Sunset Point: A Shelter Bay Novel Page 13

  Although it wasn’t that unusual for police to show up to support one of their own, in this case, Tess knew that the support from his fellow law enforcement men and women wasn’t just because they shared a badge but because Donovan was one of the good guys. The kind of cop who’d always have your back, while doing his best, during his patrol days to keep the streets safe. As a detective, he was more dogged than anyone at PPB when it came to pursuing justice for those who couldn’t win it for themselves.

  She’d often thought their shared workaholic tendencies were one reason why they hadn’t worked out as a couple. Also, pillow talk about murder, rapes, child abuse, and domestic violence, was undoubtedly not conducive to romance, part of the reason they’d never gotten to the sex part of their relationship. Which, she’d always figured, made working together a whole lot easier.

  “He had X-rays, an MRI, and CT scans,” Jake reported. “He’s got some injuries, which will heal, and they’re keeping him at least overnight, just for precaution, because he has a concussion, but it doesn’t sound as bad as it could have been.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Roger that. I finally got hold of Mike.”

  “Great. Did Dad say why he didn’t answer the phone?”

  “He had it turned off.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t ask. And he didn’t tell. But he’s on his way here. I told him you were okay.” He turned toward Nate. “You’re the Marine.”

  “I am.”

  “Yeah. It shows. Thanks for taking care of my girl.”

  Tess rolled her eyes, knowing it would only get worse when her father arrived.

  “I was just the chauffeur,” Nate said.

  “The nurse said to give them a while to settle in, then we could visit. But not all together. Meanwhile, the department sent a uniformed guard for his door.”

  “A guard? Are you saying his being hit wasn’t an accident?”

  “According to witnesses, a black SUV with dark windows came down the street and swerved to hit him. He flew up on the hood before bouncing off. Fortunately, it didn’t run over him.”

  “You didn’t tell me it was that bad!” Tess felt Nate’s hand beneath her elbow, supporting her as she swayed.

  “Sorry.” He raked a hand over his hair. “As an investigator, I should be better at reporting an incident, but this one’s especially rough because it’s personal. It could end up being a drunk driver. But no one wants to take any chances. Especially with you involved.”

  “You can’t believe…”

  Her voice trailed off. The phone calls had made her uneasy, granted. But she’d always thought of monitoring them as a way to catch the caller. Even after the bomb squad experience, she hadn’t considered herself in danger. Because, she realized now, allowing herself to even think of herself as a potential victim took her to a dark place she’d locked away in her mind.

  “That the driver was some hit guy from the Russian?” Jake filled in for her. “I think that’s a very good possibility. Your snitch said Vasilyev’s still running the organization and talking about a hit. Which is why the cops were able to get your phone tap warrant.”

  “But why Donovan?”

  He shrugged. “He could’ve been sending you a message. Or getting him off the case. Quinn’s as dogged as your old man was when he was on the force. He wasn’t going to stop until he got the caller, or anyone else who could allow Vasilyev from to get out.”

  “He’s not going to get out,” Tess insisted. Of that she was very, very sure. She’d seen to that.

  “You know that. And I know that. Unless he escapes, which isn’t likely. But that doesn’t mean he knows it. These new Russians aren’t like the old mob guys. They’re less subtle. Kinda like their president. And they’re definitely not lacking in the ego department.”

  Tess was processing all that when she saw her father headed toward them. He was wearing the suit he used to wear to court, and he wasn’t alone. He was with a woman. An attractive, age-appropriate redhead. Could he possibly be dating? After all these years?

  “Jake filled me in,” he said as he wrapped his arms around Tess. “Hell of a thing. But Quinn’s tough.”

  “He is that,” Tess agreed. She turned to the woman. “Hi.”

  “Hello.” Her voice was warm but rough. Like Lauren Bacall’s. It was also, she suspected her father had already noticed, sexy. “You must be Mike’s daughter, Tess. I recognize you from your news interviews. I’m Eleanor Flynn. I’m a volunteer at the library. I’m sorry we have to be meeting under such circumstances.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” Tess said, not certain which of them she was trying to convince more. “Some of my favorite memories are of story time at the library.”

  “So your dad told me.”

  “Eleanor and I met today,” Mike revealed. “When I went there for some research books. I spent dinner trying to talk her into coming to work for Jake and me.”

  “You and Jake?” Feeling more and more like Alice having fallen down the rabbit hole, she turned back toward the man in question. “You already have a job. With the D.A.’s office.”

  “I like the work,” he said, looking more than a little guilty for having kept the information from her. “But there are a lot of levels of bureaucracy to jump through. When your dad came up with the idea of opening our own shop—”

  “Your own shop?” Her head spun back to her father. “As in private investigations? You guys are going to be like Magnum P.I.?”

  “Well, yeah. Sort of.” Seeming a bit embarrassed—maybe because he hadn’t told her?—he came close to scuffing the toe of his polished-to-a-glass-sheen shoe on the waiting room floor. Once a Marine, always a Marine, she remembered both he and Nate saying.

  “But without the cool Ferrari, aloha shirts, and short shorts,” he continued. “I was waiting until it was official to tell you.” No longer embarrassed, his broad chest practically puffed up with pride, and his shoulders squared, once again reminding her of what he must have looked like as a Marine. “I filed the papers today. Before going to the library.”

  “Wow. Well…”

  “Nate Breslin,” Nate rescued her by introducing himself as her mind went totally blank while she struggled to process this news. Nate held out a hand. “Like I told Jake, I happened to be at Tess’s when the call came in about Quinn, so I drove her over.”

  As much as she appreciated Nate’s assistance, she waited to hear her father ask why he’d been at her house. Or why she hadn’t been capable of driving herself. But instead, her father zeroed in on an entirely different subject.

  “Breslin… You’re the writer.”

  “Guilty.”

  “The Haunting of Hannah McBride is one of my favorites.”

  “Thanks. I researched that on a PPB ride-along with Donovan.”

  “So he’s said. And it shows that you knew your stuff because you got the cop stuff right. I also liked Dragons’ Lair.”

  “You’ve read it?” Tess found her voice. Wasn’t that a surprise? She’d thought her father thrived on a diet of Ed McBain and Elmore Leonard.

  “Couple of times.” Mike nodded.

  “I didn’t know you read horror novels.”

  “Your friend here is a crackerjack storyteller.” He turned back to Nate. “Come to think of it, don’t you live somewhere on the coast?”

  “In Shelter Bay,” Nate confirmed. “And I’m glad to hear you liked my stories.”

  “A bunch,” Mike said. “Though my new favorite is probably Graveyard of the Abyss. The one about some alleged Bermuda Triangle area off the coast.”

  Tess held her breath, hoping that Nate wouldn’t bring up the damn captain. “My house overlooks that beached wreckage,” he said easily. “It just seemed to be calling out for a story. And Oregon’s coast has certainly claimed its share of ships.”

  “It sure as hell has.” Mike’s eyes met Tess’s and she knew they were both thinking of the captain and Isabella.

  Provin
g that she was as perceptive as she was friendly, Eleanor broke into the silence that was suddenly yawning as deep as that aforementioned abyss.

  “Since it’s going to be a while before you can see Detective Quinn, why don’t you and Tess go catch up over coffee upstairs in the cafe in the main part of the hospital?” she suggested. It did not escape Tess’s notice that the way she’d placed her hand on the sleeve of his suit seemed awfully intimate for two people who’d supposedly been having a business dinner. “Jake or I’ll come get you if he’s allowed visitors before you’re back.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Mike said. Looking extremely grateful as he leaped onto the suggestion like a drowning man grasping a life preserver, he patted her hand in a gesture that definitely didn’t look the least bit businesslike.

  “I’ll wait here with Jake and Eleanor,” Nate said.

  “We’ll be back in a bit.” Tess knew she was going to have to answer some hard questions. Which was fine with her, because she had more than a few of her own.

  Neither spoke as they made their way to the elevator and up to the cafe. Once they were settled at a table with coffee and a piece of cheesecake so expensive Tess figured it was the hospital’s idea of an unhealthy food tax, Mike had regained his composure and got down to brass tacks.

  “So,” he said. “When were you going to tell me you were being threatened?” As his bright blue gaze locked on to hers, Tess suddenly felt as if she were under the lens of a strong microscope.

  “I don’t know.” She admittedly hadn’t thought that part through. But she should have. Because, as she knew too well and had been proven once again tonight, all police departments leaked like a sieve. “I guess maybe once Donovan and the team caught the guy. And since you already know, you probably also realize the caller’s mechanically altering his voice. But believe me, we’ve got everything under control. Donovan has my phone tapped, and the bomb squad came out to defuse my bobblehead.”

  “The bomb squad? And what bobblehead?” Mike repeated, obviously confused.

  “I had a package delivered tonight, and I guess I was feeling edgy, because I called Donovan, who called out the bomb squad. But it was only a gift. So, obviously I overreacted.”

  For a moment, Mike the father was replaced by Michael Brown the cop. “Not at all. You were smart not to take any foolish chances. What I don’t get is why you didn’t see fit to tell your own father. What, didn’t you think I’d care?”

  “Of course I thought you’d care,” she said. “That’s just the problem. I was afraid you’d go off half-cocked, act like a cop, and get yourself killed.”

  “Being a cop is all I know how to do, sweetheart. Other than be your dad, and now that you’re grown up, you’re proving a lot less willing to let me take care of you.”

  She eyed him over the rim of her coffee cup. It was his turn to be interrogated. “Talking about being a cop, is that why you came up with the idea to open your own detective agency?”

  “Hey, you don’t have to sound as if it’s so crazy,” he said. “This is Detective Sergeant Michael Xavier Brown you’re talking to.”

  “Retired,” she pointed out.

  “After spending thirty-one years on the force without so much as a scratch.”

  She reached across the table and traced a thin white line at his temple. “And what’s this?”

  “A nick.”

  “And the scars on your chest?”

  “A little buckshot never hurt anyone.”

  “And your shoulder?”

  He shrugged. “So some gangbanger got a little careless with a knife one night. I guarantee he straightened up real fast when I showed him the error of his ways.”

  “And how about that little piece of metal lodged in one of your back muscles? Inches away from your spine,” she pointed out. She’d rushed home from law school when that shooting had made the news. Needless to say, neither her father nor Jake had bothered to inform her.

  He gave her a broad grin that never failed to diminish her irritation. “Hey, that’s my barometer; I can always tell hours before the weather bureau when it’s going to rain.”

  Tess smiled despite her concern. “You’re impossible.”

  “That’s what your mother always used to say,” he agreed cheerfully, but then his expression turned suddenly sober. “But you stayed.”

  “We both stayed,” she agreed softly. “Together.”

  “If it makes you feel better, I’m not going to be running down alleys, doing car chases through downtown, and jumping over fences to catch bad guys. Jake and I are going to work on cold cases. Then turn what we uncover over to the cops.”

  “That’s definitely in your wheelhouse,” she allowed, much relieved by this business plan. “Although I’ll miss working with Jake, you guys will be great. And you’ve chosen something that’s definitely needed, given the cutback in police funding.”

  “I’ve already gotten a lot of interest from various bureaus I contacted,” he divulged, revealing this hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment decision. “I just wish like hell that we could’ve gotten your guy. But that doesn’t mean we’ve given up. Somewhere, in some police department in this country, there are paper files stored away that’ll eventually give us what we need to know.”

  As he blew out a frustrated breath, Tess decided there was no point in suggesting it was time for both men to move on. Because it wasn’t who they were.

  “So,” he said, switching gears with a deft ease that had probably caught more than one bad guy off guard. “How did you meet the author?”

  “He was at the courthouse to observe the end of the Kagan trial.” Tess decided against mentioning the incident at the Shelter Bay seawall.

  “Is he switching genres? True crime isn’t his thing.”

  “All right, Detective Brown,” she said on a huff as his silent, unblinking stare dragged on. “I confess. We had lunch.”

  Not for the first time, Tess understood exactly how her father had gotten all those crooks to confess over the years. “The Look,” as the other cops down at the precinct house had always referred to it, was decidedly intimidating. It had always worked on her. Especially on those rare times during her teenage years when she’d try, unsuccessfully, to sneak in after curfew.

  “So, are you saying it’s solely professional? Or personal?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Did Breslin send you the bobblehead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.” And didn’t he manage to put a world of suggestion into that murmur? “He seems like a nice enough guy. Maybe even good enough for my daughter.”

  His tone was remarkably gentle for a big man, reminding Tess of all the times during her childhood that she’d found comfort in those strong arms. He’d been her rock when her mother had left without warning. One rainy day Tess had returned home from school to find her mother gone.

  Needless to say, Tess had blamed herself. If she’d only been a better daughter, if she’d only not gotten kidnapped, if she’d only not stopped for that van that day, her mother wouldn’t have changed. And she’d still be in the kitchen singing along to the radio while she made dinner.

  Tess’s guilt was assuaged by her father’s assertion that she was the sweetest, most lovable little girl that God had ever put down on this sweet green Earth.

  Her mother, he’d told her gently, needed to be free. Like the other women in her family. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just the way it was. But he’d never consider their marriage a mistake because he’d gotten the world’s best daughter out of the deal.

  And she’d gotten the world’s best father. Over the years, he’d dried her tears when she hadn’t been invited to the junior high spring dance, and put up with all the other girlish tears that had accompanied her high school years.

  She’d walked down the aisle on her father’s arm the day of her wedding, and eighteen months later, he’d offered to beat “the jerk” to a pulp if it would make her feel better. Mike Brown was
more than a father—he was the most supportive, most dependable man she’d ever known.

  “And if whatever you have with Breslin does get personal, and he dares hurt my little girl, I’ll punch his lights out.”

  Despite the seriousness of the situation—her threats, her concern about her father going back into the detective business, Donovan nearly being killed—Tess managed a laugh. “You do realize that beating people up is no way to gain clients,” she said.

  “I didn’t beat up anyone as a cop. And despite those nicks you pointed out, I never once discharged my weapon. And I have no intention of doing either of those things as a P.I.,” he assured her.

  Her father’s record, going back to his street cop days, had been stellar. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t be a master of intimidation. “Remember the time you offered to beat up Harry Davis for me?”

  “The rotten kid made you cry.”

  “Standing me up for the homecoming game was not exactly a capital offense.”

  “He made you cry,” her father repeated firmly. “He’s lucky I only threatened him.”

  “You threatened Harry?” she asked incredulously, suddenly understanding why, for the remainder of the school year, the sixteen-year-old high school junior had taken off in the opposite direction whenever he’d seen her coming.

  “I told that snot-nosed kid that the next time I caught him even looking at you, I’d show him the room in the basement of the station where we kept the rubber hoses,” Mike revealed proudly.

  “PPB doesn’t have a room with rubber hoses.”

  Mike winked. “You know that. And I know that. But Harry, the teenage louse, didn’t.”

  She shook her head in frustrated amusement. “I’m still concerned,” she admitted. “About this idea you dragged Jake into.”

  “He’s a grown man. Capable of making his own decisions.”

  “True. But it was your idea.”

  “I’m not the kind of guy who takes to being put out to pasture just because I’ve had a couple of little heart flutters.”

  “An attack,” she corrected. “Flutters don’t put you in the CCU. Flutters didn’t cause you to have a triple bypass.”