Western Romance Collection: Rugged Cowboys Part 77

"You bet," Craig said, nodding softly to music that wasn't playing.

"Is that how all your business goes?"

"Not all of it," he said with a shrug.

"Who was that, even?"

"Oh, you know," Craig said. Evading the question again. "I met him around."

"Around, huh?"

"What is this, twenty questions? Yeah. Around."

"Sorry I asked." Someone finally came around, a guy who looked like he could serve double-duty as a bulldozer if the need arose, and Craig ordered them both beers. They'd take a basket of fries, as well, and make it snappy.

Apparently the deal the day before had set him off. Well, she wasn't going to complain if it meant better service, but it told her something about the man across the table from her. All of it did.

Whatever he was getting paid for, it was worth more than the bike he was sitting on. Time rebuilding an engine might add up to ten grand, but that wasn't the kind of atmosphere that surrounded a mechanic getting paid, and this wasn't the sort of place a mechanic hung out at noon.

"You said you knew my sister."

"Yeah, I said that. Knew her voice, from over the phone, anyway. Saw a few pictures. We tried a video chat one time, but it didn't work out."

"You don't seem like the computer type."

"No?" Craig shrugged. "You have to keep up with the times, don't you?"

"I guess so," Erin agreed. The fries came out with the beer, steaming hot and overfull for the basket they came in. Craig dumped some salt on and took one.

"So. Between jobs, huh?"

"For now," she said, mildly. "They come and go. I could have a contract tomorrow, or I could be another few weeks."

"For real?"

"Sure," she said.

"How do you manage to pay for it?"

"My mom left me a little money." It was a lie. After Dad left, she'd been a wreck. Barely able to keep herself together. Erin wondered how bad Dad had taken it, but then she decided that she didn't need to worry about that. He probably took it as badly as he took everything. It would make a great excuse to drink, but not a great excuse to change anything about himself.

"We should all be so lucky."

"It is what it is."

"I hear that," Craig said, another tug of a smile at the corners of his lips. "But hey. We all do what we have to in this life, right?"

"Exactly."

Craig didn't know how true that was for her. She would do whatever she had to do, and if that meant spending time with this b.a.s.t.a.r.d until he slipped up and gave himself away, she'd wait all year if she had to.

He took a french fry between his fingers and moved over to her side of the booth, wrapped his free hand around her shoulder and pulled her in.

"I think something happened to your sister. You heard from her?"

"No," she said. "Not in years."

"See, that's a shame, darlin'. Family's family."

"I know."

"I watch out for my family, and they watch out for me. We fight, sure. Who doesn't? But we at least got that much figured out. We're responsible for each other. n.o.body gets off, and n.o.body walks away."

"What's that supposed to mean? Like-you have brothers?"

"Brothers and brothers. I was the youngest, and my brothers looked out for me. Now I'm older, I look out for them."

"I don't know what that's like. My sister and I split up a long time ago."

"That's how it is, sometimes. But I'm telling you, it's not good. You need to reforge those bonds."

"Well, if I get any word on her..." Erin forced herself to swallow the anger that was threatening to spill out. "Then I'll do just that. You're right. It's too precious to waste time on petty little fights."

"See what I mean?"

"Yeah, I see what you mean."

He smiled and stood up. Pulled another fry and put it between his lips. Like a cigarette or something. Then he went over to an old jukebox, old enough to still be using C.D.s, and thumbed a couple quarters in. A minute later it started playing something and he slid back into the booth opposite her.

"Of course, sometimes you have to take a hard line with them, too, you know?"

"What?"

"With family. I heard a little about your parents' situation. A year, it's a long time, you get to talking, and that sort of thing comes up. Bad stuff."

"Well, sometimes you have to deal with bad stuff."

"Oh, no, I ain't doubting that. But what I am saying is, I know your dad didn't do your mom right. As much as I care about family, as much as I'd do anything to keep my brothers safe-" he sucked in a breath through his nose and let it out like a bull about to charge. "-Someone did my momma like that, and they wouldn't be in no position to do it to n.o.body else. Not ever again."

Twenty.

It wasn't the first time that she'd thought it. It wasn't going to be the last time. Dad would have deserved it, if either of his daughters had decided to take that route. But hearing someone else dropping a not-so-veiled threat had been jarring, to say the very least.

Erin forced herself to focus again for a moment. On the bike, with him driving, riding was easy. Painless. She could forget about the whole world, just let him control her weight and let him take her wherever she was going. But that wasn't the life she wanted, and it wasn't the life she was going to have for herself.

The minute he slipped up enough for the cops to get involved, she would get them involved, and she'd be free and clear. He pulled up in front of her building. To her surprise, he didn't get off or park. He just let her off at the door. Not that she minded.

She felt her phone buzz in her pocket as she slid off the side. If she didn't miss her guess, that would be Roy. She had an hour to get back to him, or the game was over.

The question, now, was whether or not to tell him what had just happened. He deserved to know. But there was the risk that he would be over-cautious. He could decide that they were putting her at too much risk, and with the clear connection now between Craig and the previous killers, they had what they needed to make a move.

She couldn't allow that. The picture wasn't complete. If they moved in now, then she would have wasted her time and all for a whole h.e.l.l of a lot of nothing. That wasn't acceptable. Not remotely. Erin's keys came out of her pocket easily as she hit her floor. There wasn't any sign of a break-in. That, at least, she was thankful for. She fit the key into the lock and turned it.

The door was finicky. It didn't like to come unlocked; there was a little hitch in the motion that she'd learned to deal with over the years. It came open easily enough, though. She flicked the light on. Same as she'd left it. Erin didn't know why she had expected any different, but now that she was there and everything was okay, she let out a sigh of relief.

The laptop was still closed on her desk. The place looked exactly the way she'd expected it to. Her wallet, still sitting out on the counter. Still closed.

Something about the way that he'd come on such short notice, the way that Craig had told her to leave everything. It had driven her to think that someone was going to come around after. If someone had, then they had done a very good job hiding it. Then again, she was just being paranoid. Craig was a thug, and he was perfectly capable of getting inside. He'd already proven that.

The only reason that a guy like that demonstrates anything, though, is so he doesn't have to use it. She knew that. If he was showing off that he could get in, it was so that she wouldn't try to hide anything. Because it wouldn't work.

And besides that, as much as she suspected that he would belong to a gang-suspected even further that whatever she'd just seen was gang-related payment-that didn't mean he had the clout with them to send some kind of fixer by her apartment.

Unless he suspected something was up, there was no reason to send anyone in the first place. The whole idea made no sense, none of it did. Erin dropped her jacket over the back of a wooden chair and then pulled her phone out of her pocket. Roy's number showed a message. She read it.

Just checking in.

She said that she was alright, she was at home.

The question of whether or not to tell him was still bothering her. She had to have a free hand. That was the whole purpose of doing it this way. Of not doing it alongside the police force, of not telling her d.a.m.n Captain the whole plan from the beginning.

If she reported every little thing to Roy, then it was only a matter of time before he decided that she was taking too many risks, that she was putting herself in 'too much' danger.

There was no such thing as too much danger, though. She knew that instinctively. Her sister had put herself in too much danger, and she was dead. Craig was a shock in a lot of ways. She didn't know how to feel about his s.e.xual appet.i.tes. Didn't know how to feel about the way that he treated her like his little rag doll. Like his property.

But she knew he was right about one thing. It was her job, as the sister, to protect Becca. She'd failed that job utterly, which meant that there was only one alternative.

Now that it was done, she had to see it finished.

Erin clicked her phone off and slipped it back into her pocket. She had a long time to think. That much was good, at least. She needed the time.

The questions were piling up again, and she wasn't finding the answers she needed fast enough. It was only a matter of time before one of them slipped. Either Craig slipped up and let on that he knew what happened to Becca, or she slipped up and let him know that she was on to him.

Once that happened no more nice guy. No more friendly visits. It would be open season on her a.s.s.

Who was the guy he'd made that hand-off to? Who was he really?

She had to a.s.sume that the names from the online profiles were all fake. Craig's too, she knew, but that didn't change that she had nothing else she could call him.

There was at least one other, unless she was wildly underestimating them.

Given how similar the broad-faced man had looked, though, she wasn't keen on believing that just yet.

Which meant that one more, minimum. There might have been two more, maybe three. Maybe there were others that they hadn't made the connection to, yet.

Erin took a breath.

What was the significance of the pattern? If it was one person, then they could profile that guy. Maybe it was worth something, maybe it wasn't. Roy didn't put much stock in it, and they didn't have any cause for profilers in the L.A.P.D.

But if they were a group, and all of them did it the same way, then there was something else to it. Someone, maybe the first killer, maybe someone else entirely, had told the others that this was going to be how it was.

Seven stab wounds in the gut. Alley in the bad part of town. She was missing something, she knew it. There had to be some sort of connection. Some reason that three or more people would get involved with a murder game like this.

Erin's hands were shaking, she realized. She pressed them flat against the bed and let out an unsteady breath. This wasn't how she was supposed to feel. She was supposed to be in control. She was supposed to feel like she knew what was going on with her life. With the case. She was supposed to feel like she was in the driver's seat.

Instead, she felt like she was on the back of that d.a.m.n motorcycle. Someone was taking her for a ride, and she could wonder all she liked why they were doing what they were doing, but she wasn't going to get any answers. Not at this rate.

Erin tried to calm her mind. It was still early. She'd been working the case for less than 48 hours. That was more time than she wanted it to take, but sometimes these things took time.

She already had a solid lead on a suspect, she already knew what he was doing. She already had a solid link between him and the prior murders. The only question now was why she was feeling so much like she had nothing at all.

Was she building a house of cards? What was she going to do when it fell? She shook her head.

House of cards or not, she wasn't going to let it get to her. She needed to keep herself focused. That was the only option Erin had left, now, and she would be d.a.m.ned if she was going to let some motorcycle punk take her for a ride when it came to her sister's murder.

Twenty-One.

Waiting for Craig to call wasn't going to get anything done. She knew that, but he hadn't told Erin near enough to track him down. She slipped into the old Jeep. The only connections she could make were that bike and that biker bar. Well, looking for a single motorcycle in a city this size wasn't going to turn into anything. Not for someone working off the books.

The only other option was tracking down the biker bar. She turned the key and got driving. She hadn't payed close attention to the route Hutchinson had taken when he took her there, but that didn't change anything. She knew how to get to the interstate. From there, it wasn't too hard to figure what came next.

She pulled in, gave the bikes a slow drive-by. Maybe Craig was there, she thought, but his bike wasn't. No matter. She pulled in. If he wasn't, then maybe someone else was. Someone else who she needed to get to know.

She caught a few funny looks as she came through the door. The sort of looks that should have told her exactly why she didn't belong there, but she'd been there with Craig already. For that matter, whether she had or not, it didn't matter, because she wasn't going to leave. Not when two women were already dead, and a third would be joining her any day now.

They had been slowly accelerating things for the past four years. Would it be two this time? Or did they have three lined up? More?

She took a breath and waited for the guy to bring her the beer and the fries. He did. Still piping hot, still piled far too high for any rational person, which was just high enough for a place like this.

Then she started looking from face to face, person to person. A smile crossed her face when she saw the face she was looking for. Plain-looking except for his broad nose that looked like it was an art deco attempt at a flattish face.

She took a couple fries and ate one as she walked up to the billiards table.

"Hey, I know you."

The guy turned and raised an eyebrow. "Well I don't know you, so buzz off."