by Diana Palmer
“Don’t worry,” Winnie said softly. “It’s all right.”
“All right?” Pat ran a hand through her hair. “I overheard Copper tell his nephew that he was going to make sure I never told what I knew about that dead girl. He said he’d killed so many people that one more didn’t matter, all because a stupid kid threatened to tell what Will did to her!”
Winnie’s heart sank. She knew the wire was going to catch that statement. If she was caught wearing it, her life was over.
“I never thought you’d turn up here. Winnie, they’ll kill us both!”
Winnie, who had learned to be calm under pressure from a job on which lives depended, put a soothing hand on her arm and smiled. “It will be all right,” she said gently. “You have to trust me.”
“What are you going to do?”
Winnie sighed. “You know, I have no idea right now. But I’m sure something will come to me.”
There were heavy footsteps and Jay Copper walked into the room with a younger man. They were both heavyset and un-smiling, and if death had a face, they were wearing it. Winnie clutched her purse. Her heart raced as she wondered if she’d have time to make a grab for the pistol.
Jay Copper smiled. “You think you’re so smart,” he drawled. “Like I don’t know why you came rushing over here, after you’d just been with her in Nassau. You know too much, lady.”
“My husband is a Fed,” Winnie began, hiding her fear.
“Hell! Your husband is in San Antonio. I was listening when you were talking to Pat,” he added, and Winnie pretended to be disturbed.
“We’re not going to do both of them here, are we?” the younger man asked coolly. “Hank won’t like it. His brother would be right in the middle of the scandal.”
“Hank’s on his way. He’ll help us,” Jay said easily.
Winnie felt sick. It was all going wrong. Kilraven was just one man. Even if he was right outside, these men were quick and smart and they were both wearing big automatic pistols. If she tried to shoot it out with them, she’d be killed and so would Pat. The pistol that had made her feel so secure ten minutes ago now felt like just added weight in her purse.
As if Jay knew that, he suddenly reached out and dragged the purse out of her hands, snapping it open. He burst out laughing as he drew it out. “What, did you think you’d hurt somebody with this peashooter?” he asked. “Piece of junk.” He handed it to the younger man. “Better go and move her car, so nobody sees it.” He tossed him the keys, which had been in the purse.
Before either man could move, there was the sound of another car approaching. Jay looked out the window and tensed until the car was in view, then he relaxed. “It’s just Hank,” he said. “Go on. Move the car.”
“You bet, boss.”
He walked out. Winnie and Pat exchanged worried glances.
A car door slammed, then another. There was a pause and an odd sound, and then footsteps coming rapidly up the steps. A tall, striking man walked into the house. He had jet-black hair and black eyes, with a prominent scar on one cheek. He was wearing a designer suit and shoes as polished as a mirror. He hesitated in the doorway and looked at Pat for a long moment. Only then did his eyes cut to Winnie and back to Jay Copper.
“What’s going down?” he asked Copper.
“Just another little hiccup in a perfect plan. Nothing to worry you. Why’d you come? I told you I was going to handle this. I always handle problems for the senator.” He grinned. “He’s my boy. Your dad raised him, but I put him in your mother’s belly. She was always keen on me, not that old rich man she married.”
Hank hadn’t smiled since he walked in. His dark eyes narrowed on the older man’s face. “You’re making problems for Will, not helping him.”
“Oh, sure. Problems.” His face darkened. “Where the hell were you when that stupid kid got high and enticed him into the bedroom? Where were you when she woke up naked and screamed and said her daddy’s best friend was an anchorman in San Antonio and she was going to tell him everything! Where were you when Will cried his eyes out, scared to death, and begged me to fix it?” He cursed. “I’ve fixed everything for him since he was a teenager. I’ve always been around to do that. Nobody hurts my son as long as I’m alive!”
Winnie was standing frozen beside Pat, knowing that everything that horrible man was confessing was going right into a recording device. It would convict him. If she lived to testify about it.
“I was serving my country,” Hank said quietly.
“Oh, yeah, serving your country. You’re as bad as me,” he scoffed. “You run one of the biggest illegal gambling syndicates in the state. How does that serve your country?”
Hank’s eyes narrowed. “What are you planning?”
“Why don’t you go back to San Antonio and just let me handle this?” Copper asked. “I know what I’m doing.”
“You’ll have Will hung.”
“No, no, these are the last people who know anything about the case.” He frowned. “Well, there’s those detectives, but they don’t have evidence of anything. And that minister has been told that his church will be burned down and his congregation barbequed if he talks to a cop again as long as he lives.”
Hank moved closer to the man, smiling. “You’ve done so much already. I can do this for you. I’ve got Rourke out in the car. He’s good with women.”
Winnie felt sick to her stomach, even as she felt there was something familiar about that name, something she should remember…
16
While Winnie was trying to remember why that name sounded so familiar, Hank Sanders was waiting for an answer.
Jay Copper hesitated, but only for a minute. “No, Peppy can help me. He did Dan Jones and that woman who worked for Fowler,” he drawled. “We got rid of everybody who could connect Will with the girl’s death. I’m teaching Peppy. He’s already a chip off the old block.”
Hank moved even closer. He smiled. “Yeah. Just as stupid and just as gullible as you are. Uh-uh,” he said quickly. His hand was close to the old man’s stomach. “You don’t want to reach for that automatic. Know why?” His hand moved sharply toward the man. “Because this is a .40 caliber Glock and the clip is full. Besides that, there are two guns aimed right at your head. You make a move and you’re as dead as your victims are.”
Pat’s mouth was open. So was Winnie’s. The bad guy was turning against his own people?
The door flew open and Kilraven walked in with a tall, blond man with long hair who wore an eye patch over one eye. They were both carrying pistols.
Winnie almost fell with relief. “I got tape!” she exclaimed joyfully.
“Darling!” Rourke said with passion, approaching her.
“You touch her and you’ll be shorter in one place than any man in your whole division,” Kilraven gritted.
Rourke made a U-turn and went back toward Hank and Copper.
Hank shoved the old man toward Kilraven. “I hope you brought cuffs,” he said. “Where’s Peppy?”
“Sleeping soundly on the floor of the backseat of the rental car,” Kilraven said, taking a breath of relief that Winnie was still in one piece and unharmed. Listening to her on the wire was the most terrifying few minutes of his life.
“Courtesy of yours truly,” Rourke replied with a grin. “Trained him yourself, huh?” he asked Copper. “Very efficient.”
“You go to hell,” Copper said through his teeth as he was handcuffed. “You traitor!” he yelled at Hank. “You were working with the Feds all along?”
Hank handed the Glock to Rourke. “From the minute they found Dan Jones in the river in Jacobsville,” he said shortly. “I never could prove you did the teenager, but I knew you did Dan Jones by the way he was killed and I thought we might just get enough evidence to convict you for that one. That was what you were in prison for, killing a man who cheated the mob in such a way that nobody else was tempted to cheat them. Did you think I’d forgotten?”
“Cop lover!” Copper spat at
him. “I’ll sell you out, if I have to do it from death row!”
Hank shrugged. “Try it,” he said, and he looked every bit as menacing as the older man. “I’ve got friends on both sides of the law.”
“He hasn’t got that many on our side. I wouldn’t worry too much,” Rourke said sotto voce.
“Rourke,” Kilraven growled.
Hank laughed. “Let him rail. He and his son can share adjoining cells.”
“What do you mean?” Copper asked hesitantly.
“The Feds picked Will up for questioning about two hours ago,” Hank said. “Denied him a phone call until I could get up here and save Pat.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Will’s been trying to call, to warn you, but he couldn’t get past Copper.”
“Nice of him,” Pat said through her teeth. “He’ll lose his senate seat.”
“He’ll lose a lot more than that,” Hank said. He moved closer. His face tautened. “The girl whose father took a bribe to let Will off the hook for statutory rape, remember her?”
Pat nodded.
“Some San Antonio detective got her to press charges for it, belatedly.”
Winnie smiled. She could imagine who that detective was.
“He’ll go to prison, won’t he, Hank?” Pat asked.
“Most likely.” He drew in a long breath. “Going to stand by him, like the long-suffering, faithful little wife, and protect him from the media?” he asked harshly.
Goodness, Winnie thought, that was an odd remark. Then she got a look at his eyes and realized why he’d risked so much to save Pat.
Pat avoided looking at him. “I thought you were up to your neck in the crime syndicate.”
“Oh, I am,” he said bitterly. “I owed Garon Grier a favor, from another time, and I paid up. But I’ve never killed anybody, least of all a helpless young girl,” he added, sniping at Copper, who glared at him from the next room, where Rourke had parked him temporarily. “Will knew Copper did it, and he kept it to himself until today. He told me, just before I came up here. He confessed the whole thing. My half brother, the accessory to the most horrendous murder I’ve ever heard about.” He stared at Jay Copper with icy eyes. “I hope they hang you both! A man who’d condone doing that to a little girl deserves the same treatment!”
Hank went up in Kilraven’s esteem. He’d had a different view of the mobster. Until now.
“Will said she’d asked for it,” Jay Copper scoffed. “Those young girls, they’re tramps. They just lay in wait for older men who don’t have no sense.”
Kilraven was seeing his little girl on the floor, covered in blood, imagining if she’d been a few years older and that had happened to her.
Hank moved closer and put a hand on his shoulder. “I should have said something sooner. I had a hunch about the teenager, even your ex-wife’s boyfriend. But I never believed my brother could be cold enough to condone the execution of a mother and child.”
“Aw, the woman knew what I’d done! Her ex-boyfriend spilled his guts to her,” Jay scoffed. “I did him myself.”
Kilraven turned. His eyes were terrible. “It was you! You killed my daughter!”
Copper lifted a shoulder. “No. It was Dan Jones. I sent him to do your wife, after her ex-boyfriend spilled his guts to her. Dan was never supposed to hurt the kid, she just got in the way. They said that was why he got religion and started yapping about his evil past. His conscience hurt. He was going to tell that minister all about it.” Jay smiled coldly. “But I got to him first.”
“What about the thermos?” Winnie asked. “My uncle’s thermos was found where the car was in the river.”
Copper frowned. “What thermos? Oh, yeah, some guy loaned it to Dan when his got stolen. I had Peppy spike it. Dan was going to talk to a cop in Jacobsville about his past. We heard him say it on the phone talking to that girlfriend of his, so me and Peppy drove down to Jacobsville and ambushed him. He screamed like a little girl.”
Little girl. Little girl. Melly, holding out her arms to him. Melly, laughing, saying, “I love you, Daddy! Always remember.”
Kilraven took two quick steps toward the man.
Winnie moved right in front of him, very calm and self-assured, and put her hands on his chest. “No,” she said softly. “The criminal justice system works. Just give it a chance. Don’t give him the easy way out, after all he’s done.”
Kilraven looked down at her. He hesitated, while the forces inside him went to war. He wanted to kill the man with his bare hands. Melly had died because this fool wanted to protect his son from the law. But so many people had died already.
Winnie was staring up at him with soft, loving brown eyes. He calmed, just looking at her. She gave him comfort. She gave him peace. For the first time in years, he was pulling free of the black melancholy that sat on him from time to time. He drew in a deep breath. “Okay.”
She smiled up at him.
“Nice girl,” Hank mused, looking at Winnie. “Pity she married you when I’m still available.”
“Hey, I’m available, too, and I’m not on the wrong side of the law!” Rourke piped in.
Kilraven shook his head. Rourke was incorrigible. He turned back to Hank. “You might go legit,” he suggested. “It worked for Marcus Carrera.”
“Who do you think he turned over his San Antonio holdings to in the first place?” he asked, aghast. But then he looked at Pat. “I don’t know, though.”
Pat looked back. Almost hopefully. Hank smiled. Pat flushed and looked away.
“Whatever I decide, right now I have to get back to San Antonio. Will’s staff will be having hysterics, and there’s the news media to handle. Thanks,” Pat said, including Kilraven, Rourke and Winnie in her gratitude. “And you,” she added to Hank. “I thought you were coming up to help him kill me,” she said with helpless guilt.
He touched her cheek, very lightly. “I’m no ladykiller,” he said with a faint grin.
“Well, I am,” Rourke called from the next room. “Or I would be, if I could get past Kilraven there!”
Kilraven whirled, and he wasn’t smiling. “She’s my wife, damn you! And if you so much as smile at her, I’ll make you into the world’s first one-eyed soprano!”
Rourke stood up straight. “Yes, sir!”
Winnie was watching Kilraven with a very odd smile. That had sounded like jealousy. Of course, he could have been kidding…
He turned and looked at her. She blushed all the way down her neck. Oh, no. He wasn’t kidding!
GARON GRIER TURNED up a few minutes later with a team of U.S. Marshals, whom Winnie found fascinating. She mentioned her great-grandfather to them, and beamed when one of them recognized the name from an honor roll he’d seen. Hank and Grier moved away to speak, after a fuming mad Jay Copper and his nephew had been taken away in handcuffs.
Pat was packing. Rourke was staying well clear of Winnie. Kilraven took her into an adjoining room and removed the wire.
“I’m proud of you,” he said quietly, searching her eyes. “Very proud. You could have been killed.”
She smiled. “Not likely, with you and your cohorts covering my back. Although I must admit that Hank Sanders came as a shock.”
“To me, too, until your mother mentioned seeing him with Grier. Nobody in Texas would ever suspect Garon Grier of being hand in hand with organized crime. He’s a real boy scout.”
“A nice one,” she agreed. She looked up at him. “What now?”
He’d been expecting that question. He drew in a long breath. “We take a breathing space. Just for a few weeks. I need time…”
“Yes.” Time to heal, he meant. Time to grieve for his daughter. Maybe even for his wife. She smiled. “What about this?” She held up her wedding ring.
He looked uncomfortable. “I don’t have time to see about things right now. We’ll talk later.”
Nice answer. Smooth. Very smooth. She leaned close. “Should I toss the handcuffs?”
He burst out laughing. The other men glan
ced at him curiously, but he just threw up a hand and walked out with Winnie.
Cammy almost hugged Winnie to death back at the house. “I was so afraid for you. For both of you,” she added, hugging Kilraven, too. She hit him.
“What was that for?” he asked, aggrieved.
“For scaring me! Don’t you ever do that again!” she raged. And then she hugged him some more.
WINNIE WENT BACK TO work at the 911 center on the early morning to afternoon shift. She excused herself in the middle of a call for a wrecker, motioning to Shirley to fill in for her while she rushed into the restroom and threw up for five minutes. When she came back out, weak and pale and holding a wet paper towel to her face, Shirley turned around from her station and sang, softly, “Rock a bye baby…!”
Everybody around Winnie grinned.
She made a face. “And nobody tell Kilraven,” she muttered, “or there will be trouble!”
“Terroristic threats and acts,” Shirley whispered.
“That’s right. I belong to the Jacobsville Barfing and Terrorism Society,” she quipped.
The next day, Shirley presented her with a T-shirt with that logo. She took it home and wore it to supper.
“YOU SHOULD TELL HIM,” Boone advised.
“Definitely,” Clark added.
Matt gave her a long, sad look. “I miss playing video games with him.”
“I miss arguing with him.” Gail sighed, still nursing her gunshot wound, and on sick leave from her job in San Antonio.
“You should just tell him,” Keely said gently.
“I am not telling him anything,” Winnie said firmly. “He’d stay around out of guilt.” She sighed. “I haven’t heard a word from him in three weeks. He might be talking to a divorce lawyer for all I know. He said he didn’t want to get married again and he didn’t want another child.”
“Oh, sure, that shows,” Clark mused, indicating his sister’s growing little belly.
Winnie glared at him. “Sometimes things happen.”
Everybody laughed except Matt, who looked perplexed.
