Just Evil (The Evil Secrets Trilogy)

by Vickie McKeehan

  The minute the reporters spotted Jake and Kit trying to make their way to the car, they came alive, hurling questions and accusations at them both in rapid-fire succession. Not all of the questions were about Alana’s murder. A few of them had done their homework and uncovered all the gory details about Claire Boston’s murder as well, which made Jake and Kit an odd and interesting couple on the morning news. All the way to the Book & Bean, the press hounded them. The siege from the media made the ten minute trip take twice as long.

  Even though they parked behind the store, the minute they started unloading the car, an on-air personality with a camera crew in tow, surrounded them and began firing questions. But Jake and Kit refused to take the bait, refusing comment.

  Once they were inside the store though, Jake told her, “We use this to our advantage. I need to get Reese out here to make a statement on your behalf, standing in front of the coffee shop. From this point on, every time these guys ask, you just keep telling them you did nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide, and that you’re being harassed by the police.”

  With all the media descending on the Book & Bean, business tripled. Kit and Baylee were so busy they alternated between handling the lines behind the counter in the coffee shop to digging for titles and ringing up sales in the bookstore. When the quiche and chocolate chip muffins disappeared by eight-thirty, Kit wished she’d had the foresight to have baked more.

  With so many news people and strangers milling around the place, Jake stuck to Kit like glue. At one point, he even stepped behind the counter and did his best to fill simple orders for coffee since he had no idea how to work any of the equipment.

  By the time Gloria got there, Kit welcomed the influx of items she brought to the already dwindling inventory. The customers pounced on the mint brownies, the oatmeal raisin cookies, and cherry tarts before Kit had a chance to unpack the goodies.

  “You’re a lifesaver, Glo,” Kit commented, as Gloria stepped behind the counter to help fill orders.

  “Well, if I’d known I’d be on the news, I would have worn my black dress, the one that makes me look like I’m fifteen pounds thinner. And I called Quinn told her if she got the chance to DVR the news at noon.”

  As the morning wore on, the atmosphere became more like a party. The coffee flowed, sales picked up inside the bookstore, and the locals turned out in defense of their girl.

  Kit had never been more proud of the whole town.

  Reese showed up in time to give a live interview in front of the shop for the mid-day newscast. He answered questions for half an hour from every media source from as far away as Tijuana. When they asked about what evidence linked Kit to Alana’s murder, Reese pointed out there was none, then volleyed insults back at the police, questioning their dogged pursuit, if not downright hounding of his client. When they brought up Kit’s abuse, Reese managed to turn the tables, reminding them that Kit was the victim here. The question though, cemented his belief that St. John had leaked the information to the press. How else would they have known about Kit’s abusive childhood?

  By mid-afternoon, the hubbub had died down somewhat when most of the reporters took their film and lead-off story and headed back to L.A. to make their evening deadline.

  As Kit propped her feet up on one of the chairs, exhausted, she had to admit it had been one of the most successful days in sales in the four year history of the Book & Bean. “I’ll just put a sign on the door that says we’re sold out of food and books and coffee. I’ll have to re-order coffee. They drank every flavor I had in stock. I even managed to get rid of that raspberry flavored crap I mistakenly ordered weeks ago. Do you think they’ll be back tomorrow? How much food should I bake?”

  Jake couldn’t believe her demeanor. “You’re worried about how much to bake? You’re taking this a lot better than I am.”

  “Difference in personalities. Difference in histories. And besides you’re a guy. Hey, I’m just practicing that old adage, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve never heard that expression?”

  “No, not that.”

  “What? You mean the fact that you’re a guy. Well, it’s all about ego…”

  “Not that, the history thing, what do you mean by that?”

  “Oh that. Our histories are different that’s all. You’re successful, come from a calm, stable home environment. So you don’t react very well to chaos. My history is reaped in chaos. It’s the only atmosphere I had going for me for years. So I’m used to it, while you’re not. Understand?”

  “Yeah, I do.” And the sad thing was he really did.

  At five-thirty Kit and Jake pulled into the garage at Kit’s house and began to unload the bakery trays from the car. She gathered everything from the back seat, while Jake emptied the stuff from the trunk. Their arms laden down with empty pastry trays and metal food carriers, Jake took the house key out of Kit’s hand and made his way around the car to unlock the door going into the first floor laundry room. The minute he stepped inside, Kit heard a thud, and then the sound of metal hit the tile floor. As she got to the doorway, she looked in and saw Jake sprawled on his stomach, face down.

  She dropped the stack of trays and rushed inside.

  Collin stepped into her path.

  Standing over Jake was a man she recognized as Gerald Auslo. She turned around and bolted for the door. But Collin caught her by the hair from behind and pulled her backward. She began punching and kicking and screaming.

  Collin yelled for Auslo. “Leave that son of a bitch and get out here. Help me with Kit. And tell Taft to bring the van around.”

  As if on cue Auslo stepped out into the garage behind Collin and began talking into a two-way radio. Collin tightened the hold on her hair and started backing her out of the garage toward a van, now parked at the end of her driveway.

  “You can’t run from me this time, Kit-Kat. God knows you’ve tried all these years, but this is the end of the line. You can’t get away from me this time. Boston can’t protect you. And this time I mean to have you, understand? I mean to have what you’ve been giving that piece of shit Boston.”

  “Why are you doing this, Collin? We grew up together.”

  “You told the cops about me. Some detective came to see me, wanted to know where I was the night you lost control of your car, I gave him a very convincing story, told him I had an alibi. Cade and Connor backed me up. Surely you didn’t think the cops would believe you over me, did you? He can’t touch me now, Kit-Kat, but that doesn’t mean he won’t come after me later. I won’t spend time in jail. You hear me. And without you they’ll be no witness for later.”

  Kit didn’t intend to make it easy. With her long legs, she kicked out at Collin, and sent him sprawling onto the concrete floor. She took off running. But Auslo soon caught up with her.

  “Goddamn it, Gerald, get the fucking needle. I wasn’t going to do this, Kit-Kat, but you’re pissing me off.”

  As soon as he got to his feet, Collin backhanded Kit across the mouth. The blow sent her reeling. She fell back against the wall of the garage, knocking over a stack of paint cans.

  Collin ordered Auslo, “She isn’t going without a fight. Give her the damn drug.”

  In one quick motion Auslo pulled the syringe from his jacket pocket and plunged it into her arm. “She’s a fighter. I like that in a woman. I wouldn’t mind a go at her when you’re done with her, Boyd.”

  “Shut up, Gerald. Kit belongs to me and don’t you forget it. She’s mine, she’s always been mine, got it?”

  Kit looked at the man she’d known all of her life and saw nothing but cold, stony eyes, not a shred of compassion. But she tried to reason with him anyway. “Collin, you won’t get away with this. This is kidnapping. This is crossing the line. When Jake finds out, he’ll come after you. We can…” But as the drug started to work, blackness descended.

  Her last conscious thought was of Jake, as she fell into the arms o
f Collin and Auslo, who carried her to the waiting van.

  Jake sat on the sofa in the living room holding his throbbing head in his hands as what constituted as the law in San Madrid, a sheriff’s deputy from Ventura County, took his statement.

  When he looked up, he saw Reese and Dylan rush into the room. They took one look at Jake and saw the miserable look on his face—and the guilt.

  “Collin took her. He was inside the house waiting for us. And I bring her right in, hand her to him on a silver platter.”

  Dylan reached out, rested his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “We’ll find her, Jake.”

  “How? How the hell will we do that, Dylan? Where do we start looking?” He looked at the deputy. “Or where do they look? She’s gone. And it’s my fucking fault. I couldn’t protect her.”

  CHAPTER 28

  He’d followed the van from a safe distance back. Through night vision goggles, he watched as they unloaded the girl, carried her inside what looked like an abandoned warehouse, surrounded by an eight foot chain link fence.

  He got out of his car, surveyed the terrain, gauged the best location for his kill zone. Deciding in an instant, he opened the trunk of his car, took out a black case and began to assemble the Remington rifle. With a rhythmic motion that comes from having done this more than a thousand times, he snapped the scope into place, slid a bullet into the chamber, gathered up another magazine, and took off up the hill. As he crouched behind whatever cover he could find, adrenalin pumped through his veins.

  “I’ve killed others far less deserving than these three,” he muttered to himself, as he took up his position on the hill overlooking the warehouse. The only question in his mind was which one of them he would take down first. Before he had time to think, that question answered itself as the man known as Taft moved from behind the wheel of the van into his line of vision on the way to the open doorway. He locked on the target through his telescopic lens, sucked in a breath, steadied his gun, and slowly squeezed the trigger.

  On target, a bullet through the head, Taft lay dead.

  When Auslo came into his line of sight to check on his buddy, he squeezed off another round before the man had time to react. The bullet hit Auslo in the chest. He watched Auslo grab his shirt, stagger two steps backward before falling inside the doorway of the warehouse.

  Two down.

  I’m coming for you, Boyd.

  He charged around the side of the warehouse, scanning from left to right, watching for any movement out of the corner of his eye. He could hear Collin screaming at the two dead men, ridiculously trying to find out what was going on. He recognized the voice for what it was. Collin’s voice trembled with panic―and fear. He’d seen Collin’s type many times, the man was a weakling, and would either run at some point or would try to bargain for his life. Either way, Collin would be dead before the night was done.

  As he reached the corner of the building, he peered through a broken window. He had no clear shot. The son of a bitch had taken up position in a crumpled mass trying to use the girl as a shield as she lay on the floor. He moved to try from another vantage point. As he made his way around the side of the warehouse, he heard Collin shout, “Who’s out there? You come any closer, I’ll kill her. I swear I will.”

  He knew as long as he didn’t answer Collin, the silence would unnerve the man, so he kept holding to the side of the building, kept moving, and kept checking each window for his clear kill zone. He knew if he wasn’t careful a bullet at this range might exit Collin and keep going, so he had to make sure the girl was not in the line of fire.

  As he came to an outside stairway going up to the second level, he realized he could get a clear shot from above. Swiftly and silently, he ascended the stairs. As he went through the doorway at the top of the landing, he spotted a narrow catwalk midway up. With Collin below and to the right, he’d found his clear shot.

  Silently, he dashed onto the wooden catwalk. Even from this distance, he could smell Collin’s fear. He lowered the rifle, sighted him in, held his breath, and put his finger on the trigger. As he fired, the rotted wood beneath his feet gave way, and he fell to the first floor below. He knew before he hit the floor, the shot had been off target.

  Jarred by the fall, it took him almost a full sixty seconds to scramble to his feet. Outside, he heard the van’s engine roar to life, tires squealed, gravel spitted, and he knew at that moment he’d missed.

  And he had never missed.

  As he dusted himself off, he approached the girl with caution. But as he got closer, he realized she was still unconscious, drugged. He searched for a pulse, found it slow, but steady. Untying her hands, he laid her back on the concrete floor. He looked around for something to put under her head and noticed the sizeable amount of blood on the floor. Well, well, well, he hadn’t completely missed after all, he thought. The bastard would need a doctor for that, and he’d be easy enough to track.

  He saw nothing he could use for a pillow and shrugged out of his jacket, making sure the pockets were empty. As he gently lifted her head, he slid the jacket underneath and placed the gold cowboy in her hand, closed her fist around it.

  Looking down at her, his thoughts inexplicably turned to the daughter he’d once had from a lifetime ago, a little tow-head blonde who had once been the light of his life, who’d followed him around wherever he went. She’d looked exactly like her mother. Had his wife and daughter lived, his life would have been far different from the one he had now. All at once, snapshots of the people he’d once loved went off like a collage inside his head. He pictured his wife, his daughter as they’d been in life. Realization hit him. Kit Griffin reminded him of his daughter. She was causing emotions to surface that had long since died, emotions he’d put on hold for so long, it was as if someone else was standing there…feeling.

  He came out of his reverie long enough to push a lock of her hair from her forehead. “Looks like it’s time to call that man of yours and have him get his ass over here to pick you up. Maybe next time he won’t be so careless.”

  He stripped off his leather gloves, replaced them with a fresh pair from his pants pocket.

  “You should know Collin and his brothers aren’t likely to just let this go. They’re bound to regroup. But don’t worry. I’ll be watching out for you and the people you care about.”

  Noah Parker would have expected nothing less.

  Kit woke up swinging, both hands bunched in tight fists as she punched at the air.

  “Whoa there, honey. It’s me,” Jake announced as he blocked the jab she’d thrown at him. He’d been sitting beside her hospital bed for the last couple of hours waiting for the drug to wear off.

  Kit heard a familiar voice through the haze in her brain and collapsed back down on the bed, her body spent. Trying hard to get rid of the cobwebs clouding her head, get her eyes to focus, she propped herself up momentarily, only to slide back down again. She tried to open her eyes but the room spun. She realized she was back in a hospital room.

  She focused on Jake standing over her and whispered, “How’d you find me, Jake? Take me home, I want to go home.”

  “I’ll get you out of here just as soon as we know you’re okay. What do you remember?”

  “I remember fighting, kicking at Collin and his two thugs. Then that Auslo guy took out a needle and gave me some kind of shot.” She reached to rub the site of the injection on her arm. Then as if she’d just remembered he’d been hurt too, she touched his cheek. “What about you, how’s your head?”

  “I’ll live. The doctor thinks they might have given you something called a hotshot, a very fast-acting drug, a cocktail mixture that’s gonna leave you with a helluva headache.”

  She scrubbed at her face and laid a hand on her belly. “My head’s pounding and I’m sick to my stomach.” Clearly a bit disoriented, she asked again, “What happened, Jake? How’d you find me?”

  “I was in the process of giving my statement to a sheriff’s deputy, when I got this weird phone call.
The man on the other end told me where to find you, said you were okay, not to worry, gave me the location of a warehouse, and the directions on how to get there.”

  He paused, rested his forehead on hers to clear his head. He’d been out of his mind with worry, afraid he’d never see her again. He touched his lips to hers for a chaste kiss. “I jumped in the car with Reese and Dylan. We followed the police car to this abandoned warehouse near Thousand Oaks. When we got there we found Auslo and Taft lying dead, each from a single gunshot.

  “When we walked inside the warehouse there you were lying on the concrete floor with a jacket underneath your head and this in your hand.” He held out his palm, and showed her the gold cowboy. “Do you remember anything, honey, about the man who helped you?”

  She picked up the gold cowboy with a confused look on her face. “I don’t remember anything, except the fight with Collin.” She paused and then added, “And the fear, I remember the fear knowing Collin planned to kill me.” Her voice began to shake, and the tears came. “I vaguely remember hearing another man’s voice, a voice that oddly tried to reassure me that everything was going to be all right.” She rubbed her throbbing head. “The voice sounded familiar, you know, like I’d heard it before. The voice wasn’t Collin’s or those other guys, that’s for sure. I thought it sounded like my father.”

  Jake shook his head. “I promise you Collin will never get another chance to hurt you again. When I woke up and found you gone I’ve never been so scared in my life. I’m so sorry, honey. I won’t let him near you again. That’s a promise.” He wrapped her up, placing kisses on both cheeks, her nose, her lips.

  Her brain might have been foggy, but she knew one thing for certain. “You can’t make that kind of a promise, Jake. No one can. What happened wasn’t your fault. It’s ridiculous to think we can spend every waking minute of every day with each other. We can’t live our lives afraid to go about our daily routines. We can’t live like that, and I won’t have you blaming yourself.”