CHAPTER ONE

 

 

San Diego, California

 

DID I MISS anything?”

Kyla Wells blinked as Wes slid onto the bench seat beside her. If they weren’t in a courtroom right now, she would have hugged him. Tall and broad-shouldered with dark hair that looked like he was always running his hand through it, a perfect amount of scruff on his jaw, and blue eyes she could get lost in, he was the closest thing she had to a boyfriend. Or he could be if he weren’t her best friend.

“When did you get back?” she asked excitedly, while at the same time trying to keep her voice low. “Nobody would tell me anything about where you went.”

Not that she expected anyone to give her any details, of course. The missions Wes and the other SEALs went on were uber classified. While his teammates might all treat her like a sister, they couldn’t tell her where Wes was or what he was doing.

Wes flashed her a grin that made her heart do a little backflip. “It was just some weapons training. We got in this morning.”

She knew he was lying about where he’d been. He always downplayed every mission whether he disappeared for hours, days, or weeks at a time. She understood he couldn’t talk about his job, but at the same time, she hated that he had to lie to her about it.

“Enough about me,” he added. “What’s going on with the trial?

Kyla sighed and sat back in her seat, her gaze going to the front of the room where the prosecutor and defense attorney were talking quietly with the judge at the bench. “Very little. They’ve been in a sidebar with the judge for the past twenty minutes. I have no idea what they’re talking about.”

“Any chance they’re talking about Nesbitt taking the stand himself?”

Wes leaned in close as he spoke and the sensation of his warm breath against her neck sent goosebumps chasing over her skin. She closed her eyes for a moment as she imagined what it would be like to feel that same warmth along a few other places on her body.

Stifling a moan, she gave herself a shake and told herself to focus.

“I doubt it.” She looked at him. “According to the prosecutor, Nesbitt would be an idiot to open himself to cross-examination. It’s more likely they’re asking for another continuance. Apparently, months upon months of billable hours isn’t enough for his clown car full of lawyers.”

Wes turned his attention to the defendant’s table near the front of the room. Kyla followed his gaze. William Nesbitt, former city councilman and current scum-sucking piece of crap, sat calmly in his chair, as if he was simply waiting for the barista to bring him a cup of coffee.

Hatred wasn’t an emotion Kyla had ever been familiar with—until recently. But when it came to Nesbitt, hatred barely scratched the surface of what she felt. It wasn’t a stretch to say she wanted the man to suffer as much as her father had.

As much as her mother had.

As much as she had.

Sometimes, when she woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, her face wet with tears, she found herself wishing Nesbitt was dead. Sometimes she even imagined killing him. Especially when she thought about his trial ending with anything other than a guilty verdict.

Kyla tried not to let herself think like that, but over the course of the past several months, as she’d watched Nesbitt and his high-priced lawyers working the judge, the jury, the prosecutor, and the media, she realized she didn’t have a lot of faith in the American justice system. Money talked. And Nesbitt had a lot of it.

“Maybe Nesbitt is planning to plead out like he should have done months ago,” Wes murmured, his warm breath once more tickling the skin of her neck and ear. “The guy has to know the trial is going to end with him going to prison. The cops found the murder weapon in his frigging hands. There’s no talking your way out of that.”

Kyla snorted. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Nesbitt is a career politician. He made himself rich by knowing all the right people and making deals under the table. I’m terrified this whole trial has been one big game to him.”

Wes took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. The feel of his warm skin against hers made her pulse flutter. “Nesbitt’s going down, Kyla. And so is whoever he hired to murder your father.”

She hoped Wes was right. Because while Nesbitt might have had the gun in his possession, she wasn’t convinced he’d actually pulled the trigger.

As much as she hated Nesbitt, it didn’t make sense he’d do his own dirty work and gun her dad down at a stoplight in the middle of town, even if he did have reason to want her father dead. As a city councilman, Nesbitt had been in the perfect position to make sure a certain construction company—Alpha One to be precise—won the very lucrative contract for the Navy’s new Imperial Beach Complex on Coronado.

The problem was, Alpha One had a sizable skeleton in its closet. The company had recently built a pedestrian overpass in San Clemente that collapsed due to poor workmanship, killing two people. If word of something like that got out, Alpha One would never have gotten the Navy contract. Her dad, who’d been a civil engineer for the city, had been doing the investigation and Kyla knew for a fact that he’d been about to point the finger at Alpha One.

That’s where Nesbitt came in. In exchange for getting rid of her father before he could file his official report, Alpha One had agreed to set aside the most profitable sub-contracting jobs associated with the Imperial Beach contract for Nesbitt’s business cronies, who in turn funneled millions of dollars into the councilman’s campaign funds…and from there straight into his pockets.

Connecting Nesbitt to her father’s murder hadn’t been nearly as easy. When her father had been gunned down in his car at a stoplight, the police concluded he’d been the victim of road rage and the investigation had quickly gone cold. Kyla and two of her friends from college, Owen Cobb and Andrew Brock, had done some digging and linked Nesbitt to a freelance security consultant who worked for him—Nestor Stavros. A traffic camera placed Stavros in the car directly behind her father minutes before his death. Unfortunately, that same camera hadn’t seen the man murder him.

It had been pure chance the police caught Nesbitt at all, but since it was with the same weapon that had killed her father, they’d charged him with murder. Kyla had expected Nesbitt to give Stavros up in exchange for a deal and was still stunned he hadn’t.

“Maybe Nesbitt’s lawyer is talking to the judge because he’s finally about to roll on Stavros,” she said to Wes. “That’s fine with me, as long as Nesbitt doesn’t get off the hook completely.”

“It’s not fine with me.” Wes’s jaw was tight. “They were both involved in your father’s death. They both deserve to go to prison for life.”

He was right. Ultimately, Nesbitt was the reason her father was dead and she wanted him to pay.

Kyla was still wondering what Nesbitt’s lawyer could possibly be talking about when Owen and Andrew sat down on the bench beside her.

She smiled at them. “I didn’t know you guys were coming today. I thought you had class.”

“We did, but we blew it off.” Owen grinned. Thin with shaggy dark hair, he wore black-rimmed glasses he insisted made him a chick magnet though no one had ever been able to corroborate that. “Considering how many privacy and internet laws we violate on a regular basis it’s safe to say engineering ethics is a wasted subject on us.”

Kyla couldn’t argue with that. In addition to being there for her after her father had been murdered, her two friends had jumped into the world of computer hacking alongside her with both feet. It was safe to say none of them would get an A+ in that class.

“Everything going okay with the trial?” Andrew asked, leaning forward to see around Owen. Blond with dark eyes, he was built like a football player but without the athletic ability. “You both looked kinda serious when we walked in.”

“Nesbitt’s lawyer has been talking to the judge for the past thirty minutes,” Wes said. “We were trying to figure out if we should be concerned.”

“Not if the prosecutor’s files are any indication,” Owen said softly. “Andrew and I hacked into his computer last night and everything seemed fine.”

Wes shook his head with a chuckle. “Don’t you think it’s a little ballsy to be snooping around the DA’s computers in the middle of a murder investigation?”

Owen shrugged. “I prefer to call it practical. There’s nothing wrong with making sure politics don’t intrude in the legal process. Any more than it already has, I mean.”

Kyla couldn’t help rolling her eyes at that. She and the guys might have made a name for themselves snooping out political corruption in their city as a secret group everyone knew as The People, but that didn’t mean she didn’t laugh at her friend’s conspiracy theories. Owen had a lot of them.

She would have said as much but was interrupted by the bailiff as he called the courtroom back into session. She hadn’t even realized Nesbitt’s lawyer and the prosecutor had returned to their respective tables. Whatever Nesbitt’s attorney was whispering to him must have made him happy because the creep was smiling like the proverbial cat who ate the canary.

She barely had time for a twisting sensation to settle in the pit of her stomach before the defense attorney called their witness to the stand, a portly man with thinning gray hair named Ruben Conway. Up front, the prosecutor and his assistants visibly stiffened as the man identified himself as an employee of the state’s Comptroller’s Office from the Los Angeles office. Whoever this guy was, he had the people from the district attorney’s office scrambling through pages of notes and tapping frantically on their laptops like they were looking for something they’d only now realized they’d missed.

Nesbitt’s lawyer approached the man. “Mr. Conway, can you explain the how you know Mr. Nesbitt?”

The lead prosecutor clenched his jaw so hard it looked like his teeth might shatter. Beside him, his assistants stopped digging through their laptops and notes.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Andrew murmured. “He wasn’t anywhere in the DA’s system as a witness. I would know because I’ve been doing a background check on every person even thinking about speaking on Nesbitt’s behalf.”

“I bet that’s what the long sidebar was about earlier,” Wes muttered. “The prosecutor was probably pissed Nesbitt’s lawyer slipped in a new witness at the last minute without notifying anyone.”

Kyla could understand that. She didn’t like it either.

“I’d been meeting with Mr. Nesbitt on a recurring basis for approximately two months,” Conway said, leaning in closer to the microphone. “Well, two months prior to him being arrested, that is.”

“And what were these meeting about?” the lawyer prompted.

“Funding. Our office was auditing the city payroll. There had been several discrepancies noted related to monies going to individuals that may or may not have actually been employed by the city and Mr. Nesbitt was helping us track down the source of those irregularities.”

Nesbitt’s lawyer nodded. “How often did you have these meeting and where were they held?”

Kyla’s stomach dropped. She knew before the man answered where all of this was going. This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not after everything Nesbitt had done to her family.

“Twice a week. Sometimes more,” Conway said. “We occasionally met in his office in San Diego, but mostly at my office in LA.”

“I see,” Nesbitt’s attorney said. “And do you remember if you had one of those meeting on the evening of the 24th of March?”

“Yes.”

All around Kyla, people began murmuring to each other even as Conway stated there was video confirming Nesbitt had been in his office for nearly four hours on the evening in question. The murmurs only got louder after that and the judge banged his gavel on the bench so hard he was going to need to buy a new one. In between trying to regain some sense of control within the courtroom, he motioned the lead prosecutor forward with a frown. Probably so he could ask him how the hell it was possible the state hadn’t thought to check to see if their one and only suspect might have an alibi for the night of the crime.

Because having an alibi was the first rule of hiring someone to commit murder for you. But Kyla thought that since Nesbitt wasn’t shouting it from the rooftops he didn’t have one. And if Nesbitt’s lawyer got his way, the charges against him would be dropped. Once Nesbitt walked out of the courtroom a free man, it was going to be nearly impossible to ever get him back in unless they managed to link him to the killer he hired.

Kyla’s breath started coming faster as she felt a panic attack kick in and she thoughts she might pass out. Then Wes’s arm was around her and he was pulling her into a tight embrace. She melted against him, needing him more than she could imagine ever needing anyone.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “We’re not going to let Nesbitt get away with this.”

She wanted to believe Wes, but as Nesbitt turned in his chair to give her a smug smile, she wasn’t so sure. Abruptly, the utter despair threatening to overwhelm her disappeared to be replaced with a wave of anger that made her want to walk over there and punch the arrogant asshole right in the face.

Kyla promised herself then and there she’d do anything she had to do to make sure Nesbitt paid for what he’d done to her family.

Anything.

 

* * * * *

 

IT WAS AFTER two A.M. by the time Wes finally got home. A studio apartment on the fifth floor of the building, it was one room with the kitchen and living room taking up most of it. The bedroom was directly off the main space and separated by a half wall. Other than the closet, the bathroom was the only room that had a door. It wasn’t big by any stretch of the imagination, but the neutral color scheme made it seem more spacious than it was. The wall opposite the couch was large enough for a big-screen TV and that was all he cared about.

Locking the door, he tossed his keys on the table to one side of the tiny entryway with a sigh. Damn, he was exhausted. He’d gone straight from the mission debriefing at the Imperial Beach Complex that morning to the courthouse to see Kyla instead of grabbing some shut-eye, so he was running on fumes. Normally, he would have gotten some sleep on the flight back from the mission, but the only bird available had been in a C-5 cargo plane loaded to the gills with shrink-wrapped pallets of mail and diplomatic pouches. He’d spent half the trip trying to doze on the metal floor and the other draped over a pile of mail. If the Air Force was looking for a five-star rating on Yelp from him, they weren’t going to get it.

That wasn’t the only reason he was beat. Watching Kyla completely shut down after Nesbitt went free had been gut wrenching. She’d invested so much of herself in the trial and seeing the man responsible for her father’s murder go to prison that when it didn’t happen, she was devastated. She’d sat there staring off into space without saying a word, her face blank, her body stiff. She wouldn’t even look at the prosecutor when the man came over to apologize for what happened. She wouldn’t talk to Owen and Andrew, either. It took a while, but Wes finally managed to convince her to leave.

They’d stopped at her mother’s house on the way to her dorm. Her mother had tried to go to Nesbitt’s trial, but couldn’t handle it. Wes wished to hell Kyla hadn’t gone either. But if Wes thought it was torture seeing Kyla reaction to Nesbitt being released, but that was nothing compared to how poorly her mom had taken it. He’d been sure the woman was going to pass out.

Thankfully, she hadn’t, but it had taken a long time before any of them felt comfortable leaving. Kyla had wanted to stay—something Wes thought was a good idea—but her mom insisted Kyla go with him. Although she’d never said as much, he was pretty sure Kyla’s mother thought they were dating…and it was obvious she more than approved.

Owen and Andrew tagged along as they headed to Kyla’s dorm room at San Diego State University where she was working on her masters in computer engineering. The place was tiny, but she didn’t seem to mind, especially since she didn’t have a roommate. The moment they were inside, she’d fired up her laptop, plopped down on the bed and announced they needed to find something else to connect Nesbitt to her father’s murder.

Owen and Andrew exchanged concerned looks.

Wes quickly took a seat beside her. “We will, but how about we tackle it tomorrow? It’s already after one. You should try to get some sleep.”

She shook her head, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “I’m not tired.”

“Kyla, it’s after one in the morning,” he pointed out.

“I said, I’m not tired.”

Wes glanced at Owen and Andrew to see that they looked as helpless as he felt.

“Kyla, anything you find online is going to be there tomorrow,” he said gently.

She stopped typing and stared at him, a glint in her dark eyes he didn’t like. “You’re right. We should go over to Nesbitt’s right now and start following him. We can take shifts.”

Closing her laptop, she jumped to her feet and grabbed her car keys off the desk. Wes hurried after her, catching her hand before she could get to the door.

“Whoa,” he said. “Kyla, you need to slow down and think. Stalking Nesbitt is more likely to get you tossed in jail than him.” He reached up to brush her long, dark hair back from her face before he could stop himself. “Let’s all get some sleep and come at this from a different angle tomorrow, okay?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Please?” he cajoled.

For a moment, he thought she was going to argue, but then she nodded.

The urge to kiss her—even on the forehead—was almost too much to resist and he had to force himself to step away from her. He glanced at Owen and Andrew.

“I have to be at work in four hours,” he said. “Can you stay with Kyla while I go home and grab a shower and a uniform. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

If it weren’t for the fact that the brass wanted to go over the details of the ambush in Nigeria, he would have said the hell with it and taken off, but he couldn’t. Not right now.

“Yeah, of course,” Owen said while Andrew nodded in agreement.

“I don’t need you guys to stay,” she protested.

“I know you don’t.” Wes smiled. “But I’d feel better if you weren’t alone right now.”

Kyla opened her mouth, then closed it again.

“Try to get some sleep, okay?” he said. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

Wes only hoped she was in bed right now doing just that right now. More likely, she staring up at the ceiling, thinking up ways to put Nesbitt in prison. Regardless, the sooner he got back over to her place, the better.

Yanking his T-shirt over his head, he started for the bathroom and the shower he hoped would help wake him up when his cell phone rang. He dug it out of the pocket of his jeans with a groan, praying it wasn’t headquarters with another mission. But the moment he saw the name on the screen, he knew it had nothing to do with going wheels-up.

He thumbed the green button. “Owen, what’s up?”

“Kyla left and we don’t know where she went.”

He tightened his grip on the phone. “What do you mean, she left?”

The heavy sigh on the other end of the line was barely audible over the sound of Andrew muttering and freaking out in the background. “She went to bed right after you took off, so we both kinda nodded off. When I woke up a few minutes later, Kyla was gone and so were her car keys.”

“Dammit,” Wes muttered.

“It gets worse,” Owen said. “Andrew and I found an empty case for a handgun sticking out from under her bed.”

His stomach dropped. “Where the hell did Kyla get a gun?”

Owen snorted. “This might be California, but we’re still part of the United States. Getting a handgun isn’t difficult for anyone with an ounce of intelligence and some money. Kyla has both.”

Wes cursed. That was true enough.

“Kyla’s laptop is still here, so we can pull up her tracking program and try to get a fix on her phone signal, but there’s a good chance she shut her phone off,” Owen said. “Maybe she went to stay with her mom. I thought about calling to check, but I didn’t want to freak Mrs. Wells out if Kyla isn’t there.”

Wes took the phone away from his ear long enough to pull on his T-shirt. “After the way Kyla was talking earlier, there’s only one place she’d go.”

“Nesbitt’s,” Owens muttered. “We were afraid of that. What are we going to do?”

Scooping up his keys, Wes strode out of his apartment and headed for the stairwell. “I’m going to Nesbitt’s to intercept her before she does something crazy.”

Or before she got herself hurt. The thought of something happening to Kyla made his gut clench.

“What about Andrew and me?” Owen asked.

“Listen to the police scanner and give me a heads-up if there’s company coming.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment. “You really think Nesbitt will call the cops if he catches Kyla?”

Wes unlocked his pickup and climbed in. “Right now, I’m more concerned with Kyla killing the asshole and spending the rest of her life in jail for it. I have to stop her before that can happen.”

Hanging up, he started the engine. There was a part of him that refused to think Kyla would shoot Nesbitt in cold blood, but then he remembered how devastated she’d been after the judge released the man she’d spent the past year and a half blaming for her father’s death. But as the day had gone on, he’d seen the change in her. She’d gone from being shocked and in denial to angry as hell, and it was consuming her.

So, yeah, Kyla might very well kill Nesbitt if she had a chance.

Putting the truck in gear, he sped out of the parking lot. It would take at least a forty minutes to get to Nesbitt’s house in La Jolla, even at this time of night. With the head start Kyla had, she’d easily get there before he did. He prayed he got there before she did something she’d spend the rest of her life regretting.