Bad to the Bone (10 page)

The undeniable stab of possession he felt toward Jessica shook Sully. He didn’t crack a smile as he walked past and said, “Now, why would I leave you anything, Peter? I don’t even like you.”

“Hey, man, you can’t take it with you.”

“Sure I can,” he called over his shoulder. “I cut a deal with the devil.”

“Hell, Sully, you are the devil.”

“That’s what my daddy always said.”
And that was on a good day
.

Without bothering to straighten his tie, he strode into Captain Harlan Robertson’s office. A neatly knotted tie wasn’t going to make much of a dent in the man’s displeasure. An apologetic hangdog attitude might help, but Sully had never been able to manage “hangdog” with any degree of sincerity. And Harlan knew him much too well to fall for an act.

“Close the door.”

“Yes, sir.” Sully obliged by snagging it with the
heel of his cowboy boot and kicking it shut behind him. The old-fashioned metal venetian blinds covering the window to the squad room rattled as the door made contact with the jamb.

Sully’s gaze never wavered from the man who had not only been his captain, but was also one of the few people he trusted enough to call friend. Not that they let anything so trivial as a friendship get in the way of business. His former boss was the only one who knew the real reason Sully walked away from the major case unit.

Harlan looked about as healthy as an emaciated marathon runner. Even the starch in his shirts couldn’t keep the fabric from hanging on his spare frame. Like the rest of his body, Harlan’s lips were thin, narrowing to a faint line when he was unhappy.

At the moment, Sully decided his old boss must be downright despondent. His lips had disappeared completely.

Before he began, Harlan flicked his eyes at one of the two chairs in his office—a silent command. Sully sat, leaned back, and rested an ankle over his knee. Obviously dispensing with formalities, Harlan swore and then got right to the point.

“Sully, you are supposed to be handing out jay-walking tickets in Jericho and not knee-deep in missing persons. Why are you back in my town?”

“Sight-seeing?” Sully casually shifted a little more to the right and laced his fingers across his abdomen. When Harlan didn’t smile, Sully said, “Someone’s got to catch the bad guys.”

“It doesn’t always have to be you.”

“Why don’t you tell that to the bad guys? I didn’t pick this case. It picked me. I gotta tell you, Harlan, this one makes me nervous. The truth is, it makes me
more than a little nervous. I’ve got one of those feelings.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Harlan whispered and reached for the aspirin bottle on the credenza behind him. Unfortunately, Sully’s intuition was legendary. So Harlan slugged three of them down and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes as if he could picture a hundred horrible scenarios and a million complications. Then he opened his eyes and swore several times. “I don’t need this. Not now.”

“I didn’t exactly ask for it myself.”

His friend gave him a long-suffering look that implied otherwise. “Like hell. What do we have?”

“We got a stripped car belonging to millionaire Phil Munro, who missed a scheduled call to his kid on Sunday, and a female bodyguard type who I think is lying to me every time she opens her mouth.”

“Why should you be surprised that women lie to you? If there’s an amoral woman within earshot, she makes a beeline for you. Explain that to me. Why
is
that?”

“Safety in numbers?” Sully deadpanned.

The captain in Harlan did not appreciate the humor. He never did. Rubbing his eyes, he sighed long and hard. “Best guess on Munro.”

“Drove there for a meeting. Confirmed by calendar notes. Either went willingly with someone else to another location or they waited until he was out of the Mercedes to pop him. There’s no sign of struggle in the car. No blood. Nothing outside the car either. Given Munro’s background, we have to figure he was more than capable of defending himself. I can’t imagine him going down easy. So whatever happened, I don’t think it happened on Petrie.”

“Ransom demands?”

“None yet. But I told you. I don’t trust the woman. We don’t communicate real well.”

“You never do.”

“Yeah, well, I usually don’t have to disarm ’em. This one carries a derringer in her bra.”

“In her bra? How would you know that?” For a moment, Harlan froze, staring at Sully as if contemplating murder. “Tell me you aren’t intimate with her. You better damn well tell me you aren’t.”

Shrugging, Sully told him, “Okay. Have it your way. I’m not. Well, technically not.”

“
Give me a reason
.”

“For disarming her?” Sully purposely misunderstood the question. “I have this little rule about being the only one in the room with a gun.”

“
No!
You tell me why
you
had to be the one involved in this. You couldn’t have made a simple phone call to us? A little ‘heads up’ on the playground?”

“I’m funny that way.” Sully leaned forward, finally angry himself. “When smoke alarms go off, I don’t take the batteries out, call the fire department, and forget it. I keep looking for smoke. And lookee here … I found a fire.”

“You always do. Looking for fires is a problem with you, isn’t it, Sully? You’re always looking for someone to hate more than yourself, and we both know it.”

Sully stood up and flattened his palms on Harlan’s desk. All the trappings of professional courtesy were gone. All formality stripped away as two old friends covered familiar ground. “We don’t want to do this again.”

“No,
you
don’t want to do this again.” Harlan stood up for the first time. Even so, he was still inches short of looking Sully in the eye. But that didn’t seem to faze him. Harlan was one of only two people Sully
had never been able to subdue with a stare. Jessie was the other.

The older man continued without missing a beat. “You wanted out of Houston, out of the
badlands
? You wanted to back away from the edge before you lost your ability to feel anything but hate? To tell the good guys from the bad guys? I’m going to give you some advice. Hell, no. I’m going to give you an order. You live with that decision, Sully! It was a
by God
good one. Exorcise your own demons and leave the bad guys to us. This isn’t your case.”

“These bad guys are messin’ in my backyard,” Sully pointed out, his voice soft with suppressed anger. “Munro has a summer house on Jericho. His little girl lives there. I found the car.” Sully pulled back from the desk. “I’m on it.”

“Give me three minutes to call your chief, and you won’t be. Munro’s primary residence is here. Munro Security is here. The car—the evidence of foul play—is here. This one’s ours. Peter’s on it.”

For a long moment they stared at each other, silence reigning. Sully reached for the doorknob, uncertain whether his anger was territorial or whether it came from the realization that everything Harlan said was true. Finally he jerked open the door. “Peter better be on top of it. You tell him.”

“You tell him,” Harlan fired back. “And then you take that little girl home, make sure she’s safe, give ’em the standard speech, and you let us do our job. We’ll let you know when and if you can assist.”

“Would that be when hell freezes over?”

“That’d be a precise estimate.” Harlan sat back down. “We got your statements. Now get out of here. I’ll be in touch with your chief.”

Jessica pulled Iris to her feet the moment Sully blew back into the squad room. There was really no other way to describe it. Whatever happened in the captain’s office had changed him. Sully was always dangerous, even when he smiled. But this was different.

It was as if something had stripped him down to his essence. There was no light to balance the dark. There was no cocky smile, no silken threat. Instead, the threat was raw and real, barely contained.

When he looked at her, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. God help anyone who crossed Sullivan Kincaid. Unbidden, another thought came to her. God help any woman who loved the man. Loving him would be like holding a lightning rod in a thunderstorm and hoping it wouldn’t hurt.

“Are we done?” she asked quietly.

“Almost.” He turned away to catch the attention of the detective who’d taken their statements. “Peter, Harlan says you’re the lead on this one. Do me a favor. You turn over every rock. Ask every question twice, and you do it fast. You understand?”

Instead of taking offense at Sully’s high-handed tone, Peter visibly paled. “A feeling?”

Sully didn’t answer. He took Jessica’s arm and walked away.

Halfway down the corridor, Iris said, “I thought you didn’t have feelings.”

Sully never broke stride. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t.”

“Me too,” Iris agreed.

Looking first at Iris and then at the man who dragged her inexorably through the station, Jessica realized
that they were talking about two different things. And she agreed with them both.

Feelings exacted too high a price on the soul. That’s why she’d closed herself off after Jenny was killed. It was the only way she could make it. Pain she could control, even the loneliness, but the guilt for surviving built up inside her no matter what she did. When Phil Munro found her and offered her a way to channel that guilt, she grabbed the chance.

An eye for an eye. A life for a life.

But all she’d done was trade one hell for another. No matter that her sanctioned targets hurt people … hurt children. No matter that they tortured people, and had to be stopped. She was still in hell.

When she realized she was becoming—had already become—what she hated, she walked away. No, not walked. Ran. She ran as hard as she could from reality and the sanctimonious justifications, hiding herself away like some hermit. For a year she’d managed to shut down and keep the feelings at bay. The second year of her retirement, the nightmares had returned.

Nothing she could do seemed to stop them. Sully and Iris were only going to make it worse. Nerves that had been deadened from neglect were beginning to tingle.

Right now, she wanted to stop the process before it was too late. She didn’t want to worry about Phil. She didn’t want to be responsible for Iris. She didn’t want to need the strength she found in Sully’s strong hand wrapped around her arm, supporting her. Most of all she didn’t want to remember how it felt to be kissed by the man.

All she wanted was to be left alone on her little piece of land in the middle of the Texas hill country. That was God’s country and the closest to grace she’d
been in a long time. The closest she would probably ever be.

As Sully dragged her into the late-afternoon sunlight, the concrete and granite pulsed heat. But none of it held a candle to the heat Sully generated with that one touch on her arm. Fighting the heat was the only way to keep her emotions cold.

The drive back to the Munro complex was too short and too long. Iris slumped against her, another spot of warmth. A spot that Jessica couldn’t find it within herself to fight against.

Iris had said almost nothing since they’d left the station, but she’d asked a hundred questions earlier. Some of them over and over until she finally accepted that no one knew the answers. Her eyes were completely dry. Jessica didn’t know if that was bad or good. Bad more than likely.

“When we get your car,” Sully said, his words landing powerfully in the silence, “I need to run inside the offices long enough to use the phone. I’ll need to call Jericho and check in.”

Iris stiffened at his words. “We have to go up to Daddy’s office.”

Sully glanced sideways. “Why?”

“I want our picture. It’s the one from Easter. It’s on his desk. I want it.” Her chin was set, and those unshed tears which had worried Jessica bubbled to the surface, but not yet spilling.

“Okay.” Jessica didn’t hesitate. Not because she wanted another chance to rummage through Phil’s desk for the file and book, but because erasing the despair in Iris’s expression was suddenly important. “We’ll get it while Sully makes his call.”

“I’ll go up with you,” Sully said, “and make the call
from Phil’s office.” His tone was casual, but his expression wasn’t.

Jessica pressed her lips together. The whole damn world knew about Phil’s disappearance now. The “secret” was out, and yet he still didn’t trust her.
Do you really expect him to? He found a gun in your bra
.

The memory brought a rush of heat to her face. Quickly followed by a rush of apprehension in her stomach. Sully hadn’t given the derringer to the other detective or, to her knowledge, asked anyone to run the serial number or check for a permit. The officer who took her statement seemed willing to accept her story of Iris’s phone call, seemed to believe that Jessica Daniels was no more than a dear family friend, coming to soothe a worried child.

Sully didn’t seem nearly so willing to believe her role was innocent. Yet he kept silent about the gun, didn’t voice his suspicions in the squad room. He had his own agenda, just as she had hers. Both of them scrambling in the dark for the advantage.

“No problem,” she agreed. “We’ll all go together.”