“We’re only a few minutes away from the clinic, Mr…?”
“Stone. Uriah Stone.” He looked up at Adam. “You’ll want my statement, Sheriff.”
“My brother Jordan will accompany you to the clinic, and I’ll be by to take your statement after I see to my deputy.”
“All right.”
Warren laid Uriah’s wrapped hand against his chest. “We have two doctors on duty at the clinic, and one of them worked as a trauma surgeon. He’ll treat your hand.”
Jordan accompanied Edward out of the house, and they returned a couple of minutes later with the stretcher.
“I don’t need that,” Uriah said. “I can walk.”
Now that he wasn’t pointing a gun at her every few minutes, he seemed like any other well-mannered older man.
“Sorry, sir, it’s department policy.” Edward helped the man onto the stretcher. Then he and Warren covered him, fastened the safety strap, and then raised the stretcher.
Two minutes later they rolled him out of the house to the EMT vehicle.
It took Nancy a moment to realize that everyone who was left in the house was staring at her.
“Leg holster?”
She gave Eli a smile. “Yeah. On my left thigh—easiest way for me, since I’m right handed.” She lifted her skirt so he could have a look.
Eli surprised her when he squatted down, reached up, and removed the holster from her.
When he stood, he said, “Now I think you need to explain why you thought you didn’t have any choice.”
Nancy shrugged. Her legs were feeling less than steady now that the excitement was over. Since it was clear all the testosterone generators in the room needed an explanation, she sat back in the chair she’d been tied to.
“He was very calm, almost apologetic. He told me he was going to kill me because Reese Davies wanted me dead. But he didn’t make a move to do so. He never mentioned killing Matthew. He just kept looking out the front window—at least, that was what I thought he was doing.”
Jeremiah looked from her to where Uriah had been standing. He moved so that he was right beside her and then squatted down. “Son of a bitch.”
“What?” Eli asked.
“He wasn’t looking out the front window at all,” Jeremiah said.
“Nope. He was looking at the reflection on the glass of the kitchen behind him.”
“Waiting for someone to come in that way before he made his move? Why?” Adam asked.
Nancy shrugged. “He said something that made me shiver. He said ‘great men sometimes require the ultimate sacrifice from their disciples.’ He made it sound like he was talking about Davies, but I don’t think that was it at all.”
“The ultimate sacrifice?” Eli repeated that, then he looked from her to the kitchen. He nodded his head. “Good Lord, I think I get it.”
Nancy nodded. “If he’d killed me and then y’all had shown up here, he might not have been killed, simply arrested. So he decided that he would point his gun and fire when someone was in sight…”
“Thinking that whoever it was would shoot to kill to save your life.”
“Exactly.”
“So…he wasn’t going to kill you? It was just a very dangerous game?”
Nancy shivered, and Jeremiah put his arm around her. “No, I think he might have killed her if he had to.” Jeremiah spoke for her. “And whether or not he did, didn’t matter to him.” He looked at Adam. “I bet if you search his motorcycle—or whichever room he’s been staying at—you’ll find incontrovertible evidence that he was here doing exactly what he told Nancy he was doing—killing her for Reese Davies.”
“But I don’t think Davies is the ‘great man’ he was a disciple of,” Nancy said. “He’s not the one Uriah Stone was willing to die for.”
“I can damn well guarantee you we’ll find out who is,” Adam said. “And I bet you it’s the same man who called in that ‘anonymous tip.’”
* * * *
Eli and Jeremiah found the evidence tying Reese Davies to the attempted murder of their woman at the motel Uriah had stayed at, on the outskirts of Waco. The man had left them a trail that a junior explorer could follow, and Eli tried very hard not to be insulted by that fact.
He looked at the Waco police detective who’d met them at the motel and accompanied them into the room. Sheriff Adam Kendall had called Lieutenant Anthony Corbett, and explained the situation. Corbett, a friend of the families, agreed to represent local law enforcement, and was surprisingly friendly toward the two of them.
The jump drive had been sitting all by itself on the small dresser in the otherwise pristine room. It looked completely out of place in a motel that held no other electronic equipment. Hell, Stone hadn’t even had a cell phone on him.
It was tempting indeed to just go for the one item they were meant to find, but the three of them proceeded according to standard police procedure. Jeremiah used his cell phone video camera to take a three hundred and sixty degree look at the room. Corbett had forensics standing by—they’d dust for fingerprints.
Eli was positive that the room, and the jump drive, would be covered in Stone’s prints.
They’d entered the room wearing shoe covers and gloves—maybe over the top, all things considered, but maybe not.
Reese Davies could afford the best lawyers in the country, and so he and Jeremiah were determined to ensure the evidence gathered was without a single taint.
The forensics team came into the room, and the first thing they checked for prints was the jump drive. As soon as it had been processed, Eli, Jeremiah, and Corbett left the room and headed to Corbett’s office, jump drive in a plastic evidence bag.
Once there, Lieutenant Corbett inserted the device in his laptop, and for the next fifteen minutes, they listened to a voice recording of a meeting between Uriah Stone and Senator Reese Davies. Neither Eli nor Jeremiah were surprised by the words they heard, for they were, verbatim, the words of the statement they’d read that Stone had given to Adam Kendall.
Eli called Washington and put the call on speaker phone in Corbett’s office. At the direction of Jim Compton, their boss at the FBI, Lieutenant Corbett handed the jump drive to Eli and Jeremiah. Compton told Eli that it was at the insistence of US Attorney Norman Travers that they were both to report with that evidence in hand as quickly as they could get there. Eli and Jeremiah thanked Tony Corbett for his assistance, and headed back to Lusty.
For the first time in his career, Eli considered refusing a direct order, and he knew Jeremiah was on the same page, and for the very same reason.
“After all of our assurances to her to the contrary—and the assurances Jim gave us personally which we shared with her? Nancy is not going to be happy that we have been ordered back to the District.” Eli felt like punching something.
“No kidding. She’s just beginning to believe in us, and in our love for her.”
Eli didn’t need a degree in psychology to know this could set her—hell it could set their entire relationship—back. They spent the rest of the drive from Waco back to Lusty in silence. Eli hoped Jeremiah came up with a solution because he sure as hell couldn’t think of one.
It didn’t take them much more than an hour to reach Lusty, and although they both wanted to hold their woman, they headed straight to the sheriff’s office instead.
First they’d report to Adam, and then they’d collect Nancy—her mother had taken her to some place called the Big House, when they’d headed to Waco and Stone’s motel.
Eli entered Adam’s office, surprised by who all was there—not just Adam and Matt—but Connor, Mel, and Peter Alvarez-Kendall.
“The doc give you the all clear?” Eli wondered if his doubt was obvious in his voice.
“No, damn it. I’m to go home for two fucking days.” He sighed. “Man, I let you down. You trusted me to protect your woman, and…” Matt let his voice trail off.
“There’s only one person to blame for what happened, and Nancy shot him,” E
li said.
“You’re only human, Matt.” Jeremiah clapped him gently on the shoulder. “If either of us had gone with her, the same thing likely would have happened. Don’t sweat it.”
Eli believed every word he and Jeremiah had just said, but he knew Matt would need a bit of time to forgive himself for not being Superman.
“So what did y’all find out?” Adam asked.
Eli filled them in on what they found in Stone’s room. Connor’s laptop served to play the taped conversation contained on the jump drive.
“Mr. Stone isn’t saying anything more,” Adam said. “My other deputy, Jasper, is with him over at the clinic. Robert said there were a few blips in Stone’s EKG that he wanted to keep an eye on for a while.”
“You know that there has to be more to this than he’s admitting,” Peter said.
“Someone else is involved—someone who’s just as guilty as Stone of conspiracy to commit murder.” Connor nodded his head. “And someone Stone would go to the grave protecting.”
“Any luck with the background check on him?” Jeremiah asked.
“Not much,” Adam said. “It’s almost as if he really doesn’t exist.”
“I’m going to dig deeper,” Connor said. “Because my gut is telling me that what we don’t know could come back to bite us in the ass down the road.”
“Have you been ordered to deliver that to the DOJ personally?” Peter asked.
“Yes, damn it. We sent our boss a copy of the recording but Attorney Travers wants the actual unit. Corbett dusted it for prints and recorded the evidence—only Stone’s were on it, of course.”
“You can’t send it overnight via bonded courier?” Adam asked.
“Politics,” Connor spat. “Likely their boss’s boss wants the shiny jewel in his hot little hand so he can feel as if he busted his ass and risked his woman for the fucking thing himself. He’ll prance himself over to the Attorney General’s office and stand proud while they pin fucking medals to his chest.” Connor blinked, and then exhaled. “Sorry. Sometimes my past comes back in vivid Technicolor.”
“You don’t have to apologize to us.” Jeremiah stood with his hands in his pockets and what Eli called his “headshrinker” look on his face. “We understand completely.”
“And what we understand is that Attorney Travers left some vital information out of the mix,” Eli said, “and left us to believe that Davies’s man wasn’t a real threat at all.”
“Do you think he knew differently?” Matt asked.
“Maybe, maybe not. But what I do think, is that his ‘informant’ is the same mysterious man that Stone was willing to die for,” Eli said.
“Yeah, that’s what I think, too,” Adam said. “And I think he knew that it would take something as serious as murder—or conspiracy to commit murder—to get Davies out of the picture permanently.” Adam rubbed the back of his neck. “And Travers’s informant sent his man to meet with Davies. That implies an intimate knowledge of what Davies was thinking. It’s just unfortunate that we can’t prove that. Because if we could…”
Eli nodded. “If we could, Norman Travers could end up sharing a cell with Reese Davies, because he likely knew it all, too.”
“Some battles you just can’t win,” Connor said. “That was the reason I walked away when I did. Because sometimes, in the final analysis, you can’t tell the white hats from the black hats.”
Eli looked at Jeremiah, then turned to Adam. “We’ve got to go and talk to Nancy, let her know that we have to leave for a couple of days.”
Eli didn’t know how well Adam knew his cousin, but the look of sympathy he flashed him told him he likely knew Nancy very well. Then his next words proved it.
“Good luck with that little thing.”
Yeah, that’s what Jeremiah and I both figure. They were going to need all the luck they could get.
Chapter 25
“I never thought I’d be heading back to Washington this soon,” Nancy said.
Eli grinned. “Well, we never thought we’d be flying there in a private jet, so I guess we’re even.”
Nancy laughed. “Grandma Kate can be very persuasive.” Then she shook her head. “It always amazes me that she knows things about me the way she does. I expect that from my mom, but Kate Benedict keeps surprising me.”
“You mean the fact that she knew you were worried about us leaving and never coming back?” Jeremiah’s grin and Eli’s expression told her they weren’t angered or upset by her silly, irrational fear.
“Yeah.” Nancy couldn’t help her blush. “I know it sounds stupid. I am trying.”
“Sweetheart.” Eli lifted her hand and brought it to his lips. He placed a tiny kiss there, and he then looked over at Jeremiah, seated across from and facing them. He met her gaze again. “Maybe in thirty or forty years, this kind of uncertainty would wound us. But Nancy? We’re only just getting started, sweetheart. That kind of trust takes time to build, especially when you’ve had your trust shattered in the past. We know that.”
“We both think it’s amazing that you’ve been so willing to try. Don’t be so hard on yourself, baby.” Jeremiah leaned forward and took her hand in his. He rubbed his thumb over the back of it.
Nancy stretched forward and gave Jeremiah a light kiss. Then she gave one to Eli and rested her head on his shoulder. “Thank you for being so patient with me.” Then she grinned. “And for not spanking me because I decided to arm myself, yesterday.”
“Are you kidding?” Jeremiah shook his head. “Thank you for not tearing a strip off us because we didn’t listen to you in the first place.”
“You were right about how Stone infiltrated Lusty. Thank God you did arm yourself,” Eli said.
Having won that concession from them, she decided not to press her advantage. Morgan, seated in the copilot’s seat, looked over his shoulder and just shook his head. Then he said something to Henry, and got up from his seat.
“We’re more than an hour out. I’m making coffee for us.” Morgan passed them and went to the small galley in the back of the plane.
Nancy knew her cousin well enough to understand that making coffee and serving them á la flight attendant wasn’t the point of his actions. After he’d served everyone on board a cup, he sat down next to Jeremiah.
“Once we land in Virginia, there’ll be a car waiting for us. Henry’s going to stay with the plane, but I’ll be your driver into the capital. We’ll drop the G-men here off at the DOJ and then we’ll be checking in to the Carstairs.”
“Eli and Jeremiah both have apartments in the city, Morgan. I figured the three of us would stay at one of them.”
“Not happening on this trip, cousin.”
“We think you’re still in danger,” Jeremiah said.
“Excuse me?” Maybe I shouldn’t have spared their tender egos a few minutes ago. “Stone is behind bars, and Davies will be, soon. How am I still in any danger?”
“We haven’t caught your burglar yet.” Eli lifted her chin so that she had no choice but to meet his gaze. “You said yourself that you’re positive Stone wasn’t him.”
Damn it, she had said that.
“Maybe he’s no longer a threat, since we have your pictures as evidence.” Eli shrugged. “But we’re not willing to take that chance.”
“There is no logical reason for the burglar—whoever he was—to continue to target me. And I really can’t see Davies sending anyone else to kill me.”
“The thing about the bad guys, Nancy,” Morgan said, “is that they’re not always logical—and quite often suffer from an appalling lack of impulse control.”
“He’s right, cupcake, which is why we’re taking precautions with you.” Eli frowned and Nancy knew exactly what he was thinking. She knew he was torn. On the one hand, he wanted her near so he knew she was safe. On the other hand, he didn’t want her anywhere near Reese Davies—and that included her being in the same city as the man.
Just as she knew there were times when she would need
to act on her own instincts—as she had the day before when she’d armed herself—there would be times when she needed to let her men have their way, and let them follow their instincts.
Grandma Kate was right when she’d told her that men had to sometimes overreact, because it was just the way they were wired.
“All right, I do understand. I was hoping to stop in and see Senator Cordell while I was in town. I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately.”
She felt as much as saw her men exchange a look. Maybe in thirty or forty years she’d learn to read those looks.
Oh, yes, she’d caught that hint Eli had dropped of a long future for them. She wanted that implied question now, but knew Eli and Jeremiah would wait until they’d taken care of business before moving forward with their personal agendas.
“We’ll see you get that chance, sweetheart,” Eli said, “As soon as Jeremiah and I do what needs doing.”
Nancy was going to ask him exactly what he meant by that, but decided against it. She sensed that Eli and Jeremiah had been really unhappy about being called back to Washington—hell, they were really unhappy about the entire situation. There comes a point where I have to let them have their secrets, especially when it comes to their careers.
They were FBI agents, after all. She couldn’t, and wouldn’t, expect full disclosure from them all the time.
“Kate mentioned that you might want to look up Roman while you’re in DC,” Morgan said. “I have no idea who that is, but she seemed pretty certain you would.”
“Oh! Roman James, I forgot about him. He’s a book dealer—he specializes in rare books and first editions, but he gets a lot of books from estate sales.” She’d been thinking of contacting him once the construction on her bookstore neared completion. “He’s always looking for places that will take the books he doesn’t need. Sometimes he donates them to remote towns and villages. Unless they’re damaged, he never throws a book out.”
“You said that, cupcake, as if that is one of the greatest positive qualities known to humankind.”
Nancy grinned at Eli. “I happen to think that it is.”
Love Under Two Undercover Cops [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 24
