Extreme Exposure (21 page)

She smiled. “You’ll be happy to know MacDonald is in custody. The police will conduct an investigation—”

He closed his eyes. “I don’t care about that shit.”

She drew her hand away. “What do you mean?”

“We’ve wasted too much time. I’ve been trying to keep awake, waiting for you to come. I need your help.”

“My help?”

“I’m trying to figure out if I want a relationship with a friend of mine.”

Her heart lurched. “What kind of friend?” Her lips had trouble forming the words.

“A cranky one. Useless at … relationships.” His voice was fading.

Attempting to process what he was saying, she looked away. Clear liquid dripped steadily from an intravenous tube into his arm. On the computer next to his bed, thin digital lines formed jagged peaks as they moved across the screen. If they hooked her up, they would be spiking erratically. They’d have to call a code blue.

“Well?”

Swallowing, she looked at him again. “She sounds like my kind of person. But this is a bit sudden. And I’m not sure you should be talking about this in your frame of mind.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my frame of mind.” Reaching for her hand, those black-brown eyes stared into hers for a moment, then fluttered closed.

*  *  *

When Matt woke early the next morning, Emily was sleeping in a chair pulled up close beside the bed. A blanket tucked under her chin, her dark hair fell gently against her pale, translucent face. His eyes drank in every feature, the delicate line of her nose, the full lips. Light roots were starting to show in her dark hair. He longed to see the natural color.

Some sixth sense must have told her she was watching him, because her eyes opened.

He said, “Did you have a good sleep?”

She gave a little shake of her head, sat up straight, rubbed her eyes. “Awful, if you want to know the truth. I had a dream we were in a cave. You were forcing me to go down. You said if I didn’t you’d kill me.”

He smiled. “What happened?”

“I told you to stuff it. That’s where the dream ended.”

“I can see some things haven’t changed. I was just thinking of when I first saw you, when I pulled you out of the water. You looked like a nymph of the sea, so beautiful. It didn’t take long to find out how cranky nymphs could be.”

She smirked. “You were pretty cranky yourself last night.”

“Was I? Yesterday was a blur.”

Sometime during the night she must have washed up, because she smelled of soap and was wearing a hospital scrub top, white with navy-blue trim, that looked miles too big.

He said, “How’s your mom today?”

“She’s fine. For a while, we thought she might have had a heart attack, but she didn’t, thankfully.” She told him about the doctor’s suspicions of a panic attack. “I’d never seen her have one before, but she must have.”

He gave her a puzzled look. “Yet she gave you such a hard time about being claustrophobic.”

“I don’t want to even try to figure out the psychology of that one,” she said slowly. “But it’s funny, because I was okay in the safe room. Maybe because I was so busy, first getting us untied, then looking after my mother.”

The door to his room opened and the police chief, Frank Cameron, came in, pushing Mona in a wheelchair. As Emily stood, the chief pushed the wheelchair to the far side of the bed. He told Emily he preferred to stand and she should sit down.

After a few minutes of pleasantries, the chief said, “I thought I would give you all an update here.”

Matt said, “What’s the judge’s story now? Is he still claiming to be the victim of a home invasion?”

Mona snorted. “That’s ridiculous. He’s going to get away with it, isn’t he?”

The chief shook his head. “Not a chance. As Matt pointed out to us yesterday, he ended up doing himself in.”

Emily looked at him, eyebrows raised.

The chief said, “We know that he wasn’t kidnapped or the victim of a home invasion—and that he, in fact, shot Mona—because we spent the better part of the night looking at security footage from inside the home.”

Emily let out a long sigh. “Of course, thank God for that. And thank God for the safe room, although I didn’t think so the first time he put me in there.” She swallowed, looked up with steady eyes. “Who killed Amber and why?”

Cameron said, “Amber was killed by hit men, on orders from Harold MacDonald.”

“Why?” Emily seemed composed, ready to accept the news.

“We got some information from MacDonald late last night, after we showed him some of the incriminating video. Amber found out about a corruption scheme operating out of the courthouse. She got suspicious when her lawyer, Joel Ackerman, kept pushing for a higher settlement. We think MacDonald was pushing the judge in her case to approve it. The plan was for MacDonald and Ackerman to pocket some of that money, about fifty thousand dollars. That’s above the fees the lawyer would get.”

The next question came from Mona. “Is Ackerman admitting this?”

“Not yet, but he’s in custody and the feds have taken over the investigation. They’ll get to the bottom of it. It sounds like there’s at least one other lawyer involved.”

Emily said, “How did Amber find out?”

“Celia Williams suggested Amber use Ackerman as her lawyer. Celia had a DUI charge that Ackerman and MacDonald got rid of. Amber found out about that.”

Mona snorted. “I knew something was going on with Celia. She was acting so strange.”

Matt exchanged a look with Emily, who gave a quick roll of her eyes.

He said, “What will happen with that charge?”

“That’s up to the prosecutor, but the case will have to be looked at again. We don’t know yet how much she paid them, if at all. But to get back to Amber, it sounds like she had suspicions about her insurance case, and then when she found out about Celia’s DUI it all started to fall into place. She refused to go along with it, even though she would have gotten more money in the settlement.”

Emily said, “So who exactly killed her?”

“MacDonald had a couple of guys working for him. One of them is his son-in-law.” He turned to Mona. “His name is Philip March. He’s an ex-cop. Do you know him?”

She said, “I met him once, a couple of years ago when they came for a visit. He’s a big guy, bigger even than Harold. He and his wife, Sylvia, Harold’s daughter, live in Chicago.”

The chief said, “He’ll soon be living in a prison cell and I’d be surprised if he ever got out.”

Emily and Matt exchanged another look. Big Guy. It would be nice to see him behind bars.

Mona looked at the chief. “What will happen to Harold?”

The chief looked at her closely. “If he’s convicted, he’ll go to jail. Right now, he’s cooperating to beat a conspiracy to murder charge, but the corruption alone is enough to put him away for a very long time. It will take a long time for the feds to get to the bottom of all this. They’ll have to reopen a lot of old cases. A lot of them are small. He’d take a couple of hundred bucks to change somebody’s probation terms so they could report monthly rather than weekly.”

Matt said, “How did they find out where Emily was hiding?”

The chief looked at Emily. “Apparently, you did a search on your mother’s computer. MacDonald looked at the search history, found a link to the resort, and put two and two together.”

Emily nodded. “Of course. That was stupid of me.”

Matt said, “Don’t beat yourself up about that. You had no way of knowing.” He turned to the chief. “Do you know who attacked Emily?”

She said, “I know it wasn’t this Philip March. He’s too big. And three men found me at the cabin.”

The chief said, “The feds will sort that out. They won’t get away with it.” He looked at Mona. “Shall I wheel you back?”

She nodded, looked at her daughter. “I’ll likely be discharged this morning. The doctor says I’m well enough to go home.”

Emily got to her feet. “I’ll make sure you get home.”

Mona stopped her with a gesture. “That’s okay. Frank has that covered.” She smiled warmly at the chief.

Emily walked over and kissed her mother on the cheek and they thanked the police chief.

The door shut, he said, “I think there may be something going on between the two of them.”

“I think you’re right. I just hope he doesn’t move in with her.” At his puzzled look, she said, “Celia wouldn’t be able to sell him that house.”

He smiled. “That will be the least of her worries. I have a feeling she’ll be under a lot of scrutiny.” He made a mental note to follow up on the pictures he’d taken of the hit men chasing Emily, see if there was anything the police could use.

“I’m just wondering how much the chief let my mother cloud his judgment about Amber’s murder investigation. And I feel bad, too, because maybe Amber suspected the judge but didn’t want to say anything because of my mother’s relationship with him.”

His breakfast came. She watched for a second while he tried to eat, then grabbed the spoon out of his hands to feed him herself.

He was swallowing a mouthful of runny egg when his cell phone rang. It was on the night table. She picked it up, handed it to him in his left hand. He put it on speakerphone. It was a call from his work in Boston.

Emily slipped out of the room, returned five minutes after he’d finished the call, and sat down on the bed. “Is everything all right?”

“The construction supervisor and one of the foremen are having a disagreement over excavation at a fourplex we’re just starting. It’s nothing that can’t be sorted out, but I do have to get back. There’s a lot of really expensive equipment sitting idle. I’m going to see about a flight out tomorrow.”

Something dark flickered in her eyes and they began to shimmer. “So I guess you’ve forgotten what you said last night?”

“I was pretty groggy. What did I say?”

“Nothing important.” Standing up, she walked to the window and looked out, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

He said, “What will you do?”

When she turned around, she’d lifted her chin and composure masked her face. “I have to think about that, but I do know I want to get out of Riverton.”

He said, “You need a plan.”

That mask slipped a little, revealing a glint of anger. “Right. Well, I guess I should get going, get working on that.”

He smiled at her. “You’re getting ornery again.”

“Ornery? That’s a new word.” Her tone was clipped.

“Lucky for you that I have a thing for ornery people.”

She arched an eyebrow.

“Some of my memory is coming back from last night. I seem to remember you saying you would consider a move to Boston.”

She pushed away from the wall, a small smile flitting on her lips. “I don’t quite remember agreeing to that.”

“Well, how about it? I hear Boston has a couple of good law schools.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I thought you’d forgotten—”

“You think I would forget about that? Not a chance.”

She came toward him, sat on the bed, and maneuvered her way into his arms. “I love you, Matt Herrington. Not from first sight—it’s more like you’ve grown on me.”

“Do me a favor?” He looked into those eyes, bright and soulful, and knew he would never tire of them. He would never tire of her.

“What?” She drew her face close enough to see the faint freckles on her nose.

He kissed her, slowly, deeply, moved his lips down over her jaw to that soft, creamy neck before stopping to nibble on an ear. “Go lock that door,” he whispered.

Please see the next page for a preview of the next book in Alex Kingwell’s Chasing Justice series!

CHAPTER ONE

N
icky Bosko didn’t see the beat cop until it was too late. She was thirty steps from the intersection, and he was tucked in around the corner, his eyes tracking a homeless man pushing a shopping cart in front of her down the rain-slicked sidewalk.

Her heart constricted, as if someone had reached in and grabbed it. The girl walking beside Nicky followed her gaze, froze.

Nicky grabbed the girl’s arm. “Keep walking.” She pitched her voice low.

They had no choice. A cold drizzle had emptied the sidewalks, and the cop would notice them for sure if they turned back or tried to cross the street. They had to keep going and pass by him.

The girl had that deer-in-the-headlights look, her eyes as wide as saucers. “He’ll see me.” The words seemed to catch in her throat.

“No, he won’t.” Nicky tried to sound confident even as her stomach twisted into a hard knot.

The cop, his hands hooked behind his back, was ruddy-faced, stout, and wore a dark rain jacket. He stood under an awning, partially protected from the rain, which a west wind drove down at a slant toward him.

The homeless guy stopped to peer into a mesh garbage can, parking his cart at an angle that blocked the sidewalk.

Stuck behind him, the knot in Nicky’s gut tightened. Forcing herself not to look at the cop, she focused on the homeless guy. Fat raindrops slid down the green garbage bag he wore as a poncho.

The girl’s eyes darted around, as if looking for an escape route. Nicky tightened her grip on her arm as the homeless man finished inspecting the garbage can. Straightening, he wheeled the cart to the left, having decided to take the cross street. He waited at the curb for a green pedestrian signal.

Nicky and the girl kept going straight ahead. Just as they reached the curb, the pedestrian light flashed yellow. They could cross with the homeless man, who was now in the intersection, but it seemed better not to backtrack. Not to do anything that might draw the attention of the cop.

She bit the inside of her cheek, cursed under her breath. Cars and buses cruised by, their tires hissing on the wet road and spitting up water. Wiping rain from her forehead, she glanced to the right, past the cop and up the side street. Dark clouds hung low in the bleak sky. On the other side of the drugstore was an office building, then a four-story parking lot. On the next block, a patrol car pulled to the side of the road. She held her breath until two officers got out and walked into a building.

There were two ways this could go. They could run now in any direction. The cop would call for help, give chase and chances were one or both of them would be caught, possibly before they got farther than a block or two. Or they could keep walking. Hope the cop didn’t recognize the girl. She wore Nicky’s navy rain jacket and a ball cap pulled down low over her forehead, but her picture was everywhere and, since her father was a cop, there’d be extra incentive to catch this runaway. A vivid memory surfaced, something she hadn’t thought about in years. She’d been fourteen, a terrified runaway huddled on a city sidewalk, begging for change. A cop had taken her to a shelter. That wouldn’t happen with Michelle. This cop, any cop, would deliver her back to her father.