Pearl Sampit, one of the Walker’s closer neighbors, was their last stop for the day.
A rabid-looking brown and white dog with a blunt snout and a torn ear snarled and snapped at the door of Vega’s rented SUV as she pulled into the gravel driveway of Pearl’s simple bungalow. Faded green paint flecked off the asbestos shingles, and the roof sagged in the middle as if some giant had chosen to use the home as his seat for ten or so years. Dry stalks of dead flowering plants in the front yard’s once loved garden rustled in the winter breeze.
“Pumpkin,” a frail woman, whose back curled so severely she nearly folded in half, called from the front porch. “Pumpkin, come over here.”
The mutt ignored the woman and started tossing himself to the side of Vega’s door, snapping with an unquenchable frenzy and scraping his gangly nails down the side of the SUV as he fell back to earth.
“The rental company’s going to love this explanation,” Vega muttered.
The woman turned her neck to one side to get a better look at Vega and Fiona. “Don’t worry yourself none about Pumpkin. He’s a kitten.”
“Don’t believe her,” Fiona said. “He ripped off a sleeve and part of my pants leg before I got to the house last time.”
“Figured.” Vega rolled down her window. “Can you offer him a snack, ma’am? Something big and juicy?” A kitten? Pumpkin weighed at least fifty pounds more than the fattest kitten she’d ever seen.
The woman shrugged, disappeared into the house, and returned a few minutes later with a raw steak still wrapped in the grocery store’s cellophane package. Pumpkin must have caught the scent. He took off for the porch like a thundering bolt of lightning and snatched the meat out of the woman’s powerless arms before she managed to break the cellophane seal. With the prize tucked in his mouth, he pranced off around the house and disappeared into the back yard.
“Let’s go,” Vega said and opened the car door.
“I wish I’d thought of that last time. That beast ruined a new cashmere sweater of mine,” Fiona complained as she walked beside Vega up to the house.
“Mrs. Sampit, I’m Vega Brookes. We spoke on the phone.”
Pearl clasped Vega’s hand with a limp embrace. “Yes, you’re the darl’n who wants to know more about the Walker boy. Please, call me Pearl. Everyone does.” She released Vega’s hand and labored to return inside. Fiona held the screened door open for her. “The cold hurts deep in my bones.”
Vega believed her. Pearl’s joints couldn’t have been any stiffer. She’d done a good job keeping the damp southern winter from invading her house, though. While the stifling hot air in the living room threatened to singe Vega’s lungs, a furnace continued to roar in the attic.
After settling into the plastic-covered sofa and accepting glasses of sweet tea, Vega successfully steered the conversation to Grayson.
Pearl leaned her head back in her easy chair and pressed her carefully styled silver hair against the chair’s lace covering and smiled. “Such a sensitive boy, Gray.” Her eyes glazed as she became lost in a memory.
Fiona, sitting on the edge of the sofa and looking uncomfortable as if sharp pins were poking her, lost her patience first. “As I had explained a few weeks ago, we need to find him. Do you know if he stayed in touch with any neighbors that might no longer be around?”
Pearl’s eyes cleared. She sat forward. “Did he break your heart, darl’n?” she asked Vega, not Fiona. Vega bristled at the accusation, but kept her mouth shut.
“Even as a young thing, women were falling head over heels for him. Twisted that young kindergarten teacher all around his little finger—that he did.”
“Yes,” Fiona jumped back in with the questions. “But what connection did he have with an Etta…?”
“What was his family like, Pearl?” Vega interrupted Fiona and asked, hoping to direct the frail woman back to what she was about to tell them. Direct questions tended to muddle up details. Vega liked to let them unfold on their own when conducting background interviews. She didn’t know what important pieces of information Pearl might know, and she couldn’t guide the conversation with specific questions until she listened to the stories Pearl was willing to offer.
Fiona glared at Vega but after a minute, copied her relaxed pose.
“Mabel was a beautiful lady...and caring. The Walkers lived just next door, you know. In the canary colored house. It was purple when Mabel lived there.” Pearl leaned forward. “She was superstitious you know,” she whispered.
Vega had no idea why painting a house purple would mark Grayson’s mother as a superstitious woman, but she nodded and smiled anyhow.
“That purple paint didn’t do one lick to keep that evil man from her, now did it?” Her expression drew her soft wrinkles down; her lower lip trembled. “He killed her as sure as if he pulled out that shotgun of his and shot her. But no one really knew, never questioned her death. Too poor for them to care, I suppose.”
“Grayson’s father beat his mother?” Vega asked when Pearl’s narrative faded to silence.
“Oh yes, Gray had run away from us years before. To escape his father…if you ask me. That man had no right to be raisin’ a child. Broke Gray’s arm in a drunken rage, once. Mabel did the best she knew how, taking herself and Gray away whenever things got tough. Disappeared, she would. He’d search and search, but couldn’t ever find them. I hid from him, too. But he wouldn’t touch me. I wasn’t one of his belongings, and he was a coward really, that no good flea—only picking on those who couldn’t fight back.”
“And you knew where Mabel would take Grayson when she’d run away,” Vega said.
A sly smile lifted years from Pearl’s frail features. “I don’t know about where you’re from, darl’n. In this community, folks don’t discuss other folk’s dirty laundry. Don’t matter anyhow, now does it? Gray’s left Millville far behind him. Never come back once...not even for the funerals. Thought we’d see him when his mother passed, but we didn’t.”
Pearl sighed and leaned the back of her head against the chair again. “Such a sensitive boy, too. You won’t find him running here.”
No amount of prodding could pry any new information from Pearl’s lips. She fiddled with her chair’s tatted covering and played up the part of the helpless southern lady, which only irritated Vega. Before she felt pushed into spouting a lecture on the subject of womanly strength, she rose from the sofa, thanked Pearl politely, handing her a card, then fled with Fiona back to the car.
Thankfully, Pumpkin was nowhere in sight.
“Told you this trip wasn’t going to be useful,” Fiona said an hour into the trip back to Atlanta. She’d been brooding silently in the passenger seat up until then.
“Probably wasn’t,” Vega conceded. “But I had to try.”
“You should have believed me.” Anger flowed out of Fiona and filled the car. “I already questioned them. You didn’t even bother to read the notes I’d taken. Really Vega, you treat me like I was stupid or something.”
“You don’t have the experience or the training I have,” Vega explained. Surely Fiona understood?
Fiona hurled a wordless growl.
“I don’t think you’re stupid.”
Vega’s phone chirped. Fiona plucked the phone from the car’s dash and answered the call before Vega could think to protest.
“Don’t talk to me like that, asshole. I should hang up on you.”
That caught Vega’s attention. “Who is it?”
“Oh, you meant all that for my sister? Well, jerk-off, I’m not going to pass any of that crap along.”
“Who is it?” Vega controlled herself and didn’t wrestle the phone away from Fiona. “It’s Grayson, isn’t it?” He intended to taunt her for failing to capture him yesterday. She could just sense it.
“Okay, okay, I’ll put her on. You don’t need to shout.” Fiona pressed the phone into Vega’s hand.
Vega drew a deep breath. If this was Grayson, she needed to do some quick thinking. A couple o
f well-placed questions just might tease out a clue to his new hiding place.
“Hello?” she said and listened for any identifiable background noises.
“Vega, damn you. Why the hell did you ditch me in Detroit? I thought we had an understanding.”
Butch.
Shoot. She’d forgotten all about Butch.
He deserved an explanation, the rough kind that could only be given face-to-face. “You’re in Atlanta I suppose? Meet me tonight.” Vega glanced at her watch. They wouldn’t get back to the hotel until after six, and she’d need time to change. “At nine?”
“Where?” Butch grumbled.
Not at the hotel. Someplace neutral. Vega didn’t know Atlanta well, and the places she knew weren’t exactly the kind of places she’d voluntarily revisit. “Carl’s on Peachtree,” she said off the top of her head.
Yesterday she’d passed a brick building that had been painted black. Large red letters on the side of the building proclaimed the place to be ‘Carl’s Bar on Peachtree’. There’d been several nice cars in the parking lot, so it wasn’t a complete dive. Without knowing anything else about the bar, Vega supposed Carl’s was as good a meeting place as any.
Butch agreed.
* * * *
Since meeting Butch wasn’t exactly business, she changed out of her usual urban-combat wear and into a short, brown skirt and a baby blue cashmere sweater-set her mother had given her for Christmas, insisting the color matched her eyes. Vega spent several minutes fiddling with her makeup and piling her hair on top of her head so that the blondish loose strands cascaded down her neck. Appearances were especially important when breaking off a relationship with a man, Vega had learned the hard way years ago. She needed to look her best.
At a few minutes to nine, she left Fiona at the hotel to fend for herself. “If you follow me, I’ll tie you to the chair the next time I go out,” she’d warned.
The interior of Carl’s Bar stank of stale beer and tobacco smoke. Vega took a deep breath of the night’s clean air before fully committing herself by stepping inside. Her watchful gaze skimmed the crowd, at least those who were visible. Dim, yellowed lights created long shadows where lonely souls who wanted to watch, but not be seen could sink deep into a booth and disappear. A deep thump, thump, thump of the recorded music vibrated the room and the crowd inside. Swirling, colorful lights lit up an empty dance floor in the middle of the room.
This wasn’t the place for long, intimate conversations.
Good.
She wasn’t exactly in the mood for talking.
Butch’s cowboy hat stood about a head above everyone around him at the bar. He wore those familiar battered jeans with a fairly new flannel shirt. He propped his elbow against the bar top, the heel of his boot tucked into the metal railing that ran along the base of the bar. A smile loosened those tense lips of his when he noticed her approach. He turned away from her for only a moment to speak to the bartender. A glass of beer was waiting for her by the time she stepped up next to Butch, who, she noticed, was drinking his usual bourbon and soda.
“Hey there,” she said at a near shout to be heard over the music.
His smile grew into a big toothy grin. What was Butch up to? She’d never seen him show his teeth unless he was snarling. He let his sultry gaze rake her body, lingering over her breasts, which she expected, and returned to her face to linger on her full lips.
“I’m glad to see you.” He didn’t shout those words, didn’t need to. His lips hovered close to her ear as he smoothly snuck his arm around her back and pulled her close for a kiss.
Vega felt none of the excitement or the promise of sensual moments his skillful lips often sparked deep in her chest. No questions lingered in her mind. The affair, or whatever it transformed into, was over.
“Let’s go find a quiet corner,” Butch whispered against her mouth when he pulled his lips away. She’d given him a full kiss, not pushing him away or fighting off his roving hands. She considered it a goodbye gift. They knew one another about as well as they knew themselves. Severing the bond between them wasn’t going to be painless, for her or Butch.
She picked up her frosty beer and followed him to a secluded, but well lit booth he’d obviously selected ahead of time. Without even glancing down at the sticky mess she might encounter, she inched onto the seat across from his—the vinyl was surprisingly clean—and set her beer on the table between them.
“Vega,” he said. His toothy grin grew even toothier and his blue eyes softened. He reached across the table, took her hand, and began tracing small circles on the back of her knuckles. “I understand you have reservations about marriage. Hell, I would too if I had a mother like yours. But baby, you’ve got to admit we’re good together—more than good.”
“Yes.” She wouldn’t lie to him. “We made a good match for a while, Butch. But…”
“No.” He pressed a gentle finger to her lips. “No, don’t run away from me now.”
Butch had brains in his head and instincts to match. Those were two requirements of a skilled bounty hunter. And he nearly always captured his quarry, making him unquestionably good at his job. Surely, he sensed the coming breakup? She couldn’t believe he’d take it with a smile—he never smiled that like. What was going on?
“Baby, we can start out with the partnership. Let me work with you on this assignment.” Butch teased the soft skin between her fingers, a simple but erotic caress.
She looked down and watched his blunt fingers touching her, not feeling a damned thing beyond the sensation of his rough skin against hers.
“We can talk about advancing our relationship after we bring in Walker together. Together, baby.”
Vega retrieved her hand from underneath his. “I’m sorry, Butch. This just isn’t going to work between us. I don’t feel all warm and hopeful about our relationship like you do.”
That familiar, safe crust returned to Butch’s exterior. His powerful gaze burned through her and, she figured, through the wall behind her too. “You can’t call this off. We had an agreement.”
“I never agreed to anything. All I said was I’d think about it.” She was talking far too much, digging her hole deeper. She swallowed a taste of the beer in front of her and tossed a few dollars onto the table. “Goodbye Butch.”
She slid out of the booth. Butch followed. He matched her wide stride with an angry stomp until they reached the edge of the colorfully lit dance floor.
He grabbed her shoulder then, pressing on the bullet wound with vicious intent, and pulled her back. Jabbing a knife into her shoulder would’ve produced less pain. A prickling numbness crawled down her arm and immobilized the muscles.
“You don’t walk away from me,” he said, holding his face far too close. She could taste the cheap bourbon on his breath.
“Take your hand off me.” She gave the warning out of consideration for what they once had together. In her book, his pursuing her even after she’d made her feelings clear broke the last emotional string that bound them. The earth could open up and swallow Butch whole for all Vega cared at that moment.
“You bitch...you don’t tell me to do nothing.” His free hand whipped up and slapped her cheek. Because he held her shoulder, she couldn’t ride the blow. The force of his hand snapped her head sharply to one side.
In that split second, Butch’s position fell from pathetic ex-lover to enemy. She grabbed the hand that struck her and gave the wrist a sharp twist while pulling his arm to the side at an awkward angle.
The hold she’d used was guaranteed to bring tears to the strongest of men. Butch wasn’t immune. He released her shoulder and whimpered. One more twist and she’d break his wrist.
And why shouldn’t she? He’d treated her roughly, never really felt any consideration for her feelings or desires.
A small crowd had gathered around. Voices rose as explanations were passed around. If she broke his wrist in front of all these witnesses, the police would be called. Trouble would bubble up from ev
ery imaginable crack. And worse, Fiona might one day break some hapless guy’s wrist, thinking losing herself to anger like this was acceptable.
“I should break your wrist,” she whispered but unlocked her grip.
Moaning and cradling his arm, Butch sank to the floor. He’d bruise, if nothing else. Perhaps he’d learn something too.
Vega seriously doubted that last part. She knew wishful thinking when she heard it. Unfortunately, a crowd was closing in on her. In no mood to explain herself to strangers, she dashed out the closest exit and found herself standing in a darkened alleyway next to a large, smelly dumpster.
She leaned against the door for a moment to blink back a few tears. This blow up with Butch affected her more than she thought it should. But then, losing a dependable friend who understood the hassles of the bounty hunting lifestyle should hurt. She lived a lonely life. Not even Jack really understood her. He, like her mother, believed she should quit and get herself married into a safe, quiet existence.
Like safe and quiet ever satisfied anyone.
A shadow moved in the darkness.
Fighting off a mugger would cap off her romantic evening just perfectly. She held her ground and watched the dark figure close the distance.
Dressed in a black long-sleeved tee with even darker jeans and looking as fearsome as a devil’s minion, Grayson emerged from the depths of the chilly night to block Vega’s path. He folded one arm over the other and tilted his head, silently staring at her.
“You!” Vega breathed. She didn’t reach her hand around to the small of her back, though her hand itched to. The Beretta waited locked up in the hotel safe, miles away. Nor did she make any sudden movements. She wouldn’t pounce until she could gage the enemy and assess her environment. Let him act first.
Chapter Sixteen
Vega and Grayson stood not two feet apart. He remained as still as she, watching as steadily as she watched him. An expression of curiosity pursed his lips.
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