Dead End

by Shirley Wells

  Dead End

  By Shirley Wells

  “Dylan Scott? It’s payback time. You’re going to die.”

  Somebody is making threatening calls to private investigator Dylan Scott. This is one case with plenty of suspects—a lot of dangerous people would love to see Dylan with a bullet between the eyes. The twisted trail brings Dylan face-to-face with old foes and a few new ones—and they’re all keeping deadly secrets...

  But as he chases leads across London, his adversary is hunting down victims and is drawing ever closer to his ultimate target: Dylan. Someone from Dylan’s past is on a killing spree, and if he doesn’t connect the dots in time, the dead end will be his.

  A Dylan Scott Mystery

  91,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  When I looked at what month I was writing this letter for, the song “Kokomo” immediately popped into my head. And now, though it’s still a little cold and blustery outside my windows, in my mind, we’re all sunning ourselves on the beaches of some tropical island, reading something incredible. Since you’ll be reading this letter in July, it’s entirely possible you will be on a beach somewhere, so let me help you with the incredible reads part...

  Looking for something to add even more steam to your hot summer nights? Check out Going Under by Jeffe Kennedy, the first in her contemporary erotic romance trilogy. She’s a genius computer game designer who changed her identity to escape online trolls. He’s the crack undercover reporter who’s tracking an elusive and enigmatic hacker—her. They’re a combustible combination both in and out of bed.

  Jeffe isn’t the only author with a new beginning this month. We’re pleased to welcome debut author Caroline Kimberly to Carina Press with her unique historical romance trilogy. Set in the wilds of British India, and pitched as Romancing the Stone meets Regency, she’s no demure young miss and he’s no proper soldier. And what they experience is more than An Inconvenient Kiss. If you’ve been longing for something different in the historical romance genre, don’t miss this one!

  Ann DeFee and Inez Kelley join us in the contemporary romance genre with their respective books, A Hot Time in Texas and Should’ve Been Home Yesterday. This wraps up Inez’s Country Roads trilogy, so be sure to pick up the first two books if you haven’t already!

  Problems in Paradise by Kelsey Browning is also in our contemporary lineup this month. A small-town Texas café owner wants to bury her sordid Los Angeles past and become a part of the community, but the sexy chief deputy must uncover her secrets even if it destroys his campaign for sheriff and their chances for love.

  Fans of Julie Moffett’s Lexi Carmichael series are going to fall in love all over again with No Biz Like Showbiz, in which our favorite geek girl is off to Hollywood to bring down a hacker who’s manipulating the online voting for one of America’s favorite reality television dating shows. This is a series with something for everyone: geek references, a new adult feel, mystery themes and enough romance elements to keep any romance reader happy. If you haven’t started the series yet, you can start here or pick up No One Lives Twice at any etailer.

  Shirley Wells also has a mystery release for fans of detective novels, and is back with Dead End, A Dylan Scott Mystery.

  Two fantastic authors bring us two incredible urban fantasy novels this month. In Steve Vera’s Blood Sworn, the enemies of two worlds reluctantly join forces to fight the armies of the Underworld. And in Summoned Chaos by Joshua Roots, if there’s one thing Warlock Marcus Shifter hates it’s the Delwinn Council. They’re not pleased that he once turned his back on his kind, and he’s convinced someone on the Council is working to undermine the twenty-year peace with the non-magical Normals.

  John Tristan also shares a journey in the world of fantasy with The Sheltered City. In a land devastated by dragonfire, a man with a curse in his blood must help an elf find his missing brother in this male/male fantasy romance.

  And to round out the diverse selection of novels we have for your beach-reading pleasure, in A.M. Arthur’s Maybe This Time, when serial singleton Ezra Kelley meets his match in sexy bartender Donner Davis, both men will need to let go of past hurts before they can have a future together.

  Of course, if you’re spending a lot of time on the beach and need more, don’t forget to go diving into our backlist, which offers a variety of page-turning books in all genres of romance, mystery and science fiction from authors like Lauren Dane, Josh Lanyon, Marie Force and more.

  Coming in August 2014: Shannon Stacey is back with the final (for now) installment in the Kowalski series, we welcome Lisa Marie Rice and her cracktastic contemporary romantic suspense to Carina Press, and I’m off to Mexico for my own lie-in on the beach!

  Here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Editorial Director, Carina Press

  Dedication

  For Nick

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks are due to everyone at Carina Press for their dedication and professionalism. Special thanks must go to my awesome editor, Deborah Nemeth, who takes my stories and makes them shine.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  He didn’t know where he was when he woke up. It took him a full twenty seconds to figure out which was floor and which was ceiling, and he was relieved that he hadn’t slept on the ceiling. When he attempted a sitting position, sharp stabbing pains ricocheted round his head, jolted his brain back to life and slowly returned his memory. Dylan Scott, private investigator, married to Bev, who was currently undergoing treatment for cancer, father to amazing teenager Luke and cute baby Freya—

  Ah yes, and a stag night tha
t had included propping up bars in too many pubs and clubs with his mate Pikey, returning to Pikey’s house and demolishing a bottle of whisky—

  And someone wanted him dead. The way he felt right now, they’d be getting their wish sooner than they’d anticipated.

  He vaguely remembered being offered the sofa to sleep on, which didn’t explain what he was doing on the floor.

  He struggled onto his knees and immediately wished he hadn’t. Everything hurt. Every muscle in his body registered pain, and a wrecking ball was hard at work in his skull.

  Water. He needed water. Probably a stomach pump and life support machine too.

  He stood, gingerly, and leaned against the dining table. The sofa wasn’t even in the same room.

  Water.

  He staggered to the kitchen, turned on the tap and shoved his mouth under it. A little water found its way down his throat. Most washed over his face. He found a mug, filled it, and drank it straight down. After the second mugful, he felt almost human and his mouth began to function normally again.

  He filled the kettle and switched it on, and managed to hunt down a spoon and some coffee. He could walk, swallow and make a drink. All was not quite lost.

  A weak April sun was trying to brighten this Sunday morning but, thanks to the neighbours’ penchant for tall trees, was having little effect on the kitchen. Somewhere in the distance, church bells were ringing to summon the faithful to morning service.

  “Holy crap.” Pikey lurched into the kitchen wearing a The Man, The Myth, The Legend T-shirt back to front, and a pair of jeans that he hadn’t bothered to fasten. “How do you feel?”

  “About as good as you look.”

  “That bad, eh?” Grinning, Pikey sank down into a chair. “It was a good night though, wasn’t it?”

  “God knows. I suppose it must have been.”

  Taking a closer look, Dylan decided he didn’t feel anywhere near as good as Pikey looked. Pikey might not have managed to dress himself properly, but he still cut an impressive figure. Like Dylan, he’d passed forty, but unlike Dylan he was all muscle and energy. With his shaved head, Pikey had always looked like a thug. Detective Sergeant Pike was a damn good copper though, a damn good man too, and Dylan missed working alongside him.

  “We’ll feel better with some food inside us,” Pikey said. “What we need is a good fry-up.”

  Dylan’s stomach lurched at the prospect, but by the time Pikey had rifled through the fridge for sausages, bacon and eggs, he thought he could maybe face some food after all.

  Half an hour later, they sat down to plates laden with burned sausages, bacon that snapped apart and eggs that looked about to hatch. Baked beans and soggy fried bread completed the feast.

  “Last night,” Pikey said, “you mentioned something about wanting to pick my brain. What was that about?”

  “Did I?” Dylan had planned to raise the subject but couldn’t remember doing so. “Someone wants me dead.” It still sounded ridiculous. Hell, it was ridiculous. It had to be. “I’ve had a couple of phone calls at the office from some jerk saying it’s payback time and that I’m going to die. I know it’s a long shot but I wondered if you had any ideas.”

  Pikey’s eyebrows had risen with each word. His fork hovered level with his mouth. “You’re kidding. What else have they said?”

  “Nothing. The calls have been brief and to the point. No background sounds that I could make out. No clues as to an identity. Nothing. Just a quick ‘it’s payback time and you’re going to die.’”

  “Payback time? Who have you upset recently?”

  “How long have you got?”

  Pikey mopped up egg yolk with a piece of fried bread. “When was the first call?”

  “Two weeks ago. Before then, though, Bev took three odd calls at the house. No one said anything but she had the feeling someone was on the other end, listening.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I can give you the name of someone recently released from prison. Someone who threatened to get you—and me, come to that.”

  “Come on then. Out with it.”

  “Leonard King. Remember him?”

  “Oh, Christ. How could I forget?”

  Dylan could remember every detail of the night he and Pikey had thought they were about to sort out a domestic dispute. It was one of the last things they did together as coppers.

  They’d been on their way home, their stint finished for the day, when they’d heard that a huge fire at a furniture factory and two bomb scares were keeping uniformed officers busy. London was in chaos, and as he and Pikey had been less than two minutes from the property where the domestic was supposedly in full swing, they’d agreed to go and sort it.

  From the moment they arrived, they’d known something was wrong.

  The front door to the three-storey terraced house was open and, when they’d stepped inside, expecting to find a husband and wife in the middle of an alcohol-fuelled tiff, they quickly realised it was a setup. There was no domestic dispute.

  Instead they’d stumbled into a professional drug factory where millions of pounds’ worth of heroin had been processed. It was one of the biggest Class A drugs seizures the U.K. had seen.

  Of course, they hadn’t known that at first. They’d been too busy relieving Max Rickman, one of the U.K.’s most violent, of the samurai sword he’d been wielding.

  Thankfully, the other man at the property, small-time crook Leonard King, had been unarmed but there had been no doubt in either of their minds that Rickman wouldn’t hesitate to use that sword.

  Rickman had started life as a football hooligan, had killed a man in a bar fight while in New York and spent several years in prison, including five in San Quentin, before being deported back to England.

  Only when Rickman and King were secure and backup had finally arrived did Dylan and Pikey realise they’d stepped into a drug factory. They’d found a hundred grand in cash, a dealer list, heroin in powder and block form, a press for compressing the adulterated drug back into blocks, a cash-counting machine and another samurai sword hidden behind cushions on the sofa.

  “King’s out then?”

  “As free as a bird,” Pikey said. “The reason I know is that he was taken into custody less than twenty-four hours after his release on a drunk and disorderly charge. He was released when he’d sobered up.”

  “What about Rickman?”

  Pikey shook his head. “Up for parole in a few months. He’s late sixties now and has heart problems. Angina or something like that.”

  It was little consolation. Rickman was a dangerous bastard, with or without a naff ticker.

  They chewed on burned sausages for a few moments, and Dylan guessed their thoughts were running along the same lines. “There was something really dodgy about that night,” he said.

  “Yep.”

  That King and Rickman had been set up, presumably by someone out for revenge or by another dealer wanting to muscle in on Rickman’s territory, had been obvious. King, who’d previously spent two spells in prison for armed robbery, claimed he’d only met Rickman a few months earlier. According to him, Rickman had offered to pay him well to deliver a package. King had known Rickman was a dealer, but his story was that he’d had no idea of the scale of the operation. He’d insisted he wasn’t involved and, at first, there was nothing to suggest he was.

  A search of his flat had soon proven otherwise. A stash of heroin and an even bigger stash of cash had been found. King had denied all knowledge, had seemed genuinely shocked by the discovery, but it had been enough to send him down.

  The phone call about the so-called domestic dispute had been made by a female and they never did find out who was responsible.

  “What did King say as he was dragged from the court?” D
ylan asked.

  “Something like ‘I’m going to get you fucking bastards,’ if I recall.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Dylan wiped his plate clean with a square of bread he’d saved for the purpose. “I knew I could rely on you, Pikey. Thanks. I’ll start sniffing around and see what King’s up to.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out too.” Pikey flexed his impressive muscles. “If he needs sorting, we’ll do it together. And if I think of anyone else who might want to end your days, I’ll let you know.”

  “You do that. Although I’m sure it’s nothing. Let’s face it, if someone wants you dead—”

  “—they kill you. Yeah.” They did. They didn’t waste time trying to frighten you.

  And yet, although Dylan wasn’t going to mention it, he had a bad feeling about this. There was nothing he could pinpoint, but it was making him very uneasy. Perhaps he was simply getting old. Or soft.

  Pikey made coffee so strong that the spoon stood to attention in the mug. He plonked it down in front of Dylan. “Hey, do you remember that hooker we busted?”

  Dylan grinned. “The pregnant one? The one you helped into the back of the car as if she were made of porcelain. The one who then gave birth to a stash of cocaine before our eyes?”

  And so the reminiscing began. They’d been through a lot together, from rookie coppers who didn’t have a clue what they were doing to detectives who knew how to work the system to their advantage. Time had coloured their memories, of course. It hadn’t been all fun. Yet the memories that made them laugh were the ones that had to be dusted off and polished.

  Dylan enjoyed his work as a private investigator, most of the time at least, but he missed working alongside Pikey. He often wondered how far he might have risen in the ranks if he hadn’t been dismissed in disgrace, kicked off the force and into a prison cell.

  Still, it was no use going over old ground. It had happened. It was wrong, bloody wrong, but it had happened. End of. There were far more important things to worry about—like a sick wife, two kids, a mortgage—

  And the small matter of death threats.