Betrayals Stand (MidKnight Blue Book 5)

by Sherryl Hancock

“No, gangs.” Rick was ready to end the conversation there, but Romi looked surprised.

  “What place?”

  “Place?”

  “You know—place…” She trailed off as she tried to think of the right word. “What is the word… Ay, dios mío. Place… ah, unit?”

  “I work with FORS. Why?”

  “Ay, es muy bien that you don’t work there now then.” Romi nodded meaningfully.

  “And why’s that?” Rick said, getting bored with the woman’s game.

  “I was with this guy a while back, and he was a real nasty one. He wanted a couple of policías dead in the worst way, you know.” She looked at him to see if he caught her meaning. When Rick nodded she continued. “I wouldn’t want to mess with him—he’s dangerous.” She shook her head, the look in her eyes suggesting she was remembering just how bad the guy was.

  “What was his name?” Rick asked, mildly interested again.

  “Carlos, but he wasn’t doin’ the hit. He had someone else. He was too high up. But he had plans for one policía in particular.”

  “Was this guy’s last name Rivera?” Rick was sure she was talking about when they’d used the Scorpions to try to get rid of FORS.

  “Yeah, that was him. How do you know?”

  “’Cause he already tried to get rid of FORS, but his little hit squad failed.”

  “Oh.” Romi nodded. “I didn’t think he was ready yet.” She shrugged. “But I could be wrong.”

  “Ready yet?” Rick said, thinking the woman had inhaled too much cocaine in her time. “This happened almost four years ago.”

  Romi looked at him for a long moment and then started to shake her head. “Then we’re thinking of different people.”

  “No,” Rick said, looking confused. “It was the Riveras—we never got to them, but we knew it ’cause Daniel Robbins told us before he ended up dead.”

  “Who’s Daniel Robbins?” Romi said.

  “He’s the guy that the Riveras sent after FORS.” He looked at her. “You didn’t know much about their little plan, did you?” he said somewhat scornfully—some informant she’d make. “Daniel Robbins ran a gang called the Scorpions, and they were the ones that tried to take out FORS, but we got them in the end.”

  “Well, I’m not sure who Daniel Robbins is, or these Scorpions, but that isn’t who Carlos was working with.”

  “How long ago were you with this guy?” Rick said, irritated by her obvious confusion.

  “Last month.”

  Rick’s blood ran cold. He was up and searching for a phone a moment later.

  He ordered the bartender to let him into the small office behind the bar, identifying himself as a police officer. “Not here, you aren’t,” the man said, not recognizing the badge Rick showed him.

  Rick pulled out his gun and stuck it under the man’s chin. “I am a San Diego police officer, from the United States, and if you don’t open the fucking door, I’ll kill you.” His voice was deadly serious, and the man did as he was told.

  Rick dialed Midnight’s number. When there was no answer he did a quick calculation of the time difference. It was 10:00 p.m. in England, so it was two in the afternoon in San Diego. He called Midnight’s office phone.

  Midnight answered on the third ring, sounding very distracted.

  “Night, FORS is in danger. I think the Riveras might be gunnin’ for us again,” he said without preamble.

  Midnight gripped the phone tightly. The office around her was full of frantic action. “Rick,” she said, forcing herself to stay calm. “Joe disappeared ten hours ago.”

  “What!” Rick yelled. “Why didn’t you call me?” He could have been back there by now.

  “You aren’t a member of FORS anymore—why should I call you?” she said tonelessly.

  “Like hell I’m not. I’ll be there in ten hours.” Rick hung up.

  Midnight stood amid the mass confusion. Hanging up the phone, she dismissed Rick’s ire, as well as his statement that he’d be there so quickly. She’d heard what he’d been doing. She had talked to her daughter in the last week and Rick was never there. He was always out. She had finally spoken to Allison and gotten the whole story. Rick was hanging out with Teddy Anne Emerson again. Midnight figured he didn’t want to mess with Sheila anymore, so he had picked up with his old fiancée.

  She looked over to where Randy was sitting, reliving the last ten hours. From what she had gathered, Joe and Randy had gone to bed at about one thirty. Randy had woken to find Joe wasn’t there. She had felt very groggy, and when she sat up she saw blood on Joe’s side of the bed. She had screamed, which had brought Jessica running. They had looked for Joe, but he was nowhere to be found. Randy didn’t know anything. She was checked out at the hospital and was believed to have inhaled ether, probably keeping her from hearing the gunshot that had left Joe’s blood on the bed—it had been determined that one, it was Joe’s blood, and two, he’d been shot, because there were powder burns on the sheets. It was assumed that since Jessica hadn’t heard the shot, a silencer had been used to muffle the sound.

  Randy and Jessica had called Midnight immediately. It was a little after 4:00 a.m. Midnight had arrived at the house less than half an hour later, followed closely by two black-and-whites and the crime scene investigators. Randy was questioned, as was Jessica, but neither woman knew anything. The crime scene team had managed to lift a partial print from the keypad, but it was only the uppermost portion of one and probably not much use.

  Randy had been beside herself with worry the entire time. She apologized to Midnight for not knowing more. Midnight had nodded, her mind already working. She had headed to the office and put out a 911 text to all members. They knew the text meant they were to report in as soon as possible, and within half an hour, every member of FORS had arrived. Midnight briefed them as a group, telling them what little they had. Most of them had looked stunned. It was unreal that Joe had been taken. His life had been in danger so many times, and they couldn’t believe it was happening again.

  “This is important, boys and girls, so let’s get to work,” Midnight had said. Everyone moved toward their offices. This time there had been no threats, no imminent danger, nothing. It had happened suddenly, and that was what worried Midnight the most. There was a cold knot in her stomach as she silently prayed that Joe wasn’t already dead. There’d been no phone call to demand anything, and the more time went on without one, the less likely it was that Joe was still alive.

  At one point Jessica came over. “How are you?” she asked, knowing Midnight wasn’t fully recovered from her miscarriage, especially since she’d come back to work a week or two too early. Midnight looked haggard and utterly on edge. Jessica understood, though. Her own heart had stopped beating when she’d run into Joe and Randy’s room, finding Randy half hysterical and blood where Joe should have been. She feared the worst for Joe, having never gone through anything this terrible in her lifetime.

  Midnight nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, a complete lie. She wasn’t okay—she was sick with worry, her head was pounding, and a little while earlier she had noticed some spots of blood, probably from her uterine trauma. She knew it was related to all the surgeries they’d done on her, but she certainly didn’t have time to worry about it now. What’s the worst that could happen? she thought with a shrug. She already knew she’d never have another child.

  Midnight dragged on through the day. They didn’t hear anything. At five o’clock, Greg Dearborn had the audacity to walk onto the floor. Midnight looked up at him sharply when he approached her.

  “I heard about Sinclair,” he said. He almost looked concerned. Almost.

  Midnight just nodded and walked away from him. He followed her to her office. At the doorway Midnight turned around, her eyes narrowed. “What do you want?” she said coldly.

  Dearborn actually looked taken aback. “I wanted to find out what progress you’d made. Have you received a call yet?”

  Midnight shook her head, the look
in her eyes desolate.

  Dearborn nodded, looking around and seeing a lot of people. “How many people have you got in here from your team?”

  “All of them. Why?” Midnight replied, looking at him sharply.

  “Well…” Dearborn shrugged. “That’s a lot of overtime to burn when you’ve made no progress…” He trailed off, and Midnight knew he was thinking that Joe was already dead.

  “Every one of my people stays on the clock until Joe’s back. You got that?”

  “I understand your position, Lieutenant, but I’m telling you right now—I am not burning up this quarter’s overtime on a man who may not even be alive at this point.”

  Midnight’s eyes became points of green fire as she looked up at him. Then she glanced over at the members of FORS, most of whom had stopped working and were watching her and the assistant chief. Midnight gave Dearborn an “Oh yeah” look and walked to the middle of the room.

  “Okay, people, listen up!” she said, her voice carrying easily. Spider took her hand and helped her up onto his desk, the most central one in the room. All thirty members of FORS swarmed around her, including Randy and Jessica. “It seems that there is an executive concern about the overtime we are utilizing. So…” Midnight’s gaze trailed over to Greg Dearborn, staying on him as she continued. “Any of you that doesn’t want to work past your work day—which, by the way, ends right about now—can leave. I will be unable to pay you if you stay.” She didn’t look at any of FORS, so there could be no way of saying she had tried to guilt, force, or otherwise coerce them into working without pay. Her eyes remained on Dearborn, who looked around the group. Nobody moved.

  “I want you all to know,” Dearborn said, raising his voice, “that Lieutenant Chevalier cannot take any disciplinary action whatsoever if any of you choose to leave. I will guarantee you personally that nothing will happen to you if you go.”

  There was silence among the members of FORS for a few moments, and then someone in the back said, “Fuck that!” Everyone else started to laugh and clap, and Midnight looked at Dearborn triumphantly. This time it was Tiny who took her by the waist and lifted her down from the desk. Midnight walked over to Dearborn, her arms folded, with Kana, Spider, Tiny, and Dibbs right behind her.

  “I think you have your answer, Dearborn,” she said, her expression indicating that she knew she had won this round hands down.

  “Bitch,” Dearborn muttered under his breath, and turned to leave. The four senior members of FORS blocked his way, each one of them looking like the fierce gang members they had been before joining the unit. Midnight stood off to the side, watching Dearborn’s face.

  “That wasn’t a very nice thing to say to the lady,” Spider said.

  “Sure wasn’t,” Dibbs seconded.

  “I think you should apologize,” Kana said.

  “Now.” Tiny made the single word sound utterly deadly.

  Dearborn looked over at Midnight, who was desperately trying to stifle a grin, which she barely managed. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding as if the words had been torn from his throat. Which was better than having his throat torn out, which was pretty much what the four members of FORS wanted to do to the guy right now. The apology given, Tiny and Kana moved to make a slim aisle for Dearborn to pass, eyeing him nastily all the while. When Dearborn had made his exit, the whole unit cheered, whooping and clapping. Midnight enjoyed the momentary relief of tension. Minutes later everyone was back to work.

  They worked on through the evening and into the early hours of the next day. People were alternating sleeping in various places. Midnight had even found Spider sleeping on the table in the conference room; she’d shut off the light and left as quietly as she’d entered.

  At three thirty in the morning, almost twenty-four hours after Randy had discovered Joe gone, Jessica and Tiny were working at the computer together. They were scanning for print matches and not having any luck. Tiny had just taken over looking again, and Jessica glanced over at Randy. She looked awful; she’d been a mess the morning before, but she’d managed to hold it together, offering whatever assistance she could to find her husband. Jessica knew it was doubly hard on Randy since the members of FORS still hadn’t forgiven her for her dalliance with another police officer. Jessica’s mind had circled the problem over and over. So many things didn’t add up. How had the bad guys gotten into the house without setting off the alarm? Joe’s system was so secure it was almost impossible to override, but since the partial fingerprint had been found on the keypad itself, it was assumed that they’d managed to do it somehow. They’d looked into the personnel who worked for the alarm company, but they’d gotten nowhere fast. Joe’s system was top of the line, and even the company employees didn’t have access to the security codes—and according to the manufacturer of the alarm, there was no way to override the system.

  The police figured that the alarm company was lying because they didn’t want to be held responsible if a police officer died because of their faulty system. But wouldn’t that company want to help out if they thought they could? What if they weren’t lying—what did that mean? It meant that someone did have Joe’s security code. The limited personnel who had access to the codes were rechecked; FORS had even secured the fingerprints of every individual to cross-check against the partial. There were no dead-on matches, but partial prints were a tricky thing. One of them might have been match, but there just wasn’t enough detail in the partial to be totally sure.

  Okay, Jessica had thought, so what if it wasn’t someone from the alarm company? Who else had that code? She’d checked—only Joe, Randy, Midnight, and Rick knew the code, and herself. But she had needed it to get in late at night; she’d even been careful to hide it when she’d keyed it in when Tiny was with her. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him—she did—but Joe had trusted her to keep it confidential. Jessica took that kind of thing very seriously, having grown up in a cop family. She knew what the simplest mistake could cause. She’d had it drilled into her from early childhood that she didn’t advertise what her father did, nor did she give out her address or phone number to anyone she didn’t absolutely trust. It had caused a lot of friction in her youth, but she’d grown up understanding the meaning of confidentiality. She wondered if that was why she had a problem trusting people—she was even hesitant with Tiny, and he was a police officer. Everyone always trusted police officers. Something clicked in Jessica’s mind as she looked at Randy. She turned to Tiny. “Hey, hon,” she said. Tiny loved that she was already referring to him with an endearing term.

  “Yeah?” he said, still scanning the prints on the screen.

  “Do something for me?”

  Tiny looked up at her, hearing a different tone in her voice and wondering what she was thinking. He was constantly amazed by her quick mind. “Okay.”

  “Look for the fingerprints of cops,” she said quietly. She didn’t want anyone to hear what she was doing until she was sure she was right.

  “What!”

  “Shh! Just check, hon. I’ve got an idea.”

  Twenty minutes later, Jessica and Tiny approached Midnight. They said they needed to talk to her, and that maybe the three of them should go into her office. Midnight looked at the two of them and nodded as she led the way. She was holding a cup of coffee; she had yet to sleep. Tiny and Jessica sat down, and Midnight set down her coffee and leaned against the front of her desk.

  “What’ve you got?” she asked, seeing the hesitation in their faces.

  “A cop,” Jessica said simply.

  “Huh?”

  “A cop’s in on it, Midnight,” Tiny said.

  “On Joe’s abduction?” Midnight felt strange all of a sudden. Things started to fall into place even as Jessica began to nod.

  “It’s Dickerson,” Jessica said, and Midnight abruptly felt sick. She paled visibly.

  “Midnight!” Tiny stood, reaching out to steady her. He was worried that she was going to pass out.

  “I’m okay,” Midnig
ht said weakly, holding up her hand to fend him off. She heard the door open and glanced around Tiny to see who it was. Her breath caught sharply in her throat. Rick stood in the doorway, his eyes on her.

  “It’s Dickerson,” Rick said, his voice cutting through the fog in her brain.

  Midnight nodded slowly. “You’re about three minutes behind. Jessica figured that one out.”

  “Yeah?” Rick said, looking over to Jessica. Tiny had moved to stand behind her almost protectively. Jessica nodded. Rick looked back at Midnight. He was feeling the effects of seeing her again. His heart had skipped a number of beats when she peered around Tiny at him, and he was sure it was just going to stop altogether as she looked at him now.

  Midnight was holding tightly on to her control. Seeing Rick again felt like someone had kicked her in the chest. She couldn’t breathe.

  “I think we should go…” Tiny said, and Jessica nodded. She and Tiny moved past Rick with some difficulty—he was standing stock still, staring at his wife. Tiny and Jessica realized as they walked out that everyone was staring in the direction of Midnight’s office. They’d all seen Rick come in and head straight there. Now they were watching to see what would happen. Rick took one step inside the room, kicking the door closed with a booted foot. The office remained quiet, but people began to move around again, going back to what they were doing.

  Meanwhile, their fearless leader was having great difficulty breathing, compounded by the sick feeling in her stomach caused by the shock of finding out that Dick Dickerson was involved in Joe’s disappearance. Rick could tell she was very close to passing out. He took three long strides toward her, and without a word picked her up and carried her over to the couch. Midnight was shaking her head, as if trying to deny something.

  “Midnight?” Rick said, wondering if she was going into shock for some reason.

  “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus,” she said, her voice a deathly whisper. She had just realized that by not telling anyone that Dickerson had attacked her, she had allowed the sonofabitch to be free—to possibly have killed her partner. She’d let him off the hook. She found herself up against Rick’s chest as he embraced her. That’s when the tears started.