Tough Justice Series Box Set: Parts 1-8

“I’ll always make time for you, big boy,” Sally replied.

“She’s a piece of work,” Lara said when they were back in the car.

“I thought she showed impeccable taste.” He gifted her with one of his sexy grins.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she replied irritably.

“I was just trying to lighten you up a bit. You’ve been unusually on edge all morning.”

Since when did he know her well enough to know that she was unusually anything? “I am on edge. Aren’t you? Don’t you feel it, Nick? The terrible sense that something else bad is coming?”

“You don’t think Lara Bowman’s murder was the end of it?”

Laura fastened her seat belt and then turned toward him, knowing both her fear and her simmering alarm were in her eyes for him to see. “No, like I told you on the phone, I don’t think her murder was the end of things. I think it’s just the beginning, and there are more bad things to come.”

Her words hung in the air between them, as if suspended by sheer dread alone. Nick said nothing. He started the car, and they remained silent as they returned to 26 Federal Plaza.

* * *

If she’d hoped that any others on the team might have found and developed a new lead, her hope was soon dashed. As the team members began to trickle in, it took only one look at their tired, frustrated faces to know they were returning empty-handed.

Lara was seated at her cubicle, rereading for the hundredth time the files relating to Sean Dunst, Tina Cole and Lara Bowman when Cass approached her.

“There are thirty-one security cameras in Central Park,” she said. “Almost half of them aren’t working either due to technical issues or vandalism. The ones that are operational are monitored by a private security company. I’ve got a call into the company to get those files for review to see if we can catch sight of the mystery blond man.”

“How long do you think it will take you to look at the files once you get them?” Lara asked.

“A couple of days to look at all of them, but I’ll start with the cameras that were close to the murder scene, and hopefully that should only take an hour or so once I get the files.”

“Why haven’t they fixed the cameras that aren’t working?” Lara asked.

Cass shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you, but if I was to guess the answer is bureaucracy and budget cuts.” Cass didn’t wait for an answer. She returned to the tech room, and Lara focused back on the files in front of her.

“Maybe we should talk to Sheila again,” she leaned over and said to Nick. Was it possible the stripper girlfriend might know more than she had told them?

“We can talk to her again if you think it might be useful,” Nick said. “But to be honest, I think it would be a waste of time. She isn’t going to say anything to further incriminate herself, and it’s possible Dunst really didn’t share any real information with her.”

“You’re right,” Lara said with a sigh. “I just hate sitting around waiting for another shoe to drop.”

“Maybe there isn’t another shoe to drop,” Nick countered. “We’ll figure it out, Lara. Somehow, someway we’ll get the person behind everything.”

Lara turned her chair back to face her desk. Nick’s words had rung with an optimism Lara didn’t share. Experience had taught her that just when you thought it was over, it wasn’t. Just when you thought you were safe, you weren’t.

It was six o’clock when they all gathered in the conference room to get updates from everyone. “I got the files from the security company a couple of hours ago. I’ve managed to go through footage from the two cameras closest to the murder scene at around the time of the murder, and there’s no tall blond wearing a jogging suit on tape,” Cass said. “He might have managed to elude the cameras, but I’ve still got a lot of files to go through and might pick up a sign of him either entering or leaving the park.”

“I’ve gone over all of Lara Bowman’s social media, checked her outgoing and incoming phone calls and texts on her phone and spoken with friends and family and her boyfriend,” Xander said. “At this point I feel like I know her better than my old girlfriend. I can’t find any connection she had with Dunst or the Moretti syndicate. If she hadn’t had that stamp on her cheek, I would have ruled her out as just another victim of random crime in Central Park.”

As each of the members talked about their activities of the day and nobody had anything new to add, the heart that Lara rarely acknowledged she possessed sank lower and lower in her chest.

Time was their enemy. Every day, every hour that passed, witnesses forgot what they saw, and stories got muddied. It was true what was said about the first forty-eight hours, and all of the murders had already passed those crucial first hours.

It was just after seven when they all left for the day. Lara stepped outside and pulled up the collar of her jacket against the cold wind.

The clouds created a darker twilight than usual, and she hurried toward the subway station. The subway was crowded, but she managed to snag a seat. Her gaze swept the occupants of the car. Always looking for trouble. Always anticipating problems. That’s what a year undercover had done to her.

She leaned back against the seat as the lights overhead blinked and the subway began its screeching halt at a stop. Another stop and then a block walk and she’d be home. Hopefully she was exhausted enough that her sleep wouldn’t be haunted by any nightmares.

However, by the time she got off the subway near her apartment building, instead of heading inside, she went to the parking lot down the street where she kept her personal vehicle.

The exhaustion that had gripped her earlier had passed as she’d gotten a second wind. She got into her car and headed toward Rockaway Beach and her father’s house, her thoughts turning from the chaos of the cases they were working on to the chaos of her childhood.

Her mother had been a strong but loving woman. The only memory Lara had of love and gentleness from anyone had come from her mother in the first ten years of Lara’s life.

After her murder, life had become a barren desert when it came to trusting or loving anyone. Her father hadn’t been a warm and loving kind of man. All the softness in Lara’s life had been buried with her mother.

Her father had died and had been buried while she’d been in the safe house, and Lara hadn’t been back to her childhood home since then.

She knew it was time. She needed to deal with it. She had to go through the house and either pack up things she wanted to keep or throw out everything. The house was paid for, and she needed to get it ready to go on the market and be rid of it and those memories forever.

She drove slowly, dreading what she needed to do. She’d thought she was ready to go inside the house and start a list of things that needed to be done, but she wasn’t sure she was really mentally prepared for the task.

What she needed to do was find an answer that made sense as to the three murders that had taken place. But that wasn’t happening tonight.

As she drove she realized she was rubbing her arm again, as if attempting to rub away the MM tattoo that had already been removed.

She frowned and placed her hand back on the steering wheel. Moretti had marked her once with the tattoo. What she needed to find out more than anything was if somehow, someway he had marked her again, this time as a traitor who deserved every bad thing his evil mind could come up with.

She was halfway to the house when her cell phone rang. She punched the button on her steering wheel to answer the call. “Special Agent Lara Grant,” she said.

“Ms. Grant, it’s Jerry, the doorman.”

Lara’s nerves instantly screamed in dreadful anticipation. Something had happened; otherwise he wouldn’t have called her. “Yes, Jerry,” she said.

“I just wanted to let you know that a package was delivered here for you a little while ago.”

“A package?” Her heartbeat accelerated to a frantic pace. “What kind of a package?”

“It looks like a present. Is it your birthday?”

“Jerry, I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She murmured a goodbye and ended the call.

As she turned her car around to head back to her apartment building, she heard the resounding noise of the other shoe clattering to the floor, and she knew with a horrifying clarity that she’d been right...it wasn’t over yet.

CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_4b021b50-dd36-5286-88e1-e1570a933161)

It was just after nine when she parked her car in the lot and hurried toward her apartment building. The ride back here had seemed endless, and panic clawed up the back of her throat even as she told herself over and over again to keep calm.

She wasn’t expecting a package, and there was certainly nobody in her life to buy her a gift. The dark foreboding was back as she anticipated something bad about to rock her world yet again.