“If you don’t have a stomach for this, hang outside in the hall.” Jess stood, her gaze fixed on Alexa. “Be my eyes and ears?”
The tall blonde got to her feet.
“You don’t know me very well.” Alexa shifted her glare to Burke. “I want in on this.”
“What? What’s happening?” he asked.
His goofy grin had returned. And the man’s eyes were bugging from his shiny bald head, shifting between Jess and Alexa.
“Ladies, there’s plenty of Burke to go around. You don’t have to fight. Why not all three of us?” He shrugged, acting like threesomes happened to him all the time.
“I could go for that.” Alexa nodded. “Why not?”
“Oh, wow. Cool.” Burke looked like he was about to wet himself.
But she busted his mood by drawing her Colt Python—the muzzle aimed between his eyes—and said, “Let’s skip the foreplay.”
“Hey, what the hell is this?” he blustered.
“I’ve got Flexicuffs on my belt in a dispenser. Use ’em.” Jess ignored Burke and took charge, directing her comment to Alexa. “That radiator should work.”
Before Burke made a fuss, Jess said, “There’s a reason we wanted the music up loud, Jason. Think about it. And don’t make me shoot you.”
Alexa got to work and cuffed him to the radiator. She used the plastic restraints Jess carried with her for multiple arrests. With his hands tied to opposite ends, he sat with hunched shoulders and his butt on metal. For good measure, Alexa bound his ankles, too.
They’d have his undivided attention now.
“What’s this all about? It ain’t right, you comin’ in here like this.”
“We wanna hear what you’ve got to say about Mandy,” Jess told him.
“Mandy? How do you know her?” Staring into the Colt Python, Burke didn’t wait for an answer. “Hey, I got an alibi. I wasn’t anywhere near that motel. The cops know all about it.”
“Yeah, that’s what we hear, but humor us. She ever live here with you?”
Jess holstered her weapon, and Alexa backed off, giving her room to “work.”
“Yeah, but she moved out a month ago. We had a fight.”
“I find that hard to believe. An easygoing guy like you? What was the fight about?”
“Money. It was always about money.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I saw her a few days before she was killed. She tried to make me feel sorry for her, but I’d had enough of her act. That scrawny bitch used men to get what she wanted.” He sneered. “All she cared about was cash to feed her habit. And she didn’t give a rat’s ass what she had to do to get it neither. She was playin’ that asshole, the guy who killed her. I seen him with her. Who knows what she did to piss
“Try again, asshole. ’Cause that damned tune ain’t gonna play with us.” Jess stepped closer. And when he flashed another arrogant smirk, she reached for a shiny gold ring that pierced his eyebrow and gave it a sharp twist.
“Damn it, bitch!” he spat.
Burke had squirmed and pulled his head back. Now the ring dangled loose, nearly ripping through his skin. Blood trickled down his cheek, mixing with sweat.
“Oops. You shouldn’t have moved, slick.”
“You better hope I don’t get loose,” he threatened.
“Actually, I hope you do.” She fixed her eyes on him. “In fact, I’m counting on it.”
To make her point, Jess retrieved a knife from her boot. Dim light from a nearby lamp reflected off the blade. And his eyes grew wide.
“Hey, you don’t need that. What do you want to know?”
“The truth, Jason. We just want the truth.” After he settled down, she asked, “Besides hooking, did Mandy have other ways to earn coin? And don’t bother to lie ’cause I’ll know it.”
When Burke didn’t speak fast enough, Jess reached for another pull tab.
“Okay, okay. Just lay off the metal.” He jerked his head, trying to stay clear of her hand. “Right before our fight, Mandy came into some dough.”
“I thought you said the fight was over money, not having enough.”
“It was more like, she lived under my roof, and I wanted my share.” He shook his head. “I never actually saw her stash, but I always knew when she was holding out on me. I figured she scored big bucks off a guy. When I asked her about it, she didn’t have much to say. We fought. She left. End of story. She packed her stuff and took off when I was at work.”
“So you were wanting a piece of
“Blackmail, lady. That little bitch was blackmailing someone. At least, that’s what I figured out after I asked around, but no one could tell me nuthin’ for sure.”
“Any ideas who she was bleeding?”
“The guy who killed her, that’s who. He looked like he had deep pockets. Real used to money, you know what I mean?”
“But you don’t know this for a fact.”
He shook his head. “No, but I had a bad feeling about that kid from the first time I saw him. He didn’t look right. I always thought he was obsessed with Mandy for some reason, the way he kept coming around. I thought she put an end to that, but I guess not. Not if they were at a motel when he whacked her.”
Even a jerk like Jason Burke could damage Harper’s chances in court. He’d seen Seth with Mandy and could testify that Seth had been obsessed with her. Jess clenched her jaw. And Burke’s story had a ring of despicable truth since the bastard hadn’t tried to hide the fact he wanted to cut in on her action, whatever it was.
And if Mandy had put the squeeze on someone for money, Burke asking around might have called attention to what she’d done and put a target on her back. Plus the girl’s drug habit had been eating her alive. Jess had seen it more than once in her line of work. And common sense would be the first to go when it came to the choices that the strung-out girl had made to feed her nasty habit.
Mandy had put herself in the line of fire—and she’d dragged Harper with her. Knowing Seth, he would have done it again and again if it meant he had a shot at saving her. And being the son of Detective Max Jenkins, her boy genius had a strong measure of the hero gene in his DNA. She’d seen it in Harper before.
“All I know is, it kept her in crank for a while,” Burke kept talking. “Then one day, she came to me, acting real scared.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t remember. I was a little wasted at the time.”
“What was she scared of?”
“I don’t know. But coming to me, she had to be desperate,” he admitted. “She wanted to move back and crash here, but I had enough of that bitch, and I told her so.”
“Real compassionate of you, big man.” Jess pressed the blade to his cheek. Having learned his lesson about moving, Burke stiffened and held his breath. A white crease on his skin filled with blood, tiny beads of red. “Go on.”
“Damn it! I swear, that’s all I know. You gotta believe me.”
“Yeah, like you believed Mandy when she came to you for help?”
She looked at Alexa.
“Cut him loose…and step aside.”
Until now, Alexa’s expression had been unreadable. But by the look on her face, her companion clearly had an issue at letting Burke go without giving them a head start. Yet to her credit, the woman never said a word. Jess handed her the knife and Alexa freed the man.
Burke stood and rubbed his wrists, glaring at her. With her body tensed for action, she handed Alexa her gun,
