Keep Her Safe

  She melts into my body, her hands sliding down to my stomach, hot skin pressed against hot skin, her thumbs teasing my belt line. I feel myself swelling more, and I grit my teeth against the wish that those nimble fingers would make quick work of my buckle and zipper and slide farther down.

  Gripping her firm backside, I lift and carry her into a corner, pinning her to the wall with my hips. It gives me easier access to her body and I take it, lifting her shirt high enough to take one of her nipples in my mouth, the delicious scent of peach-scented body wash that lingers on her skin making me inhale deeply.

  Gracie moans my name softly, tightening her thighs around my waist.

  This is going too far, much too fast. If I take her to my bedroom, I already know I’ll be inside her in minutes like some fool who can’t control himself. So I stay put in these cramped quarters, instead sinking to my knees and maneuvering around, until I’m sitting on the floor with my back to the wall and Gracie is straddling my hips, her eyes wild with need.

  “Gracie, I think we should slow down and . . .” My voice fails me as she peels her shirt over her head and shrugs her unfastened bra off, leaving me to gape at her naked breasts, heavy and heaving with each quick breath. I knew her body would be beautiful, but she’s utterly perfect. “You’re . . .” I can’t even get the words out, admiring her bared top half while I run my hands up her muscular thighs, my finger slipping beneath the hem of her shorts. I manage to stop at her panty line, and it takes everything in me to not go farther, to not find out if she’s in the same predicament as I am. And I am in a terrible predicament—I don’t want to rush with her, and yet I’m about to explode, the anticipation too much.

  Hooking my hands around the backs of her knees, I pull her body flush against me. “We’re not doing this yet,” I whisper against her lips, my arms folding around her body to hold her close to me.

  “You sure about that?” Her voice is dripping with sarcasm.

  I hiss as Gracie rolls her hips, pressing hard into me.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say? I missed that last part,” she murmurs, cocking her head in mock concern, grinding down on me again. And again, her hips rolling in an erotic dance, the swell of her breasts brushing against my chest.

  I hadn’t expected this version of Gracie—seductive, playful, forward.

  Who am I kidding? I’m doomed to be a fool.

  My head falls back against the wall and I close my eyes. “You wicked woman.”

  Gracie’s delightful deep-bellied laughter answers, and she leans in to trace the edge of my neck with her tongue.

  I groan as she pushes a hand down between us, to smooth over my length.

  “What is that?”

  “Uh . . . what do you mean?” That’s a question I’ve never had a girl ask me before, in this particular situation.

  Her ragged breathing slows. “No, I’m serious, Noah. It looks like . . . blood?”

  Finally I realize she’s intently focused on her fingertips, rubbing something between them. I follow her gaze to the hardwood floor beside us, to the dark crimson smear. It’s definitely fresh blood.

  “Did you cut yourself?” Gracie’s hand begins prodding me as she searches.

  “No. And that’s a few hours old, at least.” I can tell by the dark line that’s formed around the original drop.

  “Maybe Cyclops cut himself?”

  “He was outside all day. Besides, the pantry door was closed.”

  Throwing her bra and shirt back on, she climbs off my lap and heads out to the kitchen, whistling for him. Meanwhile, a sinking suspicion begins to settle into my stomach.

  I stand to get a better look at the floor. That’s when I notice the second blood spot. And a third.

  All surrounding my mother’s safe.

  Fumbling for my wallet, I fish out the safe combination. Careful not to smear the remaining blood spots, I quickly dial the numbers. I throw open the door.

  Four guns still hang in their slots and, while I never counted the boxes of ammunition, it looks like they’re all accounted for.

  Everything seems normal.

  That is, until I crouch down to inspect the bottom shelf more closely, and spot the brown lunch bag. It’s crinkled with age and handling, and stuffed in a small gap between the ammo and the shelf, at the back.

  Did I miss that before?

  Did Silas miss it too?

  Swallowing against my growing anxiety, I use the hem of my shirt to ease the bag out.

  Inside is a handgun.

  A Colt .45.

  “Jesus Christ,” I whisper, instantly aware. That’s got to be Abe’s gun. Has it been here all along?

  Or did someone break in here today and plant it? If they did . . . how? No one has this combination except me.

  Either way, someone was definitely in this house while we were out.

  I grab my mom’s Glock and, checking the chamber to make sure it’s loaded, I charge for the backyard, hyperaware of the fact that the alarm was set when we left, which means that person circumvented the system. Someone with the equipment and the know-how to do it.

  I find Gracie outside, talking to Mr. Stiles over the fence.

  “ . . . he was making one heck of a racket earlier.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. We didn’t mean to be gone—”

  “You can’t leave dogs outside for hours, unattended!” my neighbor, with his hands on his hips, his gray hair mussed and standing on end, scolds Gracie.

  “I know. I’m sorry,” she apologizes in a placating voice that’s so foreign to her. “He’s normally a quiet dog.”

  I tuck the gun into the back of my pants and then ease in behind Gracie, settling my hands on her shoulders. Missing the feel of her hands on mine.

  “He was barking because someone broke into my house,” I explain.

  Gracie tenses. “What?”

  “A robbery!” Shock fills Mr. Stiles’s weathered face, the thought of it happening in our peaceful neighborhood appalling. “But don’t you have an alarm?”

  “We do.” And common, dumb criminals won’t get past it. But seasoned cops with a history of sneaking in and threatening widowed women are another story. Still, for them to gain access to the safe . . .

  “Well, I can’t blame the little guy for all the noise, then.” Stiles’s gray eyes search out Cyclops. He frowns. “What’s he got over there?”

  “I don’t think I want to know,” I mutter, following Stiles’s gaze to the far corner of the yard, where the dog is furiously digging in the garden. “Hey! Stop that!”

  He peers up at me with a piece of tan-colored material dangling from his mouth.

  “Come here, Cy!” Gracie calls.

  He trots over obediently, dropping the strip in front of us.

  “What is that?” Gracie lifts it in the air so we can all see it more closely.

  One side of the material is hemmed while the other side was clearly torn. A spot of crimson stains it. “It looks like it could be from a pant leg!” Mr. Stiles chuckles. “Heck, I think your dog took a chunk out of the burglar!”

  “Maybe right out of the guy’s calf. I’ll bet he’s in pain, wherever he is.”

  Like possibly in a room with Klein, being questioned by the FBI.

  Realization fills Gracie’s face as she catches my drift.

  Mr. Stiles’s amusement vanishes abruptly. “You need to call the police, Noah. If there’s a thief targeting homes in this neighborhood—”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll get right on that. Sorry again for the noise.” I lead Gracie into the house, Cyclops trotting closely behind, his nose pressed to the floor.

  “What do you think that asshole took?” she asks, her voice hard. She’s furious, I realize. And here I was sure she’d be terrified.

  “I don’t know if he took anything.” I show her the gun inside the brown bag. “It’s a Colt .45.”

  Understanding fills her face. “Is it my dad’s?”

  “I’m guessing so . . . yeah.”
r />   “Are you saying Stapley put that in there?”

  “Someone did.”

  “But . . .” She frowns. “It’s a gun safe. People aren’t supposed to be able to open them. How did he get in there?”

  “I don’t know.” Did he actually get into it? Or did he simply try?

  Did I miss seeing the bag in the first place?

  It’s as if she can read my mind. “Maybe your mom had it all this time.” Accusation doses her words as her gaze wanders the pantry shelves aimlessly, as if searching for an answer among the cans and supplies.

  Cyclops starts barking wildly from upstairs.

  Gracie and I exchange looks.

  Was Stapley alone in this? Is someone still in the house?

  Seizing the Glock in my hands, I head for the stairs, my heart thumping in my chest. “Stay here,” I whisper, taking the steps quietly.

  The stairs creak behind me. Not a surprise, Gracie isn’t listening.

  I hesitate for a moment, wondering if I’m an idiot, if we should get out of the house and call the cops.

  And then I keep going.

  Cyclops’s howls of protest are coming from my mother’s room. We find him at the dresser, standing on his hind legs, his front paws pressed against the drawers. Seeing us, he drops to his haunches, his tail wagging furiously.

  “What is it, Cy?” Gracie murmurs, edging past me.

  He barks in answer, excited.

  With a wary look over her shoulder at me, she slowly slides open the top drawer and begins sifting through my mother’s things with a delicate hand. “I don’t know what you want me to see, buddy . . . It’s all the same stuff I saw yester—” Her voice cuts off.

  “What?” I edge in next to her, to see the small packet nestled in my mother’s T-shirts. “What is that?”

  “My guess is cocaine.”

  “Cocaine?” Why the hell would Stapley bother putting drugs in my mother’s drawer?

  Gracie looks up at me. “That wasn’t in here yesterday. I went through this drawer for clothes and it was not here yesterday.”

  A curse slips out from under my breath as I look around the room. A murder victim’s gun, drugs . . . “What the hell are they up to?”

  Gracie’s gaze follows mine. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say they’re doing the same thing to your mom that they did to my dad—planting things to make her look guilty.” Her mouth twists with a bitter smile as she points to Cyclops, who’s busy sniffing around my mother’s bed frame. “They didn’t expect to contend with him.”

  I slide my phone out of my pocket. “We need to call the cops.”

  “No! Wait.”

  “Gracie, we need to report this. It needs to be on record. That blood is evidence.”

  “Yeah, but Stapley and Mantis are the cops.”

  “Two dirty ones out of thousands of good ones.” I see where she’s going with this as soon as the words leave my mouth. “But Mantis heads Internal Affairs.”

  “You heard him yesterday. He said ‘you wouldn’t believe the kinds of things I can get away with.’ ” She pauses to give me a knowing look. “What if he can make Stapley get away with doing this? Do you want to risk that?” Gracie slides her phone out and starts punching in numbers.

  CHAPTER 42

  Officer Abraham Wilkes

  April 28, 2003

  “Just doing my usual rounds!” I holler from my open window, sounding more chipper than I feel. I left Gracie at home with Dina, with big, fat tears rolling down her chubby cheeks. She doesn’t understand why Daddy’s out so much lately, why he can’t stay home and play.

  Isaac tosses the window squeegee into the bucket of suds behind him, sending dirty water onto the sidewalk around it. He slowly heads toward me, wiping his hands with a rag hanging from his back pocket. “I was wonderin’ if I’d see you today.”

  “Anything new to report?”

  “No, sir.” Isaac’s soulful brown eyes skate over the near-empty parking lot. “It’s been awful quiet here since that excitement the other day.”

  I sigh with disappointment. How long before I should give up and accept that Betsy’s gone for good? That it was a fluke that I ran into her in the first place, and I will never find her again?

  Maybe Jackie’s right and Betsy doesn’t want to be found. But from the way she looked up at me, those green eyes—twins of Dina’s—wide with a mixture of fear, panic, and relief, I can’t believe that.

  “Best be on my way, then.” I have another few local spots to stop by.

  “Now wait up a minute.” Isaac comes up close—close enough that I can smell the sweat lingering on his skin—to rest an elbow on the hood of my car. “Those police officers that came stormin’ in here . . . you know ’em?”

  “I know them.”

  “You friends with ’em?”

  “No, sir. I wouldn’t call them friends.” Sure, we’ve played ball together; we’ve gone out for celebratory beers after a game. But friends? Hell no, especially not now.

  “So if they were doin’ somethin’ they shouldn’t be doin’ . . .”

  Understanding settles onto my shoulders. “What did you see, Isaac?”

  “The question isn’t what I saw. It’s what you saw.” Isaac stoops over to meet me face to face. “And what you’re doin’ about it.”

  He saw Mantis take the money; that much is obvious. He also knows that I saw Mantis take the money. I sigh. “It’s complicated.” “Doing something” means saying something—to my supervisors, to Internal Affairs, to the chief. I read the news; I’m no idiot. Right or wrong, speaking up against a fellow officer is never without consequences. Threats, retaliation, suspensions. The kind of consequences that can make life for me on the force impossible.

  “Well, I have something that might help uncomplicate it.” Isaac reaches into his pocket.

  CHAPTER 43

  Noah

  “Who knew you’d be a good drug hound,” I murmur, scratching Cyclops between his tattered ears before sinking into the living room couch. An FBI evidence tech strolls past, peeling gloves from his hands on his way out the door.

  “I knew.” Gracie’s eyes twinkle. “Last year, Sims was on his stomach one night, searching under his trailer, cursing and threatening to kill the bastard when he finds out who was stealing from him. I was coming home from work a week later and I saw Cyclops tear out from under the Simses’ trailer with a bag of weed in his mouth. It had this long piece of duct tape attached to it, all torn up by Cyclops’s teeth. I guess Sims was taping weed to the underside.” She chuckles. “I followed him across the road, and watched him dig a hole and bury it.”

  “I take it you didn’t enlighten Sims?”

  “Hell no!” She grins. “It was way more fun knowing that idiot was getting robbed by a one-eyed dog.”

  Klein charges down the stairs then and into the living room, cutting off our laughter. “We haven’t found anything else so far, but we’ll keep looking.”

  “You checked the office? And my room?” A few drawers were sitting open a crack, enough to flag that someone might have been in there.

  “Yup. Nothing.” He flips open his notepad, his eyes on Gracie. “Why don’t you give me a rundown again . . . You got home around two fifteen p.m. You were in the pantry . . .”

  “Putting away groceries,” I answer, noting Gracie’s cheeks flushing. “Gracie noticed a spot of blood on the floor.” I run through the next few moments again, Gracie finding her composure quickly enough to fill in a word here and there.

  “And there were no signs that anyone was still in the house when you came home?”

  I shudder at the thought. “No, sir.”

  A loud knock sounds on the front door.

  “You expecting someone?” Klein nods toward Tareen, who’s been floating around, to answer it.

  “Actually, I am, but he doesn’t usually knock,” I mutter, checking my phone. Silas has been calling me all day, leaving messages. I can’t talk to him right now, not when I’m
too busy wondering how he could swear up and down that Abe was guilty despite knowing about the video and Abe’s plans to out Mantis; despite the evidence we saw today that clearly shows a third person was in that room.

  A moment later, Tareen returns with Boyd and his partner in tow, a worried look on Boyd’s face.

  “Hey, Marshall. Is everything okay?”

  I shrug. “Somebody broke in.”

  “Dang. That sucks.” He looks between me and Gracie, and then to Klein, and Bill the evidence guy, who trots down the steps carrying a plastic bag with the cocaine in it, and I can see the questions churning. Why would the feds be here? Why didn’t Noah call the APD?

  What trouble has Noah gotten himself into?

  God only knows what the neighbors will think, with FBI agents outside only two weeks after the last circus at this address. Reporters will be here soon enough, fishing for information.

  “Can we help you with something, Officer?” Klein asks in that calm, even voice that sounds so goddamn arrogant.

  Boyd stands a little taller as he faces Klein, his demeanor shifting instantly from longtime friend to cop-on-duty. “We were on patrol and saw the activity outside. I know there’s protocol, but if the APD can be of assistance—”

  “Thanks. I’ll let you know.” Klein cuts him off abruptly, disappearing into the kitchen to make a call.

  “Does this have anything to do with that run-in with Mantis?” Boyd asks.

  “Why would you think that?” Gracie fires back, that hard, naturally suspicious side of her making its appearance.

  “Because I’m no idiot, and nothing about what I saw yesterday looked normal,” he answers evenly.

  I sigh. “Gracie, this is Boyd; Boyd, . . .” I gesture between the two of them, making fast introductions.

  “So?” Boyd folds his arms across his chest.

  “It might. It’s . . . a long story.”

  “Do you need help, Noah?” His thick brows rise in question.

  “We need you to tell the truth about what you saw yesterday,” Gracie answers for me, her tone challenging.