by Julie Miller
Peter Landers’s steel-gray hair had been fluffed by the wind, and a frown carved two deep grooves into his forehead, above the bridge of his glasses. “Have you heard?”
He crossed straight toward her. The purpose in his stride made her hug her arms across her middle and pull her shoulders back to gain every inch of height she could summon. “Has something happened?”
“I’ll say.” He gripped her by the shoulders, squinched his mouth into a frown, then took a deep breath. “Galvan found out that your father was arrested. I guess he thought Cain was going to turn him in.” He stopped, closing his eyes as if he couldn’t go on.
Seeing his pain, feeling the urgency coursing through his fingertips and into her arms, Claire shook off her suspicions and laid a hand against his lapel. “What is it? What did Galvan do?”
He opened his eyes and looked deep into hers. “There was a bomb at the police station. The Fourth Precinct office, where they took your father.”
The Fourth Precinct? Cold, numbing fear turned her veins to ice. “Is A.J. all right?”
“A.J.!” Her uncle’s kindly old expression darkened with a forbidding look. He plucked his hands off her with a tiny shove, as if he was suddenly sickened by her touch. “A.J.? What about your father? Don’t you want to know how he is?”
Claire tucked her hair behind her ears, then just as quickly fluffed it back into place. Thoughts of the carnage at the Riverfront Gentleman’s Club and of Jordan Henley’s death flooded her mind. “Of course, I do. Is he hurt? How many people were injured? Was anyone killed?”
“I don’t know the details yet, but we should go. I’ll drive you.”
“I have a car. I can drive.”
But he beat her to her purse. He picked it up and held it out to her, his temper short with concern, no doubt. “My car’s parked right out front. Let’s go.”
For a few interminable moments, Claire couldn’t move. She couldn’t think or feel or see anything beyond Peter’s outstretched hand.
And the gold signet ring, just like her father’s, that he wore on his third finger. A twenty-five-year service ring honoring his tenure at Winthrop Enterprises. A ruby embossed with a gold W, its angles raised high enough to leave its mark on a dead woman’s neck.
Claire drifted back a step without taking her purse. It couldn’t be. Could it? Her lungs didn’t seem to be working right. She thumbed over her shoulder, grasping at the first excuse that came to mind to put distance between herself and her uncle. “Just let me get my shoes.”
She hurried back to the desk and sat. Thank God, the screen was still transmitting; it had picked up almost every word of their conversation. Taking her time to slip her toes into her shoes, Claire typed in a message so Peter couldn’t overhear. S-O-S. No, that’s not what cops responded to…9-1-1.
She lifted her head and called to her uncle over the top of the machine. “I can drive, really.”
An uncharacteristic impatience flared. “I said I’d drive. Your father may have been taken to the hospital by now. We should hurry.”
“Are we taking your Lincoln Continental?” she articulated for the recording.
“What?” Peter frowned. His gaze slipped to the machine, he remembered what it was now. “You stupid bitch. I worked hard to keep you alive. But now you deserve everything you’re going to get.”
As he stormed into the library, Claire shot to her feet. “Come get me, A.J.,” she whispered and disconnected the call before Peter picked up the machine and threw it against a wall of books.
He gripped her wrist in one smooth, long-fingered hand that had never been anything but kind to her before and hauled her up against him, twisting her arm behind her back. Pain radiated through her shoulder as he shoved her toward the front door. “Now smile real nice for the guard outside, and I’ll tell Galvan not to shoot him.”
Through clenched teeth, she begged, “Don’t kill anyone else. Please.”
She raised her gaze and found Peter staring down at her. With cold, empty eyes. Eyes that would let a brother-in-law go to prison for him. Eyes that would sell drugs or kill a colleague who threatened to betray him. Eyes that a man like Galvan would do business with.
Claire swallowed past the lump of dread in her throat. This was bad. This was really bad.
He pulled out his cell and punched in a number. Claire didn’t have to guess who answered on the other end.
“I’m bringing you a gift. And this time, I want you to get it right.”
A.J. CIRCLED THE INTERROGATION room table for the umpteenth time. Something wasn’t right here.
Figure it out, A.J. Figure it out.
Had he jumped to the wrong conclusion? His instincts were screaming at him, but he just couldn’t make out what they were trying to say.
He wondered if that chilly look of betrayal in Claire’s eyes was affecting his judgment. God knew how dead he felt inside, knowing that doing his job had cost him a chance at her love. Justice for his father felt pretty empty right now, compared to the joy he got from one of Claire’s smiles. Or the redemption he’d felt buried inside her welcoming body. Or the healing grace he’d felt each time she’d touched his face or defended him against his own self-recriminations.
But Cain Winthrop had no alibi for the night of Valerie’s death—beyond claiming to be at home alone. He and Valerie had a history. He’d insisted that Claire had made up the whole murder story in the first place. He had enough money spread through enough banks in enough countries to account for illegal trading and money laundering a dozen times over.
He had the damn ring.
Claire’s instincts claimed her father was innocent. Could A.J. trust hers when he couldn’t trust his own anymore?
“Park it, Rodriguez.” Dwight Powers’s deep voice interrupted his turbulent thoughts. “We’ve got our man. When Winthrop’s lawyer is done explaining the difference between life in prison and twenty years with the possibility of parole for cooperating with us, we’ll have Galvan, too.”
A.J. splayed his hands at his hips and looked at the attorney. “I don’t see how a father could allow his own child to be hunted like that.”
Powers shrugged. “That’s probably why he broke and confessed. I’m not looking a gift conviction in the mouth.”
“Technically, he confessed to having an affair with the victim, not to murder. We don’t have a witness to place him at the crime, and everything else is circumstantial.”
The A.D.A.’s eyes narrowed. “Are you rethinking this?”
“Yeah.” A.J. pulled his tweed jacket off the back of his chair and slipped it on. “After all we’ve been through, this was too easy to get Winthrop. Just too damn easy.”
“You think he’s being set up?”
“Or he’s protecting someone.” A.J. pushed open the door. There had to be something he was missing here.
“Where are you going?” Dwight called after him.
“To do some police work.”
“MADRE DIOS.” The slew of curses that followed in both Spanish and English alerted A.J.’s partner, Josh Taylor, along with Merle Banning, Captain Taylor and a half dozen other cops still on the floor, that something had gone beyond wrong. “He took Claire. That son of a bitch took Claire.”
It was the first time most of them had seen A. J. Rodriguez lose his cool.
A.J. listened to the end of the recording one more time. “I’m coming, amor. Be safe. I’m coming.”
Josh was the first to ask. “Talk to me, amigo.” A.J. slammed down the phone. “I need a plate number for Peter Landers’s Lincoln Continental. I’m sure it’s new. And then I need to know its twenty ASAP.” If they could locate the car, he could put his hands on the real killers. If they could locate Claire… Well.
Claire wanted to talk. He’d talk until he was hoarse if that’s what the woman wanted. He just needed the chance to be with her. To prove himself. The chance to speak the truth in his heart.
Where would Landers take her? A.J. closed his eyes and breathed s
lowly, in through his nose and out through his mouth. Quieting his emotions, he tuned out all the noise of the world and listened.
His eyes popped open. He knew. “I’m coming, amor.”
“Is there a situation?” Dwight Powers had come out of the interrogation room.
“Don’t book Winthrop.” A.J. was already backing toward the elevator doors, checking the clips on both his Glock and Beretta. “Run your numbers on Peter Landers’s accounts. And find out if he thinks Cain Winthrop is responsible for his sister’s death.”
“The plate is Beta-Delta 1-5-6,” Banning called out. “Black Lincoln. I’ve got the APB out on him now.”
“Keep me posted. Send units out to the landfill. That’s where they got rid of the last body.” They weren’t going to do it again.
Josh suited up to follow his partner. “What are we looking at, A.J.?”
Kidnapping, attempted murder, tampering with a witness, drug smuggling—hell, putting his hands on Claire was crime enough.
“If I don’t come back with Peter Landers, that means I’m dead.”
THE FIRST GUNSHOT hit his windshield and A.J. swerved into the oncoming lane.
He cursed in his head, but concentrated on his driving. A KCPD helicopter had spotted the Lincoln Continental, and confirmed its destination. He’d caught up with the car on I-71, cruising south at a speed nearly thirty miles over the limit. It was a dangerous game to play on this rainy night.
Between the swipe of the wiper blades, the lightning strikes that lit up the night and the swirling red and white lights of his dashboard siren, A.J. could pick them out. All three of them in the front seat. Landers, Claire and Galvan.
His petite, brave beauty was sandwiched between two killers. That meant she was still alive. Whatever plans for elimination Galvan had designed for her this time, he hadn’t carried them out yet. It was all the chance A.J. needed to drive harder.
Thankfully, this late at night, in the wet, unfriendly weather, traffic was scarce. As the highway curved well out of the city, it cut through a maze of hills, low-lying creeks and eroded gulleys.
The Continental had a powerful engine and negotiated the dips and hills without losing speed. But speed was what his Trans Am had been built for. He’d spent years and a small fortune rebuilding this car to become the hot rod his father had always dreamed about. But he’d run this baby into the ground if it meant keeping Claire alive.
With a deep, steadying breath, he pressed his foot on the accelerator and crept up behind them.
Galvan stuck his arm out the window and fired off another round of bullets. A.J. swerved, compensated, and with its low center of gravity, he quickly regained control of the car.
They were getting close to the landfill now. The stench of the place hung heavy in the damp atmosphere and leaked in through the vents. The smell of it burned his sinuses and kept his senses sharp. If they reached the dump site before him, he’d lose any advantage. Two of them on foot in the darkness with a hostage, instead of one enemy vehicle.
A.J. floored it. “Hold tight, amor.”
He gritted his teeth and braced for the impact. Thunder crashed in his ears as steel rammed steel. The Trans Am’s front end buckled and ground against the right front tire. The Continental fishtailed across the wet pavement, then spun in 360s again and again and again.
“Claire!”
The Continental sailed off an embankment and flew through the air until gravity caught it and sucked it down. The black monster crashed to earth. It bounced, flipped, caught in the watery muck of the landfill below and lurched to a halt.
A.J. skidded his last three wheels onto the shoulder and jammed his car into park. He was out of the car, Glock in hand, sliding and scrambling down the hill into the rain-soaked night even before a door opened on the twisted frame of the Continental.
“Police! Freeze!”
The instant he saw Landers’s bloody sleeve at the open door, A.J. grabbed a fistful of it and dragged him out, facedown onto the stinking mountain of wet garbage. He pressed his gun to the back of Landers’s head. “Stay down!”
“You’ll never get away from this, Detective.” Landers’s speech slurred from the gash on his scalp, but he had enough temerity to turn his head and taunt him. “You will lose one way or another.”
He stuck his knee in Landers’s back and flattened him. “I said stay down! And I’ll take this as evidence.” A.J. worked the gold signet ring from Landers’s finger and stuffed it into his pocket, finally making the connection to the mole on the Winthrop board that Claire already had.
“Claire!” he shouted, peering through the dark and the rain to see the car’s dark interior. An instant thought of how much she’d hate it out here in the stinky blackness of this stormy night was eclipsed by the worry that she wasn’t answering. He hoped they had just taken away her hearing devices and nothing more. “Claire!”
He glanced up the hill to the empty highway above. Where the hell was his backup? The storm had probably grounded the chopper. He’d outdriven everyone else to catch up with Landers.
“Claire!” he shouted one more time, pulling the handcuffs from his belt and ignoring his fear.
“Give it up, Detective. She’s already dead.”
“Shut up!”
The minute it took to cuff Landers was a minute too long. By the time A.J. had scrambled to his feet, braced his gun and swung around into the car, the Continental was empty. He swore against a backdrop of Landers’s laughter. “Claire!”
Rain beat down on him, plastering his hair to his forehead. It hit the dirt and fill with a noisy cadence, making it virtually impossible to hear anything beyond his own voice. He’d left his flashlight up in the Trans, so visibility was next to nil.
Hunching down, he kept his back to the car for protection. He pulled his radio from his pocket and called it in. “Suspect on foot with hostage. Armed and dangerous. I repeat, armed and dangerous. I need some backup down here, boys.”
A flash of lightning pinched off his pupils, temporarily blinding him. “You’d better not hurt her, Galvan.” A.J. tried a little blindman’s bluff taunt of his own to track them down. “Or on my father’s name, you are a dead man!”
Then A.J. closed his eyes and prayed for a miracle. “Talk to me, sweetheart,” he whispered, thinking of all the times he and Claire had communicated without words. “Talk to me.”
It came to him first, like a flutter of breath on the wind. A ripple of sensation along the back of his neck that had nothing to do with the rain dripping inside his collar. A footstep. A drumbeat of sound. A pulse of rhythm that could only be felt, not heard.
Glock in hand, A.J. shimmied around the car and peered into the dapple of light and shadows created by the storm and abstract carpet of bottles, junk furniture and trash bags. He listened for the telltale sounds that would lead him to Claire. Maybe it was her footsteps, maybe it was the path of the storm leading him. Maybe he simply followed his heart.
He found them, a quarter of a mile away, trying to get back up onto the highway. Galvan was trying, anyway. Who knew what kind of moves a dancer had in her when she wanted to escape a professional assassin? She twisted, she slipped, she kicked, she squirmed. It looked as if her hands were bound together because Galvan used the ligature between them to drag her to her feet, haul her up beside him, punish her for her lack of cooperation.
Damn it.
“Galvan! Let her go!”
Claire’s tormentor turned and fired and A.J. dove for the ground. Chin-deep in pungent leftovers, A.J. stayed low and covered his head as the bullets thunked in the mud and exploded the plastic and paper around him. When the fusillade stopped, he was up and running, pursuing them at a parallel course, closing in on them as they climbed to a higher level toward the road and solid ground.
Closer. Closer. A.J.’s lungs grew accustomed to the stale air and expanded to give him a boost of energy. “Claire!”
She never answered, never screamed. She must be gagged as well.
Galvan was tiring, dragging Claire up the incline beside him. He reached behind him and fired random shots A.J.’s way, but nothing came close.
Twenty yards away, A.J. stopped, stilled his breathing and took aim. But then they were climbing again, and the way Claire kept moving, he had no clear shot.
Damn. There was only one way to do this. A.J. changed direction and charged, straight up the muddy slope. He leaped at Galvan and braced himself for the jolt as they hit the ground. The impact knocked Galvan’s gun loose and it skittered away into the darkness. But the Renaissance Man was trained to kill in any number of ways and the fight was on.
Like a couple of street toughs, they did whatever it took to survive. They wrestled at the top of the incline, traded punches. When a knife materialized in Galvan’s hand and he lunged, A.J. deflected the thrust. Before his forearm recognized the slice of pain, he tangled their legs together and twisted, throwing them back to the ground. The two tumbled and fought and slid down the hill.
Galvan landed face-first in the muck, and his startled gasp for air gave A.J. the split-second advantage he needed to push to his weary feet and pull out his Glock. “Enough, Galvan. You’re under arrest.”
A.J’s chest heaved in and out with the effort to breathe. His gut was sore, his arm burned, and he was going to have one hell of a shiner come morning. Galvan rolled over on his back, spitting muck and water and blood from his mouth, slicking back his hair and grinning like an arrogant son of a bitch.
A bolt of lightning flashed, illuminating Claire long enough to give A.J. a reassuring glimpse of his feisty she-tiger, ready to wield a two-by-four despite her taped wrists. He barely had time to smile at her and the light had disappeared.
“So, Rodriguez,” Galvan spoke from the ground, demanding A.J.’s full attention. “You will go down in history as the man who silenced Dominic Galvan.”
