by Debra Webb
Carson swallowed back the rising bile of disgust. This one question had burned in his brain, twisted in his gut all those years. He had to know. “Why my family?”
Menace danced in the madman’s eyes. “I watched them for days,” he murmured, his voice thick with something like longing. “Waited for just the right moment.”
“You didn’t answer the question.” Carson refused to let him see for a damned second that he was hanging on to control by a single unraveling thread. “Why?”
Stokes sprang to his feet, testing his margin of freedom. “Because I could,” he snarled.
Carson took a moment, let those words permeate him, igniting the sheer determination necessary to see this through without yielding to his baser instincts. He pushed back his chair and stood slowly to put himself at eye level with the bastard once more.
“And there wasn’t a damned thing you or anybody else could do to stop me,” Stokes taunted.
The faintest glimmer of what had earned Carson the nickname Avenger awakened. Adrenalized him. “There wasn’t a single link discovered between you and any member of my family.”
Therein lay the rub, the part of this that gave Carson pause no matter that the scumbag had confessed. He hadn’t been able to get past that discrepancy when considered with the other glaring deviation from Stokes’s usual MO: the missing personal effects. Stokes never took so much as a lock of hair from his victims. Only their dignities and their lives—in that order. And why take items from two of the victims and not the third? Nothing of Katie’s had been missing. Something was wrong with that scenario.
“With every other case linked to you,” Carson continued, “that connection to the victims was present.”
Stokes didn’t answer, merely stared at Carson with demented amusement.
“I’ll ask you again,” Carson reiterated far more patiently than he had any obligation to given the blitz of emotions whipping inside him. “Why?”
“You think you got me all figured out”—Stokes jerked at his manacles, causing the chains to rattle forebodingly—“that you’re better than me, don’t you? But you’re not. You’re just like me.” His gaze narrowed with accusation. “The newspapers said you had their blood all over you. Felt good, didn’t it?”
“You don’t know me.” Carson’s wrath seethed dangerously close to the surface, the intensity increasing with each second, each breath. “Just like you didn’t know my family. So answer the damned question. Why...my...family?”
“I could tell you something that would turn your fancy world upside down all over again.” Stokes reared his shoulders back, full of himself. “Guaranteed. But I think I’ll let you wonder. Keep that juicy little tidbit to myself for another decade or so.”
Panic hurtled through Carson, overpowering all else before he could quell the reaction. What could this monster know beyond what he had confessed? Nothing. Nothing. Just more of his baiting. Had to be.
Didn’t matter. Carson needed an answer. He couldn’t let Stokes go off on one of his power trips. There was only one way to prevent that—withdraw the significance. “Then I guess we have nothing else to talk about.”
When Carson would have turned away, the scumbag spoke again. “Wait, wait. You can’t really say for sure I did or didn’t have contact with your precious little family. That’s not even what’s bothering you.” Stokes laughed softly, revoltingly. “It’s the rings, ain’t it?”
Pain detonated along Carson’s nerve endings as more images burned his retinas. He blinked them away, snatched back his sinking authority. “You aren’t the first to include a new step or to skip one,” he countered, playing devil’s advocate with his own doubts as well as Stokes’s assertion. “Killers far more clever than you deviate from their patterns on occasion.”
Stokes inclined his head left then right as if evaluating the implication. “Or maybe,” he proposed, “I just wanted something so I could remember your family. After all, they were so special. Way more than all the others. Especially that little sister of yours.”
Carson snapped. He went for the scumbag’s throat. His fingers gripped that disgusting flesh and instinctively locked like a vise.
Stokes grabbed Carson’s shirtfront, pulled him in rather than pushing him away. “Do it, you coward,” he dared. “Show ’em what you’re really made of!”
Carson’s brutal grasp tightened with anticipation. A surge of power rushed through him as the color of oxygen deprivation claimed Stokes’s pale complexion. Die, you bastard!
The door flew open, banged against the wall. “Mr. Tanner, step away from the prisoner,” the deputy ordered.
Carson couldn’t stop. He couldn’t let Stokes live. He’d thought he could. He’d intended to. But he couldn’t. He had to stop him...to feel that throbbing pulse beneath his fingers slow to a dead stop before the scumbag slumped to the floor.
“Carson, back off!”
Wainwright’s command barely trickled past the cloak of retribution...wasn’t nearly enough to stop Carson from doing what had to be done.
Hands were suddenly on his arms, peeling his fingers back, pulling him away from Stokes. Stokes gasped for air. Coughed. Too bad he didn’t choke to death.
“Get him out of here,” Wainwright shouted to the deputy.
The fury still roiled inside Carson, making him want to grab for Stokes again even as the deputy unlocked the tether securing the shackles to the floor and another rushed in to assist with the prisoner’s transport.
Stokes was going to Holman, the worst of the worst facilities in the state of Alabama, perhaps even the country. Carson had done his research; Stokes would spend the rest of his life wishing he were dead. He would never again have the opportunity to hurt another family.
And he would pay. How he would pay.
As Stokes was led past Carson, he stalled, refused to go a step farther. That detestable gaze locked with Carson’s. “Follow your instincts, Tanner. You know something ain’t right.” His lips screwed into that insane expression that bore no resemblance to a smile. “Ask yourself if you’ll ever really know what happened.”
“Get him out of here!” Wainwright commanded.
“Maybe you’re just like the others!” Stokes shouted as he fought to slow his removal from the room. “Tell me, Tanner, when did you stop caring about the truth?”
Carson stared after the bastard, his heart threatening its confines. The truth. He had that now, didn’t he? But...what if there was more? That same old doubt and uncertainty weighed down on his shoulders, tightened like a band around his chest.
“He’s toying with you, Carson,” Wainwright insisted, his tone, his expression laden with regret. “You know he likes to watch his prey twitch. Don’t let him get to you.”
Carson nodded, the solitary action stiff and jerky.
“Let it go,” Wainwright urged. “We both know his MO.”
Yes, Carson knew. But that didn’t change the fact that in this instance Stokes was right. Carson would never know with any degree of confidence what really happened.
There had been no witnesses...no conclusive evidence...just death. And unanswered questions.
Questions that remained unanswered.
Chapter Three
7:15 p.m.
Jazz Factory, downtown Birmingham
What the hell was he doing here?
Carson propped his forearms on the counter and leaned against the bar without bothering to slide onto a stool. He should be elated. The Stokes file was closed; the Tanner investigation resolved. Justice had been served and a killer was on his way to life in prison without the possibility of parole. By eleven o’clock tomorrow morning Stokes would be processed into Holman, the Alabama state penitentiary in Atmore, where his own personal hell on earth waited.
He was finally going to pay.
Ask yourself if you’ll ever really know what happened.
Carson blinked, shattering Stokes’s disturbing words. It was over. Done. Sifting through the details and the what
-ifs wasn’t going to change the facts. They had their killer, if not the answer Carson wanted so desperately. End of story.
But...what if Stokes wasn’t the one?
Carson inhaled a deep breath, then blew it out.
The bastard confessed. The rest was nothing but bullshit. Enough with the doubts already.
The bartender tilted his head in question, drawing Carson’s attention. “Sparkling water with lime.”
Alcohol was off limits. Despite his inability to keep his emotions in check today, control was essential to Carson. He didn’t like losing it...for any reason. Once in a lifetime was enough...and that one time had cost him everything.
“Check out the brunette at nine o’clock.” Scotch in hand, Keller Luttrell, friend and colleague, perched on the stool next to Carson with his back to the bar to facilitate his babe-watching. Besides being a highly skilled strategist in the courtroom, the man was an expert marksman when it came to spotting hot chicks at maximum range.
Carson glanced over his shoulder to take a look at the target currently in his colleague’s crosshairs and dutifully performed the expected appraisal. “Yeah. She’s great.” Hence the rarity of these sorts of male-bonding occasions. Unlike his friend, who appeared to do his best trial groundwork in this atmosphere, Carson had neither the time nor the inclination.
“I could fall in love with that.” Luttrell tracked the brunette’s movements with the same expertise he used to monitor and analyze a jury’s subtlest reaction.
Carson should be at home working. He had a briefcase packed with work lying on the passenger seat of his BMW. “I’m having this drink and then I’m going home with my briefcase,” Carson reminded his pal. That had been their bargain. One drink. An hour tops.
“Come on,” Luttrell urged. “Snap out of it. Celebrate. The past is finally buried. You can move on. Hell, man, take a freaking vacation. I can handle most of your caseload.” He shrugged. “The others will pitch in. You need a real break. I can’t remember the last time you took a day off, much less a week.”
Carson could. He had never taken a vacation. He wouldn’t now. “Yeah, right.” He shot his friend a look that underscored the statement. “And let you suck up to Wainwright while I’m gone? No way.”
“Oh ho.” Luttrell belted out a laugh. “I’m good, but I’m not that good. You’re Wainwright’s favorite and everybody knows it. Nothing short of your going off the deep end will change that.”
Carson cringed inwardly.
Luttrell just kept talking, like the Energizer-frigging-Bunny, without a clue he’d hit a nerve. “But we also know that you’re the star for a reason,” he waxed on before knocking back a slug of Scotch. “You’re the best, buddy. There’s no denying it.”
His sincerity couldn’t completely disguise the slightest hint of envy. Carson had gotten used to that long ago and understood that it wasn’t actually personal. Came with the territory. It was lonely at the top for a reason.
“But we’re not here to talk about work,” his colleague went on. He stared pointedly at Carson’s profile. “When’s the last time you did anything spontaneous that didn’t involve your briefcase?”
“Fuck off,” Carson muttered. He wasn’t looking for personal advice from his skirt-chasing buddy.
Listen, man.” Luttrell set aside the drink he’d been nursing since their arrival. “I know this excavating of the past has been tough on you.” He paused, as lawyers do when allowing the jury’s anticipation to build to a pivotal moment. “But you’ve got to stop spending every second focused on work. Real life is calling and you’re ignoring the summons.” He leaned closer. “Seriously, when’s the last time you got laid?”
Carson should have seen that one coming. “That...” He took a swallow of his for-appearances-sake-only drink. “...is none of your business.” Luttrell had just dropped several notches on Carson’s opinion scale, from confidant to asshole. Only an asshole would ask a man that question when he already knew the answer.
“We’ve all noticed how stressed you are,” Luttrell had the balls to add. “There’s a damned short fuse on your temper these days. You need to work off some of that tension. Going months without sex just isn’t natural, man.”
This conversation was officially over. Carson leveled a steady stare on Luttrell. “We are not analyzing my sex life.”
Luttrell held up his hands stop-sign fashion. “Just calling it like I see it. You need sex, Carson. Look around you.” He waved magnanimously, not about to give up without a closing argument. “This place is full of beautiful women. Let yourself go. Talk to someone, for Christ’s sake. Share a drink. See where it goes. Sunday’s your birthday, man. You’ve gotta live a little before you’re too old.”
His birthday. Thirty-one. Carson had almost succeeded in forgetting that insignificant date. “You know how I feel about birthdays.” He looked his friend straight in the eye. “Do you understand me?” If anyone, anyone, had any ideas about a birthday party, Carson intended to quash that little scheme here and now. He hadn’t celebrated a birthday since...he’d turned sixteen. More of the past tried elbowing its way into his head, but he crammed it back into that dark place he refused to visit.
“Yeah. Yeah.” Luttrell jerked his head toward the clutch of patrons on his right. “Check it out. Forget the brunette. That lady in the red dress is seriously hot, bro. She’s looked your way at least twice. Make a move.” He leaned close again. “It’s that easy. These women are here for just one thing, Carson. All you have to be is willing.”
Carson shook his head. “I find it absolutely fascinating that you can read minds.” He picked up his drink but paused short of setting the glass to his lips. “Must come in handy when speculating how a jury’s leaning.”
Luttrell rolled his eyes. “You won’t let me throw you a birthday bash, at least let me get you off on the right foot tonight. I’ve pointed out two gorgeous ladies. Take your pick. You should celebrate putting the past to rest.”
“Back off or I’m out of here.” Maybe ten minutes more and Carson was gone anyway.
“All right, all right.” Luttrell frowned. He reached into the pocket of his trousers and withdrew his cell phone. After checking the text message on the screen, he puffed out a bothered breath. “Dammit. Gotta go. Opposing counsel on one of my cases wants to have drinks.” He tossed a couple of bills onto the counter. “Remember what I said, Carson. I didn’t strong-arm you into coming here for nothing. Let go. Just this once. It’ll make a new man out of you.”
Carson didn’t acknowledge his final remarks, just let him go. Instead he stared into his glass, his mind wandering back to Stokes and the deal Wainwright had made in exchange for his confession. Two unsolved high-profile murder cases, including Carson’s family, were now closed. They had their man.
Ask yourself if you’ll ever really know what happened.
Carson banished the echo. He shouldn’t have let the bastard get to him. It was over. No more questions.
“Drinking alone is never a good sign.”
Carson turned to the woman who had moved up beside him. Long blond hair. Wide blue eyes. Lush lips. Before he could stop the move, his attention wandered lower. A great body packaged in a slinky red dress.
Wasn’t this one of the women Luttrell had pointed out just minutes ago? The lady was definitely hot, and he couldn’t deny an immediate attraction. But that wasn’t going to stop Carson from going home alone.
“You’re right,” he said in response to her allegation, “drinking alone isn’t a good sign.” Even when it’s only sparkling water, he didn’t qualify. “That’s why I always call it a night while it’s still early enough to accomplish something meaningful.” Like reading briefs and reviewing cases.
The lady smiled, somehow managing to hold on to the attention he’d fully intended to withdraw. “You look like the kind of man who searches for meaning in all that he does.” She flashed that wickedly alluring smile for the bartender as he paused for her order. “Grey Goose. Straig
ht up.”
While Carson was caught up in watching her every move, the bartender poured her drink. She picked up her glass and tapped it against Carson’s.
“Cheers.”.
Maybe he’d let Luttrell’s comments get under his skin. Had to be the reason his fixation with her profile and watching her sip the vodka persisted. All five senses abruptly yawned and stretched, making him keenly aware of the music, the cool glass in his hand, and her unique and stirringly subtle scent.
Six months. No sex in six months. Too long. The power of suggestion was undermining his self-discipline. He’d written the book on using that very tactic in the courtroom. Where was his ruthless willpower now?
She turned fully toward him then. “So.” She steadily contemplated Carson, amping up the tension working its way through his body. “What deeper meaning are you searching for tonight?”
Just go.
Carson opened his mouth to bid her good night, but the words vanished somewhere between his brain and his tongue. Possibly due to the way she looked at his mouth in anticipation of his reply or just maybe because his own gaze kept venturing to her mouth.
Those voluptuous lips slid into another smile. “Oh, I see. You’re here for that.”
Shit. Had she seen something in his eyes? Noted some flash of interest on his face? He really was slipping here.
Time for polite regrets and a prompt exit.
“As stimulating as this conversation is”—he snagged some cash from his pocket and tossed it on the counter—“I have to be going.” He didn’t do relationships or one-night stands. He did work.
“Your friend said it was your birthday or something?” she asked before he could make his escape. “Did your party run out of steam already?”
Now Carson was beginning to get the picture. Damn Keller Luttrell. “Birthday parties are vastly overrated.”
Her mouth puckered into a sexy pout. “You’ve never had a birthday party?”