Tall, Dark and Dangerous Part 1

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “You look at that file,” Chief Bradley interrupted her, “and you tell me if you think McCoy has the skill and training necessary for him to be able to snap a man’s neck.”

  Lucy gazed up at him. She didn’t want to answer that. She couldn’t answer that, not without damning Blue. But if she refused to answer, Bradley would assume she was hiding the truth.

  “Blue McCoy is a lieutenant in the Navy SEALs,” she told the chief. “He’s the executive officer of SEAL Team Ten’s Alpha Squad.” She slapped the papers against her hand. “According to this, he’s won countless medals for bravery—”

  “I didn’t ask you for a background sketch of the man,” Bradley said. “I asked if Blue McCoy has the skill and training to kill in that manner—”

  “He’d never do such a thing,” Lucy protested.

  “It’s a yes or no question, Tait. Does he or does he not have the skill and training to break a man’s neck?”

  Bradley was watching her. Annabella was watching her. Farther down the hall, Travis Southeby and Tom Harper were watching her. They were all waiting for her answer.

  “All SEALs do—”

  But Chief Bradley wasn’t listening any longer. “That sounded like a yes to me. Run next door to the judge’s chambers,” he said to Travis. “Let’s get a warrant and bring that son of a bitch in. We got motive and now we’ve got means.”

  “Motive?” Lucy asked, following Bradley down the hall, back toward his office. “What motive did Blue McCoy have for killing his brother?”

  Bradley stopped and looked at her as if she were first cousin to the village idiot. “Jenny Lee Beaumont,” he said. “She’s motive enough for damn near any man.”

  “That’s ridiculous—”

  “You got a better motive?” Bradley said, turning back to glare at her. “Or maybe you’ve got an entirely different suspect in mind?”

  They killed Gerry McCoy, Darlene Parker had said ominously. They won’t think twice about killing again.

  Lucy shook her head, backing slowly away. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t.” She gazed into the chief’s eyes, trying to see if he was capable of murder. As much as she disliked the man, she found it hard to believe. But she’d been wrong about a lot of things before.

  “Got the warrant, Chief,” Travis called.

  “Take Tom and go pick up McCoy,” Bradley said to Travis. He turned to Lucy. “He still staying out at your place?” He smiled knowingly. “In the guest bedroom?”

  Lucy’s stomach was in a knot. They were going to arrest Blue. They were going to bring him in, charge him with murdering his stepbrother. Or maybe they weren’t going to bring him in. Maybe they were simply going to kill him instead, claiming he resisted arrest.

  “Let me go along,” she said to Bradley, her mind going a mile a minute as she searched for a way out. “I can talk him into coming in quietly.”

  “Yeah, or you can tip him off—warn him so that he gets away. You don’t work for me anymore, remember?” Bradley said. He nodded to Travis, who headed for the door, Tom Harper one step behind. “No, I want you to sit down right here in my office and stay until I receive word that McCoy is behind bars.”

  “You can’t keep me here,” Lucy said tightly, her fear for Blue stronger and sharper than her concern for her personal safety.

  “Yes, I can,” Bradley said. “We can do it one of two ways. You can sit down nice and quiet, or I can have you arrested. Which will it be?”

  Lucy walked out into the hall, toward the front door. “Arrest me.”

  “Have it your way,” the chief said. He called down the hall, “Annabella, get Frank Redfield up here to arrest Lucy Tait.”

  Lucy could see Annabella flipping frantically through her code book, trying to find an appropriate ten code for the situation. The dispatcher finally gave up and just picked up the phone.

  But Frank was already upstairs. He stepped out into the hallway in front of Lucy, blocking her exit out of the building.”

  “Come on, Lucy,” he said. “Why do you want to make trouble for yourself?”

  “If you’re arresting me,” she said, “what are the charges?”

  “Attempted obstruction of justice,” Chief Bradley volunteered.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Lucy said, turning to face him, “and you know it. You try arresting me for that. Just try it.”

  She stepped around Frank, who looked down the hall at the chief, waiting for instruction. But the chief didn’t say a word. He was silent as Lucy pushed open the door and went down the stairs into the hot morning sunshine.

  She’d called Bradley’s bluff.

  Lucy ran for her truck, and started the engine with a roar even before she shut the door. She pulled out of the parking lot with a squeal of tires and headed up toward Fox Run Road, praying that she wasn’t too late.

  14

  Blue went out onto the porch as the police car pulled into the drive.

  Lucy was still downtown, and he recognized Travis Southeby behind the wheel. That wasn’t good. But at least Tom Harper was with him. Tom had no doubt read all of his civil-rights handbook, while Travis had clearly skipped a few chapters.

  They’d come to arrest him. He knew that even before they got out of the car. And the two police officers got out of the car with almost comedic differences in style.

  Tom stood up and straightened his pants, nodding a greeting to Blue, closing the car door behind him.

  Travis drew his weapon, and, flinging his car door open and using it as a shield, he aimed his gun at Blue.

  “Blue McCoy, you are under arrest,” he shrilly announced.

  Tom glanced at Travis, then looked apologetically at Blue. “We’ve got to bring you in,” he said. “We’re making the charges official.”

  “I didn’t kill Gerry,” Blue said evenly. “If I had, I would’ve been long gone.”

  “Keep your hands where I can see ’em,” Travis said sharply.

  Blue glanced back at Travis and his gun. “You’re too far away to get an accurate aim with that thing,” he said. “Put it away before you accidentally hurt someone.” He turned back to Tom. “You’re making a big mistake here. You’re wasting your time on me while Gerry’s real killer is running around free.”

  Tom actually looked sorry as he snapped a pair of handcuffs on Blue. He quickly searched him as he recited Blue’s Miranda rights.

  Travis approached, obviously keeping his hand close to his reholstered gun. “We’ve got enough evidence to put you away, McCoy,” he said. “We’ve got a motive of jealousy—”

  “That’s total bull.”

  “Is it really? I didn’t think so. Chief didn’t, either,” Travis said. “We’ve got a witness who places you with the victim at the scene of the crime—”

  “You’ve got a liar who’s probably getting paid a small fortune to make up stories,” Blue countered.

  “We’ve also got a hundred other witnesses who saw you threaten the victim earlier that evening. Are they all getting paid off, too?” Travis was enjoying this way too much.

  Tom opened the door to the patrol car, and Blue started to climb in. It wasn’t easy with his hands bound together behind his back.

  “And,” Travis said, playing his winning card with a flourish, “we’ve got military records that peg you as a martial-arts expert and we’ve got our own local military scholar—of sorts—who will be called to testify that as a Navy SEAL martial-arts expert you have the knowledge and skill necessary to be able to break a man’s neck the way Gerry’s was broken.”

  Blue straightened up. Was he talking about…?

  Travis smiled at the look on Blue’s face. “That’s right,” he said. “Lucy Tait. And she’ll be doubly valuable to the prosecution considering you’ve been shacking up with her for the past few days. Imagine how that’ll look to the jury—your own lover testifying against you.” He made tsking sounds.

  “Lucy would never do that,” Blue said. He could feel anger starting inside him, burning hot
and tightly contained.

  “She will if she’s subpoenaed,” Travis said. “And she’ll be subpoenaed. All she’ll have to do is repeat what she said this morning down at the station.”

  Blue got into the car. “Play your head games with someone else, Southeby,” he said shortly. “I know for a fact that Lucy wasn’t at the police station this morning.”

  “Well, I know for a fact that she was,” Travis said, slamming the door behind Blue and climbing in behind the driver’s wheel. He put his arm along the back of the front seat, twisting to look at Blue. “She came in to give you up. She provided us with that last bit of information we needed to come on out here and bring you in.”

  Blue just laughed and told Travis in quite specific language exactly what he could do with himself.

  Travis turned to look at Tom, who’d climbed into the car and was fastening his seat belt. “McCoy thinks I’m telling tall tales,” he said. “He thinks I’m making this all up. Isn’t that exactly what happened this morning, Tom? Lucy Tait walked in, told the chief that McCoy had the martial-arts training needed to cleanly snap a man’s neck, and five minutes later I was holding the warrant for McCoy’s arrest in my hand.”

  Tom glanced at Blue, clearly sympathetic. “I don’t know exactly how it happened,” he said. “I didn’t hear all of it, but Lucy was at the station this morning, and I did hear the chief ask her if you had the skill to break a man’s neck. Right after that, we had the warrant.”

  Part of Blue up and died. Just like that. Sudden, instant, tragic death.

  He stared out the window of the police car as Travis pulled out of Lucy’s driveway. Summer had hit full stride, and the trees and meadows were bursting with life and color. Wildflowers were everywhere. A breeze ruffled the green leaves, making the trees seem like some giant, moving, living thing. There was all that life out there, yet Blue felt dead inside. Dead and brown and dried up and broken.

  So tell me honestly, Lucy had said to him last night, after they’d made love for the second—or was it the third?—time. Do you know how to break a man’s neck the way Gerry’s neck was broken? Their legs were still intertwined, and he had been running his fingers down her back, from her shoulder all the way to her thighs. Her skin was so soft and smooth he couldn’t stop touching her.

  They’d just talked about honesty, about how Lucy was the first woman Blue had known who hadn’t had some sort of ulterior motive for being with him.

  But she had. She’d had one hell of an ulterior motive, hadn’t she? She’d used sex and the intimacy it created between them to get the information she’d needed to send him to jail.

  He’d almost let himself love her. Damn, he was such a fool.

  Blue was silent as Travis Southeby and Tom Harper led him into the station, silent as they took his fingerprints and mug shots, silent as they told him his bail would be set that afternoon, silent as they put him in the holding cell and locked the door.

  It wasn’t until Travis came back, telling him that Lucy Tait was outside, that she wanted to see him, that Blue spoke.

  “I don’t want to see her,” he said, amazed that someone who felt so dead inside could still speak.

  Lucy stared at Travis Southeby. “But…”

  “He said he doesn’t want to see you,” Travis repeated. He smiled. “Can’t say I blame him, seeing how you were the one who provided the final piece of evidence in the case against him. He wasn’t too happy when I told him about that.”

  “You told him what?”

  “Nothing but the truth,” Travis said smugly. “You came in here to tell the chief that Blue McCoy had the ability to break a man’s neck. Not everyone knew that he had that particular skill, you know. Your little tidbit of information proved vital in our case against him.”

  “You son of a bitch!”

  Could Blue really believe that she would betray him that way? She wouldn’t have thought so, but apparently he had.

  “Watch your mouth, missy,” Travis said primly.

  Lucy took a deep breath. Slamming her fist into Travis’s smug face wasn’t going to do her—or Blue—any good. She forced herself to calm down. “I’m sorry.” She took another deep breath. She’d gotten to her house too late. Blue was gone and Travis’s patrol car was nowhere in sight. She’d turned right around and come back to the station. “Please, you’ve got to let me see him anyway.”

  “Can’t do that.”

  The front doors opened, and Lucy turned to see Jenny Lee Beaumont walk into the police-station lobby. She was wearing a rose-colored suit with a frilly white blouse. The frills made her generous bosom look even larger. Her hair was up in an elegant bun and she had high heels on her tiny feet, pushing her height up to a full five foot three.

  Travis moved toward her. “Ms. Beaumont,” he said. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

  Jenny took off her sunglasses. Her eyes still looked smudged and bruised from grieving. “I received a call from Blue McCoy,” she said in her breathy Southern accent. “I’m here to see him.”

  Travis nodded. “Right this way, ma’am.”

  As Lucy watched, Jenny turned back to Annabella, who was sitting at the dispatcher’s desk. “My lawyer should be arriving soon. Will you please bring her back to us when she comes?”

  Lucy watched as Jenny Lee Beaumont was ushered down the hall, toward the holding cells. Blue had called Jenny Lee. Jenny’s lawyer was coming to help him. He trusted Jenny, not Lucy….

  But Jenny didn’t know that some—if not all—of the police officers on the Hatboro Creek force were involved in the cover-up of Gerry’s death. And Jenny didn’t know that R. W. Fisher had allegedly paid Matt Parker large sums of money to make up his story about seeing Blue in the woods with Gerry on the night of his death.

  And Jenny didn’t love Blue.

  Lucy did.

  And somehow Lucy was going to find Gerry’s killer. Somehow she was going to prove Blue’s innocence. Somehow she was going to prove to him that she didn’t betray him.

  Or she was going to die trying.

  “Bail is set…for five-hundred-thousand dollars.”

  A murmur went through the courtroom. Half a million dollars. Lucy’s stomach clenched. Where was Blue going to get half a million dollars?

  “Can the defendant make bail?”

  As Lucy watched, Blue turned and glanced at his lawyer, who turned and looked back at Jenny Lee. Jenny shook her head. “Not at this time, Your Honor,” the lawyer said. She stood up. “Your Honor, my client is a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. A Navy attorney will be arriving sometime next week. May I suggest my client remain in custody in Hatboro Creek until that time?”

  The judge shook his head. “Those facilities aren’t adequate,” he said. “The defendant will be transferred immediately to the correctional institution at Northgate.”

  Several armed guards approached Blue. He stood up and let them lead him away. He had to know Lucy was there, in the back of the room, but he didn’t look up. He didn’t even glance in her direction.

  Blue hated Northgate prison. He hated the feeling of being locked up. He hated being stripped of his clothes and forced to wear ill-fitting blue jeans, and a white T-shirt, and sneakers on his feet. He particularly hated the sneakers.

  He stood in the courtyard alone, watching from the corners of his eyes as a large group of men gathered, then approached him. They were clearly the prison’s movers and shakers—among the inmates, they were the ones in charge. They surrounded him, their body language threatening.

  He ignored them. It wasn’t until one of the men got right in his face that Blue even looked up.

  “You Popeye the sailor man?” the inmate asked, grinning at his own clever humor.

  “No,” Blue said. “I’m Blue McCoy, the Navy SEAL.”

  At least one person in the crowd knew what that meant, and as Blue stood there, a murmur spread from man to man. He couldn’t hear the words, but he knew what was being said. A Navy SEAL. A snake eater. One of the toughes
t sons of bitches in the military.

  Like magic, the crowd disappeared. No one wanted to pick a fight with a man they couldn’t possibly beat.

  Blue was almost disappointed. He could have used a good brawl to get this pain out of his system, this heartache of knowing that Lucy had used and then betrayed him.

  She was so damn good—he hadn’t suspected a thing. Her sunny smile had been genuine. Her kisses had been so sincere. How had she done it? How had she looked at him with all that emotion in her eyes without feeling a thing?

  Blue wanted to be out of this prison. He wanted to be far away from South Carolina and Lucy Tait. Damn, he never wanted to see her again.

  He wanted to take a sailboat out onto the ocean, out of sight of land, and just be one with the water and sky. He wanted to erase Lucy’s face from his memory.

  It wasn’t going to happen.

  He wanted to stop thinking about her, but she followed him everywhere, filling his mind, overwhelming him with her presence.

  Why had she done it? How could she have done it? It didn’t make sense. Did she really think he’d killed Gerry? Or worse, could she possibly be part of some conspiracy against him?

  It didn’t make sense.

  It didn’t make any sense at all.

  He closed his eyes, and she was there, in his mind, arms crossed, mouth tight, glaring at him with barely concealed impatience.

  “Why?” he asked, speaking the word aloud, causing some of the inmates to look curiously at him and then to move farther away.

  Blue needed to know why. Of course, Lucy couldn’t answer.

  Lucy sat outside the gates of R. W. Fisher’s plantation-style mansion, slumped in the front seat of Sarah’s car. She’d borrowed her friend’s shiny black Honda because she knew her own battered truck would stand out on this well-manicured street like a sore thumb. She had also borrowed a microcassette recorder from Sarah’s husband’s office, and she’d dug up a pair of binoculars from her own attic.