by Meryl Sawyer
Kat kept stuffing rib meat in her mouth to keep from saying something she would regret. What an arrogant jerk! What happened to the boy who’d seemed so nice in high school?
“When all this goes unnoticed or they lie their way out of being punished, criminals move onto bigger things like you did.”
Kat started on Big Abe’s slaw. It was loaded with fresh cabbage and finely shredded carrots with a hint of horseradish. Everyone loved it, and no one could sweet talk Big Abe out of the recipe. She refused to allow Justin Radner to ruin a meal she’d been dreaming about for years. Let him think whatever he wanted.
“Then they’re caught and convicted. In prison they learn tricks like the take-down hold and new ways to break the law. They get out, thinking they’re smarter now and can get away with crime.”
Kat finally lost it completely. “Is there a point to this?”
He let his chair legs down and again leaned toward her. He reached across the small space and seized her hand. Kat’s pulse skittered alarmingly. She had to remember this man was the enemy. She tried to pull her hand away, but his grip tightened.
“Over ninety percent of parolees return to prison within two years.”
“I know. It’s called recidivism.”
“I’m going with the odds.” His voice was low but had a lethal charge to it. “You’ll break the law again.”
“You’re wrong. I’ve never broken the law, and I won’t now.”
His jaw flexed, and she expected him to make some scathing comment. Instead, he stood up and left without another word.
JUSTIN WAITED down the road in his pickup until Kat’s car rolled out of Jo Mama’s parking lot.
“That woman’s something else,” he muttered to Redd as he scratched the dog’s chest. Redd leaned into his hand as if to agree. She was one hot babe. He wasn’t usually attracted to brunettes, but Kat was an exception.
After Justin had received the call from the Mississippi Bureau field office, he’d phoned Warden Bronson at Danville Federal Correctional Facility. According to the warden, Kaitlin “Kat” Wells had been a model prisoner and had an excellent chance of being rehabilitated.
Justin wished he had the faith he’d heard in the warden’s voice. He knew the odds. Most criminals became repeat offenders. Crime was the only life they knew.
The system had been set up to promote rehabilitation. The reality was a damn sight different. First-time offenders came out hardened cons. The system worked against them, not for them. Justin hadn’t a clue how things could be changed, but something had to be done.
Kat had come out a hard case, all right. Not that he blamed her for defending herself against Hank, but using the take-down on him had proven how tough she’d become. Tough and beautiful. And sexy as hell.
Justin had spent part of the afternoon with Tori. Kat’s older sister was a flirt with a polished veneer that reminded Justin of the society wannabes in New Orleans. Those women were after one thing—money. Kat was different. He wasn’t sure how exactly, but he could sense it. She didn’t try to flirt with him or manipulate him the way Tori had.
He’d remembered Tori from high school. Who wouldn’t? She’d been every horny guy’s wet dream, but all she’d cared about was Clay Kincaid. He didn’t remember Kat at all. She was several years younger and back then kids more than a year behind you were babies. You wouldn’t be caught dead near them. Even if she hadn’t been in any of his classes, he should have remembered her from around town. He’d thought about it and had drawn a blank.
Tori hadn’t mentioned Kat was out on furlough. He suspected she didn’t know. He recalled his mother telling him how Kat’s family had turned their backs on her when she was arrested.
He kept his lights off and followed Kat’s Toyota at a distance. “Claims she’s innocent,” he said to Redd. As usual when the car was moving, the dog had his head out the window and wasn’t paying any attention.
A few cars joined him on the road behind Kat, and he turned on his headlights. A group of teenage boys sped past him, hanging out the windows of a battered SUV. They flipped him off as they drove by and yelled, “Muthafucka!”
He could have slapped the portable flasher on the roof and triggered the siren, but he’d long ago learned an unwritten law enforcement rule: Don’t sweat the small stuff. He’d been young once. Friday nights in Twin Oaks didn’t provide many diversions.
He followed Kat into the downtown area. Fewer cars came this direction. Like the center of most towns, Twin Oaks had little going on there at night. It was almost nine and the No Latte Café was shutting down. Ragin’ Cajun Tavern would be open until two, an illegal poker game going on in the backroom.
Kat pulled into the alley behind All Washed Up. He waited, idling with his lights out. A few minutes later, he saw her sexy silhouette against the shade upstairs.
She’d taken him by surprise. Totally. In spite of everything, he found himself liking her. He didn’t know if prison had taught her that take-no-crap attitude or if she’d been that way when she’d lived here, but he liked it. He’d never gone for women who clung to men. Verity Mason had taught him how treacherous they could be.
Far too many women had paraded through his life after Verity, but he’d kept his relationships—if you could call them that—brief and with no commitment on his part. What would Kat be like, he wondered? There was a very compelling quality about her. He kept thinking of her soft mouth with its full lower lip and his pulse kicked up a notch.
She had the damnedest eyes, cat-green and fringed with long lashes. Alluring. Sexy as hell. An image kept recurring in his mind. The ceiling fan in Jo Mama’s had stirred the wispy hair at Kat’s temples in a way that he found extremely provocative. Okay, okay—arousing.
She had a temper like a tightly coiled spring. Defiance and anger had flared in her eyes more than once. He’d been brutally direct, because he wanted her to change her behavior patterns. He intended to watch her very closely. With him dogging her all the time, she might just beat the odds and turn her life around.
Beneath her anger, he detected sadness and something else—a loneliness he intuitively recognized. It was a self-protective maneuver. Prison could do that to a person. So could a stint in the service with special forces followed by a career in law enforcement.
Kat Wells was a troubled woman, he decided. She was incredibly intense, and it was clear her anger had been pent up for a long time. She’d kept herself in check but only with difficulty. She must have been warned that one brush with the law and her cute butt would land back in prison.
He drove to the station and brought Redd inside with him. He wanted to check Kat’s file. He’d been too busy earlier to rummage through the inactive files stored in the basement.
“Anything going on?” he asked the night duty deputy who was working dispatch.
Until the murder, not much had happened around here. The deputies justified their paychecks by zealously pursuing vandalism cases. Bashing mailboxes with a baseball bat was a local sport. Now things had changed. Despite what Mayor Peebles wanted the citizens to think, there was a killer out there.
“The usual stuff,” responded the deputy over a burst of static from the two-way radio. “A couple of drunk drivers and a report of gunshots on the north side.”
“I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”
The sheriff’s station wasn’t large. The brick building had a small reception area with a booking desk off to one side that doubled as the dispatcher’s station. Behind double doors was the squad room. A small briefing room also served as an interrogation room and had a one-way mirror.
He could see into the interrogation room from his corner office with walls that were glass halfway down. The glass was covered by shades. Nora had told him Sheriff Parker never left the blinds open or the door to his office. Justin had the blinds up and his door open. He wanted to be accessible to his staff and the community.
Behind the offices were three holding cells, two for men and one for women. Fe
w women were arrested and most of the men were DUIs who were locked up to sleep it off. He wondered where Kat had been held. She’d probably been sent straight to Jackson. Since bank robbery was a federal crime, she must have been tried in the state capital. Still, there would have been at least the original robbery report and the record of her arrest.
He headed down the narrow stairs at the back of the building. Justin flicked on the lights in the basement. It was one huge room heaped full of outmoded equipment: black rotary phones, a ditto machine, an old radio set with broken earphones. Bins with old evidence lined the walls, a legal disaster waiting to happen should a case need to be retried.
He’d have to get someone to sort through this mess. The stuff had been commandeered by spiders. Everything was festooned with cobwebs.
The old case files were stored in surprisingly good order. Nora’s work, no doubt. He found the box with the year Kat Wells had been tried. None of the files had her name on it. There wasn’t a file with Mercury National Bank on it either.
Weird. Friggin’ weird.
He checked the boxes for the year before and after, thinking it had been misfiled. Nothing. He rummaged through all of the boxes, which went back fourteen years. There would have been more, but a broken pipe had flooded the basement fifteen years ago and destroyed the other files.
What in hell had happened to the damn file?
CHAPTER SIX
HE HATED BEING OUT OF THE LOOP. He liked to know things before the others did. Not after. Something was going on. He felt it deep in his bones, an inner rumble of suspicion. Fate hinged on the smallest—often unnoticed—details.
Justin Radner and Kat Wells were back in town. He wasn’t sure why this bothered him, yet it did. The news made something niggle at the back of his brain, warning him.
Worse, the body he thought wouldn’t turn up for another few months had been discovered by some no-account kids nosing around in the woods. Had all the trace evidence been washed away by the spring rains?
He’d seen CSI only once but he was familiar with how seemingly insignificant fibers or some stray mark could snare a killer. If the autopsy results from Benton at Gaylord’s Mortuary had been accepted, he wouldn’t have been concerned. But that prick Radner had sent the body to New Orleans where it would receive a much more sophisticated analysis.
He might have to get rid of Justin Radner. He considered the situation for a minute. Kat Wells could present a problem also. She’d been framed for the money missing from the bank’s vault. What if she investigated what had really happened?
Again, he wouldn’t have worried about it, but Kat was going to work at the newspaper. David Noyes was a topflight investigative reporter with two Pulitzers to his credit. He might help Kat unearth some damning evidence.
“Settle down,” he said out loud. He needed to wait to see what happened and keep the others calm.
After all, he had his standards. He didn’t go off half-cocked. He planned and paid strict attention to details. Above all, he didn’t make stupid mistakes.
TORI WAITED until dessert was served to spring her news. Since they hadn’t sat down to dinner until nine and it was now almost ten, Clay’s mother was soused. Not that Tori cared. It was the judge she wanted to impress.
The whole town knew May Ellen popped pills and drank too much alcohol, but she was a Hutton and could trace her ancestors back to the earliest plantation owners. People looked the other way and pretended nothing was wrong.
Tori was always very polite to May Ellen, but Tori knew the truth. A Hutton or not, the woman was a political liability. The judge would never divorce her. He was a man to whom family values meant everything. Clay had told her the judge intended to make moral values part of his platform when he ran for senate.
Politics. Yuck. Tori hated the thought of boring bills and tedious legislation. Who cared?
When he won, Tori was positive the judge would find a reason to leave May Ellen in Twin Oaks. That was okay with Tori. Having the judge in Washington and May Ellen boozed-up, Tori would have Clay to herself—finally.
“I leased a house today,” Tori announced. “The Atherton place.”
“Next to the guy who’s always having wild parties and beats up his wife?” Clay asked.
“Yes, the Randolphs.” Tori tried to keep the excitement out of her voice.
The judge studied her with interest. “Who’d be fool enough to take it?”
Tori took a sip of her wine to let the drama build. “Justin Radner.”
“Radner?” The word exploded out of Clay, and Tori smothered a smile.
“The white trash kid who stole your place on the football team?” asked May Ellen.
“Yes,” Tori informed her. “He’s been appointed sheriff.”
“How in hell could that happen?” Clay asked his father. “Doesn’t there have to be a special election?”
“Not according to the county charter,” Tori informed him. “The mayor with council approval can appoint a sheriff and wait for the next regular election.”
“This sucks.” Clay kicked back the dregs of his whiskey.
“Watch your mouth,” May Ellen said.
Tori had long ago noted that May Ellen stayed tuned to conversations even when she was tipsy. Very little got by the woman. She was devious and deceitful. Not to mention self-absorbed. She knew Tori’s mother had cancer, but May Ellen never asked how she was doing.
“The city council had to approve Peebles’ choice,” the judge added. “The vote was five to one. Only Buck opposed it. Guess we know that’s what happens when…undesirables take over the city government.”
Tori smiled at the judge. “So true. Well, I got even a little by pawning off that dump on Justin.”
“You were with Radner?” Clay asked. “Showing him houses?”
“Not really,” Tori said, thrilled to hear the note of jealousy in his voice. “I did a virtual tour, pushing the Atherton property. When Justin went for it, I had to show it to him. I just took him to the Atherton place.”
Clay didn’t say anything, but the fire in his eyes told her that she would hear more about it later. Fine. She knew how to handle Clay. His father was another matter. The judge wasn’t nearly as impressed with her accomplishment as she’d hoped he would be nor did he compliment her on knowing about the city charter.
“I fail to see how foisting off that property helps.” Clay’s mother glared at her. “Now we’re stuck with that piece of trash.”
“There are ways of getting rid of him,” the judge assured his wife. “I think Tori did us a service. You never know. Radner might get killed if he tries to stop one of the Randolphs’ wild parties.”
“Yeah,” Clay agreed. “Randolph goes ballistic when he’s drunk. He’s beat his wife within an inch of her life several times.”
Tori seriously doubted anyone was beating up Justin Radner. It would take a lot more to kill him.
The judge said, “There was another interesting development today.”
“What was that?” Clay asked.
The judge took a swig of the Johnnie Walker Blue Label he always drank, savoring the expensive whiskey before responding. “Your sister has been released on a work furlough.”
Tori couldn’t stifle a gasp. Kat was home? Why? Why? Why now when Clay was set to announce their engagement? May Ellen was pathologically obsessed with society. Having a felon in the family would set her off like nothing else.
May Ellen stared at Tori, slack-jawed. “Your sister is back? How will you be able to hold up your head?”
“Why?” she practically screamed at the old souse. “I haven’t done anything. I’ve made something of myself. I’m the most successful real estate agent in this town. I’m not responsible for what—”
“She’ll be working at the paper,” the judge informed them.
“I didn’t think she was up for parole yet,” Clay said.
The judge shrugged. “Prisons are horribly overcrowded. Like a lot of convicts, she’s out
for good behavior.”
“She’ll steal again,” Clay’s mother said. “Mark my words.”
Tori had felt sorry for the ugly duckling when they’d been growing up. Her sympathy vanished when she’d received the call from her mother saying Kat had been arrested. They’d immediately decided to distance themselves. Why ruin their reputations in a small town where family counted for so much?
Tori had believed Kat would be paroled and disappear from their lives. Tori had worked long, brutal hours to make something of herself. Now, on the very evening Clay was going to tell his parents they were getting married, her deadbeat sister reappeared to ruin it all. Like a grenade in the pit of her stomach, her anger was primed to explode.
“Well, we’d better go,” Clay said, abruptly. “I have to be in court in Jackson first thing in the morning.”
“LOOKS LIKE Mayor Peebles is having a party,” Tori commented as they drove away from the Kincaid estate.
Clay’s family’s home was hidden by tall trees and a stately hedge. It was the epitome of class consciousness. Tori’s mother had explained this when she had been just a little girl. “Quality people” didn’t flaunt their money. That would be in bad taste.
Tyson Peebles’ mansion wasn’t hidden from view. He’d cut down the hedge shortly after buying it. Like a preening swan, the antebellum home sat atop a rise surrounded by acres of lawn that put the country club’s golf course to shame. A sweeping cobblestone drive led up to the front door and swung around a fountain Tyson’s landscape architect from Atlanta had commissioned. A trio of enormous marble lions spouted water from their mouths into the reflection pool surrounding their huge paws. Totally tasteless, but what could you expect from a black football player?