Bridegroom Bodyguard (14 page)

But maybe she hadn’t lost what everyone was looking for—well, nearly everyone....

He nodded. “I have heard about the troubles you’ve been having.”

Well, that was obvious. How else would he have known she was at the police station? He appeared to be nearly as old as her grandfather. Was he still on the bench?

She hadn’t paid much attention to any judges except Brenda since she’d started working for her. “It’ll all be over soon,” she assured him. “I just need to speak to my husband.”

She started out of the holding-cell area, toward what she assumed was the lobby, but the judge caught up with her and grasped her arm. Despite his age, his grip was surprisingly strong—almost painfully so.

“He hasn’t been released,” the judge said.

“Well, then I’ll wait for him,” she said. “I’m sure his family has paid his bail.” He would have called them, or someone in the police department would have called his brother Logan for him. There were people they couldn’t trust in the department—like Agent Rus—but there were also people who knew and respected the Payne family.

“How do you know it will all be over soon?” he asked.

She turned back and noticed the desperation in his dark eyes. And she realized whose secrets Brenda had been going to reveal in her book....

She shook her head. “I don’t know....”

“You’re lying,” he accused her. “Don’t perjure yourself, Sharon.”

And then she felt it. Not only was he grasping her arm, but he was also pushing a gun into her side. She recognized the coldness of the metal barrel.

How had he gotten it inside the police department?

She glanced around, looking for help. But the agent who looked so much like Parker and his brothers was gone. The only person standing around was a young officer who opened a door for the judge—a door to a back alley. That was obviously how the judge had gotten the gun inside—with this officer’s assistance.

“Help me,” Sharon implored him as the judge pulled her into that alley.

But the officer just lowered his head and stared down, uncaring that he was probably sending her to her death. She had been bailed out, not ordered to be executed. Why wouldn’t he help her?

“You’re behind everything,” she said. “You’re the one who put out the hit on me and Parker.”

“Maybe I should have let you wait for your husband,” the judge replied. “Then I could have killed you both—together.”

“Parker doesn’t know anything,” Sharon said. “He’s never seen the flash drive.”

“But you know....”

“I just figured it out now,” she said. “Brenda never showed me any of her book. How did you even know she was writing it?” Brenda had been too smart to announce her intentions to the dirty judge.

Munson chuckled. “As you know, she treated employees like dirt. So her bodyguard had no reason to be loyal to her.”

Parker would have been. She never should have fired him. But if she hadn’t, Ethan wouldn’t have been born, and Sharon couldn’t imagine a world without him. Or without Parker...

“Chuck told you?”

The judge nodded. “He saw some of her research and offered me the information for a price.”

“And you had him kill her and steal the laptop,” she realized. “But then you had him killed, too.”

“Before he died, he admitted that you were going to proofread the book for her,” he said. “And he also revealed—under duress—that you were supposed to bring a
package
to Parker Payne if you hadn’t heard from the judge. Horowitz had a soft spot for you, Ms. Wells. He didn’t want to put you in danger.”

The bodyguard had looked at her as everyone else who knew about her mother had—with pity.

“I used to, as well,” the judge admitted. “You went through a lot as a child and then you had to put up with His Honorable Judge Wells.”

She shivered at the coldness in the judge’s voice and from the memory of her grandfather’s coldness.

“But my soft spot hardened,” Albert Munson continued, “when I learned that you know too much.”

She shook her head. “I haven’t seen the book. I haven’t even looked at the flash drive.”

“But you know where it is.”

She sighed and nodded. Then he opened the passenger’s door and shoved her inside the car. As he went around the hood to the driver’s door, she tried her handle, but it was locked.

The judge glanced back toward the police department, as if considering. Then he opened the driver’s door and slid behind the steering wheel. “Parker Payne really doesn’t know anything about the flash drive or the book?”

“He thinks Sharpe was behind everything,” she lied. She wasn’t a good liar, but she was getting better at it since she was doing it to protect the people she loved.

Parker already knew that Sharpe hadn’t had the money to offer the outrageous reward the judge had. But how had Judge Munson had so much money? she wondered. Her grandfather had been well-off, but most of that had been his and his wife’s family money. Not just what he had earned as a judge and a law professor.

“Then Payne isn’t as smart as Brenda thought he was,” Munson remarked. “Your grandfather would have been disappointed that you married beneath you.”

“My grandfather was always disappointed in me,” she replied. But she didn’t care what he thought anymore—which was amazing because even after he’d died, she had been trying to please him. That was why she had tried to become a lawyer. For him. But she didn’t care about the past anymore.

She cared about the future. The future for Ethan and Parker. She needed to protect them...even though it was probably going to cost her her life....

Chapter Seventeen

Anger coursed through Parker’s veins, making his blood pump fast and hard. He wasn’t mad about the federal agent or even about being arrested, though. He would deal with all that later. Right now he was worried about his wife. “Where the hell is she?”

He couldn’t protect her if she wasn’t with him. And God knew they both needed protection—even in the police department. He had finally been released from the holding cells, but now he paced the lobby, refusing to leave until they released his wife, too.

Logan shrugged. “I’ve asked....”

But nobody had answered his or Parker’s insistent questions. At least the desk sergeant hadn’t and neither had the officers milling around. So he walked up to the desk again. “I want to talk to Agent Rus.”

Behind him, Logan cursed. He obviously hadn’t wanted to see the agent again. Maybe, like Parker, he wanted to forget that Nicholas Rus even existed. Apparently their father must have because he had died fifteen years ago without ever mentioning that he had another son, one around Cooper’s age.

“I can’t believe I am willingly walking into a police station,” a male voice remarked.

And a female laugh rewarded his witty remark.

Parker understood why Logan had cursed when he turned around. Logan was rushing up to their mother, whom Garek Kozminski was escorting into the lobby.

“But then, you know I would do anything for you, Mrs. Payne,” Kozminski told her, oozing his usual smarmy charm.

And
Parker
was the playboy?

He was a happily married man. Or he would be when he knew where on earth his wife was.

He was happy? Images flashed through his mind—images of him and Sharon making love—and he realized he had never been happier or more connected to another human being. Not even his son.

“Where’s Ethan?” was his first question for their mother, though.

“Cooper and Tanya are watching him,” she replied. Then her eyes widened with surprise as she peered over Parker’s shoulder. “Or so I thought....”

“You asked to see me,” a deep voice said from behind Parker.

He flinched. Even his mother had mistaken the agent for one of her sons. There was no way she wouldn’t realize who he was.

She gasped. “You’re not Cooper....”

“How the hell many Paynes are there?” Garek remarked. Logan punched his shoulder in reply.

Parker wanted to wrap his arms around her—wanted to protect his mother like he wanted to protect his wife. But she pushed him aside so that she stood in front of the agent. Then she reached up and cupped his face in her hands just as she always did her children.

But this man wasn’t her child....

Didn’t she realize that?

“You’re Carla’s son, aren’t you?” she asked.

He didn’t pull away from her touch even as he nodded. “You knew...?”

“I knew about your mother,” she said. “I didn’t know about you until right now.” Tears overflowed her warm brown eyes, rolling down her cheeks.

Parker wanted to wipe them away. But before either he or Logan or even Garek Kozminski could reach for her, Nicholas Rus closed his arms around her. Then, his deep voice gruff with emotion he hadn’t yet revealed himself capable of feeling or showing, he said, “I’m sorry....”

“You have no reason to be sorry,” she said, as she closed her arms around him and hugged him.

“I should have done something so you wouldn’t have been so surprised.” He pulled away from her, evidently embarrassed by what Parker suspected was an uncharacteristic display of sentiment. “I should have warned you....”

To his credit, Agent Rus probably hadn’t counted on her showing up at the police department. Neither had Parker.

“You don’t need to be here,” Parker told his mother. “I’ve already been bailed out. I’m just waiting to find out why Sharon hasn’t been released.”

“She has been released,” Rus replied.

“But I haven’t been able to pay her bail,” Parker said. “Did you dismiss the charges?” He didn’t care about himself; he cared only about Sharon. She hadn’t even pulled the trigger; he had.

Rus shook his head. “Not yet, but I am working on it.”

Did that mean he believed them? That they had only acted in self-defense?

“Then how did she get released?”

“Someone else paid her bail,” Rus replied in a slightly patronizing tone.

But the agent didn’t know that Sharon Wells had no one. Her family was gone, and the one person who may have been her friend had been brutally murdered.

“Who?” Parker asked.

“Judge Albert Munson,” Rus replied. “He said he was a friend of her grandfather’s.”

“Al is a friend of mine, too,” Mrs. Payne remarked. “He’s the judge who helps me get the marriage licenses issued without the waiting period.”

Panic clutched Parker’s heart. “Did he issue mine and Sharon’s?”

She smiled and nodded. “Of course. He was very happy to do it, too.”

No doubt he had been because then he had known when and where they were getting married, and he had been able to set up the ambush that had very nearly killed them.

“Good ole Judge Albert is everyone’s friend,” Garek chimed in, “especially criminals’. The assistant D.A. informed me that Munson is the judge who either threw out or reduced the sentences of those guys Parker took care of and quite a few more....”

So there were more criminals out there with a debt owed to the judge. Or had they already paid him? Was that what Brenda had had on him—what she’d written about in her missing manuscript?

“Where is she?” Parker asked. “Where did she go after you released her?”

Rus shrugged. “When I left, she was talking to the judge. She was thanking him for bailing her out.”

He was a friend of her grandfather’s. She probably would have left with him without ever realizing the threat he posed. But why would she have left without Parker?

Hadn’t last night meant anything to her? Maybe he shouldn’t have been so concerned about her falling for him. Apparently she hadn’t even cared enough to stick around to make sure he got bailed out.

But it didn’t matter whether or not she loved him. He loved her. And he was going to damn well make certain nothing happened to her.

“Give me the keys to your car,” he ordered Logan. His hand shook slightly as he held it out.

“You don’t know where she is,” Logan pointed out.

“I’ll find her,” Parker said.

“It’s not safe for you to be running around out there alone,” Logan said as he held on tightly to his ring of keys. “I’ll drive you.”

Logan wouldn’t drive like Parker would—with the urgency necessary to find his wife before the judge hurt her. “You can ride along with me,” he offered, his hand still held open between them, “but I drive.”

The second Logan reluctantly handed over the keys, Parker was gone. He didn’t have a minute to lose. He had to find his bride....

* * *

P
ARKER
WOULD
HAVE
no place
to look for Sharon. She had no apartment anymore. Not even a car. And since he didn’t know anything about Judge Munson, he wouldn’t look for her at his estate, either. So Sharon talked the judge into driving her back to Brenda’s house.

And even if Parker didn’t come looking for her like he hadn’t at the police station, there might be someone else around—one honest officer at the scene—who would come to her aid.

“It’s not here,” the judge said. “I’ve had too many people search this house for it to still be here.”

She wasn’t about to tell him where it really was—not even when he raised his gun and pressed it to her temple.

“Don’t play games with me, little girl,” he threatened her. “You brought me here because you thought there might be crime-scene techs or officers here.”

But she had been wrong—as the judge had known or he wouldn’t have brought her there. Everyone was gone. Only she and the judge stood inside the mansion where two people had already died. Was she about to be the third?

If only she could somehow get word out to Parker...

To warn him...

“It wouldn’t have done you any good if there had been officers here,” he continued. “Didn’t you see the one at the station? He is on my payroll along with so many others.”

She would have shaken her head but for the gun pressed to her temple. “There are honest cops, too,” she insisted. “Cops you haven’t been able to buy. And Parker will know who they are. He’ll take the flash drive to them.”

The judge snorted. “He might if he had it. But we both know he doesn’t have it.”

“He does,” she insisted. “That’s why I couldn’t wait to see him—to find out who was behind these attempts on our lives. Now I know it’s you....”

The judge shrugged. “It’s not like you’ll live to tell anyone anything,” he said. “And even if you did, they would never believe you—not without the flash drive. I am as widely respected as your grandfather was.”

She doubted that. If he was really known for his integrity, her grandfather would have had her clerk for this man. But Judge Wells had never really mentioned him.

“I’m even friends with your mother-in-law,” Munson said with a chuckle. “She came to me for your marriage license. If not for me, you wouldn’t be Mrs. Parker Payne.”

So that was how those men had learned where she and Parker were the night they’d married....

He laughed again. “Not that you’re going to be much longer....” From the corner of her eye, she saw that he moved his finger along the gun toward the trigger.

Was he going to kill her here?

Would Parker find yet another body in this house?

An odd ring, more of a chime, rang out—distracting them both. Sharon’s phone had blown up in her car, and she hadn’t had time to find a replacement. Maybe if she had, Parker could have traced it and found her.

But she had no way of leading him to where she was. She had no way of leaving a message for him to find the flash drive, either. If she tried, the judge would see it, and she couldn’t endanger Ethan and Mrs. Payne.

The judge fumbled the ringing phone from the pocket of his suit jacket. “Don’t try anything,” he warned her. “Or I’ll splatter your brains right now.” He cocked the gun.

She swallowed hard, choking down her fear. She didn’t want to die, but she saw no way out of her situation. No way to survive...

“Hello?” the judge answered, his voice full of suspicion. He must not have recognized the number on the caller ID. Then he chuckled. “Parker Payne, your wife and I were just discussing you.”

He must have clicked the phone onto speaker because then she could hear Parker’s voice, gruff with concern and anger and fear. For her?

Did he care about her? Did he love her? Or was he only being a bodyguard?

“Munson, you better not hurt her or I will not only give this flash drive to the feds but to all the media outlets, too.”

The grin left the old man’s face, and his eyes darkened with anger. “You are not the one who should be threatening me, Payne.”

“I have what you want,” Parker said.

“I thought she was lying,” the judge admitted, “when she said you had it....”

Had Parker found it? Or was he bluffing like she had earlier?

“Sharon would never lie,” Parker said. “She doesn’t have it in her. She’s a good person who’s already been through too much in her life. She is the granddaughter of your friend. Don’t hurt her.”

“Looks like I have what you want, too, Payne,” the judge replied with a sly glance at Sharon.

“You do,” Parker said.

But he must’ve still been lying. He couldn’t want her—not for more than the night before. He couldn’t want her forever.

“Then perhaps we can work an exchange,” the judge offered, as if he was being magnanimous. “Meet me at my estate in an hour, Payne. Alone.”

“I won’t give you anything if she’s already dead,” Parker warned him. “You better not hurt her....”

“I won’t.” The judge offered what for him was a pithy promise. Then he hung up the cell. “I won’t kill you,” he assured her, “until your husband brings me that flash drive. Then I’ll kill you together.”

He acted as if he were doing them a favor. But then, maybe he was. Sharon had spent so much of her life alone. But she would still rather die alone than have Parker die with her. But it was too late; she had no way of warning him that he was about to walk into a trap.