The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  Need to talk ASAP.

  Kathleen frowned. Can it wait? She typed back.

  No.

  Her brows shot up. Whatever it was must be important. With a glance at Mac, she dialed Anthony’s number. He answered on the first ring.

  “Where are you?”

  “Ah, in the car with Mac,” she told him. “Heading toward the station. Why?”

  “Turn around. There’s a situation at the hospital.”

  “A situation?” she repeated, a sense of unease beginning to chill her blood. “What sort of situation?”

  Anthony hesitated. “James Wellington called me a little while ago. There was a post office box he wanted me to look into.”

  “The post office box on the envelope in which the silver gift tag came?”

  “You know about that?”

  Kathleen took issue at the surprise in his voice. “Yes. Shouldn’t I?”

  “That’s not it,” Anthony said. “The kid’s just been trying to be an amateur sleuth, so I wasn’t sure if he would tell you. I’m glad he did.”

  “But clearly not until after he’d told you.” Kathleen set aside the frustration – and various other emotions – that wanted to bubble up and spill over onto Anthony. “Never mind. What did you find out?”

  Anthony hesitated, and Kathleen knew that whatever he was about to impart didn’t particularly make him happy. “The PO box is registered to LaShelle Kinson.”

  “What?” Kathleen darted another look at Mac, who arched a single brow. The opinions of the various men in her life notwithstanding, this was sufficient evidence that they needed to have a talk with Ms. Kinson real soon. She might have an alibi for the night Kathleen had been run off the road, but it looked like she’d need to provide one for the night that Mandy Hotchkiss had been murdered.

  Then Kathleen recalled the other part of Anthony’s statement. “What does this have to do with the hospital?”

  “Well, I tried to contact James a little while ago, but his phone kept going to voice mail. I thought he likely had it turned off, so I drove to the hospital to find him. I wanted to make sure he turned that evidence over immediately, given that Shelley’s name had come up yet again. Anyway, long story short, they’re not here.”

  “Who isn’t there?”

  “James. Neither is Justin.”

  “Are you sure?” she said. “I just got a text from Justin. He said he was digging in for the night.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know,” Kathleen said. “Maybe twenty minutes ago. Thirty at most.”

  “Well, Justin’s truck is here – and I know James was driving it – but I’ve searched this place, including the grounds, and there’s no sign of them. I talked to security. One guard said he’d seen a woman matching Shelley’s description sitting on a bench in the garden area, and another said that Justin had been a fixture in the waiting room all evening. Only none of them are here now. I did some canvassing, and found a woman who said she saw a car matching the description of Shelley’s backing out of a parking space. She recalled it because it almost backed into her as she was passing behind it. She couldn’t say for certain but said she thought there were two women in the vehicle.”

  “Two?” Kathleen said, her heart thudding even as she made the gesture for Mac to turn around. “To the hospital,” she told him as an aside before returning to her conversation with Anthony.

  “Who was the other woman?” she said. Not Natasha, obviously, since she was in critical condition.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The woman I talked to just said she saw long hair.”

  “We’re going to need an APB for Shelley Kinson’s vehicle,” she told Mac, and then gave him the license plate number and description.

  “We’re on our way,” she told Anthony, and despite all the feelings churning through her, Kathleen was cognizant of the time Anthony had saved her. It might have been hours until she’d tried to contact Justin again. “And Anthony? I owe you.”

  “I know you’re there,” called a voice, with what could only be described as amusement mixed with irritation. A flashlight beam shone through the trees, and James jerked Shelley against him as he ducked behind a particularly broad oak.

  He held his breath as the light passed by their hiding spot, pressing Shelley’s face into his chest so that her panting wasn’t audible. She pinched him, but then angled her head to the side and did her best to keep her breathing under control. The woman probably couldn’t hear them from that distance, but he didn’t want to take any chances. After all, she had a gun.

  “Come out, come out wherever you are!” she sang out, like this was some game they were playing.

  The light came back their direction, stopping for a moment on a tree about six feet away from them. Without warning, the bark exploded.

  Jesus. That had been close. Shelley trembled, but luckily she’d had the good sense not to cry out, and he pulled her in tighter.

  “I have my silencer now,” the voice sang out again, and James thought: Obviously. “The neighbors aren’t close, but you know how the sound from gunshots can travel. I forgot that,” she continued, almost to herself. “If it hadn’t been so loud earlier I could have gotten another shot off. But it startled me, and I had to leave quickly.” She sighed, the sound of long-suffering. “Now I guess I’ll have to take care of Natasha again.”

  In his arms, Shelley stiffened, and James figured she had also just put two and two together.

  So Anne had shot her sister.

  Holy shit.

  If he’d had any doubts before, he no longer did. The woman was entirely certifiable.

  “I really don’t want to have to come in there after you,” Anne continued, her tone no longer playful. “I broke a heel running through the house, thanks to the mess you left in the kitchen.”

  When they’d heard the garage door opening, they’d gone through the door – which hadn’t, thank God, been locked – into the house in question. Darting through the utility room, into a spacious – but unlit – kitchen, James had knocked over a stool as he dragged Shelley toward the back door.

  Apparently Anne had tripped over it.

  “Come out,” she said, her tone brooking no argument. “Now.”

  Yeah, he kind of didn’t think so. But Anne’s next words all but stopped his heart.

  “I have your brother,” she said. “For every minute you delay, I will cut off one of his fingers and send it to your mother in Savannah. Would you like me to recite the address?”

  Shelley looked up at him, eyes wide, and gave a barely perceptible shake of her head.

  James closed his eyes and swallowed.

  Then he looked down at her, putting a finger over his lips before making a run gesture with his fingers. “Don’t shoot,” he said out loud, making as much noise as possible to disguise her movements when he pushed Shelley the other direction.

  Then he stepped out from behind the tree.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  KATHLEEN was out of the car before it even stopped moving. Squad cars were parked at odd angles near one corner of the parking lot, their flashing lights lending an all-too-familiar surrealism to the scene. She ran over, spotting Anthony standing next to one of his former colleagues. He turned at the sound of her voice, and the expression on his face was grim.

  “What happened?” she said when he met her halfway, hand on her arm to steer her away from prying eyes and ears.

  “Someone found the body of an orderly behind the dumpsters,” he said. “Double tap, close range.”

  Anthony’s delivery of the facts was clinical, a fact which Kathleen appreciated.

  “What did you tell them?” she said, nodding toward the cops who were stringing up yellow tape, waiting on the crime scene unit to arrive.

  “At this point, nothing. I wanted to talk to you first, and to remain free to… maneuver, should the need arise.”

  Kathleen nodded. This place was about to become a three ring circus, almost literally. T
he way this was shaping up, there would be three different jurisdictions involved. They’d need to wait for ballistics, of course, to see if this connected to the attempted murder of Natasha Griffin, just like they’d need to wait for the lab analysis of the bag to tie in Mandy Hotchkiss’s death. But given the circumstances, Kathleen was willing to make some assumptions. If she looked like an ass later, so be it.

  Mac came strolling up then, and after cursory greetings, Anthony filled him in.

  “Let me handle this.” He nodded toward the developing scene. “Why don’t you see if you two can get a look at the security video? Since Anthony’s… uh, case seems to have overlapped with ours.”

  Kathleen closed her eyes, relieved. If she was looking at video, at least she’d be doing something. “Thanks, Mac.” She squeezed her partner’s arm, then raised her brow at Anthony.

  “Let’s go.”

  FROM her position in the bushes, Shelley could hear Anne arguing with James over her current whereabouts. It had been damned foolish of him to try to pretend that they had taken off in opposite directions when they’d fled the house. Anne might be crazy, but she wasn’t stupid. And when the bitch called out that she’d shoot James where he stood if she didn’t reveal herself, Shelley’s heart tried to crawl right out of her chest by way of her throat.

  But James told Anne – and Shelley, since he made a point of raising his voice – that Anne might as well go ahead and shoot him, because she, Shelley, was probably long gone. Not to mention that they had no real connection to each other, so even if she was in hearing distance, she’d have to be a fool to sacrifice herself for someone who was basically a total stranger.

  Although that was pretty much exactly what he was doing. The chivalrous bastard.

  But since Anne was a total narcissist, she must have related to his line of reasoning. After a few moments of indecision, she said something to James that was too low for Shelley to make out, though she thought she heard the word drive.

  If Anne thought she was beyond her grasp for the moment – and possibly headed toward a neighbor’s house where she could sound the alarm – it made sense that she wouldn’t want to stay here any longer.

  Wherever here was.

  Shelley looked over her shoulder. No lights were visible through the trees, so maybe Anne hadn’t been blowing smoke about the distance to the nearest neighbor. And who knew how long it would take her to find help if she had to stumble through the woods – in the dark – to find it. They could be long gone by that time, and even though she could identify the culprit, that didn’t mean she would necessarily be able to help James and Doctor Wellington.

  Hell, the bitch had tried to kill her own sister. She probably wouldn’t turn a hair over knocking off the Wellington brothers.

  Rolling her eyes, because apparently James wasn’t the only one with a chivalrous streak, Shelley climbed to her feet and did a sort of crouching run around the side of the house. She didn’t know precisely what she was going to do, but she definitely needed to do something.

  “STOP,” Kathleen said to the hospital’s chief of security, who dutifully paused the surveillance footage. “Right there.”

  The tall, dark form walking down the hallway, his back to the camera, was definitely Justin. She could just make out the smear of blood above his elbow, which he’d apparently forgotten to wash off.

  “He has his phone out.” Looking at the time stamp on the video, and comparing it against the time she’d received that last text, she figured he was probably going outside to check his messages. She swallowed.

  As they watched, he turned a corner, indeed heading toward what looked to be an exterior door.

  “Do you have a camera covering that exit?” Kathleen said.

  “No.” The security chief shook his head. “The only exterior cameras we have are at the front, the ER entrance and the loading dock.”

  Kathleen tamped down her frustration. Why was it that the damn cameras never seemed to be in the right place?

  A hand settled on her shoulder. “Let’s wait and see if he comes back,” Anthony murmured.

  She waited, with no great degree of patience, and wondered how long it would take to get a current location on his phone. Technology being what it was, practically anyone could track a phone’s GPS location, provided they had the right information – or the right stalker app.

  But technology being what it was, people were also savvy to the fact that phones could be tracked pretty damn easily, and knew enough to ditch them, or at least to remove their batteries.

  Kathleen considered the cameras Justin had found in his house, and surmised that whoever they were dealing with was probably fairly savvy.

  “There,” Anthony said about five minutes later. “Check it out.”

  A tall, dark-haired woman walked down the hall, glanced down the exit door’s corridor as she walked past it, and then backed up.

  She stood there a moment before shaking her head and disappearing toward the door.

  The angle of the camera was such that her face wasn’t readily visible, but something about her struck Kathleen as familiar. She was trying to place her when an orderly became visible, walking down the hall from the opposite direction, pushing some sort of cart before him.

  The dark-haired woman came back onto the screen, nearly colliding with the orderly as she came around the corner. He stopped suddenly, something falling off his cart, and they both bent down to pick it up.

  A memory wanted to click, while as they watched, the woman pointed out the door, seeming to enlist the orderly’s aid.

  They disappeared down the short hallway.

  The security chief made a sound, and when she glanced at him, his face was white. “That’s Hodges,” he explained. “He’s the one they… found.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kathleen said, but then looked at the screen again. “Can you replay that last scene? Where they’re talking?”

  She studied the woman as she knelt on the floor, smiling at the orderly, and memory came back in a rush.

  “I know her,” she said, elation mixing with a sick sort of disbelief as she turned to Anthony. “I know who we’re looking for.”

  JAMES looked for a weapon – any weapon – as he was marched at gunpoint back through the kitchen. The place was oddly barren, with only a few pieces of furniture around, and nothing but a stack of papers on the counter. He didn’t think anyone lived here.

  He eyed the stool, thinking that if he acted like he was simply righting it – after all, Psycho Chick had complained about tripping over it before – then he could swing it around and knock the gun from her hand. Theoretically.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she warned, and James sighed, skirting his erstwhile weapon. The utility room was likewise useless as far as items of self-defense, unless he wanted to attempt to brain her with the dryer. Tempting, but he doubted he’d have much success in the time between her pulling the trigger and the bullet shattering his spine.

  The door to the garage was still open from their earlier escape attempt, and the garage door itself stood open to the night. He guessed she hadn’t had time to close it.

  James glanced at Shelley’s car with a sort of wistful frustration. If they’d only managed to get out even a couple minutes sooner.

  Of course if they had, Anne probably would have driven off somewhere with his brother, and he never would have seen Justin again.

  If she even had Justin, that is.

  But James hadn’t been willing to take that chance.

  When she directed him to stop next to her car – a sleek luxury SUV – James confirmed that she hadn’t been lying. His brother was curled up in the back seat, unmoving.

  “What did you do to him?” James gritted, noticing the absence of bonds. The back windows were tinted, so in the moonlit garage, it was difficult to tell if Justin was breathing.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, her voice faintly amused. “He’s just sleeping. I like to watch him sleep,” she murmured. Re
calling the camera hidden in Justin’s bedroom, James felt slightly nauseous.

  “Get in.” She pointed to the driver’s side door. “I’m riding in back with your brother. If you don’t follow my directions exactly, I shoot him. You try to attract attention – flash your lights, drive erratically – I shoot him. You breathe wrong –”

  “You shoot him. I get the idea.”

  “Good.”

  She waited until James had opened the door to climb in, then she scrambled into the back seat, gun pointed at Justin’s chest. “Here,” she said, and passed him the keys.

  James started the engine, his mind racing. There had to be a way out of this.

  He eased the gearshift into reverse. The car moved backward, but then began to vibrate and pull to the side instead of rolling smoothly.

  “What did you do?” Anne demanded.

  “I didn’t do anything.” He braked, then tentatively pushed the gas again. “I think you have a flat tire.”

  “Give me the keys,” she demanded, and he frowned, but did as he was told.

  She climbed out, walked around to the back of the car, and then let out a virulent curse. James turned, observing as she examined the back of Shelley’s car – which, now that he looked more carefully, appeared to be listing to one side – and had the dubious pleasure of watching the crazy chick pitch a fit.

  She bent down, picking up something that looked like a for sale sign. Dirt still clung to its sharp, pointed feet.

  James smiled.

  Shelley was a resourceful woman.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “TURN here,” Kathleen instructed Mac as they drove north.

  The vehicle registered to Anne Griffin had luckily come equipped with OnStar, making pinpointing its current location relatively easy. Despite that fact – or maybe even because of it – Kathleen’s stomach churned. Things that came easily tended to have a way of biting one on the ass.

  “Never trust a silver platter,” she murmured. Mac sent her an inquisitive glance, which she waved away with an impatient gesture. “Nothing. Don’t mind me.”