There was a black sedan that was crawling along our lane and I heard a car also coming from behind.
I sighed in relief that we had company and scooted again, turning to the side to slide by, saying, “I don’t want to talk to Mr. Heller.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t an option,” he told me.
Great.
Damian.
God, I hated him. There I was thinking of bikinis and family and Brock loving me and boom! Damian rears his ugly head and sends a goon after me and all my happy thoughts evaporate.
I scooted faster. The black sedan stopped and the backdoor opened.
Damian was in the backseat.
Fuck!
The big brawny guy cut me off from scooting and the car was cutting me off in the other direction so I had to stop. Therefore, I juggled my bags to dig in my purse to grab my phone and call 911 so I could report Damian for harassing me.
“Tess, get in the car,” Damian ordered. “It’s urgent.”
I didn’t answer. Vance told me not to engage him and I wasn’t going to. I was going to phone 911. I tried to push through big brawny guy but big brawny guy just put a firm hand on my arm to stop this.
I tried to twist away at the same time activating my phone.
“Tess, there isn’t a lot of time,” I heard Damian say. “Please, for your own good, get in the car.”
Surprisingly, big brawny guy wasn’t taking my phone away. I dialed 911 (which, at this rate, could be added to my favorites) and put it to my ear.
“Tess, please,” Damian entreated, sounding like it was, indeed, urgent (the jerk) but I kept my eyes on the pavement.
The big brawny guy, weirdly gently, started to pull me to the car and the 911 operator said in my ear, “Nine-one-one, what’s your emer—?”
Then it happened.
Gunshots.
Right there.
Gunshots right there.
So loud. Unbelievably loud. Making my ears ring.
I stood frozen as the big brawny man’s hand left my arm and it left my arm because he’d fallen to the ground, blood oozing from his chest.
In a fog of horror, I tipped my head down and stared at big brawny man, who was wheezing with blood oozing from his chest.
Oh my God!
Stupidly, in shock, I turned to look left and saw an older man I’d never seen in my life advancing, smoking gun drawn.
“Tess!” Damian shouted, jumping out of the car before I could do anything, say, like flee. “Get in my fucking car!”
Then he had a hand on me and he yanked me to the car as more gunshots were fired. Damian grunted in pain as I felt his body jerk but he still shoved me into his car, coming in after me, slamming the door.
“Drive!” he yelled. The older man was still firing at the car, bullets thudding into the metal even as Damian’s driver put his foot down and the car shot forward, straight at the old, crazy, shooting man.
A bullet penetrated the windshield and the car veered crazily right and slammed into some parked cars, tossing both Damian and me to the side, skidding along them for a while, and coming to a stop when the driver slumped to the right.
And it came to a stop in a way that my door was wedged against cars. No escape except over Damian.
But I didn’t even get that chance and I didn’t because it all happened quickly. In the beat of a heart, the flash of an eye.
Damian pulled a gun out of his jacket just as the door was pulled open and old crazy shooting man leaned in, aimed at Damian, and shot him right in the face.
Right.
In.
The.
Face!
I screamed in sheer terror as Damian collapsed on me and then rolled to the floor.
I stopped screaming and looked at the old crazy shooting man who had the gun aimed at me and my heart and lungs stopped. My heart and lungs stopped but my blood was coursing through my veins. I felt hot everywhere. My scalp was tingling, my palms went instantly wet, my knees were quaking, and I stared right at him and his gun.
“Tessa O’Hara,” he said and I didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t even fucking blink. Nothing entered my mind, not his knowing my name, not blood, murder, and mayhem in the parking lot at Park Meadows Mall, nothing except him and his gun. “Brock Lucas’s Tessa O’Hara,” he whispered and that was when I knew him. I knew him. He was the man who called forever ago, the night someone had shot at Brock.
I still didn’t speak. I just kept staring.
“You wanna keep breathing, you’ll come quiet like.”
I wanted to keep breathing.
So in the car with two dead men, I left my phone, my purse, my Mrs. Field’s cookies and the Dillard’s bag with my boys’ swim trunks, and I went quiet like.
* * *
Brock
“Need a second in Cap’s office,” Brock Lucas heard. His eyes went from the computer he was shutting down before going to get his boys to the man standing beside his desk.
Or, that was to say, the men standing by his desk.
Hank Nightingale, Eddie Chavez, and Jimmy Marker, the first two men he’d known awhile, since they worked vice. Their relationship had been strained due to Brock’s second-to-last job going bad and both of them having a strong negative opinion about the plays Brock had made during that job. Now, considering Hank was Lee Nightingale’s brother, Lee was Chavez’s best friend, and Brock was working with Hector and Vance, two of Lee’s boys, not to mention he’d moved from the DEA to the DPD and paths were crossing, they’d come to an uneasy détente. As the days turned to weeks and then months, this détente improved as they got to know each other’s histories, personalities, and work ethics. He couldn’t say they were best buds but he respected them.
Jimmy Marker was a veteran cop, highly decorated, intensely dedicated to the job, and close to retirement. There wasn’t a cop in the department who didn’t respect him, including Brock.
It was Jimmy who had spoken.
“What’s up?” Brock asked.
“In Cap’s office,” Jimmy returned.
That was when he knew it. He felt it. He saw it in their guarded eyes, their alert stances.
Something was wrong. Something big was wrong. And that something big was very big and it was also very wrong.
Fuck.
He said not another word, folded out of his chair, and moved to the captain’s office, Jimmy, Eddie, and Hank following him.
The minute it came into view, Brock saw the captain had eyes to the window of his office.
Waiting.
Fuck.
He walked in, the men walked in with him, and the door closed instantly.
“Have a seat, Lucas,” the Captain ordered, his eyes not having left him.
Brock didn’t move nor take his eyes off Cap.
“Tell me,” he ordered.
Cap held his eyes.
Then he stated, “You know Josiah Burkett was released on parole four months ago.”
Bile crawled up Brock’s throat.
Josiah Burkett was Bree’s cousin who raped her. Brock had paid attention to Josiah Burkett and he knew exactly when that motherfucking monster was released. Brock also knew Burkett had kept steady with his meetings with his parole officer, the halfway house that asshole was in and hadn’t moved out of yet, and that he managed to land himself a job working the line of an automotive parts factory off 6th Avenue.
What he did not know was why Cap was leading with Burkett.
This was not starting good.
“Yeah,” he replied.
The captain held his eyes.
“Jesus, Cap, just—” Brock growled and Cap interrupted him.
Speaking quickly, he said, “A call came into nine-one-one twenty minutes ago. The caller didn’t get the chance to explain what was happening. Shots were heard over the phone. Not a minute later, multiple calls came from Park Meadows Mall…”
Hearing the location, a location Tess was at twenty minutes ago, and he knew this because he was on
the fucking phone with her twenty fucking minutes ago, every cell in Brock Lucas’s body stopped moving.
The captain kept speaking, “… reporting an elderly man had opened fire on a black sedan. When units hit the scene, the shooter was gone, there was a man down, still alive outside the car, and two men dead in the car. Damian Heller was one of those men.”
Brock didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t even fucking blink.
“I’m sorry, son, but Tessa O’Hara’s phone and purse were found in the back of that sedan.”
Brock closed his eyes.
The captain kept going. “Witnesses report she went with the elderly man, who was holding her at gunpoint.”
Brock opened his eyes.
The captain finished, saying quietly, “The descriptions of the shooter match Josiah Burkett.”
Instantly, he turned on his boot, heading for the door.
Nightingale and Chavez were already there, prepared, and if he had any room for anything else in his brain, anything other than his sweet Tess in the hands of a whacked, sick lunatic who he had set on this path to revenge, making it him who’d made his Tess unsafe, he would have cottoned onto why those two were chosen. Not a lot of men could lock Brock down but those two could.
“Lucas, you need to stay calm and listen to me,” Cap ordered urgently.
Brock stopped in front of Nightingale and Chavez.
“Outta my fuckin’ way,” he growled, his eyes moving direct to both of theirs.
They didn’t move a muscle. If anything was on his mind other than the putrid garbage that was filling it, he would have seen understanding in their eyes, concern.
But nothing was on his mind but his Tess in the sick, twisted hands of Josiah fucking Burkett.
“Lucas,” Cap called. “Son, calm down and listen to me. You don’t, we’ll lock you down. And you don’t need that, you don’t want that. I know you don’t. Not now. Be smart, turn around, and listen to me.”
Brock looked over his shoulder. “Get them outta my way.”
“We’ll find her,” Cap promised.
“When?” Brock asked, turning. “After he beats the shit outta her? After he plays his sick fuckin’ games with her? Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” He said the last on a roar. “She’s been through this before.”
“I know, son, listen to—”
Brock turned his back on the captain and lifted a finger in Nightingale’s face. “I want your brother on this, fuckin’ now.”
“He is, Slim. I already called him,” Hank said quietly. “All his boys are on the hunt.”
“Delgado,” Brock snarled, his eyes moving to Chavez. “He needs to mobilize.”
“That call’s been made too,” Eddie told him. “He’s got his team in play.”
Brock glared at them, that bile still eating away at his throat. Visions of Bree in her hospital bed filling his head, visions that morphed into Tess, jaw wired, teeth missing, eyes swollen shut, dark bruises at her neck.
Fuck.
Fuck!
He turned back to the captain. “My boys need to be picked up from school. I need to make some calls.”
“You do it from in here,” Cap replied.
Brock shook his head. “I gotta be out there. I know where he hides. I know where he creeps.”
“You give that info to Jimmy, Hank, and Eddie. They’ll follow it up.”
“She’s my woman, Cap,” Brock reminded him.
“We’ll find her,” Cap promised again.
That bile in his throat was swelling, threatening to choke him. “My job to keep her safe,” he spoke around the bile, this making his voice thick.
“We’ll find her, son,” Cap promised yet again and his eyes went intense. “Goes against the grain, man like you, I know it. Goes against the grain. But the smartest thing you can do right now is sit your ass down, brief Jimmy, Hank, and Eddie so they can work this, then call someone to take care ’a your boys. When we get her, you need to have your shit together ’cause she’s gonna need you. So, you gotta keep your shit together, Brock, do the smart thing, help us help her.”
After the captain stopped speaking, Brock “Slim” Lucas didn’t delay.
He walked to the chairs in front of Cap’s desk, sat his ass down, and looked to Jimmy Marker who was seating himself beside him. Then he ran down everything he remembered about Josiah Burkett, which was everything he knew about Josiah Burkett. He didn’t forget anything. Not anything.
Eddie Chavez left first to disburse the first wave of intel.
Hank Nightingale left second.
Jimmy Marker waited until the end.
Then Brock called his mother to go pick up his boys.
And after that, standing at the window in the captain’s office, eyes staring unseeing outside, that bile still choking him, his brain torturing him, his instincts screaming for him to move, his palms itching, his teeth clenched, it took everything he had to lock himself down and not do, again, what he’d done years ago. Something that was wild and stupid and fucked up then and something that he could have no way of knowing would put his Tess in jeopardy now. And, for the first time in fucking years, he prayed.
My wild man, he heard her sweet words whisper in his head. My snake charmer.
Brock Lucas closed his eyes and prayed harder.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Tell Slim
“DO YOU KNOW what he did to me?”
“You’re the one who hurt Bree.”
“Do you know what he did to me?”
I went silent when he started screaming.
He had the gun and his eyes on me. He was wrong. All wrong. And all that wrong came from his eyes.
As Brock would say, he was whacked. It shone out of his eyes. Clear as day. It shone straight from his eyes.
How could Bree not see that?
Or maybe he hid it from her.
But he wasn’t hiding it from me.
And it scared me nearly senseless.
Not senseless enough not to pay attention. Not senseless enough not to note exactly where we were, in Englewood, in an old cracker box house on a big lot that was mostly muddy earth from the snow melt, dead weeds, lots of big trees. I thought it was a weird place to take me. It was a neighborhood, populated, and as the afternoon wore on, it would be more populated.
People could hear me scream.
But I didn’t scream.
He did.
He was whacked.
He’d killed Damian, shot him right in the face. He’d shot two other men, one I knew was dead, the other might be. He hated Brock.
So he’d shoot me.
But he wanted to play with me first. I knew this. I knew he wanted Brock to live with that for the rest of his life. He might leave me breathing after or he might not.
But he wasn’t going to play with me for long. I knew this too. He was an old guy, for one. He couldn’t have that in him anymore. And also, he didn’t care if he was caught. He’d shot three men in the parking lot of Park Meadows Mall. People had to see, to hear. He was going to do what he was going to do to make Brock pay and he wasn’t going to waste any time.
When I didn’t answer, his voice calmed and he ordered, “Take off your clothes.”
I went still.
No, he wasn’t going to waste any time.
This couldn’t happen to me again. It couldn’t. It couldn’t happen to me again. I wasn’t sure I could survive it. Not even with Brock at my back when it was done, if I was left breathing. I wasn’t even sure we could survive it, not from what I knew of Brock, his capacity for loyalty and love, knowing he’d brought this down on me. It would undo him. So even if I survived, he might not.
“Take off… your fuckin’… clothes,” he semirepeated and I stared at him.
He moved the gun an inch to the side and squeezed the trigger.
I screamed and jumped as the gunshot sounded loud in the room, the bullet embedding in the wall behind me.
God, please God, someone hear that.
/> “Take off your clothes,” he again repeated.
I shook my head.
“No,” I whispered and he blinked.
“What?” he asked.
I knew it then. I knew I couldn’t take it. I knew Brock couldn’t take it.
I knew I had to stop this.
And if I got hurt doing it, so be it.
But no one was going to hurt me like that, not again. And they weren’t going to hurt Brock either.
Not again.
We’d had enough. We’d both had e-fucking-nough.
“You got what you deserved,” I told him quietly and he stared at me. “No.” I shook my head again. “You didn’t. You didn’t get what you deserved. If you got what you deserved you wouldn’t be breathing.”
He moved closer to me, gun pointed at me, but I kept my eyes steady on his and moved back as he moved toward me.
“You hurt her. You destroyed her,” I told him, still moving back as he moved forward, his crazy-as-shit eyes riveted to me. “You ended her. This world isn’t right because you’re breathing and she isn’t.”
I hit the wall and had to stop and he stopped with me.
“Take off your clothes,” he said yet again.
“No. No way. You aren’t going to touch me. No way.”
“Take off your clothes.”
“Shoot me. Do it. I’d rather die than have your filthy hands on me.”
“Take off… your… clothes.”
I shook my head and kept my eyes on him.
Then I whispered, “No.”
Then I moved.
Bending double, I went right at him as the next gunshot sounded loud in the room and I didn’t know where it went. I just knew it didn’t go into me.
I hit him in the middle with the top of my head.
This was not a bright move. I should have paid more attention to all the football my boys forced me to watch. I should have caught him with my shoulder. Hitting him with my head sent my head into my neck and pain jolted through my neck and down my spine.
But I kept going, shoving him back. I felt his hand clenching in my jacket as my hand went out to his gun arm. Another shot was fired but it went wide because I was pushing his arm away. He hit the wall and another jolt of pain rammed down my neck and spine. He squeezed off another round accidentally but I had my hand on his wrist and the gun was still pointed away.