Bad to the Bone

by Debra Dixon

  So where was the closure? Why did the message start that tingle at the base of his spine? Why’d he still feel the need to do something?

  Unsettled, Sully hit the message button again. Closing his eyes, he focused on Peter’s voice. The man’s nose was out of joint, but it was more than that. Peter didn’t trust them.

  “… they’re probably already there, and you just don’t know it.”

  Sully checked his watch. “Aw, hell, when you’re right, Peter, you are right.”

  As the details meshed into a nasty little scenario, Sully grabbed the phone and called the department for confirmation. No … they hadn’t heard a word from anyone on the Munro case—other than Harlan who indicated it was Houston’s baby. Of course you haven’t been contacted, Sully thought. The agency wasn’t going to be making an official visit to Jericho or Munro’s house because they’d already searched the most obvious spot. They weren’t worried about recording equipment for ransom calls or alerting the local PD for backup or interviewing witnesses. Or even protecting national security. All they wanted was the book—the last loose thread.

  They didn’t care how they got it, didn’t care if Phil came out of this alive, or even if Jessie and Iris were caught in the crossfire. They were setting Jessie up, waiting to see who else came to the party before they made a move.

  After asking for Munro’s private number, Sully hung up. What more was there to say that would sound remotely credible? He had nothing but conjecture and hunch to go on. Not a single concrete fact beyond Phil’s disappearance and the CIA’s appropriation of the investigation. Everything else had come from Jessie. Most of that either lies, half-truths, or grudging admissions to be sifted through carefully.

  So why did he believe her?

  Because she had nothing to gain.

  The agency, on the other hand, had a great deal at stake, and they were willing to sacrifice a couple of innocents if it would lead them to what they wanted. Sully wondered if they wanted the operatives back online or if they just wanted them dead.

  They’d probably read the Houston incident reports by now. She’d found the calendar and the car, which they’d sloppily missed. Maybe she could find the book for them. Jessie was their tool. Who cared if she ended up dead in the process?

  He cared, Sully discovered suddenly. He cared more than he wanted to admit, even to himself. Sparring with Jessie, kissing her, touching her—all of it—pulled him out of himself. Sully wasn’t used to that. Nor was he particularly happy. He’d never had anything feel so right and so wrong at the same time.

  He dialed the estate and willed it to ring.

  Swearing, Sully slammed the phone down. The line was busy. At ten-thirty? Why would they be on the phone at this time of night? He stared at the phone. “You’ve got five minutes, Jessie. Five.”

  Jessica spun, searching for the source of the ringing. She found the phone—sitting on the nightstand, half-hidden by the trolls she had moved off the bed earlier. Jessica’s feet barely touched the floor as she flung herself across the bed, praying that Lincoln wouldn’t answer first.

  When she snatched up the receiver, she didn’t care that the bottom of the pink Princess phone cracked when it fell off the nightstand and crashed to the floor. Or that the trolls flew everywhere. All she cared about was ripping through the mass of tangled phone cord knots to get the receiver to her ear.

  “Munro residence,” she said as the cord finally stretched far enough. Her voice was calm but every pulse of her heart pounded against her temples. “Jessica Daniels.”

  “Do you have what we want?” It was the same raspy male voice from the earlier conversation.

  “I don’t trade unless Phil’s alive.”

  The man didn’t respond, but she could hear muffled noises as if he’d put the phone to his chest for a discussion. Then Phil was on the line, his voice a ghastly, broken, fast-forward version of the whiskey-smooth man she once knew. “Don’t. Tell Iris to forget all this. Understand? I don’t want Iris to remember. Let it go. Don’t—”

  The blow was audible.

  Jessica recoiled and snapped her eyes shut. She opened them just as quickly when her mind had created a visual image to match the tortured voice. Oh, my God, Phil. Tears pricked her eyes for the man she’d known, for the man who cared more about his daughter than she’d realized, but Jessica couldn’t be sorry for him now or cry for him. Or remember what it was like to be desperately afraid.

  Her job was to pick up the pieces and ignore the emotion. That was a task for which she was imminently qualified. So she bit her lip until it bled, letting everything she felt slide away into a dark corner of her soul. Until all that existed was the job.

  When the raspy voice returned, she settled the nonnegotiable drop details as coldly as any professional: Two men and Phil would meet her, she’d deliver a page of the book as a show of good faith before she saw Phil. When Phil had walked to or been put in her car, she’d give directions and the locker key for the rest of the book.

  They agreed. Never mind that they had no intention of honoring their part of the bargain. Neither did she. In point of fact, they were the more honorable party in this transaction—they at least possessed what they intended to trade.

  The phone went dead, but she didn’t hang up. She stared at it, wondering how such a pretty pink phone—every little girl’s dream—could be the instrument of evil. Right now she wanted to do two things with it—throw it against the wall; and call Sully just to hear his voice.

  She did neither because she discovered she had an audience. Iris was back in the room. Jessica didn’t have time to ask how much the girl heard because Iris went pale. Her mood ring turned black, and she clutched her stomach.

  “Something’s wrong. I can’t find Lincoln. He didn’t answer the intercom.”

  Fear descended on Jessica’s shoulders like a vulture on a fence, hovering and waiting for her brain to accept the inevitable. Lincoln should have been back in the house by now. His routine was one last perimeter check at ten and then the inside of the house got his special attention the rest of the night. That was his routine last night. That’s what they agreed upon tonight.

  Jessica checked her watch. Almost eleven.

  Where are you Lincoln?

  She got up, tossing the phone on the bed without bothering to hang it up, and walked quietly to the door. Suddenly the eerie absence of sound spooked her. Reflex made her kill the light. She went still and listened, trying to isolate the sounds of the night from anything man-made. She couldn’t—no doors slamming, no whistling, no rattling, no footsteps on hardwood.

  When she was almost ready to give up, she heard the stair creak—the third one from the bottom. Iris heard it too. Her eyes lost their beautiful distinctive color in the darkness, but the fear was easy to see.

  Jessica pointed to the phone and whispered, “Dial nine-one-one and tell them we’ve got an intruder. Then get yourself hidden beneath the mountain of clothes on that bed. Understand? You don’t make a sound. You don’t come out until I come get you.”

  Iris nodded.

  Jessica waited until the girl had picked up the phone. Then pulled out the peashooter and exited the door into the hallway, hoping two hollow point peas would be enough. She didn’t have time to get the .357 magnum from her purse. What a shame. Sully wouldn’t turn up his nose at that one.

  “Time’s up.” Sully slammed the phone down. “I’m out of here.”

  He stopped only long enough to scoop up his wallet and .45 automatic from the coffee table, and to collect his shotgun. There was a Remington 870 in the trunk of his car, standard issue for Jericho. But the Mossberg in his gun cabinet held another round in the magazine. Sully didn’t believe in walking into a gunfight with less bullets than he absolutely had to.

  It’s overkill, bud. You don’t know that you’re going to need it, Sully’s logical side cautioned as his fingers wrapped around the stock, pulling it out. You don’t know someone will go after her. Iris was probably gabbi
ng on the phone with her friends. Jessie could’ve been calling home for messages. Lincoln might have a fondness for Dial-A-Bimbo.

  Logic didn’t work. The humor fell flat. He was already out the door, in the car, and playing, “What if someone makes a move tonight.…”

  He could get there in half an hour. She had Lincoln. She had that damn peashooter, and his intuition told him she knew how to use it. His only concern was, would she? Could she pull the trigger and put someone down if it came to it?

  The woman who walked in the door that first night could. But the woman who kissed him.… That woman would hesitate, and the hesitation would kill her.

  Maybe she wouldn’t have to shoot anyone.

  Maybe.

  But every cop bone in his body was on alert. Never a good sign. He swore at the traffic light when it switched to red and then just ran it. His was the only car on the road.

  Eleven o’clock was the dead of night on Jericho.

  The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he realized his unfortunate choice of words. He pressed the accelerator down; the car shot forward.

  With every block his instincts pushed him harder. The need to get to Jessie increased. By the time he turned into the cul-de-sac, he was prepared for the worst. And that’s what he saw.

  The gate was open. A black-and-white blocked the entrance. Another sat halfway up the drive, and it looked like every light in the place was on. Ten or fifteen residents milled around in the end of the cove.

  A sense of dread was fully formed in him by the time he’d parked his car and flashed his badge at the crowd control officer, who tried to stop him. The young guy waved him through with an apology for not recognizing him and told him that Eason was the scene officer in charge. Sully nodded, not trusting himself to say much of anything.

  He’d made upward of five hundred scenes in his career, but this one was personal. Professional distance evaporated, and he had to force himself to maintain at least a veneer of restraint. There were no ambulances, and no reason to sprint up the driveway. Whatever had happened was over. He was too late to do anything but pick up the pieces.

  There was a tarp-covered body on the drive near the southeast corner of the house. Taking a breath, Sully stopped, hunkered down, and slowly lifted the edge.

  Lincoln.

  “I told them not to call you out, Kincaid. Hell, Turner could have handled this,” Nick Eason complained loudly as he walked up. Turner was the funeral director, who doubled as Jericho’s coroner. “Not much big-city detective manpower needed for this one. Throat’s cut.”

  “I noticed.” Sully let the insult slide.

  Eason was a ten-year veteran, solid but not brilliant. The kind of tidy officer who closed cases as quickly as possible. He resented Jericho’s bringing in an outside detective when they expanded the number of detective positions to two. From his point of view, the job should have been his instead of Sully’s.

  As Sully dropped the tarp, Eason told him, “We got another one inside.”

  Sully felt the darkness swirl inside his gut when the man gave voice and form to the possibility which had haunted him since turning into the cove. Waiting until he was standing, feet braced, he asked, “Who?”

  “Male. Unidentified. Apparent burglary gone wrong.”

  Relief flared hot and quick through Sully. “The woman and the girl?”

  Eason was clearly startled that Sully knew the exact number of other occupants of the house. “They’re pretty much shot emotionally, but other than that they seem fine. I already got preliminary statements from both.”

  Finding out that Jessie was still alive changed everything for Sully. His professional distance began to return, but not his emotional detachment. This scene was still intensely personal. Sully had no intention of going through this again. Until this was over, Jessie and Iris weren’t going to be out of his sight.

  “Lay it out for me,” Sully, ordered as he strode toward the house.

  Scrambling to catch up, Nick said, “This one’s a no-brainer. We got forcible entry, a tampered security system, and a witness. The lady says the bodyguard popped one of two perps and then followed the second one outside when he ran. The second one got the bodyguard but was smart enough to get the hell out of Dodge after that. Probably because by that time the little girl had pushed the panic button. A separate set of alarms started going off like Fourth of July. She’s also the one who called nine-one-one.”

  As Sully hit the front door, he barely glanced at the second body, also covered, lying at the foot of the stairs. His attention, his focus, every fiber of his being was concentrated not on what he saw, but on what he wanted. “Jessie.”

  “Here.”

  When he looked up, Sully knew what the cop in him had suspected from the moment he found Lincoln. Jessie’s eyes were almost black now, intense. Nick Eason could write it off to shock, but Sully knew better. Lincoln hadn’t killed anyone, because Lincoln never knew what hit him. They caught him outside, slit his throat from behind, and came after Jessie. After the damned book.

  And she’d calmly blown the guy away without a second thought. There was no trace of remorse, no shadows, no need reflected in her eyes. No tears.

  This was the woman who’d walked in the door that first night. She didn’t need rescuing, not now and probably not ever. The innocence in her was the lie, the pretense. Sully was caught in a web spun by a woman he barely knew. You know her, he corrected as the weight of his knowledge settled into his gut. You know her because that same darkness lives in your soul. The only difference is that you think pinning on a badge makes you one of the good guys.

  Iris must have heard his voice when he walked in. She came around the edge of the hall and lifted Jessie’s arm around her shoulders. Seeing the two of them together, the last doubt slid away.

  I know why you did it, Jessie. I know why. But you still killed a man. And you were calm enough to cover it up when there was no need. Self-defense would have been a piece of cake in this situation. Registered gun or not.

  You killed a man, Jess. Now, what the hell am I going to do about it?

  For a split second Jessica let the rough, needy way he said her name get inside her heart. She allowed herself to believe that he’d come for her because she needed him—not because this was his job. As the coldness that had allowed her to function began to fade, his expression hardened.

  He knows, Jessica realized as apprehension and disappointment froze her again. She called herself a fool for wanting something that could never be hers.

  Sully was a cop first, no matter what happened between them earlier. A better cop than the others, obviously. He’d caught the one tiny hole in her story. She could feel it in her soul. He knew, and it changed him. Changed how he saw her, and he didn’t even know the half of it, she thought bitterly.

  What are you going to do now, Sully?

  The unspoken question stretched between them like an arrow of tension—impaling them. Finally he turned away without a word. Jessica held tight to Iris while Sully did his job. The girl wouldn’t leave her side, and Jessica couldn’t leave Sully. Not until she knew what he planned to do.

  Beyond that horrible moment when their eyes had locked, there was nothing to indicate she and Sully were more than acquaintances. Not once did he publicly question her version of the events, or ask her more than a few cursory questions. It was all so simple, and yet she couldn’t catch her breath.

  Since Iris had been beneath that mountain of clothes the entire time, there were no other witnesses to contradict her story. No one saw her slip outside and put Lincoln’s gun in his hand and fire it. No one watched as she dropped his empty shell casing by the body in the foyer, disposed of her own bullet casing by flushing it down the toilet, and reloaded the derringer. The bullet itself was not the problem because hollow points fragmented when they hit. She and Lincoln both preferred hollowpoints. The casing would match, and that placed Lincoln as the shooter.

  Then she’d washed her hands and
arms, and changed her clothes. By the time the police arrived, her story was solid, and Iris wasn’t talking.

  Neither was Sully. Everything they had to say to each other would be said in private. She knew that. Sully’s eyes promised her that every time he looked in her direction.

  He seemed content to let the cop named Eason direct everything, nodding when consulted, but otherwise standing back, biding his time. An unsettling combination of patience and anger lived in Sully. The patience made him more dangerous than the anger, Jessica thought.

  Having patience didn’t make the anger go away. All it did was create suspense, fool people into believing they were safe. Not her. She knew better.

  When the bodies had been removed and police began to leave, she didn’t feel a sense that the crisis had passed. She felt abandoned and like she was hurtling toward an unavoidable collision. Then Eason came up the stairs and gave her a reprieve.

  “I don’t think you or the girl need to stay here tonight. Why don’t you pack a couple of bags? I’ll take you to a hotel and have someone pick you up tomorrow morning to make your official statements.”

  “Thank you.” Jessica forced herself not to sound too eager. “That’s probably best.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Both she and Iris were packed in less than ten minutes. When they returned to the landing with their bags, only Sully remained in the foyer. It was the first time she’d seen him without a tie, she realized.

  “W-where’s Officer Eason?” she asked uneasily.

  “Off duty.”

  “He was … he was going to take us to a hotel.”

  “You got any objection to riding with me?” Sully was daring her to make an issue, to give him an excuse to take the gloves off. She didn’t know whether to be glad the icy indifference was gone or frightened.

  Iris hefted her bag and quietly started down the stairs. “I’d rather go with you. What if my dad calls while we’re gone?”