through him in every place they touched. Something tight and controlled inside him began to melt.
Coop hesitated a moment before giving in to the heat and the need and winding his arms tightly around her. He rested his chin on the top of her head and wrapped his body around her, surrounding her in his strength and warmth. Seth was gonna kill him for this. But Sarah snuggled closer, and he couldn’t push her away. He heard the sniffles, felt the clutch of her fingers at the back of his waist. Moments later, the warmth of her tears dampened the front of his T-shirt and singed his skin. He was gonna kill someone if this innocent woman had been hurt. “Sarah, you never answered—”
“Just hold me.” Her lips moved against his sensitized skin, and his body leaped with the need to respond in some elemental way.
He rubbed circles up and down her spine, pressed a kiss to the crown of her head and rested his nose in the fragrant silk of her freshly washed hair.
“I’ve gotcha.”
The cop in him would have to wait.
Chapter Two
Three months later
“What do you mean, we’ve got nothing on Theodore Wolfe? I thought Wolfe International was history.” Seth Cartwright’s question fueled an outburst of debates around the KCPD headquarters briefing room.
“Their money-laundering setup here in K.C., yes. And we’ve put a serious dent in their drug profits by shutting down their Kansas City base. But we’ve still got some loose ends to tie up,” replied Captain John Kincaid in his typically cool, calm and collected tone. The grumbles subsided. He gripped the desktop podium and leaned forward to make sure every detective and uniformed officer in the room understood how serious he was. “Understand this. I intend to nail the big boss and give KCPD the credit for his arrest before they kick me upstairs to the deputy commissioner’s office.”
Leaning back in his chair at the front table, Cooper Bellamy crossed his long legs at the ankle and sipped his coffee as another round of should-haves and what-ifs and let’s-do-its ensued. His own partner, Seth, turned to the long table behind them and questioned Kincaid’s second-eldest son, Sawyer, another young detective, to see if he had any insight into his father’s plans for the case.
Coop seemed to take it all in with half an ear. His disinterest was deceptive, though. He was as frustrated as his partner to hear how progress had stalled on their investigation into Wolfe International’s illegal activities.
Captain Kincaid, the man who’d recruited Coop and Seth from the Fourth precinct to work on his organized-crime task force, raised his hands and quieted the room with little more than a stern fatherly look. Coop sat up straight, remembering that same look from his own father. A gung-ho Marine until the day his job took his life, Clint Bellamy had high expectations from all five of his children, especially his oldest son, Coop. And though he’d managed to inject plenty of laughter into their lives when he’d been home, Clint’s rules for living had been drilled in hard and often.
Respect for authority went without saying. And Captain Kincaid had earned it.
Being there for the team—whether that meant backing up his partner or taking care of his mother and younger brothers and sisters—was another tenet in the Bellamy code.
But the rule that had him sitting up and waiting for the captain to explain their next plan of action was that no matter what it required of a man, failure on a mission was not an option.
Coop thumped his partner’s shoulder, urging him to ease up on the second-guessing. “Let’s hear what the big dog has to say.”
The room quieted, and the captain recapped the task force’s accomplishments and remaining goals.
Theodore Wolfe’s son, Teddy, Jr., had been killed in a shootout with Seth when Teddy had tried to murder the woman who had since become Seth’s fiancée. Although one of Teddy’s partners appeared to be a legitimate K.C. businessman, their casino had been temporarily closed until the Treasury Department could straighten out the books. And Teddy’s right-hand man and Wolfe International enforcer, Shaw McDonough—the man Sarah Cartwright had identified as a cold-blooded killer—had gone AWOL.
McDonough had skipped the country. His plane ticket out of KCI said Bermuda, but authorities had had no luck tracking him down there. They couldn’t even confirm that he’d actually gotten off the plane. The bastard could be anywhere on the planet. Spending his money in the Caribbean. Living under an assumed name back in London, still doing his boss’s dirty work. Murdering someone else if the price was right.
Coop set down his coffee as the taste went bitter. That fateful night when Sarah had witnessed the murder of Teddy’s mistress had changed his life, too. And not for the better. He’d screwed up when he’d gone to check on her. He hadn’t been thinking with his brain. He’d misread signals and moved way too fast. At the very least, his timing had sucked. He’d risked his heart and gotten it thrown back in his face for his troubles—and jeopardized his friendship with Seth should the whole truth of those twenty-four hours together with Sarah ever come out.
“So what are we supposed to do, Captain? Sit back on our heels and let Wolfe International peddle its influence somewhere else?” Seth’s question was a welcome interruption to Coop’s self-damning thoughts.
His gaze strayed to the photograph posted on the screen at the front of the room. Theodore Wolfe, Sr. Black hair, silver temples. He could have been a member of Parliament with that high-class suit and demeanor. But there was a much darker side to the multimillionaire mob boss who ruled a gambling empire that touched four continents.
Wolfe was controller of everything he touched. Rich as Midas and as feared as Hades himself. Not a nice guy.
KCPD may have put a stop to his son’s criminal career, but Daddy and his number-one henchman remained untouched.
“No, Cartwright.” There was no doubt that the captain had command of the room. “I intend to nail Wolfe on our turf. We’ve got unfinished business with him here. He’s responsible for ordering the death of crime reporter Reuben Page—” the father of Seth’s fiancée, Rebecca “—and Danielle Ballard, the intern who was feeding Page information on the bribes Wolfe offered key economic development and zoning committee members.”
“So that disk Rebecca and I found at the Riverboat casino proves Wolfe’s influence?” Seth asked.
Captain Kincaid nodded. “Absolutely. Plus, Mac Taylor from the forensic lab says he’s got a clean bullet from Dawn Kingsley’s body that matches the one he took from Reuben Page three years earlier. If we can get him McDonough’s gun, we can link him to both murders and send McDonough to death row.”
Along with Sarah’s eyewitness testimony.
“Captain?” Coop had to pipe up with a smart remark sooner or later, or Seth would suspect that something heavy was weighing on his thoughts, and start asking him questions he didn’t want to answer. “You really think Wolfe and McDonough are stupid enough to return to the scene of the crime?”
“Not stupidity. Arrogance. And family honor.” Coop had to admire the captain’s thorough profiling of their targets. “If one or both of those men don’t show up to avenge Teddy’s death at the hands of KCPD, I’ll be surprised. Even if they think Teddy was an embarrassment to the family and Cartwright did them a favor, they’ll be back. Sooner or later. Since Wolfe assumed power of his company, he hasn’t had
