Lost in Shadows (Lost)

by Anita DeVito

  A dozen men patrolled his home, the sheriff’s department was on alert, yet Jeb stalked the space that was his office like a caged panther.

  Mitchell Walker swore in his ear. “You sure it was him?”

  “No. I’m sure whoever it was had been casing Carolina’s house. The single male, white, mid-twenties ran like a bat out of hell when I gave chase. I’d’a had him if he hadn’t swerved into oncoming traffic and sent the elderly driver into a ditch.” There was panic on the old woman’s face as she veered out of the way. He’d given up the chase to help her. “How is Mrs. Owens?”

  “Pissed. She’d like a piece of that man.”

  “There won’t be anything left when I’m done.”

  Walker snorted. “How’s Carolina?”

  “Fine,” he lied. He hadn’t been able to see her. He couldn’t look into those blue eyes and know she thought him broken. He thought he had found sanctuary with her. Instead, she’d condemned him to a living hell. “She’ll stay here until Hooker is caught.”

  “Then what?”

  “She wants to live in Paris.”

  “What the fuck for?” Walker gave a long sigh. “I need to go. Another call’s coming in.”

  Jeb ended the call and placed one to Nate, updating him on the situation. “After this is over, Carolina wants to move away for a while. Your buddy still willing to take her?”

  “I thought you two were—”

  “She wants to live in Paris, eventually. You’ll have to handle the house. My family will still help.” He paced faster, opening and closing his free hand. He needed to get out. Now. “I have to get going. Send me the contact info for your buddy.”

  Sprinting up the stairs, he ran to his bedroom, nearly doubling over as Carolina’s lingering scent hit him hard. There was no stopping the visceral reaction. The black nylon bag from the closet shelf had everything he needed: clothes, instant ice packs, bandages, painkillers.

  Beck was in the kitchen, making a sandwich.

  “I’m going out,” he said as he walked through without stopping. “Kill anyone who comes in who isn’t me.”

  Beck’s thick brows pressed down, but nodded.

  Off the farm, he put the windows down, letting in the night. The temperature had dipped. It was too cold for the T-shirt he wore, but it felt good. The cold seeped in and built a shield around him. His destination was a barn across the Kentucky border in the middle of a field. Trucks filled the cleared ground. Jeb parked and walked across the unlit lot. The sounds reached him first. Adrenaline-laced voices became one, rising and falling with the action in front of them.

  A big man sat on a metal chair behind a folding table. “Was wondering when we’d see you again. Remind me the name?”

  Ahead, a sea of moving bodies swarmed a ring. Sweat salted the air, and his blood surged to join in. “Campbell. Adam Campbell.”

  For the next four hours, he didn’t think of Carolina, only of the next man he would face. It was all about tactics and counter tactics. The first colors of dawn brightened the sky as he turned onto their street, knuckles bruised, one eye closing, and a slight ringing in his ears.

  At the front gate, he punched in the code, nodding his approval when one of his men tracked his movement to the garage through a scope. Lights were on throughout the first floor, but the second was dark. He had a thought about where all the new men had been assigned, but let it go. He was tired. Bone weary. Falling into bed, he slept fully dressed, uncaring about the scent of the woman.

  Morning came early. That’s what happened when the shades weren’t pulled. Full morning sun in his face. He pushed himself up, every muscle aching. His head hung, eyes closed, as he considered sneaking in a few more minutes. He dropped back to the bed, groaning. The skinny guy had lightning-fast speed. His ribs and kidneys felt like they’d been used as a punching bad. He had to piss. There would be no ignoring it.

  He took care of business and then assessed the damage. No way to hide the black eye. Damn, the son of a bitch had gotten him good. The rest of his face wasn’t bad. It was the first time he had slept in his own bed after a fight night. With the house full, he’d sleep off the worst of it in a cheap motel and then lie about camping accidents and breaking up riots and the like.

  The only ones around now to wonder worked for him. They’d keep it to themselves.

  A loose shirt and comfortable jeans were the first order of the day. Then came food. He went to the kitchen, hoping it was too early for company. So much for hoping.

  “Don’t you ever sleep, Beck?”

  “Not when I’m hungry. You want eggs?”

  “You can cook?”

  “Eggs.”

  Jeb nodded. “I got the coffee.”

  “Good night?”

  “Yep. You?”

  “She paced all night. You wouldn’t think you could hear something like that, but I did.”

  He didn’t have to ask who. There was only one “she” in the house. “We need a way to draw Hooker out. We can’t wait around, hoping to get lucky.”

  Eggs sizzled as they landed in the hot pan. “Takes bait to catch a fish.”

  He rejected the idea before he heard it. No way he was using her as bait.

  I can barely cope with my own issues; I can’t handle yours as well.

  The words stung. More than his eye, more than his ribs. “I can’t use her that way. Too many risks.”

  “How about a lure then?”

  Jeb spent thirty minutes talking Walker into the idea and then the next four hours setting it up. As he planned, an email came in from Nate with the name, address, and phone number of a guy in Arizona. Jeb knew him, liked him, but the idea of sending Carolina to him, well…

  I can barely cope with my own issues; I can’t handle yours as well.

  He picked up the phone and made the call. It was short, to the point. Carolina was welcome, and Jeb would call back when the travel arrangements were made

  Two more days. He rested his head carefully on his hands, barely able to focus with the sludge inside his head. He should turn the op over to Beck. He was done. After he finished this for Carolina, he would go away for a while. Take a break and just…

  A soft knock came from his door. It was on his tongue to say he was busy but the door opened first. Carolina walked into his office with a blanket draped over one arm and a tray of food in her hands.

  “It’s a beautiful day out. I thought we might—” She set the tray on his desk and dropped the blanket to the floor. Invading his space, she captured his face and turned it to look at the emerging colors. “What happened to your eye?”

  “I hit it.”

  “On what?” She gasped. “Is that from yesterday? Beck wouldn’t tell me what happened. Were you in an accident?”

  “He got away.” He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t take the touch of her hands on him, not with knowing how she felt. He pulled her hands down, forcing her back enough to rise from his chair. “What is all this?”

  “Lunch. I thought I could talk you into a picnic.”

  The happy smile brought out her beauty, making him weep inside. He shook his head, backing away from her. “I’m working.”

  Her smile faded, her gaze falling to the floor. “I-I had really hoped we c-could talk.”

  “Derrick Jenkins’s memorial service is the day after next. Your uncle and I are sure Hooker will make an appearance, as he’ll think you will be there. We’re going to take him down, and then this is over. I’ve spoken with Nate and made arrangements for you to stay with his buddy in Arizona.” Her hair had fallen forward, veiling her face, but her body language wasn’t positive. Her shoulders sagged, her fingers fidgeted. “Just two more days and you’re free to go.”

  “What if I don’t want to go?”

  She spoke so softly, Jeb wasn’t sure he’d heard her. In fact, he was nearly certain he’d imagined it.

  “I waited for you. Last night. I waited for you to come to me.” She lifted her face. “You didn’t. It made me
ask myself what I wanted. I looked at it from every angle, and I kept coming back to the same answer.” She crossed the scant distance separating them, her arms wrapping around his waist. “You.”

  He hissed in air and pushed away from her as spikes of pain drove through his body.

  “Jeb? You’re hurt?” She pushed past his hands and lifted the shirt. “Dear God. How?” Her gaze went to his. “You were fighting. Last night.”

  He pulled down his shirt and put space between them. “You were right, I’m messed up. I can barely keep my issues leashed. The odds of me making it to forty…aren’t good.”

  She advanced on him, a ferocity in her eyes he hadn’t seen before. “Don’t say that, Jeb, don’t you think that way.”

  “It’s just the truth.”

  “It isn’t. It isn’t the truth any more than the things I said. I didn’t want you hurt, didn’t want you to end up like Derrick. I thought I was sending you away to protect you, but I understand now that I did it to protect me. I can’t stand the idea of a world without you in it. That scares me more than all the Coopers and Hookers and Kennedys and the lot. Jeb, I love you.”

  He touched her then, tucking her hair behind her ear. He was grateful to see a kind look for him one last time. “Baby, there’s not enough left of me to love. Two more days and you’ll have your chance at a life without stalkers and arsonists. I have no doubt that, no matter what you do, you’ll conquer the world.”

  She grabbed on his arm, holding him to her. “Let me kiss you, Jeb. I hurt you with my selfishness, with my carelessness. Let kiss me you and make it better.”

  He looked at her mouth, lips that he would fantasize about for the rest of his life, but he couldn’t touch them. He just wouldn’t survive that. “There is no making me better.” He walked around her, taking the keys from his desk. “I’m going out. If you need anything, tell Beck.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Carolina remembered high school the way most people remember a root canal. Necessary and better to have done than not done but generally unpleasant. It was in high school, the bubbling cauldron of emotions and hormones, that she learned how much words could hurt. She had liked a boy. He was smart, and she thought him cute. He was in her history class and worked at the grocery store. As he bagged her mother’s groceries, he would talk to her about faraway places he planned to travel to like Istanbul, Kiev, and Vienna. He smiled. He was nice.

  She had gone to one of those malls where they rent space to different antique and collectables dealers. She found a small brass globe, no bigger than her fist, and thought of him and bought it with her own money. She’d brought it to the grocery store, but he wasn’t working. She counted the hours until school on Monday certain—absolutely certain—that he would treasure the gift.

  She went directly to his locker, anxiously awaiting the moment. He came toward her then, walking down the hallway with three of his friends. He glanced at her and then looked away. She should have read that sign but, as excited as she was, she missed it and ran into the den of teenage boys.

  “I went to an antique mall with my mother this weekend and found this.” Carolina handed him the cylinder wrapped in his favorite color, blue.

  His eyes looked to his friends.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?”

  His friends wanted him to open it, too. They all stared. He slowly stripped away the paper as if a coiled snake was about to pop out.

  “It’s a globe,” she said. “It has all the places you want to go. See? It’ll fit perfectly on your desk.”

  “I don’t have one. Here, put it on yours.” He shoved the gift back in her hand as the first bell rang. “I gotta go.” He shuffled past her, his friends close.

  “You dating Carolina?” one of his friends asked, elbowing him.

  “No. Of course not. I don’t even like her. She just comes into the store sometimes. She’s a nice kid.”

  In that moment, she would have had to look up to an ant. There was no telling her it was just the idiocy of a teenage boy. There was no telling her that the next year, that same boy would regret pushing away the pretty girl. There was no telling her that she was smart or special or loved, because she felt none of those things.

  She didn’t go in that grocery store for the next three years.

  Some fifteen years later, she sat on a borrowed bed, wearing the shirt of a man who loved her, and cried her eyes out because she had pushed his gift back into his hands and shoved him away.

  He had come home near three in the morning. She guessed he’d fought again and worried about his condition—physical and mental. She needed to help him. Even if she’d blown it with him, she had to help him.

  But how?

  He didn’t believe it when she told him how good a man he was. The failure he felt, the brokenness, didn’t come from her. Yes, her carelessness had taken the broken pieces and scattered them like bread for birds, but she hadn’t been the one who broke him in the first place. There was nothing she could do, no words she could say, to put him back together.

  That had to come from someone else.

  She bolted up. That was it. It had to come from someone else. And she knew who.

  Carolina stood in the bedroom that was her parents’ and her grandparents’ before her. She remembered her mother saying how long it took to get Grandma’s perfume “out of the walls.” She wondered if she would ever be able to get the smoky aftertaste out of the walls and carpet and furnishings. Somehow, it was harder this time to unlock the front door and walk in. When she had done it days before, she had been in an unsettled frame of mind. She knew that was whitewashing it but gave herself permission to avoid reliving the mistakes that came after, to avoid drowning in the loneliness she’d condemned herself to.

  “What do you think?”

  She jumped, forgetting she wasn’t alone. She pressed her hand to her heart to slow it and then turned to face the lanky Latino standing in front of her mirror in a long black dress and a flowing blond wig. The padded bra and girdle he wore emulated her curves. His skin, several shades darker than hers, was visible only on his face.

  The man introduced as Ramos strutted around the room on two-inch heels.

  Carolina laughed at the unexpected fluidity of Ramos in her dress. “You look like a man who has walked a mile or two in women’s shoes.”

  He wiggled his eyebrows. “Smooth-moving Latinos get all the best assignments.”

  A woman gasped from the doorway, soft but inflected. “Dear Lord, Carolina. What in the world is going on? Don’t tell me this is another one of those internet men?”

  Carolina laughed at the idea as she crossed the room to hug the friend she had missed. “Emmaline, I’m so glad you’re home.”

  “What are y’all doing?” the woman asked, looking the slim man up and down.

  Carolina handed Ramos the hat and watched appraisingly as his features were muted under the tightly knit veil. “Jeb and Uncle Mitch think the man causing all this trouble will be at Derrick’s funeral looking for me. Mr. Ramos is going as me.”

  “Are you going?” Emmaline asked.

  “No,” she said, taking a step backward and covering her throat with her hand. “I am going to stay here.” They had come to her home to encourage the idea that Carolina was in town and going to the funeral, should anyone be looking. They had arrived in a small caravan hours before. Jeb had continued to keep his distance from her. She pressed it when she saw the new cut on his cheek. Tears clouded her vision as she cleaned and covered it. Before he could pull away, she laid her lips over the torn skin, pouring everything she could into the healing kiss. She felt his breath catch and thought, maybe, he’d look at her, see the love she felt. Instead, he walked away, handing her off to Beck for the drive.

  “I think that’s best,” Emmaline said, nodding approvingly, continuing the conversation.

  Tears burned her eyes, but she realized Emmaline hadn’t been privy to her thoughts, to the pain that came with Jeb turning away.


  “This man has caused you enough grief,” Emmaline said, continuing her stream of consciousness. “I know that Derrick was a special man in your life and he would be happier knowing you are safe.”

  She flinched. Emmaline had no idea what Derrick was to her. How could she tell her Derrick was her boogeyman? He was the thing under the bed and the one in the closet. Her stomach tossed as if she was on a roller coaster after competing in a hot dog eating contest. She pressed her hand to her stomach, wishing she would be over this sick feeling by now. If she put her mind to it, she could almost see it from his point of view. Had he ever actually hurt her? No.

  Yes! Something in her rose up, defending her, refusing to let her make excuses for Derrick. Look what her life had become. He had done it. Whatever his intentions, the result was that she was reluctant to leave her house.

  What would it take for her to get over this physical reaction to going outside?

  Did she have to watch them lower him in the ground to believe it was over?

  She ran down the stairs to the front office, where Jeb and Beck had set up a command center. A coffee pot sat on the credenza. Large aerial maps covered her father’s desk. She hovered silently at the door.

  Beck pointed to a spot on the map. “It works in our favor that the cemetery is behind the church. We skip that whole caravan to the burial site.”

  “True,” Jeb said, his eyes combing the image. “But we will have a parade from the church to the site. The site is here. The rear of the cemetery, nearly a half mile from the church.” Full-grown trees were sprinkled over the century-old land. Jeb pointed to an oak tree a hundred yards from Derrick’s grave. “I need you here before the parade starts. I’ll shadow Ramos at that point.”

  Beck nodded. “I scouted yesterday. The balcony will give us the coverage we need during the service but there’s no getting away from needing both of us. The balcony isn’t used. It’s a storage space with plenty of shadows to hide in. Assuming all is quiet for the service, I’ll move into position for the burial while you join the parade.”

  Jeb inhaled deeply, held the breath, and exhaled. “Ramos and Walker will be sitting ducks.”