Watch Your Back (13 page)

‘She’s
bait
?’ Stevie asked, horrified.

‘She’s
trained
bait,’ Clay replied. ‘If any person can take care of his or herself, it’s Paige.’

‘Grayson knows about this?’

‘It was his idea.’

‘Actually, Paige made him think it was his idea,’ Emma corrected.

Clay shrugged. ‘Whatever. The result is the same.’

‘What about Alec?’ Stevie asked.

‘We dropped him off at my office,’ Clay said. ‘We may need him to run searches for us once we start digging deeper into this situation.’

‘Doesn’t he have a laptop?’

‘Of course, but he can run searches faster from the computer in the office.’

‘I’m worried about him. He was there when the shooter drove by, just like Emma was. What if they target him?’

‘Alec’s tougher than he looks,’ Clay said mildly. ‘Grayson and Joseph will go to your parents’ house. Hyatt gave them a protection detail, but we’re taking no chances. JD’s driving to the safe house Hyatt arranged to let him know you aren’t coming.’

‘Hyatt’s gonna be pissed,’ Stevie said, biting her lip. ‘I don’t like deceiving him. But I don’t know who he’s brought into the loop on this.’

‘JD’s prepared to take whatever Hyatt dishes out.’

‘I know, but . . .’

Emma sighed loudly. ‘You’d do the same for JD, Stevie, and you know it. So hush.’

Yeah, she’d do the same for JD, but he wouldn’t like it any more than she did right now. Which was not at all. ‘What about the red SUV, the one with Joseph’s people?’

‘They follow us all the way and stand guard,’ Clay said.

‘For how long?’

‘For the weekend, at least. They volunteered for the job.’

‘But . . .’ She frowned. ‘They’ve never even met me.’

‘They didn’t need to,’ Clay said quietly. ‘They have Joseph’s back, and Joseph has yours. These two will take the night shift. Two more will take days. They don’t know you, either. You’ve got a lot of friends, Stevie. You don’t have to do this alone.’

Her throat closed, emotion overwhelming her. ‘Oh,’ was all she could manage.

‘Any more questions?’ Clay asked. Kindly, she thought.

‘No. Not at the moment.’

Chapter Seven

Baltimore, Maryland, Saturday, March 15, 9.45
P.M.

S
am Hudson had finally been able to get his mother to sleep. Her chest rose and fell evenly, but her cheeks were streaked from the tears she’d shed as she’d cried herself to sleep.

How many times had he lain in his own bed as a kid, hearing the sobs she tried to muffle? Far too many. He’d covered his ears when he was younger. Then later, he’d forced himself to listen, forced himself to picture the bruises on her face. And he’d fantasized about all the ways he could kill his father and make it really hurt.

Staring at the ring his mother had laid so carefully on her nightstand, Sam remembered every single one of those fantasies. When he’d been younger, they’d brought a kind of hollow satisfaction. Tonight, though, they filled him with panic. He’d desperately wanted his father dead. Based on the contents of the package he’d been sent, it looked like his wish had come true.

But how had his father died? Drug overdose? Murder? Who’d done it?

The panic shot through him again along with the vivid memory of waking alone in a dirty hotel room next to a recently fired gun. His father had disappeared at the same time. Eight years as a cop had taught Sam the unlikelihood of coincidences.

Me? Could it have been
me
?

No, I couldn’t have
. His mother had loved the bastard, for reasons Sam had never been able to understand. Sam wouldn’t have taken his father away from her. But something . . .
someone?
 . . . had. Uncertainty rattled him.
God help me
, could
it have been me?

Stop panicking. Stay calm and think like a goddamn cop
.

He pulled his mother’s door closed and crept down the stairs to her living room. His hand trembling, he drew the matchbook from his pocket, placed it on the coffee table, then sank to the sofa, staring into space.

The Rabbit Hole. The matchbook brought back the memory of that evening in stunning detail – the first hour of it, anyway. He’d only gone to the bar because an old buddy was having his bachelor party there. But when he’d arrived, he hadn’t found the party. No one was there.

Well, lots of people were there, but no one he knew. No one he wanted to know.

He’d figured the party hadn’t yet arrived, so he ordered a beer. If his friends hadn’t shown up by the time he finished his beer, he was leaving. He kept his eyes to himself, not wanting to look at any of the other patrons whose eyes were glued to the strippers on the small stage.

He’d looked up only once. A waitress had served him his beer, then asked him if he wanted to buy a dance. When he’d looked at her face, he’d felt a confusing mixture of lust, pity, and revulsion. She was maybe eighteen years old and already she had the look of a used-up old whore. He’d given her a twenty and told her to go away.

The next thing Sam knew it was thirty hours later and he was waking up, freezing cold, and reeking of sour booze.

Just like his old man. It had been his first thought.
I’m just like my old man.

Then his gaze had lighted on the gun on the floor next to him and his self-disgust had changed abruptly to fear.
Oh my God. What have I done?

The delivery of that matchbook was a message, one that felt distinctly like a threat.
To me.

What
had
he done? Sam drew a deep breath and came to his feet. It was time he found out.

He made his way down the basement stairs, past his mother’s laundry room, his steps unerring even in the pitch black. He’d walked this path enough times in his life to know the way by heart. He stopped at the old crawl space his family used for storage. Somewhere, in all the boxes, were memories of better times. Photographs of Sam as a baby, as a toddler, as a kindergartner. All taken before his father had become an addict.

The boxes in the crawl space were empty of anything valuable. His dad had scavenged the boxes for years, hocking the family’s belongings to buy drugs.

Sam hadn’t been exempt. His baseball card collection had disappeared from one of these boxes, along with the pocket watch he’d inherited from his maternal grandfather. His father had even stolen the jar of cash he’d earned mowing lawns. Bitter, Sam had become inventive.

He moved between the boxes in a crouch, feeling his way along the bricks that formed the back wall of the crawl space. Tugging at the fourteenth brick, he pulled it out from the wall and carefully set it on the floor. Four bricks joined the first, revealing the small hole he’d dug in the dirt at age thirteen, determined his father would steal from him no more.

His father had never found this hiding place. Neither had anyone else.

The metal box was cold to his fingertips as Sam drew it out. It was heavy, filling him with both dread and relief. Taking out his cell phone, Sam shone its light on the box’s lid as he carefully lifted it and looked inside. Wrapped in newspaper was a revolver, its six chambers empty. The four bullets he’d found loaded were in a small baggie, also in the box.

A rookie cop at the time, he’d checked the daily police reports avidly for weeks after waking in that hotel room for any incidences of gunshot wounds in which the weapon hadn’t been found, but nothing had come up. He’d finally concluded that the gun hadn’t shot anyone.

But now, with the timing of this delivery . . . He had to wonder if he’d concluded correctly.

He’d hated his father so much back then. His secret fear had always been that he’d killed the sonofabitch in a drunken rage.
And if you did? Will you tell your mother? Will you tell anyone?

Sam let out a breath.
Yes. No. Hell, I don’t know
.

He didn’t know the answer to any of those questions. Right now he needed one specific answer – what, if any, crimes had been perpetrated by this specific firearm.

He made his way up the stairs and outside to his car, storing the metal box in his trunk. Tomorrow he’d start the wheels in motion. He prayed the outcome wouldn’t ruin his life.

Saturday, March 15, 11.30
P.M.

Teeth gritted, Henderson focused on the dull painting of a landscape on the hotel room wall and managed not to scream. ‘Dammit. That needle hurts.’

Fletcher looked up with a grimace that was both harried and angry. ‘You want painless, go to a hospital. You called me to stitch you up, remember?’

Because Henderson hadn’t known who else to call. ‘I’m surprised you showed up at all.’

Fletcher was focused on Henderson’s shoulder, and if the expression on Robinette’s lead chemist’s face was any indication of prognosis, it didn’t look good. ‘I guess once a doctor, always a chump,’ Fletch muttered. ‘You put me in a shitty spot by calling me.’

‘I couldn’t get Robinette to answer my calls. I was getting desperate. I tried to get to my apartment, but there was a fire nearby. Too many emergency vehicles to risk getting closer.’

‘Robbie went to an awards dinner. It ran late.’

‘Oh. I forgot about that. Anyway, I figured you still knew how to sew a straight seam. You stitched us all up more than once.’ Being confined to the medical tent was one of Henderson’s better memories of the war. The pain had been horrific, but the tent had offered . . . sanctuary. A little peace, some time to regroup before picking up their weapons and going back out again.

‘And look where it got me,’ came Fletcher’s icy reply.

Fletcher was one of the casualties of the war – but the kind the brass liked to sweep under the rug. After putting too many torn bodies back together, Fletch had suffered a mental breakdown. A bad one. The kind that came with a medical discharge for ‘mental disorder’, keeping Fletch from practicing medicine as a civilian for years, maybe forever.

‘I didn’t think the boss would appreciate me skipping into a hospital,’ Henderson said, changing the subject when Fletcher began to stitch again. ‘They’d have to report the bullet hole.’

Fletcher’s chin came up, their eyes met. And Henderson’s gut twisted in a knot.

‘What?’ Henderson demanded. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

Fletcher’s gaze dropped, again intent on the stitching. ‘Robinette was very angry with your . . . execution of his orders.’

‘How angry?’

‘You’re . . . you’re out.’

‘Out. Like . . . out of rotation? That sucks.’

Fletcher didn’t look up. ‘No,
out
. Fired. He assigned Westmoreland to Mazzetti.’

Henderson jerked and Fletch’s needle poked a nerve, sending pain radiating everywhere. ‘What the hell? He
fired
me?’ Nobody had been fired from the organization before. Nobody. ‘I clean up Robinette’s messes every goddamn day and I make one mistake and he
fires me
?’

‘You didn’t make one mistake, Henderson. You made two really big ones. Both made the news. Both made enemies out of the cops. And both left behind evidence.’

‘Those bullets aren’t traceable and you know it.’

Fletcher’s shoulders lifted in a noncommittal shrug. ‘Anything’s traceable if you’re smart enough. What about this wound? You had to have left a trail of blood all the way in here.’

‘I didn’t. I dressed it myself, then I disposed of the car. Nobody will find a drop of blood they can use against me. He can’t fire me.’

‘He told the guard shack that you’d never been an employee. He wiped your clearance to the facility. If you try to initiate contact, he’ll give you up as a vet he once knew, but who now is mentally imbalanced. Any and all shots you took today are your full responsibility. And . . . the fire near your apartment? That
was
your apartment. He gave the order to have it burned down.’

Henderson’s jaw dropped in shock. ‘Who set the fire?’

‘Probably Westmoreland. You’ve always known the price of failure,’ Fletcher added gently. ‘None of this should come as any surprise.’

‘I did what he told me to do.’

‘You fired on a crowded restaurant.’

‘He told me to go there.’

‘To wait for her. To follow her to someplace secluded and kill her there. Not to follow her to her front yard and shoot her in front of four witnesses. Five, if you include her kid.’

‘He wasn’t specific. He wanted her dead. Lots of people were shooting at her. I thought a public display would fit with the other attempted hits.’

‘They might have, except that the cops know you were hit. They have a BOLO out on you at all area hospitals and clinics.’

‘On me, specifically?’ Fletcher’s hand was cool against Henderson’s forehead. ‘Or a general Be-On-the-Lookout?’

‘A general one for any suspicious GSWs. They don’t know your name.’ Fletch frowned. ‘You’re burning up. This wound is infected. I don’t have any medicine to treat it.’

It was true. Henderson’s shoulder was on fire. ‘Can you get me something?’

‘Only the vodka I brought you from my own liquor cabinet. I’m not even supposed to be here.’ Fletcher looked up, frustrated. ‘Robinette forbade anyone to help you. You’re out.’

Out of a job. Out of the only family Henderson had ever known. ‘Then why are you here?’

Fletcher tied off the final suture, then bandaged the wound. ‘Because I’m bat-shit crazy?’

‘Only in the most medical of terms,’ Henderson said wryly and Fletcher laughed.

‘I’ll miss you, Henderson.’ The ex-doc made fast work of packing up the used supplies.

‘I’m serious. Why did you risk coming to help me?’

Fletcher looked away. ‘Because he was wrong to cut you loose. Robinette forgot the cardinal rule – we don’t leave anyone behind. I wonder if he’s starting to believe his own—’

‘His own what?’

A shake of the head punctuated the next words. ‘No. I’m not going there.’

‘His own press? That maybe Brenda Lee did too good of a PR job, rehabilitating his image? That maybe he’s starting to believe he really is a good guy? Is
that
what you were going to say?’

‘Leave it, Henderson.’

‘I can’t. It’s not like I can get a job anywhere else, you know. Or antibiotics, for that matter. This isn’t right, Fletch, and we both know it.’

‘I’m leaving now.’

Henderson turned to watch Fletcher heading for the hotel room’s door. ‘And Lisa? Did she enter into your decision at all?’

Fletcher turned, eyes cold and narrowed. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Come on. A fool could see how you feel about Robinette. And Lisa.’

‘He is my boss. Lisa is his
wife
.’

Wife
was said with enough bitterness to confirm Henderson’s suspicions. If Fletcher became angry enough, Henderson might be able to make the former doctor an ally on the inside. ‘He went to that black-tie dinner to honor his “philanthropy” tonight with Lisa clinging to his arm, draped in her daddy’s jewels. She’s rich, accomplished, gets him running in all the right circles. He’s proud to wear
her
on his arm. And I hear she’s a tiger in the sack, too.’

Fletcher flinched, growing pale. ‘You ungrateful piece of shit. I took a big risk in coming here, and this is how you repay me?’

Shit.
Too late Henderson realized the mistake in pushing Fletcher’s buttons. ‘I’m sorry, Fletch. I’m upset and I lashed out.’

A cool nod. ‘I’ll attribute your remarks to the fever that’s unfortunately not likely to kill you. But I can still hope it’s painful as hell.’

‘That’s fair. And so you know, it
is
painful as hell. Are you going to tell anyone I’m here?’

‘No. Because you’re right. Robinette will never take our relationship public. He’s not that kind of a man. If I stay with him, it’s with full knowledge of that fact.’ Fletcher’s brows lifted. ‘And because I’m about to make him a shitload of money, twenty percent of which is mine. I’m not giving up the money, no matter whose ass I have to kiss. Keep those sutures dry. If you can get your hands on penicillin, take it. If you can’t, keep the wound clean and use peroxide when you change your bandages.’

Henderson blew out a breath when the hotel door quietly closed. Fletch was in love with Robinette. Henderson wondered if the boss knew.