The Evan Buckley Thrillers: Books 1 - 4 (Evan Buckley Thrillers Boxsets)

by James, Harper

  ‘I feel much better now.’

  She rested her hand on his thigh, an innocent, automatic gesture as her fears and worries subsided for the time being, but it didn’t stop the same electric thrill as before coursing through him.

  He wished he didn’t have to say anything more, didn’t have to bring her back down again, say things that would make her take her hand away, make her wish that she’d never set eyes on him.

  Chapter 24

  THEY SAT IN AN easy silence for a while. The longer it went on, the less he wanted to break it. He wound his window down and they both breathed in the cool night air. He really didn’t want to put her back into the pit of despair that he’d just dragged her from but he didn’t have any choice.

  ‘I take it you don’t plan on taking things any further with Detective Angel now that this has happened.’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t. I’d lose my job. I’d have to drop out of college. I might even go to prison.’

  She had her hands clamped between her thighs again rocking gently back and forward. He envied those hands. He put on his don’t talk such nonsense voice.

  ‘I’m sure they’d do a deal if you helped them get a conviction.’

  ‘I’d still lose my job. Everything would have been for nothing. All the crap I’ve had to put up with in that place would be for nothing.’

  Her voice had steadily risen until the nothing came out as a shout, slamming her palm onto the dash, making him jump. She stuffed her hands under her armpits, hugging herself, rocking back and forth again. Her lips were compressed into a tight line. He preferred the sweet, soft laughter. A scowl doesn’t do anyone’s face any favors. He was about to make it worse.

  ‘You might lose your job anyway.’

  She looked up sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

  He told her how Samantha had been watching them in the club.

  ‘She might think I was just a customer asking for sex and you turned me down.’ He grinned at her. ‘I know it’s highly unlikely when you look at me—’

  ‘Is that so?’ she said and punched him on the arm, the force behind it surprising him.

  ‘—or she might think there’s more to it after what you just told me.’

  ‘Shit. She’ll be looking for any excuse to get me fired.’

  ‘Maybe not. If they fire you, they’ve lost their hold over you.’

  She looked confused. ‘Are you saying you think they’ll fire me or not?’

  He rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. It felt nice and eased out the tension but it didn’t make things any clearer.

  ‘I don’t know. Probably not.’

  ‘So, I’m back where I started. I’ve got to decide whether I’m going to do my duty and get a nice, warm feeling inside—sorry about your career—or look after number one and try to find a way to look at myself in the mirror each morning.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s not going to come to that. I don’t think Angel’s going to be pushing too hard, so don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Why not? He was interested enough the other day.’

  ‘He hasn’t got enough. You think you’ve seen them slipping something into guy’s drinks—’

  ‘I don’t just think it, I know it,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

  He held up his hands. ‘Of course I do. So does Angel. But some scumbag defence lawyer is going to say’—he started counting the points off on his fingers—‘it’s dark in there; the bright lights are shining in your eyes; you’re moving too fast; you might have had a drink—’

  Her face fell little by little as he counted them off. ‘Okay, okay. I get the picture.’

  ‘Plus, you don’t actually know what goes on in the private rooms. Nobody’s coming forward and there’s no proof.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘What about your client? He’s got proof.’

  ‘You mean Angel’s second uncooperative witness?’ He gave a thumbs-down gesture. ‘He’s in the same boat as you—except he’s got a wife to lose as well as his job. And I know you earn well, but you’re not in the same league as him, believe me.’

  She bit her lip. He wanted to offer to do it for her.

  ‘All this soul searching for nothing,’ she said wearily. ‘It takes me weeks to pluck up the courage and then it’s just going to be filed away somewhere and forgotten.’

  ‘Unless something else crops up.’

  ‘I don’t suppose Angel’s very happy.’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose he is. He’s probably used to it by now.’

  ‘Or you.’

  ‘Or me,’ he agreed.

  They sat in silence for a while. She had her eyes closed and her head resting on the headrest. She looked peaceful but he knew it was anything but on the inside, if she was anything at all like him. Was this the end already? No—he couldn’t let it go that easily.

  ‘How about you?’ he said and she opened her eyes. ‘How do you feel about going back there every night for the next year or two until you finish your course? Watching hundreds of guys get taken for a ride. Some of them blackmailed as well. Family guys who just wanted to look at a few fit young bodies for once instead of the flabby old ones waiting for them back home.’

  ‘What am I supposed to say?’ she snapped, her eyes blazing. ‘I feel bad about it too and it’s only going to get worse. But what can I do? Unlike you, I can’t just move on and forget about it.’

  She was right. He couldn’t blame her any more than he could blame Jesse. That’s why blackmail was so popular—it worked. He shouldn’t give her such a hard time. He got out of the car to stretch his legs. She did the same and they stood looking at each other over the car roof. She was young and attractive with all her life stretching out ahead of her and he wished he could help her find a way out.

  She stretched her arms wide and yawned. ‘What are you going to do?’

  Good question. He hadn’t thought about much else since he got down to Louisville. The only thing he could think of was Guillory’s half joking suggestion. He tapped out a beat on the car roof with his fingers as he played with the idea.

  ‘Stop that, it’s really irritating.’

  ‘Sorry. A cop I know suggested some kind of a sting. Obviously, that would mean having someone on the inside.’

  She shook her head. ‘Uh, uh. I can’t help. Not after hitting Samantha. She runs the scam. She wouldn’t let me in on it if her life depended on it.’

  ‘What about one of the other girls?’ He was clutching at straws. ‘Is there anyone you can trust?’

  She thought about it for a minute before answering. ‘I’m not sure. I haven’t talked to anyone else about it. There is one girl who’s okay, not like the rest of them. She looks like the rest of them, but she’s okay. I can try to sound her out.’ She let out a short laugh. It sounded like she had something caught in her throat. ‘It’s funny. Here I am thinking I’ve discovered the scam of the century and I might be the last one to know.’

  Chapter 25

  GINA DIDN’T GET A chance to call Destiny to sound her out because Destiny beat her to it, dragging her from a fitful sleep full of bad dreams and even worse memories. Next to her on the bed, Poppy looked up disapprovingly at the intrusion.

  ‘Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘You bet. Time to spill the beans.’ The exuberance coming out of the phone was palpable. ‘What happened with that guy last night? The good-looking one you were having such fun with and all gooey-eyed over before you looked like he stuck a hot spike up your ass and you stormed off. I was going to go over to cheer him up, but he left.’

  Gina held the phone away from her ear as the excited babble came down the line. At any other time, she’d have said, ‘One, I was not all gooey-eyed and two, I really haven’t got the energy to talk about it.’

  But today she didn’t have that luxury. She didn’t know where to start.

  ‘Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that—’

  ‘What? You got his nu
mber and now you don’t want it?’

  Gina smiled to herself. If only it was that simple. A fight over a good-looking guy. And pretty soon Destiny would wish she’d never seen him either.

  ‘I don’t know how to put this ... hang on, there’s somebody at the door.’

  She put the phone down, wrapped a robe around her and padded to the front door, Poppy at her heels. She was almost there when the memory of what happened the last time she opened the front door stopped her in her tracks. Samantha wouldn’t come back again, would she?

  And then it hit her.

  They’d seen her on the fire escape, watching them as they threw that poor guy in the dumpster.

  She wished she hadn’t left her phone upstairs. Destiny could have called the police. She crept to the window, stumbling as Poppy wrapped herself around her legs and quickly looked out as a second, more insistent knock rattled the door.

  Her legs went weak with relief as she saw the familiar brown and gold livery of a UPS van parked at the curb. She ran to the door and pulled it open. The delivery driver gave her a smile and an appreciative look up and down before handing her a parcel. It measured roughly twelve inches by eight and maybe two inches deep.

  ‘Sorry to drag you out of bed,’ he said as he headed back to his van. He’d never know, but she’d probably have let him come back to it with her if he’d asked, she’d been so relieved to see him standing there on the step.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ Destiny said as Gina picked up the phone and dropped the package on the bed.

  ‘It was a delivery.’

  ‘Do you always invite the delivery man in for a coffee? And cookies. And ...’

  ‘I ... I thought it was somebody else.’

  ‘Not the guy from last night?’

  Gina smiled to herself at Destiny’s one-track mind.

  ‘No, not him.’

  She sat on the bed and Poppy jumped onto her lap and snuggled down immediately. Gina rubbed the cat’s ears absently, the unwelcome memory of Samantha’s visit refusing to shift.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

  ‘So what’s the delivery? Flowers?’

  ‘Destiny!’

  ‘I wish I got woken up by mysterious deliveries. Aren’t you going to open it?’

  It wasn’t worth fighting her. And Gina was intrigued. She wasn’t expecting anything. She found a pair of nail scissors in the nightstand and cut away the packing tape, pulled apart the cardboard packaging.

  And screamed. Screamed fit to bring the walls down. Poppy exploded into life in her lap, a frenzy of claws digging into Gina’s flesh and drawing blood as she leapt off and shot through the bedroom door and down the stairs.

  ‘Gina, what’s wrong?’ Destiny’s desperate voice was a match for the screams any day.

  Gina stared in horror at the picture frame in her hand. They’d sent her another copy of the photograph Samantha had delivered, only this time they’d put it in a pretty frame. But that wasn’t all. Before they’d framed it, somebody had taken a box cutter and neatly cut off Gina’s head.

  ‘Gina, what’s wrong?’ Destiny shrieked down the phone.

  Gina dropped the frame on the floor. She still didn’t know where to start, but she didn’t care. It just spewed out as it came, a jumbled torrent of words and tears and emotion. She started at what felt like a hundred years ago and ended with Evan’s request for Destiny’s help.

  ‘You bet your ass I’m in,’ Destiny said when the words finally dried up. ‘After what they’ve done to you, you’d have to beat me off with a stick to stop me.’

  ‘I’d do it myself if I could.’

  ‘I know you would. But it’s your loss. Now it’s me who gets up close and personal with your new friend.’

  Despite Destiny’s attempts to lighten the mood, Gina couldn’t drag her eyes away from the photo frame on the floor and all its implications.

  ‘Hey, don’t worry about that stupid photo, it’s only a photo after all.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Gina said. ‘I’m not that sensitive or stupid.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘It’s the frame. Last time I saw it, it was sitting on my shelf. It’s my photo frame. They’ve been in my house.’

  Chapter 26

  FORREST ST JOHN SNR was an athletic looking, seventy-something year old. He had equine features—a long, straight nose with flaring nostrils and large, prominent front teeth. His silver-gray hair was too long for his age and he wore it swept back behind his ears so that it gave the impression of a horse’s mane. Unfortunately, it also had the effect of making his ears look a whole lot bigger. They say that people and their pets come to resemble each other and that was certainly true of Forrest Snr.

  Horses were his passion, always had been. A family fortune founded on whiskey and tobacco and augmented in later years by shrewd real estate investments had allowed him to indulge himself in every way possible. Horses were a major part of that. So were women. Although born a little too late to fully enjoy the droit du seigneur style of abuse practiced by southern gentlemen back in the day, he had still managed to get more than his fair share.

  And that had been his downfall. It was also the reason he had spent the last half hour sitting on a dirty bench outside the fat greaseball’s office. At least today he didn’t have to share it with the usual assortment of scum and lowlifes that Tony D’Amato did business with. Forrest Snr thought of him as the Fat Tomato, or FT for short, not just because it rhymed but because of his round, perpetually florid face. He often imagined burying his fist in it and watching it explode just like an over-ripe tomato dropped from a high window.

  He wasn’t stupid—he knew very well that the meetings were scheduled solely for the purpose of humiliating him and keeping him in line. As a result, he never let the fat slob get to him. He thought about his farm and his horses and the nice life he lived for the rest of the time and let the torrent of abuse wash over him. He’d enjoyed what had gotten him into this mess in the first place and now he was paying the price. Such is life. Shit happens. Luckily Forrest Jnr took care of most of it.

  FT was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and although it was still only ten in the morning he had large sweat rings under his arms. Even on a good day he wouldn’t win any prizes for personal hygiene. Forrest Snr was almost glad that FT was in a bad mood—at least today he wouldn’t be subjected to a large, hairy arm clamped round his shoulders in a man-to-man sort of way, his nose mere inches from the exposed armpit. He had a very acute sense of smell and the slightest hint of it twitching, let alone crinkling in disgust, would result in a slap.

  ‘Forrest, have a seat. How’s Mrs St John?’

  He always started the same way. It was his idea of a subtle hint. Did the fat tub of lard really think that Forrest had forgotten what would happen if he didn’t play ball?

  She says to tell you you’re a fat pig, FT.

  ‘Good, thank you, Tony. And Mrs D?’

  FT nodded absently. ‘Good, good.’

  ‘How about Tony Junior?’

  FT shrugged. ‘What can I say? The boy’s a retard. He couldn’t win a game of checkers against a bowl of over-cooked spaghetti.’

  Like father, like son went through Forrest’s mind but he kept it to himself.

  ‘He gets it from his mother,’ FT added.

  One of the knuckleheads on the other side of the room coughed. Forrest Snr thought it sounded as if it had started out as something else, hastily covered up. He waited patiently for FT to get to the damn point, his face neutral and his hands folded lightly in his lap.

  FT hoisted himself out of his faux leather executive chair and walked around the desk. He sat on the corner, one monstrous buttock on the desk, one hanging off the side like a flabby saddlebag, his massive bulk over-shadowing Forrest Snr like an evil, black cloud.

  Forrest Snr swallowed drily. Something was different today and different was usually bad. He had the unpleasant feeling that FT had nothing to say to
him today, no stupid instructions or unreasonable demands—that he was only here so that FT could unleash his pent-up frustrations. He experienced an unwelcome shift in his bowels. He needed to use the bathroom. Badly. He’d be damned if he embarrassed himself in front of this inbred, guinea moron.

  ‘I need to use the bathroom,’ he said, getting up.

  FT backhanded him across the mouth faster than Forrest would have believed possible for such a large man. His head snapped sideways and he dropped back onto the chair. The heavy gold ring on FT’s little finger had split his lip open. A trickle of blood ran down his chin and dripped onto his shirt. FT hadn’t said a word.

  ‘What the—’ Forrest started to say.

  FT punched him full in the face, putting his considerable weight behind it. Forrest’s nose exploded with a sickening crack. White light flooded his brain and his light body flew off the chair and across the room, his too-long hair billowing around his head. His skull hit the sharp corner of the filing cabinet at an impossible angle and his seventy-something-year-old neck snapped like a dry twig.

  Chapter 27

  FORREST’S BODY TWITCHED BRIEFLY and then was still. There was a moment’s silence in the room, but not out of respect.

  ‘Merda,’ D’Amato spat. He peered at Forrest Snr’s unmoving body. ‘I hardly touched the stupid old fool. Is he dead?’

  One of his men, Seppe, crouched down next to the limp body and tried to find a pulse. He gave a small shrug. ‘Can’t feel anything.’

  ‘Merda,’ D’Amato said again.

  He pulled a grubby handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the blood off his ring before using it to mop his brow. It left a smear of blood on his forehead. Nobody in the room pointed it out to him. He put the handkerchief away again and pinched the skin between his eyes and the bridge of his nose.

  ‘He must have had a bad heart,’ D’Amato said eventually.