The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  And this thing with Sadie’s breakin was still bothering her.

  Something – she wasn’t sure what, but chalked it up to the sixth sense she’d developed in her years on the force and to which she had learned to pay attention – kept niggling at her to pursue it. So here she was, against her better judgment, coming to pick Detective Miller’s brain. Hopefully she’d learn something that might put her worries to bed.

  Though small, the station was busy. She flashed her badge to the desk sergeant on duty and gave a brief summation of the purpose of her visit. He buzzed her through the security door and directed her toward Miller’s desk in the cramped and noisy bull pen.

  Miller was hunched over his computer, stubby fingers stabbing at keys with more aggression than actual skill. A number 2 pencil was clamped between his teeth. He scowled and muttered something as Kathleen approached, causing the pencil to fall to the floor beneath his feet. He cursed as he bent to retrieve it.

  “Detective Miller?”

  “What? Ouch, damn it.” He cracked his head on the edge of his desk when he sat back up. Rubbing it gently with one hand, he clutched the errant pencil in the other. Then glared in Kathleen’s direction until recognition eased his frown. Being the genial sort, he offered her a sheepish grin.

  “Detective Murphy. Sorry about the…” he made a vague gesture with the pencil. “Reports,” he offered by way of explanation. Paperwork was the bane of every cop’s existence, and she offered a commiserative grimace.

  He motioned to the banged-up folding chair at the end of his desk, half standing until she was seated. Then he resettled his hefty bulk, tucking the pencil in a coffee mug proclaiming him the World’s Greatest Grandpa.

  She only hoped his investigative skills were half as good.

  “So anyway,” he smiled at her, lacing his fingers together on his desk. “What brings you here this afternoon? No more problems with your friends and relatives, I hope.”

  “I was just wondering what kinds of leads you’d turned up on the men who broke into Ms. Mayhew’s house.” She believed in being straightforward.

  And he believed in playing his cards close to the vest. “Look, Detective, I appreciate your concern, but the fact is –”

  “You can’t discuss the particulars of an ongoing investigation, even with another cop. I understand that. And I’m not trying to stick my nose in your case. I’ve got enough cases of my own to worry about, believe me. But the fact is… well, I have an itch between my shoulder blades, if you know what I’m talking about.”

  Miller sat a little straighter, brown eyes sharpening on her face. “You sure this has nothing to do with the fact that you share a personal relationship to the victim?”

  “Nearly positive,” Kathleen assured him. “Although that makes the itch a bit worse. I just can’t shake the feeling that we’re missing something important.”

  “We?”

  She sighed and leaned toward his desk. “It might not be my case, but as you said, I have a personal interest. Not knowing what’s turned up is killing me.”

  Miller circled his thumbs, assessing. After a long moment in which she regarded him earnestly, a conclusion of sorts was reached. The older man stretched a hand toward a stack of folders sitting haphazardly on the edge of the desk.

  “The renter. The one who just vacated the place. He was a phony.”

  Kathleen’s eyebrows shot up as he opened the file and glanced at the contents. “Name, social, references – pretty much every piece of information he wrote on the rental agreement was crap. But he ponied up the required cash so the property manager didn’t bother checking. He was a sub-lessee, anyway, so I guess she figured it didn’t much matter. According to the wording on the contract, any liability would fall with the original renter.”

  “Who would be…?”

  He flicked another assessing glance. “Something tells me that if I withhold the name, your next stop will be the Coastal Property Management offices.”

  “Good call,” Kathleen agreed.

  Miller snorted, but his irritation was mostly put-on. She was overstepping her bounds, but luckily he didn’t seem inclined to get uptight about it. “You understand that the only reason I’m sharing this with you is because I myself have had an itch from the time I got a look at that house.”

  “It doesn’t fit,” Kathleen nodded. “The intruders’ behavior was too professional given the state of the house, too messy when they spotted Sadie. It raised flags all over the place.”

  “Which was why I was having trouble buying Ms. Mayhew’s story originally. What she was describing was not your run-of-the-mill break in. It seemed almost… over the top. Anyway,” he glanced at the folder. “The original lessee is one Thomas David Nash. He’s a National Guardsman who got called up to active duty overseas. There were two months and change left on his lease, and prior to shipping out he told the property manager that he’d found someone to fulfill the contract.”

  “So the question is did he know the sub-lessee wasn’t who he claimed to be. I’m assuming you’ve been in contact?”

  Another snort. “You have any idea how big a pain in the hindquarters it is to interview somebody when you’re on one side of the hemisphere and they happen to be on the other? Large,” he concluded before she could offer an answer. “A very large pain. But we finally got an e-mail connection going, and Mr. Nash says that the guy was some friend of his sister’s. He let him stay there as a favor to her and that’s about all he knew of the situation. Never met the guy before in his life, or so he claims.”

  “And the sister?”

  Miller frowned and tapped the folder. “Here’s where it gets hinky. The sister lives down in Beaufort, but when we tried to contact her, no dice. Not answering the phone, not coming to the door, not even going in to work. Turns out nobody’s seen her since about two days before New Year’s. We checked with the Beaufort PD, and sure enough a friend of hers filed a report. She’s a bona fide missing person.”

  Kathleen shifted on the uncomfortable chair, but the restlessness she felt was internal. “That’s right about the time Sadie’s renter lit out, from what we can tell.” Could be they were looking at a domestic situation. But that didn’t explain the intruders.

  “They could have gone AWOL together. Maybe they were involved in something illegal, or owed somebody who came looking to collect.”

  “Could be,” Miller agreed, nodding to another detective who laid a file on his desk in passing. “A deal gone bad is one of the avenues I’ve been considering, although we’ve found no evidence that Josie Nash – that’s the sister – was into anything illicit. Nobody knows anything about a boyfriend either, so if this guy was involved with her they kept their relationship on the down-low. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening, just that we’ve got no real obvious motive for her to skip town. And the thing about Ms. Nash is that if she did leave of her own volition, she didn’t bother to take anything with her. Clothes, toiletries, purse – hell even her cat – were still inside her apartment. No sign of foul play, but no sign of Josie, either.”

  “I don’t like it,” Kathleen said after a moment.

  “Can’t say I’m too fond of it either. We’ve run her prints – which were on file, bein’ as she’s a day care worker – against those we lifted from your friend’s house. Came up empty. If she was ever there, we found no sign of it. Course, with all the cleaning Ms. Mayhew had been doing there’s every chance any prints might’ve been destroyed. And the prints we got from the stuff our John Doe left behind got us nothing when we ran them through AFIS. So whatever he may have been involved in, he’s either a relatively new offender or a real lucky one who’s never been caught. Either that or we got nothing because he’s clean and the timing of the breakin and Ms. Nash’s disappearance are just an unfortunate set of coincidences.” Miller raised his eyebrows to show what he thought about that. But before he could elaborate further, a uniformed officer called out to him from the front desk.

  “Cripes,
” he said apologetically. “If you’ll excuse me, that’s something I need to address.”

  Kathleen nodded absently as Miller ambled away. Like the older man had intimated, she wasn’t inclined to believe that the three events had nothing to do with one another. In her dictionary, coincidence was a dirty word.

  It was possible that the intruders were exactly as she’d hypothesized, men who had a beef with the man subletting Sadie’s house and came seeking compensation or retribution. Sadie’d simply gotten caught in the proverbial crossfire. That would also explain the men’s behavior. They might have mistaken her for the absentee Josie.

  Although the available evidence suggested that the missing woman probably hadn’t left of her own volition.

  Who ran off and left their cat in the house?

  Outside – well, people abandoned pets regularly. But inside… not unless the woman was cruel.

  Or maybe terrified for her own life.

  And the fact that Sadie’s renter left a number of his things behind suggested he also vacated in a hurry.

  Were both of them on the run?

  Or was it more likely that there were a couple of bodies somewhere yet to be identified?

  As Kathleen ruminated over the possible scenarios – and what they possibly meant for Sadie – the station continued to bustle around her. She could hear Miller’s deep voice as he spoke with the officer, smelled the ubiquitous odors of too-strong coffee and sweat. The social noises of a workplace filled with people and machines, underscored by the ringing telephone.

  Another detective strode by, dark-haired, maybe a little older than her and quite attractive, despite the fact that his once-over was a bit too pointed for her taste. He failed to watch where he was going and blundered into the corner of Miller’s desk.

  “Oops,” he said as the stack of files shuddered, then toppled. They both scrambled to avert disaster, and only a couple of the folders hit the floor.

  “Sorry,” he grinned sheepishly, dark eyes crinkling as he picked up the mess. If she didn’t have a hard and fast rule about dating other cops the crinkling would have really gotten her. Laugh lines were like her own personal kryptonite.

  “I could claim clumsiness or some other handy excuse, but the fact is I was checking out your legs.”

  And okay, rules were meant to be broken. If that weren’t the case they’d both be out of a job.

  She laughed as she handed him an affidavit that had fallen out of the folder in his hands.

  Long fingers, free of any obvious matrimonial hardware. Well-tended nails.

  Nice shoulders beneath the straps of his holster.

  It had been ages since she’d been crinkled at, so she figured what the hell. It wasn’t like she had to work with him, anyway. “The legs are even better tucked beneath a table for two at Magnolia’s.”

  This time he was the one to chuckle. “Makes it kind of tough for me to stumble over things while ogling them.”

  “Exactly.” She let the invitation stand in her eyes.

  The dark chocolate of his turned liquid. “I’m finished up here at six.”

  “I could call, get a reservation for seven.”

  The mixture of surprise and delight on his face was an extremely attractive combination. “This is the easiest date I’ve ever arranged.”

  “Maybe you should try the straightforward thing more often.”

  He grinned and tucked the affidavit in the folder, sat it on Miller’s desk. “Most women would have kicked me with one of those very fine legs I was ogling.”

  “Lucky for you, I’m not most women.”

  “No, you certainly are not. I’m Anthony Corelli, by the way.”

  A good Italian name. But the drawl was pure Charleston. The smile, purely male.

  “Kathleen Murphy.”

  He juggled his own file folders to reach over and accept her handshake.

  A crime scene photo fluttered down.

  Kathleen was able to snatch it with her free hand, her other going limp in his grip.

  She recognized the victim whose lifeless body sprawled behind a dumpster.

  The wise-ass kid whom she’d seen last, changing the locks at Sadie’s.

  “Problem?” Anthony asked, cop senses alerted.

  Kathleen glanced up into his now-serious dark eyes. “We might have to take a rain check on dinner.”

  Because her itch had broken out into an uncomfortable case of hives.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  SADIE cast a worried glance in Declan’s direction before looking up at the looming Doug. He was wet and faintly winded from trekking through the rain-dampened woods. Medium height, medium build, medium skin glistening against the slick darkness of his hair, he looked as perfectly harmless as always. But the friendly smile, the hint of yokel he seemed to deliberately add to his voice, no longer disarmed her, now that she’d seen him for what he was.

  His brother Billy, that muscle-bound bundle of charm, was nudging Dec with his work boot.

  Declan had dropped back to the floor as soon as they heard the men coming.

  Sadie knew him well enough to know his playing possum was a ruse. His flaws might be legion, but pure cowardice wasn’t among them.

  Which was why, knowing the way his mind worked, Sadie suspected he was going to attempt to present the least threat imaginable, so that he could bide his time and try to catch one or the other of their captors off guard.

  Admirable, if he wasn’t already weakened by the previous injury to his head. Not to mention the fact that he was handcuffed to a pipe.

  And at least one of the men possessed a gun.

  And both of them were crazy.

  Given those odds, she hoped he knew better than to try something foolish and end up getting shot. She didn’t think she could survive that. Having him pistol whipped in front of her – beneath her, technically – had been bad enough.

  Thankfully he didn’t move, not even when Billy nudged the boot a little harder.

  But Sadie couldn’t stop herself from protesting. “Leave him alone,” she snarled, indignation swelling in her chest.

  Doug chuckled and made a quelling motion with his fingers. Like a well-trained but temperamental dog, Billy almost immediately desisted, but he did shoot a sulky look at his brother’s back.

  There seemed to be some tension between the brothers. Over what, she didn’t know, but maybe she could use that to her advantage, given the right opportunity.

  Sensing Doug’s gaze on her, Sadie tore her eyes away from Declan. The gleam in Doug’s eyes had her praying for the right opportunity.

  She got the unnerving feeling he was enjoying this a little too much.

  “Gumption,” he said, echoing his twisted compliment from before. “Damned if I don’t like you, Sadie Rose.”

  The familiar form of address had loathing rising like bile. It was pure mockery on his part, and she couldn’t abide his amusement. She wasn’t stupid enough to tell him exactly what she thought of his approval, so she let her expression do the talking, lacing it with a heavy dose of up yours.

  He grinned and looked her over.

  “You look like a half-drowned mouse. One of those fancy little white ones they sell at the pet stores. You remember that mouse you used to have, Wilson?”

  From behind him, the larger man grunted.

  “Sure enough was a cute little thing.”

  Doug stooped in front of her, pushed her ruined shirt aside, and stroked a finger across her injured breast. Sadie struggled to remain calm, and barely stopped herself from jerking away.

  “I like you,” he mouthed, for her eyes only.

  Fear so primal she couldn’t begin to control it tore the whimper right out of her throat.

  “That had to hurt.” He fingered her scratched nipple. “Your titties might be little, but they sure are pretty to look at. I’ve a mind to let Billy cut the other one, just so they’re a matched pair.”

  Satisfaction burned bright in his dark eyes at the commotion t
hat kicked up behind him.

  “Well, well, well. Seems lover boy’s awake, after all.”

  Her free hand flew to cover her breast as her gaze winged back to Declan. Enraged over Doug’s theatrics, he rose up like a holy avenger. His foot shot out toward Billy’s knees and sent him stumbling backwards. Billy crashed into the table, the rotted wood splintering. He swore as he fell through it to the floor, got tangled up in the debris.

  Declan peeled his eyes away from the havoc he’d wrought, furious gaze homing in on Sadie.

  “Did he hurt you?” he asked, seemingly oblivious to Billy’s cursing and Doug’s laughter.

  Sadie shook her head, heartbeat racing as the ungainly Billy finally found his feet.

  She screamed when he went after Declan.

  DECLAN felt the steel-lined toe of the bastard’s boot connect with his ribs, and pain exploded into fiery shards of pure agony. It stole his breath and roiled his stomach until he had to roll onto his knees and wretch.

  “Stop it! STOP IT!” Sadie screamed as Dec felt the crunch of the boot again. The sound of bones cracking was audible, even in the ruckus. The pain in his ribs coupled with that in his head was worse than any he’d ever experienced. White lights detonated behind his eyes. He had to struggle to remain conscious. He could not, would not, pass out and leave Sadie to the mercy of these idiots.

  Not that he was doing her much good in this pathetic state, but he gave it the old college try.

  Marshaling whatever strength he had left in his arms, he grabbed onto Billy’s boot when it came at him again. Through years of scrapping with Rogan, he’d learned how to take a man down. He twisted the boot inward. Had the satisfaction of watching the asshole lose his balance. His technique was sloppy, however, given the limitations imposed by the handcuffs. Billy crashed into the sink behind him but unfortunately did not fall.

  “That’s enough,” Doug said to his brother when Sadie began to cry in earnest. But Billy had the adrenaline of the fight in his veins and ground the heel of his boot into Declan’s hand.