Chapter 16
CHAPTER 16
W ilder finished breakfast with his brothers. They didn’t like that Bex had tried to take him down in an undercover bust but were slowly changing their minds about her as she proved to be focused on justice, not politics. Plus, his sisters-in-law were texting his brothers about how much they liked Bex.
“I’ll keep an open mind,” Damon told him as they walked to their cars. “But, Wilder, you come first. I won’t sit back and let them take you down for something you didn’t do. Sexy detective or not, you are my brother. She is not.”
Wilder understood more than Damon realized. “I know. And I appreciate it. I also understand it. I felt the same way but talk to Liv. Talk to Granger. Bex refused to plant evidence against me and became a target by doing the right thing. She’ll prove herself to you all just as she did to me.”
Damon pinned him with a glare. “You like her, don’t you?”
Wilder thought about playing it off, but Damon always knew the truth, so why bother denying it? “Yeah, I do. She’s different from the others.”
Damon crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s one point in her favor. You dated a lot of empty-headed social climbers. Just be careful, okay? I know you deal with shady people regularly, but this is different from negotiating with a corrupt local politician who wants a bribe to let you import champagne. These are powerful and dangerous people. You know I can call in help if you need it.”
Wilder nodded. He knew the kind of help Damon could get. They were the kind that didn’t mind making a scene or shooting someone on the street. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. “Thanks, Damon. I appreciate it.”
Wilder drove home after promising Damon that he and Bex would show up tonight at Harper’s. Damon was in full mother hen mode and wanted all his chicks in the same nest so he could protect them.
Two hours later Wilder looked up when he heard the car approaching. Maggie was bringing Bex back to him. The house had felt strangely empty without her in it.
Wilder met Bex at the front door as she was waving goodbye to Maggie. He opened the door and stared. “Bex, you look beautiful.” It was all natural too. Her curly hair was pulled up showing off the elegant slope of her neck. The jeans hugged her curves and put her fantastic ass on display. The lightweight cranberry V-neck sweater flared at her round breasts, showed off her athletic build, and the color made her glow.
“Thank you. Your family has great taste.”
Wilder couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and running his hands down her sides to her hips. He pulled her toward him. They fit together perfectly. He’d never had such a desire to constantly touch someone before, but it was a constant need with Bex.
“Finally, I can get some uninterrupted time with you.”
Wilder leaned down as Bex rose up to meet his kiss. Wilder wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against him as their lips met. Bex ran her fingers through his hair and pulled his head down to deepen the kiss. The band on his control snapped, but it wasn’t just him. Bex hiked a leg up to his hip before he reached down to grab her other leg. In seconds they’d gone from saying hello to him having her pinned against the front door. Her hips undulated against him, sending his desire spiraling to new heights. Then when she tugged his hair, he growled, tightening his fingers on her ass and shoving his hips forward.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
It took a moment for the ringing of his phone to penetrate the lust-filled haze he and Bex were in. When he broke from the kiss, his hand was on her breast and they were both breathing heavily.
“You better get that,” Bex said. He enjoyed the way her eyes were glassed over with passion.
“Don’t move,” he said, getting one last caress of her breast in before he used that hand to reach into his back pocket and grab his phone. “Shit. It’s Wise.”
Wilder put the phone on speaker as he let Bex slide down his body until she touched the ground. “What do you have?” Wilder asked.
“Is Bex with you?” Glen asked.
“I’m here, chief.”
Glen sighed. “I wish I was calling with good news, but I’m not.”
Wilder didn’t take his eyes off of Bex. Her jaw was tight and her face had gone slightly pale, but there were no tears. Only determination showed in her eyes. “I can take it, chief,” she said, her voice steady even as her hands were in fists.
“Anyone with a connection to you has been sidelined. Commissioner Murphy has put internal affairs on you and DA Seabrook in charge of it. Ana has been put on desk duty, and because Max had been nice to you, Sean put him on an undercover mission.”
“Sean?” Wilder asked trying to remember who was who.
“Captain Sean Kilpatrick,” Bex answered. “He’s in charge of my department but under Chief Wise.”
“I’m meeting Max on the quiet when I can,” Glen told them. “Seabrook and his office are trashing you, your family, and anyone who supports you. In turn, the police department is walking on eggshells. The general feeling in the department is that your family is solid. They’ve proven themselves as good cops, but the fact that you disappeared isn’t sitting well. Ana and your family are standing up for you. They’re telling everyone who will listen that you would only run if you had no other choice. They’re placing blame on Seabrook and his lack of support for law enforcement.”
Wilder saw Bex’s face fall even more. “What’s happened to my family? Seabrook wouldn’t take that well.”
“No, he didn’t. He got Commissioner Murphy to suspend your family from the force. It’s at least paid leave, but that alone has further divided the force. You have a lot of support, but now they’ve been forced into silence out of fear for their jobs.”
“Please tell me you’re getting somewhere on Seabrook?” Wilder was now matching Bex by clenching his hands into fists too.
“Nothing. No one is talking. I’m searching high and low for some evidence of him asking Bex to take you down, but I can’t find anything. Murphy told me he’d been there for your assignment, but he said there was plenty of evidence of WET dealing drugs. I asked to see the evidence, but Murphy said it was in Seabrook’s hands since he was prosecuting the case.”
“What about non-police sources?” Bex asked.
“What do you mean?”
“If Seabrook is doing criminal shit, then talk to criminals. Go to our informants. Ana has a ton of them. I’m sure Max does too. Somebody somewhere knows something,” Bex said passionately.
Wilder nodded. It was a good idea.
“I’ll do that,” Glen told them before pausing. “Someone is calling me from a South Carolina number.”
“It’s probably Peter Castle, the head of the FBI office here. He said he’d call you,” Wilder told him. “Thanks for doing this. Talk to Peter. Maybe he has some resources the police don’t.”
“I’ll be in touch. Stay strong, Bex. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”
Wilder hung up and frowned. He hated sitting there, waiting for something to happen. He wanted to get out and find answers, solve the problem, and erase the tension from Bex’s body.
“What time is the game?” Bex asked in an almost robotic voice. Her mind was clearly elsewhere.
“Four, why?” Wilder asked. “We don’t have to go.”
“I need to find a way to tell my parents I’m okay. I know Chief Wise did when I left the hospital, but they have to be worried, and I don’t want the chief to get in trouble or draw attention to himself by talking to them too much.”
“I can ask Olivia to stop by if you want.”
Bex looked up to him with hope in her eyes. “Would she do that? The force is everything to them. I can’t imagine how they’re taking being suspended. I feel so helpless.”
Wilder called his sister and put the phone back on speaker. “Hey, is everything okay?” Olivia asked, answering the phone on the first ring.
“Not really.” Wilder went on to fill her in on what Glen told them.
“What do you need me to do?” Olivia asked.
Bex looked up with worry at Wilder. He gave her a little nod to encourage her. “Can you check in on my family? We’re worried about them. My aunt has a hair salon. You could go there and not draw any attention. Her name is Gianna Moretti,” Bex told her, giving her the address of the salon in Brooklyn.
“I can do that. I won’t tell them where you are though. It’s for your safety and theirs,” Olivia told her.
“I understand. Thank you, Olivia.” Wilder heard the relief in Bex’s voice and was glad Olivia was there to help.
“No problem. I’ll do that before we head home today.”
Wilder hung up the phone and the mood had instantly shifted. Romance was the last thing on his mind as he gathered Bex up into his arms and hugged her. She was shaking and his protective instincts went into overdrive. “Shh. Don’t cry. We’ll take care of it.”
“I’m not crying. I’m pissed as hell.” Bex pulled back from his embrace and where he expected tears, he found her face flushed and her eyes narrowed in anger. “It’s one thing to go after me. But to go after my family? I’m going to take this asshole down. I have my own contacts. I’m going to call them now.”
Bex’s heart was pounding and it wasn’t from the intense make-out session with Wilder—well, that had certainly been heart-pounding, but now it was with anger. She couldn’t believe Seabrook went after her family. Their jobs were their lives. They bled blue. They must be so embarrassed and it was all her fault. No, it was all Seabrook’s fault. He shouldered the blame here.
“Is this phone untraceable?” Bex asked.
“No. But I have a burner phone in my office. Would you like that one?”
“Lead the way. I have some calls to make.”
Bex followed Wilder to his office. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a burner phone. Bex had a thing for numbers. She saw them as a song to be played when she dialed them. Thank goodness she did because the numbers she needed to call now weren’t written down anywhere.
Bex dialed the first number and waited as it rang. “Who’s this?” the woman asked with a yawn.
“Mercedes, it’s Bex. I need help, the kind you and the girls can give me.” It took twenty minutes, but the woman who had looked out for Bex and introduced her around to the working girls when Bex was undercover was up to date on what happened and was putting out the word to the women who worked the streets that Bex needed help. Bex had helped them take down violent pimps and johns and they were eager to help.
“You had our back. Now we have yours. They’ll all call me with any dirt they can find and I can guarantee we’ll find something. These men who portray themselves as squeaky clean are the dirtiest pricks you’ve ever seen.”
Bex smiled at Mercedes’s take-no-prisoners attitude. They’d met when Bex had arrested Mercedes’s pimp. He’d dragged her by her hair down the block, ripping off her weave when she’d refused to go with a john who had a reputation for choking women into unconsciousness and then raping them. Bex had shown up at the ER and interviewed her when a nurse called the police. That’s how Bex ended up an undercover cop on that beat. Mercedes had told her abusive pimp she’d found a new girl and Bex infiltrated his stable. In the end, she arrested not only that pimp but over thirty johns who were known to get too rough with the women over the course of her six months undercover.
Bex spent the afternoon reaching out to contacts she’d made when she was a uniformed cop. Owners of shops she’d help protect on her beat and the waitstaff at some of the restaurants on her old patrol would call and tip her off if fugitives were visiting so that she could bust them after they left. Luckily, they didn’t care about a BS warrant out for her arrest. They knew her and they also knew Seabrook was refusing to prosecute those who stole from their shops or the criminals who were doing business in the restaurants.
By the time Bex finished making her calls it was time to head to the bar to watch a basketball game.
“Are you sure you want to go? We can stay in if you want,” Wilder asked her when she emerged from his office.
She’d loved getting to know Natalie, Maggie, and Waverly. They promised her they’d introduce her to many of their friends tonight. “I’m sure. It’ll be a nice distraction I desperately need right now.” Bex slipped her hand into Wilder’s as they headed to the bar. She needed this time to let her mind go blank. She got her best ideas when she was doing something other than fixating on trying to come up with an idea.