Unleashed

“Looks like it,” Rick said, easing down on the couch and rubbing his face in his hands. He tried to consider an explanation, one that didn’t involve him being screwed over by a cunning redhead.

It wasn’t looking good.

As if Kevin had read his thoughts, he asked, “How well do you know your lady friend?”

Rick snorted. There were a number of things he knew intimately about Jessica Beane—if that was her real name. He knew about the freckle southwest of her navel, that she shuddered when he kissed the backs of her knees, and that when she came, her cheeks flushed into pale pink circles. He knew she had a talented tongue and even more talented fingers, and that when he hit a sensitive spot, she purred like a kitten.

But did he know if she was a car thief? Whether their entire evening together wasn’t just a long, drawn-out plot to rob him while he slept? That was anyone’s guess.

He dug his fingers through his hair. “Apparently not well enough. I’m not sure she stole the car, but she was gone by the time I woke up.”

He felt like an idiot just saying it out loud, and as his situation began to sink in, a coil of anger curled in his gut.

Kevin sighed. “Let me go get my pad and we’ll start making notes.”

“We’ve got bigger problems than a stolen car.”

That stopped Kevin in his tracks, and when he spotted the look in Rick’s eyes, his shoulders slumped. “No. Tell me the laptop wasn’t in the car.”

“The trunk.”

“Thornton’s lawyers will have a field day with this. It was gonna be bad enough telling them we’re still holding the laptop after they got the judge to release it.” Leaning a hand against the wall, he shook his head. “You’re in for one hell of an ass chewing.”

Rick really didn’t give a squat about Thornton’s lawyers or the raking he’d get from their department. That laptop had been his one hope at finding something on Creed. Hell, it was more than hope. Rick had been certain that his computer friend would get something off that machine, which would finally get them a solid lead.

And now it was gone.

A cold curtain of fury came over him, tightening his lip and clenching his fists at his sides. “I need to get it back,” he stated. “It’s as simple as that.”

“I’ll call in an APB on the vehicle. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

Rising from the couch, Rick took determined steps to his bedroom and flipped on the shower. “While you’re doing that, get what you can on a Jessica Beane. That’s Beane with an E.” He tried to remember the name of her store and only recalled she’d said it was on Powell. Had that been a lie? Was there truth in anything she’d said last night?

The thought that he’d been duped stung in more ways than he cared to analyze, and as he tossed off his jeans and headed for the bathroom, he chose to stay focused on the task at hand instead.

“Give me a minute. I’ll need a ride to the station,” he called out.

“You’ll need more than a ride to the station.”

Kevin had said it as a joke, but it was true. Today he’d need something he hadn’t had in a long time—a lucky break. And without a doubt, the place to start was by finding one brassy Texas redhead.

The only question was, what would he do when he found her?

Chapter Four

“GEORGIA, I’m so sorry.”

It was the umpteenth time Jessie had made the statement since running home that morning and confirming her worst fears.

It was true. Wade had been in their apartment. And though barely a sock had been upturned in their dresser drawers, everything she and Georgia had of value was gone.

Granna Hawley’s jewelry, Grandpa Hawley’s watch. Her ruby-studded class ring from Tulouse High and the diamond-chip necklace she’d gotten for Christmas from Treat Wayans, her first boyfriend from the eighth grade.

Jessie’s black velvet stash box had been emptied, Georgia’s kitschy pink piggy bank drained. But worst of all was the fate of her and Georgia’s most cherished possessions. Georgia’s was her mother’s diamond ring and Jessie’s was the army commendation medal that belonged to the father she barely remembered.

Her granna Hawley had given it to her on her sixteenth birthday, handed over with words Jessie would never forget. “This is the stock you came from,” Granna said, gripping the medal tightly in Jessie’s hand. “Your mother may have changed your name, but you’re still a Hawley through and through. And Hawleys are winners.”

She’d handed Jessie the medal, telling her to think of her dead father, to take it as a reminder of what she was capable of and to never lose sight of the proud blood that ran through her veins.

Jessie had taken it, then turned around and married Wade Griggs, criminal extraordinaire.

How was that for a Hawley winner?

“It’s not your fault,” Georgia replied, also for the umpteenth time. And though Jessie tried to believe it, she couldn’t reconcile Georgia’s words with the solemn look of pain in her eyes. Just like Jessie’s medal, that diamond ring meant everything to Georgia. It was one of the few things left from Georgia’s mother who had died when Georgia was a teen. It had been that common ground, the loss of a parent, that brought Jessie and Georgia together as friends back in high school. And no one knew better than Jessie how much the ring meant.

“I’ll get it back,” Jessie promised. “If I have to scour every pawnshop in the country, I’m getting it back.”

Georgia’s smile was shrouded in doubt, and the truth made Jessie’s heart bleed. Though neither wanted to say it, they both knew the rotten odds of ever seeing their possessions again. It would take a miracle, and miracles didn’t come by Jessie often—if ever at all.

“Did you call your lawyer back home?” Georgia asked, opting to focus on something that still held a ray of promise.

“He’s closed for the weekend. I left a message.”

She tried to hide the sense of doom from her voice, but feared she was doing a sorry job of it. As if losing their valuables wasn’t bad enough, Jessie had found the manila envelope she’d remembered so vividly. The one she’d been certain contained the signed copies of her divorce papers. And breathing a long sigh of relief, she’d opened the metal clip and pulled out the contents, gratified there was at least one thing she could stop worrying about.

But the envelope didn’t contain any divorce papers. It contained her granna’s will.

Jessie had torn apart her black plastic file box and everything else in their apartment, searching through every last shred of paper she’d saved over the years. She’d found the divorce papers, all right. But they hadn’t been signed by her or Wade. It had only been the copy she’d made before the documents were signed.

How she could have made such a mistake astounded her to the point of disbelief. And now, her only hope rested on the lawyer she’d retained. Surely his office would have a signed copy, and at least the matter of her divorce would end up no more than a temporary scare.

Georgia sprayed cleaner over a glass display case in their shop, Hidden Gems, and wiped the surface clean. Jessie and Georgia were among six artists who owned and operated the store, each offering their personal specialty in apparel and accessories.

Jessie sold her Beane Bags and Georgia made hand-painted silk scarves. Swan was an artisan in Native American, Aztec and Mexican jewelry, and Sonora had an eye for the latest trend in antique baubles. Candace made hats and Vickey constructed all kinds of wraps and jackets with her panels of exotic faux fur.

Among the six, Hidden Gems had recently gained notoriety in upscale fashion accessories, Jessie’s latest nod by Hollywood bringing them all a welcomed slice of attention. And though today wasn’t Jessie and Georgia’s day to mind the shop, the recent influx in business brought them down to help keep things clean and in order.

“I’m sure Roger will have a copy of those divorce papers for you when he gets in on Monday,” Georgia said, carefully placing a collection of Sonora’s antique Bakelite jewelry back on the shelf.

“I hope you’re right,” Jessie said, the thought throwing another pit into the rocky bowels of her stomach.

She took a breath and tried to squelch it like she always did.

A magnet for misfortune, Jessie had learned years ago that busy hands made for clear minds. It was how she’d stumbled into the craft of making beaded purses in the first place. When her stepbrothers caught her up in their mischief or her stepfather’s schemes landed the family back in poverty, Jessie would hole up in her room, stringing beads and sewing sequins. For hours on end, she’d ignore the screaming matches going on outside her door by losing herself in the ornate patterns she’d create.

She’d use beads when she had the money, any material she could find when she didn’t. With as little as a roll of fishing line and a bag of screw-top soda caps, she’d learned to string bags and accessories out of anything she could tap a hole through. She’d loved the peace the tedious task brought to her often chaotic childhood. And to this day, when the world seemed to swallow her up, she strung beads to see it through.

Georgia sighed. “They’ll have those papers. Don’t you worry.”