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  That didn’t jibe with the reactions of the man he’d just met.

  His day got progressively worse with McCoy hammering him about the Masterson case and trying to figure out how to make Val believe he wasn’t using her.

  By the time he got to Val’s house, which he was hoping against all hope was going to be their house once again, he was beat. He ate takeout pizza because he couldn’t face another expired-can surprise and started making a grocery list.

  Wishful thinking, maybe—hell it was all he had going for him at the moment. If he had been thinking, he could have shopped before he came home and had something a little more appetizing than leftover pizza ready when she arrived.

  Maybe he’d just take her out to breakfast. Prolong the inevitable. That seemed to be both of their MOs. They weren’t going to last this time if they didn’t start talking about more than what was going on at the moment. Damn. He punched his pillow, set the alarm and fell into a fitful sleep that was interrupted by a phone call from Val.

  Her car wouldn’t start and jumper cables weren’t doing the trick.

  Maybe rescuing her from being stranded would make her think twice about wanting to kill him. Maybe Hell would freeze over and they could go ice skating. And he could trade his soul to the devil for the ability to convince Val that he really would have come back to her without an ulterior motive.

  * * * * *

  “That’s why McCoy didn’t object to you taking an impromptu vacation. He fucking sent you,” Val said, barely holding on to her temper. She kept counting to ten and trading glances with a man she’d been considering having wild sex with not ten minutes before when he’d picked her up from the radio station.

  Now she’d have to be running alongside his truck to be any farther away.

  “I would have told you the truth before I saw the house and the busted-down door but I knew that you’d throw me out on my ass if I did and I needed to make sure that you were safe before I left you again.”

  Left you again. She wanted to throw up. She’d spent the evening thinking about buying the flat-screen television he’d been ogling before his last birthday. It could have gone with the recliner she’d bought him so he could watch his stupid football games.

  “What makes McCoy think that I know anything about this Evie Masterson?”

  “He’s desperate. He’s been told to back off of this case and the official reason is that the case is cold and the resources are needed for other investigations. McCoy seems to think that if we aren’t looking for a body, she had to have a fairy godmother to help her disappear so completely.”

  “He thinks Bea is hiding her,” she stated flatly.

  “I honestly think he’s hoping she is because otherwise he’s afraid her body is decomposing somewhere and her husband is going to get away with murder.”

  “And he suspects murder because?”

  “The report said there was blood on the doctor’s shirt that wasn’t his but the speculation is that Mrs. Masterson cut herself when she broke a vase over his head.”

  “So you have a husband who may be wired into the department and a wife on the run who you think is holed up somewhere no one can get to her. I don’t see the immediate problem.”

  “The problem is, there’s an arrest warrant out for Evie Masterson. If she comes out of hiding and is spotted, all the arresting officers will see is that she’s a violent criminal capable of bashing her husband over the head and stealing money to support her drug habit. Personally, the fact that he describes the safe and money as his is a huge red flag for me but that’s not the way the report reads. This could turn out worse than it needs to.”

  It already was. Jack was guilty of lying to her but everything he was telling her added up. She was ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent sure that Bea’s newest little bird was Evie Masterson. She wished she wasn’t but Val wasn’t a child and she needed to face facts. Evie would have a better chance if Jack was involved. If nothing else, she trusted him to be a good cop.

  And at the moment that was all she could be sure of. She glanced at his rigid profile and wanted to cry but tears wouldn’t help anyone now.

  “About a month ago, a woman called my show wanting information on Bea’s safe house. She was a regular listener and knew all about the house and how it worked. Pete tried to get her to go to a hospital because she’d admitted that she was too hurt to drive.”

  “The report stated that her husband said she’d been beaten up by her drug dealer and she and the good doctor had fought about him giving her money to pay off the debt. He was on the phone with a rehab facility when she clocked him.

  “If she’d been assaulted Bea should have called the police immediately and filed a report,” Jack said, still in cop mode. Good, it made it easier to stay mad at him.

  “Pete tried to send an ambulance but she was scared her husband could get to her if she went to the hospital.”

  “It’s usually one of the first places checked for missing persons. I’d like to tell you that couldn’t happen but after McCoy being warned off the case, I just don’t know.”

  “So McCoy’s doing this without anyone knowing about it?”

  Jack nodded. “Would she talk to me?”

  Val sighed, her anger only marginally blunted by the realization that this all could have turned out different if they would have just trusted one another. “You’re the first person I thought of when this happened and I really tried to get Bea to convince her to talk to you. She was just too terrified.”

  He looked surprised and fairly uncomfortable. “I think she’s run out of options, Val. She can’t stay at the safe house forever and if she runs she’ll have that warrant hanging over her head until it catches her.”

  She could see his fear and almost smell his frustration. She’d been with him long enough to know part of his anger was due to the fact that he wasn’t in control of this situation. That aside, she also knew he’d do everything possible to keep Evie Masterson safe. Evie couldn’t hide forever, no one could. She let some of her anger slide away before it could affect her judgment.

  “How long do I have before McCoy stops playing nice?”

  “My guess is not long. I’ve never seen him this nuts.”

  “We do this my way,” she whispered and heard him breathe a sigh of relief. She fished inside her bag for her cell phone and punched in the number that everyone connected to Bea’s safe house had memorized.

  “I’ll need a ride from my house ASAP,” she said and just managed to hang up before Jack growled, “I can take you.”

  “No, you can’t. I’m doing this because I think you’re right—she can’t run forever. But I agreed to Bea’s terms before I met you, Jack, and I’m not going back on that promise.” She had to stop for a minute because this was the hard part and she’d never thought about it without crying. Tears wouldn’t help.

  “I broke a promise once, a long time ago, and my best friend died. We were ten years old and Katie Ann Myers asked me to keep a secret. She made me cross my heart. I thought she had a crush on the new boy in class,” she said, almost choking. She scrubbed at her face and it was already wet but she turned to face him anyway.

  “I’d never seen a cigarette burn on anyone. She had to tell me what it was and she asked me if I’d leave our back door open in case she needed a place to hide. My mom caught me unlocking the door one night after she’d locked it and I blurted out why. I remember feeling relieved that someone who could help knew.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t feel that way long. If I had just kept my mouth shut the police wouldn’t have gotten involved and there wouldn’t have been a stand-off. Her father killed everyone in the house.”

  Jack looked stunned and then he looked as if he pitied her and she had to stop herself from getting angry all over again.

  “I don’t want your pity, that’s not why I told you.”

  “You were only ten years old,” he said but she could hear frustration in his soft undertones. “You have
to know that she showed you the burns so that you’d be the one to tell someone who could help,” he whispered and she closed her eyes and let his velvety voice flow over her like a balm.

  Her ten-year-old self hadn’t accepted it when her therapist had suggested that theory and it had taken her a long time to believe it. By then her perception had been ingrained. “I still have days when I wonder if there was something else I could have done. I haven’t broken a promise since. Please don’t ask me to start now.

  “This is what I should have told you six months ago. Maybe then you would have understood that I was terrified if the marriage didn’t work out, if I walked away because I couldn’t be what you needed me to be, that I would have broken another promise I would have regretted for the rest of my life.”

  Chapter Six

  A black Honda Accord with tinted windows was already idling at the curb when they pulled up in front of the house.

  “I take it he was pissed,” Bea wheezed, and took a drag on her cigarette. There were already three butts in the ashtray, all with her signature red lipstick on the filters. She narrowed her exotic dark eyes and her mouth was a grim slash accentuating her regal features. “You’re sure he won’t follow you?”

  “I trust him, Bea. Now, you have to trust me. What happened the night you brought Evie to Wylde House?” she asked and wondered how anyone with as many bad habits as she’d witnessed could still pass for much younger than she had to be.

  “When we got there he was out like a light. She managed to tell me that he’d beat her unconscious and when she woke up she was lying on a shower curtain. The vase was on a bedside table and she grabbed it and hit him when he bent over to wrap her up.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “It was for your own protection. If there was a chance that I was wrong, I didn’t want you involved. She was afraid she’d killed him but we didn’t know that until we got there. We called 9-1-1 for him and got her out of there.”

  “You should have called the cops. Who are we?”

  “I’ll pretend you didn’t ask me that. She told us hubby was wired into the department and she didn’t think anyone would believe her side of the story. There was already a record of him trying to get her committed, saying that she was unstable because of her drug use.

  “He must have come to because if the shower curtain had still been on the bed when the EMTs arrived, I think the police would have had more of a reason to look at the doctor instead of Evie.”

  Val couldn’t hide her shock but Bea only shrugged. “If anyone goes to jail for hiding her it will be me and me alone. I’ve been where she is now and if someone hadn’t helped me I’d still be in jail for defending myself.”

  She hadn’t known that either. “Is there anything else I should know before I talk to her?” Val asked, wondering why they were taking a more circuitous route than normal.

  “Anything else, she’s going to have to tell you herself. You know the way it works,” Bea said and glanced in the rearview mirror. “Do you know anyone in a red Caddy?”

  Val glanced in the side mirror and shook her head. “How long has it been with us?”

  “I noticed it a few minutes ago. Hang on,” she said as she made a sharp turn and the Accord fishtailed, glancing off the side of a parked SUV. “Shit,” she hissed, ash from the cigarette dangling from her lips sparking before it fell.

  Val held on to the roof and thanked God that the airbag hadn’t been triggered but Bea had stomped on the gas. The Caddy didn’t relent and kissed the Accord’s back bumper, sending them through a four-way stop. She tried to get to her phone but Bea took a corner and turned the wrong way down a one-way street and her purse slid off the seat.

  The first shot took out the back window and Val screamed as the car started spinning. The Caddy rammed them in the back passenger door as the oncoming police car slammed into the car’s nose and the airbags finally deployed.

  * * * * *

  Jack had been watching from the top of the hill where he was still parked when he’d glanced in his rearview as Bea’s Accord turned the corner at the bottom of the hill. He’d noticed a familiar red Cadillac pull out of a driveway where the street formed a T intersection. He’d never moved so fast in his life. Now he grabbed his pistol off the truck’s seat as the police car slammed into the Accord’s front end and Cedric Blood jumped out of his car and shot at him. Jack shot through the open window of the truck’s cab, narrowly missing the bastard as Blood darted toward the Accord.

  Jack jumped out of the truck. “Here I am, you son of a bitch!” he yelled, firing so fast that he barely registered Blood returning fire until he saw the pimp’s body jerk, his shot going wild and taking out the back passenger window before he finally fell.

  Jack heard somebody yelling into his radio that they needed an ambulance but he was already on autopilot. There weren’t any screams. There wasn’t a sound coming from the car. This was his fault. This was the thing he hadn’t considered.

  Val wasn’t the only one who pissed people off.

  The doors were locked so he scrambled up onto the back and finished kicking out the window that Cedric’s shot had shattered. He lowered himself inside and reached for the side of Val’s neck before she moaned. He felt for a pulse anyway and started to shake when she murmured, “Thank you.”

  He was still shaking as he followed the ambulance to the hospital and had barely gotten it under control by the time Val had been wheeled into the emergency room.

  Cedric Blood was the thing he’d been missing. Fresh out of prison, with a nasty reputation for retaliation, Cedric’s standard MO was to target his enemy’s loved ones. The entire time they’d been looking for people Val had pissed off and it had been him.

  Cedric might never have remembered her if Jack hadn’t come home. If he hadn’t been looking for Evie Masterson. If he hadn’t used a cowardly excuse to inch his way back into Valentine’s life.

  After they’d closed the curtain around Val while they examined her, he kept going over what had happened. Bea’s car had just pulled away from the curb when he’d seen Cedric Blood’s familiar red Caddy pull out of a driveway at the bottom of the hill and make a beeline for the parallel street and had known that Blood was going to cut them off at the next intersection. He had run every stop sign trying to intercept the Caddy.

  He hadn’t made it. The Caddy had slipped between them, shooting out of a side street seconds before Jack. He’d sped up but the street had been too narrow for him to squeeze past the Caddy and run interference for the Accord.

  He’d turned on his siren and called for backup and heard an answering siren before the Accord shot through a four-way stop but everything after both the Caddy and the police cruiser had crashed into Bea’s car was pretty much a blur of activity that would get sorted out when he filed the report.

  * * * * *

  Val and Bea were scared and bruised but otherwise fine. Neither had responded to his apology for being responsible for Blood targeting them. Both were stoic and silent, sitting in their wheelchairs while he checked Val out.

  “You owe me a favor, Sutton,” Bea finally rasped. “Don’t pull any of that probable-cause bullshit with me and come bashing in my door.”

  He nodded and watched for a reaction from Val that didn’t materialize.

  They’d all waited until a beat-up jeep that looked as though it had seen action on too many fronts pulled up to the curb to collect Bea. Jack nodded to the white-haired driver who looked as if he’d seen as much action as the jeep. He looked like an aging Marlboro Man and barely acknowledged Jack as he scanned the perimeter while Bea was being helped into the front seat.

  Val knew Bea would be changing transportation before she reached her destination. Changing cars without being detected was something she had perfected over the years. Anyone following was going to end up staking out a vacant warehouse or neighborhood bar.

  Jack had barely spared them a glance. He was gripping the wheel so tightly that his knuckles
were white. He was either pissed or still beating himself up.

  “I didn’t really think I was going to die until I saw him walk up to the car,” she said as they pulled away from the curb and turned in the opposite direction. “I was so scared. Hell, I was terrified. All I could think of was that I wished you were there.” She was still shaken and seeing Jack again had been all she could think about since Cedric Blood’s bullet had taken out the back window.

  “Jesus, when you didn’t accept my apology I thought you were finished with me for sure this time,” he said softly, relaxing his grip on the steering wheel. “I knew if I missed, he probably wouldn’t. I’d lose you for good and it would have been my fault because I wasn’t smart enough to look past the obvious.”

  “There wasn’t any reason to, Jack. There wasn’t anything that screamed someone might have been coming at you through me. We hadn’t been together for six months.”

  “Also my fault,” he ground out.

  “You listen to me, Jack Sutton. I was just as angry and afraid as you were six months ago. I screamed just as loud and thought all of my reasons not to marry you were sound. I just didn’t tell you about all of them.

  “Don’t beat yourself up—trust me, it doesn’t do any good. It doesn’t change anything for the better. Don’t let it take years for you to figure out.”

  He looked slightly relieved. “I don’t suppose I’m going to be lucky enough for you to also overlook the fact that it took McCoy to give me an excuse to walk through your door?”

  “I’m still not happy about that but I think you were right when you said that if we make this about winning and losing we don’t stand a chance. And as disturbing as I find the fact that I may owe your return in some small way to Archer McCoy, I’m not so angry that I want to spend another six months without you.