Praise for Vickie McKeehan’s Novels
“Strong, distinctive characters. I cannot wait to get my hands on the next book.”
Just Evil
- Coffee Time Romance and More -
“Queen of suspense…”
Just Evil
- Jill D. Hidy, author of The Old World Series -
“…an excellent storyteller…”
Deeper Evil
- Toye Lawson Brown, author of When the Music Stops -
“A must read trilogy.”
Ending Evil
- Rosalie A. Pope, author of Puppies For Sale $25.00 -
“A brilliant and rewarding read.”
Promise Cove
- Bestchicklit.com -
“For an entertaining adventure and love story,
I highly recommend.”
Hidden Moon Bay
- Marilyn Holdsworth, author of Pegasus -
“You feel Keegan and Cord’s sorrows, pain, and love…”
Dancing Tides
- John Chavez, reader -
The Evil Secrets Trilogy
JUST EVIL - Book One
DEEPER EVIL - Book Two
ENDING EVIL - Book Three
The Pelican Pointe Series
PROMISE COVE
HIDDEN MOON BAY
DANCING TIDES
LIGHTHOUSE REEF
STARLIGHT DUNES
LAST CHANCE HARBOR
SEA GLASS COTTAGE
LAVENDER BEACH
The Skye Cree Novels
THE BONES OF OTHERS
THE BONES WILL TELL
THE BOX OF BONES
HIS GARDEN OF BONES
The Indigo Brothers Trilogy
2016
Exclusively at Amazon in print and Kindle format
Deeper Evil
The Evil Secrets Trilogy
Book Two
Vickie McKeehan
Deeper Evil
The Evil Secrets Trilogy
Copyright (c) 2013 by Vickie McKeehan
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Published by Beachdevils Press
ISBN: 978-1-4524-0848-4 eBook
ISBN: 978-0-6156-4480-6 Paperback
Printed in the USA
Cover art design by Audrey Mackaman
J.D. Stroube of Dreamscape Covers
www.dreamscapecovers.com
Visit the author at:
www.vickiemckeehan.com
www.facebook.com/VickieMcKeehan
For Deep, my favorite Oompa Loompa,
and the best lunch buddy a girl could have.
Not everyone is willing to share their fries without complaint.
“The evil that men do lives after them;
the good is oft interred with their bones.”
William Shakespeare
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
Deeper Evil
The Evil Secrets Trilogy
Book Two
CHAPTER 1
Sunny Southern California was turning out to be better than he’d originally thought, much better. It was warmer, for one thing, late May with spring still blossoming and coming to life around him.
Even though the locals kept mentioning something they called May Gray and grumbling about the upcoming June Gloom, he hadn’t really noticed. The days seemed no more overcast than the ones he’d grown up with in his native Ireland.
But Los Angeles definitely had its advantages. From his little hotel patio, he could sit and enjoy the beach as it slowly filled each morning with female bodies slicked with oil baking in the bright warm sun. Like this morning. He had started his day watching six gorgeously toned women play a game of beach volleyball wearing, God bless them, tiny little strips of fabric that barely covered tits and ass. Who needed Aruba when he had only to kick back and enjoy those hot bodies mere steps away from his own door?
He was living in paradise, enjoying the fruits of his labor.
And he hadn’t felt this invigorated in twenty years.
Weeks earlier, he’d been burned out, ready for Prozac. But now for the first time in years, thanks to this last mission, he was actually enjoying life. In a way, helping Kit Griffin last night made him feel as if he were making up for all of his mistakes.
And there were plenty of those. But he wasn’t going to waste time dwelling on them.
At his age, this might be his last chance to do something positive, make a change, and maybe take that first step toward cutting back on his nicotine and alcohol intake. God knew he loved the ten cigs he allowed himself daily, as well as his late-night measure of Jameson.
Had the media not labeled him an overnight hero, he might not be thinking about taking better care of himself. Amused at his own thoughts as well as the swell to his ego, he did his best to imagine himself as one of the good guys.
And just couldn’t bring the image into focus. He’d crossed over into the dark too many years ago for that picture to fully take shape.
Last night, as part of that first step, he’d promised Kit Griffin he’d keep her and her friends safe, a different direction for him to be sure. It wasn’t like him to promise anyone anything. The less involved you got, the better. That had been his motto for decades, something he lived by. He made very few promises.
But those made were always kept.
In his line of work that might be unheard of. Hit men rarely lived by a code of honor. But then, the few the proud, hadn’t been trained by Noah Parker.
As he glanced across the cobbled Main Street in the direction of the Book & Bean, he realized the role of protector might be new. A hero he wasn’t.
But even now, he knew Baylee Scott was inside the store alone with her baby daughter, working in place of Kit this morning because Kit Griffin was still trying to recover from her kidnapping ordeal from last night.
From the moment he’d opened his eyes that morning, his instincts had kicked in. He’d learned long ago never to ignore a gut feeling. Something was up. Years of tracking the quarry had him feeling antsy. It was the reason he’d driven up to San Madrid at the crack of dawn, the reason he’d left those hot bodies playing on the sand.
And even if he happened to be wrong this morning, because he’d seen no signs of the Boyd brothers, there was no way he could walk away now. No, the last couple of weeks had already set the wheels in motion. There was no going back. He’d been prepared to accept the consequences then, whatever they were.
And he still was. Today was no different. Looking back would get him nowhere.
He could not have predicted the chain of events the past few weeks would
set in motion, nor the rippling effects. Who knew the three Boyd sons would throw down an entirely different kind of challenge, one he wouldn’t be able to walk away from now?
Add in the fact that he still had a score to settle with Collin Boyd for kidnapping Kit last night and he had all matters of unfinished business with the Boyd clan.
Collin had a nasty wound to his shoulder. He ought to know, he’d put it there. He intended to finish the job first chance he got just as soon as the bastard came out of hiding. And if he didn’t crawl out from under his rock, he’d go in and dig him out. It was just that simple.
It was true he still had a few things left on his to-do list before he could call it quits in L.A. The remaining law partner for one. At some point, Frank Geller would have to be taken down. It wasn’t fair to let him off the hook, to escape payback when he’d been in on the ground floor of the plan from day one like his sister Jessica and her husband Sumner.
They had already paid the ultimate price for their greed. He’d seen to that. In time, so would Frank Geller. But now was not the time to get impatient or careless or tip his hand too early. He might be unaccustomed to this role of guardian, but he intended to do whatever it took to see this thing through to the end.
The way he saw it, quite a few lives depended on it.
Standing behind the scarred oak counter inside the Book & Bean, the only coffee shop in San Madrid, a tiny fishing village north of L.A., Baylee Scott put the finishing touches on a latte.
At just after seven in the morning, she glanced at the line snaking out the door and wondered how many of the customers were there for the coffee and pastries or how many were reporters or curiosity seekers who had watched last night’s newscast and wanted to catch a glimpse of the kidnap victim.
Baylee shook her head at the idea of people coming to gawk at Kit Griffin, her lifelong friend and owner of the Book & Bean.
What kind of people did that? She wondered. Because she didn’t recognize most of the people as regulars, that alone told her the people in line were more than likely reporters of one sort or another, who had made the trip hoping to get a quote or pick up some glimmer of gossip they could pass on, and sate whatever audience they attracted.
The whole media circus didn’t sit well with Baylee. Not only did she feel incensed at the intrusion on Kit’s behalf to her friend’s personal life, but she very much feared this entire ordeal would bring to her door a person she’d been trying to evade for more than a year.
As she steamed milk for another latte, she did her best to calm her nerves and think like practical Kit did. She tried to concentrate on how much extra business these prying parasites might bring in today.
But it was difficult to tamp down her fear in lieu of how good this would all be for the bottom line.
Baylee recalled yesterday’s mad house when the media had invaded the little town with their crews and cameras in tow, hoping to edge out the competition to get an exclusive interview with the prime suspect in the Alana Stevens murder. She was sure the police had purposely leaked the fact that Kit had suffered years of physical abuse at the hands of her mother—or rather the woman who had merely raised her. That had brought the reporters swarming like vultures over a dead carcass in the road. And once they’d discovered that Kit was involved with Jake Boston, the software mogul who was still the prime suspect in his wife’s slaying two years earlier, the media had played that relationship angle to the hilt.
Two separate murder cases, two murder suspects linked together as a couple; the press had gone wild, Baylee mused now, as she poured coffee into an oversized mug and plated a couple of cinnamon rolls for the next customer.
The way the media had portrayed Jake and Kit, one would have thought the two presented the biggest single threat to the greater Los Angeles area since The Hillside Stranglers.
But as ludicrous as it had seemed yesterday, the store had experienced its most successful day money-wise since opening four years earlier.
Even though Kit and Jake’s connection to each other had created a firestorm of interest—at least it had for about forty-five minutes—the news of Kit’s kidnapping last night had changed everything.
Baylee shook her head just thinking how fickle the media could be. She glanced at the wild-eyed, sleep-deprived reporters waiting in line. Some of them looked as though they had been up all night. Funny what a difference twenty-four hours could make, she thought.
It had taken a kidnapping to put another twist in the story and brought them back full circle to the Book & Bean for Round Two.
Today, they seemed to be working the sympathetic angle, convinced Jake and Kit had been wrongly accused. She could laugh now because they certainly hadn’t been convinced yesterday of the couple’s innocence.
But once they discovered the wealthy Collin Boyd, son of slain murder victims Jessica and Sumner Boyd, had taken Kit hostage, the story had dominated the six o’clock newscast. Then at ten o’clock, those same news reporters had announced her rescue. And that was before anyone had known about the faceless, unknown stranger who had come charging into an abandoned warehouse in Thousand Oaks where Collin had been holding Kit, and saved the day. He’d shot Kit’s captors, including Collin, and then called Jake to come pick her up.
By the time Jake had arrived, the stranger had already disappeared. Jake had found Kit still unconscious. Luckily by the time she woke up in the hospital, she hadn’t remembered a thing about the kidnapping other than the role Collin had played in the whole thing.
The fact that Jake had found one of those mysterious gold cowboys that had been left with each of the other victims clutched in the palm of Kit’s hand suggested that the man who had come to her rescue was the same one who had murdered Alana as well as all the others—and now for whatever reason had decided to play hero.
No one close to Kit felt like complaining.
Kit was alive, thanks to the stranger, and tucked away in her little bungalow along the water’s edge.
As Baylee waited on yet another customer, she thought the whole thing sounded like the plot from one of her father’s action movies.
No wonder the media had shown up again, she thought moodily as she absently wiped down the counter once more before taking another order.
Looking out over the strange faces in the crowded shop, Baylee thought she recognized some of the same on-air television reporters from yesterday. As more news vans pulled up in front of the store, it was clear they were staking the place out, hoping to find out more about Kit’s mystery savior.
Even now, they were clamoring to get another story for the noon newscast. It made her stomach burn to think the sharks were circling. They were obviously waiting for Jake and Kit to make an appearance so they could jockey for a quote on camera, no less.
Well, they’ll be sorely disappointed on that score, thought Baylee, as she expertly worked the espresso machine, mixing together java with steaming milk, working on making the perfect blend. She doubted Jake intended to let Kit out of his sight for days yet.
Baylee sighed. She hoped they weren’t staking out Kit’s house at this very moment. Her friend desperately needed some downtime.
That was the reason why she’d offered to open up for the next couple of mornings even if it meant she and Sarah had to get up extra early to make the drive in from Agoura Hills, from the sweet little guest cottage she’d rented from Gloria.
Baylee didn’t mind. Kit was more like family, more like a sister than her best friend. They would do anything for each other. The least she could do was mind the store to keep Kit away from the prying eyes and the inane questions of the pesky media. Even though it might mean she and Sarah risked wandering into the spotlight right along with Kit and Jake.
She shook off the alarm that wanted to creep in. Chancing a quick look at her almost six-month-old daughter, who sat in her swing behind the counter, content for the moment to chew on a red plastic teething bracelet, Baylee sucked in a breath. Knowing Collin had been desperate enou
gh to kidnap Kit last night was bad enough and sent chills down her arms in spite of the heat from the espresso machine.
But as she methodically passed the finished product, the latte, to the waiting hands of her customer, she fought off images of what Collin’s brother, Connor, might do if he found out she was here in San Madrid, and had been for months.
She needed to think about leaving L.A. for good. The problem with taking off again though, meant she’d be leaving behind her dying father, not to mention the fact that she’d have to go on the run with Sarah.
How could she keep doing that to her baby daughter? Sarah deserved better. To Baylee it seemed she’d been on the move ever since the baby’s birth, unsettled, moving from place to place.
She had to get her life back on track. But how could she do that when she was so terrified Connor would find out about the baby? The idea put the reality of her situation front and center.
As she wiped down the counter again for the twentieth time that morning, Baylee thought about what she wanted. She wanted for her and Sarah to be left alone, to feel secure again; she wanted her life back the way it had been before Connor Boyd had crossed her path and shown her the dark side of his life. She wanted to be left alone to raise Sarah on her own. And she’d do anything, absolutely anything, to ensure he never learned Sarah existed.
Was that asking too much? If she hadn’t had to come back to L.A. because of her father’s cancer, she would still be living in Denver, where she’d given birth. Living back with her friend, Blair Rafferty, the person she’d turned to during her pregnancy, and who had given her a job.
She knew she’d hurt her friends, Kit and Quinn, by doing that. By shutting them out, they had been excluded from participating in Sarah’s birth. But how could she explain what had happened? She couldn’t take the chance that Connor wouldn’t have followed through on his threats.
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