Chain of Custody (Holding The Line Book 2)

by Carol Ericson

  The two meals they’d shared yesterday felt like dates—except for the presence of Wyatt at dinner. He liked her, liked talking to her, and their attraction was undeniable. Again, wishful thinking?

  “Good morning, Agent Dillon. Sorry I’m late.”

  Nash shifted his attention from his personal computer to his work computer and the face of Special Agent Webb filling his screen. “Good morning, Agent Webb. Right on time.”

  “My name’s Bruce. Can I call you Nash?”

  “Absolutely.” Nash took a sip of coffee. “I have my list up and can take notes as we talk. Who do you want to discuss first?”

  “Probably the guy I got the most hits on. His name is Marcus Lanier. He’s a Phoenix businessman, a real mover and shaker. He’s married to Ming Lee Hong, daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur in China. We’re not sure his father-in-law is on the up-and-up, either.”

  “Makes sense. The wife went from one criminal family to another. What do you have on the guy?”

  While Webb went on about anomalies in Lanier’s finances, Nash multitasked. He listened to Webb, made notes in his spreadsheet and kept one eye on Emily and Wyatt.

  After about an hour discussing two of the possible Las Moscas contacts, Webb started to wrap up. “I’m going to send you Lanier’s and Booker’s latest payments and withdrawals for your files. It’s not like you’re gonna find any payments to drug dealers in there, but they serve to outline and support some of what I’ve been talking about this morning. We can set up another meeting to discuss a few of our other suspects, but I wanted to get to those two first. I have the file, and you’ll have the file. That’s it. We’re not spreading this info around just yet.”

  “Sounds good, Webb. You guys are thorough.”

  “I love numbers, man. What can I say?” Webb chuckled and signed off.

  Nash waited a few minutes for Webb’s email to come through with the attachment. He clicked on it and saved the file to his computer.

  Then he stood up and stretched. Taking another glance at his security feed, Nash turned with his coffee cup in hand to get a refill.

  Valdez beat him to it, filling up his commuter mug.

  “Leave some for the rest of us. What are you fueling up for?”

  Valdez’s lips twisted. “You missed it while you were in your meeting, but it looks like we have a body at the border.”

  “Damn. You going out?”

  “Yeah, I’m lead on this one.” Valdez swallowed. “It’s almost in the next sector, so we’ll probably be out all afternoon.”

  “Decapitation?” Nash grabbed the coffeepot from Valdez’s none-too-steady hand.

  “Not sure yet. Drone picked it up and I was the lucky one monitoring the drone footage, so it’s mine.”

  “You’ll do fine, Valdez.” Nash gave the green agent some tips before he set off for the border, and then returned to his much less exciting work on finances.

  He had done most of the work on the map of tunnels they’d received from April Archer. Nash had the backbreaking job of investigating most of those tunnels, so it was his turn to sit in the office now and look at numbers. With Wyatt’s arrival, it couldn’t have happened at a better time.

  How did Jaycee know he wouldn’t be on the border for days and unable to care for Wyatt? Jaycee didn’t think. He’d been happy when his sister, Eve, had gotten the harebrained notion to run off to New York to study acting, just because it had separated her from Jaycee. She’d had their parents’ money behind her to explore this whim. Jaycee didn’t have a dime. Did she have a husband?

  Nash blew out a breath as he sat behind his desk, setting down his coffee cup next to his computer. A quick glance at his laptop showed him all was well with Emily and Wyatt.

  He grinned as he watched Wyatt’s antics on the floor. Emily was right—if Jaycee didn’t return soon, she would miss her son’s first attempts at crawling.

  Nash cracked his knuckles and opened his folder on Aaron Booker. He dragged the newest financial info from Webb into the folder and then opened it. He scanned through the expenses. This guy definitely lived the high-life, but he had the income to support it—at least on the surface. Webb would dig into the money source and get to the bottom of the pit.

  Nash also had a folder on Lanier and repeated the actions he’d performed for Booker. Lanier lived a similar lifestyle. Nash’s eye scanned down the expenses and the payees when he stumbled across a familiar name.

  Lanier had transferred five thousand dollars into the account of an Emily Lang. But his nanny’s last name was O’Brien. Emily wasn’t an unusual name.

  He shook his head and moved on, but Emily Lang’s name popped up again—another five-thousand-dollar transfer. Lanier had made no notes with the transfer. It could be anything, but why the same amount and why two...no, three payments to this Emily Lang?

  Webb had delved deeper than a cursory look at finances ever could. Nobody would be able to track these transfers, not the IRS, not Lanier’s wife.

  Maybe Emily Lang was a high-priced escort.

  Nash closed the file and turned to other work, but a persistent feeling of unease had him by the back of the neck.

  Why had Emily been looking through his private emails? Why had she turned up in the grocery store parking lot at precisely the moment he needed her? Why would a woman on vacation be willing to work for a few days for a stranger?

  Nash dragged his work computer keyboard toward him. With his fingertips buzzing, he launched a search engine and entered Emily Lang.

  Emilys from around the country popped up—Realtors, city council members. He couldn’t go through them all.

  He went back to the top of the page and entered Emily Lang Chicago. That didn’t help. The same amount of Emilys filled his screen.

  With his heart thudding, Nash switched gears and accessed the National Crime Information Center database. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and entered Emily Lang.

  He held his breath as several Emily Langs populated the display. He looked into each one, but none of them matched the pretty redhead currently at his house.

  Okay, she wasn’t a felon. That was because she wasn’t Emily Lang.

  Nash swirled his coffee in the mug and stared into the brown whirlpool. He placed it carefully on the blotter and wiped his hands together. Then he entered Homicide Detective Lang.

  Several articles popped up and Nash opened the first one. He read aloud, “‘Chicago homicide detective Joseph Lang was shot and killed while chasing a suspect in the East Side Strangler investigation.’”

  He perused a few more articles on the murder of Detective Lang. The SOB who’d killed him had been shot later in another shoot-out. Good riddance.

  Nash clicked to the next page of search results and hovered over another article. Apparently, Lang’s daughter had gone into police work, too, and had gotten herself fired. Nash clicked on the article, and his mouth dropped open.

  The red hair was shorter and the green eyes sadder, but he’d found Emily Lang, and the disgraced police officer was in his house under false pretenses...alone with Jaycee’s baby.

  Chapter Seven

  Were they watching the house? Emily peeked out the front curtains for the hundredth time that morning. The man last night had seemed so sure she’d be meeting him with Wyatt in hand after lunch. What would they do if she didn’t show?

  They didn’t want to come to Nash’s house. If they did, they would’ve made an attempt already. They wanted to stay off Nash’s radar.

  If they weren’t watching the house, how would they know if she left early this morning with Wyatt? They must be tracking her. If she didn’t make the meeting, they’d know where and how to find her.

  How had they tracked her to the motel last night? She knew she hadn’t been followed from Nash’s place to the liquor store. They must be keeping tabs on her the same way the
y’d followed Jaycee down here and the same way she’d followed Jaycee down here—GPS device on her car.

  She’d have to get it off and then make her move. She’d leave a note for Nash so he wouldn’t think she was a straight-up kidnapper. She’d keep it vague enough and then contact him when she got Wyatt safely into Marcus’s hands.

  Not that Nash would believe her or let the abduction of Wyatt stand. He’d come after her for sure. He’d put an APB on her car, which she would ditch. He’d call in the police.

  She’d have to evade law enforcement, the thug from last night and Nash Dillon—all with a baby in tow. Hell, she’d been a cop herself for all of three years. She could handle them all.

  With Nash keeping an eye on her via those cameras, she’d have to make her movements look natural. She should’ve told Nash that she’d planned to take Wyatt to the park today. Leaving with him in his car seat would be the most natural thing ever.

  She could always disable those cameras, but he’d probably freak out. He’d taken his personal laptop to work with him today. Either he knew she’d been looking through his stuff or he didn’t quite trust her.

  She patted Wyatt’s back as he slept in the bassinet that she’d had Nash take down from his room upstairs. She’d been gradually loading up Wyatt’s toys in her bag throughout the morning.

  With her purse over her shoulder and her hand hovering near the weapon zipped inside, she slipped through the front door and sauntered to her car. She ducked down on the side of the car away from the cameras stationed at the front of the house. On her knees, she swept her phone across the undercarriage of the rental.

  She got a hit. She reached beneath the car and felt along the wheel well, her fingers dancing along the greasy surface. They stumbled over a round disc, and she peeled it off the car.

  She couldn’t throw it away or even move it and give away the fact that she’d found the device. She dropped it on the ground and shoved it to the center of the car so she wouldn’t roll over it and crush it on her way out.

  They had to think she was still here waiting for the afternoon appointment.

  Squatting on the gravel driveway, she brushed her fingers together and popped up. She hustled back into the house and opened the sliding door to the back, emitting a high-pitched whistle. “Denali!”

  She heard the dog bark in the distance and hung on the door, waiting for him. When he ran up to her, she scratched his head. “You’re a good boy. I wish we could take you with us for protection, but I can’t kidnap a baby and a dog and leave Nash with...nothing.”

  A little sob bubbled up her throat. Nash would think poorly of her only until she could fully explain. Then he’d understand why she had to get Wyatt away from here.

  Denali stood at attention at the foot of the bassinet. If she’d been anyone else trying to remove Wyatt from this house, Denali would’ve raised a fuss. But he trusted her...just like Nash trusted her.

  She bent over the bassinet and scooped up Wyatt. “Do you want to meet your daddy? He may not be ready, but it has to be now.”

  Marcus still hadn’t answered her texts, but he might be avoiding communication with her. Maybe his wife had gotten ahold of his burner phone and he was in damage mode.

  She still didn’t understand why he was in a Border Patrol spreadsheet, but maybe she’d misunderstood. Maybe those people were donors or fund-raisers or something. She knew Marcus had connections with law enforcement in Phoenix and often contributed to their causes.

  With Denali standing guard over Wyatt, she grabbed a piece of junk mail from Nash’s counter and scribbled him a note full of apologies and a few explanations. She wanted him to know that she had Wyatt’s best interests at heart and was taking him to his father. She placed the note in the center of the counter, held in place with the half-full wine bottle from last night. He couldn’t miss it.

  She settled a sleepy Wyatt in his car seat and strapped him in. Nash hadn’t said she couldn’t take Wyatt in the car, so hopefully he wouldn’t see anything unusual in her actions. He might not even be watching her right now. He had a job to do. He couldn’t stay glued to his security feed all day.

  She hitched her bag of goodies over her shoulder and hoisted up the car seat. She smacked a kiss in the air. “Bye, Denali. Be a good boy.”

  She locked the front door and trudged to her car, Wyatt swinging next to her. Nash had transferred the car seat base from his truck to her car for just this reason—well, not this exact reason, but he shouldn’t be alarmed that she was taking Wyatt for a drive.

  She snapped his car seat into the base in the back seat—facing backward. That had been her in with Nash in that grocery store parking lot. Of course, if it hadn’t been advice about the car seat, she would’ve come up with something else. Nash had been so primed for help, and she’d pounced on his weakness.

  She got behind the wheel and swiped a sniffle from her nose as she pulled away from Nash’s house, leaving the GPS tracker in the driveway. By the time one o’clock rolled around, she’d be in Phoenix.

  Marcus should be able to protect Wyatt when she got to his place and even admit to being the baby’s father. Her attacker and his sidekick would have no use for Wyatt at that point. They could get their man another way.

  She’d had a feeling even if she’d told the guy last night that Wyatt wasn’t Brett’s son, he wouldn’t have believed her. Or maybe he wouldn’t have cared. They’d figured out that Jaycee was lying about Wyatt, so they knew he was her son, and if Brett cared anything about Jaycee and her baby, he might be willing to make a deal.

  She rolled up to the end of Nash’s road and turned right, away from the town. She could take a back road to the freeway and wouldn’t have to pass through Paradiso and the Border Patrol office on her way out.

  This was going to work.

  Emily accelerated, but not too much. She didn’t need to get pulled over for a ticket or draw attention to herself in any way. She checked her rearview mirror and her heart did a flip.

  A truck, traveling at a high speed, a cloud of dust in its wake, had appeared behind her out of nowhere. Had they been watching and waiting for her instead of depending on the GPS tracker? They had no way of knowing she’d find that device. They didn’t know her profession...or former profession.

  She applied more pressure to the gas pedal, but she didn’t plan to get into a high-speed chase with Wyatt in the back seat of her car. Lodging her tongue in the corner of her mouth, she glanced in her mirror again.

  The truck was gaining on her, and then she blinked and adjusted the mirror as if that could change what she saw.

  That white truck looked an awful lot like Nash’s truck. She couldn’t afford to see him right now, either. She could tell him she was taking Wyatt for a drive to calm him down, but then how would she escape?

  What was he doing home this early, anyway? He’d told her he would be coming home at lunchtime, and he sure as hell didn’t see her leaving on the cameras and drive this far this fast from his office.

  Maybe that wasn’t even Nash. Lots of people drove white trucks in this town. She squinted in her rearview and swore. No mistaking the aviator sunglasses. That was Nash on her tail.

  She’d have to pull over, or he’d know for sure she was absconding with Wyatt. She eased off the pedal and put on her signal. Gripping the steering wheel with sweaty palms, she veered toward the side of the road and shifted into Park without turning off the engine. Not that she could make a quick getaway with Nash standing beside her car.

  As he pulled in behind her, she wiped her hands on her skirt and pasted a smile on her face. “You sure you don’t want to start crying back there to bolster my story, Wyatt?”

  The baby gurgled and burped up some white gunk, clearly not appreciating the seriousness of the situation, although the gunk on his onesie might indicate an upset baby.

  She winked at him in the mirror. �
�Good boy.”

  Emily buzzed down her window as Nash drew near, his hand hovering over the weapon on his hip. Force of habit? Did Border Patrol agents make traffic stops?

  She called out in a singsong voice, “Hey, you. What are you doing home so early?”

  “Cut the engine.” His tone lashed her, and she jerked her head back from the window.

  She also obeyed his command, her fingers fumbling with the keys in the ignition. She left them swinging there. He must be angry that she’d taken Wyatt for a ride without telling him first.

  She ran her tongue along her dry teeth. “Wyatt was cranky and restless, so I thought a drive might calm him down.”

  “Stop with the lies, Emily, and get out of the car. Put your hands where I can see them. You know the drill, Officer Lang.”

  Her blood ran cold in her veins. Busted. How had he discovered her true identity?

  “I—I can explain. I don’t mean any harm to Wyatt.”

  “Stick your hands through the open window and step out, keeping them in front of you, when I open the door.”

  She swallowed and slid a glance to the side. At least he didn’t have his weapon drawn, but that could change if she didn’t comply.

  She twisted to her left and stuck her hands out the window, wiggling her fingers to show him she didn’t have anything.

  He stepped toward the door, the leather of his equipment belt creaking. She knew the sound of that belt intimidated suspects—and she understood why.

  The doors of her car had automatically unlocked when she turned off the engine, and Nash reached over and opened the door with her arms hanging through the window.

  She did know the drill—had applied it many times herself before she went rogue. She stepped out of the car with her arms still outstretched, and she looked at her reflection in his sunglasses for a split second before he commanded her to turn around and face the car.

  She pulled her arms from the open window and turned toward the car, looking at Wyatt in the back seat kicking his legs in excitement at the sound of Nash’s voice.