At Any Cost

Book 4: US Marshals Novel

by Mandy Baxter

Genres: Action & Adventure Romance; Contemporary Romance; Romantic Suspense

Synopsis

Fast, cunning, and driven, he'll do whatever it takes to nail the most violent federal perps. But she is the one danger he'll never see coming… She can't remember when she wasn't afraid. She can't go to the police. And "Olivia Gallagher" is only a day away from fleeing her Idaho wilderness life before biker gang leader Joel Meecum finally catches up with her. So keeping her rugged new neighbor at arm's length is the only safe play. Until Livy can't resist one last hungry chance to feel alive… For U.S. Marshal Nick Brady, taking his vacation next door to Meecum's ex-girlfriend seemed the smartest way to find him. But suddenly, nothing is making sense. How could this feisty, straight-talking brunette ever get mixed up with Meecum's brutal crew? And why is he breaking his oath and getting so close that all he wants is to keep her safe? Now as the clock ticks, Nick and Livy's only chance at escape may be the one they can't survive…

Release date: May 31, 2016

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

“What in the hell am I going to do with you, Brady?”

Deputy U.S. Marshal Nick Brady worked his jaw as he stared at his chief deputy, Doug Metcalf. Not even three months on the job and already he was being reprimanded. A new record. It had taken his SWAT captain a full year before he’d put Nick’s ass in a sling. Obviously he was getting better at pissing off his superior officers.

“Well?” Oh, he was actually looking for an answer? Metcalf passed his hand over what was left of his hair and fixed Nick with a stern eye.

“I suppose you could say, keep up the good work, Brady. Keep taking those fuckers down.”

Metcalf snorted. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Hooking and hauling is what you’re supposed to be doing for the next six months. Warrants are off-limits until your probation is over. You’ve had that badge for all of sixty days and you already think you’re some sort of badass fugitive hunter. Shit.” The chief looked away, disgusted. “You’re lucky your brains haven’t been splattered all over some poor son of a bitch’s wall by now!”

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Nick had joined the USMS for one reason and one reason only: fugitive recovery. Hooking and hauling—babysitting sorry bastards as he transported them to and from court and trying to stay awake while their lawyers attempted to save their law-breaking asses—wasn’t what he’d had in mind when he applied for the job. Six months of courts duty would be the death of him, so he did what any ambitious cop would do, he went out and found the action on his own.

“I’m working courts now. So what does it matter what I do with my free time?”

“Yeah, now. You were working with the warrants squad for a damned month before anyone realized you weren’t with that division! I’ll give it to you, Brady, you know how to work the system. How in the hell did you make it past the entrance interviews?” Metcalf asked with disbelief. “You’re a smart-assed, insubordinate pain in my ass. I’m starting to think that SWAT gave you a glowing recommendation because they wanted to get rid of you.”

Nick had earned every word of that glowing recommendation. He was a stellar cop. That’s not to say that his coworkers weren’t anxious to see him go. They didn’t buy into Nick’s Wild West mentality. The way he saw it, the only way to catch a criminal was to step a toe over the line that separated him from them. If that meant bending a rule or two, so be it. And if it resulted in one less murdering son of a bitch on the street, even better. Which was why he’d snuck into warrants his first day on the job, rather than reporting to courts like he was supposed to. He didn’t want to escort criminals who’d already been caught. He wanted to do the catching.

Man hunters.

That’s what they called the marshals on the warrants squads. They were relentless. Like dogs after a bone, they hunted down the most violent and notorious criminals in the U.S.—hell, the world. They kicked down doors knowing that once they walked inside a room, they might not ever walk out. And they did it to make the world a better place. To protect innocent people from evil bastards who wanted nothing more than to do harm. Those men were the reason Nick joined the USMS, and they were the reason he wouldn’t ever be satisfied playing babysitter to some piece of shit while he had his day in court.

“There’s not a man in this district who wants to work with you right now.” Nick had never been much of a team player, but that stung. “You’re stubborn, cranky, and goddamned bossy. You need to remember something right now: You’re the new guy. You don’t pay your dues just like every other man out there”—Metcalf stabbed a finger toward the cubicles beyond his door—“not a damned one of them is going to respect you no matter how many fugitives you haul in. This is a brotherhood, Nick. Believe me, you’re going to need them as much as they need you.”

Nick wasn’t opposed to paying his dues. He simply wanted to pay them out in the field. He got brotherhood. It came with the badge. He wasn’t trying to alienate anyone. He needed the opportunity to prove himself. “I’ve made five arrests in two months. That has to count for something.”

“Case files that you stole from other deputies’ desks.”

Okay, so that probably didn’t do much for him in the brotherhood department. “I borrowed them,” Nick stressed. “Put them right back where I found them and even filed the paperwork when I was done.”

“Well,” Metcalf said dryly. “Wasn’t that big of you?”

Nick slumped back in his chair. “Why am I being penalized for doing what we’re trained for? Isn’t it better for everybody if there’s one less bad guy on the streets?”

The chief deputy sighed. “Jesus Christ, Brady. Do you always gotta swim upstream?”

Yeah, he guessed he did. Especially if it was the only way to get shit done. “Warrants are what I want to do. But since I’ve been reassigned to courts, I haven’t missed a day.”

Metcalf rested his forehead in his palm. “True, you haven’t. But every night, weekend, and hour you’re not on shift, you’re out hunting fugitives. Nick, you’ve got to slow down. You’re going to burn out and you’re not going to be any good to anyone. You put your life in those men’s hands and they put theirs in yours. If they can’t trust you, they won’t work with you. You won’t last a year here.”

“Fine.” Nick let out a gust of breath and raked his fingers through his hair. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to take a month off.” Nick sat up straight and opened his mouth to protest, but Metcalf cut him off. “This isn’t negotiable. Take a month, think about this job, why you want it, and what it’s going to take to be successful at it. Then, when you come back, you show up when you’re supposed to, do your six months of court duty, without any after-hours fugitive hunts. If you can do that, I’ll consider taking you off of probation and assigning you to a warrants squad for a full-time rotation. Deal?”

“Do I have a choice?” Nick couldn’t do anything about the sourness in his tone.

The chief deputy leveled his gaze. “No. You don’t.”

“I guess my ass is taking a month off, then.”

Without another word, Nick pushed himself out of the chair. This was absolute, utter bullshit. As he made his way down the hallway toward his cubicle, other deputies averted their gazes. No doubt every last one of them knew about the ass chewing he’d just endured. Perfect. His temper mounted with every step he took and it wouldn’t be long before Nick lost it entirely. A month? Four fucking weeks of suspension—because there was no way this was a vacation—for going out there and arresting slimy bastards who ought to be in jail in the first place. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Nick threw himself down in his chair and swiveled around toward his computer screen. A file folder peeked out from the top desk drawer and he leaned back to look up the hall and down to see if anyone was watching. He pulled the file out and flipped it open to a picture of one of those slimy assholes who’d avoided a jail cell for far too long. Joel Meecum. Supposed ex-president of the Black Death motorcycle club and a lying, raping, murdering, gunrunning piece of shit. He’d been on the run for the past four years and hit the top of the USMS’s Top 15 Most Wanted list at the beginning of the year. Nick flipped through the file at the notes he’d scribbled down. There was a promising lead in the case. One that everyone else had overlooked. A woman. A rumored ex-girlfriend to be exact. An informant had mentioned to the Oakland PD that Joel put the word out that he’d been looking for his ex, a woman by the name of Kari Hanson, and was willing to pay a healthy reward to anyone who might know where she was. The informant knew someone who knew someone who knew someone and so on, who thought Meecum’s old lady was hiding out in Idaho somewhere. A small town in the mountains.

All they knew about Meecum’s mysterious ex was that she had a tattoo on the inside of her right wrist. When the guys in Oakland ran her name, nothing had come up, which meant that Hanson might have been an alias. Without much to go on, the lead had gone cold. Something about it had stuck with Nick, though. Meecum never would have gone to the lengths he’d gone to find her if she was inconsequential. He was certain that Kari Hanson was the key to finding Meecum.

Nick looked over his shoulder, feeling a lot like a kid with his dad’s Playboy. He could make the drive in about nine or ten hours. It wouldn’t hurt to check out the lead. It’s not like he was hunting a fugitive, per se. Just . . . the ex-old lady of a fugitive.

He opened a search engine on his computer and typed in McCall, Idaho. A road trip didn’t sound like a bad idea. Besides, there were worse ways to spend a month off.

Livy Gallagher triple-checked the deadbolt on her front door, the locks on the windows that lined the tiny living room, and the ones beside the dining room table. She’d already checked the back door, kitchen windows, and upstairs windows. This had been her nightly routine for almost four full years. One thousand, three hundred and seventy days of checking, double-checking, and triple-checking every lock in the house before she went to bed.

When she did the math, it seemed so much more depressing. She went to sleep every night afraid. Woke up every morning afraid. Went to work, put in her eight hours, drove home, and the entire time, she looked over her shoulder. She’d been running scared for so long, she couldn’t remember what it felt like to not be afraid.

With a long sigh she stared through the old warped glass of the antique windows at the snow falling gently outside. A chill danced over her skin, reminding Livy that she’d better rekindle the fire before she went upstairs or she’d be huddled under the electric blanket before midnight. The old house was quaint, in a this-is-where-Norman Bates-lives sort of way. She snorted. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but it didn’t scream welcome! It had been built around 1912 and along with the modest cabin next door, was one of few remaining houses on Payette Lake that hadn’t been mowed down and replaced with a six-plus-million dollar “cabin” that the owners stayed in maybe once or twice a year. Either way, she’d scored with this old place because it fit her needs to a T. Out of the way and cheap. But it didn’t exactly sport the type of modern insulation that retained heat or was even marginally energy efficient. And since there was a snowball’s chance in hell that she’d ever have a man to keep her warm in bed, she left it up to her furry tabby cat and electric blanket to get the job done.

Livy let out a groan. She was living the life of a ninety-year-old woman. If not for the athleticism necessary for her winter job, she would have been convinced she was a twenty-five-year-old nonogenar-ian. She should have been living her life, damn it! Partying, club hopping, sleeping around and making shitty decisions that she’d regret well into her thirties. She should have fallen in love at least three times by now and had her heart broken at least twice. Instead, she was afraid of her own shadow, only talked to people when it was absolutely necessary, and stuck to routines that made people with OCD seem chill.

Livy missed life! She hadn’t lived in a long damned time and it wasn’t fair. She couldn’t even remember what it felt like to be carefree. “Shit on a stick!” Her voice carried throughout the quiet house. And now, she was talking to herself. Great.

Livy grabbed her cell from one of the end tables and turned it over in her hand. She rarely used the prepaid phone, and in a few months, she’d recycle it and buy a new one with a new number. Who knew if it would help to protect her? With technology the way it was, she doubted anyone could stay completely hidden for long. Like the phone she’d eventually trade out, she’d put this town behind her soon as well. Four years was a long time. She couldn’t allow herself to put down roots.

With a sigh, Livy swiped her finger across the screen and opened the phone app. She dialed her mom’s number and left the pad of her finger to hover over the send button. Snow slid from the roof with a scrape against the tin before it landed on the other side of the porch. Livy’s heart leaped up into her throat and she stifled a scream. “It’s just snow, you moron. Chill the hell out.” Her heart hammered against her rib cage and a burst of adrenaline caused her limbs to quake. “Way to rock that tough-girl vibe.” Talking to herself and freaking out over a snow slide. She was one step away from a padded room.

She cleared the call from the display. She only called her mom once every three months. Still a month to go. Frequent calls were easy to track. At least, that’s what she’d learned from watching cop shows. A call every few months wouldn’t be as noticeable as one every few weeks. It was safer for the both of them if she kept her distance, no matter how damned lonely she might be.

“Come on, Simon. Let’s go to bed.” The large tabby gave a forlorn meow as he hopped down from the hearth. “You’re such a baby,” Livy said. “I’ll turn on the electric blanket.”

He swished his tail from side to side, obviously pleased. It probably would have been better to own a rottweiler or a nice, loyal pit bull. Simon didn’t mind being cooped up, though. A dog—especially a large breed—would have gone stir-crazy shut up in the cabin all the time. Besides, she didn’t own Simon for protection. She owned him for company. For a warm body to curl up with when she felt as though the loneliness were sucking the air from her lungs. He was a poor substitute for human companionship, but he was a sweetheart. And unlike a boyfriend, at least Simon would never leave the toilet seat up.

She scooped him up into her arms as she turned off the lamp and headed for the stairs. “Let’s get a move on, buddy. It’s thank-you notes night on Fallon.” Simon purred in her grasp. “I know, right? We’re livin’ on the razor’s edge.”

Nick stared out the window, through the steady fall of snow outside, at the woman he’d spent months researching and the past week tracking down. Sometimes, the key to following even the vaguest lead was simply being too stubborn to let it go. Lucky for Nick, stubborn was the only way he knew to be. A fairly reliable USMS informant had been picked up for petty theft. In order to get out from under a probation violation, he’d offered up info on Meecum’s ex. According to the informant, he’d been passing through McCall, Idaho, with a group of buddies for a concert. Among the waitstaff at the venue was a woman who fit the description of Kari Hanson. He’d told the investigating marshal that her nametag read “Livy.” The USMS, unable to confirm the intel, assumed the guy had made up the story to get out of being charged.

But not Nick. He’d researched the small town for over a month prior to his mandatory vacation and it had seemed like a promising location for someone to hide out from law enforcement. The town’s population barely broke thirty-five hundred. He’d searched DMV records for any vehicles registered to women named Livy. He’d come up empty-handed, but had found two cars registered to women named Olivia. His options had been easy to narrow down from there. One of the Olivias was a seventy-five-year-old retired teacher. Definitely not Meecum’s ex. The other had only lived in the county for about four years and other than that, Nick hadn’t been able to find anything else out about her. It was like she’d appeared out of thin air, which had only further convinced him that she was, in fact, the woman Joel Meecum had been searching for.

She might be going by Olivia Gallagher now, but that didn’t matter. He was on the money. The kitchen of the rented cabin provided the perfect vantage point with a direct view of her driveway, and he watched her talk to her shovel as she moved scoop after scoop of snow. Her grumbles, spoken between bouts of profanity that could be heard even through his kitchen window, had woken him from a deep sleep. Pretty much what he’d expect from a woman who hung out with bikers. Those words would make a sailor proud.

She’d done a damned good job of flying below the radar, but not good enough. No one could simply vanish. Sporting a new name and Social Security number wasn’t enough. Living in an obscure town in the middle of BFE wasn’t enough. Nick had only set up shop in the cabin across from hers yesterday afternoon. Not even twelve hours in McCall and he had eyes on his target.

She wasn’t quite what he’d expected.

She continued to shovel, but struggled as the snow stuck to the metal scoop. With every new shovelful, she was forced to knock the snow out before she could clear another section of it away. Labor intensive, and obviously frustrating as evidenced by the constant string of profanity.

“Frank, you piece of shit! How could you do this to me?”

Nick’s lips quirked as Olivia continued on with her tirade, loud enough to wake up everyone on the lane. Well, it would have if anyone else had been living on the lane. He grabbed a notebook from the kitchen counter and scribbled the name Frank with a question mark beside it. According to his research, she lived alone. Maybe Frank was her snowplow guy. Or an ex-boyfriend. That wouldn’t make Joel Meecum very happy, would it?

A tingle of excitement raced from the base of Nick’s neck down his spine, sending a killer rush of adrenaline through his system. Who needed coffee for a morning jolt when he could live off the excitement he felt every time a lead panned out. He’d hit the jackpot with Olivia. Pure solid gold. He watched as she continued to struggle in the fresh snow, wading through a drift that had to have been pushing three feet as she made her way to the back of the car. In the dull red glow of the taillights of the still-running vehicle, he could barely make out her profile. Two long braids on either side of her head trailed down from a large, slouchy beanie that she pushed back up on her forehead. She was decked out in snow gear: ski pants, coat, gloves. Nick watched as she plopped down on the ground to check something out under the car. Hell, she looked like a little kid whose mom had gotten her dressed for the trek to the bus stop.

Where was she going this early in the morning, anyway? Nick hadn’t been there long enough to determine any patterns in her comings and goings yet. This could be part of her daily routine for all he knew. He noted the time in his notebook as he flipped on the light in the kitchen. She straightened, her head turning in his direction. Now was as good a time as any to introduce himself. From the rage-fest going on outside, he already knew that Olivia Gallagher had a bit of a temper. What would a conversation with her reveal?

She continued to wrestle with the snow and Nick left her to it as he headed for the bedroom to get dressed. Her car was buried to the hood in the deep drift; she wasn’t leaving anytime soon. And for that matter, neither was he.

The sleepy town in the heart of Idaho had to have taken her some time to get used to after living in Southern California where Meecum was rumored to be hiding out. He wondered how she’d come to the decision to move here. Had she closed her eyes and stabbed her finger down on a map? Motorcycle-club life was a far cry from the picturesque tourist town she’d settled in. He’d have to ask around, shake the bushes and see what fell out. People loved to gossip in tiny places like this. Someone had to be willing to talk. Was Olivia an upstanding member of the community? Did she pass bad checks? Hang out at the local bars? When you knew the right questions to ask and how to ask them, people could be pretty damned informative without even knowing they were being questioned.

Nick had yet to unpack his shit. He tossed his duffel onto the bed and dug out a pair of jeans, T-shirt, and a sweater. He searched around in the bottom of the bag and found a pair of wool socks that he added to the pile. His boots were in the mudroom along with his coat, gloves, and hat. Probably should have brought long underwear or some shit. Another angry shout came from outside and spurred Nick into action as he threw on his clothes.

He didn’t have a snow shovel, damn it.

Hell, he didn’t have much of anything. No groceries and a little over a week’s worth of clothes. Was it wishful thinking that he’d get the job done and be out of there in less than a week? Probably. Which meant if he was planning on sticking around Ski Town, USA, then he should probably get his ass in gear and load up on some shit. It might not be a bad idea to get his hands on a snowblower if he had any intention of making it up the lane to the city street. He had four-wheel drive and good tires, but still. This was some serious fucking snow on the ground.

Good Lord, it took less time to get outfitted in his vest and tactical gear to go out in the field. Once he got his boots laced, Nick headed out onto the porch. Olivia stood beside her car, digging snow out from underneath it as best she could with the snow shovel’s scoop, which was way too big and awkward for the job she was trying to use it for. But since Nick didn’t have even a piece-of-shit shovel like hers to help her out with, he supposed they’d have to make do.

She kept her back turned to him, completely oblivious to his presence. It was a vulnerable position, one that left her exposed to all sorts of danger. He found himself wanting to chide her, but why? No doubt Joel Meecum’s old lady could take care of herself. Meek . . .