Task Force Bride

by Julie Miller

  Pike felt a sudden chill when Hope rolled away, taking her sweet warmth and half the covers with her.

  “Is that your phone or mine?” she asked.

  His.

  Hope turned on the lamp beside her and tried to find her glasses and cell while he pulled his jeans down from the bedpost. He didn’t need glasses, the lamp or the dusky, predawn twilight to see his phone screen flashing like an alert, or to have a bad feeling about why anyone would call at this hour.

  He pushed the talk button and tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder, slipping into his shorts and jeans as soon as he read Alex’s name on the screen. “What is it?”

  He had a very bad feeling before his brother even spoke.

  “Just spotted a white van with a silver bumper half a mile north of your position,” Alex reported. “It’s headed this way. Do you want me to intercept it?”

  This was it. He was here. The Rose Red Rapist was coming for Hope.

  And Pike was damn well going to put a stop to that man’s reign of terror over the city. And her.

  “Negative,” Pike answered, grabbing his shirt. “Call Montgomery and give him a sit-rep.”

  “You need me to call in backup? SWAT Two is on duty. The team could be here in ten minutes.”

  “Pike?”

  He threaded his holster onto the belt of his jeans and hurried to the window, barely hearing the soft whisper from across the bed. Alex’s SWAT training and gear gave him a tactical advantage Pike couldn’t match. But he parted the curtains and peeked through the blinds anyway, hoping to glimpse a target where he could focus the red alert pumping through his blood.

  But beyond a few parked cars, traffic was almost nonexistent. Their unsub would see the cops coming and disappear back to one of the nearby thoroughfares or the interstate. “Negative. Too big a presence will scare this guy away. Besides, this is our bust. We’ve been working too damn long and hard on this case. We’ll take him down.”

  “Understood, little bro.” Despite the nickname, Alex was all special weapons and tactics right now. “I’ll maintain my position and give you an update if he changes course. Good luck, Pike.”

  “Thanks for having my back, Alex.”

  “Roger that. Taylor out.”

  Pike tucked the phone into the front pocket of his jeans and dropped to the bed to put on his socks and boots. Half a mile away? Maybe two or three stoplights to catch him between here and there? If he was lucky. Pike had a matter of minutes—seconds, maybe—to gear up and get into position to catch this guy. He quickly tied the second boot and stood.

  “Is it him?” Hope had pulled the quilt with her off the bed and wrapped herself in it to bar his path out the bedroom door. He’d already seen the lush beauty of her full figure, and had caressed every one of her scars, so he doubted it was modesty that made her cover up. She was afraid. Shutting down. Hiding herself from the world that had done her such harm again.

  He needed to say something. He needed to tell her that she meant something to him and that last night was hot and that maybe, one day, when life was sane and safe for them again, they could...what? What was he going to do? What did he want to do about Hope?

  “I gotta go.” Seriously? That was the best he could come up with?

  That knot of consternation dented the skin above her glasses. “Okay.”

  Frustrated by his inability to say the right thing at the right time, and feeling the clock ticking down as the van approached, Pike snaked his hand behind her neck and pulled her up onto her toes, planting a hard kiss on her soft mouth before setting her aside and darting into the hallway.

  “You’re a fighter,” he called out over his shoulder. “Remember that. Hans! Hier!”

  He grabbed his keys, his flak vest and the leash as the big dog bounded to his side. Pike suited up, before putting the harness and badge on Hans. Hope had followed him out, still clutching the quilt to her breasts and bottom, still looking at him with the fear and questions in her eyes.

  Say something.

  The phone vibrated against his thigh. His brother was calling again. The mark must be close now. “I need you to lock the doors behind me. Stay put. I’ll be back.”

  Then he and Hans were out the door and running down the stairs. He opened his truck and put the dog inside as he took Alex’s call. “What’s up?”

  “The van’s stopped at the light at the top of the street. He’ll go past you in about thirty seconds.” Pike started the engine and pulled the truck up to the edge of the parking lot entrance, leaving his lights off to stay hidden until the last possible moment. “I’m ready.”

  “Montgomery was at HQ. He’s on his way. Fensom’s already en route.” The tenor of Alex’s voice changed to that of a soldier, ready for battle. “Light’s changing. I’m on my way down to back you up.”

  Pike felt the same cagey readiness running through his veins. “Roger that. Taylor out.”

  Phone in pocket. Breathe deeply. Grip wheel.

  “And here...we...”

  Go!

  As expected, the boxy white van slowed in front of Hope’s shop. But the driver must have spotted Pike’s truck, even in the shadows. With a squeal of rubber clawing to find traction on the pavement, the van driver pushed his lights up to bright, momentarily blinding Pike, and floored it.

  Since he’d been made, Pike flipped on his own lights and the siren and pulled out onto the street as the van sped past. The truck bounced over the curb and picked up speed to gain ground on the van. With the T-intersection at the south end of the block, the unsub was going to have to either slow down or fly around a corner and risk rolling the van. Either way, Pike intended to stop him.

  Thankfully, there was little traffic, but the driver was already pushing his luck, fishtailing into the side of one parked car as he veered into the opposite lane to try to make a wider turn. Pike pushed the accelerator closer to the floor and held on tighter. The guy whipped back into his lane and bounced off another car, shooting up sparks as metal scraped against metal.

  Pike saw a couple turning the corner on the sidewalk up ahead. Their looks of panic were unmistakable as they jumped back toward the shelter of the nearest building. Another car screeched to a stop and shifted into Reverse, backing out of the intersection as the two vehicles raced toward it.

  “Slow down!”

  Pike’s engine roared with power. His siren screamed in his ears, but he could still make out other sirens in the distance. Too far in the distance. And Alex was at least half a block behind him.

  “We’ve got to stop him, Hansie.” The dog was panting in rhythm with the charged adrenaline pumping Pike’s heart. “It’s you and me.”

  He quickly glanced ahead. Nobody knew this part of town the way he did. He knew every citizen, every corner, every curb. Coffee shop on the left. Dance bar on the right. Yarn shop straight ahead. They were all closed for the night, but owners lived in the apartments above them. Security guards sat in offices and patrolled their buildings. A couple of homeless guys liked the alley off to the east when the night wasn’t too cold. If traffic was clear, that left the abandoned warehouse around the corner to the west that hadn’t been reclaimed yet.

  Target acquired.

  He called in the location, updating the chase to Dispatch, alerting traffic cops to clear the streets, telling his task force teammates where they could finally get their man. He reported his intent and hung up the radio.

  Pressing the accelerator down to the floor, Pike raced up behind the van, targeting the left side of that shiny steel bumper. Closer. Closer.

  The van’s brake lights flashed. “Gotcha.”

  Pike rammed the truck’s front end into the rusting taillight of the van and sent it skidding around the corner. With a big white target and a clear sidewalk in front of him, Pike T-boned the van. It jumped the curb and Pike hit his brakes, letting the truck’s momentum shove the van straight into the crumbling brick facade of the abandoned building.

  His seat belt caught
and held as the truck’s front end crumpled and the windshield cracked. Hans woofed in protest at the wild ride and abrupt stop.

  But they were both okay, and the damn van wasn’t going anywhere. One rear wheel was shredded and one in the front wasn’t even touching the ground.

  “Hans, bleib!” Pike reassured the dog of the need to stay put, unhooked his seat belt and climbed out of the steaming truck.

  He drew his Glock as he ran to the front of the van. “KCPD! Take your hands off the wheel!” He opened the folding door and charged up the steps, his gun pointed straight at the driver’s head. “Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it? You run my girl off the road—I run you...”

  The adrenaline short-circuited into confusion. Gray hair. Prison tats. This wasn’t right.

  “Officer Taylor.” Hank Lockhart massaged his shoulder and ran his tongue along the lip he’d split open, having smacked one or both on the bloodied side window.

  Pike glanced into the back of the van. Empty. Spotlessly clean. And there were no other seats inside. This didn’t make sense. Where...?

  The gray eyes might be bleary with pain or booze, but the old coot was laughing.

  The amused, malevolent sound galvanized Pike and he leveled his gun at the ruddy target of the bastard’s nose. Questions could be answered later. “Hands up, Lockhart.”

  There were lights flashing in the corner of his vision now. Help had arrived. Not that he’d need it to take this lousy excuse for a man down. As soon as Lockhart’s hands settled on top of his head, Pike holstered his weapon and pulled out his handcuffs. He slapped one end around Lockhart’s wrists and reached for the other hand.

  “Ow, man.” Lockhart swore as Pike jerked his injured arm behind him and locked the other cuff around his wrist. “I really took a shot to my shoulder.”

  “And your daughter took on a pair of starving dogs because of you. I don’t hear her complaining.” Cars were stopping, and guns and detectives were charging forward as Pike dragged him out and shoved his face into the side of the van. Pike kicked the old man’s legs apart and searched him, pulling out a pocketknife, a wallet and a thick long envelope. He ripped it open and found a stack of hundred-dollar bills inside. “Where’d you get this?”

  The old man turned his head with a smug grin. “I’m gettin’ my money out of that girl one way or the other.”

  Pike braced his forearm behind Lockhart’s neck and shoved him back against the van. “What are you talking about?”

  “Taylor!” Spencer Montgomery holstered his weapon as he jogged up. With a nod, his partner, Nick Fensom, jumped inside the van to give it the same once-over Pike had done. He took the cash and knife Pike handed him. “Is this our guy?”

  Pike stepped back, shaking his head as the senior detective spun the culprit to face him. “This is Hank...Henry Lockhart Sr.”

  “Hope’s father?”

  Nick jumped down from the van’s steps and holstered his weapon. “My grandmother doesn’t keep her bathroom as spotless as that van. The whole thing reeks of disinfectant.” He pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll call Annie to bring her kit. Whatever was back there has been cleaned within an inch of its life.” He nodded to the gray-haired man in handcuffs. “Who’s this douche?”

  “Our eyewitness’s father.” Montgomery pulled his cell phone from his suit jacket and pulled up a picture. “The van matches Hope’s description. But he’s not our guy. She’d have recognized her own father, wouldn’t she? Even with a mask?”

  Pike glanced behind him, taking in the skid marks and wreckage, unmarked vehicles and black-and-whites with flashing lights blocking off the three-way intersection. This was one hell of a show for downtown Kansas City at five in the morning.

  One hell of a distraction.

  Suspicion lit a fuse inside him. “Run his priors,” he advised the senior detective. He walked out past the back of his truck, gazing as far up the street as the streetlamps and strobe effect of the flashing lights would let him. What was out of place? What was missing? “Lockhart did time in Jeff City. I’m sure he was incarcerated for at least some of the Rose Red Rapist assaults.”

  His brother Alex walked up with Nelda Sapphire in handcuffs. “This one was following you in a compact heap of junk. Didn’t think much of it until you did your fancy driving. Once you crashed, she pulled off in an alley and started running the other direction.”

  “Not a word, Nelda,” Hank warned.

  “Shut up.” Pike and Detective Montgomery both had the same idea.

  “Probably his getaway,” Pike guessed, rejoining the others. If this was their unsub’s van, the one Hope had identified, there were only a couple of reasons why Hank would be driving it. And the coincidence that he’d stolen this particular van wasn’t very likely. “Drive the van someplace and drop it off, then she picks him up.”

  “This isn’t your guy?” Alex asked.

  No. But he could lead them to him.

  “Tell me about the money, Hank.” Pike resisted the urge to drive his fist into that split lip and opted for a threat Hope’s opportunistic father might answer to. “We’ve already got you on speeding, reckless driving, assault, attempted assault—”

  “What? I never.”

  “—and accessory to rape and murder. How much time do you want to spend with your old friends in lockup?”

  “Tell him, Hank,” Nelda urged. Mascara ran down her face as she cried. “Or I will.”

  Surrounded by two armed detectives, a cop in full SWAT gear and an angry Pike who used every inch of his six feet four inches of height to back the coward against the van, Hank finally muttered something useful. “Some guy paid me five thousand to drive his van past Hope’s shop.”

  “Some guy? What guy?”

  “I don’t know.” The guy looked smaller and meaner, backed into a corner like this. But he knew he had no place to go. “He found Nelda and me sleeping in her car last night. Black pants and a jacket was all I could see in the side mirror. Came at us from behind and knocked on the window. Said he saw me hanging around Hope’s shop a couple of times. Told me not to turn around and look at his face, and for that kind of money, I didn’t.”

  Decoy.

  “Hope.” Pike ran to his truck.

  That’s what was off. There’d been no cars parked in front of Hope’s shop when the van drove past. And he’d just spotted a light-colored SUV there.

  Even the unflappable Spencer Montgomery revealed a spike of temper. “You set up your own daughter?”

  “She wouldn’t help me, so I helped myself.”

  Montgomery grabbed Hank Lockhart and handed him off to a pair of approaching uniforms. “Get this trash out of here.”

  Pike’s truck was toast. The shop wasn’t that far. He opened the back door and grabbed Hans’s leash.

  “Taylor!” Detective Montgomery caught the door and closed it after Hans jumped out.

  “Pike?” Alex fell into step beside them as they jogged across the intersection. “Talk to me, bro.”

  “Get everyone back to Fairy Tale Bridal. He’s going after Hope.”

  Then there was only Pike and his partner and a long city block to run. “Go, boy!”

  * * *

  HOPE DIDN’T WASTE any time after Pike and Hans left. She pulled on underwear, jeans and a sweater, and grabbed her phone and keys before unbolting the door and running barefoot down the stairs.

  Whatever was going on was something bad. And even though she had questions about last night with Pike, and even more questions about tomorrow, she knew that something big was breaking on the task force investigation. Pike needed to deal with the danger his brother had alerted him to, and he needed her to nod her head and do what he said.

  She pulled open the door at the bottom of the stairs and immediately turned the dead bolt on the outside door of the vestibule, securing access to both the shop and her apartment. She peered out the door into the rose-tinted darkness of early morning and saw that Pike’s truck was gone. There’d be time to ask quest
ions later, she hoped. Time enough for Pike to come back safely. Time to wrap up this hellish mission and end their fake engagement.

  Hope held on to the door handle and stretched up on tiptoe, trying to see over the fence and hedge that lined the parking lot. Were those flashing lights bouncing off the tops of the buildings? Pike’s was one truck. Just how many emergency vehicles were out there? What was going on? Was someone hurt? Was Pike?

  Obeying common sense as much as curiosity, she unlocked the inside door to the shop and went in to check the front door and windows there. Her bare toes made no sound on the cold tile and carpeting, and she left the lights off so no one would be alerted to movement inside the store.

  She peeked through the mannequins in the window display and saw a black-and-white police car with flashing lights parked sideways across the street, down by the coffee shop. Had there been an accident?

  Without stopping to ponder an answer, she continued to the front door between the displays and jiggled the handle. Locked. Good. She was safe.

  Now she could spend a few seconds pressing her cheek to the glass to see farther down the street. Where was Pike’s truck? All she saw were police cars and flashing lights. She almost smiled with relief. Had they caught the Rose Red Rapist? Had the sting operation worked?

  Hope breathed a sigh of relief and pulled her phone from her pocket. How needy and inappropriate would it be if she called Pike right now and asked him for answers? Asked him to come back to her? Asked him...

  The scent of a powerful cologne, tainted with undertones of vinegar or disinfectant stung her nose.

  Oh, God. Her pulse thundered in her ears. She wasn’t alone in the shop.

  Had someone snuck in before she’d gotten the outside door locked? Who else would have a key?

  She slipped her thumb over the screen of her phone and pushed Pike’s number and the call button. Fear kicked into panic and her fingers trembled as she tried to slide her key into the lock to get out the door. But the reflection taking shape behind her in the window warned her it was already too late.

  Screaming at the familiar white mask, Hope turned to defend herself. But his arm was already swinging. He hit her in the side of the head and she was unconscious before she hit the floor.