Love You More (Tessa Leoni, #1)(69)

Lyons flushed. His fists were clenched at his side. D.D. glanced down, then …

“Son of a bitch!”

She grabbed his right hand, yanking it toward the light. Immediately, Lyons raised his left as if to shove her back, and in the next instant he had a loaded Sig Sauer dug into his temple.

“Touch her and die,” Bobby said.

Both men were breathing hard, D.D. sandwiched between them.

The state trooper had a solid fifty pounds on Bobby. He was stronger, and as a patrol officer, more experienced in a street fight. Maybe, if it had been any other officer, he would’ve been tempted to make a move, call the officer’s bluff.

But Bobby had already earned his battle stripes—one shot, one kill. Other officers didn’t ignore that kind of thing.

Lyons eased back, standing passively as D.D. jerked his bruised and battered fist under the overhead light. The knuckles on his right hand were purple and swollen, the skin abraded in several areas.

As Bobby slowly moved his firearm to his side, D.D.’s gaze went to the steel-toed boots on Lyons’s feet. The rounded tip of the boot. The bruise on Tessa’s hip her lawyer wouldn’t let them examine.

“Son of a bitch,” D.D. repeated. “You hit her. You’re the one who beat the shit out of Tessa Leoni.”

“Had to,” Lyons replied in a clipped tone.

“Why?”

“Because she begged me to.”


In Lyons’s new and improved story, Tessa had phoned him, hysterical, at nine a.m. Sunday morning. Sophie was missing, Brian was dead, some mystery man had done it all. She needed help. She wanted Lyons to come, alone, now, now, now.

Lyons had literally run to her place, as his cruiser would be too conspicuous.

When he’d arrived, he’d discovered Brian dead in the kitchen and Tessa, still in her uniform, weeping beside the corpse.

Tessa had told him some preposterous story. She’d arrived home from patrol, depositing her belt on the kitchen table, then walking upstairs to check on Sophie. Sophie’s room had been empty. Tessa had just started getting nervous, when she heard a sound from the kitchen. She’d raced back down, where she’d discovered a man in a black wool trench coat holding Brian at gunpoint.

The man had told Tessa that he’d taken Sophie. The only way to get her back was to do as he said. Then he’d shot Brian three times in the chest with Tessa’s gun and left.

“You believed this story?” D.D. asked Lyons incredulously. They were now sitting in the beanbags. It would almost appear cordial, except Bobby had his Sig Sauer on his lap.

“Not at first,” Lyons admitted, “which became Tessa’s point. If I didn’t believe her story, then who would?”

“You think the man in black was an enforcer?” Bobby asked with a frown, “sent by someone Brian owed money to?”

Lyons sighed, looked at Bobby. “Brian muscled up,” he said abruptly. “You asked about it, yesterday. Why’d Brian bulk up?”

Bobby nodded.

“Brian’s gambling started a year ago. Three months into it, he has his first little ‘episode.’ Ran up a bit too much on tab, got roughed up by some casino goons till he worked out a payment plan. Next week, he joined the gym. I think Brian’s bulking up was his own self-protection plan. Let’s just say, after Tessa and I confronted him, he didn’t quit the gym.”

“He was still gambling,” Bobby said.

“That’s my guess. Meaning, he could’ve run up more debt. And the gunman came to collect.”

D.D. frowned at him. “But he killed Brian. Last I knew, killing the mark made it difficult for him to pay up.”

“I think Brian was past that point. Sounds to me like he pissed off the wrong people. They didn’t want his money, they wanted him dead. But he’s the husband of a state police officer. Those kinds of murders can cause unwanted attention. So they came up with a scenario where Tessa herself became the suspect. Keeps all eyes off them, while getting the job done.”

“Brian’s a bad boy,” D.D. repeated slowly. “Brian is killed. Sophie is kidnapped, to keep Tessa in line.”

“Yeah.”

“This is what Tessa told you.”

“I already explained—”

D.D. held up a silencing hand. She’d already heard the story, she just didn’t believe it. And the fact it came from a fellow police officer who’d already lied to them once wasn’t helping.

“So,” D.D. reviewed, “Tessa is in a panic. Her husband has been shot with her gun, her daughter kidnapped, and her only hope of seeing her daughter alive is to plead guilty to her husband’s murder.”

“Yes.” Lyons nodded enthusiastically.

“Tessa hatches a master plan: You’ll beat the shit out of her. Then she’ll claim Brian did it, and she shot him in self-defense. That way she can plead guilty—meeting the terms of her daughter’s kidnappers—while keeping out of prison.” This part actually made some sense to D.D. Given past experience, Tessa Leoni had played to her strengths. Smart woman.

Bobby, however, had a question for Lyons. “But you really, I mean really beat the shit out of her. Why?”

The trooper flushed, stared down at his mangled fist. “I couldn’t hit her,” he said in a muffled voice.