by Liliana Hart
I would’ve laughed, but I could see how the assumption could be made. Jack oozed alpha sex appeal. It was just part of his makeup.
Vaughn was dressed for work in summer linen pants and a pressed white button-down shirt that was open at the collar. He skimmed just over six feet, but he had the kind of posture that made him seem taller, probably from years of playing the piano. He had black hair and a goatee, and his nails were clean and well-manicured. His shoes cost more than everything in my closet combined.
Much like Jack, Vaughn came from a long line of tobacco farmers, though Vaughn’s father hadn’t had the golden touch like John Lawson. And then Mr. Raines had had a heart attack in the middle of his fields and died, leaving the family rich in heritage but destitute in cash.
Vaughn had been a semester away from graduating college, but he’d packed up and come home to take care of things. He’d swallowed his pride and taken a loan from Jack’s father, liquidated items in the house and barns before the bank foreclosed on them, paid off creditors, and moved his mother into a small home in a retirement community that she constantly complained about.
Vaughn’s passion was antiquities, and he had an eye for quality. But he knew selling antiques in the warehouse he’d bought at auction wouldn’t provide for stable living. He figured the thing people cared about the most in life was themselves, so in the other half of the warehouse he’d opened up a health and vitamin supercenter. It was the only one in King George County and Vaughn had quickly become a success.
Next to Jack, Vaughn was my best friend in the world. A few months back, his lover had been brutally murdered and he was still grieving the loss. But I was starting to see glimpses of the man he’d been before the tragedy. There was still a shadow in his eyes that I wasn’t sure time would ever heal. I couldn’t imagine living in a world without Jack. That kind of love was rare. And I hated that Vaughn would have that missing piece for the rest of his life.
He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to open the store soon.”
“Sure you don’t want to get breakfast?” I asked.
“No, some of us don’t keep mortician’s hours.”
“Death is down this month,” I said, shrugging. “It’ll pick back up at the end of July and August. The heat wipes out a lot of seniors.”
“That’s fascinating and horrible,” he said, staring at me in shock. “But mostly horrible. You’re much too casual about death.”
“Never,” I said. “But it’s something I’ve learned to accept. Something that happens to everyone. And there’s rarely dignity in death. It’s my job to give it back to them. But if I don’t keep a sense of humor, I’ll go crazy.”
I opened the pantry and grabbed a box of Pop Tarts. “Who do you think she is?” I asked, changing the subject. Even when I was at my most awake, I didn’t like to dwell too much in the seriousness of death. It was too easy to get lost in the darkness and not find the way back out.
“What?” he asked. “Who?”
I raised my brows and pointed to the laptop. “The woman, of course. Who do you think she is?”
“I haven’t given it much thought,” he said, looking into his coffee.
“Liar.” I pulled the barstool close to him and took a seat. “You’ve come here every Thursday for the past five months so we can read the salacious gossip of people we’ve known our whole lives, and you’re telling me you haven’t thought of it? I call bullhockies.”
“Bullhockies?”
“I’m out of quarters,” I said, shrugging. “I’ll have to stop by the bank later for emergencies.”
The corner of Vaughn’s mouth twitched. “That’s pathetic. Maybe you need to bump it up to a dollar. I’m sure you’ll stop swearing in no time.”
“Maybe you need to mind your own beeswax,” I said, eyes narrowed.
He barked out a laugh at that.
“You mark my words,” I said. “This woman is asking for trouble. How long do you think she can really keep her identity a secret? I guarantee you and I both know her. She might even live in Bloody Mary. No one has secrets in Bloody Mary.”
I opened the shiny packaging of the Pop Tart and bit into it cold while Vaughn stared at me in horror.
“I can’t believe you’re putting that into your body,” he said. “The preservatives alone…”
“I figure I have to keep eating preservatives at this point,” I said. “If I start introducing good stuff into my body, it’ll probably go into shock and I’ll die. Then you’ll all be very sad, and all those women will eat Jack alive the second they find out he’s single again. He’ll have to put himself into Witness Protection.”
“First of all, that’s ridiculous. Jack would never let himself be eaten alive.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I like how you didn’t agree with me about being sad because I’m dead.”
He ignored me. “And second of all, how are you a doctor? That’s the most insane logic I’ve ever heard. I hope that’s not the kind of advice you’d give patients.”
“All of my patients are dead,” I said. “They’re great listeners, but don’t really take my advice all that often. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll eat it after you’ve gone so you don’t have to worry.”
“Are you taking those fruit and veggie pills from the store I brought you?” he asked.
“Every day,” I lied. “I’m healthy as a horse. Promise.”
“Good,” he said. “Now if I can just keep the two of you out of the back seats of cars in the middle of the night, I’ll feel as if I’ve succeeded as a parent.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be so judgmental. It could be you who shows up in next week’s edition. None of us are safe. We need to find out who this woman is. It’d be a service to the community.”
“As it happens,” he said, “I agree with you. We should make a list of everyone she’s ever outed. We could find out their address and put pins in a map, and then see where the central location is.”
I raised my brows in surprise. “I feel like you’ve given this a lot of thought, Nancy Drew. Are you sure you need me?”
“Of course,” he said, slapping me on the back. “Jack has that big map of the county in his office and unlimited police resources. I bet we’ll have her outed by the end of the week.”
“If we out her,” I said, “how are we going to find out all the gossip? Maybe she’s the one doing a service for the community. Think of all the bad things we’ve learned about people. She’s really opened our eyes. She even got an investigation opened on Ronnie Dowel for soliciting minors. A lot of people see her as a hero.”
“The police were already investigating Ronnie,” Vaughn said. “Jack told us that. And good riddance to him. But this woman is stirring up trouble all over the place. No one trusts each other anymore. And you have to wonder just how accurate all her stories are. Look at the insinuations she posed just on the story of you and Jack.”
“Madam Scandal reports what she sees,” I said, shrugging. “How was she supposed to know it was me in the back of Jack’s unit in that alleyway? Unless she was looking in the window, of course.”
He stared at me reproachfully, and I felt the heat creeping up my neck. “Y’all are too old to be pulling stunts like that. Don’t think I haven’t noticed Jack’s been limping all week.”
“It’s just an old injury acting up,” I said, pressing my lips together and avoiding eye contact.
“Uh huh,” he said. “I’m just saying this woman has already crossed lines. She’s got access to private information that no one should have. Medical information. Financial information. What if she printed information about your parents that no one else had access to?”
That thought made my blood run cold. Up until a few months ago, I thought my parents had been hauling coal in hell for the things they’d done on earth. They’d been using the family funeral home to smuggle all kinds of contraband into the country. They’d contracted with the government to bring home soldiers who’d died overseas, only to con
tract with another agency across the water to use the bodies as storage facilities for whatever they wanted to bring into the United States. There’d been a lot of money involved and a lot of danger. I didn’t know a fraction of what had really happened, but as soon as my parents’ car ran over that cliff, the FBI had been on me, and everything that had been left to me, like white on rice.
I’d found all of this information out by accident, stumbling across a bunker full of boxes and a dead body my father had left there to rot. Part of me wished I’d never found those boxes. Inside them had been truths I hadn’t wanted to know. Maybe there are some people out there who want the truth, no matter the cost, but after what I’d been through, I wasn’t sure I was one of those people anymore. Sometimes the truth is kept secret to protect others. And sometimes the truth is so horrific that once it’s known, life can never be the same.
The first box I’d gone through had been full of nothing but papers and information about me. The real me. I tried to find some comfort in the fact that their blood didn’t really run through my veins, but it wasn’t much comfort at all. My parents had been some kind of double agents, but the facts were murky at best. My mother had been shot in France while on a mission and had lost the baby she’d been carrying. I’d been the substitute. Stolen from other parents. Parents that probably had ethics and morals and didn’t hide contraband in dead bodies. In the other boxes had been stacks of cash, IDs, and flash drives.
I’d thought briefly about destroying all of it. The records, the cash…everything. It seemed a simple solution to a complicated problem. But I’ve learned in my lifetime that the problems that seem to plague me never have a simple solution. Burning it all would have been simple if my parents had really died in a car crash, their bodies so unrecognizable that they’d had to be identified by the dental records.
But they hadn’t died in that crash. It had been their escape when the life they’d chosen to live went south. The boxes of cash and IDs and information had been their insurance policy and a way to start over. But I’d gotten in the way, as it seemed I always had, and my father had shown up to collect what I’d discovered. It hadn’t exactly been a joyous reunion. But he’d told me to give him a chance to explain and that everything wasn’t as it seemed. And then he’d stolen every box and shred of evidence from the safe in our home without batting an eyelash.
Jack and I hadn’t seen him since, and no one else knew he was alive. But I watched over my shoulder, waiting for him to come back, felt his eyes on me from time to time. I’d given Jack permission to send a few of the flash drives to a trusted friend to see what was on them. Malachi Graves wasn’t the kind of man to leave loose ends. Even if the loose end was his daughter.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, blowing out a breath. “Shutting her down is the best thing we can do. For the community.”
Vaughn and I knuckle bumped and he pulled out a pad and pen from the briefcase he’d sat on the island.
“It always makes me nervous when the two of you have your heads together like that,” Jack said from behind us.
Vaughn and I both jumped guiltily and turned to look at him. He’d left the house just after six that morning, and I vaguely remembered him giving me a kiss and setting a cup of coffee on the bedside table before he’d left for work. I wasn’t a morning person. Jack, on the other hand, was alert and annoyingly pleasant in the mornings.
“What are you doing home?” I asked.
“The better question is, why aren’t you at work? I’ve been calling for almost twenty minutes.”
“Oh,” I said, glancing at my phone that was still plugged into the charger. “I must have it on silent. It hasn’t rung.”
There was a moment of awkward silence as Jack stood there and stared at us, assessing us with those cop eyes. King George County wasn’t huge by city standards. It was divided into four towns—King George Proper and Bloody Mary to the north, and Nottingham and Newcastle to the south. Jack had been the youngest sheriff ever elected, and he’d done a hell of a job with little resources and a community that was more than set in their ways.
It was an agricultural community for the most part. The rich were really rich and the poor were really poor. It wasn’t easy to find the middle class, though it existed in certain pockets that were more affordable to live in. But Jack managed to relate to everyone and he’d been approached more than once about taking up a higher political office.
He was the kind of man that everyone might not like, but respected. He’d been a SWAT cop in DC for a handful of years and gotten invaluable experience on the job. Then he’d been shot three times in the line of duty and lost some good friends in the same SWAT raid. That’s when he’d decided to move home to Bloody Mary.
The things that had happened in that bank—the lies, the betrayals, and the ultimate sacrifices that had been made—had changed something in Jack forever. He was healing from those wounds, but I still caught glimpses of pain I feared might never come to the surface.
Where Vaughn was GQ polished with his expensive clothes and shoes, Jack looked like a working man, even though he was one of the wealthiest men in the state. A fact that still made me uncomfortable.
He wore jeans and a denim work shirt that had the sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows. His duty belt was cinched around a trim waist, as much a part of him as one of his limbs, and his badge was pinned above his breast pocket. His dark hair was buzzed close to the scalp and he already showed signs of a day’s worth of stubble, even though I knew he’d shaved that morning. The scar that slashed through his eyebrow was white, indicating the level of his annoyance.
I caught myself staring and felt the slow flush of desire heat my skin. Sex appeal. He had it in spades. And it was all for me.
“It’s Thursday,” I finally managed to get out.
“Yes,” he said. “And tomorrow is Friday.” He went to the kitchen cabinet and grabbed a to-go cup, then took my freshly poured mug and transferred the contents to the new cup. Never a good sign.
“I don’t go into the funeral home until ten on Thursdays unless there’s a body.” I was glad I’d already showered and dressed for the day so I didn’t look like a complete slug-a-bug.
“Right,” Jack said. “The King George Tattler comes out on Thursdays. Anything good today?”
“I’ve got to take off,” Vaughn said, not wanting to be the one to break the news. “I’ve got to open the store. But I’m free tomorrow night, Jaye. Text me your schedule. I’m off at five.”
“Do I want to know?” Jack grabbed my cell phone, handed it to me, then put the to-go mug in my other hand. Apparently, I was going somewhere in a hurry, and considering my profession, it was probably a good call that I’d dressed in old jeans and a black sleeveless tee. I was hell on clothes, either ruining them with questionable stains or smells that never washed out.
“We’re going to use your numerous police resources to discover the identity of Madam Scandal,” Vaughn said, grinning.
“The taxpayers will love that,” Jack said dryly.
“I’ll buy the pizza to even things out. Believe me, after you read today’s episode, you’re going to want to catch her as much as we do.”
Jack sighed, reading between the lines. “Lovely.”
“Catch you guys later,” Vaughn said, hitching the strap of his briefcase over his shoulder and giving us an off-handed wave goodbye.
“I’m going to assume there’s a body that’s in need of my attention,” I said as the front door closed.
“The call came in early this morning,” he said.
“Homicide?” I asked.
“We’ll treat it as such until you can rule it out,” he said vaguely. “But you’re probably going to want to wear two coveralls. And maybe a hazmat suit. It’s messy.”
I blew out a sigh. I hated the messy ones.
Chapter Two
Marriage had settled me in a way I’d never thought possible.
I’d spent my entire life displaced
—not belonging—to my family or community. I always seemed to be on the outside looking in. There was something about growing up in a small town that was hard to explain to people who had never experienced it. You either belonged or you didn’t. You were either someone or you weren’t. And those things were usually determined before birth, depending on who your parents were.
My parents had always been so absorbed in themselves there hadn’t been much time for anything else. For four generations, my family had been a part of Bloody Mary. They’d owned a business and raised their children. But I’m not sure anyone could say they were a part of the community on more than a surface level. Close friends weren’t possible when living a life of deception.
I found it ironic that my home with Jack—a place I finally felt I belonged—was on the same street as the home I’d grown up in—a place I’d never belonged. The same street, but worlds apart. But that place was in the past, at the end of a long stretch of Heresy Road. It was someone else’s albatross now.
My home with Jack was two miles in the opposite direction, down a two-lane country road that was a mixture of gravel and potholes and wound through towering trees. If you rolled down the windows in the car, you could hear the rush of the Potomac River. And at the end of that two-mile stretch, tucked back in the trees on the edge of a cliff, was my paradise. The log cabin structure that Jack had built had become ours.
I loaded my medical bag and a few extras into the back of Jack’s unit, and we headed to the scene. He still hadn’t given me any information, and I wondered if it was intentional so I could see it with fresh eyes, or if he just couldn’t bring himself to tell me about it yet.
The other thing about living in a small town was that in our line of work, you tended to know the victim.
“If you’ll give me the address, I’ll have one of the interns meet us with the Suburban so we can transport the body,” I said to break the silence.
“There’s plenty of time for that,” he said, tapping his index finger against the steering wheel. “The victim is Rosalyn McGowen.”
