The Southern Comfort Prequel Trilogy Box Set

by Lisa Clark O'Neill

  He was perverse like that.

  While he assumed that Ainsley had probably intended this mainly as a kiss of gratitude – something quick and relatively harmless – she didn’t seem to be objecting to the presence of his tongue in her mouth. In fact, she made hot little sounds of approval that threatened to make Cal forget they were trespassing in an abandoned building. He had a quick, vivid vision of boosting her up onto the desk, wrapping those long legs around his waist as he buried himself inside her.

  But inevitably, she pulled back. The disappointment Cal felt was offset by the fact that she was more than a little breathless when she spoke. “We should call Ben.”

  “Right.” Cal sounded a bit ragged himself, so he cleared his throat. “Let me –”

  But Cal didn’t get a chance to finish his suggestion. A shot rang out, and he threw himself on top of Ainsley, taking them both to the floor.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  BEN tried to ignore the drop of sweat that trickled down his neck as he climbed the steps to Joe Cooper’s apartment. Joe was the night manager at the hotel which, along with the Cajun restaurant, occupied the upper floors of one of the historic buildings facing the town square. Beneath the hotel was Callum’s gallery.

  Where Sabrina worked.

  Pausing a moment to quell the anxiety that wanted to rise, to make him rush into the apartment, demand answers from a dead man, Ben drew a steadying breath. Because this guy was dead – supposedly by his own hand – that didn’t necessarily correlate to Sabrina’s disappearance. Even if the two of them had been involved.

  Ben resumed his trek up the stairs. Cooper’s apartment was a couple miles outside town, an over-the-garage deal that he rented from the owners of the main house. That couple had apparently just returned from vacation, where they’d been visiting the husband’s sister somewhere in Colorado. The wife, who was Joe Cooper’s maternal aunt, discovered the body.

  Ben could hear her quietly weeping on her husband’s shoulder while one of the responding officers took her statement – or tried to take it, at any rate. The woman was a mess, a reaction that Ben understood all too well.

  He headed toward Cooper’s bedroom, where Deputy Matt Mitchell waited, with a mix of curiosity and trepidation.

  Ben dreaded what he would find, for more reasons than one.

  Mitchell stood with his back to the room, but he turned when he heard Ben approaching. As he did so, the dead man appeared in Ben’s line of vision, his body slumped in his desk chair.

  The back of his head was missing.

  Ben grimaced. Even after a decade on the job, the sight of violent death disturbed him on a visceral level. But then he hoped he never became immune to it. If he did, he would quit, because that would mean that he’d lost touch with his humanity.

  Ben glanced around the room, which contained the usual component of bedroom furniture along with the desk. The window next to the bed was cracked open, letting in air that had begun tipping from crisp to cool. A bath towel lay on the floor in front of the dresser, as if Cooper had dropped it there before pulling on the sweatpants and T-shirt he wore currently. Ben stepped cautiously toward the towel, touched it with just the tips of his fingers.

  It was still a little damp.

  “He’s in full rigor,” Mitchell commented.

  So he’d probably been dead anywhere from eight to twenty-four hours, give or take. The coroner should be able to give them a better idea after the autopsy. “Rainwater on his way?” he asked about the county coroner.

  “He was otherwise engaged,” Mitchell said. “He’s sending a deputy. From what I got from the aunt, she spoke to Cooper last night. Or texted him, at any rate. Wanted to let him know they were coming in today, which was a day earlier than they’d planned. He responded around eight pm, before he went into work, which – according to her again, he started at nine.”

  The night manager, Ben remembered. That narrowed their window for time of death, if indeed he worked his regular shift last night. “No calls from the neighbors reporting a gunshot?”

  “No, but their spread here backs up to the woods, and you know hunting season started a couple days ago. They’re far enough from the center of town that the occasional shot probably isn’t too much cause for concern.”

  “We’re going to want to canvass the neighbors anyway, see if they heard anything.”

  “I should also mention that the serial numbers appear to have been drilled off the gun.” He presented Ben with an evidence bag containing the weapon.

  “You took photos of the room as you found it before you bagged this?”

  “Of course.”

  Ben studied the gun, a Glock-17, easy enough to get through legal channels, not to mention illegal ones. And though it wasn’t the most powerful firearm available, from close range it was more than capable of getting the job done. “Did he have a license?”

  “No. And the aunt claims that he didn’t own a firearm.”

  “Or she didn’t know about it, at any rate. Did he leave a note?”

  “Not that I’ve been able to find. I looked for a physical one first, and then, uh,” he cleared his throat “tried the computer.”

  Ben turned and handed the evidence bag back to Mitchell, who seemed as uncomfortable as a mouse that’d strayed into the cat room at the shelter. “We’ve danced around the reason you called me here for several minutes now.” And Ben wasn’t sure whether the lapse had given him time to settle or simply increased his anxiety. Mitchell, he suspected, wasn’t terribly eager to show Ben whatever it was he had to show him.

  When the man failed to completely meet Ben’s gaze, suspicion notched up to certainty.

  “Let’s have it,” Ben said, wanting it over with.

  “It’s the computer,” Mitchell said, gesturing to the open laptop sitting on Cooper’s desk. “It must have been in sleep mode or whatever, because when I touched one of the keys – to see if he’d left a suicide note – there was a picture on the screen. It… well, see for yourself.”

  Jaw set, Ben pulled a glove from his pocket and put it on before approaching the desk. He stepped as carefully as he was able around the dead man, not wanting to disturb the scene any more than he had to, and touched a finger to the keyboard. A picture of Sabrina filled the screen.

  She was naked.

  Naked, and smiling at whoever was behind the camera. Unless it was a timer selfie, of course. Ben allowed the awkwardness, the embarrassment, the flash of anger to fill him before setting it aside. Those feelings served no purpose just now, and had no place in an investigation. So he looked at Sabrina’s surroundings, turned to study the bed behind him to see if it was the same one on which she reclined in the photo. Neither the headboard nor the bedding matched, and the window placement was all wrong. Obviously not the same room.

  Nor was it Sabrina’s bedroom. Her hot pink walls, as Ben had been forced to point out when she’d solicited his opinion, were about as restful as an electric shock. The walls in the photo were that sort of utilitarian shade of brownish grey that went with almost everything. Taupe, he thought it was called, though how he knew that was beyond his ability to recollect at the moment.

  Then Ben squinted, noticing the phone on the nightstand beside the bed.

  He zoomed in, wincing as one of Sabrina’s breasts filled the screen, and quickly shifted the focus to the phone. It was a hotel phone, the kind with the little red square on it that flashed when you had a message.

  Joe Cooper was a hotel manager – the night manager. Callum Elias had just informed Ben that he’d seen Sabrina coming down the steps beside the gallery, presumably from the hotel, which occupied most of the second floor and all of the third.

  It made sense, but Ben was going to have to check out the hotel rooms to make a comparison. He was also going to have to go into Sabrina’s cell phone again, to see if she’d deleted any photos of herself, or of Cooper. Or of her and Cooper together. The same went for phone calls and texts.

  Not to mention go
ing through Cooper’s computer. Ben wanted, rather badly, to handle that task himself, but he wasn’t as good with technology as a couple of his deputies. One of them, thank God, was a female. Jessica Watson. She was also discreet. He could trust her not to download any nude pics she might find and keep them for her own private enjoyment.

  Not that he really suspected anyone else in his department would do so, but given the fact that this was his sister, he didn’t want to take the chance.

  He also didn’t want to consider what it might mean that if Cooper had been involved with Sabrina, and Sabrina was missing, that Cooper killed himself. Distraught because he thought something terrible had happened to her? Or remorseful because he knew it had?

  Because he’d been the one to do it.

  Even grimmer than he’d been when he started up those stairs, Ben straightened and looked at Mitchell. “Thanks for keeping everyone out of here before I had a chance to have a look.”

  “She’s your sister. And you’re the boss.”

  “Both of those are true, although right at this moment, neither one is giving me a great deal of pleasure. I’m going to call in Watson to have a go at the laptop, so leave it be until she gets here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ben took another look around the room, and then forced himself to look at Joe Cooper’s body, at the gun. He thought of the blood on his sister’s shoe.

  Because anger wanted to rise more than he felt was easily controllable, he knew it was time to get out and leave the scene to his deputies.

  After admonishing Mitchell to let no one inside unless they came from the coroner’s office or were Jessica Watson, Ben descended the stairs at a faster clip than he’d gone up them. He wanted to get away from the stench of violent death, wanted to clear his nostrils and his head.

  It seemed unfathomable to him that Sabrina might have been taken in much the same way as Carly. By a man with whom she was involved. For Carly snuck out of the house that night voluntarily. Ainsley had seen her talking with a man – a man who was not Grant. It pained him even now to think of it, to think of what had been done to her.

  And the pain was fresher, more… shredding, thinking of Sabrina. Not because he loved her more, but because Bree, for all her pain-in-the-ass gypsy ways, was his baby sister. And she’d been cautious with men, as far as he knew, whereas Carly certainly hadn’t. That she’d chosen one who, despite that caution, had possibly harmed her…

  Ben drew a deep breath of the cool air, smelling the nearby woods, and somewhere, a fire burning. They were good smells, comforting smells, though he wasn’t particularly comforted.

  Not until he found his sister.

  He placed a call to Deputy Watson, filled her in, and then decided that he’d go over and have a look at the hotel, talk with the other manager.

  Thinking of the hotel made him think of Cal, which made him remember that he’d never called Ainsley back. He had every reason to put it off, but it seemed important, somehow, that he connect with his cousin. Or reconnect, to be more accurate.

  He needed family, he realized. And he couldn’t go with this, not yet, to his mother.

  He dialed up the hotel where she was staying, had them put him through to Ainsley’s room, grew annoyed when she didn’t answer. Well, maybe she was sleeping. Or in the shower. Or had gone out for dinner, since it was drawing close to that time.

  He left her a message, which put him in mind of the red blinking light on the phone in the photo, which circled back around to visiting the hotel.

  Ben headed toward his vehicle.

  He had a room to check out.

  AINSLEY’S back hit the hard wood, followed closely by Callum’s weight landing fully on top of her. The air rushed out of her lungs, compounding the brief sense of disorientation. One moment she was standing, the next she was on the floor.

  Instinct kicked in and Ainsley started to struggle. She couldn’t stand being pinned down.

  “Let me go,” she told Cal, a harsh whisper all she could manage.

  “Keep your head down.”

  “Let me go,” she repeated with emphasis, but Cal just answered her with “Keep your head down, keep your head down,” again.

  His breath was warm against her ear, but as his words finally penetrated, they chilled her. Shit. Was someone actually shooting at them?

  Ainsley attempted to calm her racing thoughts even as she struggled to draw a full breath. Panic wouldn’t help. Knowing that the only thing to do was breathe shallowly until the feeling had passed, she did a quick inventory of all her parts. Aside from having the wind knocked out of her and a slight twinge in her ankle, everything seemed to be okay. She listened carefully for further activity outside as she tried to piece together what exactly had just happened. They’d been talking and then…

  “Cal,” she rasped out. She waited until she didn’t feel as if her chest were collapsing in on itself to try again. “Cal, I think it was just a car backfiring.”

  “Keep your head down,” he said again, shifting an arm so that he drew her more firmly beneath him, and Ainsley realized that he was trembling.

  “Cal. It’s okay. I think we’re safe.”

  When he repeated the words yet again, and again, almost like a mantra, it finally clued her in.

  Flashback.

  Cal had been a combat medic. And hadn’t Ben just warned her that he hadn’t been the same since he’d left the service? Now she understood.

  PTSD. Ainsley had experienced her own brush with it after discovering Carly’s body, after falling out of the tube into the creek and getting tangled up in her cousin’s lifeless limbs. She could still feel the horror of being trapped against the body, of swallowing water and choking, her cousin’s long hair drifting like flaxen seaweed across her face. It was why she’d panicked just now.

  And then there’d been the anger, the derision she’d faced when her aunt in particular refused to believe that she’d seen Carly with a man who most definitely was not Grant. Her father’s fury on her behalf. Her stepbrother’s shock, and then withdrawal. The entire family’s emotional fallout. All of it had boiled together in a nasty sort of stew. She’d suffered nightmares, some of them waking in the form of flashbacks. She remembered a classmate’s pool party when someone had unknowingly grabbed onto her underwater, and she’d completely melted down. And she’d avoided mountain streams – formerly one of her favorite things – until… well, until now, she guessed.

  Not that she thought her trauma was in any way comparable to what Cal must have experienced in war, but she did recognize his symptoms. And she knew, through her own time in therapy, that helping him to ground himself in the current moment through his five senses was one of the best ways to derail the attack.

  So she kept telling him, almost crooning to him, that both of them were safe. They were in the old store, in Dahlonega. No one was shooting at them. She repeated his name, calmly, reminding him that they’d been looking for clues that might lead them to Sabrina. She stroked his back, giving him the benefit of touch. She wished she had a lemon for him to bite into, or something as stereotypical as smelling salts. Something else, something potent, to help him know he was here and now instead of there and then.

  But eventually, after several minutes – which seemed to stretch into several hours – the trembling eased and his breathing returned to something approaching normal. The tension in his muscles shifted from one of panic, a sort of fight or flight response, to something that Ainsley attributed to acute embarrassment.

  And indeed, when he pushed himself up onto his forearms, he failed to meet her gaze. Then he rolled off and onto the floor beside her, bringing a forearm up to cover his eyes.

  Ainsley hesitated. She knew from her own experience that sometimes the aftermath of a flashback made a person want to be alone in a dark room, a nest of sorts in which to seek shelter. A den in which to lick the proverbial wounds.

  But sometimes, a hard hug – that human contact – did the trick more quickly and e
fficiently. She remembered what Ben said, and worried for a moment whether Cal was in fact dangerous. Sometimes the aftermath left people weak as babies, and sometimes they lashed out. Taking a gamble, she rolled onto her side, careful not to bump into him with her bad ankle, and put her arm across his waist.

  Cal froze, but it was only momentary. Before Ainsley quite knew what was happening, he’d rolled toward her, and his mouth was on hers again.

  She’d initiated the first kiss because… well, because. Because he’d gone out of his way for her today, and because she found him damned attractive. He was a smartass, and a bit too earthy and primal to be her type, but attractive despite that.

  Or maybe because of that.

  She didn’t have the opportunity to pursue that thought, though, as Cal’s mouth ravishing hers demanded her attention. His facial scruff rubbed against her cheeks, her chin, abrading the tender flesh there. His lips and tongue were ruthless in their demand.

  This wasn’t an outpouring of lust, Ainsley recognized. Not like their earlier kiss had been. This was need.

  A desperate need that if left unchecked was going to result in them having sex right here on the dusty floor.

  “Cal,” she said when his mouth left hers to trail open-mouthed kisses down her neck. Ainsley closed her eyes, knowing that she needed to stop him. This wasn’t the time or the place. Not to mention the fact that she’d met him just that morning. “Cal, we can’t. Callum.” She threaded her fingers through his hair, fought the surprisingly strong urge to pull him even closer, to comfort him with her body. Instead, she gently pushed him away. “We can’t.”

  His mouth stilled on the side of her neck, hot against her sensitized skin while he fought to bring himself back under control. Gradually, his grip on her eased and he rolled onto his back again. Ainsley shuddered out a breath. She wasn’t sure at what point over the past several hours she’d come to trust him, but she didn’t think he would have persisted, or hurt her in any way. Still, she didn’t really know him. And during the midst of a flashback, people weren’t themselves. Part of her wanted to ask Ben what grounds he had for warning her off, but that seemed intrusive. She felt like she should do Cal the courtesy of asking him himself. Either way, she was relieved that things hadn’t gotten out of hand.