Forbidden (Southern Comfort)

by O'Neill, Lisa Clark

  Shit, Clay thought again. Wasn’t that just dandy? They’d made it seem like he was a participant in the investigation. So when that little girl’s body turned up in a ditch they could point fingers at the feds.

  Then Justin finally woke up to what was happening and cranked up the volume even more.

  “Hey man. You’re on TV.” His tired voice was mystified.

  As Justin – and the rest of the Channel Five viewing audience – watched with interest, Clay dropped a kiss on the little boy’s head before turning his mouth toward the child’s mother. Then he put his arm around her and squeezed. Possessively.

  Justin’s brow raised as the camera panned back to the reporter, who wrapped up the segment with a grim smile. “This is Paige Lowell reporting for Action Five News.”

  He turned around and smirked at Clay.

  “Fun. Yeah.”

  Clay sat there, numb, not because he’d been pretty much name-dropped – those three little initials were like fairy dust sprinkled magically to increase the case’s sensationalism and thus the channel’s ratings – but because he’d just watched his behavior with his own eyes.

  And the verdict wasn’t pretty.

  He could circle around, backtrack and bluster all he wanted, but he’d just seen the irrefutable evidence.

  “Shit.”

  It had become his favorite word.

  With the sound of Justin’s laughter as an exit score, Clay heaved himself out of the chair and hauled his commitment-phobic, way-too-busy-for-a-relationship, down-for-the-count ass off to bed.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “WHAT the hell were you thinking?”

  Billy Wayne popped the second contact from his gritty eyes, blinking several times before sliding his gaze toward JR. The smaller man was standing across the room, clutching the remote in his fist. If Billy Wayne hadn’t already shaved his hair, the heat of his cousin’s glare would have singed it.

  JR rarely lost his temper – he was colder than an Eskimo’s tit – and to see him so close to boiling was something of a novelty.

  Billy Wayne tossed the disposable lens into the trash can next to the sofa, crossing his booted feet on the cheap oak coffee table. The place they were using was a dump, and he missed the luxury of his condo in Atlanta. It had been a long time since he’d lived out in the boondocks like this, and the memories the dingy little house brought back set his teeth on edge.

  He didn’t need JR’s attitude to send his own temper simmering.

  “I got the girl – a virgin, I might add – and no one made me or followed. Even if some people saw me talking to her, they’re going to describe me as a dark-skinned, brown-eyed man with a full head of hair.” He pointed to his bald head, from which he’d recently removed his wig. “It’s not like they had hidden cameras and facial recognition technology at that damn carnival. Who’s going to recognize me like this?”

  Despite the fact that he had an extremely distinct appearance, Billy Wayne was decent with disguises – not as good as JR, who could be old, young, dark, fair and everything in between – but decent. The only thing that really tripped him up was his overabundance of muscles, which he stubbornly refused to do anything about.

  It was the one legacy from his piece-of-shit father that he didn’t actually hate the man for. Norman Sparks had beaten and ridiculed him as often as not, but the steroids and weightlifting he’d pushed Billy Wayne into had given him the means to get even.

  In fact, he’d taken the first body building trophy he’d won and beat his old man half to death.

  Vaguely aware that JR was still glowering, he glanced at the TV. The news anchor had just titillated the audience by dropping hints about the girl’s disappearance, with the full story coming up at eleven.

  True, having their newest piece of merchandise bandied about on the evening news wasn’t exactly standard operating procedure, but all in all Billy Wayne thought that JR was overreacting. They already had a buyer lined up to take her off their hands, so it wasn’t like they even had to advertise the girl in their usual circles. They’d simply complete the transaction, the case would grow cold, and that would be the end of the sordid little story.

  He said as much, and amused himself by watching steam practically rise from his cousin’s blond head.

  Man, he’d charmed a sweet little girl and pushed JR over the edge, while he himself maintained a firm hold on his temper.

  Was this a banner night or what?

  JR pinched the bridge of his nose and brought himself under control. This was the second inexcusable miscalculation Billy Wayne had made – the first being beating one of the girls to death because he couldn’t get it up for the camera, then selling the footage as a snuff film behind JR’s back.

  He was beginning to think his cousin had gotten careless.

  Carelessness and a life of crime were two things that didn’t mix.

  Yes, this girl was a good find, and yes, they likely already had a buyer. But snatching a kid who would be missed right away was not only risky, it was unbelievably arrogant.

  Combine arrogance with carelessness and you have a recipe for disaster. That particular combination brought even the cleverest of criminals down.

  And if Billy Wayne went down, he’d try to take JR with him. That was one thing he positively could not allow.

  JR watched Billy Wayne watching him, and visibly shook off his rage. Angry confrontations were not his style, as they were usually counterproductive.

  Two pairs of blue eyes held each other’s gaze until the newscast began in earnest. When a reporter came onto the screen with a Ferris wheel looming large behind her, JR cranked the volume and then stood, hands on hips, waiting to assess the damage. They might have to cut their losses, get rid of the girl, and pull out of Charleston if this thing attracted too much attention.

  The brunette started mouthing off about baseball and apple pie. And about thirty seconds into the newscast, dropped an unexpected bomb.

  There was an FBI agent involved in the investigation.

  Now, what the hell were the Feebs doing sticking their noses into a missing persons case that wasn’t even three hours old? They had jurisdiction over kidnappings, but there should have been no indication that the girl had left the fairgrounds under anything but her own free will.

  Behind him, Billy Wayne began to make angry noises of protest, but JR stopped him with a quelling look.

  Then the camera panned out, showing a blond man and what looked to be his family. JR noted the badge on his hip. He was dressed casually – not standard government issue – and was holding onto a dark-haired woman and a sleeping child.

  From that JR surmised that the man probably had been off duty. Simply a matter of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Which meant the FBI wasn’t hot on their trail.

  Lucky thing for Billy Wayne.

  Then, just as JR was about to lose interest – after all, the locals would never be able to catch them – the off duty FBI agent kissed his wife on the mouth. As she turned, JR caught a glimpse of her face.

  Memories long buried erupted to the surface.

  He tilted his head. Squinted his eyes. He couldn’t be certain.

  The last time he’d seen her in person had been outside a crowded courthouse. She hadn’t seen him, of course – he hadn’t wanted anyone to see him, to know that he’d been drawn as helplessly as a fish on a line – so he’d dressed as a homeless bum. It had been his first attempt at disguise.

  And he’d kept up with what you could call the main players for a number of years afterward.

  Until…

  Well. Until there hadn’t been any reason to keep up with them any longer.

  Anger crept slowly back in, an unwelcome visitor with muddy feet, messing up the inner rooms he’d swept clean.

  The woman turned more fully toward the camera, and doubt fled out the door so recently opened by his intrusive guest. It was her.

  Then his gaze slid toward the sleeping child.

 
A boy.

  Tate Hennessey had a son.

  An emotion even more foreign than anger caused the remote he held to tremble.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHIT.

  It was Clay’s very first thought of the morning. Before he’d showered, before he’d had coffee, before he’d even taken a leak, he had his cell phone in his hand.

  And what, he asked himself, was he planning to do with it?

  Call Tate?

  Saying what, exactly?

  Hi Sugar, it’s me. You know that man you kicked out of your life last night? The one who has so far managed to drag you into an almost-mugging, give a peep show to your mother and your kid, disabuse any wide-eyed notions you might have about my big, bad FBI abilities to locate a missing teenager, and who all but forced himself upon you in my car’s front seat?

  The one who is in town for no more than a few more days and has absolutely nothing to offer other than a couple of dates and some hair-raising sex, and will leave you and your little boy with some nice memories and a stupid purple bear?

  Yeah. That’s the one. So do you want to have dinner tonight?

  Double shit. He’d lost his ever-loving mind.

  Clay wondered exactly when he’d gone from being Clay Copeland, expert on human behavior, easygoing bachelor and master of the fine art of Avoiding Entanglements With Women, to Clay Copeland – total head case.

  Maybe he could find a way to engrave those new credentials on his badge.

  Forget Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity. FBI – as pertaining to himself – now stood for Full Blown Idiot.

  As he lay there in Justin’s guest room watching the morning light dance through the blinds, he realized that somehow, in the past few days, he’d succumbed to what countless hours of putting himself in the mindset of some of the country’s most evil and diabolical killers hadn’t managed to do. He’d gone off the deep end, blown a fuse, gone postal or whatever you want to call it.

  Because the first thought he’d had this morning, the last notion in his head before he’d succumbed to fatigue – hell, the dreams that had plagued him all night – had all revolved around how exactly he was going to get his hands on Tate.

  Not that he’d stop with his hands.

  Oh no.

  He wanted his mouth, and his tongue, and his… everything to suddenly fuse themselves to her like some kind of parasitic growth.

  He wanted to taste her, to consume her, to frickin’ devour her. And then start the entire process again. He wanted… Hell, he didn’t know what he wanted.

  Liar. He did, too.

  He wanted to have Max crawl into bed with him in the morning, and for it to be perfectly okay for him to be there.

  Because Tate would be there.

  On a regular basis.

  Really regular.

  Like every day.

  He felt himself freefalling into complete and utter mental chaos. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  When the phone in his hand started ringing, Clay nearly did that in his pants. “Copeland,” he sighed into the phone, trying to keep the tone-of-a-man-who-has-lost-it out of his voice.

  He sort of hoped it was his boss. Cutting his vacation short. Getting him out of this rabbit hole he’d fallen into so that the world could start making sense again.

  “Agent Copeland? This is Deputy Jones with the Bentonville sheriff’s department. We spoke to each other last night?”

  Well thank God. Law enforcement. He felt familiar ground begin to grow under his feet. “Yes, this is Agent Copeland. How can I help you, Deputy Jones?”

  “Well, Agent Copeland, I understand that you’re on vacation, but I was hoping you might be able to carve out some time today to come down to the station and help us out. We put out some feelers last night to some of the other law enforcement agencies in the area, and, well… we’re beginning to think that we might have a situation that could benefit from your expertise.”

  Ask and ye shall receive, Clay thought. It was his job to be on hand to assist the locals if they should need it. And concentrating on work should help keep his mind off Tate. “Absolutely,” Clay answered, sitting up in the bed and glancing toward the alarm clock on the nightstand. Eight a.m. There were still almost twelve hours left in that critical twenty-four hour period. He didn’t hold out a lot of hope that they’d find Casey Rodriguez within that time, but he was thankful that the Sheriff was proactive enough to want to bring him into it.

  “Give me thirty minutes to shower and get changed and I’ll head out. Give me the station address.”

  The man rattled it off and Clay snagged a pen from a holder on the nightstand and jotted it down on the handy little notepad.

  “Got it,” Clay said. His blood juiced at the thought of getting back to work, and that worried him even more. He’d come here to get away from work and now he was going to work to get away from here.

  Somewhere along the line he’d gotten completely messed up.

  He was just about to end the call when the deputy cleared his throat. “Uh, I don’t mean to sound indelicate, Agent Copeland, but… is Ms. Hennessey with you, by any chance?”

  Clay knew what the deputy was going to ask. He wanted Tate to come down to the station house and look through some mug shots. Maybe help a police artist work up a sketch. This is where he should tell the man that Tate was not here, and that he should try to reach Tate at her home. They could arrange an appointment on their own time, and it didn’t have anything whatsoever to do with Clay.

  Tate had made it clear that she had no intention of continuing to see him, and as a gentleman, he should respect that.

  As a commitment-phobe, he should applaud that, running as fast and far in the opposite direction as he possibly could.

  As an agent of the federal government, he really shouldn’t lie.

  “Ms. Hennessey is… unavailable at the moment.” Hey, it was an accurate piece of information. The fact that she was across town and not merely in the shower was simply a matter of semantics. “But I’m assuming you’d like her to come in as well?”

  “Yes, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  “Not at all.” Clay did some rapid thinking. “But it may take us a little while to get there. We’ll need to make some arrangements for her son.”

  Man oh man, he was so full of it. Not to mention being a scheming, calculating idiot who didn’t know enough to get out when the getting was good.

  He said his goodbyes to the deputy, stared at the rotating ceiling fan.

  The last part of his sanity crumbled.

  He opened his phone again to call Tate.

  TATE frowned at her reflection in the hall mirror as she stabbed an earring through her left lobe. Even with an application of concealer, the skin beneath her eyes was a particularly unappealing shade of lavender. Visible proof of her restless night. After Clay left, she’d lain awake for what seemed like hours. Her body felt tight and achy, and her mind… her mind bounced from contemplating how differently the time would have passed if she’d let him stay with her to imagining – all too vividly – what could happen to a young girl in the clutches of a twisted, narcissistic adult. Sick, feeling guilty for even beginning to think of her own physical needs at such a time, Tate felt tears roll down her cheeks and soak her pillow. The day had brought too many bad memories to the surface. Her experience at camp. Her mother, so distraught and overprotective and very, very angry. The nightmares. The subsequent trial, during which whatever scraps of innocence she’d maintained had been tattered and torn to bits.

  When she finally managed to fall asleep, her dreams had been full of muscle-bound men with leering faces painted like clowns, of the Ferris wheel lights – no longer lovely, but gaudy and bright and sinister – spinning faster and faster until she’d awakened with a scream clawing its way out of her throat.

  She’d practically fallen out of bed, and raced to Max’s room, to find him sleeping soundly. Her baby. She’d spent the rest of the night curled up on the floor beside his
bed.

  Tate couldn’t fathom what Casey’s mother was going through right now.

  Hell, she thought, and stabbed the other silver hoop through her right lobe. Sheer hell.

  When Clay had called earlier, she’d been hopeful that it was with good news. Instead, here she was, getting dressed to go down to the police station to look at mug shots. She felt… not dirty, exactly. But stained. As if the filth that had altered her life so drastically that long ago summer had never quite washed off.

  When the knock sounded at the back door, Tate smoothed her damp palms over the skirt of her sundress. She was nervous, she realized. Though whether it was due to her upcoming task or to seeing Clay again, she couldn’t say.

  She pasted a smile on her face and opened the door.

  To a very well-dressed and armed federal agent.

  “Good morning.” Clay’s brow quirked over his sunglasses when she just stood there. No doubt with her mouth agape.

  “Oh. Right. Good morning.” God, she sounded like an idiot. She’d known he worked for the FBI, of course. But for some reason, the sight of him in that dark suit, weapon holstered beneath his jacket… he looked so unbelievably responsible. It was a strange thing to get flustered over, but then everybody had their buttons. Considering the negligent ass who’d fathered her son, Tate guessed that upstandingness was one of hers.

  She gestured him in, the cool, dim interior of the back hall a welcome relief from the morning’s heat.

  “Let me just get my purse.” She started to turn, but Clay whipped his glasses off and shifted to block her path.

  “Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine,” she hedged, feeling uncomfortable under his scrutiny.

  In a gesture that was becoming familiar, he brushed his thumb over her cheek. “These shadows say otherwise.”

  “Another curse of the fair-skinned. And how kind of you to point them out.”

  “Your skin is lovely.” He tapped her nose in a light reprimand. “I’m sorry. Given what happened, I should have realized you’d have a rough night.”