The Right Kind of Trouble (34 page)

Gideon looked as stone-faced and unreadable as Tank, but she knew him.

Unlike Tank, she could read Gideon. The taut muscle that kept jumping in his jaw, the eyes that kept flicking from Neve and Brannon to the big white board his men had finished setting up some twenty minutes earlier.

Gideon was worried.

And if Gideon was worried …

She swallowed.

That meant she should be terrified.

A hand brushed her shoulder and she jumped, a startled shriek rising in her throat.

“It's just me, darling Neve,” Ian murmured, moving in to hug her.

“Damn it,” she whispered. “I'm sorry.”

“No. Don't be sorry. I'm worried, too.” He held her tighter, and for a moment she let herself lean against him.

“Why didn't we see it sooner?” she asked raggedly, damning herself to hell.

“Don't do this.” Ian kissed her temple. “This isn't your fault. It isn't mine. It's not Moira's or Gideon's. It's on that fucking piece of shite's head. And I swear to you, Neve, if I'm the one who finds him, I'll rip his skull off and we'll both take turns pissing on it the rest of our days.”

The vivid and disgusting image startled a laugh out of her.

“That's gross.” She turned in his arms and pressed her face into his neck. “That's really, really gross.”

“I'll rip his balls off too, straight out through his nose.”

She cringed. “How … macho of you.”

“Moira will be fine.” Ian pressed his lips to her ear. “She's a canny woman, that one. Even on a good day she can terrify me, and I'm a smart man.”

“I don't think Charles has the sanity to be afraid of her,” she whispered.

“And that's where he'll mess up.” Ian cupped the back of her neck. “I've seen her slice off a man's balls with a simple look. That bampot doesn't likely have that much sense.”

She sniffed, not certain if that comforted her or not.

“She'll be alright,” Ian whispered again.

She squeezed her eyes shut tight and chose to believe he was right.

*   *   *

“If you keep this up, you're going to pace a hole right through that floor and then you and me are both going to crash right through and you'll be freaking out because you'll have to rush me to the emergency department and deal with handling me
and
what's going on with Moira.”

At the sound of Hannah's calm, steady tone, Brannon stopped his pacing and turned to stare at her. He'd
heard
the words and the tone, but none of the words had made sense.

Except “emergency.”

“Huh? What?” As those words made a deeper impact on his consciousness, he crossed the floor to her and closed his hands around her arms. “Damn it, Hannah, are you okay? Is it the baby? Is it the—”

She rose onto her toes and pressed her mouth to his. “Stop it,” she said after a few seconds. Then, because Brannon was a big believer in tactile persuasion, she took his hand and guided it to her belly. “She is
fine
. See?”

As if to back her up, the little baby proceeded to do a series of flops and flips, kicking up against Brannon's hand.

He blew out a breath and pressed his brow against hers. “Then why are you talking about going to the hospital?”

“Never mind.” Hannah cupped his face in her hands. “You need to calm down.”

“I can't—”

When he would have pulled away, she simply tightened her grip and pressed her lips to his once more. “You can.”

He sighed against her mouth. “Hannah…”

“Calm down. You know this guy, Brannon. You don't like him, but you know him. You know people, period. Now calm down … think. Stop panicking and think. Moira is smart. She knows him better than anybody and she can buy herself some time, but you need to help her there.
Think
.”

When Brannon lifted his head and met her eyes, she stared back levelly.

“Since when were paramedics crisis-management types?” He focused on the dark, steady strength he saw in her eyes.

“Seriously?” She laughed up at him as she curled her arms around his neck. “Half the time, all we
do
is manage crises. It's either somebody convinced their gas pains are heart attacks—or ten somebodies who wrote off their heart attacks as gas pains. You'd be amazed at how cool I am under pressure. Now … are you ready to think there, big guy?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. Thinking wasn't exactly what he
wanted
to do. What he wanted to do involved a lot of blood and pain. But thinking was what would help Moira now.

The blood and pain could come later.

The door opened and Brannon looked away from Hannah's eyes to see Gideon filling the doorframe. “I'm going to give you an update on what we have so far.”

His eyes lingered on Brannon's for a moment, then moved to Neve's.

The look on his face was enough to tell Brannon two things.

Gideon didn't know where Moira was. And Gideon wanted to kill somebody possibly more than Brannon did.

A few minutes later, Brannon found himself standing in front of a huge whiteboard. In the top middle of the board was a kids' group photo. If Brannon hadn't already seen it, he might have been pissed off, but he had. The image had two of the students circled. One of them was Charles—a much younger Charles. His image was circled in red. Off to the side and down a few rows was another youth's face, circled in purple.

That was Samuel William Clyde.

Brannon had a feeling the bastard had ended up a pawn in whatever game Hurst was playing. And there was a game, Brannon had no doubt. Somehow, that shithead Charles maneuvered Clyde into Neve's orbit.

“Okay, officers”—Gideon paused to add—“and citizens with a vested interest. Let's talk about what we know.”

*   *   *

I'm kidnapping you
.

His words were still ringing in her ears, her brain still struggling to process them when Charles casually swung out a hand and smacked it into her mouth.

Blood exploded over her tongue and her eyes began to water.

“Nothing to say there, darling?” he asked. “Did you not understand? I am kidnapping you.”

Moira let a breath shudder in, then out of her lungs.

She wasn't going to answer him right now. She didn't dare. Blood pooled in her mouth and she swallowed it before she gave into the urge to spit it into his face.

Had she had her hands free, she would have lunged for him, wrapping them around his neck and damn the fact that he was speeding down the twisting country highway.

It might have been a blessing that she hadn't quite managed to work her hands loose of the rope just yet.

She could remember telling Ella Sue that she'd find her mad soon.

Charles wasn't going to be overly thrilled that he'd been the one to trigger that discovery.

Through her disheveled hair, she stared at him.

He cast another glance her way and chuckled. “You look brassed-off, love. I suppose I can understand. Don't fret, though. You'll understand what this is all about here in a bit.”

She almost snapped at him, told him she had already connected those dots—not all the way, maybe, but they'd been looking for a connection and now with her ex-husband merrily announcing he was kidnapping her … well … Moira wasn't exactly an idiot.

So she bit her tongue.
Don't give him any advantage. Keep him in the dark.

She had to buy time. Her family, Gideon, all of them—they had to know she was missing.

Charles might've thought he'd have an hour or two, that there would be some confusion, but he wouldn't have had more than thirty minutes at the most before Ella Sue would sound the alarm.

The efficient older woman had likely already been halfway to town by the time Charles had Moira in the car.

When Moira wasn't found at Brannon's, they wouldn't waste time calling Gideon.

Her heart wrenched at the thought of that. She should have called him first thing.

She should have sent him a text, told him she was sorry, instead of brooding and trying to think of the
right
way to say it. There was only ever one way.

Now she had to wait for them to find her … or wait for her chance to escape.

They'd piece it together. She had no doubt of that.

When they didn't find her at the loft, Charles would be one of the first people they checked with. And when he wasn't found, he'd jump right to the top of the list.

You probably trust him …
Gideon's voice haunted her.

He'd been right. She had trusted him.

Charles had been right there when Gideon threw those words at her, all but begging her to listen, demanding that she understand.

Well, she did now.

*   *   *

“How could we have missed this?” Brannon's voice exploded through the station.

Gideon blocked it out, relying on Hannah to keep Brannon under control. She did, speaking to him in a no-nonsense tone that would cut through his rage far better than any soothing murmur ever could.

Gideon tuned them both out.

Neve sat with her laptop open, her face stark. He wanted to take it away, because he already knew what she was doing. Now that they had a name, she was finding all the connections, all those little pieces that connected Charles Hurst to the Whitehall family. His father's mother had been a Whitehall and all of them, it seemed, had been twisted by that ugly hate, a seed that was passed down for generations.

“They look alike,” Neve whispered. “This picture … I've
seen
it.” She pointed at something on the screen.

Ian looked and then leaned over and closed the computer. “Let's focus on your sister, Nevie. We'll deal with him later.”

As she turned into him, Gideon looked away.

Tank Grainger was already in the station, as were the deputies he'd called in to help.

“I don't understand exactly what we are doing here,” Deputy Paul Lewis said, his ruddy face twisted in a scowl. Lewis had been on call this weekend and most people knew he spent his weekend on the river fishing. Granted, Lewis's idea of fishing involved a lot of beer and very little bait—or fish. He didn't particularly care to have it interrupted for much of anything. “Ms. McKay hasn't been gone for twelve hours, much less the mandatory forty-eight. And you believe she is with her ex-husband. All we know, they might be … reconnecting.”

To Gideon's surprise, it was Maris who gave Lewis a withering look and cut the idiot down to size with the impact of that glare alone. “First of all, a woman doesn't go disappearing anywhere without taking her purse.” When Lewis went to argue, Maris took a step toward him and continued in a flinty voice. “Chief Marshall has already told us that she left without her purse, without her shoes, without her phone. She did it without telling anybody she was going anywhere. Moira McKay is a smart woman and she's already been attacked once, threatened, with her throat almost crushed.”

Lewis reached up and rubbed at his neck, glancing around the room as if searching for support.

Nobody seemed too keen on meeting his gaze.

Maris wasn't done. “There's a fire at the bookstore her brother helped renovate. The museum was targeted. Then a few days ago, a man she worked with is murdered in front of her.” Maris went back to perching on the empty desk of an off-duty patrol officer. “I don't know about you, but I'm not so big on believing in coincidences.”

“Who said anything about coincidences?” Lewis puffed out his chest, jabbing a finger toward himself. “I'm just looking at this all logical-like. This McKay chick is important—”

“McKay chick?” Maris narrowed her eyes.

“Excuse me, Ms. PC Police.” Lewis pronounced it
PO
-lice, rolling his eyes for effect. Again, he looked around, a smirking grin on his lips, but it faded when nobody seemed to share in his amusement.

“Lewis, son. You know what? Maybe you should just take yourself back on down to the river.” The sheriff gave himself a slow shake of his head.

Confused, Lewis stared at the sheriff. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me, deputy.” Tank looked over at the board. It held stills of Moira, Charles, and, although he was dead, Samuel William Clyde.

There weren't many details posted as of yet, but Gideon did have information. Thanks to some calls Ian and Neve had made once they had discovered that picture online—what a fucking stroke of luck—Gideon actually had a fairly substantial amount of information, but he wasn't certain just how much of it would be admissible. None of that was his number one concern—Moira was—but he didn't want Charles Hurst skating out from under the justice that he had coming his way, either.

Ian knew some cops—bobbies or whatever they were called—over in Glasgow. Neve had called her friend back in Carrbridge, the one she'd described as a big teddy bear. He'd saved her from William once, and his name was Angus Reid. Reid was a security specialist and he'd provided more information than Gideon could have hoped for.

Each piece of it had made Gideon's gut grow a little more cold.

Charles Hurst was a great deal smarter than anybody had known.

Gideon had known the man was smart—Moira had married him and she'd never been one to tolerate fools or idiots. Even if she'd just married him because he had a pretty face and she'd been looking for … something, she'd hired him to help with the museum and that museum had been her baby.

She wouldn't let anybody without a sharp mind near her baby.

But Charles was more than just a sharp curator. He was well above genius level. He'd started university at the age of sixteen, had graduated at twenty and continued on another year, pursuing an advanced degree of some sort and had also helped out with several teachers.