Vigilante Mine (9 page)

He looked over to see Amanda staring at his hands. She stretched out a finger to trace over a raw knuckle. The light touch soothed more than tempted, but Ryan slipped his hands into his pockets anyway. He couldn't risk another near kiss.

"Did you scrape it getting out yesterday?"

"I dinged a lot of things yesterday." He smiled. "No, this . . . My brothers were worried about me."

She looked askance. "So you punched them?"

He shrugged. Jay had been satisfied with words, but Zach had wanted to dish out a more physical reprimand. Ryan had been happy to oblige.

Amanda's expression didn't change, but she stepped onto the sidewalk and rubbed a hand over a dull green lamppost. "Well, we're here. You should probably call them."

He nodded. Zach had waited long enough. "I'll be right back." He crossed the street to page his brother. "Any luck?"

"Some of us are more blessed than others." From the clacking keyboard sounds in the background, Ryan guessed his research continued. "Or were you not talking about women?"

"We're burning daylight," Ryan said. He gripped the edge of a banner and lifted it against the wind. Dull, red symbols had been sewn around the perimeter of the rectangle, some lost where the edges were wind-frayed.

"There's no chatter over the normal channels about a masked man," Zach cut back in. "And surprise, surprise, nobody's dead."

"Good." He wasn't the only one with memories. When the gossip had blamed yesterday's bombing on a masked man, Ryan could practically see the ping on Amanda's Klepto-radar. He let the banner drop and it fluttered. Ruined, limp fabric against a charred wall. "So no one's trying to pin the 16th on Klepto."

"Nope. We're good. You're just paranoid." Zach chuckled. "Afraid your cop friend'll ID you and cuff you to the bed?"

Intriguing as his other brain found that scenario, Ryan frowned. "The idea was to deter her from digging in the first place."

"She's with you?"

"Yes."

Zach hummed on the other end of the line. "You must have been pretty convincing." His typing slowed. "I didn't figure she'd be willing to destroy her career for you and your illegally acquired case file."

Ryan dropped his voice to a low growl. "I didn't ask."

True, he'd tracked Amanda to see if she wanted to occupy her mind on her day off. But the minute he'd spotted her, he'd felt it imperative that this time, she'd see him in a better light. Good thing too, because Zach was right. She could have been arrested for working on the case without authorization.

"We're not working on the case. I can always come back later for answers." He hadn't even retrieved the photos from the glove compartment. "We're just looking around. She can't be cited for that."

The typing stopped. "Her coworkers find out she was out there with you and we've got that file, your detective's toast."

Ryan grimaced at his brother's dangerously low tone. "You're right. This should have been a solo excursion into hell."

Zach sighed. "She's not family, Ryan."

"Everything okay?" Amanda stepped onto the sidewalk in front of him, her whole presence neutral save for her eyes. Blue with a cutting glint of warning.

Aware his brother would curse him for it later, Ryan met her challenging look and clicked off the communicator completely. How much of the exchange had she overheard?

Her teeth did a fascinating jig over her bottom lip. "If we're going to look around, we better get to it."

Amanda tipped a look up at the chiseled line of Ryan's jaw as he fell into step beside her, his expression wary. Good. Let him wonder if she knew he'd intended to pick her up today to look over the Old Town file instead of trudging around the snow-dusted concrete reliving childhood memories. Let him wonder
—
so she'd have longer to figure out why he'd changed his mind.

They walked for a few minutes in silence, slower and slower steps as they approached his former home.

"I was 16," she finally said. "My dad came home that night shaking. He drank himself to sleep."

"Your father was here?"

"He was a fire fighter."

He slanted a look down at her, eyebrows dipping. "Was?"

"We lost him my senior year of high school." She lowered her gaze to the broken sidewalk. "He was a hero."

Ryan pulled to a stop and stared over her head, unable to look away from the ashes. "Some men are born that way, aren't they?"

Some men, maybe. Not her father. He'd had a rap sheet as long as her forearm for boosting cars. If her mother hadn't believed in second chances, Amanda might never have been born. It took prison to straighten him out, and by then the gasoline spike had rendered his line of work obsolete. The pride in his eyes when she'd chosen a career in law enforcement . . . 

Amanda locked those thoughts away when her nose tingled with more emotion than cold. She burrowed her hands into her jacket pockets. "This place is . . . heavy."

He gave a slight nod and glanced up at the sky.

She followed his gaze and wet sprinklings of fresh snow settled on her cheeks. "We should get out of the cold."

Ryan seemed to come back to life, though his smile was slow on the rebound. He reached toward her and gestured with his chin at his car in one smooth motion. "I know a little tea shop that will get us warm again
—
"

He stopped and one of his hands clenched tight on her jacket sleeve. Ryan's head tipped slightly, his eyes narrowing at the entrance to an alley that ran around the side of one ghoulish building.

Alarm spun down her spine. "What's wrong?"

"I think I heard something. Bad news." He dropped his hands and headed for the structure. "Wait here."

She almost snarled. He was a civilian, and she could handle "bad news". Her adrenaline surged free on a heady rush of frustration.

The last thing I need is someone else to keep me on the sidelines.

Ryan held out a hand to block her forward motion when she rounded the building and she slid around him, taking point. He whooshed out an exasperated breath. Amanda hugged the wall. In the middle of the back alley was a man, arms splayed, feet cocked at awkward angles. A perp with a knife leaned over him.

Amanda instinctively reached for a gun, her hips bare of equipment. She cut off a curse. Four months and she still wasn't used to being without a weapon. Well, she wasn't defenseless. Her eyes narrowed and she shifted onto her toes, a more mobile position as she sized up the suspect.

Long-sleeved mesh shirt over a skin-tight tee, obscenely fitted leather pants
—
this scumbag wasn't hiding a gun. Her eyes flashed to all the points where an accomplice could have been tucked away, but he didn't appear to have friends.

Ryan's fingers brushed her arm and her head jerked back, connecting with his shoulder on a light thud. Pine aftershave set her hormones to purring. She bit her lip.

"Gun. Two o'clock," he whispered in her ear. "No shooter."

Her eyes searched the ground around the body again. Sure enough, a discarded gun lay a couple of feet away, its muzzle sticking out from under a trash bin. A drug buy gone wrong?

The knife loomed closer to the fallen man and Amanda stepped into the alley. "Police, put the weapon down."

He straightened with a jolt. Both hands came up. "Lady, he was dead when I got here."

Amanda stepped closer, keeping her voice firm. "Drop the knife."

He didn't. Instead, the suspect broke into a gallop down the side street. Ryan growled somewhere behind her as she sprinted after the man, her boots blasting the cracked pavement with satisfying clicks. Thick flakes of snow wheeled around her, tumbling faster as she ran.

"Stop! Police!" Damn, but her blood was happy he didn't listen.

He jumped for a raised fire escape and she slammed into his side, plowing his shoulder against a once-neon orange scrawl of graffiti. His knife spun to the ground. She kicked it away and he wrenched free.

The skinny bastard didn't make it far. Amanda nudged the back of his knee with her heel and he stumbled. She pinned him hard and yanked her scarf from around her neck, pulling the chenille taut before wrapping it around his wrists.

"I said stop," she growled.

"I know this looks bad, but I swear I didn't ex him!" His breath on the pavement melted a layer of freshly clinging snow.

The scene would be compromised by the elements if they didn't get a CSU out there fast.

She gave a savage yank on the makeshift restraints to get him on his feet. Dark marks peeked around the dull gray fabric. Ornate, flaming dragon skulls tattooed his wrists. This guy was syndicate.

"You tryin' to take off my hands, lady?"

"Detective," she corrected. "You're lucky it's my day off. Metal cuffs are far less comfy." Or warm. As her adrenaline tapered off, the chill in the air seeped under her collar and right to her bones.

She hauled him back to the alley and Ryan grabbed his bicep. "I'll watch him."

Amanda paused, studying the determined look in the businessman's eyes and ignoring another protest from her charge.

"What?" Ryan stepped closer. The move flexed his arm in a way that drew attention to his jacket sleeve. Along with the generous muscle underneath. "It's not like I'll let him go."

"If you really didn't do this," she said, forcing the young thug to look her in the eye. "You don't run again. Try it, and you might as well sign that confession now."

She waited until he frowned, his stance loose with defeat, then she released her charge into Ryan's care. Amanda dropped her gaze to the victim, whose unseeing green eyes stared up at a darkening sky. Her chest tightened. Another death. Old Town didn't need more ghosts. She narrowed her eyes at the body. Those eyes, the jutting cheekbones, they were familiar somehow.

"I know him," Amanda said, careful not to stir the gravel around the body as she squatted by its side. Dockers, olive green slacks, and a plaid button-up with a sizeable bullet hole through the chest. Cursory glance said cause of death, but
—

"Friend or foe?" Ryan asked.

"I don't . . . " The man's identity was right on the edge of her memory. She held out her hand. "Phone. I've got to call Dispatch."

Ryan relinquished her cell and her thumb mashed the "2". Flipping to speaker phone so she could use the camera built into the device at the same time, she paced around the body and snapped shots for the crime scene unit. As she detailed the scene and ordered out a team, snowflakes grew more frequent. "I've got a person of interest in custody."

She called her lieutenant next and he answered in a huff. "I knew you couldn't stand down. Look, we haven't IDed the precinct vic yet. I don't know any more than the news outlets, so just hold your horses."

The precinct vic?
 Amanda flipped the speaker off and jerked the phone to her ear. "You found a body."

At the precinct. Her heart skipped about a dozen beats. Did that mean the rest of Greg's tip, about the man wearing a mask, was also true?

Silence. Then, "Why are you calling me on your day off, Detective?"

She turned her side to the crime scene. A dead body in-house should have been a big deal. All hands on deck. Why hadn't he bothered to bring her in? "Apparently, you're not the only one finding bodies today. Sir."

"Where are you? Werner
—
"

She hung up on him, frustration punching along the inside of her skull. And yeah, maybe a little bit of hurt. Her phone rang almost instantly but she sent it to voicemail as she turned back to the body.

"Recognize him yet?" Ryan asked, nodding at the body.

She nodded, pushing doubt aside as recognition drove home. "An informant. One of ours." Something flapped in a gust of winter wind and she flipped it over with her toe.

A mask.

Amanda stared at the black strip of fabric with two holes cut out of the center.

"I just wanted to see who the stiff was."

Her gaze slammed toward the young knife-wielder and she narrowed her eyes. "He was wearing this?"

He leaned away from Ryan, but her companion held firm. "Yeah." He clamped his lips shut in a thin line and then sighed. "You're not gonna believe me until you run the gun. It's not mine. You won't find my prints."

She glanced over at the tiny pistol with an uncomfortable feeling he'd told the truth. A pistol that tiny wouldn't account for the size of the bullet hole in this man's chest. "I found you kneeling over a dead body with a weapon," she said, but she stared down at the victim with growing dread. The mask pointed her right back to her mysterious masked attacker and with the victim's relationship to her precinct . . . 

Rumors almost always held a shred of truth.

Amanda punched redial.

"I'm following CSU your way, Werner. What's going on?"

"Was the other victim wearing a mask?"

"Yes." The answer came fast, and angry. "Don't touch anything until I get there."