Troublemaker Read online

  Bo’s packaging was on the skimpy side, but appealing for all that. She was a little taller than average, thin, with long arms and legs, and no boobs to speak of. If she was bigger than an A-cup, he’d kiss her ass—and enjoy doing it, because though she might be skinny her ass had a definite curve to it. Her face was faintly exotic, all big dark eyes and a wide, soft mouth, more appealing than pretty. There was that word again: appealing. And he didn’t need to think about how appealing she was. He was here to recuperate and wait for Axel’s trap to be sprung, then he’d be gone. He’d enjoy some flirtation, the zing of sexual attraction, if the circumstances were different. They weren’t. There wasn’t any point in thinking about Bo’s curvy little ass.

  Instead, he should spend his time going over and over everything that had happened the day he’d been shot, trying to spot the pertinent detail that had so far eluded him. Being relegated to the position of bystander rubbed him wrong. He was accustomed to swinging into action and doing what needed to be done, to being the bullet instead of the bait. He wanted to be doing something, anything, other than sitting with his thumb up his ass. He felt useless. Hell, he was useless. If anything happened, he wasn’t certain he could save himself, much less anyone else.

  Look at him now: he’d walked maybe fifty yards, and he was exhausted—though that was an improvement because when he’d arrived last Thursday, he’d needed help just getting into the house, and to the bathroom. It galled him that he needed to rest before he could make the return fifty yards.

  At least he was upright, and in the sunshine. The bright heat felt good on his skin. He stood there listening to the birds singing as boisterously as if they were drunk, and his mind slipped back to that day.

  Congresswoman Kingsley was at the top of his list for somehow being behind all of this, but he had to admit she was there solely because she was a politician. Other than that, he couldn’t think of anything she’d said or done that was out of the ordinary. There was also her husband, Dexter the lawyer. Politician, lawyer to the power brokers—was there much difference between them? Again, Dexter hadn’t done anything other than become a lawyer.

  He replayed his chance meeting with them, everything they’d said, anything he’d seen, and nothing popped.

  Next on his list was Brawley, who had made that phone call immediately after seeing him. But Axel had managed to trace the call, and the only call Brawley had made in that time frame had been to his wife. After checking out both Brawley and the wife, Axel had found nothing. They were regular citizens, with nothing suspicious in their backgrounds. They’d raised a couple of kids, had a few grandkids, went to church.

  The last person on Morgan’s list was the one he was most reluctant to think about: Kodak. He and Kodak had been in so many firefights together he couldn’t say who had saved the other’s life the most times. Kodak knew where he lived, wouldn’t have had to hack any files to get his address . . . and yet, Kodak was sharp enough to have done exactly that as a means of throwing suspicion away from himself.

  But then he came back to the same bottom line he’d reached on the others: he couldn’t think of any reason why. From Axel’s interrogation of Kodak after the ambush, he knew that Kodak had indeed had a lady companion that morning, that he’d spent the day with her. She’d gone home after an early dinner. Everything looked normal; there were no suspicious calls made to or from Kodak’s cell—or even his lady friend’s cell—and no sudden transfer of funds from his bank to that of Albert Rykov.

  They hadn’t even been able to track the money backward. Rykov had made a sizable deposit, but it had been in cash at the Bank of America ATM on Pennsylvania Avenue. Security cameras had recorded it; Rykov had been alone. The money was a dead end. It wasn’t even gratifying to know that someone had paid twenty thousand in cash to have him killed.

  Everything led to a dead end. No one he’d seen that day had said or done anything suspicious. He was no closer to figuring out who’d tried to kill him now than he had been when it first happened.

  He heard a muffled but happy bark and turned to see Tricks barreling toward him, tennis ball in her mouth, which explained why her bark had been muffled. Bo was following behind. Tricks reached him and dropped the ball at his feet, then took off running. Careful to keep his balance, he bent to pick it up and hurled it over her head. It bounced, she leaped and caught it, and immediately she froze in place with her head proudly lifted, waiting to be praised.

  “Good girl!” Bo called, clapping her hands. “That was a beautiful catch.” She reached him and said, “You’ve been out here a while. Are you okay?” Her dark eyes were calm, revealing nothing more than a casual concern.

  “Yeah, just thinking.”

  “You didn’t move for a good forty minutes. Do you want to go back in before I take Tricks for her walk?”

  Meaning she wasn’t certain he could make the short trip on his own and didn’t want to leave him there until she got back. The reminder of his weakness frayed his temper, and he started to snarl an answer before catching himself. Snapping at her wouldn’t help him recover any faster, no matter how much it galled him to have to accept her help.

  On the other hand, maybe there was an upside to this.

  He said, “My knees got a little shaky. I thought I’d rest a while before trying to get back to the house.”

  Strictly speaking, none of that was a lie. His knees had gotten a little shaky when he’d walked out. He’d also rested. But he could easily make the return trip to the house—okay, if not easily, at least without falling on his face.

  “Lean on me,” she said without hesitation, though again there was nothing to read in her face that hinted at any great concern. She stepped close and shoved her shoulder against him the way she had the day he arrived, her right arm around his waist. He looped his left arm around her shoulder and let a little of his weight rest on her as they slowly walked back to the house, Tricks prancing in escort.

  He looked down at the top of her head, at the sun gleaming on the thick, rich darkness of her hair. She didn’t do anything special, he didn’t think; her hair reached the middle of her back and all she did was pull it back and clip it at the base of her neck. If she wore any makeup, he couldn’t see it, though he wasn’t exactly an expert in the makeup department. He noticed lipstick, or if a woman wore enough eyeliner that she looked like a raccoon. Other than that, he was a guy, which meant he was fairly oblivious.

  Her skin was smooth, with a healthy sheen to it. A faint peach-hued flush had warmed her cheeks. Beneath his hand the bones of her shoulder felt fragile, not much thicker than a child’s. There was nothing childlike about her, but the feel of her shoulder clasped in his rough fingers made his stomach tighten because it reminded him that she had jumped headlong into a fight without regard for her own safety, that she’d been punched in the face by some low-life son of a bitch who needed to be shown a thing or three about what happened to jerks who hit women.

  “Are you okay?” she asked again, frowning as she slanted a look up at him, and he realized his breathing had gone deeper and faster as anger bubbled his blood.

  “I’ll make it,” he said roughly, sidestepping the question. Yeah, he was okay. He made himself a promise: Before he left this place, he’d make it his mission to track down that bastard and make him wish he never saw Hamrickville again.

  CHAPTER 10

  WHEN BO STEPPED INTO THE STATION WITH TRICKS beside her, the first person she saw was Warren Gooding. If he hadn’t seen her too, she’d have silently backed out and not returned until after he left. Unfortunately, he did see her, so she was denied the coward’s way out. Her stomach tied in knots at the thought of the coming confrontation because it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  Loretta, the dispatcher, peeked out from around her cubicle and mouthed “Sorry” at her. Bo gave a slight nod to let her know it was okay. What could Loretta have done, thrown the man out? She only wished. Physically Loretta could have, because she was a big woman, but that would only m