The Southern Comfort Prequel Trilogy Box Set

by Lisa Clark O'Neill

  After the detectives left, Jesse took a moment to control his anger. Goode, with whom he hadn’t worked very long, had obviously been talking to Axelrod. Since the man was grieving his partner, Jesse tried not to hold that against him. Still, it was a pain in the ass to have to put up with the territorial hostility. That hostility would probably be on full display tomorrow at Gannon’s memorial service. Especially since the lab results from one of the detective’s pairs of sneakers had come back positive for the concrete dust matching the sample from Jillian’s basement. Meaning Gannon had indeed been snooping around inside. Axelrod wasn’t keen on having his partner cast in a questionable light when he wasn’t around to explain his actions.

  Jesse wished the man was around to explain his actions, also, though for entirely different reasons.

  Jesse considered the fact that Gannon’s bloodwork indicated he had enough cold medicine in his system to make him groggy if not outright knock him out. Had he ingested the medicine to somehow ease the pain he might feel when he hung himself? Jesse doubted it. There was still no real answer as to why the man would have committed suicide, unless he was indeed somehow connected to Losevsky’s organization. But there was no evidence to support that, aside from the LSD tabs in his pocket.

  The whole thing seemed staged.

  Just as Losevsky’s attack was staged, for maximum dramatic impact. Irena’s death was quick and brutal, but then she’d been in jail at the time, so the choice of methods was limited. It was the same method, in fact, as the attack on LeRoy. Which suggested that someone had wanted him quickly dispatched. Probably because he had incriminating information, as had Irena. That LeRoy was almost killed on his way to see Jesse suggested that either he’d been under surveillance as a potential problem, or that whoever attacked him was already at the marina.

  Maybe because they’d followed Jillian there.

  Uncomfortable with that thought, Jesse considered Jillian’s point that whoever was behind all of this had had plenty of opportunities to dispatch her. Just like they’d dispatched Irena and almost LeRoy.

  So why had they made such a production out of Losevsky’s death? A warning to other people who worked for the organization, following some unknown infraction? And they still didn’t know why he’d had Jillian’s card.

  And what about Gannon? Jesse still found it hard to believe that the man killed himself, let alone that he’d donned Jesse’s shirt and chosen Jillian’s Christmas lights as his rope.

  All of it seemed designed to draw attention to Jillian.

  So she was right. It didn’t make sense. If they thought she knew something – like Irena and LeRoy – it seemed far more logical to simply kill her. Unless there was some other reason to… put her in the spotlight.

  Jesse realized that he’d been ruminating longer than he’d intended, and walked out of the cafeteria to find Jillian, who was probably asleep in the hall by now.

  Instead, he found Katie.

  “Hey,” she said. “I was just coming to find you guys. Is Jillian ready to go?”

  Jesse looked over her shoulder. “You haven’t seen her? Did you check the chapel?”

  “I peeked my head in but it was empty. I thought she was with you.”

  Feeling the first fingers of alarm beginning to dance up his spine, Jesse pushed past her and shoved open the door to the chapel. Like Katie said, it was empty.

  “Maybe she went to the bathroom or…”

  Katie’s voice trailed off as Jesse bent down, picked up an item from the floor beneath the pew.

  Jillian’s cellphone.

  The fingers which had been ticking his spine reached up to grab his throat.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “THROUGH here.”

  Jillian held onto the hand of the man who’d so surprised her, following him through a door and down a covered walkway that led to the hospital’s parking garage. They didn’t enter the garage, though, instead taking a footpath that led toward some sort of maintenance yard, where air conditioning units whirred as they maintained the hospital’s interior climate.

  “Here,” he said. “The machines should provide enough noise to…” he waved a hand in the air “obscure, I think is right word. They will obscure our conversation.”

  Still stunned, Jillian could only blink. “I thought you were dead.”

  Alexei Markov – beloved international ballet star and the brother she’d never met in person – nodded. “You were meant to. As was the rest of the world. It was the only way.”

  Jillian studied his face. He’d done something to it, something surgical. His chin was perhaps a tad more pointed, his nose less pronounced. His hair was a mousy shade of brown, whereas once it had been golden. But the eyes were the same. The same shade of green as her own.

  Their mother’s eyes.

  “The only way to what?” she finally said. “And why do we have to obscure our conversation? Who do you think is –”

  He cut her off with a shake of his head. “Not yet. Let me see your bag.”

  “My what?”

  “Your purse,” he said in Russian.

  It took Jillian a moment to translate, and then she frowned. “Why? You already tossed away my phone.”

  Alexei sighed. “I am sorry,” he repeated. “I know that you are probably questioning my…” he waved his hand again “intentions. As well as your safety. But I promise you, on our shared blood, that I mean you no harm. I wish only to protect you.”

  Jillian weighed the advisability of trusting this man she didn’t in reality know, a man who’d proven to not only have connections to a dangerous criminal organization, but who’d obviously faked his own death. It was probably the height of stupidity to have left with him.

  But he would have fled if she’d attempted to alert Jesse or anyone else, of that she had no doubt. He’d told her as much when he’d surprised her in the chapel. So she’d gone with him, not only for curiosity’s sake, but because she felt that if she wanted to get to the root of the trouble she’d been experiencing, this was her best – maybe her only – chance.

  Her intuition – which she’d learned to trust – told her that Alexei had no intention of physically harming her. Not right now, at any rate.

  She handed over her purse.

  Alexei acknowledged her show of trust with a small nod, and then he rooted through the contents. To her shock, he pulled out a pocket knife and slashed the lining.

  She started to vocally protest when he extracted a small object, something that looked like a button-type battery.

  Scowling at it, he then clutched it in his fist. “Wait here,” he said, and then handed her back her purse.

  He strode back toward the door with the sort of feline grace that marked him as an athlete, sure in his own body. When he disappeared from her sight, Jillian crossed her arms against the very early morning chill, glancing around. She half expected an assassin to leap out from behind a piece of machinery, or Jesse to come charging around the corner. He would be frantic when he realized she was gone. Frantic and furious. Jillian had wanted to leave a text on her phone in the drafts so that he didn’t think she’d been abducted, but Alexei insisted there wasn’t time. He would explain, but only if she came with him in that moment. It was too risky for him to stay.

  Of course, that’s what any abductor worth his salt would say. The adult equivalent of hey little girl, I’ve got candy.

  But she didn’t think her brother was psychotic. At least, she really, really hoped he wasn’t.

  Only seconds later, Alexei reappeared.

  “Was that some sort of tracking device?” she asked him.

  “Yes. I suspected your movements were being closely monitored. They would want to know if you… deviated from your routine. I placed the device on a cart in the hallway. It is better if they do not know you have left the hospital grounds.”

  “I haven’t left the hospital grounds.”

  He looked at her. “Not yet.”

  Jillian got the impress
ion that he was about to ask her to do just that. “I can’t leave without telling my roommate or the FBI agent who brought me here.”

  “Do you really think your lover will let you stroll off with a man who is supposed to be dead? A man who has brought you to the attention of a very dangerous criminal?” He raised his brows. “A man who he likely believes to be a dangerous criminal himself?”

  Jillian wasn’t going to take the time to ask him how he knew that Jesse was her lover. “I think that if you have something to say, you should tell Jesse, too, especially if it pertains to dangerous criminals. He can probably grant you immunity or –”

  Alexei snorted. “There is no immunity from death. And if the law enforcement community here gets their hands on me, I can promise you that I will truly be dead this time. Surely you, of all people, understand this.”

  “You think the cops are corrupt.”

  “I know this, at least of a few of them. A few of them – like your lover – I think are honest. But that does not mean I am willing to entrust them with my safety. Or yours.”

  “Your English has improved remarkably,” Jillian noted.

  “I have had two years to work on it. To my regret, the accent is… stubborn. Please,” he said in a low voice. “Trust me. If you were to be hurt any more than you have been, I could never forgive myself.”

  Jillian studied his pleading expression, and then sighed. “Where are we going?”

  “Someplace that I know is safe for us to talk. Afterward, I will let you contact your FBI agent. I promise.”

  “Tell me one thing… did I hallucinate you the other night, or were you really in my house?”

  “I was there. I hoped to talk to you that night, but obviously I chose a poor time.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “I climbed tree and came in through an upstairs window that was not wired into your alarm. Your roommate’s lover left it unlocked after he opened it to hide the fact that he’d been smoking.”

  “How do you know that? And do you know who drugged me? Who messed with my – our – mother’s dolls?”

  Alexei’s mouth formed a bitter line. “That is the least of what he’s done. And I will explain everything. Just not now. And not here.”

  Jillian considered that she was probably making a huge mistake. And that Katie, Brian and Jesse would fight over who got to kill her when they found out she’d left with Alexei of her own free will.

  But she wanted answers. Needed answers. It was the only way to make this nightmare end.

  “Okay. But if I feel the least bit threatened at any time, I’m screaming bloody murder and ditching you, brother or not.”

  His smile revealed long dimples in his cheeks. “Energichnyy.”

  “I’m not familiar with that word.”

  “It means that you have spirit.”

  “I also have pepper spray, so don’t make me use it.”

  He slung his arm over her shoulders. “I will try my best.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “THAT’S the last one,” Katie said, emerging from the swinging door. “She isn’t in any of the bathrooms on the main floor.”

  “She’s not at the car. Any of the cars,” Brian added. “I checked yours, mine and Katie’s.”

  “Okay,” Jesse said. He’d been trying to stay cool. After all, there was a chance that Jillian’s phone had simply fallen out of her purse when she retrieved the bag from the pew. But if she wasn’t in the restroom and she wasn’t waiting at the car – an off chance to begin with – and she wasn’t at the vending machines near the cafeteria, there weren’t a whole hell of a lot of other reasonable options as to where she could be.

  “Shit.” Jesse dragged a hand down his face. There had been several people in the hall when he’d emerged from the chapel. How could anyone have gotten in there and… removed Jillian without someone noticing? There was only one exit door, and the stained glass windows weren’t operable. She had to have left under her own steam.

  But that didn’t mean that someone hadn’t intercepted her once she’d done so.

  “Find Goode and Portman,” he told Brian. “They went off to interview LeRoy’s boyfriend. Maybe they decided to follow up with Jillian while they were here. I’m going to alert security and have them look at their surveillance footage to see which direction she took after leaving the chapel. If those options are unsuccessful, we call in more manpower and start a full scale search.”

  “What can I do?” Katie asked from beside him, her voice thin and worried.

  “If you can think of anyplace else she might have gone, check there,” he said, rather than telling her to let them handle it. He knew how frustrating it was to sit and wait, feeling helpless. “And you can check with the nurses’ station on this floor, see if any of them recall seeing her.”

  The Parker siblings dispersed on their separate missions, and Jesse strode down the hall and around the corner, toward the security office.

  He rapped his fist on the door.

  It opened to reveal a man with a graying brush cut and military bearing, his hand resting on the butt of his firearm. His nametag read Coleman. “Can I help you?”

  “Special Agent Wellington,” he said, offering his identification. “I’d like to see your surveillance footage from the corridor outside the chapel, about thirty minutes ago.”

  The man handed Jesse back his badge. “Why?”

  Because I said so trembled on the tip of Jesse’s tongue, but he figured that finesse would get him what he wanted more quickly than attitude. “Because we seem to have a missing female who was last seen in the chapel.”

  The man looked Jesse over, and then stepped back. “Come in. Burns,” he called to another man sitting in front of a bank of monitors. “Pull up footage from camera nine, starting forty minutes ago. Best to begin a few minutes back,” the man said as an aside to Jesse “so you don’t miss anything.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  He walked further into the cramped room, which was filled with monitors and the smell of doughnuts.

  “You want one?” Coleman asked, gesturing to the open box. “They’re still pretty fresh.”

  “I appreciate it, but no.” Jesse didn’t think he could stomach food right now, which was an indicator of his level of anxiety.

  “Got it,” the man named Burns said, and Jesse moved closer to the monitor. “I’ll fast forward it to save time, but if you see anything you need to look at more closely, just holler.”

  “Thank God for this digitized shit, huh?” Coleman said, biting into a glazed pastry. “Hell of a lot easier than when everything was on cassette.”

  Intent on watching the action on the screen, Jesse ignored the man’s comment. That area of the hospital wasn’t extremely busy at this time of night, considering the cafeteria was closed and visiting hours were long over, so there wasn’t a whole lot of action to be seen.

  “That’s you going into the chapel, ain’t it?” Coleman said from behind him.

  “That’s me.” And there went Katie, leaving to allow him and Jillian some privacy. A few minutes later he saw the disoriented patient wander around the corner, trailing an IV pole, and then the two nurses chasing after him. It was right around that time that Jesse exited the chapel, talking to Portman on his phone and heading toward the empty cafeteria for their discussion. He’d just rounded the corner when another figure entered the screen, moving swiftly toward the door Jesse had just closed behind him.

  “Stop!” he said. “Back up just a bit, will you?”

  When Burns had carried out his request, Jesse studied the still image. The man had kept his head down as he walked, but when one of the nurses accidentally backed into him, he glanced up. In that moment, his face was visible.

  “You recognize him?” Coleman wanted to know.

  “Yes.” Jesse’s heart climbed into his throat. It was the man who’d bumped into him on River Street. He was sure of it. “Keep going,” he told Burns.

  The f
ootage started again, in real time rather than fast forward, and Jesse realized he was holding his breath. The door to the chapel opened again, and the same man emerged.

  This time accompanied by Jillian.

  “That the women you’re looking for?”

  Jesse nodded in response to Coleman’s question. “Freeze that again, will you?” he said to Burns.

  The man did, and Jesse leaned closer. Jillian’s face held obvious shock. And the man’s face…

  “Can you print a copy of that image for me?”

  “Sure,” Burns said, and Jesse pulled out his phone, scrolled through the photos he had stored there. One of which was from the file he’d been sent from Russian authorities. Not exact, he thought… but too close to be ignored.

  When Burns handed him the printout, Jesse shook off his own shock – and a growing sense of betrayal – and thanked both men, calling Brian as he walked out the door.

  “You find her?” Brian wanted to know.

  “Not exactly.” Jesse’s voice was tight. “But she left here with her brother.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “YOU favor her. Our mother.”

  “Mostly in the coloring,” Jillian said. “Unfortunately I didn’t inherit her grace and superb athletic ability, like you did. I’m more of a runner than a dancer, and only an average runner at that.”

  “I know.” Alexei smiled to take the sting out of the mild insult. “I have followed behind you on occasion.”

  Jillian sighed. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice you. I thought I was more aware of my surroundings than that.”

  “Don’t… what is correct phrase? Beat yourself up. I have become very good at concealing my presence.”

  His sister looked around at their surroundings, a sparsely furnished basement apartment in a townhouse behind and down the street from hers. “I’ll say. You were practically in my backyard all this time.”

  “I took lease on this place close to one year ago. After I got word that Vitaly Igorevich had established himself in Savannah.”