When Night Falls
Chapter 1
”
O
pen the damn door!”
William Armstrong pounded his fist against pitifully thin wood, surprised his hand didn’t smash right through. He wished it would. He wanted inside.
Instead, he stood on the neglected front porch of an old frame house. A bitterly cold wind ripped through the surrounding oaks, while somewhere in the distance, a dog bayed. The muted light from a dirty porch lamp just barely filtered through the darkness.
“I mean it,” he growled, “open the goddamn door.” Almost anywhere else in town, someone would have called the cops by now, but here, in this run-down south
Dallas
neighborhood, late-night shouting was nothing unusual. “If you don’t, I’m coming in anyway.”
The laugh track of a late-night sitcom leaked through the rotted wood siding, but no hushed voices, no muffled cries.
Liam’s body tightened in frustration. She could be in there, he knew. With Braxton. The chances of the punk opening the door were slim. What would he do if he found them in there? Liam wondered. Together.
The thought made his blood run as cold as the freezing rain that had delayed his flight back from
Chicago
.
Liam crushed the ugly possibilities before they became even more sickening images. She wouldn’t do that. She’d promised. She’d looked at him with those beseeching blue eyes and told him she never wanted to see Adam Braxton again.
And Liam had believed her.
Then he’d come home to find her gone.
He pounded once more against the door, then crossed the rickety porch. The cops hadn’t listened to him. They hadn’t cared. They never did. If he wanted her back, he had no one to rely on but himself.
Through a grimy window, Liam squinted to see inside. Filth, was his first impression. A lamp illuminated clothes strewn everywhere, fast-food bags, CD cases. A sitcom blared from an old TV, but the couch sat empty. Milk crates on either side of the ratty structure served as tables.
Frowning, he wiped his hand across the dirty glass pane, leaning in for a better look.
She smiled back at him from a large, elaborate silver frame. Wearing only a black tank top and a short leather skirt, she lay on some sort of velvet settee. Thick, black hair cascaded over the beautiful skin of her shoulders and arms. Her smile lit up the whole room, full and beckoning, shockingly provocative.
He’d never seen any of it, not the photo, the risqué outfit or the smile. It was the kind of ensemble a woman chose for her lover, not one that a seventeen-year-old girl modeled for her father.
Liam’s heart kicked up another notch. Blood thundered through his veins. Adam Braxton had no business owning a picture of Emily. The two had broken up after she had caught him getting it on with some piece of trash. He had needs, Braxton had tried to explain, and if Emily wouldn’t fill them, he had to take care of them elsewhere. That didn’t change the way he felt about Emily.
Like hell. Liam thanked God his daughter was smart enough to recognize that line of garbage for what it was. Still, she’d been crushed. He’d held her while she cried, doing his best to soothe her broken heart.
And now she was gone.
His first hint at trouble had come in the form of a voice mail from the high school, informing him Emily hadn’t shown for homeroom. Concerned, Liam had tried unsuccessfully to reach her. By the time he arrived in
Dallas
, six hours later than planned, it had been past
Kids missed curfew all the time, he knew, but not Emily. Not ever, not even once. Trust was an implicit bond, he’d taught her. Once shattered, the fragile pieces could never be fully repaired. He’d worked hard to forge a relationship with his daughter where she could tell him things he didn’t necessarily enjoy hearing, so that he would never find himself at a moment like this.
If Emily was missing, he knew it wasn’t by her own choice.
She flat-out wouldn’t do that to him.
Liam scanned the semilit room again, this time noticing Emily’s letter sweater and a pair of painfully familiar ribbon-laced running shoes. Fury almost made him see double. She could be in there. Braxton could be trying to get her to fill those
needs
of his.
“Emily!” Something dark and punishing tore through Liam. A father’s rage. He glanced around wildly, his attention narrowing on a broken section of the porch railing. He grabbed a piece of wood and drew back to shatter the glass.
“You don’t want to do that, Mr. Armstrong.”
The authoritative voice stopped him midswing. He pivoted and found a woman standing halfway up the steps to the porch. Even the dark night couldn’t hide the steely determination in her eyes. Moonlight glinted off the pistol she held pointed toward him.
“Keep your hands where I can see them,” she said in that steady voice.
A sense of vertigo closed in on Liam. The woman cut a striking figure standing there in a long leather coat, her thick auburn hair pulled back from her face. Not an ounce of fear shone in her eyes or her stance.
He blinked, but she didn’t fade into the night as her breath did. A vague familiarity nagged at him. “Who are you?”
She mounted the next step. “Detective Jessica Clark, Dallas PD.”
The revelation surged through him like a shot of whiskey straight up. Aside from those unyieldingly sharp eyes, she looked more like a runway model than a cop. Her coat flapped open, revealing the attractive taupe pantsuit she wore beneath. Silk, he noted. The brushed fabric draped over curves a cop had no business sporting. Her heavy-lidded, almond-shaped eyes conjured images of long, athletic afternoons in bed. Her thick auburn hair was mussed and pulled back with combs, her skin flushed and flawless.
What the hell was she doing here? He hadn’t even heard her approach.
“Step away from the window, sir.”
“I’m not breaking any laws.”
“No, but you were about to.” She nodded toward the piece of wood still clenched in his hand. “You should have stayed at home and waited for me, like Commander McKnight told you to do.”
Liam swore softly.
This
was who the commander had sent to find Emily? Clearly, the doddering old fool hadn’t taken him seriously. Rather than the panther Liam needed, the skilled hunter, Commander McKnight had sent a kitten.
The temptation surfaced to turn toward the window and smash his way inside, but something about the way she looked at him, the cool challenge in her eyes, held him in place.
Or maybe it was the gun in her hands.
“Waited on you?” he demanded instead. “While my daughter is missing? Sorry, Detective, but I learned a long time ago the danger of trusting cops with my life. I’ve got better things to do than twist in the wind.”
“So do I.” She motioned with the gun. “Now turn around and put your hands against the side of the house.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
He did. He just couldn’t believe it. “For crying out loud—you can’t be serious.”
That faint smile all cops had down to an art form played with her lips. “I don’t owe you any explanations. I’m not the one about to break into someone else’s house.”
She had a point, damn it. “My daughter is missing. This is her ex-boyfriend’s house. They had a bad breakup. She could be in there. You know that’s the only reason I’m here.”
“And if you’d found her inside, then what? You’d just take her by the hand and lead her home?” She advanced to the top step. “Let me tell you what I see. I see a man who’s decided to take the law into his own hands. It’s the middle of the night. You’re prowling around a house where you clearly don’t belong. You have a piece of railing in your hand. If I hadn’t stopped you, you would have already committed a crime. You’re damn straight I’m going to make sure you’re not packing before we take this any further.” Fire flashed in her eyes. “Now turn the hell around.”
Liam swore under his breath. He didn’t know whether to be furious or to admire a woman not afraid to stand up to him. She had more guts than most men he knew.
Realizing the faster he got this over with, the faster he could find Emily, he dropped the wood and did as she asked.
* * *
Detective Jessica Clark stepped onto the darkened porch. Adrenaline surged so hard and fast she was surprised William Armstrong didn’t hear the pounding of her heart. She was also thankful.
Grimy windows boarded most of the light oozing from inside the house, leaving only a muted glow to cast the large man standing against the door in shadow. Despite the scene she’d intruded upon, she didn’t think he’d been drinking. There was no smell of alcohol, and his eyes were sharp. Still, she moved cautiously. She doubted he’d try anything more foolish than he already had, but she also knew enough about William Armstrong to know how easily he could prove her wrong.
Missing daughter or not, the man had already disobeyed a direct order from her commanding officer.
That’s why she kept her .38 trained on him.
The creak of old wooden planks announced her progress, but he didn’t so much as flinch. He just stood there with his feet shoulder-width apart and his ungloved hands pressed against the rotting siding. He seemed to know the pose well.
Yet for some odd reason, he looked more like he was bracing himself.
Mild curiosity sharpened into intrigue. When Commander McKnight called less than an hour before with instructions to pacify the big bad wolf, she’d envisioned herself sitting on a sofa in William Armstrong’s fancy living room, asking questions about his daughter, jotting a few notes. She’d imagined politely explaining procedure and discussing all the reasons a teenager might not come home on time.
She hadn’t once pictured herself holding a gun on one of
Dallas
‘s most notorious citizens while the brutal north wind slapped at them both.
But she should have.
William Armstrong never made anything easy.
For a fleeting instant, Jess wished she didn’t know so much about the self-made Internet mogul. That way, she might be able to feel sympathy for a man who didn’t know where his daughter was. But she couldn’t. She knew too much. About the man and the fortune he’d amassed, his trouble with the law, the dark allegations that never seemed to die. Many believed he belonged behind bars.
What would Armstrong do, she wondered, when he realized exactly who
she
was?
Somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog barked rambunctiously. Another answered. Jess listened for her partner’s approaching car, but hearing only the sounds of the night, she took one last step and positioned herself behind a waiting William Armstrong.
He still hadn’t moved.
The faint light cast his face in shadow. He wore expensive tailored gray slacks, but instead of a matching suit coat, a well-worn leather jacket covered the expanse of his back and shoulders. It was an odd combination of backstreet tough and big-city refinement. His past and present personified.
“What’s the matter, Detective?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder. Mistrust sparked in his eyes. Blue, the light from the window revealed. The dark, threatening blue of storm clouds gathering on the horizon. “Having second thoughts about putting your clean hands on my body? Think I might contaminate you?”
Jess offered a tight smile. “Eagerness doesn’t become you, Mr. Armstrong.”
“Eagerness?” He almost growled. “Don’t you understand what’s going on here? That my daughter is missing? She could be in trouble. Scared. I don’t have time to stand here playing mind games with you all night long.”
The very real worry in his voice scraped against training. “I understand your frustration,” she said levelly, “but you can’t just take the law into your own hands. You would have saved us both considerable time and frustration if you’d stayed at your house, like Commander McKnight asked you to.”
“If I’d thought you would actually show up and listen to me, I might have.”
“I showed up, Mr. Armstrong. I showed up just in time to see your car tearing down the street.”
“You followed me.”
“And it’s a good thing I did, otherwise you might be spending the night in jail.”
A muscle in the hollow of his cheek thumped. “I was tired of waiting.”
“Mr. Armstrong,” she said, stepping closer. “Your daughter has only been missing a couple of hours. Her car is gone. In all likelihood, she’s with friends or—”
“She’s not,” he said emphatically. “Go ahead and do what you have to do. Frisk me. Maybe then you’ll listen to what I have to say.”
Jess recognized a gauntlet when it lay glimmering at her feet. At this point, if she didn’t carry through, he’d take that as a sign of weakness. She needed to reestablish the order of things, even if that meant putting her hands all over this coldly furious man’s rigid body.
She’d rather touch a lightning bolt.
“Turn around.” She didn’t want to feel the heat of his eyes as she put her palms to the hard planes of his body.