CLOSE TO YOU: Enhanced (Lost Hearts) (35 page)

             
She looked like her mother's baby pictures.

             
Eventually, the Prescotts wore him down.

             
From his first day, Pepper seemed to think he was a rebel like her, and she had run to him with her problems. He found himself explaining her outrageous behavior to her parents, and, as often as not, he got her free from time-outs.

             
When he'd started school in Hobart, some of the boys picked on him. Hope had interfered, and what would have been a nice, quiet, new-kid trouncing had grown into a raucous fight involving a furious Hope, who belabored their prejudice and unchristian behavior. Despite a visit to the principal's office to get Hope and Gabriel out of trouble, the Prescotts pronounced themselves pleased with their children—and they meant Gabriel, too.

             
Mother Prescott hugged him every night before he went to bed and every morning before he went to school. Father Prescott dragged him out into the shop to learn woodworking because, he said, in a household of women men needed to have their own space. And at the age of five weeks, Caitlin smiled her first baby smile at him.

             
That was why, on his second Christmas with the Prescotts, he thanked his new parents by calling them Daddy and Mama.

             
For one moment, the Christmas celebration had grown quiet. Daddy smiled at him and nodded. Mama's eyes filled with tears, and she wrapped him in a hug. It was, for Gabriel, a seminal moment, one of two that defined him for the rest of his life.

             
The other was the murder of his parents and the destruction of his family.

             
He had almost all his siblings back now. Hope and Zack and their kids. Pepper and Dan and their kids.

             
But he didn't know where Caitlin was. The loss of their baby gnawed at the fabric of the family's contentment.

             
Right now Hope, Pepper, and Zack were flying in from Boston to join Dan and Gabriel, Jason Urbano and Griswald in Austin. The whole family and their friends were determined to see the completion of their sting operation. Everyone wanted to be present when they caught George Oberlin in their trap. They all wanted to make him confess to their parents' murders; they would force themselves to be satisfied with the information about Caitlin.

             
Then, with God's help, they would find her.

             
This was the culmination of twenty-three years of misery, heartache, and planning. The family was balanced on a knife's edge. They would allow nothing to get in their way. No one to destroy this chance.

             
Which was why, when Gabriel heard his computer alarm go off, he read the blinking message and picked up the phone. "Hey, Dan, do we know anything about Ramos Security? Because someone there has been snooping around Senator George Oberlin."

TWENTY

             
First thing in the morning, Brad called Kate into his office. "How do my eyes look?" he asked.

             
She looked at them, red-rimmed and bleary "Fine?" she ventured.

             
"They look like two piss holes in the snow." He leaned menacingly over his desk. "Don't they?"

             
"Yes, sir."

             
"That's because that's how they feel. Do you know"—he glared at her—"what a big pain in the ass you are?"

             
"I have my suspicions." Was he still mad about the school-funding vote?

             
"No. There's no way you can know how much trouble you've put me through." Opening his desk drawer, he pulled out a half-filled bottle of bourbon. "First for the good senator, then for your damned boyfriend."

             
One thing at a time. "The good senator?"

             
"He wanted you to have this job. You might say he insisted."

             
"He insisted." She could scarcely wrap her mind around Brad's words. "Senator George Oberlin insisted I have this job?
This
job?"

              "Hell, yes! Got a phone call one night, and just like always, I did as I was told. Oberlin has that effect on people." The biting odor of bourbon wafted across the desk as Brad filled a plastic cup.

             
"Why? Why did he want you to give me a job?"

             
"I don't know." Brad was weaving on his feet. "I'm not on the list of people permitted to ask him personal questions. I'm too far below him on the social scale. I'm on meds for—" Brad caught himself. "Oberlin doesn't confide in me."

             
She grew cold. "Have you had to hire other reporters for him?"

             
"No, this was a first." Emphatically Brad shook his head.

             
Brad was drunk. And maybe more than drunk. Coke? Tranquilizers? She didn't know what Brad's problem was, why he was on meds. She didn't care. He was talking; she was listening. "You didn't report on Oberlin's wife trying to stab me. Is this why? Because you have to do as you're told?"

             
"Aren't you clever?" Brad sneered. "A regular Einstein of the reporters' pool. But for someone who sashays around here thinking she knows everything, she sure has a lot of guys managing her from behind the scenes.

             
"Who else?" Heat shot through her.

             
"Another one of your boyfriends. I shouldn't follow instructions, but what can I do? I'm not going to get beat up for the sake of little Miss Montgomery."

             
"Are you talking about Teague Ramos? Teague gave you instructions?" Kate's eyes narrowed into slits. If Brad had been anything but blasted, he would have been afraid—of
her
.

             
But right now, he hadn't the sense God gave a garter snake. "Teague wants you assigned to something that will keep you busy and out of trouble." Brad took a good, long drink. "So I'm sending you to interview elementary school teachers about the school-funding bill and how it will impact their jobs."

             
"That's a good piece." She knew she sounded genial. Too bad she couldn't stop clenching her hands into fists.

             
"What trouble can you get in at a grade school?"

             
"You are so right. What trouble can I get into doing my job?" Teague had said he was going to trust her. He had said he wasn't going to check up on her. He had lied—although she supposed he hadn't realized Brad was mouthy when inebriated.

             
She was so mad, she was almost hyperventilating. "I should speak to at least three teachers."

             
"At least." Brad couldn't have made his indifference more clear.

             
"Probably one in Austin, one in New Braunfels, and one . . . somewhere rural." She hesitated. "Shall we say Hobart, Texas?"

             
"Sure. If there's a Hobart, Texas, then you go interview a teacher there. Don't come back until you're ready. I am, believe it or not, a busy man, and I've got more important things to do than babysit every reporter who works for me." Brad fluttered his fingers at her." 'Bye."

             
She stood, betrayed and stripped of her pride. "Hobart it is. Thanks, Brad. You've been a big help."

             
"How's Oberlin today?" Teague asked as he entered the main security office.

             
"Not as twitchy as yesterday," Gemma replied, her gaze fixed to the monitors. "Although he's starting to ask around for Kate. Look." She pointed. "He just spoke to Linda Nguyen, who about took his head off."

             
"That girl better be careful." Big Bob leaned back in his chair with his eyes closed. "It seems our boy is pretty good at removing heads himself."

             
"Or at least bashing them in." Rolf sat before the computer. He assessed Teague with a glance. "You look like hell, Teague."

             
"I'm okay." Teague passed off his various injuries as minor, but he knew if they hadn't rescued him, the thugs would have overwhelmed him and he'd have had internal bleeding and major broken bones . . . if he had been lucky enough to survive. Obviously Oberlin hadn't ordered his death, or he'd be in the morgue with a bullet hole in his chest. But he'd wanted to give Teague a warning, or make him suffer for poaching, or both. Or maybe mess him up enough so that Kate wouldn't love him anymore . . . that hadn't worked too well.

             
"Yeah, he's okay," Big Bob said. "No one cares about
him
, anyway. How's Kate?"               "She's fine, thank you."

             
"She fights good for a girl." Big Bob pulled on one of Gemma's curls.

Teague chuckled softly. His sweet girl Kate had rushed right into a fight, swinging her shoe and her briefcase and blasting two professional hit men. Sure, they'd obviously had instructions not to hurt her, but she'd still done damage.

              "The guys who beat you up . . . they're in jail, charged with assault and battery. The police say the men don't know who hired them. All it took was a voice on the phone and a valid Visa card." Gemma looked grim. "Which, by the way, is billed to an address in Mexico."

             
"Figures," Teague said. Last night Kate had been more than willing to press him to the mattress and kiss him tenderly, caress each of his bruises, hold him down and have sex with the care of a woman in love.

             
In fact, she'd said . . . it was in the middle of that fight, in the middle of a sentence, and she seemed unaware . . . but she had said she loved him.

             
Well, not exactly. She had said,
I let love sweep me off my feet and out of any good sense I ever learned.

             
He hadn't responded, but that didn't mean he hadn't noticed. That was why he had reclined on the bed and fought every primitive conquering instinct to let her make sweet love to him. It had been a strain, but my God, the rewards had been worth it.

             
"Boss?" Rolf gestured him over. "I've got something for you."

             
Breaking free of his reverie, Teague hustled over. "On Oberlin?"

             
"He is one interesting piece of shit." Rolf fixed his Nordic blue eyes on Teague. "May I point out, it took some major hacking to get this."

             
"May I point out, that's why I pay you the big bucks." Pulling up a chair, Teague eased himself down. Cracked ribs were a bitch.

             
"May I point out you may have to bust me out of jail because I had to hack into federal computers."

             
"Don't worry, man." Teague clapped his hand on Rolf's shoulder. "I'll be there every visiting day."

             
"That's all right then." Rolf pointed to his computer screen. "A woman in Houston—Gloria Cunningham— spoke to the police and the FBI about the good senator, practiclly accusing him of embezzlement and murder. She's from Hobart, Texas, same place Oberlin is from. The FBI got riled up. Apparently the Feds have been unhappy about a courthouse fire that happened quite a few years ago. Took out a bunch of official documents. That led them to listen to Mrs. Cunningham very seriously. Now they're investigating other matters in Hobart. Crimes that have been too easily solved by the local cops—and unexplained deaths. They sent a couple of agents out to visit Oberlin, and the agents' report was not good." Rolf turned away from the screen. "They seem to think Oberlin fits the profile of a possible serial killer."

             
"Yeah." Teague pushed back. A
serial killer
. Last night for the first time he'd said the words to Kate. Today the FBI concurred.

             
"He doesn't kill for fun, you understand, just the people who get in his way," Rolf said. "With a face like you're wearing, I'd say you're in his way."

             
"I know," Teague said. "I don't want to get out of his way, though. If I did, there'd be nothing between him and Kate." And she thought she . . . she said she loved Teague. Not that he wouldn't protect anyone with equal fervor, but something special had happened when she'd said that.

             
Love
.

             
First Big Bob and the other guys had said she had him hog-tied. Then her words:
I let love sweep me off my feet and out of any good sense I ever learned.