Owen and Andrew tagged along as they headed to Kyla’s dorm room at San Diego State University where she was working on her masters in computer engineering. The place was tiny, but she didn’t seem to mind, especially since she didn’t have a roommate. The moment they were inside, she’d fired up her laptop, plopped down on the bed and announced they needed to find something else to connect Nesbitt to her father’s murder.
Owen and Andrew exchanged concerned looks.
Wes quickly took a seat beside her. “We will, but how about we tackle it tomorrow? It’s already after one. You should try to get some sleep.”
She shook her head, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “I’m not tired.”
“Kyla, it’s after one in the morning,” he pointed out.
“I said, I’m not tired.”
Wes glanced at Owen and Andrew to see that they looked as helpless as he felt.
“Kyla, anything you find online is going to be there tomorrow,” he said gently.
She stopped typing and stared at him, a glint in her dark eyes he didn’t like. “You’re right. We should go over to Nesbitt’s right now and start following him. We can take shifts.”
Closing her laptop, she jumped to her feet and grabbed her car keys off the desk. Wes hurried after her, catching her hand before she could get to the door.
“Whoa,” he said. “Kyla, you need to slow down and think. Stalking Nesbitt is more likely to get you tossed in jail than him.” He reached up to brush her long, dark hair back from her face before he could stop himself. “Let’s all get some sleep and come at this from a different angle tomorrow, okay?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Please?” he cajoled.
For a moment, he thought she was going to argue, but then she nodded.
The urge to kiss her—even on the forehead—was almost too much to resist and he had to force himself to step away from her. He glanced at Owen and Andrew.
“I have to be at work in four hours,” he said. “Can you stay with Kyla while I go home and grab a shower and a uniform. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
If it weren’t for the fact that the brass wanted to go over the details of the ambush in Nigeria, he would have said the hell with it and taken off, but he couldn’t. Not right now.
“Yeah, of course,” Owen said while Andrew nodded in agreement.
“I don’t need you guys to stay,” she protested.
“I know you don’t.” Wes smiled. “But I’d feel better if you weren’t alone right now.”
Kyla opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“Try to get some sleep, okay?” he said. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Wes only hoped she was in bed right now doing just that right now. More likely, she staring up at the ceiling, thinking up ways to put Nesbitt in prison. Regardless, the sooner he got back over to her place, the better.
Yanking his T-shirt over his head, he started for the bathroom and the shower he hoped would help wake him up when his cell phone rang. He dug it out of the pocket of his jeans with a groan, praying it wasn’t headquarters with another mission. But the moment he saw the name on the screen, he knew it had nothing to do with going wheels-up.
He thumbed the green button. “Owen, what’s up?”
“Kyla left and we don’t know where she went.”
He tightened his grip on the phone. “What do you mean, she left?”
The heavy sigh on the other end of the line was barely audible over the sound of Andrew muttering and freaking out in the background. “She went to bed right after you took off, so we both kinda nodded off. When I woke up a few minutes later, Kyla was gone and so were her car keys.”
“Dammit,” Wes muttered.
“It gets worse,” Owen said. “Andrew and I found an empty case for a handgun sticking out from under her bed.”
His stomach dropped. “Where the hell did Kyla get a gun?”
Owen snorted. “This might be California, but we’re still part of the United States. Getting a handgun isn’t difficult for anyone with an ounce of intelligence and some money. Kyla has both.”
Wes cursed. That was true enough.
“Kyla’s laptop is still here, so we can pull up her tracking program and try to get a fix on her phone signal, but there’s a good chance she shut her phone off,” Owen said. “Maybe she went to stay with her mom. I thought about calling to check, but I didn’t want to freak Mrs. Wells out if Kyla isn’t there.”
Wes took the phone away from his ear long enough to pull on his T-shirt. “After the way Kyla was talking earlier, there’s only one place she’d go.”
“Nesbitt’s,” Owens muttered. “We were afraid of that. What are we going to do?”
Scooping up his keys, Wes strode out of his apartment and headed for the stairwell. “I’m going to Nesbitt’s to intercept her before she does something crazy.”
Or before she got herself hurt. The thought of something happening to Kyla made his gut clench.
“What about Andrew and me?” Owen asked.
“Listen to the police scanner and give me a heads-up if there’s company coming.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment. “You really think Nesbitt will call the cops if he catches Kyla?”
Wes unlocked his pickup and climbed in. “Right now, I’m more concerned with Kyla killing the asshole and spending the rest of her life in jail for it. I have to stop her before that can happen.”
Hanging up, he started the engine. There was a part of him that refused to think Kyla would shoot Nesbitt in cold blood, but then he remembered how devastated she’d been after the judge released the man she’d spent the past year and a half blaming for her father’s death. But as the day had gone on, he’d seen the change in her. She’d gone from being shocked and in denial to angry as hell, and it was consuming her.
So, yeah, Kyla might very well kill Nesbitt if she had a chance.
Putting the truck in gear, he sped out of the parking lot. It would take at least a forty minutes to get to Nesbitt’s house in La Jolla, even at this time of night. With the head start Kyla had, she’d easily get there before he did. He prayed he got there before she did something she’d spend the rest of her life regretting.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS ONLY fifteen miles from Kyla’s dorm to the upper crust community of La Jolla, which meant it’d typically take less than twenty minutes to get there. But since she didn’t want to chance getting pulled over with a gun in the car, she drove slower than usual. She didn’t care if it took a little longer to get to Nesbitt’s house. In fact, she hoped the extra time would help her figure out what to do. Because at the moment, her head was spinning.
Kyla stopped her Prius about a mile down the road past Nesbitt’s obnoxiously large home. She’d never been so happy as she was now to have a hybrid car that was so quiet. Stepping out, she closed the door as silently as she could, then slipped into the deeper shadows along the tall stone wall surrounding his property and headed for the wrought iron gate. Thankfully, there was barely a sliver of moon in the sky, so no one should be able to see her. Halfway there, she slowed, the reality of what she was about to do finally hitting her.