Jillian thought of the cops who’d been here last night, of the questions they’d asked her. Her throat felt dry and raw when she tried to swallow.
“Jillian?”
The voice was muffled, coming as it was through the door, but she thought she recognized it.
Only slightly less uneasy, Jillian dried her damp hands on her jeans and walked toward the front. He was a friend of Brian’s, she reminded herself. Not a serial killer. They’d talked quite amiably over tea last night. He hadn’t even given Katie’s knife block a second glance, let alone attempted to grab one of the utensils and attack her.
Despite the pep talk, Jillian paused when she reached the door, glanced out the barred window to the side. Jesse stood there, huddled against the rain that had just started to come down. The porch overhead sheltered him from the worst of it, but the wind had also begun to blow.
She couldn’t leave him standing out there. Especially not when he saw her looking at him through the window and gave a friendly wave.
Jillian unbolted the door.
“Hey,” he said in greeting. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“No, no. Just startled me a little, because people don’t generally come to this door.”
“I did ring the doorbell, and when you didn’t answer, I started to leave. But I saw the light through the window down here, and figured I’d give it a shot.”
“Oh.” That made sense. And it was rude of her to keep him outside. She considered her messy ponytail, the damp spots on her jeans that smelled like vinegar. Well. It wasn’t like she’d made a stellar impression last night. “Won’t you come in?”
He ducked a little as he came inside. The ceilings down here were only a little over seven feet, which wasn’t too terribly far over his head.
“I try to tell myself it makes it cozy rather than claustrophobic,” she told him.
He smiled, and she tried to figure out why he looked different. “You’re not wearing your glasses.”
“Contacts,” he said. “I ran out of solution yesterday, which is why I was wearing my glasses.”
“I like the glasses,” she surprised herself by admitting.
“Oh yeah?” The smile he gave her bordered on cocky.
“Sure. If you had been a serial killer, I could have broken your glasses and run away while you were groping around, half-blind, trying to find me.”
He laughed. “Do you always think in worst case scenarios?”
“I like to be prepared.”
“In that case.” He pulled something out of his pocket. “I found this on the floorboard of my Jeep. It must have fallen out of your purse when you bent over to pick up the shirt last night.”
Jillian stared at the key. She’d taken her car key off her ring yesterday and dropped it off at the garage. Somehow, this one must have slipped off as well.
She accepted it from Jesse. It was the key to the lower level, which was separate from the main house key.
She stared.
“It is yours, isn’t it? I haven’t had anyone else in my car recently.”
“What? Oh. Yes.” She cleared her throat. She knew she risked sounding like an idiot, but the question had to be asked. “You, uh, didn’t happen to let yourself in overnight and take your shirt back, did you?”
“Excuse me?”
She waved her hand. “Never mind.”
“No. wait.” He reached out and grabbed her wrist. “What happened?”
She glanced at his hand on her wrist and when he removed it, she finally met his eyes. His brows were drawn together. “Sorry. I’m just a little jumpy, I guess.”
“Jillian. What happened?”
“It’s nothing, I’m sure. Just… weird. I put your shirt into the sink with my dress, to soak them both overnight – I was planning to give it back to you – but the shirt is gone. Katie must have taken it for some reason when she came down here last night.”
“Katie spent the night at Brian’s.”
“What?” This time Jillian’s brows drew together. “No. I…” was sure she’d come home last night. Jillian had been surprised that she was already up and gone when she’d awakened this morning – she’d really wanted to talk to her friend about the visit from the cops – but figured Katie had gone into holiday panic mode and was trying to fit some shopping in before she had be at work. “How do you know that?”
“I talked to Brian this morning. Katie had too much to drink, so Brian wouldn’t let her drive.” Jesse hesitated, and then admitted with a wry lift of his lips. “And he wanted to make sure I hadn’t made any untoward moves on his honorary little sister.”
“Oh.” One part of Jillian’s brain considered that it was kind of a shame he hadn’t, but a larger, much more vocal part suggested that maybe her earlier unease hadn’t been for naught.
Jesse must have picked up on her concern. “Other than my shirt, was anything else missing?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Nothing that I noticed off hand. But the breaker had tripped, and when I came down here to fix it, all of the lights were on. I know I didn’t leave them on when I went back upstairs last night.”
“You said you’d had some vandalism in the neighborhood. Any breakins?”
“None that I’m aware of.”
He considered that. “Do you mind if I have a look around?”
Jillian debated with herself, but finally shook her head. “I don’t mind. Although the windows down here are barred, and we keep the door to the upstairs bolted – the bolt was still engaged when I woke up. Aside from that, we have an alarm. I texted Katie to tell her I was going to set it, and to be aware of that when she came in.”
He glanced around. “Can you show me the breaker box?”
“Sure.”
She took him into the mechanical room, flipped on the light. “It’s right over there.”
He stared at the old boiler. “That thing looks like it should be in a museum. Or a horror movie.”
“I call this the Freddy Krueger room.”
“I can understand why.” The concrete in this room had never been painted, and parts of it were crumbling. Jesse frowned at the floor before moving across it. He opened the panel, examined the breakers. “It looks like the security system is on the breaker that tripped. But there should be a battery backup. Did the control panel say anything about a power outage? Or did you hear any loud beeping last night?”
Jillian opened her mouth but no sound came out for at least five seconds. “No. The alarm was off when I got up this morning, but I thought Katie must have turned it off when she left the house. But if she was never here…” she pressed her hand against her stomach. “Oh my God. What if we were robbed and I slept through the whole thing? I took a couple Tylenol PMs,” she admitted. “After you left last night. I likely wouldn’t have slept at all otherwise. I didn’t think they were strong enough to keep me knocked out during something like that, but I need to look, see if anything is missing.”
When she started to turn in a panic, Jesse took her arm. “Hey. There’s no reason to believe you were robbed, okay? One missing shirt does not a robbery make. You said you didn’t notice anything else out of place?”
She shook her head. “But I didn’t go into Katie’s bedroom. Or the office. Or the front parlor. There are some valuable antiques in there. Collectible things, I mean. Easily carried.”
“You mentioned that your studio was in the garage. Is that on a separate alarm system?”
“It is. And I’ve already been out there this morning. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed.”
“Okay.” He ran his hand up and down her arm in a gesture meant to soothe. “Let’s just have a look and see what we find.”
Suddenly chilled, Jillian crossed her arms and nodded.
There were no signs of forced entry, either in the lower level or upstairs. No broken glass or unlatched windows. They examined every room, found the electronics and other valuables intact. And aside from Jesse’s shirt, it
didn’t appear that anything was missing.
“You probably think I’m nuts,” she said when they’d concluded their examination and were standing in the kitchen.
“Not at all. I do think you should call a technician from your alarm company and have them check out the battery, see if it’s still functioning. Usually the system will let you know if it’s on backup power or if your battery needs to be replaced, but since neither of those things appears to have happened, there could be a problem with your system. It wouldn’t hurt to check.”
Jillian nodded. “I’ll do that right away.”
“I’m also wondering if it’s possible that you came downstairs again without remembering.”
“You mean like sleepwalking?”
“You said you took a sleep aid. I’ve heard that can be a side effect.”
“So, you think I turned off the alarm without remembering?”
“It’s a possibility.”
A scary one, Jillian thought. “Okay, turning off the alarm and turning on the lights, I can buy. I don’t like the idea, but I can see where it would make sense. But why would I hide your shirt?”
“People do strange things when they’re sleepwalking. I have a brother who used to wake up in the middle of the night and eat sticks of butter. In the morning, he didn’t remember a thing.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“And also pretty damn annoying when there’s no butter for your toast.”
Jillian wanted to tell him it wasn’t possible, that she’d taken sleep aids before and never had a problem, but the fact was she couldn’t say for sure.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I did. And now I feel really stupid.”
“A little paranoid, maybe, but not stupid. Cut yourself some slack.”
She smiled in answer to his. “Gee, I feel so much better.”
“That’s what friends are for.”
Friends. Somehow, over the course of the past twenty-four hours, she thought they might just have become friends, of a sort. There’d been an instant… connection, she guessed you would call it, from the moment she saw him.
The question was: were they going to become more.
His smile faded as he studied her face, and she studied his in return. She did like his glasses, but without them she could really see his eyes. Beautiful. It seemed a strange term to use on a man so inherently masculine, but they were beautiful, nonetheless.
Those beautiful eyes focused in on her mouth in that way he had of making everything else seem to fade into the background. She felt her lips soften in response, part in invitation. Jillian started to sway toward him just as the back door opened, and in spilled Katie.
“Hi,” Katie said, her brows winging skyward as she divided a look between Jillian and Jesse, and then zeroed in on the latter. “I didn’t realize you were still here.”
“Not still,” Jesse clarified, taking a casual step back. “Again. Jillian dropped her key in my car last night, so I stopped by to bring it back.”
“Oh.” Katie waggled her eyebrows at Jillian. “How convenient. Well, since you’re here – again – would you care to stay for a late breakfast? I stopped by and picked up a couple baguettes on my way back from Brian’s – and I was not drunk, despite what he says. He’s just overcautious. Anyway, I’m going to make some French toast. There’ll be plenty.”
“If you don’t stay,” Jillian said when he glanced at her for direction “I’ll be forced to eat an entire baguette myself. When Katie cooks, you eat. It’s the law around here.”
“I’m nothing if not law-abiding.”
“Great.” Jillian wasn’t sure if the flutter in her stomach was nerves or… something else. “I’ll set an extra place.”
CHAPTER FIVE
STUFFED to the point that he was tempted to undo the top button of his jeans, Jesse’s delighted stomach unfortunately had no mitigating effect on his temper. Instead of a pleasant carb-induced food coma, his knuckles were white ridges against the black leather of his steering wheel as he drove across town.
The rain had finally blown out to sea, but the access road he turned onto hadn’t been very well maintained. Puddles the size of small golf course water features splashed muddy spray onto his windshield. Watching the wipers fling it away again was mildly cathartic, especially when he pictured himself as the wiper, and a certain, unnamed asshole as the mud.
The building at the end of the road was nondescript cinderblock construction, a little shabby around the edges. It had once been an automotive repair shop, now defunct. He pulled into one of the bays, hit a remote to lower the door behind him.
The garage had been part of a criminal syndicate that stole cars from dealer lots, repainted them and then sold them on Craigslist. When they were busted, the garage ended up in Bureau possession. While Jesse had mixed feelings about asset forfeiture, as it tended to be abused by some unscrupulous law enforcement agencies – Georgia’s forfeiture laws were some of the worst in the nation – he appreciated the inconspicuous meeting place. At this point, they were trying to keep the Bureau’s presence in the investigation as little-known as possible.
Especially since it seemed that the SCMPD had a leak.
Jesse’d been around law enforcement long enough to know that an oath to serve and protect didn’t always trump the lure of easy money. It was a reality of life, but one that pissed him off nonetheless.
Pocketing his keys as he headed toward the office, he then shoved his hands in after them. It was probably better for everyone involved if he didn’t have them free to use as he might have liked.
He pushed open the door with his shoulder, strode into the room. Perched on the edge of the battered desk behind which Detective Axelrod was sitting, talking on his cell.
Axelrod flicked up a finger to indicate that he’d be finished with his call momentarily, and Jesse casually swung his leg back and forth.
Back.
And forth.
Detective Gannon strolled out of the adjacent restroom, cocky as ever, shaking his hands as if to dry them. He stuck a toothpick in his mouth and then shot Jesse an amused grin.
Jesse grinned back as he stood up.
Then his hand came out of his pocket and grabbed the detective’s stylish shirtfront, seemingly of its own volition.
“Hey! Hey now,” Axelrod called, ending his call even as Gannon sputtered “What the fuck, Wellington?” and pushed at Jesse’s chest.
But Jesse had made himself a rock – he’d had plenty of practice, growing up with four rowdy brothers – and continued to stare at the other man from a distance of inches. Hostility radiated from Gannon, defiance and something else shining in his eyes. It was that something else that caught Jesse’s attention. Embarrassment, maybe? Fear? Or a sly kind of satisfaction.
When Axelrod’s hands landed on Jesse’s shoulders none too gently, he let Gannon go. But he didn’t look away.
Gannon glared back and then disguised the fact that he was the first to blink by looking down at his shirt, smoothing the wrinkles.
When he glanced back up, his expression was one of dispassionate irritation. “What the hell was that all about?”
Jesse shook off Axelrod, who was still hovering, obviously waiting for him to attack again. With one last glance at Gannon, he turned his attention to the man’s partner. “First, I don’t appreciate games, particularly not in this type of situation. An apparently innocent girl is dead, and that’s on you. A not so innocent man is dead, and that’s at least partially on me. Now the friend and housemate of my colleague’s sister may potentially –”
Gannon snorted, but Jesse ignored him “– potentially,” he continued, “be connected in some way that we have yet to determine, and given the swiftness and viciousness with which those other two were dispatched, I don’t find it amusing to have Detective Gannon entertaining himself by playing Don’t I Know You in front of that woman, who we’re all aware has an aversion to law enforcement.”
“Lots of people have an
aversion to law enforcement,” Gannon said, making air quotes. “But we don’t handle them with kid gloves.”
“We’re not handling her with kid gloves. We’re going on this little principle you may have heard of called innocent until proven guilty.”
Gannon snorted. “If she didn’t live with Parker’s sister and he hadn’t lost his shit, we’d already have hauled her ass in.”
“On what grounds? The presence of her business card among Losevsky’s effects is circumstantial at best. It gives us cause to interview her, which you did, last night.”
“With you sitting on the sofa, all cozied up beside her.”
Jesse let the implication slide. “And how far do you think you would have gotten if you had hauled her ass in.” He borrowed Gannon’s air quotes. “You spook her, she’s likely to lawyer up and make our jobs that much more difficult. Or worse, if it turns out she is connected somehow, you’re painting a target on her back. I don’t need to remind you what happened to the last witness you had in custody.”
Gannon crossed his arms. “And the fact that she’s Russian doesn’t make you the least little bit suspicious?”
“She’s American,” Jesse corrected. “Her mother was Russian. She grew up in a little town north of Atlanta, raised by an aunt. She was a cheerleader, an honor roll student, and everything in her background is about as apple pie as you can get. She has no relatives of Russian descent that we’ve been able to uncover. She’s had no contact with the Russian community here that we’re aware of. Particularly not the criminal element of that community.”
“Just because you’re not aware of it,” Axelrod joined the conversation “doesn’t mean it ain’t happening.”
Jesse nodded to acknowledge the older detective’s point. “And if we do turn up evidence to that effect, she’ll be interviewed formally, at the Barracks, with an attorney present.”
“Just whose side are you on, Wellington?”
Jesse turned, addressed Gannon in a tone that could turn the puddles outside to ice. “I’m on the side of the truth, Detective. And I’ll conduct this investigation with that – and only that – objective in mind.”
The Southern Comfort Prequel Trilogy Box Set Page 5