Operation Power Play (19 page)

Chapter 34

“T
his changes everything,” Brett said, reaching for his phone.

“I know,” Sloan answered, looking away from the hole. She reached down and stroked Cutter’s head. The dog was sitting quietly, letting out only a brief whine, as if he was distressed by what he’d found. She’d heard search-and-rescue dogs suffered stress when they found only bodies and no survivors, so she supposed it was quite possible.

Sloan shivered, although she hadn’t been cold up to now. The thought made her get out her own phone to look at her weather app. “It’s supposed to rain tonight. Heavy.”

He nodded. “I’ll need to get the crime-scene guys out here fast.”

“Brett?”

He paused before he could hit what was obviously a speed-dial number.

“Is this it? The reason for all this?”

He didn’t pretend not to understand, nor did he put her off. But then, he never did. “No proof of that. Yet. But...”

She knew what he was saying. That his instincts were saying what hers were, that this indeed was the reason behind all of this. He turned back to his phone, which rang. He looked at the screen, then answered.

“Rafe. Things just got impossibly complicated.” He listened for a moment. “Doesn’t surprise me,” he said then. “Especially right now. Your four-footed buddy just found a body.”

He gave Rafe the basics, listened for a moment, then was done. Before he made his call, he looked at her.

“I take that back. There’s one thin thread and a lot of circumstantial links.”

“What doesn’t surprise you?” she asked, guessing it was the thread.

“Mr. Muscle has a record.”

“Rams Emmet?”

He nodded. “Manslaughter, ten years ago. Charges were dropped when the eyewitness disappeared. They investigated for a possible link but couldn’t prove anything. Body was never found.”

She stared back at him. Then, slowly, shifted her gaze to the makeshift grave.

She heard him calling out the necessary responders but wasn’t really tuned in to what he was saying. She was too busy trying to keep her mind from getting ahead of the facts.

One thin thread, Brett had said. Not proof. But he thought like a cop. He had to, had to think about going to court and proving the case. Had to think about clever lawyers and judges with opinions that were supposed to be kept out of the system but too often weren’t.

She only had to think like a person who knew from long, sad experience about smoke and fire and the lust for power that turned some people into dark and evil things.

“Who do you think it is?” she asked when he’d finished his calls.

“If we’re really lucky, there will be ID in there.”

“Would they really leave that?”

“Probably not. I said really lucky.”

Something about the way he was staring at the body told her.

“You know,” she whispered.

“I don’t know anything,” he said.

“You mean you can’t prove it. Yet.”

“For a cop that’s just about the same thing.”

She knew it was a jump, but she asked anyway. “Do you think it’s that eyewitness?”

He looked up, then at her. “Careful,” he said. “You get set on an idea, you end up fitting the facts to that theory instead of letting them lead you to the truth.”

“But you have an idea,” she said. She was certain of it.

“And I’m keeping it on a leash,” he said. “For now. At least until we get an ID on this victim.” He glanced back down the hill. “Call the house. Tell Tim we’re probably dealing with a murder. Not a fresh one, by the looks of it, but still...”

Tell him so he can be on alert, to protect your family.
He didn’t say the words, but she heard them anyway. She made the call, half expecting to get questions she had no answer for. But it turned out she was worried for nothing. Deford listened to what Brett had said, answered simply, “Got it,” and hung up.

Cutter growled. Sloan’s breath caught as she felt an electric sort of shock jolt through her fingertips where she’d been stroking the dog. The dog had gone rigidly alert. He stretched his head out toward the area she’d pointed out earlier as the original site for the highway. She saw his nose flexing as he sucked in whatever scent had set him off. He looked at them, then back, as if he desperately wanted to break into a run but something was holding him back. As if he was torn between wanting to race toward whatever had caught his attention and putting himself between them and whatever it was.

Brett reached for Cutter, and the fingers of his free hand curled around the dog’s collar.

“Easy, boy,” he was saying softly as he stared in the direction the dog was looking. “I got the message. Stay with me now. I may need you.”

Amazingly, the dog settled. The growls continued but lower. His head moved slightly, as if he could see what was out there, could see it moving. The growl became a snarl. All thought of Cutter being merely an exceptionally clever house pet vanished at the sight of those bared teeth. She glanced at Brett. He was reaching for his weapon. This man was, in his own way, as much a protector and a warrior as Jason had been.

You’re doomed, girl. This is the only kind of man for you. Get used to it.

Cutter exploded into a fury of barking and snapping. The dog clearly wanted fervently to be free. Brett set himself against the pull. And then froze.

A tall blond man stepped out of the shadow of the trees. His own lethal-looking semiautomatic pistol was pointed at them. Suppressed, she thought, then gave herself an inward shake. What a ridiculous time to remember Jason’s explanation that it was a suppressor, not a silencer, because silencing a weapon was impossible.

Ramsey Emmet. As if speaking of him had conjured him out of thin air.

Her gut contracted, and it took everything in her not to let her knees give way.

“Hands,” the man ordered.

“Well, well,” Brett said, ignoring the command and keeping his hand on the gun behind his back. “I was just talking to someone about your rap sheet.”

The man frowned. “That’s sealed.” Then, clearly irritated, he ordered again. “Hands, Detective. One of them holding your weapon by the barrel.”

“Manslaughter, eh? Short step from that to murder.”

Sloan couldn’t be positive from her angle, but she thought the man’s gaze flicked to the grave for an instant. And he didn’t protest or pretend he had no idea what Brett was talking about.

“He was in the way,” he said dismissively.

Something suddenly occurred to her at his words. Brett had said the manslaughter case was ten years ago. He’d also said this wasn’t fresh. But while she was no forensics expert, this body didn’t look as if it had been in the ground for ten years.

“In whose way?” Brett asked. He sounded so calm, she thought, as if he had guns pointed at him every day.

Idiot. The possibility
is
there every day.

“None of your business. Mead’s a fool. And now you’re in my way.”

Was he saying the person in the grave had been in someone else’s way? Her mind made a crazy leap. She had no love for politicians on any side of the aisle, not after her sojourn in DC, but this seemed out there even to her. But looking into this man’s flat reptilian eyes, she could believe it.

And he worked for the man who would likely not have been sitting in the governor’s mansion had his surging opponent not quit and vanished.

Her mind raced, digging for memories of that election campaign. Had Evans ever really had a press conference or spoken to anyone? All she could recall was a published statement about his withdrawal from the race. As far as she could remember, he’d never been seen again.

She couldn’t stop herself from looking at the body then. She barely suppressed a shudder. It was crazy, but her stomach was knotting, and that little voice in her mind was screaming this was it.

“Third and last time—hands where I can see them,” Emmet said. “Now, Detective.”

“I don’t think so,” Brett said. “Are you really stupid enough to kill a cop?”

“I know something about you, too, Dunbar. You’re a man who was on the edge of cracking not so long ago. No one will be surprised that you finally worked up the nerve to end your miserable life.”

Brett didn’t react. Sloan wondered if it was true, if he’d been that lost after his wife’s murder. If his understanding reaction to the possibility Rick was contemplating suicide had been because he’d once been close himself.

“Going to be hard to sell that if you shoot me from ten feet away,” was all he said.

Emmet shifted his aim. To her. “How about this, then? This bitch has certainly made enough very important people angry that everyone will think she was vanished by them. Do you really want to be the reason another woman dies?”

Brett didn’t wince outwardly, but Sloan knew him well enough now to know that Emmet couldn’t have said anything worse. After a split second Brett shrugged. But he took his hand off the weapon at his back, leaving it still holstered.

“I’ll still take you out,” he said.

“So you care nothing about the woman you seduced?”

Brett flicked her a look. There was a warning in his glance, and she stayed put and stayed quiet. Jason had always told her the smartest thing anyone could ever do was let the people you trusted knew their jobs do them.

She trusted Brett Dunbar.

“That was just to keep her out of Mead’s way,” he said with a shrug, as if she’d been nothing more than a task at hand. “I could drop her like a hot rock and never care.”

Something about the slight emphasis he put on the word
drop
snagged Sloan’s attention. Followed, oddly, by Aunt Connie’s words echoing in her mind.
Sometimes the only weapon you have is making people think you’re less than you are.

She was afraid. Not for herself but for him. And for Cutter, who was straining to get loose, no doubt to go for the man’s throat. It went against the grain, against her very nature.

But she did it anyway.

She let out the most dramatic, heart-rending wail she could manage. “You can’t mean that,” she moaned. “You told me you loved me.”

She staggered back a step, then another, then dropped to her knees, burying her face in her hands as if her heart were truly broken. And to hide the fact that she wasn’t quite able to manufacture the tears to complete the image. She could still see between her fingers but thought she wouldn’t hear a thing over the hammering of her heart.

Cutter erupted again into furious barking and snarling. He twisted and pulled forward. Brett stumbled, the dog pulling him off balance. She saw the instant when he let go of the dog’s collar. Saw Emmet’s aim shift to the dog, apparently fearing an attack.

Cutter raced right past him into the trees. Startled, Emmet’s gaze tracked the dog’s path. Brett lunged, so quickly she knew the stumble had been a feint. He took Emmet low and hard. As they hit the ground, Emmet’s weapon fired. A little scream escaped her.

Sloan scrambled to her feet. The two men were rolling, twisting in the dirt. Emmet struggling to bring the weapon to bear. Brett struggling to stop him. Her heart skipped when she saw a wet red stain on Brett’s shirt. For an instant all she could do was stare, all her old nightmares roaring back to life at the thought of a man she loved down and bleeding, maybe dying. She swore silently, looking around for something, anything, she could use as a weapon.

Brett was on top, his hands around Emmet’s wrists. Trying to keep him from turning the weapon. Unable to reach for his own.

A weapon.

She darted over, fumbled at Brett’s back for a moment. Then she had it, his pistol sliding out into her hands.

She dropped to her knees and jammed the barrel against Emmet’s left ear. He hissed. “Bitch,” he yelled.

“If you have any doubts about whether I’ll shoot,” she said through clenched teeth, “remember who and what my husband was. He taught me well.”

“I’d believe her if I were you,” Brett said, as casually as if he hadn’t been wrestling for his life with a killer. “Drop the gun.”

Emmet hesitated.

“I won’t even blink when your brains splatter all over me,” Sloan said.

Emmet went still.

And then Cutter was there, adding a warning snarl to the proceedings.

“Or maybe we’ll just let him rip your throat out, as he’s dying to do,” Brett said.

It seemed to be that thought that tipped the scales. Brett wrested the weapon from Emmet’s hand and got to his feet.

“Watch him,” he ordered Cutter. The dog growled and took up a position within easy reach of that throat Brett had threatened. At his gesture, Sloan got to her feet as well, but she kept Brett’s gun trained on him. Until Brett stepped over and took it out of her hands.

One of his hands was streaked with blood. Up close the blood was an ugly blotch on his white shirt. She stared at it. Felt a numbness start to creep over her. Was barely aware she was shaking, violently.

“It’s his, not mine,” Brett said gently.

She heard the words. Couldn’t respond. Couldn’t even react.

Because it could have just as easily gone the other way.

He reached out to her. Instinctively she jerked away, away from the blood, away from the possibilities.

This time when she went to her knees, the tears came freely.

Chapter 35

“I
s she going to be all right?”

Brett glanced toward the closed door of the bathroom, where Sloan had retreated as soon as they’d arrived at Foxworth. It had been a long, exhausting process that had eaten the rest of the day, all night and into the morning, sorting things out.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly, looking back at Rafe.

The man had shown up at the scene within a few minutes, saying Deford had called him as soon as he’d heard the shot fired, since he knew his duty was to stay put and protect the Days. Although he had to be tired after essentially being on night watch, Rafe had been a strong presence, helping where he could but careful not to trespass on the official turf. He’d arranged for Sloan’s aunt and uncle to escape to a hotel for a few days, knowing there would be a media storm coming. It was bad enough to have law enforcement tramping all over the place without adding reporters and photographers all on probably the biggest story of the century in the entire state. He’d also arranged for protection for the property after one of those zealous media types had turned burglar, breaking into the house apparently looking for some way to connect the innocent residents to the scandal.

Foxworth to the core, Brett had thought at the time.

And had tried not to think about how Sloan had shied away from him but had leaned on Rafe as he took her from the scene back to the house.

“What about you?” Rafe asked.

“I’m fine. Emmet is the only one who got hurt, and that was his own fault.”

“As it should be. Although I’m thinking the world would be a better place if you’d shot him.”

“He would have shot Sloan. I could see it in his eyes. And I’m no sniper—no guarantee I could have prevented that trigger twitch.”

Rafe held up a hand. “Not questioning your decision. You were obviously right. Just wishful thinking. Although it may be just as well if he’s talking. I’m guessing the tremor is still rattling the halls of power down in the capitol.”

“As it should be,” Brett echoed.

“Indeed.”

Brett looked toward the bathroom again. Sloan hadn’t wanted to go home. She hadn’t wanted to go to his place. In fact, she had barely spoken to him since the moment she’d gone to her knees in the dirt next to the body.

“I’m a little surprised the sight of a little blood rattled her so much,” he said. “She’s tougher than that.”

“Maybe it’s just reaction,” Rafe said. “Nobody expects to find a body essentially in their backyard, let alone have the killer show up, ready to kill again.”

“Maybe.”

“Then again,” Rafe said, “considering how you looked, maybe she was just rattled because she thought it was you that was hurt.”

“But she knew almost immediately I wasn’t.”

“Women,” Rafe said, “have some complicated thought patterns.”

“I’ve noticed,” Brett said with a grimace. He shifted his gaze to Cutter, who had taken up a station outside the bathroom door.

“He knows something’s wrong,” Rafe said. “He’s been on her like glue.”

“Yes. The minute the cavalry arrived and took custody of Emmet, he shifted to her.”

“She’ll be all right. She’s a strong woman.”

“Who’s been through too much already in her life.” Far too much, Brett thought.

“That’s why she’s tough,” Rafe said.

“Yeah,” Brett agreed glumly. On the word, Sloan finally opened the door. Cutter scrambled to his feet. She bent to greet him. The dog stayed with her, maintaining contact by leaning against her as they came back into the room. Brett remembered how soothing the dog’s touch could be and hoped it was working for her the same way.

“Have you spoken to your folks?” Rafe asked her. She nodded. “How are they?”

“Now that it’s over, they seem a little excited by it all.” She sounded almost normal, Brett noted with no small amount of relief. Tired, yes, but her voice didn’t have that distant sound, as if she’d retreated somewhere inside that he couldn’t reach. “It helps that they never liked the governor to begin with,” she added.

“Lot of that going around,” Rafe said with a slight smile.

“Thanks for helping them get out of the chaos.”

“What we do,” Rafe said with a shrug. Then he eyed Brett curiously. “Have they ID’d the body?”

“Not officially yet.” Rafe had been there when they’d eliminated the possibility it was the missing witness from Emmet’s case ten years ago based on the simple fact that the witness had been female and this body was male. “But,” Brett went on, aware on some level of just how much he’d come to trust this man by the slightness of the qualm he felt divulging what had not been made public yet, “the man had some metal pins in his right ankle, from a bad break at some point.”

Rafe raised a brow. “That should narrow it down a bit.”

“Yes. Especially since that detail matches Ken Evans.”

Rafe straightened. “Wait a minute...the missing candidate? The one who supposedly had a mental breakdown?”

“And vanished. Yes.”

“Son of a—” He stopped with a glance at Sloan, then looked back at Brett. “That’s no tremor in the capitol—that’s an off-the-scale earthquake.”

“Exactly. The fallout’s going to be thick and fast.”

“How the hell did he end up buried there?” Rafe asked.

“Not sure,” Brett said. “Except we think it might be because they were familiar with the spot from when the highway was originally planned and surveyed for.”

“Hmm.” Rafe rubbed a hand over his unshaven jaw. “And you figure he showed up now because you triggered something running that license plate?”

“I think the plan was to finally just move the body. I think they realized Sloan wasn’t going to give up.”

He looked at her then. She was focused on Cutter, who had jumped up on the sofa beside her and plopped his head in her lap. She was petting him slowly, gently, looking at the dog’s dark head as he stared up at her intently.

Whatever magic you have, dog, work it on her, please. She needs it. Even if I don’t know why, I know that.

“Even if they thought you had her under control?”

Brett glanced at Sloan. She didn’t even look up. He smothered a sigh and answered Rafe.

“I don’t think Emmet ever bought that I was looking to jump onto their bandwagon.”

“Then he’s a better judge of character than I gave him credit for,” Rafe said.

Brett didn’t know what to say to that, so instead he said, “Speaking of credit, your furry friend there managed the perfect distraction. If he hadn’t dashed right past Emmet, drawing his attention, I never would have gotten the jump on him.”

“He’s right,” Sloan crooned to the dog, still avoiding looking up. “You done good, Cutter-dog.”

At least she was listening and acknowledged he was here, Brett thought. Even if it was indirectly. He considered trying to draw her in now that she’d spoken but somehow couldn’t find the words. So he went back to Rafe.

“But I still don’t get it. I would have sworn if he got loose he’d go right for the guy’s throat. I know he wanted at him. I was afraid I’d have to explain to Hayley and Quinn how I let their dog get shot.”

Rafe shrugged. “I’ve given up trying to explain how he always manages to do just the right thing.”

Brett looked over at dog and woman. And wished silently he had a bit of Cutter’s knack right now. Because he had no idea what the right thing was.

* * *

As he laced up his running shoes, Brett was seriously considering taking up another form of exercise. Something that required more concentration, that allowed less time for thinking. Because right now all this thinking was going to drive him insane.

He’d thought sticking to the alternate route would help, but it didn’t. Every day it just made him more aware of why he was running here instead of...there.

I can’t do this, Brett.

Do what?

I can’t deal with loving a man who puts his life at risk every day. Not again.

The kick of joy at hearing her say she loved him had died a bitterly quick death. It had done no good to point out that in this quiet north-woods place what had happened was so rare as to be almost unheard of. Or that as a detective, he usually came in after the fact and rarely had to face the kind of thing that had happened that day.

And after that he had stopped. She was in such pain—it was so clear on her face, in those beautiful eyes—that he couldn’t bear putting any more pressure on her.

When she had decided she wanted to join her aunt and uncle at the resort hotel Foxworth had arranged, he’d been almost glad, hoping some time away with her beloved family out from under all this would somehow bring her back to herself. He missed her with an ache he could barely stand but kept telling himself it was for the best. It would give him time to think himself. To ponder life’s oddities and the weight of difficult decisions.

He hadn’t expected to not hear a word from her since.

He hadn’t realized those last words had been goodbye.

Long days had dragged by, and all the chaos at work, all the huge mess that had come down after the positive ID on the body had come in, hadn’t been enough to distract him from her absence.

Hell, they’d practically brought down the damned state government, and it still wasn’t enough to distract him from her absence.

The embattled governor was still fighting, but he’d thrown Harcourt Mead under the bus the minute he realized the way the wind was blowing. And Mead had turned it all on the hapless Franklin, the lowest man on their twisted ladder and the only one with a witness against him, the bald-headed man he’d hired to follow them.

The only good thing Brett could see to come out of that was that Rick didn’t just have his job back, he had Franklin’s job. And Caro had an appointment to fly to Saint Louis and meet with Tyler Hewitt as soon as classes let out this term, and Brett had a feeling the Foxworth tech genius was going to have the help he needed soon.

So everybody’s life was getting straightened out. The bad guys were in muck to their necks and still sinking, the good guys were getting their lives back, Hayley and Quinn would be back soon, retake custody of Cutter, and his own life would return to the quiet, isolated thing it had always been.

Because obviously Sloan wanted no part of him or his life. At least, not as it was.

And there he was, back to difficult decisions.

“Come on if you’re coming, dog,” he called out to Cutter.

The dog had, strangely, been standing at the window beside the front door all morning, staring out. Twice Brett had gone over to see if there was something there but had seen only the empty expanse of the front yard. He’d had to quash the sudden hope that it was Sloan, even though he knew if it had been, Cutter would have reacted differently.

Amazing how the dog seemed so easy to read now.

“Got me trained quick,” he muttered to the dog as he trotted over and waited politely at the door. “Happy I always do what you want, are you?”

He remembered those words when they reached the bottom of the hill and Cutter turned right. The old route.

“Hold it, buddy. Not going that way.”

The dog ignored him. And instead of stopping and waiting until Brett caught up, as he usually did, the dog just kept going. There was not, it seemed, going to be any discussion about this.

He had to hustle to catch up. He probably should have put the leash on at the door, but the dog had been so cooperative about the new route this week that he had quit worrying about it after the first few days and just focused on not collapsing during the extra mile he’d added.

It was soon clear where Cutter was headed. So clear that when he turned to head up the hill, Brett wasn’t even surprised. It didn’t matter, he told himself. They weren’t there. Sloan wasn’t there. Even the media had dwindled away, their focus now on the political fallout. Surely he could run past the damned empty house without losing it.

Refusing to admit he couldn’t, he picked up the pace. Going up the hill, he challenged himself not to slow, putting every bit of his concentration into holding steady, working hard to draw in enough oxygen to do it. It was tough, but he did it. Maybe adding that extra mile did it, he thought as he reached the turn at the top. It hadn’t done what he’d hoped, helped him sleep better at night, but maybe it had upped his condition a little. Maybe yet another mile would—

Sloan’s car was in the driveway.

He slowed. Stopped. Stared.

Cutter was already racing up onto the big covered porch. As if he’d known she was back. Brett remembered his odd behavior, the staring out the window this morning. The window that, as the crow flew, faced this direction.

Cutter started to bark. Loudly. Jolted out of his shock, Brett winced; it was early for a Saturday. This was not going to be appreciated by the neighbors.

“Damn it,” he muttered, and started to run.

The door opened. Sloan stepped out and crouched beside Cutter, trying to quiet him. He stubbornly continued to bark. She straightened as Brett reached the porch steps. Brett knew she couldn’t really have gotten more beautiful in less than a week, but he would have sworn she had.

Cutter finally quieted. “I’m sorry,” Brett said, sounding stiff even to himself. “We’ve been going a different way, but this morning he got away from me and was dead set on coming this way. I don’t know why he was barking. He never does that.”

And you never babble. So shut up.

He did. He just stood there, staring at her, trying not to think. Sloan said nothing. What was there to say? he wondered.

I can’t do this, Brett.

Hadn’t that been clear enough? He should be glad, shouldn’t he? Hadn’t he sworn never to walk this path again? Never to give fate such a deadly weapon to use against him?

So walk away. She’s doing what’s best for both of you. Honor that.

“Come on, dog,” he said. “Leave her in peace.”

Cutter looked from him to Sloan. But the only move he made was to take two quick steps to stand behind her. Hiding? That didn’t seem like the nervy dog at all. Wanting Brett to come get him? And thus end up within inches of the one woman he would throw away all that hard-earned wisdom for?