GRAY WOLF SECURITY, Texas: The Complete 6-Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  “See you around, Philips.”

  I was gone before anything else could be said. I waited until I was back at the motel to make sure it’d worked. It had. I’d captured every damn word on the throwaway phone I’d taken from David’s desk.

  I had him now.

  Chapter 16

  At the Compound

  David was about to fill Elliot in on the Ingram situation and send him off to Bastrop when Ricki suddenly burst into the room.

  “Where’s Bailey?”

  David shook his head, a trickle of fear already forming in the center of his back.

  “What do you mean, where’s Bailey? Isn’t she with you?”

  “She went upstairs to check on Adam. But she’s not there now.”

  “She’s probably just lost in this labyrinth of a house,” Elliot said. “I’ll go look for her.”

  David and Ricki watched him leave the room, and then wife turned to husband.

  “Something’s not right. Karen is gone, too.”

  “Did you check the garage?”

  Ricki nodded. “One of the SUVs is gone.”

  He closed his eyes, concern burning in his chest. “Ingram went after this Philips person and Bailey went after him.”

  “Exactly what I would have done.”

  David came around his desk and pulled his wife into his arms. “I know. That’s how I knew it was going to happen. I turned on the new cameras in the garage.”

  “Yeah? You’re kind of smart.”

  “Just kind of?”

  She reached up and kissed him gently. “More than kind of.”

  She walked around him and went to his computer, typing quickly on his keyboard. David watched, remembering how enamored of her he was before they ever met. She was incredibly smart, incredibly talented, and incredibly perfect. He’d been part of a team when he was with the FBI working to bring her down. Then she abruptly went legit and her best friend went down for the crime, causing him to be reassigned. But he never forgot her and never stopped admiring her.

  Even now, he admired the way she worked, the way she sometimes stuck her tongue out when she was concentrating really hard. He wanted to suck that pretty little tongue into his mouth and play with it for a while. Forget all this bullshit and enjoy his wife for a while.

  “Here,” she said, touching one of his monitors. “There she is. And there’s Karen.”

  David moved up behind her, studying the monitor. “It doesn’t look like she’s going of her own free will.”

  “It doesn’t, does it?”

  David slowed the video replay. Then he stopped it, flicking his nail against the screen.

  “That’s a knife.”

  Ricki cursed under her breath, something David hadn’t heard her do since Chase got old enough to repeat everything he heard.

  “Karen is in on this somehow.”

  David began to type on the keyboard, bringing up a new screen on one of the monitors. In a moment, he had the answer he’d been looking for. He pointed to the new screen.

  “Carl Philips has a sister. Marlene Karen Philips.”

  “She’s his sister?”

  “That would be my bet.”

  Ricki shook her head, clearly agitated. “We have to go after her.”

  “The police—”

  “She’s one of us, David. We handle these things ourselves.”

  She was right.

  “Okay. I’ll take care of it.” He leaned close to kiss her. “Stay put. Keep Elliot close. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “David…?”

  He paused in the doorway and looked back at her.

  “Be careful. Don’t get dead.”

  He inclined his head slightly. “Don’t plan on it.”

  Chapter 17

  Bailey

  Karen forced me to drive. My hands were shaking and all I could think about was Ingram and whether or not he’d met with a similar fate by now. Philips knew what the hell he was doing. What if he’d figured out what Ingram was doing and had taken him at gunpoint to some remote place? There were lots of little towns out there, but there was also a lot of open space even now in these modern times.

  “Did he hurt you, too?” I suddenly asked. “Are you one of his victims?”

  “There are no victims. Just a bunch of stupid women who can’t handle the attentions of a man.”

  “He rapes them. You know that, right?”

  “He doesn’t have to force himself on anyone. Women flock to him.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Karen lifted the knife off of her lap and pressed it into my side. “You better watch yourself.”

  “He tried to rape me. If I hadn’t been pregnant with Adam, I might have fallen into his trap.”

  “The drug is just to help you relax. He doesn’t mean for it to be an impairment to anything.”

  “But it is.”

  “He told me about the whole thing. He said that some people would twist what he did and make it look bad. But that he never hurt anyone and they always had the option to refuse him.”

  “He was their superior officer. That’s why I went down to talk to him. And I’m sure that’s why the others went to see him.”

  Karen just shook her head. “He never hurt anyone.”

  “He hurt lots of people. He violated women, used them for his own pleasure. And that broke their families apart, hurt their children, and ruined their careers. Do you know that five of the seven women I talked to left the Navy after what he did to them?”

  “That was their choice.”

  I grabbed the wheel roughly between my hands.

  “They had no choice!”

  “We all have choices.”

  “I don’t. Not with that knife in my ribs.”

  She moved the knife, returning it to her thigh. “The knife is just to keep you in line.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To see him. He wants to explain to you why you should turn your husband in to the police in Galveston. Killing Carmichael? That was a little excessive.”

  I glanced at her. “Are you the one who told them about my investigation? Are you the one who told them where I would be the other night?”

  “He’s my brother. When he asks for information, I’m glad to give it to him.”

  Well, that was one mystery solved.

  “Carl Philips. I should have seen it in your face. You have the same eyes.”

  She smiled as if I’d just given her the best compliment anyone could get. It made me sick to my stomach.

  Ingram, where the hell are you?

  Chapter 18

  Ingram

  I wasn’t back at the motel for more than ten minutes before a knock came on the door. I opened it and Philips pushed me backward, a gun in his hand. It was a Taurus Raging Bull, a massive .500 Magnum. I stepped back, watching as he entered the room.

  “Where is it?” he demanded.

  “What?”

  “The tape recording of our conversation! Where is it?”

  I shook my head, pretending I had no idea what he was talking about. But he wasn’t stupid enough to fall for that.

  “I know you were recording our conversation. Where the fuck is it?”

  When I didn’t answer quickly enough, he began walking around the room, flinging things over and pulling open drawers. It didn’t look like he was going to find it at first, but then he kept the gun trained on me as he yanked my bag off the floor and began going through it methodically. He found my guns, setting them aside, then my clothes. Finally, he searched through a side pocket and pulled out the small phone.

  “Throwaways,” he mumbled. “Biggest mistake the government ever made, allowing those to be manufactured.”

  He turned it on and an instant later his recorded voice filled the room.

  “She didn’t drink the wine. If she’d drunk the wine, we wouldn’t have had to take her into the bar like that and you never would have seen her with Carmichael. I told Carmichael to keep his hands
off of her until we were upstairs.”

  He shut it off and smiled at me.

  “You thought you were so much smarter than me. But I’m no fool. I knew what you were up to.” He shoved the phone into his back pocket, his massive gun still pointed at me. “Just so you know, Bailey’s on her way to my house as we speak. And I’m going to enjoy her as I should have five years ago. And, if you’re nice, I might even send you a recording of the whole thing.” He waved his gun at me. “What’s good for the goose and all that…”

  “You touch a hair on her head, and I’ll—”

  “What’ll you do, Porter? The Galveston police are already looking for you on murder charges. You really want to add breaking and entering and assault to that charge?” He shook his head, a look of something like pity on his face. “You really don’t understand when you’ve been beaten, do you?”

  He turned and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

  Asshole!

  I rushed over to the window and watched as he climbed into a Cadillac Escalade and peeled out of the parking lot like a teenager who got off on the sound of his tires squealing. Then I went to the closet and knelt in front of the cheap, but sturdy, safe sitting there.

  The phone was still there.

  Two throwaway phones I’d taken from David’s office. Two phones recording our conversation. He got one, but that was okay. I still had this one and the copy of the recording I’d sent out in a mass email to a dozen news agencies, the Office of Naval Affairs, the JAG offices in South Carolina, and all the employees of GWS2.

  Who was beaten?

  But that quip about Bailey…I called Annie back in Austin.

  “Is Bailey there? Can I talk to her?”

  Annie was quiet for a moment. “I think I should let you talk to Ricki.”

  And that’s when I knew he wasn’t lying. I nearly disconnected, but Ricki must have been standing beside Annie because her voice filled my ear nearly immediately.

  “It’s Karen, Ingram. I don’t know how much you know about her, but we think she’s Carl Philips’ sister. She took Bailey at knifepoint.”

  “I know where they’re headed.”

  “Let me send Tony to help you.”

  I shook my head as though she could see it. “I’ve got this.”

  I disconnected then, grabbed my bag, and left.

  There was no way in hell I was letting anything happen to my wife. Again.

  Chapter 19

  Bailey

  Karen directed me toward a modest neighborhood in Bastrop. I thought about purposely driving the SUV off the road or swerving in the hopes that she would drop the knife. But I knew that if it didn’t work properly, she would be angry, and angry could mean that I wouldn’t make it to Philips’ house in one piece.

  I needed to get home to my boy. That’s all I could think about.

  “Pull into the garage,” she said, gesturing to a house on the end of one block. I did as I was told, a shock moving through me when I recognized Carl Philips standing just inside the garage, his finger on the garage door opener.

  As I pulled the vehicle to a stop and put it into park, Karen jumped out and went to him, throwing her arms around him and accepting a kiss that was highly inappropriate between brother and sister. The knife was still in her hand, but he slipped it away as he gently extracted himself from her embrace.

  “Hello, Lieutenant Greer,” he said as he yanked the car door open. “It’s been too long.”

  “Rear Admiral.”

  He inclined his head slightly. “I appreciate that you kept up enough with me to realize my rank.”

  I glared at him. “I couldn’t care less about your rank. But it stuck out at me when I saw the news reports on what you’d done to that young assistant of yours.”

  “An unfortunate circumstance.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the car. “I am overjoyed to see you, though. We can finally have some of that fun we were meant to have five years ago.”

  “We weren’t meant to have anything.”

  “Oh, but we were. I had so many things planned for you that night. The poor waitress who took your place wasn’t nearly as much fun as I imagined you would be.”

  I shuddered, the thought that some other girl was hurt because I managed to escape his claws made me sick. I wanted to cry, but he was dragging me into the house, the smell of sweat and burned food filling my nostrils. Then I wanted to be sick for a whole different reason.

  I didn’t get much of a chance to take in the house. He pulled me through the kitchen and the living room—the only impression was that it was dark and dirty, clothes and discarded items all over the room—to the stairs. There was discarded clothing all over the house, including on the stairs. But this one room, the room he took me to, was completely ordered. I found myself wishing it wasn’t.

  It was a small bedroom at the back of the house on the second floor. It was painted a deep, dark violet and it contained things I’d never imagined before: whips, chains, paddles, sexual toys of all sorts and colors—from dildos to vibrators to butt plugs—and some things I didn’t recognize and couldn’t imagine what they were used for.

  My stomach couldn’t take it anymore. I doubled over and vomited on the floor.

  “Fuck!”

  Philips drove his knee into my stomach, thrusting me away from him in the process. I fell onto the floor, landing wrong on my arm. I cried out, causing Karen to rush up the stairs.

  “Clean that crap up!” Philips demanded when he saw her. “And her. I want her clean and ready in an hour.”

  He stomped away, Karen watching him go, a mixture of anger and guilt on her face, like what had just happened was completely her fault.

  She grabbed me by the hair on the back of my head, half dragging, half carrying me to the bathroom. She pushed me onto the toilet and turned to turn on the water in the low bathtub. I pretended to be broken, not moving at all as I watched. After a minute, she stopped turning to check on me. Instead, she settled on the edge of the tub and let the water play over her fingers as it rushed into the tub.

  I waited, my arm throbbing, my head hurting. When there was enough water in the tub, I jumped to my feet and pushed her, forcing her head into the tub. I heard it crack, felt the brief loosening of her muscles as she lay there stunned for just a second. And then she began to struggle. I held her head as tight as I could, waiting for the struggle to end. Tears were burning my throat, filling my eyes. This woman had lived with my child and me for four years. She’d been my friend, my confidant, and my child’s best buddy. She betrayed me, but it felt like I was the one doing the betraying now.

  When she stopped struggling, I pulled her out of the water. She gasped for breath, but she was clearly unconscious. I lay her on the floor, on her side in case she coughed up water, and retreated, blocking the door with a handy chair that just happened to be close by.

  I wasn’t just going to sit back and let this man torture me.

  I searched the room, touching things I never wanted to touch again, until I found a solid piece of hickory that would work well as a weapon. And then I slipped out the bedroom door, ready to confront the man who ripped apart my marriage in less than five minutes one morning five years ago.

  I had my family back. I wasn’t going to let anyone screw that up for me now.

  Chapter 20

  Ingram

  I sped up to the house in the truck, parking on Philips’ front lawn. I had the rifle in my hand, the 9mm in my waistband, and the .35 in my other hand. He would know the moment he saw me that I was fucking serious.

  I could feel eyes on me. A neighbor was standing in her doorway, watching as I approached the front door. Another was watching me through an upstairs window. Neither had a phone or seemed terribly interested in calling the police.

  “Come on, Philips!” I yelled at the closed door. “Come out and play with someone your own size!”

  There was no sound coming from inside the house. There was a door to the garage near the f
ront door. I walked over, my rifle trained on the front door, and peeked inside. An SUV just like the one I drove was parked inside.

  They were here.

  “I know she’s in there, Philips! You better let me in before I blast my way in!”

  Still no response.

  I walked over to the bay windows that overlooked the front yard. One blast from the .35 and they shattered. Like Schwarzenegger in some bad action movie, I stepped up onto the high ledge and let myself into the house. The smell was a little overwhelming, the smell of a bachelor who’d never tried to take care of himself before.

  “Bailey!” I yelled, hoping she would hear me and know that I was here to save her.

  “She’s busy at the moment.”

  Philips’ voice was coming from the kitchen. I turned in that direction, but I couldn’t see anything in the dim light. I didn’t care. Military training told me to duck, to keep out of the line of fire. The husband in me wanted to find Bailey as quickly as possible, to hell with the risks. I stormed toward the kitchen, bursting through the threshold with guns raised. He wasn’t there.

  “Quit playing games, asshole!” I screamed.

  “She wants me, Porter,” he said, his voice coming from the stairs now. “She wants me to fuck her because she’s never had a real man before.”

  I spun around and fired the rifle. The recoil pushed me off balance, possibly saving my ass as he fired that cannon at me. The bullet shattered a cabinet door to the left of my face, a piece of wood imbedding itself in my flesh.

  “You’re too emotional, Porter,” Philips called. “That’s what makes this almost too easy.”

  I rushed toward the stairs, aware that he’d probably already moved on. But I needed to find him; I needed to kill him. There was this drive inside of me that simply couldn’t be calmed.

  I took the stairs two at a time, kicking every door open as I came to it, searching. He was nowhere to be found, but I happened upon his playroom. Talk about your sick fucks. He made that Grey fellow from those fifty-whatever books look tame by comparison.