Her Best Friend's Keeper (Finley Creek Book 1)

by Calle J. Brookes

  But he doubted he was getting her out of his car any time soon.

  “Of course I want to find the killers.”

  “So do I. So does Gabby. And your brother, too. Shouldn’t we work together on that? I’m very good at what I do, you know? Some of my work is now being used by the FBI. It’s cutting edge, or so they say. You drive me home; I’ll work in the car. I share what I have, you do the same. An I-show-you mine, you-show-me-yours kind of thing. Except with clothes on.”

  Seriously? This woman was just asking for trouble someday, wasn’t she?

  “Who controls you? You have a family out there? One of your sisters? Parents? Handlers?” Someone had to. There was no way this creature had been released on the unsuspecting world completely on her own, right?

  She stared at him for a moment. “I don’t think I understand you. I live with my father, if that’s what you’re asking. He’s home now. He and your dad were partners twenty years ago, you know?”

  “Beck. You are one of Kevin Beck’s daughters.” That made things perfectly clear. He’d met Beck on many occasions, and had liked and respected the man. Beck had been a little younger than his dad, and had four or five kids, all a little younger than Sara and Slade. And all girls, he thought. All red-haired pretty girls who gave everyone who knew them fits. This was one of them. He tried to recall if any had had hair quite that carroty. There had been one. And he hadn’t liked her when he’d been a teenager, had he? “Your dad should have whipped your ass years ago. You don’t get into strange men’s cars.”

  She looked at him like he was the idiot. “You’re not strange. Well, not unknown strange, I mean. You may do weird things that I don’t know about, though. I guess you could be strange that way. I’ve known your family my entire life. Known you. You poured pancake batter on my head. Which was really mean. And your brother is with my best friend right now. See? I do know you.”

  “Still. You don’t know me now. I could kill you, beat you, rob you, rape you, assault you right now, then dump you along a dark road somewhere. Where you’ll never be found. Have you thought about that?” He leaned down in the open passenger door. Because the girl was for damned sure not getting out. And now that he knew who she was, he couldn’t just kick her to the curb and let whatever happened to her happen, could he?

  Kevin Beck had been his sister’s godfather. His parents had reciprocated with the Beck brat closest in age to his sister, the one with the carroty red hair. This girl. Damn it.

  That meant something to Chance. It had to.

  Like it or not, he was stuck with her for a while, wasn’t he?

  He got close enough that he could see the faint flecks of gold in those peculiar brown eyes of hers. She didn’t so much as flinch away, though he knew having him in her personal space like that had to bother her. Hell, it would bother him. But this one was an extremely cool little customer. “What do you say about that?”

  “I’d say I’ve already texted my sister Mel and told her where I was and who I was with. And Jarrod. I texted him, too. He gets a little freaked out if he doesn’t know where I’m at or what I am doing. Especially this late at night.”

  “Who’s Jarrod?” Boyfriend, possibly? She was a damned beautiful—if irritating—woman. There had to be a guy involved somewhere.

  “Jarrod’s with the TSP. Detective Foster.” Chance remembered him; he’d met Foster hanging around Gabby. “In your brother’s post. He’s a detective. And a friend. But…shouldn’t you get in and start driving? We have a long night ahead of us. And I think it’s going to storm.”

  “It’s not going to storm.”

  “I think it will.”

  ***

  It stormed. Chance should have known it would. It didn’t seem to bother his companion, who’d slipped earbuds in delicate little ears.

  Something about Brynna Beck bothered the hell out of him. Made him a bit snarly. And if she was the Beck he was remembering, always had. Whenever she’d be around, she’d grate on his nerves to the point he’d want to scream.

  It was the way she looked at him, the way she talked. The way everything normal had seemed to bother her as a kid. He tried to recall the last time he’d seen her—had she been at the funeral for the four members of his family that had been murdered?

  He looked at her—she had to be around twenty-four. Close to the age his sister Sara would have been. Kevin Beck had brought his family to Chance’s college graduation, hadn’t they?

  So this girl would have been about twelve then. He vaguely recalled a thin little girl hiding behind sunglasses and headphones.

  He looked at the sunglasses on her head. The headphones in her ears. Some things hadn’t changed, had they?

  She shifted and he was just able to make out the full-grown female curves in the dim glow from her laptop.

  Well, some things had changed over the last ten years, hadn’t they?

  She thrummed. Practically vibrated in the passenger seat of the rental. Her bag was at her feet and her fingers typed at the speed of a freight train. She’d occasionally hum, little sounds of concentration that seriously pissed him off. Made him wonder when else she would hum.

  She’s promised to show him hers. He was manfully keeping his thoughts on the professional, rather than the other areas of his body that idea, that image, flooded. Trying to, anyway.

  He shifted a bit in the driver’s seat.

  Beautiful, intelligent, loyal...and apparently as mad as the hatter ever was.

  So why was he having so much trouble keeping his eyes on the road and off of her?

  She finally pulled the earbuds from her ears and sighed, about four a.m. He’d decided it would just work best if they drove straight through the night. He’d expected his companion to fall asleep, but she hadn’t. “Yes, Gabby has to have what else I need.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You know about the emails Gabby’s been getting, right? I’ve been looking for three years to find some sort of connection between the IP address and the Finley Creek Texas State Police branch. I’ve found nothing. It’s almost like someone knows exactly what I am doing as I’m doing it. Even though I’m not supposed to be working on the Marshall case. But I’ve checked every computer I use. Mine, Gabby’s, my personal ones. If they’re using spyware, I can’t find it. And that means they are very, very good.”

  “That confident in your skills?”

  She blinked at him again. Did he have moron written on his forehead, or something? “Well. Yes. I’ve designed some seriously kick-ass software for law enforcement—as has my older sister. We know what we are doing. I gave her a cloned hard drive from both mine and Gabby’s laptops. She hasn’t been able to find anything, either. But I know something has to be there. But I can’t find what.”

  “And that’s why you have that sticker over the webcam?”

  “Yes. And after what Gabby told me happened to your sister...how the killers saw Gabby, too. Well...I’m not stupid. Not stupid at all.”

  Chance looked away from her for a moment. His sister Sara had been killed while on a live webcam feed to her best friend, Gabby, ten years ago. Gabby had hit record as she’d called 911. But it had been too late for Chance’s family.

  All he had left was his brother Elliot.

  “You’ve been friends for a while?”

  “Four years. We met once or twice with Sara when we were kids. But Mel was more Sara’s friend than I was. I was too young. But Gabby and Sara...”

  “Yes.” Gabby had been his sister’s constant companion from about the age of ten or eleven, he thought.

  “I’m younger than Gabby. Mel’s older—she and Slade were the same age. Whenever we’d visit your house, I’d stay in the kitchen with your mom while they played. Mel and Sara and Slade. They’d play with Jilly and Sydney. My other sisters.”

  “But not you?”

  “Too loud for me.” She said it so matter-of-factly. “I’d rather make cookies with your mom. She didn’t talk to me like I was weir
d. And she wouldn’t let them be loud in her kitchen. She was my friend, too. I loved her, a lot. I still miss her.”

  “Me, too.” There was something in her tone that told him far too many people probably had looked at her differently. “Why weird?”

  “I wasn’t quite as good at communicating back then as I am now.”

  No? She was very direct. No artifice. He had to admit that was a bit of an oddity. “I see.”

  “I don’t think you do. Ever heard of Aspergers?”

  Who hadn’t? “Yes.”

  “I’m on it, you know. The spectrum. For years I thought I was the only one in the family. Then two years ago we found my missing sister. I’m not. Carrie’s just like me.”

  Chance was having some trouble keeping up. But Aspergers explained a lot, didn’t it? “Ok, missing sister?”

  “Carrie was kidnapped by a murderer when she was nine. He took her to Oklahoma and she went into foster care. I saw her in a computer forensic trade journal and recognized her. I mean...she looks just like me and everything. So I did some digging—” Which Chance took to mean hacking. “In her files. She’s a year and a half older than Mel.”

  “I’m sorry for what your family went through.” He’d never heard anything about Beck having a missing child out there. Had his father and mother known?

  “We didn’t know about Carrie. I mean, my dad and mom did. But not the rest of us. But we’ve found her now. We saved her life when that murderer tried to kill her again a few years ago. We got there just in time to help save her and some other people. She jumped off a roof and landed at Mel’s feet. Now she’s married with a baby. My niece Madeline.”

  “I’m glad it worked out for you.” Family sagas and drama just pissed him off. He wanted no part of them. Not that he resented people who had those kinds of connections—but he didn’t want to hear about them. “So what did you find on that laptop?”

  “Oh. I have to show you mine first, huh?”

  He wished the interior light was on, that he could see her face. Did she realize what kind of sexual innuendo she kept using? Chance knew himself as exactly what he was—he was a damned caveman at times. Especially when it came to females and sex. This woman—she still grated on his nerves but in an entirely different way than she had as a child. Did she realize that?

  Somehow he doubted she had.

  A keeper. The girl-woman needed a keeper.

  “Do you realize how that sounds?” He pulled the car to a stop at the intersection. They needed food and a break. Caffeine. Then they’d keep going.

  She turned toward him, just as headlights flooded her window. Headlights that weren’t stopping. “What—”

  Chance grabbed for her, knowing as he did that it wouldn’t matter in the least.

  Something crashed into the passenger side.

  Into Brynna.

  Her scream was a sound he would never forget.

  THE

  PRICE OF

  SILENCE

  Finley Creek Book 3

  Coming Fall 2016

  She was the one who had always done the protecting…

  Melody Beck had spent her life taking care of others—especially her younger sisters. When one of her sisters is attacked and nearly killed, Mel is determined to find out why and who.

  All signs point to the richest man in Texas, billionaire Handley Barratt as being the mastermind behind the attack. And on Barratt being involved with the infamous Marshall Murders, a ten-year-old cold case that Mel would never forget. She had been friends with the victims and their deaths had been what led her to join the Texas State Police.

  Going after Handley Barratt was going to be extremely difficult, though. In more ways than one. Going after Handley Barratt meant dealing with his son…The one man she was trying hard to forget…

  The world was claiming his father was a killer…

  His father was an honorable man and he’d raised Houghton to be the same. What had happened to his father had to be a set-up and only link Houghton had was the name of the woman who’d been attacked, who’d accused his father.

  It wasn’t Brynna Beck who drew his attention, it was her older sister—the woman he’d shared one heat-filled night with eighteen months earlier. The woman he had never forgotten, or stopped wanting.

  But as Houghton schemes and manipulates to get Mel back in his arms where she belongs, the real mastermind responsible for the Marshall Murders is getting closer. Only this time he’s focused on Mel and the sisters she’d do anything to protect…

  Chapter 1

  Get up, little one, get up. His whispered words echoed around the dim interior of the car as he sat watching the redhead fifty feet away.

  Houghton Barrett watched the woman struggle to navigate the simple sidewalk and his heart broke for her. When she fell he almost bolted from the dark sedan and lifted her back to her feet.

  He knew her story. He had her medical files in the briefcase on the passenger seat next to him. He knew everything about her, about her father, about her sisters, and her brother-in-law. Over the last several days there wasn’t a single scrap of information about her family that he hadn’t poured over, memorized. Every photo of all of them, every mention in the media.

  Everything.

  His world centered on information that family held. He’d been watching them every second that he could. The younger two, he’d discounted. The one was barely twenty-three and working on her nursing degree; the other was still in high school. That left one in St. Louis, who had discounted for simply being too far away.

  Brynna was the next one; the one who had just been found after nearly being killed. She was still in the hospital from what his sources had told him.

  And her sister was right in front of him.

  Melody Beck pulled herself back to her feet, but the groceries she’d been in the process of carrying inside were more of a struggle. She couldn’t balance both the food goods and the crutch that he’d watched her lean so heavily on.

  She should have someone to help her. It was obvious she was too weak to do anything significant, though this was the first time he’d witnessed her actually falling.

  Too weak to defend herself if trouble came. That made it easier for him, didn’t it?

  Houghton definitely meant her trouble.

  He zoomed in on her face, seeing her lips moving. She was cursing; but it wasn’t just anger he saw. It was pain. Fear. Fatigue.

  And stubbornness. He’d watched her for a few days; it wasn’t the first time determination had been all that kept her going. What had she been through these past eighteen months?

  She managed to get most of the groceries back into the bag, but a lone cantaloupe had escaped her. She stood on the sidewalk for a moment, obviously debating whether to attempt to bend down and get it or say to hell with it.

  Finally she gave up and started the slow process of inching her way toward the door. Every laborious step she took tore at him for what he was going to have to do to her.

  It must be a living hell for her, struggling to barely walk after a life, a career, of such a physical sort. And she had been a very physical sort. She looked nothing like the former cop he knew her to be. Instead she looked weak, vulnerable, an easy damned target.

  She fell again, this time catching her weight on the front of her palms. He sucked in a breath. When she turned her palms over to inspect them it was clear they were torn and scraped. He raised the lens to focus on her face—tears.

  It was the tears that did it.

  She didn’t deserve to cry over the groceries. He didn’t want her to cry over anything.

  If he went over there to her, she was likely to shoot him on sight.

  It’s what he would have done, facing the son of the man who’d—allegedly—kidnapped her sister and almost killed her.

  Rumor had it Houghton was as dirty as his father. Damn them all.

  Her sister’s words had dealt Houghton’s company a serious blow. But it had found him her.

>   What in the hell was he supposed to do now?

  ***

  Melody Beck assumed life would get better. It just sucked in that particular moment. She even knew she would one day get better. It was just going to take time.

  She wasn’t even supposed to be able to walk. The fact that she could was a miracle in itself. One she was extremely grateful for.

  But some days she was just more tired than others. And clumsier. Today had been a particularly rough one. She’d gone back to therapy after missing two appointments the week before when every moment of her waking time had been devoted to finding her sister.

  Not to mention her own twenty-four hour stay in the hospital after someone had nearly shot her, and her rescuer had thrown her to the ground and covered her with his own body. The bruised ribs had been a concern for the doctors and they’d kept her as a precaution.

  Her sister was safe. The man who’d saved her—and carried Mel back into the hospital—was safe. Their best friend Gabby was currently safe.

  It was going to have to be enough for now. Mel had used up her share of miracles for a while.

  She just hoped it was Brynna’s turn for a few miracles. Brynna and Chance.

  The look in Brynna’s eyes as Chance had left her hospital room had nearly broken Mel. Such devastation. She’d always known her sister could be hurt so easily, but what she had witnessed today was never going to be erased from her memory, from her heart.

  And it had been so much worse for Brynna.

  After their father had arrived to stay with Brynna, Melody had escaped to run to the store—and to take a breath. To decide what they would be doing next.

  Two of the men who had kidnapped and threatened her baby sister was still out there somewhere. The other was probably dead.