Expired Game (Last Chance County Book 5) Read online

  Expired Game

  LAST CHANCE COUNTY BOOK FIVE

  Lisa Phillips

  Copyright 2020 Lisa Phillips

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Publisher Lisa Phillips

  Cover design Ryan Schwarz

  Edited by www.jenwieber.com

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  One

  Across the parking lot, a shadow shifted. Officer Jess Ridgeman grabbed her off-duty gun from the glove box and shut the car door as gently and quietly as she could.

  Whoever was there just headed around the building. She sprinted full out across the lot to a building the police department had recently combed through so many times looking for something that might have been left behind. At this point, she could practically walk through it blindfolded.

  Jess headed for where she’d seen the person.

  Anyone sneaking around in the dark wasn’t up to something good. Whether it related to the open case, she didn’t know.

  At the side door, Jess leaned against the building. She breathed slowly. Listened. The night was dark and quiet, any stars up there disguised by a thick layer of cloud. It would rain before morning, according to her weather app.

  Trees rustled their leaves. A street or two away a semi-truck accelerated. But she couldn’t hear the trespasser.

  Jess used her free hand to turn the door handle and found it unlocked—because she’d left it that way the last time she was here. No matter how many times she had to return to the crime scene, Jess would keep coming back until she got a lead. Yes, it meant anyone could enter the building. But when the plan was to catch them in the act, leaving the door open was part of the trap.

  Gun first, she stepped inside and held the door so the click of it closing behind her was barely audible.

  A man stepped into view at the end of the hall. As though he’d known she was here and had planned to turn the tables.

  Jess clicked on the flashlight attached to her gun and moved toward him with measured steps, not wanting to be any more—or less—than ten feet away from him. She stopped—legs steady, shoulders back. “Lower your hand. Keep both where I can see them.”

  He obeyed that, which got her a look at his face. Two eyebrow piercings glinted in the light below a shaved head. Extremely broad shoulders—the guy was probably twice her size, but only because she was barely five-three. He had a leather jacket and jeans over black boots. On the right side of his neck, a spider web tattoo peeked out from his collar and stretched to just below his ear.

  She shifted so he’d see the badge on the belt of her jeans. “What’s your name, and why are you trespassing here?”

  While he answered that, she’d have time to figure out where she knew him from. His face—and that tattoo. She’d seen him before.

  Jess hadn’t lived in town for more than two years, though she’d grown up here. They’d moved away when she was in high school. No one from her previous career with the NYPD would show up in a small northwest town, so he wasn’t someone from the past. That meant she’d seen him here. In Last Chance.

  She said, “Name.”

  “Hammer.”

  “Is that the name on your driver’s license?”

  White teeth flashed.

  “Hammer, huh? Are you carrying any weapons on you?” She hadn’t heard that name before, but he did look familiar.

  “Yes, ma’am, I am.”

  Jess blinked. “Lay them on the ground and face the wall.” She reached for her phone and realized she hadn’t brought it with her. She’d left it on the seat in her car.

  Jess gritted her teeth. He couldn’t know she had no way to call for backup. She was off duty right now, and no one from the department knew she was here. She needed to keep it that way.

  “Am I in some kind of trouble?”

  She studied his face and figured out where she’d seen him before. The police station ambush. Armed men who’d worked for a local crime boss, Ed Summers, had stormed the office a few months back. They’d shot more than one person, scared everyone else, and stolen evidence. “You were there.”

  “What was that?”

  She realized she’d muttered the words. They’d all been there, and while hiding in the break room keeping Ted alive and out of their hands, she’d seen this guy through the window.

  “We need to talk, but I’m not arresting you.” Yet. She reserved the right to change her mind on that later. After they’d identified him, and she had proof to back up her memories. “I have questions. You’re going to accompany me to the police department and answer them.”

  She wanted to taunt him to let him know she’d seen him before when he’d stormed in there as part of that group of gunmen, but if she let on to this “Hammer” guy what she knew, he might feel threatened and try to escape. What kind of name is Hammer, anyway?

  She and the other cops she worked with had caught most of the men who’d been present during that incident. This guy had remained elusive.

  A fact that gave her pause now.

  “Let’s go.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Weapons on the ground. Hands on the wall.”

  Maybe he wasn’t used to being arrested. But if he was someone’s confidential informant in the department, then she would know. There would be a record of it in the file from that incident.

  Maybe Ted knew.

  No, she didn’t need to think about Ted right now. They were close. Probably best friends. But she couldn’t explain her drive to do her job to him any more than he could admit that he was hiding something from her.

  Despite one explosive kiss that had been a serious mistake, nothing was happening between the two of them.

  They were at a literal stalemate.

  “There aren’t a lot of options for you, so let’s make this as easy as possible.” She added a little more authority to her tone. Even though he was bigger, she wasn’t going to let him push her around. “What happens here is up to you.”

  “Yeah?” He tipped his head to the side. “You’re really not what everyone says, are you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “By the book. Doesn’t stop. Doesn’t give up.”

  “So the criminal element of this town…talks about me?”

  “Of course. You did a good job infiltrating those drug pushers targeting the high school. That was nice work.”

  She still had her hair dyed dark brown from that operation—her last undercover assignment. “Am I supposed to say thank you?”

  He wasn’t an informant.
<
br />   And this guy wasn’t going to be her informant either, though that would have been useful. She got the feeling there was seriously more to this guy than what she knew. Maybe that was the reason he’d been loose this long, even though there was plenty of evidence to get an arrest warrant. Is someone protecting him?

  The Hammer, or whatever his name actually was, grinned again. “Just making conversation.”

  “We can do that better at the station.”

  “Yeah.” He shook his head. “That isn’t going to happen. I’m not going in.”

  Just then, Jess noticed the man had inched his way to her and was now within arm’s reach. Before she could react, he disarmed her. While he dismantled her gun, Jess punched his diaphragm. He choked and coughed as her clip clattered to the floor, then he handed her back her empty gun, along with the single bullet that had been in the chamber. Acting as though she hadn’t punched him at all. “This doesn’t need to get messy.”

  “I want West.” And she would accept no other outcome. Jess would never stop asking about West. She would keep looking for evidence of West’s identity until she found something that led to him, their prime suspect: a local crime lord who had evaded them for months.

  He took two steps back. So it might be a long shot, but he reacted.

  “There’s a disease in this town, and you know it.”

  “And you’re the cure?”

  She closed her mouth. Did she think that? She opened it back up. “You’re not leaving.”

  And yet, he was headed in that direction.

  Jess followed him to the door. She swiped up her clip and put her gun back together as she moved. By the time she pushed out the exit, he was nowhere to be seen.

  She jogged to the end of the building and saw him down the street. Jess followed, having to go at a loose run just to keep up with his long-leg strides. Two streets down, he turned right. Hammer trotted up the steps of the community center with a phone to his ear.

  Who was he calling?

  She didn’t like this. A biker had no business being there. This couldn’t be good.

  She yanked the foyer door open and strode in after him. The entryway was empty except for one person. Behind the reception desk was a familiar face sprinkled with glitter, and her signature white pixie cut. “Hey, Ruby.”

  “Jessica.” She grinned, laying down her novel.

  She looked around again. “Did a guy come in here a second ago, big dude with a spider tattoo on his neck?”

  “Sure did,” Ruby said. “He told me to tell you the support group for workaholics isn’t until tomorrow.”

  Jess started at her words. “He said that?” What game was this guy playing?

  Ruby shrugged, “He seemed to think it was funny.”

  Jess pressed her lips together, then said, “If you see him again, tell him he’s being recruited for the prison baseball team.”

  She spun on her heel and strode out while Ruby chuckled.

  Jess couldn’t join her. There was nothing funny about this, not when West was still out there. Not only that, but someone in town was pimping out women and getting away with it.

  The door whooshed shut behind her. Jess jogged back to her car and heard her phone ringing before she even got the door open. She grabbed it and looked at the screen. Sergeant Basuto was calling.

  She swiped to answer. “Ridgeman.”

  “Hey, I missed the end of your shift. How was it?”

  Okay, so that was weird. She’d clocked out hours ago, and he was only now checking on her? That wasn’t like him at all. Jess slumped into the seat and leaned the back of her head against the headrest. “Pretty routine.” She stared at the abandoned office building in front of her and tried to figure out who that man, Hammer, really was.

  And whether his call had been to Basuto.

  The timing fit, but that was a serious leap.

  “The Calverts were at it again. But neither of them wanted to press charges, and neither wanted medical attention.”

  Basuto sighed. The Calverts’s neighbors regularly called 9-1-1, usually when the argument escalated to throwing things—including punches. “Anything else after that?”

  Yeah. Super weird. He was definitely fishing. Like he was on to her.

  “Couple speeding tickets, and a DUI.” She’d been assigned to patrol the area to the east of town, between the two most popular town bars and the compound where a local club of bikers lived. Most of the bikers were out of town this weekend for a rally in South Dakota, so all in all it’d been pretty quiet.

  Basuto didn’t say anything. Jess fidgeted during the several seconds of painful silence.

  “Two days off. Any plans?”

  Jess was alone in the parking lot, her car in the corner, outside the circle of glare provided by the street lights. Watching. Waiting. “Watch TV and chill. Isn’t that how it goes?”

  She heard a slight chuckle in his voice. “Do you even know how to do that?”

  “Usually my ‘chill’ involves the lake and a paddleboard, but Ellie got me hooked on Tiny House Nation, so it’s not like there’s nothin’ to do.”

  “She back?”

  “Sunday. Dean is picking her up from the airport.” Jess had to work, anyway. So it wasn’t as if she’d have been able to get Ellie herself.

  Her sister was at a conference for military history college professors, hobnobbing with her crowd while she was on sabbatical from her position. Everyone knew she’d settle here permanently, but Ellie hadn’t moved all her stuff from New York State yet. Just what she needed to occupy Jess’s guest room.

  “Okay, well I just wanted to check in,” Basuto said. “You have a good one.”

  “Copy that, Sarge.” Jess hung up the phone before he could ask any more weird questions. Had that Hammer guy called him? Maybe that was just too bizarre. She wasn’t quite yet ready for such a wild theory.

  Jess drove home trying to figure it out. Back to an empty house—that is, until Ellie got back from her trip.

  After her grandfather—the previous police chief—had passed away following a protracted battle with cancer, Jess’s sister Ellie had come home as well. Then Ellie had managed to bring down a homicidal town founder, along with discovering a decades-old body buried in the hills above town. Now she was dating Dean, the town’s unofficial EMT who was starting a treatment center for trauma victims.

  Jess had to listen to Ellie on the phone with Dean when she was home. Then hear all about everything sweet and wonderful Dean did by text when she was at work—usually while trying to avoid Dean’s brother, Ted.

  Jess looked at her phone. It was past eleven in the evening already. She still hadn’t replied to Ted’s three texts from earlier. If she did that, she’d have to answer his questions and admit she wasn’t going to spend her weekend at home watching TV. She didn’t mind spinning the sergeant a line. But tell Ted something that wasn’t the truth? She couldn’t do that.

  Jess also wasn’t going to let this go until she’d brought them down. Before the past repeated itself, and she had to relive the worst moments of her life.

  Two

  “She did what?” Ted lifted out of his seat on Conroy’s couch to pace across the room. The chief had been shot by a sniper a few weeks ago. He was back at work part time and supposedly taking it easy under the watchful eye of his fiancé.

  Except when Conroy had plans with the “boys.” Which Mia didn’t know meant he was working the Founders Case with both Ted and Sergeant Basuto.

  Ted spun to the sergeant. “Who was that who called first anyway?”

  Basuto glanced at Conroy, who gave a short nod. The chief was pretty pale and tired looking. But it had been a long day.

  Basuto said, “He goes by ‘Hammer.’ He’s undercover FBI, and he’s been working in town for months. First as one of Ed Summers’s men. Now he’s trying to identify West.”

  Just like they were. “So this is an FBI case as well. Does Jess know that?”

  Conroy said, “Given T
ate’s connection to the FBI, via his brother-in-law—who is Hammer’s handler—you could say this is a case we’re working with federal assistance. And no, she doesn’t know the FBI is taking point.”

  Ted clenched his teeth.

  The last thing he needed right now was the FBI in town.

  “Not to be confused with the FBI who’ve been calling. Asking to speak with you.”

  Ted said nothing.

  “You haven’t given them your statement yet?” Basuto asked.

  Conroy lifted a brow. “They’ve had your father in custody for two weeks now. It’s important to tell them what you know.”

  That was the part Ted didn’t get—or didn’t want to. “Surely the testimonies they got from Stuart and Kaylee, along with Kaylee’s brother, is enough evidence. Maybe they don’t need a statement from me.”

  “It’s part of the investigation, Ted.” Conroy leaned forward in his armchair with a wince he didn’t bother to hide—since Mia wasn’t here to see. “They need all the information that’s available so they can get the full picture of everything your father’s done. After all, he didn’t get to be CIA director with all the black ops operations going on under the table without help. There could be others working with him.”

  Basuto said, “Same as how we know the bank manager wasn’t alone.”

  “I thought he was a scumbag customer, not just a Russian sleeper agent.” Ted could hardly keep it all straight. This town was nuts, but it was his home.

  Ted wanted to care about the FBI’s case, about justice. But he needed to have nothing to do with his father. The old man was in FBI custody, so why couldn’t it be over? It wasn’t like he would be able to hurt anyone else.

  So no one needed to know.

  Right?

  It was bad enough that Pierce Cartwright had been arrested as Adrian Pierce West. The town was reeling over the use of that name. Though, Ted figured that was just his dad thinking he was hilarious. Using an assumed name that would get everyone in Last Chance up in arms.

  Adrian Pierce West, recently appointed to CIA director, had since been identified by the FBI who arrested him as also being Pierce Cartwright.

  Now everyone knew Ted and Dean’s father for exactly who he was.