Saved by the bell. Thank God.
The low hum of feminine voices told Jake that Amy and Faye were talking to each other. Amy was supposed to tell Faye that Freddie was in the back and needed to see her. That little twinge of guilt reared its ugly head again. Amy couldn’t be a day more than eighteen and had been incredibly easy to fool with his lies. And here he was, corrupting her and getting her to lie, too.
There was probably a special place in hell waiting for him right now.
“Freddie, what are you doing back there?” Faye called out. “Is there a problem at the bar?”
“Nope, I’m just testing out my newest whiskey before I open tonight,” she yelled back. As if to prove her point, she tipped her glass and drained it.
“I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.” Faye’s boots clomped on the hardwood floor as she approached the back room. “You wouldn’t believe the morning I’ve had so far. I tore my skirt, lost my knife, and my rifle is ruined. I had a run-in with a mean-tempered city slicker who doesn’t know his ass from an alligator. It took a lot longer than I expected to get rid of—”
When she reached the doorway, her feet stopped faster than the rest of her. She had to grab the door frame to keep from pitching forward. She was still dressed in her lavender top. And her torn skirts were hanging provocatively low on her hips, held in place by two veils tied together. Her ever-present rifle was in her right hand, pointing up at the ceiling. The fact that she wasn’t pointing it at Jake was probably only because she was too stunned to react. Or, more likely, she was worried it would backfire with all that dirt and mud crammed into the barrel, assuming she’d even managed to find more ammo after he’d unloaded it.
Not eager to test his theories around a trigger-happy woman like Faye, Jake dropped the front legs of his chair to the floor and grabbed the rifle out of her hand.
She blinked as if coming out of a daze and aimed a wounded look at her friend. “What is he doing here?”
“I think what you meant to ask,” Jake teased as he set the muddy rifle in the corner, well out of her reach, “is why is Freddie drinking with a mean-tempered city slicker?”
Faye flushed a light red.
Freddie slammed her shot glass down and twisted around in her chair, looking behind her. “What city slicker? I don’t cotton to none of them.”
Jake grinned. Winning Freddie to his side had been easy. Faye was proving to be a lot more challenging.
“I was just telling Freddie that I’m an old friend of yours,” he said.
Faye’s eyebrows shot up. “You are? I mean, you were? Telling Freddie that?”
He nodded. “I told her some of those old stories about our high school days in Mobile.”
She went a little green. She had no way of knowing that Freddie was the one who’d told him where she’d gone to high school and that Jake still knew precious little about her.
“I also told Freddie how we planned on going to the University of Florida together but you ended up going to Florida State University instead. Funny thing is, I guess I got that wrong. Freddie said you didn’t go to FSU.”
Her face went from green to sickly pale. She glanced at Freddie, obviously wondering exactly how much she’d told Jake. “Um, no, no, I didn’t. Freddie, can you give us a—”
“University of Alabama, wasn’t that it?” Freddie wiped a trickle of whiskey from her chin, smearing her makeup like a brown streak of mud. “That’s where you went to school, right? ’Cause that’s where you and Amber met.” Freddie smiled up at Jake. “Amber Callahan was my niece. She and Faye used to come here every summer between semesters. Seems like the whole town watched Faye growing up into the fine woman she’s become. She and Amber both graduated from UA.”
“Explains the accent.” Jake lifted his glass in salute. “Roll Tide, roll.” He downed his shot of whiskey in one quick swallow. The urge to cough and wheeze was overwhelming, making his eyes water. But he managed to cling to his dignity, just barely, and make it through the storm. Good grief the stuff was strong. He suspected the name on the bottle had nothing to do with the contents and prayed he wouldn’t go blind drinking what had to be a homemade brew. It certainly wasn’t Hennessey.
He cleared his throat and met Faye’s look of impending doom with a smug smile.
“Faye, Faye,” Amy yelled from the other room. “Sammie’s in trouble out front. CeeCee has him wrapped up tight and it doesn’t look like he has his alcohol with him.”
Faye whirled around and ran down the hallway toward the front of the store.
Jake cursed and ran after her. CeeCee? Alcohol? He couldn’t begin to imagine what he was about to see.
He caught a mind-numbing, lust-inducing view of Faye’s gorgeous derriere as she raced out the door, her short, ruined skirt lifting up behind her before the door shut in his face. He yanked it open in time to see her pulling on the silver chain that hung around her neck. She lifted it out of her shirt and there were three small pouches hanging from it. She unsnapped the red one and dropped to her knees.
Right beside a man with an enormous snake wrapped around his neck and chest.
Ah, hell. Jake grabbed his gun and dropped to his knees beside her and a small group of people who’d gathered around the man being squeezed to death by the snake.
“Someone find the snake’s head so I can shoot it without shooting this guy,” Jake ordered.
“No,” the man writhing in the street choked out. “No one kills CeeCee.”
Everyone looked at Jake as if he’d just threatened to shoot a baby, or kick a dog.
Faye spilled the powdery contents of the red pouch into her hand. “Bubba, there’s his head, against Sammie’s throat. Grab it, hold it.”
Two older men, probably both in their fifties, reached for the snake’s head at the same time.
“Not you,” Faye said, motioning to one of them. “The other Bubba.”
The stronger-looking of the two grabbed the snake’s head and forced it back away from Sammie.
“Hurry,” Sammie whispered.
Faye leaned toward the snake.
Jake grabbed her around the waist, holding her back.
“I’m not letting you near that thing,” he bit out. “It could kill you.”
She gave him a surprised look. “I know what I’m doing. Let me go before CeeCee squeezes so hard Sammie has a heart attack.”
He hesitated.
“Trust me,” she said. “At least with this.”
Since everyone was staring at him as if he were the devil, he reluctantly let her go.
She immediately slathered the red powder on the snake’s nostrils and head. “Okay, everybody jump back. Bubba, release CeeCee.”
Jake swung Faye up in his arms and backed away from the now violently twisting snake. Faye blinked up at him, confusion warring with some other emotion on her face.
“Catch him, Bubba,” Sammie yelled. “I need to wash him off or he’ll hurt himself.”
Faye and Jake looked back at the street, but everyone had scattered. They were all running toward the trees between two of the buildings, including the man who’d had the constrictor wrapped around him just seconds earlier.
“I guess Sammie is okay.” Faye laughed.
“This happens a lot around here?”
She grinned. “Often enough for me to always carry a pouch of snake repellant. I’ve told Sammie to keep some rubbing alcohol in his back pocket to use if CeeCee ever confuses him with food. It works almost as well as my repellant. But Sammie tends to forget.”
Jake carried her into the store. “Sounds to me like he needs to let his pet go before it kills him.”
“That pet is the only reason he gets up every day. It’s what he lives for now that his wife is gone. He’s all alone except for CeeCee.”
He grunted noncommittally and headed down the hall.
Faye stiffened as he neared the staircase that led to her apartment. “You can put me down now. I’m not in any danger, not that I needed you to rescue me in the first place.”
“You’re welcome,” he grumbled.
She rolled her eyes.
He started up the stairs.
Her eyes widened in panic. “Wait. What are you doing? Put me down.”
He tightened his hold. “Not a chance. We need to talk. No guns. No knives. And no man-eating snakes. Just you, me and the truth.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Faye tensed in Jake’s arms. She waited until he reached the top of the stairs and set her down to open her door. As soon as he let her go, she rushed inside and whirled around to shut and lock the door. He shoved his boot in the opening, blocking her efforts. There was no way to win against his superior strength, not in a direct confrontation without any tricks. She reluctantly stepped back and let him inside.
Her skirt slid dangerously low. She was forced to grab the tattered edges and retie the veils holding it together. Her face flushed as Jake’s gaze followed the movement of her hands, lingering on her exposed tummy before sliding past the skirt to her naked thighs.
She’d flirted with him the first time she met him. But that had been so she could distract him and escape. Maybe he thought it was okay to stare at her like this because of how she’d acted last night. If he were anyone else, she’d have decked him already. But even though she was worried about his investigation, and what his presence here meant for her, she couldn’t ignore the punch in her gut every time she looked at him. Attraction sizzled between them. Why did she have to be so turned on by a man whose very presence threatened her entire world?
She stepped back to put some much-needed distance between them, and so she could meet his gaze without craning her neck back at an uncomfortable angle. “How did you figure out where I lived? And how did you manage to turn my friends against me in just a few short hours?”
“Mystic Glades isn’t exactly a big city. I drove down the main street and as soon as I saw a shop called The Moon and Star, I figured it had to be yours. When I pulled up front, Freddie came out of the bar across the street. I think she thought she was protecting you by asking me why I was there.”
“Let me guess. That’s when you lied and told her I was, what, your girlfriend?”
“I might have hinted at something like that. Freddie and Amy both thought the idea was sweet and helped me surprise you. Don’t be mad at them.”
“Oh, don’t worry. You’re the one I’m mad at, not them. You might as well turn around right now and leave. You’re trespassing.”
In answer to her edict, he kicked the door closed behind him. He moved farther into the center of the tiny living room-kitchen combo. “You live here? Above the store?” He peeked into the guest bedroom that opened off the right side of the living room. It was empty, except for the twin bed and chest of drawers that had come with the place.
“Where I live isn’t any of your business.”
As if she hadn’t spoken, he crossed to the left side of the living room to her bedroom and went inside. He flicked the ballerina-pink comforter on her bed before examining the collection of figurines on her dresser. When he picked up the centaur holding a set of scales, she marched forward and plucked it out of his hand. Had she really found him appealing a minute earlier? She never could stand a bully. And she resented him forcing his way into her private sanctuary. She carefully set the figurine back on the dresser.
“Get out,” she ordered.
His smile disappeared in a flash. The cold look that replaced it had her shivering inside and wondering if his earlier smile had been a ruse to make her let down her guard. It would certainly explain how he’d gotten past Freddie’s prickly exterior. She couldn’t believe it when she’d found her friend drinking with Jake as if they were old buddies.
“Get out, or what?” he said. “You’ll call the police? I know I can get service here. I did earlier, down in your office, when I was surfing the internet.” He pulled his cell phone out of his jeans pocket and held it out to her. “Be my guest. After they get here, I’ll tell them to search their databases for Faye Star. How long do you think it will take them to figure out that Faye Star doesn’t exist? And how long before they get curious to find out why she doesn’t exist?”
The blood rushed from her face, leaving her cold. “That’s crazy.”
“Is it? I can’t find your name in any official databases, not here in Florida.” He arched a brow. “Of course, I haven’t checked Alabama yet. Maybe I need to surf the web a little more.”
Her fingernails bit into her palms. “What do you want from me?”
He stepped closer, crowding her back against the dresser. “I want the truth.”
Faye reached her right hand behind her, quietly pulling one of the drawers open a crack to grab the knife inside. “What truth?” she said, stalling for time. “You’re looking for the guy who drove that car, right? Well, I don’t know where he is. That’s the truth.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care.” She fumbled behind her in the drawer.
Jake cocked his head. “What’s wrong, Faye? Can’t find your knife?”
She stilled and dropped her hand to her side. “What did you do, search my apartment before I got here?”
“You’d better believe I did. Self-preservation. I’ve learned never to underestimate you. It was easy getting Freddie to let me up here. I just told her I needed to use the bathroom.”
They faced each other like two boxing opponents, each waiting for the other to make the first move. But Faye knew that fighting him wasn’t an option, not without a weapon and a clear avenue of escape. Even if she managed to drop him to the floor, she wouldn’t have any way to get past him and out the door. The bedroom was too small. All he’d have to do was reach out and grab her as she jumped over him to get away. She chewed her bottom lip in indecision.
Jake’s anger seemed to evaporate as he looked down at her. “I know you’re hiding from something, or someone. That’s easy to figure out. But I’m not here to expose your secrets or dig into your past. I’m here for one reason, to find Calvin Gillette. And I believe you’re the key to finding him. If you’ll talk to me, and help me, I promise I won’t do anything that will jeopardize your life here. I won’t tell anyone where you are.” He smoothed her hair out of her eyes, then placed his hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed. “Help me, Faye. Please.”
It was so tempting to believe him, to believe the gentleness of his touch, the plaintive appeal in his words. She would love to trust him, ease her own burden by letting him share it. She needed to find Calvin, too. Was it possible Jake wasn’t really a threat? That would mean she didn’t have to leave Mystic Glades, leave her friends.
“Who are you working for?” she asked. “What does he want with...Gillette?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Does he want to harm him?”
Jake’s jaw tightened. “I’m not in the business of finding people and turning them over to someone who’s going to hurt them. The answer to that insulting question is a definite ‘no.’”
His defensiveness seemed genuine. Maybe the client who’d hired Jake was a friend of Calvin’s trying to find him for some reason she didn’t know about. Maybe Calvin had overreacted and had gone on the run thinking he was in trouble when he really wasn’t.
“What makes you think I know this Gillette guy? Or that I can help you find him?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
He dropped his hand to his side. For some reason, the disappointment on his face sent a stab of guilt straight to her heart.
“I found the backpack. You were searching for him this morning, just like last night. Can w
e skip past the lies now?”
“What makes you think it’s my backpack?”
His mouth tightened into a firm line.
“Okay, okay.” There was no point in denying this particular accusation. If he’d searched her apartment for weapons then he’d probably noticed a few other things, such as that she had the same style of backpack in her closet in many different colors to match her other outfits. And that the bottled water and power bars in the purple backpack were the same brands as the ones in her pantry. She tried to bluff her way into a new explanation.
“I admit it. The backpack is mine. But only because I found that car a few days ago and realized the driver was probably hurt and wandering the woods and needed help. I’ve been searching for him, to help him, not because I know him.”
“I think you can come up with a better lie than that.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Right. You were concerned for a stranger, so concerned you’ve spent the past few days searching for him. But you weren’t concerned enough to call the police or to tell any of your friends here in town so they could help you find him. Try again.”
She crossed her arms. “Why are you trying to find this guy? Who hired you?”
He seemed to consider that question, then nodded as if he’d decided it was okay to tell her. “My client is Quinn Fugate. He’s Calvin’s brother, different fathers, different last names. He only found out recently that they were related and is trying to connect with him. He’d tracked Calvin down through another investigator to Naples. But a friend of Calvin’s reported him missing before Quinn could hop on a plane and go see him. The police gave up searching for Calvin after the first day. That’s why Quinn hired me. And that’s why I need to find Gillette before he dies out in the swamp. I’m here to help Gillette. That’s all. Nothing more.”
Hope had her staring into his eyes, trying to gauge the truthfulness of his words. He looked as if he was telling the truth. His story sounded plausible. And the name Quinn Fugate meant nothing to her, which was a relief. It was possible Jake was telling the truth. She honestly didn’t know if Calvin had a brother or not. Based on their shared past, it was entirely possible. And right now, there was no way to ask him. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if Calvin had a family he’d never known about, a family that wanted him after he’d been alone for so long?
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