Fatal Exposure

chapter 8



Brynn lay plastered under Parker, bullets thudding and pinging into the car beside them, his heavy body pinning her down.

Gangbangers were trying to kill them. They had to get out of there fast. She shoved against Parker, her survival instincts shrieking at her to run, but his dead weight kept her trapped.

“Don’t move!” he shouted into her ear. “Stay behind the engine block.” Pulling his pistol from his back holster, he leaped to his feet and returned fire, the deafening barks making her flinch. She crawled to a crouch, the cement rough on her palms, and searched for a way to escape. But they’d never make it. The nearest house was half a dozen yards away—and they’d be dead before they ran three feet.

Parker ducked behind the car again, a battle raging in his dark eyes. “I said to stay down,” he growled, whipping out his cell phone. He lifted it to his mouth.

Brynn’s heart stopped. He was going to call the police. She grabbed hold of his wrist. “No, don’t!”

“What?”

“Don’t call,” she begged as incredulity flooded his eyes. “I can’t... I’ll explain later. Please,” she added, praying he’d listen.

He stared at her for a heartbeat. Then another barrage of gunfire broke out, and he swore. He pocketed the phone and waited a beat, then jumped to his feet and pumped out several more rounds. Brynn clapped her hands to her ringing ears.

She knew Parker thought she was insane. It was lunacy to resist calling for backup when they were pinned behind this car. But the police meant involving her stepfather—a danger she couldn’t afford.

Wishing desperately that she still had her handgun, she scoured the street, frantic to find a way out. But the narrow trees wouldn’t offer protection. The nearby porches were too exposed, assuming they could make it up the steps. Farther down the street was that empty lot—but it was still too far away.

She beat back a swell of panic, the feeling of helplessness she most despised. She was not going to die here. She refused to let these street punks do her in after everything she’d endured. She spotted a bottle in the gutter and grabbed it, marginally reassured. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but at least she could try to fight back.

Parker crouched beside her. He ejected his spent magazine, took another from his holster and slammed it into his gun. Something moved at the edge of Brynn’s vision. Her panic exploding, she whipped up and hurled the bottle at their assailant—just as a shot barked out. The bullet went wild, and she flung herself back down. Parker jumped up and got off several more rounds.

The car’s engine roared. Tires screeched, a thick, choking cloud of exhaust billowing past as the driver gunned the accelerator and peeled off. Her heart still stampeding wildly, Brynn rose and peered around. Smoke swirled through the haze from a nearby porch light. The stench of sulfur permeated the air. She drew in a breath, the abrupt silence reverberating in her eardrums, her legs trembling so badly she could barely stand.

“Why didn’t you stay down?” Parker raged. “You could have been killed.”

“He was going to shoot you.” She heaved in another breath. “Did you get him?”

“Yeah.” His expression still fierce, he took her arm. “Come on. We need to get out of here before they come back.”

The gang would retaliate, all right. Parker had just provided them with another reason to want them dead.

But why had the gang attacked them to begin with? And why had they done Jamie in? Her thoughts winging back to the teenager, she raced after Parker down the empty street, her feet crunching over broken glass. This couldn’t be a coincidence. That gang had gone after Jamie right after Brynn had talked to her.

Jamie was dead because of her.

Hardly able to grasp it, she hurried toward Parker’s truck. He beeped it open, and she dove inside, but she couldn’t avoid the truth. All these years she’d guarded her secrets. It had been the only way to keep her friends safe. Even now, years of ingrained caution were clamoring at her to run, stay quiet, hide. But that strategy no longer worked. Innocent people were dying because of her. First Tommy. Now Jamie. Even her agent had nearly lost her life.

She might even be responsible for Erin’s death. Her continued silence had enabled a dangerous predator to operate undetected, harming untold numbers of kids.

She stole a look at Parker’s profile, her stomach a flurry of dread. But no matter how much it scared her, she knew what she had to do. She had to reveal what she’d witnessed that awful night, why she didn’t want him to call the police.

And how she’d caused his brother’s death.

Parker cranked the truck’s powerful engine and sped away from the curb. Fastening her seat belt, she scoured her mind for another option, but that gang had forced her hand. She had to make a leap of faith and confess the truth.

She just prayed that Parker would believe her—or neither of them would survive.

* * *

Brynn was still gathering her courage half an hour later as she huddled on the leather sofa in Parker’s condo, clutching a throw blanket over her shoulders in a futile attempt to warm up. Her hands were like blocks of ice. The adrenaline dump from that shooting had left her so shaken she could hardly hold on to a thought. But she had to pull herself together fast.

Parker came through his kitchen doorway, cradling a crystal tumbler in each big hand. “Vodka,” he announced, handing her a glass. He took his seat on the sofa beside her, making the cushions sink. He’d removed his leather jacket and pushed up the sleeves of his faded blue Henley, exposing the sinews of his muscled arms. Warmth beckoned from his solid frame, making her yearn to lean close.

Instead she sipped her vodka, shuddering as it burned her throat. “Did you find out anything?” She’d heard Parker phoning his coworkers for information as he’d poured their drinks.

He nodded, his dark eyes grim. “They received a discharge call, a report that shots were fired. They sent a patrol unit to investigate.”

“Do they know that you were involved?”

“They’ll figure it out eventually. They can trace the shells to my gun. But unless they find something that connects it to Jamie, they won’t investigate it for a while. They’ve got too many homicides to deal with first. That buys us a couple of days, at least.”

Brynn took another swallow of vodka. Baltimore was a violent city. Unless there was a victim, a simple report of shots fired would be a low priority. “What about Jamie?”

“They found her in Lincoln Park. That’s a standard spot for a dump job. Rigor mortis puts her death at around six last night. She still had money—several hundred bucks—so it wasn’t a robbery. All signs point to the Ridgewood gang.”

“That’s what the hooker said, that the gang killed her.” Like the execution she’d witnessed years ago. Brynn closed her eyes, bile swarming through her belly at the thought. She could only pray that Jamie hadn’t suffered, that the end had been mercifully swift.

“It’s my fault,” she admitted, feeling sick.

“Why do you say that?”

Brynn shifted her gaze to him. She took in his dark, knitted brows, the stark, steely planes of his thoroughly masculine face. He looked dependable, invincible, strong.

Leap of faith, she reminded herself. She had to trust him. She could no longer do this alone. She took a gulp of vodka for courage and shivered hard. “I didn’t tell you, but the night you found me, the night you came to my house, my agent, Joan Kellogg, had been attacked.”

“The one in Alexandria?”

“You know her?”

He shook his head. “Just her name.”

Of course he would know all that. He was a detective—a darned good one since he’d managed to track her down.

“That’s where I went after you left my house,” she continued. “I wanted to warn her that you’d shown up and that the media could be next. But when I got there, she’d been attacked. She said the guy was after me. He was Caucasian, with black hair and a snake tattoo.”

“The Ridgewood gang. That’s their symbol.”

Brynn nodded, then choked more vodka down. “That’s not all. I thought someone was following me when we met at the coffee shop the next day. But I figured I’d imagined it. Or that maybe I’d lost him. I must have been wrong. He must have followed me to Jamie. Although I don’t know how....”

“Why would the gang be after you?”

Good question. Knowing the time had come to answer, she swallowed hard. “I’m not exactly sure. It’s a different gang. But I think it’s connected to a gang execution I witnessed fifteen years ago.” She forced herself to meet his eyes. “That was the day your brother died.”

Parker went stone-still. His gaze didn’t veer from hers. A clock ticked in the kitchen, in time to her thumping heart. “I told you I met Tommy on the streets,” she continued. “We were friends. Just friends,” she added in case he was wondering. “I was really young. And I...I was a real mess back then.”

She’d been so incredibly damaged, so utterly alone. So terrified and furious at the world. Betrayed by everyone who should have helped her. She’d gone berserk whenever a man came near.

But Tommy had been different. He’d never looked at her in that sick, sadistic way she’d come to associate with men. He’d wormed through her defenses, renewing her hope that good people still existed, even if a monster had preyed on her.

“I had two other friends, two girls I hung around with,” she continued. “They’d run away, too. Haley got pregnant, and her family disowned her. Nadine was a little older, seventeen, I think. Her family was Middle Eastern. They were trying to force her into an arranged marriage. They threatened to kill her if she didn’t obey.” A threat they intended to carry out, even now, if they ever caught up to her.

“We stayed together for protection at first. It’s not easy to survive on the streets without a pimp.” And Brynn would have killed herself before she’d let a man touch her again.

“None of us knew how hard it would be. The hunger, the violence... We weren’t prepared for that. So we stuck together to survive.”

She slid Parker a glance. He sat immobile, tension rippling from his steel-hard frame. “Tommy watched out for us, too. He kept the men away, made sure they knew we weren’t alone. He was kind to us.” She paused. “You have no idea how rare that is on the streets.”

Parker looked away, his Adam’s apple working in his whiskered throat. Her heart rolled, knowing how painful this had to be for him to hear.

“We tried to help him, too,” she said, her own chest tight. “We made sure he had blankets and food. We took him to the needle exchange. He...he wasn’t alone, Parker. We’d formed a family of sorts.”

Parker set his glass on the coffee table, then pressed his fingertips to his eyes. The slump of his broad shoulders, the anguish seeping from his powerful body made her yearn to console him, to wrap her arms around him and hold him close. But she had to tell him the rest before she lost her nerve.

Even if he despised her when she did.

“I had a camera, an old thirty-five-millimeter Yashica. It belonged to my father—my real father. He was an amateur photographer. He mostly took nature shots. We used to go on long hikes through the woods... He taught me how to see things differently, to look at the colors and light. He made everything seem beautiful, magical.” She’d only been five or six, but she still remembered those days vividly—the enchantment, the wonder, the joy. They’d been the best days of her life.

“That camera...it meant the world to me.” It was her prized possession, her only link to her beloved father, and the only thing that had kept her sane. “Anyhow, I got it in my head to photograph an abandoned warehouse near Orleans Street. It had the most amazing historic details. And it...affected me somehow, how sad and ruined it was. I wanted to capture it on film.

“It was dumb. The C.D. gang owned the streets around there. The City of the Dead. They ran the heroin trade back then. Tommy tried to convince me not to do it. So did Haley and Nadine. But I wouldn’t listen. I thought I’d be safe if I went early enough in the day.

“I went the next afternoon. Nadine and Haley insisted on coming with me, even though they didn’t approve. But we’d gotten a late start. Haley had found a stray cat.” Even then Haley had been a nurturer, trying to rescue everyone in sight.

“And Tommy?” Parker asked, his voice unsteady.

“He wasn’t around when we woke up. I didn’t know where he’d gone. When we got to the warehouse, Haley and Nadine refused to go inside. They were smart.” Brynn stared, unseeing, at her glass, a cold pit forming around her heart. How many times had she wished she could relive that moment and listen to them this time? “I thought I’d be okay.”

She’d never been more wrong.

She drained her glass of vodka, set it on the coffee table and pushed it aside. Then she pulled the blanket closer around her in a useless attempt to warm up. “I started taking pictures. It was a big place, the walls all covered with gang tags.” Another warning she’d ignored. “I kept going in deeper, where there wasn’t much light. The shadows brought out the textures in the walls, little fissures and defects that the sunlight hid....”

Just like with people. Their real nature emerged in the dark.

Shivering, she pulled her mind back on track. “Then I heard voices. I thought it was just a drug deal. I should have turned around.” Another fatal mistake.

“The next room had a big window along one wall, the glass all busted out. It looked out at an inner courtyard. The voices were coming from there, so I went to see. A man was kneeling on the ground. He had his back to me, and I could see that his hands were tied. He was crying.”

She closed her eyes, trying to block out the memory of that horrific, high-pitched sound. A man reduced to his most primitive instinct, whimpering and pleading for his life.

“I couldn’t see his face, but he looked older, middle-aged. He had a bald spot, and he was wearing a blue plaid shirt and slacks. Not the kind of clothes someone younger would wear.”

“He was forty-five.” Parker sounded numb. “His name was Allen Chambers. He was a heroin addict from Dumfries, Virginia. His hands weren’t bound when they found him, but there were bruises on his wrists.”

Brynn nodded. Of course Parker would know the details. The dead man had been found near his brother’s body. “There were a couple of gang members with him. Two, for sure, but I only saw one man’s face. He was facing in my direction. He was Caucasian, with tattoos on his cheeks and neck. Crosses. He was in his early twenties, I’d guess. I couldn’t see the other person from where I stood, just his weapon. There was a pillar blocking my view. But they both had guns.”

She clasped her hands and curled forward, the terror of it flooding back. “I was so scared. I couldn’t move. I was just...frozen. I don’t know how long I stood there, probably only seconds, but it felt like hours. The kneeling man kept sobbing and begging for them to let him live.

“And then...they shot him. I’m not sure who fired the gun. I thought it was the other man, the one I couldn’t see, but it happened so fast I couldn’t tell. There was this enormous bang and the man flew back.”

She hugged her arms and rocked, trying to block out the images. The blood. The dead man’s vacant eyes. The dreadful silence of a life abruptly gone.

“They realized I was there. I don’t know how. Maybe I cried out, or I moved and it caught their eyes. But the guy with the tattoos looked up. He raised his gun. That’s when I turned and ran.”

Her palms turned slick with sweat, her heart thudding against her rib cage as she relived that frantic flight, the wild hysteria fueling her steps. “They chased me. I knew they wouldn’t give up, that they’d never let me live. I’d just seen them murder that man. And they were fast. I could hear their footsteps pounding behind me. All I could think was that I had to warn Haley and Nadine.

“And then, out of nowhere, Tommy leaped out. He must have been coming to find me.”

She dragged her gaze to Parker, meeting his tormented eyes. “He saved my life. He got in their way on purpose, stopping them so I could escape. I heard the shots....”

Parker closed his eyes. The stark pain on his face twisted inside her, like a knife cleaving her heart, bringing a sting of tears to her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Parker. It was all my fault. If I’d only listened to him and not gone there...”

For a long moment, he didn’t answer. He hung his head, anguish radiating from him in waves. And then he scrubbed his face with his hands, the tension in his shoulders giving way to a weary slump. Acceptance. Resignation. Despair.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, his voice raw. “You didn’t pull that trigger.”

“I might as well have. He never would have been there if it weren’t for me. And I was a coward. I kept running. I didn’t even go back to help.” To her everlasting shame.

Parker shook his head. “You were how old? Eleven? Twelve?”

“Thirteen by then.” She’d just been small for her age.

“You were a child.”

Not in the ways that counted. She’d lost her innocence long before that. “Still...”

“What good would it have done? He probably died instantly. And if you’d gone back they would have shot you, too.”

But at least she would have deserved it. And leaving Tommy alone like that after all he’d done for her... “I should have been there for him. He was my friend.” A friend she’d left lying dead in an abandoned warehouse after he’d sacrificed his life to save hers.

“So what did you do?” Parker asked, emotions roughening his voice.

“I caught up with Haley and Nadine, and we ran for blocks.” Racing through the streets in abject panic, frantic to save their lives. “We finally found a drainage pipe and hid. We huddled there for hours. Later, when it was dark enough and we were sure they’d left, we came back out.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“The police?” She shot him a look of disbelief. “We were minors. Runaways. The cops were our enemies. They would have hauled us in for questioning and sent us home.”

“And that would have been so bad?”

“Weren’t you listening? Nadine’s father had vowed to kill her. We couldn’t let her identity come out.”

His gaze narrowed. “And you?”

Her stomach tensed. She chose her words, knowing she had to tread carefully now. “My stepfather was a cop. He had...things he needed to hide. He would have made sure I didn’t talk.”

Not that the police would have believed her. They never had before. Still, he couldn’t take the chance that she’d finally get through to someone and expose him for the monster he was, blowing his facade of respectability to shreds.

Parker cocked his head, his eyes narrowed on hers. “You’re saying he would have hurt you?”

“I know he would have.”

“And that’s why you didn’t want me to call for backup today? Because he’s still around?”

“Yes.” She picked up her empty glass, then set it down, scrambling over what to say. “It’s...complicated. I can’t tell you the details right now.” And she prayed he wouldn’t press her yet. “But even if I’d talked to the police back then, it wouldn’t have done any good. I only saw the one man, the one in the photo. Haley and Nadine didn’t see anything, either, so they couldn’t help. But I’m sure that the shooter saw us. And he knew I’d caught the execution on film. That’s why we had to hide.”

Parker’s head came up. “Whoa. Back up. You’re saying you took pictures?”

She frowned. “Didn’t you see them?”

“How could I do that?”

It was her turn to be confused. “I mailed them to the police.”

He shot to his feet. “What?”

“I didn’t mean to take them. It was a reflex. That’s why they ended up blurred and underexposed. But I wanted to help the police catch the killer, so I made prints.”

“You took photos,” Parker repeated, sounding incredulous. “And you mailed them to the police?”

“Right. I’d been doing odd jobs at a photography store on Charles Street for a while part-time. I’d figured out the code for their alarm system, so I snuck inside that night and developed the film. I wrote Tommy’s name on the back of the pictures and sent them to the police. I figured someone would know what to do with them and get them to the right place.”

Parker still looked thunderstruck. “They weren’t in Tommy’s file.”

“Maybe they were in the other guy’s file—Allen Chambers, the one they executed.”

He shook his head. “I followed that case. His body was found near Tommy’s, so they assumed the deaths were linked. I would have known if they had evidence like that.”

“But...that doesn’t make sense. I thought for sure they’d get there.” It was the only thing that had assuaged her guilt, believing she’d provided the police with evidence—imperfect though it was.

“So if you never saw them, where did they go?” she asked.

“Good question.”

“They were out of focus and dark. You could sort of see that one guy, but that was it. Maybe the police figured they were worthless and threw them out.”

“Not a chance. They would have run them for prints, probably sent them to forensics to see if they could clean them up. They’d never toss evidence like that out.”

“So what are you saying? That someone kept them out of the file on purpose?”

Parker’s mouth turned grim. “It’s a possibility.”

“But that means...” If a cop had destroyed those photos... Her heart beat faster. A chill snaked through her blood, sending prickles slithering over her spine. All this time, she’d believed she had two dangerous enemies, two men who wanted her dead—her stepfather and Tommy’s killer. But what if she didn’t? What if the two men were the same?

Parker’s gaze connected with hers, the stunned realization in his eyes mirroring hers. There was only one reason the police would have destroyed that evidence. A cop must have been involved in his brother’s killing.

And her stepfather had worked in Homicide at the time....