Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Present Day
Palm Springs, California
Mission Day Three
Emily just would not stop walking.
“Please,” Mick begged her as they got dangerously close to their hotel.
He’d been talking non-stop, trying to convince her to listen to him.
He’d told her his theory that Harper, his father’s lawyer, was behind this absurd-seeming threat to her life, about his chilling suspicion that this man was intending to frame him—the former Milt Devonshire Junior—for her murder so that Harper could continue to control the family fortune.
He told her how surprised—and dismayed—Harper had been to find out that Emily had been named as his father’s heir.
He told her how weird it was that the lawyer, who’d always been so overt about his intense dislike for Milt Junior, was suddenly acting his champion, offering to contest the will, essentially suggesting they not try very hard to locate Emily.
It was then that she looked at him—she’d been walking swiftly, eyes focused dead ahead—and said, “Your father was incredibly rude to me—the one time I met him. You really expect me to believe he left me everything.”
“Not quite everything,” Mick said. “He left me one tenth of one percent.”
She looked at him then—really looked at him with a flash of something akin to sympathy in her eyes. “God, he was an asshole.”
“I didn’t want it,” Mick told her. “I don’t want it. Whatever amount it ends up being, I’m giving it all away. To World Central Kitchen. Every penny.”
Now that look she shot him was pure anger. “What, am I supposed to congratulate you because you’re such a hero? You fucking killed my mother.”
“My father killed your mother,” Mick told her again.
“So you perjured yourself in court with that guilty plea.”
“Back then, I didn’t know the truth. My fucking father roofied me, Em! He stuck me in his car, made a video of him and Helen Davis, our housekeeper ‘finding’ me in the driveway, early in the morning, changed the date and timestamp on the security video to the morning of the accident—”
“Stop,” Emily said, “just stop!”
And she stopped, too, and at first Mick was relieved because the entrance to the hotel was just a few dozen yards away, but when several cars honked out on the street, he turned to see that a black SUV that had been waiting at the side of the road, flashers on, had suddenly pulled out into the busy stream of traffic, causing the irate drivers behind it to lean on their horns.
It was odd because the SUV didn’t drive away, it just pulled out, but then sat there as the darkly tinted back window slowly went down.
And then, as Sam Starrett’s words from the message he’d left on Mick’s phone—assault-rifle-wielding idiots in a black SUV who we believe are targeting her—popped into his head, everything happened all at once.
Mick shouted for Emily to get down even as he saw the deadly looking barrel of a gun in that half-open window and he realized in that half of a heartbeat that if that was an assault-rifle, he was probably already dead, but just maybe if he used his body as a shield then Emily wouldn’t die too.
So he grabbed her and pulled her to the ground beneath him as a gunshot rang out—just one, not the rapid-fire ripping sound that he’d expected—and he felt a searing sharp pain in his upper arm.
Emily was screaming—he was, too—and the crowd on the busy sidewalk either flattened or scattered as the black SUV finally pulled away, tires squealing.
“Are you all right?” Mick asked, rolling off of her. He’d taken her down to the sidewalk pretty hard, and he started to panic when he saw that her hand was covered with blood. “Emily, my God, were you hit?”
“Mick...” She pushed herself up to sitting position and he saw she was looking at the right sleeve of his shirt where...
Oh, shit, he was bleeding. Mick flexed his right hand, moved both his shoulder and his elbow.
His arm wasn’t broken, thank God, but yeah, he’d been shot.
On closer inspection through his eyelashes—shit, shit, shit, he was squeamish as fuck—he saw that the bullet had merely grazed him.
There was no entry and exit wound, just a nasty looking, heavily bleeding two-inch gouge right beneath the sleeve of his polo shirt.
A young woman in camo BDUs came over to them. “Sir, do you need first aid?”
And shit, someone had called 9-1-1, of course they had—those fuckers in that SUV had fired a shot into the crowd. Mick could hear the sound of sirens getting louder as the police approached.
“I’m okay,” he told the earnest young soldier—bless her, she was the only person who came toward them to offer help.
He turned to Emily as he pushed himself up to his feet.
“Em, we gotta get out of here. If Harper’s somehow behind this, like I think he must be, and God damn it, maybe I’m paranoid, but I know he’s got ties to the LA police.
.. The only people I trust right now are the investigators I hired—Cassidy and Starrett.
Please we gotta get out of here so I can call them.
” He held out his hand to her and—thank you, Lord—she took it.
Mick hauled Emily up to her feet, and still holding tightly to her hand, they ran.
West Covina, California
The 210 had been a total nightmare, but they’d worked their way down to the 10 where the traffic was moving at least.
But it was crowded and too many crazy Angelenos drove like they were auditioning for NASCAR, so Sam kept both hands on the wheel of their shitty little rental car as they headed toward Palm Springs.
Jules was deep in his phone as he sat beside him, scrolling through something...
Sam glanced over at him again. “You want me to try calling Mick from my phone?” he asked. He had it plugged into the car’s Bluetooth.
“Let’s give him a few more minutes to call us back. The conversation he’s having with Emily can’t be an easy one,” Jules said, clearly distracted by whatever he was looking at. “I know that I know someone in Palm Springs...”
Oh-kay. That’s what he was doing. Scrolling through his enormous list of friendly contacts on his phone, in hopes of finding additional back-up—someone who might be available to help Mick and Emily go to ground in Palm Springs until Sam and Jules arrived.
It was going to be fully dark by the time they got to the funky little desert resort town.
It was already after 1900, and his GPS was currently claiming the trip would take three and a half hours, which meant traffic up ahead was gonna be a goatfuck.
Sam was hoping he could do it in closer to three, still that only got them there after 2200.
Which was going to be rough for Mick and Emily since they’d be waiting out in the literal desert cold.
“Jazz Jacquette used to have family in Palm Springs,” Sam told Jules now.
“A sister, I think.” Jacquette was one of the older SEAL officers in Team Sixteen who was not intending to re-up.
He still had a few months to go before he could walk away, but Sam was looking forward to adding him to the Troubleshooters roster.
He was a good man. “You want me to give him a call, see who he knows in the area?”
Jules shook his head. “No, I know there’s someone in here who... yes! Rodney Burke, but oh crap, I haven’t talked to him since his wife died. God, when was that...?” He made a sound of pain. “It was at least six months ago.”
“Do I know him?” Sam asked. Burke. The name was vaguely familiar.
“High school friend,” Jules told him. “He came to my wedding—you might’ve met him at the reception.
He’s former DEA. He was working out of the Los Angeles division, in the Vegas district office.
He quit when his wife got diagnosed, about a year ago.
They moved to Palm Springs for Connie’s treatment—it’s where she grew up. She had a doctor she liked so...”
“I don’t think I met him,” Sam said.
“Rod didn’t stay long at the reception,” Jules said. “Connie was already... unwell. I was just really touched that he came all the way to Boston to be there. It meant a lot.”
“It was kind of a tiring day for all of us,” Sam said and Jules looked at him, because yes, that was an understatement, and they both laughed.
“A good day though,” Jules said.
“Very good,” Sam agreed.
“All right,” Jules said. He took a deep breath.
“I’m gonna just call him, and...” He exhaled hard.
“Content warning: Before his wife got cancer, they lost a baby, well, a toddler. Flynn was three when he got sick and...” Another big inhale and exhale.
“Try not to listen because... I’m probably gonna cry. ”
“Not listening,” Sam said, taking the moment to just sit there in deep gratitude that both his kids—Haley and Ash—were healthy. As was Alyssa, thank God. Damn, he was a lucky, lucky man.
Jules hit the call button and put his phone to his ear, except...
“Wait,” Sam said. “What?” Somehow Jules’s phone had over-ridden his on the car’s Bluetooth, and the sound of the call ringing came loudly through the internal speakers. As did the voice of someone, presumably Rodney, picking up.
“Hello?”
Sam glanced over at Jules who was frozen in his seat with a slightly puzzled look on his face.
“Hobbit...?” Jules said.
There was an equally long pause before the voice spoke again, in an almost identical questioning tone. “Jules...?”
Jules laughed as he looked at his phone. “Yeah. What the hell? Did I dial wrong? No, this is definitely Rodney’s landline.”
“No, yeah,” the voice responded. “You didn’t misdial. I should’ve answered Rodney Burke residence.” He made his voice sound polished and polite, like a private secretary.
“What are you doing there?” Jules asked.
“I, um, came to stay for a while when Connie went into home hospice,” Hobbit said. “And I just kinda never left.” He lowered his voice. “He’s um... still not doing too well.”
“You fucking talking about me?” Another voice—deeper, rougher—came over the speaker.