ROUGH RIDER (25 page)

I
stood
outside the doors where Nathan would soon make his exit, dressed in my nicest suit and smiling so hard I thought I might pop the surgical glue on my cheek. He’d done it. He’d testified. I couldn’t possibly have been prouder of the man.

News crews had gathered down the steps near the street, waiting for him to make his appearance. As he finally emerged past the door, he looked around, eyes narrowed.

“So, this is it, huh? I do a good deed and now they throw me to the wolves?”

I laughed, following his gaze toward the reporters. “It’s not so bad. They’re going to love you. You’re a hero!”

“Nobody ever loves a billionaire,” he muttered, straightening his tie. I knew he hated it. It had been a bitch convincing him to wear one during his testimony.

“I wouldn’t count on that,” I said, trying not to grin too hard and hurt myself. “Come on. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

Nathan smiled. “Did you bring your gun?”

I laughed and shook my head, following him out the front doors and down the courthouse steps toward the clamoring journalists and flashing cameras.

Their voices rose in a chorus around him, cries of “Mr. Hale! Mr. Hale!” so loud they were all we could hear. I knew Nathan had planned on slipping past them without making a statement, but he stopped when it became clear they weren’t going to let up. He held up his hands to calm them down.

“Mr. Hale,” one woman said, speaking excitedly into her microphone. “It only took the jury thirty minutes to reach a guilty verdict on the Peter Wallace trial. How much do you think your testimony tipped the scales in the prosecution’s favor?”

Nathan smiled patiently and looked around at the multitude of stations all vying for footage of the city’s most prominent billionaire. Then he put his arm behind my back and pulled me forward beside him.

“I think when anyone does the right thing, it makes a hell of a lot of difference—more than we ever think it might,” he answered, his arm remaining tight around my waist. I looked up at him as he continued: “We’re made to believe that one person can’t make a difference without money or power. I have both, but none of that mattered. What mattered was a woman—a detective—so driven by the desire to do the right thing that her actions convinced me it was time to stand up for something greater than myself. You all know me as the billionaire playboy Nathaniel Hale, the guy who throws obnoxious parties and spends way too much money on cars and other frivolous things.” He smiled, turning to face me. “But that’s not me anymore. Now I’m the guy who does the right thing, because one woman dared to stand up and challenge me. And that could’ve been any of you. Anyone can stand up and do the right thing, because all it takes is one person to show the rest of the world how powerful they really are.”

Oh God…
I thought to myself.

“But this woman,” he added, a grin slowly spreading over his face. “Is the real hero of this story, not me. And she’s
my
hero.”

I smiled as he leaned down and kissed me, completely aware of the cameras all trained on him, on
us
in that moment. What he was doing was going to cost me my badge—my entire career. But as the media stuttered, desperately trying to make sense of what was happening, I let Nathan wrap me up in his arms and give me what I’d always wanted, what I’d always needed: redemption.

“Mr. Hale!” a reporter shouted over everything, breaking the stunned silence, but Nathan just put a hand up and released my lips long enough to shout, “No more questions.”

I found myself being pulled away, my whole life leading up to this moment flashing before my eyes. What in the world was I thinking? What in the hell was I going to say to the captain?

And how soon could I get this man somewhere private and do something totally and completely indecent?

“
W
hat
the hell is this
?” Captain Pierce asked, staring at the gun and badge I’d dropped onto his desk. I was ready for this. Surely he had seen what happened on those courthouse steps as much as anyone else did.

“Sir, we both know what this is,” I replied, trying to remain as calm and level as I could. “You saw what happened earlier today, and I’m turning in my badge.”

“Sandra, I’m afraid I can’t accept it.”

Did he think I was stupid? I was an employee of the state, and I could quit right now, walk out of here, and forget any of this happened. “Captain Pierce…” I said indignantly, prepared to give him a lecture about all the bullshit I’d put up with over the last few years in this office, but he cut me off with a hand loudly slamming down onto the table.

“Detective, just stop. Sit there, shut up, and listen to me.”

I narrowed my eyes. I could feel my nostrils flaring like an angry bull. I didn’t have to put up with this. Still, something about the urgency in his voice made me settle back down in my seat.

“Sandra, why do you think I put you on this case?” the captain asked, coming round his desk and standing there, looking down at me. “Do you think it’s because I think you’re the best detective for the job? Hell, did it ever occur to you that maybe a detective shouldn’t be wasting her time protecting a fucking witness?”

“I… Captain, I don’t understand…” I whispered, staring up at him. What in the hell was he trying to say?

“Sandra, I put you on this case because you have history with Mr. Hale. We both know you’ve been fucking him.”

I blinked. I felt like I’d been slapped right across my face. My stomach sank to my feet where it coiled into knots around my ankles, preventing me from leaping up out of the chair and clawing Captain Pierce’s eyes right out of his honky skull.

What the fuck? Did this asshole really think that kind of bullshit was going to fly with me? This was sexual harassment!

“Nathaniel Hale has a few, let’s say, ‘well known’ predilections. Putting you on his protection detail was critical. I needed you close to him, Sandra.”

I swallowed the acrid rage rising in my throat. What was he getting at?

“You put me in there because you knew Nathaniel Hale had a thing for me? What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked, locking the Captain in a hateful stare. “If it wasn’t a felony, I’d strangle you with your fucking tie!”

“I put you there, Sandra, because I knew you could get under his skin. To your credit, it seems like you’ve went
well
above and beyond the call of duty.”

“You asshole,” I replied. I knew exactly what he was implying. He’d been playing me right from the beginning. I wasn’t sent in to talk to Mr. Hale because I was the best cop for the job, I was sent there because the Captain knew we’d been intimate! I was sent there to put him off balance!

“Maybe you think I’m an asshole, but I’m an asshole who gets results. Thirty-six women were in that container they tossed into the fucking Pacific Ocean,” the Captain said, stepping over to his filing cabinet and pulling out a manila folder. “Thirty-six souls, and God-fucking-knows how many others buried around this city because Wallace was walking free.”

“We put him in prison, Captain. Nathaniel Hale’s testimony put him there.”

“There’s only one problem with that,” Captain Pierce said, tossing the folder onto the table. I stared down at it, at its contents: picture after picture of Nathaniel Hale, and in the same frame, Mr. Wallace. “You might think Nathaniel Hale is the good guy here, but it seems he had a bit more interaction with Wallace and the Paddies than you might want to admit.”

I thought back to the conversation Nathan and I had over dinner, trying to hide my emotions. The world swirled around me. I could feel darkness closing in from all sides, my pulse pounding in my head so loud that it almost drowned out the Captain’s next words.

“So it might interest you to know there’s another container on its way, detective. Full of women, just like the last one.”

Now anger wasn’t the only thing rising in my throat. I could taste bile on the back of my tongue, feel the sway of my stomach as though I was standing on a fishing boat in the middle of stormy seas. Sweat prickled on my neck, my back, and my palms, cold as ice to match the temperature of the blood racing through my veins.

This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t possible. I hadn’t slept with—fallen for—a sex trafficker, a liar, a
criminal
. I couldn’t have…

“Are you suggesting…?” I started, catching the grim look on Captain Pierce’s face.

“It’s inbound through a holding company. Everything has been routed through the Cayman Islands. No official ties back to Hale Corp, except…”

The captain paused a moment, turning back to his filing cabinet and returning with a single sheet of paper. It was a shipping manifest. Manila to San Francisco.

“Nathaniel Hale prefers to do his business in person, Sandra. That’s the manifest, and that,” he said, pointing to a dark smudge on the bottom right of the photocopied sheet, “that is Mr. Hale’s thumbprint, according to forensics.”

My whole body felt numb. “When did this happen?” I asked, my hands shaking as I stared at the document. The captain didn’t have to answer, because my eyes swept immediately to the date at the bottom of the page.

Yesterday… It fucking happened yesterday!

I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear this piece of paper to shreds and pretend it never happened. Instead, I let my mind wander back to the last 24 hours.

“Come back to bed…” I’d whispered, my body still shaking from the Earth-shattering orgasm he’d given me. I was positively giddy, grinning like a fool as I watched Nathan’s half-naked body move through the bedroom, his muscles bunching and coiling like a mass of serpents writhing just beneath his skin. I wanted to watch him crawl toward me on the bed, wanted to see his hard body ripple as he pinned me down again. I wanted to return to the nirvana he sent me to every time he touched me.

“I’d love to, but I have a bit of work to do. Money doesn’t make itself, you know,” he had replied, smiling ever so smugly before walking to huge and insanely opulent bathroom and starting the shower.

I had pouted then, and briefly even considered joining him whether he wanted me to or not. But in the end, I had settled back against the pillows and sighed, stretching my arms above my head as I basked in the afterglow of our union and drifted to sleep. When I awoke, Nathan was gone…

I blinked away the memories, as well as a few tears threatening to overflow past my lashes. The asshole had done it right under my nose.

I took slow, deep breaths, willing myself not to vomit all over the manifest and the Captain’s shoes. I sat back, hand over my mouth as the paper dangled limply from my fingers. I felt hollow inside and out. When I lifted my head to look at the Captain again, I barely even felt the motion.

“Unfortunately, there’s more,” he continued. “We don’t think Mr. Hale and Mr. Wallace were business partners on this.” He paused. Maybe it was for dramatic effect, but I wanted to think better of him. I chose to believe he hesitated because it was difficult to break the news. “We have reason to believe they were competitors.”

For a long moment, I just sat there, letting those words echo in my head.
Competitors.
So, Nathan wasn’t just complicit out of willful ignorance—he was actively trying to oust Wallace as the most prolific trafficker in the western hemisphere?

Finally, feeling returned to my body, but it wasn’t a good one. Boiling heat prickled my skin from the inside out as I looked up at the captain and said:

“What can I do?”

I’d been betrayed. I’d been used and lied to by the one man I thought I could trust. I’d helped him secure his spot at the top of a criminal enterprise. All the little puzzle pieces had fallen into place, thanks to me.

And the picture they formed was about as damning as it got.

“You’re already done the dirty work. Now, you’re going to stay close to him, Detective. You’re going to do whatever it takes to hide your true intentions, and you’re going to get me access to his computer.”

“You, as in you personally, Captain?” I asked, staring at the bear of a man. There were a lot of words and phrases that came to mind when I looked at Captain Pierce, but “technologically-savvy” wasn’t one of them.

“We still have a rat, Sandra. Officer Kimball was compromised, and now he’s dead. We have no idea how deep this rabbit hole goes. The entire operation needs to stay quiet until we have the dirt we need on this asshole. Don’t let his boyish charm fool you, though. Nathaniel Hale is smart, and he may be dangerous. Letting you go back there is a risk, but if you don’t, there might be thirty-six more women at the bottom of the ocean, and that’s going to be on you.”

None of this made sense. How could I have been so wrong? How could I have let the needs of my body get in the way of my morality? I became a cop to serve and protect, not to let myself fall for the sweet-talking billionaire with a dubious history.

“What if he’s innocent, Captain?”

I was grasping at straws and I knew it. This was the “denial” phase of grieving, it seemed. I’d seen suspects’ families do it all the time. Nobody wanted to believe that their wife, their brother, or their child could be a killer. But if there was even a chance that this might not be what it seemed, then I had to look for that angle.

Nathaniel Hale represented everything I’d always hoped for. It wasn’t the money I was after, or the lifestyle he could afford. It was the feelings I had when I was with him. He made me feel… whole. Was that just another lie?

“If he’s innocent, I want to know who’s pulling the strings. Wallace is in jail and O’Rourke is dead, but the wheels are still in motion. Somebody is bringing those women over, and you know damn well what will happen to them when they get here.”

“What do I tell him?”

“You tell him you quit.”

I nodded. It was a sound plan. That was what I’d originally come here to do, after all. “When do we get started?” I asked, steeling myself against the tide of my emotions.

“Pick up your badge. Take your gun. We get started right now, Detective,” Captain Pierce replied.