Hard to Stop (3 page)

Instead of responding, he blew out a breath laden with exasperation and folded his arms in front of his chest. She had to wonder what this guy was mixed up with that would keep him buttoned up so tight. Somehow she got the sense he felt responsible. But why? Unless Mr. Shaw and his friend were involved in something illegal.

Before she could contemplate the idea any further, Officer Clark called her over. "You're going to want to talk to the juvenile suspect Mr. Shaw brought in."

"Is there a problem?"

"You might say that." He didn't look her in the eye. "You'll want to talk to him before we go any further."

"Just a minute, Mr. Shaw." She held up her finger. "I'll be right back."

When she walked to the other side of the building, her heart stalled in her chest. Even from the back, she'd recognize him anywhere. Her younger brother, Mick, was standing beside the officer in charge, handcuffed. When he turned to glance in her direction, he looked guilty as hell.

*   *   *

 Max didn't know what was going on, but something had riled up the detective. Based on the shouting coming from the area where they'd taken the suspect, Detective Collini had definitely lost her cool. He couldn't help but be curious.

Not even a wizened-beyond-her-years NYPD detective would keep him out of this investigation. He might be a trader on Wall Street now, but at his heart he remained an investigator. And when friends or family were involved, no way in hell would he back down.

Preoccupied with berating the young man, she didn't notice his presence when he strolled over. She was on a tirade the likes of which Max hadn't heard in a long time. He only knew bits of Italian—mostly curse words—but there was a whole lot of other stuff included in her dressing down.

Finally she spoke in English. "Mick, what in the hell is the matter with you?" She sucked in a deep breath and wiped something from her cheek.

Tears
?
She knew this kid. What were the chances she'd be impartial? Zip to none. If she didn't take herself off the case, he'd have to contact the mayor and have this case reassigned.

To his amazement, there wasn't any macho posturing by the other officers. Rather than intervene, they sat back and let her do her thing.

"I swear, G. I didn't do it. I—"

She held up her hand, and to Max's amazement, the kid stopped talking. No doubt she knew this kid very well.

When the kid glanced toward him, she turned around and faced Max, anger still blazing like a fire in her gaze. "Mr. Shaw." Her jaw locked tight. "This doesn't concern you. I asked you to stay put."

"And I thought you wanted me to identify the murderers."

When she shot the kid a look, the young man's expression morphed. It turned from defiant into one that resembled a kid whose puppy dog had just gotten run over Almost like a visual reprimand from a mother. But she looked too young to be the kid's mother, unless she had him at fourteen or so. But their looks were very similar. Dark, curly hair and dark eyes, slight builds—but backed by muscle.

Max glanced from one to the other. Even in the dim evening light, the resemblance couldn't be disputed. "Holy crap. This kid's your brother?" Even though he said it as a question, there wasn't one iota of doubt in his mind. That had to be the only explanation.

"That's none of your concern, Mr. Shaw." She had this take-charge thing honed to an art form.

But she'd met her match in him. He never backed down. Never. "It damn well is. How can you investigate this matter if your brother is the chief suspect?" His body nearly vibrated as thoughts tumbled around inside his head. His friend was dead because of him, and a detective related to the suspect was supposed to find the guilty party.

Not. On. His. Watch.

It was those coal-colored eyes. Gia watched as Max Shaw stared at her brother in a way that terrified her more than she could have imagined. This guy had a past, based on the way he seemed to note every detail before him and commit it to memory in a way that felt calculating. Based on his posture and the way he carried himself, she suspected he might be former military—maybe Special Forces. It wasn't his dark hair or his over-six-foot size alone that made him imposing. There was something else there that she couldn't quite pinpoint.

Some of his word choices made her believe he'd done investigative work before, which set off her radar. The man had a past. And it wasn't based solely on the way he glared at her brother like he wanted to beat him until he was bruised and bloody. Revenge wafted around him like a kind of fog.

She needed to do more background when she got the chance. Some deep, dark past, or maybe even a suspicious present lingered around him and followed him all the way to his trendy, uberrich Upper East Side address.

"Let's keep to the focus of this investigation, Mr. Shaw." She tightened her jaw. "How far away were you when you spotted the suspect?" To use the word
suspect
and her brother in the same sentence tore a fissure in her heart. Was she naïve to think her brother couldn't possibly have killed someone? Even thinking about it made her want to do something completely out of character, like burst into tears. Instead, she held her breath and awaited his response.

He rocked back on his heels and examined Mick with a mercurial eye. After an inordinate amount of time, he shook his head in a move so slight it could be easily misinterpreted. No doubt that was his master plan. "I can't be sure. Many young men dressed like him roam the streets of New York."

"I'm confused. Are you sure about the identities?"

"I was about a half block away when I spotted them standing around Damon."

"But you couldn't have seen their faces from that far away unless you had binoculars. Did you?"

"No, but they ran away from me when I told them to stop. I was able to grab him as they split up." He gave her a pointed stare.

"People run from me all the time, but that doesn't mean they're guilty, does it?" The unspoken words between them wafted in the air. She didn't need him second-guessing her decisions. She did enough of that herself, especially as it related to her brother.

Being both Mick's mother and father figure since she was twenty-two had been rough. But they had each other. Born and raised in Brooklyn, they were able to stay in their grandmother's home after their parents' death. Many times food was scarce, and she'd cried herself to sleep more times than she could count, worried and stressed over her parenting role. But, for the most part, he hadn't given her a lick of trouble, except in the last year.

It started out with one friend, Joey. Joey had an arrest record and had quit high school. His uncle ran numbers for the local bookie. She knew it. He knew she knew. It forced her to keep a vigilant eye on the situation. She didn't want Joey hanging around, especially when he knew she'd be at work.

But she knew her brother. And she knew he was up to something tonight. And she'd bet a whole lot of money it had something to do with Joey. What she didn't know yet was if it had anything to do with Damon Rice's death.

"Mr. Shaw, since you cannot make a positive ID at this time, let's meet at the station in the morning, and we can discuss the case further."

His dark eyes flitted back and forth from her to Mick and back again before he finally nodded. Reluctance played out not only in the delay in his response but in the tight clench of his jaw. "What time?"

"Does nine a.m. work for you? I'm at the Midtown station on Thirty-Fifth Street."

"I'll be there."

Without another word, he strode away, leaving little doubt this would be one of her most difficult cases. He wasn't very forthcoming, and she could sense he would remain that way. Mr. Shaw had some secrets he didn't want uncovered. And she had every intention of making sure she found out everything she could about him before he got to the station.

After she grounded her brother and threatened to send him off to military school. Again.

"I'll take Mick with me." She nodded to the police officers and grasped her brother's shoulder.

"Gia, I—"

"You do not get to talk. Not now. Maybe not for an hour until after I've had my say." She pushed him toward the passenger-side door. "Get in."

Her fingers trembled on the steering wheel as she pulled away from the curb. "What in the hell were you doing out there tonight? And who were you with? Was it Joey? Did I not tell you to stay away from that kid? And now a murder? Are you kidding me?"

"I—"

"No, you still do not get to talk. I swear on our parents' graves, you are going to be the death of me." A little dose of guilt couldn't hurt. "What happened to that nice girl you were dating? What was her name? Adrianna or something?" She held out her hand. "Don't answer. I'm sure she was too goody two shoes for you. Right? Nice girl. Straight A student. Never been in trouble. Hangs out with other honor roll students. I could see why you'd much rather hang out with that loser Joey, who quit school to run numbers for his uncle. That's aiming for the gutter—or prison, as I like to call it."

"You're not my mother." The words grumbled through his lips at a barely audible level. But all the same, she knew them well.

The four words that made her heart squeeze inside her chest. "You're right," she said, softer now. "But I'm all you have." She drew in a deep breath as the weight of everything seemed to crash on her shoulders. "We've been in this together since you were six."

"I've heard this story a hundred times before. Will you let it drop already?" The insolent teen had returned once again. His fear of her had lasted fewer and fewer moments as he'd grown older. And he'd learned how to wound her with a simple phrase. The boy who had wanted to follow in her footsteps and become one of NY's finest had morphed into her worst nightmare.

*   *   *

Max seethed as he flagged down a cab and headed toward his townhome. His friend was dead, and the detective in charge of the investigation had a vested interest in not finding the guilty party.

Somehow Damon had gotten caught up in Max's mess. But the people who were after him weren't going to hire street thugs to do the job. That didn't mean he'd dismiss the possibility they had, but it seemed unlikely.

Coincidence?

Potentially, but also unlikely. Just like the possibility that Damon was a victim of random violence rather than anything to do with Max. Damn it.

He let himself inside, still jacked on adrenaline combined with being pissed off. Several thousand miles and eight years hadn't allowed him to outrun his past. Would he ever be able to feel like what he'd done was behind him? Would he ever be able to erase that dark cloud that hovered over him?

He'd already hung his coat on the hook by the door and pushed the code numbers on his alarm when he realized it had already been disarmed. If nothing else, he was a creature of habit and wouldn't have forgotten to set it. Since his siblings, Jake and Sabrina, were out of town, that meant whoever broke in had somehow bypassed the alarm.

He grabbed the gun out of its cabinet and chambered a bullet. Even while he meticulously inspected his home, he knew the guilty party had left long ago. Breaking into his home so expertly had sent him another message relating to his vulnerability—if they wanted to get to him, they would.

The appointment book he normally kept in his office lay open on the coffee table in the living room. Scrawled in red ink across today's date were the words
I'm coming for you, Maxim.
Words identical to his earlier text.

His heart pounded while
a tingle worked its way down his spine. All his past sins were coming home to roost, and there wasn't a lot he could do to stop it.

He opened his laptop and downloaded the intel from the cameras he had both inside and outside his home. If they broke in so easily, they'd spotted the cameras as well, but any nuance he might pick up from the film might help. A figure of indeterminate gender covered head to toe in black walked inside, disarmed his security with the finesse of a professional, and sprayed the camera lens with a fog, making it impossible to get an accurate or good picture of anything besides a vague silhouette. The person went into the kitchen area, but Max couldn't tell exactly what the figure did by the stove. The intruder moved upstairs to the bedroom and bathroom, the closet area, then back downstairs, pulling open Max's computer and plugging in a USB drive, then jotting the note down on his appointment book and placing it in the middle of his coffee table. "Son of a…" When the figure got close enough to the camera to distinguish features, a mask made in Max's own image smiled back at him. Whoever the person was, he or she planned this well.

Maybe that alone would give him a clue as to who it might be. Yep, the intruder wanted him to know he was in the hunter's crosshairs.

Bring. It. On.

*   *   *

After a restless night, Max opened the door at 6:00 a.m. to greet the man who'd saved him and his siblings' lives and arranged for them to come to America. "I appreciate this, Jennings." If it weren't for Jennings, they would have died at the hand of one of Petrovich's many assassins somewhere along the way. Maybe he'd just dodged a bullet eight years ago. Maybe he'd be a sitting duck for the time being until he could settle the score once and for all. If he only knew who was after him.

"This is the most sensitive detection device we have. If they planted something, this thing will find it." With a skill that befitted his position, Jennings worked through the house in record time, uncovering over ten listening devices.

"They had to know I'd find them." Max threw them into a plastic bag and handed them to Jennings, who put them outside the front door. "Why would they do that?"

"If they intended to kill you and make it look like an act of random violence, maybe they thought they'd get some intel on Sabrina and Jake after your death. It all circles back to Petrovich. Sabrina's showdown in Venice with Ambassador Quarto was no coincidence. Jake's run-in with Cleo wasn't either. Whoever they are, they're working their way through the three of you. They know if they can get to one of you, the other two will be easier pickings."