by Amy Vansant
“It was all worth it to get a hug from you. You’re always so stingy with them.”
“Are you okay? Did she hurt you?”
Mariska cocked her head. “She? I assumed it was a man...”
“You didn’t see who did it?” asked Frank.
Bob sniffed. “Just woke up tied to the golf cart. Though that’s not the first time that’s happened.” He winked and chuckled. “At least this time I had my pajamas on.”
Mariska slapped his arm. “You’re so stupid.”
Frank smirked, his mustache rising on the right side like a rearing caterpillar. “We should get you two checked out. They probably used some kind of injection to knock you out.”
Mariska waved Frank away. “We’re fine. But I can tell you if they carried me out of my bed, there was more than one of them.”
“That’s a good point—”
Frank cut short when Mariska glowered at him. She put her hands on her hips.
“You’re supposed to argue with women when they say things like that.”
“I didn’t mean...”
Even in the early light, Charlotte thought she could see Frank’s cheeks color.
“I didn’t mean you, I meant one person couldn’t carry either one of you very easily. You’re not children.”
Bob pulled a chunk of tinsel from his shoulder. “You should probably quit while you’re ahead. I can tell you from experience the hole you’re digging is already too deep.”
Mariska smacked him on the arm again. The movement sent glitter showering from her curls.
Charlotte smiled, but she could feel the sense of dread creeping around the back of her brain like a thief bent on stealing all her sense of wellbeing.
Nothing is right.
It was wonderful to have Mariska and Bob back, but she had miles ahead of her before she’d feel like they were truly safe.
She caught Frank watching her. He motioned with a nod of his head for her to follow him as he strolled behind the golf cart. She complied, and he spoke, his voice low and whispery, when he thought they were far enough away from the others. “Did you find anything on your phone?”
She nodded. “Jamie called again.”
“I guessed as much. And? What did she want?”
“Same thing. For me to get Stephanie out of jail. Mariska and Bob were a warning. A taste of what she could do if I let her down.”
“We need to call the FBI. She’s on their list. They can trace that number.”
“She warned me not to.”
Frank scoffed. “Of course she did. Doesn’t mean we have to listen.”
“But she’s watching. Either she or a minion is. She’ll know. And the number she called from was different than the last. There’s some sort of middle man, middle woman to be exact, who relays the call.”
Frank grunted and Charlotte worried he’d plow ahead and call the FBI anyway.
“I’m serious. She could kill half the neighborhood before you or me or the FBI knew what happened. Remember, they’ve been looking for her for decades and they never found her.”
Frank crossed his arms across his chest. “But this has got to be their best shot. What about just me and you? Can we try to find her?”
“She doesn’t seem concerned about you.” Charlotte winced. Whoops. “That didn’t come out right—”
“You mean she thinks I’m too incompetent to ruin her plans.”
“Maybe. But what does she know?”
Frank huffed. “I’ll take it as a good thing. Means I can help and she won’t hold it against you.”
“Right. And having you help makes me feel better.” She tapped him with a playful punch on the arm. “I don’t think you’re any dumber than any other small town sheriff.”
“Har har.” Frank tightened the maroon, terry-cloth belt around his middle. “So what are we supposed to do? Sit around and wait for her to kill everyone?”
“This might seem a little out there, but you could have a little faith in my detective skills.”
“But Stephanie’s guilty. You were there. You saw it.”
Charlotte hooked her mouth to the side, recalling her time in the warehouse. “I don’t know. I only saw the aftermath. I don’t know if she killed the D.A.”
“So you think she was framed?”
“Jamie thinks she was framed—and Steph’s about as charming as her mother so anything is possible.”
“Can Declan talk to her? Maybe get the straight story? I’m sorry to ask...”
“No, that’s a good thought. He might have some pull with her. I think she’s still a little obsessed with him.”
Frank took a deep breath and released a long slow sigh. “Okay. For now I’ll leave this as your operation. It sounds like Jamie just wants you to investigate. What do you want me to do?”
“I’m not sure yet. Jamie said she has info for me that will help. Apparently, she has an enemy and she thinks he’s responsible.”
“She thinks someone framed Stephanie to get to her?”
“I’m thinking something like that. Remember, before her cover was blown, Jamie worked for the witness protection program and put all her clients in this area. Maybe someone didn’t appreciate being here.”
Frank traced his mustache with his thumb and index finger, petting down the wild edges. “She knew who was after each of these guys, right? The people they flipped on—”
Charlotte’s eyes grew wide. “That’s a good point. She had the power to expose her clients to the people who wanted them dead. She could blackmail them into doing anything she liked. She didn’t gather them all here for fun—”
“She built an army of killers and stoolpigeons who had to do anything she asked.”
“Exactly. And maybe one of them doesn’t like being under her thumb.”
“That could be someplace to start. We have the book Stephanie gave you, the one with the fingerprints of Jamie’s witness protection clients.”
Charlotte pointed at him, excited to have what felt like a solid lead so quickly. “The book. You’re right. Maybe our guy is in there.”
Charlotte turned to watch Mariska and Darla chatting on the front door landing. Darla brushed glitter from Mariska’s pajamas. Eyes stared through Mariska’s front door, Izzy’s white tail wagging behind them.
Abby had lain down on her golf cart seat, the flick of her eyebrows betraying the movement of her own eyes as she waited impatiently for her ride.
Everything felt so normal...
...except not.
Chapter Five
“Is that a tattoo?”
Miles looked up from his beer. A bat-faced girl with a half-grown-out dye job stared back at him, her plump pink-painted lips hanging open like a cow’s.
“What’s that?” he asked, trying to decide on the fly if she looked like someone with her own house. He needed a place to sleep in town. It was a long drive back to the farm.
“I said is that a tattoo on your arm? It’s crazy, dude.”
Dude. Miles scowled. He hated being called dude.
He glanced down. His short sleeve t-shirt had ridden up, exposing a network of coral-like zig-zag lines on his upper arm. He grunted and took a sip of his beer.
“Sorta. A nature tattoo.”
The girl rubbed the back of her index finger beneath her nose and sniffed. “Like henna?”
Miles shrugged. He didn’t know what henna was but didn’t feel like learning either.
The girl leaned closer to him. He could smell her sweet, strawberry-scented perfume mingling with the stench of stale beer.
“How far does it go?” she asked, as flirtatiously as a woman with bad skin and greasy two-tone hair could manage.
Fish on.
Miles put down his beer.
I really hope she has her own place.
He swiveled on his stool to face her. “You live ’round here?”
“Yeah, just over the bridge.” She blinked at him. “Why?”
“Just makin’ small talk.
Live alone?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded and looked at his arm. “Tell ya what, I’ll show you for a beer.”
She grinned with tobacco-stained teeth.
“Deal.”
Miles didn’t mind the color of her chompers. He didn’t trust people with pearly white teeth. They were always fake in every other way as well.
Keeping steady eye contact with the girl, he pulled his Salt Life t-shirt over his head.
The girl gasped.
“Oh my god...”
“Hey, you can’t—” The bartender took one step toward Miles and then stopped both his momentum and his sentence, gaping.
“Is that a tattoo?” he asked, echoing the girl’s earlier question.
In the mirror behind the booze rack, Miles admired his own markings. A red, coral reef covered most of his chest, the branches crawling up his neck, across his shoulders and down his upper arms. He knew a good portion of his back sported the marking as well. He turned so the greasy girl could see the tendrils of it reaching across his spine.
“That’s the wildest tattoo I’ve ever seen. It looks like it’s following your veins.”
Miles sniffed. “That’s cause it is. It ain’t a tattoo.”
The girl scowled and traced her finger along his back. Girls always had to trace the pattern. Sometimes he felt a little like a snake charmer, mesmerizing the women with his markings instead of using a pipe.
“Then what is it?” asked the bartender. “You got some kind of disease?”
The girl snatched away her hand.
Miles shook his head and slipped his shirt back over his head. “Got struck by lightning as a kid.”
“No way,” breathed the bartender. “And it did that?”
“Yup. Shot through my body and left a trail so I could know where it went.”
“That’s somethin’ else.”
The girl’s dull eyes widened. “Did it hurt?”
Why do people always ask that?
“Of course it hurt.”
The girl tittered with nervous giggles.
Miles took another swig of his beer. “Some good came out of it though.”
The bartender snapped from his awe and began wiping down the counter. “Yeah. You got a cool tattoo.”
“Nah, besides that.”
The girl shifted to the edge of her barstool. “What?”
Miles held up a hand. “It burned off my fingerprints.” He showed the girl the dark pads of his fingertips. The ones he still had. The lightening had blasted off the tips of his pinky fingers to the first knuckle.
The girl raised her hand to cover her gaping mouth. “Why would you want to lose your fingerprints?”
“Makes it easier to steal stuff, don’t it?” Miles grinned and the girl laughed too hard. She reached out and traced the lightning roadmap on his arm, her gaze playing tag with his.
He hoped his blue eyes still had the effect they did when he was younger. As a rule, between his eyes and his unusual markings, he’d never had any trouble getting bar girls to take him home. Of course, that was before he was arrested. Before he flipped on his oxycodone-selling bosses to avoid jail time, not because he was a snitch, but because he didn’t give a rat’s ass about them. He wasn’t really in the drug-selling business and didn’t need them. Helping them with “problems” that needed to “disappear” had been a way for him to enjoy his work and get paid. He didn’t care if they were selling drugs or timeshares.
But real estate agents rarely needed someone killed.
Then that fake-Fed bitch had sent him here with a new name and the promise of a new life—but only if he did what she said.
Screw her.
She couldn’t keep hold of him. He’d lived off the grid his whole life. After a botched attempt to kill her, he’d disappeared into the swamps to reset. When he popped out of his hidey-hole again, he found out she was gone.
He’d lost his chance for revenge.
Until that man called and told him her daughter had opened a law office in town. A man who hated the Fed bitch even more than he did. He asked for Miles’ help.
It really was Christmas.
It was all too perfect. And the worst part was done. He’d framed the lawyer. Now all he had to do was wait for her mother to come out of hiding to save her.
Nothin’ to do but drink beer and—
He turned and looked at the sloppy girl beside him. He wasn’t drunk, but somehow she still looked blurry. She just was...all grease, paint and fuzz.
Blurry.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
The girl dipped her face and looked up at him.
Oh she’s feelin’ it. The eyes still have it.
“Fawn,” she said, her voice softer than it had been.
“Like a little deer.”
She giggled.
I hunt deer.
“You live out in the forest?”
She laughed again. “I don’t live in the forest, silly. I live over in the trailer park by the state park.”
“And you said you live by yourself?”
“Yeah. Now. Momma moved into her boyfriend’s place.”
“Huh.”
Miles took another swig of beer and eyed her from head to toe while she pretended she didn’t know he was looking at her.
Not much to look at. Not too skinny though, and not too fat.
Eh. Any port in a storm.
And she has her own place.
He leaned toward her. “You want to get out of here?”
She giggled.
Chapter Six
“Where do you want to go?”
Declan appeared on Charlotte’s doorstep at five minutes past five. He’d left his best and only employee, Blade, in charge of his pawn shop, the Hock o’ Bell, and now stood in Charlotte’s kitchen with no idea about the approaching storm.
She was finding it hard to tell him about Mariska and Bob’s kidnapping. He was so handsome, standing there in his polo and khaki shorts, a self-imposed work uniform, his swimmers’ body filling out the shoulders and chest nicely.
“Maybe Mexican?” she suggested.
In truth, her appetite had left the moment Jamie put the wellbeing of everyone she loved on her shoulders. What time she hadn’t spent grilling Mariska and Bob for details about their early morning abduction, she’d spent staring at her phone, waiting for Jamie to call with the extra information she needed to begin looking for the person who really killed the assistant D.A.
Assuming it wasn’t Stephanie, who remained the best and most obvious suspect. Too bad she wasn’t an acceptable target for her psycho mother.
Which brought Charlotte’s mind circling back to the most troubling aspect of her new investigation: What if Stephanie was guilty? Would Jamie accept her daughter’s transgression as an answer? Or would the truth condemn everyone Charlotte loved—
“Hey, yoo hoo...” Declan waved a hand in front of her face. “Mexican sounds fine. But why do I get the feeling you’re not thinking about dinner?”
Charlotte snapped from her thoughts and smiled. How could she not smile looking at Declan? He was sweet, funny and one hundred percent supportive when it came to her career as a newly minted private eye. And, as a bonus, she’d recently discovered he was secretly bad-ass to boot. He was almost perfect for her…
If only he hadn’t come with a crazy ex-girlfriend and a murderous almost-mother-in-law...
“There you go again. What’s wrong?”
Charlotte realized she’d drifted off again, her smile fading from her lips. She jerked it back into place. “I’m sorry. My mind is elsewhere. I need to walk Abby before we go. Want to come?”
Declan shrugged. “Sure.”
Charlotte grabbed Abby’s leash from the wall hook. The moment the chain jingled, the dog leapt to her feet and trotted to her, eager to go. The three of them headed outside, Abby leading the way, as usual. Heaven forbid anyone ever walk through a door before her. She’d nearly taken out Charlo
tte’s legs a hundred times trying to keep that from happening.
Charlotte stared at the ground as they walked, manufacturing the best way to tell Declan about Jamie’s demands. She’d resisted calling him the moment Mariska and Bob’s crisis had ended. She’d wanted to get her mind around the situation and she knew he’d think it was all his fault for bringing Stephanie into her life—which was true, technically—but Steph was a crazy train no one could have stopped.
“So how was your day?” she asked.
Good. Keep it simple. Look at you interacting like a person who isn’t trying to keep everyone alive. You go girl!
Declan sighed. “Weird. But every day is weird with Blade around. He showed up with pine needles sticking out of his t-shirt today.”
“Pine needles? Oh, wait. What shirt was he wearing? Was it a good one?”
If there was anything that could distract Charlotte from her worries, it was Blade in all his glory. Declan’s odd employee always wore the most terrifying t-shirts. Built like a brick wall, the man stood about six-foot-six and claimed his scary name had been blessed upon him by his hippie mother, who’d named him after a blade of grass. And yet, he always wore tees with the names of weapons manufacturers on them, usually knife manufacturers. Charlotte kept meaning to look into Blade’s background, but he was such a sweet and gentle giant she’d never found herself motivated to unearth any dark past.
“Today’s tee had a picture of a crab holding a knife.”
“A crab holding a knife?”
“Yep, a big knife. It said Let’s Dance.”
Charlotte laughed. “Is he still a selling machine?”
Declan thrust his hands in his pockets as Abby stopped to do her business. “Yep. He probably sold five things today I never dreamed I’d be able to unload. He sold a porcelain figurine of a woman in a dress holding what looks like an otter. I’ve been staring at that thing for years, wondering where she got that otter.”
“What about the pine needles in his tee?”
“Oh, I asked him about those. He said he went forest bathing.”
“What the heck is forest bathing?”
“Funny you should ask. I Googled it and it’s a term for hanging out in the forest, enjoying the place. But from what I can tell, Blade went into the forest and rolled around in the sticks and pine needles. He had little cuts all over his face and hands.”