Cooper Vengeance

by Paula Graves

  Rudy grimaced. “Now the sun’s gone down. God knows what that boar’s gonna do to some poor farmer’s crop tonight runnin’ loose until daylight.” He shot J.D. a pointed look. “I wouldn’t think of breakin’ the law. No matter how stupid it is.” Rudy walked away, grumbling under his breath.

  “Don’t forget—Deputy Massey!” Natalie called after him.

  “Will he call?” J.D. asked as they walked back to the car.

  “I hope so.” She unlocked her car door with the remote on her keychain. “I’ll drop you off at your motel—”

  “You hungry?” he asked.

  She hadn’t even thought about food since her breakfast at Margo’s diner. She was starving, but she answered, “A little.”

  “There’s a place down the road that serves great burgers—”

  “Margo’s,” she guessed. “And if we go there together, by tomorrow, everyone in town will either know we’ve been to Annabelle’s or think we’re having an affair.”

  “Right.” J.D. settled into the seat.

  “There’s a seafood shop near my house on Terrebonne Bay. Amazing shrimp. We could buy a pound, fire up my grill—” By the time her brain caught up with her reckless tongue, J.D. was agreeing to the idea.

  Had she lost her mind?

  “You look like you just swallowed a fly,” J.D. said.

  She laughed nervously.

  “Probably not smart to ask a stranger home,” he added. “If you’re rethinking the invitation, it won’t hurt my feelings.”

  Somehow, his words did more to reassure her about his intentions than any background check would have done. “No. I believe you’re who you say you are.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to have me over for dinner.”

  “You need to eat. I need to eat.” Keeping her voice light, she shrugged, though a part of her still wanted to back out of the offer. But not because she was afraid he was a homicidal maniac.

  She was beginning to find him an entirely different sort of danger. Being around him made her lose all good sense, and she ended up doing things like breaking into motel rooms and asking strange men to her house for dinner.

  What else might J. D. Cooper induce her to do before the night was through?

  TERREBONNE BAY WAS AN inlet off much larger Mobile Bay, fed by the Terrebonne River. Waterfront homes lined up, side by side, for several miles before oak trees draped with wispy Spanish moss took over and the houses became fewer and farther between.

  They became larger and nicer as well, J.D. noted as Natalie’s Lexus wound along the narrow two-lane road, the headlights giving occasional glimpses of the waterfront homes along this stretch of the bay. She finally slowed as they neared a gated driveway leading down toward the water, guiding the nose of the sedan between the river-stone pillars at the opening of the drive.

  He’d known she came from a prosperous family, but the sprawling clapboard cottage at the edge of the bay was a serious money kind of place. There was nothing ostentatious about it; though the house was large, it gave the appearance of modesty and casual charm. But J.D. had seen enough high-end lake homes to know what pricey real estate looked like.

  “My uncle used to live here,” Natalie said as she parked under the house between the stilt-like piles that held the main house several feet off the ground. “My mother’s brother. He died a few years ago and left it to me. Dad wanted me to sell it and buy a place in Mobile. That was back when he thought I was going to work for the company.”

  “You dad is an oilman, right?”

  “Bayside Oil,” she said with a nod. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people who think oil is evil or anything. But the business just wasn’t for me.”

  “Why the sheriff’s department?”

  “Why the Navy?”

  He smiled, though he felt a bittersweet tinge of regret as well. “I wanted to serve my country.”

  “And I wanted to serve the people of this town.” She unlocked the trunk of her car, where they’d stashed a cooler full of seafood. He carried the cooler, following her lead up the stairs to the cottage’s front door. Inside, the cottage was simply appointed, the furniture spare but good quality. A long brown-leather sofa and several comfortable-looking chairs framed a low pine coffee table in the living area, where one wall consisted entirely of floor-to-ceiling windows that J.D. guessed would offer an amazing view of Terrebonne Bay during daylight hours.

  “Those French doors lead to the deck. The grill’s out there.” Natalie took the cooler from him. “I’ll get things prepared while you get the grill fired up. Everything you need is in the storage cabinet outside. And be sure to light the citronella candles or the mosquitoes will eat you alive.”

  J.D. headed through the French doors and found himself on a large redwood deck that wrapped around the entire back of the house. It was twice the size of the deck on his parents’ lake house, and he’d always considered that deck to be enormous. At one end, a built-in grill island spanned almost seven feet of the deck. The storage cabinet Natalie had referred to was not the typical resin box he’d been expecting but a stainless-steel cabinet built into the grill island.

  J.D. had to tamp down a giddy grin. Bloody grill heaven, and he got to wield the tongs.

  By the time the door to the deck opened behind him, the citronella candles perched on the deck railing were giving off a flickering golden glow, the grill was fired up and ready to go and J.D. was playing around with the grill island settings to see what they did.

  “Nice toy, huh?” Natalie’s amused drawl drew his gaze away from the grill. She’d changed clothes, losing the lightweight business suit for something soft and filmy. The blue halter-cut blouse showed off creamy shoulders and a tantalizing hint of firm, round breasts where the V-neck dipped in the front. She’d let her hair down from its usual neat ponytail to fall in cinnamon waves around her face, softening its sharper angles.

  He forgot all about the grill.

  She was wheeling a small serving cart behind her, filled with trays of shrimp and raw vegetables. “This look like enough?”

  He nodded, turning back to the grill. A breeze blew in off the bay, stirring his hair and cooling his heated cheeks. Don’t think of her as a woman. It complicates everything.

  “Have I said something wrong?”

  He turned, finding her looking soft and pretty, lit by the moonlight and the candles circling the deck. He wanted to kiss away the little frown line between her eyes and tell her everything was perfect. But the fact that he wanted to do either of those things scared the hell out of him.

  “If you don’t want to be here—”

  He touched her before his brain could kick in and stop him. It was nothing out of bounds, a light brush of his fingers against the curve of her shoulder, but the air between them instantly crackled with energy. “I want to be here,” he answered, his voice coming out in a hoarse growl.

  “Too much?” she whispered, her green eyes gentle.

  He dropped his hand away, guilt gripping him in a bitter vise. “I guess I wasn’t ready for this.” He turned away again, focusing on the lights sparkling across the waters of the bay.

  “You’ve been faithful to your wife all these years?”

  “Not physically, no.” He met her gaze. “But I loved her. I still do.”

  Her frown deepened. “I’m sure you always will. But that doesn’t mean you can’t move forward.”

  His lips curved, but he wasn’t feeling much humor. “I know that. Academically, anyway. My mother’s constantly worrying about me. She keeps saying Brenda wouldn’t want me to build a shrine to her. She’d want me to be happy again. And it’s true. Brenda would be horrified to see me now.”

  “But you can’t stop.”

  He released a harsh sigh. “Not until the bastard who killed her—who killed all those women—is dead or locked away where he can’t ever kill again. Then maybe I can have a life again.”

  “So, let’s find him.”

  He made
himself look at her again. The softness he’d seen in her before was gone, replaced by a steely gaze and a jaw so squared and determined that he was half convinced it had been chiseled from granite. “You have your own murder to solve. Or are you agreeing they’re one and the same?”

  “I’m saying it’s an angle worth pursuing.” The curl of her lips carved a dimple in one of her lean cheeks. “Get the shrimp on. I’ll be right back.” She disappeared into the house.

  When she came back out a few minutes later, she’d changed clothes again, wearing a faded, oversized University of Alabama T-shirt and a pair of baggy sweat pants. Her hair was tucked under a BayBears cap, and her face was makeup free.

  He still wanted to kiss her. But he appreciated her effort.

  Dinner turned out to be more comfortable than he’d expected. The good food and the gorgeous bay view went a long way toward lightening his mood, and Natalie turned out to be a charming dinner companion. Dinner and their relaxed conversation seemed to chisel down the harder edges of her personality, exposing a bright woman full of quirky humor and insightful observations.

  His cell phone rang around ten, a shocking intrusion on the calm scene. He checked the screen and saw his brother Gabe’s number. “I have to get this.”

  Natalie picked up their plates and took them into the kitchen, giving him privacy.

  “Hey, Gabe, what’s up?”

  Without preamble, Gabe said, “Marlon Dyson is dead.”

  Chapter Six

  “You don’t buy the suicide angle.” Natalie broke the tense silence that had fallen between them since they began the drive back to J.D.’s motel room. The call from his brother had ended any thoughts of a longer evening together, which was probably for the best, since neither of them needed any more complications in their lives at the moment.

  But as they neared the Bay View Inn, Natalie wished for a moment that they were back on her deck, sipping coffee and relaxing, with nothing more pressing to think about than how soon the citronella candles would flicker out and leave them at the mercy of the mosquitoes.

  “I don’t know,” J.D. answered. “He knew we didn’t have anything on him except the attempted murder of Alicia. He had no priors, he was young and educated—he had to know he had a good chance at a light sentence. No way he drinks poison on purpose.”

  “It sounds suspicious,” she conceded. “But you really think the alpha killer arranged his murder in jail? How could he have that sort of reach?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just know he likes to tie up his loose ends. I think that’s why he had Dyson kill Victor last month. At least, I’m pretty sure Dyson did it.”

  “If you’re right, the alpha killer let Logan live for how long—four years?”

  J.D. nodded.

  “Why kill him after four years? Clearly, he hadn’t spilled any information about the alpha in that time.”

  “Last month, Victor spotted my brother Jake’s wife, Mariah, on a television newscast after a bad tornado hit Buckley, Mississippi. He knew Mariah from before—he’d been sort of her mentor. Gave her a place to stay, turned her into his own private student—Logan saw himself as an intellectual. Self-taught, but Mariah says he really did have an insatiable thirst for learning. Anyway, he went after her and Jake. I guess it made him seem too dangerous to keep around.”

  The lights of the motel gleamed down the road ahead, and Natalie felt a twinge of regret that the evening was about to be officially over. She parked next to his truck in front of the room and walked him to the door, noticing that the neon glow of the motel’s marquee at the front didn’t seem to carry all the way here to the far end of the motel. This end of the structure seemed to wallow in darkness, giving the old building an almost sinister appearance. Natalie was relieved when J.D. unlocked the door to his room and reached inside to flick on the light.

  He stuck his head inside, took a quick scan of the place, then turned to look at her. “Thanks for dinner. I think I’m in love with your grill.”

  She laughed. “I could tell your intentions toward it weren’t entirely honorable.”

  “I wish—” He stopped, as if he had reconsidered his words, and she figured he’d just stop there. But he squared his shoulders and looked her dead in the eye, his gaze so intense she felt it as surely as if he’d touched her. “I wish Brenda hadn’t been murdered. If she had to die, I wish it had been something else. Something quick and painless for her. Something we could grieve and move on from.”

  In her chest, her heart gave a little squeeze. “But you can’t. I do understand.”

  “Maybe you do.” He cupped her cheek for a moment in his big, work-roughened hand. The touch was light and undemanding, but she seemed to feel it all the way to her marrow.

  He dropped his hand away, leaving her feeling oddly bereft. “I meant my offer earlier. We should work your sister’s case together. We did pretty well tonight, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah, we did.” She wondered if Rudy Lawler was really going to call Doyle Massey to tell him about hearing the voices outside the restaurant the night Carrie died. Roy Tatum had picked a terrible time to put her on administrative leave. She couldn’t even call Massey to check up on Rudy without risking a bad reaction from the sheriff. “I should go.”

  He took a step back. “Be careful.”

  She nodded. “I have a Glock in the car.”

  His lips curved. “You’re just trying to get me hot and bothered now, aren’t you?”

  She laughed. “Well, that, and I really do have a Glock in the car.” She lifted her hand in farewell and headed across the lot to her car. She took a quick glance behind her and saw that J.D. had already closed the door and gone inside.

  She sighed, pulling her keys from the pocket of her jeans as she neared the Lexus, stopping as she heard the sound of a car approaching. Turning her head to spot the vehicle, she froze as she saw a dark sedan bearing down on her, its lights extinguished. But even in the low light of the parking lot, she couldn’t miss the glint of moonlight on the barrel of a pistol.

  She propelled herself backward, with no idea what lay behind her, and scrambled for cover behind the nearest vehicle, a low-slung black sedan. She heard four thuds shake the car, though the expected cracks of gunfire didn’t come, only flat, blatting noises. Sound suppressor, she thought, her mind whirling madly.

  She heard the car slow into the turn at the end of the parking lot, its brakes shrieking.

  Natalie scrambled backward crab-style, her palms scraping on the asphalt. She heard a door open behind her, and a couple of seconds later, strong arms wrapped around her, pulling her to her feet. She looked up to find J.D. gazing down at her, his eyes wide with alarm as they looked her over for signs of injury.

  “What the hell just happened?” he asked.

  She spotted other guests peeking out the doors of their motel rooms, drawn by the noise of the squealing brakes. She lowered her voice so that only J.D. could hear her. “Someone tried to shoot me,” she breathed.

  His gaze snapped up toward the end of the parking lot, where the darkened sedan had already disappeared down the highway. “Here in the parking lot?” He kept his voice equally low. “I didn’t hear any shots.”

  “Sound suppressor,” she replied. “I couldn’t get a good look—they drove with no headlights.”

  He uttered a quick, guttural epithet. “I didn’t get a look at the car. Did you?”

  “I was more focused on the gun bearing down on me.” She shook her head. “I think it was a Mercury. No idea of the model. Might have been black, might have been dark blue or dark green—hard to tell.” She peered up at the street lamp that should have illuminated this part of the parking lot. The light was out, which explained the darkness in this section of the motel lot.

  “Was that light out last night?” she asked.

  He followed her gaze. “Yeah. I noticed it last night.”

  “Okay.”

  “You think maybe someone put it out on purpose?” He p
ut his arm around her and led her into his room, closing the door.

  She wasn’t sure what she thought. Her heart still stuttered like a snare drum, and her head ached from the tense set of her muscles. “All I know is that it wasn’t random. The shooter didn’t fire until the car got right up on me.”

  He settled her on the side of the bed and sat next to her, his hand warm between her shoulders. “We need to report this.”

  She winced at the thought of her colleagues coming out on this call. But she couldn’t just ignore an attempt on her life.

  J.D. made the call while she examined her injuries. The heels of her hands had taken the brunt of the damage, raw, red scrapes marring the skin from her thumb to the outside edge of her hand. In the bathroom, she washed the asphalt grit and grime out of the scrapes, wincing as the soapy water stung like fire.

  “Ouch,” J.D. murmured from the doorway, making her jump.

  She smiled sheepishly. “Don’t suppose you have a first-aid kit lying around?”

  “Matter of fact, I do.” He handed her a clean towel to dry her hands and went back into the bedroom area. He dug in his suitcase until he emerged with a soft-sided first-aid bag. With a quick unzip, he spread the array of ointments, bandages and medicines on the bed. “Sit and I’ll do it for you.”

  He held out his hand, palm up, and she gingerly laid the back of her hand in his, no longer surprised by the slight tingle in her flesh where their skin touched. She cleared her throat and tried to ignore the thrumming sensation building in her arms and legs. “What did you tell the dispatcher when you called 911?”

  “I told her nobody was hurt, but there had been a drive-by shooting and we needed to report it and give a statement. She said she’d have an investigator out here as soon as she could.”

  “Are we sure nobody else is hurt?” She winced again as he wiped an antiseptic pad over her scrapes.

  “Sorry,” he murmured. “I saw the people on either side of me looking outside to see what the noise was about. I didn’t see anyone who looked hurt. How many shots were there?