by Amy Gamet
“I’m not going to hurt you, Gemma.”
“Shut up. You lied to me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You let me think you were just some stranger. But that’s not true, is it?”
“I’m just going to grab my shorts.” He pulled them up, zipping the zipper and leaving the button open so they hung low on his hips.
She’d taken one look at that body and hopped into bed with him.
What a fool!
“Tell me how you’re involved with Royce. Did you take him?” she demanded.
“No. He’s a client of HERO Force. I met him the day he was kidnapped. The explosion happened right in front of our headquarters.” He held up his injured palm. “I tried to save his wife, but it was too late.”
His burned hand.
She’d wondered about that.
“What a saint,” she said. “But you still didn’t explain how you managed to hook up with me. Don’t tell me it was a coincidence. I don’t have my blinders on anymore.”
“I followed you and your friend there.” He walked slowly toward her. “I went to the scene of the explosion. I watched his wife die hours earlier and I was upset. I was just…walking.”
He was almost to her, and the hand holding the scissors started to shake.
“Then there you were, and I followed you and your friend to the club. I wanted to know who you were. How you knew Royce.”
He went to touch her shoulders and she jerked her body out of reach. “Don’t touch me.”
His stare spoke volumes, reminding her of every intimacy they’d shared, that a touch now was nothing compared to what they’d already done together. She’d all but begged him to make love to her last night, actually letting herself think it might be the beginning of something real between her and Logan.
Stupid girl.
“I’m telling you the truth, Gemma. I want to help you.”
He moved so quickly, she barely registered the movement before he’d lunged and taken the scissors from her hand. “You don’t need these. I would never hurt you.”
She pushed past him. “I’m going home.” She gathered her clothes from the floor, holding them tightly against her chest.
“You’re not safe there anymore, remember?”
“Call me crazy, but I don’t feel so safe here, either.” She went in the bathroom and slammed the door behind her before twisting the lock and leaning up against it.
All she wanted to do was hide.
She should have known better than to get involved with a total stranger.
Walk the straight and narrow.
Don’t do anything reprehensible.
No casual sex.
Expect everything to come out in the open, and when it does, know that you will be able to hold your head high.
13
Hawk had a funny feeling about this that had nothing to do with invading someone’s privacy. He sat behind Royce’s desk in his home office and began opening drawers.
“This place is off the hook,” said Austin. “Can you imagine how much money this guy must have?”
The house was easily five thousand square feet, and every room looked like it had been professionally decorated. Hawk had just started looking at houses online, imagining buying one with Olivia, so he had some idea of what a place like this might cost.
Millions.
State judges must get paid pretty damn well.
Or else they didn’t.
“The house doesn’t bother me as much as the family,” he said. “Those girls didn’t want us here, permission or not.”
“You got that too, huh? Though I think the older one kind of liked me.” Austin looked up from the filing cabinet he was flipping through and winked at Hawk.
“I’m pretty sure she had something stuck in her eye.” He closed one drawer and opened another. “Well hello, Ruger.” He pulled the revolver out of the desk drawer. “Loaded.”
“What kind of dumb shit leaves a loaded gun in a desk drawer?”
“The state justice kind of dumb shit, apparently.”
“Hold the phone, here’s something interesting.” Austin pulled a file out of the cabinet. “A bank account in Switzerland. People actually have those?”
“Sure. You don’t have to put your name on it. It just has a number. Good place to hide money. What’s the balance?”
“Just over three million.”
“Maybe our judge is a saver.”
“Yeah, right. That’s probably it. I’ll bet he started when he had a paper route as a kid.”
Hawk dug through paperclips, perfectly sharpened pencils and sticky notes. A cigar box was tucked into the back of one drawer, and he pulled it out, opening it on the desk. Inside was a photograph of a beautiful young woman, topless in bed.
She was looking at the camera, a sly smile on her face.
“Something tells me this isn’t Barbara Royce.” Hawk held up the picture for Austin to see.
He whistled. “That’s not what she looked like in the wedding picture on the wall downstairs, that’s for sure. Flip it over. See if there’s anything on the back.”
“Nothing.”
“Maybe it’s part of his secret stash. Don’t all guys have some porn hidden somewhere?”
Hawk fingered the picture. “I don’t think this is porn. The way she’s looking at the photographer… I think she loved him.”
“An affair?”
“It’s possible.” He tucked the cigar box back into the drawer, minus the photograph, which he stuck in his shirt pocket.
The men worked quietly for some time.
“I think I found something,” said Austin. He brought a folder to the desk and opened it in front of Hawk. “You recognize any of these names?”
Hawk scanned the list. “No. Should I?”
“My sister was in charge of fundraising for the art gallery downtown. A lot of these names sound familiar. I think they’re donors.”
“For an art gallery? What does that have to do with Royce?”
“Rich people usually like to spread their money around. They don’t just get to the art gallery. They give to charities and causes.”
“And politicians. Let me see that.” Hawk flipped through the folder. “Do you think it’s possible Royce was misappropriating campaign funds from his elections?”
Austin looked around the room. “Judging from this house, I’d say it’s fucking likely. Rich people are always hiding something.”
“You got something against people with money?”
“Hell yeah. Most of them got it by doing something wrong. Think about it. Honest work doesn’t pay so good.”
“Some people are born into money. They just manage to keep it.”
“Exactly. You give your average working Joe a million dollars, what’s he going to do with it?”
Hawk grinned. “Give a lot of it away.”
“That’s right. You buy your mama a house, you buy your nephews and nieces each a car. But rich people don’t think that way. They don’t have the same morals. And I’m pretty damn sure my pops never had a picture of half-naked woman in a cigar box somewhere.”
“You don’t think poor people cheat on each other?”
“Not the way the rich folks do,” said Austin. “That’s what I liked about the SEALs. They’ve got high moral standards. They don’t let the riffraff in, know what I mean?”
“I don’t know about that. The day Cowboy got his swim fins, he almost missed the ceremony because he was buying weed from an AWOL buddy and banging the chaplain’s daughter in the officer’s barracks.”
Austin laughed. “I really like that guy, Cowboy. He’s all right.”
14
Cowboy scratched the beginnings of a beard as he took in their surroundings. “This looks just like my uncle Jake’s place. He lived in the mountains of West Virginia, hunted deer and made moonshine. Near as I can figure, he never did have a job.”
It had taken them nearly an hour to get here, leavi
ng the staples of civilization in their dust long before.
“You don’t have to go far to end up in the middle of fucking nowhere,” said Jax.
Piles of dog excrement littered the property, the air ripe with the smell of shit baking in the sun. “Got a guard dog around here somewhere,” said Cowboy. He looked at Noah. He’d barely said two words since they left headquarters. “You ever seen the backwoods of Georgia?”
“No, but I saw Deliverance.”
“That counts,” said Jax.
Stewart Cole’s property was just over nine acres between a fundamentalist church and a one-truck volunteer fire station. Piles of junk were strewn about the property. A pile of radiators, another of metal lawn chairs.
“Must be a scrapper,” said Cowboy as he started toward the house. The one-story dwelling was made of a patchwork of materials, from a metal and wooden roof to a cinder block porch that seemed to have been an afterthought.
“I’m guessing he’s collecting the steel,” said Noah. “My money’s on prepper.”
“There going to be a great demand for rusted radiators and mid-century lawn chairs at the end of days?” asked Jax.
Noah grinned. “It’s the metal. Some of them use it to make their own weapons. Others think of it as currency. Owning steel means they’ll be able to produce their own goods.”
“How do you know this shit?” asked Cowboy.
Noah hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “It makes good sense to be prepared.”
“You telling me you’ve got a hundred radiators stashed someplace just in case you need to pound out your own quarters?”
“I’m ready for the day when our supply system can no longer meet the needs of American citizens, if that’s what you mean.”
Cowboy narrowed his eyes. “I knew this other guy who was obsessed with the end of the world. Events he couldn’t control, that kind of shit. You want to talk about a prepper, this guy was off the hook. Had himself completely convinced weather patterns were all fucked up because of people’s influence on the earth, and the world was going to become covered in water from all the rain.”
Noah sighed heavily. “Let me guess, he built an ark, right?”
“You two know each other?”
Noah shook his head. “Asshole.”
Cowboy grinned. “What are there, like meetings or something where you guys socialize? Because I’d like to get in on that shit.”
“Shut up, Cowboy,” said Jax.
“I have some lawn chairs I could bring,” said Cowboy. “Extruded aluminum. I was thinking I could make my own tinfoil when all the Shop-Quiks close down.”
“Joke all you want,” said Noah. “But someday you’re going to come knocking on my door because you weren’t prepared for a disaster.”
“Maybe so.” The wind kicked up, blowing dust into Cowboys face. He stopped and squatted down, running his hand along the dirt in the driveway. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in a while. No tire tracks in the driveway since the rain.” They’d had several inches before the heatwave, which had turned greater Atlanta into a swamp before it became the desert they were currently standing in.
“The dirt here is smooth,” said Cowboy. “It hasn’t been driven on since the rainstorms.”
Jax’s voice was low. “Keep your weapons handy, just in case. This guy isn’t exactly our best friend.”
The last hundred yards of the walk to the house was in the wide open, making Cowboy grateful for his bulletproof vest and gun. Stewart was suing them for killing his brother. He was unpredictable, at best.
“I’ll go in first,” said Jax. “Noah, you go around back in case he tries to leave.”
“I thought we just said he wasn’t home,” said Noah.
Cowboy shook his head. “We said nobody’s come or gone in a vehicle. I didn’t say squat about him not being home.”
They walked under the front porch eave and Cowboy exhaled loudly. If no one had taken a shot at them as they crossed to the door, he figured it was less likely they would do so now.
Jax knocked. “Mr. Cole?” He knocked again, yelling louder this time, “We’d like to talk to you.”
“You just trying to make sure he has enough time to grab his gun?” whispered Cowboy.
“Shut up.” Jax turned the knob on the door and opened it a crack. He eyed Cowboy. “Do you find it strange that a prepper would leave his door wide open?”
“Most of these guys have locks up one side and down the other,” said Noah.
Cowboy held his gun at the ready as Jax kicked open the door with his foot. The offending odor of decay hung on the air, slamming Cowboy in the face like a blow.
Jax went to the left and Cowboy went to the right, holding his gun at the ready as he checked for anyone inside. He rounded the last corner in the kitchen, he and Noah holding their firearms at each other. They both put them down. “Clear,” Cowboy yelled.
“Clear,” Jax yelled from the other side of the house.
“What the fuck is that smell?” asked Noah.
“That would be dinner.” Cowboy gestured to the stove, where a rotting carcass of a small animal sat in a pan. “Looks like a groundhog. You know, when the shit hits the fan you’re going to wish you had that. Want me to wrap it up for you to-go?”
Noah ignored him. “It was left as a present for any company that might wander inside.”
“Come here,” called Jax. “You’ve got to see this.”
They found him in tiny room that opened to a bed with filthy blankets and a stained pillow. But it was what Cowboy saw next that made his muscles twitch.
The walls were plastered with photographs and clippings, his eyes instantly drawn to a picture of himself and Charlotte. “Holy Christ.” He crossed to it, plucking it from the wall as he clenched his jaw.
There were pictures of Jax too, along with one of Jessa driving her car with the window down. But the worst was a snapshot of a baby lying in a crib.
Oh, fuck.
Cowboy looked at Jax. “Is that your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“We have to get this guy.” Every muscle in Cowboy’s body was pumped and ready to attack. Cole was after his family. That’s what these people were. His brothers in arms. His sisters. A child who might as well be his niece, and the woman he loved more than anyone. “This shit just got personal.”
Jax’s face registered no emotion. “Dead, Leo. He needs to be dead. Just like his brother.”
Cowboy’s eyes shot to Noah’s. If he’d heard Jax, he gave no indication. Noah simply turned and moved to a second wall, this one covered with clippings of a different sort. “Is this the brother?”
Cowboy turned around. “That’s him all right.”
NAVY SEAL KILLED IN FREAK ACCIDENT.
The paper was yellow with age.
LOCAL SOLDIER WITH PTSD DIES AT SHOOTING RANGE.
Noah took a step back. “I’m going to check out that footlocker.”
Cowboy moved closer a framed picture, Garrison Cole stared back at him in his dress blues, the American flag in the background. The last time Cowboy had seen those eyes, they’d been staring at the sky, lifeless.
I didn’t mean to do it.
Call 9-1-1.
I thought she was older.
“Holy shit,” Noah’s voice brought Cowboy back from the past. “We have a problem.”
Cowboy turned around. Inside the military footlocker at the end of the bed was a red LED timer counting backwards.
Twenty-eight seconds.
“It’s a bomb!” he yelled. “We must have tripped something on our way in. Get the fuck out. Now!”
The men ran out the door, across the cinderblock porch and into the blinding sunshine. The explosion threw them through the air, everything in slow motion, and Cowboy wondered at that moment if Royce was somewhere inside that cabin. Had they killed him just by looking for him?
Cowboy landed hip-first, sliding from the force of his own momentum like he was stealing third base,
his mouth full of dust. He spit on the ground and looked around at his teammates.“Well that was fucking close.”
15
Logan sat in a captain’s chair in the rear of the HERO Force van, two monitors glowing in front of him. One feed was from the camera trained on Gemma’s brownstone. The second was from a camera pointed at her street, where he was parked.
Both were equipped with night vision.
He’d be damned if he was going to let anything happen to her because he’d scared her away. Someone attacked her right here not twenty-four hours before, which meant they knew where she lived and she certainly wasn’t safe here.
She was angry with him. That’s why she’d come home.
It had been easy to find out where she lived, as the only lawyer named Gemma in the greater Atlanta area. Even without a listed phone number he’d tracked her down with a single Internet search. He’d have to teach her the finer points of existing anonymously in the information age, especially after this experience.
Assuming she ever speaks to me again.
He opened Royce’s computer and it came alive with a small song. From the messages he’d already read, he knew Royce had a very busy docket, a doting wife, and an account on Tinder that told Logan the other man wasn’t everything he seemed to be.
Logan was down to fewer than a thousand messages left to read, but his mind’s ability to multitask could be a curse. He could still see Gemma in his mind’s eye, remember what she felt like beneath him. She’d wanted a night of wild sex, and he’d given it to her.
Then you gave her another.
But that wasn’t the problem. He liked her. He liked her a lot.
Movement on a monitor caught his attention. A woman’s silhouette appeared in the upper right corner window.
Gemma.
His stomach clenched.
For a moment he let himself wish things were different.
He shook his head, forcing his thoughts back to the computer. Campaign contributions. A gubernatorial dinner invitation. Airline reservations to Maui for Royce and his wife. An email from someone named, “Old Friend.”
Logan narrowed his eyes and clicked on it.
