his own franchise of the family business. He was a boss. But something about Woodrow Lynch and this office made him feel like the troublemaking kid he’d once been. Or at least like the rule-breaking vice cop he’d been.
“You’re probably wondering why I asked you to meet me here,” Woodrow began. The guy was family now, but the former FBI bureau chief was still intimidating as hell with his big build, iron-gray hair and stone face that revealed none of what he was thinking or feeling.
Parker, who was usually never without words, just nodded in response.
“It’s because I want to hire you.”
Parker’s jaw dropped. “But I already have a job.” His own damn business, actually—one that he loved and wasn’t about to abandon to go back to a place with too many rules.
Woodrow’s lips curved into a slight smile. “I know. That’s what I meant. I want to hire your agency.”
Panic struck Parker’s heart. “Why? Is Mom in danger? Are you?” His mom, widowed for nearly two decades, had just found happiness again. Parker hated the thought of anyone putting her life or her newfound happiness at risk.
“No, not at all,” Woodrow assured him. “She’s fine. This is strictly business.”
Parker narrowed his eyes and futilely tried to read his stepfather’s unreadable face. “Why me?” he asked. “Why my agency?”
His brothers, Cooper and Logan, had their own agencies. And Logan’s agency employed two of Woodrow’s former special agents, one of whom, Gage Huxton, was now his son-in-law.
“It’s business for me,” Woodrow said. “It might be personal for you.”
A chill chased down Parker’s spine. He hated when things got personal, which happened all too often with the Payne Protection Agency. “How’s that?”
“Luther Mills.”
That was all Parker had to hear, and the heat of anger and frustration burned away that chill of foreboding. For years he’d tried to bring down the biggest drug dealer in River City—maybe in Michigan—but he’d never succeeded. Fortunately, some members of his team, before they’d left the River City PD to become bodyguards, had been more successful. Or so he’d thought. “What about him?”
“He’s going to trial soon.”
Parker nodded again. He knew the story; it was how one of his bodyguards had finally left the force to join his agency. Clint Quarters had quit the vice unit after Luther Mills personally killed Clint’s informant. While Luther was responsible for many, many deaths in River City, he usually didn’t do his own dirty work, but he’d wanted to send a message.
“Some of his phone calls from jail indicate that he’s going to make sure that doesn’t happen,” the chief said.
“How?”
“He’s put a plan into motion to take out everyone involved with the prosecution, from the eyewitness to the CSI tech and even the judge’s daughter.”
“How does he know...?”
“There’s a mole somewhere,” Woodrow replied with a heavy sigh. “I don’t know if it’s in my department or the district attorney’s office. But because I can’t trust anyone in the department, I need the help of you and your team.”
“But that hit list could include some members of my team,” Parker pointed out. Probably Clint...
But Clint wasn’t the one who’d arrested Luther. A detective had had that honor.
Woodrow shrugged. “I don’t know. He must have found another way to communicate. We just know that he wants the witness taken out first and then the rest of the people associated with the trial. There could be others...”
Parker had taken longer than his brothers to assemble his team. He’d known whom he wanted because he’d worked with them before—in the vice unit. But he’d had to work at convincing them to leave the River City PD. He didn’t want to lose any of them. But if he took this assignment, he was very afraid that he would.
Luther Mills was the most dangerous criminal Parker had ever crossed paths with. And that was something, considering the number of criminals he’d dealt with in his lifetime.
Because of that, he knew he couldn’t say no to the chief. Luther Mills could not get away with murder again. He had to be stopped.
* * *
He will not be stopped. Your life is in danger...
Rosie Mendez shivered as she read the message someone had slipped under the door of her apartment. She didn’t need the warning to know she was in danger. But she appreciated that one of Javier’s old friends must have risked his safety to deliver the message to her.
Maybe she wasn’t the only one who missed her brother. Sometimes she felt as if she was. She felt so alone now that he was gone. Too soon at just twenty years old.
Eight years older than he was, Rosie had felt more like his mother than his sister most of their lives. But that hadn’t been just because of the age difference. It had been because she’d been more of a mother than their mother had ever been capable of being—to either of them. So when Javier had died, she’d felt like she had lost a part of herself. The best part...
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. She’d already wept herself out over Javier’s death. All the crying in the world wouldn’t bring him back. But he deserved justice. So Luther Mills wasn’t going to scare her off.
And maybe that was what the note was. Maybe it wasn’t a well-meant warning at all. Maybe it was a threat intended to get her to run. Or at least to tell the prosecutor that she would not testify. But there was no chance in hell that she was going to let her brother’s killer go free.
He wasn’t the only one responsible for Javier’s death. If only that other man could be brought to justice, too...
But he was even more untouchable than Luther Mills.
She glanced at the note again. She hadn’t noticed it when she’d come home from work, and she would have walked right over it when she’d entered the apartment. The white slip of paper stood out against the dark hardwood floor. That was how she’d seen it when she stepped out of the kitchen. Someone must have slipped it beneath her door when she’d been getting a snack from the galley kitchen of her tiny apartment.
A breeze wafted through the open living room window. But it was eerily quiet for a night in this building. Where was the rumble of voices from the alley that window overlooked? People were usually hanging out back there. She couldn’t even hear voices or movement from the other apartments, and the walls were paper thin.
Where was everyone? She walked up to the door and peered through the peephole—at an empty hallway.
Where was the young officer who’d escorted her home from her second shift at the hospital? Usually he was posted at her door until another officer took his place in the morning. Had he seen whoever had left that note and chased after him?
That left her completely unprotected. Not that one officer
