Nine-Month Protector

Instead of arguing either point, Coop turned on the AC and adjusted the truck cab’s interior to combat the muggy summer night outside. His job was to take care of Seth’s needs outside of his assignment, not beat some sense into his stubborn head. It was time he went to work. “Has Sarah been seeing anyone? Can you give me the names of some friends I can call?”

“You know I haven’t been able to keep in touch with her like I should. Hell, I don’t even know if Mom and Eli are back from their honeymoon yet.” He could hear Seth’s frustration. “Mom” was KCPD Commissioner Shauna Cartwright-Masterson, and Eli Masterson was her new husband—an investigator with the D.A.’s office. “All I know is I’ve seen Sarah at the casino on and off the past couple of weeks. Now tonight, I can’t find her. I can’t find my dad, either. But I figure whatever trouble he’s gotten into, he deserves it.”

Growing up in the Cartwright household couldn’t have been easy with an absent father whose gambling addiction seemed to cause trouble whenever he did try to be a part of his family’s lives. Coop knew all about stepping in to fill a father’s place. He’d lost his own dad, a Marine Corps captain, during the first Gulf War, and had helped his mom raise his three younger siblings. Though Austin Cartwright was still alive and kicking, Seth had assumed a similar role. He might be only twelve minutes older than his sister, but Seth took his big-brother role very seriously.

But if Seth was 27, then so was Sarah. One of these days, he was going to have to accept that. “Like I said, she’s a big girl.”

“I just need to know she’s all right,” Seth insisted. He recited the address, and Coop jotted down the directions. “Just check on her for me, okay? Everything’s about to blow here. It’s too dangerous. And if Wolfe finds out I’m still workin’ for KCPD…”

He didn’t have to finish how deadly those repercussions could be to anyone Seth cared about.

Coop backed into the street and headed across town toward Sarah’s apartment, feeling an increased sense of urgency. “Talk to me, buddy. Tell me exactly what the situation is.”

Seth gave Cooper a concise rundown of the night’s events at the Riverboat Casino—the suspected front for Wolfe International’s money-laundering activities. There’d been a big poker tournament there that night, and Seth believed he had proof of how Teddy Wolfe was filtering drug money through the tournament records and payouts. More than that, a Wolfe enforcer that they knew was good for at least one murder had attacked two women—one of them a leggy reporter named Rebecca Page. She was running some kind of investigation on her own, and she had Seth’s focus and libido all twisted up into knots. Coop suspected his partner’s feelings for the reporter ran a lot deeper than even Seth would admit.

And somehow, while Seth was focused on protecting Rebecca and making his case against the Wolfes, Sarah Cartwright had wandered into the mess. She’d been paying several visits to the casino over the past couple of weeks. Seth had monitored her comings and goings as best he could without drawing attention to the personal connection between them. But tonight, with evidence falling into place, a killer to subdue and a crime scene to secure, Seth had lost track of his sister.

“It could be nothing,” Seth continued. “But I don’t want to take any chances. I have to get to the hospital.”

“You hurt?”

“Nah.”

“Rebecca?”

“Not as badly as the other woman. But I want to make sure Bec has a doctor look at her injuries. You should have seen her, Coop. You should have heard her telling him where to stick it. Remind me never to pick a fight with her.” There was an uncharacteristic catch in his voice. It was part admiration, part fear. “I just need to know she’s okay.”

As much as he needed to know his sister was okay, too.

“Go.” Coop wasn’t about to fail him now. “You take care of Rebecca. I’ll track down Sarah for you.”

“Keep her safe.”

“I’ll keep her safe,” Coop promised.

He hung up and merged into the light traffic on I-70 that would take him into the heart of downtown Kansas City, just a few blocks south of Sarah’s restored loft in the City Market district. It was the most sensible place to start. If he discovered anything more sinister than Sarah’s phone being left off the hook so she could get a good night’s sleep, then he’d be at the starting point to retrace her steps for the night.

Cooper Bellamy’s job was to ghost his partner. If that backup meant standing in as big brother while Seth dealt with trouble at the casino, then so be it.

He made it to Sarah’s neighborhood in twenty minutes. It took him another five to locate the converted warehouse and connected parking garage Seth had described. Coop circled the garage until he found her car, then pulled up beside it and got out. He laid a hand on the hood of her sporty Ford Focus. Still warm. So the prodigal sister had been out on the town until the wee hours of the morning.

“Good for you, kid.” She deserved to have a little fun without reporting every move to Seth. Chances were she’d gone straight to bed, and checking on her now would only wake her. Still, a promise was a promise. For Seth’s peace of mind—and, therefore, his own—Coop needed to see Sarah Cartwright with his own eyes so he could report that she was okay. He crossed through the glassed-in walkway over the street to the former warehouse-turned-apartment building.

The lobby here on the second floor was just as empty and quiet as the closed architectural firm on the first floor below him. Bypassing the noise of the 1930s-era elevator, Coop hit the stairs and climbed the two flights to Sarah’s floor.

By the time he reached the tomblike silence of the fourth floor, Coop felt the first measure of suspicion. Why was it so quiet in Sarah’s building? There were plenty of vehicles in the parking garage to account for several of the apartments in this block. Shouldn’t he at least hear boards settling? A loud snore from a neighbor? Water running through the pipes or central air kicking on and off? Or was the top floor so well-insulated—so isolated—that sound didn’t carry up here?

Coop scraped his palm over the late-night stubble shading his jaw. What was a single woman doing, living alone in this big empty place where there were no neighbors to run to for help, no one to hear her in the middle of a night like this, even if she screamed?

Hurrying his pace, Coop quickly reached the single, sliding steel door marked “400.” He raised his fist and knocked. “Sarah?” He pushed the buzzer, then knocked a little harder, hating how his random observations about the building had spooked him into this wary state. Why the hell wasn’t she answering the door? Maybe Seth had been right to be concerned. Despite the apartment’s fortresslike design, he wouldn’t want one of his own sisters to be so cut off from the rest of the world. He pounded. “Sarah!”

The door slid open beneath his fist.

“Coop? What are you doing here?”

Dropping his hand to his side, he swept his gaze over all five feet and not much more of Sarah Cartwright.

Ah, hell. The summery scents of peaches and mango drifted up to his nose, igniting a decidedly nonbrotherly awareness of the woman standing in the doorway. She wore a modest pair of pajamas, with one of those strappy knit tops, and plaid pants that were rolled up at the ankle.

But it was the damp spots clinging to the tops of her small breasts and the flat of her stomach that made the whole package so unexpectedly sexy. She’d come straight from the shower, looking fresh-scrubbed and fragile and utterly feminine—from the damp, darkened strands of her towel-dried hair to the pink painted nails on her tiny bare feet.

For a couple of heartbeats, Cooper forgot why he was standing at this door in the shadows before dawn. It was always like this for him, and it always took him a second to come up with the right teasing line to remind him that this was his partner’s sister he was lusting after.

“Coop?” Sarah brushed past him, looking up and down the empty hallway before tilting those pretty green eyes all the way up to his following gaze. “I thought they’d send a uniformed officer.”

That’s when the frown between the eyes registered, along with the antsy way she rubbed her palms and tapped her fingers together.

Coop’s smile flatlined. “Why do you need a uniformed officer?” That same wariness that had itched beneath the surface of his skin on the way up returned in full force. He wrapped one big hand around both of hers, stilling her twisting fingers. “Sarah?”

She startled with a gasp, as if his touch had interrupted some deep thought process. But instead of pulling away, she turned her hands inside his grasp and held on. “I’m glad you’re here. I could use a friendly face right about now.”

Damn. Despite the warmth of a shower, her skin was generating nothing but chill.

“C’mon.” With a gentle tug, he pulled her back into the apartment, slid the heavy door shut and locked it behind him. He nudged her toward the center of the open living space, then quickly moved past her to check the windows for signs of trouble. Maybe there’d been a break-in. But every window was solid, locked tight. The bedroom area, untouched. The kitchen area was equally clean. The bathroom was a mess of dirty clothes and damp towels, as though she’d stripped and showered and changed more than once.

Ah, hell. A very bad feeling throbbed in the tight clench of his jaw. His nostrils flared as he forced himself to breathe deeply, to check his emotions and silence the bombardment of questions that begged to be asked.

He turned back to Sarah, looking small and vulnerable where she stood in the middle of the room. She stared at a spot on the wooden floor, hugging herself, shivering.

“Sarah?” Coop slowly approached her, demanding that those big green eyes meet his. “Why do you need a cop?”

She didn’t disappoint. Smoothing a damp strand of hair off her face, she lifted her gaze. “To answer my 9-1-1 call.”

“All right. Back up and start this conversation from the beginning.” Any pretense of standing in as big brother vanished with the tears that glistened in the fringe of her lashes. Something had happened. Something very bad. The wary detective in him was already on guard, already alert. But the man in him needed to touch her, needed to make whatever had gone wrong right. He reached out to brush aside the stubborn lock of hair that still stuck to her cheek. “What 9-1-1 call?”

“I…” The instant his finger touched her, a huge sigh rattled through her from tip to toe. Instead of talking, she turned and walked into him, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Hold me.”

She aligned herself against him, cheek to chest, breast to stomach, thigh to thigh.

A burst of heat radiated through him in every place they touched. Something tight and controlled inside him began to melt.

Coop hesitated a moment before giving in to the heat and the need and winding his arms tightly around her. He rested his chin on the top of her head and wrapped his body around her, surrounding her in his strength and warmth. Seth was gonna kill him for this. But Sarah snuggled closer, and he couldn’t push her away. He heard the sniffles, felt the clutch of her fingers at the back of his waist. Moments later, the warmth of her tears dampened the front of his T-shirt and singed his skin. He was gonna kill someone if this innocent woman had been hurt. “Sarah, you never answered—”

“Just hold me.” Her lips moved against his sensitized skin, and his body leaped with the need to respond in some elemental way.

He rubbed circles up and down her spine, pressed a kiss to the crown of her head and rested his nose in the fragrant silk of her freshly washed hair.

“I’ve gotcha.”

The cop in him would have to wait.

Chapter Two

Three months later

“What do you mean, we’ve got nothing on Theodore Wolfe? I thought Wolfe International was history.” Seth Cartwright’s question fueled an outburst of debates around the KCPD headquarters briefing room.

“Their money-laundering setup here in K.C., yes. And we’ve put a serious dent in their drug profits by shutting down their Kansas City base. But we’ve still got some loose ends to tie up,” replied Captain John Kincaid in his typically cool, calm and collected tone. The grumbles subsided. He gripped the desktop podium and leaned forward to make sure every detective and uniformed officer in the room understood how serious he was. “Understand this. I intend to nail the big boss and give KCPD the credit for his arrest before they kick me upstairs to the deputy commissioner’s office.”

Leaning back in his chair at the front table, Cooper Bellamy crossed his long legs at the ankle and sipped his coffee as another round of should-haves and what-ifs and let’s-do-its ensued. His own partner, Seth, turned to the long table behind them and questioned Kincaid’s second-eldest son, Sawyer, another young detective, to see if he had any insight into his father’s plans for the case.

Coop seemed to take it all in with half an ear. His disinterest was deceptive, though. He was as frustrated as his partner to hear how progress had stalled on their investigation into Wolfe International’s illegal activities.

Captain Kincaid, the man who’d recruited Coop and Seth from the Fourth precinct to work on his organized-crime task force, raised his hands and quieted the room with little more than a stern fatherly look. Coop sat up straight, remembering that same look from his own father. A gung-ho Marine until the day his job took his life, Clint Bellamy had high expectations from all five of his children, especially his oldest son, Coop. And though he’d managed to inject plenty of laughter into their lives when he’d been home, Clint’s rules for living had been drilled in hard and often.

Respect for authority went without saying. And Captain Kincaid had earned it.

Being there for the team—whether that meant backing up his partner or taking care of his mother and younger brothers and sisters—was another tenet in the Bellamy code.

But the rule that had him sitting up and waiting for the captain to explain their next plan of action was that no matter what it required of a man, failure on a mission was not an option.

Coop thumped his partner’s shoulder, urging him to ease up on the second-guessing. “Let’s hear what the big dog has to say.”

The room quieted, and the captain recapped the task force’s accomplishments and remaining goals.

Theodore Wolfe’s son, Teddy, Jr., had been killed in a shootout with Seth when Teddy had tried to murder the woman who had since become Seth’s fiancée. Although one of Teddy’s partners appeared to be a legitimate K.C. businessman, their casino had been temporarily closed until the Treasury Department could straighten out the books. And Teddy’s right-hand man and Wolfe International enforcer, Shaw McDonough—the man Sarah Cartwright had identified as a cold-blooded killer—had gone AWOL.

McDonough had skipped the country. His plane ticket out of KCI said Bermuda, but authorities had had no luck tracking him down there. They couldn’t even confirm that he’d actually gotten off the plane. The bastard could be anywhere on the planet. Spending his money in the Caribbean. Living under an assumed name back in London, still doing his boss’s dirty work. Murdering someone else if the price was right.

Coop set down his coffee as the taste went bitter. That fateful night when Sarah had witnessed the murder of Teddy’s mistress had changed his life, too. And not for the better. He’d screwed up when he’d gone to check on her. He hadn’t been thinking with his brain. He’d misread signals and moved way too fast. At the very least, his timing had sucked. He’d risked his heart and gotten it thrown back in his face for his troubles—and jeopardized his friendship with Seth should the whole truth of those twenty-four hours together with Sarah ever come out.

“So what are we supposed to do, Captain? Sit back on our heels and let Wolfe International peddle its influence somewhere else?” Seth’s question was a welcome interruption to Coop’s self-damning thoughts.

His gaze strayed to the photograph posted on the screen at the front of the room. Theodore Wolfe, Sr. Black hair, silver temples. He could have been a member of Parliament with that high-class suit and demeanor. But there was a much darker side to the multimillionaire mob boss who ruled a gambling empire that touched four continents.

Wolfe was controller of everything he touched. Rich as Midas and as feared as Hades himself. Not a nice guy.

KCPD may have put a stop to his son’s criminal career, but Daddy and his number-one henchman remained untouched.

“No, Cartwright.” There was no doubt that the captain had command of the room. “I intend to nail Wolfe on our turf. We’ve got unfinished business with him here. He’s responsible for ordering the death of crime reporter Reuben Page—” the father of Seth’s fiancée, Rebecca “—and Danielle Ballard, the intern who was feeding Page information on the bribes Wolfe offered key economic development and zoning committee members.”

“So that disk Rebecca and I found at the Riverboat casino proves Wolfe’s influence?” Seth asked.

Captain Kincaid nodded. “Absolutely. Plus, Mac Taylor from the forensic lab says he’s got a clean bullet from Dawn Kingsley’s body that matches the one he took from Reuben Page three years earlier. If we can get him McDonough’s gun, we can link him to both murders and send McDonough to death row.”

Along with Sarah’s eyewitness testimony.

“Captain?” Coop had to pipe up with a smart remark sooner or later, or Seth would suspect that something heavy was weighing on his thoughts, and start asking him questions he didn’t want to answer. “You really think Wolfe and McDonough are stupid enough to return to the scene of the crime?”

“Not stupidity. Arrogance. And family honor.” Coop had to admire the captain’s thorough profiling of their targets. “If one or both of those men don’t show up to avenge Teddy’s death at the hands of KCPD, I’ll be surprised. Even if they think Teddy was an embarrassment to the family and Cartwright did them a favor, they’ll be back. Sooner or later. Since Wolfe assumed power of his company, he hasn’t had a failure.”

Cooper grinned. “Until he ran into us badasses here in K.C.”

“Something like that.” Captain Kincaid chuckled, making it okay for the snickers in the room to erupt into matching, stress-relieving laughter. “On that note, let’s start wrapping this thing up. We’ve got eyes on Wolfe in London, and McDonough’s picture is on every airport, shipyard and border crossing watch list. If he tries to re-enter the country, we’ll nab him. We’ll…”

While the captain began outlining the task force’s strategy through the end of the year, Seth leaned over and whispered, “Nice one, buddy. So you think Wolfe is going to come to the States to stick it to us?”

Coop shrugged. “A good businessman is going to want to show some kind of victory for his investment here in the U.S. Between us and the Treasury Department, we’ve locked up Wolfe’s money. He doesn’t want to walk away from here empty-handed. Kincaid’s right. One way or another, he’ll be back.”

Seth sat back with a grin. “You’re smarter than you look.”

Coop didn’t miss a beat. “You’re taller than you look.”

“Wiseass.”

“Pee-wee.”

To his credit, Coop’s shoulder-high tank of a partner had mellowed in his emotional moods since finding a woman who could go head to head with him in any battle of words and wills. They could give each other grief, and Seth would walk away smiling with a genuine sense of peace he hadn’t known for a long time.

Coop hid his pensive smile behind another swallow of his tepid morning coffee, swallowing the guilt that nagged at his conscience right along with it. His friendship with Seth Cartwright went deep, and he wouldn’t begrudge the tough guy his well-earned contentment.

Funny how finding a soul mate could reform even the hardest of hearts. Seth and Rebecca Page deserved their happily-ever-after. And come Christmas time, he’d proudly stand up as best man when the two of them got married.

Coop’s mind wandered from the captain’s spiel about timetables and task force goals.

Serving as best man might be as close as he’d ever get to a wedding himself. Not unless he could find a way to purge Sarah Cartwright from his thoughts the same way she seemed to have erased him from her life so quickly and thoroughly.

It had started as a simple kiss that morning in July. Coop had stood by Sarah while a uniformed officer had taken her statement and gotten contact information. He’d held her hand while the officer had promised to post an APB for both a man named McDonough and the blond girl’s body. Sarah had witnessed a murder at the Riverboat Casino. She’d tried to tell Coop something about her father setting her up, something about Teddy Wolfe using her.

And then she’d started crying again before everything made sense. When she’d walked into his arms a second time, Cooper had welcomed her, held her tight. When she’d asked for a kiss, he hadn’t been able to resist.

That kiss had seemed to go on and on. Instead of stopping, it had altered, deepened—demanded—and comfort had given way to passion.

It had been quick that first time. Crazy.

She needed him, she’d said. Needed that affirmation of life, of normalcy. She’d needed that soul-deep connection to another human being that making love could provide. And Coop had wanted to help her so badly—had wanted her so badly—that he hadn’t been able to summon the common sense to refuse her anything she asked.

“I’m sorry.” She’d started apologizing before they’d even had all their clothes back on. “I took advantage of your kindness, your caring. I’m no better than—”

“Hey, that wasn’t completely unexpected between the two of us, was it? Things have been simmering for months. Trust me, kindness had nothing to do with howmuch I wanted you.” He’d tried to draw her back into her bed, had tried to gentle her nervous discomfort with another kiss.

“No. This was a mistake. I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”

She’d been out of his arms, out of the room before he could get a straight answer about where he’d gone wrong. Then he was out of her apartment, and out of her life before he could really get his head around the idea that Sarah Cartwright had only wanted a warm body to get close to that morning.

She hadn’t been looking for a relationship.

And she sure as hell hadn’t been looking for him.

“Watch it, buddy.” Seth nudged Coop’s arm, wrenching him back to the present. He nodded toward Coop’s hand on the table.

Lukewarm coffee dribbled over the back of Coop’s knuckles, leaking from the paper cup he’d crushed in his fist. Damn. Way to not let this get to you, Bellamy. But he managed to cover his thoughts with half a grin. “Oops.”

“We’ll get these bastards. Don’t worry.” Seth had misread Coop’s frustration, but his reassurance offered an easy excuse.

“I know. We’ll get ’em.”

While Coop mopped at the mess with a paper napkin, John Kincaid finished his briefing. “I’ll contact you individually with your assignments as they come up. In the meantime, return to your normal duties at your home precinct.” Coop tossed the cup and napkin into a nearby trash can as the captain dismissed them. “And remember to keep a twenty-four-hour line of contact open. We want to be able to mobilize our team the instant something new breaks on this case.”

“Yes, sir,” Coop answered, joining the chorus of responses from the task force members as they stood and filed from the room. Wadding up a handful of paper towels from the sink near the exit, he traded gibes and snippets of friendly conversation with his fellow cops as they walked past. Soon it was just him wiping down the table where he’d spilled his coffee, and Seth, waiting at the door for him so they could ride back to the Fourth Precinct building together.

A soft knock at the door echoed in the room’s sudden quiet.