The Kill Radius

by Nichole Christoff

  “Be careful,” I warned him as I tried to sound more lighthearted than I felt. “You and I both know sex isn’t the same as love.”

  “Sometimes,” Marc said, “it is.”

  Marc kissed me then. He eased me into the pillows. And I saw stars when I closed my eyes.

  This, I told myself, could be so easy. It would feel so good. And it offered a chance to leave all my self-made misery behind.

  So against my better judgment, I allowed my hands to wander where they would. Marc’s skin heated beneath my touch. His fast fingers found the tail of the towel tucked against my chest.

  He tugged.

  I’d be naked in a second.

  But my conscience caught up with me. Sleeping with Marc would be cheating on Barrett. And, for the first time, I suspected sticking with Barrett would break Marc’s heart.

  Caught between a rock and a hard place, I pushed Marc away, scrambled off the bed, and retreated to the bathroom. Snatching up my wet turtleneck, I hauled it on over my head. I pulled on my sodden jeans and slid my glasses onto my nose. Gathering my underthings, I stuffed them into my pockets as best as I could. And when I reached for my phone, it rang.

  “Is it him?” Marc asked, leaning against the bathroom’s jamb.

  He still hadn’t put any clothes on.

  “You know, Jamie, you don’t have to go running to him just because he calls you.”

  I knew that in spades.

  I also knew I didn’t have the courage to look at the caller ID.

  “I can’t stay,” I told Marc. “And I can’t explain why.”

  “Can you tell me one thing before you go?” he demanded.

  The fire of lust and maybe even love sizzled in Marc’s obsidian eyes.

  And a raw vulnerability burned there, too.

  “What would you like to know?”

  “Do you have feelings for me?”

  Marc was strong, and he was sexy, and he had made my pulse pound harder. He was sarcastic and caring and I couldn’t even name his hometown. He’d been a colleague, and he’d bent the rules to save my bacon more than once. He was a mystery, and he was my friend. And he deserved an answer.

  “I do,” I admitted. “But not in the way you want me to.”

  And with that said, I left Marc’s hotel room and struck out on my own.

  I was a block away from my own hotel when my cellphone gave the shimmy and shake that indicated an incoming text. With mixed emotions, I looked at the display this time. As eager as I was for news of Corinne, I was also leery that Marc had fired off a few choice words, but I needn’t have fretted. On the screen was a message from Barrett—and the sight of it made my blood flash cold. It read:

  A WARRANT HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR YOUR ARREST.

  CALL YOUR LAWYER.

  SURRENDER AT BEAUVILLE PD.

  So. Despite all of Marc’s precautions to hide our identities, Eddie Jepson must’ve recognized me beneath all that window dressing. And now I had to face the music.

  I began by feeling through my waterlogged pockets, poking around in a storm drain, and scrounging up enough change for a cup of cheap coffee. I ducked into a twenty-four-hour sandwich shop just to get off the street, took a booth at the back. I placed my order—and then I got busy on my phone.

  In the vicinity of 4 A.M., as the lone waitress mopped the floor and the short-order cook scraped down his grill, the shop’s door swung open. With horn-rimmed glasses and a briefcase that would’ve looked just fine in a Brooks Brothers catalogue, the man who entered had the appearance of a fellow who’d never eaten anywhere but the Ritz. In reality, however, Daniel Adair had been born and raised in an Appalachian town in West Virginia, where he’d spent his afternoons after school sweeping up hair at his father’s barber shop and his Saturdays washing dishes in the diner where his mother waited tables.

  Daniel had graduated as valedictorian of his high school class, made good on a scholarship to the state college, and earned a spot at Harvard Law. These days, he practiced his trade in a corner office that was a mere hop, skip, and jump from the Supreme Court. His overhead was funded in part by fat retainers from folks like me, but one weekend a month, he took on pro bono work in the same Appalachian town where he’d grown up.

  I was proud to have Daniel as my attorney.

  And I was grateful that he’d been willing to take a red-eye to Beauville.

  Daniel spotted me sitting alone and slid onto the bench across from me. Over muffuletta sandwiches, rich with green olives, and more coffee, I told him about what I’d done to Eddie Jepson—and how I regretted it. Daniel recommended a quick trip to the local Walmart to replace my incriminating sea-stained clothes—and then he advised me to turn myself in.

  Bright and early, at the stroke of 8 A.M., Daniel accompanied me to meet with Beauville’s finest. Per his advice, we hadn’t warned the police we were coming, so the sergeant on duty left us to cool our heels in an interview room while he no doubt summoned half the brass and the district attorney. By half past nine, I had a sense that the dark little space that inevitably stood on the other side of the long wall-mounted mirror reflecting my tired-looking face back at me was crowded with everyone who was anyone eager to see the daughter of a sitting U.S. senator—and a Yankee no less—get her comeuppance.

  Barrett was probably behind the glass, too, and I wondered what he thought of me. For abducting Eddie? Sure. And for torturing him. Because I could make no bones about it. Torture was what it had been. But I also wondered what Barrett thought of my turning to Marc to help me—and I wondered how he felt about it.

  Marc’s name needed to remain out of this. I’d said as much to Daniel already. He hadn’t been happy to hear me list this as a condition, but he promised he’d see what he could do.

  Twenty minutes after I became convinced my rear end would permanently retain the shape of the uncomfortable plastic chair I’d been given, a Detective Pulaski breezed through the door. April Callahan, morning perfect in her black suit and French twist, was at his shoulder. Barrett brought up the rear.

  Pulaski slapped a file folder onto the table, swung a leg over the chair across from Daniel and me. Callahan took up her customary position in the corner. I wondered if she’d acquired that habit in elementary school as punishment for habitual infractions of the schoolroom rules, like running with scissors. Barrett took up a station beside the closed door. He folded his arms over his broad chest and this was a dead giveaway he was as uncomfortable having me here as I was to be here.

  “Mornin’, sugar,” the detective drawled. “So nice of you to finally join us.”

  “You may address my client as Miss Sinclair,” Daniel snapped, swinging into gear and earning every penny of his retainer. “And I would remind you she is here of her own volition.”

  “Volition?” Pulaski regarded Daniel through narrowed eyes, then glared at me. “I don’t believe I ever learnt the meanin’ of the word volition.”

  “Apparently,” I said, in as clipped an East Coast accent as I could rustle up, “you never learnt no manners from your mama, neither.”

  Beneath the table, Daniel’s knee knocked into mine, sending the clear message that I ought to shut up. I didn’t disagree. Provoking a police detective wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done, but since coming to Mississippi, it wasn’t the dumbest, either.

  Detective Pulaski’s mouth puckered up like he would spit. But he spoke instead and though his Southern lilt was still in place, the exaggerated twang he’d assumed was long gone. So was the insulting language.

  “Well,” he said, “you are one lucky individual, Miss Sinclair.”

  “How so?” Daniel asked.

  “The warrant for Miss Sinclair’s arrest was predicated on felony charges of kidnapping, false imprisonment, and aggravated assault. Those charges have been dropped.”

  “Why?” I demanded.

  Daniel knocked my knee again.

  “Your former accuser retracted his statement this morning.” Detective Pulaski ro
se from his chair, arched a brow at Daniel. “Your client is free to go.”

  Pulaski left the interview room without looking back. Callahan winked at me as she filed out after him. Only Barrett remained.

  He left his spot on the wall, crossed the room to grip the back of the chair Detective Pulaski had vacated. Two fresh butterfly bandages decorated his brow and an ugly black bruise had blossomed on his temple. The crinkles around his chocolate-brown eyes were deep with fatigue and his gray-and-green ACUs were as rumpled as if he’d worn them all night. There was a decided coolness in his manner, too. But that, I feared, had nothing to do with exhaustion.

  Barrett said, “I thought you’d like to know your friend Ray is being released from the hospital later this morning.”

  I jumped out of my seat like a jack-in-the-box. “What about Corinne?”

  “She’s still missing.”

  “Why are the cops wasting time with me, then? They ought to be tracking her down. Hunch Nevis has her—”

  “That’s an awfully big assertion—”

  “Eddie practically told me as much—”

  “Jamie…” Barrett jerked a nod at the long mirror at the end of the room.

  I hadn’t forgotten the walls had ears in a place like this.

  But with Corinne’s well-being at stake, I just didn’t care about my own.

  Daniel eased back in his seat like a chair umpire at a tennis match. “I take it you two have met?”

  I mumbled some introductions, let Daniel draw his own conclusions. From the way he got to his feet and shook Barrett’s hand, they were the right ones. Or at least they had been before I’d screwed everything up.

  “Let me give you my two cents,” Daniel said, “but keep in mind two cents isn’t worth much. Still, it’s been my experience that when a person retracts his story, he’s usually protecting a third party not involved in the initial incident, but who has crimes of his own to hide.”

  “Like Nevis,” I said.

  Exasperated by my proclivity to name names, Barrett closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Think about it,” I cajoled. “Eddie didn’t change his tale out of the goodness of his heart. He did it so I wouldn’t be questioned, because if I were questioned, I’d have to relate what he said to me about Nevis. And he said Nevis paid him to bomb the Lady Luck. He also said Nevis had ordered him to prowl around Corinne’s. Ask him why Nevis wants her, Barrett. Ask him where Nevis is holding her. Get April and ask him hard.”

  “I can’t,” Barrett said, and a cold wave crept over me.

  “Why not?”

  “Because Eddie was arraigned on domestic terrorism charges this morning and a federal judge set bail.”

  “Set bail? On those charges?” Daniel breathed. “That shouldn’t be.”

  “It shouldn’t,” Barrett agreed, “but it happened, and Shirley Smith posted the million-dollar bond, so Eddie walked free two hours ago.”

  Shirley Smith had never even laid eyes on anything close to a million dollars in her life.

  The implications had me sinking onto the uncomfortable plastic chair. “You’re saying Nevis owns a federal judge and that he bankrolled Shirley to get Eddie out.”

  “Saying it, yes, but proving it’s another matter,” Barrett replied. “Now that we know Nevis is more than a simple trash can king, April’s forensic accountants are trying to trace the cash, but you know how that’ll go.”

  I nodded.

  With three legitimate businesses to his name and who knew how many illegit ones as well, Hunch Nevis had to be an old pro at moving money and cooking the books.

  “I don’t get it,” Daniel said. “Why would a successful businessman contract out an act of domestic terrorism?”

  But the truth of the matter was suddenly crystal clear to me.

  I said, “Because the bombing wasn’t domestic terrorism. Nevis runs an illegal gambling operation. The boat was a cruising casino. But with all that radioactive shrapnel embedded in her decks, it’ll take a hell of a lot more than a new paddle wheel to get that boat going again. Nevis has permanently eliminated some of his competition while making it look like terrorism.”

  And Damon Maddox had been collateral damage. As a soldier, that young man, and the others like him, had been willing to sacrifice their lives to keep this nation safe. But Nevis had sent Eddie to take those lives simply to further his own personal gain. Now, all signs pointed to Nevis as Corinne’s kidnapper. I didn’t know why his men had stalked her, or why he’d sent Eddie to scare her, but I knew I’d do my damnedest to bring Corinne and her baby back home.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said, popping out of my seat and crossing to the door.

  Barrett slanted one more look at the two-way mirror. “Just be sure you steer clear of Nevis and his employees, Jamie.”

  “Is that a warning?”

  “No, that’s just some friendly advice.”

  Well, I needed more than mere advice at this point.

  And so did Corinne.

  Chapter 31

  Hunch Nevis’s great white mansion with the glossy green door looked more than deserted by the time I reached it.

  Once I’d parted ways with Daniel, and sent him to the airport with my profuse thanks, I’d wasted no time retrieving my rented Escalade from Ray’s driveway. His own green Explorer sat stone cold beside the garage, and the bungalow remained dark and silent. I didn’t like to see the place that way, but I was glad Ray was tucked up in a hospital bed where he could get the help he needed—and I could get busy tracking down Corinne.

  I hit the road, hightailed it to the countryside, and, bypassing the lane where Bran and I had been buttonholed in the tobacco barn, turned onto a rutted track in the field across from the house. Thanks to a well-situated live oak and some cheap field glasses I’d bought on my way through town, I got a good view of the goings-on at the casino. And not much was going on at all.

  There were no hung-over high rollers stumbling from side entrances in the streaming sunshine this morning. No delivery trucks showed up to off-load booze. No maintenance men raised a ruckus as they power-washed the home’s stately columns. On the contrary, the drapes in the tall windows were drawn tight, and a pair of stuffed shirts in a black GMC took turns smoking cigarettes as they parked on one side of the mansion for a while, and then the other. Clearly, these two guys were the security detail that had been left to mind the store while their boss took care of business somewhere else—and I doubted they’d left Corinne on her own inside.

  Nevis, Bran had said, ran a legitimate landscaping service and a blacktopping concern in addition to the largest refuse-collection company in the area. Any one of those businesses could have a garage, a basement, a shed, or an apartment where a man of Nevis’s ilk could stash a pregnant woman. If he was on the premises at one of these places, that would tell me something—and if the company was closed today, but buzzed like a beehive, that would tell me even more.

  A quick Internet search coughed up the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the big man’s known businesses. Some fast talking put me in contact with Nevis’s secretary at the jewel in his crown, the garbage business, Daisy Mae’s. And though I was loath to tell an outright lie, I did it for Corinne’s sake, bluffing the kindly woman who took my call by saying I was Nevis’s interior decorator, and that I must’ve mixed up my appointments, because I was waiting for him at his antebellum home and he hadn’t shown.

  “Is Mr. Nevis in his office now?” I asked. “I’d be glad to swing by and drop off these fabric samples.”

  “I’m sorry,” his secretary said. “Mr. Nevis isn’t in today.”

  “If he’s at another office, I could run over there.” I made sure to add a tremble to my voice. “I’ve stuck my foot in it, and I don’t want him to get angry with me over a delay in the project.”

  The secretary must’ve been on the receiving end of Mr. Nevis’s anger more than once. She decided to take pity on me.

  “I’ll tell
you what,” she said. “Drop off the samples here and I’ll see he gets them out at the lodge.”

  “The lodge?”

  “Yes, he has one of those private hunting lodges on the Forbidden Oaks Land Preserve.”

  I thanked the lady heartily and hung up.

  Because this was exactly the kind of info I’d been hoping for.

  In Mississippi’s olden days, hunting and fishing had been among the main ways to put meat on the table, and in this century, recreational sportsmen of all stripes could buy licenses to hunt, fish, or trap in the state’s publicly held wilderness areas. But well-heeled hunters often preferred to buy memberships—and the rights that came with it—to exclusive land trusts, reservations, and preserves like Forbidden Oaks.

  Forbidden Oaks was just to the west of Beauville. Comprised of a couple hundred acres, it boasted the best in Mississippi’s pine forests and bayou country, and all the game that liked to live in that landscape. Just before lunchtime, I rolled into the conservancy, having gone from highway, to county road, to dirt track. Hunter-orange signs announced that this was private property. Nonmembers needed to move along.

  I ignored those directives, but paid attention to the white placards with red-and-black lettering. Meant to remind human beings that we were out of our element out here, they read: WARNING. And to drive home the message, silhouettes of wild animals known to roam Forbidden Oaks loomed large on the signs. Black bear, wild boar, alligators, and rattlesnakes were just a few of the permanent residents who didn’t take kindly to trespassers. If I got my wish, however, I wouldn’t cross paths with any of them.

  I drove deeper into Forbidden Oaks. The undergrowth on either side of the modest road grew thick and threatening. Now and again, I glimpsed the distant roof of a rudimentary cabin, built by a member and set back in the woods. This country could hide a hundred such structures. But that didn’t worry me. I suspected I wouldn’t have to leave the rough road that tracked through the heart of the land to find Nevis.

  Men like Hunch Nevis might claim they want to get away from it all, but in reality, they don’t want to struggle to bring their deer and boar out of the sticks. After all, if they can’t get their game to a processor, there’d be no fancy venison steaks or swine sausages to wow big-city guests. There’d be no heads or racks of antlers to hang on their office walls as trophies, either. Likewise, supplies such as bourbon, burgers, and Cuban cigars certainly needed to reach their rustic retreats regularly. Otherwise, without those luxuries, what was the point of living large?