True Colors (22 page)
“Right after you split, actually. They needed someone to fill Tucker’s position after he got the boot.”
Damn. Logan hadn’t thought of Ed Tucker, his former lieutenant, as a possibility for Alex’s kidnapper. Yet when Logan busted up the sex ring he’d stumbled into, he’d also busted two of Tucker’s subordinates who’d taken bribes to protect the brothel, acts that had cost Tucker his job as well. Yet, if Tucker was behind the kidnapping, Logan would have recognized his voice.
“So what the fuck is up?” Phil asked. “I figure there’s a reason for this call.”
Logan felt like a jerk for contacting his good friend after so long only because he wanted something from him, but he didn’t bother easing into it. Phil would understand. “Yeah, I need some help.”
“There’s a surprise. And here I thought you called me up to meet for pancakes.”
“A man has kidnapped my girlfriend. Says he wants revenge because I took his brother away from him.”
“Shit.”
“Can you tell me off the top of your head, do either Kendricks or Hudson have brothers?”
“Well, hell, Logan. Kendricks alone has three. Two of them are on the force. Far as I know, they’re not on the take like their big bro was, though. Third’s a firefighter in Chicago.”
Logan pulled out his notebook and started taking notes in the dim light. So much for hoping for one brother each. Or, better yet, one brother between the two. “Do you know their names?”
“Christ, let’s see. All started with M’s. Our guy was Matt, so his brothers are . . . Mark and Mick, the two who are cops. Mitchell, the youngest, is the one down in Chicago.”
“What about Hudson?”
“He has a twin. Name’s Tim.” Phil snorted. “Jimmy and Timmy. You wouldn’t think a kid with a twin named Timmy would grow up to be a cop on the take. Fucking idiot.”
“Did either Kendricks or Hudson ever say anything to you about getting back at me?”
“Are you shitting me? They had long, involved conversations about how they were going to take you apart, piece by piece. You fucked up their lifelong plans. They were looking at retirement at forty.”
Logan’s control slipped a notch. “Women and little kids were being forced into sexual slavery. I was supposed to walk away after stumbling into that?”
“You’re preaching to the choir, buddy.”
Logan dragged in a calming breath. “Sorry. I’m on edge.”
“Understandably. And maybe you shouldn’t consider just the brothers of Kendricks and Hudson. A lot of people paid for what those fuckholes did on the job. Tucker drank himself into liver disease. His kids haven’t talked to him in two years, and he technically didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Except overlook the fact that two of his cops were buying cars and boats and vacation homes.”
“Yep, there’s that.”
“Does Tucker have brothers?” Logan asked.
“Nope. A couple of sisters.”
“Finally, a break.”
“He’s got some pretty fucking loyal brothers-in-law, though.”
Logan’s call waiting beeped. “Hold on.” He switched over, his hand starting to shake. This was going nowhere fast, and he had no idea what to do next. “Yeah?”
“It’s Reese. I was driving by that new storage place over on Via Del Mar. There’s a white Mustang convertible parked in the lot after closing time. It’s got a bar code in the window.”
“What’s the tag?”
“JR 3418.”
Logan started running toward the driveway and his car. “I’m on my way. Call for backup.”
Butch stood by the open door and gazed down at his very disappointing captive. She had yet to regain consciousness, and he was tired of waiting. This was getting him nowhere. And it certainly wasn’t getting him
off
. His number one requirement for satisfying vengeance: It had to give him a happy. Alex Trudeau was not giving him a happy. In fact, all she’d done was flip him out and make him clean up vomit.
Not
fun.
off
. His number one requirement for satisfying vengeance: It had to give him a happy. Alex Trudeau was not giving him a happy. In fact, all she’d done was flip him out and make him clean up vomit.
Not
fun.
So screw it.
He’d take a step back and regroup. He’d go find some pleasure elsewhere in this intriguing little town, which would help him regain some patience and perspective. Maybe that tasty morsel at the Lake Avalon Public Safety Building or the one at the rental car place at the airport didn’t have plans tonight. He could easily be persuaded to partake in some tantalizing shrimp and some tantalizing woman.
He stopped to gaze down at the massive waste of his time shuddering on the floor, blood trickling from her nose. Maybe by morning, she’d snap out of her stupor and gift him with what he wanted. What he needed. Until then, he was out of this cold, sterile, concrete-and-tin-can hole.
Before leaving, he lifted her into the immobilized chair, resecured her wrists and ankles and gagged her, though he doubted she’d be able to make much noise in her current state. The tremors in the muscles of her arms and legs, and the way her head lolled forward, concerned him, but not enough to do anything about it. He planned to kill her, so whatever was wrong hardly mattered. He just wanted to have some fun first.
And he wanted her to survive long enough for him to take her apart in front of John Logan.
After locking up, he took the elevator down to the lobby. He saw the cop right away, illuminated by the obscenely bright parking lot lights, shining his massive flashlight through the windshield of the Mustang.
Crap.
Butch scooted down the hallway to the door he’d used to get in and slipped outside. The moldy scent of wet earth made his nose itch, and he swiped at it as he tread lightly toward the front of the building.
The cop was talking into a cell phone, but Butch couldn’t make out what he said. He was a big guy, tall and muscular, just the kind of guy that Butch would have to take by surprise to overpower. Not that that made him nervous. He’d taken down a few muscle-bound he-mans in his lifetime. He and his brothers had trained well, from the moment they’d all agreed to execute their own version of a coup.
Butch lingered at the corner of the building, waiting to see what happened next. Maybe the cop would mosey along without mishap. He might have stopped to run the tag on the solo car in the lot of a closed business. Butch should have parked somewhere else and walked to the storage place, but he’d been irked at the extra trip to Wal-Mart for the bucket and mop, and had gotten impatient. More proof that he really should work on his patience.
Keeping that in mind, he watched the cop. Most likely, he would get back into his squad car and drive off. Or maybe call a tow truck to haul away the illegally parked car.
A disturbing thought occurred to Butch. What if the woman who’d caught him carrying his unconscious captive to the car had called the cops? But, no, she had bought every word he’d fed her, he was sure of it. She’d been the type who wanted to believe everyone had good intentions, especially in
her
neighborhood.
her
neighborhood.
Of course, John Logan was probably the type who went door-to-door asking questions and demanding answers, no matter what time of day it was. The woman might have described the Mustang, which wouldn’t normally have been a giveaway, considering how many of them roamed the roads of tourist paradises. But one going solo in an empty parking lot . . . Well, damn. He’d done this to himself. And now he’d have to take care of it before anyone else showed up.
He really didn’t want to start killing people, especially cops, before he’d had a chance to do what he’d come to do. He also firmly believed in doing what had to be done to support the greater good. And his greater good was far from supported with a cop snooping around.
Of course, he could just walk away. If the police were on to his rental, he couldn’t very well get into it and drive away. They’d find him in a nanosecond. And if he killed a cop, well, that would just be stupid. He’d have the whole of the Lake Avalon Police Department breathing hellfire down his neck. Not conducive to achieving his goals.
Better to walk away. It’d be a hike back to the hotel, but it’d give him time to think, to clear his head. To work on his patience.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
TWENTY-NINE
Logan, with Noah’s car just about plastered to his bumper, yanked the steering wheel to the left and fishtailed into the parking lot of the new Palm Storage facility.
Lake Avalon police sergeant Darrell Reese met him at the door of his pickup as he jumped out. The sergeant, a man Logan had shared many a beer with after hours, didn’t waste time with greetings. “The place is deserted. I took a walk around back, and there’s trampled grass outside a side door that’s unlocked.”
“Which way?” Logan asked, unsnapping the holster under his arm.
Reese pointed toward the right side of the four-story, red-and-blue-stucco building. “Around that way. Backup’s on its way.”
Logan had no intention of waiting that long. He shot a glance at Noah. “You want to help Reese check out the car?”
Noah gave a quick nod. As Logan drew his Glock and headed for the grassy strip between the building and a tall chain-link fence, he glanced back once to see Reese open the driver’s door of the Mustang. Unlocked. That’d help.
Just inside the door of the storage facility, Logan paused and listened, Glock gripped in both hands but angled toward the floor. A breezy night made the metal rafters overhead shift and pop, and a chorus of crickets chirped from all directions.
If not for the Mustang in the lot, he would have assumed he was alone here. Maybe this was a waste of time. Maybe the Mustang’s battery died or the driver met some friends for dinner and had yet to return to pick it up. Maybe it was a coincidence that the tag started with JR.
His cell phone trilled on his belt, sounding as loud as a bomb in the stillness of metal and concrete, and he snatched it up. “Yeah?”
“Try unit 4410,” Noah said. “Fourth floor. I’m on my way.”
Logan looked around for a stairwell and, seeing none, started running down the hallway toward what he assumed would be the lobby, his shoes slapping at the floor.
Spotting a door marked STAIRS, he plowed through and took two steps at a time to level four. His breathing harsh and his heart thundering, he traversed clean walkways with concrete floors that had a shiny new coating. Fluorescent lights tripped by motion sensors winked on overhead as he ran, his eyes scanning for the numbered sign that would mark row forty-four.
When he stood before unit 4410, staring at the padlock securing it and wishing for bolt cutters, he heard the clomp of running feet. Noah.
Logan didn’t wait for his friend. If he broke the law, violated someone’s right to privacy or the search-and-seizure laws, he didn’t care. Alex might be on the other side of this door, and nothing was standing in his way. Screw the lack of a search warrant.
He raised the Glock and took aim. It took two deafening shots to destroy the lock, and by then, Noah had arrived. While Logan poked at the remnants of the lock to get them out of the way, Noah checked the other aisles to make sure no one tried to sneak up on them.
Logan’s hands shook as he hauled the door up.
And there she was. Chin resting on her chest, wrists and ankles secured to a fancy antique chair. She looked dead. His knees almost buckled. “Oh, God.”
Behind him, Noah ground out, “Son of a bitch.”
Logan lunged forward, blind with fear and deaf to the rest of the universe. His world consisted at that moment only of Alex tied to a chair and not moving, Alex not smiling up at him and saying, “Thank God, you found me in time.”
He
hadn’t
found her in time.
hadn’t
found her in time.
He leaned over her, his whole body trembling as he reached out to check for her pulse.
Noah was there in an instant, knocking his hand away before he could make contact with her skin. “Don’t!” Noah snapped. “Don’t you remember anything AnnaCoreen told you?”
Logan gripped the arms of the chair to brace himself and took in the cords tied around Alex’s bare wrists and ankles. “How are we supposed to get her out of this chair if we can’t touch her?”
“Use these.” Noah whipped out two pairs of latex surgical gloves that had been stuffed in his back pocket and tossed one set at Logan.
Logan stared at the gloves in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.” Noah snapped on his pair as if he did it every day of his life.
“You carry these around with you?”
“Since I met Charlie. You never know when there’s going to be a situation like this. They come in handy at crime scenes, too.”
As Logan struggled with his own pair—damn it, his hands shook so much he could barely maneuver his fingers into the latex—Noah gently cupped Alex’s head and angled it back, exposing her features to the dim light.
“Fuck,” Noah breathed.
Logan couldn’t speak, his breath stolen by the dried blood at her nose and the stark purple of the bruises marring the absolute whiteness of her features. She’d been struck more than once, fist-sized evidence on the left side of her jaw and temple. Murderous rage spewed through his veins. He would
kill
the man who’d done this to her.
kill
the man who’d done this to her.
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