Beverly Barton Bundle

by Beverly Barton

  “Great. I had a bit a part in one adult movie ten years ago and now I’m targeted by some nut job who happened to like that stupid movie.”

  “Karma’s a bitch,” Mike said, his voice a low grumble.

  Lorie and Maleah snapped around and stared at him.

  “That was a damn cruel thing to say,” Maleah told him.

  A red tinge crept up Mike’s neck and quickly darkened his face. “You’re right.” He looked at Lorie. “I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” she said.

  He snorted and then looked at Maleah. “I’ll have a patrol car drive by Jack and Cathy’s every hour once Lorie’s staying with you and by Treasures when Lorie’s at work. If I had the manpower, I’d assign someone to her, but she’s got you so she really won’t need police protection on a twenty-four/seven basis.”

  “Thanks.” Maleah grabbed Mike’s arm. “Let me walk you out, Sheriff.” She shot Lorie a quick glance. “I’ll be right back. Why don’t you go pack a bag?”

  Lorie hated the thought of being forced to leave her home. But what if the person who had killed Dean and Hilary really did intend to kill her? Her best chance of survival could well be having Maleah Perdue as her bodyguard.

  Maleah gave Mike a well-deserved tongue-lashing, reminding him that his actions toward Lorie Hammonds were completely unprofessional and most decidedly uncalled for.

  “I don’t believe you’re naturally a cruel or vindictive man,” she said. “But you’ve treated Lorie as if she doesn’t deserve even common courtesy. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you enjoyed hurting her and that you don’t give a rat’s ass if somebody does kill her.”

  “That’s not true. At least the part about my not caring if somebody kills her. I don’t wish Lorie dead.”

  “Are you saying that you enjoy hurting her?”

  “Yes. No.” He shook his head. “Damn, I don’t know.”

  “What’s the matter with you? That woman in there”—she pointed to the front door—“is in danger. Some unknown person out there somewhere has targeted her as one of his victims. And what do you do? You act like a vindictive ex-lover. You know what that tells me?” When he didn’t respond, she elaborated. “It tells me that you still have some very strong feelings for Lorie, that whether you want to or not, you still care about her.”

  “That’s a damn lie! I hate her.” Crap! He hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. But Maleah had pushed the wrong buttons. Or maybe she had pushed all the right buttons to force him to admit his true feelings.

  “I don’t have to deal directly with you from here on out,” Maleah told him. “When Jack gets back from his honeymoon, assign him to this case. Or go ahead and put one of your other detectives in charge. It’ll be better for everyone involved that way.”

  “Good idea. You and Jack should work well together. But as the sheriff, I need to stay involved if one of our citizens is being threatened by a serial killer.”

  “Fine by me as long as you can keep your personal feelings under control. I’ll report to you until Jack comes home.”

  “Okay.” Mike stepped off the porch, but paused and glanced back at her. “By the way, how often does a serial killer forewarn his victims?”

  “I have no idea,” she admitted. “But the Powell Agency is sending in a profiler first thing tomorrow, and I’m sure he’ll have all the answers.”

  “Derek Lawrence?”

  “That would be the man.”

  “Good. I got to know Derek last year when he helped us out on the Fire and Brimstone case. He and Jack got pretty buddy-buddy.”

  “Yes, I believe they did.” She barely got the words out through her partially clenched teeth. “God knows why my brother took a liking to such an egotistical SOB.”

  “Watch out, Ms. Perdue, now your unprofessional attitude is showing.”

  Grinning, Mike walked off and didn’t look back. He got in his car and drove away, doing his best not to examine too closely his feelings for Lorie Hammonds.

  Derek Lawrence had worked with Holt Keinan a couple of times in the past few years. He liked and respected the Powell agent who was a former sharpshooter for the Birmingham SWAT unit. Although they had little in common, their backgrounds as different as night and day, they had hit it off the first time they met.

  When he saw Holt halfway across the bar at Logan’s Roadhouse, he held up his hand to acknowledge he’d seen Holt motioning to him. At seven-thirty on a Thursday evening, the bar wasn’t terribly crowded. He figured most of the customers were waiting to be seated in the restaurant.

  He shook hands with Holt, then took the bar stool beside him.

  “What’ll you have?”

  Derek eyed the other man’s bottle of Guinness. “Same as you.”

  Holt placed the order with the bartender, then turned back to Derek. “Our table should be ready in about ten minutes or less.”

  “Sounds good.” The bartender handed Derek his drink. He turned up the bottle and swigged down several large gulps before setting the bottle on the bar. “I interviewed Jared Wilson, the other victim’s brother, this afternoon and the Sevier County sheriff’s office sent me copies of Dean Wilson’s case file. I thought we could go over whatever you’ve got on the Hilary Chambless case after dinner tonight and then compare the two cases. In the morning, I’ll head out for Dunmore, Alabama, where Perdue is working on a case that involves a potential victim.”

  Holt grinned. “Perdue? You two still locking horns?”

  Derek chuckled. “No doubt she’s told everyone that I actually do have horns and a tail and carry a pitchfork as well as breathe fire and eat live rattlesnakes.”

  Holt almost choked on his beer. Instead he spewed it into his hand, then wiped his hand off on a cocktail napkin. “Damn it, man, warn a guy next time, will you? Whatever you did to her, it must have really pissed her off. As long as I’ve known Maleah, I’ve never seen her react to anybody the way she does you.”

  “Maybe I remind her of somebody,” Derek said. “To my knowledge, I’ve never done anything to the lady. Perdue stays as far away from me as she possibly can.”

  “Hmm…Who knows? She’s a woman and there’s no use trying to figure out how a woman’s mind works. But you know, you might ease the tension between you two a little if you’d start calling her Maleah instead of Perdue.”

  “Nope. She’s Perdue to me. And I’m that cocky, know-it-all SOB as far as she’s concerned.”

  “Whoa there. Did she actually call you that—to your face?”

  Derek took another swig from his bottle. “Not to my face. I happened to overhear her a few months back when she was talking to Nic Powell about me.”

  The buzzer Holt had laid on the bar went off, red lights blinking and the black disk vibrating. “That’s us. Our table’s ready.”

  An hour later, with steaks, baked potatoes, and half a dozen yeast rolls consumed, Derek and Griff compared notes over after-dinner coffee. The loud shit-kicking music and the din of customers provided audio camouflage for their conversation, but they were both careful about mentioning any names in such a public place.

  “The murders are too similar to be a mere coincidence,” Derek said. “If we knew for sure the mountain cabin victim had received threatening letters, it would erase any doubts I might have. But the truth of the matter is the bodies being nude and their having been shot several times wouldn’t link them, but the fancy masks being placed on their faces tells a different story.”

  “The nudity and the masks are part of the killer’s MO, right?”

  Derek grinned. “Went through the training course at Quantico, huh?”

  “Yep. When I was with the Birmingham PD.”

  “Then you know two murders don’t make a serial killer,” Derek said. “But the fact that the UNSUB has threatened a third person—one connected to the other two victims by past association, if nothing else—indicates this guy has the potential and if he isn’t stopped, he’ll go on ki
lling.”

  “Seems he definitely has a hard-on for former porno stars. No pun intended.” Holt grinned.

  “Yeah, seems so. But my gut tells me that there’s more to it than that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Not sure yet.”

  “This Hammonds woman in Dunmore—seems she’s Maleah’s new sister-in-law’s best friend, so the case is going to get personal, at least for Maleah.”

  Derek nodded. “If I were Sanders, I’d take Maleah off the case and assign an impartial agent. But I’m an easygoing kind of guy and not prone to rocking the boat by questioning the captain’s orders.”

  “I know Sanders,” Holt said. “If Maleah can’t do her job, he’ll replace her.”

  “Any chance you could persuade him to do that before I arrive in Dunmore tomorrow? It would save me a hell of a lot of trouble if I didn’t have to deal with her.”

  Holt chuckled. “Something tells me that if there’s a man alive who can handle Maleah Perdue, it just might be you.”

  Mike kissed Hannah’s forehead, said good night, and closed her bedroom door. He moved to the next room, peeked in, and grinned when he saw that M.J. was already asleep, his long-legged little body sprawled across the rumpled covers. He tiptoed across the floor, lifted M.J. just enough to grab the covers with one hand, and pulled them up and over his son.

  As he headed toward his small home office, an eight-by-eight space that had once been a walk-in-pantry, he thought about what a lucky man he was to have two great kids, a loving and helpful mother, and a job he truly liked. If Molly were still alive, his life would be damn near perfect.

  Even after four years, he still missed her as if she’d left them only a few months ago. His sweet Molly. She had been everything a man could ask for in a wife. They’d had a good life. They’d been happy.

  He knew that when Lorie Hammonds had come back to town, Molly had worried about how he would react, but she had never brought up the subject. At least not to him. He might never have known about her insecurities where Lorie was concerned if his mother hadn’t come to him.

  “You need to make it perfectly clear to your wife that Lorie Hammonds is your past and that she and the kids are your present and future,” his mother had told him.

  He’d been dumbfounded that Molly had felt Lorie could pose a threat to their marriage.

  “I’ll tell her that she has nothing to worry about,” Mike had assured his mother. “The only feelings I have for Lorie now are loathing and disgust.”

  “I’d keep that to myself. Those are powerfully strong feelings. It’s best if Molly doesn’t see how much Lorie still affects you.”

  “She doesn’t—”

  “You forget who you’re talking to, boy. I was around when Lorie left you high and dry. You loved that girl with everything in you. Those kinds of feelings don’t die. You just bury them deep and hope and pray you can keep them buried.”

  He had denied that beneath his seething animosity for Lorie the love he had once felt for her still existed. And he’d kept on denying it all these years.

  I don’t love her. She means nothing to me. Less than nothing.

  Then stop thinking about her, you dope.

  He walked into the office, flipped on a light, and pulled out his swivel chair. After plopping down in the Office Depot special—on sale for $99.99—he glanced at the shelves above his computer desk. A row of photos spread across one shelf, school pictures of Hannah and M.J., various photos of him and his kids. And one photo of his family, taken two years before Molly died.

  I loved you, Molly. You were the best thing that ever happened to me.

  His gaze traveled over the books and magazines stored on the shelves and settled on his old yearbooks. He hadn’t looked through them in years. In fact, right after Lorie dumped him, he had tossed all four yearbooks in the trash. His mother had retrieved them and kept them for him.

  Half standing, he reached up and yanked his senior yearbook off the shelf. As he settled back into his chair, he opened the book and flipped through it. Dust particles flicked off the pages and danced in the air, their images appearing in the iridescent light from the overhead fixture. He smelled a hint of mustiness.

  And then he stopped flipping through the pages and opened the book at the sophomore photographs. A sixteen-year-old Lorie Hammonds smiled up at him, her dark eyes sultry even then. His body tightened with desire. It had been that way since the first time he’d noticed her. That much between them hadn’t changed. As desperately as he wanted to deny it, he had to admit that he still wanted Lorie.

  They had been in lust long before they fell in love. From the get-go, sex between them had been explosive. She’d been a virgin. He hadn’t. Being a good-looking jock, he’d had his pick of easy lays from the time he was fifteen. But Lorie had been different. She had been his, only his, the girl he wanted to marry and make the mother of his children.

  Mike slammed the yearbook closed and tossed it on the floor.

  “Damn you, Lorie! Damn you to hell.”

  Chapter 6

  Derek parked his Vette in the driveway, got out, locked it, and stretched his long arms over his head. He had driven in from Memphis this morning, a good three-and-a-half-hour drive, and hadn’t made any stops as he’d crossed the entire state of Mississippi. The farther east he had traveled, the hillier the landscape, going from flatland through the Magnolia State to the tentacles of the Appalachian Mountains that spread into the northern and eastern sections of Alabama. After retrieving his suitcase from the trunk, he glanced around, taking in the beauty of the renovated Victorian house and the peaceful street lined with large, mature trees beginning to come to life in the early days of spring. Dunmore was an old town, seeped in Southern traditions that grounded it in the past. And yet when he had spent quite a bit of time here last year, he had seen glimpses of change, of people looking to the future.

  When the Powell Agency had sent him there last summer, he had gotten to know Perdue’s older brother, Jack, a local deputy, rather well. He had liked Jack as instantly as he had disliked Jack’s sister. Odd thing about the vibes you picked up from people. He figured Jack for a combination of hardened soldier and good old boy, a man’s man as well as a ladies’ man. But Jack’s days of carousing were over. Less than a week ago, Derek had attended Jack and Cathy’s wedding. The following morning, he’d left his motel room and driven straight to the Nashville area, to his mother’s birthday celebration.

  Now here he was back in Dunmore and doomed to work with Perdue on a new and rather intriguing case. He figured the best way to handle their precarious partnership was not to take the woman seriously. She was big-time uptight, at least around him. He had told her more than once that what she needed was to lighten up, and a good start would be to go out and get herself laid. She hadn’t taken his suggestion in the spirit in which it had been given, which was only with the best intentions, of course.

  Chuckling to himself, Derek headed up the walk that led to the front porch. Bet Perdue couldn’t wait to see him.

  When he rang the doorbell, he didn’t expect to see a tall, lanky teenage boy open the door and invite him in.

  “Aunt Maleah’s on the phone,” Seth Cantrell told him. “She’s talking to somebody at the Powell Agency, getting some information about the case y’all are working on. She’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Seth was Jack and Cathy’s son, although Jack and Seth had met for the first time last year. Jack, a former Army Ranger, had been MIA during the Gulf War back in the early nineties. A pregnant Cathy had married another man who had raised Seth as his own. When Jack had come home to Dunmore last year, he had not only discovered that his long-lost love was a widow, but that he was her sixteen-year-old son’s biological father.

  As Seth led Derek out of the foyer and down the hall, he asked, “Have you had breakfast?”

  “Nope, sure haven’t,” Derek replied.

  “We’ve got leftovers,” Seth told him. “A stack of pancakes, some
sausage links, and I just put on a fresh pot of coffee.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll take it all, starting with the coffee.”

  By the time Maleah joined them, a good ten minutes later, Derek had finished off the pancakes and sausage and was downing his second cup of coffee. Seth had explained that even though he was staying with his grandparents while his parents were off on their honeymoon, he had stopped by for breakfast with his aunt since he had only a half day at school today.

  “I see you’ve made yourself at home.” Perdue glanced from his empty plate to his suitcase resting against the table leg at his side. “You aren’t planning on staying here, are you?”

  “As a matter of fact—”

  “There are two perfectly good motels here in Dunmore. Take your pick.”

  “Now, Perdue, don’t be that way. You’ve got more than enough room here in this big old house to put me up.”

  “He’s got you there,” Seth said.

  Perdue gave her nephew an eat-dirt-and-die glare.

  Derek laughed. “Think of it as an adventure. The two of us working side by side, living under the same roof, getting to know each other.”

  She huffed loudly, not even trying to hide her aggravation.

  He hated to even think it, hated to resort to an old cliché, but damn if Perdue wasn’t downright pretty when she was pissed. You’re beautiful when you’re angry. He could think it, but God help him if he said it.

  For all her faults and shortcomings, being unattractive wasn’t one of them. Maleah Perdue was what had once been referred to as an all-American beauty. Five-four, a trim hourglass figure, blue eyes and golden blond hair. She looked like the kind of girl men used to dream about taking home to meet their mamas.

  Seth broke the uneasy silence in the room when he cleared his throat and then said, “I hate to eat and run, but I’m supposed to meet some of the guys at ten.”

  “Are we still on for lunch and a movie Sunday?” Perdue asked.

  “Sure are.” He glanced at Derek. “Good to see you again, Mr. Lawrence.”