“She’s… different,” Tate said thoughtfully.
Isaiah looked up at that odd remark from the man who rarely shared his opinions on women, not even his wife. Roxy ought to be proud. The big guy didn’t have much of a feminine side to get in touch with, and he didn’t like most people. To openly admit he liked her was an honor.
From the wild state of Alaska, he’d lost his parents early in life. After a couple tours of duty, he’d come home uptight and reclusive, preferring the wild outdoors to the hectic civilian life of the city. Then along came Winslow Parrish, the little woman who’d turned him on his ear and won his heart. He hadn’t been the same man since. A good woman will do that.
Isaiah rapped a loose spoon on the table so both these testosterone-amped Neanderthals would stop staring down the hall, damn it. There’d be no ogling his woman, well, unless he was doing it. “Question. Who’s on patrol outside?”
Tucker blinked, shook his head, and Isaiah wanted to smack him for whatever he’d been thinking. No man got that dazed look in his eye unless it had to do with a woman, and Tucker’d better not be thinking of her like that, damn his big, square head.
The random thought made Isaiah smile. He hadn’t had a possessive bone in his body until she’d come along, now he sported one in his pants all day long. Yet he’d only known her, truly known her, for twenty-four hours. What had happened to his highly evolved brain? Seemed his little brain was in charge.
Rubbing a hand over his face, he hoped he’d masked his own delicious and terribly wicked thoughts of that woman, but damn. He was a goner. “Brattons still in their suite?” he asked to get his mind out of the gutter.
“Last I checked they were asleep,” Tate said, sitting down again. He pushed his cereal bowl out of his way and crossed his beefy arms, his elbows on the table and his fingers interlocked.
Just because he could, Isaiah sent a gentle probe Roxy’s way. Her mind was on what they’d done last night. In the shower and in his bed. She positively glowed, and didn’t that send a shot of pure lust to his groin? The lady was killing him and she didn’t even know it.
“MPD sent a couple cruisers over early this morning,” Tucker replied, finally dropping his butt into the chair next to Tate. He shoved back from the table and dropped both elbows to his knees. Staring up at Isaiah through his brows, he looked like the deadly sniper he was. “I figured the more the merrier. Plus, we need the assist when we move the Brattons, so I’ve got extra patrols in the area. Don’t worry. If Randall makes another move, we’ll get the son-of-a-bitch.”
That was what every good officer of the law said. “Tucker and I have been talking,” Isaiah informed Tate. “What if we mix things up a bit instead of sitting here waiting for him?”
Tate grunted. “Go on.”
“He’s got to be close, right? I can sense him, can’t you?”
Tate slung one arm over the back of his chair. His upper lip twitched with the insolence he did so well. “Yeah, but I’d just as soon let him come to me now that I know he’s been using a good dog like Nugget to do his dirty work. Shitty trick, hurting a dog. Men like Bratton need a come to Jesus meeting, and I want to arrange it.”
“I know what you mean,” Isaiah said as he turned to his boss. “How much cash can you get your hands on? As in millions. I’m not talking pocket change. I want Bratton to think we’ve located the armored car cache in Bratton’s old house, and I need him to see us taking it. I want him so hungry for it that he makes a mistake.”
Tucker ran a hand over his big chin. “I can request a million without much hassle. Any more will take longer, and it’ll be harder to justify, but he doesn’t need to know that. Did you know she never divorced Chester Bratton’s son?”
Isaiah froze. “She’s still married to Bob? You don’t think he’s in league with Randall again, do you?”
Tate growled. “Five mil’s a lot of margaritas south of the border. Of course Bob Bratton’s working with Randall. Why wouldn’t he be?”
“Because I can read what’s going on in Randall’s head” —when I’m not distracted by Roxy— “but I haven’t picked up a single vibe on Bob Bratton. Besides, I don’t think Randall’s in a sharing mood with Chester Bratton, not since his brother died at the bank.”
“Tank had it coming,” Tucker said. “I went to bat for Roxy over that one, else she’d still be on mandatory leave pending an MPD IA review right now.”
Wasn’t that the truth? Internal Affairs always said they were there to help, but the truth was, they often got in the way of good police work. Isaiah understood the need for checks and balances behind the rule of mandatory downtime that followed an officer-involved shooting, but if not for Roxy, there’d be a smoking crater in the District right now. Did IA take that into consideration?
Isaiah rolled his shoulder, irked that his possessive streak had now overlapped into Roxy’s official business. Good hell, Zaroyin. Get a grip. “Anyway,” he started again. “It’s time we take the fight to—”
“Now hold on a minute,” Tucker growled, his palms forward to placate Isaiah. “I’ve already got agents staked out all over this city looking for the bastard, and your job” —he stabbed a finger in Isaiah’s face— “is to sit tight and keep our little family safe. Yeah, I’ll consider baiting Randall with a cover story about finding the stash, but you won’t be involved. I’ll handle it, all of it. Who’s to say that’ll end this showdown anyway? You’re guarding Bob’s wife, not his ex, who by the way, Randall believes knows more about the five mil than she’s telling us. And furthermore—”
“So do I,” Tate muttered.
“You what?” Tucker asked, his brows up. The man liked to monologue more than he liked to remind everyone he’d been a SEAL.
“She knows something about the five mil. I can feel it,” Tate said, his jaw set in that stubborn way he had. “Can’t you?” he asked his boss pointedly.
Tucker huffed. “No, damn it. I can’t get a sense of where Randall’s at, and I can’t pick up any vibes from Mrs. Bratton. That’s your job.”
“Wait a second.” Isaiah waved for his boss to shush. He leaned into Tate, looking closer at the man with the expressionless face. “Can you read Candace Bratton?”
Tate shrugged. “Not exactly.”
“Then how do you know she knows where the five million is?”
“Because her dog doesn’t like her and she’s mean to Darrin.” Tate grunted like it was obvious. “Have you ever looked at those two kids? Why’s Darrin got red hair like she does, but Kitty’s hair is dark like mine?”
“Because the kids’ dad was brunette and their mom’s a redhead, moron,” Tucker sniped, tipped back on the rear legs of his chair. “It’s all about genetics, but that has nothing to do with the armored car heist. Jesus! Get with the program, Higgins.”
What Tucker said was correct, but Isaiah’s quick mind still tripped over what he thought he knew about genetics, recessive genes, and heredity in two seconds flat. It wasn’t much, just enough to know that it took two people with the same recessive gene to produce redheaded offspring. Two people with red hair in their genetic backgrounds. Somewhere. Generations ago, maybe. Or a redheaded woman who’d seduced a redheaded man. Like Candace and that hopeless man back at the chapel. He had red hair, and come to think of it, the coppery color was a lot like Darrin’s. Isaiah was almost sure. It hadn’t struck him as unusual at the time. But combined with his inability to read Candace, it did now.
“It’s him,” he muttered to himself as his synapses fired back to life and his Roxy-befuddled brain rapidly connected facts to motive. “His son isn’t dying. That’s not what he meant. He isn’t allowed to see his kid. That’s what he was talking about. He’s lost custody or something, and shit. She’s holding something over his—”
“What are you talking about?” Tucker snapped.
Isaiah sucked in a deep breath, certain he was on the right track. It made scary, logical sense. “That man in the cha
pel. The one I asked you to have FBI forensics identify.”
His psychic power ramped into overdrive, searching back for a replay of the desperate vibes that had shuddered off the man in the chapel last night. The death of a son would surely produce that depth of misery, but what if it was a different kind of death, the kind where the kid wasn’t physically dead, but where the father was denied access to the boy he loved? Or—oh, my hell. A universe of what-ifs crackled to life in Isaiah’s head. What if that man’s son was in danger, and he couldn’t do anything to help him?
Plink, plink, plink went the dominoes. “That guy. He was sitting behind Candace in the chapel when I caught up with her, but he left when I arrived,” Isaiah said, more to himself than to Tucker or Tate. “They’d been talking. Her hair was undone. I’d interrupted something that devastated him, but Candace…” Damn, I wish I could get past that woman’s defenses! Yet even with her daughter in the ER, she hadn’t seemed anxious or worried. She hadn’t acted like much of a mother at all, more like a woman who had all the time in the world. More like a calculating woman who’d let her hair down to tease an already tormented man. With what? Sex? While her daughter could’ve been breathing her last? When all he truly wanted was his child?
A chill shivered up Isaiah’s spine at the she-devil in disguise that he’d been dealing with and believing, all this time.
“So?” Tucker asked, once again interrupting Isaiah’s pinging thoughts.
“He has red hair,” Isaiah blurted out. “Not bright red, but… auburn. Coppery. Just like Darrin’s. And he has the same fair complexion. The same freckles. But Bob Bratton’s hair is brown, dark brown. Too dark. And his eyes are just like Kitty’s.”
That’s who he is!
Isaiah turned on his boss. “You want to bet Darrin’s not Bob Bratton’s son? That guy in the chapel is, but Candace won’t let him see his kid. That’s what he meant when he asked, ‘Can you turn back time?’ He wasn’t asking to go back to before his child got sick. No, he wants to go back to undo the worst mistake of his life. With Candace. He’s not just sad, he’s mad as hell, and…” Isaiah wanted to smack his hard head for not seeing this sooner. “It’s him. I know it’s him, Boss. Bob Bratton isn’t Darrin’s father. I don’t know the guy in the chapel’s name yet, but I’m positive that he’s Darrin’s biological father. Whoever he is, he loves his son, and he wishes he’d never met Candace.”
More dots lined up. I am so dumb! “That’s why Bob Bratton left Candace. She cheated on him and got pregnant by another man, and…” The image of Candace snuggled in bed last night with Kitty in her arms and her back to Darrin flashed into Isaiah’s head. The motherly show of affection was another lie. That had to be when she’d induced Kitty’s asthma attack. She hadn’t hugged Kitty because she’d loved her more than Darrin. She didn’t love either of them.
Tucker’s brows crashed to a dark thunder line over his already stormy eyes. “You think we’ve got a third player in this party?”
Tate offered his customary grunt. “Five, Boss.” He ticked them off his fingers. “Garrett Randall, Chester Bratton and his son, Bob. That makes three. Whoever this redheaded mystery guy is and…” He tipped back to look down the hall. “The bitch in the bedroom down the hall.”
That was a strong word for Tate, but the descriptor fit.
Isaiah raked a hand over his head as the stars lined up. Only one thing sprang to mind that Candace could hold over a man, forcing him to stay away from his child. Make that five millions things. She knew where the money was.
All the unanswered questions turned his brain into an out of control pinball game, complete with flashing lights. Did a record exist somewhere to give Isaiah the mystery man’s name? A motel receipt? A marriage certificate? A divorce decree? Or had they been just lovers? Were they ever newlyweds? Those details would take time to locate, but what had Darrin’s real father done to alienate Candace?
Shit, shit. Shit. Isaiah swallowed hard past the dread climbing up his throat. Was this even about the money or was something else, something more diabolical going on? Candace Bratton had proved elusive at every turn. Was this simply a ploy to torment the two men unlucky enough to have fallen in love with her? Was she one of those black widows, willing to hurt her children to get back at their fathers? And how the hell did Garrett Randall fit into her scheme? Was this love triangle really a four-way nightmare between her, Bob, Randall, and the mystery guy?
A noisy grunt from Tucker zeroed Isaiah’s focus back to the kitchen. “And again I ask, so what? We think we know who some guy in the hospital chapel might be. Big deal. How’s he related to Randall, and what’s his stake in the five mil? That’s what I want to know. Answers. I want real answers, not hypothetical guesses.”
Isaiah stared past his boss, his mind tuned like a sniper’s scope back on the precise moment he’d touched the man in the chapel’s wrist. Isaiah had gotten an instant psychic jolt as if he’d recognized the man at a scary intimate level. It hadn’t been simple grief staring back at him. Not pain or anger, either, but raw, utter desolation. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing the reflection of the twelve-year-old boy he’d been the night he found his dying mother on his bedroom floor. The night when Isaiah fully understood there were ugly, evil predators in the world—the human kind.
He shoved to his feet, his mouth gone dry with remembering. Along with it came the angst of a father who adored his son, but had never seen him. Could never play baseball with him or listen to Darrin talk about this favorite team, the Nats. Could never hold him in his arms and tell him that he was a good boy.
Isaiah’s mouth went dry. “I’ve got to talk to Candace.”
Tucker stopped him cold. “Not until we talk to Roxy first. Get her back here. She’s a woman. I want her take on this.”
Isaiah canted his head, not sure who his boss was at that moment. Looked like Tucker. Sure didn’t act like him though, not if he’d just included Roxy in FBI decision making. Tucker had definite rules about working with the locals. Could his sweet, intelligent wife, Melissa, have finally gotten through that thick, hard skull of his and turned him sensitive? Nah.
Off the subject sidetracks like this tended to rattle Isaiah’s overly controlled brain, but in this one minute reprieve from the monumental tasks at hand, one helluva insight blinded him now.
“Boss,” he said before he lost the thought. “We may have one more suspect.”
Tucker stared at him like the devil, but Isaiah kept going. “I got a good read on the guy who dumped Nugget over the gate. He wasn’t Garrett Randall. I sensed no greed for the missing money. He wasn’t the man in the chapel, either. No, that guy was filled with rage, not grief. The guy who hurt Nugget…” Isaiah cast his mind back to the swirling aura that had all but carried the man from the safe house. “He wants revenge, not money. He stabbed Nugget to get back at Candace Bratton.”
“Just what I need,” Tucker roared. “One more damned player.”
With long strides, Isaiah left his fuming boss behind and walked swiftly toward the Brattons’ suite. He needed time to focus, but that didn’t seem possible in this multi-level operation.
Tapping softly at the closed door that Roxy had only moments before entered, he’d no more than cocked his head to listen for her reply, when Tate bellowed, “The redhead’s gone! Get to the kids! Now!”
Chapter Twenty
Roxy couldn’t believe her eyes. From the emergency room to this! Poor Kitty lay stretched on one side of the bed, pale and as still as death, barely breathing, the sun from the open blinds streaming over her.
Darren knelt on the bed beside her, crying and tugging at her arm. “Come on, Kitty. You gotta wake up or Mom’s gonna be mad when she’s done taking her shower.”
Roxy leapt to his aid. “What happened?” she asked Darrin before she screamed at the closed bathroom door, “Goddamnit, Bratton get your ass out here!”
Roxy’s training kicked in. Quickly checking the girl’s
throat for obstructions and finding none, she began CPR, starting with emergency ventilation. The poor kid was warm. That much was good. Switching adeptly to chest compressions, she told Darrin to, “Get your mother out here.”
He ran to the bathroom door and pounded. “Mom! Mom! Kitty’s dying! You gotta come help now!”
Roxy didn’t have time to wait for Bratton to show. “Come take my two-way,” she ordered Darrin. Beads of sweaty panic dripped into her eyes, but she was pissed as hell at the woman taking a leisurely shower while her daughter struggled for life. Weren’t moms supposed to have some kind of a sixth sense to know when their kids were in trouble? I’m no mom, but I’m here. Why the hell aren’t you!
Darrin scrambled back to his sister’s side, his eyes wide but focused as he gingerly unclipped the radio from Roxy’s collar. The poor kid was on the verge of hyperventilating.
“Good, now hold the button on the side, and yell, 10-33,” Roxy ordered. Police code for emergency. Send immediate assistance.
He nodded, pressed the call button and very distinctly said in a polite little boy, inside voice, “Ten-thirty-three.”
“No, no, no!” Roxy blew out a burst of frustration, sending the tangles in her eyes flying. “Louder, Darrin. Scream it. We need help! Do it!”
What a mess. The poor kid was shaking, but that time he put his heart into it and bellowed out a strong, “Ten-thirty-three!” to be proud of.
“Now give them this address,” she ordered, giving him the safe house location.
Just as he did, Isaiah burst into the room and right on his heels, Tucker. “You go after Mrs. Bratton,” Isaiah ordered his boss. “I’ve got this.”
Sirens already screamed in the distance, but why had Tucker left? “She’s in the shower, dumbass!” Roxy called after his disappearing butt.
“No, she isn’t. She’s outside, headed for the fence,” Isaiah informed, his voice as calm as a summer day even as he stepped between Roxy and Kitty to take over compressions. “Hey, buddy,” he said to Darrin, “You did real good calling for backup. I’m proud of you. Now let’s save your sister, okay?”
One-Eyed Jack (The Deuces Wild Series Book 3) Page 17
