Breaking Out (Military Romantic Suspense) (SEAL Team Heartbreakers Book 6)

by Teresa Reasor

  Detective Sherman broke in. “That’s speculation, Ensign O’Connor. We’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t spread it around.”

  He raised a brow. Who the hell would he tell? “I won’t.” He returned his interest to Lester again and waited for the next question.

  “So you and Dr. Bertinelli have talked at length about this?”

  “Some. I wouldn’t say at length.”

  “Whose idea was it to call her customers?”

  “We talked about it in the car on the way back from visiting the master chief.” He thought of her defensiveness about not calling right away. She’d been anxious and worried about what he thought. Not the behavior of a criminal. “Piper was concerned about their clients and their animals. She called you when she had time between patients that evening.”

  Lester glanced at his partner. Detective Sherman nodded, but lines had begun to bracket his mouth, and he was eyeing Lester.

  Anyone with two eyes could see Lester had a hard-on for Piper. He could see it. Surely the man’s partner did as well.

  Lester got to his feet and reached for his jacket. “We need to interview her again instead of receiving this information second hand.”

  Zach stood and shifted position, hemming the detective in between the lounges. “She won’t speak with you, Detective Lester.”

  Lester’s deep-set eyes gleamed. “Does she have something to hide?”

  “No. But we both know you have. Have you told your partner how you know Piper, and why you’re so interested in her?” He glanced at Sherman.

  Sherman clearly had no clue what was going on, but tried to hide it behind the deadpan calm.

  Zach turned to Sherman. “Did he ask to work this case with you?”

  Sherman’s expression remained neutral. “We have quite a few detectives working on it.”

  “Good. The more guys you have on this, the quicker you’ll find the assholes responsible.” Zach folded his arms and met Detective Lester’s threatening look. “In the meantime, I’ll be covering Piper’s six. I’m off because of an injury and have nothing else to do.”

  Whatever she might have done, she wasn’t a criminal mastermind. If Lester had looked that closely at her before and been unable to arrest her, she wasn’t guilty. And she’d never hurt an animal. She was too caring of the ones in her charge.

  Lester stepped into his space, in an attempt to intimidate. Zach raised a brow and stood his ground. He’d had bigger, badder men in his face than this asshole. And those were the good guys, who trained him to remain cool under pressure. What he sensed about Lester was he wasn’t a badass, but a bully. Lester had decided Piper was the one who got away, and he was using this opportunity to get in a few more hits at her. Zach would be damned if he’d let the man anywhere near her.

  “I’m going to give you some free advice, Ensign. Don’t get tangled up with her. Men who do end up either dead or in jail.”

  Jesus, this guy was a real piece of work. “My father’s a police officer, Detective. He’s been with the Boston PD for twenty-five years. He says the worst thing a cop can do is get tunnel vision about a case. It causes you to make mistakes and overlook things. If you’re looking at Piper for this, you might want to have your eyes checked.”

  He shifted his gaze to Sherman. “If I think of anything helpful, I’ll give you a call, Detective Sherman. I’m certain Piper will be willing to speak to you alone. You’re welcome to come in and talk to her now, but without Detective Lester.”

  Sherman’s features were stiff. “I’ll call and go by her office tomorrow.”

  Zach gave Sherman a nod, gathered the chicken with the note and limped to the door. He slid open the back door and Gracie sat up, ears forward, eyes bright. He set the food on the stove, gathered the note, and stood at the door until Lester and Sherman strode around the apartment to the street.

  Gracie wagged her tail and he bent to give her a rub. She hobbled after him from the kitchen to the living room. Piper sat in the floor, her back propped against the couch. Trouble lay next to her, but reared to his feet and nearly bowled him over with enthusiasm, though he hadn’t seen him for days instead of a few minutes. His tail waved like a blond palm frond.

  “Gracie insisted on staying by the door until you came in,” Piper said. She’d been crying, and her lashes were clumped with tears.

  Gracie eyed Trouble with aloof superiority, but deigned to touch noses with him. He went into a wiggly I’m-so-happy-to-have-a-new-friend production until she yapped at him. He immediately settled down and trailed along behind her as she went to Piper and head-butted her gently for attention.

  Zach watched how naturally Piper gathered her close. Gracie folded herself to lie down next to her on one side, while Trouble took the other.

  He’d read somewhere that dogs could sense human emotion. Or was it the change in the pheromones? Whatever it was, the Malinois laid her head on Piper’s leg and looked up at him as if to say, What are you going to do about this?

  He sought something neutral to begin with. “She’s doing okay, isn’t she?”

  “Very well. The problem will be keeping her calm when she starts to feel better. She’ll believe she can do everything she used to do well before her leg and hip are ready for it.”

  A wry smile twisted his lips. “I can identify with that.”

  He sank into one of the leather chairs across from her, and although it felt too far away, she appeared to have all the comfort she had room for right now.

  “How did it go?” she asked, while she seemed to concentrate hard on every stroke she made over Gracie’s head.

  “Lester wanted to question you again.”

  She glanced toward the kitchen, her features tense with dread.

  “I told him you wouldn’t talk to him. Sherman didn’t know about the history between you, I’m certain of it. He said he’d call and come by your office tomorrow.”

  “Lester will be back.” She leaned her neck back against the couch cushion and closed her eyes, baring the fragile slope of her throat and the delicate thrust of her collarbones.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  She lifted her head as though it was too heavy to lift. “I was in my junior year in college, and had just turned nineteen. I met David at a party.” She ran a hand over her wet lashes. “He was funny and charming, and everyone seemed to gravitate toward him. I thought it was because of his personality. It was because he was dealing drugs, but I didn’t find out until nearly three weeks later. By then, I realized he was using and I broke it off.

  “I was afraid he might get arrested or overdose, so I went to his parents and told them what was going on. They got him into a four-week rehab. The minute he got out, he came back around. But my family had found out about the drug issues, and they were hounding me to stay away from him at the same time he was pressuring me to get back together.

  “I moved out of the house and into an apartment with three other girls. It was a planned move. I’d already signed the lease before he went into rehab, and I couldn’t leave the other girls holding the bag on the rent, so I went ahead and moved in.”

  She cupped a hand to her forehead. “It was a big mistake. The girls I lived with didn’t realize how charming and how determined David could be when he wanted his way, so he was able to sweet-talk his way into the apartment on several occasions.

  “His mom and dad started pressuring me. They kept saying what a good influence I was on him. I was the reason he agreed to rehab to begin with.

  “I realized later that what they wanted was a watchdog. I’d gone to them before when he was out of control, and they wanted me to keep an eye on him since they couldn’t.”

  Absently, she brushed her hand over Trouble’s large head and massaged his ear. “It wasn’t the first or even second time he’d been in trouble for selling drugs or using them. He just hadn’t been caught, or when he had, they’d gotten him off with a slap on the wrist.”

  She tucked back the strand of rich brown hair
that had fallen against her cheek. “He swore to me he’d cleaned up, and he was over the drugs. So I agreed to see him again. Things went okay for a couple of weeks, until he—”

  She wrapped her arms around Trouble and held him close. “He did something, and I knew he was using again. I broke it off for good. I told my roommates not to let him back in the apartment. I blocked his number from my phone, changed my email address. I threatened him with a restraining order.”

  A hollow feeling struck Zach’s stomach when she looked up.

  “I couldn’t permit him to affect my future. I was afraid if I was with him when he was arrested with drugs it might affect my ability to get into vet school. You can’t hold a vet or doctor’s license with a drug arrest on your record.”

  “A week later David was stopped with heroin and cocaine in his trunk. A lot of both. They arrested him.”

  “He accused me of turning him in. He’d been by my mom’s house earlier that day, begging me to take him back. I told him if he didn’t leave I’d call the police, and the police received an anonymous tip a couple of hours later accusing David of transporting and selling drugs. His parents accused me of calling them and of taking advantage of him. After they begged me to take him back, they accused me of taking money from him, drug money.”

  Her voice took on a note of outrage. “I was working two part-time jobs, and going to school on the scholarship I worked my butt off to get. I didn’t have any money, and he certainly never gave me any.

  “David made bail, but was under house arrest. But he still had access to a phone. He contacted his supplier, Duardo Acosta, and told him he’d given me the money he owed him.

  “I was showing out the last customer and about to lock the door when Acosta shoved into the restaurant. He knocked me down, waved a gun at me, and threatened to shoot me if I didn’t give him the money.”

  She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “I didn’t know who he was. My father walked in. He tried to talk him down, to give him the money out of the register and he—he shot him.” She caught her breath and it sounded close to a sob. “He’d have shot me too, but he didn’t have his money yet. One of the wait staff heard what was going down and dialed nine-one-one, and the sirens were getting close. He ran out of the restaurant.”

  Her restless movements were driving him crazy. Her body language was screaming pain and fear. His instinct was to go to her, lift her into his lap and comfort her.

  “Detective Lester interviewed me for the first time the night my father was killed. Duardo Acosta insisted I had the twenty-five thousand dollars. David had told him I did. Then Lester interviewed David and his parents. Everyone else involved in the drug case. And that’s when he decided I was guilty. That I was involved in the drug business somehow, and I had the money.

  “I’d go to class and come out, and he’d be there waiting on me. He hauled me into the station six times before my mother got a lawyer, and we filed harassment charges and threatened to sue. He told my family it was my fault my father was killed. He harassed the other members of my family, encouraging them to turn me in. He wanted them to get me to confess that I’d sold drugs or at least still had the money for David. My sister, Teresa, quit speaking to me. My brother Lorenzo asked me point blank if I had the money. He was disrupting their lives and making it as hard for them as it was for me, and he completely destroyed their trust in me.”

  Tears streamed down her face. “He made the loss of my father seem a byproduct instead of the most important, painful thing that had ever happened in our lives. Wasn’t the fact that Acosta and David were murderers more important than anything else?”

  Zach rose and got some tissue from the bathroom.

  She closed her eyes and he read the struggle to regain her composure.

  “My last year and a half of college, I pulled away from my family so he’d have no reason to harass them anymore. I avoided going to the restaurant or going home on the weekends, but he was still hounding me every chance he got. I’d think he was finally done, and he’d just pop up at a restaurant where I was eating or at the grocery store.”

  “I just kept putting one foot in front of the other and working toward finishing my degree. It was all I had left.” She paused for a shaky breath. “I didn’t have anything else to hold on to. I would study myself into a coma rather than give myself time to think…to remember…” She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and remained silent for a long moment. “Lester did everything he could to make my life hell.”

  Her despair and grief deepened the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  She dropped her hands. “I applied for financial aid and grants. Then, right after I graduated, I got another job to go with the two I already had and waited for vet school to start in the fall. Two weeks before school started, I moved up to U C Davis and roomed with three other women to save money. For a while I thought I’d finally been able to leave it behind.

  “I stayed on campus for the most part. I went home with one of my roommates for Thanksgiving. I hadn’t been home in months, and my mom begged me to come for Christmas. He—he was parked across the street on Christmas Day, watching the house.”

  At the weariness in her expression, Zach shifted, his muscles tight with emotion, but he didn’t want to distract her. He needed to hear it all, see it all in her face.

  “I took pictures of him with my phone, and I went outside and took pictures of his license plate while he drove away. I filed a complaint, but it was ignored. He said he had business in the neighborhood, and they believed him.

  “In January, he came up to Davis and interviewed some of my professors. He told them I was involved in a drug case. He tried to get me kicked out of school. I contacted a lawyer, an expert in civil liberties. She took depositions from every person he’d interviewed. She filed a harassment suit, and I reported him for violating my civil liberties. We filed a restraining order against him in the county I lived in. My lawyer presented them to the district attorney’s office there, and he contacted the district attorney here.

  “Internal affairs went through both my father’s case and David’s. They interviewed my roommates, my family, and everyone else involved, including David and his parents, and went through my bank account, my computer, and all the social media accounts I had closed months before. Every dime I’d spent at school. They traced everything.”

  “Their finding was there was no evidence to support that I had any illegal money, or that I had ever sold drugs. I had a clean record.”

  “They looked through all the paperwork Lester filed, all the interviews he’d done, and filed a disciplinary action against him, suspended him for four months, and ordered him to stay away from me. It was only then that some members of my family started to think I might be innocent.”

  She remained silent for a moment, her features blank with loss. “By then it was too late.”

  “David accepted a plea deal with the understanding he would have to testify against Acosta. It was two years before Acosta went to trial for killing my father. He got life because he already had two arrests for drug distribution, and they were able to connect the killing to the drug distribution.

  “During the trial—I might as well have been put on trial, too, and of course the money came up again. Lester made sure it did during his testimony. And he tried every way he could to point the finger at me while he was on the stand. He could have messed up the conviction of Acosta, but he wouldn’t have cared as long as he got to me.”

  Her large brown eyes looked smudged with exhaustion now the adrenaline was wearing off. “If I’d had the money, no matter where it came from, I’d have given it to Acosta. I’d have given him anything to save my father. No one thought to ask me about that.” She drew her knees up again and rested her arms atop them.

  She raised her head to look up at him. “If Lester can figure out a way to turn this on me, he will. This will give him a toehold to start all over again. I’m over a hundred thou
sand dollars in debt between my school loans and my part of the business, and I can’t afford for him to start stalking me again, and taking me in for questioning over and over. He’ll damage our business if he can.”

  “Take it easy,” Zach soothed, and waited, giving her time to regroup. “Have you tried to figure out what David might have done with the money?’

  “Of course.” She threw out a hand in frustration. “He said he put it in the back of my car in a small black backpack. But the police searched my car, my mom’s car, every car at my parents’ house that day, and it wasn’t there. They searched my apartment, my mom’s house, David’s house. It was never found. The longer it was missing, the guiltier I looked to him.

  “For a while I was obsessed with finding it to prove my innocence. I racked my brain, trying to figure out who he might have left it with, or where he could have hidden it. But then I realized if I found it and tried to turn it in, Detective Lester would say I had it all along, and I’d be right back where I started. He’d arrest me no matter what I did. So I let it go. I didn’t want to take the chance.”

  Zach could certainly understand. When you have a vicious dog on your tail, you didn’t go around poking him with a stick. Or maybe you do, to get him to move in the direction you wanted him to. He’d have to give that some thought.

  Zach rose from the leather chair. If he’d left the money with someone, they’d have spent it by now. Twenty-five thousand dollars would be a huge temptation to have lying around. Whoever had it could have nickled and dimed it until they spent every bit of it without drawing attention.

  Even Piper could have done that. But she wouldn’t have played dumb with a gun in her face. She’d have given up the money to save her father.