Outlaw Ridge: Nico (Hard Justice: Outlaw Ridge #2)

Chapter One

Deputy Callie Brandon slammed on the brakes of her Outlaw Ridge PD cruiser when she spotted something on the side of the country road. Something she darn sure hadn’t expected to see on her morning drive to work.

A dead man.

His jeans-clad legs and torso were sprawled out on the asphalt, but his head was angled down in the deep drainage ditch. He wasn’t moving.

And there was blood.

Lots and lots of it was all over the part of his shirt that she could see, and it had pooled around him. There was way too much of it for her to even hope that he could still be alive.

Moving fast, Callie slapped on the flashing lights so any approaching vehicles wouldn’t rear-end the cruiser or run over her, and she bolted out, hurrying toward him.

Since he was face down, she couldn’t see who he was, but the odds were she probably knew him. In Outlaw Ridge there weren’t many degrees of separation—one or two at most—and even though she had only recently moved back to town after being away a decade, she had been born and raised here.

So, this likely wasn’t a stranger.

Especially not out here in what most would consider the middle of nowhere. It was five miles from town and a good half mile from the nearest house. Only the locals would have a reason to be out in this neck of the woods.

Callie had been a cop for nearly twelve years now, the majority of that time in San Antonio PD, so she knew not to try to turn the man over since that could potentially destroy evidence. But she did lean down and touch her fingers to an exposed part of his neck.

No pulse.

Not a surprise because of all that blood. Also, the leaning in allowed her to see the side of his head. And the gunshot wound that was there.

Callie’s gaze whipped up so fast that she heard her neck pop, and she made a quick sweeping glance around her. She didn’t see anyone, but the body was still warm. The blood, still fresh. And since she didn’t spot a gun anywhere around the man, the odds were he’d been murdered.

The killer could still be here.

That sent her heart racing and caused her breath to go thin, but she kept looking around and spotted something else in that pool of blood around his head. A white sticky note with something written on it.

“Faster than a stainless steel ride,” she read aloud.

It sounded familiar—a song or band maybe?—but she couldn’t put her finger on what it meant. Nor could she touch the note to see if anything was written on the back side. Instead, she yanked out her phone and snapped some pictures of it before she gave the verbal command to call dispatch. As she’d come to expect in her three months on the job here, she got an answer on the first ring.

“Burt,” the dispatcher, Burt Winters, said, going with no formal greeting which was the norm for Outlaw Ridge PD. “What can I do for you, Callie?”

“There’s a DB in the ditch just before the bridge on Mesquite Trail Road,” she managed to say. “He has a gunshot wound to the right side of his head.”

Being a veteran cop didn’t mean something like this hadn’t shaken her to the core. Because it had. And she had to fight the flashbacks. Of another time and place, another person murdered.

“A dead body,” Burt muttered. Obviously, he was shaken, too. “Who is it?”

“Can’t tell. Just please get the responders out here right away,” she added, ending the call.

Callie wanted to be able to listen to her surroundings, to keep watch for a killer, and she couldn’t do that if she stayed on the phone. Besides, Burt had everything he needed to get the ball rolling on what she figured would soon become a full-scale murder investigation.

Until three months ago, a murder would have been somewhat of an anomaly in Outlaw Ridge. Despite the town’s name and roots of once having been a haven for bank robbers, rustlers, and other assorted criminals, it had had a relatively low crime rate.

That was before the majority of the police force had been murdered by some sick SOB.

But the town was recovering from that nightmare, and that killer was dead. Still, this was going to rattle some nerves. It had certainly rattled hers.

Callie stood and continued to look around. The whole area was basically dense woods with old cattle trails that threaded through the trees and thick underbrush. Plenty of places for a killer to hide. But the odds were the person who’d done this was long gone.

Figuring it’d only be about ten minutes or less before backup arrived, Callie walked up the road, looking for any tracks in the soft dirt on the road’s shoulder. It didn’t take long for the sweat to bead on her face and pretty much the rest of her. Even though it was barely seven AM, the temp was already in the mid-80’s. That was Texas in June for you.

Callie kept trudging along the road, but she looked up when she caught some movement from the corner of her eye. A blur of motion.

A man.

With his phone in his hand, he was standing beneath a trio of sprawling live oak trees. The thick branches created enough shadows to obscure his face, and he made it even harder for her to see him when he stepped even deeper into those shadows.

Callie drew her gun and started running toward him. “I’m Deputy Brandon, Outlaw Ridge PD,” she shouted. “Stay where you are.”

She vaulted over the ditch, running through the weeds and Texas sage bushes straight to him. In the back of her mind, it occurred to her that this guy just might shoot her. That was always the risk when in pursuit of a suspect. Callie knew that firsthand.

More flashbacks came.

She silently cursed them, shoved them away and kept running until she darted into a narrow opening in between the trees.

And collided with the man.

Hard.

It knocked the breath right out of her and sent them both tumbling to the ground. Because she knew her life could depend on it, she didn’t stay put. She quickly levered herself up, shoving the man back so she could straddle him and pin him down.

Then, she cursed when her gaze collided with his.

There were no degrees of separation here, and that applied on several levels. In the positions of their bodies, which were basically aligned in the wrong areas. And because she knew him—both his name and in the biblical sense of the word.

Nico Salvetti.

He’d been her high school and college flame. But he was much more. Especially more. He was an all around bad boy and the son of a notorious local crime boss that folks called the Rattler. If the rumors were true, Nico had followed in his daddy’s dirty footsteps. Unlike his kid sister, Jemma, who was one of Callie’s fellow deputies.

“Callie,” he said.

And she hated that the sound of his voice could still get to her. Heck, everything about Nico got to her. That black hair, the piercing blue eyes and the hot body. Even though she hadn’t “known” him in twelve years, not since they’d graduated from college, she might have had to fight her reactions to him.

But not this time.

Because there was blood on him. It was smeared on his arm, just below the bottom of the short sleeve of his black tee. And Callie saw something else.

The gun in his hand.

She leapt up and took aim at him. “Drop your weapon,” she demanded.

After a couple of snail crawling moments, the Glock 22 slid from his grip and onto the ground. He stared at her, not alarmed by her demand but not saying anything either. He certainly wasn’t jumping to claim he was innocent or ask her why she had her gun pointed at him.

“Nico Salvetti, you’re under arrest,” she blurted, and she began to Mirandize him just as she heard the sounds of the approaching sirens. “On your feet,” Callie ordered when she had finished.

“I think you’ll regret this,” he drawled as he stood. He dusted off his jeans before holding out his hands, wrists together, ready to be cuffed. “In fact, I’m pretty sure we’ll both regret it.”

“Is that a threat?” she snapped.

He shrugged and complied when she yanked out a pair of plastic cuffs from her pocket and bound his wrist in front of him. Once she had that done, she holstered her own gun, temporarily, so she could frisk him. She did it fast. Touching as little of him as possible.

He had no other weapons, but a wallet, keys and a cell phone were in his pockets. She left those items for now, and once he was at the station, they’d be logged in and stored someplace safe.

His hair was tousled, maybe from their fall to the ground, or she thought maybe from a motorcycle helmet. Since that had been his preferred means of transportation way back when, she wondered if he had one parked nearby somewhere.

“Stainless steel ride,” she muttered recalling what was on the note. That was possibly a reference to a motorcycle. But why had Nico left it there if it was just going to point right back to him?

“Stainless steel ride,” Nico repeated with his eyebrow raised. Not a question. “Are you threatening me?”

Callie was sure she gave him a confused look. “No. What does it mean?”

He stared at her as if it were some kind of trick question. “It’s slang around prisons for death by lethal injection. Some cops used the term, too.”

She frowned and continued frisking him. “I guess you spent a lot a time around criminals to pick that up.”

“Maybe I learned it on Jeopardy ,” he said. Oh, butter stood no chance whatsoever of melting in that cool mouth.

“Yeah, right,” she snarled.

After she was certain he didn’t have anything on his person he could use to attack her, she motioned for him to get moving. Callie positioned herself behind him and started for the road.

And fought yet more old memories.

A couple of times in college they’d played cop and bad guy. Sex games that had ended with a fake arrest using cheap handcuffs that they’d bought at a party supply store. The cuffing was usually followed by a thorough frisking. Even the occasional semi-bondage thanks to the then popular Shades of Grey craze.

Followed by amazing sex.

Then again, most things she’d done with Nico had ended with them naked and in bed. Or on the floor. Or heck even on his motorcycle when it’d been parked in the woods.

But that was a lifetime ago, Callie reminded herself.

Old heat and old flames didn’t mean squat if Nico had killed that man on the road, and the preliminary indications were he’d done just that. Or if he hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger, he certainly knew what had happened here.

She wanted to question him, and, yes, she wanted him to deny that he’d had any part of this, but Callie decided to hold off until they were at the station.

When they came out from the trees, she saw the approaching cruiser and her fellow deputies, Lexa Mullen and Shaw Brodie. Like Callie, Lexa had been a San Antonio cop and had only recently returned to town. Shaw was one of the half dozen or so temporary deputies and a member of Strike Force, an elite private security operation. Both knew their stuff.

And both drew their guns.

Shaw’s expression stayed stone cold, but Lexa’s eyes widened almost comically when her attention landed on Nico.

“Holy shit. This is for real?” Lexa asked. Since Callie and she had been best friends since kindergarten, Lexa was also well aware of Callie’s history with Nico. And, yes, even aware of those past sex games.

“He was at the scene, armed, has blood on him, and he ducked out of sight when I saw him,” Callie explained.

“I needed to make a call and couldn’t see my phone screen because of the glare so I moved further behind the tree,” Nico offered. “Hey, Lexa,” he added.

He didn’t exactly flash her a smile, but it was close. And any trace of a possible smile vanished when he glanced at the body.

Callie closely watched his reaction. He wasn’t surprised, but there was something. Disgust, maybe. Was that because he’d been discovered so close to the body? Or was this about something else?

“Nico,” Lexa said, returning the greeting as Callie led him toward the cruiser. Lexa opened her mouth, maybe to launch into some questions, but she seemed to change her mind about that.

“His Glock is back there,” Callie told Shaw, tipping her head to the small clearing. “It’ll need to be bagged.”

Shaw nodded and took off in that direction. Lexa gave Nico a long look before shifting her attention back to Callie. “The Rattler’s going to be seriously pissed about this,” Lexa muttered.

Yeah, he would be, and Callie wished she was totally immune to that. Hard to be unaffected by the fact that doing her job could cause Stefano Salvetti, a crime kingpin, to come gunning for her because she’d arrested his first born. Callie would handle Stefano if she had to, and it wouldn’t be like those days in high school and college when she had just tried to avoid him.

“Who’s the dead guy?” Lexa asked, thankfully interrupting Callie’s trip down memory lane.

“Don’t have a clue,” Callie replied and continued to the cruiser. “There’s a note by the body that needs to be bagged before it blows away. Or the blood smears the ink. I got some pictures of it just in case.”

“What kind of note?” Lexa pressed.

Callie looked at Nico, wishing that she could suddenly render him temporarily deaf so he wouldn’t hear this. No need to share any info with a murder suspect.

“The note said something about a stainless steel ride, didn’t it?” Nico asked, and his usual cocky expression had toned down considerably.

“I can’t discuss anything about that with you,” Callie let him know.

He craned his neck as if trying to get a glimpse of it. No way could he see it from this distance, but this seemed like more than curiosity on his part. Why have that reaction if he was the one who’d written it, the one who’d killed?

Callie shook off the question. Tried to shake off any and everything except getting Nico to jail and dealing with the situation right here, right now.

Judging from the sound of other sirens, the EMTs would soon arrive. Not that they could help the man with his head in the ditch, but once he was declared dead, the ME could be called in.

And Callie would have to excuse herself as an investigator on this case.

She understood that now as everything was sinking in. Considering her history with Nico, no way could she be the lead on the case though Lexa and she were Outlaw Ridge’s most experienced cops. Even the acting sheriff, Owen Striker, didn’t have anywhere near the law enforcement expertise they did.

“Unicorn,” she spat out in frustration under her breath.

That’d been the safe word Nico and she had used during that semi-bondage stuff. Why it’d come to her now, she didn’t know, but it was yet something else cluttering her mind, and that was more proof of why she had to bow out of this. That included staying off the crime scene.

Callie threw open the backdoor of the cruiser with far more force than required, and Nico slipped right in as if this were the most natural thing in the world. So was the look he gave her. Not an enraged, I’m going to ruin you for this look from the Rattler’s son. But a slow, lazy once-over that ended with his gaze sliding over her and settling on her mouth.

And with her slamming the door in his face.

Callie got behind the wheel and started the short drive to the police station. Again, she waited for him to start spilling…something. Anything. But he sat quietly in the back of the cruiser. His phone wasn’t quiet though. It made a soft ding, probably indicating he had an incoming text.

Since she hadn’t cuffed him behind the back, he managed to fish out his phone from his pocket, read the text, but he didn’t attempt a reply. He just sat and watched her. The only time he even glanced out the window was when she drove past his family’s estate.

The area surrounding the place was stunning, thanks to the backdrop of Texas Hill Country. Lush trees, green hills, and a picturesque limestone bluff. But the house itself looked more like a sprawling prison with its dark gray limestone exterior. Added to that, it was surrounded by a wrought iron black fence.

Callie didn’t slow down. She just continued the drive and didn’t take a full breath until she came to a stop in front of the police station.

Where she immediately saw the sheriff, Owen Striker, in the doorway.

She figured it’d been a decade or more since Owen had retired as a colonel in charge of a military special ops unit, but he still had that kick ass, don’t mess with me vibe. And he didn’t look happy. Callie couldn’t imagine it was because he was worried about pissing off the Rattler so this likely was just his sour mood at having yet another murder in his jurisdiction.

The moment that Callie got Nico out of the cruiser, Owen motioned for them to follow him, and he led them straight to his office where he closed the door.

“Owen,” Nico greeted, holding out his hands as if ready for the sheriff to free him.

Much to Callie’s surprise, Owen did.

Callie huffed when Owen took out his knife and sliced it right through the plastic handcuffs.

“I found him near a dead body,” Callie spelled out. “He has blood on him, and he was armed.”

“Please sit down, Callie,” Owen said, and while his tone had been calm, it was clearly an order.

She dropped down in one of the chairs across from his desk as Nico went to the window and glanced out. Not a cursory look of his hometown. No. There was an edge to that look.

“I think it’s okay,” Nico said, glancing at Owen who nodded.

Callie shook her head. Clearly, she was missing something here. “Nico is under arrest for murder,” she reminded Owen.

Sighing Owen dropped down into his chair and leveled his gaze on her. “No. He’s not.”

That brought her right back to her feet. “You can’t show favoritism because of who his father is—”

“I’m not,” Owen interrupted, still using that calm but edgy tone. He drew in a long breath. “Nico is a special agent with the FBI, and he’s undercover.”

It took more than a moment for the words to even start to sink in, and during that time she got a different kind of flashback.

Of the reason Nico and she parted ways.

“What?” she managed to say. “FBI? I never heard that about him.”

Just the opposite. Eleven years ago, when she’d been a rookie at SAPD, she’d personally witnessed him making a deal with a known criminal. It had been the reason she’d ended things with him then and there.

“You shouldn’t have ever heard anything about him being an agent. Or his being undercover,” Owen stated. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes a moment. “He uses his real name but a fake persona. The only reason I know about him is because two weeks ago Nico’s handler made me aware that we had an agent on our turf, and I was sworn to secrecy. I didn’t tell anyone else in the station.”

Now, Nico looked at her. There was no heat in those eyes now. No mental trip to the past. There was just dread.

“Callie,” Nico said like an apology, “you just stumbled into a very dangerous situation. If it hasn’t happened already, then I suspect soon, very soon, someone will try to murder you.”