Riskier Business Read online

  She traced a pattern on his sweat-slicked chest. “I won’t. I promise.”

  His long release of breath fluttered her hair. “Sleep now. We’ll worry about everything in the morning.”

  Ruby nodded through a yawn. Tomorrow would be soon enough to worry about her father coming after her mother. Tomorrow.

  Right before she drifted off, a little voice in the back of her head warned her tomorrow would be too late.

  Chapter Nine

  Troy locked the door of his police vehicle and headed toward the station at a fast clip. He’d woken early and headed to Brooklyn with the intention of tracking down Jim, but he’d had no luck. In truth, he hadn’t really expected Ruby’s father to show himself in his old neighborhood. Surprisingly, he hadn’t shown up at Pamela’s apartment last night as they’d expected. Daniel had been waiting with backup to arrest him for breaking and entering, a short-term solution to keep him off the street until they could figure out where to put Pamela. Now Troy began to worry that Jim had either spotted the police lying in wait, or they’d somehow tipped their hand yesterday at Mancuso’s.

  Whatever it was, he didn’t like it. Something didn’t feel right. Until today, he’d been able to predict Jim’s moves accurately, but since this morning, he’d started feeling as though he’d underestimated the man. The entire drive back from Brooklyn, he’d been racking his brain for something he’d failed to see. Last night in Mancuso’s, Jim’s eagerness to confront Pamela had been palpable. There had to be a reason he’d neglected to go straight to her apartment.

  He had a sudden vision of how beautiful Ruby had looked, curled up beside him in their bed this morning, bathed in predawn light. Her hair had been a tangled mess on the pillow, courtesy of him waking her in the middle of the night for a quick, pounding fuck. Christ, as soon as he’d stretched out on top of her, she’d been frantic for him, as if they hadn’t made love just hours before. He’d been forced to hold her down and cover her mouth to keep her quiet. And damn, he’d loved every frantic, sweaty second of it.

  She was counting on him. The giving of trust last night had been a tangible thing and it weighed heavily on his shoulders. He couldn’t let her down.

  Troy came to a dead stop when he heard the gun cocking behind him. He didn’t even have to turn around to know who held it.

  “Holding a gun on me outside the police station?” Troy turned slowly, hand itching to reach for his own weapon. “You’re either desperate or stupid.”

  Jim shrugged. “Either of those options makes you dead if you touch your gun.”

  Troy whistled under his breath. “You know, this whole meet-your-girlfriend’s-father thing is really turning out to be a pain in the ass.”

  “You know, under different circumstances, I might have liked you.” He pointed the gun at Troy’s midsection. “But probably not. Put your gun, cell phone, and whatever other police bullshit you’re holding on the ground and slide them over to me.”

  “Go fuck yourself.” As confident as he sounded, Troy knew he was at a disadvantage. This early in the morning, only a handful of cops were inside the station and most of them were exhausted from the night shift. There were cameras all over the parking lot, but only an off chance someone was inside monitoring them. That footage was only accessed if an incident took place, but it would happen after the fact. His only chance was to stall and hope another cop arrived to distract Jim long enough for him to draw his weapon. On top of everything, the possibility of having to injure or kill Ruby’s father made him ill.

  Jim laughed without humor. “You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Can’t imagine my daughter dating a pushover.”

  “Damn right.”

  His tone turned almost conversational, but amusement lurked in his eyes. “You must hate me like hell, knowing the situations I put her in. Did she ever tell you about the time we lost that match in Duluth, Minnesota? I left her as collateral until I could pawn my gold ring to pay up.” When Troy’s hands curled into fists, Jim laughed. “Relax, it was only for about an hour.”

  “I was conflicted about killing you before. Not any longer.”

  “You won’t get the chance.”

  Troy’s jaw tightened painfully. “What the hell do you want?”

  “I’ll have what I want soon enough.” Jim raised the gun slightly higher. “For now, though? I have to tie up some loose ends. Namely you.” He jerked his chin toward a blue Impala idling at the curb about sixty yards away, just outside police station property. “You’re coming with me.”

  An incredulous laugh escaped him. “Keep dreaming.”

  “I had a feeling you’d say that. It’s why I stopped by your apartment this morning to pay my daughter and her bitch mother a visit. They put up quite a fight.” His smile widened maliciously. “If you come with me, I might be willing to let Ruby off with a warning. You, on the other hand, don’t get one.”

  Troy’s blood turned to ice. His heart lodged in his throat, choking off his air, but he tried desperately not to let his sickening fear show. No, no, no. “Her mother? You’re losing your touch, Jim. Ruby hasn’t seen her since she was a child.”

  “You must think I’m an idiot.”

  Troy simply raised an eyebrow in response, even though he wanted to wrap his hands around the older man’s throat.

  Jim shifted impatiently, obviously having expected them to be gone by now. “Look, I knew I was racing the clock this week. You’re a goddamn cop. I knew you would try to find Ruby’s mother before me. But when you let her walk into Mancuso’s last night, it told me you hadn’t found her yet. Then you got that phone call and everything changed.” He scoffed. “I’m not a blind man. You’d throw yourself in front of a train for my girl, yet you don’t even try to take the file away from me? Just walk out whistling Dixie without her getting what she came for? No, I knew then that you’d found her.”

  Dammit, he’d assumed Jim’s greed would blind him to anything but getting what he wanted. It had been a vast underestimation on his part, and it was too late now to do anything about it. Jesus, he could have Ruby tied up somewhere and there was no way he could pick up his cell phone and call Brent to go check, either. Knowing he couldn’t go solely on the word of a criminal, Troy shook his head. “You don’t have them. It’s a bluff. You never would have gotten past the men outside.”

  “You willing to bet on that? My profession has taught me the importance of being invisible.”

  Troy understood the meaning of Jim’s earlier cryptic statement. If he went with Jim now, he might allow Ruby to go free. Troy wouldn’t walk away alive, but at least Ruby would have a chance. He couldn’t gamble on the hope that Jim was merely bluffing. If he refused to leave, the possibility existed that Jim might take him out here and now, unwilling to ignore the possibility that Pamela had confided Jim’s past crime while at their apartment. If he went willingly, allowing Jim to tie up his loose end, at least he might be able to exchange himself to save Ruby.

  There was no choice.

  “If you hurt her—”

  “Relax, she’s just a little bruised up.”

  Helplessness raged through Troy, the need to get to Ruby almost bringing him to his knees. Reluctantly, he removed his gun and kicked it across the pavement. “Take me to her.”

  …

  Ruby frowned down at her cell phone as she waited for coffee to brew.

  Pamela walked into the kitchen behind her, still wearing the same ripped jeans and white tank top from the night before. “Is that your pre-coffee face or is something wrong?”

  Not quite ready to face her mother yet, Ruby busied herself by pulling two mugs out of the cabinet. Anyway, she didn’t know if she could put the anxious feeling into words. It sat in her belly like a metal dumbbell. “It’s nothing.”

  After a pause, Pamela sighed. “Come on. I’m the same person you’ve been shooting the shit with for months at the workshop. Can we just go to that place for a while until we’re ready for the
dark and twisty?”

  Ruby smiled despite herself, but it quickly vanished. Once again, her eyes strayed to her cell phone. “Every day since we’ve been together, Troy has texted me when he sits down at his desk. It’s like…our thing. He never forgets.” She didn’t explain Troy’s reason for creating the ritual, as yet another way to remind her on a daily basis that he wasn’t going anywhere. She’d come to expect the text messages, whether they were sweet or sexual. Miss you already or I’m going to lick what’s mine later. They’d become a constant, like Troy. He hadn’t even neglected to send them while they were in the midst of their fight, so Troy forgetting the morning after an incredible night together…it seemed odd, to say the least.

  “He’s probably just busy doing cop stuff,” Pamela said, but Ruby heard a note of uncertainty in her voice, telling her she didn’t believe in coincidences, either. As long as Jim remained in town, every anomaly would somehow connect back to him.

  “I’m going to give him five more minutes, then I’ll call,” Ruby decided, pouring them each a mug of coffee. “In the meantime, maybe I’ll just give my friend Bowen a call. See if he heard of Jim being anywhere in the old neighborhood last night or this morning.”

  Pamela’s coffee mug paused halfway to her mouth. “Bowen?”

  “Yeah. Bowen Driscol.” Ruby watched her mother closely, curious over her reaction. She’d purposely never spoken about Bowen before in the workshop, wanting to keep her past separate from her professional life. While she would always count Bowen as her best friend, there was no denying his criminal history. Or present, for that matter. It hadn’t seemed like a wise move divulging too much to the woman investing so much in her upstart company.

  As if she’d pushed her father’s unwanted words straight to her subconscious overnight, they suddenly came creeping back in, waving a red flag. He’d claimed Pamela had slept with his best friend at the time…but before her mother had taken off, his best friend had been…

  Slowly, Ruby lowered herself into a chair. “You cheated with Lenny? Bowen’s…father?”

  At first, her mother looked startled, but resignation followed on its heels. “I wasn’t always the paragon of virtue you see before you today.”

  “Please, I’m not in the mood for jokes.”

  Pamela dropped into the chair across from Ruby. “Lenny and I had a…thing…long before I hooked up with Jim. I was young and it was exciting, watching them fight over me. Up until that point in my life, no one had given two shits about me.”

  Ruby sipped her coffee. “I get that.”

  Regret washed over Pamela’s features. “So you do.”

  Letting the new information sink in about a time before she’d even been born, Ruby frowned. “Wasn’t Lenny married back then?”

  “No, she was long gone. Took off maybe three years earlier.”

  Ruby swallowed, trying to ignore the buzzing in her ears. “But…she had to have given birth to Bowen, right? He’s four years older than me. If she was long gone…”

  Pamela wouldn’t look at her, keeping her gaze firmly glued to a spot beyond Ruby’s shoulder. It told her everything she needed to know. “Bowen’s my—”

  “Brother,” Pamela interrupted quietly. “Half, anyway.”

  Everything came back to her in a blinding rush. Bowen’s constant, fierce need to protect her from the beginning. Her father’s unexplainable hostility toward him. And, worse, the way Bowen had backed down in the face of it, when he’d never backed down from anything in his life.

  “H-how long has Bowen known?”

  Her mother looked suspiciously close to tears. “Since you were kids. Forever. I started seeing your father shortly after I had Bowen. For a while, I was living with your father, raising you both. Then one day, Lenny came and took him. I couldn’t stop him, and your father knew better than to cross Lenny.” She rose and walked to the kitchen window. “When he was old enough to understand, Lenny told Bowen to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t want any reminder of me in his house. I…I think he may have even threatened your safety if he talked.”

  When moisture plopped onto Ruby’s arm, she realized she’d started crying. All these years, he’d looked out for her, feeling a sense of duty he’d never been allowed to speak about. Just as quickly, her sadness turned to anger. Anger toward the adults who’d played with their children’s lives without a thought for anyone but themselves or who it would affect.

  She opened her mouth to vocalize the sentiment when her cell phone rang. Relief eclipsed the anger momentarily, as she stood on shaky legs to reach her phone. But it wasn’t Troy’s number on the screen. A blocked number showed instead.

  Her body felt numb as she answered. “Hello?”

  “Ruby! Enjoying your reunion with your mother?”

  She grabbed on to the counter, her legs unable to support her. No, Jim couldn’t have found out so quickly. He was just trying to rattle her. Please, let that be it. “What are you talking about?”

  Her father’s laughter echoed through the phone. “See, this is why I used to do all the talking and you kept your mouth shut and played pool.”

  “Too bad you usually talked us into more trouble.”

  Ruby could practically see his cocky shrug through the phone. “More trouble can sometimes equal more money.”

  God, in that moment, she hated him. How stupid she’d been, allowing herself to hope he cared or felt an ounce of remorse for those years on the road. “Well, at least you have your priorities in order. This conversation is no longer one of mine.”

  “Hang up and I won’t let you say good-bye to your boyfriend.” This time, she didn’t even try to grab the counter for support as her legs folded beneath her. The pain of her knees landing hard on the linoleum floor barely registered. “Do I have your attention now?”

  “I don’t believe you,” she whispered, her entire being screaming in denial. Still, another part of her, which knew her father better than anyone, heard the rare note of truth in his voice. She also knew what it meant and could hardly breathe through the debilitating dread.

  “Would you like to talk to him?”

  Ruby deflated under the weight of the confirmation that he had Troy. “Yes,” she managed.

  In the background, she heard movement and a few muffled words being exchanged before Troy’s voice reached her though the phone. “Ruby, stay where you are and call the police,” he ordered in a rush. “Do not come here.”

  “Come where?” she wailed as a sickening thud, followed by a grunt, assaulted her ear. “Where are you?”

  A moment later, her father came back on the line, sounding supremely irritated. “I’d seriously advise you not to listen to him.”

  “Don’t hurt him, please. Please.” Ruby commanded herself to sit up and focus, even though she wanted to curl up on the floor and never move again. “What do you want? Just tell me.”

  “I’m going to text you an address. Bring your thief mother to me and I’ll let you leave with your boyfriend.”

  Ruby shook her head rapidly, forgetting in her fear that he couldn’t see her. It would never happen. He’d never let them both walk.

  “It shouldn’t even be a choice, really. What did your mother ever do for you? It’s your boyfriend or your mother, Ruby. Make the right choice. We’ll be here waiting. You’ve got an hour.” She thought he’d hung up, but he delivered one final parting shot before the line went dead. “And if you call the cops, or alert the one sitting outside guarding your building, Troy will be dead long before they take me.”

  Her entire body shook as the phone dropped from her lifeless fingers onto the counter. Only then did she remember her mother was standing beside her.

  “He wants me,” Pamela guessed. “He wants the money back.”

  Ruby nodded dumbly. “I won’t do it. How can he ask me to—” She flinched when the text message signal went off on her phone. With the address etched permanently on her brain, Ruby turned and tripped her way to the bedroom, shedding her robe and sle
ep T-shirt as she went. She didn’t think, couldn’t think, as she dragged on a pair of jeans and yanked a hoodie over her head. Until she saw Troy’s Chicago Cubs ball cap perched on their dresser, she managed to hold it together, but now she couldn’t help the scream that ripped from her throat.

  Your fault. This is all your fault. If she’d listened to Troy and refused her father’s offer the first night in Quincy’s, his life wouldn’t be in danger. She’d done this to him. To them.

  She had to fix her mistake at all costs.

  Ruby shoved her feet into an old pair of Converse and sprinted from the bedroom. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do.” An empty room greeted her. “Pamela?”

  The silence was deafening. Her gaze shot to the counter where her cell phone had been, her father’s text message lighting up the screen. It was gone. In its place sat a note:

  This is my chance to make things right. Be happy.

  - Mom

  Chapter Ten

  Through his swollen right eye, Troy stared at the door of the motel room, begging Ruby not to walk through it. Part of him knew it was useless to hope. He could already see her storming in like an avenging angel, demanding to take his place. Her mother’s place. She’d always been stubborn enough to believe she could fix the world. It was only one of the thousand or so reasons he loved her.

  When they’d driven just past JFK airport and arrived at the motel room, he’d been at once relieved and unsurprised to find it empty. He’d suspected Jim of lying about Ruby and Pamela’s being taken, but he’d refused to stake Ruby’s life on a gut feeling. Now he sat on the floor with his back up against the wall, hands secured behind his back with his own cuffs. Jim had waited until Troy was without the use of his hands before clocking him over the head with the butt of his gun. Payment for warning Ruby over the phone. God, she’d sounded so damn scared. He’d never heard her sound like that, and the memory ricocheted though his brain, making him even dizzier.

  Troy absently registered the feel of blood running down the side of his face as he glanced at the bedside clock. It had been forty minutes since Jim made the call. Within the space of twenty minutes, he could be dead, leaving Ruby to the mercy of her father.