All Cried Out (All Falls Down Book 2)

by Ayden K. Morgen

  I hate that I had to take that choice away from her today. But fuck, I need her where I can protect her right now, and the Talbot Estate is as close to a fortress as I can get. Thanks to Paulson, Lexi gave Chris and Demetri free rein with security. They have three of their people on the property at all times. No one gets through without their approval. I need that peace of mind right now, and I think Savannah does, too.

  She's quiet for a minute and then, "I'm scared, Jared."

  I pull her closer, hold her tighter. "I swear to you, baby, he won't get near you. We'll find him before that happens," I promise, meaning every word. One way or another, I will find him. And I'll end this once and for all.

  Chapter Ten

  Something I Need

  "I have something for you," Lewis says to Savannah as soon as he climbs from his car the next morning. He circles around to the passenger side and pulls the door open before leaning in. When he straightens, her book bag is in his hands.

  "Thank you." She reaches out with a small smile and takes it from him, a relieved sigh falling from her lips once her books are in her hands again. She's been anxious this morning, antsy. Hopefully having her books and assignments will ease her mind a little, at least until we figure out a way to get her safely to and from campus.

  "How many reporters are out there?" I ask Lewis when he closes the door and leans a hip against it.

  "Four."

  I tilt my head back on a groan. Savannah's car was splashed front and center on the paper this morning, but I'd hoped they'd have gotten tired of milling outside the gates to the mansion by now, waiting for a statement they aren't going to get. Clearly, that didn't happen as hoped.

  Savannah sets the bag on the ground beside her before turning to me, chewing on her bottom lip. "Will they leave you alone while you work?" she asks worriedly, slipping one of her small hands into mine.

  I lift it to my lips and brush a kiss across her knuckles.

  "Interfering with a police investigation is a crime," Lewis says, crossing his arms over his chest. He's not being cocky or rude, just telling it like he sees it. "They'll leave us alone today."

  His confidence seems to placate Savannah. The furrow between her brows lessens a little.

  "You'll be careful, right?" she asks.

  "You know it," I promise her, cupping her face in my hands to kiss her.

  She blushes when my lips brush insistently against hers, but she kisses me back, one of her hands diving into my hair. I nibble on her lips, sweeping my tongue along her bottom lip until she opens for me. I kiss her until my heart races and my cock twitches in my pants, and then pull back before I lose the ability to do so. I can't think straight when her mouth is on me. It takes everything I have to stop myself from wrapping her legs around my waist and burying myself in her.

  "Promise me you'll stay with the girls and Evans today," I request quietly, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, trying to calm myself down. "I don't want you stepping foot outside unless he's with you."

  "He can't babysit me and help Lexi, Jared."

  "Yeah, he can. He's already agreed to do it."

  One of her eyebrows flies upward.

  "I talked to him this morning, beautiful girl," I murmur, putting my lips to her ear. "Until Chris and Demetri are back from their honeymoon, if I can't be with you, he will."

  "What about Lexi?" she demands with a frown, pulling away to look at me.

  "He'll be watching out for her, too." I tip her head back, planting my lips on her forehead. "Everything will be okay, baby. Trust me."

  Luckily, it's the holiday weekend and Lexi isn't needed in the office until Tuesday. Evans can keep an eye on both of them right here at the manor while I deal with McKee. If we haven't found the SOB by Tuesday, we'll come up with a different plan, because I'm dead serious: I don't want Savannah going anywhere by herself.

  She scrutinizes my expression for a moment before relaxing into me. "I love you," she whispers quietly, giving me a small, worried smile.

  "I love you, too."

  "You ready?" Lewis asks, pushing away from the car where he's been toying with his phone, giving us a little privacy to say goodbye.

  "Yeah." I drop another kiss to Savannah's forehead and turn toward the manor where Evans waits on the steps. He jogs down to meet Savannah, taking her bag from her and giving me a chin-lift as if to tell me she'll be fine.

  When they reach the top of the steps, she glances at me over her shoulder and waves.

  I head toward the car, ready to get this day over with so I can get back to my girl. Lewis is already in the driver's seat, his seatbelt latched, when I climb in. He waits for the security team to open the gates and then pulls out, shaking his head at the reporters who jump to attention, thrusting microphones at the car as if they expect me to roll down the window and give them a quote.

  "They're like fucking mosquitos," Lewis mutters with a shake of his head.

  I lean my head against the seat rest and sigh when we're through the mess and the Talbot Estate begins shrinking in the rearview mirror. "You guys find anything yet?"

  "Our crime scene guys found a few additional latent prints. The ones we've run thus far have come back to you, Savannah, and Katrina Talbot." He pauses. "And one partial belongs to Melinda Martin."

  I whip my head in his direction. "You're kidding me."

  "Nope. You surprised?" Lewis asks, cocking a brow at me.

  Am I?

  "She lied to me," I murmur, narrowing my eyes as anger sparks in my chest. The distrust I feel for the woman grows, twisting inside me. What does she want from my girl? She told me she hasn't been near Savannah, and Savannah certainly doesn't know she's in town, so what is she up to? Why are her fingerprints on Savannah's car?

  "Jacoby's sitting on her today." Lewis shrugs when I arch a brow, surprised. "Figured it wouldn't hurt to keep an eye on her, find out what she's doing in her spare time. Until we can be sure McKee's working alone, I'm not so sure I trust her."

  Well… fuck. I never even considered the possibility that McKee might have help. The thought that Savannah's mother could be working with him to torment her own daughter makes me sick to my stomach. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, suddenly grateful as hell that Lewis is on this case. He's turning out to be a hell of a lot more useful than I expected.

  "Were you here yesterday?" Lewis asks the young guy behind the counter at a deli crammed into a row of shops down the block from where Savannah's car was vandalized. He flashes the kid his badge and props a hip on the counter, making it clear he doesn't intend to move until the kid answers him.

  "Yeah," the kid says, eyeing us warily. He's maybe nineteen or twenty, with wild hair and thick hipster glasses. Nico is scrawled across his nametag in permanent marker.

  "You see this guy anywhere around here?" Lewis sets a picture of McKee on the counter and taps it with a finger. "Any time before two?"

  Nico bows his head over the picture, his eyes narrowing on it before he shakes his head. "Nah, he doesn't look familiar."

  I bite back a frustrated curse. We've been at this for two hours already, and no one remembers seeing McKee. Damn near every shop we've been into has security cameras, but most are useless, capturing only what happens inside the store. We need sidewalk footage, and this is our best bet. They've set up a row of tables outside, allowing diners to people watch over lunch on warmer days.

  "You guys have a security camera outside?" I ask.

  "Some dude busted a chick in the face with a beer bottle about a year ago," Nico says, nodding. "My boss installed one after that."

  "Does it record?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I'd like to look at the tape from yesterday, please." Lewis frames this as a command, a hard look on his face.

  The kid eyes him for a moment and then shrugs and motions for us to follow him. We stroll behind the counter and duck through the kitchen into a little office in the back corner. The kid turns a television monitor around and begins fiddli
ng with it. "What'd this guy do anyway?" he asks.

  "He's wanted for attempted murder."

  "Damn!" Nico's eyes widen behind his glasses and then turn curious. "Who'd he try to kill?"

  "A little girl," I answer softly, familiar anger running through me at the memory of what he did to Madeline when he tampered with that damn swing. Her hair is still growing back where they had to shave it to stitch up the brutal gash across her head. He could have easily killed her.

  "Shit." The kid scowls and shakes his head. "I fuckin' hate assholes who mess with kids. That's messed up." He fiddles with the television monitor for another moment and then holds a remote out to Lewis. "I set it back to yesterday morning. Fast-forward with this button, pause with that one, and rewind with this one. You can select different cameras with this one." He demonstrates quickly, waiting for Lewis to confirm he's got it. "I'll be out front if you need anything. Hope you find the dude."

  "Yeah, thanks," I mumble, leaning against the wall across from the television monitor. The office is small, with little more than a desk, a set of filing cabinets, and a bulletin board full of papers and little Post-It notes.

  Lewis takes the uncomfortable looking rolling chair stationed at the desk, and pulls up the outside camera so it takes up most of the screen, leaving the inside camera feeds as small squares in the bottom corners. Even enlarged the outside feed isn't great, with very little of the roadway visible behind the empty tables and chairs, but it's better than nothing.

  "What time did Hadid say he remembers Savannah coming through? 10:20?" Lewis asks, confirming what Amani Hadid, a shop owner a block down, told us earlier this morning when we questioned him. He couldn't give us anything on McKee, but he did remember Savannah's Charger.

  "Yeah, somewhere between 10:10 and 10:20."

  Lewis taps a button on the remote and fast forwards through the first few hours of video. When he taps the play button and adjusts the speed so we aren't staring at the video all damn day, we both watch the screen, eyes peeled for anything suspicious.

  Thirty-five minutes in, I'm fidgeting in place, trying to keep my attention from wandering, when I see McKee slide into the frame from the top right. The cocky bastard strolls right through the frame, the handle of a baseball bat sticking out of a shopping bag. He doesn't even attempt to hide as he moves, skirting around a table before moving out of the frame on the bottom left.

  I wanted to be wrong. For Savannah's sake, I wanted it to be anyone but McKee.

  "Roll it back," I tell Lewis, anger rolling through me in a wave.

  He does so immediately, sitting upright in his chair.

  I watch, my hands clenched into fists, as the scene replays. McKee's dressed casually in jeans and a gunmetal gray t-shirt. His hair is a little longer than it was when I last saw him, but he hasn't changed otherwise. He's massive, corded with bulky muscle. I cannot even imagine how scared Savannah must have felt when this bastard would lose his temper and start screaming and throwing things at her. She's so tiny, so breakable.

  "It's him?" Lewis asks for confirmation, pausing the tape before McKee walks out of frame.

  "Yeah, it's him."

  Lewis nods and resumes playing. We watch the next hour tick by but McKee never reappears on screen. Lewis speeds the camera up, but McKee never shows up in the film again. He took a different route back to his car after destroying Savannah's.

  Eventually, Lewis stops the feed and turns to me. "I'll ask Nico for a copy of the video. If the judge is reasonable, we should be able to get an affidavit warrant issued for a violation of the protection order and malicious mischief." He scrubs his hands down his face and curses. "Once we issue the warrant, it'll be a matter of hours before the media has the information. We can only delay their FOIs on this for so long. You need to decide what you're going to do."

  I grunt and lean my head back, staring up at the spackled ceiling. Once the media knows who the suspect is and that there's an active protection order in place against him, it won't take them long to start digging into Savannah's past, if they aren't already. This time, she won't be merely a passing interest for them. She'll be their new center of attention. Her past with McKee will be all over the news. And if her mom is involved with the bastard?

  Fucking hell.

  "I'm getting really goddamned tired of this shit," I curse, ready to hit something. This asshole has already left so much destruction and devastation in her life. When does it end? When he breaks her completely? When he kills her?

  Fuck that. It'll never happen.

  "Find him," I seethe, turning to glare at Lewis, "because I swear to God, Lewis, if I find him first, I'm going to kill him." I don't even care if I just admitted that shit to another cop. If they don't get to him before I do, all hell is going to break loose.

  Lewis shoots me a warning look, and then shakes his head and climbs to his feet, his gray eyes hard. "I may shoot the son of a bitch myself when we finally catch him." He steps out to talk with the kid.

  When he returns with Nico, the kid burns us a copy of the footage and wishes us luck. We duck back through the kitchen and out into the deli. It's started to fill up with customers, shopping bags clustered at their feet around the tables. A few glance at me and Lewis as we stroll through, their eyes widening, but most are caught up in their conversations, oblivious to the badge hanging around my neck or the gun holstered at his hip beside his own badge.

  "I'm going to pull someone to sit on the McKee property around the clock until we catch him," Lewis says when we step outside into weak sunlight and patchy clouds. "He hasn't been there yet, but I'd like to ensure he doesn't attempt to hide out there."

  "I want someone on Melinda Martin around the clock until we know one way or another if she's involved, too." I jerk the door to his Impala open, glancing at him over the top. "I want to know where she goes, who she sees, and how long she's there. Everything."

  One of his eyebrows climbs. "You realize this isn't the only crime in this city, right?"

  "In the next day or so, reporters are going to be camped outside your office, demanding to know what you're doing to find McKee. They're going to sensationalize the hell out of this because Savannah is my fiancée and she's already been through hell, and by the time all is said and done, everyone in the immediate area will be on red alert, thinking the son of a bitch is lurking behind the bushes, willing to do whatever he has to do to get to my girl. The best way to avoid that shit is to find him before those FOIs hit the desk and you're forced to turn over the reports. And the best way to do that," I snap, glaring at him, "is to exhaust every possible lead."

  Melinda's fingerprints were on the car and they shouldn't have been. I want to know why she was screwing with Savannah's car, and what she's up to now. If putting a tail on her will get us those answers, that's what needs to be done.

  Lewis holds his hands up in a placating gesture. "I'm just saying, pulling someone else to sit on her is going to be a hard sell with our Captain."

  "Then I'll tell him," I mutter, sliding into the car and slamming the door. Playing the FBI trump card is a dick move and will undoubtedly piss his Captain off, but I'll do it if it comes down to it.

  Lewis strides around to the driver's side and climbs in. He doesn't say anything for a long moment, letting me stew. And then he sighs. "I know you're not thrilled about the media getting their hands on this, but there might be a silver lining here."

  I turn to glare at him, but he holds up a hand.

  "If everyone in San Francisco knows who he is and that we're actively looking for him, he's going to have one hell of a difficult time hiding from us," Lewis says, pulling away from the curb into traffic. "I get not wanting them to make a public spectacle of your fiancée and her past, but McKee may have done us a favor yesterday."

  "You're kidding me."

  "Think about it, Corbit. When word leaks about who he is and what he's done to your girl and her family, he's going to be crucified by the media. They spin shit when it suits them, but
they can't spin this. She was kidnapped and held hostage by a lunatic not even six months ago. McKee dug himself a hole here. There's no way out of this for him."

  "Yeah," I mutter, "that's what scares me."

  Half an hour later, Lewis and I hover over the shoulder of one of San Francisco's traffic enforcement techs, watching the feed he pulled for us. My jaw is clenched tight, anger pulsing forcefully behind my eyes as I watch Savannah's Charger stop at a red-light four blocks from the parking garage. She's barely visible through the windshield, but it's definitely her.

  When the light changes to green, she creeps through the intersection and the car behind her makes a right turn. A small black passenger car pulls forward, following behind the Charger. The driver's face is obscured, but he's big, bulky. There's no doubt in my mind that it's McKee. The son of a bitch followed her. I suspected that was the case, but having that suspicion confirmed makes my blood boil.

  "We checked the license plate against what Border Patrol had and got a partial match," Brewster, San Francisco's traffic guy, tells us, pressing a button that switches to another feed. This one shows the back of McKee's car as he pulls through another intersection, the Charger still ahead of him. "About fifteen minutes after this footage, we see him coming back through." Brewster switches feeds again. "He pulls to a stop at the curb up here."

  We watch as McKee pulls up against the curb and stops in the very top corner of the frame. There's no movement for several minutes, and then he climbs from the car and circles around, taking something out of the trunk. He walks out of frame.

  "Notice how he walks out of frame up here?" Brewster asks, jabbing a finger at the screen.

  "Yeah," Lewis says.

  "Two hours and fourteen minutes later, he returns to the vehicle from this direction. Watch close and tell me what you see." Brewster swaps feeds again, and we watch McKee stroll toward the car from the bottom of the screen.

  Lewis and I both lean in, trying to get a closer look.

  McKee casually walks up to his car and climbs in before pulling out into traffic a few moments later. Unlike when he left the car, his hands are empty.