Beyond His Control

She really wanted to be home at a decent hour tonight. She deserved it. Although she knew she’d be working once she arrived home—she’d been handed a new case last week. It was another seemingly cut-and-dried domestic abuse case, but as Paul now seemed to understand, there was nothing cut-and-dried about these cases.

Every case she won was not only a personal and professional victory, it was building her a stellar reputation as a strong women’s rights advocate.

She wasn’t always successful, not nearly as often as her pride would’ve liked, but her track record put her at the top of the A.D.A. list. She was being fast-tracked—to what, she wasn’t sure, but she’d heard the whispered rumors about herself too often to ignore it. Not that any of the rumors mattered. Justice was what mattered, a sense born and bred into her thanks to her father and his career, first with the army and then the DEA. He’d always been fighting the bad guys—and she always did her best to do the same.

The fact that a majority of her cases were garnering her more of the spotlight meant she’d also received her share of threats from the men she prosecuted and their families. That part was only going to get worse, her boss had warned her, but she’d grown up surrounded by men, was able to put up her own version of male bravado when she needed to. She’d learned to shoot and carried a gun wherever she went, learned self-defense moves and knew to watch her back.

She’d also learned that being on guard all the time was exhausting.

Now she guided her car, weaving through the typical New York City traffic heading east on the Henry Hudson. She thought of her little slice of land—and the small Cape Cod–style house she called home. She lived an hour outside of Manhattan in the hamlet of Carmel, and by the time she’d pulled into the driveway, the ride home with the top down and the radio blasting had relaxed her.

Still, she looked over her shoulder before going into the house and wished for the thousandth time she’d thought about buying a house with an attached garage.

Her older brother, Leo, had reminded her of that after the fact. She dropped her stuff, kicked off her shoes and began stripping off her business attire on the way to her bedroom. In fact, she hadn’t heard from Leo in three months. It was driving her crazy, even though he’d warned her ahead of time that it would be this way on most of his assignments.

The only person who might have heard from Leo recently would have been Justin. He was her brother’s best friend and still referred to Leo as Turk—his high-school nickname. At one time, she’d called Justin her best friend, as well.

Call Justin if you have any problems, Leo had repeated the last time she’d seen him, slipped her a piece of paper with a phone number on it the way he always did before he left on assignment. That paper was sitting in the bottom of her fire-safe with her other important documents, but she’d memorized that number. Thought about using it every single day for the past three months even though there had been no trouble in sight. At least nothing out of the ordinary.

Leo knew she wouldn’t call Justin unless there was a major emergency, but she also understood why he kept giving her the number. Justin was the closest thing to family she and Leo had since their father had died when she was seventeen.

Ava had grown up running wild. Her mom left when Ava had been just thirteen, and in need of a mother the most.

She’d had to turn to her father and Leo for dating advice instead of her mom—both their mantra being, you’re notdating until you’re thirty, so no, that hadn’t worked out well after all.

For the next few years, until they moved from North Carolina to Virginia, she’d taken on a lot of the household responsibilities. Her father was away too much to do so and Leo had no interest in things like grocery shopping or cooking.

She’d also found time to maintain a straight-A average —with a slight bit of coercion, first from Leo and later, from Justin, and have a normal social life. She didn’t want anything further to disrupt their family, and she knew enough to know that social workers would have a field day if they knew her father was sometimes away for a month at a time.

Still, something inside always pressed her to go further and further to the edge, test the limits. It was a need she couldn’t really control, something bred into her from her father’s genes, she supposed.

Her father had been in the army—Delta Force, then moved over to the DEA at the request of her mother, who’d somehow thought that a government agency would be a safer bet. She figured she’d have her husband home more and not taking off at a moment’s notice.

But her mother had been wrong because her father could find trouble just as efficiently and effectively as Ava and Leo could.

Which, of course, explained Ava’s want of Justin. At the time, Justin had been trouble—the supposed black sheep of his family and honestly more interested in keeping her out of trouble than finding it himself. Her best friend.

She’d thought for sure they had a future together, was still haunted by that one night when she’d finally gotten through to him—or so she’d thought, the one time she’d been able to have him stop seeing her as his closest friend’s little sister and he’d actually touched her…

The best and worst night of her young life. The night Justin kissed her…almost made love to her.

The day before he’d announced to her that he was marrying someone else, a girl Ava hadn’t even known he was dating. A girl he’d gotten pregnant.

Nine years had passed faster than she could’ve imagined then, when she was just seventeen and crying so hard over Justin’s betrayal she could barely breathe. Still heavily in grief over her father’s death, she’d thrown herself into academics. When Leo announced he’d been accepted into the DEA, it made her turn away from him and refocus on her own career. Something that was all hers, which no one else could ever take away.

She told herself she’d been lucky that nothing had ever worked out with Justin. Where would she have been today? Worrying constantly about his safety? About when he’d return? If he’d return? Even though she’d been taught at an early age that you never, ever used the word if in conjunction with a military deployment. No need to tempt the fates.

Not that she didn’t worry about him and Leo in secret, all the time, anyway.

There had been men during the years since she’d seen Justin. Too many, probably, in some kind of strange attempt to exorcize him from her mind and her dreams. But between her job and her lack of interest in any of these guys, because she’d always been too guarded for her own good, she’d never had much more than casual relationships. Even her most recent romance, which had lasted six months, ended because it had gotten too serious for her. Instead, she put in late nights at the office and fielded hate mail and death threats and worked hard to put the bad guys in jail and tried her best not to let the past overwhelm her.

You never even called Justin about his baby or the divorce.

She’d been too hurt to even think about Justin’s loss. It had been wrong, selfish and, in her eyes, unforgivable enough that she’d never been able to contact him before this. And the worst part was that she knew that Justin, probably more than anyone else, understood why, and not just for the obvious reasons.

She’d heard, through the good old grapevine, that Justin’s ex-wife had remarried, had more babies, and that Justin hadn’t gotten involved with anyone significant.

She wondered if he’d been keeping tabs on her, too.

She reached for the phone, wondering if this time she’d actually go through with it. But the phone rang as her hand touched the receiver, and jolted her firmly back to reality.

She didn’t know the number on her caller ID, and answered with a wary hello.

“I’ve got a lead for you on the Mercer case.” She recognized the deep garbled voice of an informant she’d gotten solid evidence from several times in the past, thanks to some of her connections with the New York City Police Department.

Most informants couldn’t be trusted any farther than she could throw them, but she didn’t have much choice. “I’m waiting,” she said.

“Not over the phone. In person. At Grandpa’s Bar. Midnight.” He hung up before she had a chance to respond. Didn’t matter—she’d be there.

She had to find out what everyone else knew about Susie’s disappearance.

2

AT A TABLE in the back of the dim bar, the man Ava knew only as Sammy downed the third beer she’d bought for him. Ava, in turn, played with the label on her first and only bottle and tried to appear patient.

Sammy was a good-looking, fast-talking con man whose penchant for gambling had gotten him into some bad situations. But his time spent around other recently paroled convicts afforded Ava, and the officers she often worked with, insight into cases they might never have broken otherwise.

Finally, Sammy spoke. “They got me again. I’m going to need your help.”

She sighed, knowing the “they” referred to his parole officer, and the help, no doubt, involved a gambling scheme gone bad. “I thought you were getting out of the game.”

“It was a setup,” he protested.

“I’ll talk to your parole officer but I can’t promise anything, Sammy. You might be looking at some jail time.”

Sammy nodded, because he knew. Still, he’d give her information in an attempt to reduce his sentence. “I hear you’re looking for that Susie Mercer woman.”

Keep it cool, Ava. He really doesn’t know anything. “Have you heard where she is?” she asked, and Sammy shook his head roughly.

“No. I don’t know where she is, but I know who she is.” His voice was so low she could barely hear him over the music and the bar’s rowdy clientele. “You’ve heard of the O’Rourkes?”

Everyone had heard of the O’Rourkes. The infamous family ran an import/export business as its legitimate front, which was a cover for a highly successful and illegal drug-smuggling business that seemed to grow bigger every year. The business was based out of Chicago, and even though O’Rourke also had an office in New York, the D.A. had never been able to touch him.

“Of course I’ve heard of the O’Rourkes,” she said, pushing her beer to the side as her head began to pound.

“Well, she’s married to one of them. Robert Mercer, Susie’s husband, is the guy’s son,” Sammy said triumphantly. He clinked the neck of his beer bottle with hers.

“Sammy, how did you find that out?” she whispered urgently. Sammy shrugged, unconcerned. Since Susie had come forward, Robert Mercer was under investigation for more than just domestic abuse—the D.A.’s office was trying to keep his connection to the O’Rourkes under wraps until the Grand Jury convened in two weeks. If Sammy confirmed to anyone that Ava now knew the information…