THE GUARDIAN (Taskforce Series)

by Melton, Marliss

  Considering all she’d gone through to get to this moment, the decision was daunting but not hard to make.

  Drawing her purse out from under the register, she flipped the switch in the lipstick-case clipped to one side, activating her new spy camera. She’d procured it on the same day that she’d bought her new Mac. With trembling hands, she transferred her micro pistol to the voluminous left pocket of her sundress. Grabbing up a notepad and a pen, she willed her heart to stop pounding.

  In order to pull this off, she had to be convincing.

  I can do this. Plus, with Deputy Doug Hazelwood out of the picture, Davis just might actually tell her what she wanted to know.

  She thought of Jackson and her promise to be careful. She thought of Alexa and the justice she deserved. And then she slowly and deliberately turned toward the store room.

  Rupert Davis scrutinized sexy Maggie. Her red and white sundress had a high waist, a low neckline and a short hem that showed more of her smooth, tan skin than it covered. Silver jewelry shimmered at her pulse points. Women who dressed the way she did deserved to get what they were asking for.

  He licked his lips. She sure had it coming.

  He hadn’t returned to Artie’s so much to be interviewed as to relish his plans for her. Her tale that she was writing a book was just an excuse to lure men one-by-one into the back of the store, anyway. She claimed to be a writer, but she was just a slut like any other woman, the strong-willed kind that didn’t break when things got rough. But when the time was right, he’d show her who had the upper hand.

  “Have a seat,” she offered, nodding at the chair cattycorner to the one she pulled away from the table. Situating her purse, pen and notepad on the tabletop, she smoothed the shapeless fabric of her dress and sank into her seat, crossing her legs at the knee. A whiff of her perfume and a glimpse of bare thigh clouded his thoughts momentarily.

  Not yet, he cautioned, feeling his dick swell. Later, when he lured her to the abandoned meat plant on 15th Street South East, where all trace of her struggles could be eradicated, he would take what he wanted. And then it would be the tangy sweet smell of her fear that excited him, not her perfume.

  As he wallowed in his anticipation, she picked up her pen, started scribbling a note, then laid it promptly down.

  Only, too late. He had seen her fingers trembling.

  Excitement boiled inside him as he noted, too, the rapid pulse along her slender neck. The telltale signs of her fear goaded him to attack her now, to shred her clothing and throw her to the floor beneath him.

  But then she met his stare with such a direct look that he questioned his perceptions. Maybe the bitch was turned on by him, not afraid.

  “Tell me about your childhood, Sulayman,” she calmly requested.

  Confused by mixed signals, he obliged her by describing what it was like growing up in Ward 8 public housing. He had been a member of a street gang. Bodies were being bagged and carted away, sometimes daily. “Cops told me I could testify against my friends or go to jail with them. So I testified. That’s when I realized whose side it paid to be on,” he recollected.

  “How old were you then?” she asked him.

  “Fifteen.”

  “If you could talk to the boy you used to be, what would you tell him?”

  He had to think a moment. “Trust no one,” he finally decided. “Not your mother, not your so-called friends. It’s every man for himself. Write that down,” he added, proud of the way he’d phrased his thoughts.

  She jotted his words down quickly. “You mentioned your mother,” she noted, her pen now steady in her pink-tipped fingers. “What did she do to break your trust?”

  Davis snorted his derision. “All that cunt was ever interested in was how to get her next fix.”

  “So, you’re saying she was a drug addict,” Maggie inferred, with little trace of empathy.

  “And a whore,” he added, reliving the first time he’d seen his mother with a man. He had recoiled that first time, but after years of watching perverts exploit her filthy body, he’d realized she deserved every minute of her torment.

  “Do you mean that was her profession? Or is that just your opinion of her?”

  “Both,” he spat.

  “Has your mother affected your view of all females?”

  “Whatchu think?” Her fixation on is mother was beginning to annoy him.

  “What about your father? Where was he?”

  “Who the hell knows? I never knew him.”

  “I see. How old were you, then, when you became a police officer?”

  “Nineteen. I went to the academy right out of high school.”

  Her assessing gaze fell to his broad shoulders. “Would you say you were an asset to the force?”

  He sat up straighter. “Hell, yeah. Because of me, Ward 8 became a decent place to live.”

  “Did you end up having to arrest your friends? People you knew?”

  He shrugged. “Had to. So what? That was the only way to clean up my neighborhood.”

  “What was your strategy?”

  “I owned the drug dealers,” he admitted, experiencing the same heady power he’d felt back then. “Hell, I owned the whole damn city. See, crime is always gonna be there. Key is to make it work for you. I made ‘em fear me.” He paused, remembering his glory days. “Someone’s got to rule. That was me. That’s what I did.”

  “I guess the system didn’t see it that way,” she drawled, all inflection smoothed from her voice. “Or you wouldn’t have gone to jail.”

  He could have cared less what the system thought. “Bet you the streets are crawling with vermin now,” he predicted darkly.

  She heaved a sigh, laid down her pen, and sat back.

  “What?” he demanded, sensing her disappointment.

  She raised her eyebrows at him. “I don’t know, Sulayman. I guess I’m looking for more substance to my book, you know? My goal is to tell gripping, true-life stories about the other side of crime, but drug trafficking doesn’t interest people. It’s not like abduction, or rape, or murder. That’s the stuff that sells.” She sent him pleading look. “And so far, I haven’t gotten anything like that from any of the others. I was hoping to get it from you. I mean,” her gaze skittered over him, “you just seem so much more experienced.”

  Her words filled him with satisfaction. “So what if I am?”

  She spread her hands. “Then here’s your chance to show people how the world really works. People need a reality check. You’ve seen the darker side of life, and you mastered it. Prove yourself the master.”

  He liked the word she used—the master. It reminded him of what Ibrahim insisted, that he was Allah; he was God. As such, he could do whatever the hell he wanted.

  “Come on, now.” Her voice grew husky. “You must’ve have gotten away with some awfully naughty things as a cop. Am I right?”

  The way she touched her tongue to her teeth made his dick tingle. He’d gone so long without pussy in prison that he doubted he could ever get enough to make up for his deprivation. His plan to lure her to the abandoned meat market two weeks from now seemed suddenly too distant. “Shit,” he drawled, stalling to think through his options. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  Her eyes shimmered with excitement. “Are you that bad of a boy?”

  Her effect on him was too much to ignore. “Why don’t you sit your pretty little ass in my lap and I’ll show you just how bad I am,” he growled, drawing attention to his hard on as he rubbed himself through his pants. Problem was, if he took her here, he might lose control, leave a DNA trail that couldn’t be covered up, and then he’d be back in the slammer before he knew what hit him. They would have to go somewhere else for what he had in mind.

  “I want a rape story,” she requested unexpectedly, keeping his fire lit with her bold request.

  “Why?” Seeing his hard-on must have excited her. “You like it rough?”

  “Maybe,” she hinted. “Do you have one for me?”


  “I might.” She didn’t know how rough she was going to get it. It was becoming more difficult by the moment to think clearly. Maybe if they got in her car and went somewhere. . .

  “Women have a weakness for a man in uniform. A man with a gun.” She ran her gaze over him. “I’m sure you had all the ladies throwing themselves at you.”

  “Let’s go for a ride,” he suggested. Surrounded as they were by miles of farmland, how hard could it be to find a place where no one would find any evidence if things went south? Some women acted like they liked it and still pressed charges later. And others fought like they’d never led on like they wanted it—the bitches.

  “I’ll think about it,” she replied, sliding a hand causally into the folds of her dress.

  He cut her hand a suspicious glance. Was she hiding something down there or playing with herself? He couldn’t tell what she was doing with the tabletop blocking his view.

  “Maybe you just need more incentive,” she suggested.

  Her words snatched his gaze up. “Like what?”

  “What if I offered to pay you money?”

  Just the mention of money made his mouth water. Fresh out of prison with no finances to speak of, money was second to what he wanted most, sex being the first. Money bought cocaine, which he could always sell at a profit. “How much?”

  “Up to five thousand dollars,” she promised smoothly, “if you tell me a really good story now.”

  Suspicion wicked into Rupert’s brain. Why was she so desperate that she felt the need to buy him? “Where you gonna get money like that?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “My daddy’s rich. You’ve seen my new ride, haven’t you?”

  The sleek Jag outside had caught his eye on Sunday. Hell, who cared where the money came from? Having a small fortune to invest in drugs was a broke ex-con’s dream-come-true. He couldn’t afford to turn her down.

  A rape story huh? He had so many of those he wouldn’t know which one to pick. One in particular stood out, though, because he’d almost been caught—but not really, because he’d known what he was doing and he’d outsmarted the system, something he could have done forever if some rat hadn’t ended up squealing on him.

  Maybe she’d pay even more for a juicy story like that.

  “Well...” He paused, measuring the risk. There’d been no evidence to indict him then. Ten years later, he ought to be safe in coming clean. “One time stands out because I did almost get caught, though the bitch turned out not to be worth the trouble.”

  Her expression seemed to freeze. “You almost got caught?”

  “There was this school girl I picked up one night on patrol. Found her bein’ harassed by the wrong kind of people, if you know what I mean. I was gonna take her home to her parents, but then I thought, what’s this schoolgirl doin’ out alone at night? And then I knew; she was out looking for action, just like any other whore. So I decided to give it to her good and ha-”

  A rap on the door behind them cut him off.

  Davis leapt to his feet. The story he was on the verge of confessing made him react like a hunted man. “Who’s that? You got someone listening outside?”

  She cut him an innocent but frazzled look. “No, I have no idea who’s out there.”

  Paranoia flooded his mind. What if the cop was back, listening through the walls with some newfangled technology?

  Something wasn’t right about this whole set up. His skin had been crawling for ten minutes straight. The scheming bitch had to be up to something. Lunging at Maggie, he caught her by the neck, plucked her out of her seat and dragged her to him, pinning her back to his chest so he could use her as a hostage in some worst-case scenario.

  But then he heard a familiar voice on the other side of the door calling, “Sulayman, open up!” And he realized it was only Corey—that studious do-gooder. What the hell did he want?

  With Maggie’s soft ass pressed against his hard dick, Davis found himself incapable of letting go. Giving himself a taste of what he’d do to her next time, he squeezed one of her big tits and stabbed his tongue into her ear. The way her body locked up in protest turned him even harder. But then Corey knocked on the door again, distracting him from his pleasure.

  “Mother fucker.” With parolees looking for him, there was no way in hell he’d get to satisfy his compulsions tonight.

  No worries. He still had plans for Maggie. Now he knew exactly how to lure her to the meat market. It’d be easier than it might have been. “Keep it quiet,” he warned her, slowly removing his hand from her throat. Shifting to see her better, he savored his power over her as she gagged and sucked in air. “You want to hear the rest of my story?” he asked, as her fit subsided.

  Lifting wide, watering eyes at him, she gave a nod.

  He snatched the pen off the table. “Write your number on my hand,” he requested. “I’ll call you in two weeks. You come with the money and you’ll have that story and more.”

  Fingers trembling uncontrollably, she scrawled a D.C. phone number onto his palm as he raked her curvaceous body with dark anticipation. “We’ll finish this when I’m done at Gateway,” he vowed.

  Striding to the door, he thrust it open, knocking the steel panel into Corey’s face as the man had his ear to the door.

  “Watchu want?” he growled, herding him away from the building.

  “Ibrahim’s lookin’ for contraband,” Lena heard Corey murmur just before the door clanged shut.

  Overcome with relief to find herself alone and in one-piece, Lena sank bonelessly onto the dusty floor where she battled the impulse to vomit.

  Diavolos!

  One minute she’d been euphoric with the realization that Davis was confessing to her sister’s murder; the next, she was writhing in pain and in mortal fear as he overreacted to the interruption.

  The certainty that he would have sealed his own sentence of guilt made the ache in her throat all the more unbearable. Acid burned her esophagus as she realized she could still feel his saliva in her ear. She scoured it with her sleeve, shuddering in disgust.

  Damn Corey for undoing her hard-earned work in an instant! And damn Davis for reacting like the guilty beast he was and cutting short his confession at the most critical moment.

  She felt her neck for permanent damage. A fraction harder of a squeeze, and he’d have cut off her airway completely.

  But the physical discomfort was nothing compared to the crushing knowledge that all the effort she had poured into this project was for naught...unless, of course, she met Davis when he called her looking for the money.

  There was still that option. Except just thinking of it made her sick to her stomach.

  A soft knock at the door snatched her head up. She winced and scrambled to her feet. Had Davis come back? God, no!

  Drawing her micro pistol from her pocket, she flipped off the safety and aimed it wildly at the door.

  The knock came again, urgently.

  Could it be Jackson? She didn’t want him seeing Davis’s handiwork.

  A soft whirring sound replaced the knocking, and the lock on the door shivered. In the next instant, the lever turned and the door swung open. Lena’s grip on the pistol tightened, only to relax again as Jackson’s colleague, Toby, surged into the room.

  Wresting the gun from her grasp, he set it aside. His horrified gaze locked on her bruised throat. “Christ, Jackson is going to kill me.”

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, confused by his presence.

  “He texted me. Said you were over here alone with Davis. I had to talk him out of coming over here himself—not a good idea, what with the bad blood between him and Davis. I got here as fast as I could. It was his idea to send Corey in the meantime.”

  “What?” Then it was Jackson’s fault Corey had interrupted her interview.

  A pounding at the door startled them both. “That’s gotta be Jackson.” Toby crossed to the door to let him in. “She’s alive,” he said on a reassuring note as Jackson bar
reled past Toby to get to her.

  “Lena!” His reaction to the marks on her neck was identical to his colleague’s. “That sick son of a bitch,” he raged through clenched teeth. He whirled on his partner. “What took you so long?”

  “I was on the other side of Mechanicsville!”

  Frustration and fury exploded in Lena without warning. She shoved Jackson with all her might. “You arrogant jerk!” she grated hoarsely. He staggered back and she pursued him. “I had him!” she cried, striking his chest with her balled hands. “I had my sister’s killer eating out of the palm of my hand. He was telling me exactly how it happened, and it was Alexa he was talking about because he mentioned her school uniform, and that’s when Corey knocked on the door and interrupted his confession. All because of you and your meddling. How could you!”

  Stone-faced, Jackson caught her wrists as she continued to pummel him. “Stop it,” he insisted. “Calm down.”

  “Calm down?” Tears scalded her eyes, blurring her vision. “You have the gall to tell me to calm down when you just ruined everything? Get out!” She jerked her chin furiously at the door. “Just go. I don’t want to look at you right now.”

  At her harsh words, Jackson freed her wrists abruptly. “You’re being unreasonable.”

  “Unreasonable? How do you expect me to behave? I told you I could do this. I promised I would be careful. You demand me to trust you, but you didn’t trust me. How does that make me unreasonable?” She swiped an impatient hand over the tears now leaking from her eyes.

  “He was in here alone with you,” Jackson countered. “Look at your neck. He could have killed you, for Christ’s sake!”

  “I had my gun the whole time.”

  “That puny thing? He could have knocked it right out of your hands, just like I could have done that night in the alley when you pulled it on me. You’re lucky to be alive, Lena. Why don’t you get that?”

  “I wasn’t in danger until Muhammed started knocking,” she insisted. Whirling on him, she crossed to the table where she flipped open her lipstick case and switched off the camera. To think that she’d been a hair’s-breadth from capturing Davis’s full confession! The only real evidence she’d recorded was his vicious attack. And that would get him—what?—a couple of months in jail, at most.