DADDY WITH A BADGE Read online

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  Contents:

  Prologue

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

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  Prologue

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  He was alive. Barely. Now it was up to the cardiac team to keep him that way.

  Sweat-stained and exhausted after the frantic struggle to keep the patient from bleeding to death, the surgeon in charge of the Level-1 trauma unit at George Washington University Hospital stripped off her bloody gown and gloves before heading down the sterile corridor in search of the patient's family.

  While she and her team had been battling the almost impossible odds, a crowd had gathered—predominantly large, solemn-faced, broad-shouldered men with narrowed, watchful eyes.

  Among the group were the two men who had ridden in the ambulance with the ashen-faced man now in surgery, their once pristine shirts bloodied while performing CPR until the medics had arrived.

  All were members of the Special Investigations Branch of the Secret Service. The patient, Rafael Cardoza, was a senior agent in the same branch. His weapon as well as his badge and ID had been vouchered by the admitting clerk after they'd cut off his blood-soaked clothing.

  Falling silent as she approached, they stood stiffly the way people do when they feel helpless, hands in the pockets of conservative suit coats, their carefully unobtrusive ties loosened, the requisite dark sunglasses tucked away in breast pockets.

  "Excuse me, gentlemen, is Agent Cardoza's family here yet?" she asked, her voice reflecting her utter weariness.

  In answer to her question, most looked toward a solid, massively muscled man in his mid-fifties who stood to one side of the crowded corridor, alone in a little island of deference. A pleasantly homely man, he had thick iron-gray hair, a granite jaw and steely blue eyes.

  "Cardoza's parents are in Oregon. According to his wishes, they're to be notified only in the event of his death." He stopped, the unspoken question hanging in the air.

  "He's alive," the surgeon hastened to assure him.

  "Thank God." He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. "I'm his immediate superior and his friend. Name's Lincoln Slocum in case you need to know." That done, he sharpened his gaze. "Fill me in."

  Though he spoke quietly, she had a ridiculous urge to snap to attention. She recognized the name as the newly appointed Director of the Secret Service, though in reality the photo in the Washington Post hadn't come close to portraying the powerful life force of the man.

  "Agent Cardoza was hit twice in the chest," she related in a voice that was equally quiet. "One of the bullets punctured his left lung, the other may have nicked his aorta, which is why Dr. Forchet took him straight to the OR as soon as his blood pressure was stabilized."

  He accepted that impassively, with only a slight movement of his stern mouth to betray his feelings. "Worst-case scenario?"

  "He's lost a great deal of blood, which makes surgery extremely risky. His heart might also have been damaged. Dr. Forchet won't know until he cracks the chest."

  No one spoke. The tension was palpable, a lethal black energy that seemed to suck all the air from the surrounding space. The silence was broken by a frustrated curse.

  Finally Director Slocum released a long breath. "Rafe's as tough as they come. He'll make it."

  She thought about the stripped-down body she'd seen only in clinical terms—lean and muscular and larger than average, bronzed where his skin had been exposed to the sun, paler where it had not. His shoulders were wide and packed with latent power, the torso long and corded with hard muscle, the waist narrow. Without an ounce of extra fat on the long frame, every superbly developed muscle, tendon and sinew had been outlined perfectly like an anatomy lesson come to life.

  In spite of the Latin name, the man had a Viking's golden coloring and height. She'd had only a glimpse of his features before the second-year resident had inserted a breathing tube, but the rough-cut features had been overlaid with a rugged strength. Masculinity personified, she thought with a giddiness born of exhaustion. A beautiful tawny gold man with a heart that had faltered but fought on.

  Did he have a mate? she wondered, thinking of her own adorably rumpled husband waiting for her at home. A woman with enough courage and strength to keep from being overpowered by his? A romantic at heart, she fervently hoped so.

  "He's tough," she echoed, infusing her voice with a certainty she desperately wanted to feel. "He'll make it."

  With a lot of luck, she thought as she turned away—and perhaps a little help from whatever benevolent deity looked after men like him.

  Gut knotted even tighter now, Linc Slocum watched her until she disappeared behind the double doors to his left. Only then did he allow his stiff shoulders to relax.

  He'd been at the White House, meeting with the President's Chief of Staff, when he'd been notified that one of his men was down, shot while guarding a witness at a government safe house in Maryland.

  No, not just one of his men, damn it. His best man, his go-to guy. In spite of the fourteen years difference in their ages, they had a bond, he and Rafe—an immigrant steelworker's kid and the bastard son of a teenage runaway, brought up by a Mexican-American laborer and his wife after his birth mother had abandoned him in a horse barn.

  "Any word, yet, sir?" Preoccupied with his own thoughts he hadn't seen Rafe's partner of three months approaching. Each year the new hires seemed to get younger, he thought with an inner sigh. Even Rafe, at a lean and muscular thirty-eight, had started complaining about feeling old. But then Linc doubted that Rafe had ever truly been young.

  "He's holding his own," he said, smiling briefly to let the rookie know his concern had been noted and appreciated. "The doctor said it might take a while to patch things together."

  Seth Gresham's lips tightened as he struggled to settle his emotions. "Twenty more minutes and I would have been there," he grated in an emotion rough voice.

  "Any idea how the shooter found her?"

  "Damned if I know, sir."

  Rafe was too savvy to let himself be tailed. But this kid? It was possible, though unlikely. Among other things, Rafe had a way of getting the young ones up to speed fast.

  Apparently Rafe had been in the kitchen making breakfast when the woman he'd been protecting had inexplicably—and against express orders—opened the front door to a man who'd claimed to be Rafe's relief.

  It had been damn clever, the way the shooter had worked it. Arriving not too early to alert Rafe, but late enough to minimize the chance of being spotted.

  "You think the shooter was Folsom himself?" Gresham asked tersely.

  "Could be. Or he could have hired a pro."

  "Damn frigging flu bug. Rafe never should have had to pull that kind of routine duty." Stan Vincent was head of the investigative branch—and Rafe's immediate superior—although both he and Stan knew that Rafe played by his own rules, which, given the unshakable integrity at the man's core, were far stricter than the ones in the book.

  "We both know there was no 'should' to it, Stan. The woman only agreed to testify because Rafe convinced her she'd be protected. Nothing but an act of God was going to keep him from looking out for her."

  Slocum bit down hard on the rage that threatened to break free.

  Jacob Peter Folsom was a cold, calculating predator, a swindler and a cheat who raped with words instead of his body. The specifics varied, but his M.O. was always the same. Contrive to meet a lonely—and well-off—woman on vacation, romance her with flowers and dancing and a healthy dollop of charm, winning her trust during moonlit strolls and candlelight dinners.

  Alice MacGregor had been the principal of a prestigious boarding school located in Virginia's horse country.
A dedicated scholar and empathetic teacher, she had entered her fortieth year a virgin with a spotless reputation and an empty womb.

  While on a Mediterranean cruise she'd met a man who'd introduced himself as Jason Smythe-Jones. Cultured, sophisticated and well-read, he had claimed to be a history professor at Bennington in Vermont.

  Still fit and athletic at forty-seven, he had beautiful silver hair and piercing blue eyes. In her statement Alice, as well as several of his other victims, had mentioned his remarkable resemblance to George Hamilton.

  A highly intelligent, bluntly honest woman who knew all too well that her face would never be considered more than passably pleasant, she would have been immune to a traditional seduction. Instead, Smythe-Jones, aka Jacob Folsom, had praised her mind and her dedication to her students. To sweeten the pot, he'd asked her to be the mother of his children. For all her intelligence and sophistication Alice had been bedazzled.

  They'd married in a flower-filled chapel in Venice before returning to Alice's small home on the school grounds. Two months later Alice had been bankrupt, her reputation in tatters, her job in jeopardy. After cleaning her out, her new husband had simply vanished. This time, however, he'd been caught when, in a wholly improbable coincidence he'd attempted to sell her highly recognizable vintage Mercedes convertible to the mother of one of Alice's former students.

  Out on bail, he'd first tried to charm his bride into refusing to testify. When that hadn't worked, he'd threatened to kill her. Something in his eyes had made her believe him. Rafe had been the one to calm her fears. Now brave, heartbroken Alice MacGregor was downstairs on a slab in the hospital morgue, and the man who had tried to protect her was fighting for his life a few doors away in the OR.

  "I don't get it, sir," Gresham said in a low, frustrated tone. "Ms. MacGregor was too trusting, yeah, but she wasn't a stupid woman. Just the opposite, in fact." He took a fast breath, his expression earnest. "In fact, none of the victims seem like the type to be conned. Near as we've been able to piece together, almost all are college graduates with responsible jobs. The one in Miami was a neurosurgeon and the one before Alice is an associate dean of women at San Diego State. As far as I can see, there's not a bimbo or airhead in the bunch."

  Slocum was astounded by the man's naiveté. "Bimbos and airheads don't usually have fat bank accounts and platinum charge cards," he said tightly.

  "He targets professionals in their thirties or forties because most of them have been too busy getting to the top to have time for romance," Stan amplified when Gresham's face reddened. "Most have biological clocks that are clicking down, which makes them especially susceptible to a man who professes to want children very badly."

  Slocum felt a certain sympathy for the rookie, who still expected evil to make sense. "Folsom's smart and he's charming. He knows exactly what a woman wants—and he gives it to her." His jaw hardened. "If she's lucky, he'll only destroy her life before he walks away."

  There was no need to say more. Every man and woman there knew that unless Folsom was stopped, there was every possibility that Alice MacGregor would not be the last woman to end up dead, simply because she fell in love with a monster.

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  Chapter 1

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  Portland, Oregon

  Six months later.

  As soon as Dr. Daniela Fabrizio picked up her office phone and heard the tobacco-ruined voice of the repair shop mechanic on the other end, she'd expected bad news. In fact, it was worse than bad.

  "Did you say eleven hundred dollars?" she forced out when breath returned to her body. "To fix that … that lemon?"

  On the other end of the line Bruno of Bruno's Economy Automotive Repairs cleared his throat. "Uh, yes, ma'am. 'Leven hunnert it is. 'Course that could be a mite high on account of we might be able to get some of the parts used. I got my parts girl callin' around, but it bein' the start of the holiday weekend and all, it'll prob'ly be Tuesday or Wednesday before I know for sure."

  "But you said it was just the transmission."

  "Lady, there ain't no just to it when it comes to them foreign jobs. This here model of your'n is especially wonky."

  "Wonky. I … see." Danni squeezed her eyes shut and tried to find that safe place in her mind. Unfortunately, it seemed to have disappeared, along with darn near everything else she and her late husband Mark had accumulated during twelve years of marriage. Like the silver Lexus Mark had given her four years ago on their tenth anniversary and the healthy nest egg from his insurance settlement that she'd put aside for Lyssa's college education.

  This morning on the way to the restored Victorian white elephant on the edge of Portland's historic district that she shared with two other psychotherapists, the nine-year-old hatchback that was now her only mode of transportation had started bucking like a deranged bronc.

  By the time she'd made it to the nearest off-ramp, narrowly averting death by collision several times, her entire thirty-six years on earth had passed before her eyes. She'd barely made it to the ramp's shoulder when smoke had started pouring out from under the hood. The driver of the tow truck she'd called on her cell phone had recommended Bruno's.

  "Couldn't you just fix some of the gears? I mean, I only need Drive and Reverse and Park. The others are just superfluous."

  This time Bruno snorted something approximating a belly laugh. "That's a good one, Miz Fabrizio. Yes, ma'am, it surely is. But no can do."

  "In other words, it's all or … nothing. Transmission-wise."

  "That's about the size of it, yep."

  She drew in a lungful of air. The pink hybrid tea roses she'd brought from home yesterday morning gave off a cloyingly sweet smell, and her stomach did a slow, clammy roll. The Cajun chicken salad she'd forced down at her desk five hours earlier had clearly been a mistake.

  "So worst-case scenario, if I want it fixed, I have to come up with eleven hunnert—hundred dollars?"

  "Yep. Like the man says, cash on the barrelhead."

  No one said that these days. No one had said that for a hundred years at least. Nevertheless, the meaning was all too clear. No money, no car.

  Like it or not, Lyssa would have to transfer to a middle school closer to the house they were currently renting on Mill Works Ridge. It would break her daughter's heart to leave her friends in Lake Oswego, but even with a student pass, the bus fare was more than their already whisper-thin budget could handle.

  She took another breath, fighting a sick feeling of helplessness. The phone rang twice in Paul Baxter's office next door before the service picked up. Outside, a MAX train swooshed past. A horn tooted cheerfully. It was the start of Memorial Day weekend, and downtown was emptying fast. Happy people rushing out to have fun despite the gray skies and icy wind.

  The weather was due to break late tomorrow night, however, with the promise of sunshine for the rest of the long weekend. As a special surprise, she'd planned to take Lyssa down to the family vineyard near Ashland on Sunday. Fortunately Danni hadn't told her yet. Her little girl had already had too many broken promises in her twelve short years.

  "Okay, say you can get those used parts," she said with determined cheerfulness. "What's the best I can hope for, costwise?"

  "Hmm. Let me do some calculatin' here."

  "With a sharp pencil, okay?"

  "Ain't no need for a pencil. I got me a knack for figures, do it all in my head."

  Which, as she recalled, was shaped exactly like a bullet. With a greasy "gimme" cap on top.

  Torn between laughing hysterically or pleading piteously, Danni clamped her mouth shut and leaned back against the high back of her cushy executive chair. One by one she toed off her low-heeled pumps, then closed her eyes.

  She'd been up since six, with scarcely a moment to herself since she'd dropped Lyssa off at school. Her calendar had been packed, with only a hurried twenty minutes for lunch. Her last session had been highly emotional, and she'd been drained by the time Cindy Habiz had left, calmer, finally, but still dan
gerously volatile.

  Now it was nearly 5:00 p.m. and she still had patient notes to dictate so that their part-time medical assistant Ruthie could transcribe them over the weekend. Friday was also her night to stop at the market for groceries. Did taxis charge extra to carry groceries? she wondered, feeling a little giddy.

  "Well, near's I can figure, the best we can do even with used parts would be a thou."

  Sharpen the damn pencil again! she wanted to shout. Instead, she dropped her head and rubbed her forehead with her free hand. The spot above her right eyebrow was beginning to throb and her stomach was growing more iffy by the second.

  "I can pay you a third now and the rest over the next three months." It would mean more belt-tightening, but—

  "Sony, little lady, I don't give credit. Got burned too many times by deadbeats, y'know?"

  "Yes, I suppose you have." Danni felt truly queasy now. Humiliation had a taste, she'd learned. It was beyond bitter. She cleared her throat, but the bitterness remained. "Uh, let me see what I can do and I'll call you Tuesday morning."

  There was a momentary silence before Bruno said in a softer tone, "Tell you the truth, I don't like takin' plastic on account of the service charge, but I s'pose I could make an exception, seein' as how you're expecting a little 'un and all."

  A sudden wash of tears blurred the outlines of her mauve-and-blue office. The kindness of strangers, she thought. "I'm afraid that won't help, but thank you for the offer," she said in a wobbly voice.

  Both of her platinum cards had been cancelled. In the bottom drawer of her filing cabinet was a thick file folder full of overdue statements and threatening letters. While she'd been basking in newlywed bliss—and her adoring husband's constant attention—Jonathan Sommerset, may he rot in the hottest bowels of hell, had managed to steal every cent of her liquid assets, sell her beautiful home on a bluff and all the furnishings before destroying her credit rating.

  The damage he'd done to an innocent young girl desperate to feel a father's love again was his greatest crime, however. For that alone, the lying weasel deserved to spend the rest of his worthless life in a particularly nasty prison.