Stealing Justice (The Justice Team) (2 page)

She couldn’t have a tail.
Couldn’t
. She’d been careful by looping around the city, then alternating main roads with back roads until she reached Titanville, population four-sixty-five.

But the car behind them created problems. Big ones. Even if it wasn’t a tail, the driver of that car would spot her pulling into the drop-off point. What if it were a sheriff’s deputy on patrol? If Syd, after having driven this road only a handful of times found another car suspicious, a deputy most certainly would.
Well, you see, Officer, this woman’s husband beat the shit out of her and I’m helping her disappear.

Damn, this could be a panty-twister.

She focused on the road ahead. Five more miles before the drop off. All she needed to do was lose the second car. If not, she risked the entire underground operation. And if Lauren-now-Kelly’s husband found any of them, they’d be sure to suffer his ungodly wrath.

And she wasn’t about to let that happen.

The road curved into a perfect C and when Syd hit the upper part of it, she glanced in the mirror. No headlights. They’d hit the blind spot.
Now
. She punched the gas again, the little car sputtering and growling, but responding.

“What’s happening?” Lauren-now-Kelly asked.

“Just a precaution. I need the car behind us to drive by and I have an idea how to make that happen.”

Lauren-now-Kelly swung to look in the backseat where her seven-year-old daughter slept, her breathing offering Syd a calming distraction.
Just get them there
.

Somewhere ahead, smack in the middle of the field to her left, was an access road for tractors. On one of her earlier trips, she’d spotted a mammoth John Deere parked there overnight—the unexpected, hulking monster scaring the hell out of her.

If she found that road, she could duck into the field, kill the engine, and vanish into the darkness until their unwelcome interloper drove by. Not a perfect plan, but if it worked, perfection wasn’t necessary.

Syd roared out of the curve, her gaze bouncing left every few seconds, hoping she wouldn’t miss the road. So damned dark. “Help me look. It’s a road on the left. Cuts right into the field.”

Lauren scooted forward, gripping the dashboard as she focused on the field. “There it is!”

“Got it.”

Syd hit the brakes, thanked whatever power above that no giant tractor blocked her path, and swerved onto the rutty road. She floored the gas and the car bounced along, the bumpers and undercarriage scraping as they went. She had to be doing major damage.
Please, don’t let this car fall apart
.

“Mommy?”

The jarring and bouncing had woken Lauren-now-Kelly’s daughter.
Don’t get distracted
. She’d let the child’s mother handle it.

“Sshh, honey. It’s okay. Just a bumpy road. Go back to sleep.”

Syd smacked the lights off and checked the rearview. Total blackness.
Far enough
. She eased her weary car to a stop and breathed in. Lauren-now-Kelly reached across the console and squeezed her hand.

“Two minutes and that car should roll by. Then we’re good.”

Syd’s heart slammed, all the ferocious blood funneling in—
buh-bum-buh-bum-buh-bum
—and her head began to pound.
Please drive by
. Please.

Not daring to light the interior of the car by checking the time on her phone, she counted in her head as she kept her gaze glued to the rearview. Had it been two minutes?

“Sixty seconds,” Lauren-now-Kelly said. “I’m counting.”

“Okay. Almost there.”

“Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one…”

Suddenly, headlights flashed against the road they’d left, the shadow becoming brighter as the car neared and Syd’s body went to full-on alert, every nerve sparking and banging.
Please drive by
.

“Thirty-five, thirty-six…”

Please drive by
. Syd watched, waited.
Any second now
. Whoosh. The car sped by, not even slowing to check the access road. “There it goes!”

Lauren-now-Kelly threw her head between her knees and Syd, still keeping watch in the rearview, rubbed her back.
Not home free yet.
The car could spin around and come back.

“We’ll wait a few more minutes just to make sure they’re gone.”

Syd’s cell phone chirped and she scooped it from the cup holder. Grace. Not her real name, but for safety reasons, Syd didn’t concern herself with that. Syd’s only concern was getting Lauren-now-Kelly and her daughter to Grace, who would usher them into a maze so complex that Syd didn’t know where they’d wind up. “Hi. We’re two minutes away. Did you see that car?”

“Yes. Does the husband have a Dodge Challenger?”

Syd refused to look at her passenger. The tension, like a snapping live-wire, firing off the woman was enough. “No. An SUV. GMC.”

She’d covered this with Lauren-now-Kelly before they’d left D.C. Having done this enough times, Syd had learned to watch for the husbands or any other family members who might be following. “I detoured every which way and there weren’t any SUV’s tailing us. Did the driver of the Challenger see you?”

“The car slowed as it went past, but didn’t stop. My car is behind the barn.”

“Is it safe for us?”

Crunching noises filtered through the phone. Grace walking along the gravel drive of the broken-down barn that sat on the backend of a giant farm. At that barn, Syd would turn Lauren-now-Kelly over to Grace. “I think so. I ran to the road and watched the taillights dim. I got a bad feeling about that car though. After this, we need to change our spot.”

“I agree.” Syd started the car. “We’ll see you in a few minutes.”

Syd backed the car to the road and drove the half mile to the driveway leading to the dilapidated barn. It was too bad they’d have to switch drop-off locations because this one served their purposes. Remote locations miles from surrounding homes weren’t exactly easy to find in the D.C. area.

They’d work it out. Somehow. Even if Syd had to drive an extra hour, she’d do it.

She parked in the driveway, cut the lights but kept the engine running. They wouldn’t be here long. Grace walked around the side of the barn, her stride as swift as a two hundred pound, fifty-year-old woman could make it. By morning, Lauren-now-Kelly and her daughter would be in another state with another handler. Hopefully, the start of a new life without a battering husband.

“Okay,” Syd said. “Let’s get your things.”

She grabbed her purse from behind her seat and dug for the white envelope. “Here, take this.”

Lauren stared at the envelope, shook her head. “What’s this? You gave me our new ID’s and social security cards already.”

“I know. This is some cash. It’s not a lot.”

All she had and part of next month’s rent, but it was worth it.

“No. I can’t take your money.”

Syd dropped the envelope in Lauren-now-Kelly’s lap. “You can and you will. It’s only money. I can make more. Besides, it’ll take you a while to get cash flow going. You’ll need it for your daughter.”

Whatever argument Lauren-now-Kelly had conjured evaporated at the mention of her daughter. She gripped the envelope. “Thank you. I’ll pay you back. I swear. You’ve done so much.”

“Blah, blah,” Syd said.

Never a fan of the emotional goodbye, she shoved her door open to retrieve the single suitcase from the trunk. Lauren-now-Kelly had walked away from her life with only one suitcase. All of her photos, mementos, a lifetime of memories—weddings, baby showers, the first day of school—erased because of a husband who, if she’d stayed, would someday cause her death.

Well, Syd wouldn’t allow it. Not for Lauren-now-Kelly or any other woman who had the spine to walk away from a bastard husband.

She lifted the suitcase from the trunk, handed it off to Grace while Lauren-now-Kelly gathered her daughter for the next leg of their journey.

“She okay?” Grace asked.

“Nervous. She’ll be fine though. She’s ready. He worked her over good last night. She’s all busted up.”

Grace nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”

“I know. I’ll be in touch.”

Grace strode back around the side of the barn to retrieve her car and Syd turned to Lauren-now-Kelly. “Grace will take care of you. Remember what we talked about. No calls, no letters, no emails to anyone. Not even your parents or sister. I’m sorry. I know it’s brutal, but it has to be this way.”

She nodded. “I know.”

And then out of nowhere, Lauren-now-Kelly stepped forward and threw her arms around Syd.
Oh, crap.
Syd raised her arms, thought about it, and dropped them again. No hugging. Too personal. Too
connected
. And in her line of work, too connected could earn her a beating from a pissed-off spouse. Self-defense training only took her so far when faced with an enraged bear.

She opened her mouth, took a small breath, but the air clogged in her throat. Nowhere to go.
Crap, crap, crap
. She slammed her eyes closed. Refused to give in to the emotional drama. What good would it do?

“You need to go.”

Lauren-now-Kelly gave her one last squeeze. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll never forget you.”

Headlights from Grace’s minivan shined on them and Lauren-now-Kelly released Syd, grabbed her daughter’s hand, and headed for the next step in her new life. Syd waited for them to get settled in the car and then stood back, offering up a brief wave as they drove away.

I’ll never forget you either.

Chapter Three

People let their guard down when they thought no one was watching.

Grey stared into his Burris spotting scope, magnifying Sydney’s body as he watched her through the floor-to-ceiling window of the former church building. She’d swept her long hair, still wet from her morning shower, into a high ponytail, the ends brushing her shoulders as she stood over her desk rifling through a stack of folders.

Sydney’s office at the Saint Agnes Fresh Start shelter for women in lower D.C. was the size of a broom closet.

“St. Agnes, the saint of chastity.” Grey snorted and recalled his mother’s fascination with all the female saints. “The founder of Fresh Start must have had one serious dose of wishful thinking to name it after her.”

Through the scope, Grey ignored the way Sydney’s cleavage yelled
look at me
over the top of her black tank. Instead, he zoomed in on her face, her lips. Smooth skin, a smattering of freckles, tendrils of hair teasing her neck where they’d escaped the ponytail.

So young.

Not so innocent.

She was twenty-five, but could have passed for eighteen. Young, pretty, smart…the all-American poster girl for the other women who populated the charity. Sydney sent the unspoken message that even if life screwed you over, you could still make something out of yourself.

Hell, different place, different sitch, he would’ve hit her up for a date. Two screw-ups taking on the world…or at least each other. Great for a short-term fling. Not so much for a real relationship.

She picked up the phone on her desk, tucked the receiver between her shoulder and ear and continued shuffling through folders, seeming to look for one in particular. Finally, she dragged a sheet of paper from one of them. Grey shifted the scope to read the words on the sheet she held as she talked.

The Burris provided four times the magnification of a rifle scope, creating the ultimate intimacy with his suspect even though he was across the street in an abandoned apartment above a pizza joint. He could see the mole on the side of Sydney’s neck, catch the slight grimace she made as she listened to the caller.

Her brows drew down, as she appeared to argue with the caller. Her ringless fingers tightened on the receiver and her body tensed. Grey’s body responded in kind.

“Bad news, Syd?” The soft-spoken words fell on an empty pizza box and soda can lying on the floor at his feet. “Ian just lay the news on you about the murder of one of your girls?”

A surge of familiarity, as intimate as the view the scope gave him, flooded his mind. He’d only been surveilling Sydney for two days, but he knew pretty much all there was to know about the woman. She didn’t just run a shelter. She talked to herself in the mirror hanging alongside the single coat hook in her office. She opened the window of her closet sized office for a few minutes every afternoon, even on cold, blustery days. She didn’t use her computer to surf TMZ or YouTube on her lunch break. Instead, she combed self-help sites for Ten Tips to Prevent Being a Victim or Five Ways To Help A Rape Victim.

And, to Grey’s way of thinking, she was into something illegal. Something involving the shelter and women disappearing.

He just couldn’t prove it.

But if he could flip her and ace this off-the-books job for the Bureau, the Bureau that fired him for insubordination, he might just get his badge back. His entire future rested on the shoulders of the woman in the Burris scope’s sight. All because Grey and Donaldson had been at the Panthera the night an
escort
had been killed. The same night the man Grey had tirelessly investigated and knew—
knew
—was a murderer had also been in attendance.

As Grey watched, Sydney sat at her desk, propped her elbows and leaned her forehead into her hands. In her short lifetime, she’d seen as much of the dangerous side of humankind as he had while flying helicopters for the Army and working violent crimes for the FBI’s criminal investigation division.

Hang on. Was she crying? Over Amanda’s death?

“Shit.” A weird feeling took hold in Grey’s chest. For half a freaky second, he wanted to reach through the scope and lay a hand on her shoulder, comfort her. Tell her Amanda would be the last one. No one else would get hurt on his watch.

Total bullshit of course. Not just because he’d let a killer get past him once before, costing someone dear her life, but also the fact he couldn’t stop this killer singlehandedly. The only way to stop The Lion was to send in a woman who could take him on, catch him in the act.