Reckoning and Ruin

by Tina Whittle

  “Idealistic liberal from an old-money conservative family. Takes on the scandalous cases no decent lawyer would touch, mostly to piss off said family. Why do you ask?”

  “He’s Jasper’s new lawyer. And his investigator is trying to set up an interview with me and Trey.”

  “Well now, that is a game changer.” He sheathed his weapon in its matching scabbard. “Are you ready to dig around in that again?”

  “Ready or not, I’m about to start.”

  The bugle sounded, calling him to arms. “Lovett is picky in his clientele. He prefers them rich and headline-making, but every now and then he signs up a less-than-wealthy client if he thinks the case is especially horrifying.”

  “Pro bono?”

  Reynolds snorted. “Hardly, though he will work on a contingency basis, I have heard. How does a miscreant like Jasper Boone come about such funds, or the promise of such thereof?”

  “You’re hitting the same question I have. You haven’t seen any odd transactions in the relic trade, have you?”

  He shook his head. Reynolds bought and sold on a higher plane than I did, up in the five-and-six-figure stratosphere. I specialized in tracking down specific single pieces, but he saw extensive collections come up for private auction. And he knew as well as I did that well-moneyed, well-connected racists were often the buyers or sellers. If Jasper had indeed found some white supremacist movement besides the KKK to be his savior, liquidating a few old relics might provide some hard cash.

  “I’ll send out some feelers come Monday and let you know what I find,” he said. He fixed me with a watery, but dead serious eye. “As you know, such organizations as we are speaking of are not charities. Jasper would have to have something to offer them in return besides his undying loyalty.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” I adjusted the hang of his scabbard. “There. Once more into the breach. Fingers crossed things turn out differently for you this time, Private Harrington.”

  He bowed low, sweeping his hat. “Ah, m’dear, I suspect things will play out exactly as they have before. They always do.”

  ***

  I remembered his words after the melee, when the sun finally set on the battle and the last pick-up trucks growled away, the last picnickers with them. I did most of the clean-up myself while Kenny engaged in the post-battle rundown with his unit. The morning air had been heated into starchy afternoon stillness, but a graying sky and the kick-up of fresh wind meant rain was on the way, so I didn’t tarry.

  I’d packed the last box when an unfamiliar man stepped up to my counter, bare now of any goods. His khaki shorts and black tee were clean, his pale face unstriped with dirt or grass. He wore his black cap low on his forehead, the brim obscuring his eyes, and there was something off about him. Not a reenactor, not a spectator, not a fellow sutler from one of the other shops.

  “Tai Randolph?” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Owner and proprietor of Dexter’s Guns and More?”

  “Yes.” I kept my expression blandly professional. “Can I help you with something?”

  “Yes, you can.” He pushed the cap back, his pale eyes penetrating, uncomfortably so. He got a good long look at me, then handed over a large manila envelope. “You can consider yourself officially served.”

  I ripped open the envelope and dumped the contents on my table. I started to feel sick to my stomach, and then the nausea ripened into ripping pure anger. Suddenly, I knew where Jasper thought he was going to get the money for his extravagant new defense.

  I shoved the envelope and its contents away and looked up. “You can tell that lousy waste of oxygen who sent you that—”

  But the man had vanished.

  Chapter Eight

  I slammed the trunk of the Camaro and put the phone to my ear again. “What the hell is he up to?”

  Trey’s voice held all the warmth of steel. “He’s suing us.”

  “I know what he’s doing, I want to know why he’s doing it!”

  “Because he wants nine million dollars in damages, most likely to pay for his new defense.”

  I flung myself behind the wheel and slammed the door. “Yeah, but he’s up to something else too. Even he knows there’s not a jury in the world gonna award a racist bastard like him that kind of settlement, not for a few well-deserved bullets and a kick to the knee.”

  “Which is probably why he’s serving as his own counsel in this matter. Because he couldn’t find a lawyer who’d take the case.”

  “Because it’s ridiculous!”

  “Yes, it is. But it’s happening nonetheless.”

  I cranked the engine, yanked the gearshift, and revved my car into a grass-spitting takeoff worthy of an Alabama dirt track. “The creepy son of a bitch who served me disappeared before I could ask any questions.”

  “Process servers don’t answer questions.”

  “Oh, but this wasn’t an official one from the sheriff’s department. No, this one knew exactly what he was delivering, and then he hot-footed it out of there before I could yell at him. Jasper hired him personally, I know he did.”

  “That seems likely as well.”

  I grumbled some more, gunned the engine. God, I wanted to skewer that arrogant murderous, conniving…

  I took a deep breath, blew it out. “What did Marisa say when she got her papers?”

  “The same things you did, I imagine. Worse perhaps.”

  That was the most outrageous part of the suit, Jasper’s allegation that when Trey and I defended ourselves, we were acting not as individuals, but as agents of our respective businesses. Which meant that he was technically suing the gun shop for three million, which meant that my co-owner brother was about to get involved, and Phoenix Corporate Security for six million, which meant that Marisa and her platoon of lawyers were already involved.

  “So she’s mad?”

  “Furious. Not at me personally, however, which is a good thing.” A pause. “She wants to meet tomorrow morning, as soon as she’s done with church. At the office.”

  “Do you need me to drive you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because of your shoulder, or because she wants to see me too?”

  “Both.”

  I cursed and banged the steering wheel, accidentally blaring the horn. The guy in the pick-up beside me honked back. I ignored him. Traffic leaving a reenactment event was always a bear. Lots of pedestrians milling about, half of them in circa-1865 garments carrying plastic coolers and talking on their cell phones.

  “This is why Garrity’s involved,” I said, “because they’re gonna make him testify about your resignation from the Atlanta PD. They’re gonna imply you’re damaged goods.”

  “It was officially a retirement. And I left with a clean record.”

  “Yes, but Jasper will twist and shred and…” I honked, this time with intent. “Get the hell out of the way!”

  “Tai. Hang up and drive.”

  Trey was right. I needed to concentrate before I ended up with a Confederate soldier as a hood ornament.

  “I’ll call when I leave the shop,” I said. “It shouldn’t take long to unpack, and then I’ll be on my way.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “And hey…” I felt the stubborn blush rising again. “Thanks for the roses.”

  “You got them?”

  “I did.”

  He didn’t speak for a second. “Okay. I’m glad.”

  And then he hung up abruptly. I stared at the phone until another car honked at me. Get it in gear, Tai, I reprimanded myself, and pointed the car toward Kennesaw.

  ***

  The almost-full moon cut through the clouds in a wash of light so bright I had to squint against it, illuminating the lot behind my shop. The building was shabby, but still standing, all two stories of it, with the shop on
the ground floor, my dinky apartment on the second. I pulled the Camaro into the parking spot beside the back entrance and climbed out into the night, locking the car behind me.

  A flicker of movement in the alley stopped me short. I automatically dipped my right hand into my carry bag until I felt the cool metal of my .38.

  “Who’s there?”

  The shadow stepped forward, and the security light flared to illuminate a woman with dark bangs, short hair tucked behind her ears. I wrapped my hand around the grip of the gun and thumbed it free from its holster.

  “Hope,” I said.

  She kept her hands in her pockets. “I was wondering when you’d come dragging in.”

  “You’re supposed to be in jail.”

  “Early release for good behavior.”

  I snorted.

  She tossed her head. “You can drop the attitude. I know the son of a bitch is in there.”

  “I have no idea which son of a bitch you mean.”

  “John. My husband. The one you’ve been trying to get back ever since he dumped you.”

  John Wilde. My most infamous ex, the one who’d run off with Hope, returning briefly a year later to drag me into a stew of betrayal and double-dealing and Ku Klux Klan workings. And now here was Hope, fresh from the clink and spoiling for a fight.

  I exhaled wearily. “John’s not here. I haven’t talked to him in five months.”

  “Then why was your number the last one he called?”

  She held up a phone and pressed redial. Sure enough, I heard my voice on the shop’s answering machine. “You’ve reached Tai Randolph at Dexter’s Guns and More, please leave—”

  She thumbed it off and glared at me. “Care to explain?”

  “Beats hell outta me. Ask your husband when you find him. Because he isn’t in there.”

  And then to my utter astonishment, Hope pulled a snub-nosed semi-auto out of her pocket and pointed the muzzle right between my feet.

  “I don’t think you’re taking me seriously,” she said.

  The gun trembled in her grasp. It was ridiculously tiny and probably less accurate than a slingshot, but she was barely twenty feet away, and shaky hands made for shaky trigger fingers. A year of training with Trey, and I snapped into survival headspace automatically. Unlike Trey, however, my hands trembled almost as badly as hers, especially the one plunged in my carry bag, wrapped around my revolver, heavy on my hip.

  Hope waved her gun in that direction. “Get your hand away from that bag and let me in that goddamn shop right now!”

  I kept my hand where it was. “Put that piece-of-shit gun away, and we’ll talk.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I tried to keep my voice neutral. “You may think you did something smart, sneaking over here like this. I know you’ve spotted the security cameras—you always had an eye for those—and so you’re staying in the alley, hunkered down in the blind spot. What you didn’t think about, couldn’t possibly consider, was the urban in-ground target detector.”

  She stared at me. The gun didn’t drop an inch.

  “You’re pretending you know what that is, but you don’t, so I’ll tell you. It’s a device set in the ground right about where you’re standing now, and it tripped the second you stepped on it. I don’t know how it works—I don’t even know where Trey finds these things—but as we speak it is pinging his phone with an intruder alert. So I’m guessing you’ve got anywhere from ten seconds to two minutes before he calls.”

  She raised the gun higher. “Then you’d better get ready to tell him everything’s fine.”

  I snorted. “Like that’ll work. The man’s a human lie detector, you know that. If he hears me trying to pull one over on him, he’s gonna drive that Ferrari over here like a bat out of hell. But he’s gonna call the Kennesaw police first, and then the Cobb County police, and anybody armed and uniformed on his speed dial.”

  She glared, the gun shaking in her hands.

  “So before this phone rings, I suggest you either drop the Calamity Jane routine or get the hell off my property. Your choice.”

  My phone buzzed, loud enough for her to hear, and she jerked in surprise. That was when I saw behind the bravado. She was shaking, but not from anger. From desperation and fear and probably sheer exhaustion. She wasn’t here to shoot me. She wasn’t here to shoot anybody, not even John Wilde, wherever the hell he was.

  I kept my voice level. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Something worse than your husband sneaking off to be with me?”

  She shivered, and the gun dropped a smidgen. The phone rang again, and she hesitated only a second before laying the weapon at her feet. She didn’t run, though. She stood there, fierce and resigned.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and put it to my ear. “Hey boyfriend, I’m just—”

  “The IGDT triggered. Someone’s—”

  “I know. I’m out here now.”

  “Who is it?”

  I hesitated. Despite what I’d told Hope, Trey couldn’t detect shit over the phone. He’d either do what I told him, or he’d launch into emergency protocol, and I didn’t really want SWAT cops helicoptering into my parking lot. Again.

  Trey’s voice was insistent. “Tai?”

  “It’s Hope.”

  “She’s supposed to be in jail.”

  “Early release, she says.”

  “You don’t know that. I’m calling—”

  “No cops.”

  “But—”

  “I’m serious. We’re just talking.”

  Across the lot, Hope stared. The post-adrenalin crash had me buzzed and cranky and a little confused, but I knew one thing—if things got official, Hope would bolt. And I didn’t want her doing that until I’d figured out what was going on because there was no way in hell her sudden appearance wasn’t a part of the mess Ainsworth Lovett was stirring up.

  At Trey’s end, I heard murmured conversation, the ding of the elevator. I gripped the phone tighter. “Trey Seaver, do not—”

  “I’m coming up there.”

  “No, you are not. For one, you’ve only got one good arm. For two, you’re hopped up on painkillers, and for three—”

  “I’m not driving, Gabriella is.”

  I felt a cold knot in my stomach. “Gabriella’s there?”

  “She came to check on me.”

  I bit back my response. Now was not the time to argue about his way-over-the-line ex. But the time was coming. Like a freight train it was coming.

  Trey’s voice was steady. “Did Hope come alone?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Have you checked the car?”

  “What car?”

  “The one out front. I assume it’s hers.”

  Crap. I’d forgotten to examine all the angles on the security feed.

  “I’ll do that in a second,” I said.

  “No, go inside the shop. Take Hope with you and keep her in sight at all times. And keep the surveillance channels open. I’ll monitor them on the way in.”

  “Only if you promise that we’ll handle this without official interference. No 911.”

  “Tai—”

  “I’m serious. Promise.”

  He was being even bossier than usual, and I felt a prickle at the small of my back. Eric had diagnosed this prickle as oppositional defiant disorder. I’d told him to shove it.

  Trey exhaled gruffly. “Copy that. I promise. No 911. I’ll be there in forty minutes. Don’t let her out of sight, understand?”

  “I understand. But—”

  He hung up. Despite my annoyance, I was relieved to know he was on the way. I was capable of taking care of myself, but Trey was SWAT-trained and situation-ready, and with Hope, I needed all the back-up I could get.

  Hope glared. “He’s coming up here, isn’t he
?”

  “Of course he is. He saved your life once, and he’ll do it again if he needs to, but he will tolerate no nonsense. Neither will I. Are we clear?”

  She started to say something, then bit it back. She looked like the only thing keeping her pilot light lit was pure anger, and now that it was burned up, her engine was running dry. I realized then that she’d wanted to find John here. That the alternative was too awful to comprehend.

  “What’s it gonna be, Hope? Deal with this all by yourself, or come into the shop and tell me what’s going on?”

  Hope hesitated for two seconds, then shoved past me toward the door. I caught the smell of sweat and stale fast food and knew she was truly desperate. Because out of all the people on the planet, I was the very last person she wanted to ask for help. Which meant she had no other place to go.

  I picked up her pistol and followed her inside.

  Chapter Nine

  I unlocked the door and switched on the lights, keeping one eye on Hope the whole time. She was strangely calm, almost dead-eyed. I examined her gun, a cheap and badly maintained .22 barely bigger than the palm of my hand. It was a classic junk gun, not very powerful or accurate, but quick and dirty and disposable provided it didn’t blow up in your hand.

  I popped the mag, checked the chamber, then stuck everything in the gun safe under the counter. “What are you doing with a firearm? They’ll violate you for that.”

  Her eyes flashed. “You gonna call my parole officer?”

  “Depends on what you say during the next five minutes.”

  She stood at my counter, scanning the room for exits and cover and security cameras. I’d watched Trey do the exact same thing every time he entered an unfamiliar space.

  “It’s not mine, it’s John’s,” she said. “I found it in the glove compartment.”

  “John hates guns.”

  “I guess he changed his mind.”

  “Why?”

  She didn’t answer. In the fluorescents, I could see her more clearly. Jeans, dirty at the knees. Dollar store flip-flops. She wore no make-up, and was thinner than I remembered, skinny now instead of willowy. Her clothes hung on her, and her eyes were red.