Just Evil

by Vickie McKeehan

  Hearing that, Jake spun around to face him and noticed the expression in his eyes, a weary look that said he’d come as a courtesy and didn’t have to be here. “We’d appreciate that.”

  Holloway stuck his hands in his pockets and started talking. “No surprise, but Collin’s story differs quite a bit from the one I got from the deputy sheriff who took you out to Thousand Oaks. Collin claims Auslo and Taft forced him at gunpoint to help them kidnap Kit. Seems Auslo and Taft learned she’d inherited a lot of money and figured even if she didn’t actually have the money in the bank yet, there was always you, their former employer who was more than a little loaded and good for a pricey ransom. They figured you’d pay anything to get Kit back. The way Collin tells it, Auslo and Taft needed a big score before they left town after the hit and run on Kit, while at the same time they’d get back at you for firing them. So they approach Collin, coerced him into participating.”

  When Jake started to protest, Holloway gave him a stern look. “Let me finish. The story gets better. Collin’s version is that once they got Kit to the warehouse, Collin managed to wrestle the gun away from Auslo, shot him, and then Taft in self-defense. He was wounded in the ensuing gun battle trying to save Kit. And get this, he says he disposed of the weapon by throwing it in the ocean on his way back to Malibu because he panicked and was disoriented from the loss of blood.

  “But that isn’t the best part. And you’re just going to love this. He claims he’s the one that made the phone call from a pay phone to you, telling you where you could find Kit.”

  The story rattled Jake so much he had to sit down on the bed. “I’ve never heard such bullshit in my life. That voice on the phone did not belong to Collin. The voice on the phone had a slight accent, like a brogue. Please don’t tell me you guys believe that fabrication of his and you’re letting him off the hook on the kidnapping charge?”

  “Well now, his story is so full of holes it’s like a sieve, and had it been up to me, I’d have kept him locked up in a cell, but…”

  Jake swore. “He’s out?”

  Holloway checked his watch. “About thirty minutes ago he got a sympathetic judge who set bail at a paltry five grand. He’s probably back at the Enclave now nursing an ugly wound to his shoulder.”

  “Damn it, he should be locked up.”

  Clutching the gold cowboy in her fist, even with a pounding headache, Kit explained, “Collin definitely was not coerced. He was the one in charge, telling Auslo and Taft what to do. It was Collin who told Auslo to give me the shot. And he planned to kill me. He told me so. He told me I was a witness and wouldn’t testify against him, that he wouldn’t spend jail time…”

  She ran out of steam. She held her hand out, palm up, showed Holloway the gold cowboy. “Jake found this in my hand.” She watched as Holloway reached to pick it up, saw the look of disbelief on his face.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t know how it got there. I’m telling you the truth.”

  “I know.” It was said simply and took some of the venom out of Kit’s temper.

  Jake didn’t trust what he was hearing. “You know? Then you believe me about the phone call from the guy with the brogue?”

  “Yeah. But it doesn’t matter a damn what I believe only what I can prove. First of all, I’m starting with those holes in Auslo and Taft and working from there. To me it looks like they came from a high-powered rifle from some distance away, not from a gun battle at close range. But I’ll have to wait for something definitive from the autopsies. Even though I didn’t get to inspect Collin’s bullet wound since he drove himself to the hospital before turning himself in, if what I suspect turns out to be true, I intend to find out what kind of bullet made that hole in his shoulder and to do that I’ll have to interview the doctor who treated him and soon. Right now, I’ve got my work cut out for me. I just wanted to stop by and tell you, Ms. Griffin, there will be a hearing. And I take it you’ll testify against Collin Boyd?”

  “We both will,” Jake said before Kit could answer.

  Holloway nodded. “Good. And don’t worry. We’ll be keeping an eye on Boyd. He may be out on bail, but he’s on our radar now. I don’t intend to lose him.”

  “Does this mean I’m no longer a suspect?”

  Holloway grinned. “That’s the other news. The coroner convinced Max the angle of your mother’s stab wounds had to come from a right-handed person. Just do me a favor, don’t ever pick up anything with your right hand around Max.” He winked and left the room.

  Thirty minutes later, Jake checked Kit out of the hospital. On the drive back to San Madrid, Kit made sure she kept the window rolled down giving her a chance to breathe in the moist night air along the coast. When they got to the city limits, Jake unexpectedly took a detour down a gravel covered driveway, pulling up in front of the Crandall House. He looked over and noticed Kit’s head rested on the back of the seat. Her eyes were closed. It probably wasn’t the best time to do this, but after what happened earlier when he believed he’d lost her, he wasn’t letting another minute slip away.

  As soon as he cut the engine, Kit’s head popped up. It took a minute for her to get her bearings. When she saw where they were, she asked, “What are we doing here?”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Better.”

  “Let’s take a walk then.”

  “I could use the fresh air. With everything that’s happened, I haven’t asked you about the progress you’ve made on the house.”

  They got out of the car. Jake appreciated her graceful stride, her long elegant body, which he planned to take advantage of as soon as he got her home. But in a sense they were already there. They walked up to the wraparound porch, which was no longer dilapidated but rather sported brand new wooden planks.

  The stars glittered overhead, and in the stillness they could hear the waves crashing against the rocks in the distance. Despite the spur-of-the-moment stop, this felt right after all.

  “One of the first things I did when I got back to town was buy this house, knowing it needed a lot of work, but hoping one day, you and I could live here together. Hoping you’d give me a second chance, or a third chance or even a fourth.”

  He took her chin in his hand. “I want to live here with you, Kit. Make a home here, have kids, the whole package.”

  Her throat went dry. She turned to face him, afraid she’d misunderstood. “What are you saying?”

  “I thought I’d lost you tonight. It ripped me in two. I’ve been waiting for you to grow up. I love you, Kit. It took leaving you and missing you for me to realize how much I need you in my life. Marry me. I’m tired of waiting for us to be together. Our time is now.”

  “And all these years I’ve waited for you to come to your senses. I’d say it’s about time.”

  With that, she launched her body into his.

  Other Books by Vickie McKeehan

  The Evil Trilogy

  JUST EVIL

  DEEPER EVIL

  ENDING EVIL

  Pelican Pointe Novels

  PROMISE COVE

  HIDDEN MOON BAY

  DANCING TIDES (fall of 2012)

  Go to the next page for a preview of

  Deeper Evil

  Book Two of the Evil Trilogy

  DEEPER EVIL

  CHAPTER 1

  Sunny Southern California was turning out to be better than he’d originally thought, much better. It was warmer for one, late May with spring still blossoming and coming to life around him.

  Even though the locals kept mentioning something they called May Gray and grumbling about the upcoming June Gloom, he hadn’t really noticed. The days seemed no more overcast than the ones he’d grown up with in his native Ireland.

  But Los Angeles definitely had its advantages. From his little hotel patio he could sit and enjoy the beach as it slowly filled each morning with female bodies slicked with oil, baking in the bright warm sun. Like this morning. He had started his day watching six gorgeously toned women
play a game of beach volleyball wearing, God bless them, tiny little strips of fabric that barely covered tits and ass. Who needed Aruba when he had only to kick back and enjoy those hot bodies mere steps away from his own door?

  He was living in paradise, enjoying the fruits of his labor.

  And he hadn’t felt this invigorated in twenty years.

  Weeks earlier, he’d been burned out, ready for Prozac. But now for the first time in years, thanks to this last mission, he was actually enjoying life. In a way, helping Kit Griffin last night made him feel as if he were making up for all of his mistakes.

  And there were plenty of those. But he wasn’t going to waste time dwelling on them.

  At his age, this might be his last chance to do something positive, make a change, and maybe take that first step towards cutting back on his nicotine and alcohol intake. God knew he loved the ten cigs he allowed himself daily, as well as his late-night measure of Jameson.

  Had the media not labeled him an overnight hero, he might not be thinking about taking better care of himself.

  Amused at his own thoughts as well as the swell to his ego, he did his best to imagine himself as one of the good guys.

  And just couldn’t bring the image into focus. He’d crossed over into the dark too many years ago for that picture to fully take shape.

  Last night, as part of that first step, he’d promised Kit Griffin he’d keep her and her friends safe, a different direction for him to be sure. It wasn’t like him to promise anyone anything. The less involved you got the better. That had been his motto for decades, something he lived by. He made very few promises.

  But those made were always kept.

  In his line of work that might be unheard of. Hit men rarely lived by a code of honor. But then, the few, the proud, hadn’t been trained by Noah Parker.

  As he glanced across the cobbled Main Street towards the Book & Bean, he realized the role of protector might be new. A hero he wasn’t.

  But even now, he knew Baylee Scott was inside the store alone with her baby daughter, working in place of Kit this morning because Kit Griffin was still trying to recover from her kidnapping ordeal from last night.

  From the moment he’d opened his eyes that morning, his instincts had kicked in. He’d learned long ago never to ignore a gut feeling. Something was up. Years of tracking the quarry had him feeling antsy. It was the reason he’d driven up to San Madrid at the crack of dawn, the reason he’d left those hot bodies playing on the sand.

  And even if he happened to be wrong this morning, because he’d seen no signs of the Boyd brothers, there was no way he could walk away now. No, the last couple of weeks had already set the wheels in motion. There was no going back. He’d been prepared to accept the consequences then, whatever they were.

  And he still was. Today was no different. Looking back would get him nowhere.

  He could not have predicted the chain of events the past few weeks would set in motion, nor the rippling effects. Who knew the three Boyd sons would throw down an entirely different kind of challenge, one he wouldn’t be able to walk away from now.

  Add in the fact that he still had a score to settle with Collin Boyd for kidnapping Kit last night and he had all matters of unfinished business with the Boyd clan.

  Collin had a nasty wound to his shoulder. He ought to know, he’d put it there. He intended to finish the job first chance he got just as soon as the bastard came out of hiding. And if he didn’t crawl out from under his rock, he’d go in and dig him out. It was just that simple.

  It was true he still had a few things left on his to do list before he could call it quits in L.A. The remaining law partner for one. At some point, Frank Geller would have to be taken down. It wasn’t fair to let him off the hook, to escape payback when he’d been in on the ground floor of the plan from day one like his sister, Jessica, and her husband Sumner.

  Those two had already paid the ultimate price for their greed. He’d seen to that. In time, so would Frank Geller. But now was not the time to get impatient or careless or tip his hand too early. He might be unaccustomed to this role of guardian, but he intended to do whatever it took to see this thing through to the end.

  The way he saw it, quite a few lives depended on it.

  Standing behind the scarred oak counter inside the Book & Bean, the only coffee shop in San Madrid, the tiny fishing village north of L.A., Baylee Scott put the finishing touches on a latte.

  At just after seven in the morning, she glanced at the line snaking out the door and wondered how many of the customers were there for the coffee and pastries or how many were reporters or curiosity seekers who had watched last night’s newscast and wanted to catch a glimpse of the kidnap victim.

  Baylee shook her head at the idea of people coming to gawk at Kit Griffin, her lifelong friend and owner of the Book & Bean.

  What kind of people did that? she wondered. Because she didn’t recognize most of the people as regulars that alone told her the people in line were more than likely reporters of one sort or another, who had made the trip hoping to get a quote or pick up some glimmer of gossip they could pass on, and sate whatever audience they attracted.

  The whole media circus didn’t sit well with Baylee. Not only did she feel incensed at the intrusion on Kit’s behalf to her friend’s personal life, but she very much feared this entire ordeal would bring to her door a person she’d been trying to evade for more than a year.

  As she steamed milk for another latte, she did her best to calm her nerves and think like practical Kit did. She tried to concentrate on how much extra business these prying parasites might bring in today.

  But it was difficult to tamp down her fear in lieu of how good this would all be for the bottom line.

  Baylee recalled yesterday’s mad house when the media had invaded the little town with their crews and cameras in tow, hoping to edge out the competition to get an exclusive interview with the prime suspect in the Alana Stevens murder. She was sure the police had purposely leaked the fact that Kit had suffered years of physical abuse at the hands of her mother or rather the woman who had merely raised her. That had brought the reporters swarming like vultures over a dead carcass in the road. And once they’d discovered that Kit was involved with Jake Boston, the software mogul who was still the prime suspect in his wife’s slaying two years earlier, the media had played that relationship angle to the hilt.

  Two separate murder cases, two murder suspects linked together as a couple, the press had gone wild, Baylee mused now, as she poured coffee into an oversized mug and plated a couple of cinnamon rolls for the next customer.

  The way the media had portrayed Jake and Kit, one would have thought the two presented the biggest single threat to the greater Los Angeles area since The Hillside Stranglers.

  But as ludicrous as it had seemed yesterday, the store had experienced its most successful day money-wise since opening four years earlier.

  Even though Kit and Jake’s connection to each other had created a firestorm of interest―at least it had for about forty-five minutes, the news of Kit’s kidnapping last night had changed everything.

  Baylee shook her head just thinking how fickle the media could be. She glanced at the wild-eyed, sleep-deprived reporters waiting in line. Some of them looked as though they had been up all night.

  Funny what a difference 24 hours could make, she thought.

  It had taken a kidnapping to put another twist in the story and brought them back full circle to the Book & Bean for Round Two. Today, they seemed to be working the sympathetic angle, convinced Jake and Kit had been wrongly accused. She could laugh now because they certainly hadn’t been convinced yesterday of the couple’s innocence.

  But once they discovered the wealthy Collin Boyd, son of slain murder victims Jessica and Sumner Boyd, had taken Kit hostage, the story had dominated the six o’clock newscast. Then at ten o’clock, those same news reporters had announced her rescue. And that was before anyone had known about the faceless, un
known stranger who had come charging in to an abandoned warehouse in Thousand Oaks where Collin had been holding Kit, and saved the day.

  He’d shot Kit’s captors, including Collin, and then called Jake to come pick her up.

  By the time Jake had arrived, the stranger had already disappeared. Jake had found Kit still unconscious. Luckily by the time she woke up in the hospital, she hadn’t remembered a thing about the kidnapping other than the role Collin had played in the whole thing.

  The fact that Jake had found one of those mysterious gold cowboys that had been left with each of the other victims clutched in the palm of Kit’s hand suggested that the man who had come to her rescue was the same one who had murdered Alana as well as all the others—and now for whatever reason had decided to play hero.

  No one close to Kit felt like complaining.

  Kit was alive, thanks to the stranger and tucked away in her little bungalow along the water’s edge.

  As Baylee waited on yet another customer, she thought the whole thing sounded like the plot from one of her father’s action movies.

  No wonder the media had shown up again, she thought moodily, as she absently wiped down the counter once more before taking another order.

  Looking out over the strange faces in the crowded shop, Baylee thought she recognized some of the same on-air television reporters from yesterday. As more news vans pulled up in front of the store, it was clear they were staking the place out, hoping to find out more about Kit’s mystery savior.

  Even now, they were clamoring to get another story for the noon newscast. It made her stomach burn to think the sharks were circling. They were obviously waiting for Jake and Kit to make an appearance, so they could jockey for a quote on camera no less.

  Well, they’ll be sorely disappointed on that score, thought Baylee, as she expertly worked the espresso machine, mixing together java with steaming milk, working on making the perfect blend. She doubted Jake intended to let Kit out of his sight for days yet.