And he tore out of the lot before they could catch him.
They would be too groggy to follow him. And too concerned about the wounded. Or the dead...
CHAPTER 16
Woodrow had already been on the way to the hospital when he got the call that there had been a shooting in the visitors’ parking garage. His hand shook as he punched in the contact for his wife. He’d been on his way to meet her there, but a situation in the police lab had prevented him from leaving when he should have.
What if she’d been in the garage at the time? What if she was one of the wounded?
And there were wounded...
He’d seen the blood as he’d passed through the crime scene on his way to the hospital. With his cell pressed to his ear, he headed toward the ER. His stomach flipped when her voice answered, but he realized it was only her voice mail. She hadn’t picked up. But his phone buzzed and he glanced down at the text flashing on the screen.
Where are you, darling? I am already cuddling this gorgeous new grandbaby.
He grinned with relief. The child technically wasn’t their grandbaby, but that didn’t matter to Penny. She’d long ago emotionally adopted the Kozminski children even though everyone had believed their father had killed her husband. Even if he had, Penny wouldn’t have cared. She was so forgiving and loving.
She would forgive him for being late because she would understand why. If she’d known about the shooting, she would have been heading where he was, to the ER, to check on the wounded, especially if she knew what he did, that one of those wounded was a Payne Protection bodyguard.
She treated every bodyguard like they were her children. Of course, quite a few of them were. Panic struck Woodrow’s heart, making it pound even faster than it had already been. It couldn’t be one of his stepsons or stepdaughter, could it? Parker had had a narrow escape from death earlier in the week. And he’d brought in his brothers’ teams for backup because of how damn dangerous Luther Mills had become, even more dangerous than they’d thought.
If he’d known how risky this assignment was, Woodrow might not have hired Parker for the job. But then, he hadn’t had many options—not with being unable to trust his own damn officers. And now even the lab.
He hurried as he neared the front desk for the ER. He flashed his shield at the security guard who rushed up to meet him. “I’m the chief of police,” he said.
It had been odd to say that in the beginning—after so many years of being special agent in charge of a field office of the FBI. But now it felt right.
This was where he belonged. In River City with his wife and his ever-expanding family. And now one of those family members might have been injured, so he had no problem about cutting to the front of the line waiting in the ER. “The people who were wounded in the parking garage,” he said. “Where are they?”
“Over here,” the security guard said as he pushed open a door marked Employees Only. He led the way down a wide corridor. “A detective’s already gone back to take the woman’s statement.”
So a woman had been attacked but survived. The man could have been referring to Jocelyn Gerber or to Nikki Payne-Ecklund. Nikki might have been working as backup for Landon. If anything had happened to Penny’s daughter...
He shuddered and refused to consider it. For one, Nikki was damn tough and had already survived so many close calls that she had to be invincible. When the security guard pulled aside the curtain, he was relieved to see Jocelyn Gerber, with Nikki standing next to her.
They were both all right except for the blood oozing from cuts on Jocelyn’s knees. She also had a scrape on her cheek.
“Are you all right?” he asked because she looked so very pale and fragile sitting on the gurney. He’d had his issues with Jocelyn Gerber, but now he felt a deep pull of sympathy and concern for her. While she could be brash and bossy, she was also a damn hard worker and a strong woman. Woodrow had so much respect and appreciation for strong women.
She nodded, and her black hair swung around her face, only slightly tangled from her ordeal. “Yes, but Landon’s in surgery,” she said, her voice shaking with concern.
“What happened?” He’d heard about the shooting—that it involved the assistant district attorney and her bodyguard—but he didn’t know entirely what had happened.
“Landon and I were walking to the SUV when we noticed the backup bodyguards.” Her voice caught. “They were slumped against the windows of their SUV. We thought they were dead.”
Instinctively, Woodrow reached for Nikki, pulling her into a hug. “Are you all right? What happened?”
Nikki squeezed him before pulling back. Her face was flushed with embarrassment. “Lars and I must have been drugged,” she said. “We fell asleep...only waking up when we heard the gunshots.”
“Somebody was shooting at us,” Jocelyn said.
“Did you see who?” Woodrow asked.
She shook her head. “Landon pushed me down so fast that I didn’t even see where the shots were coming from.”
Spencer Dubridge stepped behind the curtain with Keeli Abbott at his side. “Landon’s out of surgery—”
“How is he?” Jocelyn asked, her blue eyes full of concern.
“The doctor said he’d be fine. The bullet just nicked an artery in his neck—that’s why there was so much blood. But they’ve repaired it. Because he lost so much blood, though, he’s not awake yet.” Dubridge said the last with recrimination, as if he was angry that Landon was unconscious.
“Give him a minute or two to recover before you hassle him for his statement,” Keeli remarked.
He glared at her before realizing everyone was staring at him with the same condemnation she was. “We need to find out who the hell this perp is,” he said. “It’s gotta be someone in the DA’s office.”
Nikki nodded. “He’s right. It has to be. That’s where Lars and I drank the coffee that must have been drugged.”
Jocelyn looked even paler than she had moments ago. “You were right,” she murmured to the chief.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It doesn’t feel good to know you’ve been working with a traitor.”
Now there was a sudden rush of color to her face. She looked around and asked the others, “Can you give me a few minutes alone with the chief?”
Nikki shook her head. “I promised Landon that I wouldn’t leave your side,” she said. “That’s the only way he agreed to be treated.”
“I know,” Jocelyn said. “But this is private.”
Woodrow swallowed a groan. Did she still suspect Landon was working for Luther—even after all the times he’d saved her life?
But he had things he needed to share with her, as well. “It’s okay,” he told the others. “I have some experience with law enforcement. I think I can protect her for a few minutes.”
Dubridge chuckled. “Yeah, well, if you get into any trouble, let us know.”
“So you’re a smart-ass even to the chief,” Keeli muttered as she followed him out of the area.
Nikki hesitated a moment longer. “Are you sure?”
Woodrow nodded. “Yes. Where’s your husband? Is he okay?” She was married to Lars Ecklund, the fellow bodyguard she’d mentioned who had also been drugged.
She nodded. “He’s in the parking garage, looking for anything Detective Dubridge might have missed.”
So nobody trusted his department anymore. But with a rookie cop nearly killing the eyewitness, Woodrow could hardly blame them—especially after what had happened today. Once Nikki left, he turned back to Jocelyn and told her, “You were right.”
She tensed. “You know?”
He nodded. “About the CSI, yeah. You were right that it had to be one of them getting rid of evidence.”
She gasped. “Not Wendy Thompson.”
“No. Terrance Gibbs.”
“I though
t he was retired,” she said.
“Just a short time ago,” he said. “But he came back recently to help out.” He hadn’t been trying to help the River City PD, though. He’d been trying to help Luther Mills to get rid of the evidence against him.
Her brow puckered as if she was searching her memory. Then she nodded. “I think he collected some of the evidence that went missing...”
“Well, he won’t be a problem anymore,” Woodrow assured her. The former CSI had died while he’d been trying to kill Wendy.
“That’s good,” she said. “Because we have another one.”
And this was what she’d wanted privacy to tell him. Dread settled heavily into the pit of his stomach. “What is it?”
“I told you I had concerns about Parker Payne’s team of bodyguards...”
He released his groan this time. “How can you—after how many times Landon’s risked his life for you?”
“I don’t know if he even knows this,” she said. “That’s why I wanted to tell you first. But then the judge has to hear it, too. He needs to be warned.”
“Warned about what?”
“Luther Mills’s brother works for the Payne Protection Agency.”
Just as Woodrow hadn’t been the chief for very long, he hadn’t been a resident of River City for long either. He didn’t know the history everyone else seemed to know. “I wasn’t aware that he had a brother.”
“Neither was I,” she admitted. “I just learned today.”
“Who is it?”
“Tyce Jackson. The man protecting the judge’s daughter.”
Woodrow sucked in a breath, shocked. He shook his head. “Are you sure that’s true? Where did you learn that?”
“From someone within my office,” she said.
“Can you trust that person?”
She shook her head. “I can’t trust anyone.” She looked speculatively at him, as if she was wondering if she could even trust him.
“Then you don’t know that’s true,” he pointed out.
“I doubt this person—another assistant district attorney—would have told me something that could be easily disproved,” she said. “It would only make him look guiltier.”
Maybe that was all the man had been trying to do—cast guilt onto someone else. But she was right. Woodrow needed to look into it—to hopefully disprove it. Like the other bodyguards, Tyce Jackson had risked his life several times to save the judge’s daughter, so Woodrow couldn’t believe he was any threat to her.
“I’ll find out,” he promised, and he pulled back the curtain. He didn’t see Nikki or the others. But he doubted Jocelyn, with her scraped knees, was going anywhere. And as she’d said, she didn’t trust anyone right now.
So he wasn’t worried about her. He was worried about the judge’s daughter and just how far reaching Luther Mills’s influence was.
Jocelyn had had her doubts about his hiring Parker’s team. He hoped she was wrong, though. Or he had put everybody in greater danger—just as she’d feared.
* * *
Pain shot through Landon’s neck, blood spurting from the wound. Instinctively, he reached for Jocelyn, pushing her to the ground. But had he been too late? Had she been shot, too?
He reached out, but something tugged on his arm. And he jerked awake. Then he flinched and squinted against the bright lights. “Jocelyn!”
“She’s fine,” a deep voice assured him. And he turned to find Spencer Dubridge sitting next to his bed. That was not who he’d wanted to see.
As if he’d guessed as much, Dubridge chuckled. “She’s talking to the chief in the ER. That’s why she’s not here.”
“In the ER,” Landon said. “So she is hurt!”
Spencer shook his head. “Just a little bruised and scraped from you shoving her down.”
He flinched again with regret that he’d hurt her.
“You saved her life,” Dubridge said. “Did you see who it was? Who was shooting at you?”
He shook his head. “It looked like the car—same make and model—that tried hitting us the other day. But the tinted windshield had been replaced.”
Dubridge cursed. “I checked all the glass replacement companies in the area.”
Landon shrugged. There were a lot of places that didn’t like giving information to cops, even if served with a warrant. He cared less about finding the car than finding the driver. He had a feeling the guy was smart enough to make sure the car couldn’t be traced to him anyway.
“What’re Jocelyn and the chief talking about?” he asked. And why hadn’t she come to see him yet?
“She didn’t want us to know,” Keeli said, speaking up from where she stood at the door—as if protecting both the detective and him.
Dubridge nodded. “Yeah, she wanted to talk to him in private.”
Landon tensed. He didn’t like the sound of that. Was she trying again to get the chief to fire the Payne Protection Agency?
Ever since she’d spoken to Garza alone, she’d been acting strangely. He needed to see her—needed to make sure she was all right. He gripped the railings on his bed and sat up.
“What are you doing?” Keeli asked as she stepped toward his bed.
He pushed down one of the railings and tried to swing his legs over the side. But his body felt so damn heavy that he could barely move them.
“You have to take it easy,” Keeli said. “You lost a lot of blood.”
He lifted his fingers to his neck and felt the bandage covering the wound. “It was nothing...”
“If you hadn’t kept your hand on it...” Keeli shuddered. “You were lucky.”
He had a feeling that luck was about to change as a strange chill chased down his spine. “You need to check on Jocelyn,” he said.
“I need to take your statement,” Dubridge told him.
“I gave you my statement,” he said, frustration tightening the muscles of his already aching stomach. “I saw nothing more than I did the last time. I don’t know who the hell is after Jocelyn.”
“Someone in her office,” Dubridge said. “That’s where Nikki thinks she and Lars were drugged. They were lucky they made it to the parking garage without crashing.”
“Lars was driving, and he’s a big guy,” Keeli said. “So the sleeping aid didn’t work as quickly on him as it did on Nikki.”
“Another reason petite women should not be bodyguards,” Spencer murmured.
Ignoring their bickering, Landon managed to get to his feet. The room tilted for a moment, and spots danced before his eyes. But he powered through—because, like Lars, he was a big guy. Yet it wasn’t just his strength driving him. It was his concern for Jocelyn.
And once he got dressed, with Dubridge’s help, and made it down to the ER, he found his concern was warranted. She was gone.
* * *
Jocelyn knew she shouldn’t have slipped out of the ER without telling anyone. That she shouldn’t have gone off alone. But she thought she might be safer alone than with anyone else right now. She did not know whom to trust.
Sure, Landon kept saving her life, but had he known the whole time who was putting her in danger? Was he aware that one of his team members—one of his friends—was Luther Mills’s brother? And he hadn’t told her?
She wanted to trust him. Most of all, she wanted to make sure he was all right. But Dubridge had assured her that he would be. Still, she felt a sickening lurch in her stomach as she stepped out of the cab onto the sidewalk outside the front entry of the district attorney’s office building.
While she wanted to trust Landon, she could not bring herself to trust the others. She didn’t know what they knew about Tyce Jackson’s relationship to Luther—if they were keeping him apprised of everyone else’s whereabouts. So she hadn’t told them hers.
It was bad enough that Tyce was protecting the judge’
s daughter. So she’d warned him.
Judge Holmes had been shocked, the way she had been.
She had to make sure she had no more surprises. She needed to find out who in her office could be working with Luther. She could no longer deny that someone was, not after the backup bodyguards were drugged.
Dubridge had probably already sent a crime-scene tech to retrieve the coffeepot. Since she worked in an office of caffeine junkies, she suspected everybody’s prints would be on it. And the break room didn’t have a security camera that might have caught the culprit in the act. They didn’t have enough cause to legally search everybody’s office.
She swiped her ID badge through the reader outside, and the exterior doors opened for her. She hurried through the lobby to the elevators. Despite it being way after hours, the elevator worked. The cleaning staff was in the building.
Jocelyn searched until she found one of the unmanned carts and lifted the ring of keys from it. Even if whatever she found wouldn’t be admissible, she intended to search everybody’s offices; she needed to know who was working for Luther.
But the first office she unlocked was her own. She intended to put her briefcase inside while she searched the others, so she left the door open behind her. But when she opened the bottom drawer of her filing cabinet to slide her briefcase inside it, she found a couple of things.
Things that she had not put there.
An orange prescription bottle with the label torn off, as well as a cell phone. So someone else had already lifted the office keys from the cleaning person’s cart. And they’d used those keys to plant evidence in Jocelyn’s office.
But it made no sense. Why would she drug the bodyguards who were protecting her? She’d nearly been killed—too many times. And she clearly wasn’t the one firing those shots or running herself down.
She stared down at the bottle. She needed a plastic bag or something to put it in so that it could be checked for prints. Whereas the coffeepot would have a lot, she doubted the bottle would have any. The same with the cell phone. She would bet it had been wiped down and was an untraceable burner phone—a phone that no doubt had a record of calls to Luther Mills or to his lawyer.
Harlequin Romantic Suspense July 2021 Box Set Page 56
