Most Wanted Woman

by Maggie Price

  How could a man not love a woman who made thunder roll and lightning strike inside him?

  In retrospect, that moment had opened his eyes to something about his own family. He’d stayed firmly footloose partly because of the emotional turmoil he’d seen his brothers and sisters go through all in the name of love. But he now understood what put the bedazzled look in his father’s eyes whenever his mother was near. It was the same look he’d seen in the eyes of each of his newly married brother and sisters. And more recently in Nate’s eyes whenever he talked about Paige. Josh knew now what caused a man or woman to fall so deeply in love it never ended.

  It was finding that unique someone. That only someone. For him, that was Regan. This woman, to whom he’d given his heart.

  This woman, who was worth any risk.

  She was his, and he had no intention of letting Payne Creath win the sick game he’d drawn her into. So for now Josh had to put aside his own wants and needs and be a cop. To keep her safe, he had to be what Regan feared most.

  “We need to talk,” he repeated. Reaching out, he skimmed a hand down her gloriously messy hair. “After coffee.”

  She tilted her head. “You have coffee on this fancy speedboat?”

  “Yeah,” he said, slicking his knuckles along her jawline. “The McCalls consider caffeine one of the essential food groups. So there’s a coffeepot onboard that hooks into the battery.” He rose, grabbed his jeans and hitched them on. “I’ll have it brewing in a couple of minutes.”

  Seeing the gold badge still clipped to his jeans reminded Regan all over again of what lay ahead of her. The only way she could get through this was if she locked down her emotions. To do that, she needed to keep distance between them. Well, as much distance as one could manage on a boat.

  While Josh dealt with the coffee, she hurriedly dressed. She dragged the cushions onto the built-in benches, then settled onto the one Josh had dropped her on last night. She avoided looking at the handcuff still locked on the rail beside her.

  “Sorry, there’s no cream or sugar onboard,” he said when he handed her a mug.

  “Black’s fine.” She blew across the coffee’s steaming surface then took her first sip while he settled on the opposite end of the bench from her. There was enough light now she could see a cop’s intense assessment in his eyes as he studied her over the rim of his own mug.

  “I have a lot of questions, so let’s get to them,” he said quietly. “The most important being, did you kill Steven Vaughn?”

  Her heart kicked, and she slowly lowered the mug from her lips. “I told you I didn’t. You said you believed me.”

  “I do. Which means I’m not arresting you or taking you to jail.”

  “But…you ran my fingerprints. Surely there’s some system in place that Creath would find out about that. And know I’m in Sundown.”

  “I didn’t want to alert anyone you were here, so I bypassed the Sundown PD’s computer. My brother Nate ran your prints from Oklahoma City.”

  “Won’t that lead Creath to him?”

  “Probably.” Josh glanced at his watch. “Nate won’t get in touch with Creath on his own, but Creath might have already contacted him.”

  Regan slid her tongue over her lips. “Nate knows I’m wanted. Won’t he tell Creath I’m in Sundown?”

  Glancing across the lake, Josh saw that the sun had almost totally cleared the horizon. He knew Nate would keep his word not to contact Creath. Just as Nate would wait the full twenty-four hours they’d agreed to, then—if necessary—he would make good on his promise to show up with the rest of the McCall siblings in order to get their rebel brother out of hot water in his dealings with a woman wanted for murder.

  But Regan hadn’t killed anyone. And even if his entire family believed otherwise, Josh wasn’t going to turn his back on her. He would do what had to be done.

  “Nate will tell Creath your prints were pulled out of a stolen car recovered near one of the interstates in Oklahoma City. Your prints being only on the passenger side means that you aren’t wanted for the car theft. And that doesn’t necessarily put you in Oklahoma, since you could have hitched a ride anywhere and the thief ditched the car later.” Josh raised a shoulder. “Creath won’t have any reason to think Nate’s covering for you.”

  Because just talking about Creath made her hands unsteady, Regan set her mug aside. “But his contacting your brother puts Creath one step closer to you. Josh, please…”

  He held up a hand. “The instant I was accused of planting evidence in that rapist’s apartment, I started trying to prove my innocence. I’m doing the same where you’re concerned.”

  “You weren’t intentionally set up.” She fisted her hands in her lap. “I was. By a cop who investigates homicides. Creath knows how to kill people and get away with it.”

  “Every homicide cop worth his salt knows. It’s just that the smart ones also know there’s no such thing as the perfect crime.” Leaning back, Josh rested an ankle over his knee. “Which explains why the cops catch so many bad guys. And why I need to know as much about Creath as possible.”

  Seeing the steadiness in Josh’s eyes, hearing it in his voice gave Regan the first glimmer of hope she had found in a very dark tunnel that was over a year long. “What do you need to know?”

  “At first, Creath was obsessed with having you in his life. He was so sure you were his ‘one magic person’ that it doesn’t sound like he anticipated you would bolt. Even after you did, he found you in D.C., gave you one last chance to return to New Orleans and set up house with him. You wouldn’t have been free to do that if he’d already set you up to take the fall for Steven’s murder. Which means he had to do things in two phases.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Regan said after a moment. “Everything’s all knotted together in my mind. I never tried to analyze what happened step-by-step.”

  “It’s hard to reason out a nightmare when you’re living it.” Josh sipped his coffee. He’d worked out a lot of it during the night, and he knew things would solidify even more while he talked to Regan.

  “Do you know what drug Creath used to kill Steven? How he administered it?”

  She nodded. “Because I was a paramedic, I knew all the assistants in the New Orleans coroner’s office. One of them gave me copies of Steven’s autopsy and tox report. Steven died from an overdose of fentanyl.”

  “Fentanyl?”

  “An opioid, probably one of the most addictive there is. It gives a bigger high than heroin. It can be injected or taken orally. There are even fentanyl lollipops to help kids relax pre-op.”

  “Pre-op, meaning it’s used a lot in hospitals?”

  “Yes.” Regan paused, collected her thoughts while she shored up her emotions. “The night…I found Steven, there was an open bottle of scotch and a glass on the coffee table near his body. Lab tests later showed the scotch in the glass had been spiked with enough fentanyl to kill someone five times over.”

  “Were there track marks on Steven’s body?”

  She closed her eyes. “No.”

  “The suicide note you told me about that was found on Steven’s computer talked about his battling a long-term drug problem. But Creath would know track marks can be used to date how long someone’s been using drugs. By spiking the scotch, he created the impression Steven always ingested the fentanyl orally. And unless the investigating officer, in this case Creath, asked for a special tox screen on the liver which could show how long the victim had been abusing a drug, the usual tox screen would have been done on blood or urine. That screen would show only how much drug was in Steven’s system at the time of death.”

  “True.”

  “Then Creath sees Bobby comforting you at Steven’s funeral. A few days later he spots you at the E.R., crying on Bobby’s shoulder. That may be when Creath realized as long as Bobby was around you wouldn’t turn to him for solace. So, he took Bobby out of the picture.” Josh paused, a sudden thought narrowing his eyes. “Did Creath ever threaten
to set you up to take the blame for Bobby’s murder?”

  “No. I guess he thought Steven’s would be sufficient.”

  “Okay, at that point Creath had cleared the way for the two of you to be together. Instead of cooperating, you threaten to go to his chief and tell him Creath killed Steven and Bobby. That would have sent the message to Creath he was going to have to play hardball to get you to go along with his plans. So by the time Internal Affairs interviewed him, he’d dummied up your phone records and had you on tape swearing your eternal love.”

  “I don’t understand how Creath did either of those things.”

  “His coming up with the tape wouldn’t be hard, especially if he carried a hidden recorder and taped your conversations from the time he first started those chance encounters with you, which were anything but chance. He was obsessed with you—it makes sense he’d want his true love’s voice on tape. And don’t forget the session where he met you at that diner. You said you told him ‘I love Steven.’ All Creath had to do was splice the section of tape with you saying ‘I love’ onto one where you say ‘you.’ Suddenly, he’s got you on tape saying, ‘I love you.’”

  Regan shook her head. “It must have been so easy for him.”

  “That part,” Josh agreed. “Your phone records are another matter. I’m not sure how he pulled that off. But OCPD’s got a techno whiz on board named Wade Crawford who might be able to shed some light.”

  Josh paused, thinking. “After the IA cop’s visit, you knew Creath had totally blocked you from getting help, so you left town. Which couldn’t have done much for his ego. Still, his ultimate obsession was to have you, so he came to D.C., broke into your place and left peppermint candy—another obsession of his—on your bed. He would have seen the tape recorder hooked to your phone. By then he’d have been wary about what you might do. So he replaced the tape in the recorder with one that had been degaussed.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Subjected to a strong magnet so it wouldn’t record. What did you hear when you tried to play back the recording you made of Creath’s phone call?”

  “The hiss of a blank tape.”

  Josh nodded. “Which made you think your recorder screwed up. Chances are, if you’d put that cassette in a different machine and tried to record something, you would have still wound up with a blank tape.”

  “All I knew then was Creath would always be one step ahead of me. And if I didn’t go back to New Orleans with him he would make good on his threat to make it look like I killed Steven.”

  “So you skipped out on Creath. Which probably zapped that twisted love he felt for you into deep-seated hate. That takes us to phase two.”

  “The murder warrant?” Regan asked.

  “Right. No cop gets a warrant without presenting a halfway decent case to a D.A. Which includes at least some damn good circumstantial evidence. Any idea what Creath came up with to use against you?”

  “No. When Langley told me I was wanted for murder, I didn’t ask questions. I was too upset. Too scared. And I knew there wasn’t any way for me to fight Creath.”

  “Who’s Langley?”

  “A New Orleans P.I. He watches Creath for me.”

  Leaning, Josh set his mug on the boat’s deck. “Why Langley? Had you used him before?”

  “No, I remembered Steven mentioning a doctor he worked with had hired Langley. The doctor had been on the verge of a divorce and suspected his wife was having an affair. He knew he needed proof of that so he could block her taking him to the cleaners for alimony. The doc got the name of a P.I. whose license had once been suspended over a run-in with cops. Word was, Langley would do whatever it took to get the goods on someone.”

  “Meaning break a few laws?”

  Regan raised a shoulder. “I didn’t care what it meant. He sounded like someone who wouldn’t have qualms about keeping track of a cop’s whereabouts.”

  “Did you ask Langley to do more? Maybe check out Creath’s background?”

  “I didn’t have money for that.” Regan stared down at her hands, still clenched together in her lap. “In a couple of e-mails Langley said Creath had snagged his interest, but he never said why. All I wanted to know was if Creath left New Orleans.”

  Josh nodded, a plan forming in his mind. “If Langley’s watched Creath for a year, then the P.I. must know a lot about him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Who he hangs with. What he does, where he goes. Everyone has an Achilles heel—I want to know what Creath’s is. I can check some things from a distance, but they can’t help me get a fix on who Creath is. Understand who he is. I need to talk to Langley.”

  “Except for when I called and hired him, we’ve always communicated by e-mail. I trust Langley, but I don’t want him to know where I am. Or to be able to trace my calls.”

  “What about your e-mail?”

  “I have it set up to go through an anonymous remailing service. That makes it a lot harder to track e-mails to their true origin.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got yourself covered, and we want to leave things that way. So you and I are going to drive to Dallas this morning and use a pay phone to call Langley. You can tell him it’s okay to talk to me, then I’ll let him know what I need him to do.” Josh’s lips curved a little. “And don’t worry about the cost, this is on me.”

  “No. I’ll pay you back. It will take time, but I’ll pay you.” Feeling the pressure building in her lungs, Regan let out a slow breath. “Going to Langley just gets you in deeper.”

  “That’s where I want to be.”

  “Josh, what if Creath doesn’t believe Nate’s story about finding my prints in a stolen car? What if he shows up in Nate’s office, wanting to see that evidence?”

  “Then Nate and I will figure out how to handle things without clueing Creath that we know where you are.”

  “He’ll find out,” she said, as if it were already a reality. “Somehow he’ll find out you’re protecting me. Then he’ll come after you, just like he did Steven and Bobby.” She rose, knowing if she sat still a moment longer, she’d explode. “Since you’re not arresting me, I should leave Sundown. This morning.”

  Josh was on his feet in a heartbeat. He advanced on her, framing her face with his hands. “That’s not an option.”

  She reached up, curled her fingers around his wrists. “If Creath figures things out and comes here looking for me, he won’t stay if I’m gone. He’ll try to catch up with me.”

  “Meaning, if he’s focused on you, he won’t have time to look too hard at me.”

  “He’ll kill you.”

  “Listen to me.” Josh was tempted to shake some sense into her, but he knew she was running on pure emotion, so he held back. “Steven and Bobby weren’t cops. I am. I know how cops work, how they think. I also know what it takes to set someone up, the steps that have to be gone through to make someone look bad. From both sides.”

  Her ice-cold fingers tightened on his wrists as she stared up at him, her eyes both brilliant and tormented. “Creath can’t find out about you. If I leave Sundown, he won’t find out.”

  “Dammit, Regan, if you run now, Creath wins. You’ll have to run for the rest of your life. You’ll never be sure he won’t find you. Is that what you want?”

  “What I want is not to be afraid anymore. I want to wake up and find out this has all been a nightmare and my life is as neat and tidy as it used to be. But that’s not going to happen.”

  “It can happen. But only if you give me time to dig into Creath. Unearth whatever the hell mistakes he made when he set up what he believes is the perfect crime.” Josh’s fingers tightened against her face. “I want your word you won’t run. That you’ll trust me to take care of this. Of you. Promise me, Regan.”

  Her throat was so dry, she wasn’t certain she could answer. With an effort, she swallowed. “Why are you doing this? You’ve got nothing but my word about what happened. I can’t prove I didn’t kill Steven. I can’t p
rove anything. Yet, you’re putting your job, your life at risk for me. Why?”

  He gave her a long look that was close to grim. “I’m in love with you.”

  Shock flashed into her eyes an instant before she jerked back.

  He set his jaw. “I see that thrills the hell out of you.”

  “Josh, I…” She was thrilled. And terrified. Filled with regrets and hammered with longings. She wanted desperately to tell him she loved him, too. But a dark, icy premonition held her back, whispering at the edges of her mind that if she voiced her feelings, Creath would somehow know. And come after Josh.

  When she continued to stare at him, lips parted, eyes wide, Josh held up a hand. “Let’s just deal with my feelings later,” he ground out. “Right now, I want you to promise you’ll stay in Sundown.”

  “I’ll stay as long as Creath is in New Orleans.” Her voice held a thread of desperation, but she didn’t care. “If he leaves there—the minute he leaves—so do I.”

  Driven, he grabbed her arms, dragged her against him. “That’s not good enough.”

  “It has to be,” she said dully. She pressed her palms against his chest while emotion twisted inside her. “I can’t lose anyone else, Josh. I won’t sit around here waiting for Creath to show up and…” Her voice cracked. Kill you. She couldn’t bring herself to say those words again. “I’ll run for the rest of my life if it means keeping you safe.”

  On an oath, Josh wrapped his arms around her, wanting to soothe, needing to reassure. Wishing this closeness could last forever, he stroked her hair while searching for words to penetrate her fear, her grief. But there was no place for logic here, no place to be calm and rational. So he held her. Just held her.

  And he knew that if she ran, he would never get over it. Never get over her. So he would hold tight to what he loved and figure out a way to take Creath down before the bastard picked up her scent.

  Chapter 13

  Hours later, Josh stood in a Dallas phone booth talking long-distance to the P.I. Regan had hired to watch Payne Creath. Concurrently, the subject of that conversation left his car parked out of sight off a rutted dirt road on the outskirts of New Orleans, and crept toward the rear of a house that looked to be a leading candidate for termite bait.