Dangerous (19 page)

“Yes, well, they save a lot of lives,” Kilraven reminded her.

“So they do.”

“We won’t be long,” Kilraven said. He pushed Matt ahead of him out of the room.

Winnie stared at her mother with wide, soft eyes. She was trying to reconcile the memories of twelve years ago with the woman in the hospital bed.

“You’ve changed,” Winnie said finally.

“Yeah,” her mother said with a chuckle. “I’ve gotten older and meaner.”

“I meant, you…” She bit her lip. “It’s hard to put into words. I remember you always waiting on Daddy, bringing him things that he could have gotten for himself. He wouldn’t even make himself a sandwich. You were always jumping up, every time he called. You aren’t docile like that anymore. You’re like, well, you’re like the people I work with in Jacobs County,” she said with a faint smile. “They’re hard people, because they do a hard job. But they’re always there when you need them. They never let you down. That’s what I mean.”

“I let you down, though, didn’t I, baby?” she asked sadly. “I was such a wimp, Winnie. I let your father walk all over me, from the day I was sixteen and we got married. I was raised thinking that’s what women are supposed to do.” She smiled. “Your uncle Bruce was a high roller. He was flamboyant and full of dreams, funny and fun to be with. I’d never met anybody like him. He came to see your father twelve years ago and made a dead set at me. I’d been dominated and ignored and taken for granted for so many years…” She broke off. “I didn’t know he hated your father and wanted to score off him. I didn’t know that’s why he’d kept his distance from us, except for Christmas cards once a year. I fell, and fell hard. So we ran away together.” She shook her head. “We went to Vegas and I got a divorce, then we got a quickie wedding and went to the Bahamas. That was when I knew why he was always so hyper. He was a drug user. He shot up in the room, and wanted me to join him.” She lay back on the pillows, agonizing over the memories. “I used my ticket and came back to the States. I wouldn’t sleep with him. He came to see me and confessed that he’d only wanted me because he hated your father for, as he said, cheating him out of the ranch. It didn’t happen that way, but that’s another story.”

“You never slept with him?” Matt had told her as much, but she needed to hear it from her.

She shook her head. “I found him repulsive when I saw him using drugs. I could never do that. You know, I never even had a parking ticket my whole life. My grandfather was a U.S. Marshal.”

“Wow,” Winnie said, impressed. “That would be my great-grandfather.”

Gail nodded. “He was quite a guy. I used to have clippings of some of his exploits, but I wouldn’t know where to look for them, after all this time. I imagine your father threw all my things out.”

“Actually, he didn’t get the chance to,” Winnie told her. “You remember old George, who drives the cattle trucks for us?”

“Yes.”

“Daddy put the stuff out and told him to carry it off, but George hid it in the attic while Daddy was gone hunting.”

Gail was surprised. “And you didn’t throw it out, Winnie? You had good reason to.”

“I didn’t think about it,” Winnie confessed. “I was just ten years old. George said we had to keep it, and he was a grownup, so I kept the secret.” She smiled. “I hadn’t thought about it in years! All those things, even your trunk, they’re still up in the attic.” She hesitated. “You might like to come down and look at them sometime.”

Gail smiled hesitantly. “I might.”

“What happened after you got home from the Bahamas?” Winnie asked.

“I had no money, your father had cut off my credit card and emptied our joint bank account,” she said with a sigh. “I had a little savings account that he couldn’t touch, just a few thousand dollars, but it was enough to get me an apartment and a few clothes to wear. I didn’t know how I was going to make a living, but I thought about Granddaddy, and I knew I might have a future in law enforcement. I was athletic and healthy and strong for my height, and I looked younger than I really was. So I applied, and they accepted me. I did the police academy thing, graduated with honors, and got a job with the San Antonio Police Department. Last year, I got promoted to homicide detective sergeant. It’s the best job I’ve ever had. I love it.”

“I worked as a clerk for the Jacobsville Police Department for a while, before I got the job as a 911 operator,” Winnie told her. “I figured I was too soft to be a cop.”

Gail laughed. “So did I. But I seemed to fit right in.”

“Our uncle… He lived in San Antonio, didn’t he?”

“Oh, yes, he did,” she said heavily. “He was a pest, always needing money, wanting loans, wanting me to go back to your father and make it all up to him so that he could get forgiven and back in your father’s good graces.” She shook her head. “All those dreams he had, but the drugs got in the way of anything he tried to do. In the end, they killed him. But not before he’d done permanent damage to Matt.”

“Matt told us about that,” Winnie said coldly. “I couldn’t believe a man would be so coldhearted as to do that to his own nephew.”

“He could do that, and more,” she said. “He got mixed up with Senator Sanders’s hoodlum brother,” she added. “I thought he was just a ‘gofer,’ just an extra hand for the local bad guys. But he might have had his hand in more than that. I didn’t want anything to do with him, but especially after he crippled Matt and almost killed him. I swear to God, if I could have proved it, I’d have had him sent to prison for life for attempted murder. But it was only Matt’s word against his.” She shook her head. “He always could talk his way out of anything.” She lay back on the pillows with a grimace. “Then he had the gall to come to the apartment when I was working and tell Matt that he needed to borrow the motorized wheelchair. Matt’s so good-hearted, he said sure.” She winced. “He sold it to buy drugs. I saved every extra dime I had for almost a year and a half just to afford it, and then my coworkers put in the last couple of hundred dollars I was short…” Her voice trailed off.

“Matt will have a new one tomorrow,” she said gently. “It’s all right.”

Gail looked at the ceiling, fighting tears. “One stupid mistake. I made one stupid mistake, and I’ve paid for it, over and over again. If I could only go back and change it.” She shook her head. “But there’s no way. You kids paid a higher price than I did for that one mistake I made. I’m so sorry, Winnie. So sorry…!”

She was sobbing. Winnie ran to her, pulled the blond head into her arms and rocked it, crying, too.

“It’s okay, Mama,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”

The sobs grew louder. Gail had gone so long without hope, missing her children, wanting to see them. It had been impossible. Now here was her daughter, forgiving her, comforting her. It was like a new start. It was even worth getting shot.

Winnie laughed, because she’d said that last bit aloud. “Please don’t get shot again,” she said gently.

“I’ll do my best, baby,” Gail promised. She drew back, dabbing at her eyes with the sheet.

Winnie pulled out a paper towel and dabbed at her own eyes.

Kilraven appeared in the doorway and hesitated.

“Women’s Terrorist and Sobbing Society?” Kilraven quipped.

“What a great legend for a T-shirt,” Winnie exclaimed. “I’ll have some made up right away.” She glanced at her mother and laughed. “You can have one, too.”

“I’ll wear it to work and drive my lieutenant bonkers,” Gail promised, laughing.

Kilraven handed Winnie a cup of coffee in a plastic cup. “It looks weak.”

“I don’t care. It’s still coffee,” she said.

Gail shook her head. “What I wouldn’t give for a cup of that.”

“I’d let you share it, but the nurses would probably smell it on your breath and have us thrown out,” Winnie reasoned.

“Evil girls,” Gail muttered.

“I understand from the night nurse that you’ve been an interesting patient,” Kilraven said with pursed lips and twinkling eyes. “Sneaking out the door and down to the street in your gown and a robe to have a cigarette?”

She glared at him. “You can’t smoke in here, they won’t let you.”

“You could quit,” he pointed out.

“You know what you could do, too,” Gail shot right back.

He chuckled as he glanced at Winnie. “See? That’s you in twenty years.”

“God forbid!” Gail said.

“Stop that,” Winnie told her. “You’re not bad.”

“I guess I ought to quit smoking, sure enough. But it won’t help my other shortcomings. I yell at people, I do terrible things to uniformed officers,” Gail began.

“What do you do to uniformed officers?” Kilraven wondered.

“Only if they threaten to mess up my crime scene,” Gail said defensively.

“What?”

“I send them to other precincts to question people I think might be involved in my cases.”

“Oh? That doesn’t sound too bad,” Winnie commented.

“I give them false names of people in lockup,” she confessed.

“And you’re calling the nurses evil?” Kilraven asked.

She glowered at him. “They won’t let me smoke and drink coffee.”

“You should quit smoking,” Kilraven pointed out.

“Oh, sure, it’s easy, I’ll start right now,” Gail said sarcastically. “Have you ever tried to quit?”

“Sure. I quit two years ago.” He frowned. “And I quit five years before that. And I quit seven years ago.” He smiled.

“Have you ever stayed quit?” she persisted.

“I’ve been clean for two years,” he pointed out. “And as long as I don’t have anything traumatic to upset me, I probably can stay quit for the rest of my life.”

Gail was looking at him curiously. “That’s a big if.”

He shrugged. “I like cigars.” He glared at Winnie when she made a face. “I’m not the only person around who likes a good cigar. They say the governor of California likes them, too.”

“Smelly, stinky things,” Winnie scoffed.

He lifted his eyebrows. “Yes? Well, if you marry me, you’ll just have to get used to them, won’t you?”

“Not for long,” she said under her breath.

He leaned back in his chair. “Yes. Not for long.”

“I wish I could come to the wedding,” Gail said heavily. “But they won’t let me out for another few days. I don’t even know how many. The doctor won’t come in here anymore so I can ask him.”

“I saw him in the hall,” Kilraven told her. “He says he’s never coming back in here, because you grill him like a murder suspect.”

“I do not,” she said haughtily. “I only wanted to know when I could go home.”

“It’s the way you asked him,” Kilraven said. “Need to work on your people skills, Rogers,” he pointed out.

“Blow my people skills,” she returned hotly. “I can’t sit around here in my underwear while whoever shot me goes from bar to lowlife bar, bragging about it! I want to lock him up and throw away the key, as soon as I find out who the hell he is!”

“He may not be bragging about it.”

“Of course he’s bragging about it, he shot a cop and got away with it,” she said, smoldering. Her dark eyes narrowed. “But not for long. I’ll track him down if it takes me five years!”

“See?” Kilraven said, nodding toward Winnie’s mother, “that’s why she makes a good detective.”

“Speaking of detectives, are they any closer to finding out who blindsided Marquez?” Gail asked, diverted.

“No,” Kilraven told her. “They’re still working the case. They’ll add yours to it. I’d bet half my pension that they’re connected, somehow.”

“It’s all connected,” Gail said. “The murder of your family, the DB in the Little Carmichael River in Jacobsville, the death of Senator Fowler’s employee, Marquez’s mugging and my wounds. All tied together. Something else, Kilraven—I seriously think we should reopen the case of that young girl who was found murdered just before your family was killed.”

Kilraven’s silver eyes glittered. “You still think there’s a connection. Why?”

“Look at the cases,” she said intently. “Both victims were found in such a condition that only DNA could identify them. The killers have never been found. I heard that the killer left a thermos near the submerged car that the perp was driving. Left it out in the open, wiped clean of prints.” Her eyes narrowed. “Bruce Sinclair, my ex-husband, had one just like it. My question is, how did it wind up in Jacobsville?”

“Did your ex give it to someone?” Kilraven asked.

“I don’t know. But we need to find out. You might go to see that hophead girlfriend of his, the one who was living with him,” Gail suggested. “I don’t know if she’s sober enough to remember anything, but it’s worth a try. Just be careful,” she added. “Somebody’s targeting people connected with this case.”

“This isn’t the time to be careful,” he replied. “It’s time to put the heat on the perps, take the fight into their own territory. I have a hunch that Senator Will Sanders’s brother is up to his neck in these cases.”

Gail nodded. “So do I. How do we prove it?”

Kilraven leaned back in his chair. “I’m going to put the word out on the street that Hank Sanders is being looked at as a potential suspect in two assaults on law enforcement officers. Let’s see what happens.”

Gail’s dark eyes sparkled. “What original thinking.”

“Thank you,” he replied with a chuckle. “It just might flush somebody out.”

“Or he might sacrifice somebody to get the heat off himself,” she replied.

“Or he might tell his brother the senator, and the two of you might be out of a job,” Winnie said solemnly.

“In which case,” Kilraven told her, “we’ll go to Senator Fowler and plead our cases. He had Sanders back off before when he took your mother off the case and busted her back to traffic duty.”

“Senator Sanders had you demoted?” she asked Gail, shocked.

Gail nodded. “I didn’t know it at the time, not until Alice Jones let something slip about her fiancé’s father. That’s Senator Fowler,” she added.

“Yes, Harley’s father.” Winnie nodded.

“Who?” Gail wanted to know.

“Harley Fowler. He works for Cy Parks on his ranch.”

Gail shook her head. “That’s after my time, I’m afraid. I don’t know Mr. Parks.”

“He’s very nice.”

“Nice.” Kilraven chuckled. He glanced at her. “Listen, that old lobo wolf may be married and have kids, but don’t think he’s tame.”