Justice Hunter

by Jennifer Morey

  She chose her answer carefully. “He wants to get back together. He says he still loves me.” She sent a pointed look his way. “You heard him.”

  He’d listened in on her without her knowledge.

  “And you’re afraid of his brand of love?”

  “He’s seeing Marcy.” How could he love her and see other women? “It’s like he’s obsessed with me. Like it’s a power thing.”

  “That’s Jared. He feeds off power and money. He likes to be in control. He probably felt that way when you were seeing him.”

  In control of his wife. In control of his lover. In control of his business. The man. The boss.

  “Yes,” she said. How had she been so easily controlled? She supposed it was easy to control someone if they didn’t know the truth.

  He pulled into a casual venue with cheery neon signs and cottage-style architecture. An old house converted into a restaurant. Pine trees surrounded the parking lot. A pile of plowed snow would take well into spring to melt. Rachel zipped up her jacket to the chill. The sun had begun to set.

  A car drove into the parking lot behind them. Hearing it approach, she felt Lucas put his arm around her waist and tug her off to the side.

  The car came up to them.

  Rachel saw it heading right for them. She moved to the side of the lane as Lucas gave her a shove. He pulled out a gun as the car sped up.

  Lucas fired, and the driver veered away. But then it spun into a circle to face them again.

  Rachel ran for the edge of the lot, toward the pile of snow. The car went for her. Lucas fired his pistol again. Rachel screamed and leaped onto the mound of snow, clawing and climbing up. Glancing back, she saw the car skid, and it slid into the side of the snowbank.

  Snow loosened and fell. She lost her precarious perch midway up and began to fall.

  She screamed again as she landed at the bumper of the car.

  Gunfire compelled the driver to race off. Spinning tires spat snow and ice at her. She covered her head with her arms and rolled the rest of the way off the bank.

  “Rachel!” Lucas ran to her, crouching and checking back to make sure the car had gone.

  “I’m all right.” She sat up and did a mental survey of herself, almost not believing she was okay.

  “He went after you,” Lucas said.

  “But the man who broke into my apartment is dead.” She met his hard eyes, his entire face strained with alert readiness.

  “He got caught. Whoever paid him must have taken over.”

  “Damn.” She shook her head, wishing she could make this all go away and she could get back to the task of improving her life. School. A good job. Why couldn’t those two things be her only worry? That and money. Surviving.

  This gave a whole new meaning to survival. That man had tried to kill her. Or had he?

  She averted her face, remembering the caller. Was he trying to scare her?

  Yes, but would he not try the next time? Maybe next time he’d try to kill her for real.

  Lucas sank his fingers into her hair, gripping the back of her head and moving her so that she had to look at him.

  “Please tell me what’s going on, Rachel.” His grip tightened in her hair.

  Rachel stared breathlessly up into his intense face, the strength of his concern for her and his angst that she wouldn’t trust him.

  He brought his head down for an energy-packed kiss.

  The impact stunned her and an instant later, fire melted any thought of resisting. She let him take her mouth and fell into the velvety passion, desire so strong she couldn’t comprehend where she ended and he began.

  His kiss eased into a series of gentler, quicker ones.

  “He almost killed you.” He kissed her again, hard, seeking reassurance that she still lived. “I thought he was going to.”

  “Lucas.”

  His mouth covered hers yet again, his tongue going in for more drugging passion. Then he eased off. “I can’t lose another woman, Rachel. I can’t fail again.”

  As he continued kissing her, she answered with equal fervor.

  He ended the kiss, and she drowned in the blue-gray force of his eyes.

  “Tell me,” he rasped.

  Hearing his desperate need for her to trust him in at least that, Rachel nearly capitulated. She could not trust him this way. Where was his ex-wife? How did he really feel about her? Slighted, lied to, but if he’d loved her, love would prevail and mend whatever had transpired between them. His ex could have done what she’d done out of love. She loved Lucas. She’d made a mistake lying to him, trying to claim him for her own.

  “I can’t,” she whispered harshly.

  “Why not?” he demanded, his passion fading with anger.

  “I’m afraid.” That, at least, was the unaltered truth. She was afraid.

  “I’ll protect you.”

  Rachel let her head fall forward onto his shoulder. “You won’t.”

  With his fingers still in her hair, he pulled her head back.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’ll look guilty even though I’m not.”

  “Why will you look guilty? I believe you didn’t kill my sister. Please. Tell me what you know.”

  Tears burned her eyes. The temptation to confide in him was so great, and yet, she’d spent so many years watching out for herself, she couldn’t rely on anyone else.

  “If I could help you find her killer, I would,” she said. “Nothing I tell you will do that, Lucas. Please believe me when I say that.”

  “Then you have nothing to fear, least of all from me. I can help you, Rachel. I can protect you, from whatever it is you’re running from. Just trust me.”

  Rachel rarely cried, but a wrenching sob broke free. “I want to.” She put her hand on his cheek. “I do.”

  “Then do it. Tell me what you know. No matter how small of a detail it is, tell me. You may not realize that it would help. But what if it can help, Rachel?”

  The wrenching sob eased into soft crying, a release of built-up tension she’d kept bottled up so long. “Lucas.”

  He used his thumbs to wipe her dropping tears. “Even if you don’t trust me, trust that I’ll do whatever it takes to solve my sister’s murder. I know it wasn’t you, Rachel. Trust me that I’ll find her killer. Just trust in that.”

  Rachel closed her eyes to that sweet temptation, temptation that won her over. She didn’t kill Luella. And she believed Lucas was capable of finding the person who had.

  She opened her eyes. “I’m scared.”

  “Don’t be. Not with me here.”

  She closed her eyes again, this time more briefly. When she opened them, she was ready. “I saw her in Jared’s office late at night.”

  “Luella?”

  “Yes. The night before she was murdered.”

  “Why were you there? Were you working?”

  Oh, this would be uncomfortable. “I went to see Jared. It was late. After ten. I was just leaving. We had just... We were in a conference room. He had this fantasy—”

  “Okay, okay, I get the picture. What was Luella doing in his office?”

  “I don’t know. I asked her what she was doing and she told me she’d gone to the wrong office and left. I didn’t know who she was until the morning after her murder, when the news showed her picture and said she was Jared Palmer’s wife and he was the prime suspect. I assumed she went to his computer to find out what he was doing. I don’t think she realized I was the one he was with.”

  “She might have been looking for something else,” Lucas said.

  Rachel hadn’t considered that. Luella had been Jared’s wife. She hadn’t thought it odd that she’d be there. Plus, she’d been absorbed in the realization that Jared had lied, and seein
g his wife for the first time—and the night she’d been killed—had been a shock and a horror.

  “What would she have been looking for?”

  “Something that got her killed.” Lucas stood up, taking her hand and helping her.

  Reeling with the implications of that, Rachel slipped on the icy pavement and put her hands on his chest.

  He held her with one arm around her waist. “Did anyone besides Luella know you were there?”

  She shook her head.

  “Jared?”

  “He took a call and then said he had work to do. I left him in the conference room.”

  “What call? Who called him?”

  “I don’t know. Someone he works with.”

  “At what time of night?”

  By then it had been about eleven. “I don’t know exactly. Do you think that’s significant?”

  “It could be.” He kept her hand and walked back toward the vehicle. “How about we pick up dinner and go to my place.”

  She didn’t argue. Dinner in public had lost its appeal.

  “The man who’s trying to scare you isn’t Jared.”

  “I know.”

  “But Jared could be paying someone.”

  She nodded wearily. “Maybe.”

  He opened the passenger door for her and then when she sank onto the soft leather seat, he leaned in. “How long has he been trying to scare you?”

  She stared at him, astonished. How could he be so sure he was only trying to scare her?

  “What?” she asked, dumbfounded.

  “Come on, Rachel. You’re scared. You always look over your shoulder when we go places. You’ve been scared a long time, haven’t you?”

  She looked straight ahead. Yes, she’d been scared. But never more so than now. The man who’d threatened her was out there, somewhere. He’d kill her. Could she depend on Lucas to protect her as he claimed? He may intend to, but what if he failed?

  “It’s all right,” Lucas said. “You don’t have to tell me anything more.”

  He went around to the other side and got in. Starting the engine, he didn’t drive right away. “One thing confuses me.”

  His intelligence amazed her. He’d pieced together far more than she had or ever could have in just a few minutes. That made her uneasy. What if he figured out too much?

  “What is it?”

  “Why would Jared claim to love you if he wants you dead?”

  Rachel leaned her head back against the seat, relieved he hadn’t pieced everything together. “Maybe he doesn’t want me dead.”

  Revealing any more to Lucas would put her life in danger. Because he’d start digging where he shouldn’t, and that would set off more than her stalker. That would roll a boulder off something best left where it lay.

  Chapter 8

  Lucas had to work extra hard talking Rachel into letting him drop her off at Tieber Transport. He needed her safe while he went to investigate a lead he’d discovered last night, one he hadn’t told her about.

  “Why does it have to be your stepdad’s company?”

  “You’ll be safe there.”

  Her head lolled in annoyance without looking his way. “That’s what you keep saying.”

  “And I think you should keep your job.” Another thing he’d kept repeating this morning.

  “It was never my job.”

  She’d said that this morning, too. “Yes, it was. Are we going to argue about that again?”

  She sighed.

  “Joseph knows you’re coming. He’s happy. You don’t have to work. You can sit in the cafeteria if you want. But he did ask that you meet with him.”

  Rachel propped her elbow on the window frame and bit her thumbnail.

  He drove to a stop in front of Tieber Transport. “I’ll be back in two hours.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I can’t tell you.” They’d already been over this.

  “Why not?”

  “Rachel...”

  Dropping her hand, she turned to him. Unlike before, she conveyed an injured look. Brief. But he felt it deep down. She didn’t trust him.

  He didn’t trust her, either. Whatever he had planned, he wasn’t sharing. That was all she needed to know.

  She got out and slammed the door.

  He watched her walk to the entrance, her angered strides twitching her butt to a sexy tempo.

  When she was inside, the doorman’s head nodded down once. Lucas had prearranged his watch. He gave the man a salute.

  * * *

  Nan McNally lived in the country on a farm not far from where Rachel had lived when her parents died. Nan, he’d learned from a treasured box filled with old records in Rachel’s apartment, had known her since they were kids. The last photo Lucas found placed the two at about age twelve, just before Rachel’s parents died. Nan wasn’t Rachel’s only friend back then. She’d had several, but Nan was in more photos than any other. He found no other photos like that. Rachel had some on her computer, and even a few of Nan, but nothing as social as those as a kid. Losing her parents had alienated her, made her something of a loner.

  He opened the hair salon door to the jingle of a bell. The Clip and Color was Nan’s salon. Kadin had zipped him over a quick background. At nine in the morning on a weekday, Nan was the only hairdresser in the wood-floored room. Three other stations and the small front counter were empty.

  “Be right with you,” she said as she picked up a hair dryer.

  A five-foot-six slender woman with good-size breasts and shoulder-length hair with blond streaks, she was attractive and put together. She wore slightly heavy makeup around bright blue eyes and wore tasteful earrings with her silky green, blue and black shirt that hung over black leggings.

  The shop was next to a grocery store and decorated richly in predominantly gold and black. The seating area looked more like a living room with a sofa and two chairs. A water fountain trickled along with soft pop music.

  Lucas waited for her to finish with her customer; the elderly woman with freshly cut gray hair paid and left.

  “Right this way.”

  “I didn’t come for a haircut,” Lucas said, seeing her go still with unexpected bewilderment and then slight annoyance.

  “Did you see the no-soliciting sign in the front window?” she asked.

  “I’m here to talk to you about Rachel Delany.”

  She stopped and turned. “Oh.” She smiled, although not with welcome. “And here I thought you were going to try and sell me something. Do you know how hard it is to make a living as a hairdresser in a town like this? People think that just because you own a business, you have money to scatter to the masses.” She braced her hands on the counter. “Who are you?”

  Lucas had caught her off guard. She hadn’t expected anyone to come to her about Rachel. In fact, it seemed she hadn’t heard about or from Rachel in a long time.

  “Lucas Curran. My sister was Luella Palmer.”

  Nan straightened from the counter, becoming wary. “So you found out about Rachel’s affair and now you’re hoping I can say something to implicate her.”

  Lucas moved closer to the counter. “No. I came here to understand why she hid her relationship with him.”

  Nan assessed him with new eyes. “You want to know about her relationship with another man? She captured you, didn’t she?”

  He’d rather not acknowledge that, especially since it stung with so much truth. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Almost four years ago. She’s had some rough times, but that girl has never lost faith. She believes someday she’ll have the life she was meant to have before her parents died. How’d you find out about her?”

  Rachel’s affair had been a big secret
up until Joseph found out through rumors that Jared had an affair around the time of Luella’s murder. Now Lucas realized Marcy must have gotten Jared to talk.

  “Word got around,” he said. “Why has it been so long since you’ve seen her?”

  “Probably the same reason she kept her affair secret.”

  Did Nan know that secret? He had to be careful not to clam her up. She’d protect Rachel. He’d make her feel comfortable and convince her that he meant her friend no harm. He would if she did have something to do with his sister’s murder, but getting information was more important to him than anything. A few tiny lies wouldn’t hurt.

  “Why did she alienate herself from you?” he asked.

  “From everyone. Not that she had any family. She had lots of friends. And she was beginning to flourish at that job. Jared ruined all that. And Luella’s murder. She felt humiliated over his deception, and she was afraid Jared was the one who killed Luella.”

  “Why did she think that?”

  “She wouldn’t say. I’ve tried to call her and get her to open up, but Rachel isn’t one to rely on others. She’s been that way ever since her parents died. She feels she has no one to turn to. That sometimes upsets me. I’ve known her most my life. Why doesn’t she rely on me?” Nan drifted off in silent thought, clearly mourning the loss of a good friend.

  “She came to you after she discovered Jared’s lies.” But even if Rachel had been forced to toughen up and closed herself off, why run and hide from an affair and a murder? There had to be more. If she had nothing to do with it, she wouldn’t hide. That made her appear guilty.

  “How did she find out Jared was married?” Lucas asked.

  “She saw the news about Luella.” Nan blew air out as she remembered. “It’s been so long.”

  Yes, a long time, and his sister’s murderer still walked free. “Where was she the night of the murder?”

  Nan eyed him suspiciously. “I thought you didn’t come here to try and tie her to that.”

  “I didn’t. Just being thorough.” He smiled gently. Best not to frighten her off, not to make her feel she’d expose Rachel, even if unknowingly.

  “Why not leave the investigating up to police?”