Sin (The Waite Family) (26 page)

“I was thinking how bad we’d look if someone came in right now. We should be more careful of that.” He pulled her lax body to his.
“But this feeling is much too nice to quit right now to lock it.”

“It’s locked
,” she told him as she laid her head back to his shoulder
.
“
David locked it on the way out. It’s a habit he has, locking doors when he leaves a room.
It’s
one of the most
irritating
habits he has, used to drive his wife nuts.”

Coop didn’t know whether to be happy it was locked or happy because she knew and still played with him when he didn’t.
He lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at her.
“Sydney, I am in love with you.
You should know that now. I don’t expect you to tell me you love me in return, but I do love you.”

She pulled her chin from his hand and laid her head back on his shoulder.
“I don’t know what I feel for you,” she said in his neck.
“I feel something, but love…I don’t know.
I’m sorry.”

He couldn’t be
sorry
, not when she said she felt something for him. He pulled her closer and held her. Life would never be dull again
,
that was for sure.
He hated to make her move, but he was getting sore again. Coop had to smile. He’d gotten more
exercise
in the past few days than he had the entire time he’d been in the hospital. And he was looking forward to it more and more.

They left the building and
,
this time
,
he was more alert for tails. He found the one she’d mentioned in the office.
Not too far away, but just enough to make him aware they we
ren’t
alone.

“Shipley will protect us before he’d hurt me.
He was the only man I trusted inside.”
He glanced over at her as he drove.
“I’d swear on it with my life.”

He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

~Chapter 14~

Carl closed his phone and sat back in his chair.
Things were progressing
,
but not the way he’d hoped.
Shipley was doing his part
,
but not quickly enough
,
n
either
was he giving the information
Carl
wanted.
Completely not his fault, but Carl needed someone to blame and he didn’t care who it was.

Quinn had remarried.
That was a complete surprise.
He’d expected…hoped really
,
that he’d broken her of that.
Grinning
,
he got up and walked to the large window that faced the back lot.
She had been a lot of fun to knock around.
And knowing that her big
,
bad-assed twin had not done a thing about it had made it more delicious for him.
Until that bitch had come along.

The dyke Army bitch.
He hadn’t even known about her until he’d done a little investigating when he’d moved to Jersey.
Sydney, the baby bitch
,
had taken his wife from him and had made her fight him.
Him!
No one fought Carl Marshall Wickett and walked away.
Especially now and especially when he had made his claim.
He’d been stupid to leave, not run away like they all thought
,
but leave.
He’d make sure both of them paid.
Carl opened the door
,
walked out into the brisk night
,
and stood on the deck.

But first he’d have to stop Cooperider. Shipley had said he was in Ohio.
The same small
p
odunk town his wife was in.
Carl wondered if they knew each other or
if it
was just a
serendipity chance
that they lived there.
No, couldn’t be. Something made him think they’d been against him all the time.
Carl snorted.

He didn’t like sounding like one of those paranoid pricks that thought that every cocksucker in the world was against him.
He didn’t actually believe that Cooperider and Quinn had set out to try and make him look bad, but he couldn’t help thinking about them together now
,
laughing at him behind his back.
When he heard his phone on the desk ring he glanced down at his watch.
Only three people had this number and one of them was dead.
Carl went back inside.

“This had better be good if you’re calling me at four in the morning, James.
And I do mean good.” Carl sat behind the desk and toyed with the idea of making this man a thing of the past as well.

“The trial has been moved up three months.
The prosecution has decided that you are still a flight risk and that delaying it any longer will just give you more time to flee.” Dean James, his lawyer
,
had just gone from an idea of a dead man to an actuality.
“The trial is set for next Thursday at nine in the morning.”

“And you couldn’t convince them for the eight hundred dollars an hour that I pay you that not only do they have my passport, my plane grounded
,
and my assets frozen that there is no way in hell I can
run
?
What good are you anyway?”
Carl reached into his second drawer
,
pulled out his gun
,
and laid it on the desk.
“I haven’t had time to make arrangements on my other little problem yet.
You have to go back to them and tell them that I’m staying put in this little hovel they’ve reduced me to.”

“I got it scheduled for next Thursday and not today.
If the judge had his way you’d be in jail and not that
‘
hovel’ you call it now.
He’s convinced you are living in the lap of luxury and not scraping by as I’ve claimed you are.”

James sounded pissed and that pissed off Carl.
“You think I’m living in the lap here, James?
While my home in town has all the things I want and need
,
I sit here in the three
-
bedroom house with barely enough room for me much less the five servants I have running around here
.
This fucking sucks.
Take care of this or
,
so help me, I will. Do I make myself understood?”
Carl waited for the groveling
,
but was sorely disappointed in James.

“Are you threatening me?” There was a snort of laughter.
“Bring it on
,
ass
wipe
,
and we’ll see how quickly you go from that massive house you’re in to an eight
-
by
-
eight cell in minutes.
Fuck you
,
Mr. Wickett
.
I quit.”

The phone slammed down so hard that Carl jerked the receiver from his ear. Carl closed his eyes and started to count
,
but was much too pissed and way to
o
fucking scared to do more than three numbers before he threw the entire phone across the room and hit the large glass door he’d just came in.
Lucky for him…or James
,
that it was bulletproof or he’d have another mess to have dealt with.
Carl
started pacing the room.

What did his lawyer know?
Everything. And that meant he had to go.
Ballsy moves did not mean smart ones and Carl didn’t even care to appreciate th
e
fact that someone had stood up to him.
Carl started for his desk to call someone to take care of the fucking lawyer when he remembered the phone was now in pieces on the floor.
Instead
,
he picked up a pen and started making notes.

The second order of business was to find out why Shipley had had to kill Louis. Hartman Louis had been with Carl for years and all of
a
sudden he g
ot
it in his head to take out one of his workers
?
It didn’t sound true.
He tried to think what might have provoked Shipley to lie.
Nothing
.

Carl thought back over the past three years.
Okay, there was any number of men Louis had claimed had disappeared.
There was that hit man he’d hired named…well
,
he couldn’t be expected to remember everyone’s name
,
but he’d been found a few weeks after Louis had told him he had disappeared.
Washed up on the beach
,
a neat hole in his forehead.
The more Carl tried to think, the more nameless bodies would flitter through his memory.
And all of them men that Louis had claimed hadn’t worked out or had simply disappeared.
Carl
did laugh now.
Things, he supposed
,
where not as pretty as Louis had made them appear
.

“Well, well
,
you little cocksucker, met your match in Shipley
,
didn’t you?”
Carl was still laughing when his cell phone rang.

“I guess you haven’t heard the good news then
,
have you? Your trial date has been moved.
Seems you have to be back here in a few days to stand trial for the list of shit that Officer Cooperider had on you.”

Carl didn’t like that the
m
ayor was saying
“
his stuff
,”
as if he’d had nothing to do with it.
“Yeah.
James just called to inform me.
He said he worked to get it until then. What’s your take on this judge? Can he be persuaded?”
Carl didn’t like having this type of conversation on a cell
,
but this particular phone was supposed to be the most secure.
“I don’t need this shit right at the moment.”