Murder in the City: Blue Lights (19 page)

There was very little time left to save Lainey and the others.

Brice yelled out loudly, “Show yourselves.”

And a blue light flashed on, spiraling through the trees from the road above, then another and another and another illuminated the dusky woods. Until a ring of blue circled them, coming from the street above and the street beyond the vacant area. Cops had killed their engines and let their cars roll silently down the hill as Brice’s brother had instructed them.

“I’m over here,” a voice boomed from deep in the trees. That was Mason. Of course, he would have been the first down the hill to save his brother’s life. Brice knew that Mason had a rifle trained on Pete’s head now, and was only waiting to take the shot. Waiting until he was forced to shoot another cop in the head.

“I’m over here,” another male voice followed.

“And here,” a female voice came from behind Pete.

Pete’s eyes darted around with a crazed frenetic energy. He was trapped, caught.

“Put the gun down, Pete,” Brice urged in a soothing, reassuring voice. “Think of your mama. She’ll be devastated if something happens to you. A good lawyer can do wonders with the little we’ve got on you.”

Pete put the gun to his head. His face crumpled and he began crying. “I have screwed up my entire life.”

“As long as you’re alive, there’s hope, Pete. We’ve all been where you are emotionally.” He waved around the woods at the hidden cops. “Everyone here has lost someone at some point, and they’ve wanted to kill someone at some point. Usually someone they once loved. That’s why people don’t get the death penalty for killing someone they love.” He laughed harshly. “Because almost everyone in the world has had that impulse at some point in their life. They’ve wanted to kill someone for taking away the person they loved or kill their loved one for cheating on them or for just stopping loving them.”

His vitriolic soup of resentful emotions toward his adulterous ex-wife and her lover had cooled over the years. But, he remembered when he’d been in the heat of the breakup, finding out just how bad the deception and betrayal had been.

“You’re human for wanting to kill this man for killing the woman you loved. Who wouldn’t want to kill the scumbag?”

Sean shot him a pleading glance. Yeah, like Moseman had shown any mercy for Simone.

“But, let the courts do it. That’s the way society works. Not like this.”

He met Pete’s eyes. “If you put down that gun, I promise you, I will not rest until I put Moseman away for the rest of his life with men bigger and meaner than him.”

Pete’s eyes connected with Brice’s for a very long moment, for a lifetime of seconds that felt like years. The war waged in his eyes over what the outcome would be.

Finally, Pete’s face crumpled, and as if he couldn’t support the weight of the gun any longer, he dropped the gun. Lainey pushed away from him, stumbling forward.

Brice grabbed Lainey’s arm and pulled her away from Pete, wrapping his arm around her and turning so that his body shielded her from anything more the young detective might do.

Instantly, the woods were alive with cops barreling down the hill. Mason was the first to erupt into the clearing, tackling Pete to the ground, wrenching his arms behind him, and roughly handcuffing him.

“Take it easy with him,” Brice heard himself saying, despite everything the guy had done.

* * *

Much later, with the scene secured and Pete taken away to headquarters for interviews, Brice and Lainey stood on the street near his car.

Mason walked out of the woods, a big man carrying a big gun. “You good?” he said to Brice, clapping him on the shoulder. So casual, as if he hadn’t recently trained his scope on a cop’s head, his finger on the trigger, hoping to shot before his brother got shot.

Mason had waited, knowing that if he took the shot his brother would live. But, instead, like Brice, he’d waited, giving Brice the chance to bring everyone out alive.

Yeah, Mason’s coolness was a force of nature, a sleeping giant waiting to awaken, to spring into action when needed. But, not until.

“I’m good.” Brice stuck out his hand and shook Mason’s, pumping it a couple of extra times.

“Thanks, Mason.” Lainey stepped forward, reaching up to hug the big man’s neck. “Thanks for everything.”

“No problem. I’m gonna head on over to the hospital to see Mom.”

“Tell her I’ll be over later,” Brice said. Like it was just another day at the office. Both of them, so casual now that the danger was past, and the bad guy was in cuffs. Make that the bad guys. Both Moseman and Pete were being hauled off to jail tonight.

“Not a bad day’s work,” Mason said, correctly reading Brice’s thoughts.

Brice laughed. “See ya at the hospital.”

“Tell Julie I’ll be there in just a bit,” Lainey said. Mason had dropped off Julie at the hospital before he’d come here. She’d be hanging out in a waiting room with Brice and Mason’s sister who had shown up at the hospital. She’d already told Lainey that Julie was watching a movie on a tablet, along with her daughter.

“Will do.” He walked on up the hill and around the corner to his car.

All the action was down in the woods. Since Brice had parked up the street and around the corner so Pete wouldn’t hear his car approaching the scene, he and Lainey were pretty much alone.

Night insects chirped and lightning bugs flitted around. A cool breeze drifted over them since the rain had stopped. It was as if the powerful front had moved through, leaving a low humidity evening.

Much like the storm of Pete’s anger had moved through, releasing all the fear and tension that had gripped them for days now.

Brice looked down at Lainey, her blue eyes sparkling in the last traces of twilight. She was so beautiful, her silky brown hair drying into soft strands that floated around her face.

A lifetime of looking at that wouldn’t get old.

“Do you believe this?” she said, her voice whispery, almost as if they’d been to a 3-D horror film, and the effects were only now wearing off.

He pulled her into his arms, and breathed in her scent for a moment. The feel of her alive, with all the possibilities of tomorrow, sent exhilarating pulses through him.

“He’s going away for a really long time, don’t you think?” she said, pulling back, standing and putting some distance between their bodies.

“I’m gonna call a lawyer, and have him meet Pete at headquarters,” Brice said. “Don’t want him saying anything else before he gets advice.”

“Yeah, he’s already said enough to put him away for a really long time.”

“Maybe a lawyer can cut a deal.”

Lainey shook her head in disbelief. “It’s like you have sympathy for him.”

Brice nodded.

“After all that he did?”

Brice raised his shoulders, wanting to shrug off all that had happened, wanting to get on with his life with Lainey, to get on with the business of them.

“I’ve seen you want to kill people for less than this guy did,” Lainey said, a quizzical look in her beautiful eyes. “How can you have any sympathy for him?”

Brice met those eyes, looking into them, trying to decide just what to call the color of blue they were now. They were the blue of the horizon just before dark fell. They were the color of his future, the eyes he wanted to look into for the rest of his life. When he’d thought about her dying, leaving the world a barren planet without hope, he’d known she was what he wanted in his life for as long as they both shall live.

Her, with her strength of character, her bravery, her loyalty to her family. She was what he wanted. Lainey Thomas, with those fierce blue eyes.

“I do have sympathy for him, because he’s me. He’s every one of us who is human. We’ve all wanted to hurt people who’ve hurt us.”

He stepped closer. “Love is the most powerful force there is. And when someone takes that from you.” He glanced away as if searching for the right words. “Let’s just say, I can understand the emotions that drove him to do what he did.”

“Kidnap little girls?”

“I didn’t say I understood or condoned his actions, just his emotions. Very human emotions drove him to do very bad things.”

He met her eyes again. “You and I both know how frustrating it is to see people walk away with what we consider to be too light of sentences because legally we can’t prove what we know.”

“Like Sean Moseman was in danger of doing.”

“Right. I understand the rage Pete felt when he saw Moseman walk out of the jail. I hate what Pete did, but I understand the feelings that drove him to do it.”

He stepped closer to her, taking her upper arms, and a frisson of electricity shot through her. “When I thought you could be hurt, I knew I’d break whatever law there was to prevent it or to make the person pay who had hurt you.”

Lainey had known the same about whoever had kidnapped Julie. She looked up into his eyes, feeling the emotion pouring off him. “But, you got a divorce and your wife remarried. You didn’t hunt your wife down and kill her for loving someone else.”

“My wife cheated on me while we were still living together.” He laughed huskily. “You better believe I thought about killing the man who cheated with my wife. I imagined doing it.” He smiled darkly. “I imagined it many times.”

“Yes, but you didn’t do it.”

His face turned serious, his eyes narrowing. “I had a little girl who needed me. I couldn’t be selfish and satisfy my hunger for a pound of flesh.”

“Your humanity conquered your animalistic passions.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

Brice looked down at Lainey and realized that besides duty, something else had kept him going. “There were other reasons I kept plodding on with life. There were things I hoped for in the future.”

Lainey looked up into his eyes, and a misty emotion filled her gaze, as if she realized where he was going with this line of thought.

“What was that?” she whispered, a breath away from his mouth.

He leaned in, closing half the distance. “I didn’t go crazy, because the dream of you kept me going.”

If ever there had been a perfect second family for him, it was Lainey and her sister.

Lainey understood the cop life, lived it herself almost, and her little sister wanted to be a cop.

His wife had resented his job for taking him away in the middle of the night, resented the almost obsession that would take over him when he was heavily involved in a case, with the need to find justice for victims.

Lainey understood. Hell, she felt exactly the same drive for justice as he did.

With a vision of what their future could hold, Brice closed the distance between his mouth and Lainey’s, brushing his lips across hers before pulling back. The jolt of that quick touch sent shock waves through his body.

He looked down into her deep blue eyes and saw a future there, a future that included him living with this strong, vibrant woman and her little sister. He saw a loving home that Maddie would enjoy visiting, his child also learning the lesson that after a huge setback, an enormous disappointment in life, that people could recover.

They could come back to love again.

Maybe, he and Lainey would even have another child of their own. He sucked in a deep breath, wanting to say it now, wanting Lainey Thomas to understand just how much finding her meant to him.

“I believed that even if I had to wait my whole life, that one day I just might look up and you would be there.”

“Me?”

“You. I didn’t know what hair color you’d have, what your job would be, or how I would meet you. But deep inside, something told me that love wasn’t finished with me yet.”

She laughed softly.

“Love’s a bitch that can kick the hell out of you, then turn around and bring you the woman you were always meant to find,” he said softly.

“You were meant to find me?”

“Emm,” he murmured. “I don’t regret my marriage to my ex-wife, Jennifer, because that brought me Maddie, one of the great loves of my life.”

He shook his head. “But, Jennifer and I were never happy after the first year or so. She wanted me to quit the department. Get a corporate nine to five job.”

Lainey looked up at Brice, trying to imagine him doing anything else besides being a cop. But, that would never have been him. He loved his job as much as she did, living for the moment they took another dangerous person off the streets of Atlanta. She didn’t know where his need for justice came from, but it was as much a part of him as it was of her makeup.

“I’ve held onto life, kept on plodding along. A big part of that was for Maddie.”

He looked down into her eyes. “But, as much as I hate being apart from my daughter so much of the time, I see that when my wife left me, it made room in my life for you, someone so right for me.”

Lainey read the emotion in his eyes, stronger than a river after a rainstorm, a tumultuous torrent of feeling moving through him, shedding from him like mist on the river after the rain had passed.

“I respect everything I’ve seen in you,” he continued, “We’re alike, you and I. I’ve felt stronger for you in the short time we’ve been involved than I’ve ever felt for any other woman in my life.”