Last Call (9 page)

Rhys's cheeks warmed with the memory of his
kiss, of his hardened length putting a dent in her thigh. "Me too,"
she murmured. She absently massaged her wounded
shoulder.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, just a little sore. Trying to keep it
from stiffening up." She abandoned her shoulder and reached in the
bag for the laptop. She hoped digging into the news reports of her
death would offer some insight, but medication on an empty stomach
left her queasy. She didn't need to start reading and add motion
sickness to her list of issues.

They stopped at a drive-thru and ate in the
car, the routine old and comfortable. Once they were back on the
interstate, the urban landscape quickly gave way to suburbs, then
quiet. The late afternoon winter sun gleamed on the remnants of the
prior night's storm, the road ahead a ribbon cutting through
ice-sculpted evergreens situated on gently rolling hills. Nick had
mentioned a privately owned safe house in which he'd spent the
night on a previous assignment, warning it would be
rustic.

The shooting, the boat — only hours before,
they seemed like a lifetime ago. Why, then, did Nick feel so
painfully familiar? Rhys's heart ached.

"Why did you come back to town? Why the
timing?" she asked.

He stared through the windshield. "I don't
know," he said finally. "Why did you go to the bar?"

He didn't have to say which one, but his
knowledge of her visit startled her. "How did you know?"

"Bart told me. I'd just bought a fifty dollar
beer when I saw you on the news. Dead."

"You bought a fifty dollar beer?"

"Long story. Stop trying to change the
subject. Why were you in the bar?"

She leaned against her seat, unsure how much
to confess. But ultimately there was far too much unsaid, and she
had little to lose by laying her cards on the table. "You're
familiar to me. Everything turned inside out. For months, I lost
the practical use of my arm. I lost my job. I lost … that bar was
as close as I could get to you."

"We've worked half this town, Rhys. You could
get close to me almost anywhere."

"Difference being we didn't work that
bar."

He said nothing. He didn't have to. She
cleared her throat. "My turn. Why did you leave?"

Nick winced as if she'd struck him. "Now is
not the time for this."

Rhys gestured through the windshield and its
endless supply of trees. "What better time?"

"Guilt. Cowardice. I just walked away,
okay?"

"No, it's not okay. Not at all. I'm not saying
you owe me anything—"

"Isn't that exactly what you're saying? I owe
you an explanation for leaving?"

Rhys's eyes heated with the threat of
uncharacteristic tears.

His expression softened. "Not only did I fail
to protect you, but I almost killed you. And I did kill someone
else."

"Your job isn't to protect me."

"Wrong. We were partners. You protect me, I
protect you. I failed. And killed an innocent kid." Quiet regret
iced every word.

Sad and frustrated, Rhys sighed. "It wasn't
the first undercover op to go south. Shit happens all the time.
Cops don't run."

"Then clearly I was in the wrong
profession."

"Now who's full of crap? You lived for your
job. It was everything to you."

"Not everything," he muttered. "That was part
of the problem."

She threw out her hands, her right
hand inadvertently smacking the glass. "
What
? What was the
problem?"

"My job wasn't everything to me anymore. And I
screwed up. And someone died."

"It wasn't the first time and it
won't be the last. It's the
job
."

Nick glared at her, his face hard.
Impenetrable. "It changed me."

He looked like a bear about to tear
through her, but she couldn't ignore the urge to touch him. So she
did, hesitating before settling her fingers on his jean-clad thigh.
"
What
changed
you?"

After a long moment, he finally
spoke.

"
You,
Rhys. I fell in love with
you
."

Chapter Seven

Stunned, Rhys drew away her hand
and found something —
anything
— interesting outside the window. Overgrown grass
tangled brown and yellow along the roadside, where snow and ice
occasionally gave way to muck. Trees lined the ditches on both
sides, leaving her with an overwhelmingly gray view of the world
around her.

"I shouldn't have said that," Nick said after
a long silence.

She started to tell him it was okay but bit
her tongue. She never expected Nick to say those words in any
capacity. He wasn't made of deep confessions — nor would he make
one lightly — which left her wondering how to take his words. After
all, changing someone wasn't an extraordinary thing. In the great
jostle of life people tended to change one another on a regular
basis. But some changes, of course, were more distinguishable than
others.

Like Corey. He'd forever changed her
life.

He'd given her Nick.

"Rhys?"

"I get it. The shooting."

"No, that's not it. Not exactly. I just saw
things differently after that. I doubted myself."

"You decided you loved me, starting
doubting yourself, and
left
?" She fought for control of her
frustration. Softer, she asked, "Why did you come back? Why
now?"

He sighed. "Remember the kid who
died?"

She nodded, though it had to be a
rhetorical question. How could she forget? Brian McKenney. Just
days after turning eighteen he'd walked in front of a bullet. On an
instinctive level, she knew Nick didn't see it that way, but the
kid shouldn't have been anywhere near that drug bust. He didn't
live in the neighborhood, and the residents knew to avoid the area
where the deal went down. Nick carried with him the idea Brian had
been an innocent witness, but Rhys wasn't so sure. Her tenuous
connection to the old neighborhood rumbled of something more
sinister: McKenney wasn't a bystander — he
was
their bust. Word was good he had
deep pockets, but the whole incident had been hushed to protect the
undercover op. Oddly, however, there had been no outcry over
McKenney's death. Apparently the cops weren't the only ones hoping
to avoid unnecessary attention.

"What about him?" Rhys asked.

"He doesn't have a head stone. Just a small
little marker. Standard issue for the cemetery."

"Um, I'm not following."

"I started wondering why no one seemed to care
about his death. The kid got his money somewhere but no one will
talk. If he's got a family, they aren't coming forward."

"I've wondered the same thing. It's a high
crime area, though, and our cover wasn't blown — at least not until
yesterday when they plastered my face all over the news. Who are
they going to complain to? How is this related to you coming
back?"

"I started digging," he said. "And I must have
dug too far. I got a message indicating if I didn't back off, you'd
be next."

"And coming back here is your version of
backing off?"

"I don't back off."

"No, you just turn tail and run."

The look he gave her then made her desperately
want to recoil — ideally, into the back seat. But outwardly she
didn't flinch.

He turned away first, his grip on the steering
wheel lethal.

"Since we're putting it all out
there," he said through his teeth, "why don't you tell me how
you're involved with this case,
Detective
."

She glanced from his hands to his face, but he
wasn't looking at her. "I'm not," she said firmly.

He shot a dark glimpse her way. "Fair
assumption, considering your untimely demise. Technicalities aside
. . ."

Rhys wanted to keep her cards
close, but somehow they'd been set up. She didn't yet know how her
being shot tied into Nick's arrival in town, but the timing was
suspect, at best.
Someone
forced her hand, and with any luck, together she
and Nick could figure out who and why.

She didn't have to like it.

"Years ago," she said, "a drug deal went bad
in my neighborhood. A few… kids were killed. After I was sidelined
the last time, I had a lot of time to catch up on the gossip, and
an old name resurfaced. I had enough connections here and there to
put some of the pieces together, but I needed to stay on the wire
so I went back in."

"Who the hell cleared that?"

"No one. This is personal."

Nick glowered with such ferocity she began to
think she really had lost her mind. Dangerous work, yes. But she
had very little to lose.

"You went back into that neighborhood without
backup? What about your cover?"

"Like I said, it wasn't blown. You and I were
reportedly arrested on drug charges. I got out. You didn't. There
were no headlines. You know how it is — those small arrests don't
even make the news these days, and I was admitted to the hospital
under my street name to protect the investigation. It's all
covered."

A spot at Nick's temple pulsed. "You are not
this naïve," he said fiercely. "Or this stupid."

"I'm not involved with the big players. I'm
mainly just keeping up with Judy, very much on the sidelines." Judy
Ross had become one of Rhys's closest friends over the course of
the investigation. Rhys hated lying to her about who she was. She
despised that she used her, in spite of a genuine
friendship.

"You're not involved at all now. You know
this, right?"

She glared. Of course she couldn't go back.
Her cover had been blown sky high and he was a jerk for stating the
obvious. "You can forget the machismo. In case you've
forgotten—"

Welcome to
Woodson
.

The sign flashed by at sixty miles an hour,
but the impact was head-on.

"Elliot Woodson." The words came in a whisper,
if they made noise at all. Elliot was the frontrunner in a special
election for a new assistant district attorney — the previous one
had been murdered after a high profile drug dealer went down hard.
Apparently, the prosecution couldn't be bought.

Rumor had it Elliot Woodson couldn't be,
either.

"What?"

"He was the man… killed in front of me. The
night I was shot."

"Elliot Woodson?
The
Elliot Woodson? Are
you sure?"

"I saw him.
I know
." Rhys fumbled for the
computer. "Tell me your phone has a mobile hotspot."

"You can't read while you're riding. You'll
get—"

"I
know
I get car sick. I don't care."
She glared at him until he gave up his password, then entered it
and impatiently tapped her fingers on either side of the touch pad
while the computer found the network.

Nick frowned. "You won't find the real story
in the news."

Again with the obvious. Quickly, she found a
preliminary blurb on his death. "Heart attack."

"Wouldn't expect that out of him. Young, and
he was always in those charity marathons. You're sure you saw
him?"

"It gets worse. It was a hit."

"How do you know that?"

"Right after I was shot, one of them said
something about not being paid to lose him. He was up for ADA after
the last one was killed."

Nick cocked an eyebrow. "Really? Who was he
running against?"

"Vincent Siegal."

The silence that descended over them said
everything. A pretty, polished picture for the public, Vincent
Siegal was thickly rumored to have ties in illegal operations.
Problem was no amount of digging uncovered anything more
incriminating than an overdue library book. Even then, the bastard
had paid his ten cent fine and followed with a two-thousand dollar
donation. The man was as beloved as he was crooked. But at some
point, the circumstantial evidence had to amount to something.
Everyone who dared butt heads with him ended up dead, and that was
enough to sway her opinion, if not provide proof.

Nick still hadn't said a word.

Rhys stared through the window at the passing
landscape for a moment before remembering her own circumstances.
Then she returned her attention to the computer and found the local
news story on her death. She was in luck — it came with video.
"They didn't waste any time on this, did they?"

"Had you really died, your body wouldn't have
been cold," he said.

Rhys started the video. Watching her own death
play out on the local news didn't sit well with her, nor did she
learn anything useful. She sighed.