Lawman's Perfect Surrender (16 page)

The guard looked from the cash to Ford and then Gemma, hesitating.

“Please,” Gemma repeated.

Ford took out another five twenties. He’d made sure he had a lot of cash before he’d come here, planning for the worst. He had befriended Patrick for a reason. A security guard could come in handy when you least expected it, especially when Grayson’s evil arms reached this far away from Cold Plains.

Patrick took the money. “All right, but you’ll have to find your own way in.”

Ford gave him a single nod. “Thanks.”

He and Gemma moved away from the counter just as a worker headed for the secure door, oblivious to his surroundings, bored and unenthusiastic. Taking Gemma’s hand, Ford walked faster. The worker reached the door and used his badge to open it. Ford caught the door and entered behind him. The man didn’t even look back.

Ford was familiar with this building. Michael’s lab was straight down this hall. If he was going to get in, he’d need a badge. He knew exactly which one he was going to take, too. When Bo had said he had a friend here, Ford had had a very good idea who that could be. Passing Michael’s lab, he headed for the executive offices. When he found the Vice President of Security’s office, he was pleased to see the door open and Galen Steele sitting inside. Michael had mentioned that he’d seen Bo meeting with him. Ford hadn’t thought it would be an issue, since Michael wouldn’t have told Galen about the laptop. But somehow, he was sure, the VP had found out.

“Wait right here,” he told Gemma.

“What are you—”

He put his hands on her waist to stop her, and experienced a moment of awareness of that touch. Her lips parted and her light brown eyes looked up at him. “Wait right here,” he said.

She nodded a couple of times. “Just hurry.”

He went into the office and shut the door. Galen had already looked up from his computer.

“What are you doing here?”

Galen knew who Ford was. “Bo Fargo sent me.”

The man stared warily at him. “What for?”

“Insurance. He wasn’t planning on having to clean up after you.”

Galen’s eyes widened in a flash before calming. “Hey, if you think I had anything to do with Michael’s murder, I didn’t.”

Ford walked around the desk to loom over the man. “Bo doesn’t like messes.”

“He asked for information, I gave it to him, that’s it. The rest is his problem,” Galen said.

Just as he’d gambled, Bo hadn’t told the security VP that Ford had given the laptop to Michael, only that Michael had it.

Ford popped the man’s temple with his fist. Galen staggered off his chair and fell to his hands and knees, trying to crawl away. Slipping out his gun, Ford stepped around the office chair and then hit the back of Galen’s head. He flattened onto the floor and didn’t move. He’d be out long enough.

Ford pulled the lanyard and the badge clipped to it from it from the executive’s neck and left the office, shutting the door behind him. He saw Gemma’s big, round eyes darting one way and then another. She wasn’t accustomed to this type of investigative work. Not that he went around slugging people and knocking them out to get what he needed as a rule.

“Stay behind me.” He put the lanyard around his neck, making sure it was backward, the name and picture facing his chest, and started for Michael’s lab.

A worker in a lab coat passed them without looking too closely at them. Another worker passed and glanced down at Ford’s badge. Ford feigned nonchalance. The worker passed without issue, not seeing Gemma enough to notice she wore no identification.

At the door of Michael’s lab, Ford swiped Galen’s badge. The door clicked and he pushed it open, entering ahead of Gemma. Her steps slowed as she took in the expanse of equipment. Tables lined the walls and two more were pushed together in the center of the room. Gadgets and computers littered their surfaces. Cabinets and equipment filled in the spaces between.

Ford searched the surfaces first, then had to break into a locked cabinet. He already knew Michael stored his most valuable hard drives in here. Jed’s laptop was nowhere to be found.

Cursing, he shut the cabinet door.

“It’s not here,” Gemma said.

She sounded scared. The laptop would have cleared her of any guilt and now it was gone, likely in Bo’s hands, never to be seen again.

“Come on. Let’s go search Michael’s house.”

Retracing their steps toward the exit, Ford kept a careful watch for detection.

“You. Stop right there!”

Gemma inhaled a startled breath as they looked back and saw a security guard holding a cell phone. He wasn’t armed.

Galen must have been found.

Grabbing Gemma’s hand, Ford ran for the door leading to the lobby.

“Block the exits!” he heard the guard shout into the phone.

He shoved the lobby door open and saw Patrick frantically talking to two other men. A door across from the lobby swung open and another guard rushed through. This one was armed.

“Stop them!”

The unarmed guard entered the lobby, still talking into the phone.

Damn. Having to pull Gemma along with him, he moved closer to the armed guard.

“I said stop!”

“Mr. McCall…” Patrick warned.

Ford slipped out his pistol as he drew closer to the armed guard, stopping just a few feet away.

“Give me the gun.” The guard held out one of his hands.

Hearing the guard who’d caught them in the hall move up behind him and Gemma, Ford held up his pistol. The armed guard tentatively moved closer, exactly as Ford hoped. He lunged, hitting the guard’s gun, deflecting his aim while he punched him hard enough to make him bow forward. Quickly maneuvering behind him, Ford hooked his arm around the man’s neck and pressed his pistol against his temple.

“Drop it,” he told the other guard.

After a bit of hesitation, the guard dropped his gun. Patrick sank down onto his chair. The two men standing next to him didn’t move.

“Gemma, go through the doors.”

Her fast breathing belied her courage. She walked slowly backward toward the door.

Ford backed up after her, using the guard as a hostage. At the door, he pushed the guard and used his foot to kick him back into the lobby.

Running through the door, he grabbed Gemma’s hand and ran with her to his SUV.

They scrambled in and he wheeled the Escalade around and gave it full power. Zigzagging through a neighborhood, he slowed long enough to use the computer attached to his dash to look up Michael Harris’s home address.

“Do you think we’ll find the laptop there?”

“If it’s not there, we’ll know that Bo has it.”

In his rearview mirror, he saw the security guard with the cell phone, holding it to his head and talking rapidly. He’d gotten Ford’s plate number. That didn’t matter. Bo already knew Ford had brought the laptop to Michael without telling him. They were now playing a very dangerous game. His biggest concern was for Gemma. Bo could fire him, or even send one of Samuel’s henchmen after him. Gemma would be caught in the crossfire. Or maybe she was caught anyway.

Jed’s killer had planted her bracelet next to his body to take the heat off himself. The laptop threatened exposure. And Bo was at the center of it all, doing Samuel’s bidding. But what did Samuel want from Gemma? Would he let the murder go unsolved? Welcome Gemma into his circle? Or would he drive her out of town, or worse, kill her?

Samuel would have to get past Ford first.

* * *

The front door of Michael’s house was locked, but the back door wasn’t. He slid it open and was relieved to see nothing disturbed. No one had been here. That meant Bo had the laptop.

Taking Gemma’s hand, he led her through the house to Michael’s office. He’d been here a few times before, whenever he had something he needed Michael to look at without Bo’s knowledge.

Inside the office, headlights from the street flashed through the window. Ford pulled Gemma out of the stream of light. She landed against him and he held her around her waist. Once again she looked up at him with her lips parted and her eyes inquisitive and hot.

“Woman, you’re killing me.”

She stepped back. “You keep touching me.”

Taking in her small form and round, perky breasts, he turned in frustration and went to the desk, booting the computer. Gemma put her hands on the back of the chair and watched over his head.

The computer was password protected. Gemma started opening a drawer to his right and he opened the one on the left. She found a small notebook and flipped through the pages.

She stopped and pushed her forefinger into his biceps, showing him a page.

The words
For Ford
were handwritten there. And then a word followed by four numbers. The password. There was something on this computer.

His heart picking up speed, he tore the page out and typed in the password, then searched through folders and files.

“Open his email,” Gemma said. “Maybe he emailed himself the video file.”

“Good thinking.” He didn’t think Michael would have done that, not after their conversation when he’d dropped off the laptop. But maybe he’d sent something else. Some kind of clue.

There was an email from his work account six deep in the inbox. A forwarded message.

“That’s from Lacy to Jed. That’s Jed’s email address.” Her voice held a tremor.

“Yeah.” He opened the email.

Gemma stood straighter, resting her hand on the back of the office chair to read the email. In it, Lacy warned Jed to leave town before he was killed. “Oh, my God.”

“How did she get his email address?”

A moment went by while she thought. “I showed her some emails he sent to me before he came to Cold Plains.”

“He sent you emails?”

“Yes, things like, ‘I miss you, come home,’ and ‘Why did you have to do this to us?’ Disturbing. Stalker emails. That’s why I showed them to Lacy. I wanted to see what she thought.”

“What did she say?”

“She agreed they were creepy and told me not to respond to any of them.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

Why did she warn him to leave town? What reason would she have? Why care about a man who hurt her friend? Would a true Devotee do that? If she was beginning to see through Grayson’s deception, knew what happened to anyone who didn’t fit in…

Maybe she simply didn’t want to see anyone else getting hurt, or thought convincing Jed to leave town was a way to help Gemma.

Or…

“She might have known Jed would be murdered,” he said.

“She couldn’t have.”

“Does she know anyone close to Grayson? Someone who would have known Jed would be killed?”

“Alan,” Gemma breathed incredulously. “She said he worked at the community center, ‘doing things for Samuel.’ I couldn’t believe she was interested in him. He looked like a gangster.”

“‘Doing things for Samuel’?” Ford nodded. Was he doing things for Samuel by way of his henchmen? “She might have heard them talking. Or Alan told her. He could have been close enough to know the plans.” He might have been tasked with doing the killing, too.

He printed the email and then sent it to his personal account. After deleting every trace of the email from Michael’s inbox, sent and deleted folders, he got up from the office chair, stuffing the note with the password and the email into his pocket. “Let’s go.”

If Lacy had warned Jed, maybe there was hope for her yet. On the other hand, if she was beginning to see the truth about Grayson and his cult, she could be stepping onto dangerous ground. If Grayson found out what she’d done, or suspected her in any way…

Through the back door, Ford took Gemma’s hand. When hers tightened in his, he felt an instant response. How she managed to elicit so much heat with so little coaxing disconcerted him. Right now he had to stay alert.

Reaching the front of the house, he spotted a car parked across the street that hadn’t been there before. There were two men inside.

“That’s Alan,” Gemma said. “In the passenger seat.”

The two men started to get out. They hadn’t searched Michael’s house yet, but apparently would now.

“Let’s go another way.” Ford took her around the back, staying hidden by trees and thick vegetation in the neighboring front yard. Sneaking down the block, they made it to Ford’s Escalade.

He opened the passenger door. “Get in.”

Closing the door behind her, he went around to the driver’s side, hoping Lacy’s email wouldn’t be discovered. He’d deleted the files but they could still be extracted.

“I need to go talk to Lacy,” Gemma said.

“I’ll go with you. I need to talk to her, too.”

“No, Ford. She won’t talk with you around. She must know how Bo feels about you. Samuel, too.”

“It’s too risky. Samuel will start to question your loyalty now.”

“Surely he expects me to try and prove my innocence. He just doesn’t want the identity of the killer to be exposed. He’s tasked Bo with ensuring that. If he sees that I’m still close to Lacy, he might leave me alone.”

“Lacy warned Jed, remember.”

“He doesn’t know that.”

Yet. “All right, but I’m going to be waiting nearby.”

* * *

The next day, Gemma put on her best Devotee face and headed for Cold Plains Coffee. Ford waited in the Escalade, blue eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, elbow on the open window frame. Sexy. Gorgeous. Armed and carrying his badge.

Pushing the door open, Gemma spotted Lacy and hoped she was right about her friend, that she’d warned Jed because she knew what kind of man Samuel really was. That she was turning her back on his cult. That way, Gemma could keep her friend.

Lacy beamed a brilliant, happy smile when she saw Gemma and Gemma smiled back. Was it genuine? Was Lacy truly her friend or did she have another reason for warning Jed? A more sinister one?

“Gemma.” Lacy wove her way around workers and the counter, whisking past a short line of pinkies-up Cold Plains residents and gracefully wrapped her arm around Gemma. “I’ve been so worried about you.”

“You heard, huh?”

Lacy let her go. “Who hasn’t? Your bracelet was found at your ex’s crime scene. It was in the paper.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“Of course you didn’t, Gemma.”