Calculated Vendetta

by Jodie Bailey

  “Explain.” Lucas’s head tilted to the side, and he glanced around to make sure no one was near. “You think somebody is trying to silence Deacon right under the doctors’ noses?”

  It was a leap the size of the Grand Canyon, but with Deacon’s warning ringing in his ears, it was the one thing that made sense. “He said something to me about how he and John never should have started hanging around... And then he stopped without giving me a name. There’s somebody else involved for certain, and Deacon’s afraid of them, even in the relative safety of the hospital. Whoever it is, they have a long reach.”

  Casey straightened and wrapped a hand around Travis’s biceps as though she were trying to hold on to an idea before it ran from her. “I went through my notes this morning. John said almost the same thing, something about a guy who lives near Raeford, has a lot of property. Called him a friend he’d gone to for advice. The guy was dealing a designer drug, a depressant. Pretty much the same thing Deacon said when I interviewed him for the first story.” She squinted, her shoulders sagging as her hand fell from Travis’s arm. “But one thing doesn’t make sense. Why push Deacon to the brink then pull him back last night just to nearly kill him today?”

  “Threatening him?” Lucas asked.

  Leaning against a small tree next to the sidewalk, Travis crossed his arms and studied the Life Flight helicopter situated on the helipad in front of the hospital. Sunlight reflected off the windows, but the brightness did nothing to shed light on his dark thoughts. “He told me not to ask any more questions. Said we’d already been warned.”

  Casey gasped.

  Lucas cocked his head to the side, his expression hardening. “How long have you been holding on to this piece of information?”

  “Last night.” He couldn’t look at Casey. She was probably trying to burn him to ashes with her eyeballs. “I’m guessing by ‘warning’ he meant what happened downtown.”

  “What questions were you asking?” Casey’s voice was low, anger adding weight.

  He should have told her earlier, but he’d thought it best to protect her from more worry and to remind her as little as possible of those last moments with John. He’d looked right at Casey as he spoke his last word, yet she had never mentioned it. It had to be something she was trying to shove out of her memory. “What John said right before he died.”

  When he dared to look at her, her face had paled, but she stood as tall as ever. “I knew he said something, but honestly, I was too focused on what I was seeing to hear it.”

  “He said ‘bet.’”

  Lucas squinted. “Gambling?”

  “I thought so at first, but it doesn’t fit. When I said it to Deacon, he acted like he knew exactly what I meant. It’s the thing that spooked him. He was talking about using, and how John and he never should have gotten involved with whoever it was—” Something Casey had said leaped up, almost visible in the air, bringing with it a suspicion he should never have. Ever. But the more he thought about it, the more those pieces he’d been fighting to wrestle together slipped into place, forming a picture he’d never imagined was coming. “Case, where did you say the guy lived that John was dealing with?”

  “Raeford.”

  “And he owns a lot of property.” The sick sensation in his gut swam faster.

  “Yes.” She leaked the word out slowly, as though she could tell he was working something out in his mind.

  “Earlier, you told me ketamine is used in designer drugs, and it’s frequently stolen from veterinary clinics. You said John and Deacon had both gone to the same guy for advice and they should have stayed away.”

  “What are you thinking?” Lucas straightened and glanced around them as though he expected an assault at any second.

  Maybe he should.

  “A couple of years ago, I introduced John to a guy who lives in Raeford and has a lot of land. A guy who wouldn’t have any problem getting whatever he wanted from a vet clinic.” A guy who’d befriended Travis then tried to urge him to return to his own addictions, likely so he could drag him even lower, creating one more customer.

  A guy who, when they saw him hours after John died, had hands bruised and cut more like a fistfight than a dogfight.

  In a flash of clarity, Travis remembered where he’d seen their hooded stalker before. At Meredith’s clinic. One of the vet techs. Until their last few encounters, the young man had always been smiling and friendly. His scowl in the shadows of the yard light at Casey’s grandfather’s house had been anything but.

  Travis turned his face to the sky, wishing he had the words to pray but coming up empty. Let him be wrong. Let it be a stranger. But deep inside where he couldn’t deny, he knew there was too much circumstantial evidence for it to be anyone else.

  “Travis?” Casey laid a hand on his arm, drawing him into the moment. “You said you introduced John to him? I was listening to one of my interviews with John earlier, and he said the man he trusted had been introduced to him by a former team leader.”

  He exhaled loudly, and the guilt he’d been fighting washed back to knock him down like a rogue wave. He’d missed all the signs pointing him straight to the truth. Now one man was dead and another was battling for his life. “I don’t think John said ‘bet.’ It was ‘vet.’ And I know exactly who he was warning us about.”

  * * *

  In Kristin’s small kitchen, the faded light of early evening leaked between the plantation blinds, muting the edges of the cabinets and casting the room in shadows. Nobody had bothered to turn on the lights, and the darkness grew heavier by the second, tempered by the streetlights popping on outside.

  Travis slid away from Kristin’s small kitchen table and stretched out his legs, his boot brushing Casey’s.

  Even brief contact was too much. She tucked her feet under her chair and leaned forward, bracing her elbows on the table. He’d touched her enough today. The warmth of his lips on hers lingered, and hopefully her cheeks weren’t red enough to let the whole room know what she was thinking. With her insides all knotted, she never should have let him kiss her, but the longer they were around each other, the harder it was for her to keep her distance and the more she wanted to abandon her dreams to go chasing after his.

  Except even he didn’t know what his were anymore.

  It didn’t help the way the pain on his face made her want to comfort him. They’d all had to go to work after Travis’s revelation about Meredith and Phil, and the afternoon had dragged on longer than any she’d ever known. He’d insisted on following her to Kristin’s house. Reluctantly, she’d let him, but his silence since they’d arrived made her wonder more than once why he’d bothered. It had taken all her willpower not to reach out to him, but after the way he’d kissed her this morning and she’d responded, physical contact wasn’t something either of them could handle.

  They’d come to Kristin’s house with Lucas and were all gathered in the kitchen, trying to land on a strategy. So far, they’d come up empty.

  On the other side of the small round table, Kristin rolled an orange between her palms. She’d eaten two since the group had come together less than an hour ago.

  “I don’t know how you do it.” Travis let a smile ghost his features.

  Casey, Kristin and Lucas all swirled their heads toward him.

  Lucas quirked an eyebrow from where he leaned against the kitchen counter nearby. “How who does what?”

  Dipping his head toward Kristin, Travis said, “I don’t know how Kristin eats so many oranges. You got a cast-iron stomach?”

  “Maybe.” She rolled the fruit across the table to him and held up her hand for him to toss it back. She caught it neatly and ran a thumbnail along the peel. “Stress eating. I thought when we put my brother’s killer away we were done with this kind of stuff. A girl can only take so many assassination attempts in her inner circle, you
know?”

  Kristin started to dig her thumb into the orange, but Lucas crossed the room in two strides and took it away. “Enough’s enough. I’m cutting you off.”

  “Fine.” She huffed then turned to Casey, her amusement evaporating as she returned to their earlier conversation. “I think you should tell the police.”

  “Wait. What?” Travis laughed, but the sound was bitter in the tense room. “This from the woman who absolutely refused to let any of us call the cops, even after someone broke into her house?”

  Casey had never seen him so bitter, but it was there, the true testament to how much the situation was wearing on him. She wanted to lay a hand on his shoulder or take his hand in hers, to stand with him and to support him.

  Then again, maybe it would do him some good to get this out of his system. Kristin was a strong woman. She could take it.

  Apparently, Lucas agreed, because he didn’t move from his position by the sink, simply crossed his arms and watched to see how the confrontation would play out.

  “People change, Travis.” Selecting another orange from the bowl on the table, she glanced over her shoulder at Lucas. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to eat it.” When she turned to Travis, her expression had grown serious. “I had my reasons for not calling. You? You have the look of a man about to go vigilante. Don’t. Let the authorities take care of Phil and Meredith. You’re too emotionally deep in this.”

  “What exactly am I supposed to tell them?” Travis shoved his chair away from the table and paced the length of the tile in the long, narrow room. “Everything we have is circumstantial. Other than a gut feeling and a few descriptions that sound like them but could also match two dozen other people, we’ve got nothing. The police won’t do anything but maybe pay them a visit and ask a few questions, and those questions will send them straight underground. Or worse, make them more determined to silence whoever they see as a threat. I’m going to assume they think either John or Deacon fed information to Casey. That’s why they stole her laptop, then when they couldn’t get into it, came after her directly. If this is true and we want to stop them, then what we need is proof.”

  The way he paced like a caged tiger set Casey’s nerves on edge. Kristin was right. He acted like a man at the end of his rope, likely to do anything to end what was happening to all of them. If he decided to take off after the Ingrams, Casey wasn’t sure she could stop him.

  She glanced at Lucas, who had straightened and was watching Travis as though he thought he might have to wrestle his friend into submission. The last thing she wanted to see was two buddies duke it out. “Can you call Marcus Brewer?”

  Travis stopped and stared out the window above the kitchen sink, his profile tight. He dug his finger into his thigh and didn’t say anything, just stared out the window.

  “Travis?” She ached to go to him, and she might give in to the urge if he didn’t come to his good senses soon.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because every time something happens, he’s there. He’s the only cop who was at all our crime scenes.”

  Glancing at Lucas, Casey chewed her next words carefully. They’d either calm Travis or set him off like a Fourth of July firework. “Sounds like you might be edging a little bit toward paranoid.”

  His head jerked up, his gaze hard on hers, but then he considered her before leaning against the kitchen counter to stare at the refrigerator. “Maybe.” He glanced around at the small group. A full minute ticked by before he spoke again. “Know what? Maybe we all need a break. Things have been crazy the past few days and we’re all seeing shadows where there aren’t any.” Shoving away from the counter, he walked to the door leading to the living room. “I’m out.”

  Lucas straightened, instantly alert. “To where?”

  “Now you’re paranoid. To my apartment, if it’s okay with you. I need a shower and to get out of my uniform into civilian clothes. Follow me if you want, but it’s your choice. I’ll be back in an hour. Promise.”

  With a slow nod, Lucas watched him go.

  Casey’s muscles tensed, wanting to follow him to make sure he was really as calm as he claimed to be. Since she’d nearly melted in his arms in the hospital lobby, he’d been distant, like they’d never shared a kiss. Maybe walking away had been the right thing to do, even if it did hurt. He hadn’t made up his mind yet what he wanted.

  But he was a man in pain. And he was the man she loved. Since the day he’d walked out her door never to return, she had never felt so helpless. “So what do we do?”

  Kristin shrugged as Lucas sat in the seat Travis had vacated. “We could call the police, but Travis is right. If they give us any credibility at all, they’ll go question Phil and Meredith. That’s not doing anybody any good. All it does is tell them we’re onto them. Somebody’s going to have to find a way to get real evidence.”

  “Or get Deacon to talk.” Casey sighed and stood, Travis’s restlessness transferred to her, driving a need to pace the floor in his footsteps. “Maybe if I go to the hospital and try to—”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Lucas said. “Travis would kill me if I let you step foot into the hospital while he suspects Phil of being behind all this. He works there, and he knows the ins and outs of every hallway. It’s walking into enemy territory if I ever saw it. He could make you vanish before anyone even knew you were there.”

  Like yesterday. Casey wrapped her arms tight around her stomach. What would have happened if Travis hadn’t appeared when he had? Likely, she’d have followed Phil, enticed by the lure of some peace and quiet. He was definitely smooth, the kind of guy who invited trust. Like so many serial killers she’d read about over the years, he was the last one you’d ever suspect. Now, safe in Kristin’s kitchen, the pointed questions he’d asked stood out like blazing fires in the night. And his invitation for coffee? Accepting likely would have ended with Travis searching forever but never finding her.

  The thought left her even antsier than before. She paced to the window that faced the front yard and watched Travis back out of Lucas’s driveway, then hang a right.

  A right.

  If he were truly going to his apartment as he’d said, he’d have made a left. The only reason he’d have to turn right was if he’d decided to take matters into his own hands.

  He was going rogue, on his way to force Phil’s hand. Alone.

  SIXTEEN

  The outside lights of Ingram’s Veterinary Center glowed brightly in the darkness after sunset. The center, on a parcel of farmland near Raeford, consisted of a small white brick clinic near the road for office visits and, toward the rear of the property, a large white barn where Meredith practiced her real joy, rehabilitating horses. On the other side of a grove of trees and out of sight of the road, the two-story white house stood in a large clearing.

  The parking lot sat empty and the clinic lights were dark, but the barn doors stood wide open, light pouring out of the structure.

  Travis had called ahead to Meredith and said he wanted to take her up on the offer to visit Gus, who he knew usually nosed around the clinic or the barn all day. Meredith had been excited to agree.

  He’d hated using his dog as the excuse.

  Kneading the steering wheel, Travis glanced at his phone on the passenger seat, where it buzzed for what had to be the twentieth time since he’d left Kristin’s. Casey and Lucas, maybe even Kristin, were probably calling to talk some sense into him. He probably needed it, but he didn’t want it. What he wanted was to get some hard evidence to take to the police and to end this thing, to make sure Casey was safe so he could spend a few days focused on praying about what to do next instead of constantly scanning for trouble.

  With uncertain threats hanging over both of their heads, the last thing he could do before this was over was go to selection. He was suppo
sed to report in a few days and, right now, moving on was the last thing he wanted to do.

  So this had to stop. Tonight.

  Now that he was here, he had no idea what his plan was. The whole drive, he’d known he wanted to question Meredith apart from Phil, but exactly how to broach the subject had eluded him. He killed the engine on the truck and reached for the door handle, hesitating as he scanned the buildings.

  He should have brought Lucas along. Backup was never a bad thing, but if this went south, he wanted to know the only one in danger was himself. And since, based on the time his phone had started ringing, he didn’t have much of a head start, he’d better get moving.

  As he pushed the truck door open, a figure appeared around the corner of the clinic, a shadow in the darkness until the person stepped into the circle of floodlights near the parking lot.

  Meredith.

  Dressed in what looked to be old jeans and a plaid button-down shirt, she looked every bit the farm girl cleaning out stables, not the murderous leader of a drug ring. Travis cast up a quick prayer the woman he’d known for years was innocent before he exited the truck.

  She met him at the front bumper, swiping her hands down her jeans before she gave him a quick hug. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist the memory of Gus’s puppy-dog face for long. He’s roaming around here somewhere. I tried calling him when you pulled in, but he’s probably out in the woods chasing squirrels before they bed down for the night. Either that or he’s at the house waiting for his supper. He’s pretty good about knowing when it’s quitting time, so I’m guessing he’ll come charging in here any second. Come on out to the barn. I’m about to shut down for the night, and he’ll definitely come running when he sees those lights go out. He’s a smart pup.”

  For a moment, the prospect of seeing Gus drove away the more serious reasons he’d driven out to Meredith’s. The dog had been his buddy for years, until he’d deployed for the third time and realized his coming and going was growing harder on the dog as he grew older. Travis had thought it was for the best, but now the idea he might have dumped his best friend off with violent drug dealers was more than he could take. The angry fire he’d managed to bank flared, but headlights turning into the small gravel parking lot cleared his thinking and refocused him on the situation at hand. He had to be ready for anything, and there was no telling who was coming in...or why.