14

by J. T. Ellison

  “Don’t push me, Win. It won’t work.” She leaned back in the chair, lifted her cup to her lips. This charade needed to end.

  “Seriously, Win. Why did you want to meet with me? It’s a little dangerous to go meeting with the cops when you’re on the run from us, isn’t it?”

  “Because I need your help. And you need mine.”

  “Really? I need your help? Hardly.”

  Win leaned forward. “Get me a cup of coffee and I’ll explain.”

  “You’ll explain now. I don’t have time for cloak-and-dagger shit, nor do I intend to sit here all afternoon while you try to play your little games. Talk.”

  Win folded his arms across his chest, closing himself off. “You have a hard heart, daughter. I’m sure that fiancé of yours is in for quite a ride.”

  “Leave him out of it.” She pushed the argument away.

  “No. I…I need him, too.”

  The flash of anger came so intensely she had trouble tamping it back down. Now she knew what was happening. Good old Win. He didn’t want to see her, like he claimed. Nope, that wasn’t it at all.

  “Talk,” she commanded.

  “Only for immunity. I’ll give the feds everything they need to take Malik down. And trust me, I know where the bodies are buried.”

  “I’m so proud,” Taylor murmured.

  “And I need witness protection. I want to disappear.”

  “That shouldn’t be so hard. You’ve been a master at that my whole life.”

  “I’m serious, Taylor. I need protection. Malik is capable of many things, and he has a lot of friends who are just as bloodthirsty. They’ll see me dead before they let me talk. I need your word, Taylor.”

  “No,” she said, as calmly and softly as she could muster.

  Win Jackson’s eyes bulged. “What do you mean, no? You can’t say no. You’re not authorized. You don’t work for them. You can’t make a decision like this.” The desperation in his voice was so hard to hear. Damn it, he was scared. But that wasn’t her problem. Her heart was stone.

  “I’m sorry, Win. Malik was taken into custody this morning and turned over to the Argentinean government for human trafficking. He’s being extradited as we speak. We don’t need you. I don’t need you.”

  She stood, swallowing the lump in her throat.

  “Goodbye, Dad.” She turned and started for the door. Damn Anthony Malik. L’Uomo. The Man had fucked them both. He’d taken a man who might have had a future, and tossed him down the rat hole. He’d taken her father and turned him into just the kind of man Taylor despised.

  “Taylor, please?”

  She turned and saw Win, standing by the table, his hands out. “Taylor, you can’t do this. He’ll kill me. It doesn’t matter whether he’s in custody. You have to get me out of town. I need money and transportation. You need to save me. For God’s sake, I’m your father.” He took a step toward her; her hand automatically crossed her body, went to her weapon. She dropped it as soon as she realized, but Win had caught the movement.

  “What, were you going to shoot me?”

  “No, Win.”

  “You have to help me. Please,” he begged again. Something in her tore.

  It was too much to ask. This charade was impossible. She was a cop. That’s who she was always meant to be. It was ingrained in her DNA, in her blood. Blood she’d spilled in pursuit of the truth, to be honest, and faithful to the law.

  This was the plan, that she’d exit the building, walk away from her father and his crimes forever. Baldwin had told her that the Argentinean authorities weren’t going to press charges against him, that he was in essence a free man.

  Damn Baldwin, he knew her better than she knew herself. How did she think she was going to live with letting her father, the criminal, walk away? She wasn’t. She realized she’d made the decision several minutes before and just hadn’t let the conscious thought into her mind.

  “Taylor?” Win asked again, sensing the struggle she was having. There was hope in his voice. “You’ll help me get away?”

  Taylor gave her father a smile. “Yes, Win. I’ll help.” She crossed to him, three long strides, grabbed his right wrist and spun him around, latching her handcuffs on to his wrist. She got his left arm before he could struggle and whipped it behind his back, slapped the cuff on.

  “Win Jackson, you’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. You—”

  “What the hell are you doing? Taylor? Let me go. Taylor, you can’t do this. You can’t put me into the legal system. He has men everywhere, Taylor. They’ll kill me. They’ll kill you.”

  “Yeah, Win, he might. But at least I’ll die knowing I did the right thing.” The faces of the café workers were wide with shock. She finished Mirandizing him and took him outside. Marcus was waiting in the parking lot, a cruiser with a plastic divider waiting with its door open, just like she’d asked. Just in case. She handed the still-protesting Win off to him.

  “You may want to Mirandize him again at the station. There may be a conflict of interest.”

  “Why?”

  Taylor caught Win’s eye, his face cloudy with a portending storm. There was naked hatred in his gaze, and Taylor’s last little bit of love for him melted away. She turned to Marcus, a tight smile on her face.

  “I assume there’s some crazy technicality that precludes me from Mirandizing him because he’s my father. And if there isn’t, he’ll find a lawyer to drum one up, get this all thrown out on appeal. Just humor me.”

  She stepped away, trying not to listen as Marcus read Win his rights, then instructed him to get in the back of the car, to watch his head.

  She watched Marcus drive out of the parking lot, saw Win look back over his shoulder at her, pleading in his eyes. She hardened her heart. She could no sooner let him walk away than she could stop breathing. It was his own damn fault.

  She hit the door open button on her key fob. She saw a reflection in the window, and turned to see Baldwin standing behind her. He didn’t say a word, and neither did she. She just went to him and let him comfort her.

  Fifty-Two

  Nashville, Tennessee

  Saturday, December 27

  4:00 p.m.

  Taylor and Baldwin were finished packing and were waiting on a cab to take them to the airport. The preparations were effortless—their suitcases were ready to go from the previous Saturday and all they needed to do was throw in their overnight bags, catch a cab to the airport and disappear.

  Baldwin was pacing around the front of the house, staring out the windows. Taylor was sitting at the dining-room table, sipping a cup of tea. She could not wait to get out of town, away from all the mess.

  Her father had been arraigned on several charges, including embezzlement, bribery and RICO statutes. All white-collar crimes. He’d be going to a nice little prison where he could wear chinos and drink coffee out of real cups instead of Styrofoam. Taylor didn’t care; she was just happy he was being punished for his role in L’Uomo’s businesses.

  Conrad Hawley, the A.G. of New York, had quietly resigned when the Nashville police let him know they had a tape of him having sex with an underage illegal who was being forced into prostitution. He was not so quietly being indicted this week, along with a slew of other men who’d been captured on the multitudes of videotapes. Identifications were still being made on many of the participants.

  Jane Macias had returned to her home in Long Island, obviously jaded about Nashville. Taylor couldn’t blame her. Being that close to a serial predator, knowing you were next, wasn’t easy. Her exposé on L’Uomo was being published by the New York Times.

  Snow White had been buried next to his daughter and wife in a private cemetery in north Nashville. His son, Joshua, kept the house, though a full-time nurse was needed to care for him.

  Frank Richardson’s family was developing a journalism scholarship in his honor. Daphne Beauchamp had been hired to run the foundation.

  The many victims of Snow White and his
apprentice were lauded in several articles written by the Tennessean. The world looked on as the cases were dissected and ultimately solved. Giselle, Glenna, Elizabeth and Candace had all been in the bar called Control. Their faces would haunt Taylor’s dreams.

  The apprentice disappeared.

  Taylor mulled over all of these developments. The past few days had been crazy, to say the least. But it was time for them to go away now.

  Baldwin stopped pacing and came to her in the dining room, putting one hand over hers as she set her tea mug down.

  “So, what do we do about getting married?”

  Taylor shook her head. “We don’t. I think that was all a sign.”

  “We don’t, ever?”

  She stood, pointing out the window. The cab had arrived at last. “Let’s just go take our honeymoon. We can talk all this out over there.”

  Baldwin smiled, leaned in for a kiss. “Whatever you say, Taylor.”

  Fifty-Three

  Three weeks later

  He sat in a quiet corner of the café, watching rain drizzle down the plate-glass window. He sipped a delicious concoction of chocolate and espresso, topped with fresh whipped cream and flakes of white chocolate. A decadent treat, a reward for all his hard work.

  He licked a piece of chocolate off his lip and tapped the keys on the keyboard.

  Taylor and Baldwin stumbled through the garage door into their kitchen, laden with suitcases and packages. The house felt empty, unused, and Taylor dropped her bags on the hardwood floor and took in the sight. Home. Their home.

  “Let’s just leave these in the dining room and have a glass of wine. What do you think about that, cara?”

  Taylor turned to Baldwin. “I think that sounds like a lovely idea. How about you pour? I want to glance through this stack of mail real quick.”

  He went to the wine refrigerator and started combing through the bottles. Taylor flicked through the pile of mail idly, not really that interested in what it contained, just trying to acclimate to being home. A white envelope caught her eye. It was addressed to her, under the wrong name. Mrs. Taylor Baldwin.

  Well, they had certainly jumped the gun on that one. She assumed it was from someone who was attached to their postponed wedding, someone who didn’t know that they hadn’t gotten married.

  She picked up the letter, slit the top with her opener. There was no return address, but it was postmarked three days earlier from Seattle. Seattle? They didn’t know anyone in Seattle. A single sheet of paper, folded three ways, was in the envelope. Something set off Taylor’s senses. She set the letter on the counter, grabbed two plastic sandwich Baggies from the second drawer and slipped them onto her hands.

  She teased the letter out of the envelope, unfolded it and read the short message. Then she read it again, her heart beating just a little faster.

  “Baldwin,” she called. “You need to see this.”

  Her voice sounded strange, hollow, unreal. She watched Baldwin come back into the kitchen, saw him register that she was in operational mode, with the Baggies on her hands, and followed suit without asking why. He nodded at her, and she handed him the letter. He read it aloud, twice, to let the words sink in. He looked at Taylor.

  “This is a problem.”

  “You think?” She took the letter back from him, reread the lines and realized they might never have a moment’s peace.

  Baldwin had retrieved his cell phone from his briefcase and was calling in to Quantico. They’d want to know all the details.

  Taylor folded the letter up neatly and put it back in the envelope, the typewritten words burned into her mind.

  An apprentice no more.

  You may call me the Pretender.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-5402-6

  14

  Copyright © 2008 by J.T. Ellison

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