Rewarded
Page 9
“Is this the part where we hug?”
“Shut up, asswipe.”
But he laughed, and Taylor couldn’t help but be a little cheered as he pulled out of the parking lot.
Maybe this day would take a turn for the better after all.
* * *
Max is dead! Oh, God.
Cara Evans pulled the baseball cap low on her head and watched the activity from her hiding place in the park across the street from the Sugarland Motel. Angrily, she swiped away the tears that refused to quit falling. Just as she’d done for the past four goddamned years.
Max had come to town, looking for Cara. Then he’d phoned, urging her in a hushed voice to meet him at the motel. Why had he come to her? Especially now, after all this time? Who killed him, and why? His visit could be related to her sister’s murder. Or their father’s estate. Any number of things. But the answers to those questions had died with Max in that awful room.
One thing for sure—the murdering asshole would pay for snuffing out the life of a good man. The only person she had still counted as a friend in the entire, sorry world. Leaning her head against the rough bark of the tree, she gave up and let the tears flow. For several long moments she allowed herself to grieve, barely aware of the sounds of activity across the street. Gradually, however, she gained a measure of control. Her fingers tightened around a solid object she’d forgotten about.
Max’s iPhone.
She’d be in a fuckton of trouble if and when the cops thought to track its whereabouts. It would be hard to explain her presence in Max’s room and why she’d lifted the device. Harder still to convince them she hadn’t killed him, that he was dead when she arrived. But she planned to get rid of the phone. As soon as she took a peek to try to determine why he had wanted to see her so badly. Why he had possibly died for it.
Voices across the motel’s parking lot snared her attention. Peering around the tree, she saw two men in plain clothes emerge from the room. Detectives, from the glint of the shields hooked to their belts at the waist. She’d been too stricken with panic and raw grief to pay attention when they had arrived, so she studied them now.
Both were tall, but the brown-haired one was taller and leaner than the other. The man who was presumably his partner was maybe an inch or two shorter, and more muscular. Golden blond hair just covered his ears, layered in a loose, casual style with some wisps of bangs falling into what looked from here to be quite a handsome face—
Recognition hit her like a baseball bat to the head, and though she’d half-expected him to show up, she felt sick. If not for the tree, she would have tumbled to the ground.
Taylor Kayne. Untouchable. Man’s man. Lauded hero.
“Fucking lying murderer,” she whispered, rage welling in her chest. Despair, rotten and black, clogged her throat.
Once again, Kayne was smack in the middle of the hell that was her life. That suited her fine, though. Because the bastard probably didn’t know Cara had come to Sugarland, or even have a clue who she was in the first place. He sure as hell didn’t know he was the reason she was here. Or that she knew where he worked, lived, ate, shopped, jogged.
But he would find out, soon. She was biding her time, waiting for the perfect moment. Then she’d spring her trap. Force him to spill every last filthy secret that should have corroded his guts by now.
Detective Taylor Kayne was going to confess to murdering her sister.
And then Cara would exact sweet, long-awaited revenge.
National best-selling author Jo Davis is the author of the Sugarland Blue series of contemporary romances, the popular Firefighters of Station Five series and, as J. D. Tyler, the sexy paranormal series Alpha Pack. Primal Law, the first book in that series, is the winner of the National Reader’s Choice Award in Paranormal. She has also been a multiple finalist in the Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence, a finalist for the Booksellers’ Best Award, has captured the HOLT Medallion Award of Merit, and has been a two-time nominee for the Australian Romance Readers Award in romantic suspense. She’s had one book optioned for a major motion picture.
Visit the author online:
www.jodavis.net