Finding Her Son (10 page)

As charming as Mitch could be—and Emily had to admit, she liked him—he had that deadly look that she’d hate to be on the wrong side of.

They climbed up the stairs, and Emily kept a close eye on his gait. She could see a bit of strain, but he powered through the stiffness, not giving away anything. One more thing to appreciate about him—he had grit.

Mitch turned a corner. Perry’s office door was cracked open. And quiet. Mitch paused. His entire body tensed; his stance screamed alert. He leaned forward. “You ever seen the door ajar?” His voice was so quiet she could barely hear him.

He pointed to the other doors down the hall. All of them were closed. She strained to remember.

“No,” she whispered. “I’ve always knocked.”

“Stay behind me.”

He moved in front of her and pulled a gun from beneath his jacket. With caution, he eased toward the office. His back against the wall, he slowly pushed at the wood.

He stepped through the entrance and stilled.

Emily peeked around him.

Perry Young faced them, on his knees, his face bruised, his nose bleeding, his hands behind his head.

A masked figure stood behind the PI, a gun at his head.

Perry lifted resigned eyes and met Emily’s gaze.

“Eighty-five!” he yelled.

The gun went off.

Chapter Five

Perry Young’s face exploded. Blown off too fast for Mitch to pull the trigger at the killer. He shoved Emily into the hall and aimed his Glock. “Denver police. Put the gun down. Now.”

The man leaped over Perry’s rickety desk and crashed through the window. Mitch skidded across the old wood floor, hitching through the opening onto the fire escape. The perp bounded down to the first landing and then hurtled to the ground.

Mitch eyed the distance. Too far. He took the steps as quickly as possible, cursing every one. A few months ago, he would’ve had this guy the second the assassin hit the brown, winter grass. Mitch jumped the last few stairs and landed on the turf. His leg seized, but he ignored the pain. Some kids stood staring, a soccer ball rolling across the yard. Mitch couldn’t risk a shot. He gripped his gun as the man raced past the group.

Mitch’s legs pumped hard in pursuit as the kids scattered, but the man shot off like he was used to doing hundred-yard sprints. Within seconds the killer shoved through a fence. By the time Mitch slammed open the gate, his quarry had disappeared. A motorcycle revved and peeled away, but Mitch couldn’t see anything through the thicket of trees guarding the street.

Cursing, Mitch slipped his gun back into the holster. What good was rehab if he couldn’t run down a murder suspect?

And he’d left Emily alone.

Mitch raced back to Perry’s office, using the stairs this time to preserve the scene. Expecting to see her trembling in the hallway, his gut fell when he reached the second floor. Empty. Silent.

Had the whole thing been a diversion? Had someone else been waiting to take her?

He redrew his weapon and entered the room. There she was, behind Perry’s desk, rifling through the papers. Not just papers. Evidence.

“What are you doing? This is a crime scene.”

“He’s my last connection.” Emily tore through another drawer, eyes wild with desperation, her movements frantic. “There has to be something here. Something about Joshua. The tattoo. The cops.”

Mitch limped around the desk. He tugged at her hands, enclosing them in his fists, and pulled her away from the stack of papers. “Look at me, Emily.” She raised her gaze to his, and he released one hand to let his finger run down her cheek. “Let’s go into the hall and call for the crime-scene unit.”

She tugged away from him. “Don’t treat me like I’m a fragile doll. I’m not.”

Her hand hovered over her throat as her husky voice cracked a bit—a stark reminder of just how much she’d endured.

“Perry can’t just be gone.” She stared at his body.

The killer had used a hollow point. The PI hadn’t stood a chance. Her face lost all color, but she didn’t look away.

“He told me to come alone. To tell no one.” She rounded on Mitch. “You heard him. Did you reveal to
anyone
where we were going? Tanner, maybe?”

The unspoken accusation hung like poison between them, her suspicions palpable. Mitch stiffened, but as he stared at what was left of Perry’s head, and the blood and brain splattered across the floor, his mind clicked through the possibilities of who might have known of their destination. Ian knew. Tanner knew. If his boss had told anyone…She had every right to be distrustful.

So did Mitch.

Until he was sure who had killed Perry and tried to kill Emily, he had to be extremely cautious. He couldn’t trust the police department. The realization skewered his gut.

Mitch guided her into the hallway, pressed close against him. “A few months ago, I would’ve ignored the suggestion someone I know could be responsible for attacking you. Or for killing Perry. Since then, the man I trusted more than anyone on the force set me up for an ambush. He caused this.” Mitch tapped his bad leg. “I’m not discounting anything anymore.” He turned Emily in his arms. “That means we’re on our own. Fewer resources to find your son until we’re certain who our friends are. Can you live with that?”

“Perry paid with his life for helping me. It’s my fault. I can’t ask you to take that same risk.”

Her voice had turned monotone. Shock had settled in.

“His death’s not your fault. Blame the guy who pulled the trigger.” He willed her to look at him until the cloudy, stunned look faded from her expression. “I will tell you one thing, though. This means Perry was onto something. He discovered a connection he shouldn’t have, and they wanted him silenced.”

Mitch pulled out his cell phone, and Emily stilled his hand.

“Who are you calling?”

“The police. I have to notify them of the shooting. No choice. If I don’t, someone else will, and we can be placed here.”

Mitch didn’t like the churning in his gut. He studied Emily’s jittery movements as he made the call. Her life was at stake. He couldn’t let her down, so he’d have to accept the weight of his deception. Until he could uncover the truth.

“They’ll be here in a few minutes. I need you to think back to every conversation you’ve had with Perry in the past month.”

Emily bit down on the side of her lip, concentrating. “He got real excited about Sister Kate’s shelter. Said things didn’t smell right there. You heard the phone call. Oh, he really wanted me to get a good look at Ghost’s tattoo.”

Pain flashed in her eyes, and she massaged her temple. Mitch had seen that look before. When he’d pushed her to remember that night, she’d had the same expression.

“You’re starting to remember,” he said.

“A red and green tattoo. Some kind of figure, I think.”

“What else did Perry tell you?” Mitch asked.

“I don’t know. I took notes. They’re at the house.”

“How about the number he yelled right before—”

Emily’s eyes cleared. “Eighty-five! His code. He talked about how when he got tidbits of information, he never wanted to be the only one who had them. He stashed them away.”

“Good for Perry. Do you know where he kept the files?”

“He told me if anything ever happened to him, to remember that a sommelier would find the files before the bad guys.”

“He hid his evidence in his wine rack?”

“I don’t know.” Panic laced her voice. “Oh, God. He never told me his hiding place.”

“What about your contract? Paperwork he gave you?”

Her vision cleared. “Maybe. He wouldn’t have just said that word without thinking I could find it, right?”

“Exactly. Let’s search for a liquor stash in his office. The guy was an alcoholic from what I gather. We’ll find it.” He glanced at his watch and held her shoulders. Mitch whistled through his teeth. “Listen to me carefully. I can’t touch the evidence in that room. Rules, you know.” He slipped on a pair of gloves that hadn’t been standard issue for him until he’d been benched from SWAT. “But your fingerprints are already on his desk. So…”

He watched her eyes widen with comprehension. She hurried back inside Perry’s office, avoiding the body on the floor, but focused. His Emily was fearless.

He followed her into the room. They rifled through papers and opened drawers, but there was nothing helpful. No wine bottles, just a half-full flask of whisky. No address of a store. He shook his head at Perry’s body. The man had a code word. That meant he had a plan. He had to have left a clue somewhere.

Sirens screamed in the distance.

“We’re out of time.” Mitch tugged Emily’s hand and started toward the exit.

She tugged one last time on a last locked drawer before grabbing a letter opener and jimmying the lock. She snagged a small box containing files, notes and an unopened bottle of wine. She gave him a challenging look. He sighed, then nodded.

“What about his apartment?” she said. “Can we go there, too?”

“The investigators’ll be all over his place. We’ll stash the box in my SUV and wait for the cops downstairs. Then we go to your place and look at the evidence and your notes. Maybe we’ll get lucky. I’ll keep an eye on the investigation. If they find liquor bottles, I’ll know about it.”

“But you won’t tell Tanner, right?”

Her voice made his skin prickle. He didn’t like not trusting his colleagues. The men he’d put his life on the line for a hundred times.

“For now.”

“I
CAN’T GET
P
ERRY
out of my mind,” Emily said quietly as Mitch maneuvered the SUV up the road toward her house. The image of his faceless body chilled her far more than the winter that had taken hold, or the clearing of leafless aspens poking through the surrounding pines.

They’d spent too long giving statements to the police. After a scathing lecture, Tanner had warned both of them not to leave town, informing them they were persons of interest in Perry’s execution.

She pictured his endearing face, his ruddy cheeks, the deep crow’s-feet at the corner of his eyes, the eagerness with which he came to her to give her one more bit of news. The excitement in his final phone call.

“His last words were to help me.”

“And we won’t let him down,” Mitch said. “We’ll find out what got him killed.”

“And make them pay.” She twisted in her seat. “I want them to pay for taking the life of an innocent man. He didn’t have to die.”

Mitch squeezed her hand. “We’ll figure this out, Emily. I won’t stop until we do.”

She stared at his large, strong fingers engulfing hers. She believed him. He wouldn’t give up. Not like William or even Eric had. The Wentworth brothers had both gone down the path of least resistance—Eric by avoiding his family, William by giving into them. Mitch would never have done either. He didn’t walk away from a fight, he ran toward conflict and battled it out. He was a protector, a warrior. Perhaps that’s why she felt safe when she was near him.

She gripped him hard as a familiar stretch of road loomed around the next corner. The police had removed the signs of the roadside investigation. Only the scarred pavement where the cars had burned remained. A few hundred feet farther, a white cross rose in the gravel.

A barren cross.

“They took the poinsettias,” Emily whispered.

“Evidence. I’m sorry.”

“I need to replace them,” she said quietly as they passed the memorial. “Eric’s favorite.”

“I’ll take you to a florist’s,” Mitch said as he turned onto her street. “Whose car is outside your house?” His voice had tensed; his hands gripped the steering wheel as if he were ready to spin the SUV around.

Emily turned. A familiar black Mercedes sat running at the front curb. She didn’t need to see inside its tinted windows to know who waited for her. “Oh, no. Not today.”

“Who is it?”

“Victoria. The woman who believes I’m the worst thing that ever happened to her family—especially Eric.” Emily swiped at the errant hairs and the char and dirt on her clothes. Nothing like looking as if she’d just climbed out of a ditch to give her oh-so-perfect mother-in-law more ammunition.

Emily bit her lip and slid a glance to Mitch. “Do you mind staying in the car while I get rid of her?”

“Yes, actually I do. I’m interested in what Mrs. Wentworth has to say. Like how far she’d go to make you look suspicious. And why she happens by for a visit on the day you were almost killed.”

The implication of his words sent waves of shock through Emily. No way. The Wentworths wouldn’t risk anything that could cost them an ounce of respect.

Mitch pulled the SUV into the driveway. Just as he and Emily exited the vehicle, a driver opened the back door of the Mercedes. Victoria Wentworth stepped out and paused. Her simple black Chanel suit said much more in subtlety than her biting insults said with a smile. She waited, clearly expecting the peons to approach her. Emily sighed and started to her, but Mitch grabbed her hand and tugged her back.