Justice, Mercy and Other Myths

By Deborah Nam-Krane

Only one person was ever able to fight Alex Sheldon head on. Is that the same person who finally stopped him?

A man like Alex always has a long list of enemies: Lucy Bartolome, the wealthy socialite he blackmailed for decades; Michael Abbot, Miranda Harel, and Richard Hendrickson, all of whom lost parents because of him; David Hwang, the squeaky clean politician who found himself caught in a deal with the devil; Hilary Sayles, the inept madame Alex kept under his thumb; and Mariela, the young woman who almost died when she was trapped in his web. Detective Robert Teague knows the players all too well, but his gut is telling him that Hannah Bruges, the young woman who's been taking the law into her own hands for a decade, is keeping him from putting it all together. If only she wasn't the most exciting thing to happen to him in years, he might still be able to solve this thing.

Hannah has a piece of information that's not only going to change the course of the murder investigation, it's also going to make him and everyone else question a case he thought he'd closed years ago, one that almost cost him his job. What Robert really needs to see is how he fits in, because as soon as he does, everything else will fall into place.

Everyone needs to be careful what they wish for, because solving the murder is nothing compared to living with the answer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deborah Nam-Krane
• Release date: Mar 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463854280

Deborah Nam-Krane

Deborah Nam-Krane is a Boston-based writer who has been telling stories in one way or another since she could talk. In addition to writing romance/chick lit/women's fiction, she's also intensely interested in education, history, economics, policy and media literacy- that is, when her four children (two of whom are homeschooled) allow her to be.

Book preview

1980

It had amused John Bartolome to no end that Gerald Hendrickson had gone to so much trouble to solve his problem for him.

John smirked. He knew Gerald thought he was the author of John’s problems. Did he honestly think John could snap his fingers and Lucy would agree to marry anyone, much less Gerald’s son Jim? Didn’t he realize that putting Jim in front of Lucy would have been the worst thing he could have done? She would have outright refused and never backed down, if only to prove to John that she could.

Of course, there was another reason, but Gerald had no clue. John chuckled. It was amazing how smart people could talk themselves out of and into things so easily or change their perception of reality to either suit what they already believed or avoid what they didn’t want to face.

Gerald did not want to admit that he resented the privileges the Leightons—well, the Bartolomes—still had, the ones the Hendricksons had lost and which he was working so hard to reacquire. Amazing; at some point, the Hendricksons had embraced that earnest fairy tale about America being the land where anyone could succeed if they worked hard enough. Of course they could; it just didn’t mean that they were going to rise to the top. Realizing that it was out of reach had made Gerald bitter, but because he was smart, it had also made him calculating.

But only up to a point.

John had always seen everything clearly. He had known from the time he could form thoughts that his mother despised his father and her own father. His parents’ marriage was not a match made out of love but one that might as well have come with a written contract. But that would have been superfluous, because everyone understood what the trade was: the Leighton respectability and Boston contacts for the Bartolome fortune.

John frowned, thinking for the thousandth time how illogical it was that anyone should look down their noses at such an arrangement. In earlier decades, it was one people happily made with impoverished European aristocrats. And he’d certainly take a Louisiana accent over an English or, God forbid, French one any day.

Before he’d understood the word prejudice, he’d known that his mother’s complaints were not rooted in such high-minded concepts. Her problem was that her husband was a womanizing bully and she could do nothing to control him. By the time he was ten, John knew that even their unwritten contract wasn’t the reason she stayed in the marriage; living in squalor in the most remote and uninhabitable part of the country would have been preferable to her hell of a marriage. She was free to go any time she pleased. Unfortunately, she couldn’t take John with her.

We’re both prisoners, John had said to his mother Jeanne when he was twelve, startling her. Then he’d grinned. The one good thing he’d gotten from his father was his natural charm. So let’s have fun in our prison. From that day on, he made sure that he and his mother had an active social calendar, and when he was old enough to make such arrangements, he’d also made sure that his mother had appropriate male companionship.

It upset John—he was capable of being upset—when his father struck his mother. He stood in front of his father more than once to protect her. He didn’t mind taking a blow for her, but what unnerved him was his father’s unpredictability: sometimes he would fall upon his son in rage, and sometimes he would laugh out loud, equally amused and impressed by his son’s audacity.

John understood now that his father’s propensity to drink had exacerbated those tendencies. It was a shame. Even if his father and mother would never have loved each other, his father did have his moments during which he approached something like affection. Glimpses into what his father could have been, if not for that unpredictability, were one of the few things that ever caused John pain.

When John came home one evening a few months after he’d turned eighteen, that pain had long since passed. He saw the black eye his father had given his mother and sighed. He regretted what he was going to have to do, but this was getting out of his control, and that was dangerous.

He comforted his mother, called a doctor to attend to her, and made sure she got something to help her sleep. Then he put in another call.

It’s time. And please make sure it happens as we discussed, with no complications.

Consider it done, sir, the voice on the other end had said politely before he hung up.

Two nights later, William Bartolome was killed in a car accident. In one of those fits of luck that characterized John’s life, the weather had been awful that night. It was just one more factor that meant that the police would be immediately satisfied that William had died because of a collision. The smell of alcohol on him was so strong that they wouldn’t need to check his blood alcohol level, just as John had planned, so they wouldn’t find that he had enough barbiturates in his system to make it impossible for him to have started the car himself, and they weren’t going to trace his last known stop to the brothel he frequented.

Within a year, John had made sure Jeanne could indulge in all of the traveling she’d put off during the last two decades, and that she would be comfortable for what was left of her life.

Lucy reminded John of his mother, and he was glad she’d lived long enough to meet her granddaughter. He knew, though, that she was bitterly disappointed in his son Tom, and he honestly couldn’t blame her for thinking Tom was just like William.

If only his wife Iris were still alive. She had been better at controlling Tom than John had been. She had been the only person Tom had wanted to please, and she hadn’t found his excesses endearing. But when she’d died during Tom’s adolescence, his tendencies toward cruelty and overindulgence had been stoked by his grief. John hadn’t been able to reach him. If only he hadn’t been distracted by Lucy.

So perfect in every other way...why did she have to prefer the company of women? God knew he wasn’t going to begrudge experiments, but much to his horror, Lucy had no interest in any man.

That was why he insisted on Lucy attending the university his father had put up the seed money for. She had narrowed her eyes but said nothing. He was relieved; unlike his mother, Lucy had nothing to lose except money if she left, but what of the damage to him?

It had been inevitable that Lucy would fall in love while she was at school; there was nothing he could have done about that. But at least there, in Boston, he could keep tabs on her. He counted himself fortunate yet again that Joanna Hazlett was, as illicit lovers went, tolerable. She was intelligent but not an extrovert. She raised her hands enough for teachers to take notice and earn a reputation as one of the more intelligent students attending the university (what an accomplishment, John thought), but she had no ambitions to be known to the greater world.

John could work with that.

Did Gerald have a clue? And if he had, would he have cared? John wasn’t flattered that his daughter was so important that a man would sacrifice his son’s happiness just to be in her presence. He smiled as if he was mocking Gerald. Did that man have any idea how much he owed to Tom? Tom, and his little lackey Alex Sheldon?

John had sized up Alex within two minutes of meeting him. The way he carefully dropped names and facts...did he really think he was impressive or had any hopes of being so? Did he really think he would ever be more than useful? It was hard enough to serve one master well, and only someone very skilled could serve two for a time. But Stephen Abbot, Gerald Hendrickson, and Tom? That was going to blow up in his face, no matter how much he told himself that Stephen was his friend.

Stephen...John sneered as he remembered seeing Annabelle Hendrickson turn white when Gerald announced her brother’s engagement to Lucy—at her engagement party, no less—and then a couple of shades paler after a few minutes alone with Alex. That girl was as smart as her brother ought to be, but as spineless as her father needed her to be. What a perfect match for an alcoholic-in-training.

Whatever Alex had gotten from Gerald, Gerald had gotten infinitely more. It was only a matter of time before Alex realized that. John raised a glass. Maybe Gerald was a little bit smarter than he’d given him credit for.

Chapter One

Hannah Bruges woke up as the light of dawn streamed in from Robert Teague’s bedroom window. She didn’t need a moment to remember where she was; she remembered the day before perfectly.

It had been almost a decade, but Mariela was finally home and with Hannah’s brother Josh. Hannah had lost her belief in anything like a benevolent deity in the years she’d been searching for Mari, but as she lay in bed, she wanted to thank God for finally answering her prayers.

Maybe God would answer the other one, and Josh would forgive her now that he was reunited with Mari and their daughter.

But that wasn’t what was important now. Hannah winced as she remembered Mari’s face and frail body when they found her after being locked in that warehouse for weeks. She was at one of the best hospitals in Boston and would recover physically, but the trauma to her psyche would take much longer. Hannah knew because she’d seen it so many times before. The circles she’d infiltrated, the networks she’d hacked into, and the rescue missions she’d pulled off weren’t the frightening part; watching the people she had freed being unable to shake their captivity and—there was no other word for—enslavement was much worse. It made Hannah feel helpless, and every time that feeling crept into her, she remembered being fourteen and being locked in her room, unable to help Josh get Mariela and her mother—

No, don’t do this. She rolled over as if to escape her thoughts. It’s over now.

She was looking at Robert now. The gray light reflecting off his walls made his light hair look redder and his skin more vibrant, even in his sleep. And her memories of what he’d done made him look like the most beautiful creature she’d ever met.

No one who hadn’t seen the world she’d dipped in and out of had believed her before, and certainly no one had helped like he had. Hannah had been willing to give up her freedom once she’d brought Mariana back to her parents, but he’d made sure she had an attorney and took a punch to the jaw to get a federal agent to talk. She owed him.

But it wasn’t gratitude that had brought her to his bed the night before. He was the first thing she’d wanted in a long time that was just for her, and knowing that he wanted her—in spite of, because of—what she’d done gave her a thrill she hadn’t felt in a long time.

She wanted to reach out and run her hands through his hair, but it had only been one night, however long that night had been. It was a good night, but today was the beginning she’d been waiting so long for.

She sat up and swung her legs over the bed, but before she could move, Robert wrapped an arm around her waist from behind. Where do you think you’re going, Miss Bruges?

She turned around to face his devilish grin. How long have you been awake, Detective?

He pulled her back to lay down. Long enough to feel you moving around.

She ran her fingers over the stubble on his chin. Sorry, I was trying not to wake you.

Yeah? The right corner of his lip drew up. What are you going to do with me now that I’m awake?

He brought his tongue to the tip of her thumb as it traced his bottom lip. She inhaled sharply as he took it into his mouth. I’ll think of something, she said as he brought his mouth to her neck. Maybe I don’t have to leave just yet.

—

If Hannah had been smart, she wouldn’t be on the boat that afternoon.

She’d have insisted on taking Mariana when she called Emily, and not given in when she heard Hellie and Mariana jumping up and down in the background, begging to be taken to a movie. Mariana probably hadn’t been allowed to go to too many of those before. So when Robert said he wanted to show her one of the most beautiful parts of Boston, she didn’t have a reason to stop herself from saying yes.

If she had been smart, she wouldn’t be sitting so close to Robert, either. She’d cross her legs and turn her knees away from him, signaling that they were going to be friendly but polite while they were out.

But sometimes Hannah wasn’t smart, and this was one of those times.

Her legs were crossed, but only at the ankles, so her feet could be intertwined with his. They held hands while they alternated between kissing and giggling. She was aware that some people were moving away from them, but she didn’t care. She was enjoying the sun on the water and the way it made everything about him brighter. Or was that just the way the world looked when it wasn’t going wrong?

He looked over her head. She followed his gaze to the door leading to the hatch. Let’s go downstairs, he whispered. Less of an audience.

That was enough to remind Hannah of everything. Her fingers felt cold. No, I’m good here. She stood up and walked to the railing, trying to lose her thoughts by finding patterns in the waves as they were created and then lapped back to the boat.

She felt him next to her. Sorry, he said after a moment. I didn’t think you were claustrophobic.

She faced him. I’m not, she said. But the bottom levels of ships aren’t very romantic when you know what happens in a lot of them.

He threw his head back. I’m sorry, he said, shaking his head up at the sky. I wasn’t thinking—

Do I have that effect on you, or is that just your way? Her hands started to warm up again as she slid them over Robert’s waist.

He traced his fingers up her arm, making her shiver. I do have to stay on my toes around you. He leaned down to meet her lips. Just promise me something.

What’s that? she whispered as she drew closer.

No assumed identities today.

One night and you’re so sure you want me just as I am?

She felt him smile against her lips. Oh yeah. He pulled back, which felt like a tease. All I can say is that the worst thing you’re going to find down there is overpriced beer. And in case you forgot, I’m here and I’d arrest a kidnapper and human trafficker if I saw one.

So I’m sure you’re looking forward to seeing Alex Sheldon again, she said dryly.

Robert clicked his tongue. Hannah had seen the text message from his captain while he’d been washing up. If she’d have been smart, she’d have said something about it before he invited her to join him in the shower. If you have proof, I’m all ears.

She leaned on the railing. Making what was supposed to be an impossible bail for that witch who kidnapped my niece and left her mother to die doesn’t make your spidey senses tingle? Hannah had trained a gun on Hilary Sayles’ heart yesterday. If she hadn’t let Robert talk her down, maybe she wouldn’t have to worry about the other monster today...

If only I could go after everyone who helped a creep make bail.

How long ago did Alex Sheldon leave Boston?

Robert shot her a look that was half wounded, half warning. Oh, sweetheart, why don’t you tell me?

The hospital where Michael Abbot was recovering from his gunshot wound is one of the last places Sheldon was spotted before he closed up everything two days later.

He narrowed his eyes. And I’ll assume you know that I was in the same hospital waiting room with him.

Hannah shrugged. I mean, you were the officer on the scene when Abbot was shot—

Robert cut her off. "Is there