Close Enough to Kill

by Beverly Barton

  “Hello, Captain Norton.”

  Jim swallowed hard, but his hands remained steady. He kept the gun aimed at Scotty Joe. “Let her go.”

  “You’re a lot smarter than I gave you credit for,” Scotty Joe said. “How’d you figure out it was me?”

  “I said, let her go.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  Robyn’s eyes widened in terror.

  “It’s over, Melvin,” Jim said. “We know everything. All about how the Sable Girls humiliated you, about your nervous breakdown. We know about your metamorphosis while you were in the Army, changing from skinny, nerdy Melvin Smith into macho guy Scotty Joe Walters. And we know you killed Heather and the other Sable Girls. Then when that didn’t satisfy your thirst for revenge, you began killing their look-alikes.”

  “You’ve been a busy boy, haven’t you, Captain?”

  “Let Robyn go. If you don’t, I’ll have to shoot you.”

  Scotty Joe laughed, the sound maniacal. And unnerving.

  “I can break her neck before you can shoot me.” He tightened his fingers around Robyn’s throat.

  “Are you willing to bet your life on it?” Jim asked.

  “Are you willing to bet Robyn’s life?”

  Without another word, without another thought, Jim pulled the trigger. Robyn screamed. The bullet entered Scotty Joe’s head, dead center between his eyebrows. When he fell, Robyn fell with him.

  Jim ran across the room, his weapon in his hand. He knelt and inspected Scotty Joe’s body. The guy was dead. He returned his gun to the holster, then reached down and rolled the young deputy over and off Robyn. He scooped her shivering body up into his arms. As he carried her past the metal bed, he reached out, yanked off the top sheet and wrapped it around her.

  She lay cuddled in his arms, weeping softly, clinging to him for dear life. He paused at the bottom of the steps. “I’m going to toss you over my shoulder until we get out of this hole.”

  When they emerged from the bomb shelter dungeon, Jim paused long enough to call Charlie Patterson. “I’ve got her. We’re coming out.”

  “What about Scotty Joe?” Charlie asked.

  “The son of a bitch is dead. You’ll find his body in the bomb shelter.”

  The moment Bernie saw Jim walk out of the old building, with Robyn in his arms, she raced toward them. Her father and Raymond were only a few steps behind her. In the background, a cheer rose from the deputies.

  Bernie caressed her sister’s pale face; then she leaned over and kissed her forehead. Tears streamed down Bernie’s cheeks, over her mouth and dripped off her chin.

  “I—I’m alive,” Robyn said. “I’m alive.”

  “You sure are, baby girl.” R.B. grabbed Robyn’s limp hand, brought it to his lips and kissed it.

  Bernie looked at Jim and mouthed the words Thank you.

  Jim glanced at Raymond, who stood there crying and trembling. Jim handed Robyn over to Raymond, who immediately opened his arms and took her from Jim. Holding her close and pressing his face against hers, he said, “You’re going to be all right, sweetheart. There’s an ambulance waiting.”

  “Don’t leave me.” She clung to Raymond.

  “Never.”

  When Raymond turned and headed for the ambulance, R.B. started to go after them. Jim reached out and grasped R.B.’s arm. “She’ll always be your little girl, but it’s time you turn her over to another man. The man who loves her and wants to take care of her.”

  With tears trickling down his weathered face, R.B. nodded, then glanced from Jim to Bernie and then back at Jim. “I suppose you want me to turn this one over to you.”

  “Damn straight,” Jim said.

  R.B. reached out and shook Jim’s hand. “Thank you, son.” R.B. swallowed. “I need to call Brenda and tell her to meet us at the hospital.” Making direct eye contact with Jim, R.B. asked, “How bad did he hurt her?”

  Jim hesitated. “She’s alive. That’s all that matters.”

  R.B. clenched his teeth tightly, then walked toward Charlie Patterson, leaving Jim and Bernie alone. R.B. pulled out his cell phone, hit his home number and spoke to his wife.

  Jim turned to Bernie and held out his hand. When she put her hand in his, they headed across the parking lot toward her Jeep. Pausing by the SUV’s hood, Bernie faced him.

  “How will I ever be able to thank you for solving the case and saving my sister?”

  Jim slid his arm around her waist and yanked her up against him. “I think spending the next forty or fifty years with me should be thanks enough.”

  “The next forty or—Jim Norton, was that a proposal?”

  “Yeah, I guess it was.”

  “It wasn’t a very romantic proposal.”

  “Honey, I told you that I’m not a romantic kind of guy.”

  Bernie lifted her arms up and around his neck, then kissed him. All the while thanking God for sparing her sister’s life. And for giving Jim and her a second chance at love.

  Epilogue

  Brenda and R.B. Granger celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary surrounded by their two daughters, their two sons-in-law, and their four grandchildren. The gala event was held at—where else?—the country club. Bernie and Robyn had spent months preparing for the lavish party, every detail discussed with and approved by their mother, of course.

  After Robyn’s terrifying experience with Scotty Joe Walters, she had spent months in therapy. With the love and support of her family and her fiancé, she had recovered by slow degrees. Although she had returned to work almost immediately, it had taken her over a year to begin living her life without fear, to be able to plan and prepare for her wedding. Robyn and Raymond shared their big day with over three hundred people, on a warm, sunny day in June. Bernie had been the matron of honor, since she and Jim had married on New Year’s Day the year before, having chosen the date because it represented new beginnings. Bernie and Jim’s wedding had been simple, held in her parents’ home, with only immediate family and close friends in attendance. It had been what they’d both wanted.

  Brenda and R.B. were in their element as grandparents, first with Kevin, then with the other three. Both had been ecstatic when, only six months after her elaborate June wedding, Robyn announced she was pregnant. Rea Long was as beautiful as her mother and grandmother before her, but Robyn liked to point out that Rea had Raymond’s gorgeous eyes. The precocious little imp had every man in the family eating out of the palm of her delicate seven-year-old hand.

  Rea sashayed up to her grandmother and announced in a loud yet ladylike voice, “Grandmother, Bobby ran into Brenda Anne and she spilled punch on my new patent leather shoes. Those two little cousins of mine are absolute hooligans.” Rea sighed dramatically.

  Brenda managed to mask her smile. “Since you’re seven and they’re only five, it’s your responsibility to set a good example for them.”

  Bernie grinned at Robyn and shrugged. “Sorry, Sis. If Rea’s shoes are ruined—”

  “Don’t worry,” Robyn replied. “I’m sure the punch will wash right off.” Then she whispered, her words for Bernie’s ears only, “That crack Rea made about your twins being hooligans—you know that didn’t come from Raymond or me. She just repeated what she’s heard Helen say. That mother-in-law of mine!” Robyn rolled her eyes upward and sighed as dramatically as her daughter had only moments ago.

  Five-year-old James Robert “Bobby” Norton chased his twin sister, Brenda Anne, around the gift table, and just as his foot caught on the edge of the tablecloth, his big brother, UT senior Kevin, scooped him up into his arms. Jim eased in behind his daughter and grabbed her up and off the floor. Both twins giggled and squirmed.

  Bernie smiled at her husband, a feeling of complete happiness enveloping her. It wasn’t that their life together was perfect, but it was good. Damn good! Just when she’d given up hope of having Jim’s baby, they’d found out she was carrying twins. Bed rest for six months and a lot of prayers had helped bring two healthy babies into t
his world. Not a day went by that she didn’t thank the Lord for her many blessings, not the least of which was Kevin. Although she hadn’t given birth to him, she thought of him as her son. He was the child of her heart, a young man so very much like his father.

  Six months after Mary Lee’s surgery, she and Jim had worked out a joint custody agreement so that they shared their son equally. Then less than a year later, shortly before Kevin’s fourteenth birthday, Allen Clark had been offered the job of a lifetime—in Singapore. After he and Mary Lee moved out of the country, Kevin had come to live with Jim and Bernie full time, but he spent a month each summer with his mother and stepfather overseas.

  With Brenda Anne on his hip, Jim walked over to Bernie. Kevin followed, his little brother, Bobby, in tow.

  “Sheriff, I think these two heathens need to be put in the hoosegow,” Kevin said jokingly.

  “What’s a hoosegow?” Bobby asked, looking up at his big brother.

  “It’s a bad place,” Brenda Anne said, then smiled at Jim. “Isn’t it, Daddy?”

  “You don’t have to worry, sugar pie,” Jim said. “Nobody is ever going to put you in a bad place.”

  She wrapped her pudgy little arms around Jim’s neck. “That’s ’cause you and Mommy won’t let them. ’Cause you and Mommy are the sheriff.”

  When everyone laughed, Brenda Anne narrowed her gaze and glared at her relatives.

  “Mommy’s the sheriff,” Bobby said. “Daddy’s the chief.”

  “Then I guess when we grow up, I’ll be the sheriff and you’ll be the chief,” Brenda Anne said.

  Everyone laughed again. Brenda Anne frowned.

  Jim slipped his free arm around Bernie’s waist. “Sounds like our younger two plan to keep the Granger tradition going for another generation.”

  “The Granger-Norton tradition,” she told her husband.

  Jim grinned. “Yeah, the Granger-Norton tradition.”

  Dear Reader,

  I truly hated to say good-bye to Bernie and Jim and the residents of Adams County, Alabama. I hope that while reading their story, Close Enough to Kill, you became as deeply involved with them as I did while writing about them. When I finished Killing Her Softly, I knew I had to write a book for secondary character Jim Norton, and I also knew at that time I would have to make another secondary character—wealthy, debonaire lawyer Judd Walker—the hero of his own book. So, in my next romantic suspense novel for Zebra Books, I’m leaving Jim and Bernie to live happily ever after and am traveling slightly northeast of Adams County, Alabama, to Chattanooga, Tennessee, a city I consider my second home.

  Judd Walker, the hero of my next Zebra book, was born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. Rich, handsome, intelligent, married to former Miss Tennessee Jennifer Mobley, Judd lived the good life until an unforeseen tragedy struck, destroying what mattered most to him. Filled with anger and rage, obsessed with only one goal, Judd becomes a man that his best friend wouldn’t recognize—a single-minded, ruthless vigilante seeking revenge.

  In Judd’s book, you will be reintroduced to Jim Norton’s old UT buddy, Griffin Powell, the mystery man, the multimillionaire who heads up the prestigious Powell Private Investigation Agency, home-based in Knoxville, Tennessee. And you’ll meet Lindsay McAllister, a former Chattanooga police detective who now works for the Powell agency, a lady as determined as Judd is to find a diabolical killer to whom murder is simply a game.

  But before my next novel comes out in April 2007, I have a very special project set for release in February 2007. Lisa Jackson, Wendy Corsi Staub and I have collaborated on a romantic suspense novel, MOST LIKELY TO DIE. Bad boy Jake Marcott was brutally killed at a high school dance on Valentine’s Day and his murderer never caught. Now, twenty year later, when Jake’s old classmates return to Portland, Oregon, for a high school reunion, the killer strikes again and the victims are all women with a connection to Jake.

  I enjoy hearing from readers. You may contact me through my Web site at www.beverlybarton.com, or by writing to me in care of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  Warmest regards,

  Beverly Barton

  Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of

  Beverly Barton’s

  newest romantic suspense thriller

  coming in 2007!

  The intensely bright lights blinded her. She couldn’t see anything except the white illumination that obscured everything in her line of vision. She wished he would turn off the car’s headlights.

  Judd didn’t like for her to show houses to clients in the evenings and generally she did what Judd wanted her to do. But her career as a realtor was just getting off the ground, and if she could sell this half-million-dollar house to Mr. and Mrs. Farris, her percentage would be enough to furnish the nursery. Not that she was pregnant. Not yet. And not that her husband couldn’t well afford to furnish a nursery with the best of everything. It was just that Jennifer wanted the baby to be her gift to her wonderful husband and the nursery to be a gift from her to their child.

  Holding her hand up to shield her eyes from the headlights, she walked down the sidewalk to meet John and Katherine Farris, an up-and-coming entrepreneurial couple planning to start a new business in Chattanooga. She had spoken only to John Farris. From their telephone conversations, she had surmised that John, like her own husband, was the type who liked to think he wore the pants in the family. Odd how considering the fact that she believed herself to be a thoroughly modern women, Jennifer loved Judd’s old-fashioned sense of protectiveness and possessiveness.

  When John Farris parked his black Mercedes and opened the driver’s door, Jennifer met him, her hand outstretched in greeting. He accepted her hand immediately and smiled warmly.

  “Good evening, Mr. Farris.” Jennifer glanced around, searching for Mrs. Farris.

  “I’m sorry, something came up at the last minute that delayed Katherine. She’ll be joining us soon.”

  When John Farris raked his silvery blue eyes over her, Jennifer shuddered inwardly, an odd sense of uneasiness settling in the pit of her stomach. You’re being silly, she told herself. Men found her attractive. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t do anything to lead them on, nothing except simply being beautiful, which she owed to the fact she’d inherited great genes from her attractive parents.

  Jennifer sighed. Sometimes being a former beauty queen was a curse.

  “If you’d like to wait for your wife before you look at the house, I can go ahead and answer any questions you might have. I’ve got all the information in my briefcase in my car.”

  He shook his head. “No need to wait. I’d like to take a look around now. If I don’t like the place, Katherine won’t be interested.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  He chuckled. “It’s not that she gives in to me on everything. We each try to please the other. Isn’t that the way to have a successful marriage?”

  “Yes, I think so. It’s certainly what Judd and I have been trying to do. We’re a couple of newlyweds just trying to make our way through that first year of marriage.” Jennifer nodded toward the front entrance to the sprawling glass and log house. “If you’ll follow me.”

  “I’d be delighted to follow you.”

  Despite his reply sending a quiver of apprehension along her nerve endings, she kept walking toward the front steps, telling herself that if she had to defend her honor against unwanted advances, it wouldn’t be the first time. She knew how to handle herself in sticky situations. She carried pepper spray in her purse and her cell phone rested securely in her jacket pocket.

  After unlocking the front door, she flipped on the light switch, which illuminated the large foyer. “The house was built in nineteen-seventy-five by an architect for his own personal home.”

  John Farris paused in the doorway. “How many rooms?”

  “Ten,” she replied, then motioned to him. “Please, come on in.”

  He entered the foyer and glanced around, up into the huge living room and to the rig
ht into the open dining room. “It seems perfect for entertaining.”

  “Oh, it is. There’s a state-of-the-art kitchen. It was completely gutted and redone only four years ago by the present owner.”

  “I’d like to take a look,” he told her. “I’m the chef in the family. Katherine can’t boil water.”

  Feeling a bit more at ease, Jennifer led him from the foyer, through the dining room and into the galley-style kitchen. “I love this kitchen. I’m not much of a cook myself, but I’ve been taking gourmet cooking lessons as a surprise for my husband.”

  “Isn’t he a lucky man?”

  Jennifer felt Mr. Farris as he came up behind her. Shuddering nervously, she started to turn and face him, but suddenly and without warning, he grabbed her from behind and covered her face with a foul-smelling rag.

  No. No…no, this can’t be happening.

  Had she been unconscious for a few minutes or a few hours? She didn’t know. When she came to, she realized she was sitting propped up against the wall in the kitchen, her feet tied together with rope and her hands pulled over her head, each wrist bound with individual pieces of rope that had been tied to the door handles of two open kitchen cabinets.

  Groggy, slightly disoriented, Jennifer blinked several times, then took a deep breath and glanced around the room, searching for her attacker. John Farris loomed over her, an odd smile on his handsome face.

  “Well, hello, beautiful,” he said. “I was wondering how long you’d sleep. I’ve been waiting patiently for you to wake up. You’ve been out nearly fifteen minutes.”

  “Why?” she asked, her voice a ragged whisper.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “What do you think I intend to do?”

  “Rape me.” Her voice trembled.

  Please, God, don’t let him kill me.

  He laughed. “What sort of man do you think I am? I’d never force myself on an unwilling woman.”