“Unlikely anyone besides you could get in here. Especially not that monster. Everyone’s on the lookout for him.”
I took a deep breath and studied the ceiling. It was a shade of drab beige.
“The man has money. Why chance getting caught when he can hire someone to kill you?”
A translucent tear slid down her cheek as she stared at the top of her desk. I’d finally gotten through to her. She knew that to him, it was all a game. There was no telling when, how, or where he would strike. If I could get to her so easily, so could someone else. And I’d been welcomed like a buyer on a car lot. They all but fawned over me.
After checking her appearance in a compact mirror, the judge called her private guard. Seconds later he entered her chambers and stood at attention while she cut into him. He launched into an explanation of how he was on the lookout for the escapee, not a female.
“And you were Secret Service?” I said.
His face colored.
I explained how I’d gotten in with a simple diversion, one of the oldest tricks in the book. The judge’s humbled daytime guard listened with half-shaded eyes as I rattled off a rundown of precautions they needed to implement. I relayed that, before I flew home, I would meet with Axis Security to discuss the judge’s overall protection plan, including her private residence in Columbia.
“Thank you, Jersey,” the judge said when her retired Secret Service fellow left the chambers. “I protected your cover when you were involved with busting that warden who was on the take, sure. But you really may have saved my ass today with your … ‘wake-up call,’ as you put it.”
“You put yourself in danger to keep my cover that night, Judge,” I countered. “You could have been killed, were I found out.”
Transitioning back to her normal tough demeanor, the judge dismissed my comment with a wave of her hand. “I’d do it again to help put that loser on the right side of the prison bars.”
I sat across the desk from Pete Hammons, owner of Axis Security. Axis was a small but prestigious security contractor that specialized in personal protection for high-profile clients, and they were the folks who provided the judge’s private bodyguards. After landing in Atlanta, I’d headed straight to his office, hoping we could get the meeting over with quickly. I wanted to catch a five o’clock return flight to Wilmington, North Carolina, to make my dinner date with Bill.
Pete and I made small talk until another man joined us. After introductions, I learned that he was Pete’s new man in charge of recruiting and training. He was ex-military and had an impressive pedigree. He was also the person who hand-selected the private guard who had ushered me through courthouse security.
“So as not to waste your time, gentlemen, I’ll make it short. Earlier today, I entered the judge’s private office with a .410 derringer, a handful of shells, and an attaché packed with what looks very much like plastic explosives and a detonation device.” I smiled at their reactions. “You can imagine the judge’s surprise when she came in to find me waiting on her.”
I laid a few Polaroid photos on his desk. One was a shot of me relaxing in the judge’s chair, aiming the gun; I’d used the camera’s timer. The second shot was of my attaché, opened and resting beneath her desk. Just to be cute, I’d written “BOOM!” on a Post-it note and stuck it to the base of her desk chair.
“Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Pete said, shaking his head.
The other man paled but remained silent.
“How do you do it, Jersey? I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he repeated.
He did a mental fast-forward of what would happen were the judge to be murdered. The repercussions would be ugly. A few minutes passed before he slowly shook his head at me. I gave him my smug smile. After a successful security breach, I always felt a little cocky, like an athlete who had just completed a marathon in the front of the pack. Dinner with Bill later would be great, and the sex after that would be even better. I glanced at my watch. I had only half an hour before I needed to be back at the airport to make my Wilmington flight.
“The courthouse screeners need to be much better trained in hand-checking items like crutches and walking aids,” I told them. “For example, had they handled my set of crutches, they would have noticed that one was much heavier than the other. Also, they need to pay more attention to people in wheelchairs who don’t go through the tunnel.”
Just last month, my associate, Rita, posed as a disabled retiree in a wheelchair and wore a silver wig, old-age makeup, and a colostomy bag complete with a faint fecal odor. Since the chair’s frame would have set off the metal detector, she was pushed around it. She was asked to lean forward in the chair and after receiving a hasty scan with the handheld wand, a helpful guard escorted her right into the courtroom. Problem was, Rita had a Colt 9 millimeter tucked into the waistband of a girdle. It wasn’t loaded because the thought of ammunition that close to her reproductive parts made her nervous, but it very well could have been.
I explained to Pete how Rita got through last month and how I’d done it today. Axis’s head of recruiting and training melted into his chair. He studied something, invisible to me, on the carpeted office floor.
“They weren’t on the lookout for a grandmother in a wheelchair or a female reporter on crutches,” Pete’s associate finally said.
“Don’t you think an assassin might be a little sneaky?”
Pete sighed. “Don’t have to be a smart-ass.”
“Can’t help it,” I said. “Sarcasm runs in my family.”
He handed me a plain envelope. This job was a freebie, but I knew without looking that the envelope held a several-thousand-dollar check for a previous job. I almost regretted my decision to retire.
“I’ll FedEx the full report with recommendations to you tomorrow and, as always, yours is the only copy,” I told him. My clients always got the originals and I always got a paycheck. With the type of jobs I did, trust was priceless.
Pete studied me briefly then burst into laughter.
“It’s a good thing you’re straight, Jersey. I wouldn’t want you working for the enemy.”
“Actually, I won’t be working much for anyone anymore. Didn’t you get the word? I’m retiring.”
His head jerked as though I’d sucker punched him. “What?”
“You know, retiring. Not working anymore. I’m gonna tinker on my boat, maybe do some fishing, and spend more time with Bill. He keeps pestering me to settle down and marry him.”
“Retiring to get married? No way, not you, Jersey Barnes. You’re the only person I know who enjoys this business more than Ido.”
“It’s true, Pete. The letter already went out to my clients. I want to travel and relax and live a normal life. Might even decide to adopt a kid and do the mom thing.”
“But …”
“My partner, Rita, is taking over for me, and she’ll bring someone else on board as soon as we find the right woman. I’ll still be around to put in a word or two when needed.”
I really didn’t plan to be around much at all but it sounded reassuring, especially to clients who hadn’t yet established a relationship with Rita. Besides, I would be available by telephone. Sometimes.
“Rita isn’t as good as you,” he complained.
“Yes, she is,” I said without hesitation.
“Ah, well,” Pete said, rebounding in the quick manner of a successful businessman. “Gotta do what you gotta do. But don’t rush into the marriage thing. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
TWO
The Barter’s Block was in full swing when I arrived home from the airport. The Block, as everyone calls it, is a grill and pub that serves huge deli sandwiches, sweet potato fries, locally caught seafood, and iced-down bottled beer. Its name comes from the fact that it had been a trading center in the early eighteen hundreds, when the town of Wilmington first began. Because it borders the Cape Fear River, the Block was a perfect location for manufactured goods coming in by riverboat to be traded for
locally made wares. The historic building had been witness to Civil War struggles and during World War II it housed families of workers who built ships. Eventually, the Barter’s Block became a shoe shop and later a brothel, where casual entertaining was done on the lower level and the real entertainment took place in the upstairs bedrooms. Finally, it was renovated and leased to retail merchants and, like a hound on a scent, the name Barter’s Block had stuck with the building through its eventful past.
When I bought it four years ago with plans to put in a pub downstairs and live upstairs, changing the name was not an option. It didn’t occur to me until after I’d signed the closing papers that I had absolutely no idea how to run a bar. Not to mention the fact that I was running my own security agency and had no time to run another business. But I’d always wanted to own a pub and when I stumbled upon the building with a breathtaking view of the river that could double as my home, I put in an offer the next day. The Block became a mostly peaceful, occasionally boisterous joint that attracted longtime locals like an old oak tree’s shade on a sweltering summer day.
Sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and Cape Fear River, the city of Wilmington is basically a peninsula with a magnetic atmosphere. I first visited during my stint with the government and knew immediately that I’d make it my home someday. While the action and danger that came with my government job was addictive, I’d decided to fold my hand and get out of the game while I still had a big pile of chips on the table. I relocated to North Carolina and used some of those chips to open the Barnes Agency, a private security firm specializing in all security issues that affect public safety. What I never imagined is that I’d end up with two men I thought I’d lost forever: my father and my best friend from high school. Duke Oxendine appeared first and, after I talked him into becoming my partner in the Block, I knew I’d made the right decision in buying the property.
It is always fun to travel for an exciting job and it is always wonderful to be back home afterward, I thought, strolling through the Block and smiling at the regulars.
Ox grinned at me from behind the bar, where he poured draught beers from a tap, holding four mugs in one large hand. “I think your father is trying to cook again. Smells like burning peanuts up there.”
A Lumbee Indian from Robeson County, North Carolina, Ox had traditional Native American features such as high cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and thick, dark hair. But he also had some other interesting features mixed in, including a square chin with a dimple smack in the center of it. My friends thought he was a stud and couldn’t understand why I didn’t have a steamy romantic relationship with him. Or at least sleep with the man once in a while. I’d thought about it on several occasions, but the idea of sex with Ox scared the hell out of me. With him, there would be no turning back, and I liked to keep my options open.
“Maybe he’s trying to roast peanuts or something.” I sighed, hoping my father hadn’t done any major damage to the kitchen. “I’ll go check on him.”
“Things go as planned with the judge?”
“Of course.”
“So your retirement from active participation in your agency is official, then?”
“Sure.”
“How does it feel?”
“Good, I think. Pretty darn good.”
“Hope it sticks.”
“Me, too.” I headed up the stairs to see what trouble my father had managed to stir up, once again reminded how sweet it was to be reunited with my best friend. Like the intertwined roots of adjacent trees, our high school years together had fashioned a permanent bond of sharp memories, lively debates, and youthful dreams. Now that I had gotten used to sharing days with him once again, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to manage my life without Ox in it, should he ever decide to move on.
We were both sixteen when his family relocated to my hometown of Lexington, Kentucky. I first spotted him in the school’s hallway, angry about being uprooted from the Lumber River that he loved and glowering at everything around him. I taught him the eleventh-grade ropes and he taught me how to box. For the nearly two years that followed, we were inseparable. A day after high school graduation, under the influence of youthful ignorance, we talked each other into joining the marines, specifying to the recruiter that we wanted only the “most dangerous shit.”
The recruiter took us at our word. The fact that I had the bad taste to have been born female meant that Ox and I were abruptly split up two weeks later. The screaming hit my ears before I’d even stepped off the bus at Parris Island and I immediately realized two things: that being separated from Ox had pierced a hole through my young heart and that it was going to be a very long six years.
They’d purposely scheduled the busloads of new female recruits to arrive in the middle of the night so we were disoriented and couldn’t bolt from the island with a sudden spurt of remorse. Sheer anger gave me the will to survive basic training, and I discovered that I enjoyed fighting, was pretty good with an M-16, and excelled at the physical challenges. I became an MP working for a brigadier general. Three years later, I was relieved of completing my tour by the government, which had hand-picked me and a few other female marines for a “privileged” assignment. I found myself employed by a branch of the government I’d never heard of, learning how to do things I’d seen only in action movies. Meanwhile, Ox completed his tour and, surprising me and everyone who knew him, opted for a military career. He went through OCS and continued playing marine games until he earned the rank of major.
If you’ve never seen a six-foot-tall, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound Lumbee in full dress blues, you ought to. Even civilians were tempted to salute the man during the weekend I surprised him by flying to Camp Pendleton, California, for a birthday party planned by his master gunnery sergeant. Although we had stayed in touch with brief e-mails and generic Christmas cards, Ox and I hadn’t seen each other since our teenage years. We hugged so tight and for so long that the embrace drew a nasty glance from his wife. He’d decided to retire from the service after one more year, Ox told so me later that night, which would be his twenty-year mark and the point at which he’d receive a half-pay pension. He wanted to head back to the East Coast and explore new career options.
I decided to do the same thing, and twenty years after Ox and I had first stepped into the recruiter’s office, I left the government with little fanfare to start my own business. Ox’s retirement from the military was coupled with divorce papers. His wife dumped him the day he retired, announcing that she was in love with someone else. She waited until then, he realized later, so that she could get her share of his monthly retirement check.
When he visited Wilmington, still dazed by the turn of events in his life, I needed a pub manager and he needed a change of pace. It only took four or five tequila shots chased by a few beers before we reached an agreement on the Block and another several swigs of tequila straight from the bottle before we almost went to bed together.
“Your body is still amazing,” I’d said, running my hands over his shoulders and down his chest. I wasn’t sure if he’d unbuttoned his shirt or I did, but the feel of his smooth skin beneath my palms electrified something buried deep in my brain and I suddenly realized that I yearned to fulfill a twenty-year-old fantasy.
“As is yours, my spirited soul mate,” he’d said, outlining my silhouette with strong hands while capturing my mouth with his. Like an anchored boat rocking gently from side to side, the kiss stretched on and on, tantalizing and comforting, seeking, yet ending way too soon and leaving an untouched ocean to explore.
His hands found mine and held them tight. “But let’s wait until you’re sober and my heart has healed. Right now, I need a place to hang my feathers and you need someone to manage this dump of a bar on the river.”
That was five years ago and Ox still runs the Block. We never did fall into bed together, but oddly, I was closer to him than anyone else in my life. Semper fidelis, as the marines like to say. Always faithful.
As I climbed the stai
rs in search of my father, the weird odor grew stronger and snapped my attention back to the present. “Spud? Are you home? What’s that smell?”
Wearing an apron and looking like a shrunken, much older version of Wolfgang Puck, Dad stood in the kitchen scraping blackened plops from a cookie sheet with a putty knife. “It’s the delicious aroma of cookies baking. Women like men who can cook home-baked stuff. I saw that on Oprah.” He pounded one of the plops a few times to loosen it up. It cracked into several coal-like pieces. “So I’m making peanut butter cookies for Sara Jane.”
I leaned in for a closer look and crinkled my nose at the sight. “Spud, why don’t you just buy cookies at a bakery and tell her you made them?”
“Well, for crying out loud. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Besides, we promised the fire chief that you wouldn’t use the stove anymore.”
He removed the apron and a tuft of flour billowed around him. “Wasn’t my fault this place had bad wiring,” he grumbled. “Those Spam and cheese sandwiches were delicious, by the way. And anyway, I’m not using the stove, kid. You make cookies in an oven.”
My father had materialized a few months after Ox showed up. A career cop, Dad missed my ninth birthday and never returned. Through the years, with the assistance of a private investigator, he’d kept track of what I was doing and where I was living. But we’d had no contact until, without warning, he checked up on me in person. Traveling through North Carolina on his way to move in with a Florida girlfriend, he stopped by the Block to say hello. It was the first time I’d seen him since grade school and my reflexes argued whether to hug him or slug him. I did both, in that order, and pulled the punch so as not to break anything because he seemed frail. And then—I don’t cry, mind you—I cried. Inexplicable tears that erupted on and off for two days, until Ox wrapped his thick arms around me and whispered, “The spirits brought him here for a reason, Jersey. Look forward.”
T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 01 - Southern Fatality Page 2
