But everything had been screwed up right from the start.
The writer was still alive. Lee had gotten caught in the act and would almost certainly have talked if he wasn’t bailed out quickly. So he’d had to get the cash and make that happen.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered, remembering the other thread that needed to be snipped.
The bail bondsman was the only one who knew who had posted the 10 percent for the bond. Although he’d used a fake name and ID when delivering the $25K, he could still be physically identified, which was no good.
“Can’t deal with all this shit,” he said aloud. It was all spiraling, when it should have been pretty simple. How hard could taking out one dumb broad be?
“Winchester,” he seethed.
That asshole was nosy. He’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time and was still sticking to the bitch like he was a piece of gum on her fuckin’ shoe.
Everything was a mess.
He hated messes, and he wasn’t going to be able to rely on anybody else to help clean them up…not unless he wanted to drag in even more potential witnesses.
He had to find and eliminate Frankie, deal with the bail bondsman, and cover all his tracks.
And somewhere during all of that, preferably sooner rather than later, he had to deal with the writer. He’d stopped by to visit her a couple of times this week but had never found her home. The bitch kept odd hours.
He hadn’t entirely minded. Messing with Evie Fleming’s head by slipping into her house and moving things around, knowing she would wonder if she was losing her mind, had actually been fun. Now, though, with the Frankie situation, he couldn’t fool around anymore. All of these issues needed to be taken care of. “Toot-friggin’-sweet,” he mumbled.
It was time to take her out. Starting today, he was gonna watch her house, make sure she was home, and then go finish what his hired help had started last week.
Chapter 9
Reece is gonna fucking kill you, man.”
“Would you please stop saying that?” Rowan glowered at his kid brother, who was eyeing him from the other side of the booth in the crowded fast-food joint.
No pretentious lunch for the Winchester brothers. Reece had been out of town for weeks, and the only place he’d wanted to go was an In-N-Out Burger. Surprisingly, he was usually able to blend in at places like this, where he was least expected to be. He’d probably show up in a baseball cap and jersey or something, and should be able to fly under the radar.
Of course, with all three of them together, it might be a little tougher. But even the pitfalls of fame couldn’t win in a battle against a delicious, greasy burger.
“Sorry. But you know he is,” Raine said with a shrug as finished off burger number one.
The two of them had gotten here around the same time. Reece was late. They’d grabbed their food, knowing their brother might well have been held up at one studio or another and wouldn’t make it at all.
But in case he did come, and knowing Reece was probably the one who was going to lose his shit over this whole Evie situation, Rowan had carefully explained everything to their younger brother, hoping for an ally.
As was his custom, Raine didn’t react much either way. His jaw went hard enough to crack a bowling ball, but he’d been pretty quiet other than predicting Rowan’s impending doom.
He’d probably predicted correctly how Reece was going to react when he found out his twin had brought a journalist into their lives by accident and had compounded the mistake by then inserting himself into hers.
Maybe that could be understood, even forgiven since he’d been telling himself he was in a perfect position to keep the Winchester family secrets from falling into her hands. Now, though, he’d fallen for her, something his kid brother had recognized as soon as Rowan mentioned Evie’s name. How was he going to convince them they could trust her? They might suspect she was trying to seduce their secrets out of him.
Which, to be fair, she probably could.
But she wouldn’t need to. Because she wasn’t writing about Harry Baker. End of story.
“How bad is it?” Raine asked as he chomped more crispy fries. “You told her anything?”
“Nothing about that night.” Definitely not. “She knows just enough to know how hard bringing all that up again would be on our family. So she’s not going to.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Believe me, she’s got enough to worry about without trying to trick me into spilling something for a book.”
The mugging, the mystery she was trying to solve, and Angstrom, who was always hanging in the back of her mind like a noxious ghost that never went away. He cast one hell of a long shadow. She’d been living under it for years, trying to inch away as time passed. Now it looked like he was throwing it over her again, a caustic blanket of darkness and contamination.
Christ, how he hoped she didn’t have to go through any of that shit again.
Frankly, when pictured what she might have to endure if the bastard’s conviction was overturned, and the possible danger she could be in if Angstrom reached out from behind bars to try to silence her, he found himself not giving a shit about his family’s secrets. Not much else mattered other than keeping her safe.
God, he must be losing his mind. But that didn’t make his feelings any less true.
“Okay, you know her and I don’t. I trust your judgment.”
Nice compliment coming from his usually very quiet kid brother.
“But you know Reece is still gonna fucking kill you.”
“Why, exactly, am I going to fucking kill him?”
Hearing his other brother’s voice, Rowan jerked his head up. What shitty luck. His Dodgers-cap-wearing, ex-movie-star brother had walked up to their table just in time to overhear.
Across from him, Raine was smirking. He’d probably seen Reece come in, the little shit.
Well, not little. Raine was the tallest of the three of them. Not to mention the broadest. That army stint had changed him from a scrawny eighteen-year-old into a candidate for the next Incredible Hulk movie.
“So, am I gonna need to eat my food before I hear whatever it is you’ve been up to?” Reece asked. “I mean, if you make me nauseous and I can’t enjoy the burger I’ve been fantasizing about for weeks, I might kill you at that.”
“Get your food,” Rowan muttered.
Reece headed for the counter. Raine leaned across the table.
“Postponing the execution?”
“Don’t you have some snotty six-year-old movie star to play Barbies with?”
“See what you know. Barbie is out, dude. It’s all about the American Girl dolls.”
He chuckled at his brother’s knowledge, but his laughter grew wistful as he murmured, “Rachel had one of those. I remember she wanted the one with the prettiest dresses.”
Raine didn’t smile back. He rarely smiled whenever Rachel was mentioned.
That probably wasn’t surprising considering Raine had been the last member of their family to see Rachel alive. And in those final moments before her fateful fall, she’d been trying to get away from the fucking bastard who’d been molesting her. Her six-year-old brother had borne witness, though the memory had been locked in his brain for years. Until he’d seen Harry Baker reenacting his crime with another young girl.
Yeah, it was no wonder Raine wasn’t much of a smiler. His happy thoughts had died when he was six years old. And despite a flash of a normal, happy guy here and there, for the most part, it had never come back.
Reece returned and grabbed a chair, pulling it to the end of their booth, his back to the rest of the restaurant. That was probably a good thing. There’d been a few murmurs and whispers, and Rowan had the feeling some customers had a suspicion about his identity. Only the fact that they couldn’t really believe an Oscar-winning actor/director would be sitting in an In-N-Out burger in Glendale prevented anyone from coming up to ask for an autograph.
Reece took a coup
le of bites of his burger, sighing in satisfaction, and then took a big gulp from his water bottle.
“Okay,” he said. “Why am I gonna kill you, Rowan? What the hell is going on?”
Knowing from experience that, with Reece, it was better to pull off the Band-Aid and let him get all shitty and mad, and then talk him back down off the ledge, Rowan spilled it. He told his twin about stopping Evie from being mugged, reminding him that Reece and Jessica had both invited her to stay at their place.
“Yeah, I know all this.” Reece smiled a little as he reached for his burger. “Just FYI, Jess was very curious about this new friend of yours. She snooped around the house last night, looking for some evidence of what happened.”
“What did she think she was gonna find? Evidence of an orgy in your bedroom?”
“Dude, please, I’m eating.” Finishing one burger, Reece unwrapped another. “She was looking to see if she could figure out where everybody, uh, slept. But I guess that new friend of yours is a neat freak. Beds were stripped, trash cans emptied.”
“That was me,” Rowan mumbled. What’d they think he was, a savage?
Reece ignored him. “Jess’s robe freshly laundered and folded. She was pretty disappointed.”
“So sorry to disappoint your girlfriend…”
“Fiancée.”
Rowan dropped his fry. Raine jerked back in his seat. Reece just smiled.
His twin, aka the bomb-dropper.
“Seriously?” Raine asked.
“Yep.”
“Congratulations! Why don’t you tell a person?” Rowan asked.
“I believe I just did.”
“You are one lucky son of a bitch. You know you don’t deserve her, right?”
“Oh yeah, I definitely know that.”
Reece had that crazy-in-love look on his face, one Rowan used to think he’d never see on the emotionally rigid man. And he couldn’t be happier about it.
Smacking his brother on the back, Rowan smiled broadly, and not because he was temporarily off the hook with his whole story. He liked Jessica a lot. Mostly he liked the changes his future sister-in-law had brought out in his brother, who had at times been one of the biggest assholes in the universe. Now Reece was in love and engaged to marry a beautiful, kindhearted, funny young woman who didn’t take herself too seriously…and didn’t take him too seriously either. He needed someone who wouldn’t take any of his shit, and Jess was that person.
“She’s fantastic,” Rowan said. “I really am happy for you. But I hope you did it right and didn’t just toss a ring at her and inform her of the date and the church address.”
Reece was a director, always planning out the scene. Jess swore she would break him of that if it took a lifetime. And it sounded like she was going to have her chance.
“Bite me. Believe me, I planned it all perfectly.”
Curious about the satisfied tone in his twin’s voice, Rowan couldn’t help asking a question that would probably be more likely asked to a future bride by her future bridesmaids. “So how’d you do it? What does the ring look like?”
Across from him, he saw Raine roll his eyes. But tough shit. Rowan wanted to know.
Not because he was thinking about getting married or anything, hell no.
But he was thinking a lot about one certain woman.
And what it might be like to really let himself go for it with her.
He wasn’t exactly a love-at-first-sight kind of guy, and his first sight of Evie had elicited rage and concern, not love-everlasting. Every sight since, though, had brought a storm of feelings like he’d never experienced before. Admiration, liking, confusion, irritation. Attraction—hell, yes. Plus a desire to make sure she wasn’t hurt, that nobody got to her, that no evil monster ever laid another finger on her, or played psycho mind games with her.
He wanted to see her smile all the time and wanted to hear that joyful laugh she very seldom let escape those perfect lips. He wanted to kiss the taste out of her mouth and wanted to have sex with her more than he wanted to live until Christmas.
Was that love?
Fucked if he knew.
“It’s a ruby. Not traditional, but Jess loves rubies. And she’s not very traditional either.”
“Well done,” Rowan said. “Where and when?”
“We went to New York last weekend to see Hamilton.”
“No wonder she said yes,” Rowan muttered.
“The show was just an excuse.”
“You didn’t really have tickets?” he said, his eyes rounding. “You’re lucky she didn’t turn you down, you asshole.”
“Of course I had the tickets. Jesus, pay attention. I meant the show was the excuse for the trip. The truth was, I wanted to take her out on the town, in a limo, show her a fantastic time, and then propose somewhere really special.”
He had to ask. “So? Where was that?”
“Uh…” Reece suddenly wouldn’t meet his eye. His unflappable brother was so seldom at a loss for words that even Raine suddenly looked interested.
“Where?” their younger brother asked.
“Well…we never actually got out of the limo.”
Rowan barked a laugh and even Raine chuckled.
“Dude, you took her to New York to see the hottest show, like, ever, and planned to propose, lemme guess, on top of the Empire State Building?”
“Rainbow Room,” Reece muttered before shoving more fries into his mouth.
“And you never even got out of the damn car.”
“What can I say? She likes limos.”
Reece wasn’t at all the kind of guy who kissed and told, but his expression was pretty damned self-explanatory. Obviously he and his fiancée had ridden around New York City in a long stretch limo all night long, boning and getting engaged.
“Nice,” Raine said with a grin.
“Has she forgiven you for not taking her to see the show?” Rowan asked.
“I took her the next night.”
Knowing what not one but two sets of tickets to that production must have cost, Rowan whistled. He sometimes wondered what it would be like to have the kind of money his brother did. He didn’t envy him, of course, knowing the kind of shit Reece dealt with because of his very public lifestyle. In the spotlight was not an easy space to live, as evidenced by the stalker who had really made his life hell earlier in the year.
No, Rowan didn’t miss Hollywood stardom, not that he’d ever been as good as his siblings. But if he’d stayed in law school, how different might his life be now? He certainly doubted he’d be living in a crappy apartment, driving an old muscle car. He wouldn’t be at Reece’s level, but he didn’t doubt he’d have done pretty well for himself.
Strange, he could barely remember the young, right-out-of-college guy he’d been when he’d started at Stanford, determined to graduate at the top of his class.
He’d been well on his way to fulfilling that vow. But within a year of finishing, he’d dropped out. That had been right after he and Reece had hidden evidence of what they thought was Raine’s killing of Harry Baker.
He just couldn’t stand the hypocrisy of it, becoming a lawyer and arguing in a courtroom while carrying the weight of something like that. Maybe it had been crazy to then join the LAPD instead, but it had made sense to him at the time. He couldn’t tell anyone what he had done, or why he’d done it. So he couldn’t practice law. But walking a beat, catching genuinely evil criminals and taking them off the street? That had sounded right. He wasn’t going to get rich doing it, but he wouldn’t feel like as much of a fucking hypocrite either.
And he could do some good. He could atone.
No, he didn’t regret that Baker was dead. But he did regret that his actions—and Reece’s—had enabled a killer to get away with the crime.
“Okay, back to the point. Why am I gonna kill you again? And can I put it off since I want the two of you to stand up for me at the wedding?”
Before Rowan could answer, his phone rang. He glanced at it,
just in case, and was surprised to see a name that tugged at his memory.
“Candace Oakley,” he murmured. Then he remembered. Wondering why Evie’s agent would be calling him, he held an index finger up to his brothers and answered.
“Detective Winchester? This is Candace Oakley. I’m Evie’s—”
“I know who you are. What can I do for you?”
“I can’t reach her.” The woman sounded anxious, nervous and tense. “I’ve tried and tried. She kept the same number when she replaced her phone, right? But she’s not picking up.”
“She said she was going to the beach,” he explained. “She must have left it at home.”
“Are you with her?”
“No.”
“She’s all by herself?” Her voice was no longer just tense; she sounded almost fearful.
Rowan’s heart started to thump in his chest. Something was very, very wrong. And he sensed it wasn’t anything as simple as her Hollywood manager outing her to the press.
“She is alone. Now, do you want to tell me what, exactly, is going on?”
“It’s bad.”
Bad. Like Evie needed more of that in her life. “Tell me.”
The woman did. And she was right.
It was bad.
* * *
As much as Evie liked the cold weather back home when the holidays drew close, there was something to be said about lying on a sandy beach, soaking up the sun, just a week or so before Thanksgiving. She had walked the few blocks here to a quiet beach used mostly by people in her neighborhood. There was no big public parking lot nearby, so it seldom drew outsiders. Today, it was practically deserted, the temperature probably just a tinge too cold for the locals. For an Easterner like her, it was just perfect.
Spreading her blanket, she’d planned to just lie here and read a book. But she’d been so comfortable, so relaxed, that she ended up closing her eyes for an afternoon nap. The churning of the surf and the cries of seagulls overhead provided the perfect background noise, lulling her, easing her stress. She felt the tension leave her body. Here, with the breeze on her skin, the sand between her toes, and the sunshine falling warmly on her face, she could almost forget there was such a person as Angstrom, or as the mugger. Or as the flower killer, whoever he may be.
Wanting You Page 19
