To Trust a Stranger

by Karen Robards

  No matter what he had done, Mac was a tiny, unimportant chapter in her life. A phase. She should have been mad, but she shouldn’t have been hating him.

  Mac grimaced, and stuck his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Look, Sid and I go way back, okay? When I stumbled across you, I admit that my first thought was that I could maybe get some information from you about him. But . . .”

  “Forget it,” Julie said through her teeth. “You’re wasting your breath. At this point, if you told me the sun rises in the east I’d get a second opinion. Now leave me alone.”

  She turned on her heel, presenting him with her back as she opened her car door.

  “It ever occur to you that Sid might be trying to kill you?”

  “What?” The question was so unexpected—and yet so in sync with her own uneasy feelings—that she stiffened and turned to face him again.

  “Oh, not Sid himself. He’s not the type to get his hands dirty. What he might do is hire somebody—a professional. A hit man. Think about it: The girl who got killed today—she was wearing your dress, wasn’t she? And coming out of your shop? Maybe somebody thought she was you. Maybe the same somebody who attacked you in your house. And maybe he’s still out there. You’ve escaped him twice now. Maybe he’s going to try again.”

  Julie’s heart leaped in her chest. Goose bumps prickled into life all over her skin. What he was suggesting was ridiculous, of course. Sid would never hire someone to kill her—would he? It was the stuff of bad movies.

  She could barely keep herself from glancing all around, fearfully probing the shadows. If Mac hadn’t been standing right in front of her, watching her narrowly to, she thought, judge her reaction, she would have done just that. But she refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he had succeeded in scaring her.

  Even though he had.

  “If you really believe that, you need to go to the police.” Julie was proud of how cool her voice sounded. She slid into her car, and prepared to close the door. His hand closing on the top of the window frame prevented her.

  “They don’t listen to me anymore—especially when it comes to Sid. Remember I told you that I got fired because the guy I was investigating set me up? That would be Sid.”

  Julie’s eyes widened. She stopped in the act of inserting her key into the ignition.

  “You were investigating Sid?” Her throat felt suddenly dry. “Why?”

  “Drugs.” His eyes bored into hers. “At the time I thought he was running a drug operation, big time. Among other things.”

  For a moment Julie simply gaped at him. Then the sheer absurdity of the accusation hit her. Her brows snapped together, and she jerked the door away from him, closing and locking it before he could react. He stood there with his fists on his hips scowling at her through the glass. Julie started the car, then, unable to resist, rolled her window down the merest crack.

  “You need professional help, you know that? If I were you, I’d run, not walk, to the nearest treatment facility. Now good-bye.”

  She rolled up the window and shifted into reverse at the same time, leaving him standing there in the shadowy parking lot glaring after her. Thank goodness he’d finally strayed into the realm of the ridiculous, Julie told herself as she drove away. For a minute there, he’d really had her going. But imagining Sid—meticulous, blue-blooded Sid with his golf games and his business meetings and his fussy insistence on order and punctuality—as a drug dealer was too much. Even in the throes of divorcing him, she couldn’t go that far.

  It was Mac’s suggestion that someone was trying to kill her that had made her listen to him at all.

  For some reason, his words had seemed to strike a chord. They took on a resonance inside her that would not be dismissed no matter how far-fetched the rest of his suggestions might be.

  Julie realized that his warning echoed her own fears.

  Turning off the main drag into the labyrinth of narrow dark streets that led to her mother’s house—it would be a cold day in hell before she stepped foot inside her own again; she supposed she was going to have to hire movers to retrieve her things, and beg Becky to supervise—she became conscious of one particular set of headlights that stayed a consistent half a block back, making all the turns she made, slowing down when she slowed, speeding up when she hit the gas.

  She was being followed. The knowledge broke over her like a cold wave. Julie’s breathing quickened, and she reached in a panic for her cell phone.

  Then she realized who it almost had to be: Mac.

  Slowly she put her phone down. If she was wrong, if this really was a hit man on a mission, she was going to feel dumb as a rock before she died. But she didn’t think she was wrong.

  Just to be sure, she watched carefully in her rearview mirror as the black Blazer passed beneath the only streetlight on the route. And it was a black Blazer.

  Mac was following her.

  That infuriated her so much that she was parked in front of her mother’s modest brick ranch house waiting when he got there. By the time he pulled up behind her, she was already out of her car and advancing on him, cell phone in hand.

  He got out of the Blazer just as she reached it, shutting the door but leaving the motor running. For Josephine, Julie guessed in passing. She could see the poodle’s fluffy white head peering at her through the window. The sight of Josephine cost her a pang. She realized that somehow, over the course of this nightmare, she had fallen in love—with Josephine.

  Certainly not with the jackass leaning against the side of the Blazer with his arms crossed over his chest.

  “If you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to call the police,” she threatened, waving her cell phone at him.

  He ignored that. He was, Julie thought furiously, good at ignoring things.

  “You remember I asked you about Sid’s first wife? You said she was completely out of the picture before you came into it. That’s more true than you know: after an evening spent at a party with Sid, she was never seen again. Just walked off the face of the earth. I’ve been searching for her for years without turning up so much as a trace. Her name was Kelly. She was only twenty-two.”

  “Are you trying to make me believe that Sid killed her?” Her voice quivered with outrage—and, if she was honest, just the tiniest, most infuriating smidgen of fear.

  Mac shrugged. “I think it’s more likely that he had her killed.”

  “You’re insane.” Julie took a deep breath. “If you really believe that, why don’t you go to the police?”

  “I was the police, remember? Once upon a time. I was a cop when I first noticed that Kelly Carlson was nowhere to be found, but the bottom line is, no witnesses, no bodies, no crime. The story was that the first Mrs. Carlson went home to her family in California. The powers that be at the department were fine with that—even though there was no family in California for her to go home to. Although she was from California originally, her parents had died before she married Sid. I can find no record of her anywhere on this planet after she left him. Now the department doesn’t even want to talk to me. They might listen to you, if you went to them and told them that you think your husband’s trying to kill you, but then again, they might not. There’s no proof: not yet. And Sid and his family have some powerful friends.”

  “You’re trying to scare me!” And he was succeeding too; put together the right way, everything that had happened could be interpreted in such a way that it was possible to conclude that Sid had hired someone to kill her. But how unlikely was that? Sid was many unpleasant things, but she couldn’t picture him as a cold-blooded killer. It was far more likely that Mac was adding two and two and getting five—or lying again for some nefarious purpose of his own. Remembering how he had already lied to her infuriated her all over again. She turned on her heel, meaning to walk away.

  “I’m trying to keep you alive.” He came away from the Blazer then, catching her arm and pulling her around to face him. “I’ve been doing my homework latel
y, darlin’, and I don’t like what I’m learning. Did you know that Sweetwater’s—remember Sweetwater’s, Sid’s after-hours hang-out?—is owned by Rand Corporation, which also owns All-American Builders? Yeah, Sid’s company. Apparently Sweetwater’s is a happening place: cash goes through there by the truckload. Word on the street is that it’s used for money laundering by the mob. And Rand Corporation is owned by—want to guess who?—John Sidney Carlson the Third. In other words, Sid’s dad. John Sidney Carlson the Second—Sid’s grandfather—was chairman emeritus up until he died.”

  “You think Sid’s father and grandfather are involved in money laundering? For the mob?” Julie stared up at him incredulously. Imagining Sid and his family as a southern-fried version of the Sopranos was mind-boggling. “That’s ridiculous.”

  Mac shook his head. “No, it isn’t. I don’t have all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed yet. I haven’t had time. But I think Rand Corporation and its offshoots—in other words, Sid and his father and grandfather, going back I don’t know how many generations—are fronts for organized crime. I think they’re into drug smuggling, gun running, gambling, protection rackets, money laundering, the whole bit. And I think anyone who gets in their way ends up dead.”

  “Are you saying that I’m in their way?”

  “Did you know that there has never been a divorce in the Carlson family?”

  Julie blinked at the non sequitur. “That’s a sign of organized crime?”

  “That’s a sign of real bad luck for women who marry into the Carlson family. There’s never been a divorce, but there’ve been lots of remarriages. The Carlsons’ wives tend to die.”

  Julie gaped at him. Then, as she thought about it, her heart started to thud. The eerie truth of it hit her like a brick. John had been married twice before he’d apparently decided to limit himself to girlfriends. Sid had said his mother had been hit by a car when he was three; John’s second wife had drowned.

  Another equally scary idea flashed into her mind. Carlene had been hit by a car. Her own father had drowned. Julie’s blood ran cold. It was a coincidence. It had to be. But—

  “When I was a little girl, my father would sometimes do work for a company called Rand Corporation.” Her voice was constricted.

  Mac stared down at her with a slowly gathering frown. “He did? When?”

  “I don’t know—when I was seven or eight, maybe. He and my mother were divorced by then, but he would come by sometimes and give her his paycheck to pay for things for Becky and me. The checks were drawn on the Rand Corporation. I remember the name, because Becky and I were greedy to know everything we could about him. He didn’t come around much.”

  She didn’t think her tone revealed her pain, but something must have given her away, because his lips compressed. His eyes darkened on her face. He was holding both her arms now, and his grip tightened as if he would draw her closer.

  “Julie . . .”

  “Oh no you don’t!” Julie remembered the old saying Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me with some force, and pulled out of his arms. Maybe his warning had merit and maybe it didn’t, but she wasn’t going to just take his word for anything anymore. “You’ve lied to me since I first met you. Why the hell should I start believing you now?”

  He started to reply, but before he could say anything a light on the small porch of her mother’s house blinked on. Her mother stepped out onto the porch.

  “Julie! Julie, is that you?” She peered toward where Julie stood talking to Mac at the edge of the front yard just beyond the reach of the light. Her red hair was twisted onto pink foam curlers in preparation for bed, and she wore a knee-length flowered robe and slippers.

  “Yes, Mama,” she called. Her mother came to the edge of the porch, shading her eyes from the light with her hand.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Who’s that with you?”

  “Nobody, Mama.” Then, to Mac, Julie said in a much quieter voice that was nevertheless strong with conviction, “I don’t believe you. Not a single word. I don’t know what you’re up to, but whatever it is I don’t want any part of it. Go away and leave me alone. I mean it.”

  “Julie, for God’s sake . . .” Mac began, only to be drowned out by Dixie, who was coming down the steps.

  “That is too somebody. Land sakes, Julie, it’s not the man who punched Sid in the nose, is it?”

  Julie almost groaned aloud. Trust the family’s jungle drums. “Who told you that?”

  Not waiting for an answer, she started walking quickly across the front yard toward her mother, and at the same time hissed at Mac over her shoulder. “Leave. Now.”

  “Becky told me. Kenny told her. Sid’s secretary—Heidi whosit—told Kenny. She knew because she had to meet Sid at the airport with a fresh shirt because the one he was wearing had blood all over it and he told her that you had a lover who attacked him.” Dixie’s voice grew shrill with indignation on that last part. “ ’Course, I didn’t believe that.”

  “Oh, did Sid go ahead and go to Atlanta after all?” Julie felt a degree of relief at the idea that at least one of her problems was out of the way for a few days.

  “I guess he did, but that’s not the point. The point is he’s going around saying you have a lover.”

  Dixie was quivering with indignation as they met at the foot of the steps. Putting an arm around her mother’s shoulders, Julie determinedly steered her back up them. A quick glance back at Mac told her that he was still standing beside the Blazer watching them, making no attempt to go away. Gritting her teeth, she tried to push him and his crazy-making warnings from her mind.

  “Mama, there’s no easy way to say this.” As they reached the level surface of the porch, she took a deep breath and decided to go for it. “I’m getting a divorce.”

  If she’d been looking for something to distract her mother from Mac’s presence—and she had—she couldn’t have found a better topic.

  Her mother gave a little gasp. Both hands flew up to cover her mouth.

  “Oh, my God, Julie! Why? Why?” There was the tiniest pause, while Dixie’s eyes fixed on Julie’s face with growing horror. “Was Sid telling the truth? I can’t believe it! Never say you really do have a lover?”

  “Have you ever thought that maybe she takes after you, Mama?” Becky opened the screen door to admit them, fixing their mother with a stern look. “How many lovers have you had? I bet you’ve lost count. Julie’s allowed to have one.”

  “Thanks, Beck,” Julie said dispiritedly, realizing that her truly horrible day was about to keep on keeping on. She didn’t know why she was surprised at Becky’s presence—her mother was a great believer in double-teaming. If she’d been thinking straight, she would have known that Becky would be at her mother’s house waiting for her. “Is Kenny watching the girls?”

  “Yeah. He’s pretty upset. Says this could cost him his job.” Becky grinned teasingly at her. “Whoever would have thunk it—my perfect little sister with a lover. Way to go, Jules—you’re making me look good.”

  “Shut up, Becky.”

  “Listen to me, Julie Ann.” Dixie pulled her the rest of the way inside the house and shut the door. “Just because you have a lover doesn’t mean you have to get a divorce. With a little work, I just know you and Sid can patch this up. . . .”

  Julie sighed, allowed herself to be drawn into the kitchen where all their family powwows seemed to take place, and resigned herself: It was going to be a long night.

  26

  AFTER HOURS SPENT NOT SLEEPING in the increasingly cramped front seat of his SUV, Mac was beyond grumpy. All through the night, he’d kept watch over the house where Julie slept; via his cell phone, he’d sent Hinkle and Rawanda and Mother and just about everyone else he knew scurrying to round up information fast; and he’d done everything from taking Josephine on brisk walks around the property’s perimeter to jumping jacks to remain alert. The night had passed undisturbed, except for th
e poodle’s maddeningly frequent urge to pee and her determined destruction of a motley assortment of items he’d stored for possible later use in the backseat. What he needed most by dawn’s early light was a shower and a cup of coffee, not necessarily in that order. What he got, instead, was the sight of Julie emerging from her mother’s house, dressed in bicycle shorts and an oversized pink T-shirt with some kind of cartoon character on it, her hair in a ponytail and sneakers on her feet.

  The mere sight of her made his heart speed up. And not just from the dazzling effect of her beauty on all his salient male parts, although that was there in the mix, too. What really got his heart going was pure, unadulterated fear.

  She was, obviously, going for a run. Alone. From the spot behind the overgrown honeysuckle hedge where he had resituated the Blazer after she’d gone inside with her mother, Mac watched with utter disbelief as she ran down the steps and across the yard, then set off down the sidewalk at a brisk pace. Either the woman hadn’t believed a single word he’d said, or she had a death wish.

  Or both.

  He said a few choice words under his breath as he sprang out of the Blazer, glanced at Josephine, who was stretched out sound asleep on her back, paws flapping in the air, amid the destruction in the backseat, obviously exhausted by her active night, and set off after Julie. The neighborhood was semi-rural, a quiet enclave of ranch-style homes on well-tended half-acre lots about five miles to the north of Summerville proper. He knew the area fairly well: it was a nice enough one, inhabited mostly by retirees and empty-nesters looking to downsize. A glance at his watch told him that it was twenty-six minutes after seven A.M. Most of these people—the intelligent ones, anyway—would still be in bed. One old lady came out on her porch to retrieve her newspaper as Mac jogged past. He waved at her. She scowled at him suspiciously.

  He already knew that they didn’t cotton much to strangers around these parts. He’d once done a background check on the daughter of a woman who lived in the area, and it had been like pulling hen’s teeth to get the neighbors to talk to him.