Foster Justice

by Colleen Shannon

  Trey leaned forward. “But Daddy was a pussycat compared to Chad. He’ll lock you away for good this time.”

  In any other man, Kinnard’s rude noise would have been impolite, but somehow even that sounded cultured. Kinnard smiled. “If I believed you, which I don’t because you came out here too fast to contact any lawyer, I might be a bit concerned. That’s the thing about good attorneys. They can bury you to your neck in paperwork and you still don’t know a damn thing. There’s only one document in existence that ties me to the Del Mar Corporation, and neither you nor your brother will ever get your hands on it.”

  Montoya whispered something in Kinnard’s ear. Thomas looked genuinely pained as he eyed his protégé, saw the calculating fury in Trey’s blue eyes. “You should have stayed in the storage area, Trey. And not made that phone call.”

  “Do you really think getting rid of me will stop my brother?” Trey smiled this time. “As Chad would say, not hardly.”

  “Your brother doesn’t scare me. He’s alone with no jurisdiction, he quit the Rangers—” Kinnard broke off at the shock in Trey’s eyes. “You didn’t know that, did you? You’re mighty important to your brother, apparently. Important enough to quit his job to come a-huntin’. He’s so broke he’s living in a tent at the equestrian center and he’s barking up the wrong tree. Damn shame there are so many gorgeous redheads with butterfly tattoos out here.”

  Trey inhaled sharply. “Jasmine. You’re using Jasmine as a decoy to keep him on the wrong trail.”

  Clicking his tongue, Kinnard made a shooting motion with his forefinger. “You’re smarter than I thought. Turns out your brother has a real hard-on for our lovely stripper Jasmine, and he doesn’t like it one bit because he blames her for luring you away from home.”

  Now Trey wasn’t even listening. His eyes closed as he whispered, “Mary. Mary, how could you?”

  “Right again. She’s in Amarillo setting up the fracking rig to come in at a horizontal under your land. Turns out the biggest deposit may be under Chad’s half, but Chad’s busy, isn’t he?” He looked at Montoya and shrugged. “I tried, but this peckerwood has become a real liability.”

  Tears burned behind Trey’s eyes. Montoya and two of his gang came at him in a blur. He turned to run, but it was too late.

  For him. And for Mary . . .

  Trey whirled just as Montoya and his men grabbed him roughly. One of the gang members pulled out a switchblade and with a lethal snick, opened it. Trey stood still, knowing of only one chance. As the knife moved to his jugular, Trey looked at Kinnard. “If you kill me, Mary won’t help you anymore. Whatever she may have done, she still loves me.”

  Kinnard made a stop motion with his upraised palm. Montoya scowled but glared a command. His attack dog backed off enough that only a dot of blood came out to decorate the gleaming blade. They still held Trey between them.

  “She’ll never connect me to your disappearance,” Kinnard blustered.

  “She’s been suspicious of you for a long time, especially when you had Jasmine get that identical tattoo. We talked about it before I even came out here. And if she’s the one supervising the horizontal, you going to put your entire deal at risk? Who am I going to blab to anyway? I’m sure you won’t let me near a phone again.”

  Trey stared back as coolly as he could manage with his pounding heart and sweaty palms. He could see he’d given Kinnard pause by attacking the bastard’s one weakness. Nothing would get in his way of being the next oil baron.

  Kinnard pulled out his phone. “Time to call her, let her know you’re all right.”

  “No.” Trey slapped Kinnard’s phone away when they held it to his ear. A fist in his gut made him double over, but he still didn’t take the phone.

  When Kinnard gave a grim nod, the blows came fast and steady, but for once in his life, Trey took them without complaint.

  The choice between a beating and death was no choice at all.

  Hurry, Chad, he thought as the lights began to dim. Time to keep on a-comin’.

  CHAPTER 10

  Several miles away deeper into City of Industry, the unmarked car idled far more patiently than Chad. “For God’s sake,” he burst out after they’d waited an hour, “let’s cruise around and see what we can find while we wait.”

  “You don’t do stakeouts very well, do you?” Riley asked. “Let’s look at this logically, shall we? City of Industry has some of the highest percentage of industrial footage in Los Angeles County. The odds of us just blundering across Trey—” He broke off and yanked up his bleating phone. “What was it again?” Riley went to his phone notes and texted in the address the caller had given him. “Got it, thanks.” He keyed the address into his GPS and wheeled out of the parking lot.

  Jasmine looked out the window and noted they’d almost passed the border into South El Monte. But the railroad tracks abutted this thoroughfare, so that fit, at least. Jasmine turned to Chad. “Why are you so sure Thomas is involved in this?” she asked, wanting to find out how much he knew.

  “His background is too clean.” Chad never even turned his head from scanning outside the window as he answered shortly. “No record of him at all until he moved to California about ten years ago. And if he’s a Californio, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Ivy Leaguer. He doesn’t always hide his Texas accent, and his office shouts Neiman Marcus, not Saks. Besides, he’s making his bucks in something besides art. And whatever it is, I’d bet my half of the ranch it’s illegal and Trey is smack dab in the middle of it.”

  Jasmine had speculated that herself, so she nodded and looked pointedly at Riley. “Thomas isn’t making much money at the gallery, Riley. I can confirm that from both him and Roger Larsen. Thomas has also told me himself he used to work oil deals before he moved to California. I’m pretty sure he’s still working them.” She could hardly admit how she’d illegally searched Thomas’s computer and files, so she only added logically, “So where’s the big bucks coming from and why is one of the guys who does his dirty work following me and stealing plates from the Beverly Hills Police Department?”

  Riley scoffed, “Supposition about one of the richest men in Beverly Hills.” He threw on his brakes to avoid an eighteen-wheeler coming off a side street. When the intersection was clear, he turned down the same street. It was lined with a row of warehouses. The vast, dark buildings had the occasional truck parked in huge lots, but no other signs of life.

  Riley slowed the unmarked car to a creep. “Help me find an address. This should be the block.”

  They couldn’t see any addresses but as they watched, another eighteen-wheeler exited an open bay. Quickly, Riley killed the engine and cut the lights. “Duck.” They all ducked down but as soon as the huge rig exited the lot, Chad popped back up to snap the license plate with his cell phone. He threw open the car door and ran toward the bay, which was being closed behind a last vehicle.

  A green lowrider. It idled, lights off, but the yard floodlight was bright enough for Chad to ID the vehicle. The hood hadn’t seen him yet, and appeared to be waiting for his pal to lock the bay door and get in the car.

  Shielded behind a Dumpster next to the corrugated steel building, Chad slid to a stop, his hand automatically going to his hip for the pistol that wasn’t there. He’d left it in the truck rather than take it into Riley’s unmarked car, fearing if Riley saw it he’d confiscate it. Now what? If they followed the lowrider, they couldn’t search the building. Chad’s heart was pounding and the mere thought of losing his brother now, when he was so close, made him break into a cold sweat.

  Only one way to do this.

  Chad waited until the lowrider had turned to drive toward the exit and then he came out in the open so Riley and Jasmine could see him under the yard light. He waved his arms over his head frantically to get their attention, then pointed toward the vehicle.

  They got the message because Riley waited until the lowrider had turned up the street before easing out of the lot after it, his lights still off. Chad went straight
to the bay door and pulled out his knife to pry at the sturdy lock. He had but one thought, to get to Trey, so his reaction time wasn’t as quick as usual.

  By the time he realized someone was behind him and began to turn, his knife raised, the tire iron came down on his skull with a dull thud. He collapsed, his hat flying as his head hit the ground first. Blood seeped onto the greasy pavement, coating it with a brackish pool that slowly widened from his head wound.

  Cursing in Spanish, Montoya opened his cell phone and made a call, tossing the tire iron into the backseat of the spiffy little truck he’d kept to drive while the lowrider, pristine of any evidence, led the unmarked car away. He’d made the vehicle the minute it turned into the vacant lot, but the cops were too late. The last truck had loaded up and exited, full of car parts and one damaged piece of highly incriminating evidence . . .

  Chad opened his eyes to a blinding light and the sickening smell of antiseptic and bleach. His head hurt like a sonofabitch. He felt the aching spot but it was covered with bandages. Only then did he realize he was in a hospital, wearing one of those ridiculous smocks with no backside.

  Trey . . . what about Trey? Chad forced himself to sit up and almost vomited as the room swam around him. He sank back, closing his eyes. He felt a presence and cocked a wary eye on Jasmine’s sympathetic face.

  “You need rest and quiet for a few days,” she said. “Mild concussion, according to the doctor, but no long-term effects. Apparently you have a very solid skull.”

  The teasing lilt might have pleased him under other circumstances, but he could only manage a hoarse, “Did the lowrider lead you to Trey?”

  “No. The driver wasn’t Montoya. Would you believe he actually pulled over and cooperated?”

  Chad groaned and closed his eyes again. “He let you search the vehicle and you didn’t find diddly.”

  “Right again. The vehicle isn’t even registered to Montoya, it’s in the name of some LLC.”

  “And the plates? That’s enough to warrant an arrest and impound the vehicle.”

  “Uh, they must have switched them again. These came up as I said, legal under the name of some LLC. It matched the insurance card. So we swung back around for you and . . . and . . .” Jasmine trailed off.

  She didn’t need to paint a rosy picture because Chad had a good idea of how much blood he’d lost by how he felt. He turned his head away, embarrassed both at the way they’d caught him unprepared and at how weak and hopeless he felt now. He had to swallow back or choke on his growing fears for Trey. “Did Riley search the warehouse?”

  “Yes. With the very tangible evidence of you bleeding at his feet, even Riley had to admit there were signs enough of foul play. He got the El Monte police to assist. They brought a warrant while I rode in the ambulance with you to the hospital, but other than the few remnants of a highly sophisticated chop shop, they found no evidence of Trey. It was the right place, though. They matched the phone number Trey used to the landline in the warehouse. We did a search on the company that pays the phone bill and it’s been there for years. The owner of the building pays the bill for the tenants. The latest tenants had a short-term lease that just ended. They always paid in cash. He gave us what he had, a copy of the lease and a credit check, but it wasn’t much. It led to a dummy LLC. They’re still searching for a connection to the Del Mar Corporation.”

  Chad summed up the situation in his usual blunt way. “Square one.” Infuriated, worried sick about Trey, Chad tossed back the thin blanket and put his bare feet on the floor. He moved to sit up, so frustrated he didn’t care what he bared to Jasmine, but somehow the floor didn’t stay under his feet where it belonged. It seemed to want to rise up to meet him . . . Damn floor. Chad felt surprisingly strong, limber arms catch him before he made intimate acquaintance with the linoleum. Jasmine staggered a bit beneath his weight and they both fell back on the bed, half on it, half off, in a tangle of arms and legs.

  Chad hadn’t been so close to her since the night she gave him the lap dance. His head swam again, but not because of the concussion. She felt so good, she smelled so good, and she looked . . . Half lying on top of him, she looked at him with those lucid green eyes that riled him in ways he’d never believed he could be touched.

  Even slightly nauseous and with a pounding headache, Chad couldn’t resist pushing himself back onto the bed and taking her with him so that she lay atop him. She tried to rear away but only succeeded in pushing her lower body into the vee of his sprawled legs. The thin gown had twisted. He was decent, barely, but he felt the sheet against his backside and knew if she moved just right, they’d both be embarrassed. In fact, he felt a growing . . . embarrassment that neither the aseptic setting nor the clinical garb could quell. Her eyes widened and darkened as she looked into his, so she felt it, too.

  “You really want to make me feel better?” he asked huskily. All of a sudden, he wanted to kiss her, bad. Not all of a sudden, actually. It had been coming on him like a West Texas thunderstorm. Sometimes they built slow, but when they broke, nothing could contain their gale-force winds and lightning.

  When she bit her lip he groaned and caught her head in his hands, pulling her lips down to his, running the very tip of his tongue over the slight depression her teeth had made in her soft upper lip. She gasped, her heart leaping against his rib cage, but he knew she wasn’t afraid. He caught the emotion in his mouth and gave it back to her in a deep breath, opening them both to the tingling charge arcing between them like static electricity before a storm. The hairs on his body stood on end as every dormant scintilla of his male being came alive.

  He shouldn’t do this.

  She made him weak when he had to be strong.

  He was alone, had been alone for a long time, but her soft warmth and curves brought home to him how acutely he missed the touch and taste of a woman.

  Trey, he reminded himself . . . this woman had bewitched Trey into deserting his birthright. This wicked woman used sex against men like a howitzer.

  But for the moment, his body won, especially in this vulnerable moment under the feel of her soft warmth. When she sighed a deep, shuddering breath into his mouth and slanted her lips over his in a brazen invitation, he wrapped his arms around her back and kissed her like he’d been longing to. Kiss was a weak word for this seminal event of his spotty romantic life, for he’d never felt so hungry and so fulfilled at the same time. The taste of her on his tongue was honey—edible, pure sustenance.

  And in the purest sense, they fed one another in that moment. Here was a feast in a dreary world of famine. Both had starved for this nurturing, the male and the female, the yin and the yang, the angles and the curves.

  They fit. Perfectly. Only in this way could two halves make a whole.

  Jasmine muttered something and squirmed closer to him, unafraid, apparently, of the hard male need thrusting into her stomach as she lay atop him. She brought her hands to the sides of his head and tenderly caressed him under the bandages, as if wanting to take his pain away.

  And somehow, she did. Her lips softened in their desperate connection, confident enough now to whisper against his, yet increasing their tingling sensation by her very gentleness. Chad went limp, letting her feed all the lonely, hungry places he let no one see, much less touch. He kissed her back, caressing the long flow of her back into her hips, alive finally with the feel and taste of female.

  Their play of lips moving in sync segued into tongues, Jasmine gently offering, Chad accepting as his male due the darting invitation to deeper intimacy. He’d never been very good at French kissing, but Jasmine brought out both his best and his worst . . . It was his turn to groan when she reciprocated passionately, thrusting into his mouth to test his tongue and teeth. He moved to pull her harder between his legs, lifting them around her hips, when a strange sound invaded their intimate feast.

  Footsteps? A genteel cough. “It’s good to see you’re feeling better, Mr. Foster,” the doctor said drily. “I’m not sure if it’s the dru
g or your potency that gives you such . . . energy, but in any case, if the two of you want a shared suite, you have to go one floor up.”

  Reluctantly, Chad relaxed his tight hold. Jasmine moved to scramble off the bed so quickly he had to grab her arm to keep her from sliding to the floor. She was almost as red as her boots. Chad glared at the intruder as best he could under the thick bandages, but the doctor only eyed the lump under the covers. Chad dared him with his scowl to make another smart remark and he relented. He helped Jasmine situate Chad in bed properly, head on the pillow, sheet and blanket folded under his arms, and then he checked the chart and glanced at the vitals on the monitors. He shined his scope into Chad’s eyes, nodding in satisfaction when Chad’s pupils contracted.

  “All in all, you’re a lucky man,” the doctor said, sneaking a glance at Jasmine.

  Chad noticed his interest but pretended not to. “When can I get the hell out of here? Hospitals give me the creeps.”

  “You have to have rest and close observation for at least three days,” the doctor stated. Softly, but adamantly. “Bed rest. Total.”

  “Three days? I have a case to work—”

  “The Beverly Hills Police Department is working it now,” Jasmine inserted, safely two feet away, her flush slowly fading. “Riley has always wanted to get away from the streets and work the bigger cases, so really, we’ve done him a favor.”

  “He’s a wet-behind-the-ears, prissy little prick,” Chad stated, “and—”

  “Don’t mind him, Doctor, he’s just cranky,” Jasmine said with a wry smile. When the doctor’s lips twitched as if he knew why, she added hastily, “What about if you release him to my recognizance? I’m certified in CPR and I know what to look for in a concussion. Dilated pupils, nausea, cold sweat—”