Quite literally, she held the power to ruin him in that sheaf of papers.
“You have nothing,” he said, deciding on a bluff and making a point to look at the documents in her hand. “O’Brien is a common name.”
“Then why did you agree to meet me?” She waved toward the remote expanse of the park to the west, the sleeve of her wool coat riding up her arm enough to expose a diamond bracelet that probably cost more than he earned in half a year. “Here?” She smiled. “Away from work and home and your pretty, pregnant wife?”
Neil stared at her. The antacid he had swallowed just before getting out of the car turned sour in his mouth. Another foolish hope. That he could keep his gambling—and his mountain of debt—from Mary.
“I wonder…does she know about this, Neil?” She tapped a finger against her lips. “A phone call to her—”
“Get to the point. What do you want?”
She opened her purple leather handbag, the designer name discreetly embossed onto the surface, and put the folded papers inside. “Cooperation, Neil, that’s all.”
“What kind of cooperation?” Whatever it took to keep his wife from finding out that he had accumulated gambling debts greater than the mortgage on their brand-new home was worth considering in the short run. In the long run, there was only one way to be rid of a blackmailer—a remedy he would take just as soon as he had the originals of the promissory notes in his possession.
“You want all this to go away?” She pressed the flat of her hand against the purse. “All of it?”
“The debt would go away?”
She tapped her finger against her lip again. “Neil, my dear, Neil. You do understand, don’t you?”
What he understood was that he was being played, and he didn’t like it. And without a big win, he didn’t see a way out, either. She held the winning hand.
“What do you want?” he repeated, shivering as the wind shifted and fine, cold snowflakes blew across his face.
“There’s a certain firefighter in your department who will have a tragic accident that will end her life.”
Another cold bead of sweat trickled down Neil’s back. What she was suggesting was impossible. Murder, like he was contemplating just now, was easy. Murder by fire and made to look like an accident…nearly impossible.
“The poor thing went against the wishes of her family to take on such a dangerous job, alienated herself from her father, worried her mother to death and all those protective older brothers…Why, they were opposed down to the last man.”
The woman was talking about Lucia Vance, Neil realized. Personally, Neil thought she represented nepotism at its finest. Her daddy was the mayor, and her brother Sam was a detective on the Colorado Springs police force. It had been Neil’s goal for the last year to get her kicked out of the department. But deliberately setting her up to be injured—killed—he couldn’t do it.
He shook his head. “That’s not an easy thing to do. If you want her dead, why not simply shoot her?”
Her mouth tightened. “Easier, yes. But then her parents and her brothers wouldn’t understand.”
“What?”
“That for every choice there is a consequence.” She patted her purse again. “Think about it, Neil. All this goes away. Your sweet little pregnant wife doesn’t find out. You’re not ruined.”
“What you’re asking—”
She pressed a shockingly hot finger against his lips, her eyes wide and luminous, making her look like a girlfriend instead of a blackmailer. “I’m not asking.”
When she took her finger away, he shuddered inside his heavy parka.
“A perfect place would be Vance Memorial Hospital, where her mother keeps a vigil over her poor injured father.”
“You can’t be serious.” Mayor Maxwell Vance had been shot in an assassination attempt last November. He was still in critical condition, and Neil knew the investigation had drawn in the FBI. Security in the hospital was tight.
“Oh, but I am.”
Neil shook his head. “It can’t be done. Hospitals have sprinklers and preactionary systems, all designed to prevent even the smallest fire.”
She stared at him as though what he had just told her didn’t make any sense.
“I can see the headline now,” she said. “Assistant Fire Chief Neil O’Brien Ruined.” She smiled again, but her expression was as warm as the icy snow falling around them. “Only you will have died tragically, maybe suicide in your despondence over your gambling. And your wife will be left to raise your child in poverty and shame, all because you wouldn’t do a simple thing.” She paused and shifted the purse on her arm. “A simple thing, Neil, that would make all your troubles go away.”
Wishing he’d had the guts to simply kill her, he watched with his hands in his pockets as she walked away. As she got into her silver luxury coupe, she blew him a kiss. A second later, the car purred to life.
A simple thing. As if there was anything simple about planning a murder that was supposed to look like an accident.
ONE
Last night, Rafael Wright had been too consumed with guilt to pay attention to the hospital room numbers, so he paused at the doorway to make sure he was at the correct one. He knocked lightly on the door before pushing it open. The bed closest to the door was empty, and his good friend Malik Williams lay in the other, raised to a reclining position. The television mounted near the ceiling was tuned to a police drama.
“Hey, you came,” Malik said as Rafe moved toward him.
A bandage at one corner of his forehead covered a gash that had bled like crazy yesterday when he was knocked over by a fifteen-foot ladder when it fell. Last night, Malik had been asleep when Rafe checked on him.
“Of course I came.” His fault that Malik was here—an accident, but one that should not have happened. Malik wouldn’t have been hurt if Rafe had been focused on the training exercise they were doing instead of the news that his younger sister Lisa was separating from her husband.
His dark eyes gleaming, Malik craned his head as Rafe came farther into the room. “If you don’t have a big vanilla malt hidden behind your back, you can leave right now.”
Rafe clicked his tongue. “That concussion must not be too bad since you’re cranky.” He pulled his hand from behind his back and set the tall paper cup containing his friend’s favorite dessert on the table pulled next to the bed.
Malik grinned, pressing the volume control to turn the television down. “Figured I should play on your sympathy—”
“Which won’t last long if you keep this up.” Rafe shrugged out of his leather bomber jacket, which he set on the chair in the corner.
“That’s you, all right. All bark. No bite.”
“I wouldn’t count on that.” Since Rafe was the foreman for a Type 1 hotshot crew of forest-fire fighters, part of the territory was making sure he came across as a major tough guy. Since Malik was both his roommate and his friend, just now he seemed more like a kid brother than simply one of the guys on the crew. Not that many years separated them, but a lifetime of experience did. Malik worked full-time during the summer, then went to school and skied in the winter while continuing to work part-time for the Forest Service. “I thought I’d been properly sympathetic—”
“If you don’t count yelling.”
Inwardly, Rafe winced. He had yelled. At the time he had been furious, a hundred percent of it directed at himself