“I don’t know about that.”
“I do,” her neighbor said, lifting his phone to his ear and pointing to the passenger headrest.
When he saw what the man was pointing to, ice streaked to Reid’s marrow. A bullet was lodged in the ripped foam, where Pen’s head had been seconds earlier.
Chapter 7
“Yeah, I need to report a shooting...” the older man said, turning his attention to his phone.
“Reid...” Penelope carefully shook the sharp bits of glass from her sweatshirt and the top of her tennis shoes. “If this wasn’t a random drive-by, then...are you saying you think it was planned?” She raised wide eyes of distress to his. “That someone wanted to kill us?”
As a cop, he’d known the risks he faced on the job. But having someone he cared about put in the line of fire shook him hard. If they had, in fact, been targeted—and he would operate under that assumption until proven wrong—he had to take measures to protect Penelope.
He reached for her cheek, careful to dust aside the slivers of broken window clinging to her shoulder and in her hair. “Maybe. We have to consider it a possibility.” He held her gaze. “But I promise I will not let anyone hurt you. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
A detective made his fair share of enemies in the line of duty. Reid didn’t know of anyone who wanted him dead, but that meant little. God only knew who he’d pissed off, who might have recently gotten parole and might be coming for revenge.
And just because Andrew had been gone for more than a year didn’t mean his enemies knew about his death. This attack could even be tied to the odd circumstances surrounding Andrew’s death. If Andrew didn’t put those stolen drugs in their squad car, who did? And most important, who had replaced Andrew’s insulin with potassium? Someone had been setting Andrew up, maybe even setting Reid up to take the fall for killing his partner. This attack, he knew, could very well be related to Andrew’s death. Reid simply didn’t believe in coincidences.
As he opened his truck door and eased out, the tinkle of glass shards littering the street scraped his nerves. Even if he replaced the windows, had the interior professionally vacuumed and repaired, he’d likely be finding bits of safety glass in odd places for the rest of the truck’s life. Not that he couldn’t afford a new one, even a whole fleet of trucks. It just ticked him off to need a new truck because of some punk shooter. Even angrier that the dirtwad had endangered Pen.
Come after me if you must, scumbag, but if you hurt my family or friends, I’ll end you.
“So...you really think—” Pen drew a shuddering breath as she climbed from the front seat and slid to the ground on wobbly legs. He put an arm under hers to steady her, and she clung to it with a white-knuckle grip. “But who? Why on earth...?”
“I don’t know.” But a low, uneasy gnawing had started in Reid’s belly. The itch of something dark and dangerous tickled his spine. His premonitions weren’t often wrong. Could the shooter have been sent because they were found snooping in Hugh Barrington’s office?
“Reid? What?” Pen stepped in front of him, one hand fisting on his shirtfront. “You look like someone just walked on your grave.”
He tried to shake off the gut feeling about Barrington. “It’s...nothing. I—”
Barrington’s involvement in the attack seemed unlikely on the surface. First, it had been no more than two hours since they’d been at the Barrington estate. Sure, they’d detoured by the park for their talk, so there might have been time to call a hit man if the butler had reported their activity to Barrington the minute they left. Or could Stanley have called in the shooter, with or without Barrington’s knowledge?
No coincidences...
Reid’s jaw tightened, and his gut knotted as he tried to decipher the unlikely turn of events when Penelope gasped in terror. She grabbed both of Reid’s arms and rasped, “Nicholas!”
Reid blinked once as his brain shifted gears, following her line of thought, and a bolt of fear shot to his heart.
“If this was targeted at me...or related to Andrew, they...” She seemed to have trouble catching her breath. “They could go after Nicholas! I have to get him from the church. Now!” She wrenched herself out of his grip, her steps unsteady as she spun away.
“Pen, slow down. Don’t panic.” He scrubbed a hand down his cheek, thinking fast. “We can’t take my truck. The cops will need it for the crime scene. Where are your keys?”
“H-here.” She fumbled for a moment in her pocketbook before dumping the contents, including the jewelry box, on the street. She grabbed her keys and phone, shoved the necklace and her wallet back in the purse and started at a run for her driveway.
“Tell the cops we’ll be back. We have to get her kid!” he shouted to the elderly man who, at their abrupt departure, sent a startled look after them.
“I’ll drive!” he shouted, and she tossed him the keys over the hood of her Ford Explorer. Gunning the engine, he pealed out of her driveway and raced back toward the neighborhood entrance.
“Buckle up and hold on,” he told her as he punched the gas.
He’d lied to her neighbor. If someone was trying to kill Penelope, even just maybe, he would not be bringing her or her small son back to her house. Andrew’s family was now officially in protective custody, Reid Colton–style.
* * *
Penelope wouldn’t take an easy breath until Nicholas was in her arms. She squeezed the armrest of her Explorer as Reid whizzed down back streets, taking the shortest route to the church.
As Reid drove to the church, she’d shed her sweatshirt, just in case there were still bits of embedded glass clinging to it, and used the brush from the gym bag she kept in the backseat to rid her hair of any last shards before retrieving her son.
The velvet box of jewels peeked up at her from her purse, and she frowned. “Do you think... Is it possible someone knew we had the jewels with us? That it was a failed robbery attempt?”
“I think you’re on the right track, but I don’t think it is about the jewels.”
The hard line of Reid’s mouth sent a frisson of something cold and dark to her soul. “What are you saying?”
“Think about it, Pen. Your father’s butler saw us in his office. He has to know by now that we were there snooping. That we were in his safe.”
“My father! You think my father sent that man to shoot us?” She chortled a scoff of disbelief. But fingers of fear and doubt squeezed her heart. “My father...”
Every time she repeated the assertion, a tiny piece of her skepticism chipped away. Could Hugh Barrington, who’d never been especially warm or generous with her, who’d coldly ignored her mother in the last months of her illness—who kept a getaway stash in his safe—really be as cruel and heartless, as criminally cold-blooded, as to put a hit on her and Reid to protect his own interests?
Nausea swelled in her gut. She wanted desperately to deny it. And yet...Andrew had been keeping a file on him. Someone had replaced Andrew’s insulin with potassium chloride.
“But...we were only in his office a couple hours ago. For him to have arranged a hit on us that quickly would mean—”
“Stanley was on the phone to him before we made it back to my truck. I guarantee that.”
She turned a stunned look to Reid, her insides churning. Her father!
“Does it really surprise you that your father could have a gunman for hire in his little black book? With one call he could have made the arrangements, given the guy your address, knowing eventually you’d have to go back to your house.”
Acid built in her stomach as the harsh truth settled like a rock. “Pull over.”
“What?”
“Pull over!” she shouted, even as she unbuckled her seat belt and opened the passenger door.
He braked hard, swerving to the curb just as sh
e stumbled out of the Explorer and indelicately lost her lunch on the side of the road.
“Pen!” His voice held a sharp note of concern.
She waved a hand behind her, as she coughed and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “I... I’m okay,” she lied. She was trembling to her core. Heartsick. Terrified. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be okay again.
She flopped back onto the passenger seat and motioned for him to drive on. “Go. Hurry. We have to get Nicholas, before...”
She closed her eyes, not allowing herself to finish the thought. Nicholas had to be all right. She simply couldn’t live with any other possibility.
Finally Reid wheeled into the church lot and parked on the side nearest the children’s wing.
When they hurried up to the nursery door, the volunteers at the Mother’s Day Out were concerned by the cuts on her face and gave Reid suspicious looks. She assured them with a stiff smile that she was fine, just shaken by the “minor accident” that broke the car window. After signing her son out and carrying him, with Reid escorting her, back to her Explorer, she buckled Nicholas into his safety seat. She climbed in the back with him as Reid slid into the driver’s seat. If the drive-by shooter found them again, she wanted to be closer to her son, be better able to protect him, shield him. And in the meantime, as needy as it sounded, she wanted to be able to see Nicholas, touch him, reassure herself that he was safe. Sometimes, especially since Andrew’s death, she just needed an extra degree of connection to her son. Today was one of those days. In spades.
“Give me your cell phone.” Reid extended his hand toward her, and she blinked at him.
“Why?”
He frowned his irritation with her reluctance. “I don’t want anyone tracking us.”
The seriousness of their situation smacked into her again, stealing her breath. Reid’s cloak-and-dagger tactics brought the reality home. She was on the run, hiding from a killer. Potentially sent by her father.
Reid wiggled his fingers impatiently. “Come on!”
Fear balled in her gut like a cold stone as she fished in her purse for her phone. She handed it over and watched in dismay as he pried off the back and removed the battery and SIM card. He tossed the pieces onto the passenger seat, then performed the same disassembly on his own mobile phone. With their phones’ GPS-tracking abilities disabled, Reid cranked the engine and sped out of the church parking lot.
Nicholas watched her with wide, curious eyes, blinking an unspoken question about what was happening. She tried to mask her fear, not wanting to upset him, but her son was perceptive for a two-year-old. Mommy didn’t usually sit in the backseat. A strange man was driving their car. He’d been too young the last time Reid had been at their house to remember the sandy-haired man behind the wheel of their SUV. Nicholas’s curious brown gaze was so like his father’s it hurt her heart sometimes to look at him.
“Mommy?” Her son tipped his little head in inquiry, his button nose wrinkling.
Her chest contracted as her love for him swelled at the precious sound of his baby voice addressing her. When would every tiny thing he did stop being such a fascination and point of pride to her? Never, she hoped.
“It’s okay, sweet pea. That’s Mommy’s friend.” Mommy’s friend. Or was he? She might not have thought so this morning when she woke up, but a lot had happened to change her view of Reid in the last few hours. He saved your life.
Reid glanced over his shoulder and smiled at Nicholas. “Hi, buddy. How ya doin’?” He turned back to watch the road, but Pen saw his gaze flick to the rearview mirror over and again watching her, studying Nicholas. “He’s looking more like his dad as he gets older, isn’t he?”
She drew a breath intended to relieve the tightness constricting her lungs, but the sound of gunfire still echoed in her memory, and she couldn’t relax. “Yeah. He does.”
“I can’t believe how big he’s getting.” He met her gaze in the mirror and huffed a wry laugh. “Why do people say that? Like they’re surprised a kid is growing up?” He shook his head and twisted his mouth. “And yet that’s really what I thought when I saw him—how much he’s grown and changed.” He chuckled dryly. “Some fine detective work there, huh?”
She hummed an acknowledgment but wasn’t in the mood for banal conversation. Maybe he was trying to distract her, calm her down, but too much had happened today for her to maintain the illusion of idle chatter. Keeping her composure in front of Nicholas was taking all her energy. She forced a stiff grin for her son’s sake and smoothed his silky hair with her fingers. “Did you have fun playing at the church, sweet pea? Did you play blocks?”
“Bwocks?” Nicholas parroted.
His vocabulary was expanding rapidly in recent days as he mimicked what she said. She could only guess whether he understood what he was saying, but her money was on her son’s ability to connect the dots. Nicholas had an intelligence in his watchful gaze that spoke of precocious levels of understanding. Or maybe that was her biased view as his mother.
She tweaked his chin and whispered, “You’re Mommy’s smart little boy, aren’t you?”
He reached for her face and poked one of the cuts. “Mommy booboo?”
Wrapping her fingers around his hand, she turned up his wrist to kiss it. “Just a little one. Mommy’s okay.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Kiss it?”
She had to fight a sudden onslaught of tears. “Will you?” She leaned closer to her boy, and he pressed a tender kiss to her cheek.
“Ahw bettah.”
She bit the inside of her cheek and blinked back tears as she smiled at Nicholas. “Yep. All better. Thank you, sweet pea.”
Nicholas gave her a sweet smile, then looked past her out the car window. “Fwench fwies?”
The little stinker had spotted the golden arches as they drove past the fast-food restaurant where she sometimes took him for a treat.
“Not today, honey. We’ll get a snack at home.” She ruffled his hair, then, realizing where they were, jerked her attention back to the window. “Reid, where are you going? This isn’t the way to my house.”
“We’re not going back to your house,” he said, his tone flat and uncompromising.
“What are you talking about? Of course we are!”
“No. Too risky.”
She gaped at his profile, too stunned by his pronouncement to respond for a moment. “Reid...”
“Look, whoever that guy was, he was waiting outside your house. Do you really want to go back and give him a second chance to finish the job?”
“But...where can we—” She glanced at Nicholas. He might be too young to understand, but just in case she modified her language. “How do we know he wasn’t aiming for you? Maybe you’re the one who has the target on his back.”
“We don’t know. But he was waiting outside your house. Which is why you’re not going back there until I figure out—for sure—who was behind the attack and why. And put an end to the threat.”
“If there’s a threat. It could have been a random thing. A case of mistaken identity, or a fluke...”
He sent her a look that asked, You don’t really believe that, do you?
“Reid, I can’t—”
“Pen, I know you don’t want to believe it was your dad, but it comes down to this—are you willing to put your child at risk if all your doubts prove wrong?”
A shudder rolled through her. Despite her denials, her attempts to rationalize the irrational, in her gut she knew Reid was right. She couldn’t do anything that would put Nicholas in harm’s way. As incredible as it seemed, the evidence pointed to the frightening fact that—whether it was her father or not—someone had tried to kill her today. And they could try again.
Chapter 8
Reid took a circuitous route as he drove Pen and her son to his lake house. Kno
wing he could be followed, he made sure to watch his tail and take irregular turns, sometimes doubling back and quite often making zigzagging turns. Only when he was certain no one was tailing them did he drive to his property outside of the Dallas metro area. He’d bought the place several years earlier through a blind corporation he’d set up so he’d have a safe house to go to if one of his police investigations ever got too hot. He’d primarily used the lake house as a getaway when things at Colton Valley Ranch got too crazed, when he needed an escape from classic Colton-style drama.
Because he’d originally intended it to be a secure retreat when he felt his life was at risk from the enemies he made through his job, he’d taken extra measures at the lake house. A state-of-the-art alarm system, dead bolts, security cameras, secure Wi-Fi and reinforced windows. He’d spared no expense because...well, he could. He had his share of the Colton wealth at his disposal, and if he couldn’t spend it to create a safe zone for himself, a retreat where he could not only relax and rejuvenate, but do so in safety and luxury, then what was the point of having vast amounts of cash at his disposal?
His salary at the police department had been irrelevant to him. He’d worked because he’d have been bored living the life of a rich playboy. As a detective, he’d been challenged mentally and physically. The element of danger had appealed to his thirst for excitement, and the service he’d performed the community by arresting criminals and solving murders gave him a sense of purpose. That purpose was what he’d missed most in the past year. He hated feeling useless, hated knocking around the huge Colton estate and having no direction in his life.
His father’s disappearance had fueled his days in recent weeks, given him a mystery to puzzle out, but the lack of progress in finding the old man was proving an aggravation in more ways than one. Now, he supposed, he’d need to set aside Eldridge’s disappearance to look into who had shot up his truck. Knowing the elderly neighbor had called the police, Reid also knew there would be questions about why they’d left the scene. He’d be in touch with his contacts within the Plano PD to set things right there and find out as much as he could about the official investigation into the shooting.
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