B00C179BP0 EBOK

by J W Becton

  Hope.

  That was truly the only option available to me now. Prosecution, court cases, testimony: they were all out of my hands. I had no control over anything that might happen in the coming months.

  Suddenly, I felt like a car skidding out of control, just waiting for something solid to stop me.

  Vincent.

  The image of him came to mind instantly.

  I wanted to go to him, plain and simple. I wanted to share this moment with him, not with Tripp, wonderful though he was.

  So after Tripp finished his tea and left, and without another thought about the consequences of my actions, I climbed into my Explorer, cranked it, and felt something quicken inside me at what I was about to do.

  Almost before I even realized I’d physically made the trip, I was walking along Vincent’s sidewalk with Lake Montclair in the background shimmering under the bright winter sunlight.

  Without an ounce of hesitation, I knocked on the oak-paneled door, feeling the grain of the wood brush my skin. I drew back onto the stoop, waiting for him to come.

  Finally, after what seemed like an interminable span of time, the door swung open.

  Vincent.

  That one word seemed to somehow encapsulate everything about him. He was so, well, himself. Maybe not as perfectly solid as I’d thought before, but at least he was damaged in a way I understood.

  Standing there with the light streaming around the porch as he took me in, I knew this was right.

  He stood immobile in the door, but his gaze brushed along my skin, traveled the length of my body, and then returned to meet my eyes.

  I took a shuddering breath and just stared at him without even having the sense to feel foolish about it. His face had healed from Carla Sumler’s scratches, and he was barefoot and wearing faded jeans and a gray t-shirt that looked worn and soft. He looked absolutely touchable, and I had the craziest impulse to skip conversation and just launch myself at him.

  “Ah,” he said, looking at me with expectation and more than a hint of confusion in his eyes. “Everything okay?”

  I nodded and felt a smile spread across my no-longer-bruised face.

  “I just heard from Tripp. The DNA is a match.”

  Vincent studied me quietly for a moment before I continued.

  “We definitely found the asshole who raped my sister, and it’s weird. I don’t know how to feel. Part of me is thrilled, part of me feels free, and part of me is scared to death about what will happen next.”

  “I know the feeling,” he said. “We’ve both been waiting, pursuing something for a long time, and now that we’re on the cusp of having it, we realize that the difficult part is just beginning.”

  “Yeah,” I said softly. “Slidell’s trial.”

  My sister’s sobriety. Dealing with the potential fallout if my evidence theft were to come to light.

  “Being a good father to Justin and not just being nearby,” Vincent added.

  At his mention of Justin, I became conscious of a TV blaring in the background. That wasn’t like Vincent.

  “He’s here? Justin’s here?” I asked, half hopeful that Vincent might be on the path to mending matters with his son and half sad that the evening wouldn’t go exactly as I’d planned. Not with Justin in the house.

  “Yes,” Vincent said, his expression flickering between hesitancy and hope. “Not living here. But here.”

  My heart swelled at the conflicted look on his face. Justin hadn’t spoken a word to him in the two weeks since the drag race, and Vincent had been trapped somewhere between worry and anger about the choices his son had made.

  God, I so understood that feeling.

  But now Justin was here.

  “At least it’s a start,” I said, hoping he followed my meaning, “and you’ll keep being there for him. I know you will.”

  “Yeah, but that’s no guarantee of a happily ever after, is it? He may never forgive me for leaving, or for making him confess his crimes to his mother. Not to mention the alcohol classes.”

  “No, he might never forgive you, and my family might never forgive me, but we did what was right. Didn’t we?”

  I paused and reached for his hand. I felt his fingers tighten on mine, and we stood there like that until he finally murmured, “Coming in?”

  “Yes,” I said a little too breathlessly, “Yes, I’ll come in, but first—”

  I let go of Vincent’s hand and reached around him, searching for the door handle. As I began to close the door behind him, my body brushed against his, causing the very air between us to shift—almost shimmer. As the door clicked quietly shut, Vincent slid his hand along my extended arm, leaning back against the closed door and taking me with him.

  Pressed against his length and acutely aware of the hard chest beneath me, I looked up and found his blue eyes intent on mine.

  Slowly, his forehead descended until it leaned against mine, and I could feel his warm breath on my cheek.

  Without another thought, I grasped the back of his head, letting my hands sink into the hairs there, and I kissed Mark Vincent, hot, open-mouthed, and desperate as I let my body melt into his.

  Even though I had been the one to initiate the kiss, there was no shock or hesitation in his response. A groan rumbled through his chest, and I felt it reverberate through my own body as I pressed into him. My hands roamed down his muscled back, over his arms, up his chest. Now that I let myself touch him, I couldn’t get enough.

  Suddenly, my back was against the porch column, and it was Vincent’s body that was pressing so desperately into my own. Overwhelmed by the heat and hunger of it all, I heard myself sigh into his mouth, and in answer, he lifted me from my feet, holding me aloft against his tall, solid frame as if I were too precious to tread on the earth.

  As the kiss deepened further, I could think of nothing—not Justin’s choices, Tricia’s drinking, Slidell’s court cases, or the future—because the question had been asked and answered, and now we were blazing a new trail, all because I had deliberately kissed Mark Vincent for the simple reason that I could not stop myself in time.

  Nor did I want to.

  Please enjoy the following excerpt from Moral Hazard (Southern Fraud Thriller 4) by J. W. Becton.

  A WHITELEY PRESS, LLC, BOOK

  Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Becton

  http://www.jwbecton.com

  One

  “We’ve got a problem,” Tripp Carver said, his voice straining through the speaker of my cell phone in an anxious whisper. “Can you meet me?”

  Before I could offer a sensible reply, sweat beaded on my forehead, and my skin began to prickle. I shifted in my office chair, causing its springs to squeal in alarm.

  “Okay,” I said, drawing out the word and hoping Tripp might give me a hint about the nature of the problem. When he offered nothing, I plunged in.

  “What’s up?”

  Tripp remained obstinately silent, and I shifted again, eliciting only the response of more squeaky springs.

  This tactic would obviously get me nowhere.

  “When and where do you want to meet?” I asked finally.

  “Fifteen minutes at Middle Mercer Park.”

  Tripp’s curt reply made my scalp tingle with anticipation, and nervous energy loosened my tongue, probably a bit too much.

  “Should I wear my trench coat and dark glasses?” I quipped.

  Tripp gave what sounded like an unintended snort of laughter, a sound that brought me only fleeting reassurance, because when he spoke again, his serious tone returned.

  “This isn’t a joke, Jules. We have a real problem. I’ll see you in a few.”

  “See ya then,” I replied, but he had already disconnected.

  Stunned, I stared unseeingly at my phone.

  Crap.

  I glanced at the clock on my computer screen even though I didn’t need to. Middle Mercer Park stood on the fringes of downtown, so it would take less than fifteen minutes for me to get there from the Georgia
Department of Insurance building. But it felt good to distract myself with a simple action. It gave my adrenaline production the chance to ease off and my brain the opportunity to kick in.

  I closed my eyes to analyze our brief conversation.

  When Tripp called, he usually engaged me in harmless flirtation and then inquired after my sister and parents. If nothing else, he at least said hello. He’d initiated none of the expected rituals today, and that didn’t bode well. What’s worse, he refused to answer my questions, and he wanted no delays; we had to meet now. Based on his hurried whispers and choice of private rendezvous point, he didn’t want anyone to know about our conversation.

  Even when Tripp faced the stress that came with being a detective in the Mercer Police Department Violent Crimes Unit, he never failed to maintain a sense of joviality, a trait I admired in him. Despite the darkness he witnessed on the job every day, he never stopped looking toward the light.

  I felt disoriented after his call, as if I’d been in a bright room when all the lights were suddenly shut off.

  I knew I had to get moving, get out there and face whatever I had to face.

  Grabbing my coat, I strode out of the DOI and crossed the parking lot to my Explorer, trying to tamp down my impending panic. After all, it could be nothing, I reasoned. Then immediately dismissed that thought.

  It couldn’t be nothing. When Tripp Carver said we had a problem in that tone of voice, we had an honest-to-God problem.

  I hurried, hoping to outrun what I already knew in my heart. I knew what Tripp had called about, but that didn’t prevent me from listing all the reasons I was surely wrong while I shuttled myself across downtown Mercer on autopilot. At least my mind was busy as I zipped by the roadside plantings and barely noticed that the forsythia was starting to bloom, a sure sign that the city sat on the cusp of spring. But I felt only the gloom of a gray winter morning pressing down on me. For all I knew, there was no color in sight.

  When my SUV ground to a halt in the parking lot of Middle Mercer Park, I sighed and pulled myself from the car, forcing my leaden feet across the asphalt lot and into the playground, where Tripp sat on a swing, waiting for me. Though he looked relaxed, idly rocking his swing back and forth with his feet planted firmly on the ground, his expression was grim, and he didn’t smile at me as I took the swing beside him.

  We remained quiet for a long moment, both of us staring ahead. I didn’t feel ready to hear what Tripp was going to say, and apparently, he was in no hurry to begin either.

  A young college coed bounded across my line of sight. Dressed in bright pink running gear and wearing enough makeup to be photographed for a sporting goods advertisement, she turned down a nearby path toward the trees, earbuds lodged securely in place.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I peeked at Tripp. His eyes followed the jogger without the gleam of appreciation for her lithe feminine form that I expected to see. In fact, he appeared vaguely disgusted.

  “Someone should tell her that it’s not safe to run while listening to music,” Tripp stated.

  I turned my swing so that I could study him. Not yet noon, and already he’d loosened his tie, and his rumpled white button-down shirt looked like it had never seen the business end of an iron.

  Time to get this over with.

  “You didn’t ask me to meet so we could discuss personal safety habits,” I said, watching the coed’s strawberry blond ponytail disappear from view. I tried to keep my tone light but didn’t quite manage it. “Why all the cloak and dagger?”

  “The GBI is in the building today, Jules.”

  Fear kicked me in the gut, and I sucked in a breath as my eyes flew to meet his. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was at the Mercer PD. Something big was going down.

  Apparently, their presence involved me.

  “Oh.”

  That one syllable was the best I could manage as panicked thoughts swirled in my brain.

  “The whole thing’s been very hush-hush,” Tripp said. “We got no word about what they’re investigating, but the guys in Internal Affairs seemed pretty pissed. When I found out that they requested your sister’s case file and evidence, I had to look deeper at what they were up to.”

  Tripp’s sober tone threatened to undo me, so I spun my swing until it faced forward again and began to rock myself slowly back and forth in a lame attempt to calm myself. The movement felt vaguely soothing, and I focused on the park path again while I tried to force my quickly numbing brain to think.

  An elderly man with a basset hound had replaced the jogger, and I watched as he pulled the unenthusiastic canine down the path and into the woods too.

  “What are they up to?” I asked quietly.

  “They suspect that the DNA evidence has been tainted,” he said soberly. “The defense attorney noticed an anomaly in the sample—a missing piece, apparently—at the pre-trial evidence viewing.”

  I chewed nervously on my lip.

  The authorities knew about the missing evidence.

  The evidence that I’d stolen and used to help identify and locate the man who had raped my sister. The evidence that I’d tucked away for safekeeping in the small trunk in my house.

  But the authorities didn’t know my part in the story.

  Not yet.

  Maybe they didn’t have to find out.

  I shook my head at that thought.

  The MPD brass had bypassed their own internal affairs division and called in the big guns. That meant the district attorney was serious about discovering the reasons for the anomaly in the evidence; calling an independent third party to investigate would prevent the appearance of bias or impropriety. The MPD probably wanted to keep their own noses clean so they could make an example out of the culprit.

  Me.

  The GBI employed the state’s premier investigators. They’d discover my role soon enough.

  So in short, I was screwed.

  Fear, logical and cold, sneaked into my mind. Not only could the GBI investigate the internal affairs of the MPD, but, when they got wind of my involvement, they would start poking around my work at the DOI as well.

  Not that I had done anything illegal there, but still, it was the principle of the thing. I didn’t want to bring a GBI investigation to the DOI’s doorstep if I could help it.

  I continued to rock my swing back and forth as Tripp explained.

  “Kay Lanyon is prosecuting the case. We’ve worked together on a number of occasions, and let me tell you, she’s one scary bitch. She’s got one of the best conviction records in the county, and she’s the kind of attorney you don’t want to piss off. And she’s pissed, Jules.”

  Oops, I thought.

  But it got worse.

  “The DNA evidence might not be admissible now,” Tripp said, and all the oxygen suddenly disappeared from the atmosphere. My breathing became labored, and I couldn’t suck in enough air to form a proper reply.

  Without the DNA evidence, Clayton Leslie Slidell, the man who had raped my sister Tricia seventeen years ago and the man whom I’d been on a quest to find for my entire adult life, might go free.

  By the time the MPD had arrested his ass for an unrelated assault, the statute of limitations on rape had expired.

  However, the state of Georgia offers an exception.

  If DNA evidence is used to establish the identity of the accused, there is no statute of limitations on rape in Georgia.

  In order for the DNA evidence to be admitted in court, the prosecuting attorney must be able to prove an unbroken chain of evidence, meaning that it could be accounted for from the time it was collected to the time it was presented in court. Any gap in the chain of evidence could indicate mishandling at the very least or foul play at the worst.

  And just as if Tripp had been reading my thoughts, he added, “They suspect tampering.”

  Oh God.

  My mind raced toward the logical conclusion: if they suspected tampering, the case would be thrown out. And now that I’d pissed off the D
A, the investigation would not go out the door with the case. They’d want to know what happened, and I would be one of their first suspects. Because I’d actually done it, well, it wouldn’t be long before they scrounged up enough proof to get an arrest warrant.

  I attempted to say something, but my lips wouldn’t part, and even if they had been physically capable of that action, I had no idea what to say.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tripp angle his swing toward mine, and then I felt his fingers wrap around the chain that held me, pulling me toward him. The movement felt slow, languid, as if we were moving through water.

  “Look at me, Jules,” he said. “I’m not your enemy. But I need to know the truth.”

  I did look at him then, and after a few moments of focusing on Tripp’s familiar face and seeing the mixture of disappointment and yet persistent faith in his expression, I was able to suck in a few breaths and gather my thoughts.

  This was Tripp, one of my oldest friends, my former boyfriend, my confidant. But he was also Tripp, the by-the-book cop, the morally upstanding man.

  What would he do if I told him the truth now?

  I trusted Tripp, always had, but would he have my back now, when I was the bad guy?

  “Tell me they’re wrong to suspect tampering,” he said, watching me expectantly.

  I could feel the weight of his gaze as if it were a physical thing.

  “Well,” I began, my voice rasping out from between my suddenly dry lips, “they’re not exactly right, and that’s the truth.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” Tripp said, leaning his swing away and running a frustrated hand through his dark, perpetually mussed hair.

  “It means that technically the evidence was ‘knowingly altered,’” I admitted, using terms straight from the legal statute. Yeah, I’d memorized it. It’s the kind of thing you do when you knowingly commit a felony.

  “But,” I added, “not with ‘the intent to prevent the apprehension or cause the wrongful apprehension of any person or to obstruct the prosecution or defense of any person.’”

  “Jesus, Jules, you sound like a law book. Just tell me what you know. Who tampered with the evidence?”