Outlaw Justice (Decorah Security Series, Book #13): A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novella (7 page)

“What if she’s home?”

“She won’t be.”

He kept the engine running while Leah rang the bell. When no one answered, he cut the engine and they both got out.

As they walked down the block, Steve hated the exposure, but he didn’t see any alternative unless they were going to drop out of the sky with a parachute.

They reached Leah’s block, and she pointed toward her house.

“There’s a gravel and stepping stone path on the left side as you face the front. You open the garden gate by reaching inside for the latch.”

“Okay. Give me ten minutes to get to the second floor. Then you ring the bell.”

“How did I get here?” she suddenly asked.

“In a cab, but you had them let you off around the corner.”

“Why?”

“Because you felt funny showing up without your car,” he answered.

“And where is the car?”

“In a lot downtown.”

“Why?”

“You bashed the fender.”

She laughed. “Yeah, he won’t want to hear
that.
”

They were standing in the shadows under a maple tree. He reached for Leah and hugged her tightly, and she clung to him fiercely. Finally he forced himself to ease away, hoping this wasn’t going to turn into a disaster.

She gave him a determined look before he turned and walked down the block like he belonged in the neighborhood. Really, he’d felt more at home in Pig Town, but he didn’t see anyone watching from the windows as he stopped at the edge of Pendelton’s lot, then took the path to the backyard, being careful to walk on the stepping stones and not the gravel.

There was a high fence at the back, but he reached over the gate and found the latch, then slipped inside, stopping to listen. As far as he could tell, no one had heard him enter the yard.

Behind the one-story addition was a patio and swimming pool. The storage shed was to the side.

So far, so good.

After making sure no one was watching, he picked up one of the patio chairs, carried it to the back of the shed, and used it to boost himself up to the low roof. From there he climbed to the top of the addition and moved quietly along the roof until he reached what must be the bedroom. He began pushing at window sashes and found one that was open. While he eased it up, he was thinking that if he could get in this way, so could a burglar.

After making sure the room was empty, he climbed inside. As he came down on the floor, he heard the doorbell ring.

Leah’s heart was pounding as she rang the doorbell at the house she had shared with her husband. When she’d moved here, she’d tried to convince herself her life was on the right track. Warren had given her a beautiful home and an upscale lifestyle. But she’d secretly had some doubts about the marriage.

She shook her head, cursing her inability to make the right decision. She should have left years ago, but there had been too many reasons to hang on. Her husband had made sure she didn’t have any good way to support herself. And then there was the fear. What would Warren do to her if she left and he found out where she’d gone?

She had the answer now, and it wasn’t pretty. As far as Warren was concerned, she belonged to him—whether or not he actually wanted to make a life with her.

And what would he do now?

She steeled herself as she heard footsteps approaching the door. Someone looked out through the translucent curtains screening the side light. When the door flew open, she was facing her worst nightmare—her husband.

Unprepared for the burning fury in his eyes, she struggled to catch her breath as he grabbed her arm and pulled her inside.

“Why did you leave?”

“I knew I made a mistake. Now I’m back.”

“You’re answering the wrong question—why did you leave?”

“I was scared,” she said in a voice filled with genuine fear.

“Of what?”

“You were so angry. You hurt me.”

oOo

Upstairs, Steve gritted his teeth as he stood looking around the small but nicely appointed office with wooden file cabinets and a top-of-the-line computer on the wide desk.

Probably the computer was password protected. Instead, he pulled on rubber gloves and began opening drawers and looking through papers and folders. He found a lot of stuff here, including bank and credit card statements, but nothing that looked like a red flag. He glanced toward the door, knowing he had limited time. With a sigh he peeled off the gloves, sat down, and started searching again, not through papers, but touching the objects on the desk and in the office.

He hit pay dirt when he cupped a hand around an ornate globe of the world, smaller than the usual model but apparently made out of semiprecious gemstones.

As he grasped the object, he was seized by a wave of dizziness.

Then he felt the familiar sensation of disorientation as his gift transported him from the present to a scene in this very office. A man a few years older than Steve was sitting in the desk chair. It was the same man he’d seen hit Leah—and grope Candy.

Steve took in details he hadn’t focused on earlier. Dressed casually in jeans and a white polo shirt, Pendelton wore a heavy gold chain around his neck. He had a diamond ring on the middle finger of his right hand, and he was playing with the globe while he spoke on the phone.

“Listen, Malcolm, I know we have a deal, but it’s getting harder to funnel cash through my legit businesses.”

He listened for a minute and said. “Half a mill is a hell of a lot. I want more of a cut.”

Again he listened, then said, “Yeah, okay,” but he didn’t look very happy with the answer.

The conversation and Steve’s Baltimore PD background had given him what he needed, and he struggled to pull away. Before he could come back to present reality, he heard a sharp voice that seemed to come from out of thin air.

“Put your hands flat on the desk.”

The command filtered through Steve’s consciousness. He blinked and looked up to see a man holding a gun. Not Pendelton. One of his goons that Leah had described. The blond guy with the ponytail. Carlton. The other one, Jimmy, was behind him. Although both of them looked like they could snap a normal man in half without breaking a sweat, Carlton was holding an automatic pistol pointed at Steve’s chest.

He shook his head to clear it, silently cursing the talent that had given him the answer to an important question but at the same time had made him as vulnerable as a puppy in a tiger’s cage.

“Keep your hands where I can see them. Stand up.”

Steve stood.

The other guy frisked him, found the gun tucked into the back of his waistband, and removed it.

“Get moving. We’re going down.”

With no other choice, Steve walked out of the office and toward the stairs, his mind scrambling for a way to save Leah.

oOo

This ruse had been Leah’s idea. Now she knew she might never leave this house alive. The sound of footsteps on the stairs made her head jerk up and wonder why Steve was coming down. Then she saw he was followed by the two bodyguards—one holding a gun at Steve’s back.

“He was in the office,” Carlton said.

Warren looked up in satisfaction. “Got ya.” Swinging back to Leah he said, “I thought you might be with this guy all along.”

Explanations danced through her head, but she knew none of them was going to do her any good.

“Take him into the sunroom,” Warren said, clamping his hand painfully on Leah’s arm. When the trio had passed, he led her down the hall after them.

She fought a sick feeling as Warren pushed her onto the couch beside Steve.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“Shut the fuck up,” her husband ordered. “I know you were poking into my business. Your boyfriend in my office proves it. But there’s nothing for him to find up there. I don’t keep records on paper, and he can’t get into my computer.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Then what’s he doing here?”

She didn’t answer, because anything she said would be wrong—as far as Warren was concerned.

He must have caught the sick expression on her face.

“Yes, I know what you’re up to. After you didn’t find anything, you hired this guy.” He jerked his head toward Steve. “But you don’t have any money, so you must have been paying him with sex.”

Leah’s face flamed. She couldn’t deny that she was sleeping with Steve, but it was nothing like what Warren had said. It hadn’t been for any kind of payment.

oOo

Steve interjected himself into the conversation, keeping his voice hard and even. “I do know something about your work ethic, actually. You’re laundering drug and prostitution money for Malcolm Herman—Malcolm the Hammer—through your retail businesses. And now you’re afraid the IRS is going to figure it out.”

Warren’s eyes bugged as though he’d turned into a bullfrog. The reaction told Steve he’d hit the mark with his educated guess about the guy on the other end of the line. Malcolm the Hammer was a well-known Baltimore crime figure.

Though Warren blanched, he kept his voice even. “You’re lying. There’s no way you could get to that.”

“But I did. And I know that you’re also in trouble with his organization because you’re not getting the job done fast enough.”

“Jesus. How did you figure any of that?”

Without hearing the other end of the conversation, Steve had done a lot of guessing—partly based on Leah’s description of Warren’s behavior. He’d been nervous about something—and was taking it out on her.

Reaching for another bluff, he added, “Candy told me.”

“What?” Pendelton spat out, the syllable sharp as a steel blade.

“I got it from Candy,” Steve said again. “You’re fucking her, but she’s not the loyal little girl you thought she’d be. In fact, she’s probably about to go to the Feds on her own because rats always desert a sinking ship.”

Warren’s eyes blazed. “I’ll take care of you in a minute.” Stepping to the door, he shouted, “Get in here.”

When there was no response, he shouted again, “Get your ass in here before I kick it around the block.”

Candy appeared in the doorway. She’d changed from the dress she’d been wearing that afternoon into jeans and a pale yellow knit top. But the most conspicuous thing about her was the way her face had drained of color.

“So you’ve betrayed me too,” Warren bellowed.

If possible her skin went a couple of shades paler. “No. I would never. I did just what you asked me to do. I went down and tried to bring Leah home. And here she is,” she added, stretching out her arm as though she was a magician who had just pulled off a seemingly impossible trick.

Pendelton laughed. “Nice try. No thanks to you. And when did you clue him in to my business dealings?” he asked, jerking his head toward Steve.

“I didn’t. He’s lying.”

“Then how the hell would he know anything?”

All she could do was give Pendelton a blank stare.

The two bodyguards had turned toward the couple exchanging angry words. With no time to warn Leah what he was doing, Steve stood, braced his bad leg, and picked up the heavy wooden coffee table in front of the sofa. Putting all his weight into the throw, he hurled it at the men. Taken by surprise by the flying furniture, they were pushed backward, into Warren, who stumbled against Candy. While all of them were wavering on their feet, Steve grabbed a cut glass bowl from the side table and hurled it at Carlton’s head.

He went down, and Steve grabbed the gun from his limp hand. In the space of heartbeats, the whole scene had changed. But unlike one of his visions, this was the here and now, and he had to get Leah away from danger.

While the bad guys were trying to sort themselves out, he picked up the table again, grasping it by one end, then whirled and hurled it through the large window in back of the sofa. The twist sent a sharp stab through his leg, but he fought to ignore the pain as he listened to the sounds behind him.

At least one of the guys was scrabbling up. Gritting his teeth, Steve snatched up Leah and carried her through the massive hole in the glass, coming down hard on the patio. The unyielding surface was a shock to his bones, and glass dug into his hands. Ignoring the pain, he pulled himself up and started toward the gate.

But the leg had already taken a beating. As he tried to run across the patio, he stumbled. Leah grabbed him, giving him support as they fled. Before they reached the gate, shots peppered the area near the exit.

They were trapped inside the high fence, but Leah led him into to the shrubbery beyond the pool deck, heading toward a large planted area at the back of the property. They crashed through a bed of azalea bushes and into a small stand of pine trees.

As they hunkered down on the ground, floods snapped on in the yard, and lights began to pour from the windows of other houses. He could hear voices of people asking what was going on.

“Is there another way out?” Steve whispered.

“That’s the only gate, but maybe we can get over the fence.”

He looked in back of them, seeing that the barrier was not uniform where it was screened from the house. Perhaps part of it had been put up by the people who owned the property behind the Pendelton’s.

Bullets crashed into the bushes, but it was clear that Warren’s crew couldn’t see Steve and Leah’s location. Not yet. And Steve wasn’t going to fire and give it away. He crawled toward the fence, every move sending fire through his leg. At the back of the yard, he found a place where two different sections joined—one board on board and one stockade.

When he pulled on the stockade section, it gave a little, but he knew he couldn’t pull it apart from the bottom. As he started to stand, Leah grabbed his arm.

“No.”

“I need leverage. You stay down.”

He stood and began to pull the section back and forth, making a larger and larger gap.

Ignoring his orders to keep under cover, she stood and began to help. But the noise must have alerted Warren and his goons to their location, because the shots began hitting closer.

“We got ‘em trapped,” Warren called out. “Spread out.”