by Liliana Hart
“Christ,” Jack said. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.” His arms came around me and I buried my face against his chest. He was always so warm. So steady.
“That’s not even the worst of it.” My voice was starting to fade, and I’d stopped noticing the tears running down my face. They only mixed with the rain. But my anger grew even as I thought of what else I had to tell him.
“They were traitors. Did you know that?” I looked him in the eye as the words rushed out, and he smoothed the wet strands of hair back from my face. But I didn’t want gentleness. I needed my anger.
“Those documents were records of each body that came through. American soldiers and spies that could have died by the same people my parents worked for. It’s like a nightmare.” My words spilled out faster and faster. “Their list of sins doesn’t even end there. There was a body in the bunker at the cabin. Gunshot wound to the head. A couple of years old by the looks of it, but not as badly decayed as it should have been because the bunker is climate controlled. So now I can add murder to the list, because who else could have put him there?”
My fists pounded against his chest, but he didn’t try to stop the violence erupting from the deepest part of me. He just held me close, his broad hand rubbing up and down my back.
I had to tell him the last of it. The part that would make him understand why things wouldn’t work between us. Why he couldn’t possibly love me.
“I wasn’t theirs, Jack.” The sob that broke out of me sounded more animalistic than human, and I saw the shock on his face before I tried to pull away. To hide. But he didn’t let me go no matter how I fought against him.
“Get the rest out,” he said. “You’ll feel better for it.”
“I wasn’t theirs,” I yelled. “Isn’t that enough? Do you know what it feels like to know your parents smuggled you into the country like diamonds or guns?”
I crumpled against him, and he picked me up where we were and sat down on the ground, rocking me back and forth like a child. We were both soaked to the skin, and the storm didn’t show any signs of letting up, but his arms were solid and sure around me.
“She’d been pregnant,” I said. “My mother. Pretty far along when something happened on a trip she and my dad took overseas. It was supposed to be vacation, but who the hell knows what they were really doing. She somehow got shot and lost the baby. They were there for weeks while she recovered, and part of the shipment of goods they were overseeing were the bodies of an American colonel and his French wife, along with several other unfortunate soldiers. And inside their bodies was more than half a billion dollars in heroin. The Colonel and his wife had a week old baby girl, and no one knew what to do with her. So my parents just took me, and told everyone I’d been born during their vacation in Italy. I always thought I’d been born in Italy.”
My teeth chattered as I choked out those last words, and I knew the symptoms well enough to know I was in shock. But damned if I knew what to do about it. I looked up into Jack’s eyes and saw the rage he was trying hard to contain for my sake. I looked away so I wouldn’t have to see the pity I was sure would follow.
“Look at me, Jaye,” he said, placing his hands on each side of my face and forcing me to look up. “You think you can’t love or be loved because you came from that? Fuck them. You should be jumping for joy that you don’t share their blood. Their sins aren’t yours. And dammit, I’m not going to stand by and let you tell me I’d be better off loving someone else because you have this clusterfuck of a shit storm about to explode around you. Do you think I can’t, or won’t, stand with you? If I’d go to hell and back again for you, then I sure as hell can take whatever Bloody Mary or even the goddamned FBI has to throw at us.”
My breath was coming faster and faster, and my vision clouded, either because of the tears or the rain, I couldn’t be sure.
“Jack—”
“I’m not finished, dammit.” His thumb brushed at the tears that couldn’t seem to stop falling, and despite the anger I saw in him, his hold on me was gentle. “I’m sorry about Brody. I’m sorry to the depths of my soul that you had to go through that. That you had to watch him die. But you can’t blame yourself because you didn’t love him. It’s not because you weren’t able to love him. You have the capacity to love more than anyone I know. It’s because you weren’t meant to love him. That love belongs to me, Jaye. It always has. And you’ve always had mine.”
Something broke free inside of me as his lips took mine in a kiss that was years—decades—overdue. There wasn’t the gentleness of a first kiss, nor the awkward maneuvering and adjustments that had to be made until you became used to each other. It was just—right. There was no other way to describe it.
His fingers tangled in my hair and brought me closer, so our bodies were fused together in every way but the most vital. I cursed the clothes that separated us, and relished the heat that suffused my body as his teeth nipped at my bottom lip.
Someone moaned—probably me—and my arms and legs tightened around him as he coaxed my mouth open and his tongue stroked erotically against mine. His kisses trailed across my cheek and down my neck, where his tongue and teeth did something that had fireworks blasting behind my eyelids. My body felt so hot that it amazed me steam wasn’t sizzling from my skin as soon as the rain touched flesh.
“God, Jaye,” he whispered. “So long. I’ve waited so long for you.”
I’d stopped thinking the moment his mouth touched mine. My past and my parents no longer seemed as important. The bodies that waited for me at the funeral home could all go to the devil. Only Jack mattered. He’s the only one who’d ever mattered.
“Jack,” I moaned.
His hands caressed my shoulders and slid sinuously down, following the dip in my waist and then flaring out as he reached my hips. His fingers tightened and he pulled me closer, so I could feel every inch of his hardness. He pressed my hips against him, and my eyes rolled back in my head just before my lids fluttered closed.
Everything was happening too fast. My brain couldn’t quite catch up with my body, and part of me still thought this was all an illusion. Maybe I’d finally gone over the edge.
His head dropped to my shoulder, and his rapid breaths heated the side of my neck. “We’ve got to stop,” he finally said. The cold was starting to seep in, so I snuggled closer to draw his warmth. “Christ, Jaye. Don’t move or I’ll end up embarrassing myself.”
For some reason that made me giggle, and I buried my face against his neck as exhaustion and euphoria took control. The tears hadn’t completely run their course, but I wiped viciously at my eyes, determined to force them to subside. I wasn’t a crier. There was no need to start now.
“Jesus, Jack. What are we doing? This is insanity.”
“Feels pretty sane to me,” he said, unwinding my arms and legs from around him. He lifted me enough so he could stand and then helped me to my feet. My knees were wobbly and I knew I probably looked like hell, but Jack had already seen me at my worst, though this time was probably running a close second.
He all but carried me to his cruiser and helped me into the seat. The shivers had come back with a vengeance, and there was no hope of warming up when every inch of me was soaking wet. I watched, my brain foggy, as Jack gathered my stuff from the Suburban, pocketed my keys and then tossed my things in the back seat. His lips were blue by the time he got in and started the car.
“I can tell you exactly what we’re going to do, Doctor Graves.” He did a u-turn in the middle of the road and headed back down the lane. “We’re going home. And we’re going to get warm and eat soup and talk about murder.”
My whole body relaxed against the seat, and I’d just realized I’d been scared to death he was going to ravish me as soon as we walked through the door.
“And maybe while we’re doing all that, you can work on getting used to me kissing you.”
Chapter Fifteen
I shoved the photograph I’d found in George’s throat at Jack the mom
ent we walked inside, much to his surprise. I escaped upstairs, where I tried to get my composure back under the hot spray of the shower. I pulled on a pair of old sweats—mostly because my subconscious was trying to tell me to wear something as sexless as possible—and I headed back down to face Jack, having practiced what I was going to say while I was in the shower.
Those thoughts seeped out my ears the moment I smelled food. It took two cups of coffee and a large bowl of soup before I started to feel human again, and somewhere along the way I caught my second wind.
“So—” I said. “You said something about murder. We should probably talk about that. And then we should go to bed.”
Jack grinned at me, and I felt the heat rush to my face.
“Separately, I mean. Because it’s been a long day, and I’m kind of tired.” The temperature rose and my old sweats weren’t doing the job of being sexless if the look he was giving me was anything to go by. “Is it hot in here to you?” I wished Jack would show some mercy and just shoot me between the eyes, but luck wasn’t on my side so I continued on. “And I’m supposed to meet with Reverend Thomas and Mr. Oglesby tomorrow after church services to talk about the Reverend’s interment. Should be a packed house. And then there’s Mrs. Perry’s hair and makeup to schedule.”
“You want some more coffee?” he asked.
“No, why?”
“I just figured your throat might be dry. I’m not sure I’ve heard you talk that long since you’ve been back. It’s nice to know I make you nervous.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I sputtered. “You don’t make me nervous. Can we please talk about dead people now? Did you see anything in the photo I gave you?”
“Nothing on the surface, other than the fact it was taken several years ago.”
“I noticed that too.”
“It obviously has some meaning or it wouldn’t have been shoved down his throat.”
“I was thinking about that,” I said. “And I don’t think it was shoved down his throat. I think he tried to swallow it himself.”
Jack’s brows rose with interest. “Explain.”
“There was no damage to the inside of the mouth. There would have been scrapes along the inside of the cheek or even a chipped tooth if someone had tried to force him to swallow it. And it was far enough down in the trachea that he had some success at swallowing it before they killed him.”
“Huh,” Jack said. “That changes things some.”
“Did you find anything else out today?” I asked.
“I’ve called in some help from Agent Carver in the Richmond FBI office. He’s going to drive over in the morning. We’re going to have to form some type of task force between local law enforcement and the federal guys.”
He gathered up our dishes and rinsed them off in the sink before he put them in the dishwasher. “Let’s head to my office, and I’ll show you what I’ve got.”
I went ahead of him to the office at front of the house. The room was dark and masculine. Books lined the walls on either side of a gray stone fireplace, and his desk took up almost all the space on the adjacent wall. A thick rug lay in the middle of the floor, and two overstuffed chairs flanked each side of the fireplace. A well-used leather couch sat against the opposite wall, and there was an ancient throw Jack’s mom had knitted in hues of green tossed carelessly over the back. It was a comfortable space, and it was obvious it was where he spent most of his time.
White boards were set up in front of the windows, identical to the ones he had up in his office, and he had the curtains pulled tight so no one could see in or out. It was hard to miss the garish evidence of what we were dealing with when it was so starkly presented. Jack handed me a fresh cup of coffee when he came in.
“I’ve got Doctor Vance under surveillance,” he said. “There are two other departments working with me who don’t have assholes in charge, so I’m using their resources for surveillance purposes. I don’t think we’re going to pin this on Vance though.”
“But you think he’s guilty?”
“I think he knows what’s going on, at least part of it, but his hands are clean. He’s made sure of it. But I’m not sure he’s trained his sons to be so careful. William and Gregory Jr—I’ve got them both under surveillance. One of them reads like an altar boy. Comes off squeaky clean. The other doesn’t have a record of violence, but he’s got a hell of a temper, according to a few people who’ve worked with him in the past.” Jack rubbed at the back of his neck. “One of the Vances is involved somehow. Maybe all of them. But I don’t have the evidence to pin a murder on anyone.”
“Let me guess. The younger Doctor Vance is the one with the temper.”
“Bingo,” Jack said.
“How are we supposed to find everyone involved in this?”
“We’ve got a warrant for the membership list. I’ll serve it in the morning and have one of the tech guys pull it from online. If someone paid the membership dues and was ever entered into the system, then it’ll show up in the list.”
Jack grabbed a folder from his desk and went to the extra white board set up next to the murder board. “And to answer your question. We’re not supposed to find everyone. That’s for the federal guys to deal with. We have to focus on Daniel Oglesby and George. It all comes back to them. Have a seat, buttercup. We’re going to be here for a while.”
I curled up in one of the oversized chairs in front of the fireplace and watched Jack construct the puzzle pieces by sticking them to the board in a loose timeline. Daniel Oglesby’s photograph went up first—not the crime scene photo, but one identical to the picture hanging in the church.
“He was taken Sunday afternoon,” Jack said, writing in approximate dates and times. “By one initial assailant who had access to a drug only available to doctors. Who has access?”
“In Bloody Mary or in the county?” I asked.
“In the county. Anyone you can think of.”
“I’d have access. Doc Randall would be the only other one here in Bloody Mary. But he’s old as dirt. I can’t see him stabbing anyone in the back with a hypodermic needle. He can barely see two feet in front of him.”
“Who else?”
“King George Proper has several doctors who work at a clinic there in town, and all of them would have access to Augusta General. Nottingham and Newcastle are small like we are, so just a few. We’ve already established that Doctor Vance had access. I feel like you’re testing me. You have that look on your face that says you know all of this already.”
“Sometimes it’s better to hear it all out loud in case it knocks something loose. Augusta General is our place,” he said. “Twenty milliliters of Diprivan are unaccounted for. The nurse who mans the cage where they keep all the drugs has no explanation, and we can’t find a tie in to the Diprivan Doctor Vance signed for a week ago. Everything in their records shows every doctor logged in like they were supposed to. Even Doc Randall on the afternoon before Daniel Oglesby went missing. But the hospital can’t pin the theft on any one of them.”
“You’re shitting me,” I said.
“I got the chance to talk to Doc Randall this afternoon while you were digging into George.”
“I bet that was an interesting conversation.”
“In all honesty, I’d have rather watched you put George back together instead of dealing with what I did today. You’re right. Doc Randall can’t see two feet in front of him, and he’s as old as dirt. He started to cry as soon as he saw me at the door. Easiest confession I’ve ever gotten out of a suspect before.”
“He confessed to injecting Reverend Oglesby with the drug?” I asked incredulously.
I didn’t have feelings for Doc Randall one way or the other. He’d kept his opinions to himself about my parents as far as I knew, and I’d only gone to him a couple of times as a patient when I was a child. But I still didn’t believe he’d be capable of doing something like that. He was just so—old. And small. And his glasses were thicker than Coke bottles.
&
nbsp; “He confessed to getting an envelope full of money in his mailbox last Thursday. He said his practice has dwindled down to nothing. Most everyone is driving over to King George to the clinic there or waiting for you to open a private practice here.”
“What? Really?” I asked, intrigued.
“Focus,” Jack said. “He said his social security isn’t enough to pay for his malpractice insurance and still live on, and he keeps hoping he’ll die of old age soon so he can get some rest.”
Jack rubbed his forehead and put up Doc Randall’s photo on the timeline before Reverend Oglesby, and the date he stole the medicine.
“Christ,” I said.
“Just shoot me if I ever get to that point. The man’s been working for sixty years and has nothing to show for it.”
“Who left the money in his mailbox?”
“He doesn’t know. There was a note that said what they wanted and how much to get, and they said if he delivered the product on time that the other half of the payment would be sent. I took it all into evidence, and maybe we’ll get a couple of prints, but they’ve been careful so far. It was a quarter of a million dollars.”
I whistled between my teeth. “That’s a hell of a price to pay to make sure a gay preacher is taught a lesson.”
Jack looked at me and nodded. “That was pretty much my thought. Which means something else is going on here that we’re not seeing.”
He filled out the rest of the timeline, his block handwriting square and neat below each photo. Doctor Vance went on the board next, and underneath him went two more pictures. The first I didn’t recognize, but something flickered in my mind about the second.
“Hey, I know that guy,” I said.
“Oh, yeah?”
“I don’t know him, know him. But I recognize him from somewhere.”
“That’s the younger Doctor Vance. He’s a cardiologist.”
“That would explain the temper,” I said. “Cardiologists all have a God complex.”
“Have you spoken to him before?”
