She blinked several times, her fingers going to her still-tingling mouth. What had just happened?
Chapter
6
Ryker pulled up to the business just as Heath finished scraping off the last of the logo on the front window. “Thanks for letting me borrow the Hemi,” Ryker said, tossing the keys to his brother. Life, not genetics, had made them family, and he’d die for either Heath or Denver.
“No problem.” Heath wiped the window with a clean cloth, his jeans nearly threadbare beneath a tattered Grateful Dead T-shirt. His movements barely contained his fury as he waited for something to break in the serial killer case.
“You do not look like a lawyer.”
Heath turned, his eyes sober. “I’m not a lawyer. Well, I am, but I don’t want to practice law. I just have the degree to get us out of trouble when it comes knocking.”
Sometimes Ryker saw in Heath the angry and scared-shitless kid he’d met at Lost Springs so many years ago, determined to fight any bully who threatened him, no matter how big the bully. “Even so, now that we have this place, you should probably get some clothes.”
Heath glanced down at his torn jeans. “Why?”
Ryker opened his mouth and shut it again. “I don’t know. I mean, don’t people who have dressers buy shit to put in them?”
Heath’s eyebrows rose. “We don’t have dressers.”
Oh yeah. “I guess we should get some?”
Heath leaned in. “I don’t know why. We’ll be out of here as soon as we find the fucker killing redheads. I mean, if Denver gets the bug for nesting out of his ass.”
“That ain’t it with Den.”
“Then what is it?”
Ryker rubbed the scruff on his jaw. He should probably shave at some point. “He’s running from Alaska, and he’s trying to convince himself that he needs to stay here.” Probably to keep himself from hurrying back to Noni.
“Do you think he’s really done with her?”
“No.” Crisp and cutting, the wind scattered dead leaves across his boots. “But he has to make that decision himself.”
Heath nodded. “He had a splash of coffee with his booze today, by the way.”
Ryker scrubbed both hands down his face, jostling his aviator sunglasses. “I can’t really criticize him there. Pot and kettle, you know.”
“Yep. Just something to watch.” Heath moved off the step and headed for his car. “He has info for you on your girl, and I’m chasing down a lead on the Copper Killer case. I need to do something, anything, so I’m going to talk to some folks from the first victim’s circle.”
Ryker wanted to go with him, but he needed to figure out Zara’s problems first. “Is your head on straight?”
Heath paused. “I think so.”
Ryker studied him. Heath lost himself in cases, especially in the impossible ones. Always trying to fix broken wings. “Stay in contact and stay safe. What about Zara?”
Heath’s jaw hardened. “She paid for three nights at the Lonely Trail Motel outside of town last week.”
“Motel?” Ryker asked, his gut clenching.
“Yep. Told you this wasn’t going to end well.” Heath opened the car door and slipped inside, his flippant words contrasting with the very real concern in his eyes. “I can handle only one of you falling apart at a time, and your turn is over.”
Ryker nodded, his chest filling. “Understood.”
Heath started the engine and sped down the quiet road, the Hemi making a badass statement even in quiet mode.
“When is it your turn, Heath?” Ryker murmured. At some point, Heath was going to try to save somebody he couldn’t, and it was going to be ugly. Ryker drew in air before heading through the building to Denver’s office. “Heath told me you found something.”
Denver looked up from his computer, his eyes only a little cloudy. “He told you about the motel.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Denver tapped a few more times on his keyboard. “Zara has withdrawn nine thousand dollars from her savings account in three-thousand-dollar increments in the last three months.”
Ryker dropped into a leather chair and shoved his sunglasses up on his head. “Cash?”
“Yep.”
Blackmail? “To spend where?”
“Dunno yet.” Denver stretched his neck. “Don’t see blackmail here. Investing?”
“With cash?” Ryker drew air in through his nose, trying to rein in his temper. “Bullshit.” What the hell was Zara involved in? She’d damn well give him the truth, because he was done being patient. “What else?”
“That’s all I have so far. The cash doesn’t look good, though.”
“Thanks.” The anger turned into something deeper…something that hurt. Ryker moved out of the office, waiting until Denver had joined him. “You can take one of the bikes.”
“No, thanks. I’ll stick to my truck.” Denver yanked on a worn leather jacket and headed for the basement garage. “Your office furniture arrived.”
Ryker hesitated and then called out. “Denver?”
“Don’t want to talk about it, brother.” Denver disappeared out the door.
The guy never wanted to talk, so that wasn’t exactly a newsflash. Yet at some point Ryker would have to drag words out of him. Or at least some of the hurt. But apparently not today.
Ryker turned toward the middle office and stepped inside, stopping short. Glass and chrome. The entire office was glass and chrome with black leather accents. Whoa. A glass-topped desk, black leather chairs, and chrome file cabinets. A large black-and-white picture of Ryker’s Harley Davidson Fat Boy was framed on the wall behind the desk, and a wide window to the side looked out at the mountains. “Shit, Denver,” Ryker murmured as he walked around the desk to see the computer already set up. He sat. The office felt like home.
He’d never had a home. His sunglasses fell down onto his nose, and he tugged them off and tossed them onto the desk. The light from the window was comforting, even with the chill in the air.
A wisp of sound came from the other room, and he stilled, his senses going on alert. “Denver?”
“No.” A kid walked into the office, his stride long and his expression hard. He shut the door. “You’re Ryker.”
Ryker sat back, tension swamping him. The kid was about twelve and large for his age, and he moved like he could handle himself. His brown hair reached his shoulders, and his eyes, a lighter shade of brown, held secrets and sadness. “Who are you?”
“Name is Greg.” The kid sat, meeting his gaze evenly. “I want to hire you for a job.”
“We’re an eighteen-and-older type of service,” Ryker drawled, his body remaining on alert.
The kid flashed a grin. “You help find the lost, and boy have I lost somebody.”
Even with the smile, the kid oozed danger. What the fuck? “Sorry. We don’t work for kids,” Ryker said.
“Change your mind.” Reaching into his back pocket, Greg yanked out a wad of hundreds bound with a rubber band. “As a new business, you probably require capital.” He tossed the wad toward Ryker.
Ryker lifted one eyebrow. “Where did you get the cash?”
“Doesn’t matter, and there’s more if you do the job right.” Greg didn’t blink. “What do you say?”
More than a little curious, Ryker still shook his head. “Where are your parents?”
“Where are yours?”
Quick. The kid was very quick. “You’re a minor.”
“A minor with tons of cash and no parents.” No emotion showed on his young face. “Nobody is looking for me, so there’s no interference.”
Lie. The kid had just lied. Ryker tilted his head to the side. “Not interested.”
A slight tightening of the skin around kid’s eyes was his only reaction. “All right. Let’s move on to blackmail.”
Ryker clasped his hands together on the glass desktop. “Am I blackmailing you?”
“No.” Greg smiled again, showing a dimple in his right
cheek. “How about you just find one person for me, and I don’t call Sheriff Cobb and tell him the three boy fugitives he’s been searching for his entire fucking life happen to be right here in Cisco.”
Well, shit. “You hacked our files.” Ryker frowned but kept his voice level, as if they got hacked every day. Giving the kid the upper hand would be a mistake. Who the holy fuck was this kid?
“Yep. The encryptions were good but…” He shrugged.
“If you’re that good, why can’t you find your own missing person?” Ryker asked, looking for the setup.
“I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried.” Greg rested his hands on his knees. “But your track record shows you’re the best, almost to the point of being supernatural about it, and I need the best. So far I’ve been unsuccessful.”
“You believe in the supernatural?”
“No.” Greg shook his head. “But I think certain people have special gifts, and from your record, you’re one of those people.”
Everything in Ryker stilled. “I don’t have any special gifts.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night, pal.”
Ryker dropped his gaze to the wide hands. “You have a gun in your boot, kid?”
Greg’s eyes hardened. “Gun in right, knife in left. If I wanted you dead, buddy, you’d already be dead.”
A chill spread down Ryker’s back. “How old are you?”
At the question, a desolateness filtered across Greg’s sharp face. “Too old, man. Way too fucking old.”
Ryker leaned back, more than prepared to go for the gun in his boot.
Greg shook his head. “I’m faster than you.”
“I doubt that,” Ryker said softly. His gift in reading people didn’t come close to the speed of his reflexes.
Greg’s gaze sharpened, and he studied Ryker closely. “You gonna help me or not?”
“Our files don’t indicate anything about Lost Springs,” Ryker said. “The connections out there have been severed.”
“Obviously not.” Arrogance, probably well earned, echoed in Greg’s tone. “There’s always a string to pull, and I found yours. If you help me with my one little case, I’ll show you how I found you and how to cut that string to the past for good.”
Now, that was an intriguing offer, and there was something about Greg that drew Ryker. Heath would take the kid in and buy him a milkshake. “Who do you want me to find?”
Greg reached into his front pocket and brought out a piece of paper, which he quickly unfolded. He took a long look at it and then slid it across the desk.
Ryker lifted the sketch of a middle-aged woman with blue eyes and jet black hair. His entire chest heated and then chilled with the force of a glacier. It was Sylvia Daniels…but older than he remembered. In the picture, she had a few wrinkles but still had the cold, intelligent gaze that had given him the willies as a child. For two seconds, he was a lost kid again, scared and alone. Then he regained control. “Who is this woman?” His voice remained steady, which shocked the hell out of him.
“Just a woman I need to find.”
Ryker’s head spun. “Your mother?”
“Hell no.” Anger sizzled from the kid.
Ryker set down the paper. What was going on? “I’m not finding somebody for you to hurt.” Although now he was going to find the woman no matter what.
“Don’t want to hurt her. Just need to find her.” The kid crossed his arms. “You gonna help or go to jail?”
Ryker flattened a hand over the carefully drawn sketch. He’d been running for a long time, and some kid wasn’t going to turn him in. But he’d have to leave Cisco, and he didn’t want to leave Zara until he figured out what was going on between them. The fact that this kid wanted to find Daniels… Shit. Something was going on, and it was way out of his wheelhouse. “I’ll help.”
Greg sat back. “Wise choice.”
“Who is she?” Ryker studied the fine lines of her face. If he found her, he’d be digging up a past he’d spent ten years burying. Hell. Fifteen years.
“Her name is Dr. Isobel Madison, and she disappeared from a covert military facility in Utah last year,” Greg said.
A covert military facility? Ryker eyed the kid. Why did the woman have two names? “If she isn’t your mother and you don’t want to hurt her, why do you want to find her?”
Greg ran his hands down his legs, his jaw trembling until he visibly controlled himself. “She’s my last hope, man.”
* * *
Several hours after Greg had disappeared from the office, Ryker leaned back in his chair, his emotions rioting. Every once in a while he could feel control slipping away, and he grabbed it back with ruthless hands. He’d been on the computer, doing searches, and nothing had popped, which didn’t surprise him. Heath and Denver were still away from the office, and he hadn’t discovered Zara’s secrets.
At the moment, he wasn’t doing anything right.
Taking a deep breath, he kicked his feet up onto his desk and closed his eyes.
Memories battered him, and he let them come, trying to find a pattern in the past. Just who was Isobel Madison?
He was twelve years old, had just taken Denver under his wing, and was worried Heath would try to recruit more members into their sad little team. He could cover only so many people, and two was his limit.
Even though it was Sunday, he’d been told to report to one of the two classrooms and continue working with Sylvia Daniels.
A thought played through his mind that he could just up and leave and nobody would find him, but he couldn’t leave Heath and Denver. How could he take care of them if they all ran now?
Time. He was smart, and he’d bide his time.
The classrooms were on the second floor of the main building, and on Sunday, the entire floor was empty. He plodded down the empty hallway, his footsteps silent.
A woman’s cry stopped him short. Chills darted down his back. He inched down the dingy walls and stopped, peeking into the classroom. Daniels was on her back on a table, her legs up over Sheriff Cobb’s shoulders as he stood beside the table, and his pants were down around his ankles. He was holding her hips and thrusting hard, grunting each time, his butt in full view. His body shuddered, and he groaned.
Ryker jerked around, put his back to the wall, and kept out of sight. His stomach heaved. Old people having sex were grosser than he would’ve thought. Cobb had to be almost thirty, for pete’s sake.
“That was lovely,” Daniels said, her voice drowsy.
The sound of rustling clothing echoed. “When are you going to move here for good?” the sheriff asked, his voice growly.
Daniels sighed. “I have work elsewhere, and you know it. We have what we have, Elton.”
A belt buckled. “What is it with these kids?” the sheriff asked. “Why these three, and why do you keep studying them?”
Ryker leaned closer to the door, his heart rate picking up.
Daniels laughed. “They’re mine…just mine. I’m doing a study on kids in homes, and these three boys are exemplary. It’s my private little study, which I don’t share with anybody.”
They were part of a study? She’d always said that, but instinct whispered to Ryker that it was something more. He leaned farther so he could see.
The sheriff helped Daniels set her clothes to right and kissed her—gently, really—on the forehead. “Whatever your reasons for being here, I’m glad my brother introduced us when you approached him about your little study.”
“Me too.” Daniels slid her hands over the sheriff’s chest. “I really do like you, Elton. You’re just for me, too. One more thing that’s all mine.”
Ryker shivered in the hallway. Her voice was so possessive. Who claimed other people like she did? Something was seriously wrong with this woman. Even though the Cobb brothers liked to beat kids, instinct told him she was the biggest threat in his life.
As if to confirm that fact, she glanced around Sheriff Cobb’s shoulder and winked at him. Oh God. She knew he’
d been watching.
Ryker sat up in his chair, shaking. He’d always known he’d have to confront the past, but he’d hoped to be able to run a while longer.
His time was up.
Chapter
7
Zara pulled her compact into a parking spot behind the Lazy Horse Motel, her stomach cramping. She’d told her receptionist that she had to run out for a few minutes, and now she had only an hour to get back to the office building before Ryker showed up for dinner. She really didn’t want another confrontation with him. He was acting like a boyfriend, not a casual lover, and she wasn’t sure what to do with that.
Did she want a real shot with him? An affair with a sexier-than-hell rebel was one thing, while a real relationship with a guy like him held certain danger. He was a rambling man, and the idea of him settling down didn’t seem possible. For years she’d watched her mother fall for the wrong guy and then get her heart shattered when he left. In fact, her relationship with the wrong man had led to her death.
Rebels left.
They were hell on wheels for a short time, but they eventually rambled on.
She never felt more alive than when he was in town, and she never felt safer than when he was in her bed. That was the danger of a guy like him.
Drawing her coat around her shoulders, she stepped from the car. The wind kicked up, biting into her skin with cold. Winter was coming to Cisco. She shivered. The torn asphalt tried to grab her heels as she made her way to the back entrance of the decrepit motel. She already knew the lock didn’t work on the faded door. Sucking in air, she nudged the door open. The breeze threw pine needles and leaves against her back, and she hurried inside the narrow hallway. Hunching her shoulders, she strode down the ugly orange carpet, ignoring the wall canisters selling everything from flavored condoms to tampons. The only open door in the hallway was near the front entrance, and one look inside the office showed the young clerk dead asleep in his chair.