Out of Control

“He a friend of yours?” her father asked, no doubt hoping for news of a decent man in her life.

“I’ve never met him.” Technically, that wasn’t a lie. She only knew Daniel Rutledge through Nick’s notes and a series of phone messages and e-mail inquiries she’d asked him to return. Alex stuffed the note into her pocket. “I guess I’ll have to call him to see who he is and find out what he wants.”

She couldn’t reassure her father with a better answer than that? Especially with a mixture of excitement and fear that was no doubt stamped all over her face. Did Rutledge have suspicions about Nick’s death, too? Answers for her? Alex lowered her head, feeling her cheeks steam with her lousy cover-up.

Fortunately, her father was perplexed enough by the mystery to miss her reaction. “The name’s familiar. Wasn’t he a friend of Nick’s back in school? Did you ever know him, Drew?”

Drew shook his head. “Must be from law school. Nick and I lost touch for a couple of years when Grandfather sent me off to Princeton to finish my education.”

“I hope he wasn’t looking for Nick.” George sank back onto the corner of the desk. “Maybe he doesn’t know about the accident, and he was trying to reach him. Oh, hell. Somebody else I didn’t tell.”

“Daddy?” Alex reached out, but he was already drifting away from her, shrinking back into the distant shadow of the man he’d been before grief had ravaged him. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”

George Morgan barely nodded. Tears burned behind Alex’s eyelids. Some son of a bitch was going to pay for what they’d done to this man. “Daddy?”

A long arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her into the hallway. “Let’s give him his privacy.” Drew closed the door softly behind them and turned her against his chest for a hug, pressing her nose into the scent of designer cologne at the open collar of his shirt. “He’ll be all right, Alex. Give him some space.”

When she felt his lips brushing against her temple, she pushed away. “No. I want to fix this.”

“You can’t.”

“Watch me.”

“Alex.” His familiar, indulgent smile stopped her from retreating across the hall into her own office. “I miss Nick, too. I thought he and I would be a team forever. You can’t make your father’s hurt go away for him. You have to let him grieve.”

“In my head, I know you’re right. But…” Drew Fisk was no fantasy knight in shining armor. But he was a friend, and he drove a fast car. And right now, Alex needed some speed to drown out the frustrations roiling inside her. She mustered up an answering smile. “Maybe I could use a little fresh air, after all. Give me a few minutes to find Tater to tell him I’m leaving. Start your engine, Drew. I’ll be right there.”

4

JACK RILEY LEANED BACK against the wall at the Headlights Ice House, a bustling food and drink establishment where picnic tables and stacked crates formed eating areas that were anything but private. The lights were bright, the noise was loud, but with thunder rumbling in the night sky outside, it offered a warm, dry place where a man could fill his belly and get a crash course in who was who in Dahlia, Tennessee.

Stretching his long legs out across the bench seat of his table, he took a long swig from his second bottle of beer.

He’d come here to catch a criminal. Or two. Or six. Or however many sons of bitches it took to stop the flow of drugs and money that he’d traced from Nashville back to this deceptively innocent spot on the map.

Located about thirty miles east of Nashville, Dahlia had once been home to plantations, horse breeding and tobacco. According to his current investigation, Dahlia had nearly died during the Great Depression. But one of its founding families, the Fisks, had built the Dahlia Speedway in the 1960s, and the town was reborn. Now, instead of racing thoroughbreds, they raced cars.

The Chevy Camaro he’d been working on since he was a teenager—a lifetime ago, it seemed—was Jack’s ticket into town. Secured in the trailer he was hauling behind his pickup, the modified street car would qualify him as an entrant in the track’s Outlaw 10.5 Division Drag Racing Series.

He needed to become a part of the track.

He needed to become a part of this town.

Because someone here had murdered his partner.

When Lorenzo Vaughn had agreed to reveal his source for the drugs he’d sold in Nashville, in exchange for a reduced sentence, a fatal chain of events had been set into motion.

Vaughn had sent Jack and Eric to a chop shop. The business of tearing down racing cars from across the country and selling parts on the black market had also been a front for the even more dangerous business of smuggling heroin and other drugs inside some of the vehicles. But by the time the task force moved in to make an arrest, the business had closed up and moved its location. To ferret out the new distribution center and the men behind the drug import scheme, Eric had gone in undercover as a buyer looking to make a purchase. He’d stayed with the job, perfected the role of a new dealer in town, worked his way up through the hierarchy of thugs and lieutenants to the men in charge of the operation—who made him as a cop and had him gunned down in the street. Whoever was running the Dahlia-Nashville smuggling connection was going to pay.