Kansas City Cowboy

by Julie Miller

  “Where are we going?” she asked again. Although she had a pretty good idea.

  “To talk some sense into Jeannee.” After shifting the car into Drive, he pulled the gun out and set it on his thigh, reminding Kate the he was armed and she was not. Reminding her, too, that she was the only one in the squad car who was thinking rationally right now. “And if you don’t make things right between us, then I’m going to shoot you both.”

  * * *

  WITH THE LOBBY AREA CLEARING OUT and the KCPD crew taking control of that crazy mob that had swarmed around Kate, Boone stepped out of the way to let the city cops escort the reporters and drama seekers outside. He wondered what his chances were of convincing Kate to let someone else, who wasn’t the target of some crazy guy’s threats, take over the public spotlight.

  And sure, she’d kept her cool on the outside when the questions had taken a personal turn. But he’d seen the hands disappear. He knew her skin wasn’t as thick as she’d like the rest of the world to think it was. He knew what it cost her to face down Vanessa Owen and the memories of an unpleasant past.

  Let somebody else take the hits. Let somebody else deal with the grabbing hands and taking the blame for unsolved crimes that had the city on edge.

  He wanted Kate Kilpatrick away from all this mess. He wanted her safe.

  Boone pressed the elevator button, thinking he’d have at least three floors to come up with some reasonable argument to get Kate to hide away someplace safe for a while—preferably in bed with him. She’d probably acknowledge his argument, come back with some logical counterargument, distract him with the brush of her hand over his arm, and then stubbornly go about doing whatever she thought was right—no matter what it cost her.

  Or him.

  The elevator opened and Boone stepped inside. He pushed the button for the third floor, glanced down and saw the leather purse crumpled in the corner.

  Boone’s blood ran cold. He scooped up the familiar bag, caught the sliding door and shoved it back open.

  A quick sweep of the lobby and dwindling crowd told him she wasn’t here.

  “Doc?”

  He’d taken a couple of steps toward the front doors to follow the press conference attendees outside when his phone beeped.

  He paused to read the incoming text from Kate’s phone. “Down.” What did that mean?

  Boone mentally replayed the last few seconds he’d had Kate in his sights. Final statement. Crowd. Swarm. Hand on her. Push her toward elevator. She braced her hand against him and...

  “She saw something.” No. Someone.

  Boone grabbed the first blue suit that walked by. “What’s downstairs?”

  He flashed his badge before the officer would answer. “The SWAT garage, equipment storage, squad car parking—”

  “Any way to get there besides the elevator?”

  The officer pointed to the stairs.

  Boone shoved open the door and hit the stairwell. He dialed Spencer Montgomery’s number and unholstered his Glock as he waited for the detective to pick up.

  “This is Montgomery.”

  “Code red or blue or whatever you call it here. Get a team down to the basement.” Boone shoved open the door at the foot of the stairs. “That Estes kid just took Kate.”

  Chapter Ten

  The cage was coming down over the garage’s exit arch.

  “What the...?” Pete stomped on the brake of the speeding car. Kate braced her hands and they skidded to the edge of the ramp leading up to the street. “What did you do, Dr. K.?”

  They lurched to a stop and Pete’s gun toppled to the floorboards. For two milliseconds, Kate considered diving for the weapon herself. But by the time she’d released her death grip on the dashboard and reached for the door handle, Pete had already retrieved the gun and aimed it squarely at Kate’s chest.

  “Don’t you move!”

  Kate also saw the silhouette of a cowboy hat in the side view mirror. She turned in her seat as he came up beside the car, with his gun cradled between both hands. “Oh, no, no, no. Boone, wait!”

  There were other guns. Too many guns. Detectives Montgomery and Fensom. Maggie Wheeler. She’d texted for help and the cavalry had arrived.

  Boone darted up to the front fender and pointed his gun at the driver behind the windshield. “Get out of the car, Estes!”

  More movement in the mirror and to her left warned Kate they were being surrounded. Men she recognized from SWAT Team 1 were slipping into flak vests and aiming rifles.

  This wasn’t going to end well.

  Unless someone with a cool head prevailed.

  Kate held her arms up in surrender. Her hands were shaking. She kept her head slightly bowed although she never completely looked away from Pete or the gun.

  “Estes!” Boone shouted.

  “I need to roll my window down so I can talk to him, Pete, okay? I’ll tell him to lower his weapon.” She brought her hands back to her lap, softened her voice. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Pete’s hands were shaking, too.

  “Please, Pete.” If she was right, this desperate young man didn’t really want to harm her. He’d been frustrated, maybe even scared, angry for sure. He’d needed someone to blame for his troubles, someone to pay for his girlfriend leaving, and Kate—the woman who was supposed to fix all that for him and had failed—had become the target of all those unbalanced emotions.

  She inhaled a deep, silent breath, trying to stay focused, trying to calm her nerves, trying to remember everything she’d ever learned about talking to someone as troubled as Pete Estes.

  He glanced through the glass at Boone’s rock-steady hands, then back at her. “Tell him to drop his gun.”

  Moving slowly so as not to alarm Pete, Kate rolled down the passenger window. The fumes from the garage stung her nose as she leaned her head toward the opening. “Boone, please put your gun away.”

  “When he tosses his out of the car.”

  “Please,” she begged. She watched the emotions travel across his face. He was a man of action. He’d promised to protect her. Holstering his gun and letting her take control of the potentially deadly standoff must be like her letting go of her emotions and simply trusting her instincts. She looked up at the tic of a muscle working beneath his steeled jaw. “Pete just needs to talk.”

  “He should have made an appointment.” His eyes never left Pete or the gun trained on her. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.” She had to make Boone understand that this was one problem that violence couldn’t solve. She had to make Pete understand that, too. “I need everyone to put their guns away.”

  “You have to fix it with Jeannee.” Pete’s gun continued to shake. “I said all those things you told me to. I told her I was going to be okay about the baby, that we’d make it work. But you lied, Dr. Kilpatrick. She left me anyway.” He ground the gun against her shoulder. “She left me.”

  “Kate?”

  “No!” She warned Boone back.

  “He left all those damn threats, didn’t he? He hurt you that night at the house.”

  “I’m fine. I need you to trust me on this.” She tore her gaze away from Boone and read the desperation in Pete’s eyes. “Pete just wants someone to listen. He wanted me to stop talking and listen.”

  Pete’s head jerked with a nod.

  “I’m listening now.”

  It was the first hint of trust, the first sign of being able to reason with him—her first hope that she and Pete both might get out of this squad car alive. Kate leaned her head out the window again. “I need Jeannee Mercer, Tiger Village Apartments, on the phone right now.”

  Nick Fensom, standing off to the side in her peripheral vision, holstered his weapon and pulled out his phone. “I’m on it.”

  “She may not want to talk.” Kate didn’t know if Pete had physically abused his girlfriend. But she was guessing that with his anger management issues, she’d certainly borne the brunt of his verbal tirades.

  Nick n
odded his understanding and retreated. “I’ll make it happen.”

  “I need everyone to put their guns away,” she said.

  The Glock in Boone’s outstretched hands must be getting heavy, but he hadn’t wavered.

  Despite the facts, Kate tried to assure him she had the situation under control. “This isn’t a kidnapping, it’s a...counseling session.”

  “Don’t make me put my gun away.”

  “Please, Boone.” She saw the sweat beading on his upper lip. “I’ll ask Pete to lower his weapon, too.”

  She looked to the younger man, dropped her gaze to the gun bruising her shoulder. “How about it?”

  He pulled the gun from the dent he’d made in her sleeve and the skin beneath. The gun still rested on his thigh, but it was pointed in a less vulnerable position toward her legs. “Thank you.” She forced her trembling lips to smile. “See? It’s okay.”

  “All right.” At last, he eased his stance and slowly, keeping his hands where Pete could see them, slipped his gun into its holster. He inched closer to her window. “But you’re not gettin’ rid of me.”

  It was a promise she wanted to cling to, a promise she was starting to believe.

  “Let me ask you a question, Boone.” It was a natural excuse for him to move another step closer to her window. “Pete. You and Sheriff Harrison have a lot in common.”

  “Like what?” he sneered. “If you’re gonna talk, you’d better make those words count.”

  She intended to. “You’re both officers of the law. And pretty good ones, too, I think.”

  She glanced up at Boone, urging him to say something helpful. His handsome mouth was a tight line of doubt. “Yeah, Estes. I’ve been in this business for almost twenty years. I’m sure you’ve got a long career ahead of you, too.”

  Kate slid her hand along the door above the armrest. She wanted to touch Boone, to squeeze his hand, to borrow his strength. But a firmer grip on Pete’s gun warned her to pull her hand back to her lap. “Being married to a cop isn’t easy. Being in a relationship with one doesn’t always work out.”

  “Kate...” Boone cautioned. It was a risky topic, for both men. Yet she knew there was no one here who could understand Pete Estes’s situation better than Boone.

  “Sheriff Harrison’s wife left him. Like Jeannee left you.”

  Boone was catching on to her ploy long before Pete. “Yeah, um...the long hours are hard for someone who isn’t in the business.”

  “Sometimes, you’re working so hard to establish your career, that you may lose track of what’s going on at home.”

  Pete agreed. “Jeannee said I wasn’t spending enough time with her. I didn’t help her paint the baby’s room.”

  The other detectives and uniformed officers surrounding the car were slowly lowering their weapons and backing off. But Kate could see it was because the SWAT team was fully armed now and getting into more strategic positions. Kate had to keep Pete talking to distract him from their movements. “I’m sure you feel as badly about that as she does.”

  “I felt guilty as hell. I want to take care of my boy...or little girl. But I need to spend time on the streets, too.” He ducked his head to see Boone through her window. “I have to earn the respect of the people on my beat.”

  Boone nodded, pretending he and Pete were sharing a moment of camaraderie. “You have to get to know them.”

  “Right. It takes time. My shift may say I get off in eight hours, but if there’s something I have to take care of...”

  “You can’t leave victims in the middle of a traffic accident.” Boone was a natural at getting the rookie officer to talk. “If a crime is in progress, you have to stop it. You can’t wait for the next guy to do it for you.”

  “Exactly. I want to be with Jeannee. But I want to do my job right, too. How else can I get promoted and make more money? I’m going to have a family to support.”

  Nick Fensom returned to the car, with his hands and cell phone up in the air. Pete raised his gun again and Kate held her breath. “I’ve got her.” Nick had Jeannee Mercer—and the possible end to this standoff—on the line. “I reached her at her mother’s place.”

  Her breath eased out on a careful sigh. “May I take the phone from Detective Fensom?”

  “Yeah.” Pete was waving the gun again, but this time, it was Boone who held up his hands to warn the SWAT team to hold their fire. “But Cowboy there steps back.”

  “I explained the situation,” Nick said, handing Kate the phone. “She said she’d come down to the precinct. I sent Sgt. Wheeler out to pick her up.”

  Kate put the cell to her ear and introduced herself. “I’m Dr. Kilpatrick. I’m a...friend of Pete’s. He’d like to say how much he loves you. And explain a few things to you.”

  “Jeannee?” Pete took the phone after an encouraging nod from Kate. “Yeah, baby. I love you, too. I don’t want you to be afraid of me. I want to do better by you.” The young man was laughing, crying, setting his gun down on his thigh and finally relaxing his guard the more he talked. “I need you to understand where I’m coming from.”

  They talked for seven minutes and twenty-three seconds, according to the dashboard clock.

  At seven minutes and twenty-four seconds, Pete let go of his gun to switch the cell to his right hand.

  Enough talking. Kate snatched the gun from his lap. Boone opened her door and pulled her from the car, forcing her down against the protection of the tire and fender and shielding her body with his while the SWAT team swooped in to drag Pete from the car. They put him facedown on the concrete and cuffed his wrists behind his back.

  When the SWAT team commander, Michael Cutler, announced the all-clear, Boone pressed his lips against Kate’s ear and whispered, “You probably just saved that kid’s life. But next time, Doc? We do things my way.”

  Kate was shaking so badly when they stood up that Boone was the only thing holding her upright. She curled her fingers into the sleeve of his jacket and held on.

  And that was when she realized that Boone was shaking, too.

  * * *

  “THE HEROINE OF THE DAY.”

  When would the madness end?

  Boone closed the conference room door as a round of applause from Spencer Montgomery and the members of the task force greeted Kate’s arrival at the late-afternoon meeting. He was bone tired and itching to get someplace where he wasn’t running into another cop or reporter who wanted to get close to Kate to either congratulate her for talking her way out of a hostage crisis or get a quote for the evening news and morning paper.

  Kate should be in a bed, sleeping.

  No, she should be in a safehouse bed, catching up on her sleep.

  And if he was in that bed with her, so much the better.

  He could tell by the extra-determined tilt of her chin that she was exhausted by the emotional ordeal of the last few days, too. She was working that sophisticated ice-princess facade while he was feeling more raw and less refined than ever after watching that sad, mixed-up kid hold a gun on her. He’d had the shot. He could have taken the young officer out. But Kate had insisted on saving her client’s neck as well as her own.

  She smiled at their praise and thanked them for their concern before sitting down at the long table. Boone dropped his hat on top of the table and pulled out a chair to sit beside her, not waiting for an invitation to join the meeting. He’d agreed to be Kate’s protector in exchange for access to the task force’s investigation.

  Until Janie’s killer was locked behind bars, and these people could prove that the only danger stalking Kate was now locked away in a psych evaluation cell, he was staying.

  “You should hear the press buzzing now,” said Spencer Montgomery. Kate audibly groaned at the prospect of going another round with local reporters. “Don’t worry. Chief Taylor is taking care of them. I’m relieving you of press liaison duty, Kate.”

  “’Bout damn time,” Boone muttered under his breath.

  The detective at the head
of the table paused at the interruption. “I hate to say it, but Sheriff Harrison was right. Setting you up as the bait to draw out Estes turned out to be far more dangerous than any risk I’m comfortable with.”

  “Pete Estes is a troubled young man.” Kate still wanted to defend this guy? “If he’d gotten out of the garage with me as a hostage, I’m guessing one or both of us would have died in an inevitable shoot-out. He’s confused and hurting and needs a lot of help.” She looked to every person sitting around the table, including Boone. Perhaps her gaze lingered a little longer on him. “Thank you for letting me take charge of the situation.”

  “You’ve done good work, Kate,” Montgomery said. “Your theory about multiple unsubs was right. Estes had a personal beef with you, and tried to cover his tracks with the red roses. But he isn’t our rapist or killer.”

  “I don’t think he even knows Janie Harrison’s name. His focus was on his girlfriend, and then on me because he blamed me for her leaving him.”

  “You’re eliminating all kinds of suspects for us, Kate. The victim’s boyfriend. This copycat stalker.” With a nod to the criminologist sitting across from Boone, Montgomery continued. “But I’d pay good money if someone could bring me a viable suspect on this case. We’re no closer to identifying the Rose Red Rapist than we were a week ago. Annie?”

  Annie Hermann stood to set her big shoulder bag on top of the table with a solid thunk. She pulled out one file after another, sorting through the labels until she found the one she was looking for and handed it off to Maggie Wheeler. “Here. I have the results we’ve been waiting for from the lab. I know chemical analysis reports can be hard to read, but go ahead and pass them around. I made a copy for everybody.”

  “And what do these squiggly lines mean to those of us who aren’t scientists?” Nick asked, passing the folder around the table.

  Boone was willing to back up the five foot two inches of glare Annie shot toward Nick, providing it would either (a) get Kate out of this meeting and into the comparative safety and privacy of their hotel room sooner, or (b) give him the answers he needed to finally let his sister rest in peace.