Free Captive Star by Nora Roberts

And he hurried down the street, around the comer.
    "He's not going to buy food," M.J. murmured. "You know what he's going to buy with that."
    "You can't save the world. Sometimes you can't even save a little piece of it.
    But maybe he won't mug anybody tonight, or get himself shot trying to." Jack shrugged. "He's been dead since the first time he picked up a needle. Nothing I can do about it."
    "Then why do you feel so lousy about it?" She lifted a brow when he looked down at her. "It's all over your face, Dakota."
    "He used to have a family" was all he said by way of an answer. "Let's go." He led her up the street, then ducked down the side of a building. To her surprise, he unlocked the cuffs. "You've got more sense than to take off in this neighborhood." He smiled. "And I've got your rock locked in the trunk of my car."
    "On a street like this, you'll be lucky if your car's still there when you get back around."
    "They know my car. Nobody'll mess with it." Then he turned—whirled, really—and made her jolt as he slammed two vicious kicks into a dull gray door.
    She heard wood splinter, and pursed her lips in appreciation as the door gave way on the third try. "Nice job."
    "Thanks. And if Ralph didn't get cute and change the code, we're in business."
    He stepped inside, scanned an alarm box beside the broken door. With quick fingers he stabbed numbers.
    "How do you know his code?"
    "I make it my business to know things. Move aside." With a strength she had to admire, he hauled the broken door up, muscled it back into place. "Ralph should have gone for steel. Too cheap."

    He flicked on the lights, scanned the tiny space that was crammed with file boxes and smelled of must. M.J. watched a mouse scamper out of sight.
    "Charming. I'm very impressed with your associates so far, Dakota. Would this be his secretary's year off?"
    "Ralph doesn't have a secretary, either. He's a big believer in low overhead.
    Office is through here."
    "I can't wait." Wary of rodents and anything else with more than two legs, she watched her step as she followed him. "This is what they call nighttime breaking and entering, isn't it?"
    "Cops have a name for everything." He paused with his hand on a doorknob, glanced over his shoulder. "If you wanted someone who'd knock politely on the front door, you wouldn't be with me."
    She lifted her arm, rattled the dangling handcuffs. "Remember these?"
    He only shook his head. "You wouldn't be with me," he repeated, and opened the door.
    She sucked in her breath, but it was the only sound she made. Later, he would remember that and appreciate her grit and her control. The backwash of light from the anteroom spilled into the closet-size office.
    Gunmetal-gray file cabinets, scarred and dented, lined two walls. Papers spilled out of the open drawers, Uttered the floor, fluttered on the desk under the breeze of a whining electric fan.
    Blood was everywhere.
    The smell of it roiled in her stomach, had her clamping her teeth and swallowing hard. But her voice was steady enough when she spoke.
    "That would be Ralph?"

Chapter 5
    It had been a messy job, Jack thought If it had been pros, they hadn't bothered to be quick or neat. But then, there'd been no reason for either. Ralph was still tied to the chair.
    Or what was left of him was.
    "You can wait in the back," Jack told her.
    "I don't think so." She wasn't a stranger to violence. A girl didn't grow up in a bar and not see blood spilled from time to time.
    But she'd never seen anything like this. As realistic as she considered herself, she hadn't really believed it was possible for one human being to inflict this kind of horror on another.
    She kept her eyes on the wall, but stepped in beside him. "What do you think they were after?"
    "The same thing I am. Anything that leads back to whoever used Ralph to set us up. Stupid son of a bitch." His voice softened all at once, with what could only have been termed regret. "Why didn't he run?"
    "Maybe he didn't have the