Chapter Twenty

Owen wasn't surprised that Francine had responded. Then again, he wouldn't have been surprised if it'd been Marlie or Alice either. Brynn had offered up an enticing package to lure them into a trap.

But it didn't mean Francine was the killer.

And that was something Brynn needed to hear.

"Francine just lost her son," Owen pointed out. "She's no doubt looking for revenge, especially if she thinks you're the one who murdered him. She could want to meet with you so she can kill you."

Brynn nodded, and it was obvious from her expression that it was something she had already considered. "Francine could bring muscle with her. Her gardener, Calvin Shetland, for instance. He's worked for her for years and is very loyal. Or her cop friend, Detective Heather Lawrence."

Owen recognized the gardener's name and had already done a deep run on the man. And all of Francine's other employees and friends. Including Heather. He'd wanted to try to find out if Francine, Carlton or anyone in their circle of friends or employees was helping Trent. He hadn't uncovered anything, but that didn't mean the connection wasn't there.

"I need to text Francine back with a location," Brynn continued. "Where's a good place?"

Owen muttered some profanity. So did Ruby, letting him know they were of a like mind on this. "There's no good place in this bait scenario," he insisted, but he knew that wasn't going to get Brynn to nix this plan.

And he definitely didn't want her trying to do this by herself.

He thought of some possibilities. His house. Ruby's. One of his operatives. Owen dismissed them all since he didn't want the venue to be a place where innocent bystanders could be hurt if Francine, Heather or Francine's loyal gardener opened fire. There was also the issue of securing the area, and that was harder to do if there were other buildings or houses around.

There was one other factor playing into this, too. The sun was starting to set, and it'd be dark soon. That could work for, or against, them depending on the location they chose.

"How about that old, abandoned motel on the edge of town?" Ruby asked. "We could get there in less than five minutes and have time to set up and wait for Francine."

Owen pulled up a mental picture of the motel. It'd been vacant for about three years now, tied up in a bankruptcy situation, and while the place wasn't exactly falling down, it wasn't in great shape either. Thieves had already taken out anything of value, and the local teenagers had added an assortment of graffiti to make the exterior look like a shithole. But it was one story with a flat roof and about a dozen rooms that faced the road where Francine would be arriving.

That would give Ruby and he choices as to where to wait for this showdown.

The darkness would be an advantage to them there, too, since he could use his night vision equipment to make sure no one was lurking near the building. And the darkness would give Ruby and him some cover.

Owen nodded. "Tell Francine to meet you at the Rustlers Motel about a mile outside of Outlaw Ridge in an hour. She'll be able to get there in about half that time, which means she'll probably show up early to try to get the jump on you."

Brynn nodded, not the least bit shaken by that possibility. "All right." She fired off a text to Francine. "Then, let's leave now," she added, already heading for the door.

"Hold on a minute," Owen insisted, stepping in front of her to block her exit. "You're wearing a Kevlar vest. All of us are," he tacked onto that.

He went to his supply closet, brought out three vests, and he handed one to Ruby and another to Brynn before putting his on.

"Wear your hoodie over the vest," Ruby suggested to Brynn as they geared up. "A vest will make you look…less vulnerable. If Francine sees that you're ready for an attack, she might back off."

"True," Brynn agreed, and she shucked off her hoodie before donning the vest.

The vests were just a start, but he wanted a whole lot more than a mere start. Owen grabbed a bag that contained an infrared scanner so he could check the motel to make sure no one was already there, lying in wait for them.

"Help yourself to whatever weapons or equipment you want," he told Ruby.

She took him up on that invitation and grabbed a Glock that she shoved in the back waist of her black cargo pants. She also put some more ammo in her pockets, and then she helped Brynn with the vest.

Ruby and he exchanged a glance, and Owen knew what she was thinking. A vest wasn't going to stop Brynn from being killed with a head shot. Still, it was better than nothing, and Owen's goal would be to make sure no one got off a single shot. Not at Brynn anyway.

"I have operatives who live close enough to get them out here in time," Ruby offered.

"So do I." But Owen shook his head. "It's possible Francine will be looking for that sort of thing, and I don't want her backing off."

"Agreed," Brynn quickly said. "If she helped Trent kidnap and hold me, and if she killed those people, I want to know."

So did he. Owen only wished he had a guarantee that they'd get that info without Ruby or Brynn getting hurt.

Once they had everything ready, Owen led them toward the garage. He had several vehicles there, but he chose his modified van. It was bullet resistant and was fully loaded with other weapons and gear, including a drone, night vision goggles, and even laser flares. It was the vehicle he used when he wasn't sure what the hell they'd be facing.

He got behind the wheel, Ruby took shotgun, and Brynn went in the backseat. However, they hadn't even made it out of his garage when Brynn's phone dinged with another text. Owen thought it was probably a confirmation from Francine about the meeting place.

But it wasn't.

"It's from Alice," Brynn relayed. "She wants to know when and where to meet me."

"Hell," he muttered.

Again, his reaction wasn't because he was surprised but because he'd hoped to keep this simple. Well, as simple as something like this could be. He didn't repeat his warning that Alice could want to kill Brynn. No need. His niece seemed to be more than aware of what she'd already set into motion.

"Text her the same time and place," Owen instructed.

He wasn't sure what Francine and Alice would do when they realized this wasn't a solo meeting with Brynn, but there was enough hatred between the two women that they might go after each other rather than Brynn.

"Go ahead and text Marlie with the time and location, too," Owen told Brynn. "If she's the killer, she might not be able to resist coming."

Of course, she might now resist bringing muscle or a hired gun with her, too.

He heard the soft clicks on Brynn's phone as she typed and sent the texts. And he hoped like the devil that this didn't turn into a deadly mistake. He settled his churning stomach with the reminder that doing nothing could be the wrong move as well.

Owen pulled out of his garage, Ruby and he immediately fired glances around him since the killer could already be here. She could have followed Brynn and was waiting for the chance to attack. But Owen saw nothing out of the ordinary, though he did get a nasty flashback of the earlier attack from Rocco.

Yeah.

It was going to be a while, if ever, before that gut punch of almost losing Ruby left him. Soon, once this mess was over and Brynn was safe, he needed to have a long talk with Ruby about…

He stopped and immediately shoved that and his feelings for her onto the back burner. Best not to have that playing in his head right now.

They were still about a mile from the motel when Ruby's phone dinged with a text. "It's from one of my operatives, Angel DeLuca. He's a former SAPD cop, and he talked to the detective in charge of Trent's murder." She paused, met his glance so they made brief eye contact. "They found the hammer right where the camera feed showed it would be."

"Please tell me it had prints or some kind of evidence on it," Owen said.

She shrugged. "It'd been wiped cleaned, but they're searching every millimeter of it for anything they can use. And that wasn't the only thing they found. There was a mask stuffed into a storm drain about a block from there. A mask of Brynn's face," Ruby added.

Brynn groaned and muttered something he didn't catch. However, he did catch her expression in his rearview mirror and saw that the news had creeped her out.

Well, temporarily anyway.

That expression soon faded, and she got that determined look in her eyes again.

"The last thing Trent would have seen would have been my face," Brynn stated. "Good."

Yeah, that was good as far as Owen was concerned. But it left them with the same problem they'd had with this right from the start. They didn't know who the hell was committing these murders.

Owen continued to drive, threading his way around the narrow country road, and he didn't pass another vehicle along the route. That didn't surprise him. There wasn't anything other than the inn on this side of town, not even the road that led to the interstate. There weren't a lot of reasons for people to be out there which was another advantage of the location.

He slowed to make the turn into the pot-hole-riddled parking lot of the motel. It was nearly dark now, but there was still plenty of light for him to see that the place didn't look inviting.

All the windows had been shattered, the bits of glass hanging from them like broken teeth, and more graffiti and paintings had been added to the brick exterior walls. There was now a rendition of a large six-foot-long veiny dick, complete with balls. Around it, someone had added a pair of massive tits and what was perhaps female genitalia. Either that or it were some hairy plant species.

"The high school art teacher must be so proud," Ruby muttered, causing Owen to smile.

That smile was a nice temporary reprieve before they got down to business. He parked, not in what was left of the actual slot but rather sideways so the passenger's side faced the building. Then, he used the infrared to scan the entire place and the surroundings.

"There are some small heat sources," he relayed. "Probably rats." That caused Brynn to make a ewww sound. Yeah, he wasn't a fan of rats either. "But no humans." And he definitely wasn't a fan of humans hellbent on trying to kill them.

Once he'd put the infrared away, Owen turned in the seat to face Brynn. "The van will stay here, and you'll stay inside it until I say otherwise. Got that?" he added. He waited for her to nod before he rummaged through his equipment bag to come up with three sets of earbuds.

The earbuds would allow them to communicate with each other. And hopefully Brynn would hear and heed whatever Ruby and he told her and not go off halfcocked to try to put a quick end to this.

"Got that," Brynn muttered in a tone that convinced absolutely no one that she would do as he said.

Shit.

She still had that stubborn streak, and while Owen admired that in a woman, he wished Brynn would throttle it back for this particular situation.

Sighing, he continued with the briefing. "Ruby and I will be in there," Owen said, pointing to the room three doors down from the van.

It had once been the office and was the center of the building. It'd give them the best vantage point to see the entire parking lot and the road while still keeping them close enough to the van in case they had to get to Brynn in a hurry.

He switched his phone to the silent mode, put in his earbud and stepped out, drawing one of his guns with his right hand and hoisting up the equipment bag with his other. Ruby did the same with her phone and earbuds before she got out on the passenger's side. Both of them made more of those sweeping glances around them.

Nothing.

So far.

"Stay in the van until you hear from me," Owen repeated to Brynn, and he gave her one last look before Ruby and he headed to the office.

It wasn't hard to get inside the room, what with no door and no windows. They stepped in, their boots crunching over the broken glass that littered what was left of the floor.

There was plenty of actual litter in here, too. Beer bottles, empty fast food bags, empty condom wrappers, and what appeared to have been a makeshift campfire. Whoever had set that was damn lucky they hadn't burned the place down.

"We'll be out of sight behind the counter," he decided, though there wasn't a hell of a lot of it left. Apparently, part of it had been used for that campfire.

Ruby nodded, and stepping around the debris, she went to the far side, and he took up position nearest the door.

Then, he heard the sound. A text. But it hadn't come from Ruby and his silenced phones. It'd come from Brynn's.

"It's from Marlie," Brynn relayed through the earbud. "She said she's on her way here."

So, all three were coming. Now, all they had to do was wait for this dog and pony show to start.

The minutes crawled by. So did the damn insects. Owen stepped on a few roaches scampering around him and batted away some mosquitoes. There were enough spiderwebs in the place that he figured those critters would soon be making an appearance as well. Despite all of that, though, he'd been on assignments in worse places.

Far worse.

And the stakes had been sky-high on some of those missions. But he'd never been in a situation where two women he deeply cared about were about to face down a killer.

More minutes passed, and, yep, a spider and his buddy arrived, skittering across the wall next to Ruby. She didn't react, didn't take her attention off the parking lot.

After what seemed an eternity, there was a flare of headlights, cutting through the darkness. Headlights that bobbled over the parking lot surface as the vehicle made its way to the motel.

It was a black SUV, and it practically screeched to a stop about twenty feet from the van. Francine barreled out from the passenger's side. So she hadn't come alone, but Owen couldn't see who was behind the steering wheel.

"She's too far away to scan her for weapons," Owen whispered, but he suspected both Francine and her driver were both armed. Francine was wearing a short jacket, plenty big enough to conceal a gun.

"Brynn," Francine shouted. "Where are you, bitch? Come out now so we can finish this."

Francine glanced around, much as Ruby and he had when they'd arrived. Her gaze skirted over each of the windows. "I'm guessing you brought your uncle with you," Francine said. "Because you're too much of a coward to face me alone. Well, bitch, I'm not a coward."

Francine whipped out a knife from her pocket and dragged the blade across her forearm.