Page 39 of Shielding his Legacy
“Not officially. But the youngest one, Fiona, has been bringing me pictures of engagement rings she finds on her iPad. Let’s just say she has Liberace’s taste in jewelry.”
Gavin watched as his friends worked to make Eva comfortable. She needn’t have worried about them judging her—any woman by his side would be welcomed into the fold like family. His phone rang and he glanced at the screen. It was Razorback, so he put him on speaker. “Ian, you’re on speaker. Eva and the guys are here. Find anything on that dead detective?” Gavin asked.
There was a pause as the other man typed in the background. “Not a whole hell of a lot. He was on the organized crime task force, working the narcotics angle.”
“How long was he on the task force?” asked Champion.
“Two years,” said Razorback. “A dozen other detectives on the narcotics team, but the department has more than fifty working organized crime all together.”
Sloan rocked back on his heels. “That’s a hell of a pool of coworkers who might’ve had a beef with our guy. It’s going to be hard to narrow it down.”
“We got positive IDs on two of the guys you took out at your place,” said Razorback, and Gavin tensed at the other man’s tone. “Both were known associates of the Lombardi crime family.”
The Lombardi crime network was one of the largest in the New York metropolitan area. Gavin thought he might be sick. He crossed his arms over his chest and swore colorfully. “Chop off the head, and another one grows in its place.”
Trace stared at the woodstove with a faraway look in his eye. “The murderer in Eva’s photo is wearing a badge. He’s acop, not a gangster. But he’s a crooked cop working for the Lombardi’s. So, he’s not going to go after Eva himself. He’s going to send their minions to do it.”
“Chop off the head, another grows in its place,” Sloan echoed Gavin’s statement.
Gavin began to pace, the rickety old floorboards protesting his every step. “We have to find a way to get the killer to step forward. Get him out of the shadows. Force his hand.”
Razorback’s voice was sharp, crisp. “We must create urgency. Put him in a situation where if he doesn’t act quickly, all will be lost.”
“Exactly,” Gavin snapped. “He can’t have time to think, no less line up a handful of goons to fight in his place. He’s going to have to do it himself.”
“A trap of some kind?” asked Sloan. “Bait him, draw him out.”
Champion hitched his hip on the back of the sofa. “But how do you make it urgent?”
The men were quiet for several minutes, each of them lost in thought until Eva spoke up. “He’s a cop, right?”
Gavin met her stare across the room. She wasn’t breaking down in a heap of worried tears. If anything, she looked angry, and he was filled with a sense of pride at how she was handling this. “Right.”
“So, there’s a good chance he’s working on this case.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t think he’d be assigned to it, but he sure as hell must be interested. He’s got to be following the investigation as much as possible.”
She stood from the couch, resettling Abby on her shoulder. “So, if a witness to the murder came forward, he’d know about it pretty quickly.”
“Yeah, but who—” He suddenly knew what she wasgetting at, and a fear unlike anything he’d ever known sluiced through him. “No. Absolutely not.”
Eva crossed to him, her hand patting Abby’s back in that familiar rhythm. “Hear me out,” she said. “If I went to the police, I could tell them I had the murder on film.”
Gavin closed the distance between them in two long strides. “No. Have you forgotten what happened the last time you went to the police?” She winced almost imperceptibly, and he felt a moment’s shame at the pain he knew he’d caused her by reminding her of the officers’ deaths.
“They wouldn’t be protecting me this time. I’d be right under his nose, vulnerable and exposed, and ready to tell the world what I knew.”
Before Gavin could object a third time, Sloan said, “He’d have motive and opportunity. If he doesn’t act, he believes he’s going to be exposed as a killer.”
Eva nodded. “He’ll lose everything unless he comes after me.”
Gavin ran his hands through his hair, panic entering his bloodstream like speed. It was madness, the two of them discussing this as if it was really going to happen, as if he’d allow her to put herself in harm’s way. “And what if he’s successful, Eva? What if you’re hurt, or worse, killed? What happens to Abby? What happens to me?”
The desperate words were out of his mouth before he could snatch them back and push them down. It was as if he’d put his feelings on display, like hanging his underwear on a clothesline for the whole world to see. He couldn’t take them back, couldn’t explain them away, so he just stood there—imagining what it would be like to lose this woman after he’d only just found her again.
She rested her hand on his forearm, the contact seeming to short-circuit his nerve endings like a toaster dropped in atub. Her blue eyes fixed on him. “You’re not going to let anything happen to me. You, Sloan, Trace, and Champion—you’re going to keep me safe.”
He pulled his arm back, working hard to make the motion seem casual, unaffected, before turning and beginning to pace once more. “We’ll find another way.”
