Protective Instincts. Julie Miller

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      There were plenty of folks here, honoring his father. Missing him. But amongst the honor guards, police and government officials, extended family and friends like Caldwell, Sawyer concentrated on something more important than tamping down his sorrow or anger.

      He studied each face huddled inside the tent, standing beneath umbrellas and taking shelter under the green, soggy branches of the towering oaks and ash trees and pines lining the road that twisted through the hills of Kansas City’s Mount Washington Cemetery. But he wasn’t looking for familiar friends or comfort.

      Sawyer was looking for a face that didn’t fit. He was looking for someone watching the gathering and admiring the success of his handiwork—someone whose curiosity might be bolder than his brains. A smile of satisfaction amongst all the sorrow. He was looking for the man who’d beaten his father bloody and fired a bullet into his chest.

      He was looking for his father’s killer.

      “IS THIS A JOKE?”

      Sawyer switched the phone to his left ear and paced to the opposite end of the large country kitchen. Staring out the window over the sink into the blackness of the backyard he’d grown up in, he jerked the knot loose on his tie and unhooked the top two buttons of his soggy white shirt.

      Finally, he had something useful to do to take his mind off the funeral and the friends and family who’d come to his mother’s house afterward. But he’d trade almost anything for a different assignment.

      “I wish. All three of them have vanished. Including our pal Longbow.” Friend and fellow cop Detective Seth Cartwright, the commissioner’s son, hadn’t shown up for the potluck dinner after leaving the cemetery. Now Sawyer understood why. A nightmare from the organized-crime investigation they’d worked together last year had reawakened.

      “He’s no friend of mine.”

      “Mine, either. I know what that bastard can do.” Like try to murder Seth’s wife.

      Sawyer knew Ace Longbow as a hulking, temperamental enforcer for the mob. In exchange for testifying against his former boss, he’d been given the opportunity to spend the rest of his life rotting away in prison, instead of facing a lethal injection himself. But something had gone very, very wrong at a courthouse in Jefferson City, Missouri, that afternoon. “You’re sure he didn’t die in the crash?”

      They should be so lucky.

      Seth continued. “We’re listing all three as escaped prisoners until we’ve got bodies to confirm their deaths.”

      Sawyer scrubbed at the evening beard peppering his jaw. “What happened?”

      “The Department Of Corrections in Jefferson City had him out to testify in the Wolfe case, along with two other prisoners who were involved in different federal investigations. From what I understand, there were weapons planted in the courtroom. Artillery fire from a van outside knocked out one of the walls.”

      “Artillery fire? Sounds like an invasion. Or terrorists.”

      “Somebody had some money and connections behind the escape. One prison escort is dead and another critical. At least three other personnel from the courthouse are hospitalized in serious condition. I don’t know how many others suffered minor injuries. They kidnapped the stenographer, but dumped her before their getaway car went into the river. The feds are already on-site, along with the DOC and local authorities. They’re still cleaning up the mess. State police claim at least one of the prisoners was hit before they rammed the car and knocked it off the bridge. They’re dredging the river where the car went in, but have come up with nothing.”

      “Three escapees and at least one accomplice if those guns were planted, but no bodies have been found?” Sawyer didn’t know whether to curse or laugh.

      “Not one. No John Doe gunshot victims reported at any local hospitals. No one washed up on the banks. The Missouri has a deep channel and strong currents in that part of the state, so they could be miles downstream by now. Longbow and the others could be anywhere in Missouri, anywhere in the country by now. Hell, if he survived, he could be back here in K.C.”

      Sawyer’s muscles jumped with the desire to join in the manhunt. But pacing off the length of the kitchen seemed to be his only option right now. “And there are no leads?”

      Seth’s no was colorful and emphatic. “It’s no secret that Longbow’s former boss, Theodore Wolfe, took out a hit on Longbow—to shut his mouth and keep Ace from testifying against him. As easy as it is to off a guy in lockup, why go to all this trouble? Besides, we shut Wolfe down—turned over all his men to Interpol or local authorities. If he still has the connections to pull off something this big, then he’d have left the body to prove it.”

      Seth had survived turning on the Wolfes himself. Saywer’s father had survived bringing the Wolfe family to justice. Was John Kincaid’s murder related to Longbow’s escape from prison?

      “I thought you should know,” Seth went on, explainingthe real purpose behind this call on this day. “You were there at the casino to provide backup for me while I was undercover with the Wolfe family, and I know you developed some kind of…attachment to Longbow’s ex-wife.”

      The pacing stopped.

      Melissa Teague. Single mom and cocktail waitress. Sawyer had been playing bartender and bouncer back then and had worked with Melissa. An image of her small, perfectly proportioned figure filling out that skimpy saloon-girl costume the waitresses had worn popped into his mind, as vivid and distracting as the real woman had been. He remembered Melissa as a pretty little slip of a thing—all blue eyes and golden hair. And bruises. Sprained wrists.

      And fear.

      “We all wanted to take care of her.” But they had all failed her.

      The sandwich Sawyer had wolfed down to appease his mother churned in his stomach at the memory of seeing Melissa in a hospital bed, looking small and pale as she lay in a coma, fighting for her life. The last time he’d seen her awake, she’d rolled over in the hospital bed and turned her back on him. Even though he’d told her he’d been working undercover, that he was a cop and the bartender she’d known as Tom Sawyer was really Thomas Sawyer Kincaid, she still associated him with the Wolfe crime family and the place where Ace Longbow had tried to kill her.

      Or maybe an oversize, overbuilt truck of a man lurkingin her doorway was too much of a reminder of her abusive ex.

      Sawyer hissed a frustrated breath through tightly clenched teeth. He had no special claim on Melissa. She’d made it clear that, despite sharing a few cups of coffee before work, or walking her to her car after closing, she wanted nothing to do with him. Maybe not with any man. Considering her background, he couldn’t blame her. “Why call me?”

      “So far, we’ve been able to keep the escapees’names out of the press and the details sketchy. We’ve got every man on this. As soon as we got the wire from Jeff City, we dispatched a car to Melissa’s house to keep an eye on things.” Seth’s long pause bespoke the depth of the favor he was asking of Sawyer. “I know the timing sucks. But I figured she’d rather hear the news from a familiar face than a stranger.”

      “Ah, hell.” He finally had it fixed in his brain that he’d never see Melissa again. That was the only way he’d been able to get past the guilt and the wanting.

      “Can you СКАЧАТЬ