Cold Pursuit (Cold Justice) (Volume 2) (30 page)

***

Leaving Vivi standing guard over Michael, Jed ran outside to see if the bastard was dead in the snow. There were enough dark stains on the ground to know Vivi had clipped him at least once. A blood trail led down the road, across the narrow bridge.
Shit
! A body lay in the snow. The sight of a cop uniform made his own heart stop beating.
Liam
! He ran, skidded to a halt on his knees, turned the guy over to check for a pulse and start CPR.

It wasn’t Liam. And CPR wasn’t going to help.

He called his brother who answered on the first ring.

“Shit. I missed your text. What happened?”

From the guilt and breathlessness in his brother’s voice, Jed had interrupted him with a woman. If there had been any way of delaying or changing the truth, Jed would have done it. Unfortunately, this was gonna hurt and no one understood that better than Jed.

“We had a visitor,” Jed ground out. There was no way to negate the pain.

“Shit.” Jed heard a rustle that sounded like clothes being pulled on. “I sent T-Bone to watch over the place. Did he fall asleep? I told him I’d be there in another hour. Dammit.”

There was a female voice in the background, and Jed frowned because she sounded a hell of a lot like Angela—but right now it didn’t matter.

“He didn’t fall asleep, Liam.”

“Oh, fuck, no. No, no,
no.
”

He heard a door slam and an engine start, the whoop-whoop of a police siren start up.

“Tell me he’s OK, Jed.”

But T-Bone—who Jed now recognized as being the younger brother of another of his high school friends—wasn’t OK. He was never going to be OK again.

“He’s dead, Liam. The guy who killed him was the real deal. I doubt he even saw him coming.” Jed closed his eyes. Christ, if his brother hadn’t had a hot date the chances were it would be Liam’s body he was staring at. His assumption and faith that they could deal with this themselves had got an innocent man killed. “Vivi shot the guy, but he ran off and stole your officer’s SUV. You need to get a BOLO out on the vehicle and you need to call in the feds. I’m sorry.” Jed hung up and called his father. “I need you to come over here and pick up Vivi and Michael. Take them home and guard them with your life.”

How had they found them? He eyed his SUV. Until he had someone go over his car for a tracking device he wasn’t taking Vivi anywhere in it. But how had they known
he’d
taken her? Someone had sure as hell put the pieces together fast. Or they’d gotten very, very lucky. Killion had probably figured it out. That should have alerted him to the danger earlier. His complacency had put the Vincents at risk and got a cop killed.

He strode back to the house and put more wood on the fire to warm the place up. He used his cell to quickly photograph all the pictures Michael had drawn and sent them to Frazer back at Quantico.

His phone rang thirty seconds later.

“Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”

“It’s worse. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I screwed up. Vivi and Michael are both with me, and still alive, no thanks to me. I need ERT to process a crime scene.” He hung up on his boss, frozen from the inside out. His career was totally fucked, but worse was the self-reproof creeping through his skull. How could he have imagined he could keep Vivi and Michael safe? He’d let them down the way he’d let Mia down all those years ago.

But these terrorists had tentacles everywhere—who the hell could he trust? They had to have someone inside law enforcement.

He gathered up the drawing supplies and the tablet he’d given Michael and put them in a bag to send with them. Then he squeezed his eyes shut. Even now he was trying to use the kid for his knowledge, squeeze that young, vulnerable mind for every piece of information he could find to put these people behind bars where they belonged.

Then Michael and Vivi would be safe
.

He spotted a pair of night vision goggles on the kitchen floor beneath the dishwasher. Shit. The guy had certainly been prepared. Jed frowned at the weapon lying beside the island. A twinge of unease shifted through him. Tanfoglio were damn good gunsmiths. They were also the chief supplier of handguns to the Mossad.

Could this get any more complicated?

It could certainly get worse if anything happened to Vivi or Michael or anyone else he cared about. Right now he was ill-prepared to stop it. They needed better protection than he could provide alone.

He went through to the bedroom and touched Vivi on the shoulder. She was as cold as a corpse. Eyes shocked and glassy. The woman he’d made love to earlier had disappeared deep inside.

“Liam will be here in a minute. Run upstairs. Get dressed”—she was clad in only a t-shirt and panties, which further reminded him how far he’d crossed the line with her earlier—“and grab your stuff because we have to get out of here fast.”

There was a noise at the front door. “Only me,” Jed’s father called out as Jed reached for his weapon.

Vivi obviously didn’t want to leave Michael. He put both hands on her shoulders and pushed her toward the door. “I’ll watch him. Go quickly. Dad will take you both to his place. Hopefully Michael won’t even wake up until morning.”

Her lip wobbled. “Won’t I need to make a statement?”

“Yes,” Jed said. “But I want you out of here first so we can process the scene and make sure there aren’t any other shooters nearby.”

She laid a hand on his chest, and he flinched away. She blinked at him then as if finally understanding that what happened between them earlier had been a massive mistake. She dropped her hand and moved away faster than if he’d bitten her. And he had bitten her several times when he should have been guarding Michael.

“I don’t want to bring danger to your parents,” she said quietly. “Maybe we should go to the police station?”

He tried to soften his features, but it was impossible. Inside he was so angry, with the situation, with himself, he could barely speak. He shook off the emotions that were clouding his ability to function, finally getting what his boss kept trying to ram into his brain. It was time to step back. Detach. He couldn’t hunt these people and guard Vivi at the same time.

“Dad will keep you safe for the next few hours. They even have a panic room in the basement of the cottage.” Her eyes flared. “And we’ll have people guarding the area. You need to hurry though, I have work to do.” He made his voice impersonal and implacable. It would be easier this way in the long run.

She firmed her mouth and nodded. Strode out of the bedroom door and past his dad who Jed heard ask if she was all right. He didn’t hear the answer, just the punch of feet on the stairs. Then above him, the thumping of belongings once again being thrown into a bag with little regard for packing—they were way past that logistical nicety. On the run again from people who would stop at nothing to kill them.

Who the hell
was
this? And why did they want Michael dead so badly?

His cell phone rang. Frazer. Jed straightened and answered, wondering if he even had a career left worth saving anymore.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

V
ivi ran upstairs, not even caring she was barely dressed as she passed Jed’s father. The fear and anger and distress of the last thirty minutes had made her immune to such minor considerations. The bedroom still smelled of sweat and sex which seemed to carry the price of letting down your guard.

So stupid. So naive.

She heard a police car arrive, sirens blazing. Her life had become a series of disastrous events that involved guns, death, and sirens.

For a brief time today she’d escaped it. Being here, in this beautiful snowbound cabin with a man she’d thought…

Her hands shook. Downstairs she’d wanted Jed to wrap her up like a little girl and take care of her, but she was the one with a child to look after. She was the one who needed to pull herself together. Yes, she’d shot a man, a man who no doubt would have killed her if Jed hadn’t disarmed him. A man who’d come here with the express purpose of putting a bullet in her son’s head.

The thought had anger pushing away the numbness and shock. She’d shoot him again, happily. She’d spend a lifetime in prison for murder as long as Michael survived this ordeal. And he’d slept through the whole thing.

She gulped back a sob, forced down the shock, and pulled on socks and jeans.

Jed was angry with her for seducing him, and maybe he was right.

She’d known these people wouldn’t give up easily. She never should have believed Jed when he’d said they were safe. She had a terrible feeling they’d never be safe again. She ran into the bathroom and grabbed all their supplies, including the soap—as if she might never enter a shop again and these stupid items, however unimportant, were all she’d ever have. She flung them into a plastic bag.

She tossed aside the shirt she’d been wearing, pulled on a bra, shirt, sweater. Everything else was shoved into more plastic bags, and she gathered them all together and ran back downstairs without glancing at the bloodstains on the floor.

A voice from the doorway stopped her dead. “Hello, Veronica.”

Bile squeezed up her throat as she recognized the voice. She looked up. David Pentecost, her ex-husband, stood in the doorway wearing a uniform that fit snugly to a thickening chest. His face had gained lines around the mouth that made him look permanently angry, and his super short hair revealed touches of gray that hadn’t been there the last time she’d seen him. He was still a handsome man, but there was no vestige of attraction left between them.

His cold, disparaging gaze traveled over her unbrushed hair and flicked over the bite mark on her neck.

The guy had been screwing around during their marriage, and he dared to judge her? Fire smoldered through her marrow, anger igniting in its wake. She narrowed her gaze and lifted her chin. To think they’d once vowed to love each other until death—they hadn’t even come close. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to protect my son.”

Her brows rose with incredulity. “Protect
your
son?” She didn’t raise her voice. In fact, she was proud of how soft and level it sounded. How
reasonable,
because inside she was screaming. “In the last four years you never even sent him a birthday card and now you’ve come to
protect
him?” There was enough blood on the floor to prove she could take care of Michael herself.

She spotted another man behind David, the blond spook she’d met at the safe house and mistrusted on sight. Killion came inside, looking at the bloodstain with a critical eye.

“I hear you clipped him. Nice work, Ms. Vincent.”

David sneered. “No way did you do that. You would never touch a gun, let alone shoot anyone.”

Vivi could feel the feralness of her smile touch the brittleness of her lips. “Oh, trust me. I did it. And I’ll do it again to
anyone
who threatens my son.”

“Our son,” David corrected.

She set her teeth. David wanted something, but it wasn’t a relationship with Michael. Vivi didn’t know what was going on, but David wasn’t going to hurt them just because he had some agenda. Jed came out of the bedroom carrying her sleeping child and more plastic bags filled with their meager belongings. She touched Jed’s arm and looked at Michael’s slack features. He was sleeping like he was drugged, and although she was glad, she was inversely worried.

“Is he OK?”

“Just exhausted.” Jed’s gaze raked her from head to toe as if assuring himself she was unharmed. Then it flicked to the men at the door.

“Still mollycoddling the boy, Veronica?”

“You should try it sometime, asshole,” Jed told David. Vivi wanted to cheer.

David’s expression grew mean. “Considering you’re about to lose your job for lying to federal authorities and possible kidnap charges—”

“He didn’t kidnap anyone, David, he brought us here for safety.”

Supercilious brows rose as he flicked a glance at the floor. “And look how well that turned out.”

Jed’s expression went blank, and Vivi could tell he was blaming himself.

“Want me to kill him for you, son?” Jed’s dad asked from behind David on the porch.

Vivi blinked. David puffed out his chest in indignation. Killion tried to hide a grin.

“I can dump the body in one of the back lakes. No one will find him. Bodyguards too.” Jed’s father’s tone of voice was so flat Vivi half-wondered if he was serious. David obviously did too.

Vivi couldn’t help being moved by the offer.

“I can have you arrested for threatening behavior,” David said, turning his back to the wall in a defensive position.

Jed’s father laughed, clearly unfazed. “Not if you’re dead you can’t.”

Killion’s face gave nothing away now. He was watching everything play out. Vivi decided she disliked
him
most of all.

David shifted uneasily.

“What do you want, David?” she asked tiredly.

“I’ve come to take Michael to safety.”

“No.” She kept her voice down so as not to wake her child, but panic was starting to swell. “Tell him, Jed.”

But a weird expression came over Jed’s features. “Actually, it might be the best thing.”

Her knees buckled.

“What?” How could he say that? She’d told him what had happened before. He knew what sort of parent—or lack of parent—David had been. Betrayal whipped through her as she stared up at those flat, expressionless eyes. Eyes she’d made glitter with lust less than an hour ago. Maybe that was the problem.

Jed spoke quietly. “My boss told me they think they’ve identified the faction behind the attack. We should be able to use that information to round these people up pretty quickly, which means the threat to Michael’s life should soon be null and void.”

Elation rushed through Vivi. “So we can go home?”

Jed shook his head. He avoided her gaze, but his voice was tight. “You need to stay in protective custody for another few days.
He
can get you out of here to somewhere safe.” He pointed to David.