eyes, her time for getting answers out of him was quickly disappearing. And he’d probably caught on to what she was getting at.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  Should she tell him? Honesty always came first for her. It was the cornerstone of trust. “Because I think she went for you because of who your dad is.”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “What kind of house did she want with you?”

  He turned away.

  “A nice, big, expensive one, right?”

  Then he rounded on her, defenses flaring. “She was a good person.”

  “Okay, but she also liked it that you were Jackson Ivy’s son. She liked that you have money.”

 
The idea that he may have missed that fought with the storm brewing in his eyes. “I thought the same about you when I met you, that who my father is wasn’t important to you.”

  Had he? That suggested he’d been interested in her. Hadn’t she sensed that? “I thought it was interesting, but not important.”

  “Miranda told me that, too.”

  “I would never want to live in a giant house. I’m not into all the things money can buy. Money is a necessary evil to me. You need it to live and plan for your future, and that’s it. I spend it on frivolous things occasionally. I like a nice house. I’d spend money to decorate it. But really, I’m simple that way. I don’t need to impress anyone with who I marry or what kind of house I live in. I just want to love, be loved and live a happy life.” Why that was so hard for her to attain, she’d like to know.

  As she spoke, his demeanor grew more restless. She was forcing him to face some truths about Miranda, and in her postmortem, worshipped status, she was too perfect to be anything less than his idolized version. He’d have to get past that if he ever wanted to have a meaningful relationship with anyone. Why did she always meet men who had something to stop her from finding love?

  “Let’s get out of here.” He stood and threw down some cash.

  She’d made him angry. She’d disrupted his idealism when it came to Miranda’s death.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.” She trailed him out of the bar.

  Lincoln was such an even-tempered man, it shocked her to see him like this.

  “You must see that you have to let go of her,” she continued, not understanding why.

  Why was it so important to her that he let Miranda go? Why couldn’t she stop trying to get him to? That suggested she might be trying to prep him to become her man. And he couldn’t be her man if he was still hung up on someone else.

  “Stop talking about her,” he snapped.

  She would. She had to. Sabrina—or any woman, for that matter—could not fix him. There was no fixing any man. Men like Lincoln had to cure themselves. He had to want to let go of Miranda, and from all she’d seen, he was nowhere near doing so. He needed more time to get over the woman he’d loved...or at least thought he’d loved.

  Lincoln was not a wise choice for Sabrina. She had chosen badly once before. She damn well refused to choose badly again.

  Chapter 11

  Just as Pasquale had said, Cesar Castillo’s wife ran a small market off Muscle Beach in Venice, California. Lincoln walked beside Sabrina down the dirty narrow sidewalk, glad for the distraction. He wished she wouldn’t try to get him to talk about Miranda. It dredged up so many negative thoughts and feelings. He wasn’t a believer in therapy. Talking about problems only enabled dwelling on them. He’d rather dwell on other things, like clearing Sabrina’s name and exposing Tristan so he could get back to his life.

  The hotel across the street looked newly renovated. Not so for Castillo’s Market. A red canopy jutted out from the flat roof. The old building showed its age, with chipping brick painted white along the bottom and around the single door. Lincoln opened it for her.

  Inside, it smelled like an antiques flea market. No amount of cleaning would improve the dull and scratched linoleum. Two rows of shelving were jam-packed with convenient grocery items. Some of the labels were so faded she wanted to check the expiration date to see just how long they’d been sitting there. The produce display along the front didn’t offer much better promise, and flies circled the six-foot-long meat counter.

  A dark-haired woman with a yellow-toothed smile appeared from the back. Short and petite, she must not eat the food here.

  “Mrs. Castillo?” Lincoln asked, seeing Sabrina taking in the antiquated market.

  “Yes,” she answered with a slight Spanish accent.

  “We’re here to talk to you about your husband.”

  Her sales-eager smile vanished. “Do you know where my Cesar is? Have you seen him?”

  “We were hoping you could tell us something about why he disappeared.”

  “Who are you? Are you friends of his? He usually introduces me to all his friends.”

  “We’re trying to find out what happened to him.”

  “Are you a friend of his?” she repeated.

  “We’ve never met him, but we need to find him,” Sabrina said.

  She eyed them strangely and then said, “The police have already been here. They are searching for him. I know nothing.”

  Moving down the counter, she asked a man in dirty jeans and not-so-white T-shirt, “May I help you?”

  The man ordered a sandwich.

  Lincoln watched beside Sabrina as the woman removed some roast beef from the meat counter. The glass was smudged. A fly flew in low over the handful she took. At least she’d put on some plastic gloves.

  Removing some stiff pieces of bread from a bagged loaf, she prepared the roast-beef sandwich, retrieving some cheese from an equally infested counter. Mayo and mustard followed. She sliced the finished product and wrapped it in paper.

  The man went to get a soda from the small refrigerator in the back, and the woman rang up his purchase, which was about three dollars higher than it should have been.

  Lincoln glanced around at some other products. Everything appeared to be marked up a little.

  The man left beneath the ding of the door.

  “Did your husband ever mention any trouble he was having at his OneDefense store?” Lincoln asked.

  The woman eyed them strangely again, as though she wished they’d disappear.

  “He has no trouble. He runs a good business, my Cesar.”

  “You seem confident that he’ll be found,” Sabrina said. Clever observation.

  She hesitated a few seconds. “The police are looking for him. Perhaps you should go now.”

  She was being awfully standoffish, as though she had something to hide—or her husband did. “What about his relationship with Tristan Coulter? Did he ever talk to you about him?”

  “Why do you ask about Tristan?”

  She spoke his name as though it was familiar to her, more familiar than a coworker might be. Lincoln glanced at Sabrina, latching on to the fact that Cesar had known Tristan personally and wondering how much they should tell the woman. Maybe it didn’t matter. If Archer Latoya learned why they’d come here, maybe it would compel him to steer the investigation toward Tristan.

  “We believe he’s responsible for your husband’s disappearance,” he answered while Sabrina swatted a fly away from her head.

  The woman turned troubled brown eyes from him to Sabrina and back. “Tristan Coulter works for OneDefense. My husband runs one of their stores here in Venice.”

  Lincoln noticed how she spoke as though he was still here. “We’re aware of that. But Tristan has been involved in some illegal gun sales, and we think perhaps your husband may have known something about them.”

  Mrs. Castillo shook her head. “No. My Cesar would not have been involved in anything illegal.”

  “We aren’t suggesting he was. But he may have learned something and that’s why he’s missing.”

  “Are you saying that Tristan Coulter kidnapped him?”

  Or killed him. “You know Tristan?”

  “I have met him.”

  Why would an account manager work so closely with a OneDefense retail store? He could understand the sales link, but why Cesar? Why any store manager?

  “Did Wade report to Tristan?” he asked Sabrina.

  She shook her head. “They all reported to the chief operations officer. Tristan is in charge of internet sales.”

  “Did the COO know about the illegal sales?”

  “No.”

  Lincoln turned back to Mrs. Castillo. “Was your husband in contact with anyone prior to his disap
pearance? Anyone new?”

  “No. No one new. But he has many friends.”

  “Who are his closest?” Lincoln doubted his close friends would be involved, but maybe they’d be able to tell them something.

  “The police have already gone to talk to them.”

  Yes, but were they asking the right questions? And who were they?

  “Can you tell us about any of them?” Sabrina asked.

  Her gaze shifted back and forth between them.

  “We want to help, Mrs. Castillo,” Sabrina said. “Finding your husband may help us stop Tristan.”

  That was the wrong thing to say. Lincoln watched her freeze and then clam up.

  “You should go now,” she said.

  She liked Tristan, or respected him because her husband had. Little did she know that Tristan was probably the one responsible for her husband’s death.

  “Tristan is not your friend, Mrs. Castillo,” Lincoln said. He had to try to make her understand. “Neither was he a friend to your husband. He’s a bad man.”

  Mrs. Castillo said nothing.

  “He’s selling guns illegally, and we’re trying to stop him.”

  “Please, go.” Mrs. Castillo put a pen topped with dirty, gaudy, yellow plastic daisies back into a coffee cup filled with more.

  “We believe he’s already killed the general manager of the Denver, Colorado, OneDefense store,” Lincoln persisted.

  The woman turned horrified eyes to him. “And you are suggesting that Tristan has done the same to my Cesar?”

  Lincoln held himself still and quiet.

  “He is a friend to my Cesar. He would not do such a thing.”

  “You say Cesar wouldn’t do anything illegal,” Lincoln said. “What if Tristan was trying to force him and your husband refused?”

  A tortured gasp came from Mrs. Castillo. “It isn’t true! I have met Tristan on many occasions. He has come into my home. He and Cesar were friends.”

  “Maybe that’s what Tristan wanted him to believe,” Sabrina said.

  Tears sprang to the woman’s eyes. “Please. You must go now. The police are looking for my Cesar. They will find him.”

  Lincoln shared a look with Sabrina. They wouldn’t get any more out of this woman.