“Could he have been carrying?”
Another grudging silence. “Could have been.”
Clay nodded and searched Gemini’s room briefly. Her dresser was full of the clothes they’d bought since she’d joined them, and wet towel lay on top of it. Her cell phone was on the bed. He inspected the closet then he went to the bathroom. He spilled the small trash basket there into the sink. At the very bottom, he found a pregnancy test stick. They were all quiet as he shoved it and the spent tissues back into the basket.
“Jace,” Clay said grimly. “Let’s see what we find at your place.”
On the way out to Clay’s Outback, Quinn left instructions with Emma. If she couldn’t get help to cover the night, she should just close up the bar. In the car, Jace made a call to cancel his afternoon appointments, and Clay called Chris Norton to cover his evening shift.
Halfway to Jace’s, they tossed Quinn’s meth kit into a random dumpster, just as Clay had done with the one he’d found at his place.
From the back seat, Quinn argued that they should forget Jace’s house and just go after Gemini.
“Don’t think I’m not tempted,” Clay said. “But she left because she thought Tomlinson could hurt us. We’d better make sure he can’t before we go get her back.”
Jace had turned in his seat so he could see both men. “You know he’ll hurt her.”
Clay drove, wishing he had something to punch. “She could have come to us, but she went with him instead.” He looked hard at Jace. “She knew what the risk was. She chose that over letting harm come to us. We should honor that choice.”
Jace’s disagreement showed in his face.
Clay finished his thought. “And we’ll take Tomlinson down in the end.”
* * * *
Quinn found the box in Jace’s garage. He’d searched like a fiend, like anything he could do now would make it better for Gemini.
He was torn with guilt. Clay had said more than once that Tomlinson would have found a way no matter what. But Quinn had been the one to leave Gem alone. And he’d let her walk out the door of the bar.
He was only partially convinced by Clay’s argument. Mostly, he wanted to smash a fist into Tomlinson’s face. Quinn probably wasn’t going to feel better until he had Gemini safely in his arms and Tomlinson’s blood on his knuckles. And even then, he’d have a hard time forgiving himself for being so careless with something that meant so much to him. Someone.
What he found was a fishing tackle box stuffed full with large bags of meth. He held it over his head like a victorious warrior when he carried it into the house. Clay came from upstairs and Jace from the basement in response to his shouts.
“Found it,” he said, as he set the box on the kitchen counter.
Clay hefted a bag, one of about six or seven in the container. “This isn’t for personal use. He wants to set us up as dealers.”
Silence fell while they each took a stool and looked at the box.
Finally Jace spoke. “So either we have a very good supplier, or we have a lab somewhere.”
Clay nodded. “A lab. It would be easy enough to plant, and it would seal the deal in the eyes of the DEA.”
“Where?” Quinn asked. “He couldn’t leave it in sight.”
“My basement is empty,” Jace said. “You’d have seen it, if it was in the storeroom at the bar, right, Quinn?”
He nodded. “It’s not there.”
Clay’s brain was working. “He could leave it nearby. Have it in a storage unit, or even in a trailer somewhere. One phone call, and it could be moved into one of our places.”
Jace leveled a look between the two others. “And the phone call comes anytime Gemini doesn’t do what he wants. We have to get to her.”
Clay lifted a finger. “Wait.”
“No,” Quinn said. “Let’s go.”
Clay stood. “She’s stronger than we’re giving her credit for. Let’s think this through.” He pointed at the drugs and then at Jace. “We’re looking at losing our jobs, here. You losing the bar, Quinn. The guy is playing hardball. We really want to make sure we win.”
Quinn stood, too. “I’d give up the bar to save Gem from what she’s going through right now.”
Clay didn’t back down. “Yeah. And we’ll be writing her letters from the state pen. Let’s be smart. Gem bought us this time. Let’s use it. Put away how guilty you’re feeling and use your head.”
Quinn sat back down, but he obviously wasn’t happy.
Jace had been watching—and thinking, apparently. “Wherever he has it, it’s already in place. Tomlinson isn’t going to hold back, waiting for Gemini to misbehave. He’s going to want to hurt us now. The only phone call he’s going to make is to the DEA. He’s probably already made it.”
“Pack a bag, quick,” Clay told Jace. “Throw in some extra clothes for Quinn. We need to get out of here fast.” As a group, they went to Jace’s bedroom. Clay took a spot at the window, like that would help if agents were already at the door. “We need a vehicle.”
Thinking a minute, Quinn came up with an answer. “Mrs. Konik’s Lexus. She let me borrow it the last time I had my car in the shop.”
Quinn helped his old neighbor out once in a while. A couple times a month, he fired up the Lexus—twelve years old with seven thousand miles on it—and drove the old lady to the grocery store. She lived above the bakery she and her husband had owned, but there was no one in the family to take it over now that she was widowed and struggling to keep up with it on her own.
“That’ll work.”
They grabbed the tackle box on their way through the kitchen and, while Clay drove, Quinn wiped the prints off the one bag Clay had handled. As they crossed Monument Creek on their way back to town, Clay pulled over. Using a pair of exam gloves from a cubby, Quinn got out and emptied the bags into the water. He tossed the bags, too, with a quick apology to the environment and the fish that might be a little loopy for a while. He wiped the box and left it there on the bridge.
Inside the car, Jace was still working that brain of his. “My family’s cabin,” he said. “When my grandfather moved into senior living, he deeded it to me. Tomlinson could have searched the property records.”
Clay nodded. “Has anyone been up there since the three of us spent Memorial Day weekend there?”
Jace shook his head. “I don’t think so. If anyone in my family was going to use it, they’d have let me know.”
Clay rolled with it. “It’s isolated, nobody’s there much. If you were going to plant a meth lab that looked like it belonged to us, that would be the place. No one would buy that we’re cooking it in your basement or in the storeroom of Mach One.”
Quinn leapt out of the backseat as they got to Mrs. Konik’s place. He took the stairs at the side of the bakery two at a time. Just short of rudeness, Quinn turned down the offer of bad tea and great cookies. Inside of three minutes, he was backing the Lexus out of Mrs. Konik’s garage. Clay drove the Outback in, and they pulled the door down behind it. As Jace and Clay climbed into the Lexus, Quinn said a little prayer that Mrs. Konik wouldn’t suffer for their deception.
By the time they reached the far end of the alley, behind them, an unmarked car pulled up to the back of Mach One.
Chapter Six
Gemini was alone in the mansion she’d considered home for nearly three years. Well, she was alone if she didn’t count the two guards who rotated shifts every twelve hours. One stayed outside, manning the gate at the bottom of the drive. The other followed her wherever she went, standing at the door of the room she was in—outside the door only if she was in the bathroom or her bedroom. He didn’t speak.
They’d flown from Colorado Springs to Sacramento, she and Bryce and Ron Purdue. Bryce had barely spoken to her, and Purdue not at all. At the airport, they’d transferred to another limo. Purdue had driven them to the mansion and waited in the car while Bryce took her into the house, a hand at her elbow.
He’d walked her straight upstairs to h
er bedroom. It was a small guest room at the far end of the hall from his suite. She’d moved there about a year and a half into the marriage. It had taken that long for her to stop believing him when he explained he hadn’t meant to hurt her and it wouldn’t happen again.
Gemini had paid for that act of defiance, but Bryce hadn’t made her move back. She was pretty sure he wasn’t always alone when he slept in his room.
It wasn’t like she cared.
Bryce left her there alone on Wednesday evening. On Thursday morning, she ventured out, making breakfast for herself while the guard watched, and learning that the phones and computers had all been disabled. Bryce’s office, which likely contained functional communication devices, was locked.
Late that morning, Purdue came and took her to Dr. Mathis. He was the OB/GYN who had treated her through her pregnancies and miscarriages, and who had injected her once with fertility drugs. The two of them had long since given up pretending that he was her physician. It was clearly Bryce he answered to.
And so she didn’t speak to him, even as she let him poke and prod. It was beyond her to care, and whatever Dr. Mathis did to her, at least it was impersonal and less painful than what she was sure Bryce had in store for her, once the test results were back.
She figured she had one more day for that, maybe two.
Back in her room, she read. Or she took up the needlework she’d started learning her last months as a midwife. It was a time-honored tradition, the midwife knitting while waiting for a baby to come.
Mostly, what she did was discipline herself to not think about the men she’d left in Colorado.
They wouldn’t let her go, she knew. Even if they hadn’t loved her, they would consider themselves her protectors in Capricorn’s stead. She was certain they would come for her if they could, and she could only hope they would protect themselves as they did.
Gemini would have to do the same—she would have to protect them. And to do that, she would hurt them.
There was no other way.
* * * *
Jace had been right. They’d found the setup for a meth lab at his grandfather’s cabin. It looked like someone had actually cooked up a batch there—the equipment was settled in and well-used. Plus, there were a couple of Academy T-shirts tossed around, and Jace spotted a pair of gloves he was sure had come from his own front closet. As evidence that the three men had a good business going, it was authentic in the extreme.
Clay gave him a look when they opened the door to the cabin. Jace really couldn’t help that he had the skill to think like a criminal—he spent a good part of his days with that element.
In a way, he felt like he knew Bryce. His grandfather on his mother’s side had been lieutenant governor back in the day, and Jace had played in the governor’s mansion as a kid. He’d grown up around men with serious political aspirations. Some of them were good men. Some were single-mindedly ambitious, convinced that the end justified any means. And the end was sometimes about their own self-centered goals, not the good of the electorate.
Bryce’s men had made only the smallest mistake—a misalignment of a shade that no one but a guy like Clay would have spotted. So Tomlinson’s hand had been tipped. Otherwise, the meth planted in each of their homes would have been found by the authorities, and, led there by an “anonymous” tip from Bryce or not, they’d have discovered works in the cabin, too.
It would have been a slam-dunk. An end to the careers and personal freedom of the three men. They’d have had only the smallest chance of defending their innocence—none at all without bringing their relationship with Gemini into it. And that would not have been an option.
So, after Clay talked Jace down from just torching the cabin and while Quinn fussed about getting in the car and heading to Sacramento, they’d cleaned the place out. They burned what they could in the fire pit out back and smashed and scattered the rest of it at a dump outside of Cripple Creek.
Then, finally, well past dark, they drove west.
* * * *
It happened sooner than she guessed. On Thursday afternoon, Ron Purdue came back to the house. He opened her bedroom door without knocking, confident of his power over her. He leered at her from the doorway. She was still wearing her jeans and sweater, and he let his disdain show in his face. She’d changed her underwear, but he didn’t have to know that.
“Mr. Tomlinson wants you dressed for dinner. He’ll be here at six.”
He didn’t leave until Gemini raised a brow at him. “Fine,” she said, and kept that brow up until he’d backed out the door.
She sat still, not stirring, trying very hard not to think, until five. Then she rose and showered. She put her hair up and dressed her part—a silk sheath that ended at her knees, made just a little sexy by its sleek fit and the slit in the back. She wore strands of pearls with a large sapphire clasp that contrasted with the fuchsia of the silk. More sapphires and pearls dangled from her ears. She slid her feet into strappy heels.
It was a look she’d perfected in the last two years—class with a touch of sex, a political wife in love with her handsome, successful and powerful husband. With a high neckline and long sleeves to cover the bruises.
She used more makeup than usual, needing a heavy hand to cover the dark smudges under her eyes.
When she was done, she left her room. She walked past her guard without acknowledging his presence, aware that he followed a few paces behind her. Downstairs, she caught the scent of dinner.
Bryce had always used a catering service for the meals they shared, a staff that rotated. The same went for the cleaning crew. She seldom saw the same person twice—Bryce saw to it she would form no attachments.
The formal living room was empty, so she moved to Bryce’s office. When she heard voices there, she knocked on the door. Ron Purdue opened it and stood back to let her enter.
Bryce was behind his desk, as handsome and smartly tailored as ever. He looked up in greeting with a smile, as though in welcome to a beloved wife. “Darling,” he said as he rose and walked to her. “How lovely you look.”
Gemini commanded her body to stay still, her face to smile as he came to her. When he took her hand and lifted it to his lips, she could see just a hint of a smirk. She could dress for him and paste a smile on her face, but she couldn’t keep the cold from her hand that betrayed the utter despair in her soul. The squeeze he gave before releasing her hand was painful—a subtle, deliberate message.
“Thank you, Ron,” Bryce said, dismissing both Purdue and the guard.
Gemini kept her gaze away from the Ron’s face, knowing she would see only snide triumph there. He’d always treated her as an interloper, a threat to his own relationship with Bryce. With Gemini’s fall from grace, Ron was winning. He was happy.
Silently, Bryce led her to the living room. She glanced into the dining room as they passed. The table was set extravagantly for two, and a catering staff member was lighting the long tapers there.
Seating her at a Queen Anne sofa upholstered in spotless cream damask, he went to a cabriole table set with a silver tray, crystal, and wine. He poured two glasses of a dark red, handing one to her before he sat across from her in a wing back chair. It was a Merlot—a wine too bitter for her, as he was very aware.
He lifted his glass to her. “Dr. Mathis’s report was very pleasing to me.”
Hell. Mathis must have had access to a fast-track lab.
“I’ve been looking forward to our evening ever since I got his call.”
He seemed to pout a little at her lack of response. “You understand you’ll be punished, don’t you?”
Perhaps he didn’t realize there was only one way he could hurt her, and it had nothing to do with how he used her body. Still, she had a hard time suppressing a shudder at the gleam in his eyes.
“I think I’d like to hear, Anne, some of your experiences while you were gone. Did you spread your legs readily for your boyfriends? Did you enjoy whoring for them?” He leaned forward intently.
“Did you let them all use you at once? Did they each find a tight little orifice for their pleasure?”
Gemini sipped her wine, the bitter taste of it entirely emblematic of her life now.
Bryce didn’t seem to expect her to respond. “I believe we’ll be exploring some new frontiers tonight. Since I no longer have to treat you as a lady.”
Gemini had nothing to do but keep her gaze steady, but she could feel heat touch her cheeks.
One of the kitchen staff hovered beneath the arch to the dining room until Bryce acknowledged her. He stood and held out a hand until Gemini joined him. With a touch at the small of her back, he took her in and seated her at the table.
They were served small salads, and she forced herself to take a few bites.
Serving plates were set in front of them, then, grilled vegetables and steak medallions. Bryce served himself, then held the plates until Gemini took some.
She cut a small piece of steak but was certain she wouldn’t be able to stomach it. Just as she was about to give up and set her fork down, Purdue came and whispered in Bryce’s ear.
Bryce looked up in pleased excitement. “By all means, show them in.” He watched Purdue leave the room. “Come, Anne,” he said then. “You have some gentlemen callers.”
Slowly, Gemini stood. Bryce held his arm out until she stepped into it. Then, with his hand securely at her waist, he walked her into the living room.
* * * *
It was possible they weren’t showing themselves at their best. They’d been on the road for nearly twenty hours straight, taking turns driving, navigating, and sleeping in the back seat. Quinn still wore the jeans he’d had on when he left the bar, though he’d changed to a button-down shirt that Jace had tossed him the last time they’d stopped for gas.
Jace was still in his suit, but it had obviously been slept in. Clay looked like—well, like he always looked. Pretty much like he was running on coffee and a bad attitude. None of them had shaved.
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