by Dee Tenorio
“Why are you doing it like this, Trina? Why get them out and not yourself?” The look he gave the cut above her eye was an accusation, pure and simple.
“I have to stay visible, or he’ll know I’m involved. Behind Rick, I’m the only person who helps her. She won’t go if either of us are implicated.”
She could see the wheels of his mind looking for another option, something that would keep them all safe. “You’re still keeping secrets, baby. Secrets I am going to sort out eventually.”
There was no glib answer to that, least of all in front of Shana, so she just jutted her chin out at him.
“Not today, though, am I?”
Her silence gave him that answer, too.
He glared at her, so pissed she could feel it like a flame to her skin.
“If you don’t do this,” Shana interrupted, conviction in her quiet tone even though her voice shook. “I’m dead. My son, too. And no one on this earth will ever find out what happened to either of us.”
He stared at Shana, glancing down at Katrina with such frustration she had to fight with herself not to go to him. “I’m a lot of things, ma’am, but I’m not someone who’d leave you or your boy to be butchered.”
Shana released a slow breath, nodding once, then again, as if she couldn’t quite stop herself. “Thank you.” She scraped her chair back, rising unsteadily. “I should go check on Jimmy. He gets scared when I’m gone too long.” Without another word, she made her way out of the kitchen.
Cade turned back to her. “You must think a lot less of me than I realized if you really believed I wouldn’t take her.”
“I think you’re the most honorable man I’ve ever met,” she replied, relief at being honest with him at last flooding through her. “Or I never would have called you.”
His eye twitched, his mouth flattening into a hard line. One second he was glaring at her, the next he yanked her up to her feet, claiming her mouth in a rough kiss that simply stole everything she had. She didn’t care that it hurt, that he took without asking. Her hands slid over his shoulders, pulling him tighter. She drowned in the taste of him, let him take and command her response until she forgot even about her need for air.
He finally let go, leaning his forehead down to hers. “Tell her to be ready in fifteen minutes. And make sure I can reach this contact of yours.”
Trina tried to control her breathing, her hands clenching the lapels of his coat. “Cade—”
“No. You got what you wanted, just like usual. But if you can’t give me the truth, I don’t want to hear anything at all.”
She looked up at him, shame filling her. “You can’t tell Rick.”
“When she disappears, he’ll go crazy.”
He’d think she was dead. They both knew it.
Cade worked his jaw side to side. “You’re asking me to hurt the only friend I have.”
“It’s the only way to protect him.”
He swore, closing his eyes. “One of these days, you’re going to ask too much of me.”
Nothing burned like the truth. She knew that, but it still stung when Cade released her like she was on fire and stomped out of the house.
Chapter Ten
Cade leaned back in his chair, weariness pulling at him. A long day after a long couple of weeks. He rubbed his temple with two fingers while finishing up the paperwork on his latest arrests. If there was anything to miss about the military, he didn’t have as much daily paperwork back then. At least when he was walking thirty miles across rocky terrain, he was moving. Sitting at this desk for hours dotting i’s and crossing t’s? Infinitely less stimulating.
On the other hand, today had been eerily quiet.
Frank’s rage had run like a wildfire over the town once he realized his woman had left him. His men were turning over every stone, every avenue, looking for someone who might have helped her escape. People they didn’t believe paid dearly. Rick wasn’t much better, at first. Afraid her disappearance meant something worse, Cade and the other deputies had put in brutal hours searching. The longer she was gone, the more of Frank Carter’s efforts they uncovered, the better Rick seemed to feel about Shana’s chances.
Cade couldn’t quite decide if it was good that her running off had made her some kind of local hero—escaping with her life proved quite the inspiration—giving the people cause to keep their mouths shut more than usual. God knew the woman deserved some loyalty at long last. But as a result, hardly a night passed without gunfire echoing through the streets and sirens going in one direction or another.
Not today, though. It was as if the entire town was holding its collective breath. There had been no calls, no sirens. No roar of engines streaming down the main roads. It gave Cade an itch down his spine.
He glanced to the open door of Rick’s office. As expected, his friend sat at his desk, frowning down at his own paperwork. Case files spread across the otherwise neat desktop, overlapping as he flipped through, looking for something. When the phone rang, he picked it up absently, but Cade could tell the moment he didn’t like what he was hearing.
Finally, something had given way.
“Why am I just hearing about this now?” he barked, scrambling under files until he grabbed his personal phone. He was still collecting information from the office line, his hands deftly working the cell phone while he nodded and replied in a much lower tone. “How long has it been?”
The itch in Cade’s back intensified.
“You better goddamn hope no one knows.” His head dipped and Cade recognized the tension in the other man’s shoulders. The nameplate went flying across the small room like a dart. “Assholes,” Rick growled when he hung up with a clang, still glaring down at his cell. He typed again, waited. Texting, Cade guessed. And getting no response. “Cade!”
He followed the summons, curiosity and dread forming dark twins in his gut.
Rick looked up at him briefly as he entered the office, gesturing for Cade to shut the door. That done, Cade waited for the hammer to fall.
“I need you to transport someone for me.”
“Transport.” That wasn’t what Cade expected, especially when Rick continued to tap impatiently into his phone. “Orders just came in, we need to move Carl Hespers to Mojave. Tonight.”
Cade frowned. “Hespers is one of Frank’s men.” Not one of his better ones, either. More drunk than useful.
“This last bust is his third strike. He’s buying his way out by flipping on the MC, provided we get him out of Frank’s reach. Mojave’s ready to take him, but we have to get him there by morning.” It went without saying that he didn’t trust anyone else to move a key witness. Still, it didn’t explain why he looked so strained or why Cade’s instincts screamed that something else was going on.
“Why tonight?” Why Mojave?
“Feds are picking him up in the morning.”
“Feds?”
“Frank finally hit the big leagues. They think they can link Wheels of Pain with the Scarapacci family somehow.” Last Cade had paid attention to organized crime other than their own, that particular name was a problem on the East Coast only.
“They think Hespers is going to be able to help them?” Cade snorted. Hespers could barely find his own ass without a barstool.
“Well, that’ll be their problem. In a few days, Frank will be, too.” A prospect that seemed to piss Rick off even more. “They’re coming here, Cade.”
“What’s wrong with that?” The more the merrier, he figured. Let them try to weed out the snakes in the grass.
“They’re coming because this whole town is suspected of corruption, including the sheriff’s department. They’re going to be looking in every nook and cranny for a speck of wrongdoing and when they find it, they’ll likely turn our jurisdiction over to the state police.” Rick’s gaze became pointed.
Cade’s spine straightened. “You think they’re going to find something on you?”
His friend sighed. “I may have…skipped a few steps, bringi
ng you on.”
Cade shook his head, the dread taking shape into something close to betrayal. “You lied about getting me approved for duty, didn’t you?”
Rick didn’t answer, but Cade could see it in the hard set of his jaw. “It’ll be best if you’re out of sight for a few weeks. You have vacation time. Maybe it’s smart for you to take it now.”
“Smart,” Cade repeated. Frustration surged. “This town is practically a war zone and you want me take a fucking vacation?”
Rick didn’t even flinch. “I need you to do this. Two weeks. That’s all I’m asking. The smoke will be clear by then and with any luck, the feds will have enough to clean this whole place out.”
“You’re expecting a hell of a lot from fourteen days.”
“Take Hespers. On the way back, head to your cabin. Call it a fishing trip.”
“Instead of what it is.” Hiding out.
At least Rick didn’t bullshit him, but the determined gleam in his eyes didn’t bode well at all. “Two weeks. If it’s not clear by then, I’ll bring my pole up there and join you.”
Cade swore. Somehow this reminded him way too much of being dragged from the blast zone. Then, Rick had been right to do it. This time… This time, he didn’t know what the right move was.
“Pick up your gear and go. If you leave in the next hour, you should get easy traffic all the way up the Grapevine.”
“I don’t like this.”
Rick glanced toward his phone, which remained black and silent. “You’re not the only one.” He nodded to the door, picking up the cell once again. “Get going. It’s going to be a long night.”
Cade stared at him a minute longer, trying to sort out the truth hiding from him. But Rick didn’t say anything more and he was right.
There was a lot to do.
…
Katrina finished calculating the ordering with a sigh. Bastards sure did eat a lot. Not as much as they drank, of course. Thank God she made sure they all paid for what they used or this place would be a pathetic cover. Her gaze flicked to her phone.
The temptation to call Cade, just to hear his cranky, swearing-at-being-awakened-at-two-a.m. voice almost had her reaching for it. She’d been doing her best to ignore it all day, and it had helped her by staying obnoxiously silent. Instead, she forced herself to shut down the office computer and take a steady breath before heading out into the bar.
She hated to admit it, but fear was a constant companion these days. Hawkings’s attack alone would have had her on pins and needles. Helping carry Shana and Jimmy in the heavy canvas gun bags Cade had pulled from his truck had her jumping at every shadow. Worse, she had to act as if none of it bothered her. Working behind the bar, serving assholes who had watched her walk past them with blood streaming down her face. Meeting Frank Carter’s reptilian gaze from across the room and staring him down day after day was starting to crack even her resolve.
Two weeks since that day. Two weeks since she’d spoken to Cade and every day was harder than the last. The bar was full of a growing anxiety, men coming and going, reporting in only to be given new orders and new names to question. Everyone was openly armed and surprisingly, the drinking had fallen off to virtually nothing.
But no one had found a trace of Shana.
Which meant that for Katrina, it was two weeks of Frank’s grim, accusing glare. He knew it was her. He couldn’t prove it—not that he was usually the type to wait for proof—but it was clear he knew. Frank trying to kill her, she could handle. It’d be a relief to finally fight back. But this waiting… She felt like a mouse tied to a string, dangling over a bonfire. She could feel the heat but she was powerless to do anything but wait to be dropped into the flames.
She’d watched carefully and only sent the barest reports to Rick from her phone. He always acknowledged the same way, his generic number verifying that he was still receiving and recording from the bugs she’d placed throughout the bar. Unfortunately, she still didn’t have one in the corner table and had no way of getting one there for whatever information Frank and his men were discussing. Meaning she had nothing to report the last few days, and all she could do was wait for the explosion to come.
Katrina opened the door to the office and stopped.
Frank stood on the other side.
She had less than a heartbeat to register the violence in his black eyes before the blur of his hand slashed at her midsection. She arched back, felt the knife slice through her jacket and across her ribs. Off balance, she couldn’t stop him when he jammed his other hand into her throat. She stumbled backward, falling to the ground as her body spasmed from the shock. Throat closed, the air in her lungs suddenly too big for her chest, she heard bizarre croaking noises and belatedly realized she was making them.
Katrina rolled, trying to get to her feet. The floor was the last place she could afford to be, not with Frank standing over her, hands fisted. She struggled to make her body obey, to drag herself to the other side of the desk. Her gun was still taped behind the top drawer. She could get there—
Frank’s booted foot connected with her stomach, punching the air out of her lungs so hard she thought her throat might have burst from the pressure.
“Pick her up,” Frank said quietly.
She tried to scramble. She’d been trained for this. Pain could be overcome. She didn’t need to be oriented, she just had to move. Get to the gun. Get to it, god dammit.
Her hand was actually on the drawer when she was lifted roughly from each arm, dragged to her feet almost hard enough to wrench either one from its socket. Shit. Barnett and Samuels. The two bikers were essentially brainless, but they were both massive and loved little more than fighting and building their oversize muscles. Getting out of their grips was going to take a fucking miracle.
“Where’s Shana?” Frank moved into her space, his hand grasping her chin in a painful grip. His other hand brought his short but shiny knife up, placing the point just under her right eye, pushing hard enough to sting. “And before you lie to me, cunt, keep in mind that I will cut your tongue out if I even think you’re fucking with me.”
He would. Then again, he’d likely do it if she told him the truth. So she did the next best thing and spit in his face. “Red Dog is gonna feed you your own balls for this, you asshole.”
He didn’t even wipe the spittle off before he smiled, a vicious expression that turned her blood to ice. “Red Dog’s dead. My men inside cut him open like a fuckin’ fish. All there is left of that old shit is the itty bitty pieces.”
She wanted to refute that—she’d have been notified if Red Dog were killed. She’d have been pulled. But she couldn’t. Frank had been too free these last weeks. Too sure of himself. He’d cut his ties with Red Dog and now he was cutting loose ends.
Frank leaned in, rubbing the wetness off his face and onto her cheek before whispering in her ear, “So’s that cop you’ve been fucking.”
She flinched, her gut tightening as true fear gripped her tight.
“Yeah, I knew that one would get you. You could give a shit about your uncle but you’re soft when it comes to that psycho, aint’cha?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Had a tip when he’d be in his house tonight. Burned that motherfucker to the ground. Nothing left of him now but the smoke.”
She turned her head away, closing her eyes and willing it to be a lie. Frank always lied. Cade would never let anyone that close to his house.
You got in, didn’t you?
“You think I didn’t know what you were doing, Katy?” Frank whispered against her ear. “Stringing that pathetic bastard along the way you were. You really think I didn’t know you were playing both ends against the middle?”
Her breath caught.
“I know what you are, Katy.” He pulled back, his lip lifting in a disgusted snarl. He backhanded her, the blow coming so fast she couldn’t brace. “Fuckin’ DEA traitor.”
Probably another fact he got from his little tip-maker. No point being subtle now, she s
upposed, spitting the blood from her split lip on the floor. “That’s fuckin’ Special Agent Killian to you, dumbass. Do you know what kind of shit you’re pulling down on this place if you kill a federal officer? You’re not walking away from this. Not you, not your men.”
He laughed. “You’re as crazy as that psycho was, you know that? Or should I call him the Crispy Critter now?”
“Cade Evigan is ten times the man you are, you pathetic little shit!” She pulled on her arms, but Shithead and Fuckface just tightened their grips, jerking her back into place.
Frank ignored her struggles, instead studying her body the way he would look at a map to decide his approach. “I didn’t think someone that fucked in the head could even get it up. You must be a better piece of ass than I thought.”
“You’ll never find out.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I will.” He punched her, the snap of it throwing her head back into the wall so hard she saw white.
Stunned, she barely registered when his hands found the collar of her blouse and ripped it open. Cold air on her chest, followed by the colder slide of steel tracing her midline. Her head drooped, giving her the vantage point to watch him catch the waist of her jeans and slip the knife inside.
“Tell me where you sent that bitch.”
Katrina lifted her head slowly, letting the blood spill from her mouth. “I’m not telling you shit.”
A ripping sound. He’d cut through the fabric, yanking upward. Her jeans gaped, the threat beyond clear.
“Oh, you’ll talk.” His hand found her throat again, this time squeezing and pushing her flat to the wall. “Maybe not for me, but after every sumbitch in this place has had a turn on you? Oh yeah. You’ll do just about anything to make them stop.”
“No, I won’t.” Because this motherfucker wasn’t about to lay another hand on her. Slamming her head into his, there was the satisfying crunch of his nose beneath her forehead. Frank stumbled back, just as she brought her boot up as hard as she could manage, right into his groin. He dropped and his men threw her back into the wall again. It hurt, but at least they had to let her go to do it.
