Bulletproof Princess (8 page)

“Well,” Ange started, then sighed and spoke to someone in the background, but it was indistinct. “With the money she makes, and holy lord it is a
fucklot
of money, I could see him getting away with this for a while. That said, he was still into a lot of people, both above and below board, for a lot of money. Like pay for a first home in Scottsdale outright kinda money, and those people he owed? Yeah, more than a couple of them trace back in a roundabout way to the Salazars. Not the big man, but enough known associates to host a very large family reunion.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus.” Not only was he embezzling from Cassie, but Clint’s murder was beginning to look a lot less like a crime of opportunity and more like a repossession. As if Cassie needed this added to her burden. He pulled a hand down his face and reached out to absently take her hand in his. The connection grounded him in ways he refused to address. “So, how does the shooter fit in?”

His partner sighed. “Well, near as I can figure, he was doing a solid for his boss that went sideways. He’s not normally in collections, so when collecting the cash developed a body count, he reverted to type and took care of it the way he normally would. Cassie was just an unwitting bystander.”

“Damn, that’s unfortunate.” There was a lot of that going around as far as this case was concerned. The finer points of distinction between her friend being killed for money and being killed because of money were not something he felt like explaining to Cass right now. The whole idea of it gave him a headache, so he focused on what he could communicate. “Any word on the shooter?”

“Actually…” Ange’s voice brightened as he could hear her shifting around in the background. “Do you have Skype there? You’re gonna want to see this.”

Cassie, over the course of the conversation, had given serious thought to climbing up Mack’s body to get to the phone. She didn’t take being in the dark well, and she certainly wasn’t one to keep her opinions to herself. The longer he spoke to his partner, the more concerned his face became, leading her to imagine a whole host of horrible conclusions. Her complete focus on him had her mirroring his movements as he stepped to the table and snagged his tablet. A few swipes of his finger and he was logged in to the program so he could speak to his partner face to face.

He set the phone down on the table after disconnecting and taking a chair. Cassie chose to loom over him as she stood behind him. “You look like hell, Ange.”

The woman’s dark eyes narrowed in the screen as the speakers filled with a menacing growl. “You would, too, princess, if you’d spent as much time as I have running down leads for
your
case. You owe me, huge.”

Cassie flinched at her tone, but Mack just laughed in the face of a woman who would most likely beat him to death when she saw him next.

“I do,” he conceded immediately.

“Like a villa on the isle of Capri huge, mister.” She nodded for emphasis, but Mack only shook his head.

“Keep dreaming. But I am sorry. Whatcha got for us?”

“Cassie.” Ange turned her attention to her and held up a mug shot. “You know this guy?”

The face in the picture caused all her muscles to lock up at once, and then become watery a moment later. Her hand groped for the back of Mack’s chair and dug her nails in to give herself something to concentrate on. She opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out, just like the previous night.

“I’ll take your sudden pallor as a ‘yes’.” She took the picture off screen and handed it off to a tall man behind her. “Okay, that’s Jesus Reynaldo-Hinojosa, ‘Chuy’ to his friends, ‘The Second Coming’ to his employers. He is a one man killing machine with an impressive record of proven kills and scores more of suspected. He’s on every watch list from here to Indonesia.”

“And yet,” Mack turned around to look up at her before turning back to his partner, “you’re not telling us he’s in custody.”

The tall man knelt down next to Ange, only he looked substantially more refreshed than Mack’s partner. He was good-looking, if a bit severe with his hawkish features and piercing eyes. “Hey, Mack.”

Mack nodded at the screen after sneaking another unreadable glance in her direction. “Hey, Eli.”

“So, the reason he’s on every watch list in the known world is due to his ability to vanish like a ghost. That’s not going to stop us, obviously, but it’s going to be more difficult.” He looked down as he shuffled some papers before holding two up, side by side. “Miss Witt has an amazing memory and a very accurate eye. We were able to get an ID from the sketch fairly quickly when we combined it with the facial rec software. Additionally, there’s footage of the scene in the hallway with some very high def cameras. So, making the case is not difficult.”

Mack pulled a hand down his face again and set it next to his tablet, drumming his fingers lightly in a show of growing impatience. “Excellent, so any leads on running him down?”

Eli stood with a grimace of obvious pain from his previous position. “We’re working on it.” He paused to whisper in Ange’s ear before turning back to the screen. “We’ll call you as soon as we know any more, Mack. We will get this done, I promise you.”

Mack nodded.

Eli looked straight at Cassie. “It was lovely to make your acquaintance, Miss Witt. My niece is going to lose her mind when she hears I got to meet you, as it were.”

Cassie smiled in spite of the situation. “Tell her I appreciate her being a fan, and I’ll see what I can do about an autograph, okay?” She figured it was the least she could do for the man who was hunting her friend’s killer. Eli grinned broadly before wandering off the screen.

“Actually, Cassie, there is some good news.” Ange shuffled the papers in front of her. “I got a message from Trista today to pass along to you.”

The worry she’d been courting since the beginning of the phone conversation jumped immeasurably and dropped the bottom out of her stomach. “Is Trista okay? Please, don’t tell me—”

The dark haired woman held up a hand to forestall any further freak out. “She is fine, and has a protection detail I worked out myself. She’s great, and she is doing a helluva job keeping your career going and managing the press while we deal with this.” She waved a hand toward the room behind her for emphasis. “You have the number one single, and album, in the country, Cassie. Congratulations.”

The shock of debuting at number one was greatly tempered by her current circumstances, leaving the triumphant feeling hollow to her. “Thank you, Angela. Really. Tell her I’m okay and this will be over soon, okay? I miss her.” She sniffed and pressed her lips together to keep any more words from spilling out, or any tears from breaching her walls.

Ange nodded, and a male voice in the background called out, getting her attention. “All right, I have to go. I’ll be in touch tomorrow, okay? Mackenzie, you’ll take care of that other thing?”

Mack nodded. “I got it. You be safe, and get some sleep for god’s sake,” he teased with palpable affection.

His partner nodded and stood. “I’ll add it to my list.” The screen went black in front of them, leaving them in the quiet of the kitchen, the only sound being the ice maker in the freezer turning over a fresh batch and the swishing of the dishwasher.

“So what’d she say?” Cassie asked as she sank onto a stool next to him. At his blank look, she prompted, “Angela, on the phone. What did she tell you about Clint? I know she said something because you looked like she punched you in the gut and threatened to do it to your face.”

Mack dropped his head, chuckling at her analogy. “Well, kind of. Do you drink?”

It was an interesting diversion, the idea of drinking with him beyond a simple beer, but she needed answers. “I do sometimes,” she allowed. “But I need to know what your partner had to say. This is my life we’re talking about here, and I have a right to know.”

“I never said you didn’t.” He rose from the table and wandered into the living room, returning with two crystal tumblers and an unlabeled crystal decanter. A quick trip to the freezer, he poured after taking a seat, and pushed a glass in her direction. “I just think this might be the kind of conversation you have over whiskey.”

“You don’t say.” As a country musician, she could appreciate all he said in his choice of alcohols alone without a protracted explanation. She wasn’t going to like what he said at all, and he was trying, in his own way, to soften the blow. Sniffing the glass, she was pleasantly surprised to find the amber liquid reminded her of Sunday brunch after church with bacon and waffles.

Once they were situated with their liquor, he looked her over with eyes narrowed in speculation. “You know Clint had a gambling problem?”

The sip she’d taken stalled in her throat, and it was a fight to actually swallow. She wasn’t prepared for the directness of his approach given the roundabout way they’d arrived at the conversation. “I know he’d been going to GA for a while. I was proud of him for facing his problems head on.”

Her keeper’s eyebrows rose as he sipped his own drink slowly. “How long is ‘a while’?”

“At least five years that I know of, but I don’t know how many before that. Why are you asking me about GA?” She took a bigger gulp of the burning liquid before hoarsely declaring, “He was the victim! Whatever he did, he didn’t deserve to die that way!”

“Never said he did.” He watched her over the rim of the glass as he took a healthy swig himself, downing half. “You aware of any money issues he’d been having?”

She shook her head and concentrated on the slow erosion of the ice in her tumbler.
Why was he asking all this? What the hell did his spending habits have to do with his death?
“Do you think he brought this on himself somehow?”

Mack lifted a muscular shoulder, but didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be watching her like her face held the answer to a question he didn’t want to ask. “What did you see?”

Not the question she expected, and the image of the mug shot flashed through her mind, bringing with it a roiling sense of nausea. Cassie set the glass down on the table gently, so as not to betray her sudden shakiness. “I…” Her voice dried up in her throat, and she swallowed hard to try again. The man across from her, the one who’d put his life on hold and career on the line for her, had a right to know at least this much. “I went back for my guitar.”

* * *

Mack watched the color slowly migrate down her face to her neck, as she studied the glass in front of her intently. He had wanted to pursue his line of questioning about Clint’s gambling, but opted for the more pressing question. A part of him felt like a bastard for pushing her, but with all he learned from his partner tonight, it was a reasonable question. Any knowledge at this point would serve them both better in the long run instead of him remaining in the dark and her remaining in her head. “The guitar you brought here?”

She gave a single stuttered nod that ruffled her bangs and little else. “I left it backstage. I never do that. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, leaving it there. It was a gift, and I’m usually better about things like that.”

“I’m sure,” he murmured as he sipped his drink. It was all he could do to keep from forcibly dragging the information out of her, but he knew if he continued to push, she’d shut him out entirely.

“I got the guitar,” she stopped and sniffed, picking up the glass and swirling the ice around. “Then I started to pick my way back through the maze of hallways back to the car. We were supposed to have a celebratory dinner before…”

His thoughts went to Ange’s congratulations to the woman across from him. She should have been on top of the world, doing the whirlwind spots on daytime and late night television, shooting her videos, anything but being holed up in the middle of nowhere with a schmuck like him. “Before your newest release?” he filled in, hoping to bring her back on track.

She nodded again and looked straight at him, her eyes glittering with unshed tears. “Yeah. Clint was so proud of this album, said it was going to be the one that changed everything for me. Looks like he was right.”

Mack poured another finger or so of whiskey in his glass and did the same for hers. “You saw him die?” It wasn’t a question, regardless of the phrasing. It was the only thing that explained the series of events that brought them into each other’s lives and the haunted look in her eyes.

“It happened so fast,” she whispered into her whiskey. It was several deep breaths later before she continued. “I turned the corner and they were there, just talking. Not yelling, not fighting, nothing, then Clint was on the floor with that guy just standing over him. Once Clint was down, he saw me. His eyes, my god, like shark’s eyes, black, dead. He started toward me a second later, stepping over Clint like he was trash, just a pile of trash in his way.” She finished her whiskey in three gulps and set the glass down on the table forcefully. “I ran, like a coward. I didn’t even check on Clint or anything. I just… I ran.”

Mack was out of his chair before the second sniffle opened up the floodgates, scooping Cassie up and cradling her to him as she sobbed. Fifteen short steps later, they were situated in the formal sitting room on a settee, and he did his best to comfort her. It was wrenching, hearing all the guilt and self-recrimination that held her in thrall on top of the grief for the loss of her friend and mentor. He wanted to tell her it was going to be okay, to say the right thing to make her pain lessen, but he’d never been good at being meaningful when it counted, so he kept silent, rocking her and stroking her hair as she cried.

The ebb and flow of the wracking sobs slowed to sniffles and the occasional hiccup, before stopping completely. Her head still on his chest, he listened to her breathing and felt her relax in his arms.

“I’m sorry.”

Pressing his lips to the top of her head, he muttered, “Don’t be. You get to grieve. That’s your right.”

She pulled away from him slightly and looked at his shirt for a moment. “Your shirt’s wet.”

That was, by far, the least of his concerns. The warmth of her in his arms and how much he enjoyed it was number one with a bullet on his list currently. And he was dangerously close to the line, several of them actually, and he needed to get himself together. Like now. He never, ever, got this close to a witness, having witnessed the consequences of that lapse first hand a few years ago, and yet, she remained in his lap with his arms loosely around her back and waist. “It’ll dry.”