Donnell Ann Bell

by Donnell Ann Bell

  “We’ve kept her aware of his movements so far. Now that he’s disappeared, why would we do otherwise?”

  “She’ll think I failed her,” Simon replied.

  “I doubt that. She’s aware of everything you’ve done for her.” Joe sighed. “Any chance we’re overreacting? That Maxwell has let all of this go?”

  “The warden at Maxwell’s prison passed on a decade of documented reports that say differently. I find your wishful thinking unlikely. Maxwell may not have had a thing to do with Jesse Ropes’ murder, but if Drake finds Melanie, he will hurt her. Which brings me back to my point, if she chooses to avoid you, how do you plan to keep her safe?”

  That was a damn good question. Joe had no idea. “You’ve seen how I work. I’ll think of something.”

  Joe hung up the phone. He should return to the meeting, but he’d said his peace, and now it was up to the brass to approve the additional overtime. He dialed information and asked for the number of Maxwell Construction in Riverside.

  Adam Maxwell greeted Joe in the most cordial of tones. It wasn’t until Joe identified himself that he caught the first case of hostility. “I’ll tell you what I told the other man who called me today. I can’t help you. I wish I could.”

  “I appreciate that, Mr. Maxwell. But I have to ask―did your brother mention a man by the name of Jesse Ropes?” Joe went on to explain about the guard’s murder.

  Maxwell remained silent for a time. “We never got that far. Drake wanted one thing when he came to see me, and that was money. I offered him a job. He refused. He left. As I said, I’d help you if I could. It would be a huge relief to my family.”

  “Why is that, sir?”

  “He threatened to kill every last one of us.”

  Joe stared so hard at the wood ingrains in the door, the pattern swirled. “That’s an important omission, Mr. Maxwell. Did you alert the local police?”

  “No. I have it all on a digital recording, though. If Drake dares to harm any one of us, he’s our number one suspect. He ruined my family’s reputation once. It took us years to rebuild it. My company can’t tolerate any more negative publicity.”

  “Who do you think your brother would come after first?

  As Joe met with another round of silence, the ingrained wood pattern spun faster.

  “Drake would come after me first,” Adam admitted. “But as I explained, I have the recording, I surround myself with topnotch security, and my driver’s my bodyguard.”

  Joe yanked his gaze from the damn door. “Sounds like you’ve taken precautions. But I hope you’ll keep vigilant. If you happen to think of anything, no matter how insignificant, or if you see your brother around―”

  “I’ll call you. I can’t even begin to make excuses for Drake. There are none. It wasn’t until our last meeting that I realized he truly lacks conscience. If he did this terrible thing...” Adam’s voice shook as it trailed off. “My deepest condolences to Mr. Ropes’ family.”

  To hell with Drake Maxwell and his civil rights. Someone needed to give a damn about the people who crashed in his wake.

  Joe gave Adam Maxwell every one of his contact numbers, then called the Cañon City Police Department and clued the investigating detective in on the fact they should consider another suspect regarding the guard’s murder. As Joe expected, the detective wasn’t particularly appreciative or willing to share information.

  Joe returned to the Chaos Bandit meeting, still heavy in debate. He forced himself to focus, but his thoughts kept veering toward Maxwell. From the warden to Maxwell’s brother, everything pointed to Drake being one vengeful son of a bitch. Moreover, Adam Maxwell may have not known the correct term, but the wealthy businessman had just called his brother a sociopath. The question was, who did he hold a grudge against more―the family who’d rejected him or the woman Joe couldn’t banish from his head?

  Chapter Nineteen

  Drake settled in with the ex-cons. Well, about as well as he’d settled in with anyone. When you’ve been in prison you make do. As he’d suspected would happen, Ramirez was kicking his ass. From the moment Drake joined the team, he’d been surrounded by nonstop planning and bullshitting. Early mornings, late evenings, Ramirez concentrated on dividing these men who thought they were bad-asses into teams. From there, he trained them to disorient, strike fast and hit the least suspecting.

  With the exception of Ramirez, Drake didn’t see one he couldn’t take. And after seeing the gang leader’s smarts, and what he had planned for the future, Drake wanted in on this deal. In a few short months, this crew had raked in some serious bread.

  There was one small problem. Ramirez watched everybody―especially Drake. Maybe it was because the gang leader had bought Drake’s lie that he was flat-assed broke, or maybe it was simply because, in or out of the joint, cons don’t trust easily. Whatever the reasons, he had found himself invited to camp out in Ramirez’s sister’s basement―which might have worked for Ramirez, but not necessarily for his younger sister.

  Not much shocked Drake anymore, but that’s what occurred the moment he met her. She’d entered her eastside Colorado Springs home two nights ago, taken one look at the diverse group of thugs sitting around her dining room table, said something to her brother in Spanish, and the chill factor in the room had plummeted to sub-zero.

  Ramirez shrugged, said something back to her in Spanish, to which she’d grabbed her suitcase, glared at them all and disappeared into the back of the house.

  Unless you crossed him, Ramirez was very good at keeping his cool. That night, however, he’d met every con’s gaze with a snarl and a warning look. And who could blame him? Maria Ramirez was a sweet piece of meat, with a gorgeous face, long legs and shimmering black hair down her back.

  From that time on, the house had been filled with her perfume and the smell of her spicy cooking, which to a con who’d spent fifteen years in the joint, was like tossing a single piece of prime rib to a pack of wild dogs.

  This morning, however, Drake had other business on his mind. Ramirez had left early, and Drake saw it as the perfect opportunity to take advantage. He’d had the stolen Pueblo phone book in his possession for several days now, and he’d managed to work his way through the Ks. So far, the people he’d talked to at the floral shops were either morons or crazy suspicious. But the end result was still the same―no one had ever heard of Melanie Norris.

  Now that he was on the outside, he realized another thing the bitch had cost him. Namely, he couldn’t keep up. Just like the GPS device he considered totally worthless and alien, he felt the same about computers. He’d go crazy if he ever had to spend any length of time behind one.

  So if he was going to find her, he needed someone with a grasp of technology.

  Tucking the phone directory inside his coat, he slipped on gloves and walked out the front door. Outside, the sky was blue, but the day was brisk and he could see his breath as he strode to the apartment complex where he parked his Jeep. Next to the complex was a coffee house where the cons met up, and there was one team member he was anxious to see.

  Ramirez called the guy “Breakneck,” when his name was actually something unoriginal like Mike Brown. Breakneck had something to do with the guy’s typing speed and accessing of information. From what Drake had learned, Brown had been in and out of the pen since he was eighteen years old. Now in his late thirties, he’d been convicted of everything from dope dealing to grand theft auto. But the last time Brown had gone back to prison, he’d said he was done. He’d then enrolled in the slammer’s vocational training program to learn computers. Now he fixed them part-time for a struggling electronics shop, and when he wasn’t there, Ramirez gave Breakneck a cut for researching the hits.

  Sure enough, the moment Drake entered the cafe, he saw the dude, fingers flying, in one of the booths near the johns. Drake ordered two cups of coffee, sauntered through
the semi-crowded restaurant, placed the extra coffee in front of Brown and slid into a seat across from him.

  Brown’s stubby fingers paused on the keyboard. The man with a really bad goatee eyed the coffee, stared back through black-rimmed glasses, with an obvious look of suspicion.

  Drake took no offense. It was an expression most men in the pen wore when they wanted to stay alive.

  “What’s up, Max?” he said.

  “How’d you like to make some money?”

  Brown started typing again. “You know the rules. No business outside of our hits.”

  “Nothing crooked about it,” Drake said. “There’s five-hundred now, and five-hundred when you finish the deal.”

  “Where’d you get a grand? You haven’t helped us with a job yet.”

  Brown grilling Drake about where he got his money pissed the hell out of him, but with forty or so witnesses, he unclamped his jaw and tamped down his temper. “Where I got it is my business. Look, my old lady disappeared.” He forced the next words. “I’m still hung up on her. Someone said she had my kid. I gotta know for sure, one way or the other. Nothing illegal about it.”

  Brown folded his arms and his eyebrows shot up. “She live here?”

  “Pueblo.” Drake pulled out the rolled up phone book from the lining of his jacket. She works with flowers, so I was trying the floral shops. I’ve scratched off how far I got.” He shrugged. “With all we’ve got going on with Ramirez, I’m not getting very far.”

  When Brown picked up his coffee, Drake took it as a good sign. “There’s probably a faster way to do it,” Brown said. “Does Ramirez know what you’re doing?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Let’s keep it between us.”

  Why didn’t I think of that? Drake extracted the bills from his pocket.

  “I don’t hack government agencies, Max. I got enough problems with my IP address, and hacking those places carries a sentence of five to ten. I’ll do my best, but I ain’t going back on the inside.” Brown paused. “By the way, say I don’t find her, do I... I mean, there’s some work involved... keep the five hundred?”

  Drake leaned back, looked the dude in the eye and resisted laughing out loud. Under the table, he tightened his grip, imagining the feel of the spindle that he’d used to crush Rope’s windpipe. But Brown could do what Drake couldn’t, so slowly he uncurled his fingers. Covering the money with his palm, he slid it across the table. “Tell you what. Ramirez wants to leave the Springs by New Year’s. If you find my chick by Christmas, I’ll include a bonus.”

  Brown’s eyes narrowed and made with the familiar suspicion again. “Seriously?”

  Drake forced something he hoped was a smile. “Absolutely.” And if Brown kept Drake’s money without results, his nickname of Breakneck would be Broken Neck.

  “Okay, Max. You got yourself a deal. Here’s what I need...”

  Ten minutes later, Drake wiped the grin off his face as he rounded the corner toward the hideout. Good thing he did, too, because Ramirez sat in his low-rider in the driveway with the motor running. “Where you been, Max?”

  Who was this guy, his mother? In that instant, it didn’t matter how good the highfalutin spic was with a blade, Drake had his fists, which he was about to use on the gang leader’s face. “I went for coffee.”

  “Dressed like that?”

  He glanced down. He wore jeans and a jacket over a flannel shirt, almost identical to what Ramirez wore. Returning a what-the-fuck look, Drake replied, “Yeah.”

  “Get in, Max.”

  Warily, he did what he was told, then for the first time considered that Brown might have pocketed the money and ratted Drake out anyway.

  He’d kill the son of a bitch. Holding his breath, Drake said, “Want to tell me where we’re going?”

  Ramirez backed into the street and put the car into drive. “You look like shit, amigo. You need some new clothes.”

  Later that afternoon, when they sat in Maria’s kitchen again, Drake ran his hand over the back of his neck and winced at the noticeable lack of hair. Turned out Brown wasn’t doomed to die anytime soon after all.

  Ramirez joined Drake at the table and plopped down a heavy binder. “Why are you frowning, amigo? I did you a favor. You no longer look like shit. As a matter of fact, you clean up real nice.”

  Nice? He frigging looked great.

  When he’d walked into the swanky men’s clothing store with a pocketful of Ramirez’ cash, the store manager had eyed Drake like a bum. But then he plopped down two grand on a suit, and a couple of dress pants and shirts later, the stiff dick had found religion and treated him like a god.

  Dressed in his new threads, he’d left the store. People on the street had said excuse me, actually met his gaze and smiled. Not that he’d smiled back. For a moment, he’d glanced over his shoulder to see if there was somebody else behind him. Nope, they’d been looking at him. Respect. It was about fucking time.

  Now Ramirez opened a binder full of Brown’s research. “Based on what I’ve gone over here, I’ve nixed some of the previous plans. Take a look at the ones I’ve highlighted in yellow.”

  Drake pulled the papers close, but he was like a boy stuck in a wet dream. This couldn’t have turned out better if he’d written the script. If the cops were on to him for Ropes’ murder, they were matching his description to the long-haired dude who’d left prison, not some guy dressed like a model for GQ.

  “So, Max, what do you think?”

  What did he think? He’d turned into a natural born delegator, that’s what. In California, with Rander panting to earn drug money, Adam was as good as dead. And in Colorado, Brown was working to find Melanie. Now that he’d handed off his dirty work, Drake could relax into the plan.

  Ramirez’s notes looked promising, but without seeing them in real life, it was still too big a risk. “Looks good on paper,” Drake said. “But we’d be crazy not to scope these out in person.”

  Ramirez gave Drake a sly look. “You see any of my other men wearing fancy threads? I told you when you signed up for this gig, you’d work alone.”

  Drake didn’t think this day could get any better. But it did, including a finale he never saw coming. Maria walked over to the table set a beer in front of her brother and handed one to Drake. His gaze traveled from her breasts to her pouting lips and finally to her eyes. Dark, curious... interested.

  Guess I do clean up real nice.

  Before her brother noticed and slit him from ear to ear, Drake returned his attention to the hits. At last, things were going his way. As for little sister, he’d get him some of that. Later.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Mel, there’s someone out front to see you.”

  Mel lifted a brow and paused in her work on an alstroemeria arrangement. Taking a quick whiff of the fragrant orange and yellow petals, she tucked a flyaway strand behind her ear, then followed Aaron through the connecting doorway.

  An attractive older woman stood at the counter bedecked in a mid-length mink and very authentic-looking jewelry. Perplexed, Mel glanced from the visitor to Aaron.

  The store owner beamed. “Melanie Norris, this is Elaine Preston. She’s the customer you made the wreaths for.”

  Mel joined in Aaron’s excitement. “Oh, hi.”

  “Hello, Melanie.” Elaine extended a gloved hand. “I had to stop by to tell you how pleased my husband was with your work. His clients are raving. Last year I gave them fruitcakes.” The woman rolled her eyes. “Let’s just say I’m still the butt of all jokes at our parties.”

  The three broke out in laughter.

  “When Aaron told me a member of his staff had made the wreaths, and each one so unique, I wanted to stop by and thank you personally.”

  Mel felt herself blush. “I loved doing them, Mrs. Preston. It was a new ex
perience. Thank you.”

  Elaine removed an envelope from her mink coat pocket. “I hope you’ll let me show my appreciation by giving you a little something extra.”

  “Oh, no, ma’am. I couldn’t. Aaron paid me, I assure you.”

  The older woman’s smile faded, indicating not many said no to her.

  Aaron intervened. “You worked hard on a tight deadline, Mel. I have no objection.”

  “Wonderful. It’s settled then.” Aaron’s customer pressed the envelope into Mel’s hand. “Enjoy your holidays,” she said, and left through the chiming front door.

  Staring after her, Mel asked, “Was she wearing tennis shoes with that mink?”

  “I believe she was,” Aaron supplied. “Well, girlfriend, aren’t you going to open it?”

  “Should I?”

  “No. Keep me standing here, dying of suspense.”

  She grinned, retrieved a letter opener near the cash register and ripped through the seal. A hundred dollar bill lay inside. Her eyes widened, and she turned to her boss. “Technically, Aaron, this money belongs to you. After all, I was working for you when I made those wreaths.”

  “I made a comfortable profit. The money’s yours, Mel. It’s Christmas. Have fun with it.”

  Wow, she loved this job.

  “There’s something else I want to discuss with you,” he said. “It looks like I’ll need a new manager here in the near future.”

  “Oh?” Mel made no effort to hide her disappointment. Karlee Stanfield had been an ally as well as a good manager. “Is Karlee okay?”

  “The Air Force has transferred her husband to Japan. Can you believe it?” Aaron sighed dramatically. “After all I’ve done for her, she wants to join him. So, as a heads up, I’ll be starting the interview process as soon as possible.”

  “Thanks for letting me know.” How could Aaron sound so upbeat? Karlee was one of those rare finds who maintained authority, but still managed to create fun. Who knew what her replacement would be like?