The Broken

by Shelley Coriell

  “I will.” They’d reached the door to the station. Sometime during their paperwork marathon, the storm had passed. The early morning air, still dark, was cool and damp, fresh and clean. He helped her into the car and shut the driver’s side door, but he didn’t walk away when she started the engine. “Oatmeal raisin cookies,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “You, Lottie, are like oatmeal raisin cookies, soft and sweet, but with a spicy kick.”

  Lottie’s deep laugh rumbled as she pulled away.

  Hayden got into his rental car and picked up his phone. Chief Greenfield had told him earlier Smokey came through the surgery and was feeling good enough to pick a groggy fight with the chief nurse. Kate had been there with the old man the whole time.

  It was his time now. He picked up his phone.

  Maeve answered, but her voice sounded worried.

  “What’s wrong?” Hayden asked. “Is it Smokey? Are there post-op complications?”

  “It’s Kate. She left.”

  “Left?”

  “A few hours ago, right after the doctors upgraded Smokey’s condition to good.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “I…I don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to ask her. She just disappeared. She didn’t even say goodbye to Smokey.”

  She had run away. Again.

  His head slumped forward and rested on the steering wheel. Kate was the first to admit there was something more between them. He knew that now. He needed to tell her that he loved her and that he wanted her in his life. He wasn’t good at letting people in, but he’d find a way.

  The tires squealed as he backed out of the parking lot and cut across the median. He had no plan, no logical thought processes, just the fiery need to find Kate. At the yellow cottage, he tore through every room. She was gone. Packed up.

  She left you. The voice was a small snicker.

  No, she wouldn’t leave you. She loves you.

  He chose to listen to the second voice. Back in his car, he started to hunt once again for Kate Johnson.

  * * *

  Saturday, June 20, 5 a.m.

  Dorado Bay, Nevada

  The cry was low and tortured. It came from the porch that wrapped around Kate’s childhood home.

  “Where are you?” Kate knelt in the mud, a flashlight in her hand as she squinted into the darkness under the porch. Night still hadn’t given way to dawn, but a soft glow hovered on the horizon.

  Another cry sounded, and she aimed her flashlight to the right, and there, staring at her with wide eyes and a battered right ear, was her cat.

  “Ellie,” she said with equal parts irritation and affection, “I’ve been looking for you for hours.”

  The cat blinked.

  “Come on, girl,” she said in a softer tone. Poor thing. She’d been left on her own at the lake cottage, and when no one showed, the cat must have run to the one place where she felt safe. “Come here, Ellie, I’ll take you home. Get us both cleaned up.” The cat just sat there.

  Home? Was that her condo? Smokey Joe’s cabin? She didn’t know where that was anymore, but she knew she needed to get off her bike and rest for a while. Somewhere. But not alone.

  She had…a cat.

  She laughed out loud. She had a cat.

  She had Smokey Joe, who was on the mend in a Reno hospital. She had her freedom, because Hayden had hauled the Butcher off to a cage.

  And Hayden. She had Hayden.

  But the poor man didn’t realize it yet. The man wasn’t good at feelings, but she was. She loved Hayden Reed, and she’d fight to get him.

  “Come on, Ellie, I’m cold and hungry and tired, and we need to find Hayden before he takes off.”

  Ellie let loose another strangled cry, inched out of her muddy crawl space, and gave Kate a hiss. Kate laughed and scooped her into her arms. “Okay, you’re tired, too. Let’s get out of here.”

  They got as far as the driveway when a car pulled up.

  Hayden got out, and a surge of warmth flowed through her entire body. He looked perfect, in command, as if he hadn’t battled a madman last night. Hayden wore one of his exquisite suits. Every hair on his head was in place. Today’s tie was red with black swirls. But no shoes. She laughed.

  His steps weren’t sure or purposeful. And his eyes—so many questions seemed to swim in those gray depths. “I thought you ran away.”

  She shook her head and tried to smile. “I can’t run anymore. I have a cat.” But do I have you? It was on the tip of her tongue. But for once, she held back her words.

  Go slow. Be patient. She’d learned much from the man she loved.

  He didn’t say it. Instead he held out his arms to her, and she didn’t hesitate. She threw herself at his chest. His arms clamped around her, their bodies pressing together in a moment that she wanted to last forever.

  Ellie, trapped between them, screeched.

  Hayden drew back his chest but lowered his mouth to hers. The kiss heated her chest and fogged her brain. He pulled her closer, tighter. It stirred up frothy desire low in her belly and sent a throaty sigh over her lips. So thorough. That kiss was so obscenely thorough. And right. Never before had anything felt so right.

  When he finally pulled himself from her, Hayden cupped her cheeks with his hands, forcing his gaze on her. “I’m pretty screwed up. You realize that, right?”

  “Me too,” she said.

  “I’m obsessive about my work.”

  “Me too. It’s what started this whole thing.”

  “And the touchy-feely stuff,” he slid a hand along his tie and shook his head, “it’s tough for me.”

  “I can help.”

  Any steel left in his gray eyes fled, and he lowered his head.

  Ellie hissed.

  A soft laugh fell from his lips. “And just so you know, I’m not a cat person. Or a dog person. I’m too busy with work.”

  “I’m sure Ellie’s willing to work with you on that one.” Kate held out the cat to him. Ellie hissed and jumped to the ground, her crooked tail high in the air.

  “She might need some convincing,” Hayden said.

  “I’m all over that, too.” Hand in hand, they walked to the car. When Hayden opened her door, Ellie jumped into the backseat. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  Hayden slid into the driver’s seat, and a frown settled on his lips, quickly replaced by a half smile. “I’m not sure.”

  Epilogue

  Tuesday, June 30, 7:48 a.m.

  Mancos, Colorado

  Kate set a steaming mug of coffee on Smokey’s placemat in the number three spot, right where he liked it. She placed a plate of cinnamon toast with a fat pat of butter in the center. “Come back to Reno with us.”

  “Why the he-ell would I do that?” Smokey grabbed his steamy coffee and took a long swig. It had been almost two weeks since the surgery to repair the stab wound that had nicked his left lung, and he was getting back to his cantankerous old self. Two days ago, the aide he’d hired gave his notice after Smokey Joe “accidentally” wiped the man’s personal computer. Of course this was after the aide refused to learn how to use the bread machine.

  “We want you to live with us,” Kate continued, “because we love your genteel manner and sweet nature.”

  Smokey snorted a laugh and set down his cup. He seemed to stare at the steam as if reading a message from a smoke signal. At last he turned his sightless eyes to her. “You and G-man got a good thing going, and good things, Katy-lady, with a little work turn into great things. You don’t need me to complicate things.”

  These past two weeks with Hayden hadn’t been easy. Fiercely independent, they were still learning how to be a couple, but Hayden had moved to Reno.

  “Except for Maeve, Tucson is just a place to store my suits,” he’d said. “I’m rarely home.”

  True. Last week, Hayden had been called in to profile an individual believed to be running a sex slave ring in San Francisco, and before that he had been in Washington, DC,
profiling the sender of a series of ricin-laced letters sent through the U.S. Postal Service. But to her surprise, he’d called daily. And on the day she’d interviewed for a position to work as the media relations liaison for a Reno-area nonprofit, he had commandeered Parker’s jet and its captain, and flew home for a celebratory dinner.

  “Celebratory?” she’d asked as she grilled two T-bones that night while he poured champagne. “Isn’t that a bit premature?”

  “You’ll get the job,” he said with a smile. Agent Know-It-All had been right. After a delicious dinner then dessert in bed, he hopped on the jet back to DC. The next day the recruiter called and offered her the job. Today, she finally found the nerve to say yes. And tomorrow, she and Hayden would start house hunting in Reno.

  “You’re right. Hayden and I have a long way to go before we get to the doorstep of Happily Ever After, so why not go to Tucson? Maeve said she wouldn’t mind putting up with you a while longer. Go, just for a few weeks. She needs the company.”

  “That bossy thing?” Smokey picked up his toast and aimed the point at her. “I don’t need people telling me what to do, including you.” Smokey didn’t want to be a burden to anyone, but he couldn’t live alone.

  The old soldier had dug his way out of an underground prison and helped Hayden catch Dustin Root, aka the Butcher. He was healthy, and yesterday, before the aide left, he told her Smokey Joe hadn’t had a single nightmare. Maybe because the old solider had completed the mission. She wrapped her hands around her coffee but didn’t drink. Smokey Joe had been her hero. He had saved her in more ways than one.

  “But I need you,” she said. Just like she needed Hayden. “Who’s going to help with the jewelry store? You expect me to work two jobs while you sit around and play dominoes?”

  “Stop your yammering, Kate. That new aide I hired will be here any minute, and I need to find that damned bread machine book.” He hopped up from the chair and started rooting around one of the kitchen drawers. “Now git outside and check on G-man. He should have the shed doors fixed by now. Also have him take a look at the bottom step on the porch. I damn near broke my leg on it the other day.”

  Outside Kate found Hayden wearing a tool belt and using a screwdriver to test the hinges on Smokey’s newly installed shed doors. He pressed the two doors together, and they clicked into place.

  “A perfect fit,” she said.

  He turned with a smile. “Well?”

  “I couldn’t close the deal,” she sat on the bottom step, which was indeed loose. “I’m afraid all you get is me and the cat.”

  Hayden tucked the screwdriver into the tool belt and joined her on the bottom step. “All I need is you.”

  “But I’m going to keep trying. Eventually, he’ll admit that he can’t keep chasing off aides, and he can’t live alone.”

  “Is that hope I hear?” Hayden asked with a grin.

  “Probably.”

  Escape is impossible.

  Please see the next page for

  a preview of THE BURIED

  by Shelley Coriell.

  Chapter One

  Momma was wrong.

  Good things didn’t happen to good girls.

  Tears seeped from Lia Grant’s eyes, and she inched a bloodied hand to her cheek and brushed away the dampness. She couldn’t see the tears. Or the blood.

  Too dark.

  But she felt the slickness running down her palms and wrists, the slivers of wood biting into the fleshy nubs of what was left of her fingers, and the heaviness pressing down on her chest, flattening her lungs.

  Yes, Momma was wrong. Bad things happened to good girls.

  A scream coiled in the pit of her stomach and clawed up her throat, but by the time it poured over her lips, the cry was little more than a strangled gasp. She had so little left. Little fight. Little air. Little hope that God would protect good girls who did good things.

  She always tried to be a good girl, just like Momma wanted. Church every Sunday. Straight A’s in her first year of nursing studies. A job as a volunteer greeter at the Cypress Bend Medical Center. But that was so far away from the dark, cold place where she now lay.

  In a box.

  Underground.

  Somewhere on the bayou.

  She breathed in the rot of the swamp, a steamy mixture of death and decay. In the world above, kites and warblers cried and gators splashed. A chunk of earth fell onto the top of the wooden box that encased her trembling body.

  “Let me out! Please let me out!” She beat her fists against the rough-hewn lid of her tomb.

  The thud of damp earth momentarily stopped. “I’m afraid that would be against the rules,” a faraway voice said.

  Rules? There were rules that governed bad people doing bad things?

  Lia clawed and kicked. Screamed and swore. Eventually she cried. Then prayed. She prayed for help, prayed for air, and when she realized the bad would win, prayed that after death she’d be in a good place for good girls.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been in the wooden box, but she knew it would be over soon. She inched her arms above her head, trying to ease the ache in her lungs, and when she did, something clattered, like bones rattling in a coffin. Was it a hand? A foot? An elbow?

  Dear God, she was falling apart.

  Her fingers slid over something cold and hard, small and square. Not a bone. More like a deck of playing cards. Did the devil who’d buried her alive want her to amuse herself as she suffocated?

  Her fingers, sticky with blood, slid over the small box. No, not playing cards. A phone. A whisper of breath caught in her throat. Had her captor dropped a phone? Would a phone work underground? Her trembling fingers fumbled with the power button. A joyful cry tumbled over her lips. Light, glorious light, glowed on the face.

  “Momma, oh, Momma, I’m here. Your good girl’s here.” Lia Grant reached up from her cold, dark grave and with bloodied fingertips punched in Momma’s phone number.

  * * *

  Grace: 345. Bad guys: 0.

  Grace Courtemanche always kept score. A relatively easy task at this point in her career.

  “Hey, counselor, one more picture.” A photographer from the Associated Press motioned to her as she stepped away from the microphone centered on the steps of the county courthouse.

  Grace turned to the photographer and smiled. Lips together. Chin forward. Left eyebrow arched. Her colleagues called it her news-at-eleven smile, and tonight it would be splashed across televisions and newspapers throughout the Florida Panhandle, right next to the stunned mug of Larry Morehouse. Morehouse, the former commander-in-chief of the state’s largest ring of prostitution houses masquerading as strip clubs, had just been slammed with a few not-so-minor convictions: conspiracy to engage in prostitution, coercion, money laundering, racketeering, and tax evasion. As lead prosecutor, Grace had dealt the blows, swift and hard, and she’d loved every minute of the fight.

  Her step light, she made her way through the buzzing crowd to the offices that housed the team of prosecutors from Florida’s Second Judicial Circuit. She pushed the elevator button that would take her to her third-floor, garden-view office and to Helena Ring. Ring was the twenty-four-year-old meth user who gave birth to a son in a roadside rest stop off Highway 319 and tossed the newborn in an underground toilet to die amid human waste. Florida vs. Morehouse was over, and she couldn’t wait to dig into Florida vs. Ring.

  As she waited for the elevator, the phone at her waist buzzed. Call display showed Restricted Number. She jabbed her finger at the keypad and banished the call to voicemail where it would be saved so she could forward it—and the six others—to the sheriff’s department. The calls had started months ago when the Morehouse camp had approached with her a bribe, suggesting they all shoot for a deal down. She laughed then and now.

  With the elevator once again stuck on the second floor, she spun on her gray slingbacks and took the stairs. Inside her office she reached for the light switch but stilled when a man sitting in s
ilhouette on the windowsill bent in a sweeping bow.

  “I shall buy you furs and diamonds and place chocolate bonbons at your feet,” her boss, Travis Theobold, said.

  She switched on the light and slipped out of her jacket. “I’m sure your wife will take issue with that.”

  “Nah. She knows you too well.” His eyes were bright, his grin boy-next-door appealing. A deceptively young-looking man with a mop of carrot-colored hair, her boss served as the state attorney for Florida’s Second Circuit. He had an ease with people that she had never quite mastered, not that she needed it. There were people-pleasing politicians like Travis, and there were people like her, people who didn’t care about getting votes, just getting bad guys what they deserved.

  “Damn, Grace, you buried that son of a bitch and made us look brilliant.”

  Some called her a justice-seeking missile. Those with less tact called her the Blond Bulldozer. In her youth her father had simply called her a winner. For the briefest of moments, she raised her gaze heavenward and allowed the corners of her mouth to tilt in a grin that wasn’t practiced, a little girl smile that came from a heart some defense attorneys claimed she didn’t have.

  See that, Daddy, I won.

  “Why don’t you knock off for the day? Come to Jeb’s and celebrate?” Travis asked.

  She placed her jacket on the back of her chair and fired up her computer, concentrating on the soothing hum. “Can’t. Helena Ring needs my immediate attention.”

  She reached for her computer mouse. Travis cupped his hand over hers. “I’ve taken you off the Ring case. She tried to shake off his hand, but his fingers tightened. “It’s about the bribe.”

  “You mean the one Morehouse’s people offered and I didn’t take?”

  “We received detailed information on a bank account in Nevis in your name. It includes two six-figure transfers from one of Morehouse’s companies.”

  In her dreams. Until payday she had a whopping fifty-six dollars in her bank account. “This is clearly a twisted case of identity theft.”