“Get in. Close the door.” Tyrone Nash reclined in the leather seat, a Black & Mild in his right hand contaminating the air inside the SUV.

  “What do you want, Nash?”

  The goon who’d knocked on his window moved in behind Carter. “He said get in.”

  Fury broiling, Carter climbed into the seat and closed the door. A front interior light remained lit, preventing total darkness.

  “Did you decide what your future is worth?” Nash asked.

  Carter thought about the question. His fury dissolved into amusement. He was going to enjoy this. “Funny thing about that, Nash.” He turned to the black bastard. “According to the autopsy report, Shelley wasn’t pregnant.” He let the amusement slide across his lips. “So, you see, that video you have is no longer relevant.”

  Nash took a long drag from his Black & Mild. “When did you get this news flash?”

  “Just a few hours ago.” Carter relaxed, enjoying the upper hand Nash couldn’t possibly deny. “I considered calling you, but I didn’t want to waste my time.”

  Nash chuckled. “You hear that, boys? The man didn’t want to waste his time.”

  The two goons seated up front burst into laughter.

  The laughter abruptly stopped and dead silence reigned for about ten seconds.

  “What you fail to comprehend, Dr. Cost,” Nash countered, “is that at the time the video was made you thought Shelley was pregnant. You reacted based on that concept. Just because you found out she wasn’t pregnant after you killed her—”

  Carter tensed. “Who said I killed her?”

  “Don’t matter who said what.” Nash shook his head. “Uh-uh. That don’t matter one bit. What matters is what you thought the night she was murdered. What you think or know now don’t mean shit.”

  Carter couldn’t breathe. His heart rammed mercilessly against his sternum. “What do you want, Nash?” He’d asked him that twice already. Why didn’t the son of a bitch just answer the damned question?

  “What I want is simple,” Nash said. “About a quarter mil ought to convince me to part with that video.” He took another puff of his cigar. “Maybe we better add another fifty thou for the sentimental value. Shelley was my favorite ho, you know.”

  “Three hundred thousand.” Carter felt his insides twisting into screaming knots. “I...I can do that.” His mind raced with the hoops he’d have to jump through to pull together that kind of cash. But he had to do it. He couldn’t risk that video getting out.

  “Why don’t I give you a couple days to come up with the money,” Nash offered, “then we’ll talk again? Course, unless you think it might be a waste of your valuable time.”

  “How...” Carter scrambled to think clearly. “How can I be sure you won’t make a copy of the video? You could keep blackmailing me—”

  “Blackmail?” Nash reared his head back and guffawed. “This is a business transaction. Why you talking about blackmail?”

  Carter blinked. What the hell was he supposed to say to that?

  “You pay me,” Nash said, “I give you the only copy of the video. A simple business transaction.” Nash leaned in close. “Then you never have to see my pretty face again.”

  Carter couldn’t help himself. He stared at the scar on the man’s cheek, flinched when Nash reached up and traced the mark.

  “You see, if you’re smart, you can learn something from our business relationship. Never, ever let a bitch get you in a vulnerable position.” Nash turned his attention forward. “You’ll get screwed every time.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Monte Sano

  Saturday, August 7, 9:00 a.m.

  “Why did you bring me here?”

  Braddock surveyed the rustic setting, then looked at his passenger. “I rented this cabin so we could talk without any distractions.”

  The state park’s campgrounds and cabins were no more than half an hour from Huntsville proper, but there was nothing else this deep in the woods atop Monte Sano. He’d rented a cabin here a couple of times. Once just to get away for the weekend; the other time so that he and Cooper could escape to brainstorm on a particularly puzzling case.

  Escape was the other reason Braddock had made the decision to come here. He had allowed his need for vengeance to override his logic twice now. Shelley Patterson was dead for that reason. Now CJ was going down that same path. Both had made that decision of their own accord. He’d gone along with Shelley out of sheer desperation. But he couldn’t let CJ do this. She had been gone from the live she and Shelley had shared as kids for too long. She’d lost the edge that growing up in the village had instilled.

  He’d suspected she wasn’t going to wait for him. If she had left before he’d arrived at Abbott’s this morning...

  He couldn’t let that happen.

  “Is this about yesterday’s meeting?” CJ asked as she followed him to the cabin.

  “It’s about the investigation in general.” He unlocked the cabin’s front door and pushed it open.

  She considered the open door before swinging a guarded gaze toward him. “You’re not changing my mind. In fact,” she hitched her purse strap higher up her shoulder, “the only thing you’re doing is wasting my time.”

  He didn’t doubt that for a moment. “I’m not going to waste my time trying to change your mind. What I am going to do,” he said, stepping across the threshold, then turning back to face her, “is make you an offer Nash won’t be able to refuse.”

  Unconvinced, she stared at him a moment.

  “Trust me, CJ.” He moved back to give her room to enter.

  The stare-off lasted another few seconds. Then she brushed past him on her way inside.

  He closed the door and moved around the cabin to open the shades, letting in the morning sun. The place was primitive, but it did offer a small basic kitchen and bath beyond the one main room. A bed, a couch, and a fireplace—not that they would be needing a fire. Noon was hours away and the temperature had already climbed into the low nineties. The altitude and the cloak of thick woods kept the cabin’s interior reasonably cool.

  She tossed her bag onto the plaid couch and moved to a window with a view of the valley below. “I lived here most of my life and I never once had the luxury of staying in a place like this.”

  He glanced around. “I wouldn’t exactly call it luxurious.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Your folks weren’t into weekend getaways with the kids, huh?” He braced one shoulder against the window frame and studied her profile. He loved looking at her. That delicate jaw-line and nose. The blond hair she usually kept up out of the way. There was a strength about her that amazed him.

  “My folks were into drinking and partying.” She didn’t look at him, instead continued to stare out the window. “And God only knows what else. The village was all Shelley and I had. We talked about vacations in what we considered faraway places, like Florida or even Tennessee. But we never had a vacation. Not even once. The only getaway we enjoyed was the occasional sleepover at Widow Daniels’s house across the street.” She did glance at Braddock then. “She died last year.”

  He could imagine the blond-haired sisters playing in the street. Skipping along the sidewalk, waiting for the ice cream truck to come around the neighborhood. From what Shelley had told him, that had been the highlight of their summers. “You never stayed with friends?”

  She laughed. “The parents of the nice kids at school didn’t invite kids from the village to stay at their homes. The other kids in the village had it as bad as we did, so that wasn’t an option.” She turned away from the window. “Besides, I couldn’t risk staying away from home overnight unless it was absolutely necessary.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because my mother might pass out with a cigarette in her hand. Or leave something cooking on the stove.” CJ plopped down on the sofa. “Or pass out in the bathtub.” She pulled out her cell phone, checked the screen. “The only time we stayed away from home was when my mother and father got into a major war, which made staying at home hazardous to our health, or after my father’s murder, when my mother brought in a drunk-ass slob who leered at us.”

  “So you’d take your sister someplace safe.” What kind of childhood was that? There were people who didn’t deserve to be parents. CJ’s fell smack into that category.

  “Look, I have questions for Lusk. Can we get on with this?” She cleared her face of the emotions he’d watched play out as she spoke of her childhood. Gone was the vulnerable little girl she’d dared to allow to surface, and back was the hard-edged doctor who wasn’t taking any grief from anyone.

  “I told you that Shelley wanted Nash to pay for what he’s gotten away with all these years. Besides the murders he’s suspected of being responsible for, he’s the major contributor to the prostitution and drug markets in Madison County. Basically he’s a lowlife scumbag who doesn’t deserve to live. But then, you know all that.”

  “Better than I would like.” She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs.

  She looked so painfully young when she did that. Made him want to protect her—the way he hadn’t protected Shelley. He couldn’t imagine living the way she and her sister had as children. His childhood had been pretty much ideal. Loving, doting parents. He’d never had to worry about what he would eat or wear...or if it was safe to go to sleep at night.

  His protective instincts surged with the need to show her that it was possible to depend upon another human being and not be disappointed. Would she ever really trust anyone? Well, he supposed she trusted Edward Abbott.

  But would her past allow her to trust anyone enough to make a deep, unconditional commitment? The memory of sinking inside her abruptly took his breath. He’d wanted to make love to her practically since the day he’d laid eyes on her. But not like that.

  He’d wanted to do it right.

  “Earth to Braddock.”

  He snapped back to attention. “I...I was thinking.” Focus. “There was one thing Shelley knew for certain.” He settled on the arm of the couch, opposite CJ. “Nash wants me as bad as I want him. In order to keep him off guard, Shelley went along with his idea of luring me into a compromising position. Whenever she was around, he would get so preoccupied talking about planning my fall that he would let things slip, allow her to see things he wouldn’t have under any other circumstances.”

  “For example?”

  “Nash has six men, five now that Banks is dead, who oversee his prostitution business. The city is divided into territories. Banks had the village and a number of streets beyond. One of those men is on the verge of talking. Cooper and I have him primed to spill the beans on everything he knows about that aspect of Nash’s business.”

  “What’s keeping him from talking now?”

  “He wants to keep breathing. He won’t talk unless Nash is already on his way down. No one wants to take the risk unless we have something big enough on Nash to start the ball rolling. Besides, I want that bastard to go away for the rest of his life. I need more than the prostitution.”

  “You have no evidence tying him to any of the disappearances or the murders,” she reminded.

  Braddock hated that feeling of helplessness. To know a man is guilty of so much and to be unable to prove one damned thing. “Not yet. But if we bring charges of any kind that will stick, our man will talk. To be honest, I have a feeling lots of witnesses will be coming forward. I’ve made a number of contacts in the village. There are plenty who would like to see Nash brought to justice, but they’re afraid.”

  “What about his bodyguards and the others who protect him? Won’t those same witnesses fear repercussions from his chain of command?”

  “That’s true,” Braddock agreed. “Some will still be afraid to talk, but it only takes two or three to get the job done.”

  She dropped one foot to the floor, pulled the other beneath her as she shifted to face him. “So, what exactly is it I’m to offer Tyrone?”

  Braddock’s attention stalled for a moment on her breasts. The blouse she wore was one of her conservative ones, but she hadn’t buttoned it to the throat today.

  She was staring at him, waiting for him to go on. He blinked, cleared his mind yet again. What the hell was wrong with him? This was far too important for him to get distracted. “Nash has had his way with law enforcement for a long time. Those who try to levy justice can’t get anything on him.”

  “He’s too slippery for them,” she suggested. “He doesn’t do the dirty work himself. His underlings take the risks. And the falls.”

  “Exactly. He pays them well for the gamble.” Disgust consumed him when he considered what he had to say next. “There are those on the force who look the other way because it’s more lucrative to do that than to do their jobs.”

  She exhaled a big breath, drawing his attention to her chest once more. He had to stop that.

  “This is Huntsville, Alabama,” CJ complained. “How can a man like Nash have gotten away with this crap for so long? It’s not like this is Baltimore or Atlanta. There can’t be that many dirty cops around here.”

  “It only takes a few. Evidence can disappear. Information leaked. Two or three sellouts can do a lot of damage. Nash always seems to be one step ahead of us. This might not be Baltimore, but you’d be surprised at how much of what goes on in towns just like Huntsville feeds what happens in the bigger cities and vice versa.”

  “You mean like a network?”

  “Nash has suppliers in Mobile, Memphis, Atlanta, even as far away as Mexico. What he does here fuels the business in those places.”

  She shook her head, chewed on her lower lip. “Explain to me how this ties in to why Nash will want to negotiate for you.”

  “Because of what he did to my niece, he knows I won’t stop until I nail him. He can’t buy me off. Or scare me off. He tried that. I don’t get frustrated and walk away. I keep pounding at his people. I was so close with Shelley.”

  CJ looked away.

  Yeah. So close. Close enough to get her killed.

  “Nash wants me off his back,” Braddock went on. “He made big promises to Shelley if she could make it happen. But she didn’t care about his promises. She just wanted free of him.”

  CJ’s eyes glistened with emotion when her gaze met his once more. “Will taking Nash down do it? I mean, won’t someone else just step up to the plate and take his place in the village?”

  “They’ll try. And people like me and my partner will just have to see that it doesn’t take root. Nash’s power has built over time. He’s like those annoying little weeds that crop up in a nice lawn. If you ignore them, they’ll take over. You have to wipe them out as soon as they crop up. The new chief is working hard to clean up a mess that accumulated over two decades, but we have to be able to tie Nash to the murders to take him out.”

  “If Nash wants you out of his way, why doesn’t he just do it? You know,” she said with a shrug, “pop a cap in your ass or whatever it is guys like him do?”

  He smiled. Fair question. “I’m a cop. There are those at HPD who will look the other way for a few extra bucks, but most aren’t willing to pretend they don’t see when one of their own is murdered. Nash isn’t going to risk having his resources dry up on him or, worse, turn on him. He has to find a way to get rid of me that doesn’t include blatantly killing me. Plus, I can be slippery, too. I’m not going to make whatever he decides to do easy for him. He already knows that.”

  “Are you saying he’s tried?”

  He lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “I’ve had the usual tactics attempted. My SUV’s brakes were tampered with more than once. The first apartment I lived in got a sudden gas leak. One or all may have been coincidental, but I don’t take the risk. I pay attention. Don’t let him catch me by surprise. He’d like nothing better than to see me suffer a little accident.”

  She shuddered, got up, started to pace. “So, what was it Shelley was supposed to give him? Some sort of evidence?”

  “Nash wanted her to video me in a compromising position. You know, drugs, sex. She was supposed to slip me a mickey, so to speak, and then she and some of her friends were going to make it look as if we were—”

  “I don’t need to hear the dirty details.”

  Braddock heaved a sigh and went on. He hated like hell to tell her this part. “We had planned to...last weekend.”

  She sat in silence a long moment, absorbing the impact of his statement. Stewing, probably, over the pain he’d already caused her without adding this insult to the injury.

  “Okay.” She seemed to gather her strength around her. “Why didn’t you...do this thing the two of you had planned?”

  He tamped back the emotions that accompanied the answer. “She was supposed to call me when she had it set up, but she didn’t call. When I tried to call her, I got her voicemail.”

  CJ blinked, her face a visible stage for the emotions playing out inside her. “I can see how what Shelly was supposed to give him would make you look bad, but how was that supposed to stop you?”

  “He wanted leverage to be able to use me, I think. At least that was Shelley’s impression. Nash figured if he could get me in a malleable spot, he could up his ante of HPD assets.”

  She thought about that a moment. “So I go in, tell Tyrone I want the truth about what happened to Shelley. He laughs in my face.” She sent a knowing look at Braddock. “Then I say that if he’ll tell me who killed her, I’ll give him something he wants.”

  Braddock stood. “No. You tell him that and you may get asked for more than you want to give.”

  Embarrassment darkened her cheeks. “I didn’t think of that.” She leveled her gaze on his. “So what do I say?”

  “You tell him one thing and one thing only.”

  Her gaze held his.

  “That you can deliver me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six