She put a hand over his. “But Reese, it isn’t the same thing. Don’t you see that? You had a relationship with your father, a good one. I never had that. Surely a guy who had a four-point-seven grade point average all through law school would understand that.”
“You asked about me.”
“Once. Jake and I were having difficulty finding anything to talk about and your name slipped into the conversation. That’s all. And wipe that smug look off your face.”
For the first time that day, he smiled. The woman could be such a hard-ass when the opposite was true. “I admit the situation is different with your father. But that’s inconceivable to me. My dad was always there for me, my mom too.”
But thinking about her early years, anger bubbled up in him at Nick Tyler for not having the balls to check on the welfare of his own flesh and blood. In Reese’s opinion, whether the child had been conceived out of wedlock or not, the man should have at least met with her before now. His financial responsibility certainly had not included a caring heart.
“My parents were a joke. Face it, Reese. You had that Norman Rockwell family we all wanted.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. But my childhood was pretty normal.”
“Lucky you.” As if to change the subject, Quinn stared at the half-eaten BLT on Reese’s plate. “You gonna eat that?”
He shoved the plate her way, just as a hail of gunfire pierced through the front window, causing glass to shatter all around them.
He grabbed her as they hit the floor on the way down. Bullets flew past them as he lay sprawled on top of Quinn while the pings of metal hit every surface inside his house. Plaster and shards of glass rained down over both of them.
Just as suddenly as the gunfire began, it was over. Reese heard the squeal of tires and made a dash to the living room window in time to see an SUV peel down the street.
The walls were riddled with holes. His flat-screen TV hung at an angle. Glass shards from lamps and photographs were scattered all over the floor. Debris lay everywhere.
Pulling out his cell phone, he dialed nine-one-one, even though he could hear sirens already in the distance.
CHAPTER 6
In a drug-induced haze, Ella Canyon sat in her tiny room in East Oakland, wondering what had happened to the gravy train she’d once rode hard and fast. Somehow she’d fallen off and never managed to get back onboard.
Once upon a time she’d had it made—even lived in Beverly Hills for chrissakes, had a Mercedes parked in the driveway, diamonds on her fingers. She’d been able to shop on fucking Rodeo Drive, eat in the fancy-schmancy restaurants where celebs like Steve McQueen had once dined.
Those were the days when she’d worn the best clothes, lived in a mansion and had a roof over her head on a regular basis. During that time, she’d done her best to walk the straight and narrow. For about six months.
She’d walked away at the first opportunity.
She’d gotten used to another way of life long ago. Having to sell her body to survive came easy. Old habits were hard to break.
Because God knew she’d loved the smack. She could survive on snow and uppers in a pinch, but it was the smack she used for escape and that which had ultimately dragged her down to the gutter where she found herself now.
She rarely had a lucid day anymore. And when she did, she tended to ramble on to whoever would listen about that lap of luxury in which she had once lived.
“Shame the kid had to grow up,” she mumbled now to the four walls as they closed in around her. So she’d left the kid to live the life she was meant to live. Little brat should be grateful for that.
It had been five years since she’d laid eyes on Quinn. That last time they’d had a good, old-fashioned catfight about her heroin addiction. Not just screaming and yelling either, but honest-to-God yanking hair and face-slapping.
Ella cackled at the memory with the laugh of the insane.
She licked her dry lips and began to shake, her body knowing full well it was time for the generous dose of methadone it craved on a daily basis. She took in her surroundings. She’d lived in worse.
Somehow she needed to make it to the pay phone downstairs, though. It was time to call the uppity little bitch and remind her to wire her some cash. After all, it had been six months since she’d heard from the kid, Christmas to be exact. At least she thought it had been Christmas. Maybe it had been some other goddamned holiday. It was hard to keep the days straight any more.
It didn’t matter. It was past time to go to the well again. She could always count on Quinn for at least a grand to get her through the rough spots—like now.
As she wiped spittle from her mouth, the shaking grew worse. She crawled out of bed and padded into the bathroom for a drink of water.
Glancing at her reflection in the mirror, she saw an old woman looking back at her. For chrissakes she was only forty-seven but looked a good ten years older. Her bloated face sagged. Her eyelids dipped over rheumy eyes. Her teeth were brownish stumps, rotting from years of chasing the white dragon.
And that was on the outside. The crystal meth had done its own number burning the linings in her lungs. Her body itched with a constant, red splotchy rash she couldn’t make go away no matter how much prescription cream doctors handed out.
She began clawing at her arms, where visible needle marks scarred the sallow skin.
When the four walls closed in even more, she muttered louder this time, “Damn shame the kid had to grow up.”
By early afternoon, Dan Holloway’s day had already passed hectic and was running down the fast lane to frenzied. He’d spent the better part of the morning hanging out with arson investigators, going through the site of the explosion the night before. So he’d been on the scene when they’d discovered additional bodies under the rubble.
That part of the job, staring at dead bodies, no matter how they’d met their deaths, had a tendency to make his stomach lurch.
That had been one of the reasons he’d missed lunch.
He’d been about to head back to his office to fill out paperwork when he’d gotten the call about a drive-by shooting in Westlake Village.
It seems Reese Brennan’s house had taken a hit. Because he’d seen firsthand the destruction back at Quinn Tyler’s apartment building, he might be tempted to jump to conclusions. So far, he couldn’t prove Cade had been anywhere near Tyler’s apartment building when it had exploded. Presumption wasn’t his friend. As a third-year detective in Homicide, he knew better than to begin any investigation with a false premise. Not only was it unprofessional, it could lead a good investigator down the wrong path really quickly with no way to turn back.
The fact that he could keep an open mind was his best trait.
Having to maneuver in gridlock traffic, though, it took him forty minutes to reach Brennan’s Mediterranean-style house. Wearing his suit coat and tie in the summer heat, the detective surveyed the busted glass scattered in the flower beds and on the lawn, even as the criminal lawyer, sporting a pair of jeans and T-shirt, hammered nails to board up his windows.
Holloway glanced up and down the trendy street and took in the tidy manicured lawns of the upscale neighborhood. “Never knew Westlake to have a drive-by—in broad daylight, no less. Seems too peaceful for something like this.”
Reese shot him a steely-eyed look of disdain. “I’ve lived here ten years, first time anything like this has ever happened. You think this was random or a coincidence after last night? Think again.”
The uniform cops were still on the scene, milling about, still bagging spent shells they’d dug out of the walls. The insurance adjuster had shown up an hour earlier but was still in the process of snapping photos of the damage to go with his claim forms.
“Did you see them do it?” Holloway asked pointblank. “Because right now I could really use an eyewitness account.”
Still holding a hammer in his fist, Reese bobbed his head toward the uniforms. “They took my statement. It’s all in the
report. I saw a big-ass SUV peel out of here like a bat outta hell. The Boyds have a thing for big gas-guzzling SUVs. You know they do.”
“Doesn’t mean they did this, I need something concrete.”
“Yeah, well, you heard Cade in the ER threaten Quinn. That’s good enough for me.”
“I’ll look into it.”
“You do that,” Reese grumbled as he looked over at Quinn standing on the lawn holding the pot of coffee she had fixed for the officers and insurance agent.
While he fumed and worried, she had gone into cool, composed doctor-mode. It was either practiced, something a physician needed to convey in a crisis situation, or a side benefit as a result of how she’d grown up in chaotic disorder.
But fury still ran hot through the usual calm demeanor he had worked so hard to perfect over the years. He didn’t like losing his composure. A defense attorney had to keep his cool under fire in and out of the courtroom. Usually he could contain his emotions; today not so much. He wasn’t in a courtroom now. And this was personal.
Plus, he hadn’t been around cops for ten years for nothing. They might need rock solid evidence to go after Cade Boyd, but he had all the proof he needed.
By the time Reese and Quinn walked up to the wraparound porch at Crandall House, carrying two suitcases mostly packed with stuff belonging to him, it was almost six-thirty.
Kit opened the front door before they even had a chance to knock or ring the bell.
“Hey, what kept you guys?”
“Cade shot up Reese’s house. What a mess! Reese’s beautiful home is boarded up now, shot full of holes. It should be on the news,” Quinn announced. “But I took photos with my phone. Wait till you see what Cade did to it.”
“Oh. My. God. We didn’t have the TV on at the store and we just now got home. Are you both all right?” She pulled them inside and began to give Quinn the once-over, like a mother hen.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry, Mom,” Quinn said as she stormed inside. “Even though it’s my fault.”
“We’ve been over that, Quinn,” Reese scoffed.
Dragging them into the spacious front room, Kit automatically ran her hands over Quinn’s shoulders. “Jake, get in here!”
Jake appeared in the doorway, followed by a still-limping Pepper, a result of injuries from the car accident Collin had caused. “What’s up? What took you guys so long? Did Quinn make you take her shopping?”
Reese shot Jake a withering stare. “No. Drive-by courtesy of Cade Boyd. I gave the cops a description of the SUV I saw speeding down the street, a black Yukon. I’m certain it was a rental, not the Escalade or Connor’s Hummer, either. But we all know it was them.”
“And the cops?”
“Need concrete evidence linking them. And I couldn’t provide it. Maybe I should’ve made something up. Anyway, I wouldn’t go putting any faith in finding this particular SUV any time soon. No doubt these guys have a string of vehicles at their disposal. A rental maybe, I don’t know. Besides, the cops put out an APB, even set up roadblocks in and around my neighborhood, got zip.”
“Reese thinks they’ll go underground after this,” Quinn proclaimed. “They do that and what chance will we have finding them?”
“We’ll come up with something,” Reese promised.
Stunned at the boldness of the daylight attack, Jake ran his hands through his hair. “They’re ramping up, taking things up a notch. After the attack on Quinn’s apartment building, I called Jordan. He’s posting guards here beginning tonight. That’s why we’re all holing up here under one roof until we can think of some place better. Six people are easier to contain if they’re in one spot.”
Reese cocked a brow. “Contain? It’s hard to believe these guys have gone this far off the deep end.”
Jake shot Reese a searing glance. “Don’t start that skeptic crap again.”
“No skeptic crap. But I’ve gone up against Cade in court. Never thought one day he’d be blowing up a building, shooting up my house, and going on the lam as a fugitive.”
“Killers,” Kit corrected. “They’re both killers now.”
“Okay, killers. At this point, I’m wondering where they’ll strike next. And it isn’t sitting well with me not knowing. Show me where to stow our stuff, okay?” The question got the desired reaction. Jake motioned for Reese to follow him upstairs so they could talk in private.
On the way up, Jake asked, “You and Quinn sharing a room yet?”
Reese sent him a sidelong glance. “I’m not rushing her. You should’ve seen her last night taking care of all the injured. The woman is a natural. Not just with the doctor stuff either, but with people. She actually cares.”
“And you’d like to sample that bedside manner, right?”
Reese grinned. “I’m working on it, but with people trying to kill her it’s a little tough to get her into that frame of mind and keep her there.”
Jake grinned back. “I know exactly how you feel. Baylee and Dylan will be here any minute. I say when they get here we all sit down and formulate a plan.”
“That talk doesn’t have to include the women, does it? I’ve already gotten into trouble, deep quicksand as a matter of fact, by putting my nose into Quinn’s business when I shouldn’t have. I tried to talk her into taking a trip to Ireland to see her estranged father.”
With that, Reese dumped the gear onto a bed in one of the recently finished guest rooms designated as his and went into a detailed account of the other mistake he’d made.
“Wait, you called Nick Tyler’s attorney without asking her first? Are you nuts?” Jake shook his head and slapped Reese on the back. “Quinn will kill you when she finds out. You should call this guy back on the QT and beg insanity.”
“I thought I could reason with her.”
“Not about that you can’t. Look, I’ve known Quinn quite a bit longer than you have; Baylee, too, for that matter. I’ve known these women since they were teenagers when all three hung out regularly at Morty’s law firm, ostensibly under the guise of lending a hand with the filing. At the time, I wondered why Morty would hire girls so young. Now I know. Had I paid more attention, I would have realized that, even then, they didn’t want to spend any time at home. The job was merely an excuse to get them out of the house. Of course, I didn’t put the pieces together until now, didn’t focus on the red flags right there in front of me.
“Those three have been living under dark clouds their entire lives. The threat of constant instability must have been hell. I think that’s what makes all three of them so incredibly independent. But Kit’s stubborn streak pales in comparison to Quinn’s. I’ve never met a woman more obstinate than Quinn Tyler.”
Reese rubbed his chin. “Gee thanks for the heads up. You might have mentioned this before I stepped off the cliff.”
“Who knew you’d take it upon yourself to contact Tyler, a man who’s shown absolutely no interest in his own daughter for over a quarter of a century now? If it hadn’t happened at this late date…”
“In that case, what am I worried about? The son of a bitch will probably ignore the call and the fact that she’s in trouble like he has her entire life. By the way, you say you know Quinn. Did you know Ella Canyon was a hooker? Were you aware Quinn lived a hand-to-mouth existence before ever getting to Beverly Hills?”
“Hand-to-mouth, as in going hungry and stuff? No way. I had no idea. Kit never mentioned that.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know.”
“Trust me. She knows. There isn’t anything that happens between those three that they don’t share in minute detail.”
“I might agree with you if it wasn’t for one thing. Baylee kept what happened with Connor Boyd from both of them. She didn’t share the fact she’d been raped or that she was even pregnant. When there’s trauma involved, when something hurts that badly, maybe they aren’t as close as you think.”
“Okay, there is that. Maybe Quinn did hold something back about her early years. But trust me, anything that hap
pened to those three once they became a unit, every morsel got dissected.”
But Reese wasn’t so sure. He’d seen Quinn’s eyes last night when she’d hinted at how rough those early years had really been. He could only wonder if she’d kept certain things to herself to keep from reliving it or for some other reason.
By the time they got downstairs, Dylan was in the process of unloading his boxy G500 crammed full of all Sarah’s baby stuff.
“Well, don’t just stand there, follow me and grab some gear. Believe me, there’s enough to go around,” Dylan admitted as he disappeared out the front door, going back for a second load.
Dutifully, Reese and Jake followed him out to the car.
In the kitchen Quinn helped herself to a can of soda out of the fridge. She leaned against the counter and tried to explain to her friends why she hadn’t told them about the suspension. “Baylee had a lot going on last night…I...”
“Don’t push this onto me,” Baylee screeched through gritted teeth. “Don’t you dare use me as your excuse. As soon as the cops took off, you had plenty of time to mention that Cade was the cause of your getting suspended. It would have taken what…four little words? But no, not Quinn Tyler, Quinn has to keep that to herself.”
“She’s right, Quinn. You do that martyr thing better than anyone I know. You’ve shut us down before.”
“And you have the gall to get all bent out of shape knowing I kept stuff to myself about Connor,” Baylee pointed out. “I don’t think so.”
“That’s completely different and you know it.”
“No, it isn’t. The night I went to that charity benefit, you were focused on starting the last year of med school. And Kit here had just gotten the Book & Bean out of the red into black for the first time. You guys didn’t need my problems taking away from your efforts.”
“Fine,” Quinn threw out. “Okay, I should have said something. Happy now? But really, what was the point? By the time I got upstairs, I was sick of Cade Boyd and this whole damned thing. All I wanted was a soak in the tub and a good night’s sleep. And look how that turned out. Eight of my neighbors are dead because of me. You should see Reese’s neighborhood, talk about swanky. But not now, not after Quinn Tyler checks in for the night. Now, Reese’s house is an eyesore. His neighbors didn’t look too happy about that either.”
Ending Evil (The Evil Secrets Trilogy Book 3) Page 8
