The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  It was terrifying, and… terrifying, and yet comforting at the same time.

  “I’m in,” he said after a moment.

  “Good.” Then the hand on his chest began inching lower, and Clay groaned as it closed around his member.

  This, he thought, rolling over to pin Tate beneath him, was a program he could definitely get used to.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  JR Walker ambled into the Bentonville UPS store a mere ten minutes after it opened, stewing over the mess his idiot cousin had made. Probably, he mused, he should have stopped him from beating that girl. But a little sadism could foster sales in certain quarters, so he’d seen no reason to stop the filming.

  Until Billy Wayne climbed off and she wasn’t breathing.

  JR had even done CPR – he still remembered how – but to no avail.

  And now they had a murder on their heads.

  How the hell had he managed to be related to such a fool? But then it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise – JR’s entire family had been worthless. From his junkie mother who more times than not forgot that he needed food, to his asshole of an uncle who’d been as free with his fists as he’d been with his gin.

  Fury twisted inside him, quickly suppressed. That was something he hadn’t allowed himself to think about in years.

  “Hey, Rob.”

  JR blinked himself back to the present. He’d been standing in front of his mailbox. Staring into space.

  Not acceptable behavior.

  He turned, managed a smile, and put on some aw, shucks. He was Rob. It was something he couldn’t forget.

  “Hey, Julie.” He exaggerated his drawl, scratched the deep brown hair of his wig. Just another tobacco-chewing local yokel – easy to recognize, easy to forget. “I didn’t even see you,” he told the woman whose acquaintanceship he’d been cultivating for the past couple months. Since it was impossible to remain anonymous in a small town, that left hiding in plain sight.

  “No kidding,” Julie chuckled, which did unflattering things to her jowls. But as her friendliness worked to his advantage, he kept his personal distaste in check. No way would she link “Rob” to anything, should it ever come to that. “You looked like your brain had been sucked out by aliens.”

  “I was having one of them, whaddaya call it, senior moments,” he said as he opened his box, gathered his mail. And glancing at the small stack, made a face that said more bills.

  “I think you have to be a little older to qualify for a senior moment.”

  “Tell that to my brain.” And grinning, adjusted his pants under his padded gut.

  Julie, stupid sow that she was, just kept talking as if he cared. Something about her decrepit mother, who really had senior moments, and oh! – some of the mirth-provoking situations that caused. As she was droning on, the WANTED poster behind her reached out like a fist to grab him.

  Remarkable, actually, how well the artist had captured Billy Wayne.

  “Hey,” he interrupted Julie’s nonsense, as absolutely casually as he could. “What’s that poster over there all about?”

  “Oh.” Julie’s eyes lit at the opportunity to pass on the latest gossip. “That man is wanted for questioning in some kind of abduction. Took a girl from that carnival they have goin’ outside town.”

  “Is that so?” The fist tightened, and squeezed.

  “Yep.” Julie was utterly delighted. “And that’s not all.” She turned and lifted a stubby finger, which stilled in a flash of confusion. “Well huh. I wonder where the other one went.” Moving to the table over which the sign hung, she peered under it, toward the floor. “Here it is!” Triumphant, she scooped another paper off the floor. Then ripping a piece of tape off the dispenser she wore clipped on her belt, affixed the second flyer to the wall.

  And as she stood back to admire her handiwork, JR’s vision began to gray.

  “The FBI man who brought this in said that the guy might use a disguise, and that he could be one of those, what are they called? Albinos.”

  “Is that so?” he repeated weakly. Then clearing his throat, managed to look impressed. “FBI, you said?”

  “Uh-huh.” Then she lowered her voice. “But between you, me and the fencepost, he smelled like he’d been drinking.”

  If JR hadn’t been going into freefall, he might have found that amusing. But since his brain quickly calculated that Billy Wayne had to have been identified from that incident at the diner, where he’d simply refused to wear a disguise – and where JR, as usual, had gone along to make sure the imbecile stayed out of trouble…

  As himself, he remembered, infuriated. Because he hadn’t wanted to risk anyone seeing “Rob” with Billy Wayne.

  But how the fuck had they managed to tie that incident to the missing girl?

  Julie kept yammering away, mistaking speechless rage for fascination. “My cousin Jenny’s boyfriend – do you know Jenny? No? – well anyway, Jenny’s boyfriend works down at the sheriff’s office as a dispatcher, and he said that the FBI man and his girlfriend saw this guy at the carnival, and that they were this close to stopping him from taking that girl. Because, you know, they saw them talking and stuff. Wild, huh? He abducted someone right in front of the FBI?”

  But JR had stopped listening. He hadn’t heard anything past the word girlfriend.

  He knew who that girlfriend was.

  Julie stopped blabbing. “Are you okay Rob? You got that alien look again.”

  Nausea roiled, but he smiled through it. “Just surprised about all this, I guess.”

  “I know what you mean. You don’t think about that stuff happening around here. But that’s not even the worst of it. They think he killed another girl.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh. Some run-away they found over by Piney Woods.”

  He had to fight to keep his hands from reaching. From squeezing her throat the way her words were squeezing him. Piney Woods was just around the corner. A hop, skip and a jump from the old farm that had belonged to JR’s grandmother.

  And where Billy Wayne was staying.

  Where they had the girl.

  It was only a matter of time before the authorities came knocking.

  And the arrogance of it all, the fact that Billy Wayne had killed a girl, left her in the woods, and then gone out and taken another, like no one would notice…

  Rage bubbled inside and heated his veins, melting all the ice he’d cultivated for years.

  People had messed with him – messed him up – for the last time.

  And it was time the people who messed with him paid.

  “NICE pants, by the way.”

  Clay shot Kim a look as they made their way down Bentonville’s main thoroughfare – a palmetto-lined accumulation of shops and services that looked like a southern-fried version of Mayberry – heading toward the sheriff’s office.

  He’d run out this morning, in search of suitable attire, and the only store open at seven a.m. was the twenty-four hour Wal-Mart. His pants were serviceable, if not exactly the height of fashion. “Hardy har har. So I didn’t come prepared for an investigation. Sue me.”

  Kim adjusted her own immaculate slacks, and gave him a thorough once over. “You probably could have found something nicer last night,” she mused “if you hadn’t been in such a hurry to get over to see your friend Justin. It was Justin that you kept calling every hour, wasn’t it? So what – you had a front row ticket to an appendectomy? Maybe a triple by-pass that you just had to watch? Because he was working last night, right? You mentioned that, when I asked about him.”

  Clay briefly closed his eyes, because his grace period was apparently over.

  “If I didn’t know any better,” she continued, immune to the fact that he was trying to ignore her. Like a mosquito buzzing in your ear.

  A fly that you desperately wanted to swat…

  “I’d think that my formerly commitment-phobic, changes-women-with-the-frequency-of-underwear, best friend Clay was in lo-o-o-ve.” She did wh
at could only be described as a happy dance in her seat. “So tell me, Lone Ranger – how the hell did you manage to do that?”

  How the hell, precisely.

  Clay had no frickin’ clue.

  He’d awakened quite early this morning, startled to find a small foot in his groin. At some point in the night Max had apparently snuck into Tate’s bed and cuddled up between them, unbeknownst to the bed’s occupants, who’d both thought the other one had locked the door.

  Being a good mother, Tate had been equally freaked out to find him there, as the fact that they were sleeping together and there was a general lack of clothing made the situation uncomfortable for all. She’d started spouting off some sort of parental mumbo-jumbo about how when two adults really cared about each other they sometimes had “grown up sleepovers,” which Max, perceptive kid that he was, clearly felt reeked of all kinds of bullshit, but he hadn’t been the least perturbed. In fact, he’d told her with a fairly bored air that his friend Cole’s mommy and daddy had sleepovers every night.

  Then, with irrefutable five-year-old logic, he’d asked Clay if that meant he was going to be his new dad.

  And okay. That had freaked him out a little.

  Because as much as he cared about Tate and had gotten on board with this whole relationship program, despite previously discussed pitfalls and problems, the idea of marriage – of being someone’s daddy, for God’s sake – was just a little too much for his very recently ex-commitment phobic brain to take.

  What did he know about being a good dad?

  Sure, his own father had done a helluva job, raising him singlehandedly from the time Clay’s mom died when he was eight.

  But jeez.

  What if he messed the kid up?

  He’d been so worried about the stresses of his job on his and Tate’s relationship, that he hadn’t given nearly enough consideration to Max.

  Like how would he feel when Clay missed his Little League games? Or parent-teacher conferences? Or those really embarrassing school plays that every self-respecting boy dreads because he has to dress up like an oak leaf?

  So okay, maybe Max wouldn’t be too sad if he missed that one. But still.

  What exactly had he gone and done?

  “Clay, look out!”

  Kim’s voice cut through his fugue, and Clay realized that he’d almost barreled through a crosswalk. An occupied crosswalk.

  Slamming on the brakes, he thanked God for both Kim’s ability to focus on what was really important – like driving – and also for seatbelts, because otherwise they’d both currently be getting intimate with his dashboard.

  The man in the crosswalk – a slightly overweight brunette who’d obviously just conducted some business at the UPS store and was now making his way to his car – stopped like the proverbial deer in the headlights and stared at Clay’s truck in horror.

  Feeling like more than a little bit of an idiot, Clay rolled his window down and stuck out his head. “Sorry,” he called. Totally mortified. Wouldn’t that have been a headline to do the Bureau proud? “I’m afraid I wasn’t paying enough attention.”

  A range of emotions crossed the other man’s face, which finally settled into a scowl that read asshole.

  Yeah. He’d arrived at that conclusion himself.

  Clay watched the guy cross to an old blue pickup – one that Justin would have loved to have gotten hold of, because it was obviously in running condition but needed a serious bit of TLC. Out of habit, he looked at the license plate, while the man, after casting one last furious look in Clay’s direction, climbed in as they pulled away.

  “I’m sorry.” Kim covered her surprise with humor. “I didn’t realize that saying the ‘L’ word in the same sentence with your name would result in you mowing down pedestrians.”

  Shaken, Clay rubbed at the headache that was brewing steadily behind his eyes. “Let’s just drop it, alright?”

  “Sure,” Kim agreed.

  Clay took his foot off the brake and started driving.

  JR sat in his truck, watching the SUV in his rearview mirror.

  Damn, that had been close. He’d almost been taken out by the FBI, quite literally. It was that same agent he’d seen on TV. The one who was humping Tate Hennessey.

  Good ole Julie had been a font of valuable information. Thank God for the small town grapevine, which made everybody’s business public record. Tate Hennessy, who’d been the one to help construct the composite, was apparently hot and heavy with Mr. Visiting FBI, who, word had it, was some kind of profiler, just like on TV.

  Blah, blah, blah, ad nauseam – the woman had droned on and on. But JR had discovered that the delectable Ms. Hennessey lived in Charleston proper and ran a bed and breakfast.

  And was no doubt bedding and breakfasting Mr. FBI.

  It gave JR a small burst of pleasure, however, to realize that the bastard had been so close to him and not even known it. It was dangerous thinking, he knew, because it was exactly that sort of arrogance that had led Billy Wayne to go and screw things up.

  The son of a bitch.

  Now everything was ruined.

  He had to come up with a plan, and he had to make it quick – a way to complete this latest transaction, get the FBI off his tail, and spread around a little of his own personal misery in the process.

  Vendetta was such an ugly word, but he had to admit it had a certain ring to it.

  It was dangerous, and would mean extra risk, but hell – what exactly did he have to lose?

  He’d lost everything that mattered, already.

  So he’d pick up the pieces, just one last time, and then laugh his ass off as everyone else scrambled – the FBI, the local police.

  Tate.

  He studied his own reflection in the mirror, allowing a self-satisfied little wink.

  Oh yeah. It was going to be a hot time in the old town tonight.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CASEY trembled and tried not to cry as William climbed out of the bed.

  Whatever they were doing with her, whatever they had planned, she hoped it would happen soon. Because whenever the blond man was away for the night William crept into her bed. Two nights ago he’d paid just a brief visit, chatting away as if she was interested.

  Casey and William, long lost pals.

  He’d touched her, but they’d both kept their clothes on, which she felt was due to the blond man’s warning. Whoever he was, he seemed to be in charge, which worked out in her favor, because it made William keep his hands mostly to himself.

  Mostly.

  But last night…

  A sob escaped before Casey could stop it. She’d learned that William didn’t like for her to cry, and became agitated whenever she did so. So last night, after he came to her bed, she’d tried her best to appear calm and friendly. But it was so hard…

  And it became harder before the night was over.

  He’d stripped out of his clothes again.

  The blond man apparently wasn’t coming.

  So he’d felt comfortable not only removing his shorts and his Gold’s Gym T-shirt – folding them neatly, lying them beside the bed, while he smiled at her – but he’d also removed her clothes as well. Her shirt had been tricky for him, seeing as she was still handcuffed to the bed, so it had ended up dangling from her wrist like some sort of weird bracelet. And her pants…

  Tears rolled down Casey’s face in helpless currents as she remembered how very, very hard it had been not to cry. To not just break down and sob, sob, sob like a little baby. But William had put his fist through the wall – somehow, she’d always thought that was an expression, until she’d seen him actually do it – when she’d cried like that the other day. So she’d lain there, biting her bottom lip until it bled, so that she didn’t cry while he undressed her. He’d skimmed his big, thick-fingered white hands over her hips, pulling down her shorts. Over her breasts…

  He’d murmured endearments meant to charm but which turned her stomach. She kept her legs clench
ed together as tightly as she could, but he’d gently pried them apart and then knelt back on the bed, just… looking.

  And touching himself while he looked.

  But he hadn’t raped her.

  Pushing the reality of what he’d done out of her head, clearing her mind of that disgusting vision which made her feel dirty and shameful and used, she reminded herself of that fact.

  But how much longer would she be able to comfort herself with that thought?

  And how much longer before he actually did so?

  Hearing the toilet flush, Casey turned her head into her pillow, wiping the tears away so that William wouldn’t see. She was exhausted from keeping up the charade, and from getting no rest because William was sleeping beside her. He’d slept with his arm around her. And if she hadn’t been so worried about what would happen if she tried to escape – about how easily he could put his hand through her as he had through that wall – she would have tried to kill him while he slept.

  But she had been afraid, and she hadn’t tried, so she was still lying in this bed.

  Naked and terrified and desperately wanting someone to come save her.

  As if on cue, the blond man stepped into the room. With her face pressed into the pillow she hadn’t heard his footsteps on the stairs. But something in the air had given away his presence.

  It made her shiver.

  She looked up into his eyes – which were hazel now? – and he looked her over grimly. Then his attention shifted to the bathroom as William opened the door.

  With a look that said oh, shit.

  “Hey, cuz,” he said casually, like he wasn’t really standing there naked. Like the blond man hadn’t just caught him in the act of doing exactly what he’d been warned not to do.

  William, however, did his best to appear unconcerned. Like maybe if he ignored the great big pile of oh, shit he’d gotten himself into, the whole thing would just go away. He crossed the room with a nonchalant air and picked up his shorts from the floor. Pulling them on, he pretended the other man’s stare didn’t affect him.

  When William finally looked up, the other man was waiting.