by Lisa Jackson
“I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Anna tossed her an exasperated look. “You think it was Cole. You were going to testify that he shot you. And now…now they expect him to be released from prison. The whole case against him has fallen apart. But that doesn’t mean he won’t come after you. He did before, didn’t he? When he was out on bail? He called. Planned to meet with you, and you, being some kind of idealistic numbskull, were actually going to see him! What the hell were you thinking?”
Eve’s stomach knotted. The headache that never seemed to quite go away began to beat slowly inside her skull. She didn’t want to think about all this again.
“Cole thought you were having an affair. Probably with Roy.”
Anxiety clamped over Eve’s lungs. The truth of the matter was that she couldn’t remember. Her headache thundered. “Damn it all.” She found her purse in the car, scrounged through a zippered pocket, came up with a nearly empty bottle of ibuprofen, and tossed two pills into her mouth. “I told you, I don’t want to rehash this. I’m done arguing.” She grabbed Anna’s cup and washed down the tablets with a swallow of tepid, milky coffee. “God, this is awful.”
Anna snagged her cup.
Feeling a tic develop beneath her eye, Eve sensed another panic attack in the making. Her heart was racing, and she felt as if her lungs were strapped by steel bands.
Not now. Not here. A full-blown anxiety attack will only add fuel to Anna Maria’s you-aren’t-ready-to-leave fire…. One …Breathe!… Two …Think calm thoughts…. Three …Slow your heartbeat…. Four …
By the time she reached ten, she was taking normal breaths again, but Anna was watching her closely. “I gotta go.” Eve grabbed her makeup kit, not that it would do much good. Her face was still a bit puffy, the plastic surgery around her right eye not quite healed. She placed the makeup bag beside the cat carrier, then turned to reach for her large roller-bag.
“Okay, fine. Hey! No! Stop! For God’s sake, don’t lift that. Just wait a sec, will ya?” Anna set her cup down then grabbed Eve’s roller-bag. “Jesus, this weighs a ton. What’ve you got in here, lead weights?”
Eve smiled faintly. “At least you didn’t say a dead body.”
“I thought about it.”
“I know you did.”
From within the interior of the car came the pitiful sound of a cat who thought he was being tortured. “Won’t that drive you nuts?” Anna asked.
“Probably.” Eve flipped up the lid of the trunk. “But I’ll survive.”
“You know you’re impossible, don’t you? As stubborn as your brothers.” Anna refused Eve’s help as she hoisted the bag into the trunk. “And don’t give me any of that crap about you not being from the same genetic pool as Kyle and Van. It doesn’t matter. You were all raised under the same roof, and that’s why you’re all so bullheaded.”
Eve had given up arguing. There was just no point to it. Not when Anna Maria got going. Logic didn’t count, and the fact that Eve’s older brothers were from their mother’s first marriage, that they were twelve and ten years old when Eve, as an infant, was adopted by Melody and Terrence Renner, wasn’t going to change Anna’s mind. Eve suspected that the only reason she’d ended up living with Kyle and Anna after being released from the hospital was that Anna Maria had insisted upon it. It hadn’t been any bit of brotherly love, or nobility, or even guilt on Kyle’s part.
Anna picked up her cup, took a swallow, and scowled. “You’re right. This is really bad.” She tossed the dregs into the dirt beneath the magnolia tree.
“Told you.”
“So, if you’re going to go,” Anna said, glancing up at the menacing sky, “go already. And Eve?”
“Yeah?”
“Avoid Cole. He’s just plain bad news.”
“I know.”
“That’s not the answer I want to hear.” Anna wrapped her arms around Eve and held her tight, as if she didn’t want to let go, and Eve wondered if it was because she was worried for Eve or because she didn’t want to be left alone with her husband. Eve knew only too well what a brooding, moody tyrant her oldest brother could be. The fact that Anna had never bent to Kyle’s will or had let him break her spirit was testament to her strength.
“Take care of yourself, Anna,” Eve whispered emotionally. “Thanks for everything. I owe you!”
“I’ll try. You too.” Before the whole scene got any more difficult, Eve extracted herself from Anna’s embrace, slid behind the wheel of her car, ignored the yowling cat, and fired up the engine. “Bye!”
Anna was already reaching into her pocket for her pack of cigarettes. She shook out the last one before crumpling the empty pack.
As Eve headed out the drive, drops of rain began to pepper the ground. Just what she needed. She had over four hundred miles of asphalt between here and New Orleans.
And once you get there, then what?
“God only knows.” She flipped on the wipers and pressed her toe to the accelerator. To drown out Samson’s mournful cries, she turned on the radio, found a country station, and wondered which was worse, the wailing guitar or the unhappy cat.
The rest of her life, whatever that was going to be, was waiting.
“Get me the hell out of here!” Cole Dennis paced from one end of the small holding cell to the other. He was tense. Agitated. This tiny room, with its scarred cinder-block walls and steel bars, smelled of must, dirt, and broken dreams. Worse yet, beneath the strong odor of some pine-scented cleaner was the whiff of ammonia and urine, as if the someone who’d been here last had been scared enough to lose control of his bladder. Or maybe he’d pissed on purpose to mark his territory or just make a defiant, in-your-face point to the cops.
Cole’s attorney, Sam Deeds, was seated at the simple table that was bolted to the floor. Impeccable in an Armani suit, a silk tie, and a haircut that cost what some men made in a month, Deeds looked the part of the slick attorney: clean shaven and hawkeyed, his expression serious, his dark eyes missing nothing as Cole paced from one end of the cell to the other.
How many times had Cole himself sat in that very chair, dressed like Deeds, telling his client not to sweat, never once noticing the odor of desperation that clung to these chipped walls?
“We’re just waiting for all the paperwork. You know the drill,” Deeds said.
“Like hell. They’re stalling. And why am I locked in here? I’m supposed to be getting out. This is an interrogation room, for God’s sake.”
“Your case is high profile.”
“So this is for my protection? So that I’m hidden from the press?” Cole snorted his contempt. “Bullshit!”
“Cool it.” Deeds tossed a look to the large mirror on one side of the room as if in silent reminder about the two-way glass.
Cole shut up. He knew all about the mirror and about the pricks standing on the other side watching him squirm, hoping against hope that there was some way to nail his hide for the Royal Kajak murder. Jesus, what a mess. He shoved one hand through his hair and felt warm drops of sweat on his scalp. Just like he’d seen hundreds of times on the poor sons of bitches that he’d represented.
He cast a hard glance at the reflective glass, wondering if Montoya, that useless piece of crap, was on the other side, or maybe Bentz, the older, heavier, quieter guy, Montoya’s partner. Or Brinkman…Christ, now that guy was a piece of work. How he held on to a job was beyond Cole. Then there was the DA, Melinda Jaskiel. She was probably eating this up. Cole couldn’t count how many times he’d sat on the opposite side of the courtroom from Jaskiel or one of her assistants, working against them. He’d been surprised Jaskiel herself hadn’t handled his case, that she’d handed it off to an underling.
No wonder they were doing everything in their power to nail his ass.
What was it Bentz had said when they’d booked him? What goes around, comes around. Yeah, that was it. Well, that worked two ways. He narrowed his eyes and hoped that pompous son of a bitch was watching him now, that Bent
z was feeling the frustration of losing what he considered a “good collar.” Bastard. And that Montoya, what a cocky, self-serving ass.
The police didn’t have enough to hold him. Their case against him had been thin to begin with, then had fallen apart completely because Deeds had found some problem with the evidence chain—someone in the department had screwed up, leaving key evidence against him unsupervised and possibly contaminated. Then there was Eve. Beautiful, deadly, cheating Eve. She’d been ready to testify against him, claimed he’d shot her, for God’s sake! But then her memory of that night was faulty, Cole reminded himself with repressed fury.
Deeds had been prepared to tear into Eve, making her look like a fool, a liar, a woman without morals or conscience, one who had “convenient” memory loss. Yes, he’d inwardly cringed when he’d heard Deeds talk about cross-examining her, but had girded himself with the knowledge that she’d betrayed him.
Fortunately, the case never made it to court, though Cole had been detained on trumped-up charges.
Morons!
Cole walked over to the mirror, glaring through the glass and seeing only his own reflection: harsh blue eyes; thick brows drawn down in simmering anger; high, flat cheekbones and a razor-thin mouth compressed to the point that white showed around his lips. The crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes and bits of gray in his dark hair seemed more pronounced than they had three months earlier. He’d aged a lifetime in the hellhole of a cell where he’d been locked away. His clothes were a mess: the pair of faded jeans and T-shirt were wrinkled and still smelled of perspiration, his own nervous sweat from the quick ride in the patrol car the night he’d been taken in. He’d been barefoot at the time; thankfully Deeds had brought him a pair of battered Nikes, even if they were a size too small and pinched.
In the reflection, he noticed a muscle working on one side of his jaw.
So did Deeds. “Sit down, Cole.”
“I can’t.”
“Do it.” Sam Deeds’s voice was calm. Firm. Insistent.
Just as Cole’s had been with all of his own clients. That is, when he still had clients, still had a law practice, still had a house, a membership in a country club, a Jaguar, a goddamned life. Things had taken a turn for the worse. A real bad turn. Now he knew what it was like to have zero freedom, to have to do what he was told, to feel the cold grip of steel around his wrists and ankles.
Turning away from the mirror, he rubbed the back of his arm, where the handcuffs had cut into his flesh. There was still the hint of a scar. A reminder of the night the police had shown up at his house, read him his rights, and hauled him to jail. He’d just stepped out of the shower, was wearing nothing but a pair of worn jeans and was pulling on a shirt when the banging had started. He’d opened the door, seen blue and red lights strobing the night sky as his neighbors and the press had watched the circus. Cameras had flashed, his bare feet had sunk into the loam of his yard, and despite his immediate request for a lawyer, he’d been pushed into a cruiser and driven to the station, where, after being booked and Mirandized again, he’d had to wait three hours for Deeds. In that time he hadn’t said a word but, from the questions put to him, had surmised that he was being held in a murder investigation involving Eve Renner and Roy Kajak.
His jaw slid to one side as he thought about it.
Eve. Jesus, he’d loved her.
Passionately.
Wildly.
Without regard to consequences.
That was the problem: he’d loved her too damned much.
His ardor for her had been unhealthy.
And she’d used it against him.
Now, not only had he lost her, he’d lost everything.
From this day forward, he would have to start over. From scratch.
Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.
He clenched a fist then straightened his fingers, stretching them, only to do it all over again.
Catching another harsh glance from Deeds, he decided not to fight it. He could pound on the damned two-way, scream that he was innocent, rail to the gods, and threaten all kinds of suits against the parish for false arrest.
But that would only make things worse.
And he’d already done a fine job of that, screwing up his bail as he had. Hell, he couldn’t win for losing.
The whole damned case against him reeked of a setup. One he planned to prove, once he was out.
But it wouldn’t be easy. The damned dicks were determined to lock him away, to prove that he’d been there the night Roy Kajak died, to find a way to show that he had indeed pulled the trigger of the gun that had nearly killed Eve Renner.
He couldn’t risk another screwup.
Even if he were completely innocent.
Which, of course, he wasn’t.
CHAPTER 2
“He’s guilty.” Montoya glared through the two-way window in to the room where Cole and his attorney were waiting. He jabbed a finger in Cole Dennis’s direction. “Guilty as goddamned sin.”
Bentz grunted but gave a quick nod of assent. They stood in a darkened room that smelled vaguely of ancient cigarette smoke.
Montoya would have killed for a drag about now, but he’d given up the habit, his beloved Marlboros replaced first by the patch and then, in the past few months, by tasteless gum that was supposed to give him a nicotine hit but, in reality, was nothing more than a useless oral substitute. It was times like this, when he wanted to concentrate, when he missed his smokes the most. He scratched his goatee and tamped down the urge to go flying into the next room, to slam Cole Dennis up against the wall and force the truth from the self-serving jerk.
“Can’t hold him any longer. The DA’s dropping the homicide case.” Bentz too was disappointed. And angry. His jaw was set, the corners of his mouth pinched, his lips flat against his teeth.
“Hell.” Montoya wanted Cole Dennis so bad he could taste it. He tugged at the diamond stud in his ear. Though he felt a bit of satisfaction that Dennis had been cuffed and shackled, then spent nearly ninety days in lockup, had been forced to wear the stiff cotton of jail attire long enough to wipe the cocksure grin from his face, it wasn’t enough. The bastard had spent most of his adult life wearing designer-label suits, hanging out at all the right golf and tennis clubs, and managed to get some of the biggest, wealthiest scumbags off on crimes ranging from tax evasion to assault. It was well past his time to pay.
But the damned case had fallen apart.
Even after Dennis had made bail, walked out of the jailhouse then been busted again for failing to adhere to the rules of his bail, the damned case had fallen apart. Montoya shook his head. The guy had lost a cool million, but he was still going to walk. Montoya scratched more vigorously at his goatee then caught Bentz watching him, and scowled. “What?”
“Let it go.”
“I can’t, damn it. Dennis was there that night at Roy Kajak’s cabin. There was a footprint outside the door, size twelve and a half, same as Dennis.”
“So where’s the shoe or boot?”
“Ditched. Along with the clothes. Had to have been a lot of blood from Kajak, slicing his throat like that. We caught Dennis in the shower, you know.”
“And we tore his house up looking for something—the shoes, clothes, blood. Nothing there.”
Montoya lifted a shoulder. The forensic team hadn’t found any evidence of blood, not even in the pipes. But there had been traces of bleach…. The bastard had known enough to cover his tracks. And fast.
Bentz, always playing devil’s advocate, said, “Maybe Cole didn’t kill Roy. Just shot Eve Renner.”
“Then who slit Roy’s throat?” Montoya asked for the hundredth time. He and Bentz had been over this same conversation daily. They got nowhere each time. Every once in a while they’d come up with a new idea, only to run headlong into a dead end. And what the hell did the number 212 mean? Written in blood, for God’s sake, with the index finger of the victim’s right hand.
And tattooed into his forehead. Th
e same numerals. When they’d cleaned up the victim, they’d found that chilling surprise. Was it some kind of code? A number for a post office box? An area code? A password on a computer? A birthday? The police had come up with nothing.
Same as with Faith Chastain. She had been murdered years before at Our Lady of Virtues Mental Hospital. And a tattoo had been discovered beneath her hair…. Coincidence? Hell! He could use a smoke about now. Maybe a drink too.
Who would go to the trouble and time of tattooing a victim? The thought of someone inking dead flesh…weird. Just the idea made his skin crawl.
Montoya glanced again at Bentz. The older cop’s flinty gaze was trained through the glass. His lips were pulled into a thoughtful frown, creases sliding across his brow, and he was chewing a wad of gum. He might show a calmer exterior than Montoya, but he was aggravated. Big time.
For now, they had to release the son of a bitch.
Through the glass, Montoya watched as the release officer entered the interrogation room to literally hand Cole Dennis his walking papers.
Hell.
His stomach clamped. This was wrong. So damned wrong.
A few strokes of a pen and that was that.
Cole Dennis was once again a free man in his wrinkled T-shirt and faded jeans. He might be a million dollars poorer, his license to practice law in question, but he couldn’t be locked up any longer.
Shit!
Montoya, his eyes still trained on the glass, hooked his leather jacket from the back of an unused chair.
As he walked through the door, Dennis had the balls to look over his shoulder at the two-way mirror, but he didn’t smile. No, his eyes narrowed, his lips compressed, and the skin over his cheekbones stretched tight. He was pissed as hell.
Good.
Montoya only hoped the bastard was angry enough to make another mistake.
When he did, Montoya intended to slam his ass into jail for the rest of Cole Dennis’s miserable life.
Hands curled around the steering wheel in a death grip, Eve rolled the kinks out of her neck and tried to ignore the headache that had only intensified as she’d driven south toward New Orleans. The rain had come and gone, spitting from the dark sky in some spots, pouring in sheets a few times, and then disappearing altogether when she’d driven through Montgomery and the sun had broken through the clouds to bask the hills, skyscrapers, and the Alabama River in a shimmering golden glow.