The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  She crossed her arms, trying to hold onto some of that warmth while she waited for Anthony. Her former lover. And current PI.

  Her life had certainly taken some interesting turns here of late.

  Her head throbbed once, and while the pain was significantly less than it had been, Kathleen figured it wouldn’t hurt to get ahead of it before it could become a monster again.

  She looked toward where the pharmacy bag had been sitting on the pavement. And realized that Justin had accidently taken it along with his takeout.

  Which meant he had her ibuprofen.

  And the box of condoms.

  Well. At least he’d know she had him covered, so to speak.

  Standing alone in the cold wind, Kathleen could only laugh.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  JUSTIN grabbed the takeout bag from the passenger seat before sliding out of his brother’s SUV. He didn’t know that switching the vehicles around was accomplishing more than making James feel marginally better, but since it was making his brother feel better, he hadn’t insisted on driving his own truck.

  Justin hit the remote to engage the lock, then headed toward the back door. The plants beside the walk were trampled where the police had searched for evidence last night, and Justin felt himself growing tense. The repeated violation of his personal space was more offensive than Justin had imagined. He’d heard people talk about the psychological aftereffects of breakins and robberies, but decided that it couldn’t be fully appreciated until you’d experienced it firsthand.

  He thought of Kathleen’s situation, the fact that she was willing to step a little outside the system – a system of which she was a part – to solve her problem and protect her family.

  And felt better about the fact that he’d taken some steps of his own instead of relying solely on the cops.

  He unlocked the back door, called out to his brother. “Lucy! I’m home.”

  Justin started to unload soda bread and beer-braised corned beef sandwiches from the bag, then his hand encountered slippery plastic.

  He pulled out the pharmacy bag, realizing he’d accidentally dropped it in with his takeout.

  Kathleen’s pain reliever. Shit.

  The acupressure had helped, but he doubted it had totally knocked the headache out. Justin debated a second, then opened the bag, wanting to see if she’d purchased an over-the-counter med that could be easily reacquired, or if she’d filled a prescription. He was relatively certain that she didn’t suffer from migraines strong enough to require narcotics or triptans, but he didn’t want to make assumptions when it came to her wellbeing.

  The bag contained a bottle of ibuprofen.

  And a large box of condoms.

  The blood rushed out of his head, pooling in a region farther south, when he gathered that Kathleen had bought the condoms because she’d finally made the break with Anthony. And was ready to move on.

  With him.

  “I didn’t realize that Murphy’s had expanded their menu to include prophylactics. It’s an interesting marketing ploy, but ‘fish and dicks’ just doesn’t have the same ring.”

  Justin leveled a stare at his brother.

  “Rough day in the OR?” James asked as he checked out Justin’s black eye.

  “Corelli sucker punched me.”

  “Huh. That wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain hot cop and that box of condoms you’re holding, now would it?”

  When Justin continued to glare, James simply grinned. “Corned beef?” He shifted his attention to the Styrofoam cartons on the table. “Excellent. I’m starving.” He popped a hand-cut French fry into his mouth.

  Justin tucked the ibuprofen – and the condoms – back into the bag.

  “Nothing but the finest room and board here at chalet Wellington. Want a beer?”

  “I wouldn’t turn one down.”

  Justin pulled two bottles from the fridge, and – with an image of his mother’s disapproving frown in his head – grabbed two plates so that they weren’t eating dinner straight from the takeout carton. After handing one of each to his brother, he joined him at the table. “So what’s the bad news?”

  “Bad news?” James asked around a bite of corned beef.

  “Your earlier text?”

  “Oh.” James chewed and swallowed. “I don’t know if it’s bad news. Or even news at all, seeing as you might have been aware of it. And if you were aware of it, let me apologize in advance for screwing it up.”

  Getting up from the table, James walked over to the counter, where he palmed a small object. He tossed it onto the table.

  Justin picked it up. It was small and black, some sort of electronic component, if he had to guess. There was a crack across the front. “Am I supposed to understand why this is significant?”

  James sat the sandwich he’d just picked up back onto his plate. “Shit. I was afraid of that.”

  Justin frowned at the component, then at his brother. “You wanna clue me in?”

  “You know that wobbly shelf in the living room bookcase?”

  “One of the braces split. I haven’t gotten around to replacing it.”

  “Well, I was getting around to it for you.” James ran a hand through his hair. “When I was emptying the other shelves so that I didn’t knock stuff off while I worked, I knocked something off anyway. It didn’t break, thank God. Well, for the most part. But… wait here for a second.”

  James left the kitchen, then came back with the model of the 1942 Ford pickup that Justin had put together when he’d been a kid. He’d always had a thing for vintage trucks.

  “Here.”

  Justin looked at the model. “And the connection here would be?”

  “Look at the left headlight.”

  Justin did. There was an empty space where the light had been. He frowned. “That’s not a big deal. I can probably find a part to replace it.”

  “Geez, you’re slow tonight. When I dropped the truck, this fell out of the space where the headlight had been.” He pointed to the electrical component.

  The pieces started to fit together, and the picture wasn’t pleasant.

  “Is this what I think it is?”

  James nodded. “A nanny cam. Wireless. I did a little research on them when I was writing a paper on contemporary wiretapping precedents.”

  The beer he’d drunk seemed to rise back up his esophagus. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  “I was hoping that maybe you’d installed it yourself.”

  “For what? To covertly watch you sit on the sofa?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe you’re a secret sex tape mogul and the surgeon thing is just a ruse. Or maybe the hot cop likes to watch.”

  Justin leveled another stare.

  “Sorry.” James lifted his hands. “I know you’ve got to be pissed.”

  “Pissed doesn’t begin to cover the intensity of my feelings right now.” Justin thought about the reticence he’d shown with regards to Mandy in the hospital elevator, and was glad he hadn’t known about this at the time. He’d hate to be sitting in a jail cell right now for wringing her psychotic little neck.

  “Is it still functional?”

  “With that crack, I kind of doubt it.”

  At least there was that. “Do you know if there’s any way to… figure out where the feed was going, or whatever?” he asked his brother.

  “Sorry. That’s beyond my level of expertise. Which is pretty much being able to identify that thing as a camera.”

  Justin carefully sat it on the table so that he wasn’t tempted to crush it in his bare hand.

  He wondered how long the thing had been there. Flipping through his mental catalogue of stored memories, he tried to determine if there was anything significant that may have been caught on video.

  Plenty of sleeping on the couch. Clay and Josh and a couple other guys were over for some football. He and Kathleen had watched a few movies. And there was one night, when he and Mandy had been more off than on,
that Justin brought home a woman he’d known in med school who’d been in town for a conference.

  There’d been some heavy petting on the couch before they’d adjourned to his bedroom.

  “How insecure,” he wondered aloud “would a woman have to be, to want to spy on a guy she’s dating when she’s not with him?”

  “Women are crazy, bro.”

  Justin scrubbed his hands over his already abused face. He wasn’t a prude by any means, but nor did he relish the idea of having his private moments broadcast for the viewing enjoyment of delusional ex-girlfriends.

  “She needs to be locked down in a mental facility.”

  “Um.” James cleared his throat. “I hate to bring this up right now, but I figure you’re going to arrive at this conclusion yourself when you cool down and start thinking clearly.”

  Justin’s gaze was wary. “What?”

  James nodded toward the camera. “A lot of times, those things are sold in packs. That might not be the only one.”

  Justin closed his eyes. Of course. Of course it wasn’t the only one.

  Sliding his full plate toward his brother, he pushed back from the table. “Here.” He hooked his beer in two fingers as he stood up, and then took a healthy slug. “I seem to have lost my appetite.”

  KATHLEEN sat in her rental car outside a slightly rundown apartment building on the city’s west side. It had come back as the registered address for the tags she’d had Anthony run. The name LaShelle Kinson hadn’t meant anything to her at first. Not that she’d expected the car to be registered to Joe Palmer – that would be entirely too easy – but when Anthony had sent her a copy of the woman’s driver’s license, recognition struck.

  And with it came doubt.

  There was a perfectly logical reason for that car to have been parked in the lot beside Kathleen’s loft, considering the building that housed the pharmacy shared the lot with Murphy’s. And the woman in question worked there. Kathleen had seen her there herself.

  She’d also seen her, quite recently, bringing her overdosing friend to the hospital. And prior to that, she’d seen the woman immediately following the drive-by at Jugs.

  She was Shelley, the former coworker, and apparent roommate, of the waitress whom Justin had saved.

  The results of the paint sample Anthony lifted from the front bumper of the car wouldn’t be available for several days yet, so she had no conclusive proof. And Kathleen couldn’t imagine – other than an odd sort of coincidence – why Ms. Kinson would have been behind her leaving the Isle of Palms, and driven, presumably, by road rage, to attempt to run Kathleen into a tree.

  It didn’t particularly make sense.

  Not that she expected logic to be the governing principal of anyone’s behavior, as her decade on the force had shown her that humans were, more often than not, unpredictable and highly irrational.

  For example, Kathleen should logically have waited until Anthony got the results of that paint sample back from the lab, because it was entirely possible Shelley Kinson had been involved in a minor car accident that had nothing whatsoever to do with Kathleen. Which meant that Kathleen was wasting her time.

  And even if Ms. Kinson had been the one to run Kathleen off the road, the chances of that incident being significant beyond the scope of your basic rage-driven traffic altercation – let alone tied to the threat which had been made in the form of the bloody doll – were slim, to say the least.

  Yet here Kathleen sat.

  She’d followed the woman home after her shift at Murphy’s ended, noting that she obeyed all traffic laws – even consistently signaling when she changed lanes – and hadn’t once tailgated or attempted to run anyone into a tree.

  Kathleen tapped her fingers on the steering wheel.

  She should probably go home. It was late – well after midnight – and she had to work tomorrow. Ms. Kinson’s bedroom light had gone off fifteen minutes ago, and it was highly unlikely that she was coming back out. Staking out her apartment wasn’t actually accomplishing much of anything, other than ensuring that Kathleen would be tired and grumpy tomorrow. She’d barely slept in the past thirty-six hours.

  Which explained why she didn’t notice anyone approaching the car.

  “Shit.” She jumped at the sharp rap on her window.

  And sighed in resignation when she looked through the glass at Anthony’s exasperated face.

  She jerked her head, and he walked around to the passenger side, all the while shaking his head.

  Kathleen popped the lock, and he slid in.

  “See, when one hires a private investigator,” he lectured her congenially “that generally means that they leave the investigating up to him.”

  “I hired you to run some tags and take a paint sample.”

  “Like I’m really going to leave it at that? Come on, Kathleen. And you’re in no shape to be staking out anything right now, other than your bed. You didn’t see me walking up to the car, and I wasn’t even trying to be stealthy.”

  She slid a little lower in the seat.

  “Go home,” he told her.

  Irritation wanted to crawl up her back, but the fact was, Kathleen was exhausted. “Yeah, okay.” She tapped her fingers on the wheel again, and then looked his way. “Thanks. For following up, I mean.”

  “Hey, I want to get paid, I better make sure my client doesn’t get herself killed due to stubbornness and/or stupidity.”

  She glared, but when he only lifted an eyebrow in response, Kathleen was forced to admit that she was probably being a little hardheaded about the entire situation. It was difficult not to, when her family was involved. She wasn’t being stupid, though. The chances of her being killed while sitting in a nondescript rental car outside the home of a sleeping waitress – who may or may not have run Kathleen off the road – probably weren’t worth mentioning.

  “Go home,” he repeated as he climbed out of the car.

  Anthony waited until she’d started the engine, then he gave a little wave and strolled off toward wherever he’d left his vehicle.

  Kathleen wondered how she was supposed to feel about the fact that Anthony was treating her almost as he would a partner. Aside from him taking a swing at Justin – which Kathleen thought had more to do with ego than with any deep feelings toward her – he’d been remarkably… blasé about the entire thing.

  But when she thought it over, she realized that they’d been almost like partners all along. They’d been close without being too intimate, had each other’s backs while remaining firmly independent. They’d both been up front and hadn’t played games, because the emotional stakes had been negligible. Take away the sex – which, if she were being honest, they hadn’t actually engaged in much of late – and it wasn’t too different from her relationships with Mac and with Josh.

  She guessed it made sense that Anthony hadn’t taken their breakup more to heart. It simply hadn’t meant enough to do so. And that, she was forced to admit, was an ego blow roughly equivalent to the one she’d dealt him this morning.

  At least she didn’t feel the need to punch anything.

  Yawning, Kathleen navigated the mostly deserted streets of the city and then pulled into the parking lot behind her building. Since Maureen had moved out of the second floor apartment when she’d married, Kathleen was the only one who lived on the premises. The pharmacy would be locked down tight – they closed at midnight – and because Kathleen didn’t feel like messing with the alarm, she headed up the exterior stairs.

  And paused when she sensed more than saw the figure waiting on the landing outside her door.

  Drawing her weapon, she flattened her back to the wall and eased up the last flight of stairs.

  “Police,” she said, her tone authoritative, even as her heart knocked in her chest.

  “Physician,” came the reply. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t shoot me, though, as I don’t relish the prospect of removing a bullet from my own flesh.”

  “Justin.” He must have driven
his brother’s car, otherwise she would have noticed his truck in the nearly empty parking lot. Kathleen holstered her sidearm before ascending the final few steps. The illuminated pool cast by her outside light showed him sitting on the floor, his back against the wall. His arms rested on his bent knees, hands dangling between them. His gray eyes gleamed in the shadows.

  Her heart gave another little kick, entirely different in nature.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “That’s the question.” He ran his hand through his hair, and when he winced, Kathleen noticed his scraped knuckles.

  Instant concern – and anger – had her crouching down next to him, taking his hand. “What happened. Did Anthony –”

  “No. Anthony gets credit for the black eye, but I’m afraid I bear sole responsibility for this particular stupidity.” He sighed, flexed his fingers. “At least they’re not swollen.”

  “Justin.” She searched his eyes. If he’d somehow been goaded into hitting something – or someone – she knew it had to be pretty serious. As a surgeon, he was understandably protective of his hands. “What happened?”

  He waited a beat. “James found a camera earlier this evening. In the house. The wireless spycam sort of thing.”

  Her anger found a new target. “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish. I also wish I were kidding about the three other cameras we found planted in various spots around the house, including my workout room, my bedroom. And a really cleverly disguised one in my shower.”

  The scope of the privacy invasion struck Kathleen like a fist.

  Obviously, it had hit Justin the same way, which is why he’d struck back.

  “Did you punch an inanimate object, or someone’s face? And please note that, asking as a woman who cares about you and not as a cop, I’m sort of hoping it was the face.”

  A smile ghosted around his lips. “The bathroom door. Although I have to admit, I was picturing the face when I punched it.”

  The cop in her wanted to ask questions, but she sensed that he was at the end of a very short and slippery rope. The eye that wasn’t blackened was shadowed, and despite the fact that his nose had reddened in the chill wind, he looked far paler than usual. Tenderness, the urge to take care of him, surprised her with its intensity.