Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle

by Lisa Jackson

  He grabbed his things and glanced again at his new home, if you could call it that. The ramshackle cottage was a far cry from his last house, an Italianate two-story manor whose exterior still boasted its original cast-iron grillwork and wide porticos cooled by slow-turning ceiling fans and shaded by centuries-old live oaks. The interior had been renovated to its original charm with gleaming hardwood and marble floors, smooth granite and marble countertops, shiny white baseboards and doors, built-in pine and glass bookcases in the library, and a wrought-iron and wooden staircase that swept from the grand foyer to the library and bedrooms located above. Outside, behind thickets of crepe myrtle hedges, cut into the smooth stones of the backyard, was a lap pool that he used each morning before the sun had come up, before he drove his Jaguar into the private parking lot of the offices of O’Black, Sullivan and Kravitz, Attorneys at Law.

  What was it his pa had said not long before he’d taken off? “The higher they climb, the harder they fall.” His old man had been a bastard, a part-time preacher, part-time grifter, and full-time loser, but he’d left his only son with a dog-eared Bible and a few pearls of wisdom.

  Maybe old Isaac Dennis had been right. Cole certainly had experienced his own personal tumble. Nearly to hell. This pathetic little cottage only served to remind him of that.

  As if reading his thoughts, Deeds said, “It was the best I could do.”

  “This place is just my style,” Cole lied, managing the kind of conspiratorial smile he’d been known to flash a jury when cross-examining a witness and closing in for the kill. He’d never looked smug or self-righteous, just not surprised when the prosecution’s star witness was led down the garden path, trapped into admitting things he or she had tried to hide.

  “Give me a break,” Deeds said. “Think of it as temporary.”

  “Now you give me a break.” He and Deeds both knew that not only his credit but his reputation had been destroyed in the past quarter of a year. His once-sizable bank account had withered to a few thousand bucks. His house, Jaguar, and job had disappeared. But he was still good with his hands, able to fix about anything broken, so Deeds had somehow convinced the owner of this shack to rent to him despite his current lack of employment.

  “I need a job.” Cole rubbed a hand around the back of his neck. Jesus, he hated asking for anything from anyone.

  “We’re working on that.”

  By “we,” Deeds meant the partners at the law firm, where Cole had once been their brightest star. Now his license to practice law had been suspended and was currently “under review.”

  “You can still clerk at the firm.”

  Cole nodded. He’d swallow his pride if it meant getting a paycheck, but it still stuck in his craw that the very interns and law students he’d mentored would now be higher on the food chain than he’d be. Well, so be it. He’d been in tight spots before and had always landed on his feet.

  He’d do it again.

  Besides, he had a plan. One he couldn’t tell Deeds about. A plan that was his personal secret.

  A gust of wind swept down the street, trailing after a rumbling, converted bus spewing exhaust. The driver ground the gears as he reached the intersection, and somewhere, a few houses down, a dog barked. Lights began to glow in some of the neighboring windows though night was still far off. A few kids played on skateboards and bikes, and rap music blared from a beat-up garage two doors down, where a couple of twenty-something men were working on the engine of an older Pontiac.

  “I had a moving company put your stuff inside. Still in boxes, I’m afraid.” Deeds handed him a small ring with two keys, one for the house, the other for the Jeep.

  Cole managed another wry smile. “It’s not as if I don’t have some time on my hands.”

  Deeds snorted. It was almost a laugh. Almost. “So, I’ll be talkin’ to ya.”

  “Yeah.” Cole stuck out his hand. “Thanks, Sam.”

  Deeds grabbed Cole’s palm. Squeezed hard. “Stay out of trouble.”

  “I will.”

  “I mean it.” Deeds didn’t let go of Cole’s hand. “And for God’s sake, don’t go looking up Eve or anyone associated with Roy’s death, okay? It’s a closed chapter.”

  “Of course it is,” he said, forcing conviction into his tone as Deeds finally dropped his hand. He had to play this carefully. No one could suspect what he intended to do.

  Deeds’s eyes narrowed as if he weren’t buying Cole’s new attitude. Thin lines of frustration were etched on the lawyer’s high forehead. “Just so we’re on the same page. Whoever killed Kajak has either left the vicinity or is laying low.”

  “Or is dead.”

  Deeds held up a hand, silently warning Cole not to say anything else. “Maybe. Doesn’t matter. You keep your nose clean. You and I both know that you’re not the New Orleans PD’s favorite son, so don’t give them anything to work with. We’ve still got that small charge to deal with.”

  Cole’s jaw tightened when he thought about the misdemeanor that was still smudging his record. “I was set up,” he muttered through lips that didn’t move. “I haven’t smoked dope since I was an under-grad.”

  “Even if I believe you, the weed was found in your glove box while you were out on bail.”

  The muscles in Cole’s jaw tightened even more, and his fingers were clenched so tightly over the handle of his briefcase that he knew his knuckles had blanched. “Someone yanked the taillight fuse of my Jag to make certain I’d be pulled over. When I reached for my registration, the bag of marijuana fell out. If the stuff was mine, would I have been so stupid? So careless?”

  “Hey, you don’t have to convince me. But I still have to clean it up. Get it off your record.”

  Cole swore under his breath.

  Deeds touched him on the arm. “So the pot wasn’t yours. So someone set you up. Okay. I believe you. But you’re the one who broke bail. You knew the terms, that you weren’t supposed to talk to anyone involved in the case, and you couldn’t help yourself.”

  Cole couldn’t argue that one. He’d tried to contact Eve and had paid the price.

  “Stay away from her, man,” Deeds advised, lowering his voice as if the kid jumping the curb on his skateboard could hear or care about their conversation. “She’s bad news.” Deeds’s cell phone rang, and he slipped it out of the clip on his belt. “Deeds.” A pause. “Oh hell…Look, I’m on my way.” He checked his watch, mouthed, “I’ve got to go,” and when Cole nodded, he sketched a wave, folded himself into his BMW, found his earbud, and switched to the hands-free mode of his cell as he turned the ignition.

  As the sleek car roared away from the curb, Cole headed inside, but he knew he wasn’t going to take Deeds’s advice. One of his first acts as a free man would be to confront Eve.

  Hang the consequences.

  She had to keep moving.

  Couldn’t waste time.

  Eve headed to the cash register, pulling out bills. She didn’t want to think about her father’s culpability or innocence or anything else about the trial. It was all water under the bridge, and the fact that she’d wondered if Roy Kajak’s reference to “evidence” had something to do with Tracy Aliota’s death was just her own way of admitting she didn’t completely trust the father she’d thought she loved.

  She finished paying her bill and walked outside to a day that was even gloomier than before. Purple clouds scraped the tops of the spindly pines in the perimeter of the lot. Raindrops pounded and splashed on the cracked asphalt, forcing Eve to make a mad dash to her car.

  Samson howled in his cage, and as she shushed him she spied water on the passenger seat. Swearing under her breath, she grabbed the towel she kept in the car for just such emergencies. In the past few weeks the window had begun to slip a bit, refusing to seal. Kyle had looked at it a couple of times but hadn’t been able to repair the damned thing. She mopped up the small puddle then leaned across the bucket seat, pressed on the button to raise the window, and heard the electric motor whine to no avail.
The glass didn’t budge. She’d just have to live with it and call a mechanic once she got home.

  If she ever made it.

  Her headache had dulled, the edges softening, and she wasn’t going to let something as inconsequential as the broken window bother her. She could even put up with Samson’s now-intermittent mewling.

  She drove out of the lot and onto a side street before locating the ramp to the freeway again. Nosing her Toyota into the flow of traffic heading toward the gulf, she tried to relax. So Cole was a free man. So what? She wondered if he would return to New Orleans. Her sister-in-law was right about one thing: it was damned ironic that he had regained his freedom on the very day she decided to take the reins of her life again.

  Fate?

  Coincidence?

  Or just bad luck?

  Not that it mattered.

  Because she wanted to see him again. Intended to face the bastard.

  She had a hell of a lot of questions for him.

  Within a few miles, the rain let up then stopped completely. Her wipers were suddenly scraping and screeching against the glass, and sunlight, so long filtered by the clouds, bounced off the pavement in bright, blinding shafts. Maybe things were getting better. Even the cat had stopped crying. Eve switched off the wipers just as her cell phone jangled. With one eye on the road, she pulled the phone from a side pocket of her purse and flipped it open.

  She put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

  “He’s free,” a raspy voice hissed.

  “Excuse me?”

  The phone went instantly dead.

  “Hello…?”

  A tingle of fear plucked at her spine.

  She wanted to think that someone had dialed her incorrectly, that the call had been a mistake, but she knew differently. The message was meant for her, to tell her that Cole had been released from prison.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” she muttered, scowling as she tried to read the display on the small screen. Caller ID failed her: Unknown Number was all she learned for her efforts.

  She dropped the phone into the pocket of her purse again and fought a tiny drip of panic. So some idiot had called to…what? Inform her? Warn her? Scare her? So what?

  It was no big deal.

  Then why did whoever called hang up?

  Why not finish the conversation?

  The gravelly, almost hissing timbre of the voice in those two small words, He’s free, caused latent goose bumps to rise on her forearms.

  She glanced in the rearview mirror and felt the spit dry in her mouth. A dark pickup was following her. Surely it wasn’t the same shadowy truck she’d seen in the parking lot of the restaurant nearly an hour before? The one with tinted windows where a man had been smoking…?

  Don’t go there, Eve. Don’t panic. You, of all people, know how dangerous that can be.

  But her heart rate jumped and her palms began to sweat.

  Don’t do this…. It was nothing. NOTHING! A phone call. Nothing more.

  Her gaze flicked to the rearview mirror. Had the pickup closed the gap? Was he hanging on her bumper? She knew all about incidents where someone would intentionally rear-end a victim on the pretense of an accident, but when the victim pulled over, the assailant would get the upper hand, pull a gun or a knife or…

  Her heart was pounding crazily now.

  She stepped on the accelerator and switched lanes, speeding past an eighteen-wheeler carrying gasoline. The pickup followed, and her heart thumped even more wildly, and she considered calling 911.

  Get a grip, she told herself. The guy’s just passing the semi. It happens all the time.

  She was breathing shallowly again, and the cat, damn the cat, as if he were infected with her own fear, started yowling again. She checked the mirror as she shot past a minivan and two cars, the needle of her speedometer twenty miles over the speed limit. Fine. Let her get a ticket. Be pulled over by the police. That would solve the problem!

  But as she flew past the last vehicle, the dark truck she’d thought was so malevolent lagged far behind, soon disappearing from view.

  He hadn’t been following her.

  It probably wasn’t even the same truck that she’d seen at the rest stop.

  She’d overreacted.

  Again.

  “No reason to borrow trouble,” she told herself, remembering one of her grandmother’s favorite phrases: Why borrow what you know is already coming your way? “Oh Nana,” she whispered, instantly missing the woman who had helped raise her once her mother had died fifteen years earlier.

  Her sudden anxiety attack melted away, and she slowly let out her breath. For the next fifteen minutes she tried to concentrate on the radio, talking nonsense to the cat, obsessively checking her rearview mirror every few seconds. The menacing dark truck failed to reappear.

  Maybe Anna Maria was right. She was still far from a hundred percent of being herself. Then again, would she ever be the woman she was before she’d been shot?

  Of course not.

  No one could ever be.

  Not when she knew that the man she loved, the man she had trusted above all others, had tried to kill her.

  His breath came in short gasps.

  His heart was thundering so loudly that the freeway noise, usually crushing, couldn’t be heard. He snapped the stolen cell phone shut and licked his lips. Though he stared straight ahead, driving by instinct, his mind was full of her, recalling, relishing the sound of her voice as she’d answered.

  Hello.

  Innocent.

  Trusting.

  One little word, and it caused so many emotions to roil deep within him. His fingers gripped the steering wheel more tightly, and he smiled. A tingle swept through his blood, causing his groin to tighten just as the sunlight broke through the clouds. He stepped on the accelerator. The truck nosed up a small rise. Through the bug-spattered windshield, he spied her car again as she switched lanes, the Camry half a mile ahead, gliding easily around another eighteen-wheeler.

  His heart thumped in his chest.

  Behind his sunglasses, his eyes squinted as if he could focus sharply enough to see her. His fingers stretched over the steering wheel.

  Come on, baby. One glimpse…that’s all I want.

  Then her car disappeared around a long, sweeping curve. But he knew she was close, could feel her. He knew where she was going, but he couldn’t let her get too far ahead, out of sight, just in case she took a detour.

  No, he had to remain within view.

  Without checking his mirrors, he floored the pickup and sped around an ancient Mercedes burning too much oil, black smoke pluming from the exhaust pipes.

  More speed!

  He was losing her!

  He pushed down on the gas. His truck roared past a newer Ford Focus with heavy-metal music throbbing loud enough that he could feel the thrum of the bass through his closed windows.

  Still his eyes remained straight ahead, his gaze focused on the little red Toyota with Eve at the wheel.

  He’d blown it the first time at the cabin.

  She’d lived.

  He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

  CHAPTER 4

  Eve couldn’t make it all the way to New Orleans. The needle on the gas gauge was hovering near empty, while her bladder was stretched to full. With less than eighty miles to the city, she was resigned that she’d have to stop, so she pulled into a gas station/mini-mart that shared a parking lot with a coffee hut. Across a small access road was a McDonald’s where cars and trucks were stacking up at the drive-up window and vying for spots near the doors.

  Eve eased her car to a pump and waited for the minivan in front of her to drive off. Finally she filled her tank, pulled around to a parking spot, took Samson out of his cage for a couple of strokes of his long fur, then offered him water from her bottle. He clung to her like crazy, rubbed the top of his head against her chin as she told him what a good boy he was. He meowed pitifully when she returned him to the crate. “Just a litt
le longer,” she promised, leaving him in the car and wending her way through the vehicles parked in front of the market. The convenience store was doing a banner business. Inside, there were people standing in line to buy their gas, sodas, nachos, cigarettes, and beer. At the restroom she waited for nearly five minutes before it was her turn. After using the facilities and washing, she eyed her reflection in the small mirror, scowled, but didn’t bother to repair the damage. Who cared that her hair was a mess and her lipstick had faded hours earlier? She walked out of the restroom and through the crowded little store, where she grabbed a pack of M& Ms, a small container of aspirin, and a bottle of Dr. Pepper.

  As she waited in line, she noticed a mirror mounted high overhead. Convex, the reflective glass gave the cashier a distorted but panoramic view of the interior of the market. In the reflection she saw several customers searching through the shelves, eyeing products, selecting their purchases, but one man was standing alone, not shopping, just looking at the entrance of the store through dark wraparound sunglasses…or…was he looking at her?

  Don’t be silly, she told herself and glanced over her shoulder. She couldn’t see past the products stacked on the highest shelf and told herself she was imagining things. No one was lurking, ogling her behind the rolls of paper towels and boxes of cold cereal, for God’s sake!

  No—this was all in her head. She’d been edgy ever since she’d gotten that weird phone call.

  “Get over it,” she muttered to herself. Then, when the girl behind the counter peered at her oddly, Eve offered an embarrassed smile and quickly paid for her purchases and tank of unleaded.

  Outside, beyond the overhang covering the gas pumps, the clouds had lifted to a high, thin haze that was rapidly burning off. The sun hung low in the sky, promising darkness within the hour, but for now it was bright enough to be bothersome, reflecting harshly against glass and metal, creating tiny rainbows on the oil swimming on the surface of puddles caught in the uneven asphalt.