One-Eyed Jack (The Deuces Wild Series Book 3)

by Irish Winters

  Still catching his balance, Keller looked Tucker in the eye. “Director Chase, it’s good to finally meet you. I’m new at this psychic stuff, but no, sir. I detected nothing to indicate that Chester Bratton was aware he had a child with Candace. All I saw was the insane look on her face when she ended him. She’s a cold-blooded killer, sir.”

  Tucker glared at the newest addition to his band of psychics before he leveled a stern eye at Isaiah. “Then why’d you guys let her go? Where is she?”

  “I wish I knew,” Isaiah replied evenly, “but she’s not transmitting, and stop baiting us, Boss. You know as well as I do that we didn’t let her go. It was Chester’s cry for help that both Keller and I received. That’s what brought us here in the first place. Chester probably didn’t know it, but he projected tremendous energy into the universe in the last seconds of his life. Like Ky Winchester did the first time he met Eden.”

  Met, as in psychically found each other across time and thousands of miles of space. At the time, Ky’d been near death, strung by his wrists to an overhead hook in a rat-infested prison cell on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan. It was Eden who’d heard his mental prayer to die. It was her psychically reaching out to him from the East Coast of the United States and all the way to that prison, that got him through what might’ve been the last night of his life. Coincidentally, another Marine imprisoned in that same death trap did the actual rescuing the very same night. But it was Eden who Ky had resolved to live for. She gave him the strength to hang on. Anyone who saw them together today knew that.

  “We just couldn’t get here fast enough to save him, sir,” Keller offered quietly, his eyes still on Tucker, his hands at his side. The man was literally standing at attention as if he were still in the military.

  That seemed to impress Tucker. “But you did apprehend Randall. That’s something,” he said.

  “Not nearly enough,” Tate added. “Candace Bratton’s still on the loose, and she’s more dangerous than any of the guys in this mess.”

  “But there is a safe below the surface of this murky shit, right, Keller?” Tucker stabbed a finger at the service pit. “Are you absolutely sure?”

  For that split second, Isaiah wasn’t sure who was trying to impress who, the former SEAL or the former… Wait for it. Isaiah skimmed the surface of Keller’s memories. Oh damn. Keller’s a former Army Ranger. This can’t be good.

  “Yes, sir,” Keller said with certainty, pointing to the opposite end of the rectangular pit. “I saw it and it’s in that corner. I’ve already called a hazmat service in to drain the pit, at which point, our men will retrieve the safe and remove it to FBI Headquarters downtown DC before they open it. It’s the size of a five-foot locker, made of galvanized metal with rubber seals that haven’t corroded. It’s sitting on four fist-sized rubber feet. There’s a chain around it.” Keller looked to the engine hoist at the ceiling. “No doubt that’s how Bratton got it down there, and sir.” Keller’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “The money’s still dry.”

  “You mean to tell me that Chester Bratton intentionally hid five million in a water-filled pit?” Tucker’s tone had shifted from snark to honest inquiry.

  “Yes, sir, I do. It’s the perfect hiding place, and I’ll bet ten-to-one Chester Bratton owns this service station, too. It’s only vacant because he wanted it that way.”

  Isaiah watched the two men size each other up as Keller began to settle down and fit in. He’d make a good addition to the team. Isaiah interrupted the staring contest with, “I’ll take those odds, Keller, and I’ll raise you another ten. Want to bet Chester Bratton also owned Candace Bratton’s shitty little place down the road? Want to bet he’s kept watch on her all this time, either just because she had custody of his grandkids or—?”

  “He knew Kitty was his daughter,” Tate interjected. “The bastard’s been sitting on money that could’ve made those kids’ lives easier, but instead” —he waved his hands at the glimmering pool of muck in the chilly room— “he settled for that.”

  By then, Chester Bratton’s body was encased in the body bag and laying on the ME’s gurney. The FBI’s one and only psychic team had nothing to be proud of. Candace Bratton was still on the run. Eventually, the five mil would all go back to First National. None of it would benefit Kitty and Darrin, and Chester Bratton was dead. That Garrett Randall now cooled his heels in an FBI cell seemed a damned small consolation.

  “We’re missing something, guys,” Isaiah murmured. He’d been racking his brain all day at the niggling sensation that all was not accounted for. Knowing that Jack Fillion was Darrin’s father, and if Chester Bratton truly was Kitty’s father, there seemed to be no loose ends in this robbery scheme besides Candace. Right? How far could a woman drenched in her murdered lover’s blood get? Someone had to have seen her coming or going.

  “I’ll put out an APB for Candace Bratton,” Tucker declared, his gaze on Isaiah because he’d had the same thought. “We’ll release her picture to the press to get their support locating her. Just wait. You’ll see. It’s only a matter of time now.”

  Isaiah shook his head at the canned, politically correct answer that he wasn’t buying. Nothing had changed in Candace Bratton’s MO since day one. She’d manipulated the robbery scene at the bank the same way she’d manipulated Kitty’s asthma attacks. She hadn’t been what Isaiah thought he’d seen then, and she wasn’t now. There was no damsel in distress behind those innocent gray eyes, and certainly no loving mother. Yet Candace had carried every one of those misdirects off with precision, and he’d fallen for them. All of them. Like a naïve Boy Scout instead of a highly trained federal agent, he’d given her the benefit of the doubt every time.

  Well, no more. “We need warrants for all the traffic cams in the immediate area,” Isaiah ordered. “And I want four agents sitting outside her house until this thing’s done. She might go back home. We need to be prepared if she does. I want more guards for Roxy and the kids, too. Four ought to do it. And bait, Boss…” He turned to his very surprised director, but Isaiah was on a roll and this was important, damn it. “You know as well as I do that Candace wants the five million enough to kill for it. Then let’s give it to her. No one but us knows it’s at the bottom of that pit, so hold your press conference. Tell the world how the case is going, but dangle that five mil in front of her nose like a carrot. Explain that the money hasn’t been recovered. Spin a lie, Boss. I know you can do it. Give her an FBI sob story. Tell her the five mil may never be located. Make her feel safe, Boss. Tempt her to come out in the open. You can do it. Understood?” Isaiah’s toes were tapping by the time he finished, but this was the only way forward.

  Tucker scrubbed a hand over his chin, and Isaiah was pretty sure he did that to hide that smirky smile of his. “Did you just call Candace Bratton an ass, and” —he glanced at Tate with one brow spiked like the devil— “did you call me a liar, Zaroyin? To my face?”

  “So what if I did?” Isaiah shot back at him, even as he blinked at his own audacity that had literally, come out of nowhere. But he wasn’t stopping now. He did the one thing Tucker had taught him, and had apparently taught him well. Isaiah didn’t back down.

  The barest hint of a smile curled the corners of Tucker’s big mouth. “You’re right, Agent Zaroyin,” he said evenly. “I have been thinking about why Candace Bratton didn’t take the cash. Answer seems simple. She couldn’t get to it, but are we sure she knows it’s down there? There’s no sense in broadcasting a lie until we’re sure that she does, in fact, know precisely where the five million is, now is there?”

  All eyes turned on Keller.

  Talk about a deer-in-the-headlights look. “Why are you looking at me?” he asked as his palm came to rest on his stomach again. Empathy worked that way. A true empath suffered from the same physical pains the person transmitting did. Right now Keller’s expanded mind was telling him he’d been stabbed and that he needed help, while his very logical brain kept proving the exact opposite.
That was why Eden had collapsed on her kitchen floor the evening she’d intercepted Ky’s prayer to die. She’d felt every bit of his pain as if she’d been hung by her arms and tortured.

  Special Agent Keller would soon have ulcers if he didn’t learn how to separate fact from fiction. “All I saw was her stabbing Chester Bratton and grunting when she did it. Seemed all she wanted was for him to die, and she screamed at him for lying to her the last twelve years. I take it I was right. Kitty Bratton’s twelve years old and Chester Bratton, not Bob Bratton, was her father.”

  Isaiah, Tucker, and Tate nodded in unison. At that moment, the ME rolled by with the deceased securely protected within the body bag. Isaiah eyed the puddle of blood left behind. What if…? Maybe… Just maybe…

  “Guys,” he hissed. “Cover me. I need a minute or two.” I hope.

  As a team, Tucker, Tate, and Keller followed Isaiah. When he knelt at ground zero where Chester had died, they stood between him and the remaining MPD officers still at the scene.

  Isaiah leaned into the space where Chester’s body had been laying. Closing his eyes, Isaiah disregarded the Bureau’s stringent protocols as he delved both hands into the remaining puddle of evidence. The blood and gore had gone cold, but a psychic trail lingered.

  Chester’s aura rose up around his fingers in a murky blue mist that faded to gray then glimmered with blue again. Poor, poor Chester Bratton. At one time, he’d been an honest man. A hard worker. But when his young wife died an untimely death, he’d lost his way. Burdened with a son he couldn’t seem to love, he’d turned to petty theft at first, then developed a genuine talent for picking locks and safes. He had, it seemed, a light touch, and he’d left an even lighter trail.

  His reputation for safe cracking grew in the dark underbelly of big cities where crime operated as easily as city governments did in the light of day. Yet something was missing in his successful life, and he knew it. Until the day his son brought home his pretty new wife. Enter the new Mrs. Robert Bratton. Candace. What a breath of fresh air she was. Chester almost began to love his son again. Almost. But he loved Candace more, and she loved him in return. Or so he’d thought.

  Isaiah sucked in a breath of the damp, cement smell in the abandoned garage, now mingled with the cloying, coppery scent of blood, and the rancid sting in his nose of leaked stomach acids. Chester hadn’t expected to die here tonight. The old fool knew he’d fathered a daughter. That was why he’d bought the abandoned garage, to live in and to hide his treasure, yes, but also to stay close to Candace and her children, yet far enough from them that his sins could never hurt them.

  But somehow Bob had found out that Kitty wasn’t his flesh and blood, that he’d been betrayed in the worst ways possible—by his father and his wife. After that, the tangled web Chester had carefully spun to protect the woman and child he’d loved unraveled quickly.

  With a start, Isaiah jerked his hands from the sticky, icy puddle. The concrete floor materialized first, then the sensation of a wall at his back. His team still stood guard at his rear. His knees ached, and he honestly didn’t know how long he’d knelt there. Psychic journeys weren’t measureable by time or space.

  It was Tucker who offered a hand up, after he carefully encased Isaiah’s hands in evidence bags, tugged him into his side and said, “I’ve got you, son.”

  And there it was, the link with an older brother that Isaiah had forever craved since his mother’s death and his father’s betrayal, the same type of link that Chester had craved with his daughter. The one he’d never been allowed to experience, first because Bob hated his father on sight; second, because Candace hated and used everyone.

  Chester had never held his pretty little girl named Kitty. Not even once. Like Jack Fillion, he’d loved her from afar. Until the day he’d tangled with Garrett Randall and his brothers. Then, unbeknownst to Candace, he’d moved into her neighborhood and he’d settled for the unrequited love of a man wanted by the law.

  “He… he… ” Isaiah hiccupped in a jolt of frigid air, for a moment dizzy from the journey he’d just taken. “He t-told her where the money is. Candace. She knows. She also knows he loved Kitty. She just… she just didn’t care.”

  “The woman’s stark raving crazy,” Tucker muttered as he and his team provided a hulking, protective escort for Isaiah from the garage and into Tate’s SUV. He reached past Isaiah to secure the seatbelt for him, but by then, the cold had taken over. Isaiah shivered, his breath a smoky cloud. Tate came up with a blanket from somewhere while Agent Keller stood behind Tucker, anxiously waiting to offer a—a hand. For some reason that was damned funny. Isaiah suppressed the urge to laugh out loud. At the moment, he seemed to have plenty of h-h-hands.

  “Take him downtown,” Tucker ordered Tate, “and keep him warm. I want everything he says recorded, the blood evidence bagged and tagged, and I want him rehydrated and fed by the time I get there. Take good care of him.”

  “Always do, Boss,” Tate replied gruffly.

  Isaiah let his head drop to the back of his seat, exhausted to his core. “She knows where the money is, Boss. She knows.”

  “And now, so do we.” Tucker slapped Isaiah’s knee like a brother who always—always—had his back, and damn it. Isaiah blinked at that simple, but powerful, tough guy contact. It didn’t last more than a couple seconds, but apparently, mind-numbing psychic journeys made him emotional, too. The thing was that Tucker embodied all the honorable traits Isaiah strived to become. Okay, so they came wrapped up in a ton of male testosterone and bullshit, too, but damn. Isaiah ducked his cheek to his shoulder before he made a fool of himself and that tear got away. Men didn’t cry. Another Tucker Chase rule.

  “You okay, kid?” Tucker asked, his voice gentler now as he ducked low to read the only agent he called kid. Even that simple nickname hit Isaiah in the heart. Tucker used a lot of expletives in his daily communications, but damned few nicknames.

  Isaiah nodded. “You bet, Boss,” he said hoarsely. “D-don’t take all night. We’ve got plans to make.”

  Tucker nodded, slammed the door, and away Tate and Isaiah went.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Tate asked once he pulled into traffic. Instead of heading north to hook into Pennsylvania Avenue, he ducked south to I-695, then passed the on ramp to the interstate, and hooked a right onto M Street SW.

  Isaiah knew Tate was buying time, taking the long way home, so to speak. Letting Isaiah gather his wits after the emotional deluge from Chester’s memories.

  “You like this drive,” Isaiah deduced correctly. He knew Tate like a brother. Another brother. Damned if that didn’t cause more tears at the brim of Isaiah’s tired eyes. For an only child to be surrounded by brothers of this mighty caliber was a gift from the universe Isaiah could never have imagined when he’d lost his mom. He thought he’d lost everything that night and the lonely months that followed, yet here he was. Part of a brotherhood like no other.

  “I like the waterfront,” Tate answered thoughtfully. “You can see the river in a minute.”

  Sure enough, M Street curved right into Maine Avenue SW, and the Potomac River, with all its watercraft, lights, and wharf-side businesses, sprang into view. Angling left through the heavy late night traffic on Seventh Street SW, Tate dropped into the District’s latest and greatest booming enterprise: The Wharf DC. Tourists flocked to the nightlife here. Washington’s finest patrolled the waterfront, making it a trendy, secure destination any time of the year.

  Isaiah sagged into the heated seat, his head turned to the right as he took in the glittering sights. He’d known this part of the Potomac had been renovated into a spectacular sight, but he’d never once eaten at one of the fine restaurants or pubs, much less taken a date here. He’d been too busy with his job as a career FBI psychic and analyst. It hurt to realize that the same thing had also driven Abraham Zaroyin. His job.

  His father had never cheated on his mom, yet in a way, he had, simply because he’d chosen to spend his t
ime on a drone project that, in the end, ruined him and got his wife killed. Destroyed his family. Turned his only child into a lonely boy with nowhere to turn and no one to turn to.

  At the next corner, a gregarious patrol cop lifted a gloved hand in greeting as Tate drove by. Isaiah waved back, and suddenly his heart ached for Roxy. He’d left her alone with Tucker and the kids, but now, late at night, she was the only one protecting what he knew was the greatest treasure on Earth. The kids. His home. And her.

  “Chester Bratton had everything,” Tate murmured, apparently lost in the same melancholy. He’d had a tough go when he’d lost his mom, too. His dad had never recovered, just walked out of their cabin in Alaska one day and disappeared. In that tragedy, Isaiah and Tate were the same. They’d been forced to cope with gut-sucking grief and loss alone, and they’d done it as twelve-year old boys. Much like twelve-year old Kitty Bratton would have to do now that her mother might face federal charges and prison time, if Candace were ever apprehended. If she lived.

  “I want to go home,” Isaiah told his best bud earnestly. “Don’t take me downtown, Tate. Take me home.” I want to see Roxy. I need to see her.

  Tate offered the best grunt Isaiah had ever heard—right before he said, “Hell, yeah. Where’d you think we were going?”

  Brothers. Nothing like them in the universe.

  Roxy had no idea what time it was or how long she’d been out before her rude introduction to Bob Bratton. That she’d awakened somewhere other than Isaiah’s house told her she’d suffered a concussion. The throbbing beat in her head didn’t contradict her conclusion, but Jesus H. Christ, she was freezing. The flimsy T-shirt she’d changed into after her shower was dirty and wet, from what, she wasn’t sure, but she smelled of sweat and—fear.