Cooper Vengeance

by Paula Graves

  “Okay.” He turned to find Margo holding out his half-finished plate. Biting back a grin, he took the plate and grabbed his glass of tea and joined Natalie at a table near the window.

  They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. Finally, Natalie cleared her throat. “Did you work things out with Mike?”

  “Oh, yeah,” J.D. assured her quickly. “He just had to get past the whole ick factor.”

  Her lips quirked. “I didn’t even think about that.”

  He leaned toward her. “I’m glad I ran into you. I’ve been thinking about you—I don’t like the way we left things.”

  “It’s okay. I mean, nobody said anything that wasn’t true—” She fell silent as Margo approached with a turkey sandwich, a bag of pretzels and a glass of water. “Thanks, Margo.”

  “Can I get y’all anything else?”

  “I’m good,” J.D. said, trying not to sound impatient.

  After Margo left, Natalie started picking at the sandwich, but J.D. noticed she wasn’t really eating. “Is something wrong?”

  She looked up at him. “I don’t know.”

  Alarm wriggled in his gut. “Has something happened?”

  “Did you hear I’m back at work?”

  “No,” he answered, surprised. “Full time?”

  “In terms of hours, yes.” She stopped pretending any interest in her lunch. “But I’m on desk duty only.”

  “Well, that’s better than twiddling your thumbs at home, right? At least you have access to the sheriff’s department resources—files and the computers—”

  “I found another possible murder. Right here in Terrebonne, just a couple of months after your wife’s murder.” For the first time since she entered the diner, he saw a little light in her eyes. He listened patiently as she outlined what she knew about a murder victim named Carol Freemont. From what she described, she had ample reason to think the murder might be connected to the other murders he’d been tracking for over a decade.

  “Good catch,” he murmured. “Have you discussed it with Doyle Massey yet?”

  “He was out of the office—I found it right before I broke for lunch.”

  “Is that why you’re not hungry?” He gestured at her nearly untouched plate.

  She looked down at the plate. “Oh.” She picked up half of the sandwich and got it halfway to her mouth before she put it back on the plate and leaned forward. She spoke in a hushed tone. “Someone left me flowers anonymously.” She gave him a meaningful look. “Sunflowers.”

  His gut tightened. Her sister’s, Carrie’s, favorite flower.

  “No return address, no florist’s logo, nobody knows how it came to be sitting on the sidewalk outside the sheriff’s department front door.”

  “No video surveillance of the area?”

  She shook her head. “Just inside the building for interrogations and that sort of thing. Not outside the building.”

  “You think the killer left it for you.”

  “Don’t you?” she asked.

  He sighed. “I don’t know. I can’t make sense of anything. First someone tried to shoot you. Now someone’s sending you flowers anonymously. It seems a little anticlimactic—”

  “It’s creepy,” she admitted. “Someone trying to shoot me was scary, but it was—I don’t know—businesslike, you know? This is more—”

  “Personal?”

  “Yes. More personal.”

  That’s what he was beginning to fear himself.

  “Maybe we really are looking at two different sets of murders here,” she said softly. “Maybe Carrie’s was an intentional copycat of the killer you’re looking for.”

  “And what about the Moss Crossing murder? That seems even more like a copycat killing than your sister’s murder.”

  “I don’t know.” She winced with frustration. “The more I learn, the more questions I have.”

  He reached across the table and laid his hand over hers without thinking. Her gaze snapped up to meet his, and he withdrew his hand. “Sorry.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, then reached over and caught his hand in hers. “When I found the old murder file, I wanted to call you so badly.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  She let go of his hand. “You know why.”

  Heat burned the back of his neck. “Natalie, I’m sorry for what I said.”

  “You’re only sorry I heard it.”

  “No, I’m sorry I said it. It was an easy answer to give my son so he’d stop feeling freaked out. But it didn’t tell the whole truth, did it?” He didn’t know why he wasn’t taking the easy way out now. All he had to say was that he was in no position in his life to get involved with a woman. That was true, wasn’t it?

  “It told enough of the truth,” Natalie murmured. “I’m not your girlfriend. You’re not sticking around here that much longer, so anything between us is temporary. I know that.”

  “If things were different—”

  “They’re not,” she said flatly. “But I need your knowledge, and you need my access to the police files. So I say we put aside the awkwardness and just deal with each other like professionals.”

  He wasn’t sure he was capable of being strictly professional with her. She got under his skin like no woman in years.

  Like no woman since Brenda, a traitorous voice whispered in his head.

  But given what he was about to suggest, he knew he’d have to agree to her terms. “Okay,” he agreed, “but it might be harder than you think.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Because I don’t intend to let you live alone out there by the bay while there’s someone stalking you,” he answered, bracing for her reaction.

  Her eyes narrowed. “What are you suggesting—that I hire a bodyguard?”

  That would be the obvious answer, he realized, surprised he hadn’t thought of it himself. It would be a lot less messy and complicated than what he’d had in mind.

  “Or you could have me for free,” he blurted, as if his gut wanted to get the idea out there before his head could talk him out of it.

  She stared at him, her eyes dark with wariness and something else, something glittery and hot. He felt an answering heat low in his gut, a stark reminder of how difficult the next few days would be if she agreed to what he was suggesting.

  “I can take care of myself,” she said, her voice faint.

  “I know.”

  “Then why?”

  “You’re a cop. When you and your fellow deputies go out on dangerous calls, do you go alone?”

  “No.”

  “Safety in numbers.” He leaned toward her, his chest tight with tension. “You’ve seen my files. You know how those women died. You know how he got to them. For that one moment, nobody was watching their backs.”

  Moisture pooled in her eyes, making them shine.

  “Brenda wanted me to resign from the Navy. It was never supposed to be my career, you know—I was going to serve my country a few years, save up a little money and then we’d buy us a house on the lake and raise our kids—” He stopped short, pain constricting his throat.

  “Best-laid plans,” she murmured.

  “If I’d been there, she’d have called me. I’d have gone there and fixed her car—” He grimaced. “It was an old piece of crap anyway. I should have replaced it long before it gave out on her, but we were saving as much money as we could.”

  “What happened to her wasn’t your fault.”

  “And Carrie’s death wasn’t yours. But you blame yourself anyway, don’t you?”

  She looked down at her hands. “She wanted me to meet her there, but we were crossways about Hamilton, and I just found something else to do that night. At least until I started worrying about her.”

  “They both needed someone watching their backs, and we didn’t realize it until too late.” He reached across the table, taking her hand firmly. “You need someone to watch your back. I wasn’t there for Brenda. Please let me be there fo
r you.”

  She knew he was right—he could see the look of resignation in her green eyes—but he also knew she took pride in being self-sufficient and strong. She didn’t want to admit she needed anyone’s help.

  She pulled her hand away from his, and for a second, he thought she was going to refuse him. But when she spoke, she said, “I have a spare room. It’s not huge, and I’ll have to get it ready for habitation—”

  “I can help you.”

  Now that she’d made the decision, she seemed to relax, even slanting an amused look his way. “Tell the truth—you’re really in this for temporary joint custody of my grill.”

  “I do love your grill,” he admitted, grinning at her.

  She smiled back at him. “If you’ll cook every night, this might be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  They fell silent, but the tension that had thickened the air between them was mostly gone, replaced by a watchful sort of truce, one J.D. was loath to shatter by speaking. But something she’d said earlier niggled at his memory. “You said you wanted to call me when you found the file. Just to tell me about it, or was there something more specific?”

  “That’s right, I didn’t ask you—do you know if Victor Logan could have been in the Terrebonne area twelve years ago?”

  He thought about it. There was a lot about Logan’s movements that remained a mystery. “I know he was working in Chickasaw County at the time of Brenda’s death. We’ve traced him in the area as far back as six months before her murder, but he left town a couple of weeks afterward, the best we can tell. Nobody knew where he went. He didn’t ask anyone for work references, but apparently that’s not unheard of for people who travel from job to job the way he did.”

  “That’s the last you know about him until he showed up in Buckley, Mississippi?”

  “He spent some time in the New Orleans area, because that’s where he met my sister-in-law.” He’d already told Natalie about his sister-in-law Mariah’s connection to Victor—how her suspicion of his possible involvement in Brenda’s murder was what had led her to Gossamer Ridge in the first place, where she’d met his brother Jake and married him after a whirlwind courtship. “She shared a house with Victor for a few years before he was arrested, but she said he spent a lot of time away from home over that time and could have been involved in any number of murders within driving distance of Buckley.”

  “Terrebonne is within driving distance,” she pointed out. “It’s a two-hour drive.”

  “But the murder you’re talking about happened several years before he got to Buckley.”

  “I think we’re looking at this the wrong way,” she said. “We’re worried about where Victor Logan was living at the time when the real question is, where was the alpha killer living?”

  “If we knew who he was, we’d be in a better position to figure that out.”

  She nodded. “I have to get back to work. But here.” She pulled a key ring from her jacket pocket and removed a key from the ring. “This is my house key. Do you have something to write with? I need to give you the alarm code.”

  He had a pen in his shirt pocket. He gave it to her and pushed a clean napkin toward her. “Just write it down. Don’t want anyone to overhear it.”

  She grabbed the napkin and wrote the code on it, glancing around to make sure no one was looking. She handed the pen and the napkin back to him. “Let yourself in. I’ll call if I’m going to be any later than six-thirty. Raid my freezer and see what you’re in the mood to grill.” She flashed him an unexpected smile that lit up the whole diner. “Surprise me.”

  After they paid for lunch, she walked him to his truck, pausing by his door while he unlocked it. “J.D., this has to be strictly business. You know that, right?”

  He turned to look at her, disarmed by the wariness in her eyes. “I know we should keep it that way, yes.”

  “We will keep it that way,” she said firmly. “I can’t do casual relationships. Hell, I can’t do relationships, period, apparently. So if you’re looking for someone who’ll be okay with a temporary shackup—”

  “That’s not what I’m looking for,” he protested. “I’m not looking for anything.”

  “Which amounts to the same thing. And I’m just not up for that, okay?”

  He started to reach out and touch her arm, to try to reassure her that his intentions were nothing but honorable, but he knew that was only part of the truth. Hell, his whole body seemed to be humming with fire just because she was standing close enough to touch. His intentions might be honorable, but his desires were anything but. Maybe her wariness was warranted. He dropped his hand to his side.

  He couldn’t let his baser urges get in his way. She was clearly in danger, and he could help her. And maybe together, they could find the answers about his wife’s murder that had eluded him all these years.

  “Okay, he said aloud. He’d just have to find some way to keep his hands to himself, and not just for her sake.

  God knew, he didn’t want any more regrets in his own life, either.

  NATALIE FELT A FLUTTER of reckless anticipation when she spotted J.D.’s truck parked under the tall stilts supporting her house that evening. She pulled the Lexus into the space next to his and walked under the house to the steps leading up to the back balcony.

  The smoky aroma of grilling meat lured her up the steps, where she found J.D. working at the grill, flipping jumbo Gulf shrimp with a pair of tongs. He looked up at her approach, his blue eyes smoldering. An answering flutter low in her belly made her stop at a safe distance.

  “Shrimp’s a good choice,” she said. “I approve.”

  “I stopped at the fish market. I bought some salad stuff, too—your refrigerator contents would make my poor mother cry.”

  She chuckled. “Let’s don’t tell her, then. I’ll go start on the salad.”

  He caught her arm as she began to pass him, heading for the door into the house. Instantly, her body turned into one raw nerve ending set aflame by the touch. She met his gaze, her breath hitching.

  He stared back, his eyes dilating until only a thin rim of blue remained. Suddenly, he dragged his gaze away and cleared his throat. “Um, first take a look at that paper on the table over there.” He gestured toward the small round patio table, where a large piece of legal paper lay, anchored in place against the light breeze off the bay by a citronella candle holder.

  When she drew closer, she saw that J.D. had drawn a crude map of the Gulf states—Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. He’d drawn dots on the map, each dot with a name beside it. Adele Phillips in Saraland. Vivian Nettles in Meridian. Two coeds killed in Millbridge three hours north of Terrebonne. Other murders scattered across southern Mississippi and Alabama. Two murders in the New Orleans area.

  And one in Gossamer Ridge, Alabama.

  “Why Gossamer Ridge?” she asked aloud. She looked over at J.D., who stood by the grill, nodding at her.

  “That’s what struck me. All the other murders are along the Gulf coast area. Brenda’s is the outlier—Gossamer Ridge is almost six hours from the coast.”

  “It’s not just that,” she said, looking back at the hand-drawn map. “All of the murders happened in areas within a three-hour drive from Terrebonne.” She picked up the pen he’d been using and, using Terrebonne as her starting point, she drew lines to each of the murder sites. The lines spread out from the small bay town like rays of the sun.

  “Terrebonne,” she said aloud.

  “Terrebonne,” he agreed. “And I think that may explain why Gossamer Ridge, too.”

  “Because Brenda was from here.”

  He nodded again. “I think Brenda was the first murder, and I think he sought her out on purpose. Because he knew her personally.” His gaze captured hers, afire with an old, white-hot fury. “The son of a bitch lives right here in Terrebonne.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “It could be Terrebonne, or just Ridley County,” J.D. said later, as they shared a plate of grilled
shrimp and vegetables over the map he’d drawn.

  Natalie swatted away a mosquito. “Ten thousand people in the county, five thousand here in Terrebonne.” Grabbing the box of matches on the table, she lit the citronella candle. The scent wafting from its flickering flame reminded J.D. of lazy family cookouts on the back deck of his parents’ lake house. He wished the rest of the Coopers were here with him right now. The more time he spent alone with Natalie, the less certain he became that staying here tonight was a good idea.

  It had been a long time since he’d wanted a woman as badly as he wanted Natalie right now.

  But why? Why her? She was a pretty woman, certainly, but he knew plenty of women more beautiful. More shapely, more glamorous, more openly sexual and seductive.

  Right now, she looked tired, her clothes rumpled from a long day at the sheriff’s station and her hair escaping in messy tendrils from the ponytail at the base of her neck. Her makeup had worn off during the day, save for a smoky smudge of smeared mascara beneath each green eye. Her tailored blouse looked almost masculine and shapeless, and the Smith & Wesson riding in a chunky holster at her hip was nearly as big as his SIG.

  He ought to have no trouble keeping his mind on the case they were trying to crack—the case he’d been trying to crack for more than a decade. The man they were looking for killed Brenda. Why wasn’t that enough to keep him focused tonight?

  “J.D.?” Natalie’s voice penetrated his mental haze.

  He met her questioning gaze. “Yes?”

  “I asked if Brenda ever mentioned having a stalker.”

  The question caught him by surprise. “Not that I remember. I think she’d have told me or at least my parents if someone in Gossamer Ridge was giving her a hard time.”

  “I meant here in Terrebonne.”

  “Oh.” Brenda had never mentioned having trouble with anyone when she was still living at home, though he did remember being surprised when she wanted to move to Gossamer Ridge to live while he was doing his overseas duty.

  “What is it?” Natalie asked, apparently reading his expression. “Did you remember something?”