The Southern Comfort Prequel Trilogy Box Set

by Lisa Clark O'Neill

  It had taken some fancy footwork to get himself and his brother out of there without Jack revealing that tidbit of information.

  Jesse tried not to examine all of the reasons he wasn’t ready for her to know. It had made sense at first to avoid telling her who he worked for, given her feelings about law enforcement. He’d acted as a sort of referee between Brian and Detective Gannon in particular, trying to make sure that the case moved forward without traumatizing Jillian unnecessarily, since Losevsky’s possession of her business card was flimsy grounds on which to base an investigation. But questions did need to be asked. So they’d come up with a plan – meant to only be in effect temporarily – which met everyone’s needs.

  The detectives had conducted their interview, Jesse’d listened in and made sure they didn’t cross any lines, and Jillian hadn’t been the wiser. Meanwhile, he’d investigated her background thoroughly and found nothing in her conduct, finances or connections to arouse suspicion.

  Until she’d walked into the Shady Lady the other night.

  “At least you hadn’t given her an alias. That would have been really awkward. And don’t look at me like that,” Jack said. “If you want me to pretend like I don’t know you when I see you out in public, we’re going to have to come up with some kind of code word or secret hand signal.”

  “How’s this?” Jesse lifted a middle finger.

  “You’ll blend right in with the rest of my fan club.”

  Jesse leaned over, snagged the glass at Jack’s elbow.

  “You said you didn’t want any,” Jack pointed out as Jesse tossed it back. “And I’ll have you know that’s 18-year-old Macallan you’re swilling like a frat boy with a bottle of Budweiser.”

  Jesse coughed, eyes watering as his throat burned with fire. “Not my fault you waste a hundred bucks on a bottle of whisky.”

  “Two hundred. And it’s not a waste if you savor it. Jesus. It’s confounding to think we come from the same gene pool.” He took the glass back, added another finger. “Here. That’s all you’re getting because you’re driving and I don’t want to have to bail you out of jail. Now how about you cut the bullshit and tell me what’s really up.”

  Jesse looked at Jack across the desk. Yeah, they liked to rag on each other, but the fact was his older brother knew him better than just about anyone else.

  “Look, Jack.” He leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees “this isn’t the first time that you and I have been on opposite sides of a legal issue, but it’s the first time we’ve ended up in a position to butt heads during an investigation. We knew it would probably happen eventually, but… shit.” He shook his head. He was the one who suggested that Jillian get an attorney, and now it was coming back to bite him in the ass. “I can’t believe she retained a lawyer from your firm.”

  “She didn’t.”

  Jesse’s head came up. “You said she was here today.”

  “And she was. She spoke with Ainsley.”

  Jesse nearly groaned. Ainsley Tidwell. Jack’s underling. And Jesse’s ex-girlfriend. Not to mention the legal equivalent of a barracuda. “This just gets better.”

  “I don’t know what they discussed, and I wouldn’t tell you even if I did. That pesky code of ethics. But either she’s shopping around for an attorney who’s more reasonably priced or a better fit personality-wise, or Ainsley didn’t feel that your… let’s just call her a person of interest, since I don’t know the whole story. Anyway, maybe Ainsley didn’t feel that she needed her services.” He studied Jesse over the rim of his glass. “But from the look on your face, I’m wondering if maybe Ainsley didn’t misjudge the situation.”

  Jesse sat there, torn. He really shouldn’t tell his brother anything. He should probably get up and walk out of the office.

  But he and Jack had always been close. And he wanted his brother’s… not advice, precisely. Maybe he just wanted to use him as a sounding board.

  “Anything I tell you is between you and me. If… anything develops that causes Ms. Montgomery to decide she does in fact require the services of your firm, this discussion never happened.”

  Jack swirled the liquid in his glass. “What discussion?”

  Jesse’s shoulders relaxed a little. “You called her a person of interest, and that’s a good description.” On so many levels. “But she’s extremely wary of law enforcement, and with good reason. And she lives with Brian Parker’s younger sister.”

  Jack sipped his whisky. “That sounds like a clusterfuck. I’m surprised your SAC hasn’t pulled Parker off the investigation for conflict of interest.”

  “He’s mostly operating on the periphery at this point, but if they tried to pull him completely, he’d probably lose it. Or quit.”

  “So you’re the lead investigator.”

  “With a task force of Savannah’s finest.”

  Jack grinned. “And to think it wasn’t that long ago, after that little incident in South Carolina, that you were in the professional dog house.”

  “I’m still in the dog house. They just lengthened my chain. Anyway, do you remember a case about five years back, three local cops busted for assault, attempted rape, one of them shot the officer who stepped in to break it up?”

  Jack tipped his head back, sorted through his mental files, which Jesse knew from experience were scarily accurate.

  “I think Andrew Blevins defended the shooter,” he said after a moment. “The other two plea bargained, but Blevins isn’t the type to miss an opportunity to put himself in front of a jury or a camera. Pompous windbag,” was Jack’s assessment.

  “I would make a comment about pots and kettles, but it would deflect off your ego in the manner of asteroids bouncing off a force field.”

  “You read too much science fiction as a kid, and not enough girly magazines. It stunted your development. This woman – Jillian. She was the one they assaulted.”

  “Yeah. You remember?”

  “I didn’t until you brought it up.”

  “Well, several Savannah cops still have a hard on for her. When her name came up in the course of an investigation, one of the detectives involved all but blew his load.”

  “Which is why she was here today.”

  “Yeah.” Jesse considered what, and how much else to say. “I’d like to say that’s the worst of it, because that’s certainly enough. But this case in which she’s a person of interest? If it turns out she is connected, what she went through before will be child’s play in comparison.”

  Jack studied Jesse’s face. “You’re worried for her.”

  “These are bad people we’re dealing with. And the fact that she lives with the sister of a federal agent adds another whole layer of cluster to the fuck. What?” he said when he noticed Jack’s expression.

  Jack leaned back in his massive leather chair. “You can, and likely will, tell me to mind my business.”

  “When has that ever stopped you before?”

  Ignoring that, Jack went on. “I know you Jesse. And while what I’m hearing is cause for concern, it’s what I’m seeing that really worries me.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “A man who’s walking a fine line between sound professional judgment and… emotional entanglement. And the fact that you didn’t immediately contradict me means you’re at least being honest enough with yourself to recognize the danger.”

  Jesse stared into the glass of whisky. “I know how to do my job.”

  “Of that I have no doubt. I don’t think you’re careless or rash. Despite what your bosses think about your occasional… rogue behavior. That’s simply because you know how to recognize bullshit when you smell it and prefer to go around it rather than sit there mired in it just because some bureaucrat said you should. And I don’t think you’re a sucker for a pretty face. At least not enough to get you in trouble.”

  “Okay,” Jesse said, sitting the empty glass on the desk. “Then what am I a sucker for? Because you obviously think I am.”

  “The wo
unded,” Jack said. “The vulnerable. The huddled masses yearning to be free. You have a strong sense of justice, and a protective streak a mile wide. I’d say this woman – this pretty, wounded, vulnerable woman who is a person of interest in what sounds like an already dangerous investigation – has already gotten under your skin.”

  Jesse wanted to protest, just on principle. Jack made him sound like a pushover for whatever sob story people spewed.

  But he knew that on some level, his brother wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t a pushover, but he did have a protective streak.

  And Jillian Montgomery had managed to rouse it.

  “Fuck,” Jesse muttered.

  “Probably not the best idea under the circumstances.”

  “You should have been a comedian instead of an ambulance chaser.”

  “I don’t have to chase the ambulances. They come to me.” He took the glass back from Jesse, and studied him with his cool gray gaze. “Acknowledging that you have a problematic attraction is the first step. The second step, of course, being to keep your pants firmly zipped so that the little head doesn’t have a chance to convince the big head that the pretty, wounded vulnerable woman who is a person of interest in a dangerous investigation will be best served by screwing her six ways from Sunday.”

  “I’m not an idiot,” Jesse said. “And anyway, you’re one to talk about keeping your pants zipped.”

  “But you’ll notice that my pants always remain zipped around clients, witnesses, colleagues and opposing counsel. Pissing in your own pool is bad form.”

  Jesse shook his head. He couldn’t believe they were even having this discussion. He wasn’t going to have sex with a potential suspect, or a potential witness, or a potential whatever the hell Jillian was.

  And the fact was he didn’t know what she was. He’d been caught completely off guard by her appearance at the Shady Lady, and still, despite the translator mostly confirming Jillian’s version of events, wasn’t completely convinced that she was telling the whole truth.

  Anyone else…

  It could mean anything, including Jillian believing that someone else might have been asking about her at the bar.

  Who? And why?

  Those were questions that needed to be answered. He’d been making some progress that direction before Jack showed up, which in hindsight was probably fortuitous. He had to do this right. If he had any lingering uncertainties, any suspicions at all, he should address them in a formal interview. He had been walking a fine line, and it was time he planted his feet firmly on the side of professional ethics. He’d never be able to live with himself otherwise. When they’d had the meeting with the translator, it hadn’t seemed like there was enough evidence to question Jillian’s story. And maybe there wasn’t. But he also had to make sure he wasn’t allowing his personal feelings to influence the way he looked at her potential involvement in the case.

  “I have to go,” he told his brother. He needed to talk to Brian.

  “Not that I won’t see you beforehand, but you’ll be at Mom and Dad’s for Christmas Eve dinner, right?”

  “Like I’d miss Mom’s ham?”

  “Silly question.”

  Jesse put his hand on the door knob, glanced back over his shoulder. “Thanks for the whisky. And the conversation.”

  “Any time,” Jack said, his expression softening. “You know that.”

  He did. As big a pain as his brother could be, Jesse knew he always had his back.

  Jesse mulled things over as he walked down the steps, through the nearly deserted building. A Christmas tree stood in the lobby, its lights reflecting on the marble floor like a cache of diamonds.

  It reminded him of the tree in the laundromat, Losevsky’s blood staining the angel’s white dress. Which took him right back to the beginning of this mess.

  The way he saw it, there were a couple of possibilities. One: Jillian lied and was somehow connected to Losevsky, or maybe to the person who’d ordered his death. He’d watched her closely for any signs of deceit during the original interview, and thought she was being forthright. At least as far as Losevsky was concerned. But someone associated with that organization? That was another matter. The tremor he’d detected in her hands could have been the result of general nerves about being questioned by the police, but he wasn’t willing to rule some sort of duplicity out completely.

  And that shamed him. Shamed him that he’d given in to his baser urges, kissing her the way he had. All but having sex with her against the wall of her foyer, even while harboring uncertainties. Regardless of her guilt or innocence, she deserved better from him. And his employer certainly deserved better from an agent in which they’d entrusted a badge.

  If he looked at it from that angle, the dead squirrel looked less likely to be a form of payback from Mike McGrath than a warning from an unknown party.

  Don’t cooperate with the police or you’ll be next.

  If that was the case, her very real fear when she’d seen Axelrod and Gannon might have less to do with her previous experience and more to do with a current threat. It also suggested, by the fact that she hadn’t already been eliminated, that either the information she might be able to impart was less damning than that of the other two victims – Losevsky and Irena – or that the opportunity to silence her simply hadn’t presented itself yet.

  Or as a third possibility, perhaps she… meant more, on a personal level, to whomever was calling the shots.

  Jesse couldn’t stop his jaw from clenching at the thought.

  “Thanks Dawson,” he said to the guard who held the door open for him.

  “No problem, Mr. Wellington. Looks like we’re about to get more rain. You stay dry now.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  The brisk night air slid over him, cooling the heat the whisky and his own guilt and anger had kindled beneath his skin. He stopped in the light of the flickering gas flame lanterns that flanked either side of the entrance. The breeze picked up, bringing with it the smell of the approaching rain and of the pine from the wreath on the door behind him. Both familiar smells, but for some reason the entire nightscape struck Jesse as alien. He felt separated not only from his surroundings, but from his normal good judgment.

  He wasn’t used to feeling tangled by his own fishing line. Caught in a trap of his own making.

  Shaking off the self-recrimination for the time being, Jesse admitted it was not unfeasible that someone in the Savannah Chatham Metropolitan Police Department had seized the opportunity for payback, starting when they’d discovered her card. He couldn’t ignore the toothpick belonging to Gannon he’d found under Jillian’s window.

  So maybe she was telling the truth about that. About everything.

  And maybe he’d become so… entangled that he couldn’t judge any of this objectively.

  “Hell,” he muttered to himself. Jesse started down the front steps when his cell phone started to vibrate. He pulled it from his pocket, checked the readout. “Hey. I was just about to call you.”

  Brian rattled off a residential address. “You need to get over here. Now.”

  “Whose apartment?” Jesse asked, clicking the remote to unlock his Jeep.

  “Gannon’s.” Brian said, just as the first raindrops started to fall. “He’s dead.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AS many dead bodies as Jesse’d seen during his career, it never got any easier visiting a scene. Especially when the deceased was someone you knew.

  Knew, and didn’t like all that much. Jesse wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. But that didn’t mean he was happy about the situation. In fact, it both sickened him and pissed him off.

  “First apartment on your left when you step off the elevator,” the uniformed officer said after Jesse flashed his badge at the door to the building. Rain dripped off the man’s hat, which was covered by a plastic poncho. “And wear these.”

  Jesse took the shoe covers the man handed him, meant to help preserve any evidence that would be compromised
by people trudging in and out of the wet. He took the elevator, happy to find himself alone in the car, and slipped the booties over his sneakers before approaching the apartment. Another uniformed cop greeted him, checked his identification, and then allowed him to pass.

  Taking a deep breath, Jesse entered the apartment.

  His first impression was that it was neat as a pin. Gannon was either anal retentive, or hadn’t spent much time here. Or maybe, judging by the scent of pine cleaner, his maid service had paid a recent visit.

  The forensics team was already busy collecting evidence, and Jesse sidestepped them, following the voices toward what he presumed was the dining area.

  His heart skipped a beat when he approached the doorway. The table had been pushed to the corner of the room, and one of the chairs – currently on its side – was positioned beneath the chandelier.

  Gannon hung from it.

  His eyes were open, protruding in the manner typical of hanging victims, and seemed to accuse Jesse. Of course, Jesse was probably just reading that last part into it.

  He dragged his hand over the lower half of his face.

  Brian spotted him, and made his way past a couple of plain clothes detectives, who were taking notes while a photographer documented the scene from every conceivable angle.

  “His ex-wife found him,” Brian said in a low voice, giving him the rundown. “Was supposed to pick up their kid after school, never showed. She was pissed at first, assumed he’d forgotten, tried calling and texting to chew him out. She got worried when he didn’t respond after several hours. Tried contacting him through the station, thought maybe he’d gotten called out on a case, but it turns out he’d phoned in sick earlier in the day. There’s some over the counter cold medicine – the knock you out kind – on the vanity in the bathroom, used tissues piled on the nightstand, and the bed had been slept in recently. Looks like he was legitimately ill. Anyway, she has a key – I guess they’re still on decent terms – and stopped by to check on him.” He glanced at Gannon’s body. “Not a very pleasant thing to discover.”