Building Ties (Military Romantic Suspense) (SEAL Team Heartbreakers Book 4) (17 page)

The three stories she was working on right now could prove important to her career. If she couldn’t do Washington, she could damn sure do San Diego. If she discovered proof Brian Gooding had been involved with a man’s death, she’d have to report it to the authorities, as well as write about it.

Brett was right, she couldn’t be anyone else’s conscience. But damn she didn’t want Brian Gooding to be a bad guy.

Brett got out of the car and came around to open her door. He’d left the bulletproof vest behind today and, since he’d finally been able to pick up some clothes from his apartment, had opted for a navy sports coat to cover the bulge of his shoulder holster. Despite the civilian apparel, the way he stood, the controlled way he handled himself, still shouted military, or cop.

Once they passed through the door to the store, two checkers tracked their progress to the customer service department. One was the woman she’d given her business card to the first day. She made a subtle motion with her hand and Tess cut in that direction to speak to her. “Buy a pack of gum,” the woman said under her breath.

Tess picked out a pack of gum from the racks at the woman’s station and laid it on the conveyer belt. She slipped a dollar bill from her purse. The woman pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and extended it to Tess with her receipt and change. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back. Rosalie said she would talk to you on the phone. But she’s afraid to meet with you face to face. She doesn’t want it to get back to Mr. Gordon that she spoke to you.”

“It won’t, I promise. Thank you.”

The woman nodded, then turned to her next customer.

The man crowded Tess, and she glanced behind her with a frown. She caught a flash of dark hair and eyes and a slight build.

Tess tucked the pack of gum, note and receipt into her jacket pocket and returned to Brett. The two of them moved on to the cage-like structure that housed customer service. A heavyset woman with a thick swath of dark hair pushed aside the paperwork she was working on and approached them. “Can I help you?”

“I’d like to speak to the manager, please,” Tess said.

“Is it something I can take care of for you?” she asked.

“No. I’d like to speak directly to Mr. Gordon.”

The woman eyed Brett with a frown, then nodded. “I think he’s at the back of the store, I’ll buzz him.”

“Thank you.” Tess leaned back against the counter and smiled at the set planes of Brett’s face while he scanned the aisles for any threat. She slipped her fingers through his and was rewarded with the one-sided quirk at of his mouth.

“I think this is your guy,” he said he tilted his head toward a stocky man walking toward them.

“Yes it is,” Tess said, recognizing him from his wife’s social media page.

Gordon shoved his glasses up his nose as he approached, his gaze shifting from Tess to Brett and back again.

Reaching them, he asked, “May I help you?”

“Mr. Ronald Gordon?” Tess asked, just to make an official identification.

“Yes.”

“I’m Tess Kelly from the San Diego Tribune.” She offered her hand.

The man’s jaw tensed but he shook her hand.

“This is Brett Weaver, my associate. We’d like to interview you about Daniel Delgado, if you have time.”

“The police have told me not to speak to anyone about the robbery.”

“I’m not asking to speak to you about the robbery, sir. Only Daniel.”

Gordon’s brown eyes shifted back and forth again. “What is it you want to know about him?”

“What kind of employee was he?”

Gordon’s gaze went to the woman working behind them in the customer service cage. “I think we need to move this to my office upstairs.”

Though she was focused on whatever paperwork she was working on, Tess noticed the woman glanced up at her with raised brows.

“That will be fine, sir,” Tess said.

Tess followed Gordon to a door positioned just behind customer service and then up narrow stairs. Once they reached the landing, the stairway opened into a hall with several offices. He paused outside one of the doors and gestured her inside. Brett waited for her to find a seat and for Gordon to move behind his desk before he took the seat closest to the door. The room was little bigger than a closet, and had a desk and a filing cabinet.

“I’d like to ask some things about you, first, just for background,” Tess began before leading him through a series of questions about his own employment with the store. Gordon relaxed in his chair and eagerly talked about his history with the grocery store chain.

“Now about Daniel. How long has he worked here?”

“Since his sophomore year of high school.” Gordon folded his hands on his blotter, arranging his face in a pious expression. “He was a good employee. He hasn’t called in sick in a year, and he’s never late.”

“I heard the robbery suspect wore a mask.”

“Who told you that?” Gordon demanded, his jaw taking on a pugnacious tilt.

Tess studied his expression. “If the suspect was masked, how did you identify him?”

“I can’t talk to you about the robbery.”

“Since you identified Daniel, why do you think he would rob the store he’d worked for over a year?”

“Money, I suppose.”

“How often do your employees get paid?” Tess asked.

“Every two weeks.”

“Since the robbery occurred on a Friday night, on the thirty-first, wouldn’t he have just gotten his paycheck?”

“Yes, but robbing the store would have brought him much more.”

Interesting choice of words. Would have…or did? “How much trouble do you have from the gangs in the neighborhood, Mr. Gordon?”

“Not much. A lot of their family members work here. That provides some protection from them. Though it doesn’t keep them from coming in and spreading a little fear now and then.”

“Daniel isn’t a member of any gang, is he?”

Gordon slid forward on his seat. “I don’t believe so, but it’s well known in the neighborhood his brother is. He’s been arrested numerous times.”

“I looked into his brother. Why do you think he’s never done any time?”

“I think his gang buddies cover for him so the cops can’t get the evidence they need. I’ve heard the gang even pays his court fees when he’s arrested.” An underlying thread of rage hardened his words.

“But up to now Daniel’s always walked the straight and narrow. He has a college scholarship. He’s on the verge of being able to escape this neighborhood and take his mother with him. This arrest may make all of that impossible.”

Gordon’s expression hardened and one side of his mouth lifted. “I can’t help that.”

“Why would he throw all that away, Mr. Gordon?”

“You’ll have to ask him.” He paused for a moment. “Maybe his brother’s gangbanger ways have finally rubbed off on him.” Once again a hair-thin touch of bitterness and anger colored his tone.

“Does Daniel’s brother deal drugs?” Tess asked.

Gordon’s gaze shifted away. “I wouldn’t know, but the gangs do have a reputation for doing that as well as robbing, stealing and terrorizing the neighborhood.”

She could say the same thing about his nephew. “Do you think Daniel should pay for his brother’s mistakes?”

“His brother wasn’t the one who perpetrated this crime, but in my opinion he was responsible.”

Tess leaned back in her seat and studied Gordon’s face, an idea beginning to form.

“Does your nephew belong to the gang, Mr. Gordon?”

Gordon’s face flushed red. He shoved his chair back and got to his feet. “My nephew has nothing to do with this robbery. This interview is over.”

Tess’s gaze swung to Brett and they stood. Brett stepped back and motioned her ahead of him. Gordon came around his desk and grabbed Tess’s arm.

Brett caught the man’s wrist and shoved him back against the desk. “You don’t want to do that.” The flat, steady stare he turned on Gordon projected a controlled violence that shot a skittering alarm along Tess’s nerve endings. She laid a hand on Brett’s shoulder.

“You print anything about my nephew and I’ll sue your paper,” Gordon threatened as he jerked away and scuttled backwards behind the desk.

“I print facts, Mr. Gordon, not fairy tales. You can’t sue if it’s the truth,” Tess said, her voice quiet. “Thank you for your time.”

*

Brett took a
deep breath to calm the anger-fueled adrenaline flooding his system. The hand he rested against Tess’s hip held her close against him all the way to the car.

“What would you have done if you’d been alone and that creep tried to intimidate you into keeping quiet about his nephew?”

“First of all, I’d have never stepped inside his office had you not been with me. I’d have asked him to walk around the store with me while we spoke.”

“Why?”

“When I first came into the store, the woman from produce was working a register. She asked me to buy a pack of gum, and when I did, she passed me a note with the other witness’s phone number. She didn’t want Gordon to know she gave it to me. And the other witness, Rosalie, doesn’t want him to learn she’s speaking to me either. If he’s intimidated them that much, then I knew he’d try something with me. That’s why I introduced you as my associate and wanted you to go upstairs with me.”

Some of the tension drained from Brett’s muscles. “It drives me crazy thinking you might be in danger from anyone, Tess.”

“I’m careful, Brett.”

As careful as she thought she was, it only took one asshole to take things to another level. “I’m going to buy you some mace and a Taser.”

She laughed. “I can see the headlines ‘Newspaper reporter Tasers interviewee to get the truth.’” She ran her hand over his arm. “I know you deal with danger all the time, but we women have dealt with it since the birth of the human species. How often do you look under your car before you approach it? Or look in the back seat before you get in? Or carry your keys between your fingers like a weapon?”

Brett held her hand against his arm. Should he be honest with her? And if he was, would she freak out? “I don’t do the key thing, but the rest—all the time, honey. Just because I’m not in a war zone right now doesn’t mean I don’t evaluate the threat level of every place we go. It’s as natural as breathing to me right now. It’ll ease off after a while, until the next time I’m deployed. But right now I need it, Tess. Your freaking car was blown up!”

She cupped his face and for a long moment met his gaze. “Do you think I don’t know all of that already? I know you have to ease into this world when you come home from the other.”

For the tenth time today he cursed the console between them that kept him from drawing her close. He leaned over and placed a slow, deliberate kiss on her cheek.

“We’re more alike than you think, Brett,” Tess said her fingers resting against the front of his shirt. “I deal with people when they’re at their most vulnerable, their most volatile. You focus in on movement around you, I concentrate on the emotion.”

Was she shining him on to put his fears to rest? It was working, but anxiety still ate at him.

She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket, along with a pack of gum and a receipt. “I’m going to call Rosalie before Gordon has a chance to get to her. If Daniel Delgado did this, he needs to pay for it. But if it was someone else who held up the store that night, she needs to step up and say so.”

“I’ll drive while you call. Where do we go from here?”

Tess frowned as she read a text message.

“The Brittain Development Corporation. I have an interview with Nicolas Brittain at three o’clock about the accident and how his company is recovering from it. I have to go to the office before the interview, though. Mr. Taylor wants to see me.”

She gave him the Brittain Corporation address and he keyed it into the GPS system and saved it while Tess dialed a number on her phone and waited for it to ring.

With a sigh, Brett started the car and whipped out of the grocery store parking lot.

He listened to Tess’s side of the conversation while she questioned Rosalie about the robbery. Though the police had told her not to talk about it, Tess kept circling around the facts until the woman admitted the robber had worn a ski mask and she had seen a tattoo on the man’s forearm. Tess spent the remainder of the time boosting the woman’s sense of right and wrong to encourage her to withstand Gordon’s intimidation tactics. By the time Brett drove in and parked in the lot next to the newspaper office she had concluded her conversation.

Brett exited the car and came around to open her door. “What do you think Taylor wants to talk to you about?”

“I don’t know. I emailed him my schedule early this morning before we left the house. Something may have come in that he wants me to cover.”

They entered the building and rode the elevator up to the newsroom. The space was alive with other reporters at their desks, phones ringing, and movement.

Taylor looked as if he’d been watching for them and left his glassed-in office to meet them. “What the hell is going on, Tess? I just spoke to an editor from the Washington Post. When did they offer you a job? And why haven’t you told me about it?”

The noise in the room died for a second, all but a persistent ringing telephone. For a brief moment Tess froze. Then she jerked her eyes up to Brett’s face.