On the surface, he’d seemed like a legitimate businessman.

But Jennifer had found out the truth about him.

Brodie took one more look down at Brushard’s picture. Black hair, blue eyes, cleft in his chin. He had the stats on the guy, too. Six foot three, two hundred pounds. Or at least, that had been his weight before he’d spent those years in prison.

Prison could change a man, on the inside and outside.

Brodie shut off his penlight and stared up at the apartment building. “What’s the plan now?” Davis wanted to know. “You run in, guns blazing?”

“No.” More finesse would be needed until he could figure out just what game Shayne thought he was playing. Why did you take her? Why keep me from her? “You watch the front, and I’ll go up the fire escape.” That fire escape would take him all the way up to the third floor. Shayne had tried to keep the location secret, but the guy obviously didn’t realize that half of his department owed favors to the McGuires. Brodie had called in some of those favors.

“Right. So you want me to just stay here...”

He pulled his gun from the glove box. “And if you see Stephen Brushard, you stop him. With any force necessary.” He shoved open his door, but Davis caught his shoulder.

“And if you see him,” Davis told him. “Don’t you hesitate—got it? Protect yourself. Protect Jennifer.”

He would.

Brodie slipped from the vehicle. Not his car because he hadn’t wanted anyone to follow him back to Jennifer. He’d made sure that no one was behind him and Davis when they headed to this street.

Music and laughter drifted from a nearby bar. Since it was closing in on 4:00 a.m., the late-night crowd was packing it in, and voices floated to him. He swept around the side of the building, his gaze drifting up to the third floor. Lights were on up there, and those lights were like a beacon to him.

I’m coming, Jennifer.

He grabbed for the fire-escape ladder, but then...

Then he spotted a dark liquid on the ground to the right. It gleamed under the old street light. A pool of water? What the hell?

He bent, frowning, as he looked at that pool.

Brodie realized he wasn’t staring at water...just as he heard a faint groan.

Not water. Blood.

The groan came again, the sound so close, seeming to originate from right behind a pile of garbage. He hurried toward that garbage, his gun out. “I’m armed,” he said. “So you’d better—”

There was more blood. Far too much.

He shoved away the garbage and saw the crumpled form—a man, young, clean-shaven—who’d been tossed away.

Left to die.

Brodie jerked out his phone. Called 9-1-1 and—

“What is the nature of your emergency?”

The man groaned once more, a low, weak sound. With that much blood loss, how was he even alive? “Help...” the guy whispered, “her...”

Brodie spun back around and stared up at the third floor. Only the lights had just flashed off. The whole building was in total darkness.

* * *

“WHAT THE HELL?” Shayne demanded as he pulled his hands away from her.

They were surrounded by darkness. Her heart slammed into her chest because Jennifer knew. This isn’t good.

The only light in the place came from the window—faint streetlight that managed to peek through the layer of brown grime.

“He found me,” Jennifer whispered.

“The building’s old,” Shayne said. “A fuse could have blown. Anything could have happened.”

She heard the floor creak beneath his feet. “The door’s locked,” he said a few moments later. “This place is secure. I’ll call Randy and get him to tell us what’s happening.”

“Randy?”

“The cop on patrol outside.”

When he pulled out his phone, the illumination lit up the hard lines of his face.

She caught her breath while she waited for him to make a connection with Randy. She wanted that other cop to pick up, to tell them everything was fine and—

“Randy?” Shayne demanded. “What’s going on out there? We just went dark.”

She exhaled slowly. Randy was okay. He was still patrolling.

“What? I can hardly hear you.”

Jennifer turned and curled her fingers around the window. She shoved, trying to lift it up, but it was stuck. So she shoved even harder.

Nothing.

“Where are you? Yeah, yeah, I’ll let you in.” He ended the call, but he must have still been using his flashlight app because he shone that light right on her as he pointed his phone in her direction. “Randy’s on the stairs. He said the whole building went dark.”

“Stephen is here. You know he is.”

The light swung away from her and hit the front door. She grabbed for the window and yanked harder. It lifted—about one inch.

“It could be coincidence—”

Her laughter cut him off. “Come on. You’re a cop! You know better. It’s him. He followed you or he made someone at the PD tell him where we were.” Did you tell him, Detective Townsend? Her breath came out in heaving pants. “And I can’t help but wonder, did you want him to find me? Are you the one who tipped him off?”

Silence.

“Because I don’t understand what’s been happening since you had me in that interrogation room! Something is going on and I just—”

“The money was for me.”

That little reveal had her tensing...and her hands shoved harder against the window. It slid up a few more inches. Not enough for her to slip out, not yet.

Is the fire escape on the other side of the window? It had better be. Or else her escape plan wasn’t going to work at all.

“I was in trouble. In deep...and if I didn’t pay up, then my life would have been over.”

“What are you talking about?” she whispered.

“They weren’t supposed to get hurt. No one was.”

Her shoulders hunched back.

“But maybe...hell, maybe they were watching me the whole time. Maybe they thought the McGuires had more money, and that’s why they went back to them.”

A hard pounding shook the front door.

“I’ll lose it all if the truth comes out,” Shayne said, his voice thick.

“I don’t understand what’s happening!”

“I shot a man. I was young then, inexperienced... It was a mistake. But they knew. They saw me. Saw the cover-up.”

And, just like that, she did understand. “Blackmail.”

“Hurry, Townsend,” a voice called out from the other side of the front door. “Let me in!”

“I paid, and that should have been the end.” His voice was still low, but she heard him clearly. His light was on the door, but he wasn’t opening it. “But it’s never the end. Once they’ve got you on the hook, you are theirs for life.”

Her gaze was on the door, the only thing she could see in that room. “Randy... That’s not Randy out there, is it?”

“He told me that he’d keep it all quiet, if I just let him have you.”

“He’s lying,” she whispered. “Please, don’t open that front door.”

“He has the video of the shooting. The kid wasn’t armed! I—I thought he was.” A beat of silence then, “I don’t know how Brushard got it, but he’ll air it, and I’ll lose everything.”

That was the way Stephen had worked before. Find a weak spot and exploit it. It was obvious that Stephen knew the detective’s weakness.

The door shook.

“Brodie thinks I’ve been his friend. And I am... I am.”

But he was walking toward the door.

Jennifer spun around and crawled through the window. She grabbed for the fire escape, but—a hand grabbed her.

She screamed.

And that hand jerked her out of the room. Right into—

“I’ve got you.” Brodie’s voice.

She’d been jerked into Brodie’s arms.

He’d been there? Standing out on that fire escape? Had he heard Shayne’s confession?

“Go down the fire escape,” he ordered. “Davis is down there. More cops are coming. Go.”

She rushed down the old steps, and the fire escape shook beneath her. Her hands flew over the railing. Down, down she went; then Jennifer jumped the last few feet to the ground below.