Take the Key and Lock Her Up

by LENA DIAZ,

  “Yes. I assume even a baby cop knows what they mean. Three tears, three kills. He’s a gangbanger, a murderer. He doesn’t deserve mercy.”

  “Quit calling me a baby cop. And none of that means it’s okay for you to . . . to . . .” She waved her hand, searching for the right word. “It’s not okay to just execute him.”

  She rushed around him, ignoring his curses, and stood a few feet from the man who was lying on his side, whimpering.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  He shot a look at Devlin.

  “Ignore him,” she demanded. “Look at me. What’s your name?”

  “Brad,” he wheezed between clenched teeth. “Brad Robinson.”

  “Where do you live? In Savannah?”

  “Yes. Call an ambulance, lady. Please. I need a doctor.”

  She looked at Devlin, who was already pulling out his phone. Yes. She was making progress. She turned back to the injured man. “We’ll get you help. But tell me who hired you. Why are you after us?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His mouth tightened.

  “Brad Robinson,” Devlin said. “Surprise, surprise, you’ve got a criminal record.”

  Emily looked back at Devlin. He swiped his thumb across the screen on his phone. She hurried over to see what he was looking at.

  “You Googled him? I thought you were calling 911.”

  “No, I didn’t Google him. I looked up his criminal record, courtesy of a backdoor into the state’s prison record system. Let’s see. Convenience store robbery for starters. Oh, and it looks like our Mr. Robinson is not only a gangbanger, he’s a rapist. Started with his thirteen- and fourteen-year-old cousins when he was seventeen. Served only one year in juvie for that. Then he graduated to manslaughter, and let’s count them, one, two, three rapes as an adult offender—that we know of. The only reason he’s out of prison is because he turned state’s evidence, testifying against his cell mate, who supposedly gave a jailhouse confession to armed robbery.”

  “I need a doctor,” the man cried.

  Devlin held the phone for Emily to see the report. “Is this the kind of man you think deserves mercy, Em? How many more women do you think he’ll rape if we let him go?”

  She clenched her fists in frustration. “You still can’t kill him in cold blood.”

  “Why not? I’ve been doing that for years and it’s worked fine so far.”

  “But it’s wrong. My God, Dev. How can you be so cold, so unfeeling? Don’t you care about anyone?”

  He stiffened. “I’m not cold and unfeeling, Em. I don’t do what I do because I want to hurt people. I do what I have to do so the decent people in this world don’t suffer the way Arianna did.”

  She gasped, belatedly wishing she could take back what she’d just said. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking about Arianna when I said that.” She lifted her hand to cup his cheek.

  He jerked away before she could touch him, his jaw clenched so tight the skin turned white. He circled around her and crouched beside the man on the ground.

  “Who hired you?” Devlin demanded. When the man didn’t answer, Devlin slammed his pistol against the side of the man’s head.

  The man cried out and held his hand up. “Stop, please. Don’t hurt me!”

  Emily bit her lip. She should pull her gun, demand that Devlin stop. But she couldn’t make herself do it, not after hearing the agony and pain in his voice when he’d told her about his fiancée’s murder.

  “Who hired you?” he repeated.

  “I don’t know. It was all done over the phone. We were supposed to kill both of you and provide proof of death to get our money.”

  “How were you going to provide proof of death?”

  The man whimpered.

  Devlin shoved his gun against the man’s temple. “I’m not asking again.”

  “Pictures of the corpses,” he choked out. “And a finger from each of you.”

  Emily pressed her hand to her throat.

  “Where were you supposed to send proof of death?” Devlin asked.

  The man started blubbering again. “We were supposed to get a phone call in a couple of days with further instructions. That’s all I know. I swear!”

  Devlin studied him, as if weighing his words for the truth. He finally rose and leveled his gun at the other man’s head.

  Emily gasped and started toward him, determined to step between the two if necessary. But she stopped when Devlin looked at her.

  “This really matters to you? You don’t want me to kill him?”

  “Y . . . yes. Yes, of course it matters. I don’t want you to kill him.”

  He gave her a curt nod. “All right. I won’t kill him.” He moved the gun lower. Bam! Bam!

  Robinson screamed.

  Emily ran to Devlin. “You said you wouldn’t kill him!”

  “I didn’t. I cured him. He’ll never rape another woman or child again.” He shoved his gun in his holster and calmly walked away.

  Robinson rolled back and forth on the ground, screaming and moaning as he clutched himself.

  Devlin had shot him in the groin.

  Chapter Eighteen

  * * *

  IT TOOK ONLY a few minutes for Devlin to find and hot-wire the Jeep the dead men had been driving. But in that time Emily must have asked him fifty times to call 911 to help the rapist he’d left bleeding in the woods. Didn’t she realize the sacrifice he’d made for her already in not killing that evil scum? He’d thought that sparing the man’s life would have made her, if not happy, at least grateful. Apparently not.

  The sun was just coming up when he steered the Jeep the last few bumpy feet out of the woods and pulled onto the two-lane highway.

  “Devlin—”

  “All right, all right. We’re far enough away that you can call 911. You can pull the GPS coordinates where we left Robinson from the text message I sent myself.”

  Her brows rose in surprise. “You planned all along to let me get help for that man.”

  “It seemed important to you. Don’t stay on the line very long. I’ll have to destroy the phone to keep them from tracing us.”

  She rested her hand on the top of his leg. “Thank you. You’re doing the right thing.”

  Since he was having trouble breathing with her hand riding so high on his thigh, he didn’t try to talk. If he knew she would have touched him like that for sparing Robinson, he would have spared all four men to see what that would have gained him.

  After Emily completed the anonymous call, she followed his directions, turning off the phone, smashing open the battery housing against the dashboard, then throwing the pieces out the window.

  “There’s another phone in the go bag behind my seat.”

  Her breast brushed against his arm as she reached past him for the bag. He gritted his teeth and shifted his legs to ease the pressure against his pants. If he ever got her naked, he’d probably last all of fifteen seconds before the pleasure killed him.

  He passed a shaky hand across his brow as Emily sat back in her seat, phone in hand, and fastened her seat belt. She handed him the phone and he shoved it in his pocket.

  “You okay?” She frowned. “You’re sweating.”

  “It’s July.” He flipped the air conditioner on high.

  She gave him a funny look, probably because it was already cold inside the car.

  “Earlier you said you had something in the bag that might help us figure out who’d taken those women. Is it that binder I saw?”

  “Yes. It’s got dossiers on all of the enforcers, plus recent mission details.”

  “Great. I’ll just—”

  “No, don’t bother. I’ll get it.” He thrust his arm at a crazy angle behind his seat before she could torture him again by brushing her breast against him and wiggling that gorgeous ass in the air. He yanked the bag out and dropped it on the front floorboard between her feet.

  “I could have done that, but, uh, thanks.” She glanced throug
h the windshield before flipping the binder open. “Are we going to another hideout to brainstorm the case?”

  “Can’t. Gage knows all my hideouts. We’ll have to get a motel room. Most motels don’t allow check-ins this early. For now, we’ll just drive around.” The thought of sharing a motel room with her had him sweating again. “Do you like music?”

  “Of course. Who doesn’t?”

  He turned on the radio and tuned it to the first thing that came on. Country music wasn’t his usual style. He preferred classic rock. But he was desperate for anything to take his mind off the curvy, sexy woman sitting two feet away.

  A couple of hours later, with his libido finally in control, he turned down a gravel road. It had been a close call for a little while back there. But thankfully, Emily was blissfully unaware of the internal battle he’d raged not to pull the car over and beg her to let him make love to her. And since he’d never begged anyone for anything, he was more confused than ever over his growing fascination with her.

  “Where does this road lead?” Emily asked.

  “If you stay on it long enough, it’ll take you to I-16 and on up to Macon. But we’re driving only 1.2 miles in.”

  “One point two, huh? That specific?”

  “I can give you the GPS coordinates if you prefer.”

  “I’m sure you could. What’s 1.2 miles down this road?”

  “This.” He turned down what appeared to be little more than a walking trail—to discourage strangers from using it—and parked the Jeep behind a tall row of bushes that hid it from the road.

  He cut the engine and waited.

  Emily looked all around, then shrugged. “I don’t see anything but trees and bushes.”

  “That’s because you’re not supposed to. Come on. We’re switching vehicles.”

  A few minutes later, they’d traded the Jeep for a black Dodge Charger that had been hidden under some camouflaged netting and were back on the road.

  She shook her head in wonder. “Do you have vehicles hidden all over the country?”

  “Just here in Savannah, mainly.”

  “We’re still in Savannah?”

  “About half an hour outside. I’ve been driving in circles, more or less, to make sure no one was following us.”

  “I’m impressed. You seem to know every back road and shortcut around. But if more, um, enforcers are after us, why are we hanging around? Why not head a few hours outside of town?”

  “Because everything the killer’s done so far has been centered around where I live and where my family lives. I think the killer is close to Savannah, if not in the city itself. I want to stay in the general vicinity so we can move fast once we figure out who he is and where the women are being held.”

  The song on the radio suddenly cut off in midnote as a news announcer broke in.

  “The body of a murdered young woman has been found at a house outside of Savannah.”

  Devlin turned the volume higher.

  “Although police won’t confirm if the woman’s death is connected to Virginia Hawley’s abduction last week, sources close to the investigation said off the record that there’s a high probability that both women were abducted by the same man. Next of kin have been notified. The dead woman is Nancy Thomas, a sophomore at the University of Georgia in Athens.”

  Devlin sucked in a sharp breath and slammed his fist onto the dash.

  “Did . . . did you know her, that woman, Nancy Thomas?” Emily asked.

  He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was too furious to form coherent words. Why? Why would the killer go after Nancy of all people? She was young, innocent, one of the kindest women he’d ever known.

  At the next gravel road that opened on their right, he jerked the wheel and punched the accelerator. Fifty feet in, he brought the car to a shuddering halt, barely missing a stand of trees beside the road.

  Emily sat frozen in shock as he jumped out of the car.

  He hurried into the cover of trees and didn’t stop until he’d reached a clearing out of sight of the Charger. After yanking out his pistol, he paced back and forth. He wanted to shoot something. Hell, he wanted to kill something. No, not something. Some one: the man who’d murdered Nancy.

  Memories swirled through his mind.

  Nancy at the zoo, laughing with her school classmates while they threw peanuts at Devlin. And Devlin forcing a smile as he planned his revenge against Gage for suckering him into being a field-trip chaperone.

  The delight on Nancy’s face the following weekend when Devlin bought her a puppy. Gage had nearly had a stroke at the thought of house-training a dog when he’d just installed brand-new, expensive carpet throughout the house. Revenge had been very sweet indeed.

  Nancy calling him from college, crying about a fight she’d had with her brother about her wanting to major in criminal justice.

  Devlin fervently hoped Nancy and Gage had been able to heal their differences before she was killed or Gage would never forgive himself.

  His pacing brought him to the stand of trees by the road. He caught a glimpse of Emily’s pale, concerned face watching him from the passenger window and whirled around again, his hand tightening on his gun. When he was out of sight of the car, he stopped, his breaths coming in deep, painful gasps. What was going on? Who had he so royally pissed off that they would, on top of everything else, kill an innocent young woman of nineteen just to squeeze the pressure around him even more? He had little doubt that she’d been killed in some way that would point the finger at him. All he had to do was make one phone call to confirm it.

  He shoved his pistol in the holster and pulled out his latest burn phone. What he was doing was stupid, foolish, a mistake. He knew it. But he couldn’t not have made that call, no matter what. Because this wasn’t just about him, or Kelly, or even Emily anymore.

  He punched in a landline number he rarely called but knew by heart, and rested his forehead against a pine tree. One ring. Two. Three. In the middle of the fourth ring, a bitter, raw voice came on the line.

  “Gage Thomas.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your sister,” Devlin whispered, his own throat raw even though he hadn’t been crying.

  “You bastard. Why did you do it? Why Nancy?”

  “It wasn’t me, Gage. I swear it. I didn’t kill Shannon. And I didn’t kill Nancy. You know I adored her. I would never, ever hurt her.”

  “You beat her, stabbed her, nearly fucking cut her head off with that damn wire you’re so fond of. And you left her lying on my front porch like garbage. Don’t tell me you adored my baby sister.” He broke down, crying into the phone.

  Devlin blinked back the answering moisture in his own eyes. He could feel his friend’s pain just as if it were twelve years ago all over again and Devlin was jogging around the corner of the dorm only to see the police crime-scene tape around Arianna’s car. Her long blonde hair hanging out of the driver’s side door, brushing against the pavement.

  “I let you escape yesterday morning even though I had an EXIT order for you,” Gage snarled. “And until I found out about Nancy, I’d done nothing, nothing about that order. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go after you. But all of that has changed.”

  Devlin stilled. “It’s all changed? What do you mean? What have you done, Gage?”

  “What I’m going to do is kill you. Right now, I have a funeral to plan, but once I explained to Ace what you’d done, he was more than willing to assist me in a little quid pro quo. Turns out, he doesn’t care about the rules any more than you do, especially rule number one: Enforcers’ families are not to be harmed in any way.” The line clicked.

  The blood drained from Devlin’s face. Gage had just sicced Ace on his family. He took off toward the car in a sprint, punching numbers into his phone as he ran.

  EMILY CLUTCHED THE armrest as Devlin took another sharp curve going way too fast. The Charger tilted dangerously to the right, the wheels wobbling and lifting off the pavement.

  “Devlin,” she
squeaked, her stomach plunging like a roller coaster going over a steep drop.

  He eased up on the gas and the wheels dropped. Another tight curve and then the road straightened out before them. Devlin punched the accelerator. How fast was he going? Eighty? Ninety? On a two-lane rural road on which anyone could pull out in front of them at any moment.

  “Please,” Emily tried to reason with him, speaking calmly, slowly. “Please slow down. You’re going to get us killed.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. If anything, he sped up. He held the phone to his ear and slowed for another curve, barely. The wheels screeched but held.

  “Devlin, please. You’re scaring me. What happened back there? Slow down.”

  “Pierce,” he barked into the phone. “What took you so long? Forget it. Where are Maddie and Nikki?” A few seconds later, “Get them somewhere safe. I’ve got some bad people after me, and they’ve threatened to go after my family.” His hand tightened around the phone. “What? No, right now. Now! Okay, okay. I’ll explain later. Just do it. And watch your back.”

  The fingers of Emily’s right hand ached from holding on to the armrest so hard.

  Devlin repeated the same series of warnings over the phone to his brother Matt, telling him to get his wife, Tessa, somewhere safe and to hide with her. Then he made yet another call but hung up a few seconds later. Whoever he’d called hadn’t answered.

  The rural areas faded away and they roared into Savannah’s Historic District. Devlin’s jaw tightened as he was forced to slow down drastically to avoid early morning church goers and tourists.

  “Where are we going? Does this have something to do with Nancy Thomas?”

  He weaved around a car and made another call.

  “Judy, it’s Devlin. Yes, hi. I need to speak to Braedon. It’s urgent.” He listened for a few seconds. “No, I tried his cell. He’s not answering. Is he on a construction site?” Another pause and he suddenly slowed, turned right. “I’m a few blocks from there. Thanks.”

  “Devlin, for the love of God, please tell me what’s going on.”