The Southern Comfort Prequel Trilogy Box Set

by Lisa Clark O'Neill

  The coffee rose and fell in violent waves in his stomach, and Ben grimaced before sitting the Styrofoam cup down. He needed to look at the photos. He doubted he would find anything damning – after all, whoever’d taken the journals had left the photo albums behind. If Callum was to be believed, that is, although if there was a benefit to the man making up that particular story, Ben failed to see what it was.

  But he needed to look at them anyway, if for no other reason than his own conscience.

  It still pained him that his last words to Carly were spoken in disgust and anger – anger over the fact that she’d practically been throwing herself at Ainsley’s stepbrother all through dinner. It wouldn’t have bothered him so badly if he hadn’t had the altercation with Cal just a few short months beforehand – an altercation that probably cost him a scholarship.

  Ben closed his eyes and drew in a pain-filled breath as memory assailed him. He’d called his sister a slut.

  Feeling grim, Ben walked behind his desk, sat in his chair much like a death row inmate sentenced to execution. He hated having all the old feelings dredged up again, compounded by the fresh terror over Sabrina’s disappearance. Honest to God, it made him wish he’d been born an only child.

  Steeling himself, Ben donned a pair of latex gloves and opened the first album. He was going to have to remove the photos from beneath the plastic film in order to see them clearly, since they’d dusted the plastic for prints.

  He stared at the first picture. Carly had had a way of taking the most decrepit, decaying, falling-down junk and making it somehow beautiful. He only wished – wished – she’d seen the beauty in herself and not sought out some kind of validation by sleeping around.

  His beautiful, vibrant, popular sister had in reality been deeply insecure. She’d craved approval, particularly from men.

  It didn’t take a psychologist to understand why, although Ben had sought one out during the darkest part of his despair. He’d woken up under a bush in a pile of his own vomit outside his campus residence hall freshman year. He had no memory of how he’d gotten there or what he’d done beforehand, aside from the fact that he’d consumed vast quantities of alcohol. Ben told himself that he was just a typical college student, going a little wild, but deep down he’d known better. He was a wounded animal, a creature that was attempting to numb its deepest pain. He’d turned to one of his advisors, who’d gotten him hooked up with a grief counselor. Ben thought that it had probably saved his life.

  And his life, up to the point of his sister’s death, had always been golden.

  As far as Benjamin Paulson, Senior was concerned, Ben might as well have been an only child. He’d doted on Ben, teaching him to throw a football, taking him hiking, coaching his little league baseball team, volunteering to be his Boy Scout den leader. They were pretty well inseparable, he and his father. Best friends.

  Carly had been starved for even a drop of their father’s attention.

  Benjamin hadn’t abused his daughters, and he’d never neglected their physical needs. But he hadn’t been particularly interested in them either, beyond expecting them to help their mother around the house and sit quietly in the church pew on Sundays, and speaking sternly to them when they misbehaved. Bree didn’t seem to mind as much – she’d spent most of her time with their grandmother, anyway – but Carly craved his affection. She got straight A’s, learned how to cook their father’s favorite meals. She taught herself to use a camera after their father made an offhand remark about a framed photograph he admired in one of the local galleries, and then won first place in most of the photography contests she entered. But she wasn’t a male, a son, and no amount of impressive deeds could change that. So when she hit fifteen, she finally rebelled.

  She started looking for male attention elsewhere.

  Ben rubbed his eyes, wincing at the feel of the latex against the tired flesh there. Understanding the psychology behind Carly’s behavior hadn’t quelled his anger, but merely transferred it onto his father, himself, the young men who’d taken advantage of her pain.

  And the one who did her the ultimate violence.

  In the way of siblings, he’d sensed he was their father’s favorite, and he’d lorded it over Carly. At the time, he thought it was funny. Now, it made him stew in his own deep regret. He wished he had another chance to not be an asshole. To not let her down.

  But second chances weren’t possible when the one you’d wronged was dead.

  However, he might have a second chance with Sabrina. And he was going to do everything in his power not to let that one slip through his fingers.

  Returning his focus to the photos, Ben tried to identify some of the locations before setting them aside. The Calgary Baptist church, which had been struck by lightning and subsequently abandoned. But strangely, the steeple stood tall among the blackened ruins, virtually untouched. The image was stark, and haunting. Next was the old Mitchell farm, which was a housing development now. Ben tilted his head when he saw the image of the old tractor, trying to place the location, when his phone rang.

  He set the picture down before looking at the readout. His heart started to thump when he saw that it was one of his deputies – one who likely wouldn’t be bothering him right now unless it was important.

  “Paulson.”

  “Ben? It’s Matt Mitchell.” He rattled off an address. “You’re going to want to get over here ASAP.”

  “What happened?” Please don’t let it be Sabrina, dead. Please.

  “Looks like the night manager over at the hotel on the square killed himself. But there are a few things here that lead me to believe he may have been… involved with your sister.”

  “DO not,” Cal insisted “get any closer to that kudzu.”

  Ainsley looked at the sea of green that swarmed up the hill behind the old store, covering ground and trees and what looked to be a couple of abandoned chicken coops, its tentacles reaching greedily toward what remained of the buildings.

  Then she glanced back at him, her dark hair catching the sunlight and shining like the coat of a mink as it swung over her shoulder. Cal was momentarily dazzled.

  Luckily, she opened her mouth and brought him back to his senses.

  “You act like it’s sentient, and preparing to swallow me.”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out. Stand still around here too long and some future archaeologist will find your mummified remains, covered entirely in kudzu. But what I meant is that if you get your foot caught up in it, you’re more than likely going to go down. You don’t want to risk doing more damage to your ankle.”

  She muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “mother hen,” but she did back up. She waited for him to make sure Beaumont couldn’t find a way out through the partially open truck windows before joining her.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for,” she admitted.

  Neither did he. He had some experience with tracking, but he wasn’t exactly Daniel Boone. Especially when he wasn’t even sure there was anything here to track.

  They peeked in the windows, one on either side of the double doors. The glass was covered in a layer of dust and grime, making it difficult to see, but he could just make out the wooden tables and bins that had once held fresh produce and some of the other basic necessities that old man Cross had sold. The woodworker in him immediately started imagining the pieces he could build with that reclaimed wood, but he pushed those thoughts aside. A cash register – a really old one – sat on a desk in a shaft of thin sunlight that streamed in through the window. What Cal knew about antiques told him that it was probably valuable if properly restored. But Tanner Cross didn’t need the money. And he obviously didn’t care about the sentiment, either.

  Cal squinted, noting a darker square on the surface of the desk beside the cash register. Like it had recently been moved?

  He glanced at the double doors, and then tried to turn the knobs. Not surprisingly, they didn’t budge. He turned toward Ainsley.
/>   “Stay here.”

  The look she gave him was just this side of scathing. “I feel compelled to remind you that I’m not a dog.”

  “Let me rephrase: stay here, please.”

  “Why?”

  A sharp retort wanted to roll off his tongue like a hand grenade, but he wasn’t in the military any longer, nor was this a life or death medical situation in which every second counted. He doubted because I said so was going to fly with a woman like Ainsley.

  “Because I’m going to go around back and see if there’s another way to get into this place,” he told her “that isn’t locked. If I can get in, I’ll come through and open the door for you so that you don’t have to risk stumbling around on your crutches, putting your foot through a rotten floorboard or getting swallowed by kudzu.”

  “Okay,” she said after a moment, though there was a note of something – reluctance? Disappointment? – in her voice. He guessed she wasn’t the type who was content to sit back in relative comfort while the menfolk led the expedition. If she’d been Queen Isabella she probably would have told Christopher Columbus to go to hell and set sail herself.

  “What?” she asked, her eyes narrow with suspicion.

  “Nothing. I’ll be right back.”

  Cal glanced at the cab of the truck, where Beaumont’s face was pressed to the passenger window with a forlorn expression. Cal refrained from making another comparison between the dog and the woman, even if only to himself.

  A tall wooden privacy fence blocked off the side of the building that wasn’t covered with kudzu, which meant that Cal had to fight his way through vines to make his way around back. The ground sloped down, meaning that the windows there were slightly higher than they were out front, but he could see that several panes were broken or missing – and one of the windows stood open.

  Cal considered going back to his truck to get a pair of thick gloves, but when he felt cautiously around the edge of the window frame he didn’t discover any broken glass. Nevertheless, he took off his cotton sweater and used it as a buffer to hoist himself up and through, landing cautiously on the other side. The comment he’d made about rotting floorboards had come from experience – and he hadn’t been kidding when he’d told Ainsley that the previous owners of her grandmother’s house had done virtually nothing to maintain it. Cal’d put his foot through a board on the front porch the day he’d come to look at the place. Having experience with carpentry, it hadn’t deterred him from purchasing, but it did mean that he’d gotten the place for a song.

  The room he’d landed in appeared to be a sort of storage area, filled with various crates and the detritus of a now defunct business. Old man Cross had died almost twenty years ago – the same summer that Carly was killed, if Cal wasn’t mistaken. It looked to him like Tanner Cross hadn’t touched the place since.

  Tying the sweater around his waist, Cal started toward the door. Then he reconsidered, stepping to the side so that he wasn’t blocking the light. If Sabrina – or anyone else, for that matter – had entered the building the same way he had, maybe they’d left some evidence.

  Broken glass did litter the floor here, but it was difficult to tell whether it had been lying there for days or years. Mixed in with the glass were decaying leaves that had blown in through the open window, bird droppings and some kind of small round balls.

  Cal picked one of them up, and then glanced out the window. From this vantage point, he could see the broken windows of the old chicken coop – several of which featured the spider web pattern which resulted from the impact of a high velocity projectile.

  Kids, he decided. Goofing off with BB guns. He’d done the same sort of stuff when he’d been a boy and young teen.

  Cal started to stand back up when a dark spot, maybe half the size of a dime, on one of the floorboards caught his eye. Because the light coming through the window wasn’t entirely sufficient given the fact that it was close to dusk, he pulled out his cell phone and brought up the flashlight app.

  Blood. God knew he’d seen enough of it to recognize the stuff.

  Cal looked more closely at the broken glass. Again using his sweater, he picked up the piece lying next to the bloodstain. One corner of it was smudged with a rusty brown substance.

  Someone coming through the window might have cut their hand, if they’d landed hard and had to catch themselves. Carefully, Cal placed the glass back where he found it. If it turned out to be evidence, it shouldn’t be disturbed. Shutting the barn door after the horse was out in this case, but it was the best he could do.

  Moving cautiously so as to avoid wreaking any more havoc than he had to, Cal walked into the main area of the store, crossing to the front doors. Luckily they weren’t padlocked. He covered his hand with the edge of his sweater to turn the deadbolt, letting in a flood of light and a pensive-looking Ainsley.

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Some broken glass beneath the window I came through,” he said as he closed the door again. No need to advertise their presence to any passersby. If anyone saw his truck, hopefully they’d just assume that he’d pulled over to take a piss behind a tree or something. “And what looks to be a small bloodstain on the floor.” He made a circle with his finger and thumb to approximate the size.

  “Ben found one of Sabrina’s shoes,” Ainsley said. “In the woods, not terribly far from where they discovered her car. It had blood on it – a lot of blood. Maybe she cut her foot?”

  She sounded hopeful, and Cal realized that she must have been envisioning something much worse. “Maybe,” he said. “Although I don’t see how unless she was barefoot.”

  “She was wearing gladiator sandals, according to Ben. But you saw her that day. Didn’t you notice?”

  “She was sitting behind the counter when I talked to her. Gladiator sandals? Those things that lace up the leg but leave most of your foot exposed? While climbing through busted out windows?” He shook his head. “Apparently wearing shoes totally unsuited to the activity at hand is a family trait.”

  She scowled at him, and then started to move past him. “I want to have a look.”

  “If,” he said as he moved an arm out to bar her way “that is indeed what happened and that’s Sabrina’s blood on the floor back there, it’s evidence. Your cousin already has his nose out of joint about the two of us hooking up this morning, however inadvertently. I don’t think we should mess around in here anymore than we have to. He’s liable to toss us both in jail.”

  “You’re right.” She blew out a breath, ruffling a few tendrils of dark hair. “Of course you’re right. I know better.”

  “You’ve had an emotional few days, I’m sure. And coming back here obviously hasn’t been easy. It’s understandable that you’re not thinking as clearly as you possibly should.”

  Her expression turned rueful. “Don’t go all diplomatic on me now, Callum.”

  “Okay. You’re muddleheaded and accident-prone, and you should have waited in the truck like I told you. How’s that?”

  She smiled, and Cal was dazzled all over again. “Better.”

  To distract himself , he nodded toward the cash register. “One more thing.”

  The crutches hit the floor with a hollow thumping sound as Ainsley followed behind him. Cal pointed out the relatively dust-free square to the side of the machine which suggested to him that it had recently been moved. Then he squatted down, looked it over.

  “Several of the keys are gone,” Ainsley noted.

  “We don’t know how long they’ve been missing,” Cal said. “But yes, keys from the cash register of the old Cross produce stand would be right in line with Sabrina’s plan for her new pieces.”

  “We should probably call Ben. We should probably have called him beforehand, but I didn’t want to waste his time in case this turned out to be nothing. But it’s not nothing, is it? You were right. Sabrina was here.”

  “We don’t know that,” Cal said as he stood back up. “But yeah, we should call Ben so that he
can check, do his thing. The question is, are we going to admit that we came inside?”

  Ainsley hesitated, and then sighed. “Yes.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  “I’m hoping his happiness over possibly having new evidence overrides his annoyance at us for trespassing – but I’m not banking on it. And knowing Ben, he’ll feel duty bound to tell Todd Cross, who could, in theory, press charges if he so desired.”

  “I guess an anonymous phone call is out. Yeah, don’t even bother to answer.” Cal rubbed a hand over his face. “I probably should have run the other way when I saw you this morning.”

  But he smiled and Ainsley answered it with one of her own, however rueful. “That’ll teach you to sneak up on people.” Then she sobered. “Thank you. For thinking of this.” She gestured to indicate the old building.

  Cal scratched behind his ear. “It’s nothing. Sabrina is a friend of mine. I want her found, too.”

  Their shared gaze lasted long enough that it seemed to take on a palpable weight. And then Ainsley surprised him by balancing her weight so that she could lift one hand from her crutches to lay it against his cheek.

  And then she leaned in and kissed him.

  He guessed it shouldn’t surprise him that she’d made the first move. Despite the circumstances, he’d felt the attraction, and he’d sensed more than once that it was mutual. Reluctant, but mutual. And as he’d already noted, she didn’t seem the type to sit back and wait or to adhere to gender stereotypes. So, not being one to let an opportunity go to waste, Cal slid one hand onto her hip and eased her closer, throwing her ever so slightly off balance so that her free hand slid from his cheek to clutch at his chest.

  And he took the kiss deeper.

  She tasted sweet, which seemed at odds with her frequently acerbic tongue. He’d wanted his hands on her, he could admit now, since the moment he first saw her striding purposefully down the path by the creek in those ridiculously impractical high-heeled boots. And because he’d wanted her, he’d been more caustic than he needed to be.