The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  “Well now.” Clay took another sip from his mug. “You respond to my prerequisite masculine post-game commentary by telling me she’s an amazing woman. That’s what I like to call ‘Non-specific Answer Evasion Syndrome.’ It’s a favorite of politicians. You answered my implied question, but didn’t tell me a thing.”

  “You’re making that up.”

  “The syndrome? Sure, I coined the name, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. In layman’s terms it’s known as giving the runaround.”

  “I’m not giving you the runaround, Clay. I told you, she’s an amazing woman.”

  “Uh-huh,” Clay drawled lazily. “You did. But you left out a few things between the ‘amazing’ and the ‘woman.’ Like, she’s an amazingly agile woman. Or, she’s an amazingly insatiable woman. So either you didn’t have the opportunity to find out, and still think she’s amazing rather than frustrating, or you found out and don’t want to share the details. Either way, that’s an uh-oh.”

  Jordan snapped his briefcase shut. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Clay chuckled, clearly enjoying himself. “I sense the beginning of the end, my friend. You seem to have early stage infatuation inamorata, likely to become terminal.”

  “You see,” Jordan pointed to his head, made a little circling motion with his finger. “This is why you shrink types shouldn’t be allowed among the general populace. Too much psychobabble. Especially at eight-thirty in the morning.”

  Clay’s chuckle turned into a laugh. “Well now you’re just being bitchy.” At Jordan’s warning snarl, he relented. “Okay, okay.” He held up his palms in a gesture of peace. “The subject is officially dropped.”

  Jordan stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I wish I’d been wrong.”

  Clay sat his mug on the table, knowing they were no longer discussing Ava. “Jordan. You know that the profile I built is just a guideline. And really, it’s just an opinion. An educated opinion based on the evidence at hand, but you know that doesn’t frequently hold much water in court.”

  Clay had used Jordan’s absence last night to finish the profile of the type of individual who was not only capable but likely to do what had been done to those three women. Some of the points fit. But more, far more, suggested that Elijah Fuller wasn’t even close.

  Jordan looked out the bank of windows behind the kitchen table. The sky was a pure cerulean, softened, as if by an artist’s brush, with thin strokes of wispy clouds. Tulips stuck up like lollipops from the big pots the florist had positioned on the sidewalk. Cars blurred past, people strolled out of the coffee shop carrying fat pastries and skinny lattes, a little girl skipped, hand-in-hand with her mother, toward the preschool on the corner.

  A beautiful spring day in a beautiful city.

  And somewhere, among the cobblestones and horse drawn carriages, the haze of history and specters of the past, lurked a modern day monster.

  A man who cut out women’s tongues so that no one could hear their screams.

  “So,” Jordan looked back at his friend. “I’ll just have to convince the rest of the team that an educated opinion is sometimes more watertight than circumstantial facts.”

  “WHAT the hell is this?

  A visibly annoyed Jeff Simpson – SCMPD detective and all-around pain in Jordan’s ass – glanced up from the printout Jordan had passed to him. Cocky in his mud-colored suit, he looked at the others gathered at the conference table – members of the team who’d investigated, arrested and/or indicted Elijah Fuller – inviting them to join in his sneer.

  “This,” Jordan handed the final paper to Simpson’s partner before reclaiming his seat at the end of the table “is an offender profile of the person who murdered Tracy Buckler, Sonya Kousman and Mackenzie Wright.”

  Four pairs of eyes dropped to their printouts.

  “White male.” Simpson skimmed, his bulldog face set in a frown. “Likely between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. Solid knowledge of forensic evidence and police procedures. Organized, control motivated, history of childhood abuse…” He flicked the paper with his hand. “This is all just great, Wellington, but in case you forgot, we already caught the guy.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” Oh yeah, that got everyone’s attention.

  “People, people.” Joel Feinstein, Jordan’s boss, raised his voice over the din. Then turned his own ire on Jordan. “Way to handle that diplomatically.” He looked down the considerable length of his nose.

  “It needed to be said.”

  “What is this?” Simpson repeated, angrily this time.

  “Exactly what it looks like,” Jordan said. He’d worked with Simpson, butted heads with Simpson, on several trials already. And though the man was thought to be a solid cop, Jordan had found that solidity to be unbending. “Based on the victimology, the manner of death, the method and locations of the body disposals, Agent Copeland –”

  “Agent Copeland? You called in the fucking feds?”

  “I agreed to it,” Feinstein interjected. “We’re talking serial murder, here. A behavioral profile and testimony to that effect is pretty standard procedure in a trial like this. Of course, one would hope that our expert’s testimony would actually work in our favor.” He frowned at Jordan again.

  “As I was saying,” Jordan carried on. “A few of the characteristics jibe. Elijah Fuller is a white male. He’s young, mobile, intelligent, we know he was abused as a child. But Fuller was also obsessed with – stalked – Sonya Kuosman. He followed her, photographed her, constructed an elaborate relationship in his mind based on her being friendly to him in their apartment building’s laundry room. It was creepy, and probably criminal, but the point is he saw her as a specific person. If you’ll read further, you’ll note that Agent Copeland believes the killer dehumanized the three victims – didn’t know much about them, really, didn’t care. They simply met some basic criteria that, he believed, entitled him to dominate and destroy them for his own gratification. And probably from the need to affirm his own self-worth.”

  “Don’t stalkers sometimes kill the, uh, object of their affection?” Simpson’s partner, Carrie Dawson, commented. “Maybe the other women were just substitutes until he worked up the nerve, or got the opportunity, to go after Kuosman.”

  “Doesn’t play.” Jordan had wondered the same thing, initially. But didn’t believe that now. “There are almost no similarities among the women – physical, background, or otherwise – to conclude that the first two were somehow substitutes for the real deal. I –”

  “How does your damn expert explain the victim’s blood in Fuller’s car?”

  “He doesn’t.” Jordan gazed steadily at Simpson. “He’s giving us the benefit of his experience and considerable knowledge, not attempting to investigate every aspect of the crime. That’s your job, Jeff.”

  “You son of a –”

  “People,” Feinstein raised his hands. “Let’s take a minute to cool off here.”

  “You’re going to let him do this?” Simpson pushed away from the table, stood. Vibrated with enough outrage that his hands shook. “You’re going to let him, what, torpedo the trial? Drop the damn charges? Let this asshole go free?”

  “What I’m doing,” Feinstein’s gray eyes turned to smoke “is giving this some consideration. The evidence we have to work with is mostly circumstantial –”

  “Your office, your prosecutor – the first one, the one who could tell the difference between good, solid police work and psycho bullshit – is the one who said we had enough to indict. The one who got the indictment.”

  “And so we did.” Feinstein laid a restraining hand on Jordan’s arm. “But if our expert witness is raising these questions, you can be damned sure the defense will be, too. We want a conviction, we might just need something more solid.”

  “But that’s not the point,” Jordan objected. “There were other discrepancies –”

  “More shrink mumbo jumbo.”

  “This particular shri
nk’s mumbo jumbo,” Jordan aimed a lowering glare at Simpson “has helped put away more killers than some of us have brain cells.”

  “Shut up, Jordan.”

  Reminding himself that Feinstein was his boss, Jordan shut up while Simpson smirked.

  “We’ll work on it,” his boss said to the detectives. “We’ll work on it, you’ll work on it, and for now, we keep this under wraps. Understood?” He fired that smoke at Jordan.

  “Understood.” Though he didn’t have to like it. He didn’t have to agree.

  “Okay, then.” Feinstein nodded, and released Jordan’s gaze. “Meeting adjourned.”

  AVA thought she’d never been so glad to see the stroke of five o’clock.

  Both of yesterday’s surgery patients had recovered sufficiently that their owners were able to trundle them off home, and aside from her own temperamental feline, the office was one hundred percent animal-free.

  She was exhausted. Right down to the bone. The small of her back ached from scrubbing the floors of the kennel, and her feet in their ancient sneakers had given up aching and now quietly wept.

  She wanted nothing more than a quick dinner, a quicker shower, and a long, long stretch of reacquainting herself with her bed.

  Actually, in the grand scheme of things, dinner and the shower didn’t seem all that important.

  Taking the file from her last patient of the day – an African Gray parrot with an attitude problem and a bad case of nasal discharge – she tossed it onto the desk in front of Katie.

  “Long day?”

  “Long life.” Resting her head on the reception counter, Ava’s eyelids dropped like stones. Hearing a purr near her ear, she automatically extended her hand to stroke it over One-eyed Jack. “But the day, at least, is over.”

  “Or not.”

  Ava groaned as the bells on the door jangled behind her. “Whoever it is, tell them I’m not here,” she murmured to Katie. “Or better yet, that I’ve died.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Ava opened her eyes, and Katie’s smile shone like sunlight across a meadow. “You may want to resurrect yourself for this one.”

  Ava turned.

  Jordan stood, looking annoyingly well-rested and pleasant in his tan slacks and crisp white dress shirt – a far cry from her worn jeans and dog-bone scrub top – brown paper sack curled into one arm and a potted plant balanced in the other.

  And damn if her exhausted body didn’t rev back into action.

  “Shit,” she muttered, just loud enough to reach Katie.

  “Language,” Katie sang without dimming the smile a watt.

  “Hey,” Jordan drawled, in a general kind of greeting for both women.

  “Hey yourself.” Ava was relieved that her voice sounded normal. “What –”

  But before she could ask what he was doing there, what was in the bag, what was up with the greenery, his breath fluttered across her cheek, and his lips pressed to hers.

  As if he had every right to do so.

  As if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  As if she would want him – big, pushy, hot-looking, needle fearing man that he was – to just waltz into her clinic, her personal space, and kiss her like they had some kind of relationship.

  And wouldn’t you know? That irritated her so much that she kissed him back.

  If it hadn’t been for Katie looking on with obvious interest, she was pretty sure she would have done so with even more enthusiasm.

  “Hey,” he repeated, softly. Drawing back, Jordan deposited the plant on the counter so that he could brush a thumb over her bruised eyes. “You look tired.”

  “A little,” she minimized. And because it was a bad idea altogether to encourage this sort of thing, put another solid step between them. “So. You’ve abandoned the law and have taken up selling foliage door-to-door?” She nodded her head toward the counter.

  I brought you a cactus.”

  “A cactus.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” He beamed at the little plant, complete with terra cotta pot and red cellophane wrapper.

  “Okay. Why?”

  “It won’t die if you don’t water it.”

  Oh, you adorable man. How could a woman not be charmed? Especially considering Ava had been nearly as prickly to him as that cactus. “And the bag?” she couldn’t help asking.

  Jordan shifted the bag so that she could see into it. “Since you kept turning me down when I asked you out to dinner, I thought I might have more success if I brought dinner to you.”

  Behind her, Katie made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a coo. And damn if Ava didn’t feel like billing, also. Curious, she pushed her ponytail behind her shoulder and took a peek into the bag. And pulled out a raw bell pepper.

  “You shouldn’t have.”

  Jordan laughed, grabbing the vegetable out of her hand and dropping it back into the bag. “It’s an ingredient, Ava. I’m making you vegetarian lasagna.”

  Another approving noise emitted from the direction of her employee.

  Ava cut her eyes toward Katie, who smiled like a loon. When she returned her attention to Jordan he’d shifted the bag again, and had closed the distance between them. She tilted her head back to frown. “You cook?”

  “I’ve been known to.” He took advantage of her tipped up face to drop a quick kiss on her lips. “I would have invited you over to my place,” and here he spared a quick glance for the still enrapt Katie, “but Clay’s currently camped out in my living room. So I left him to his own devices,” – another, more pointed look – “and picked up everything we’d need to do dinner at your place.”

  “Well.” Katie, no fool, picked up the hint that Jordan had just quite obviously dropped. Grabbing her purse, she pushed her chair away from the desk. “Seeing as how it’s after five o’clock and there’s no real reason for either of us to stick around here any longer, I think I’ll be going.” She scooted around the counter with a deftness born of practice, long legs eating up the space to the door in a few quick strides. “It was nice to see you again, Jordan. Ava, I’ll catch you tomorrow. Enjoy your dinner.”

  As bells jangled, Ava turned her scowl on Jordan. “Subtle.”

  “I try.”

  “So let me get this straight,” she motioned toward the bag. “You’re inviting yourself to dinner at my place?”

  “No.” Alone now, he anchored an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. He sat the bag of groceries on the counter next to the cactus so that he could run his other hand along her spine. “I’m inviting you to dinner. I’m making it, remember? Your place is simply the venue.”

  And a recipe for disaster. Because the desire to lean on him, both physically and emotionally, was so strong, Ava forced herself to push back. “That’s very sweet of you, Jordan, but I’m afraid that’s not a good idea. I’m…” she searched around for a reasonable excuse that involved at least a kernel of truth. “I’m really tired. Like you said.”

  Jordan danced his fingers up until they wiggled her ponytail. “All the more reason for me to cook, so that you don’t have to. You can kick back and relax with a nice glass of wine, while I dazzle you with my culinary prowess. And besides,” his face went straight. “I get the feeling Katie may be headed over to keep Clay company, so I really have no place to go.”

  Ava rolled her eyes. “You don’t seriously think I’m going to fall for that again, do you?”

  “Hope springs. Find something that works, might as well stick with it.”

  “Well aside from the fact that you’re pathetically transparent, I appreciate the offer.” She couldn’t help but grin at the plant. “And the cactus. A creative alternative to roses and a candlelit dinner.”

  “Wait.” Rummaging in the bag, he drew out a pair of votives. “Who said we weren’t going to dine by candlelight?”

  Looking at the candles, Ava was struck by a sudden epiphany. Here – standing right here in front of her – might possibly be the perfect man.

  Or at least as close to
perfect as any woman not completely masochistic might hope to expect. Hell, maybe Lou Ellen wasn’t crazy. Maybe fate had put her at the right place at the right time to save him.

  Not that fate intended him for her, of course. But a glowing example of natural selection at its finest like this wasn’t meant to be cut down in his prime.

  That kind of thing would have been a crime against womankind.

  And since she’d done such a good thing, a worthy thing, a purely selfless thing by preventing that genetic loss, she figured she was entitled to at least one lousy dinner.

  “You’re a smooth one, Jordan Wellington.” Lou Ellen had been right about that. “And since you are, and you’ve gone to the trouble, and I probably would have eaten cold cereal otherwise, I’ll allow you to make me dinner. Just let me grab Jack and lock up.”

  After seeing that everything was as it should be for the night, she followed Jordan outside. The spring air was like a first kiss, tentative and full of promise. Though hers and Jordan’s first kiss, Ava considered wryly, had been anything but light.

  Jordan pointed to his car, parked under the bud-heavy magnolia shading her lot, and approval hummed through her again. It looked like a fat, silver bullet.

  “I’ll follow you,” he suggested, stowing the groceries on the back seat.

  “That’s fine.” She tossed him an easy smile. “I’ll just…”

  Whatever she’d been about to say was forgotten as she caught her first real glimpse of her car.

  It sat alone.

  No black T-Bird, no beat up blue Chevy nearby. Nary a goon in sight. Her heartbeat picked up as she realized she’d blithely walked into plain view, accompanied by Jordan. ADA Jordan. Upholder of law and order. The man who still bore the evidence of her uncle’s assault on his head.

  Had one of the men seen him going in? Had they recognized him?

  Or, alternately, had Uncle Carlos finally called off his dogs?

  Frozen by a surge of nerves, Ava noticed that there was something a little off about her car. The back end sat considerably lower.

  Nerves fled, fury nipping at the heels.

  “Son of a bitch,” she muttered, and had Jordan straightening from his car.