Fight For Me (15 page)

“
He ain't one of ours,
that's for sure,” the guard said. “I don't mean to sound racist or
nothin', but all our janitors are Mexicans, I mean,
Hispanic.”

He barely thanked the man
before running out of the room. He knew who he was looking at, and
he hoped he knew where he was.
Hang on Cassie, I'm coming
for you.

~*~

Chris was scrawling on the white board, his
mind turning over all the information they had when he was pulled
from his thoughts by Tiffany yelling, “I need to see the footage.”
He turned to look at her at that same time Brandon barked, “What'd
you find?”

She shook her head, her hair flying and more
disheveled than the last time Chris had glanced her way. “I'm not
sure, but I don't like it,” she answered warily. “I really, really
don't like it.”

Brandon made his way to stand behind her to
lay a hand on her shoulder, the usually cocky smirk gone from his
face. “What?”

“
I only found one link
between the Rossi and the Stanza cases,” she paused, “and this
case.”

All eyes were on Tiffany as she dropped her
gaze to her computer screen. “The only tie besides Cassidy herself
is,” she paused again, her pale face losing what little color she
had, her blue eyes dimming to almost gray. She swallowed hard
before continuing. “The only link is Steve.”

Detective Steve Archer? “Where did you say
he ran off to, anyway?” Chris asked.

“
He was wrapping up the
Brewer case,” Davis answered quickly. “He was called
in.”

Chris had never seen the man anything but
cocksure, but he seemed gobsmacked. “Why did he have to wrap that
case up now?”

“
Cavendish called him, he
had to go.”

“
You sure about that?”
Jason put in from his desk across from them. “Call Cavendish, check
it out.”

“
Steve isn't dirty,” Davis
protested. “He can't be.”

The officer's delicate features tightened as
she turned her chair to face Davis. “He investigated the Rossi case
and was on the team for the Stanza case. He was in the courtroom
when Stanza threated Ms. Everett,” she stopped, wiped her palms
over her jean clad thighs, “and he wasn't with us when she was
attacked.”

“
Circumstantial,” Davis
snapped.

“
Just call your CO and
check,” Jason pressed. “If he is responsible, we have to track him
down. If he's not, then we need to reevaluate our
leads.”

Reluctantly Davis dialed Cavendish, his
posture rigid as it rang. “Did you call Archer this morning?” he
barked without any greeting at all.

Chris watched as Davis nodded, then dropped
into the chair he'd vacated minutes before. He'd lowered his voice
as he spoke to his Captain, not allowing anyone else in the room to
listen in. Davis didn't want to be overheard and wasn't happy with
what was being said, his spine under enough tension Chris was
afraid it would snap in two. When Davis tucked the phone back into
his jacket pocket, he ignored everyone in the room except Tiffany.
“How could you?” he growled, coming out of his chair and advancing
toward her.

Her brows knitted together. “How could I
what? I didn't do anything to Ms. Everett.”

“
You were fucking Steve,
you should've known.” His hazel eyes were blazing, and Chris was
afraid he'd have to jump between the two of them. Instead Tiffany
shot from her own chair to stand toe-to-toe with the detective.
“The only person I've been sleeping with it you, you asshole,” she
bit out, “and I won't be doing that anymore.”

Jason cleared his throat. “This is all very
interesting, but I don't give two shits about who's sleeping with
who. What do we know about Archer?”

Davis's fists were clenched, his back
straight, his jaw tense. He looked like he was about to explode,
but answered all the same. “Nothing happened with the Brewer case.
Archer is MIA, and Morgan here is likely onto something.” He
slammed a fist into the nearest desk. “Why the fuck would he do
this?”

“
I don't care about the
why now,” Chris put in, “what I want to know is where he would've
taken her.” The sooner they could get to her, the easier it'd be to
keep Dylan from killing Archer. He wouldn't be able to stand trial
dead, and Chris was willing to bet Archer's list of crimes
encompassed more than just those against Cassidy Everett. If Dylan
got there first, it'd just be a clean-up mission.

“
Doesn't he own a house in
Sheridan?” Tiffany asked.

Davis was pacing now. “He lived there before
his divorce. Run a search, Tiffany.”

For long moments, the only sound in the room
was the clacking of nails against the keyboard and Tiffany's quiet
curses when she ran into a problem. “He bought the property under
an assumed name, but I'm certain this is it,” she told them before
rattling off the address.

“
Are there any other
addresses?” Jason asked. “We can't afford another unnecessary
trip.”

More clacking and typing and Chris absently
held his breath. “There's a property without any buildings listed,
but it's outside of Aylesford.”

“
Monroe and I will head to
Sheridan, you and Delmonico go to the country,” Davis directed.
“I'll place a call to McNamara so he's apprised of the situation.”
He blew out a long breath. “En route, you need to figure out why
Archer snapped.”

“
Just like that?” Tiffany
spat.

“
You have insight,” Davis
insisted.

“
I never slept with the
man!” She stood again, crossed to Davis. “I know there are stories
about me, but none of them—not a single one—are true. I haven't
slept with anyone except for you.” She marched off to stand next to
Chris. “Let's go.”

Davis blinked and shook his head as if he'd
been hit. “I meant you were good at profiling.”

“
You did not,” she said
quietly and walked out the door.

Instead of getting in the middle, Chris
followed the small, curvy officer. They had to find Archer and
Cassidy, had to save the day. They didn't have time for lover's
quarrels or whatever the hell was going on with Tiffany Morgan and
Brandon Davis. “So, where are we headed?”

She gave him directions and they sped toward
what he hoped was the end of this nightmare day.

~*~

Cassidy felt like she'd been hit by a truck.
Every single part of her ached, her head was throbbing, and she was
nauseous from pain. She was also inside what looked to be a cargo
crate. Nothing about this was good, and she had no way of getting
out. Her heart beat erratically in her chest, and she lost her
breath. She was alone in a metal box, the man who had blown up her
house and car nowhere to be seen. Was she just inside a bomb now,
waiting until she turned into pink mist? She swallowed back the sob
that wanted to tear from her throat.
Think, Everett.
She wouldn't be here if she hadn't tried to run
from Dylan, if she'd admitted her feelings, if she hadn't had some
harebrained idea that leaving him would protect him. The only place
on the planet he'd let her go alone was a public restroom and not
only had she known that, her attacker had, too.

The man who had beaten the shit out of her
was tall, taller than Dylan, so there was no way is was Philip
Stanza or Nicholas Rossi, both men of relatively average height.
She racked her brain. Who would want to kill her, to terrorize her,
who was taller than Dylan's six and half feet? The only person she
knew who was that tall was Steve Archer, but he was a
detective.

Her mind spun with the possibilities. Why
would Steve terrorize her, beat her, imprison her? They hadn't
worked together much in the last five years, although he had lead
the investigation into the Rossi cartel. She thunked her head
against the cold metal wall behind her. She and Archer had nearly
come to blows over Rossi's supposed right-hand man. The evidence
just wasn't there, but Steve had pushed to prosecute. She clenched
her teeth against shooting pain in her ribs as she remembered.

“
If you can't win, you won't even bother?
Is that what you're saying?” Steve Archer's broad chest was
heaving, his dark eyes almost black.

“
If we can't win, we can't win. We won't
go forward with a case with evidence this shaky—if we did, any new
evidence wouldn't make a difference down the road. You're just
going to have to stick with Rossi.”

“
He's trafficking women, and you don't
care!” he accused.

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I
care enough not to bring a case we can't win to a jury. Nail him on
something that will stick.”

“
Dammit, Everett, I gave you all that,”
he growled.

Why couldn't he see how much she wanted to
help? Didn't he know how much she'd like to round up all the
members of Rossi's cartel, lock them up, and throw away the key?
But a case she couldn't win would just offer them validation. “No,
you didn't. And if this evidence can't convince me, how can you
think it would hold up against a jury?” She pinched the bridge of
her nose, closed her eyes. “Even if I thought the evidence was
valid, even if I wanted to pursue this, I can't. It's Simmons'
call, and he's decided we're not prosecuting.”

She almost felt threatened by the detective
towering over her, but stood her ground when he called her every
name in the book before stomping out of her office.

Everything clicked into place. Steve Archer
had been dead-set on prosecuting, and had held her and then
Commonwealth's Attorney Robert Simmons responsible when the
conviction of Rossi hadn't stopped the criminal activity in Tyler.
Three girls had disappeared from the high school a few weeks later,
and they believed the cartel had relocated in Maryland afterward.
Losing those girls, sure they had been essentially sold into
slavery made her sick, and even though she knew the evidence
brought to her by Archer wouldn't have helped, wouldn't have locked
anyone away, she'd hated herself for weeks.

She wrapped her arms
around her middle, held back a wave of nausea. What had caused
Archer to snap, to kill Robert, to use Stanza's crimes to terrorize
her? Why did she find herself imprisoned now, years after the Rossi
trial and the attempted round up of the cartel? She took a deep
breath and shoved the thought away, the pain in her ribs startling.
Why wouldn't help her now. She had no phone, no door, no way out,
and no way of getting help.
Please find me,
Dylan.

The ground shook and the blaring whistle of
a train jerked her from sleep. The train was so close it sounded
like it was bearing down on her prison, and she braced herself in
the corner so she wouldn't bang her throbbing head. Idly she
wondered where she was being shipped, and if she would live to see
it. With no water, she wouldn't survive longer than three days. She
kicked at the wall, the sound ringing in her ears. She wouldn't let
this be the way her life would end, dehydrating in a box headed for
God knew where. She kicked again, and again, and again. If she was
at a station waiting to be loaded on a train, there had to be
people around somewhere, someone who would hear her. She kept
kicking, rattling her teeth, jarring her bones, and praying she
wasn't alone.

Chapter Eleven

“
He's your partner, how
did you not see he was crazy?” Jason Monroe asked Brandon as he
drove the two of them toward Sheridan.

Good question. If he had noticed something,
he would've done something. Maybe. “He never acted crazy.”

“
They rarely do.” Monroe
glanced his way briefly. “How long have you been
partners?”

“
Less than a year. His old
partner was killed by a drug dealer during a bust.” As soon as he
said it, he wondered the same thing he was sure the other detective
was as well. “I don't know if that's just what we were all led to
believe or if it's true. I don't know anything anymore. I thought
Tiffany was sleeping her way through the department, I thought I
had a solid partner, I thought a lot of things.”

Monroe was quiet, the only sound in the car
the tapping of his thumbs against the steering wheel. “No one knows
what someone else is capable of,” he said after a few miles.

How true that was. He'd never thought
himself capable of framing an innocent woman, yet that's exactly
what he'd done not long ago. Usually he just tipped the scales in
his favor, he didn't deliberately implicate someone who wasn't
guilty. He wiped a hand down his face. All his crimes paled in
comparison to Steve's murder, arson, attempted murder, and now
whatever he'd done with Cassidy Everett. She might not be his
favorite person in the world, but even so he hoped she was still in
this world.

They found the house in Sheridan easily
enough. It looked like it hadn't been occupied for a long time, the
grass overgrown, the windows smeared with dirt. “He's not here,” he
said before they'd parked in the cracked driveway.

Monroe's eyes narrowed as he took in the
peeling paint of the beige house. “The man had millions of dollars
when he retired, yet he owns this dump and became a cop in Tyler?
It doesn't make sense.”

“
He said he joined the
force to give back. Said he earned so much money playing a game, he
needed to feel like a contributing member of society.” He'd asked
when Archer had been assigned as his partner, his own questions
similar to the Aylesford hotshot detective's. “I laughed at the
time, but he never gave me any reason to disbelieve
him.”

“
But, now you're
wondering,” Monroe stated.