Safe Haven

by Lisa Mondello

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dear Reader:

  Ebooks by Lisa Mondello

  Bonus Material:

  SAFE HAVEN

  By Lisa Mondello

  ~

  This book is dedicated to the men and women in law enforcement who protect and serve.

  ~

  A special thank you to Officer Tom Naujoks and Officer Dave Mellen who listened to my wild ideas patiently and helped me plot and research this story. Any mistakes in interpreting facts are my own.

  *

  Published by: Lisa Mondello

  *

  Copyright © 2016 by Lisa Mondello

  License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people unless it is part of the authorized lending program. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, then it is stolen and you should delete it from your device and purchase your own copy. Pirating ebooks is a crime and all violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  *

  When someone you once loved wants you dead, is there any SAFE HAVEN?

  Finding out her ex-husband hired a hitman to kill her didn’t leave Daria Carlisle all warm and fuzzy. But Detective Kevin Gordon’s suggestion she flee the only home that had ever truly been hers was downright crazy. Forget that the sexy police officer made her heart pound and her blood stir. She’d worked too hard to get what little she had. She wasn’t leaving.

  Kevin Gordon didn’t make mistakes, but he’d made a big one in letting Daria’s ex slip through his fingers. Although he tried to make it very clear to Daria that the fixer upper home she considered a palace was no safe haven, she just dug in deeper and insisted on staying, leaving him no choice but to be her protector. Left on her own, she surely faced murder at an assassin’s hand. But can Kevin spend every waking hour sleeping on her doorstep just to keep this stubborn woman alive without risking his heart to love?

  *

  Chapter One

  The six-foot-high chain-link gate was locked tight. Kevin Gordon tested it, curling his fingers around the metal, he gave it a quick yank.

  It didn’t budge. He knew it wouldn’t. The owners had long since packed up their lunch boxes and paperwork, washed their hands of grease and filth and headed home.

  George Carlisle, the man he’d agreed to meet here, was only using this salvage yard on Water Street for their meeting. It looked empty enough. But it was always better to be safe than to be dead.

  Satisfied, Kevin carefully moved down the cracked sidewalk, sidestepping a concave square that rainwater had gouged out. A quick glance down to the intersection told him the streets and the crossroad were as barren as a ghost town, with no movement except from scraps of newspaper and discarded wrappers rolling in the wind like dried out balls of tumbleweed across the asphalt.

  No self-respecting person would be caught dead walking these streets at this late hour of the evening. But that didn’t mean someone meaning to do harm wasn’t lurking in the dark shadows, waiting for him to happen by. As far as Kevin could see, it was just him and a menacing junkyard dog testing the six-foot high chain-link fence with every jump against its metal lace as Kevin walked along the sidewalk.

  “Easy, boy,” he said quietly, which only aggravated the dog further. Yellow and white blinking lights had been strung across the top of the fence, making the dog’s snarl look even more threatening when the light hit its face. Deciding the location was as secure as it was going to get, Kevin focused on his backup. Pulling the hood of his gray winter jacket over his head to conceal his earpiece, the undercover detective said, “You with me in the van, Jake?”

  The night was just cool enough to pull off wearing it. If the temperature dropped, Carlisle might suspect something. He couldn’t afford not to give him credit for smarts until he’d nailed him.

  “Reading you loud and clear, Kev.” He recognized his partner, Jake Santos, as the man speaking into his ear. “There’s no one moving around out here.”

  “Ski, anything moving from where you’re sitting?” The only thing moving where Amery Stanasloski was perched was his hands, Kevin figured. The kid, fresh out of the academy, was probably sitting on his hands right now just to still them. A hint of a smile tugged at Kevin’s lips. Ski had the eyes of a hawk, but the nervous habit of tapping his fingers, a pencil or whatever on anything in front of him. Sitting on the rooftop of the Foundry building on the corner of Rosewood and Clifton, Ski probably had a birds-eye view of the blocks below him. Yeah, Kevin could just picture the kid perched high on a wooden crate like a hawk on a cliff with steely talons clutching a lone branch jutting out of ledge.

  “That’s a negative. You’re coming through loud and clear here, Kevin,” Ski said into the mic, but it was filled with so much static that Kevin’s hand instinctively went to his ear.

  “Do you hear that static in the van, Jake?” he asked his partner, who was sitting three blocks away in an alley ready to rock and roll if things went bad.

  “You’re all clean here. Must be on your end.”

  Kevin swore silently as irritation filled him. A half hour ago when he’d tested all the devices, the earpiece was working fine. Now it was too late to go back to the van and get a backup.

  “Dylan, what about you?” Kevin asked. Dylan Montgomery was hidden down the street behind a dumpster with a clear view of where Kevin was standing. The camera he held was state of the art and would capture enough pictures of George Carlisle to add to their evidence.

  Static came through his headset.

  “Come again, Dylan,” he said. Static.

  “I’m ditching the earpiece, Jake.”

  Then Jake came over the radio, his voice firm and hard through the bits of static. “Keep it, Kevin. You won’t have…” Static.

  Keeping his voice low, Kevin said, “If I flinch, I’m liable to blow this whole meeting. I’m not risking it.”

  Kevin yanked the earpiece out of his ear and dropped it in this pocket.

  The connection to the team was critical, but the most important factor was making sure the meeting went off without a hitch. Even without audio communication, Kevin knew that Ski was in position to see any surprises that may come his way. Dylan was close enough to make it to him if anything turned sour. The team would be at Kevin’s back in half a heartbeat to take Carlisle down. It was risky, but he’d be fine, even without the earpiece.Checking his watch, he discovered that Carlisle was running late. Nerves coiled around his stomach, turning it sour.

  If you’re informant is five minutes late, you’ve stayed five minutes too long. That’s what his mentor, Jake’s former partner, Tyler Jacobsen had always said. Kevin didn’t relish the idea of hanging around in the dark. Anything could happen. But George Carlisle wasn’t an informant. And this was too important to ignore.

  Kevin moved slowly down the sidewalk, just to have something to do. The dog jumped against the fence spewing snot and phlegm to show just how much he disapproved of Kevin being there. When Kevin got to the end of the fence, he pivoted and walked back the way he’d come.

  On his third pass, he heard a twig
snap. Kevin swung around and searched the shadows until he saw a dark figure on the sidewalk by the corner of the junkyard fence. The figure didn’t move. Neither did Kevin even though the Doberman snarled on the other side of the fence. The dog would no doubt continue until they’d moved on away from his turf.

  Kevin’s comforting Glock was snug tight in his holster and concealed by the heavy fleece jacket he wore. His backup was sitting pretty in place. Standing in the shadows, the man almost looked like a menacing apparition. But he was no apparition. Murder was always real.

  The figure moved toward him slowly, but Kevin remained still. This meeting couldn’t happen in the shadows where backup wouldn’t have a clear view of what was going on. A flick of a switchblade or the quick draw of a gun pressed firmly at his temple would put a bad end this meeting.

  “Are you waiting for the bakery on the corner to open up or did you come here to talk?” the man asked. He kept his voice low, scarcely audible above the rustle of unfurled leaves moving with the late evening breeze.

  “I didn’t think you were going to show,” Kevin said, intentionally keeping his voice lower in an effort to draw the man closer to him. It didn’t work.

  His pulse pounded, and the nerves in his stomach squeezed tighter. Kevin moved a few feet forward and into the shadow, ignoring the snarling dog as he followed his movement.

  Kevin cut to the chase. “You Carlisle?”

  “Were you expecting someone else?” the man asked with heavy sarcasm.

  Without a name, some damning proof, this meeting would be a bust. Kevin pushed harder. “Answer the damned question. I like to know who I’m talking to.”

  Only the silhouette of the man’s face was visible in the darkness. He could hardly see the shape of George Carlisle’s nose, but the square of his jaw and the way he stood looked like the pictures Ski had taken less than a week ago. In this dark, it was hard to be sure.

  “Yeah, I’m George Carlisle. Satisfied?”

  “For the time being. Word is you’re in need of a service.”

  Carlisle sighed and nodded. “I want you to kill my wife.”

  Kevin forced the words out of his mouth. Make him talk. Get it on record. “Just tell me how you want it and I’ll make sure it’s done.”

  “It needs to be soon.”

  “What’s the hurry? I don’t like being rushed.”

  “It’s my dime.”

  Cold disdain froze Kevin’s insides. “It’s my ass on the line. I can accommodate you if the price is right. But I won’t dick around just to get it done quick and be sloppy. These things take planning.”

  “Fine, but I don’t want it to take forever and…no suffering. Quick and painless. I don’t want her to know what hit her.”

  Kevin’s jaw clenched. “Her” would be Daria Carlisle. Why would a man put out a contract of murder and be concerned at all about the pain involved? The book answer would be that George Carlisle loved his ex-wife. Loved her, but wanted her dead.

  Kevin knew different. How a man could profess to love a woman and then put out a contract to murder her was unimaginable. That wasn’t love. And it wasn’t a gray area he was willing to argue about with any profiler who would call this a crime of passion. Passion had nothing to do with what George Carlisle was asking him to do. It was murder, as sharp and clean as a razor’s edge.

  He still couldn’t see the man’s face in the darkness of the low hanging tree limb that concealed the glow of the distant streetlight. But Kevin knew he was no apparition. He was George Carlisle. And he was a monster.

  “How do you want it done?” he forced himself to ask evenly.

  Carlisle laughed and that sent a chill straight up Kevin’s spine. “If you have to ask, maybe I’ve come to the wrong place.”

  “There isn’t anyone better than me to do the job and you know it or you wouldn’t have sought me out,” Kevin said tightly. “This is business and I like to be clear about what I’ve been hired to do. I don’t like misunderstandings and I don’t like mistakes.”

  “I’ve heard that about you.”

  Maybe not in what this joker intended, Kevin thought, but it was true. He couldn’t help but feel a little bit of pride, even though he knew they were talking about two different things.

  Kevin was a cop who didn’t make mistakes. He knew it. And so did everyone he worked with. The human factor in law enforcement wasn’t forgiving. There was no room for a margin of error. That didn’t mean it didn’t exist. There were bound to be narrow escapes that could lead to an officer not going home at the end of the day. He’d seen it happen many times. On more than a few occasions, he’d been the one to bring home the bad news. He did everything possible to make sure the margin of error on his shift was as small as possible.

  The man turned and looked around as if wanting to make sure they were truly alone on that dark road before giving himself away. And for the first time, Kevin realized George Carlisle wasn’t looking at him at all. He was looking around, checking shadows and the empty streets, paying no mind to the Doberman who was still barking out his unrest at their presence.

  Carlisle stopped searching the street, but still didn’t look Kevin straight in the face. “Her name is Daria Carlisle. She lives in a rundown house on a side-street by the highway. She’s been renovating the dilapidated house for months. It’s probably full of tools you can use to make it look like a breakin. But…you do it whatever way you want. I just… I want you to kill her.”

  Daria Carlisle. Did she even have a clue of the kind of man she’d married? Kevin had done his homework on Daria when he first took on this case. Newly divorced, new address in the suburbs, and new life. From what he’d uncovered about her, she’d severed ties with her ex cleanly. But that didn’t seem to matter to George Carlisle. He aimed to sever their ties in a way that would be permanent.

  Her name is Daria Carlisle. I want you to kill her. The words, spoken bright and pleasant as if George Carlisle were bidding Kevin a kindly good day instead of asking him to kill his ex-wife, seemed to float in the air around him.

  It was all Kevin could do to keep from reaching out and grabbing this son of a bitch by the throat. Anger flared through him, hot and raw, until he had to swallow to make himself think. He was undercover. He wouldn’t blow this.

  Still, he couldn’t help but think about how close Daria Carlisle had come to ending up in a cold grave just like Lucy. If George had contacted someone else, Daria Carlisle would likely be dead by morning. Kevin’s chest hurt just thinking about it. There was no one there to intervene for Lucy way back then when she’d thought she had nothing to fear. Kevin knew better now and was here for Daria Carlisle, even if she didn’t know of the danger she was in. Tomorrow she’d know the truth, and when he told her just what her ex-husband had planned to do, she’d be safe.

  Backup was in position and ready to haul this beast away as soon as Kevin gave the signal. He’d be the one to throw this monster’s sorry ass in jail where he’d most likely spend the next twenty years to life. George Carlisle was never going to hurt Daria Carlisle.

  For the first time that night, Kevin smiled.

  *

  “Your husband hired me to kill you.”

  The last words Daria Carlisle expected to hear in her kitchen on a bright and sunny Sunday morning were those. She stared at the man who’d just uttered the frightening words. Words spoken with such ease and comfort it made her blood run cold.

  She stood statue still, almost glued to the aged linoleum floor that was too frail to be salvaged. Her gaze swept from his face to the decrepit floor as she dragged in a breath of air. Earlier that day she’d been obsessing over how she was going to afford replacing the linoleum. Hearing these words from a man she’d just invited into her home willingly put a slightly different spin on her priorities.

  Your
husband hired me to kill you. The words just hung there in the air between them like some bright red cartoon balloon, mocking her.

  She’d woken happy that morning, intent on starting the day by rummaging through the Sunday paper for a used miter saw to finish off the woodwork in the one hundred and fifty year old house she’d purchased because she’d fallen in love with the back yard. Like the house, it too, needed much tender loving care and Daria was up to the challenge. Oh, how had the day taken such a drastic turn so quickly?

  The coffee maker stopped burping behind her as the pot reached full capacity and reminded her to breathe. She’d been making coffee for her guest. It was a spontaneous thing to invite him home after meeting him at the market. She wasn’t normally so impulsive when meeting people. Despite her gypsy childhood and the need to make friends quickly, Daria had always been guarded when facing new situations. But the bright sunshine streaming through her kitchen window this morning, and seeing the first poking of spring bulbs pushing out of the ground as she stepped onto her porch had made her brave.

  Daria cleared her throat and gazed unsure at the tall man who’d introduced himself to her earlier at the corner market. Kevin Gordon he’d said his name was when he’d introduced himself.

  “Did you hear what I said?” he asked.

  She nodded as she said, “Yes, I did. I guess that changes things between us just a bit.”

  Between us. She’d just met the man. There was no us.

  He sighed. “I didn’t mean to lead you on earlier.”

  She remained still as the words sunk in, not wanting to think about how she’d actually found herself so utterly attracted to the tall man with longish dark blond hair pulled into a tight ponytail at the back of his head now seated at her kitchen table. He wasn’t just an incredibly charming man. He was a hit man hired to kill her by her ex-husband.