The Good Daughter: A Mafia Story

by Diana Layne

  She vaguely registered a flash from Keith’s gun before he hit the ground. She didn’t have time to worry about it. There was still one bad guy to go.

  She heard the man moving behind her. She dove to the ground, rolled to her back and popped off two shots into his head before he recovered enough to draw another weapon.

  He fell.

  Another hit.

  Pain tore into her then, ripping through her gut. She grabbed her stomach. When she pulled her hand away, it was covered in blood. Keith’s wild shot must have hit her as he fell. Gut shot and losing blood fast . . . .

  She heard the chopper but didn’t know if it was the guys wearing the white hats or those dressed all in black. Injured and unable to escape, this could be her last breaths if it was the wrong side.

  Trying to ramp down her heart rate, she took slow deep breaths, but with little effect. The warm blood flowed out making steam rise from her body in the frigid air. Good guys or bad guys coming, she was done for either way.

  She saw two people rappelling from the chopper. When they dropped to the ground, a deep voice of authority snapped, “Check the men. Make sure they’re dead.”

  Make sure they’re dead? Did they know already that Keith had gone rogue? She wanted to ask, but no sound came out when she tried.

  A man’s face appeared before her. He had the most beautiful chocolate-colored almond-shaped eyes framed by thick, dark eyebrows. Great time to notice a man’s eyes, MJ, she chastised herself. And yet, what better to notice if she was about to die?

  “What about her?” the other man said. “She’s as good as dead.”

  “No,” the man with almond-shaped eyes answered. “We’re getting her out of here.” He pressed something against her stomach. She presumed to slow the blood.

  “You and women,” the second man said. “You can’t save all of them.” Though MJ couldn’t see him, she heard the disgust in his tone and wondered what stick got shoved up his ass.

  She blinked at her bizarre thoughts, tried to focus, tried to follow the conversation but her brain felt sluggish and inadequate. Blackness edged into her vision.

  “Hang on, MJ,” the man with the eyes told her. “Hang on.”

  ***

  (and for another preview of exciting new Romantic Suspense author, Cynthia Justlin, and her award-winning novel, Her Own Best Enemy, turn the page once again!)

  Praise for Cynthia Justlin’s HER OWN BEST ENEMY:

  "Fans of romantic suspense authors like Allison Brennan and Suzanne Brockmann will definitely want to pick up Her Own Best Enemy."

  ~ Gemma Halliday, award winning author of the High Heel Mysteries

  HER OWN BEST ENEMY

  Chapter One

  Keith King looked about as approachable as a coiled timber rattler ready to strike—and that was with his back to her.

  Grace Stevens stood in the doorway of the Monthan Rehabilitation Center, trying her best to wipe the remnants of the pouring rain out of her eyes, and stared at his rigid shoulders. He looked like a man who wouldn’t give an inch—and she needed him to give a mile.

  For Ryker.

  She clutched her son’s picture in her hands, pressed it to her heart. Miraculously, it was the only dry spot on her soaked t-shirt, as if the universe knew how much she needed to keep her little boy near, even if the connection was only through a photograph.

  Panicked tears gathered in her eyes. If she took one look at his sweet little face, she’d crumble. Her legs shook as she took her first step toward Keith’s table. He’d chosen the farthest one from the door, of course. She continued the long walk, whispers of her past ringing in her ears.

  Grace-less. Grace-less.

  She shouldn’t have remembered the exact youthful drawl in Keith’s voice, or the jagged sting of his childish taunts, but even fourteen years couldn’t separate her from destruction he’d caused in her life.

  He’d used her. Used her to carry out something so despicable that even now she couldn’t stomach the sight of him. But with her son’s life hanging in the balance, and nowhere else to turn, she couldn’t afford to be choosy.

  Confronting Keith was going to be hard—Keith would make damn sure of that. Asking wouldn’t be good enough. Not for the Keith she remembered He’d make her beg, make her jump through hoops, and question her courage.

  She steeled herself to take whatever he dished out. A clap of thunder shook the high windows. Hard rain pelted the glass mercilessly announcing the onslaught of another Arizona monsoon. The tormented weather matched the wave of unease that roiled through her stomach.

  Straightening her spine, she marched between two rows of primary-colored plastic chairs and made the final beeline to Keith. Her steps faltered when she spied the don’t-mess-with-me tendons that stretched taut in his neck as he bent over the table.

  The sharp edge of her son’s picture poking into her palm spurred her on. She couldn’t tell Keith who she really was. Not if she wanted his cooperation. He’d either scoff at her or blast her with his fury. And neither would succeed in getting her what she so desperately needed.

  “Keith...King?” She grit her teeth at the crack in her voice and forced herself to continue around the scarred wooden table until they were face to face.

  He looked up from the deck of cards he was shuffling. His intense hazel eyes narrowed on her face. Cold. Calculating. Derisive.

  A scar marred his left cheek, a half moon that bisected the hard plane of his jaw. He hadn’t had it as a teenager, she definitely would’ve remembered. Even the faintest lines of his young face had been branded in her memory.

  His straw-colored hair had darkened since his youth and was much, much shorter, in the typical military style. And the mouth that had once been the talk of teenage girls in two counties no longer appeared to have a hint of the sensuality it once possessed. In fact, the grim slash was void of any emotion at all.

  Strangely enough, it only served to make his mouth sexier.

  He surveyed her from head to toe, a long, slow perusal that started with her face, moved down to her pale yellow shirt, lingering on the damp fabric across her breasts, before trailing lower, over her equally wet jeans, down to the scuffs on her white sneakers. “Who’s asking?”

  The rusty edge to his voice stirred a cocktail of nerves and anger through her, along with something more. Something she didn’t even want to acknowledge, something that fluttered low in her tummy and heated her cheeks. Damn him, he’d always had the ability to reduce her to a quivering mass of uncertainty.

  Not this time. She wouldn’t let herself be trapped by his good looks and cocky attitude. This time she was taking control.

  Grace thrust out her hand. “Grace Stevens.”

  Though she’d deliberately used her ex-husband’s last name, her shoulders still twisted with tension. She watched his eyes for a flicker of recognition, waiting for them to darken with suspicion, or narrow in irritation, but they stared back at her with nothing more than cool assessment.

  Of course he wouldn’t remember her. She’d been nothing more than a gangly, awkward, girl, sport for Keith and his friends, while he’d been the catalyst that crumbled her whole world.

  He shifted his steady gaze to her outstretched hand then back to her face. “And?”

  She slapped her purse on the table careful to lay Ryker’s photograph on the dry wood then plopped down hard into a puke green chair. He fanned a deck of cards across the coarse wood and proceeded to ignore her. The weight of his silence pressed in on her. Around the room other patients stopped what they were doing to stare.

  “I—” she sucked in a deep breath and forced it past her dry throat, into her lungs. “I need your help. To find my son.”

  He flipped a red queen of diamonds over and laid it atop the black king of spades, all without sparing her a glance. “I don’t see how that’s possible. I don’t even know you.”

  “I know your sister.” Not exactly a lie. Victoria had been one year her junior, and even though she w
as now drunk more often than not, her knowledge of Keith’s whereabouts had been reliable. “She told me where I could find you.”

  He snorted and turned over another card, still not bothering to look at her. “Figures.”

  She didn’t know what she’d expected from Keith—certainly not a friendly greeting—but his total lack of response was—was—

  Something thick and molten ignited in her veins. With one great sweep of her arm, she sent his cards careening off the table. They hit the floor with a satisfying thwap that spurred her tears to start flowing once again.

  The scrape of metal chair legs against the floor snapped her head up. Keith stood, a muscle leaping to life in his tight jaw. She’d gone too far. Rationality had taken a backseat to her goal, but God, her heart was disintegrating to dust without Ryker.

  She leapt up and grabbed Keith’s hand before he could move away from the table. His hazel eyes shot daggers of contempt at her, but she sandwiched his warm fingers between her cold palms.

  “Please.” Her throat ached. “It’s been two days. Two days without seeing my little boy’s crooked smile.” She released his hand and snatched up Ryker’s photo. His wavy, brown hair swirled about his head, his mischievous gray eyes twinkling up at her from behind wire-rimmed glasses.

  She touched his cheek, her heart constricting over the photo’s two-dimensional limitations. Emotion lodged in her esophagus. She tipped the picture to Keith, who gave it barely a once over. “He’s eight.” She stuck the picture in his face. “Look at this face. Can’t you understand that I need help?”

  Wariness crept into Keith’s hazel eyes, along with something that almost looked suspiciously like compassion, but before she knew what to make of it, it was gone. “So go to the police.”

  “Don’t you think I tried that?” Her voice rose an octave, earning her more stares and a glare from a sour faced lady on staff who was rearranging the books in the room’s small bookcase housed below the wall mounted flat screen TV. Grace took a slow breath and spoke softly. “Since he was taken out of school by his father, they won’t do anything without evidence of a threat.”

  “There you go. He probably took the kid camping.”

  “My ex wouldn’t do that. He hated camping.”

  No, the Mark she knew hated camping, but then again, as she’d recently discovered, she hadn’t really known him at all.

  “How do you know he’s not after custody?”

  “Mark has no reason to do that. We’ve always shared custody of Ryker.”

  Keith rubbed at his furrowed brow for a moment then leaned forward, placing his palms on the table. “Look, lady, I’d love to help, but as you can see, I’m not exactly in any position to go anywhere. Hotel Monthan’s got a lock on me for the next couple months.”

  “What?” Her throat tightened, pushing the word out in a squeak. “But your sister said—she told me your—your stay was voluntary.”

  He let out a bark of laughter. “You think I’d willingly check myself into this place? You should know better than to trust anything Victoria says. She’s a drunk, and half-crazy to boot.”

  Grace’s knees buckled, her elbow hit the edge of the table and jarred her back into the chair, but the sharp pain was nothing compared to the despair that knifed through her. “But….he said you were the key.”

  ***

  Keith wasn’t the damn key to anything, and the sooner he made this woman realize that, the sooner he could go back to being what he was. The patsy. The Army’s scapegoat. If he’d learned anything during his three week stay here at Monthan it was that the Army wasn’t interested in looking for the real traitor behind the training exercise tragedy that had taken the lives of several of his friends. His superiors knew someone needed to pay, not only for their deaths, but also for the missile components stolen from Fort Bragg during the screw-up. He’d been the convenient choice.

  He was suffering from PTSD, they’d said. Spiraling out of control. Drinking and raging at fellow officers. Damn them all to hell, he’d been grieving the loss of the only stable family he’d ever known, the brothers who had taken him into the fold without question and watched his back.

  And as soon as he’d done his time here, he’d find out who was really responsible, and lock the son of a bitch traitor up for good.

  He glanced down at the woman who’d barged in here looking for something he couldn’t provide. “I’m not the man you’re looking for.”

  She brought her head up, tears tracking from her misty green eyes and down her cheeks, mouth trembling. “You’re exactly who I’m looking for. Mark left me a note. He told me to find you.” She didn’t look at all happy by the admission, a fact that confused him further. He didn’t know her, did he? He looked closer, but she’d bent her head to rifle through her purse, her hair falling in front of her eyes. She withdrew two more photos, which she spread out on the table next to her son’s. “Do you recognize him?”

  Keith reached out a finger and snagged one of the photos closer. He narrowed his eyes on the familiar craggy face. “Your ex is The Bard?”

  She frowned up at him, wiping tears off her face. “Who?”

  “Mark Stevens. We called him The Bard ‘cause he was always spouting poetry at us.”

  “Mark spouting poetry? That doesn’t sound…” Her voice trailed off. “Oh, God. What was he into?”

  Instead of answering her, he picked up the second photo. The penetrating stares of his Special Ops unit slithered up his spine. Parker. Dead. Millhouse. Dead. Not from a dangerous mission or an attack, but by the hand of a fellow soldier who’d betrayed them.

  His throat constricted. The acrid stench of burning flesh still lingered in his mind. As the Engineer Sergeant, Keith had double and triple-checked those charges. Damn it, he wasn’t some fresh recruit just out of basic. He knew the difference between live explosives and dummy loads. He’d used dummies, as always.

  Someone had to have switched the charges and blown them all to hell. Why couldn’t he remember those last precious seconds before the explosion? He shoved the picture aside, but the sour taste of retribution remained.

  “You know something. About Mark.” Grace leaned forward and a lock of light brown chin-length hair popped out of its resting place behind her ear. She scrubbed at her cheek, brushed the strand away from her eye and tucked it back in place.

  A sudden prickle of déjà vu hit him in the back of his neck. Why did the simple action seem so familiar? She tipped her head and the sensation eased, but Keith knew better than to ignore a feeling that strong.

  Don’t trust her. Tread carefully. There’s something about her…

  He crouched down to pick up the cards that were still scattered over the floor, hoping to give himself some space to clear his head. She came alongside to help him, getting right back in his face.

  “Tell me. Was it something…illegal? Is Ryker—?” She clamped her mouth shut like she couldn’t bear to give voice to the thought that her son might be in danger.

  There was no ‘might’ about it. The people The Bard dealt with weren’t your average every day criminals. Then again, Mark Stevens wasn’t your average Defense Intelligence Agent. He’d been tasked with a highly sensitive covert mission: infiltrate the inner sanctum of the Army in the hopes of catching the traitor known only as The Keeper. After years of dead ends, Mark had finally found a lead. A name—one he hadn’t had the chance to divulge before he’d disappeared.

  “Stevens wouldn’t be caught dead doing something illegal.” Keith had been his point man, the only one who knew the real reason for his sudden appearance at Fort Bragg.

  Grace’s wide eyes snared him, willing him to divulge more out of compassion. But he’d learned long ago that such a weak emotion had no business in his life.

  He rubbed the still tender scar along his forehead with the jack of clubs in his hand, a raw reminder that even when you worked hard to control every corner of your life it still managed to end up royally FUBAR.

  Keith closed hi
s eyes and was immediately transported to that afternoon. He could see his finger depressing the trigger to detonate the dummy charge to expel a thin blanket of smoke into the hollowed out training facility. Instead of the familiar pop he’d expected to hear, a roar had shook the ground and tossed him on his back.

  Keith tightened his jaw, willing his fuzzy brain to remember more. But all he could recall was the smell. The thick, impenetrable smoke. The hazy whispers before he lost consciousness. And the blurred image of a man. Had it been The Keeper? Keith’s gut told him it had.

  He needed a name. And if the only way to get it was from The Bard himself, then that’s what he’d do. He’d bided his time in this stinking rehab center long enough. He’d thought if he did his sentence like a good soldier he could save his career, but his career meant nothing if the bastard who’d killed his friends went free. He couldn’t wait. He had to find Stevens now. If Keith was the key, then Stevens was the lock, holding all the secrets that would break the truth wide open.

  “Do you have any idea where Mark might have taken your son?”

  Misery drew Grace’s features into a tight mask as she handed him the stack of cards. “No.”

  “Then we have our work cut out for us.”

  Excitement coursed through his veins. He was going to do something reckless and impulsive but damn nothing had ever felt so right. He flicked a glance at the rows of tables, the nurses and counselors wandering around, the security doors he’d have to breach. Difficult but not impossible.

  He leaned forward. “Do you have a car?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. Get rid of it.”

  “But—”

  “Abandon it. Take your money and buy something else. Four wheel drive. Nothing fancy. Got that?”

  “Why?”

  He tapped the deck of cards on his thigh. “It won’t take long for someone to report my disappearance.”