Free One Kiss More by Mandy Baxter

chuckled and it was all Landon could do not to throw his phone. “All right. Fine. It’s no fun razzing you when you’re in a shitty mood, so let’s get to it. You were right that Ruiz didn’t do this alone. At least, that’s what I gathered after filling in the blanks.”
    Finally they were getting somewhere. “Do you think it was an inside job?”
    “I think whoever helped Ruiz escape was coercing information from someone who worked at the prison, but I don’t think any employees were actively involved in his escape.” Galen paused, and Landon grabbed a notebook and pen from the glove box and started to scribble down a few notes. “The initial report suggested that Ruiz escaped prison custody without any help. He was being transported to Willamette Valley Medical Center for a chemo treatment, and it’s only seventeen minutes from Sheridan. Doesn’t leave a lot of time for an escape. Plus, dude was not in any shape to overpower two guards and a driver. They were most likely drugged. We’re running tests on blood samples to see if we can find anything, though it might be out of their systems by now. All three guards are reporting gaps in their memory. Anyway—”
    “Wait a sec,” Landon interrupted as a thought struck. “Do you think Ruiz could have been kidnapped?”
    “Kidnapped?” Galen asked as though he’d never heard the word before. “Who would want to kidnap him? And why?”
    Exactly. “Can you e-mail me the complete report from the interview?”
    “Sure, but there’s not much more, just a few jumbled details.”
    Landon tossed the notebook into the passenger seat and turned his key in the ignition. “And send me the tox reports on the guards’ blood.”
    “Can do. You wanna fill me in on what you’re thinking?”
    Right now, it was only a hunch, but until Landon discovered the identity of Emma’s grabby admirer last night, a hunch was all it was going to be. “Not yet. I need to dig a little deeper.”
    “Secrets don’t make friends, you know,” Galen quipped, though his tone was light.
    “Neither does being a dick,” Landon shot right back. “I’ll call you when I have something concrete.”
    “Later,” Galen responded with a laugh and ended the call.
    Landon pulled out into traffic, antsy to get to work. Jesus. Until now, he’d never considered the possibility that Ruiz might be a victim rather than an escapee. And if the former judge had, in fact, been kidnapped, Emma might be in more danger than she realized.
    An image of the rough-looking gangster grabbing onto Emma’s arm flared in Landon’s mind, and he gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. Maybe Emma knew exactly what sort of danger she was in. And maybe he was already too late to do anything about it.
     
     
    “She’s famous for being famous. Sort of like Paris Hilton or one of the Kardashians, but on a smaller scale.”
    Emma cringed as she overheard the whispered words of the girls behind her in line at Starbucks and pushed her sunglasses down from her forehead and back over her eyes. For the record, she had zero sex tapes floating around the interwebs, and no matter what anyone thought to the contrary, she was hardly famous for being famous. More like, she was accidentally famous. And on the celebrity radar, she was barely a blip.
    Growing up, Emma’s friends had always been guys. And being a sports junkie, she had a tendency to hang out with guys who played sports. Tyson Kennedy had been her best friend since childhood. And because he’d gone on to become a famous pro athlete and Emma was always hanging around, she’d sort of gained notoriety by default.
    “I heard she was dating Jeremy Blakely from the Seahawks. And that her dad’s some sort of Mexican cartel drug lord.”
    Emma snorted. Jeremy would get a kick out of that little bit of news. And her dad was about as dangerous as a springer spaniel. God, how she hated the rumor mill.
    “Venti caramel macchiato for Ella?” the