Shadows at Dawn Read online

  “You get someone to come up with the info on the woman, and I’ll pony up a hundred for each of you.”

  The desk clerk’s interest stirred. “I’ll ask around.” He tucked the card into his pocket as Jax turned and started walking.

  At least they knew Shipman had been there, just as Mindy had said. Who he’d met was still speculation. Jax hoped he’d get a call from someone on the hotel staff, but time was of the essence. He needed to talk to Tabitha Love, the company computer whiz, get her to do some digging, see if she could come up with the name on the credit card used to pay for the room.

  He quietly swore as he slid behind the wheel of the Dodge. He had a couple of errands to run, some leads he needed follow up on. It was going to take a couple of hours when he needed to get back to the office, back to Mindy. Even with Hawk Maddox there to protect her, he worried.

  The longer this dragged on, the more likely something would go wrong, and Mindy could get hurt.

  By the time Jax pulled into the parking lot behind The Max, the always efficient Tabitha Love had called him with the information he needed.

  “DeMarco Staffing,” Tabby said. “Company credit card, booked through the hotel webpage. You were right on the money, Jax-man.”

  Jax could almost see her grinning, the silver hoop in her sleek black eyebrow glinting. She was tall, with short black hair shaved on the sides and moussed on top. Tabby was uniquely her own person. Jax had never met anyone like her—or anyone half as smart.

  “Thanks, Tab, you’re the best.”

  Tabby laughed. “Can’t argue with that.”

  Jax chuckled as he ended the call.

  As soon as he walked into the office, he collected Mindy and Lissa, and pulled Maddox and Chase in for a meeting. Since Wolfe had clients in the conference room, they walked down the block to Clancy’s, which was quiet this late in the day.

  The bartender, a string bean of a guy named Marty O’Halloran, and a waitress named Bridget, were the only ones working. Jax led the group to a long wooden table in the corner, and they all sat down.

  Bridget took their drink orders, iced tea for Jax and Lissa, water for Mindy, beers for Jason and Chase. Once everyone had their drinks, he brought them up to speed on the case.

  “Way it looks, Shipman and Susan DeMarco were definitely involved in an affair. According to one of the desk clerks, it was several months back, but Shipman checked in a couple of times a week, and the room was paid for with a DeMarco Staffing credit card.”

  “Now that I think about it,” Mindy said, “Susan mentioned shopping at the Galleria more than once.”

  “Perfect cover if she ran into someone she knew,” Chase said.

  “Like her husband,” Maddox added.

  “Let’s assume Shipman was blackmailing Susan,” Jax said. “Threatening to go to her husband. He’d need proof of the affair.”

  Lissa sat forward. “Pictures of them together in a hotel room would certainly work.”

  “Better yet—nude photos or a sex video,” Maddox drawled, sending color into Mindy’s cheeks.

  Jax nodded. “An insurance policy for when things started going south between them.”

  “Which, sooner or later, they would,” Chase said. “Susan DeMarco isn’t known for her fidelity. I did a little more digging. It isn’t exactly common knowledge, but one of the caddies at the country club says she’s damned fickle when it comes to her lovers. Unlike Shipman, they had the good sense to keep their mouths shut.”

  Maddox picked up his longneck bottle and took a swallow of beer. “Instead of fading quietly into the sunset, Shipman planned ahead. He made the flash drive in case he ever got into a financial bind.”

  “Like needing money to pay off a gambling debt,” Chase said.

  “He had proof he figured was worth big money,” Lissa added.

  “But why would anyone think I’m the one who has Ryan’s sex video?”

  Jax’s dark eyes hardened. “Because while they were torturing him, Shipman told them you had it. By then he’d figured out he’d given it to you by mistake.”

  “Or accidentally given you a copy,” Maddox said.

  “Even more likely,” Jax agreed. “Since he’d need something to sell in the first place.”

  Silence fell around the table. Just the sound of ice clinking in glasses and beer bottles being hoisted and set back down.

  “Okay,” Mindy said at last. “If we follow that logic, what happens next? The kidnappers still want the flash drive—and I still don’t have it.”

  Jax took a drink of his tea, set the glass back down. “We can’t find the drive, but the kidnappers don’t know that. We’ll send Susan a message, tell her we’ve got what she wants.”

  Mindy’s eyes widened. “Set a trap?”

  “Exactly. If we’re right about all this, we won’t have to go after Susan and whoever she hired to do her dirty work. We’ll get them to come to us.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “THAT LITTLE TRAMP.” Susan paced back and forth across the living room of Elliot’s sleekly modern, seventeenth-floor apartment overlooking the city. She didn’t come here often. She didn’t want to risk being seen, but today was important.

  “And to think I actually liked her.” She turned, paced back the opposite way. “I helped her get the job working for Chase Garrett. I even gave her my cell number.”

  “You can’t trust anyone these days,” Elliot said mildly, taking a sip of his Bombay Sapphire martini.

  Susan sighed and thought of the text she had received. “She wants to meet me at noon tomorrow at the Vietnam Memorial at Fair Park. She wants twenty-five thousand for her copy of the video.”

  “You’re lucky. You thought she’d want a hundred.”

  “There’s no way to be sure she hasn’t made a dozen more copies. Twenty-five thousand now, fifty the next time. It’ll never end until we get rid of her.”

  She paused in front of the window to look down at the traffic crawling along the street. “And what if she goes to Jonathan? He’d pay a king’s ransom to keep the world from knowing he’s a cuckold. His pride’s too great for that. Jonathan has the best lawyers in the world. I’d get next to nothing.”

  “I told you I’ll take care of her,” Elliot said. “You just make sure she comes alone.”

  Susan thought of the phone call to Mindy that she had made using one of the disposable phones she kept to communicate with Elliot and anyone else she didn’t want her husband to know about.

  “I told her I’d meet her, but only if she came alone. I told her if she brought her SEAL boyfriend, the deal was off.”

  “And she agreed?”

  “Only if I agreed to the same terms. You were right about the money. She can’t wait to get her hands on it. The only stipulation is that I come by myself.”

  Elliot chuckled, sipped from his long-stemmed martini glass. “Only you won’t be alone. I’ll be close by, and my men will be in position to take the girl out.”

  “What about the police?”

  “As soon as you have the flash drive, you’ll leave. When they find her body, the girl will be in possession of twenty-five thousand dollars. It’ll look like a drug deal gone bad. There’s no way to connect you to any of this. You’ll have the video, and Mindy Stewart will be dead before she gets back to her car.”

  * * *

  MINDY SAT ON the brown tweed sofa in Jax’s living room. The evening had settled in. The Chinese takeout they’d had for supper was gone, the dishes cleaned up and put away. After the text she had sent, and the return phone call she’d received from Susan, they knew they were on the right track.

  Ryan Shipman had been blackmailing his ex-lover. Now he was dead, and Susan believed Mindy had a copy of the drive, for which she wanted twenty-five thousand dollars.

  Since the stakes had just gotten dangerously higher, Jax had insisted they stay at his place where DeMarco and her crew were less likely to find them. Muffin was with them, perfectly at home, curled up in the middle of Jax’s big bed.

  Jason had arrived to help Jax flesh out the plan they had come up with earlier and now sat across from them, sprawled in an overstuffed chair.

  “You have to bring in the cops,” he argued. “You know it as well as I do. We try to handle this on our own, we’ll end up killing some dickwad and winding up in jail.”

  Jax grunted. “At least Mindy would be safe.”

  “Stop it, Jax,” Mindy demanded. “You need to listen to Jason.”

  It took another few minutes, but since Jax knew his friend was right, he had grudgingly conceded. They needed help. Lieutenant Gunderson was their best option. Jax called and filled him in as much as possible. The detective was on his way over now.

  A knock sounded at the door. When Jax pulled it open, Gunderson walked into the living room. With faint circles beneath his eyes and his light brown hair mussed, he looked even more fatigued than usual.

  “I was getting ready to call you anyway,” Gunderson said, taking a seat in the empty chair while Jax sat back down on the sofa next to Mindy. “Looks like you’ve managed to get yourself in the middle of an ongoing homicide investigation.”

  “How’s that?” Jax asked.

  “CSI’s found evidence that links the Shipman murder to the kidnapping attempt on Ms. Stewart.”

  Jax sat up straighter. It was the conclusion they had already drawn, but they had needed a way to prove it.

  “Shoe print at the murder scene was made by a Giuseppe Zanotti high-top sneaker. Same shoe you reported the night of the attempted abduction. Also, there were tracks in the dirt that matched the tire tread on the white van.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Jax said. Mindy felt a sweep of relief that they were definitely on the right track.

  “We also got a print off the inside of the van door. It belongs to a scumbag named Walker Riley. Big bastard, tough and vicious, known for his skill with a knife. Got a bad scar on his right hand from a fight he nearly lost, but didn’t. Sound familiar?”

  Jax nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Riley hangs with a couple of ex-cons named A. J. Whiteman and Charley Burns. Burns is average height and weight with pale blue eyes, and Whiteman is tall and thin. Both fit the descriptions you gave of the men in the parking lot.”

  “Tell me they’re in custody,” Jax practically growled.

  “They’re walking around free as air,” the detective said. “And if you’d get your head on straight, you’d understand why. These guys are nothing but low-level criminals. If we don’t bring in the person who hired them to make the hit on Shipman—the same person behind the kidnapping attempt—Ms. Stewart will still be in danger.”

  “He’s right,” Jason said. “Plenty of scumballs ready to step in and do the job if the money’s right.”

  Jax sighed. “That’s for sure.” He turned back to the detective. “After the phone call Mindy got from Susan DeMarco agreeing to the meet, it’s pretty clear Shipman was blackmailing DeMarco for whatever is on the drive he accidentally gave to Mindy.”

  “Which unfortunately I managed to lose,” Mindy said.

  Gunderson shifted to face her. “Which is why we’re going to need you to be wearing a wire when you meet Susan DeMarco in the park tomorrow.”

  Jax shot up from the sofa. “No fucking way.”

  Gunderson remained unruffled. “Sorry, Ryker, but the only way we’re bringing these people down is with hard evidence. We’ve got the shoe print, the fingerprint from the burned-up van and a hodgepodge of miscellaneous evidence, but it isn’t enough. We need direct evidence against Susan DeMarco.” He turned and looked straight at Mindy. “We’re counting on you, Ms. Stewart, to get it.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Jax argued, pinning the detective with a glare. “DeMarco won’t come alone. She’ll bring men with her, and their job will be to take Mindy out. We have to figure another way.”

  She reached over and slid her hand around a powerful bicep, felt the tension running through him. “We don’t have time to figure out another way, Jax. We have to do this now while we have the chance. You know Lieutenant Gunderson is right. You and Jason both know it.”

  “Once we get what we need on DeMarco,” the detective calmly continued, “we can round the whole bunch up and bring them in. They’ll turn on each other like a pack of jackals. We’ll have enough evidence to put them all away, and Mindy will be safe.”

  Jax scrubbed a hand over his face, making a rasping sound on the stubble along his jaw. Mindy could read his worry, anger and frustration. He knew the detective and Jason were right, and there was nothing he could do but go along with it.

  “Okay, fine,” he ground out. “She wears a wire. But Maddox and I are there to cover her. We’re there and we’re in on the op.”

  “That isn’t the way it works,” Gunderson said.

  “That’s the way it’s going to work tomorrow—or it isn’t going to happen. You want DeMarco for murder? We can get her for you. You just do whatever you need to in order to make your bosses happy.”

  A long silence fell. With a sigh, Gunderson rose and stalked off to make a phone call. When he returned, Mindy followed the men into the kitchen, and they all sat down at the table.

  “You’re in,” Gunderson said. “Just make sure you don’t kill anyone.”

  Jax eyed him darkly. “Unless, of course, it’s self-defense.”

  Gunderson’s mouth tightened, but he didn’t argue, and Jax relaxed back in his chair.

  The next hour was spent working out a strategy designed to protect Mindy and end up with a recorded confession from Susan DeMarco, along with the arrest of the men who had killed Ryan Shipman.

  Mindy prayed it would work.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  TWO MILES EAST of downtown Dallas, Fair Park encompassed 277 acres of beautifully landscaped ground. Built for the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition, it contained a complex of museums, entertainment venues, monuments and landmarks, one of which was the Texas Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

  The rendezvous was set to take place near the flagpole, in a granite seating area not far from the memorial wall. Trees and buildings surrounded the spot, enough to provide distant cover for SWAT team marksman and other MAX team members—or at least that was the plan.

  Jax and Maddox would be closer, there for Mindy’s protection if the exchange went wrong. She knew they would do everything in their power to keep her safe—even at the risk of their own lives.

  She nervously fidgeted as she drove her little VW Bug down Parry Avenue, turned off the road onto a lane that led to the parking lot closest to the memorial.

  Jax and Maddox had left for the park hours ago, as soon as the police arrived at the apartment to provide protection. They needed to recon the area, Jax said, find a secure location to be ready for her arrival at the rendezvous point. They planned to go after the men they were sure would be coming with Susan DeMarco and “quietly take them out.”

  Mindy didn’t ask what that meant. She was pretty sure she didn’t want to know.

  After Maddox and Gunderson had departed last night, she and Jax had spent the remainder of the evening in bed, Jax making wild, possessive love to her. It was as if he wanted to absorb her into his skin, as if he couldn’t get enough of her.

  Mindy felt the same. Anything could happen. They both knew it, accepted it.

  “I’m crazy about you,” Jax had said during a particularly sweet interlude as he drew her down into his arms. “Tell me you feel the same about me.”

  She couldn’t lie to him. If things went wrong tomorrow, she could be killed—or he could be—and they would never see each other again. She swallowed, forced herself to say the words that crowded her throat.

  “I love you, Jax. You probably don’t want to hear that, and it doesn’t change anything, but—”

  He came up over her swiftly, silenced her words with a fierce, demanding kiss. “I love you, too, honey. I’ve never said those words before. I don’t want to lose you. I want us to work things out.”

  Her eyes teared. “Jax...”

  “It can work, baby. We can make it work. We’ll talk to Chase, convince him to let you keep your job. Say you love me enough to try.”

  She swallowed past the thick lump in her throat. It was insane. She had dreamed of Jaxon Ryker, dreamed of spending time with him, making love with him, dreamed he would look at her the way he was looking at her now, his dark eyes filled with yearning. But it was only a fantasy. Wasn’t it?

  But what if it wasn’t? What if he loved her the way he said? Because she knew in her heart that she was deeply in love with him.

  “I don’t want to lose you, either.” It was as much as she was willing to say, and it was the truth. Now that she had been with him, giving him up would be the hardest thing she had ever done.

  Jax ran a finger along her cheek, leaned down and softly kissed her, accepting the words as enough for now. He made love to her again, slowly and with tender care, and they finally fell asleep.

  Morning came way too soon.

  Now she was pulling her red VW into a parking space and turning off the engine, taking a couple of deep breaths for courage.

  Unconsciously, she touched the wire she was wearing beneath her lavender print blouse. She had dressed in jean leggings and put on a pair of sneakers—in case she needed to run—pulled her long hair into a ponytail for the same reason. Determined to know as much as possible about what she would be doing, she had Googled audio surveillance that morning as soon as she had finished dressing.

  Body wires were covert devices you could put in your pockets or on your body to send conversations to a radio surveillance receiver. With the receiver, you could either listen or connect to an audio recorder. The police would be doing both.