Chapter 9
Sapphire
Holding my service weapon two-handed in front of me, I raced along the back of William Branson’s house and dropped into a crouch at the base of the stairs, breath shallow and controlled, every drill I’d ever done at the academy running at high speed in the front of my mind.
How many people were inside? Had Bob come alone? Was Frank in there, too? Was Frank even alive?
Kayden was right behind me. That pissed me off, but I was also grateful, and that pissed me off, too. I didn’t have time for either feeling right now.
I eased back and angled my gaze up through the half-open screen door at the top of the stairs. I could just make out Bob’s broad back. He had one knee on the floor, latex gloves on as he crouched over a body.
Kayden pressed in tightly behind me. I palmed his chest without looking at him.
He stayed. For now.
Through the gap, I watched Bob shift the body, reach into the side pocket of the jeans, and pull out a mobile phone. He flicked the back open with his thumbnail, tipped out the SIM card, snapped it between his fingers, and dropped both halves into his uniform pocket.
Jesus.
Then he smashed the phone against the edge of the kitchen counter. Once. Twice. Again and again, until the casing split apart in his hand. He pulled a Ziplock bag from his back pocket, dropped the pieces in, sealed it, and tucked it into the front of his shirt.
Fucking hell. Kayden was right. Bob is a crooked cop.
I gripped my weapon until my knuckles ached.
For four years, I’d worked under this man. I’d trusted his judgment, followed his lead, defended his decisions, and he was destroying evidence with the kind of ease that told me this wasn’t the first time.
I needed to move on him. I had enough to arrest him right now. Tampering with a crime scene. Destroying evidence. And whatever the hell else was waiting on the other side of that door.
But Bob Ackerman was six-foot-two, solid muscle, and mean when he was cornered. Nearly a foot taller than me, even with my boots on. I’d seen him lose his temper before, and it had been terrifying.
He wasn’t going to come quietly. Not with what I’d just witnessed.
I needed to get up those stairs and get my weapon on him before he knew I was there. I needed the element of surprise, and I needed to be close enough that he had no doubt I was serious.
I just needed the right moment.
My heart hammered as I crouched there, weapon ready, trying to get my head around the fact that I was about to arrest my boss.
The shrill ring of a phone shattered the silence, and I flinched.
That’s not Bob’s work phone. I’d heard his ringtone a thousand times in four years. That wasn’t it.
Bob reached into his left pants pocket, not his right, where I’d watched him pocket his work phone, and pulled out a second handset. He looked at the screen and scowled as he jammed it to his ear. “What do you want?”
He turned and walked away from the kitchen.
I lost sight of him, but I heard his footsteps going deeper into the house.
Now.
I raced up the stairs fast, weight forward, stepping to the outer edge of each tread where the timber was less likely to creak.
Kayden was right behind me, matching my moves in stealth mode.
At the top, I pressed my back against the exterior wall beside the screen door, and Kayden flattened himself in behind me.
“We had a deal.” Bob’s voice drifted through the thin walls, low and controlled, the tone he used when he wanted to own a conversation.
I peered through the gap in the screen door.
Bruce Henderson was on his side in a pool of blood that had spread across the floor and gone under the fridge. A large knife was buried so deep in his side that the blade wasn’t visible.
“It’s a hundred grand. Take it, or I’ll find someone else.” Bob paused. “Don’t push me.”
Wayne was hog-tied beside Bruce. Rope was wrapped tightly around his ankles, and his wrists were behind his back.
The loop of rope around his neck was drawn so tightly that it had embedded into his flesh.
His eyes were wide and clouded, and a bloodied dishcloth was jammed into his mouth.
The skin around his nose and lips was the color of an old bruise.
Two of the three Henderson brothers. Dead.
Shit! Bob had killed them.
He had to have. He was destroying the evidence. That was the only explanation that made sense.
My stomach turned over.
Kayden’s hand gripped my shoulder, and I held up one finger. Wait.
“A hundred grand is more than fair for one old man.” Bob’s voice dropped further, angry and lethal.
One old man? Had to be Frank. So Frank was still alive.
“You find him, you bring him to me breathing, and you get paid. That’s the arrangement.”
Bob had a bounty on Frank’s head.
My mind was moving fast. Was that why Bruce and Wayne were dead? Because they’d failed to deliver?
“I don’t care. Find him.” A beat of silence followed, then footsteps headed back toward the kitchen.
I pressed flat against the wall, gripped my weapon, and stopped breathing.
Bob’s shadow spilled across the door threshold when he crouched down with his back toward me. I peered around the doorframe. Bob was crouched beside Wayne. He pulled the rag from his back pocket and wiped the floor in front of Wayne’s face.
Is he wiping away fingerprints?
Every doubt I’d been carrying for the last twenty-four hours hardened into one cold, undeniable piece of certainty. Bob was a crooked cop.
He’d put a bounty on Frank Branson.
Bruce and Wayne Henderson had been his hired muscle.
When they’d failed, Bob had killed them.
I glanced at Kayden over my shoulder. His jaw was set, his eyes hard and steady. He gave me one short nod.
I pushed out a breath, shoved the screen door open with my boot, and stepped into the kitchen with my weapon aimed at my boss’s face.
“Hands where I can see them, Bob. Step away from the body.”
He froze. Just a beat. Then he turned, slowly and deliberately, hands rising as he came around, and I clocked the latex gloves on his hands.
“Stand down, Delaney.” He didn’t look surprised. He didn’t look afraid. He was just assessing me like he did in every meeting.
“Put your hands up.”
“Sapphire.” His voice was gentle, the same voice he’d used on me a hundred times at the station. “What are you doing here? Put the gun down.”
“Turn around, Bob. Hands on your head.”
“Sapphire, listen to me.”
“Hands on your head!”
He didn’t move. “It’s not what it looks like.”
“Hands on your head, Bob.” I kept my voice level. Professional.
“You don’t understand what you’ve walked into. Frank did this. He’s been hiding in this house for weeks. He butchered these two. Look at them. I came here looking for Frank and found this mess.”
“You’re wearing latex gloves.”
“It’s a crime scene.”
“You haven’t called it in.”
“I was about to.”
“You destroyed a SIM card, Bob. I watched you do it.”
His mouth went tight.
“And you destroyed a phone belonging to a man you sent here last night.” I kept my weapon steady. “I know you sent them. Lyle called me an hour ago.”
His mouth went tighter.
“You’ve got no idea what you’re dealing with,” he said, “or what Frank’s capable of.”
“Then why haven’t you answered my calls? Why don’t you have backup? Why are you in a house registered to Frank’s brother? Why are you wiping prints off the floor?” I held his gaze. “Why, Bob?”
Movement shifted in my peripheral vision, and Kayden stepped up behind me.
Bob’s hand lowered to his hip, near his gun.
“Don’t do it, Bob.” I kept my weapon up, my voice steady, every muscle in my body coiled tightly.
“You going to shoot your boss?” A sick grin crossed his face. “I don’t think you’ve got it in you, Sapphire.”
I didn’t know if I did either. I’ve never shot anyone. Never even aimed my weapon at anyone. Bob could be right, and I hated that he knew it.
Four years of Bob telling me I was the best constable he’d ever trained, but was that because he’d known I could never pull the trigger on him?
“Don’t make me do this, Bob.” My brain was still trying to reconcile the man in front of me with the man I thought I knew.
He drew his gun so fast I didn’t even see it.
I squeezed my trigger. The bullet went wide, blowing a chunk out of the kitchen cupboard behind him.
“Bitch!” Bob ducked and came up firing.
The doorframe beside my head exploded into splinters.
“Run!” I slammed my shoulder into Kayden’s chest and drove him backward through the doorway.
I fired two shots behind me as we hit the top step together and launched ourselves down the stairs. Kayden twisted on the way down, and my elbow slammed into the railing, spearing pain up to my shoulder.
Another shot cracked from the top of the stairs, and Kayden gasped like he’d been punched in the nose.
We hit the dry grass at the bottom in a tangle of limbs. I rolled onto my back, weapon up, saw Bob was at the top step, and I fired. He darted away, and my bullet punched into the ceiling inside the doorway.
Kayden jumped to his feet, grabbed my arm, and hauled me upright. “Run!”
We scrambled along the base of the house toward the corner, away from the line of sight from the stairs. I pressed my back against the weathered timber and yanked Kayden in beside me.
“Fuck!” Bob roared, then he slammed the back door so hard the floorboards above us shook. The deadbolt thumped into place.
“He’s locked himself inside.” I pressed my back harder against the timber. “Fucking hell,” I gasped. “I can’t believe—”
Kayden hissed through his teeth, and I shot my gaze to his arm. Dark blood was soaking through his shirt sleeve just below his left shoulder and spreading fast.
“Shit! You’ve been shot.”
“I’m okay.” He snarled at the blood as if it pissed him off.
“How bad does it hurt?”
“I’m fine, Sapphire.” He leveled his gaze at me and clenched his jaw. “What do we do?”
“Christ.” I pulled out my phone.
“Who are you calling?” He shook his head. “You don’t know who to trust.”
Shit. He’s right.
Kayden and I stared at the ceiling above us, tracking Bob’s heavy footsteps as he moved from room to room. “What the hell is he doing up there?”
Is he destroying more evidence? Had to be.
“Show me your wound.” I grabbed Kayden’s arm.
“It’s nothing.”
“Show me.”
He pulled his hand away from his upper arm. His sleeve was dark and wet, but the wound was a bloody stripe along the outside of the bicep, not a hole. The bullet had cut a clean track across the muscle and left a deep graze. That would hurt like hell, but it wasn’t life-threatening.
I shook my head at him. “You bloody idiot,” I whisper-shouted at him. “I told you to stay back.”
“You said it twice. I heard you.” He squared out his jaw.
“And you ignored me twice.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t look remotely sorry. “I did.”
“You could’ve been killed.” I thumped his good shoulder.
“Sapphire.” He caught my wrist, and his eyes locked onto mine. “I’m fine. We have bigger problems right now.”
He was right.
“What do we do?” he asked.
I made myself think. A single officer and a civilian, up against a corrupt senior sergeant barricaded inside a house with two men he’d just murdered. I had to stop Bob before he destroyed every piece of evidence left in that kitchen.
I had to go back in. I’m a cop. This is what I trained for.
I checked my gun magazine and clipped it back into place. I paused to hear what Bob was doing, but he’d gone quiet.
I gripped Kayden’s wrist. “Stay here.”
An engine revved nearby, the rough cough of an old V8 cranking to life.
I peered through the gaps in the palings under the house. Then the clatter of a roller door going up filled the silence.
“Shit.” I sprinted around the side of the house, clutching my weapon.
Headlights swept the driveway.
“No!” I ran harder around the front.
Bob’s battered pearl-white Land Cruiser speared out of the garage and accelerated hard up the driveway.
“Shit!” I planted my feet, raised my weapon two-handed, and fired at the rear tires.
He didn’t slow down.
I squeezed off three more rounds at the back of the car as it hit the street.
The rear window exploded inward in a starburst of glass.
The Land Cruiser fishtailed onto the road, straightened, and Bob floored it.
“Shit!” I bolted up the driveway, but by the time I reached the street, the taillights were nothing but two red dots in the distance. The brake lights flared once at the corner, then he turned and was gone.
Dust hung in the empty road.
“Goddammit.” I stood there on the road with my sidearm by my thigh, breathing damn hard.
Kayden stood at my side. He didn’t say anything. He just put his hand on my shoulder and pulled me into his chest.
I meant to hold it together. I genuinely did. But when he wrapped his good arm around me, I pressed my forehead against his chest and fought the knot climbing my throat.
Four years of taking Bob’s word as gospel. Four years of telling myself he was one of the good ones. I’d believed he was a brilliant police officer, but now, I had proof he was a crooked cop. Not just crooked. He’s a murderer, for God’s sake.
And I’d never once suspected him.
Was I that blind? Or had he just been that good?
Kayden’s chin came to rest on the top of my head, and his hand moved slowly up my back.
Pull yourself together, Delaney. You have work to do.
I straightened, eased back, and swiped at my face before he could see my stupid emotions.
Kayden’s face was drawn and gray in the fading sunlight. A smear of his own blood was drying along his jaw, and although he held his arm loosely at his side, he acted like he was fine.
“You okay?” I reached for his arm.
“Yes, but what do we do now?”
My mind was a mess as I tried to pull a plan together. Across the road, a lace curtain shifted in a front window.
“Shit.” I nodded toward it. “Won’t be long before someone calls the police.”
“Then we need to get out of here before Bob sends someone to finish the job.” Kayden’s voice was flat and certain. “Sapphire ...” He squeezed my hand. “You can’t trust anyone. You hear me? You don’t know who Bob’s got his claws into.”
He was right.
“Okay. But I need to see what Bob did inside, and I need to photograph that crime scene before it gets any more contaminated.”
“Then do it quickly.”
We took off, and as we sprinted down the driveway, I calculated we had maybe twenty minutes. Thirty at the most.
If we were lucky.