Trust No One (Devlin & Falco)

  PRAISE FOR TRUST NO ONE

  “Trust No One is Debra Webb at her finest. Political intrigue and dark family secrets will keep readers feverishly turning pages to uncover all the twists in this stunning thriller.”

  —Melinda Leigh, #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Cross Her Heart

  “A wild, twisting crime thriller filled with secrets, betrayals, and complex characters that will keep you up until you reach the last darkly satisfying page. A five-star beginning to Debra Webb’s explosive series!”

  —Allison Brennan, New York Times bestselling author

  “Debra Webb once again delivers with Trust No One, a twisty and gritty page-turning procedural with a cast of complex characters and a compelling cop heroine in Detective Kerri Devlin. I look forward to seeing more of Detectives Devlin and Falco.”

  —Loreth Anne White, Washington Post bestselling author of In the Deep

  “Trust No One is a gritty and exciting ride. Webb skillfully weaves together a mystery filled with twists and turns. I was riveted as each layer of the past peeled away, revealing dark secrets. An intriguing cast of complicated characters, led by the compelling Detective Kerri Devlin, had me holding my breath until the last page.”

  —Brianna Labuskes, Washington Post bestselling author of Girls of Glass

  “Debra Webb’s name says it all.”

  —Karen Rose, New York Times bestselling author

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Debra Webb

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542018098

  ISBN-10: 1542018099

  Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant

  I cannot thank Megha Parekh enough for giving me this amazing opportunity. I am so excited about this new journey with Thomas & Mercer.

  Writing a novel isn’t as easy as simply sitting down at your computer and allowing the magic to flow from your fingertips. It is sometimes hard, mentally exhausting work. Other times the words flow like a river. And once you’ve completed the manuscript, there is more work. Much more work. To create the best story possible, this part requires a team effort. I want to thank every member of the team who helped me bring this story to life. Thanks so much to Megha Parekh, Charlotte Herscher, and all the copy editors and proofreaders who touched these pages. You are brilliant!

  CONTENTS

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve . . .

  —Unknown

  1

  TODAY

  Saturday, June 16

  7:15 a.m.

  “Just tell me where she is, and we can take this down a notch.” Kerri took a breath, let it out slowly. “I’ll lower my weapon. You have my word. All I want is your cooperation.”

  Her palms were sweating. Arms shaking from maintaining the firing stance for so long. She didn’t trust this bastard, but she damned sure hadn’t followed him here to do this.

  Now she had a situation.

  The lieutenant would say desperation had driven her over the edge, and he wouldn’t be wrong. Her new partner would shake his head and wonder how she ever dared to judge him.

  Kerri blinked. She had gone too far. She knew this. Too late to change that now. Swallowing the lump of uncertainty rising in her throat, she stared at the man in her crosshairs. Way too late.

  He laughed. Blood trickled from his swollen, no doubt broken nose. She’d punched him hard. As if to underscore the thought, her right hand throbbed mercilessly. Anger tightened her lips. Not hard enough, or he wouldn’t be so smug right now. The son of a bitch.

  “You should know by now, Detective Devlin, that you can’t touch me. I will ruin you,” he warned, the words nasally sounding. He swiped at the blood spatter staining his pale-blue polo. “Your career with the Birmingham Police Department is over.”

  Like she needed anyone to point out that glaringly obvious detail. With every fiber of her being, she wanted to kill him. The urge simmered in the deepest part of her soul. She knew what this bastard had done. She had evidence, by God. Maybe not enough for a trial conviction, but it was something. For now, that could wait. This was far more important . . . more urgent.

  She was the one who laughed this time. “Can’t you tell by now I don’t care? As long as I take you all the way down first, I can live with whatever comes second.”

  He smiled at her, the expression incongruent with his bleeding and damaged face. “But you do care about that sweet little daughter of yours, don’t you? I would hate to see her have to pay for your mistakes, Detective.”

  Kerri flinched. A new rush of fury lashed through her, more at her reaction than at his threat. “Just fucking tell me what I need to know.” She twitched the barrel of her Glock .40 cal. “Or I swear to God I will put a bullet right between your eyes.”

  He stared at her for one, two, three beats; then he said, “Go ahead. Shoot me.”

  Shit.

  Maybe he’d seen her arms shake or spotted that goddamned flinch. Either way, he’d called her bluff.

  No turning back now.

  Her hand tightened on the grip. Forefinger curled around the trigger. “You think I won’t?”

  He lunged at her.

  She instinctively twisted to the right.

  His body crashed into her left shoulder, sending her off balance.

  She slammed backward onto the floor. The weight of his body landing on top of her forced the air from her lungs.

  Weapon?

  Adrenaline roaring, she locked the fingers of her right hand tighter around the butt of the Glock.

  She still had her weapon. Relief trickled through her.

  With every ounce of might she possessed, she punched with her left fist, aiming for the throat. He stretched his upper body to one side, ensuring the blow jammed impotently into his shoulder.

  She yanked her arm back, aimed again . . . he backhanded her.

  Blocking out the pain, she rammed her knee toward his groin. He dodged the move. Grabbed at the Glock with one hand and her hair with the other.

  No. No. No!

  She twisted her right arm, fought to wrench the barrel of the weapon from his desperate grasp. His grip tightened. His face distorted with rage. She bucked and rotated her body, used her free hand to clutch at his throat, his eyes, whatever she could reach. He slammed her head against the floor. Again. And again.

  The room spun. She felt her wrist crack from the pressure of him trying to rip the Glock from her grasp.

  She . . . could . . . not . . . allow . . . him . . . to . . . take . . . it . . .

  Her head hit the floor again, harder this time.

  Her eyes rolled back. She blinked. Shook herself. His weight ground into her waist.

  Another thwack of her head . . .

  The blast of a bullet discharging from her weapon exploded in the room.

  She gasped.

  Darkness clawed at her.

  She fought to stay conscious. Tried to rise up.

  Where was he . . . ?

  The room shifted out of focus. Started to spin. She closed her eyes to slow the whirling sensation.

  The darkness swallowed her, dragging her down . . . down . . . down . . .

  There was sound.

  She stopped falling . . . fought against the darkness still swaddling her.

  The sound came again. Rattling . . . vibrating.

  There was pain.

  Kerri tried to open her eyes once more.

  More of that vibrating.

  Her eyes cracked open, and pain exploded b
ehind them. She squeezed them shut and groaned.

  That damned rattling started again, and this time she recognized it was her phone. She opened her eyes and turned her head despite the pain and stared at the black device lying on the wood floor. A moment was required before her brain got the message through to her arm that she had to reach for the phone in order to answer it.

  Her partner’s face flashed on the screen. Falco. There was something . . .

  Shit!

  She sat up. The room spun, and her head exploded with more of that searing pain. When she dared to open her eyes again, she stared at the man slumped facedown on the floor, one of her legs trapped beneath his thighs.

  “Jesus Christ.” She scrambled free of his weight.

  The room whirled again. She grabbed her head and closed her eyes until the spinning stopped, and the pain leveled out. Another groan hissed past her lips.

  That damned vibration erupted once more. She couldn’t deal with that right now. She forced her eyes open. Slowly, she crawled on all fours until she was within reach of him. She touched his neck, checked for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  He was dead.

  Fuck.

  Where was her weapon?

  She hoisted herself to her feet, staggered around the body. Didn’t see the damned thing.

  “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  The Glock had to be under him.

  Using her right foot, she pushed, swaying drunkenly on her left, until she rolled him onto his back. The hole in his upper chest and all the blood told her the bullet had likely gone in at an upward trajectory and pierced a major artery.

  He was dead.

  She’d killed him.

  Reaching down, she was relieved that her weapon lay just outside the widening ring of blood. She snatched it up and shoved it into her waistband.

  Her phone started rattling again. This time she grabbed it and managed to hit the necessary button. “Devlin.”

  “Where the hell are you?” Rather than wait for her answer, Luke Falco, her partner, said, “They’ve found something, Devlin. Another body, possibly female. This case is busting wide open. You need to be here. You need to be here now.”

  The case. For ten days the investigation into a double homicide had been leading them deeper and deeper into the past and giving them nothing but the occasional fragment of information. Now, suddenly the dozens of scattered pieces were coming together.

  She stared at the dead man on the floor. He was one of those pieces.

  A new rush of cold, hard reality gushed through her.

  Fuck! She touched the back of her head gingerly with her free hand. She didn’t feel any blood, but it hurt like hell. She winced and drew her hand away. Focus! The case. Falco. Jesus Christ, this was a mess.

  “Sorry.” She swallowed back the rising panic. “I got caught up in something.” She closed her eyes to block the body from her field of vision. “Text me the address. I’m on my way.”

  “Hurry, Devlin. I’ve got a feeling about this.”

  “Yeah. Okay. I’ll be there soon.” She ended the call and shoved the phone into her back pocket.

  What the hell should she do? Call it in? If she did . . . a new kind of foreboding slunk around her chest.

  She held her aching head and fought the urge to cry. Too damned late for that. He was dead.

  Okay. Okay. She had killed him. Regardless of whether she had intended to do so, he was dead, and it was her bullet that had initiated the cause of death.

  She needed to think. To figure this out.

  She thought of her daughter. Oh God. If Kerri went to jail, Tori . . .

  She banished the thought, steadied herself. “I can’t do this right now.”

  She had to go. Falco and the search team were already at the scene. She was supposed to be there. She could deal with this later. Claim temporary insanity for leaving the scene.

  She stared at her hands and checked her clothes to ensure there was no blood on her. Clean.

  After turning too quickly, she stumbled and almost fell rushing to the door. She closed the door behind her and moved a little more slowly across the porch and down the steps, her hands searching her pockets for her keys. If she had to go back in there . . .

  She climbed into her Wagoneer and thanked God when the keys were in the ignition.

  Summoning every ounce of resolve she possessed, she started the engine and shifted into drive, only then remembering to fasten her seat belt. Considering the way her head throbbed and the need to vomit along with the loopy feeling, she probably had a concussion, but that was another of those situations she couldn’t do anything about at the moment.

  She held on to the steering wheel with both hands and drew in a deep breath, then another. She could straighten this out later. “It was an accident.”

  The words rang hollowly in the air around her.

  He’d attacked her. The weapon had discharged.

  Accidental shooting. Maybe even self-defense. He had threatened her and her daughter.

  What the hell had she been thinking, confronting him in the first place? Had she really expected the bastard to come clean with her? She was a better cop than this. Goddamn it.

  She was losing it . . . or maybe she’d already lost it.

  A man was dead. Possibly an innocent man. No way. Hell no. She refused to go that far. He was guilty of at least covering up numerous crimes, possibly even murder. Her lips tightened. Oh yes. Every instinct she had honed over the years as a detective warned that he was the one.

  Curve.

  Her breath stalled in her lungs. She shoved her foot down on the brake.

  Too late. The car spun, sliding sideways.

  She missed the curve.

  The ditch rose up to meet her.

  2

  TEN DAYS EARLIER

  Wednesday, June 6

  9:15 a.m.

  Birmingham Police Department

  First Avenue North

  Major Investigations Division

  “I’m not happy about this.” Kerri shook her head, dug her fists deeper into her waist. “How did I draw the short straw?”

  Lieutenant Dontrelle Brooks leaned far enough back in his chair that if not for the credenza behind him, he might have actually tipped over. The sharp creases in his white shirt stood at attention; his tie lay expertly knotted at his throat. He could land the coveted cover of GQ as the best-dressed cop in America. Too bad the look wouldn’t last long. By noon his crisp white shirt would be wrinkled and his blue-and-red-striped tie loosened the slightest bit from dealing with frustrating situations, not unlike this one, that he would just as soon ignore.

  “Detective Falco needs a top-notch detective to teach him the ropes.” The LT flared his big hands—hands that had collared more than his fair share of perps before ending up pushing around pencils and shuffling resources. “You’re the best in the division, Devlin. What’s the big deal? You were once a new detective. If Boswell hadn’t wanted you as a partner, you think you’d be the next in line for a promotion to sergeant at this stage in your career?”

  Trent Boswell had been her partner for seven years, until he’d retired last month. He had been the best partner any detective could ask for. A good cop, a good man. Falco, on the other hand, was rumored to be a pain in the ass who had skated on the edge his entire too-short career. He had more reprimands than anyone in the Birmingham Police Department. Frankly, Kerri didn’t see how the hell he’d made detective, much less found his way into Major Investigations. Being a good detective was about a lot more than passing a written exam. A cop’s record, bearing, and attitude came into play with equal gravity. She assumed the guy had unearthed a dirty little secret on someone high enough up to make a difference, because he didn’t have the record, the bearing, or the attitude to hold the rank—in her possibly not-so-humble and entirely unobjective opinion.

  She hated that kind of double-dealing.

  But she got it now. “In other words, I’m being punished for being a good cop?”

  Brooks rolled his eyes. “Enough with the grief, Devlin. You know how this works.”

  Before she could launch her next wave of protest, he stopped her with a caveat: “Just give this arrangement a month. If you’re not happy with him as your partner, then we’ll consider other options.”

  The lie rolled glibly off his tongue, but the body language told the real story. His shoulders had slumped forward, and he immediately averted his gaze from hers. She was stuck with Falco until he quit or got himself fired or dead.

  The more likely scenario was that his cocky, completely irreverent attitude would get her dead.