I didn’t love easy, and honestly I wasn’t even sure I knew what love was. I’d thought my parents had loved me. But I’d been wrong there.
Terror had crippled me after my brush with death. And I hated that about myself. I’d never been a coward. Had never been one to hide from a scandal or the terrible things that life seemed hell bent on throwing in my path. Lord knows I’d faced enough of them in my thirty years. But I guess everyone has a breaking point, and I’d finally met mine.
I was broken. And I had no idea how to fix myself.
I took another deep breath and slowly straightened my spine, wiping the inside of the windshield with the back of my sleeve to clear away the steam. I put the car in drive and checked my mirror for any traffic before I pulled back onto the road. It was habit. There would never be any traffic on these back roads at this time of night.
Bloody Mary, Virginia was like a throwback to another century. It was one of the four towns belonging to King George County and it was just shy of 3,000 of the most contrary people I’d ever met. My mother had always said it was because there was nothing to do in town except drink or procreate. My mother, come to find out, had been a consummate liar, but I was pretty sure she was right about that one thing.
It was a postcard of a town—towering trees and clapboard houses with American flags flying from the porches. The main roads were bricked and the sidewalks were cracked. It was a town that boasted family values and the American Dream. The shops closed before dark and everything was shut down on Sundays. People got up early and worked hard, and they went home to their families and home-cooked meals.
King George wasn’t a rich county, for the most part. There were pockets where the wealthy lived, of course, because the scenery lent itself well to the monstrous homes those with money tended to own. But most people in King George County were solid, blue-collar working class. It was a good place to raise a family and settle down to a comfortable life.
Maybe that was the reason driving back home made me feel out of place. A family and a comfortable life didn’t seem to be in the cards for me. I was fourth generation mortician. First generation law-abiding citizen. And I was all that was left of the Graves’ family legacy. By all accounts, I should have been buried next to my parents in the Bloody Mary Cemetery. But for some inexplicable reason, I was still breathing. The blood was still pumping through my body and causing my heart to pound erratically in my chest. I had no idea why God had chosen to spare me. It was just another thing to feel guilty for, wondering if He’d made the right decision.
My headlights slashed across the old playground equipment on the opposite side of the country road—rusted seesaws and metal slides that would blister the backs of some poor kids’ legs in the heat of the summer. There were patches of dirt where grass should have been and scarred picnic tables strategically placed under the towering oaks. It was a park well tended but in an area that couldn’t afford anything better.
The crunch of gravel beneath my tires seemed unusually loud over the whirr of the car heater, and my head turned automatically in surprise when a gust of wind had the seesaw moving up and down on its own, giving a ride to what I imagined to be the ghosts of two invisible children. My skin chilled and my flesh pebbled as I got the sense I wasn’t alone.
But it wasn’t ghosts I had to worry about. It was flesh and blood. Human. At least what was left of him. His skin was pale in the glare of my headlights, and now that I’d seen him I wondered how I ever could have missed him.
“Oh, shit.”
I made a hard left with the wheel and drove onto the playground, so the bright yellow of my headlights gave center stage to the man chained to the tree. His naked body was mangled and so bloody I couldn’t pinpoint the mortal wound. Heavy chains wrapped around his chest—I got the impression they were there to hold him up instead of restraining him. His dark hair hung down and his hands were limp at his sides, though from the looks of his misshapen fingers they would have been useless anyway.
I felt the initial rush of fear even as my training kicked in.
In a former life that seemed like an eternity ago, I’d been a medical doctor doing rounds in the ER at Augusta General. After my parents had died amidst lies and scandal, I’d had no choice but to pack up and move back to Bloody Mary and take over the family mortuary business. Mostly because it was damned hard to do rounds while the FBI was trying to question me about my parents’ illegal activities. It didn’t put patients at ease when they found out my parents had been using their funeral home to hide and transport smuggled goods. Sins of the fathers, and all that. Go figure.
Once I’d moved back home and taken over the business (or what was left of it), I’d somehow gotten roped into acting as coroner for the whole county. Fortunately, we didn’t get a lot of suspicious deaths in this part of the country unless you counted the serial killer who’d murdered three people last winter. Almost four.
I took a long look around the area and shoved my cell phone in my pocket before flinging the door of the Suburban open and stepping to the ground. The piercing cold of a March wind slapped at my face and sliced through my long wool coat, past the threadbare lining and straight to my bones. I didn’t bother with gloves. I stuck my hand inside my coat pocket and pulled out the small Beretta that had become like an appendage since my incident.
The wind blew the door of the Suburban shut almost before I could get out, and I looked around slowly, trying to see beyond the thick copse of trees and past the shadows that resembled grotesque pictures of my darkest nightmares.
Guilt was a vicious and cruel emotion. In the past I would have rushed straight to the victim, searching for that one last hope that he might have a chance for survival. But I learned the hard way that survival is something you have to fight for, and sometimes you have to be selfish when it comes down to your life or a stranger’s.
I breathed out slowly and put the Beretta back in my pocket, focusing my full attention on the man. If I’d had my wits about me sooner, I would have realized at first glance that hope for his survival had run out a long time ago.
Whoever had done this to the man had made a mess out of him. It looked like his hands and feet had both been broken, as well as his knees. There were small wounds all over his body, but most of the blood loss came from the area of his genitals. Someone had decided to castrate the victim and remove all signs of his manhood. Blood loss and shock would have been enough to kill him.
I fought back the urge to start an examination. I didn’t have my kit or any gloves, and technically I wasn’t coroner since I’d taken leave after my own brush with death.
But something stirred inside me that I hadn’t felt over the last three months. A spark of life. Of purpose. Lying in a hospital bed gave a person too much time to think—to question how much worth one really had. And I wanted this case. I wanted to keep my mind and my hands busy so I wouldn’t think of other things.
I needed to call into the station and report the scene, but even the thought had my breath hitching and sweat streaking down my spine in cold rivulets. I wasn’t sure I was ready to face them all. My friends. My acquaintances. My enemies. Being back in town would almost be as big news as the body. But mostly I wasn’t ready to face Jack.
There wasn’t a choice. The universe had decided it wasn’t through with me yet, even though I’d started to wonder. I’d have to face everyone sooner or later, so I pulled the phone from my pocket and dialed before I could second-guess myself.
“Dispatch,” a woman answered.
“This is Doctor Graves. I’ve got a body.”
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Chapter One
The slap, slap, slap of his shoes hitting the pavement echoed in the fog that crept over the sleeping city.
He was slicked with sweat and his lungs burned with each laboring breath, but still he ran faster, punishing his body, punishing himself, as he fought
the urge to look over his shoulder. It never seemed to matter how fast he ran, because his past continued to haunt him.
Shane Quincy knew all about ghosts and personal demons. He knew about the terror of the innocent and their screams that still filled his head. He knew about heartbreak and sorrow because it plagued him with every breath he took. And most of all, he knew about fear—fear that clawed its way up from the pit of his belly and left a bitter taste in his mouth—and horrors so devastating they could break even the toughest FBI Hostage and Rescue Sniper.
And he had been the toughest. The best the FBI had ever had to offer.
He slowed his steps as a heavy drizzle blanketed the deserted New Orleans street and hunched over, propping his hands on his knees as he gasped for breath and tried to ease the aching in his chest. He knew from experience that the ache would never go away, but he tried just the same.
For two years his routine hadn’t changed. The nightmares would come, waking him in a cold sweat with the taste of bile rising in the back of his throat. The covers would be damp and twisted beneath his restless body and his senses would be primed. But the echoes of the screams were only in his imagination, so he’d slip on his sweatpants and a t-shirt, leave his empty apartment, careful not to disturb the dark-haired woman he shared the third floor with, and he’d run for miles through The Big Easy. Fast and hard, as if he were running for his life. And in some ways he was.
The drizzle turned into a downpour and Shane laughed bitterly as he raised his face to the sky. He began running again, this time at a slower tempo, and turned left off of First Street onto Prytania, where the historic mansion that housed six different apartment units was located. He never would have been able to afford the place when he was working for the FBI, but he’d found out very quickly after he’d turned in his resignation that private security paid a hell of a lot more than working for the government.
His skin was chilled and his dark hair, which was in desperate need of a trim, dripped into his eyes as he typed in the security code for the wrought iron gate that protected him and the other residents. Only four of the six units were currently occupied, the effects of Katrina and Rita still making people wary of putting down roots. There was a young couple on the first floor, both of them attorneys at a large firm, a tenured professor at Loyola on the second floor, and the woman who’d moved in a couple of months ago across the hall from him.
Shane wasn’t afraid to admit that the new neighbor had given him a restless night or two after she’d first moved in. Apparently a peaches and cream complexion, raven hair and pale blue eyes were enough to jump-start his libido after a long hiatus. He hadn’t wanted a woman in two years.
Not since Maggie had died.
But he wanted his new neighbor, and because of the fierce need that had caught him unawares, he did his damnedest to stay out of her way. He didn’t know anything about her and it didn’t look like things would ever be any different since she’d never gone out of her way to say more than a lukewarm hello. The same could be said about all the neighbors, which in his opinion made it the perfect place to live.
Along the outside of the building, freshly painted, white wooden stair cases led to each level of the house and split in different directions to each apartment door. Shane was almost to the third floor before he smelled the smoke. The rain and the wind had dampened the scent so it was barely recognizable, but it was there. He was sure of it.
He raced the rest of the way to the third floor and saw the licks of flame taunting him from the windows. The sight was hypnotic, the reds and oranges of the fire as it danced a path of destruction. The front door and one of the windows was open, feeding the inferno with much needed oxygen so it spread quickly through the rooms, up the thick drapes and onto the ceiling. Black smoke billowed out the open window and door, and he cursed himself for leaving his cell phone on his nightstand. He heard the fire alarms shrieking and hoped the other tenants made it out safely.
He didn’t pay attention to the splintered wood on the open door as he charged into the smoke and biting flames to see if his neighbor was still inside. His adrenaline was pumping and he didn’t miss the irony of the situation, that a failure such as himself would be put in the role of hero once again. He hadn’t been able to save anyone in a long time. He could barely save himself.
The apartment was a mirror image of his own, and he ran with familiarity down the long hallway to the bedrooms at the back. Paint blistered on the walls. Black smoke blurred his vision and clogged his lungs, so he ducked down on his hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way to the bedroom. The fire wasn’t contained to one area but seemed to be everywhere at once, racing toward some unseen finish line where the prize was utter destruction. The blaze was scorching hot and windows shattered as the pressure built hotter and higher inside the fiery walls.
Shane heard the coughs and the pants that sounded more animal than human as he crawled over the threshold into the master bedroom. The air was slightly clearer, but it wouldn’t be for long. He stood up quickly and used his shirt to wipe his burning eyes before taking stock of the situation. What he saw built a fury in his gut that he hadn’t felt in a long time.
The woman was handcuffed to the wooden slats on her headboard, her eyes wide and panic-stricken, and they became even more so when she saw him enter the room. The lady was terrified, but not just of the fire. She was afraid of him, and her struggles became even more frantic. He knew she would have screamed if she could have, but the smoke was thick and she doubled over in a coughing fit. Her black hair was matted around her temples and the boxer shorts and tank top she’d been sleeping in were wilted and sweat slicked. Her wrist was raw and bloody where she’d been pulling against her restraints.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Shane called out. He didn’t know if she heard him or not, but he moved toward her anyway because they were running out of time. He could hear the blare of sirens from below, but it was up to him to get them both out alive.
He touched her on the shoulder and was caught off guard as she came up swinging with her free hand. It barely glanced off his shoulder, but he was impressed by her tenacity. She was no coward, that was for sure.
“I’m not going to let you kill me!” she screamed. “When I get out of here I’m going to send you back to my uncle in a body cast.”
She fought against him like a caged animal until he wrapped both of his arms around her and squeezed tightly.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he repeated. “We’ve got to get out of here. We’re running out of time.”
She went into another fit of coughing and he used her distraction to kick at the wooden slats on the headboard. They were sturdy and thick, the antique obviously made to last centuries. Shane kicked again and put everything he had behind the force. The woman finally caught on that he was there to help and began pulling her weight against the steel bonds. A crack echoed through the room as the headboard gave way, and Shane barely caught her as the momentum from pulling against the cuffs almost sent them both to the floor.
Shane grabbed her around the waist and hauled her up over his shoulder. The smoke from the hallway was billowing into the room, so he carried her into the bathroom and shut the door behind him, buying them a few precious seconds. The large picture window behind the tub was the only way out. Black smoke crept under the door, and Shane used the small vanity chair sitting at the woman’s dressing table to knock out the glass in the window. Fresh oxygen whooshed into the room and he gulped in a breath before the smoke found the opening he’d made.
He looked down three stories and felt his heart lodge in his throat. He’d been in a lot of deadly situations and thought he was going to die on more than one occasion, but he couldn’t remember the feeling ever being more prevalent than it was right now.
They couldn’t jump three stories. It was out of the question.
The bathroom window overlooked the side of the house, and if he leaned out far enough he could see the wide, wrap-a-rou
nd porch that led to their front doors. Black smoke still billowed out the front door and open windows, but the fire department was at work, taming the beast as best they could with gallons of water. If he could throw her far enough and then jump himself, they might just have a chance. It was their only option.
Shane put the woman down gently and noticed her eyes were still wide with shock. He stripped his shirt off and used it to clear the glass shards from the window so he didn’t cut them both to pieces.
“Are you with me, Sugar?” he asked, swiping his thumb across her sooty face. “I’m going to toss you over to the railing. Do you think you’re strong enough to grab hold?”
“I’m strong enough,” she said with assurance. “And I’m not your Sugar.”
“Yes, maam,” Shane said with a smile and grabbed her around the waist. He maneuvered them both out the window until he straddled the sill. “Use your feet to propel you,” he instructed as he showed her where to place her feet.
“On three,” he said.
He waited for her nod and began to count. “One, two…”
Shane heaved with all his might at the same time that she pushed off the windowsill. Time was suspended as she flew through the air. He could hear every heartbeat that thudded in his chest and waited, what seemed like minutes but in reality was only a few short seconds, until she caught the railing with both hands.
He took a split second to heave a sigh of relief and then went after her, propelling himself off the ledge with a strength that had been lying dormant for two years. He climbed over the railing quickly and helped pull her over before grabbing her around the waist and hurtling down the stairs as fast as his legs could carry both of them.
Shane noticed the other tenants standing back away from the house in their nightclothes. They were unharmed and stood transfixed as the wild orange fire was conquered. The cop in him looked around to see if anyone was overly interested in the blaze, but there was no one that stood out in the crowd. He noticed the woman was doing the same, but she was fading fast into exhaustion and shock. If someone wanted to kill her, she would be an easy target after the ordeal she’d just gone through.
Dirty Little Secrets (Romantic Mystery) Book 1 in the J.J. Graves Series Page 21