by Gwen Hunter
On the screen Gail begged again as the station replayed her plea. Gail was a dimwit, but she had a point. Part of me echoed her plea—with a twist. Don’t hurt my brother, I shouted in my mind. You can have anything you want, if you’ll bring him back safe. But if you hurt him, I’ll…I’ll….
Something molten solidified deep inside me. Grew cold. Jagged. Something I hadn’t known was even there. I’ll track you down and kill you, I mentally shouted to the man who pummeled Davie in my vision. I will!
I thought of the gun in Mama’s trunk. The gun that had no bullets. The gun I hated. I wondered where I could buy ammunition. I wondered where the closest shooting range was. This was the Appalachian Mountains. There was probably a gun range within thirty yards of me. I climbed to my feet and clicked off the TV with a snap. Picked up the gun and thumbed it open. No bullets. Davie and Evan were right. What good was a gun with no ammo? I stuck it into my pants at the waist.
I was halfway down to Bloodstone Inc. when the thought hit me. The alley had to be long, with lots of hiding places. Areas where there was no security camera. Why had the kidnappers chosen to attack Davie under the direct eye of a camera? Because they just got unlucky? Stupid criminal tricks? Or because they wanted the attack on film…
The anger that had grabbed me in the apartment started a fast boil at the bottom of the stairs. Unless they were born idiots with the luck of Murphy, the kidnappers wanted the attack on film. Why? What purpose would it serve, except to establish that the kidnapping had taken place. To make sure that someone—me?—knew he was taken. They wanted something. They had said as much on the phone message. What did I have that they wanted?
I paused at the foot of the stairs as another thought settled softly in the bracken of my mind. What if they wanted something but someone else had it? Would Davie have pointed a finger at me to protect Jane? Yeah. Of course he would. So, if I didn’t have what the kidnappers wanted, then Jane did. I cursed beneath my breath, stopping short as a second realization hit me broadside. Davie was a St. Claire. Why hadn’t he seen the attack coming? Why hadn’t he sensed the attackers long before he entered the alley? Had his thoughts been so taken up with other things that he had been wearing mental blinders?
I had a feeling I was going to have to learn how to shoot. And fast.
In the shop, I turned up the heat to combat the snow that was mounding up outside. I opened the safe and started pulling out the black velvet boxes of our more pricey items to be put in the display cases. Anger made me clumsy and I banged a tray, scattering the contents to the side. All I could see was the .38, the cylinder open, empty, in Evan Bartlock’s hand. All I could feel was the weapon at my waist.
Sick at the stomach, but now from anger that churned restlessly in my gut, I straightened the stock items and placed them in the cases, arranging all the displays for early customers who would start arriving at our ten-o’clock opening. I even polished the smudge-free glass of the cases and door and windows. Busywork to control the anger that flamed just beneath my skin, to keep my mind occupied, trying to banish the sight of Davie going down under the blows. To keep the memory of his torture at bay.
When I heard my name called, I was bent over, hidden beneath the antique brass cash register. I stuck my head above the customer-display area to see Jubal standing in the open door at his entrance to Bloodstone, looking around the shop. He walked across the store toward me, taking in the filled display cabinets. My business partner was in full-fledged, outrageous, queen-bitch mode today, his dark brown hair swept back, his steps mincing. “Where is Tyler, and how did you get into her body?”
I took in a breath that quivered painfully against my ribs.
Jubal made a sympathetic face and held out his arms. “I heard, honeybunch. And I saw the news. Come here, sweetie.”
I wasn’t the “honeybunch” or “sweetie” type. Not even the huggy type. But I found myself pulled against him as his arms wrapped around me. Jubal was warm, his body heat a furnace, and a shiver of misery ran through me, my breath throbbing and harsh. I gripped him, hands in his shirt, my ear against his heart, hearing its steady rhythm.
I was, only then, aware how cold I was. And just how angry. Icy rage thrummed in my veins, brittle and frangible, breaking off in sharp slivers that pierced my soul. My heart hammered with fury. A red haze misted at the edges of my vision. I was plain mad.
“It’s okay. David will be fine.” Jubal’s voice rumbled through his chest. “The police will find him.”
I shuddered. I didn’t want platitudes. I wanted to bash something. “A cop came to see me. Evan Bartlock, from the State Bureau of Investigsation,” I said. “And I had a phone call from the kidnappers.” Jubal’s heart rate sped up. His arms enclosed me tighter as I spilled out the story, my face in his shirt, my throat so tight that I could hardly speak. When I finished, he nudged me away and looked into my eyes. The concern I saw there quickly vanished, morphing into something I couldn’t identify before he shuttered it. He took a quick step back. And then two more.
“What is that?” He pointed at my waistband and I remembered the gun.
“It’s a gun.” I pulled out the .38 and held it pointed at the floor and away from us.
“Oh, my.” Gingerly Jubal took the weapon and retreated back into his doorway, setting the .38 on the floor out of sight. “Your throat. You look like you have hives.” His pale blue eyes narrowed. “I’ve only seen you get all red and blotchy once before and that was when Stan’s girlfriend came to the shop to gloat.”
At the expression on his face, I felt the rage recede a bit and a wash of something else shower over me—the beginnings of laughter. Crazy laughter, but at least it was some emotion other than anger.
“I had to pull you off that woman,” he said. “You scratched me! Don’t you dare laugh! I saved us from a lawsuit. I was heroic. And now you let me take my life in my hands and touch you when you have a gun? I am not that brave. Not with your temper. You should have warned me.”
I laughed, the sound shaky.
Jubal inspected me as closely as he could from across the room. “Girl, I thought you would be crying. Worried. In need of tenderness and the attention of dear friends. But no. Not even. You are…are…spooky-nuts. A clear and present danger. You, my dear, are rabid. Let me get you some ice.”
I laughed. Spooky-nuts. Yeah, that would describe a St. Claire at any time.
“Isaac,” he shouted at the bottom of the stairs to their loft apartment on the other side of the narrow smithy shop that subleased space from Bloodstone and shared our entrance. “Throw an ice bag down. Tyler is ice-cold all over except her neck. It’s fluorescing!” A voice answered, words muffled. Jubal shouted back, “No, she hasn’t cussed and I can’t see that she’s thrown anything. But she had a gun in her pants. And she looks hideous!”
“Gee, thanks,” I said. My voice quivered. “You can forget that stupid bet you two have. I don’t cuss. And I’m not dangerous.”
“Of course not,” Jubal soothed. “You don’t cuss, honey child. We know that. You use multisyllabic, insulting expressions. You make up phrases that sound vile but really aren’t.” Emanations wafted from him, but they weren’t soothing. Beneath the concern he still felt for me and for Davie, Jubal was laughing at me. I was getting really tired of male amusement. “And occasionally, you throw things. You—are dangerous.”
I glared at him, eyes spitting sparks. “I—am—not—dangerous. And I am not funny.”
Jubal grinned at me and I balled my hands. My best friend was enjoying this entirely too much. In one hand, he caught an ice bag that flew from the top of the stairs; in the other hand, he caught a velour throw. He moved close to me again. Slowly. He was wearing a dark-as-night shirt that brought out the delicate pale blue of his eyes. I’d smeared his shirt with makeup. He’d be ticked. Which made me grin back at him. I was pretty sure it wasn’t a sweet smile. The dark blue shirt meant he planned to wear turquoise today, like me. Odd thoughts to have in the middle of a c
risis. Not a temper tantrum—a crisis, I told myself, though I could see where other people might not be able to judge the difference.
Jubal held out the ice bag from two feet away, like a lion tamer whose newest wildcat was hissing and spitting. “As usual, Isaac says to meditate on calming things. Did you hear? He shouted out flowers as a suggestion. I think you should contemplate wild sex instead.” I closed my eyes, fighting down laughter. Okay. So I was mad. But I was laughing. Which had been Jubal’s intent, to drag me out of temper and fear into humor.
But I hadn’t thrown anything. Had never in my life thrown anything in anger until last year. Of course, that had been a bad one. I had bitch-slapped Stan’s cheap, redneck, blowsy…woman, the one he was sleeping with. Then I had thrown a porcelain display bust at her and missed. I had broken a glass case instead of her face. The woman hadn’t sued, but replacing the display glass and bust had been costly and my divorce had been painful.
I took a deep breath, opened my eyes and took the ice bag. While Jubal draped the throw around me, I held it to my neck and tried to find a meditative breath pattern, a clear place in my mind for the breath to fill. Long seconds passed as I let the ice work on the ugly red blotches Jubal had described.
“This Evan Bartlock you mentioned,” Jubal said gently. “State cops can do more than the local cops. Forensics and SWAT teams and superduper spy stuff. Batman and Robin in uniforms, instead of those really cool tights.” I shook my head at his ploys. Jubal was pulling out all the stops to make me feel better. Tears pricked at his kindness. “Holy cops and robbers, Batman,” he tried again. When I still didn’t smile, he said, “They’ll get him back, honeybunch.”
“And if they don’t?”
“They will. But…”
“But what?”
He sighed, unconsciously theatrical, and went to the complementary coffee bar, busying himself with the coffeemaker and freshly ground beans. His back was to me, and he didn’t speak for a moment. Finally he said, “A city cop came to the shop yesterday before you got home and talked to Isaac and me. He told us about the video and the kidnapping. And he asked if it was possible that David might have…” He stopped cold.
“Spit it out, Jubal.”
“He asked if David could have staged the kidnapping. To get money or attention or to further a business deal or something.”
Rage was sucked out of me in a single breath. Davie, staging his own kidnapping? Davie, needing money? A tickle started in back of my throat and stuttered into the open. And I laughed. Really laughed, a hard, belly-slapping hee-haw. I fell into one of the deeply cushioned wing chairs where customers sat when waiting for sizing or minor repair work. “Thanks. I needed that.”
Jubal looked pleased with himself. “I’m here to serve.”
I have a temper. I know it. It comes with the reddish-gold hair and double Scorpio influences and the fact that Aunt Matilda says I was born under Fire, the Tarot card that claimed “boundless creative energy waiting to be unleashed, passion and vitality.” According to my dear, batty aunt, I was “swift movement and decisive action.” Whatever. It also meant I tended to lose my temper, though I don’t get really mad very often. I could count on my fingers and toes the times when I’d really lost my temper. Well, nearly. I only needed a couple of extra digits. Some people are born with extra fingers for counting in just such circumstances. Somehow that thought made me laugh harder.
I finally got my hilarity under control. “Lascivious, libidinous lechery,” I said, in my version of cursing. “Davie has more money than you and me and this entire town. He offered the town a loan last year, for pity’s sake. Why would he stage a kidnapping? And how can someone make money staging their own abduction? Is he going to pay himself a ransom? That’s ludicrous.”
Jubal brought me a cup of hot herbal tea. Chamomile, unsweetened, for my anger. I chuckled again and drank back the thin brew in one swallow. “Davie planning this is not sensible or realistic.”
“I happen to agree, but the cops think different.”
“Which cops?” I asked, thinking of Evan Bartlock. He hadn’t said anything about Davie doing this to himself.
Jubal looked slightly abashed but pushed on. “That corporal. Harry Boone.”
My anger surged back a pace. “Harry Boone is a lick-spittle, butt-kissing, hunk of horse hockey,” I said precisely. “He’s a local cop who got promoted because he planted a piece of evidence at a scene.”
“Lick-spittle? That’s a new one,” Jubal said with delight. “How very British of you. Just because Boone tried to date you doesn’t mean he’s not a good cop. And nothing was ever proved about the drugs.”
“He’s a bad cop. He planted marijuana on the Loobray kid to get a drug arrest. His last promotion required three drug busts. He’s angling for bigger things and doesn’t care who he has to hurt to get them.”
“You don’t know that.”
Actually I did know it, but I couldn’t admit that to Jubal. The family gift again. I hadn’t told them about the St. Claires and their multimillion-dollar psychic empire. Except for Stan, my lecherous ex, I had never told another soul about my family, and even to him I’d made them all sound like fakes. Most weren’t. Not entirely.
I’d picked the truth out of Boone’s head one day while he was eating in the Red Bird Coffee Shoppe. He was broadcasting like a son of a gun and the image of him planting evidence punched me in the head. I couldn’t ignore it, but I couldn’t prove it either. I’d tried, by asking questions about the arrest and getting his boss to look at it again, and by feigning interest in the man himself, hoping to pick up something that would translate into a clue that might help Anton Loobray. I’d gotten nothing tangible.
Now, Harry Boone didn’t like me much. Can’t say I blamed him. I’d gone from apparently smitten to openly detesting the guy overnight. After our one single kiss. The mess I’d picked up from his brain while in such close contact had been so icky that I’d been unable to maintain the pretence of interest. And then his boss had let slip my questions and the investigation into his arrest of Anton.
Presto-chango, I had an enemy in the police department.
“Speaking of the devil,” Jubal said, his voice trailing off.
I turned and looked at the closed shop door. On the other side stood Harry Boone, the lick-spittle, butt-kissing, lying, evidence-planting, hunk of horse hockey himself. Behind him stood Jane, her face tear streaked, chapped and red from crying.
4
Monday, 8:45 a.m.
I grabbed my keys and ran to the door. When I got it open, Jane jerked her hand out of the cop’s and almost leaped into my arms. “Somebody hurt him,” she snuffled into my blouse. “I saw it on TV. Somebody hurt my daddy.” My niece was not yet twelve, and small for her age, like most with St. Claire blood. And she was a frozen block of ice. No coat, no sweater. I shot daggers at Boone, sorry that looks couldn’t kill.
“I know, darlin’. I know,” I said. “Where’s her coat? She’s freezing. And where’s Quinn,” I asked the cop, remembering my theory that Jane had whatever they wanted. “Where is her bodyguard?”
Boone looked at Jane in surprise. It was clear he hadn’t noticed she was underdressed and cold. “Quinn’s downtown answering questions.”
“And her coat?” Jubal asked softly.
Boone’s horse-hockey-brown eyes skittered sideways to Jubal. Fear and hate mingled in them, the guarded emotions of a man not secure in his own masculinity, suddenly in the presence of a gay man. “Quinn didn’t get her one when we brought him downtown.”
“Daddy’s—”
“Shh,” I said, my hand stroking Jane’s back. “Later. Later.” I stared at Boone. “And Jane is with you because…?”
“Because the captain made me bring her to you, and bring you back to the station for questioning.” His hate beat at me, so strong it was palpable. I dropped my wall in place, closing my mind off from him.
“When Quinn’s free and Jane is safe, I’ll come.”
“She’s volunteered to help with the investigation into her brother’s disappearance,” a soft Texas voice said from the side of the shop. “Tyler is only asking for a little time to make certain that her niece is safe, which seems a reasonable request in light of the facts that her father is missing, and that the captain sent Jane here.”
Isaac stood in the open doorway, a massive, second-generation Latino from Puerto Rico, six-two, two-hundred pounds of muscle and brains, bald head shining as if it had been polished. He was shirtless, arms crossed over his chest, shoulders like hillocks of brawn above, six-pack glistening below, jeans only half buttoned, feet bare. Isaac leaned against the frame, deceptively peaceful. But everyone in town knew he had won three national-level martial arts competitions, and had black belts in several different disciplines, Hapkido and judo among them, and was a master in tae kwon do. Isaac appeared dangerous even at rest, much like a napping grizzly. “Arrest her or get out.” He smiled with perfect teeth, something vulpine in his eyes. He didn’t like Boone, either, and didn’t care who knew it.
The cop didn’t back out the door at the expression in Isaac’s eyes, but his hands did twitch once. Boone looked at me, not hiding his rancor. “I expect you at the police department in one hour.”
I nodded. An hour and ten minutes, I thought. Maybe a little more. I turned away, Jane’s face still hidden against my chest, and settled into the wing chair, cradling her against me. I tucked her icy hands beneath my armpits and cuddled her close. I didn’t look up when the door opened and closed, letting in a blast of winter air.
“Where’s your coat?” I asked, my mouth against the top of her head.
“I forgot it at school on Friday. Quinn was supposed to take me in the Land Rover so I wouldn’t get cold. But they kidnapped Daddy and the stupid police took Quinn.”
“He’ll be back. Both of them will.” I felt, more than saw, Isaac cross the room. His huge hand stroked Jane’s head, lifting her hair out of her collar. From somewhere, the velour throw reappeared and was tucked around us, sealing in our warmth. I caught the scent of chocolate and knew Jubal was making instant hot cocoa with little marshmallows, just the way Jane liked it.