Moonshine & Murder: Moonshine Hollow Series #1

by Brooks, Kathleen

  Moonshine & Murder

  Moonshine Hollow Series #1

  Kathleen Brooks

  Contents

  Also by Kathleen Brooks

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Also by Kathleen Brooks

  About the Author

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, actual events, locale, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  An original work of Kathleen Brooks. Moonshine & Murder copyright @ 2019 by Kathleen Brooks.

  Created with Vellum

  Bluegrass Series

  Bluegrass State of Mind

  Risky Shot

  Dead Heat

  Bluegrass Brothers

  Bluegrass Undercover

  Rising Storm

  Secret Santa: A Bluegrass Series Novella

  Acquiring Trouble

  Relentless Pursuit

  Secrets Collide

  Final Vow

  Bluegrass Singles

  All Hung Up

  Bluegrass Dawn

  The Perfect Gift

  The Keeneston Roses

  Forever Bluegrass Series

  Forever Entangled

  Forever Hidden

  Forever Betrayed

  Forever Driven

  Forever Secret

  Forever Surprised

  Forever Concealed

  Forever Devoted

  Forever Hunted

  Forever Guarded

  Forever Notorious

  Forever Ventured (coming later in 2019)

  Shadows Landing Series

  Saving Shadows

  Sunken Shadows (coming May 14, 2019)

  Lasting Shadows (coming later in 2019)

  Women of Power Series

  Chosen for Power

  Built for Power

  Fashioned for Power

  Destined for Power

  Web of Lies Series

  Whispered Lies

  Rogue Lies

  Shattered Lies

  Moonshine Hollow Series

  Moonshine & Murder

  Moonshine & Malice (coming March 26, 2019)

  Moonshine & Mayhem (coming April 16, 2019)

  Prologue

  Zoey Mathers was just about to leave her law office in the most prestigious skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles. At twenty-eight, she was working her way up the ladder at the entertainment firm with her eye on the senior associate position. And today had been a good day.

  Zoey turned off the lamp in her cubicle and walked down the dark halls. It was almost two in the morning and she was going home to celebrate her big deal—all thanks to Scott Westerfield. Scott was her star client. He was the next big Hollywood action hero, and he’d picked her to negotiate the deal for his next action movie franchise. She’d just gotten the last signatures needed on the thirty-million-dollar contract and had sent it to Scott and his agent. Her boss had been thrilled. The words “junior” and “partner” were being spoken with her name attached to them. There was a chance she’d skip straight to partner, and she was so excited she did a little dance in the elevator.

  It had been a little tenuous to get the deal to go through. Scott had only selected her because when he’d walked by her toward the conference room she’d been bending over the filing cabinet, and he thought she had a nice butt. Hey, she’d take any in she could if it got her off her current ninety-hour workweeks. Even if that meant putting up with his constant talk about sex, drugs, parties, and all the things he shouldn’t be doing if he wanted to stay employed.

  Zoey hit the elevator button as her phone rang. SCOTT WESTERFIELD showed up. “No, no, no. Please don’t be anything bad,” Zoey said as she answered the phone. “Scott?”

  “Dude,” he whispered into the phone. “You have to save me. I’m surrounded by shiny goblins trying to kill me!”

  “What?” Zoey asked with dread as she pushed the button to the parking garage.

  “Freaking goblins! They’re slithering all over me.”

  “Are you crying?”

  “Save me!”

  The image of the movie deal being ripped apart flashed a second before the image of her junior partnership being flushed down the drain.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at the Sparkling Tassel. Oh no, they’re coming!” The phone thudded as Scott screamed. The Sparkling Tassel was a strip club all the celebrities went to. Knowing the movie deal had a morals clause in it, Zoey raced from the elevator to her car. She sped through the still-occupied streets of downtown to the strip club to rescue him, the deal, and her career.

  When she’d arrived at the brightly colored Sparkling Tassel, the parking lot was packed. Great. There were going to be photos, and she’d need to pay off a lot of people to get them deleted. Zoey slid to a stop and parked her car by the front door before hurrying inside. She slammed her palms against the metallic door covered in fake diamonds and shoved it open.

  Zoey was assaulted by the sound of thumping music, laughter, screaming, and the high-pitched wailing of her client. She looked around and was met with the vision of a naked Scott swinging on a stripper pole while crying as all hell was breaking loose on the stage. The escorts he’d brought with him to the club were on the stage, screaming and fighting with the club’s strippers, all of whom were in various stages of undress. The escorts’ pimp was trying to round them up, but it was like herding wet cats. Men were packed around the stage, shouting encouragements and suggestions.

  “The drugs they took were dirty,” the deep masculine voice of a mountain of a man said next to her. Zoey looked over at a large muscled arm, then followed it up to the symbol tattooed on his neck. It was a circle of black swords with a red drop of blood in the middle. It matched the black vest over a black T-shirt that stretched tight across his wide chest and thick biceps, black pants, and combat boots.

  “Is that pleather?” Zoey asked with a raised eyebrow at the pants and vest that did nothing to hide the sexy man under them.

  “Yup. Easy to clean. You just hose it down,” the man said as he looked her over. “Armani?”

  Zoey looked down at her white pencil skirt and light pink silk blouse and nodded. “Good eye. Why are you just standing here? Shouldn’t you be up there stopping them?” Zoey watched as Scott spun around the pole and landed hard on the ground. One of the escorts had another by her weave. With a sickening scream, the weave came off.

  The victorious escort held it in her hand, her eyes wide with surprise while the other woman covered her head with her hands. The escort shook the weave off her hand, sending it flying and landing on Scott’s shoulder. Scott screamed as if he’d been castrated, flung the weave to the floor, and peed on it.

  “Nope. I’ll let the cops take this one. They’re on the way,” the bouncer said. “Now, if they start destroying property, I’ll get up there. But this is just amusement for everyone.”

  Zoey’s stomach plummeted. No, no, no! “Did you say cops?”

  “Ye
ah. They’ll be here any minute. So, are you his wife?” he asked as he nodded to Scott.

  “No, I’m his attorney. Do you have a backdoor to this place?”

  “Of course we do,” he said with a nod of his head to a back hallway that looked as if it led to the gates of hell. It was dark as the lights barely gave off a yellow tinted glow that somehow didn’t illuminate anything. When Zoey squinted, she would have sworn something was moving back there.

  “Ugh!” Zoey was forced to do what any good entertainment lawyer did—especially one who wanted to save her potential promotion. Zoey pushed away from the safety of the door and hurried to the stage. She had to skirt tables and push through the men lining the stage who were whooping and hollering as Zoey stepped up on a chair, hiked up her skirt, and climbed onto the shiny black stage. The men’s hollers grew louder, and the escorts and strippers turned to see what the noise was all about. That’s when things went from bad to worse.

  By the time the cops arrived, Zoey had a hunk of her long reddish-brown hair torn out and tossed on the stage, which her client had peed on, a slit torn up her skirt, her blouse ripped partially off of her, and somehow she only had one shoe.

  “Hands behind your back,” the cop standing in front of her said as he pulled a pair of cuffs out.

  Panic like none other filled her. She couldn’t be arrested! “But I’m a lawyer!”

  “Look lady, half the women up here are in law school or medical school. Hands now.”

  “No, you don’t get it. I’m trying to stop the fight.”

  “That’ll teach you to keep your hands off my man!” the woman who’d ripped Zoey’s shirt yelled as she was dragged away in handcuffs. “Just because you charge more doesn’t mean you get my man!”

  “No, I’m . . .” Zoey had started to argue when the cuffs were closed over her hands and the police officer hauled her from the stage.

  “Zoey,” Scott called out. “I’ll pay your bill when I get out of jail. Thanks again for today. Hey!” Scott yelled, “Why isn’t anyone arresting that unicorn? He’s pooping rainbows on the sidewalk.”

  That son of a . . . The door to the cruiser hadn’t even closed before the door to her career slammed shut. News and gossip outlets were already playing video of them being escorted out of the strip club by the police and someone had managed to snap a couple pictures inside. She saw herself on the television in the booking room— up on the stage, fighting with one of the strippers as Scott sat crying.

  “In you go,” the officer said after she’d been booked.

  Her call to her office went unanswered. Similarly, her calls to all of her lawyer friends were too. Desperation and panic filled her unlike any she’d ever felt before. Everything she had worked for, all the years in school, all the time studying, the long hours working—it was over. She knew it.

  Zoey hung up the phone and the woman officer who was letting her use the phone looked sympathetically at her before putting her back into the holding cell.

  The minutes were excruciatingly slow as they ticked by while Zoey tried to figure out who to call to bail her out.

  “Zoey Mathers,” an officer called out as she stepped to the bars an hour later. “You’ve made bail.”

  “Who bailed me out?” Zoey asked with a mixture of relief and trepidation at facing whoever it was in the waiting room.

  “Don’t know, but he’s good-looking. A word of advice,” she said as she handed Zoey her things back. “Try to find another way to pay off law school.”

  Zoey was about to protest she wasn’t an escort when the door to the waiting room opened and there stood the man in black pleather.

  “You?”

  “You,” he said back with a slow grin.

  “What? Why?” she asked as if she couldn’t gather any more words.

  The man cupped her elbow and led her from the police station. “I thought you could use a helping hand tonight,” he said, shoving a bike helmet into her hands.

  He put on his own helmet and swung one pleather-encased leg over his motorcycle. “Come on, sweetness. Let me take you home.”

  “Are you going to hack me up into a hundred pieces and leave parts of my body all around LA?”

  She didn’t hear him laugh, but saw his shoulders moving as he shook his head. “No. It just feels like the right thing to do. Come on. I got your address when I bailed you out.”

  “Where’s my shoe?”

  “Starr Bright took it home. Apparently even just one of those shoes can get her a hundred bucks.”

  Maybe being killed wouldn’t be so bad. At least she wouldn’t have to face her boss in the morning. Zoey took a deep breath and climbed onto the motorcycle with one foot wearing a high heel and the other bare. She clung to his thick strong body from her seat on the back of his motorcycle as he navigated his way to her condo in the hottest part of LA.

  “Thank you for bailing me out. If you give me your address I’ll mail you a check for the money you had to put up.”

  “It’s okay. I know you’re good for it,” he said as he turned off his bike and removed his helmet.

  “You don’t have to come up,” Zoey said as she set her helmet on the seat.

  He didn’t answer, instead just cupped her elbow again and walked her inside. She smiled tightly at the night guard as they made their way to the elevator and then up to her floor without saying a word. When the elevator doors opened, Zoey paused.

  “Are you sure you’re not going to murder me?”

  “I hardly would have come to your video-monitored condo to do so. You’re safe with me, sweetness.”

  Zoey stepped from the elevator, turned down the hall, and stopped in her tracks. Three boxes sat by her door. He bent down and picked them up, along with the note notifying her of her termination from the law firm. Tears pressed against the back of her eyes as he quietly moved about her home as if he had been there before. He directed her to the couch, brought a glass from the kitchen and filled it with vodka before handing it to her.

  “Drink,” he ordered.

  “I’ve been fired,” she said numbly as she looked at all her possessions from work along with her notice of termination.

  “So, you’ll get another job.”

  “What’s your name?” Zoey finally asked. She didn’t even realize she didn’t know who he was.

  “Slade.”

  “Slade what?”

  “Just Slade.”

  Zoey tossed back the drink and Slade refilled it. She needed the pain to stop. “Well, Just Slade, California may be a big state, but there’s no outrunning this. I’m a national joke now. There’s nowhere I can practice law that I won’t be recognized. My career is over. My life is over.” She tossed back the second drink and started to feel better. The hysterical panic pressing on her started to relax with the warmth of the liquor. Oh crap, her life was over. The panic rose again.

  Slade handed her the third drink and sat down next to her on a couch that cost her almost ten thousand dollars and suddenly looked small and about to break with a man as large as Slade sitting on it. “Did you always want to be an attorney?”

  Zoey started to feel fuzzy. Her body began to relax, but she was still so worried she thought she might throw up. “No. When I was a kid I wanted to be a baker.” And that’s when the idea struck her. “That’s what I’ll do. I’ll go someplace new. I’ll start over. Give it a couple years and I’ll slowly get back into law someplace new after the scandal dies down. Maybe change my name too.” Hope filled her, or maybe it was just the alcohol.

  “Where will you go?” Slade asked, his long legs spread out before him as he slung his arm along the back of the couch.

  “I don’t know. I’m a California girl. My father died when I was young, and my mom’s second husband is a plastic surgeon to the stars, so she’s never lived anywhere else either.” Zoey sighed. Her own mother hadn’t answered her call. She’d been at some charity ball or dinner party or who knows what. Whatever it was, it was more important than her dau
ghter. Zoey closed her eyes against the pain of their estrangement and focused on the future. “It’s kind of overwhelming when you think about it. How can I possibly choose someplace to live?”

  Slade lifted his hips and pulled out a knife. Zoey shrank back into her couch remembering what he said about how easy pleather was to clean. She’d been top in her class at law school, yet here she was with an armed stranger in her apartment. What had she been thinking? Well, she hadn’t been. She’d been too consumed by fear and self-pity to think about making good decisions. “You said you wouldn’t murder me.”

  Slade shook his head. “This is Lady Luck. Do you have a map of the United States?”

  “Who uses maps? It’s all online now,” Zoey said reaching for her phone.

  Slade shook his head. “Fine. Give me your laptop.”

  Ten minutes later, a collage of printouts was taped on the wall. She had her map. The entire country laid out in front of her. “Come here,” Slade said, pulling her from the couch and tying a dishtowel around her eyes as a blindfold. Zoey couldn’t see as he spun her around, moved her right and left, and then placed the hilt of the knife in her hand. “Walk until the knife sticks in the wall. Where it lands is where you will land. Fate will guide you to where you should be.”

  1

  Three months later . . .

  It had taken Zoey eight days to pack up her stuff, get the charges dropped, and drive across the country to Moonshine Hollow, Tennessee. She had sold her couch in LA and used the money to rent a small shop on Main Street in Moonshine for a year. It had taken her three weeks to clean the place and get it set up as a bakery. It was a small space, but it was her space. Pride filled her as she looked around. There was a glass door with a pink bell over it that chimed every time it was opened. A large plate glass window took up the remainder of the front wall. She had put up a pink and white awning with Zoey’s Sweet Treats written in black script. Inside, she had five bistro tables set up in the open space before the refrigerated case that formed a wall between the sitting area and the kitchens. Behind the refrigerated case was room to move around and stock the cases before a set of swinging door led to the kitchen area. To the far right of the cases was a cash register and an opening to get into the front of the shop.