Born Wild

by Julie Ann Walker

  Delilah searched for the truth in her face, and she must’ve found it, because she nodded. And then her expression sharpened. “All those things I’ve been reading about you in the paper…Those weren’t accidents, were they?”

  Yep, and talk about astute. Maybe Delilah should join the gang at Black Knights Inc. The woman was certainly proving she had the instincts for it. Without hesitation, Eve laid it all on the line—she figured Delilah deserved that—and told her about the fire, the mugging, the cut brake lines, and the police closing the cases. “And when nobody would believe me,” she finished, “I went to Black Knights Inc., hoping they could help me figure out who’s doing this.”

  Delilah’s green eyes narrowed, and she blinked rapidly as if she were physically trying to take it all in—and having trouble in the endeavor. Eve had to admit, it was quite a tale. “Because Mac is a former FBI agent,” Delilah finally murmured, “you thought he’d be able to succeed where the CPD failed?”

  “Yes,” she said, hoping Jeremy didn’t feel her stiffen at the question. “Th-that’s what I figured.”

  Delilah fell into a long silence as she glanced off into the distance. The thousand-yard stare…Eve remembered Becky referring to such a thing, but until this moment she wasn’t sure she’d actually ever seen it. Then again, she’d never taken part in an all-out gun battle either, so, yippee! Lots of firsts today!

  Mac was the one to finally break into the quiet pall that’d momentarily fallen over the group. He lifted a hand toward Jeremy. “Mac McMillan.” His deep Texas twang was softer than usual. “Sorry to be meetin’ you for the first time under these circumstances.”

  “Likewise.” Jeremy shook his hand.

  “They were hired guns,” Billy blurted, and everyone in the group turned to stare at him.

  “What?” Jeremy was the first to recover. “How do you figure that?” Eve seconded that question.

  “Two reasons,” Billy said, and something in Eve told her she wasn’t going to like where he was going with this. “The first one being that the nature of the other attempts on her life led us to believe whoever is behind this thing is someone she knows.”

  Sweet Jesus help her, she couldn’t begin to fathom who that could be…And the fact that Jeremy instinctively hugged her closer, a slight tremor running down the length of his big body? Well, that just made it all the more terrifying. Because he was Jeremy, the guy who’d punched out Todd Stockwell for pinching her butt from beneath the bleachers. Jeremy, the guy who’d raced to her rescue the night she found out her marriage was a sham. Jeremy, the guy who put seriously bad men behind bars on a daily basis. He wasn’t supposed to get scared. But she could tell he was. He was scared. Scared for her.

  “And considering how the witnesses described these two men,” Billy continued, “they don’t exactly sound like the types to find themselves on the inside of Eve’s social circle.”

  Erm…yes, so that was putting it mildly. The only guy she knew who even came close to wearing gold chains was Preston Ferrell who sometimes, for a laugh, donned the gold medal he’d won in the 1998 winter Olympics.

  “Okay.” Delilah cocked her head, looking far steadier, suddenly, than Eve was feeling. This is bad, a little voice whispered through her head, followed immediately by, this is really bad. She wanted to tell the little bugger to shove off, because she knew things were bad. They had been for months and—“So,” Delilah continued, “what’s the second reason?”

  “Well,” Billy said, and the look on his face when he slid her a quick glance? Holy cow, it was enough to give her nightmares.

  Don’t say it! she wanted to scream at him. Don’t say what I don’t want to hear! Don’t say what I’ll never be ready to hear!

  “The second reason is that, since we knew someone was out to get her, we were very careful on the drive here to ensure nobody followed us.” Which would explain their convoluted route to the bar. “And that means those two gunman,” oh, God, and suddenly she knew exactly where Billy was going, “had to have received notification of her whereabouts. Which begs the question…” Now, he turned toward her, and before he even opened his mouth, her world dimmed. Everything around her faded to black, and her vision tunneled down to a single point of reference: Billy’s hard, uncompromising face. “Who did you call, Eve? Who knew you were here?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Bill watched as Eve’s lovely, tear-laden eyes blinked rapidly, and he cursed himself and the bastard behind all this for making her go through it. But there was no other way. And he needed to know who she’d called…

  Of course, he could tell from the way her face drained of blood, from the way her nostrils flared unnaturally wide, that she was having trouble grasping the reality of the situation.

  The truth hurts? Yeah, whoever came up with that little nugget should be crowned High King of the Understaters, because from the look on her face, the truth not only hurt, but it tore apart her whole friggin’ existence, her whole sense of self and what she knew to be real.

  “No,” she shook her head, her chest rising and falling with each panting breath—he called himself ten kinds of asshole for noticing how it made her breasts press against her thin blouse. She looked around as if the world had suddenly changed shape. As if up was down, and black was white. “No,” she choked again, wrenching away from her cousin’s embrace. “It can’t be.”

  “Who?” he demanded. But it didn’t do any good. She was lost in her own denial, shaking her head and whispering, “No, it can’t be,” over and over again.

  “Her father,” Delilah piped up.

  Eve swung on the woman, screaming, “No!”

  “I heard her talking to him and—”

  “No!” Eve yelled again, reaching up to fist double handfuls of her own hair.

  Bill went with his gut and dragged her into his arms, ignoring the fact that Buchanan narrowed his eyes at the move. Eve fought initially, writhing in his embrace, beating his chest, but she had no more strength than a kitten. And in seconds, her struggling stopped and she collapsed against him in a sad, sobbing heap—which was so, so much worse than her pitiful fighting had been.

  His hardened warrior’s heart bled for her. And once again, their sad history was forgotten, all the hurts and disappointments trivialized when compared to a father’s ultimate betrayal. He silently promised to kill Patrick Edens…slowly. But aloud he crooned, “Shh, Eve. It’s gonna be okay. We’ll figure this out. We’ll—”

  “No, Billy!” she wailed, hiccupping on her tears. “It-it can’t be him! He’s my f-father. He-he loves me! He wouldn’t do this to me!”

  “Eve—”

  “Why?” she demanded, pushing away from him, her expression telegraphing the fact that her denial was quickly morphing into anger. “What reason would he have? None!” She sliced a hand through the air karate-chop style. “Tell him, Jeremy!” She swung on her cousin. “Tell him Dad wouldn’t do this!”

  “Eve, I—” Buchanan shook his head, his eyes full of pity. “I don’t—” He stopped, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

  “Not you, too!” she wailed. “Just because he didn’t believe you when you said someone was trying to kill me, now you think he’s the one? No!”

  “I’m not saying—” Jeremy began, but he was stopped by the buzzing of his cell phone. He slapped a hand over his hip pocket, cursing. “I’ve got to take this,” he said. His expression was tortured when his gaze landed on Eve. “I’m still on the clock, and that might be my partner calling, and—”

  “Just do it.” Eve’s face was streaked with tears and red as a ripe cherry.

  Buchanan hesitated a second more, and Bill felt himself softening toward the guy again. Just a little bit. Because Buchanan had done everything he’d known to do to protect Eve. But who would think to protect her against her own father. Christ! When the guy’s phone continued to buzz imperiously Buchanan was f
orced to spin away, quickly moving down the alley and disappearing around the corner as he answered the call.

  “You’re wrong, Billy,” Eve hissed, swinging back to him. “You’re so dead wrong and—”

  “Okay.” Delilah stepped into the brink. Literally. She jumped between him and Eve, and it was probably a good thing she did. Because Eve’s hands were curled into fists, and Bill figured he was about two seconds away from experiencing one or two of those self-defense moves she’d been practicing for the past year. And, yeah, he knew that she knew none of this was really his fault. But that didn’t change the fact that she needed an outlet for all her rage and denial. And since he was quite handily standing right in front of her—presto changeo—he could play the part of scapegoat.

  “I have to agree with Eve that this all seems a little farfetched. I mean,” Delilah slid a placating look toward Eve, but Eve missed it since she was busy staring ice-tipped daggers at him, “what kind of father would pay a couple of Southside gangbangers to barge into a biker bar and shoot his only daughter in cold blood?”

  The kind of father who’d kept his only daughter caged away in an ivory tower, never allowing her to develop any sort of social confidence. The kind of father who’d fostered his only daughter’s natural shyness and timidity so he could control her life.

  Basically, a father exactly like Patrick Edens.

  Of course, Bill kept all this to himself as Delilah continued, “I mean, isn’t it possible that Eve is bugged or something? Couldn’t she have been followed or located another way?”

  “Yes!” Eve stopped her frantic pacing, her expression suddenly filled with so much hope it caused a jagged crack to open in Bill’s already ragged heart. “That’s it! I have to be bugged. I have—”

  “No,” Mac cut her off, and Bill was glad he wasn’t the one who’d been forced to do it, forced to dash all her misplaced faith.

  “What do you mean no?” she demanded, planting her hands on her hips and glaring at the poor guy. Bill could tell by the former FBI agent’s face that he didn’t want to be the one to crush her sudden optimism, but he cowboyed-up and did it all the same.

  “There’s no way you’re bugged, Eve,” Mac said, and Bill held his breath and slid a glance toward Delilah who was listening intently…Intently? Pshht. More like she was monitoring the conversation with the dedication of a submarine sonar specialist.

  Shit. This could get sticky. Er…stickier. The situation was already as sticky as the birdlime they used in anti-tank bombs.

  “How can you possibly know that?” Eve asked, her eyes daring Mac to come up with something she would believe.

  “Uh,” Mac made a face and scratched the back of his head, peeking over at Delilah, “because you’ve been to the shop today, and we have wall-mounted…um…call it bug-detection equipment. So, if someone had a tracking device on you, believe me, we’d know about it. The entire shop would’ve flashed and wailed like a Lady Gaga concert.”

  “Aha!” Delilah pointed a blood-red fingernail straight at Mac’s face. “I knew it! I knew—”

  “Excuse me.” A man in a rumpled gray suit walked up to them. He was on the downhill side of fifty and couldn’t care less, evidenced by the fact that he didn’t try to hide his receding hairline or the ketchup stain on the shirt stretched tight over his beer gut. “Hello again, Ms. Edens.” The guy nodded once to Eve before addressing the group. “I’m Detective Normandy, and I need you folks to come with me down to the station where I can ask you some questions regarding tonight’s events.”

  “Oh, now you’re ready to take me down to the station to ask me some questions?” Eve was already shaking her head before Normandy finished his little speech. Bill got the distinct impression she’d found a new outlet for all her frustration and denial. And call him a lily-livered coward, but he couldn’t say he was sorry all that vitriol was no longer directed at him. “Now you’re ready? So the fire and the mugging and the cut brakes lines weren’t enough to warrant an interview, but masked men barging into a bar to point guns at my head, not to mention strangling me,” she pointed at the bruises on her neck, and once again, Bill’s rage began to boil, “are? Sheesh!” She threw her hands in the air sarcastically. “Why didn’t you just say that before, Detective?”

  “Ms. Edens,” Normandy placated, “if you’ll just calm down—”

  “Oh, you did not just tell me to calm down!” she shrieked, blue fire shooting from her eyes. It was a good thing Normandy was mostly bald or his hair might’ve burst into flames. “And let’s get something straight right now, I’m not going anywhere with you until I get a chance to speak with my father!”

  And Bill could admit he, too, would like a chance to confront Patrick Edens before the CPD carted the sonofabitch off to a nice, tidy jail cell. If only to look into the man’s eyes when he admitted what low-down, dirty, scum-of-the-earth he really was.

  Then again, a confession was probably a little too much to hope for, but Bill still wanted to see the man’s face when his daughter finally stood up to him. The part of him that remembered being looked down upon and openly sneered at had waited a very long time to see the lion bearded in his own den.

  And in the name of avoiding an immediate police-cruiser ride down to the station and missing his chance to witness said bearding, he stepped away from the group, pulled his cell phone from his pocket, and punched in Chief Washington’s number. As he listened to it ring on the other end, he watched Normandy produce a notepad from the inside pocket of his wrinkled suit coat.

  “Why would you need to speak with your father?” he heard Normandy ask, but he didn’t catch Eve’s response, because right at that moment Washington answered with a gruff, “What the hell do you want, Reichert?”

  Taking a few more steps away from the group, Bill explained the situation to the CPD police chief.

  “Hell, no!” was Washington’s immediate response to his request that he keep Normandy off their backs for a couple of hours. “If Patrick Edens is really behind Ms. Edens’s recent mishaps and tonight’s attempted murder, then you need to let Detective Normandy do his goddamned job. Let him question the man and—”

  “You know as well as I do,” Bill interrupted, “if the police approach Patrick Edens first, he’ll lawyer-up quicker than I’ll be able to say I told you so, and we’ll miss any opportunity we had at surprising him into a confession.”

  “Yeah, right. You’re crazier than I thought, and I already thought you were bat-shit crazy, if you’re under the impression a man like Patrick Edens will cop to trying to kill his own daughter,” Washington snorted. “Besides, anything he admits to you won’t stand up in court. It’ll be nothing but hearsay. Unless…this isn’t about a confession at all, but revenge? That’s it, isn’t it?” Washington’s bass boomed through the connection. “Don’t you even think about going all vigilante on his ass, Reichert! You may be some hot-shot, super-secret agent, but you’re a Chicago citizen, too. Which means you fall under the purview of a little thing known as Illinois law and—”

  “Cool your jets, Chief,” Bill cut in. “I’m not going to kill the guy. I just want to give Eve the opportunity to look the man in the eye and tell him she knows what he’s been up to.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Washington insisted. “If he is the man behind these attacks, then what’s to keep him from plugging her then and there?”

  “You mean with two witnesses watching? Me and Mac? Come on, Chief. Give me—”

  “Hand me the phone.” Bill turned to see Buchanan standing behind him, the man’s hand extended in his direction.

  His first instinct was to tell Eve’s cousin to fuck off, but he reminded himself of how hard Buchanan had been working—begrudgingly albeit—to help them. So, instead he tempered his response to, “Excuse me?”

  “I couldn’t help but overhear,” Buchanan said. “I know you’re talking to my police chief, and I think I h
ave a way to convince him to let you have what you want.”

  Bill lifted his brows, making his skepticism known, and then handed the phone over. He listened as Buchanan said something about a wire being inadmissible in court but going a long way in securing a search warrant before the man fell silent, no doubt intent on Washington’s response on the other end.

  Then he gave Bill a thumbs-up and handed back the phone.

  “What’s up, Chief?” Bill asked.

  “Two hours,” Washington muttered, and Bill shot a mental fist in the air. “I’ll give you two hours to do your confronting. Jeremy’s gonna give you a wire for Eve, and I want you to make damned sure she wears it!”

  “You got it.”

  “And then when those two hours are up, I want all your asses down at the goddamned station answering any goddamned questions Normandy thinks to throw your goddamned way!”

  Three goddamns in the same sentence? Washington meant business. “You have my word,” he was quick to assure the man.

  “And in the meantime, just in case Edens thinks to vamoose himself from the city, I’m sending unmarked units to keep an eye on him. You hear what I’m saying to you, Reichert? You catch my meaning?”

  Bill rolled his eyes. He may be crazier than Washington thought he was, but he wasn’t stupider. “You’re telling me I shouldn’t do anything hinky, because, if I do, your watchdogs will see it and then they’ll be forced to cuff me and throw me in the nearest eight by ten.”

  “Bingo,” Washington said. “You’re not as dumb as you look, white boy.” Ha! Well, you can take the man out of the Marines, but you can’t take the Marine out of the man. The drill sergeant in Washington tended to pop up when least expected. “And tell Normandy to call me immediately!” he yelled before the line went dead.

  Bill thumbed off his cell phone and turned to walk back toward the group. Buchanan, striding beside him, asked, “How the hell do you know my police chief?”