Riskier Business (Crossing the Line 0.5)(28)

An incredulous laugh escaped him. “Keep dreaming.”

“I had a feeling you’d say that. It’s why I stopped by your apartment this morning to pay my daughter and her bitch mother a visit. They put up quite a fight.” His smile widened maliciously. “If you come with me, I might be willing to let Ruby off with a warning. You, on the other hand, don’t get one.”

Troy’s blood turned to ice. His heart lodged in his throat, choking off his air, but he tried desperately not to let his sickening fear show. No, no, no. “Her mother? You’re losing your touch, Jim. Ruby hasn’t seen her since she was a child.”

“You must think I’m an idiot.”

Troy simply raised an eyebrow in response, even though he wanted to wrap his hands around the older man’s throat.

Jim shifted impatiently, obviously having expected them to be gone by now. “Look, I knew I was racing the clock this week. You’re a goddamn cop. I knew you would try to find Ruby’s mother before me. But when you let her walk into Mancuso’s last night, it told me you hadn’t found her yet. Then you got that phone call and everything changed.” He scoffed. “I’m not a blind man. You’d throw yourself in front of a train for my girl, yet you don’t even try to take the file away from me? Just walk out whistling Dixie without her getting what she came for? No, I knew then that you’d found her.”

Dammit, he’d assumed Jim’s greed would blind him to anything but getting what he wanted. It had been a vast underestimation on his part, and it was too late now to do anything about it. Jesus, he could have Ruby tied up somewhere and there was no way he could pick up his cell phone and call Brent to go check, either. Knowing he couldn’t go solely on the word of a criminal, Troy shook his head. “You don’t have them. It’s a bluff. You never would have gotten past the men outside.”

“You willing to bet on that? My profession has taught me the importance of being invisible.”

Troy understood the meaning of Jim’s earlier cryptic statement. If he went with Jim now, he might allow Ruby to go free. Troy wouldn’t walk away alive, but at least Ruby would have a chance. He couldn’t gamble on the hope that Jim was merely bluffing. If he refused to leave, the possibility existed that Jim might take him out here and now, unwilling to ignore the possibility that Pamela had confided Jim’s past crime while at their apartment. If he went willingly, allowing Jim to tie up his loose end, at least he might be able to exchange himself to save Ruby.

There was no choice.

“If you hurt her—”

“Relax, she’s just a little bruised up.”

Helplessness raged through Troy, the need to get to Ruby almost bringing him to his knees. Reluctantly, he removed his gun and kicked it across the pavement. “Take me to her.”

…

Ruby frowned down at her cell phone as she waited for coffee to brew.

Pamela walked into the kitchen behind her, still wearing the same ripped jeans and white tank top from the night before. “Is that your pre-coffee face or is something wrong?”

Not quite ready to face her mother yet, Ruby busied herself by pulling two mugs out of the cabinet. Anyway, she didn’t know if she could put the anxious feeling into words. It sat in her belly like a metal dumbbell. “It’s nothing.”

After a pause, Pamela sighed. “Come on. I’m the same person you’ve been shooting the shit with for months at the workshop. Can we just go to that place for a while until we’re ready for the dark and twisty?”

Ruby smiled despite herself, but it quickly vanished. Once again, her eyes strayed to her cell phone. “Every day since we’ve been together, Troy has texted me when he sits down at his desk. It’s like…our thing. He never forgets.” She didn’t explain Troy’s reason for creating the ritual, as yet another way to remind her on a daily basis that he wasn’t going anywhere. She’d come to expect the text messages, whether they were sweet or sexual. Miss you already or I’m going to lick what’s mine later. They’d become a constant, like Troy. He hadn’t even neglected to send them while they were in the midst of their fight, so Troy forgetting the morning after an incredible night together…it seemed odd, to say the least.

“He’s probably just busy doing cop stuff,” Pamela said, but Ruby heard a note of uncertainty in her voice, telling her she didn’t believe in coincidences, either. As long as Jim remained in town, every anomaly would somehow connect back to him.

“I’m going to give him five more minutes, then I’ll call,” Ruby decided, pouring them each a mug of coffee. “In the meantime, maybe I’ll just give my friend Bowen a call. See if he heard of Jim being anywhere in the old neighborhood last night or this morning.”

Pamela’s coffee mug paused halfway to her mouth. “Bowen?”

“Yeah. Bowen Driscol.” Ruby watched her mother closely, curious over her reaction. She’d purposely never spoken about Bowen before in the workshop, wanting to keep her past separate from her professional life. While she would always count Bowen as her best friend, there was no denying his criminal history. Or present, for that matter. It hadn’t seemed like a wise move divulging too much to the woman investing so much in her upstart company.

As if she’d pushed her father’s unwanted words straight to her subconscious overnight, they suddenly came creeping back in, waving a red flag. He’d claimed Pamela had slept with his best friend at the time…but before her mother had taken off, his best friend had been…