Game of Fear
Authors: Robin Perini
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Suspense, #Romance, #Romantic Suspense, #Mystery & Suspense, #Series
Praise for the Montgomery Justice Novels
“The Montgomery Justice series satisfies on all levels, with plots that dovetail into one another and characters that aren’t always what they seem.”
—RT Book Reviews
on
Behind the Lies
“Robin Perini is synonymous with stellar romantic suspense.”
—USA Today
Happy Ever After Blog on
Behind the Lies
“Perini refreshes romantic suspense.”
—Publishers Weekly
on
In Her Sights
“This riveting book will keep readers on the edge of their seats and surprise them at the end. The tightly woven plot, quick pace and complex characters make for a remarkable read.”
—RT Book Reviews
on
In Her Sights
“Robin Perini will keep you perched on the edge of your seat. Danger, excitement and romance…everything a reader craves!”
—New York Times
bestselling author Brenda Novak, on
In Her Sights
“Robin Perini delivers the goods—
Game of Fear
is an intelligent, fast-paced romantic thriller that kept my heart racing and the pages flying.”
—
Karen Rose
, New York Times
bestselling author
Also by Robin Perini
Finding Her Son
Cowboy in the Crossfire
Christmas Conspiracy
Undercover Texas
The Cradle Conspiracy
Secret Obsession
Christmas Justice
The Montgomery Justice Novels
In Her Sights (Luke’s story)
Behind the Lies
(Zach’s story)
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2014 Robin Perini
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
ISBN-13: 9781611098914
ISBN-10: 1611098912
Cover design by The Book Designers
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014905351
To Claire Cavanaugh, the sister of my heart. For listening in times of trouble, for celebrating in times of joy, for crying with me in times of sorrow, and for carrying me when I couldn’t walk on my own. This book is for you, my friend.
Contents
PROLOGUE
Eight years ago
T
HREE IN THE
morning cloaked too
many secrets.
Seventeen-year-old Gabe Montgomery slipped around the side of the Denver bus terminal trying to stay out of sight. A blaring horn pierced the night and the hydraulic hiss of a bus door’s opening snaked through the crowd.
A puff of warmth from an idling engine doused the November air in an eerie fog. Gabe shrank into the shadows. If he knew how to do anything, it was sneak. Tonight, for example, after partying at a club his father had forbidden, Gabe had stuck one leg into his bedroom window sight unseen—until he’d caught his father sneaking out of the house dressed like a stealth ninja.
Gabe couldn’t resist. Maybe it was time for some payback. The last time he’d disappeared from his bed, his father had been waiting up when Gabe had crawled through the window. The memory of the scathing insults that followed still burned. The lecture about being smart in his choices or he’d never be good enough for the force still irked. Well, Gabe had his old man now, tailing him without being seen.
Except something was very wrong.
The smell of diesel clung to the air surrounding the fleet of buses. Gabe recognized the bulge beneath his dad’s coat, just under his shoulder, packing heat where most wouldn’t notice. His movements were too furtive to be answering a routine call from the sheriff’s office. And Patrick Montgomery sure as hell wasn’t wearing his official uniform.
His father glanced around, the guilty look on his face twisting Gabe’s gut. He wanted to believe that one of his brothers had called, making a surprise visit home from the military, but he knew better.
Patrick Montgomery was hiding something, and Gabe’s mission had changed. He vowed to discover his father’s secret.
Gabe pressed against the bus terminal wall, his back digging against the brick, but the bite didn’t faze him. His father stood in the shadows, nearly invisible in his black garb, surveying the area around him as if expecting an attack at any moment. Twice he’d checked his weapon and more than once peered into the darkness.
Gabe’s father had decent radar, not as good as Mom with her Spidey sense, but decent. He could obviously feel Gabe watching.
“Damn right I’m watching, Dad.” Big-man cop didn’t even know his seventeen-year-old son had tailed him here.
Yeah, Dad. Your kid can outmaneuver you after all.
Gabe had wanted to be a cop since he was six. He knew what it took. But he’d been on the other side of the law, too, and had to admit sometimes walking off the straight and narrow path was more fun. He’d gotten into enough trouble this year to know the inside of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office jail all too well. He hadn’t spent as much time there as his older brother Zach, but Gabe figured he had a semester left to surpass the troublemaker of the Montgomery clan. Problem was, being the youngest of six hell-raising brothers, Gabe hadn’t recognized that Patrick Montgomery no longer possessed a whole lot of patience. Being grounded half of senior year sucked.
Pissed Gabe off. His father was a poster child for perfect. Perfect cop, perfect husband, perfect father.
To be honest, he’d never doubted that absolute truth. Until tonight.
Gabe squatted down and squinted through the night, out of his father’s line of sight. The scent of gasoline burned Gabe’s nose. The exhaust hit his lungs and he fought back a cough. Had to be quiet.
His dad was antsy, nervous. He fidgeted like Gabe had never seen, and Gabe had definitely never witnessed that particular expression on his father’s face. What was his dad hiding? Had he gone over to the dark side? Gabe had heard his dad whisper over the phone about good cops going bad enough to know it happened.
His entire body stilled. Maybe he should just go. Did he even want to know the truth? He shoved the apprehension aside. He needed to know.
A bus pulled into the station, its headlights sweeping the parking lot and momentarily exposing an unexpected sadness on his father’s face. Another emotion—anticipation—glittered in his eyes. Who was his dad waiting for?
The doors opened and, one after another, passengers disembarked. The excited, the down-and-out, the dead-tired . . .
Then a teenager with long, dark brown hair exited and scanned the terminal area suspiciously. Patrick straightened, his entire body going on alert.
Gabe took another look at the girl. A weird sense of déjà vu swept through him. She looked familiar, but Gabe knew he’d never seen her before.
She was gorgeous.
And scared.
She turned back to help the blonde girl behind her make it down the few stairs to the street. Ugly bruises marred the blonde’s face and each step made her grimace and hug her arms to her body, as if her ribs ached.
Patrick Montgomery stepped out of the shadows and caught the girls’ attentions, the relief on their faces obvious.
Idiot
. Here he’d been suspecting his father was up to no good, yet obviously this was police business. He’d kick Gabe’s butt for following him here. What if these teenagers were going into WITSEC or something? Maybe there was a U.S. Marshal around, too.
Gabe shrank farther into the shadows. If he got out now, his dad would never know he’d followed—
“Mr. Montgomery? You really came?”
The tremulous whisper stopped Gabe. He turned back to see his father sweep the brunette into his arms for a crushing hug.
“Yes, honey.” Patrick’s voice broke. “And it’s . . . Dad.”
Gabe stilled. No. It couldn’t be.
Her hair. Her eyes.
His father’s eyes.
And he knew.
“What the—” Gabe exploded out of the darkness and yanked his father away from the girl. The guilt and shock on his father’s face ramped up Gabe’s fury. “ ‘
Dad
’? Is this some kind of sick joke? ’Cause I’m sure not laughing!”
“Gabe, I—” Patrick stopped and cursed. “Yes, Whitney is my—”
Gabe punched his father hard, knuckles cracking against his father’s chin. He pummeled his father’s chest. Gabe’s vision blurred, not with tears but with fury. The man did nothing to defend himself.
“You bastard! How could you have cheated on Mom? On all of us?”
His so-called sister grabbed Gabe’s arm with both hands and yanked him back. “Look, I’m sorry I screwed up your perfect life, but this is a crisis. We have to get my friend to safety. Someone’s trying to—”
Bullets strafed the side of the bus, decimating anyone in the way. An elderly woman reaching for her suitcase sprawled to the ground. Panicked screams and cries of agony filled the night. Patrick homed in on where the shots had come from and ran that way, his gun at the ready. “Gabe, get the girls inside and call 9-1-1.”
Gabe turned to grab them, then slipped on the blood oozing from the wounded. Before him lay the blood-spattered, bullet-ridden body of the blonde teenager. His sister futilely pressed her hands against the pulsing wound in the girl’s chest.
“Don’t die, Shannon. Oh God, please.”
Gabe bolted to them, tipping over a large metal trash can to act as a temporary shield. He pulled off his shirt and stuffed it against the chest wound.
The girl moaned, “Need my book . . . the game . . .” A gurgling sound came from her throat and crimson rivulets ran from the side of her mouth. “Stop them—”
“Shannon!”
His sister’s tearful cry twisted everything inside him. This was his fault. He’d kept them outside so some lunatic could take them out. “Get inside. I’ll carry her.”
Gabe picked Shannon up gently, even though he knew it no longer mattered. Her eyes stared sightlessly up and her body had gone completely limp. Crouching as low as he could, he ran for the door, his sister clearing the way. She’d grabbed the bags they’d brought with them.
Sirens wailed in the distance, but everyone stayed hunkered behind concrete walls until the police cleared the area. Gabe stared at his sister cradling the lifeless body of her friend. She rocked back and forth, tears streaming down her face. God, he’d screwed up. If he hadn’t gone postal on his father, maybe Shannon would still be alive.
“Gabe?”
His father’s frantic voice across the terminal broke through Gabe’s shock and guilt. He waved his dad over, meeting him halfway.
Patrick Montgomery wove through the crowded area until he reached his son. “Is anyone hurt?”
Gabe glanced over his shoulder. “The shooter got Shannon and hit several other people, too. Looks like everyone else will make it.”
A tic pulsed in his father’s jaw. “And Whitney?”
“You mean your
daughter
?” Gabe couldn’t keep the contempt from his voice. “A bullet grazed her arm, but she refused to go to the hospital unless you went with her.”
Patrick’s eyes flicked to the sobbing girl with obvious worry. “You okay, Gabe?”
Gabe laughed, the bitterness stinging his gut. “Oh, yeah, Dad. Awesome. I find out my father’s a cheater, meet my half sister, and witness a murder. Hell of a night. At least tell me you got the guy.”
Patrick flushed. “The shooter was too far away. He had a long-range weapon. I didn’t.”
“Maybe you should have joined SWAT instead of Homicide. Not that you stopped anyone from dying tonight.”
Patrick’s shoulders slumped. “All I could find was the shooter’s position. Maybe som
e
thing will come from that. We’ll talk later. I need to see to Whitney now.”
Gabe crossed his arms, trying to stop the shaking that had settled deep in his core. He couldn’t let his father see, though. “Yeah, I get it, but don’t count on having that talk with me later. How can I believe anything you tell me after tonight?”
“What are you going to say at home?” Patrick asked quietly.
“Oh, don’t worry. They won’t find out from me what a bastard you are. I’d never hurt Mom like that.”
Gabe walked away, his emotions running hot and wild. He couldn’t leave the premises without giving a statement to the police, but nothing said he had to stay inside with that lying cheat. Gabe’s eyes burned and he shoved his disillusionment inside. How could his dad do this to Mom? Another hero dead and buried. Patrick Montgomery was scum.
Gabe didn’t know how long he waited through the chaos to be interviewed. Finally, they left him alone. The threatening tears had dried. When a black body bag wheeled out on a gurney past him, he stood, fists clenched at the injustice.
An hour ago Shannon had been alive. Now she was dead because of a coward shooting from the bushes. And because Gabe hadn’t seen the danger coming; he hadn’t moved fast enough.
A fire lit in Gabe’s belly—a need for revenge, a need to make things right.
By the time he left two hours later, he’d made a decision. No matter what his dad said, Gabe was going to be a cop. A better one than his father. A SWAT cop, not a detective who investigated after the fact. Gabe would be on the front lines, kicking ass and taking names. If he could track down whoever had killed Shannon, even better. He never wanted to feel this helpless—or guilty—again.