“I’m not that bad!” I protested. But I felt my face flame. “Am I?”
Corinne’s laugh was like wind chimes. She shook back the blue-black bangs dusting her forehead and hugged me again. “Jamie, it’s about time. I’ve been holding my breath, hoping you’d meet someone who makes you feel this way.”
And that statement, in a nutshell, summed up Corinne Nguyen Walther.
She was the kind of friend who held onto high hopes for me, despite all the miles that had come between us and all the intervening years.
“Come on,” she said, shepherding me down the hall and toward the kitchen at the back of the house. “We’re going to have a pot of tea, and you’re going to tell me more about this hottie of yours.”
But I’d left Corinne’s present in my coat.
“Hold that thought,” I told her. “I’ll be right back.”
“No, Jamie, wait—”
I didn’t listen. I hustled into the foyer. And just as I slipped the gift from my blazer’s pocket, a man appeared at the top of the stairs.
He wore a pair of faded jeans that fit him in all the right places—and nothing else. A broadcloth shirt bundled with a leather coat lay over the crook of his arm. Barefoot, he carried his boots by the laces. Thick, honey-blond hair swept his shoulders. His hair was soaking wet. He’d combed it straight back from his chiseled face. The rest of him looked like he’d been hewn from a block of granite, too. He had to be younger than me and Corinne by a decade. That made him younger than Ray by more than thirty years.
He halted when he caught sight of me, standing stock-still and stupid in the foyer.
“Jamie”—Corinne suddenly appeared at my shoulder—“this is Brandon Laurent.”
“Hey,” he said, the sound of the bayou clinging to his tongue.
“Hello,” I replied.
“I, uh, was just—”
“—in the shower?” I supplied, less than helpfully.
“No, ma’am,” he said at the same moment Corinne said, “Yes.”
“The showerhead’s been leaking nonstop,” she added hastily. “Bran offered to take care of it.”
I blinked at my pregnant friend who was wearing little else than a satin robe in the middle of the day and wondered what else Bran took care of around here.
“Bran is Ray’s partner,” Corinne explained.
“Partner?” This was a double surprise. Ray had never seemed interested in taking on a partner before. And the notion that it was someone besides me rather stung. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” Bran offered an embarrassed smile. He descended the stairs, sliding an arm into his shirt on the way. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Jamie. Corinne and Ray talk about you all the time.”
Well, that was funny.
Because neither one of them had said a word about him.
I didn’t get to point this out to him, though. Corinne seized my hand. She tried to tow me toward the kitchen.
“Jamie, come have a cup of tea. Or lunch. Have you had lunch?”
She wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. Maybe pregnancy had made her too swollen to keep the band on her finger—or maybe she’d taken it off for another reason. With that possibility front and center in my head, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stomach lunch.
“You know,” I said, “I still haven’t checked into my hotel. I’ve got to grab a shower, get dressed. Barrett’s got Dining Out tonight.”
“Oh. Well, you could bring your bag in. Use our shower. It’s fixed now, isn’t it, Bran?”
Bran didn’t look at me as he crouched to tie his boots.
I quit looking at him and made a break for the door.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I promised Corinne.
“But Ray will be home soon—”
And the second Corinne uttered his name, the man himself arrived, banging through the back door and bellowing good-naturedly for his wife.
“Corinne? I’m back. I found those little kumquats you like…”
Corinne clutched my arm.
“Please,” she whispered, “don’t leave like this. At least say hey to Ray. He’s dying to see you.”
If Corinne had asked me to stay for anyone else, I would’ve turned my back and walked out on her. But I couldn’t walk out on Ray. On tripping feet, I left Corinne and Bran to get their story straight, made the journey down the hall, and passed through the archway into the kitchen.
When Ray had hired me, this part of the house had been trapped in a time warp. The chipped Formica countertops had screamed with 1970s goldenrod and the busy brownish floor tiles would’ve made a sailor seasick, but the marigold refrigerator had been capable of chilling an entire case of beer, so Ray had been satisfied to leave things as they were. Once Corinne became more than his office manager, however, Ray had given the kitchen a much-needed face-lift.
Now, clean stainless steel gleamed everywhere that tired shade of yellow had been. Modern appliances mixed seamlessly with quietly handsome Arts-and-Crafts-style cabinets. Granite countertops sparkled with quartz and mica, and despite the cloudy day, plenty of light poured in through French doors that led onto an expansive deck. A homey dining table was parked under a pendant lamp sporting a deep amber shade. There, at that table, stood Ray, with a grocery bag at his elbow, sorting through the mail.
Ray was past sixty now and his barrel chest had slipped south to settle around his middle, but my money would still be on him in a fight. His crew cut was as closely cropped as any soldier’s, even if his hair had gone completely white. And he still clamped a Churchill cigar between his teeth, though this one was unlit since he’d given up smoking as a wedding present to his bride.
Ray glanced up when I walked into the room and his face split into a wide grin.
“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. When’d you get in, kid?”
“A little while ago.”
Ray tossed the envelopes on the table so he could thump me on the back with a ham hand. For him, this was quite a display of affection. And it was more paternal than any gesture my father had ever made.
“Where’s this MP of yours?” Ray asked, now that the niceties were out of the way. “I thought you might bring him over.”
“He’s on duty.”
“Uh-huh. He’s probably out writing a speeding ticket for some general’s daughter about now.”
“Probably,” I mumbled.
During his own active duty days, Ray had been a military policeman in his own right. Add in the fact that he’d hired me and it was safe to say Ray knew all about generals’ daughters. By turns, we could be sugar and spice and everything nice. Or we could be hell on wheels. When my father, the general, had been a post commander at an installation called Fort Leeds, the recently commissioned Second Lieutenant Adam Barrett and the rest of the post’s MPs had been under orders to be on the lookout for me.
Ray knew all this.
But I wondered if he knew what his wife and his business partner were up to under his own roof.
Ray frowned. “You okay, kid? You look funny. You and this soldier didn’t have some kind of spat, did you?”
“Oh, Ray,” Corinne laughed, materializing in the archway. She’d gone upstairs apparently, to pull on a soft gray sweater and charcoal leggings. She’d touched her lips with baby-pink gloss, too. “You’ll embarrass Jamie. Besides, she hasn’t been in town long enough to have a spat with anyone.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. I also wasn’t sure what had happened to Bran. I didn’t hear him in the hall.
“I should go,” I announced.
“Go?” Ray protested. “You just got here.”
“Really, I just stopped in for a quick hello.” I glanced down at the gift still clutched in my fist. “I meant to give Corinne this.”
I offered it to her.
With hesitant hands, she accepted the slender little box and plucked at the bow on the top. Ray peered over her shoulder as she turned back the wrapping paper. She lifted the lid beneath, blinked
up at me with wet eyes.
“Aw, ain’t that the sweetest thing,” Ray said. “Here. I’ll help you put it on.”
The charm bracelet looked ridiculously fragile dangling from Ray’s thick fingers, but with its sterling-silver teddy bear, rattle, and baby carriage, it was absolutely perfect around Corinne’s wrist.
She cleared her throat.
“Thank you, Jamie.”
I nodded.
For once in my life, I didn’t know what to say to my friend in return.
Chapter 3
Well after the sun had slipped across the cloudy sky to sink below the horizon, I parked Barrett’s truck in the crowded lot behind the Lady Luck’s pier. Deep shadows had taken advantage of the twilight, making the entire waterfront feel like one of those places your mother should’ve warned you about. The moon wasn’t yet on the rise, but along the weathered boardwalk, streetlamps too utilitarian to be pretty hissed and buzzed with sodium lights. They illuminated the weatherworn planks of the dock that ran past the tiny shack passing for a ticket office and splashed yellow light as bright as dog pee onto the Lady Luck herself. Despite her seedy surroundings, however, she was still a grand old dame.
The Lady Luck’s own lights, dozens of great glass globes held aloft in ornate cast-iron brackets and mounted to the frilly pillars supporting the verandas along her three decks, pushed back the shabbiness and shone like glory. She was a wedding cake dressed in white. Her twin smokestacks, jet black and crowned like kings, rose from her top deck. And at her stern, an enormous red paddle wheel stood an entire story tall, its broad spokes more than ready to drive her through the water. She was magnificent.
The rainstorm of the late morning had blown away, leaving a crisp breeze, sharp with the scent of wet leaves and evergreens. It blew in from the landward side of the beach while the tide, rich and briny, was on its way out. All in all, it was a perfect night for a cruise—except my heart wasn’t in it.
Infidelity never sat right with me, and while I couldn’t say for sure that I’d walked in on a sticky situation between my best friend, my mentor, and his partner, I wasn’t a fool. Sooner or later, someone was bound to get hurt because of that scenario. And that someone, I feared, would be Ray.
While I brooded about this, a Ford truck, even fancier than Barrett’s Ram, pulled into the lot. It zoomed past me, crammed full of soldiers who weren’t much older than high school students. After it braked in the middle of the lane, its doors burst open, releasing all those young men upon the world.
Laughing and joking, the soldiers jerked the short jackets of their blue mess dress into place, tugged at the black bow ties strangling their starched white collars, and buffed up the toes of their black patent-leather shoes by standing on one foot to rub the other on the opposite calf. And then there was Barrett, stepping down from the running board, the gold stripe on the leg of his uniform’s dark trousers making him appear taller somehow. He saw me across the way, sitting behind the wheel of his truck, and grinned.
He said something to his fellows. One of them slapped him on the back. Damon, in the Ford’s driver’s seat, hit the gas, no doubt in a hurry to pick up his own date. The rest of the soldiers sauntered toward the Lady Luck. But Barrett crossed the lot to me.
Banishing my worries about Corinne and Ray, I slid from the Ram. It was a neat trick considering my emerald-green, crushed-velvet dress hadn’t been designed with scampering in and out of pickups in mind. Neither had my heavily beaded high-heeled shoes. They’d been custom made to match the diaphanous stole and minuscule handbag that that actress who’d won those back-to-back Oscars had given me for breaking open a blackmail scheme targeting her teenage daughter. But I managed to reach the asphalt without so much as snagging my silk stockings, and I greeted Barrett with a smile.
“You clean up pretty good, soldier.”
“Thanks.” He glanced over his shoulder to be sure the coast was clear before wrapping an arm around my waist. He pulled me close, whispered into my ear, “Have I told you how beautiful you are? How beautiful you’ve always been?”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever qualified as beautiful, but Barrett’s sincerity—and the heat behind it—had my pulse fluttering in my throat. Barrett dipped his head, nuzzled my neck to find it—until a trio of female army officers clipped by in their regulation patent-leather high heels, holding up the long columns of their blue mess-dress skirts so their hems wouldn’t brush the sandy blacktop. Reluctantly, Barrett and I quit cuddling among the parked cars, fell in behind them, and made our way onto the boardwalk, the jetty, and the Lady Luck herself.
The Lady Luck’s crew, in spiffy white uniforms, directed me and the military types toward a broad wooden staircase framed by cast-iron curlicues and gleaming mahogany handrails. Apparently, the private parlors on the second deck had been reserved for the Fort Donovan shindig, but that didn’t prevent me from peeking through the etched-glass panels of the first deck’s swinging doors. I spied a classy restaurant, serving juicy steaks and fresh seafood to diners in sports coats and open-necked shirts, short skirts and strappy sandals. Past the dining room, old ladies in velour sweatsuits wrestled with one-armed bandits, noisy and bright with blinking lights. The clatter of marbles skipping across roulette wheels added to the din. Beyond them, the green fields of blackjack and craps tables were a gambler’s Promised Land.
“Looks like they do a pretty brisk business on Friday night,” I murmured.
“The way I hear it,” Barrett replied, “they do a brisk business every night.”
Barrett offered the crook of his arm and I took it, the fine wool of his jacket soft and warm beneath my fingertips. On the wraparound veranda of the second deck, soldiers and their guests talked and laughed. Enlisted and officers alike hailed Barrett, and though they didn’t know me, they welcomed me, too, with a friendly smile or a happy nod. And that, really, is the beauty of military life. There are no strangers, only comrades you haven’t yet met. Of course, not every aspect of the lifestyle is this casual. Army etiquette demanded I officially meet the leadership—and say hello to a certain colonel with a penchant for keeping Barrett chained to his desk.
Barrett and I joined the queue filing past the good, old-fashioned receiving line.
Despite being a throwback to the stuffy rituals of the Victorian Age, the receiving line is still a staple at every formal military event across every branch of service. And across the stern of the riverboat, in the shadow of the massive paddle wheel just waiting for her orders, the receiving line for Dining Out waited. A lowly protocol officer, an unruly cowlick standing at attention on the back of his head, intercepted Barrett and asked him my name. He presented us to a craggy-faced master sergeant and his girlfriend. They, in turn, introduced us to a chestnut-haired captain and her fiancé. Up the line we went, paying our respects to the men and women who kept the 405th Military Police Company firing on all cylinders—until we were face-to-face with the man who had a passion for coming up with useless reports filled with obscure facts just to keep Barrett busy, Colonel Durante.
The colonel had the bearing of a bald eagle and a nose to match. His wife, a wispy-haired blonde with dark roots, sported the slim but slack figure of a middle-aged woman who deprived herself of actual food and smoked too many cigarettes. Barrett and I waited politely while they made small talk with the couple ahead of us, and then the colonel turned a beady eye on Barrett.
“Sir,” Barrett said, “may I present Miss Jamie Sinclair?”
“Sinclair…” Durante grasped my recently manicured hand in his rough grip. “I knew a Sinclair once. James Sinclair. Good soldier. Tough son of a bitch.”
Yep. That was my father. All the way around.
I didn’t say so, however. Instead, I looked Durante straight in the eye and waited for his punch line. I was ready, willing, and able to hate him, and if he sneered at the hours Barrett put into those ridiculous reports, or let loose with a wisecrack about my father’s current occupation, I’d gladly give him a piece of my mind.<
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Durante, however, didn’t do any such thing.
“Barrett,” he said, “I had no idea you kept such lovely company.”
And with that compliment, the colonel and his wife wished us a pleasant evening.
That was the cue for Barrett and me to take our leave, so we did. And with the gauntlet of the receiving line behind us, we followed the rest of the herd along the veranda and down a cast-iron staircase. It spiraled through the bow of the boat to the first deck—and the saloon.
Like a turn-of-the-twentieth-century watering hole, it boasted burgundy leather barstools, plaid wallpaper, clubby prints of Thoroughbreds, and a long mahogany bar crammed full of civilians from the casino and soldiers from the second deck alike. The Lady Luck would be casting off soon and everyone seemed intent on getting their own personal party started. I was no exception, and when Barrett returned to the tiny table we’d managed to nab, carrying a French ’75 for me in his hand, I dove into it face first.
After a couple of sweet, soothing sips, I said, “You know, he’s not the horse’s rear end I thought he’d be.”
“Who? Durante?” Barrett laughed, took a long swallow of his bourbon. “No, he’s not a bad guy at all.”
I wasn’t willing to go that far. But before I could say as much, an awful clanging interrupted me. Past the crush of drinkers crowding the bar, the Lady Luck’s purser had stepped up to a solid brass bell the size of a basketball. He hammered that thing with a heavy brass mallet.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he hollered over the noise. “We are underway!”
The mob cheered and the Lady Luck shuddered as if she’d caught a chill. The entire riverboat surged forward once, twice. I could practically picture the wide red spokes at the stern of the boat digging into the Gulf Coast waters, picking up speed as the engines picked up steam, and propelling us into the night.
We were underway, all right.
The saloon’s double doors swung open and another cheer arose. This time, though, the crowd let loose with the distinctive hooah shouted only by soldiers. I craned my neck, caught sight of Damon Maddox greeting his buddies and introducing them to the breathtaking blonde hanging on his arm.
The Kill Radius Page 3