Bulletproof Hearts

by Brenda Harlen

  “I’m pissed off at myself,” he admitted.

  “Why?”

  “Because I should have anticipated that Conroy would engineer a stunt like this.”

  “What could you have done to prevent it?”

  “I could have had Jennings under surveillance.”

  “Why him and not one of the others? There are several independent witnesses in this case. If it hadn’t been Jennings, it would have been someone else.” Instinct momentarily overruled common sense, and she reached out to lay a comforting hand on his arm. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  The anger and disgust in his tone alerted her that there was something more going on than just his frustration with the case. She dropped her hand away, folded her arms across her chest. “What are you really angry about, Dylan? The fact that Conroy got to a witness? Or the fact that you were sleeping with me when it happened?”

  “Both.”

  She’d known it was a mistake to get involved with him—for so many reasons. She’d known that what happened between them couldn’t last. But to hear him so easily disregard their night together was more than she could take right now.

  “I didn’t invite you to come here last night,” she reminded him. “You showed up on your own initiative with your Kung Pao Chicken and your damn dimples and now you’re blaming me for what happened?”

  “I didn’t come here with the intention of making love with you.”

  “And when you said, ‘Let me make love with you, Natalie’—what did you really mean? Pass the fried rice?”

  “I know I made the first move,” he admitted grudgingly.

  “You made all the moves.”

  “You wanted me as much as I wanted you.”

  “I did,” she agreed coolly. “My mistake.”

  She went back into her room and closed and locked the door behind her.

  Chapter 9

  Dylan stopped at McNamara’s on his way home. He’d started frequenting the pub after Beth died. It was a popular spot and within walking distance of his home. That had been a particularly important factor in the weeks just after her death, when he’d often had to leave his car parked in the lot behind the bar and stumble drunkenly home to his empty house.

  As tempting as it had been to lose himself in an alcoholic haze, he’d finally realized that no amount of booze could bring her back. It had been a long time since he’d drunk himself into a stupor, but he still stopped by on occasion. Mostly because the pub was never empty. Not that he often struck up a conversation with other patrons, but being there provided him with the illusion that he wasn’t alone. He needed that illusion tonight.

  He found an empty stool and studied the rows of bottles behind the bar. It would be easy enough to fall into old habits, to drown his misery in a haze of alcohol. But he was smarter now. Smart enough to know that, once again, Zane Conroy had won. Zane Conroy always won. Nothing could undo the damage that had been done. He ordered a Pepsi.

  “Haven’t seen you around here in a while,” the aging bartender said, placing the soda on a coaster in front of him. “Did you finally find yourself a woman to keep you warm at night?”

  Dylan managed a smile. He’d spent enough time at this pub over the years to have struck up something of a friendship with Liam McNamara, and he knew the older man’s question was precipitated as much by concern as curiosity. “Found her and lost her—all within twenty-four hours,” he admitted.

  “Is that why you’re looking so miserable?”

  “One of the reasons.” He could hardly discuss his crumbling case against Zane Conroy with a civilian.

  Both men glanced toward the door as a trio of women walked into the bar.

  “Might find someone in that group to take your mind off your troubles,” Liam told him.

  Dylan just shook his head. He wasn’t in the mood for that kind of company. He couldn’t look at anyone else right now and not think of Natalie.

  He sipped his Pepsi and tried not to remember the things he’d said. He’d struck out at her blindly, because she was there—a convenient target for his mounting frustration. She hadn’t deserved to bear the brunt of his anger, his dissatisfaction.

  He’d accused her of being naive, and maybe she was. But he would bet she wasn’t so naive as to give him another chance. Whatever hope he’d had of building a relationship with Natalie had been annihilated by a few harshly spoken words.

  Or maybe that had been his intention all along. Maybe he’d deliberately instigated a fight with Natalie because he was terrified by what had happened between them last night. He’d loved Beth, and losing her had nearly destroyed him. With Natalie, he’d felt the first genuine stirring of emotion in years. When they’d made love, he’d realized he was dangerously close to falling in love with her. He’d thought he was ready to open up his heart again. He was wrong.

  The incident with Victor Jennings reminded him of the danger and the vulnerability that was an inherent aspect of sharing your heart with someone. Jennings wasn’t refusing to testify because he feared for his own life. He was afraid of the potential danger to his family. That was Zane Conroy’s greatest asset—knowing and targeting weakness. By using Jennings’s father-in-law’s car to deliver the dead rat, he’d proven—simply and effectively—that he could get to Jennings’s family. And that was a risk Jennings wasn’t willing to take.

  Dylan might be angry and frustrated, but he couldn’t blame the man. If he could go back in time, he would have done anything to stop Beth from leaving their house that night. But he couldn’t go back. He also couldn’t risk losing someone else he loved, and he knew the only way to ensure that would be to not fall in love again.

  He regretted the things he’d said to Natalie earlier. But he couldn’t regret the result. Whatever might have grown between them was ended. He wasn’t ready to open up his heart again. He didn’t know if he ever would be.

  He was staring into his empty glass, still thinking about Natalie, when Joel Logan came in and straddled the empty stool beside him. The former detective ordered a beer and gestured for the bartender to refill Dylan’s glass.

  “What brings you to this part of town?” Dylan asked.

  “I was looking for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe I just want to share a drink and some conversation.” Joel took the beer the bartender set in front of him and tipped the bottle to his lips, drinking deeply.

  “Maybe,” he allowed. “But not likely.”

  “Those powers of deductive reasoning never cease to amaze me.”

  “You’re easily impressed,” Dylan told him. “But why don’t you tell me what really dragged you away from your pretty young wife this afternoon?”

  “I heard about the Jennings incident.”

  The revelation didn’t really surprise Dylan. With Joel’s contacts in the police department, there wasn’t much he couldn’t find out if he wanted to—and he had a definite interest in anything that might be linked to Conroy.

  “We found enough evidence to point the finger at Ellis Todd,” Dylan told his friend, “but nothing that definitively places him at the scene.”

  “Which makes me wonder,” Joel said, “why Todd would deliver his unpleasant little package from a vehicle that would undoubtedly be traced back to him.”

  “I’ve wondered the same thing.”

  “Any theories?”

  “Arrogance, carelessness, stupidity.” He’d considered a dozen different possibilities, but none seemed to fit.

  “Or maybe he’s being set up,” Joel suggested.

  Dylan laughed. That was one he had not considered. “You know as well as I do that innocent men don’t work for Zane Conroy.”

  “I’m not disagreeing with you. I have no doubt that our accountant has been cooking Conroy’s books, but I have trouble picturing him slitting the throat of a furry little rodent.”

  “Anyone who could pump Merrick full of bullets wouldn’t think twice about carving up
a rat.”

  “Which brings me to my next point,” Joel said, sounding pleased. “Do you really think Ellis Todd was the triggerman in Merrick’s apartment?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think,” Dylan reminded him. “The evidence all points to Todd as Merrick’s killer.”

  Joel hesitated, as if there was something else he wanted to say. But in the end he just nodded. “Are you going to question Todd regarding this incident?”

  “Yeah, but I figured it could wait until after the weekend.”

  “Isn’t his prelim Monday?”

  “It’s supposed to be. But I’d guess it will be adjourned, considering the absence of one of the prosecution’s main witnesses.”

  “There’s enough circumstantial evidence to make a prima facie case without Jennings’s testimony.”

  Dylan wished he could be as certain. “Maybe.”

  “I heard the new A.D.A.’s handling the prelim.”

  He nodded.

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t have a problem with it,” he said, and felt only a slight twinge of guilt for lying to his friend. “So long as she does the job.”

  “Then you’ve resolved your concerns about her?”

  Not even close. “As much as possible at this stage,” was all he said.

  Joel pushed away from the bar, slapped a hand on his shoulder. “If there’s anything you need, just let me know.”

  “Thanks.”

  Dylan left McNamara’s feeling even more miserable than when he’d walked in.

  Natalie was furious with Dylan after their altercation Saturday afternoon, and even angrier with herself.

  Shannon had always warned her that her heart would get her into trouble. She’d been right. Seven years earlier, Natalie had thought she was in love with Jack’s dad. She’d certainly been awed and enthralled by him. It wasn’t until much later she’d realized sex had never been anything more than a physical act to him; it had certainly never been an expression of love. And yet she’d allowed herself to hope that making love with Dylan had been something more. That illusion had lasted less than twenty-four hours.

  She blamed him for destroying that illusion. She blamed herself for believing in it, for giving him that power to hurt her. She wouldn’t do so again.

  Last night he’d touched her—body and soul—as no one else ever had. Today, he’d told her he wished it had never happened. Well, he couldn’t regret it any more than she did right now.

  And so she’d ruthlessly banished all thoughts of Dylan Creighton from her mind and concentrated on preparing for Monday’s preliminary hearing. She established the order of physical evidence, prepared her questions for the witnesses. And when she was sure she could recite the facts of the case and the applicable law in her sleep, she went over it all again. By the time she fell into bed, she was so exhausted she slept without even dreaming about the man who’d held her in his arms the night before.

  When she entered Judge Kirkwood’s court Monday morning, Natalie was prepared, focused and determined. But, she knew the exact moment Dylan walked into the room. She sensed his presence instinctively.

  She was still angry, still hurt, but more than anything, she regretted the distance between them. She hadn’t been in Fairweather long enough to make many friends, but she’d thought he was one.

  He stayed throughout the prelim, and he was still there, sitting in the front row, when everyone else had filed out of the courtroom after the judge had bound Ellis Todd over for trial.

  “Congratulations.”

  She reminded herself that whatever mistakes they’d made Friday night, they had to work together and, for that reason, she would treat him with professional courtesy and respect. She turned, offering a cool smile that she hoped masked the longing in her heart. “Thank you. I can only hope the trial goes half as well.”

  She closed the lid of her briefcase, snapped the locks shut. He stepped through the swinging gate of the bar, blocking her escape.

  “How did you convince Jennings to take the stand?”

  It hurt, to look at him and remember the intimacies they’d shared. To attempt to carry on a casual conversation as if Friday night had never happened. But she had too much pride to reveal these feelings, and she managed to respond to his question in an equally neutral tone. “I told him we needed his testimony in order to convict a killer.”

  “That didn’t carry much weight when I mentioned it.”

  “He was scared,” she reminded him. “For himself and his family. But he’s a good man. He loves his wife and his daughters, and he goes to work at six o’clock every morning to provide for them.”

  “Which he won’t be able to do if Conroy has him killed.”

  “I can see why you didn’t succeed with him if that’s the line of reasoning you used,” she said dryly.

  “That’s what he told me,” Dylan said. “And it’s true.”

  “It’s also true that Roger Merrick had a family,” Natalie pointed out. “He was a twenty-three-year-old man with a fiancée and a baby. He had two younger brothers and loving parents who are still mourning his death. He was a kid who made some mistakes, got himself into debt with Conroy, and when he tried to get out—Conroy ordered his execution.”

  “And sharing those details with Jennings changed his mind about testifying?” He still sounded skeptical.

  “Instead of letting him use the potential danger to his family as a justification not to testify, I made him see that his love for his family was the reason he should.”

  “How?”

  She knew his interest had nothing to do with her and everything to do with getting to Zane Conroy through Ellis Todd. He wanted nothing more than to bring his wife’s killer to justice, and she felt petty and small for resenting that fact. “I asked him how he’d feel if it had been his wife or his brother or one of his children who had been killed. It’s too late for Roger Merrick’s family to protect him, but it isn’t too late for justice.”

  “Very good, counselor. Is that going to be part of your closing argument at trial?”

  She shrugged, shifted the weight of her briefcase to her other hand. “It might, but the trial’s still a long way off and I have a lot of work to do before then.”

  He was silent for a long moment.

  She waited, half-hoping he would just walk away and leave her alone, half-hoping he would find the words to break through the awkwardness between them.

  He stepped aside.

  She walked away.

  Natalie grabbed a turkey sandwich from the courthouse cafeteria and headed back to her office. She needed half an hour of peace and quiet to beat back the headache that was brewing behind her eyes. She glanced at her watch, considered her afternoon schedule and did some quick mental calculations. At least twenty minutes, she promised herself.

  Then she stepped into her office and came face-to-face with Randolph Hawkins.

  “Round one goes to the lady A.D.A.,” he said. Then he smiled pleasantly at her, as if he hadn’t stood in that exact same spot once before and threatened to have her disbarred.

  She dumped her briefcase and sandwich on top of her desk and mentally kissed those twenty minutes goodbye.

  Hawkins hadn’t so much as glanced in her direction throughout the preliminary inquiry. Now he was making polite conversation, pretending they were allies rather than adversaries. She didn’t have time for games.

  “Only because your client’s scare tactics were unsuccessful.”

  Hawkins frowned. “I’m not sure I like your implication.”

  She sank into her chair and began unwrapping the cellophane from her sandwich. “You’ll like it even less when your client’s bail is revoked for witness tampering.”

  “My client hasn’t been charged with any such crime,” Hawkins denied hotly.

  “Not yet.”

  She bit into the dry bread and processed meat, prepared for the next round of confrontation. She was surprised, and immediately suspi
cious, when he let the topic drop.

  “I’ll worry about that if and when charges are laid,” he said, lowering himself into one of the chairs across from her. He smiled again. “I’m here today to discuss the disposition of the current charge.”

  “Disposition?” She pushed her lunch away. “Does your client wish to change his plea to ‘guilty’?”

  “I think I can convince my client to consider a plea to a lesser charge. What are you offering?”

  “Murder one.”

  “That’s hardly a bargain.”

  She opened her briefcase, withdrew Ellis Todd’s file. “If your client wants to plead, he’ll plead the sheet. You’ve given me no evidence to support a reduction of the charge.”

  “And you have no evidence of motive.”

  “Motive isn’t a required element of the crime.”

  “Maybe not according to the letter of the law, but in my vast experience, juries don’t convict without understanding the ‘why’ of the crime.”

  Natalie would never admit it aloud, but his statement closely paralleled her own thoughts—her own doubts. John Beckett had handed her the case neatly tied up with a bow, but the lack of motive continued to nag at her. To Hawkins, she merely said, “If you’re that confident, why not take it to trial?”

  “Because a trial will only waste my time and yours. The physical evidence is there, motive is not. Without it you might get a conviction, but not on first-degree murder.”

  “I can show premeditation,” she reminded him. “The gun was in the possession of Todd’s estranged wife, he was at her home Saturday night, Merrick was killed Monday.”

  “You can’t prove he took the gun on that particular night.”

  “I only need to prove he took it prior to killing Merrick. The jury will infer that he took it for that purpose.”

  “You’re putting an awful lot of faith in the hands of twelve randomly selected citizens.” His tone was deliberately patronizing.

  “I have confidence they’ll do their jobs.”

  “But it’s possible that Mr. Todd removed the gun from his wife’s home weeks earlier. Maybe he decided he didn’t like the idea of a loaded gun being kept in the house with his child.”