Not Without Risk

by Sarah Grimm

  Her stomach tightened painfully. As soon as the thought presented itself, she knew it to be true. Before this day ended, she would know the identity of the man who’d killed Leroy, the man who’d been getting his thrills keeping her on edge.

  The man who wanted her dead.

  High-pitched, melodious notes sounded throughout the house sending Paige’s heart into her throat. She jumped at the abrupt sound, barely biting back a scream. The glass slipped from her hand. She fumbled it and the water bottle a few times before they both landed on the tiles at her feet. Glass shattered, scattering tiny shards in all directions.

  “Hello?” a voice called from the other side of the front door. The doorbell sounded a second time. “Sergeant Harrison, it’s Jon Brennan.”

  The doorbell, it was only the doorbell. It took a few seconds for her heart to return to her chest.

  Mindful of the broken glass, she pushed through the swinging kitchen door. She’d progressed halfway across the living room before her mind caught up with her feet and her steps halted. Why would Jon Brennan come here, to Justin’s house? She’d just spoken with him not forty-five minutes ago and informed him Justin was not home today.

  Unease settled in. Every instinct she possessed screamed at her to get out of there. She took a deep breath. Where could she go? Even if she slipped through the kitchen and out the side door, whoever waited for her outside could catch her before she got away. Perhaps if she remained silent, the man would think no one was home and leave.

  “Sergeant? I heard glass breaking, is everything all right in there?”

  Paige pressed her lips together to keep her gasp of alarm from breaking free. She had to think. She needed to figure out how to get out of there.

  Edging around the couch, she moved as quietly as possible toward the desk and her cell phone. She could go back into the kitchen and use the telephone in there, but she didn’t have Justin’s mobile number memorized. She needed her cell phone and the information programmed into its memory.

  “Ms. Conroy?”

  She froze, her hand in mid-air as she reached for her phone. He knew her name? How did he know her name?

  The feeling of being watched had her glancing to the window. She couldn’t hold back the squeal of alarm when a face suddenly appeared in the front window. The man—brown hair, her mind catalogued, bleached tips spiked above dark sunglasses—looked right at her. His mouth curved into a smile that under different circumstances she might have described as charming. Today, right now, she found it supremely unnerving.

  “Ms. Conroy,” he repeated, his smile firmly in place. “Could you open the door please, I need to speak with Sergeant Harrison.”

  She couldn’t take her eyes off his face. Reaching out blindly, she stretched, brushed her hand across the desk a few times but couldn’t locate her phone.

  Suddenly, his head turned, his attention locked on her searching hand. His smile dimmed.

  She weighed her need to keep the man in her sights against her need to get hold of her cell phone. Accepting the risk, Paige turned her gaze to the desk and snatched up the phone.

  She looked away for only a moment, still, he no longer stood at the window when her gaze returned. Precious moments where wasted as she wondered where he had gone, what his next move would be. Moments she should have spent calling for help.

  A sudden thump sounded against the door, then a second time, louder than the first. She jumped, her pulse skipping as the sound came again and again, until with a resounding crack, the front door swung in and slammed against the inside wall.

  The man stood, framed in the doorway, one arm raised and holding the door against the wall to keep it from swinging back at him. His glasses were gone now and the sight of those eyes looking at her, staring at her from a stranger’s face, actually made her feel faint.

  Her breath clogged in her lungs. Her body began to tremble even harder. She’d seen those eyes before, staring down at her as she slept. She’d thought she’d dreamed them, but here they were. Eyes so blue that had she not known better, she would have believed they were colored contacts.

  “It can’t be,” Paige whispered, clutching her cell phone so tightly her fingers went numb. “You’re dead.”

  “Put down the phone, P.C.”

  * * * * *

  “I don’t like not being kept abreast of your investigation,” the man claiming to be Detective Jon Brennan stated. “I’ve called, left numerous messages. I think you could give me the consideration of returning my calls.”

  The department’s voicemail had been down for days now. Every time someone attempted to retrieve their messages, the system would play their outgoing message back at them. A technician had been brought in and the system was supposed to be repaired. However, Justin hadn’t checked his messages yet today. He’d been too busy worrying over his growing feelings for Paige. Busy shuffling through reports, searching for answers.

  He glanced at the telephone now, as he struggled with what the man before him was saying. “There’s just one problem. Jon Brennan arrived on Friday.”

  The man straightened his stance ever so slightly. “I assure you, Sergeant,” he stated quietly, “I am Detective Jon Brennan.”

  Justin’s gaze shifted between the man standing before him and the identification he held. He went very still inside as his mind fought against the truth. He couldn’t allow himself to believe it because if he did, the man he’d been searching for all week had been right under his nose. He’d sat in nearly the exact spot the real Jon Brennan now stood and garnered every bit of information they had on the St. John homicide.

  “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me a man came to this department, claiming to be me?”

  Justin couldn’t wrap his mind around it either. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “How?”

  A damn good question.

  “I flew in yesterday,” Brennan announced, tucking his identification back into his pocket. “Half our department is down with the flu and I couldn’t make it out here until then. I left all of this information on your voice mail.”

  “The system’s been down most of the week. Apparently it takes messages just fine, it just won’t allow us to retrieve them.”

  Justin’s gaze returned to his desk, to the items he’d begun to clear off the top of it. That something niggled his mind again, but still remained just out of reach. “You were St. John’s partner for the last three years?” he asked the man at his side.

  “Yes?”

  “Tell me something, did you know your partner well?”

  “Of course. He was my partner.”

  Justin pushed aside anger at himself. He’d known, deep inside he’d known something was wrong when the other man who’d called himself Brennan claimed not to know his partner. His heart started to beat faster. Dread spread throughout his body, painfully tightening the muscles in his side.

  He needed to get a handle on what was going on. “Then can you tell me why St. John came to San Diego?”

  “He came looking for a woman by the name of Paige Conroy. He wanted to interview her again. To see if she saw what she thought she saw.”

  What she thought she saw?

  “He had a picture,” Brennan continued. “It haunted him.”

  Justin shuffled aside the items on his desk searching for the photo found in St. John’s hotel room. He showed it to Brennan. “This picture?”

  “No. A picture of a man.”

  “You saw it? Describe him to me.”

  “Medium build, early thirties I’d guess, brown hair, blue eyes.”

  It could be the first Jon Brennan. Of course with such a vague description it could be anybody. “Did you notice any scars or tattoos? Anything to help identify the man.”

  “Not that I saw. It wasn’t much of a picture, just a snapshot of a guy, but it haunted Leroy. He said it was the man’s eyes. ‘Dead eyes,’ he called them.”

  Eyes.

  What had been bothering him f
or days clicked in that instant.

  Paige had mentioned Preston’s eyes. The morning of St. John’s death, as she’d told them of Rick Preston’s shooting, she mentioned his eyes and how she’d never forget the look of his eyes after he’d been shot.

  Justin fisted his left hand, gritting his teeth against the pain that knifed down his side. He stared at the autopsy report atop his desk. The report that described the body of Rick Preston, and how the injury to the man’s face was so extensive, he was unrecognizable. If he believed the body the coroner autopsied was that of Rick Preston, there was no way Paige would remember his eyes.

  “Brennan.” He could barely catch his breath. It was all so unbelievable. Almost too unbelievable, yet it would make sense. “What are you saying?”

  “My partner didn’t believe Rick Preston died that night outside that restaurant, Sergeant. Leroy believed Preston is still alive.”

  It would explain the man’s ability to get where he shouldn’t have been able to get, to fool an entire precinct into believing he was Detective Brennan. It would explain his ability to duplicate crime scene photos because he would know, from his own experience as a detective, what angles would be taken. Most importantly, it would explain why Paige remained alive. Why he’d chosen to use fear in order to force her to run instead of killing her outright, as he’d done with St. John.

  “I think your partner was right. Rick Preston is alive. I met him a few days ago when he presented himself as you.”

  “When he…” Brennan’s words trailed off. Justin watched the man absorb what he’d just heard. It didn’t take him long. “Damn,” he said quietly. “He needed to know what you knew. Just how much Leroy managed to pass on before he died.”

  “Exactly.” Justin continued to talk out loud, bouncing his thoughts off Brennan the same way he would have bounced them off Allan. “The thing is, once he discovered we had nothing, no physical evidence, no motive, why didn’t he leave town? Why not just disappear again?”

  “How do you know he didn’t? Have you seen the man since then?”

  “No, but he’s made his presence known,” Justin replied, thinking of Paige’s late night visitor. The thought brought him full circle, back to where he’d been heading before Brennan approached him. “Why’d he call her?”

  “Who?”

  “Unless…unless he doesn’t know I’m not with her.”

  “Sergeant, what are you talking about?”

  “He called Paige from her home, knowing I’d go investigate. He didn’t know I wasn’t with her.”

  “Paige? You’re talking about Paige Conroy?”

  Justin nodded, fear rising as everything seemed to slip into place. “That means he knows where she is. How can he know where she is?”

  The moment Justin gave voice to his question the answer came to him. With perfect clarity, he recalled the events of the morning Preston sat at the apex of his and Allan’s desk, pretending to be a Boston detective. How their conversation had been cut short by Paige’s arrival and Preston’s hurried departure. A departure that came on the heels of Allan’s statement that Paige was there to see Justin.

  Paige had described Rick Preston as charming, slick and incredibly smart. The type of man who could ease into new situations, make everyone believe in him, and walk away unscathed. It wouldn’t take long for the man she described to figure out where she’d run off to, once he made the connection between Paige and Justin. And it wouldn’t take much for a man like that, to charm Justin’s home address out of someone.

  “Jesus.” Fear tightened his gut, mixed with the dread already swirling there. Bile crawled up the back of his throat. “Jesus, he’s going after Paige.”

  He needed to warn her. He had to find Preston before Preston could get to Paige. Before he could kill her.

  Paige. Instantly he imagined his life without her. In that moment, he realized the truth. He loved her. He hadn’t meant to do it. Hadn’t even realized it was in him to do. He’d told her he didn’t believe in love, but that was before he felt its power, the reality of the emotion pulsing through his body like blood.

  If only he’d realized it sooner. He wanted what Allan had—a life outside the job. A family. Love. He wanted these things with Paige.

  Justin just had to keep her alive so he could convince her she wanted the same from him.

  With shaking hands, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and punched in his home telephone number. He waited until the machine picked up. “Paige, honey, pick up the phone. Paige? Listen to me. Get out of there. He knows where you are.”

  He disconnected, shoved his phone back into his pocket and was nearly to the archway before realizing Jon Brennan remained hot on his heels. He stopped, leveled his gaze on the man.

  “I’m with you on this,” Brennan stated boldly.

  Justin hesitated.

  “You’ll need another set of eyes. Someone to watch your back.”

  The man wasn’t going to back down, that much was obvious. There was a fierce gleam visible in Detective Jon Brennan’s eyes. A thirst for justice.

  “The bastard killed my partner,” Brennan reminded Justin unnecessarily. “I can help you keep him from getting the woman.”

  “All right,” Justin acquiesced, his voice unsteady. He forced back panic, refusing to even consider that he might be too late. He’d made Paige a promise and he was damn well going to come through for her. “Did you bring your sidearm?”

  “No. Too much hassle to fly with it.”

  Justin reached down and removed the .38 from the holster he’d had custom made for his boot. He handed it to Detective Brennan. “Then you’re going to need this.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Paige couldn’t move. She couldn’t seem to draw a deep breath. In some sick way, everything made sense. It was all suddenly so clear to her. Because Justin was right, her stalker knew her. He knew her intimately.

  “Put down the phone, P.C.,” Rick Preston repeated as he stepped further into the room and swung the door closed behind him.

  He’d been shot in the face, in the forehead, near his left temple. He’d been down. Bleeding. Dying. She’d watched it all transpire. Saw, with her own eyes, the ambulance’s arrival, the paramedic’s hurried attempts to stabilize him. The mad rush to load him into the waiting ambulance and speed him to the hospital.

  Where he’d been pronounced dead.

  Rick.

  Her heart hammered so hard it hurt. She swallowed, a bit hard to do since all her saliva seemed to have dried up. “How? I saw you…”

  “What? Die? You saw a man shoot me,” he replied, leveling an automatic at her chest.

  His old service weapon, the one she’d kept in a drawer all these years. He’d done more than just call her while in her house. He’d armed himself.

  Rick’s gaze followed hers to the Beretta. The coolness of his smile sent a shiver down her spine. “You know, when I swapped your wireless security remote for an identical one, while you lay there on the sidewalk, I wasn’t sure I would even use it. I’m glad I did. I can’t tell you how pleased I was to discover you’d held on to my service pistol all these years. I didn’t know you cared, P.C.”

  “I don’t. And stop calling me P.C. You know I hate that nickname.”

  His smile faded. “Drop the phone. Now!”

  She dropped the phone. It clattered off the edge of the desk and landed at her feet.