The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  Whichever, Justin looked back at the shadowy figure of the former cop and frowned.

  “So, I wasn’t aware that you were quite so territorial,” Anthony finally said. “I guess I’m lucky you don’t have a guard dog.”

  “Right.” Justin rubbed his chin again to rid it of the last of the trickle of blood. Because he felt like an idiot admitting that he’d been worried Anthony was actually Justin’s ex-girlfriend, who may or may not be insane, he pulled out a slight distortion of the truth. “My truck was broken into not too long ago. I, uh, thought the guilty party may have come back for another shot.”

  “Really? It sucks to have your things stolen like that, right out from under your nose. I hope you didn’t lose anything too valuable.”

  Was it Justin’s imagination, or was there an… implication in those words.

  Whatever. He was just being paranoid. Probably because his conscience was pricked.

  “Nothing I can’t replace.”

  Another beat passed in silence. “Are you alright?” Anthony finally asked. “You’ve been a little jumpy the past couple times I’ve seen you.”

  No way was Justin going to touch that. Both his crazy ex-girlfriend and his newly altered relationship with Kathleen were two topics he wasn’t about to discuss with this man. “I’m fine. Feeling a little stupid right now. Sorry about screwing up your investigation.”

  Anthony shrugged. “Honest mistake.”

  Because standing around in his wet boxers – in the cold – while shooting the breeze with Kathleen’s soon-to-be-former boyfriend was awkward, to say the least, Justin nodded toward his house. “I’m, uh, going back inside. I’ll catch you later.”

  After making the appropriate goodbye noises, Anthony moved off in the direction his target had taken and Justin made a beeline for the back porch. He’d climbed the first couple steps before he remembered that the door was locked. And he hadn’t yet hidden a spare key outside. If he knocked, James would answer the door and Justin would have to explain what he was doing outside in his underwear.

  Cursing under his breath, Justin headed toward the side of the house. He’d have to climb back in through the open window.

  He’d just rounded the corner when he heard something in the garage.

  Justin froze.

  Listening intently, he waited for another noise, something to indicate that it hadn’t just been his imagination. Several beats passed, but the only sound he heard was water dripping from the gutter.

  Probably nothing, he told himself, disliking this newfound sense of paranoia. Even if he had heard what sounded like a metal pail being kicked over, there were plenty of explanations. Could be a raccoon. They’d been known to come into the garage through the attic space over it.

  Because that seemed like a logical explanation, and because he didn’t want to stand here – again, in the cold – like a paranoiac when there could be a raccoon digging through his garbage, Justin moved toward the human sized door at the corner nearest him.

  He tested the door, found it unlocked. And made a mental note to have a word with James about that.

  Sliding through the opening, Justin debated a moment about whether or not to turn on the overhead light. But deciding that he’d had enough intrigue for one night, he felt along the wall, and hit the switch. Light flooded the space, revealing his truck – both of them – along with his workbench and various assorted tools. No raccoons that he could see.

  Everything appeared as it should be.

  Wanting to be thorough, he skirted the workbench, circling to the far side of the garage. And there, behind the truck that was still little more than a rusted shell awaiting his attention, he saw the bucket. Or the paint can, rather.

  Apparently, he’d neglected to close the lid tightly enough when he’d stored it, because a small amount of sage green spilled onto the concrete.

  Frowning, Justin stooped down to right the can, noticed the partial shoeprint. The rather large partial shoeprint. Leading toward the front carriage door, which stood slightly ajar.

  What the hell?

  Whipping his head up, Justin looked around. Had James come out to the garage for something, not realized he’d tracked through the paint? But why hadn’t he exited back through the side door?

  Shivering slightly, Justin glanced down at himself, reminded of his state of undress. And of that little… fiasco in the backyard. Maybe James had seen said fiasco, and hadn’t wanted to cause him further embarrassment.

  Yeah, right.

  Deciding that it was stupid to stand in his garage – in the cold – having this internal debate, Justin righted the paint can, then closed and latched the carriage door.

  Locking the side door on his way out, Justin headed toward the open window. And feeling like an idiot, hauled himself through before closing and latching it as well.

  “Well, that was pointless,” he muttered as he maneuvered around the workout equipment. He was – unsurprisingly – cold, wet, vaguely humiliated, and dripping all over the wood floor.

  Frowning, Justin looked at the floor, noted the wet footprints illuminated by the slant of light coming from the hall. The footprints that bore a shoe tread very similar to the one that had tracked paint through his garage.

  Hitting the light switch, Justin took a closer look. His own prints had muddled things up a bit, but there was definitely a second set of tracks – nearly identical in size to his own – which seemed to end at the runner that ran the length of the hall.

  “James?” Justin called out, because something about this didn’t seem right.

  When he got no answer, Justin followed the sound of the TV toward the living room. He could just see the top of his brother’s dark head, lying against the back of the couch. “James,” he said again, his heart beating a little faster, and when he reached over to grab his brother’s shoulder, both of them jumped.

  “Jesus,” James said, blinking to clear the sleep from his eyes. “Scare me to death, why don’t you.” Then he sat up, frowned at Justin. “Do you have something against wearing pants?”

  “You haven’t been outside,” Justin said, noting the sock-clad feet propped on the coffee table.

  “No, but judging by the pine needles stuck in your hair, I’d say you have.” His gaze, sharper now, raked Justin. “What’s wrong?”

  “Stay here,” Justin said in lieu of an answer, because the little hairs on the back of his neck were standing up again.

  He headed back down the hall, did a quick scan of the guest bathroom. It appeared as it should.

  “What’s wrong?” James repeated, almost directly behind him. His brother must have hurtled the couch.

  Justin sighed. “I think someone’s been in the house.”

  “What?” This time, James grabbed his shoulder. “Tell me.”

  He did, recapping his little misadventure, while James stooped down to check out the prints. The water had begun to dry, but the slightly chalky effect left over from stepping on wet oyster shells made the tracks clear enough.

  “No paint in the tread,” James said.

  “They wouldn’t have had time to sneak around the garage and into the house between the time I heard the can being kicked over and the time I came back through the window, which leads me to believe they’re long gone. I wouldn’t be standing here calmly shooting the breeze with you otherwise.”

  “So they were in here while you were rolling around in the vegetation with Kathleen’s boyfriend.”

  Justin spared his brother a withering look.

  “That’s a pretty quick in and out, if someone was looking to rob you. Not to mention convenient as far as timing goes.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Watson.”

  “Under the circumstances, I think I should be Sherlock. You’re the doctor, after all. You want to see if anything is missing?”

  Resigned, Justin looked around the room, which seemed intact. Hard to carry a weight bench out the window. “You check your bedroom, I’ll check mine.”


  Justin flipped the light switch on in his bedroom – it seemed to be the evening’s trend – noted that it looked exactly as it had when he’d left it. The damp towel was still on the chair, the bed still unmade – he guessed his intruder wasn’t obsessive compulsive – and none of his drawers appeared to have been rifled, though he looked through them just to be sure. His computer and i-Pad both sat on the desk against the far wall. They were really the only easily portable valuables he had in plain sight.

  A sudden finger of unease ticked his spine, and Justin checked the little dish on his nightstand in which he’d taken to keeping his keys.

  The keys were there. All of them. And his wallet and various IDs were in the drawer beneath them.

  Relieved, anger flooded in to fill the spaces recently occupied by concern. He wasn’t entirely sure what the hell was going on here lately, but he had definitely had enough.

  Grabbing the damp towel off the chair, Justin gave consideration to taking another shower. A hot one this time. Because he’d had enough of being cold for one evening as well.

  Striding through the bathroom doorway, he stopped short just as his brother’s voice sounded behind him.

  “All my stuff is still where it should be,” James said. “I don’t know what… whoa.”

  In the mirror, Justin met the reflection of his brother’s gaze. And the expression on their faces was nearly identical.

  “Bro,” James said, his tone low and just a little dangerous. “That’s fucked up.”

  Justin looked back at the floral shower curtain, which now hung in tatters. And at the scalpel, which had obviously been used to shred it, lying on the tile floor.

  Anger, bubbling hot, and fear, icy, did battle for the upper hand. His brother had been asleep on the couch. Essentially defenseless.

  It might be a leap from property destruction to physical violence, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Get my phone,” Justin said, his voice remarkably even. The calm he’d learned through years as a physician slapped both the anger and the fear ruthlessly down. “Don’t touch anything else, though.”

  James hesitated, then went to do as Justin asked, though the heat from his brother’s body seemed to linger. Justin suspected that James’ feelings were similar to his own, though anger appeared to have the upper hand at the moment.

  Justin’s gaze was drawn back to the shower curtain. Then he considered the incongruity of the size of the footprints.

  No, he wasn’t sure what the hell was going on.

  But he was damn sure going to find out.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WIND whipped off the water, shrieking down the alley like a banshee to claw with icy fingers at Kathleen’s hair. Shoving that hair back, Kathleen squatted down to examine the bluish gray skin of the corpse sprawled behind the dumpster. The cold had acted in their favor, preserving the body, and the scene, in ways which they weren’t often fortunate to see this far south.

  Not that she had that much question regarding cause of death. The deep slice across the young man’s throat, nearly severing his head, was a pretty reliable clue.

  “Somebody didn’t want him talking,” Mac suggested, and Kathleen was forced to agree. She sighed, rising to her feet as she looked into the dead eyes of the blond kid whom Justin had tried to help in the diner. The kid hadn’t managed to kill himself with that overdose, but it appeared that someone else had taken care of it for him.

  “The amount of blood beneath the body suggests that this is the primary scene. So there’s that.” Flicking on her penlight, she trained it on the brick wall. “The spatter looks like arterial spray.” Then she scanned it over the detritus in the alley. “Needles. He probably came here to make a buy, got his throat slit for the trouble.”

  When she rolled her shoulder, grimaced, Mac’s attention shifted from the evidence back to Kathleen.

  “Your arm still giving you trouble?”

  “What?” Then Kathleen realized he was referring to her elbow. “No, it’s fine.” His penetrating dark gaze let her know that he didn’t believe her. “I’m just a little sore. I had a… thing last night.”

  “Thing?”

  “Minor car accident.” Although it hadn’t really been an accident. The asshole had deliberately run her off the road. “There’s some lingering stiffness. That’s all.” Before he could grill her further, a car door slammed at the mouth of the alley, and Kathleen turned to see that the crime scene unit had arrived.

  “Looks like the cavalry is here. We need to call Rutledge,” she told her partner. “He’s not going to be happy that his witness is no longer among the living.”

  Kathleen’s phone vibrated, and she unclipped it from her belt, moving further into the alley as Mac strode off to brief the forensic techs.

  The incoming text was from her sister Maureen’s husband. And as she read it, the tension eased from her shoulders. Grinning, she shot back an answering text, pocketing her phone just as Mac reached her.

  “Good news?”

  “Another generation of Murphy women is about to be born.”

  “God help us.” But when Kathleen punched his arm, Mac only grunted. “If you want to take off, I’ll stay. Not much more we can do until after the techs do their thing, anyway. You can call Rutledge on your way. And attend the autopsy in the morning.”

  “The hidden agenda comes out.”

  “Hey, I took the last one.”

  “We both took the last one. The autoerotic asphyxiation that wasn’t so auto.”

  “Guess it just seems like I suffered through that one by myself. Seriously though, go be with your family.” He gently squeezed her shoulder. “Attending a birth should be a nice change of pace.”

  Kathleen looked past him, to where some other mother’s child lay dead in the alley.

  Life was a cycle. But Mac was right; it would be nice to spend some time at the other end of the cycle for a change.

  WEARY, Justin pried the lid from his coffee, because sipping wasn’t going to cut it. The scent hit him like an open-handed slap and he leaned closer, inhaled. The first taste powered through his mental fog, by the third he felt almost human.

  He hadn’t slept. Not that he wasn’t used to doing without, but generally that was because he was busy in the operating room. When he wasn’t in surgery, he’d learned – the hard way – to catch sleep whenever and wherever he could. He’d been known to nod off at his parents’ dining room table, mid-conversation.

  But last night, after the cops had left his house, he hadn’t been able to settle. He’d been… uneasy. In his own home. And it seriously pissed him off.

  Follow that up with a six hour surgery on a kid who’d been dumb enough to attempt to mattress surf off the porch roof of his frat house, and Justin was forced to acknowledge that he was fried. Mentally and physically.

  Wondering what was taking the elevator so long, Justin realized that he hadn’t pressed the call button. Correcting that oversight, he leaned against the wall.

  And could only close his eyes when he heard the shrill tone of the voice behind him.

  “You bastard.”

  Turning, Justin looked down into Mandy’s outraged face. And strove to keep his own face impassive, despite the fury simmering in his blood. “I can’t talk to you.”

  “Oh, you’re going to talk to me.” She ground her finger into his chest.

  “No.” He grabbed her finger. Fought to keep his temper in check. “I’m not. Back off. And keep your voice down, before you embarrass yourself further.”

  “Embarrass myself? Myself?”

  The elevator dinged, the doors opening behind him and spilling its occupants into the hall. Luckily none of them were hospital employees, who would no doubt be captivated by the little production unfolding before them. The workplace gossip had been a bit lackluster of late.

  Ignoring Mandy, as any further confrontation could do him no good, Justin strode into the car.

  Mandy followed.

  “Don’
t,” she hissed, getting all up in his face as the doors closed behind her “walk away from me when I’m speaking to you. You called the cops on me.” Her normally rosy cheeks turned fuchsia. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Reminding himself that it was pointless to engage her in a debate on exactly which of them it was with issues, Justin pressed the button for his floor.

  “Mandy,” he said with as much equanimity as he could muster. “I did not call the cops on you. I called the cops, period.” Much to his displeasure. “If they chose to speak with you, it’s because they considered you a person of interest.”

  “A person of interest? How quaint. And how about the other women you’ve fucked – or should I say: fucked over? Are they persons of interest as well?”

  Insult layered over anger. But his tone was cool. “You’ll have to ask the police. I have no say in how they conduct their investigations.”

  And he had to remind himself to let the police do their job. To gather the evidence, and if the evidence pointed to Mandy – a foregone conclusion in Justin’s mind – to follow up with the appropriate legal steps. Justin might have preferred to handle things himself, but with three brothers in the legal profession – one of them a defense attorney – he’d spent much of his sleepless night reminding himself that people were innocent until proven guilty.

  Even crazy women.

  “Six months. I dated you, slept with you, exclusively, for six months. We’ve been acquainted for almost three years. And you don’t know me any better than to believe I could break into your house?”

  Because there was hurt, just a thread of hurt, mixed with the fury in her voice, Justin forced himself to meet her eyes. “No. I don’t know you any better. And I’m sorry for that.”

  “You think that makes this okay?”

  “There is nothing okay about this.”

  “And what about your precious Kathleen? I bet they didn’t interview her. She’s one of them after all.”

  The tone that had previously been cool went cold and hard as steel. “Leave Kathleen out of it. This is between you and me.”