The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  After a moment Rick busted out in laughter. “You can’t seriously expect me to believe that.”

  Not really, when she seriously didn’t believe it herself. But before she could formulate a suitable response, Josh’s voice snagged Kathleen’s attention.

  “… can’t be serious. That truck is pretty much brand new. How the heck could it need new shock absorbers?”

  And suddenly it all came together.

  “Shit. Oh hell.”

  Kathleen shot a look at the obviously irate Rick, whose annoying presence here was suddenly the least of her many worries. “Pleasant as our time together’s been, I’m afraid I have to cut this short.”

  Because Declan’s Jeep definitely didn’t have a good suspension.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  SADIE contorted herself into yet another impossible position.

  The handcuff tore more pieces of flesh from her already bloodied wrist. In her free hand she wielded a splintered table leg, fishing for the damn key. It glittered among the broken table remnants like some kind of buried treasure.

  “Just –” she extended her aching arm “a little –” the wooden floor scratched her leg “bit more.” She flicked her wrist, tried to set the hook, but it remained just out of reach.

  “Damn it.” Her voice cracked with the unbearable frustration of dashed hopes. “I can’t reach it.” In a fit of pique she slammed both fists against the floor, cursing the trick of genetics that had made her a midget.

  Declan had been watching her attempts with varying degrees of patience. But her outburst caused him to sigh. “Hand over the leg.” He made a gimme gesture with his unbroken fingers.

  Sadie winced and shook her head.

  The problem was that his good hand – the cuffed one – was on the opposite side of the table. Which meant that if he was to try to get at the key he’d have to use the hand that was broken.

  “No.” She grabbed the leg again. “Just give me a minute to think about this. Maybe if I…”

  “Maybe if you keep trying to take everything on yourself, you’re going to waste enough time that the boys will come back. You know they’re going to,” Declan added “once Billy figures out that he dropped the key.”

  It was harsh, because the thought terrified Declan, and she’d already suffered enough, but maybe the threat of some stomach-knotting, bowel-loosening torment at the hands of the bastards who’d kidnapped them might knock some sense into her thick little head.

  She had to stop trying to protect him.

  “Fine,” she finally said, tossing him the leg with ill-disguised irritation. “Do permanent damage to your hand. See if I really care.”

  He could have retorted that damage to his hand was a lot less permanent than being dead, but he knew she was wracked with fear and frustration and that lashing out was just a way to control it.

  “Okay,” he agreed easily. And steeled himself for a barrage of pain.

  His fingers looked like five black sausages, and they rebelled violently when he tried to bend them. But whoever said fear was an anesthetic really knew whereof they spoke. The thought of what those men might do to Sadie made whatever discomfort he felt irrelevant.

  Except that yeah, discomfort was pretty much a joke. Because it hurt like freakin’ hell.

  Perspiring, nauseous and visibly shaking with pain, Declan managed to get his hand wrapped around the old piece of wood. He slid it across the floor and poked the mess of scraps that had been the table. His aim was a little off, his efficiency pretty much nil.

  But after several minutes of banging the thing around, he somehow knocked into one of the corner braces, and the key skidded across the floor.

  “YOU got it. Oh, you got it!” Joy and concern filled Sadie in equal proportion as Declan pancaked against the floor. Like a goatee-adorned throw rug. All black and gray and blue. He brought his hand in close, cradled against his chest, and she knew what the effort had cost him.

  The key was closer to her now, but not so close that she could outright reach it. Regret flooded into the spaces recently worn hollow with concern.

  “Dec,” she said softly, hating what she had to say. “I need you to give me the wood.”

  One eye cracked open. When it rolled her way it was glazed with the remnants of exertion. “I’d love to give you the wood, sweetheart, but I think we need to stay focused on getting that key.”

  Sadie blinked. She couldn’t believe he could crack a joke right now. But the corners of her mouth quirked, anyway. “When we get out of here,” she told him, “I see life-affirming fornication figuring large in your future.”

  “Excellent,” he replied. And heaved the table leg her way.

  She grabbed it, hand trembling, heart soaring with impending freedom. She’d spent the past eighteen hours coming to terms with her own death, and with the death of a man for whom she cared greatly. The possibility of reprieve was almost more than she could handle. Her whole body bubbled with tightly bottled emotions. After some clumsy attempts and a few near-misses, the key skittered within her reach.

  “Thank God,” she whispered as her fingers closed around it. “Oh thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  Then with an audible click the cuffs were open.

  “Yay,” Declan grunted as Sadie shook the pins and needles out of her hand. But his eyes were filled with true thankfulness when Sadie crawled toward him across the dusty floor. For a stolen moment, she laid her head against his, tears bathing his face. Then she pressed a quick but emotional kiss to his lips before turning her attention to freeing his hand.

  He sat up, and she could all but hear his bruised ribs screaming in protest. But despite that he reached out to draw her tightly against his chest.

  “I love you,” he said again, fiercely. “Good job.”

  “Team effort.” She ran a hand into his hair, cradling him against her.

  “I think our next objective should be getting the team out of here. The opponents don’t play nice.”

  They disentangled, and Sadie helped him climb painfully to his feet, where both of them swayed from the sudden change in position.

  “My legs are cramped,” she commented, kneading a hand into her shaking thighs.

  “Mine, too. But it’s better than the alternative.”

  Wrapping their arms around each other, they stumbled like a three-legged racing team toward the door. Sadie grasped the knob.

  Which went nowhere when she tried to turn it.

  “It’s locked.” She rattled it again.

  “Not for long.”

  Declan motioned her back. Then he visibly steeled himself, planted one foot, and kicked out viciously with the other.

  “Ah, shit.” Declan fell to his knees but the door remained standing. Sadie scrambled over, wrapped her arm around his waist, and did her best to get him standing again.

  “Okay Bruce Lee.” She sucked in a breath and heaved. Nearly two hundred pounds of injured male was not that easy to maneuver. “I’m guessing that door is either chained or padlocked from the other side. By the time we break it down you’ll have a broken leg to go with your hand and your ribs. Let’s take a look at the window.”

  They hobbled back to the sink, and the dusty square of fixed glass that centered over it. Sadie scooped up the table leg Dec had abandoned earlier. But when he started to reach for it she held up her hand like a stop sign.

  “Let me take this one.”

  Dec’s pride might be bruised, but he wasn’t stupid. He nodded, still winded. “Be careful.”

  Sadie climbed into the grimy basin and smashed the wood into the glass. It shattered surprisingly easily, falling to the ground outside.

  She used the end of the table leg to knock any lingerers out of the framework.

  “Let me go first. Then I’ll catch you.”

  She shot Dec a whole lot of Get Real. “This isn’t the first time I’ve escaped through a window.”

  “But I bet it’s the first time you jumped onto broken glass
barefoot.”

  She peered out the open window. Jagged shards lay on a bed of pine straw, dusty, dingy and lethal.

  “No time for debate.” He heaved himself up next to her. And despite the pain that was making him gray-faced, dropped the eight feet or so to the ground.

  “Come on. I have you.” He opened the arms that should be protecting his ribs.

  Sadie hesitated, worried for him, until she saw Declan turn his head. “You hear that?”

  It was the sound of another motor.

  But it wasn’t coming off the water.

  “Jump,” he said, his tone brooking no argument.

  Sadie didn’t even waver. She pushed off the sill and leaped into his waiting arms.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “OKAY,” Detective Miller said. “Let’s run through this again. You want to tell us one more time why you think your brother and his girlfriend might have been abducted?”

  Kathleen stabbed a hand through her hair, creating a riot of disordered locks. She knew the drill. Even though she was a cop they had to question her suppositions, her very sanity when it came to her family. And she cursed the fact that the entire mess had happened outside her jurisdiction.

  She wanted to demand that they get their asses in gear and skip all the preliminary bullshit. But the rational part of her brain knew that they needed to get the facts, laid out as calmly as she could relay them.

  If there was any hope of figuring out what the hell was going on, she needed to have a clear head.

  She glanced at Anthony, sitting dark and silent beside Miller. He gave her an encouraging nod. He’d been calm, efficient and cooperative when she called him, not even balking at her demand that he round up Miller and meet her at his station.

  That was even better than the sexy crinkles.

  Her first instinct had been to tear up both Sadie’s and Declan’s homes, looking for any clues she might have missed earlier. But as her temper cooled and her heart calmed slightly while she made the drive into Mount Pleasant, she’d shifted what she knew around in her head until she’d realized the key had to be the house.

  There was something there that somebody wanted.

  And before she went in, guns blazing, stirring things up in a tsunami of rage, she needed to hang back and get a plan together. Because if she tipped her hand, she feared it might cost her brother and Sadie their lives.

  She looked at the men sitting across from her. Cops she didn’t know well but was forced to trust. This would go a hell of a lot smoother if she had Mac or Josh at her back, but there was no valid reason to bring them into this.

  Technically it wasn’t her case, either.

  But somebody makes the mistake of messing with her family and technicalities were just too damn bad.

  “Okay.” She sucked in some air, fanned the flames of hope a little higher. “Let’s start with what we know.” She glanced at the dry-erase board that was leaning drunkenly against some file cabinets. “May I?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Detective Corelli popped up after Miller’s offer, dragging the board around to her side of the room. Then he unearthed a black marker. She took it with an appreciative smile, and began to create a timeline of sorts.

  “End of October. One Josie Nash of Beaufort contacts her brother. His rental contract for the Mayhew house runs through December, but he’s been called overseas. She has a friend that needs a place to stay, so that works to everyone’s benefit. Nash ships out, the friend moves in, everything’s kosher until a couple days before New Year’s, when Josie disappears. Same time frame, far as anyone can tell, the mystery friend – who fakes his identity on the papers for the sublease – bails out of the rental. Leaves behind just enough stuff to make us think he cleared out a little quicker than he’d planned to.”

  The marker scratched across the board as she drew a connecting line from Josie Nash to the renter.

  “Day after New Year’s Sadie moves in, encounters burglars, and overhears them saying, according to Sadie’s statement: better hope we find it. This gives the impression they’re looking for something specific. Sadie gets away, enter police, my brother, myself, much hoopla and attention, leaving little chance for anyone to get back in the house and have a look-see. Alarm’s being installed, locks are being changed – if they’re casing, it’s clear they’re going to encounter some problems. Not that it makes it impossible, but it’s going to be a little more uncomfortable to manage.”

  “Hence, the murdered locksmith.”

  “Exactly.” Kathleen pointed the marker at Anthony. “Maybe these guys were watching, followed him, snagged one of the extra keys he’d made just that afternoon, made a duplicate for themselves. Handy to not have to bust a window, pick a lock, draw more attention to the house or to themselves if they want to go in and have another look-see.”

  “There was a call on Shawn Nelson’s – the locksmith’s – log,” Anthony informed her, “shortly before the coroner’s estimated time of death. Came back as a disposable cell. Could be he was lured to that parking lot intentionally.”

  “Makes sense,” Miller concurred. “And you’re thinking what, these guys off the locksmith, use their new key, Ms. Mayhew somehow stumbles upon them, so they kidnap her to get her out of their way? How’d they end up with your brother?”

  “I don’t know, exactly,” Kathleen admitted. “It had to have happened when he stopped by to see her yesterday. I was with him until shortly before I came by here to speak with you. He was headed to her house directly after.”

  “A daytime breakin is pretty bold,” Anthony observed. “Especially when they’d gone to so much trouble to avoid detection.”

  “Sadie was out of the house for a job interview. Maybe they’re just taking their opportunities when they find them. After the alarm is in, their job will get tougher.”

  “Weren’t the security contractors there yesterday?”

  “Sadie mentioned that they were going to be in and out. I have a source who claims to have seen them there last evening. I haven’t verified that because I tried calling the number on the card I found on Sadie’s refrigerator, but I keep getting dumped into voice mail.” And that nagged at her.

  “Detective Corelli said you’ve been in contact with Ms. Mayhew?”

  “She called, on her cell, late afternoon yesterday. Detective Corelli and I were standing on her porch, waiting to speak with her.”

  “He gave me the gist of the circumstances and conversation.”

  “Then you know that I was uncomfortable with her story. It seemed absurd, to believe they went camping. But it didn’t hit me full on until I overheard one of my coworkers talking to his mechanic. Sadie claimed they’d taken Dec’s Jeep because it had a better suspension. He’s needed new shock absorbers for months.”

  Miller’s brows drew together slightly, punctuating the doubt written on his face.

  “Look, I know that sounds flimsy, but given what we know, what I know about my brother, about my friend’s patterns of behavior, I’m telling you she was sending a message. And my father and I have both tried numerous times to reach them since. There’s been a slight medical crisis with my brother, Declan’s twin. I just can’t believe they’d keep blowing off calls from us, knowing there’s stuff brewing with the case, or that Dad might need Declan at the bar. My brother can be a pain, but he’s damn responsible. Call it gut instinct, but I know they’re in trouble.”

  “You go away looking for privacy, would you want to answer the phone?”

  Before Kathleen could offer a retort, Miller waved the question away. “Look, it seems risky, again, bothering with abduction. Assuming everything’s connected – and right now assumption’s all we’ve got – these guys have a trail of missing persons in their wake. Maybe at least one outright homicide. Would have been easier,” he supposed “to just make Ms. Mayhew disappear like the others.”

  Sick worry twisted her gut. “Maybe they’d planned to. Maybe, I don’t know, Declan somehow got in the
way. Maybe they knew there’d be real problems if she just turned up missing, given the fact that I’m a cop. However it happened, I just know we need to move on this soon. Or statistically their chances are not good.”

  “You’re assuming – again – they haven’t been killed already.”

  It was a possibility, a good possibility, but Kathleen couldn’t let that douse the flame.

  “They needed to keep them alive, make that call, alleviate suspicion. Give the kidnappers a chance to have a little space so that they could find what they’re looking for. Better not to kill them right off on the chance they’ll need them again.”

  “Provided they haven’t already found the booty.”

  Kathleen simply refused to believe that.

  Anthony leaned back in his chair, arms folded as he cleared his throat. “One flaw in the logic I can see, Detective Murphy, is your supposition about the renter. If he fled, why are these men still so focused on the house? Wouldn’t it follow that he’d take whatever they’re looking for with him, if it’s worth all this trouble?”

  Kathleen opened her mouth, closed it. Damn it, he was right. And she’d been too crazed with worry to think that detail through. Which was why cops didn’t work on cases to which they were personally connected.

  And the house and its supposed contents was the hinge that supported her theory.

  “Unless they knew for certain,” Anthony continued, “that the mystery renter hadn’t had a chance to take whatever it was with him.”

  “They could have killed him,” Kathleen agreed, some of the muddle clearing up. “They used Josie Nash to track him down, maybe? And then got him out of the way. Went back to the house to do their search when they thought the coast was clear.”

  Miller watched her in open assessment, finally nodded his head. “I’ll give you that this bears looking into. We need to talk to Ms. Mayhew’s security contractors. See what, if anything, they’ve seen. Maybe talk to the property manager over at Coastal about the mysterious renter. If we’re looking for another body, it pays to have a description. If we get an accurate ID on him it could help lead us to the identity of the perps.”