Nothing To Lose: A Grey Justice Novel (10 page)

“All I know is what Thomas told me to do. He said you could help me. Was he wrong?”

“Oh, no, ma’am. Thomas O’Connell was a good man. He helped get my boy on the straight and narrow. I’d do anything for him.”

“This is what Thomas wanted.”

Nodding, he said, “That’s good enough for me.” An amazing change came over the man’s craggy face. He might not have felt comfortable consoling a grieving widow, but he was in his element when it came to his expertise—helping people disappear.

His eyes targeted the object in her hand. “You need to get rid of that right quick.”

She gripped her phone…the last link to what was dear and familiar. It contained texts, emails and voice mails from Thomas. And it had all of her contacts.

“Give it here.”

“But I still need to call a couple of people.”

With one hand, he snatched the phone from her grasp, and with the other hand, he plunked a small plastic bag holding three phones onto his desk. “Use these. They’re burner phones. Can’t trace ’em…usually. To be on the safe side, make the calls short. No more than thirty seconds. And as soon as you finish with a call, do this.”

Pulling a wooden mallet from his desk, he whacked her cellphone, obliterating it. He then gave her a narrow-eyed glare, as if waiting for her objections.

She blew out a fragile, shaky breath. There was no point in protesting what was already done.

“What do I need to do?”

“You got a place to stay?”

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

“You got cash?”

“Yes.” After driving around the city for an hour, making sure she wasn’t being followed, she’d stopped at an ATM and withdrew the maximum allowable amount for a single transaction. Her shaking hands pulled the wad of bills from her coat pocket and shoved them toward the man.

“I don’t want your money, darlin’. Thomas O’Connell done paid with what he did for me and mine years ago. I just wanted to make sure you got cash. No more credit cards.”

Yes, she knew that much, but there was one slight problem. Thomas’s life insurance company had been amazingly quick in paying, and she’d deposited the money into her savings account. “How can I get into my savings? I’m going to need it to live.”

“You got your account number?”

She nodded and withdrew the card from her wallet. It never occurred to her not to give it to him. Thomas had trusted him—she had no choice but to do the same.

“I got a man who can get it for you. Don’t ask how. He’ll want payment, though. And he ain’t cheap.”

Negotiating a price for doing something that was most likely illegal was beyond her knowledge and expertise. “I’ll pay him.”
 

“You go on now and get you a good night’s sleep. Come back tomorrow night. I should have what you need.”

“Thank you, Mr. Meacham.” Feeling as though she’d lived a thousand lives in the last few hours, Kennedy returned to her car and took a moment to think. First, she had to try Nick again, to explain what was going on. He had most likely dropped by the house to check on her. There was no telling what he was thinking.
 

She took one of the phones from the plastic bag and tapped in Nick’s cell number. After three rings, his voice mail came on again. Why wasn’t he answering? She left another message, once again telling him that she would call back in a few hours.

She had one more call to make. One she dreaded. She’d been told to keep it short, but how do you tell your best friend that you’re disappearing and might never see her again? She could explain nothing.

Julie answered on the first ring. The thick huskiness of her voice made Kennedy wonder if her friend was coming down with a cold.

“Julie, it’s me. I—”

“Kennedy, where the hell are you? I’ve been calling you for hours.”

“I’m sorry. I had to turn my phone off because I—”

“Then you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Nick’s been shot. It’s been all over the news.”

If she hadn’t been sitting down, she would have fallen. “What happened?” she asked faintly.

“There are almost no details. He was getting into his car. There was another man shot, too. That man was killed.”

“And Nick?”

“He’s hanging on…but it’s not looking good. He’s in coma. You need to come to the hospital. We’re all here in the ICU waiting room on the third floor.”

A sob built up in her chest, waiting to explode.
Nick.
Did this have anything to do with the Slaters? Had he been targeted, too? He was the one person Thomas had trusted. Had Thomas told him something and had Nick been shot because of it? Or had they just assumed he knew something?

 
“Kennedy, you there? What’s going on?”

“I can’t come to the hospital right now, Julie. I—I’m not even in town. I left a few hours ago.”

“What? Where? Why?”

“I just needed to get away. I’ve got to go. I’m sorry.”

“What? No, wait… I—”

She ended the call before she lost it completely. Dear, wonderful Nick. The one man she could count on and trust was fighting for his life.
 

Kennedy’s forehead pressed into the steering wheel. Her fingers gripping the leather with a punishing force, she whispered softly, “Oh, Thomas, what have you done to us?”

Hours later, a slender, shadowy figure crept up the stairway to the third floor. Dressed in navy sweats and a dark hoodie that covered her hair and most of her face, she was unidentifiable. A lone nurse sat at the main desk, staring at a computer screen. Silent as a whisper, Kennedy slipped into the supply room and five minutes later, emerged wearing scrubs and a surgical cap. Clipboard in hand, she walked with an air of confidence toward the intensive care unit. Stopping at another supply closet not far from the locked ICU door, she stepped inside and waited. Five, ten…fifteen minutes. She didn’t care how long it took. She had to see him. At last, two nurses emerged from the unit. Deep in conversation with each other, they never glanced her way as she caught the door they’d exited before it could close.

She peeked into several rooms before she found the right one. The sight that met her eyes caused a small cry to slip out. Prone and lifeless on the bed, Nick looked paler than death. Half of his face was covered in bandages. Had he been shot in the head, his face? Machines beeped, oxygen pumped air into his lungs, and tubes filled with life-sustaining fluids were attached to both of his arms.
 

Swallowing a sob, she drew closer. The last time she had stood beside a hospital bed and seen someone so seriously injured, she had been ten years old and her daddy had been barely clinging to life. He had never woken up. Would that be Nick’s fate, too?

Nick had always treated her with affection and respect. He had been a part of her life almost as long as Thomas. The last few days she hadn’t been sure she would have survived without him. Her heart breaking, she uttered a small, fervent prayer for his recovery.

Knowing she could be caught at any moment, Kennedy leaned over and whispered a promise in his ear, “I’m going to get whoever killed Thomas. And if they hurt you, too, I’ll make them pay double. I swear I will, Nick.” She pressed a kiss to his unbandaged cheek and then a soft kiss to his firm, masculine lips.

She then turned with a new determination. She had made a promise, and she would keep it. The Slaters had messed with the wrong people. And they would pay.

Chapter Eight

Twenty months later

Nick steered his car toward home, his thoughts as grim and bleak as the flat, barren landscape. He’d seen a lot of shit in his life. A person didn’t grow up in one of the most dangerous areas of Houston and not see his share. But he’d had the kind of mother who could turn the sorriest piece of news into something good. And though he couldn’t say he had inherited her optimism, for the most part he had always felt some kind of hope for a better day. All of that had gone to hell. He had felt nothing positive in months and didn’t see a change in attitude coming his way anytime soon.

His recovery had been a long and arduous journey. After waking from a five-day, drug-induced coma, he’d barely known his own name, much less what had happened. It’d taken more than a week to remember. When the memories had rolled in, a tidal wave of panic had followed.

Kennedy was in danger. He was sure of it. When he had demanded to see her, he’d learned just how much was being kept from him. She had disappeared. No one knew where the hell she was—not even Julie, her best friend.
 

The panic had morphed into something else. With a howl of fury, he’d ripped tubes and wires from his body and flung himself out of bed. Three steps from the doorway, all hell had broken loose inside his body. He’d keeled over, unconscious. He’d learned later that he had been rushed to the operating room for another seven hours of surgery.

When he’d finally been coherent again, he’d asked for news. There had been nothing.

The first few weeks after his release from the hospital, in between rehab, Nick had spent hours trying to track Kennedy down and again, found nothing.
 

When he’d been able to return to work, he had been deskbound for months. That hadn’t stopped him from demanding a thorough investigation into Thomas’s death. Most everyone, including his captain, had looked at him as if he was crazy. There’d been talk of brain damage, PTSD, hallucinations. He hadn’t given a shit what people thought. He had insisted and finally got grudging approval to move forward. Of course, implicating the Slaters hadn’t made him popular or appear any less crazed. The top brass especially hadn’t been thrilled with the target of his investigation, but they had allowed him leeway. Wasn’t long before Nick figured out why. He couldn’t find one damn thing.
 

Whatever evidence Milton Ward had possessed was long gone. Nick had tracked down the man’s last known address, an apartment on the south side of the city. The three-room apartment had been tossed, not even a scrap of paper could be found.
 

The accounting firm, McClusky and Hendrix, did confirm that Ward was a former employee but they claimed he was let go because of poor job performance. When Nick had asked questions about the Slater account, he’d been met with a stony silence. With nothing and no one to back him up, he’d had no choice but to walk away.

The lack of information and cooperation was infuriating but did help him understand Thomas’s secrecy. Hell, there had been nothing to tell. The evidence that Milton Ward had provided had probably felt like answered prayers. Unfortunately, it had gotten both Ward and Thomas killed.

Nick had the gut-wrenching feeling that unless another snitch stepped up to rat out the Slaters, Thomas’s murder would remain unsolved. True, the bastard who’d fired the gun was dead, but the people who’d hired the hit were still running free. And, apparently, that’s the way it would stay. Thomas’s murder was officially closed as a robbery gone bad. Nick’s own shooting and Milton Ward’s death had gone to cold case. Speculation that Nick had been targeted for a bust he’d made years ago had become the standard party line.
 

The shooting of the three gang members, including the kid associated with Jonah Slater, went down as a rival gang shooting. Everything got tied up with a neat little bow.

And once again, the Slaters had gotten away with murder.

For Nick, this would never be over. He would search until death to find the people behind Thomas’s murder.

On his own time and dime, Nick had dug deep into the Slaters. Investigating the family was a lot like eating cotton candy. You could stuff a lot in your mouth, but it disintegrated into a whole lot of nothing. If he hadn’t been shot and Milton’s head hadn’t exploded seconds after implicating the Slaters, he wouldn’t have believed they were involved either.

He would’ve handled everything a hell of a lot better if he could have been sure that Kennedy was safe. The three voice mail messages she’d left on his phone had been terrifying and frustrating. The first two had been “I’ll call you back” messages; the third one had been a vague, “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me, just take care of yourself.”
 

He’d heard the fear and despair in her voice. He had listened to those messages at least a hundred times. He could only imagine how alone and cornered she must have felt. And he hadn’t been able to do a damn thing to help her. After all the promises he’d made to her and to Thomas, he had failed them both.

Arrogantly, he had assumed that because she was an amateur, she would be easy to find. He knew she was intelligent but had underestimated her ingenuity. Air and train tickets purchased and not used. Car rental reservations made without the car being picked up. Her car had been found in a grocery store parking lot in Hobbs, New Mexico. And at some point, in the middle of the night, someone had come and cleaned out her house. According to her neighbors, one day the house had been filled with furniture, and the next it stood empty, as if no one had ever lived there.
 

Where was the evidence Ward claimed to have given Thomas? Had Thomas hidden it somewhere? Or had one of Slater’s people gotten to it?