“THAT LITTLE TRAMP.” Susan paced back and forth across the living room of Elliot’s sleekly modern, seventeenth-floor apartment overlooking the city. She didn’t come here often. She didn’t want to risk being seen, but today was important.
“And to think I actually liked her.” She turned, paced back the opposite way. “I helped her get the job working for Chase Garrett. I even gave her my cell number.”
“You can’t trust anyone these days,” Elliot said mildly, taking a sip of his Bombay Sapphire martini.
Susan sighed and thought of the text she had received. “She wants to meet me at noon tomorrow at the Vietnam Memorial at Fair Park. She wants twenty-five thousand for her copy of the video.”
“You’re lucky. You thought she’d want a hundred.”
“There’s no way to be sure she hasn’t made a dozen more copies. Twenty-five thousand now, fifty the next time. It’ll never end until we get rid of her.”
She paused in front of the window to look down at the traffic crawling along the street. “And what if she goes to Jonathan? He’d pay a king’s ransom to keep the world from knowing he’s a cuckold. His pride’s too great for that. Jonathan has the best lawyers in the world. I’d get next to nothing.”
“I told you I’ll take care of her,” Elliot said. “You just make sure she comes alone.”
Susan thought of the phone call to Mindy that she had made using one of the disposable phones she kept to communicate with Elliot and anyone else she didn’t want her husband to know about.
“I told her I’d meet her, but only if she came alone. I told her if she brought her SEAL boyfriend, the deal was off.”
“And she agreed?”
“Only if I agreed to the same terms. You were right about the money. She can’t wait to get her hands on it. The only stipulation is that I come by myself.”
Elliot chuckled, sipped from his long-stemmed martini glass. “Only you won’t be alone. I’ll be close by, and my men will be in position to take the girl out.”
“What about the police?”
“As soon as you have the flash drive, you’ll leave. When they find her body, the girl will be in possession of twenty-five thousand dollars. It’ll look like a drug deal gone bad. There’s no way to connect you to any of this. You’ll have the video, and Mindy Stewart will be dead before she gets back to her car.”
MINDY SAT ON the brown tweed sofa in Jax’s living room. The evening had settled in. The Chinese takeout they’d had for supper was gone, the dishes cleaned up and put away. After the text she had sent, and the return phone call she’d received from Susan, they knew they were on the right track.
Ryan Shipman had been blackmailing his ex-lover. Now he was dead, and Susan believed Mindy had a copy of the drive, for which she wanted twenty-five thousand dollars.
Since the stakes had just gotten dangerously higher, Jax had insisted they stay at his place where DeMarco and her crew were less likely to find them. Muffin was with them, perfectly at home, curled up in the middle of Jax’s big bed.
Jason had arrived to help Jax flesh out the plan they had come up with earlier and now sat across from them, sprawled in an overstuffed chair.
“You have to bring in the cops,” he argued. “You know it as well as I do. We try to handle this on our own, we’ll end up killing some dickwad and winding up in jail.”
Jax grunted. “At least Mindy would be safe.”
“Stop it, Jax,” Mindy demanded. “You need to listen to Jason.”
It took another few minutes, but since Jax knew his friend was right, he had grudgingly conceded. They needed help. Lieutenant Gunderson was their best option. Jax called and filled him in as much as possible. The detective was on his way over now.
A knock sounded at the door. When Jax pulled it open, Gunderson walked into the living room. With faint circles beneath his eyes and his light brown hair mussed, he looked even more fatigued than usual.
“I was getting ready to call you anyway,” Gunderson said, taking a seat in the empty chair while Jax sat back down on the sofa next to Mindy. “Looks like you’ve managed to get yourself in the middle of an ongoing homicide investigation.”
“How’s that?” Jax asked.
“CSI’s found evidence that links the Shipman murder to the kidnapping attempt on Ms. Stewart.”
Jax sat up straighter. It was the conclusion they had already drawn, but they had needed a way to prove it.
“Shoe print at the murder scene was made by a Giuseppe Zanotti high-top sneaker. Same shoe you reported the night of the attempted abduction. Also, there were tracks in the dirt that matched the tire tread on the white van.”
“Son of a bitch,” Jax said. Mindy felt a sweep of relief that they were definitely on the right track.
“We also got a print off the inside of the van door. It belongs to a scumbag named Walker Riley. Big bastard, tough and vicious, known for his skill with a knife. Got a bad scar on his right hand from a fight he nearly lost, but didn’t. Sound familiar?”
Jax nodded. “Yeah.”
“Riley hangs with a couple of ex-cons named A. J. Whiteman and Charley Burns. Burns is average height and weight with pale blue eyes, and Whiteman is tall and thin. Both fit the descriptions you gave of the men in the parking lot.”
“Tell me they’re in custody,” Jax practically growled.
“They’re walking around free as air,” the detective said. “And if you’d get your head on straight, you’d understand why. These guys are nothing but low-level criminals. If we don’t bring in the person who hired them to make the hit on Shipman—the same person behind the kidnapping attempt—Ms. Stewart will still be in danger.”
“He’s right,” Jason said. “Plenty of scumballs ready to step in and do the job if the money’s right.”
Jax sighed. “That’s for sure.” He turned back to the detective. “After the phone call Mindy got from Susan DeMarco agreeing to the meet, it’s pretty clear Shipman was blackmailing DeMarco for whatever is on the drive he accidentally gave to Mindy.”
“Which unfortunately I managed to lose,” Mindy said.
Gunderson shifted to face her. “Which is why we’re going to need you to be wearing a wire when you meet Susan DeMarco in the park tomorrow.”
Jax shot up from the sofa. “No fucking way.”
Gunderson remained unruffled. “Sorry, Ryker, but the only way we’re bringing these people down is with hard evidence. We’ve got the shoe print, the fingerprint from the burned-up van and a hodgepodge of miscellaneous evidence, but it isn’t enough. We need direct evidence against Susan DeMarco.” He turned and looked straight at Mindy. “We’re counting on you, Ms. Stewart, to get it.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Jax argued, pinning the detective with a glare. “DeMarco won’t come alone. She’ll bring men with her, and their job will be to take Mindy out. We have to figure another way.”
She reached over and slid her hand around a powerful bicep, felt the tension running through him. “We don’t have time to figure out another way, Jax. We have to do this now while we have the chance. You know Lieutenant Gunderson is right. You and Jason both know it.”
“Once we get what we need on DeMarco,” the detective calmly continued, “we can round the whole bunch up and bring them in. They’ll turn on each other like a pack of jackals. We’ll have enough evidence to put them all away, and Mindy will be safe.”
Jax scrubbed a hand over his face, making a rasping sound on the stubble along his jaw. Mindy could read his worry, anger and frustration. He knew the detective and Jason were right, and there was nothing he could do but go along with it.
“Okay, fine,” he ground out. “She wears a wire. But Maddox and I are there to cover her. We’re there and we’re in on the op.”
“That isn’t the way it works,” Gunderson said.
“That’s the way it’s going to work tomorrow—or it isn’t going to happen. You want DeMarco for murder? We can get her for you. You just do whatever you need to in order to make your bosses happy.”
A long silence fell. With a sigh, Gunderson rose and stalked off to make a phone call. When he returned, Mindy followed the men into the kitchen, and they all sat down at the table.
“You’re in,” Gunderson said. “Just make sure you don’t kill anyone.”
Jax eyed him darkly. “Unless, of course, it’s self-defense.”
Gunderson’s mouth tightened, but he didn’t argue, and Jax relaxed back in his chair.
The next hour was spent working out a strategy designed to protect Mindy and end up with a recorded confession from Susan DeMarco, along with the arrest of the men who had killed Ryan Shipman.
Mindy prayed it would work.