The Southern Comfort Prequel Trilogy Box Set

by Lisa Clark O'Neill

  “If I take longer, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “It’s ten a.m.”

  “I’ll buy you coffee.”

  The corners of her mouth twitched. “Deal.”

  He bolted off toward the locker rooms, and Jillian tried not to feel too guilty about watching him go. His rearview was just as enjoyable as his front.

  “Might want to take that down a notch,” she murmured to herself as she leaned against the wall.

  Jillian pulled her phone from her bag and shot off a text to Katie.

  Guess who I bumped into – literally – at the Y.

  It only took a moment or two for Katie to answer.

  Is he tall, dark and bespectacled?

  Jillian smiled.

  The very one. We’re going out for coffee. So you can have your ‘I told you so’ speech all ready for when you get home this evening.

  “Ready?”

  At the sound of Jesse’s deep voice right beside her, Jillian dropped her phone.

  “I’ve got it,” Jesse said, stooping down.

  “No, no.” The messages were still displayed. Jillian all but elbowed him out of the way. “That’s okay.”

  She snatched the phone, shoving it into her purse as she stood back up. When she glanced at Jesse, his tongue was stuck in his cheek.

  “I, um, wasn’t expecting you so quickly.”

  “I told you I’d be ready in five.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t believe you.” She took in his damp, clean hair, the jeans and soft blue sweater that had replaced the athletic shorts and T-shirt. “How do you do that?”

  “Another benefit of growing up with four brothers and limited hot water. You learn to shower quickly.”

  “Well. Looks like you don’t owe me a coffee.”

  “Yes, except that bet was what we call a ruse. I was planning on taking you out for coffee either way.” He tilted his head in the direction of the door. “Shall we?”

  They drove to a shop a few blocks over, a quirky little place near the park which had great coffee and terrible parking. Jesse circled the block once, and then whipped into a spot right behind the minivan which vacated it.

  They placed their orders, found a relatively quiet spot next to a display of decorative mugs and holiday blend coffees tied up with silver bows. Jesse grimaced when he looked at them.

  “You don’t like Christmas?”

  “What? Oh. Yeah. Sure I do. I just don’t like Christmas shopping.”

  “Coming from such a large family, I imagine you have a lot of presents to buy.”

  “Luckily my brothers and I came to an agreement. We go in on our parents’ gift and we don’t bother with presents for each other. No one’s produced any offspring yet – much to my mother’s dismay – so no nieces or nephews to worry about. But I somehow still always seem to have a list.” He took a sip of coffee, eyed her over the rim. “What about you? Do you have a lot of relatives?”

  “No.” Jillian shook her head. “I was raised by my aunt, but she passed away a few years ago. I have a couple cousins, but they’re a good bit older. A card usually suffices. My parents died when I was five. Rip current. My mom got sucked under and my dad went in to try and save her. They both drowned.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s awful.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “That doesn’t make it any less awful.”

  “No,” she agreed. “It doesn’t. It sounds strange to say, but I wish I could remember something about that day. I was on the beach, saw it happen, and some Good Samaritan took care of me until the authorities could get there. But I don’t recall any of it. I guess I blocked it out.”

  “That’s pretty common after such a traumatic event, especially in children.”

  “So the therapist assured me.”

  “Your cousins, they don’t live around here?”

  She shook her head.

  “No other relatives?”

  Jillian hesitated. “No.”

  “I’m sorry.” He sat down his coffee. “I don’t mean to pry. I guess, considering that my own clan is legion, I just have a difficult time imagining what it’s like.”

  “It can be difficult at times,” she admitted. “But Katie, Brian, their parents, they’ve become my surrogate family.” The bell over the door jangled, and three uniformed cops came in.

  She glanced up when Jesse’s hand closed over hers, guiding her mug back onto the saucer.

  “It was sloshing over the rim,” he said quietly.

  She looked down. There was a small puddle of coffee on the table.

  Embarrassed, she reached over to grab some napkins, wipe it up.

  “Hey.” His hand closed over hers again, clenched on the wadded napkins. “It’s okay. They’re leaving.”

  She looked over. The officers, complimentary coffees in hand, were heading back out the door.

  Her shoulders slumped a little. “You must think I’m crazy.”

  “No. But I think that the ‘unpleasant experience’ you alluded to the other night was probably more of a traumatic event. One that you haven’t blocked out.” His jaw got tight. “One that causes your hand to shake when you so much as see a cop.”

  “It’s not that bad. At least not usually.” She looked up, met his skeptical gaze. “I mean my reaction to the cops, not the… event. I won’t downplay that. But I’m not so traumatized that I can’t distinguish that not all law enforcement personnel are evil. I don’t think that all of them are out to get me. It’s just that the other night stirred up some bad memories. I guess I’m still a little shaky.”

  He studied her face for several moments, and then squeezed her hand before releasing it. “Can you talk about it?”

  “I…” prefer not to, she started to say. But he’d sat there with her the other night while the detectives asked their questions. She hadn’t had to face them alone – doubted she would have faced them alone, which would only serve to antagonize them and make them more suspicious. And he’d made her tea afterward.

  “I can,” she said instead. “If you really want to hear it.”

  “I believe I’ve mentioned that I don’t make offers I don’t want to make, and don’t ask questions if I’m not interested in the answer.”

  Something in her chest fluttered at that way he had of zeroing in. “Okay. But after this, maybe we could talk about the weather.”

  He smiled. “Deal.”

  Jillian took a sip of her coffee to soothe her throat. “My senior year at SCAD I shared an apartment with Katie and another girl. Charlotte. Charlotte became involved with a Savannah cop. Everything was great at first. We all felt safer having Mike – that was his name. Mike McGrath. Anyway, we all felt safer having him around. But Charlotte was a beautiful girl, just stunning really, and Mike was a possessive guy. Despite the fact that Charlotte was crazy about him, he slowly became convinced that she was cheating. A girl that beautiful had to be receptive to the advances of other men. Especially men who made more money than a cop, or so Mike’s own insecurities caused him to believe. Anyway, he became abusive. Charlotte tried to cover it up at first, to hide the abuse from us, but it got bad enough that Katie and I staged an intervention of sorts. We convinced Charlotte to pursue a restraining order – not an easy thing to do when the order is against a police officer. Needless to say, Mike was furious.”

  The coffee turned bitter in her throat, so she sat the mug back down. When she glanced up Jesse was watching her steadily. Patiently.

  Jillian pressed on. “As I’m sure you can imagine, Mike blamed us. Me and Katie. But especially me, as I was the one who turned him away from the door one night when he showed up, drunk and enraged and demanding to see Charlotte. I’m the one who called nine-one-one. Who embarrassed him in front of his colleagues. And I’m the one who had my camera with me when he came back days later, when he caught Charlotte alone outside the apartment building, when he had her pinned to the wall, choking her even as he sobbed and begged her to take him back.”


  Many people had questioned her on this next part. On why she didn’t immediately cry out or run to Charlotte’s aid. But Jillian had known without a doubt that it would once more end up being her word or Charlotte’s word against his. That even the bruises would be explained away as the blue wall closed in to protect one of its own. So she’d done what had come instinctively. She’d snapped off several photos even as she’d used her cell phone to again call nine-one-one.

  And then she’d jumped on Mike’s back.

  “The photos were finally evidence that was irrefutable enough to get Mike put on leave,” Jillian explained “while they conducted an internal investigation. But somehow during that time – and I still don’t know how – Mike got to Charlotte. He scared her, I think, into withdrawing her statement. She said that I’d misunderstood. That it was consensual. That she liked it rough.”

  “Christ,” Jesse muttered.

  Jillian swallowed the bitterness that never quite went away. “Katie and I tried to talk to her, but she was adamant. It got to the point that she couldn’t live with us, with our judgment, and so she moved out.” She closed her eyes. “She moved in with Mike.”

  She felt Jesse’s hand close over hers again. “You know that there’s a psychological aspect to abuse. To why women – and sometimes men – stay with their abusers. That they have to be ready to help themselves before you can help them.”

  Jillian nodded. She knew. But it didn’t make it any easier. “I did all I could, but like you said, Charlotte had to be the one. Anyway, I went about my business, heavier of heart, but minding my own. But things started… happening. I got pulled over for doing only a mile or two over the speed limit, more than once. Cops followed me for no reason. Katie and I had our apartment raided because someone called in a tip that we were selling drugs. We both spent the night in jail, despite the fact that there were no drugs on the premises. I’m only surprised that they didn’t plant them.”

  “You were the target of a harassment campaign.”

  “Payback. Mike got his friends on board. He was never involved himself, so I couldn’t accuse him of abusing his position to seek revenge. Brian found out about the raid and came down here – he was at Quantico at the time – and raised holy hell. The cops backed off.”

  Sharp blue eyes searched her face. “There’s more.”

  “There’s more,” she agreed. And it was the more that still caused her to wake up occasionally in the night, sweating, a scream trapped in her throat. It was the more that caused her hands to shake when she spotted a blue uniform.

  “They left Katie alone after that. I think they didn’t want to risk pissing off a federal agent, especially one of Brian’s size and disposition. Plus, Katie’s family has some connections in this town. She became too risky as a target.”

  “But not you.”

  “I don’t have connections. I’m an orphan who was raised by my aunt. Aside from that, I was the one who really pushed. The one who took the photos. The one who dug my fingers into Mike’s eyes so that he’d release his grip on Charlotte’s throat.”

  A fierce smile broke free like the sun emerging from a passing cloud. “Good for you.”

  “I would have liked to have kicked him in the balls, but I was coming at him from the wrong side.”

  The smile faded, and Jesse gave her hand another squeeze. “Let’s hear the rest of it.”

  A fine tremor wanted to start in her legs, but Jillian refused to allow it. She distanced herself from the story, became the narrator, not the protagonist. It was something that had happened to someone else. “There were a few more incidents – my car being broken into, my camera stolen.”

  “That’s what you were referring to the other night.”

  She nodded. “But I couldn’t specifically pin them on Mike, because things like that do happen. Then weeks passed without any sort of event,” she said slowly “and it seemed like Mike was through. Brian’s threats had done the trick. I let my guard down. I was on River Street one night, down toward the end, away from the hotels, because there was a full moon. A spectacular full moon over the water. I wanted to get some photos – with my new camera. Our apartment wasn’t too far away, so I started to walk back, full of the thrill of knowing I’d really nailed a few of the shots. You can tell sometimes, you know? Even before you see the results, you can tell that they’re going to be good. So I was sort of bouncing along, buoyant with that creative power, not paying all that much attention, when… someone grabbed me. Pulled me into an alley.”

  Jillian closed her eyes, tried not to feel the impact of fists against bone, of rough hands on tender flesh, of her hair being pulled from the root as they dragged her by it. “There were three of them. All in black. Masks covering their faces. They beat me. Had me down on the ground behind a dumpster, kicking and punching. Groping. The dumpster smelled of old frying oil and rotting fish. There was a puddle – it had rained the day before, and there was a muddy puddle in the middle of the alley – and my head was in it. It wasn’t terribly deep, but every time I turned my head to the side to try to… get away, the water choked me. I thought that I might drown. But it seemed better than being raped by Mike and his friends. Because I’d seen his eyes through the hole in the mask, and I knew that it was him, knew what he had planned. He wanted me to know. And he laughed, knowing that I couldn’t do anything to stop him.”

  She winced when Jesse’s hand tightened on hers, almost painfully this time, and he immediately released her. “I’m sorry.” He looked at her hand. At his. Back into her eyes. “I’m so damn sorry.”

  She knew that he meant more than just the fact that he’d squeezed her hand a little too tightly. “It’s okay. Really. Unbeknownst to me, Brian had asked one of his friends, a cop in a different division from Mike, to keep an eye out. I still don’t know whether he somehow got wind of what Mike was planning or just happened to be in the right place at the right time that night, but he came to my aid. The other two who were with Mike ran off, but Mike and the other officer grappled. The officer – his name is Sam Herrera – was shot in the arm. Finally realizing what he’d done, Mike took off too, but backup had arrived by that point and they were able to apprehend him a few blocks over. Mike and his cohorts went to jail – more, I think, because another police officer was shot during the course of their attack than for the attack itself – but… anyway, they went to jail. Mike is still there, although the other two have since been paroled. Thankfully, they no longer live in the area. But Officer Herrera was forced to accept a desk job after his gun arm was ruined. He isn’t bitter, though. At least he didn’t seem so the last time I saw him. I photographed his two daughters as a birthday gift for his wife.”

  Jesse stared at her for several long moments and then leaned back against his chair.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he admitted. “Offering to kill the bastards who hurt you doesn’t seem very productive, but it would sure as hell make me feel better.”

  She smiled. “That’s very chivalrous of you. Some people don’t… believe me. That it happened in quite the way I claimed, I mean. There’s a culture in this country of hero-worship when it comes to public servants. For a lot of people, anyway. They don’t want to believe that not everyone who pins on a badge is filled with integrity and the desire to serve and protect. Charlotte,” this was the most difficult part for her “Charlotte convinced herself that I was jealous of her relationship with Mike, that I wanted him for myself. That that’s why I kept after her to break things off, and that I somehow… enticed him, chased after him, leaving him no choice but to put me in my place.”

  “She’s delusional.”

  Jillian nodded. “I know. It took me a while to come around to that in my heart. I knew it, logically, but the heart’s more stubborn. And I also know, logically, that there are lots of good people in law enforcement. Sam and Brian are proof of that. But that wariness – and yes, fear – doesn’t always respond to logic. So… now you know.”

  He was
quiet for several beats. “Now I know. I don’t blame you for feeling wary, though the fear… I hate that you’re still afraid. But the self-defense class makes even more sense now.”

  “I won’t be helpless.” She lifted her chin. “Never again.”

  Their eyes met, held, until Jillian’s chin slowly lowered. The air between them seemed to stir. To heat.

  He finally broke contact, glanced at the clock positioned on the wall behind the counter. “I should take you home.”

  She followed his gaze toward the clock. They’d been talking for nearly two hours.

  When she looked back, he was watching her in that way of his. But this time the flutter it caused was considerably lower.

  “Thank you for the coffee.”

  He watched her for another heartbeat. “Any time.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “SHOULD I be alarmed,” Brian said as Jesse pulled the knit beanie onto his head “that you dig this disguise stuff as much as you do?”

  “I don’t know that this qualifies as a disguise.” Jesse checked the rearview mirror, satisfied that he’d completely obscured his hair. “And besides, why should you be alarmed?” He adjusted the plaid shirt he wore over a paint-splattered vintage T-shirt, and then angled around the steering wheel to roll up his jeans.

  “Because it’s so out of character.”

  Jesse glanced up at him through his thick black-framed glasses. “Exactly.”

  “You should talk to Davis. Katie’s boyfriend,” he clarified when Jesse arched an inquiring eyebrow. “He does theater stuff. Maybe he’d offer you a summer job.”

  “The problem with you, Parker, is that you fail to take advantage of the fun side of law enforcement.”

  “Fun.”

  “Technology is great,” Jesse explained, “but all of the digital age tools have diminished what I like to think of as the Columbo appeal.”

  “The dude with the rumpled raincoat?”

  “The very one. Now Columbo, he didn’t have GPS tracking and long range microphones and camera-equipped drones. He had his wits.”