by Taylor Lee
The best Jude could do was to nod his approval. How could he tell her that she had articulated the conclusions that he had come to after wracking his brain for hours since he first walked into the shattered library? It would have been graceless at best to “me-too” her conclusions. It would only look like he was trying to piggyback on her astute analysis.
Instead he shrugged and said, “You are correct. It’s a given that finances have to be a part of this, but are you intimating that we ignore the vicious sexual elements? That they aren’t an important factor?”
Skylar returned his shrug. “Of course they are. But raping someone financially can be as devastating as raping them physically.”
Jude nodded thoughtfully. “I think you’re on to something, Specs. It would seem as though we should start by getting us a first-rate accounting team to go over the Parker’s finances.”
Jake and Jared laughed in unison.
Jared’s voice was laced with disdain. “You’re in luck, bro, it just so happens that…” He paused for effect, then said with a snort, “You ready for this, big guy? One of Skylar’s degrees is in forensic accounting.”
Chapter 3
“Okay, asshole. Out with it. Besides being exceptionally odd and unattractive, who the fuck is she?”
Jude reached into the bottom drawer of his desk and yanked out a bottle of Jack Daniels Black Label. Plunking three glasses next to the bottle, he poured a healthy shot in each. Pushing the glasses toward his brothers sitting across from him, he glared at Jared, indicating he wanted an answer.
Jared raised his glass in a toast then swallowed thoughtfully. “Hmm, I don’t think of her that way, bro. Yeah, she’s odd, but unattractive? I don’t agree. But the more important question is, what’s shoved that elephant-sized bug up your ass that made you go after a shy young woman and do your best to demolish her in front of her peers?”
Jude had the decency to blush. He shook his head and didn’t try to excuse his behavior. Running his hands through his shaggy hair, he sighed. “Damned if I know, bro. If I were an even bigger coward I’d blame it on the strain of this whole fucking mess. Or I’d say that watching the Parker kids’ anguish brings back the memory of how our parents died, and it’s tearing me apart. But hell, you both gotta be feeling all of that as much as I am. But why I took it out on that pitiful urchin? I’ll be damned if I know.”
Jake shook his head in agreement. “We’re all riding a thin wire, Jude. It’s understandable. We’re gonna have to pull together like we never have before. And we’re gonna have to include Jorden and Gramps in that huddle. They have to be as wracked with hard memories as we are. Maybe even more. Christ, Jared, you were only two years old, and Jude, you were barely five when Mom and Dad died. I was eight, and even though Jorden seemed so much older, he was all of eleven. Think about that, and then remember that he was the only one of us who saw the boat explode.”
Jake closed his eyes as if to shut out the scene. When he opened them Jude wasn’t surprised to see the tears welling in his solemn brother’s eyes. Jake shook his head and raised his hands in defeat. After a long pause, he continued. “You, um, you know what I remember most about that afternoon? I remember Jorden’s face when he came running in the door. He looked like a fifty-year-old man, not an elementary school kid. His face was pure white and his eyes were like saucers. He ran up to Gramps and said, ‘Mama and Dad blew up!’ ”
Jude let the silence stand for a long moment. There was no sense pretending that the slaughter of the Carol and Hank Parker hadn’t hit all of them in hideous ways. Not the least of which was the knowledge that like the Parkers, their parents had also been murdered.
He muttered, “Yeah, Jake. We all got our memories of that day. Jared and I were too young to understand much at the time. But seeing the Parkers, and most of all, seeing Blake and his sisters, their agony—” He stopped in mid-sentence, then grabbed a ragged breath and shot his brothers a hard glare.
“But fuck it all, forget about us for a moment. Can you imagine how this is hitting Gramps? It’s taken him most of our lifetimes to come to grips what he considers to be his responsibility for Mom and Dad’s murders. And now this?”
Sharing a shattered silence with his brothers, Jude slowly poured another finger of the amber liquid into their glasses and raised his in a bitter toast. “Not that it’s necessary, but I pledge to you both that together, we will run the animals who did this into the ground, and so help me God, do everything in our power to ensure that they don’t draw an easy breath until they die. After that we can only hope that they spend eternity fleeing from one fiery level of hell to the next.”
At his brothers’ resounding ‘Hear! Hear!’, Jude snorted as he shoved the bottle of liquid comfort into his drawer.
“Given that we’ve all been up for at least twenty-four hours, and the range of emotions hitting us, a jolt of Jack probably isn’t the best breakfast juice we could imbibe.”
The thought of eating breakfast or even drinking a glass of orange juice brought back the memory of the spiky-haired pixie consuming two gargantuan, greasy doughnuts while studiously watching the gruesome autopsy details on the television monitors.
Choking down an aggrieved snort, he challenged his brothers. “Look, I know I’ve been acting like an overbearing asshole when it comes to the kid with the coke-bottle glasses, but for Christ’s sake, did you see that pint-sized pixie down those fucking doughnuts like Joey ‘Jaws’ Chestnut? All the while never taking her eyes off the gory pictures of the murder scene? Hell, she even looked kind of dainty doing it.”
He snorted again and mimicked the young girl carefully picking apart the greasy globs of fat and putting them piece-by-piece in his mouth.
Jared snorted in return. “I dunno, dude. To me it speaks to aplomb that none of us have. Hell, what I’d give to have a cast-iron stomach like that. Maybe we could finish off a whole bottle of Jack at 8:30 in the morning instead of just a half bottle.”
Jude flicked him a one-finger salute. “Touché. And yeah, I concede, you’ve got a point. We all have our foibles.”
Jared pinned him with a stern gaze. “Which doesn’t explain why you’ve got that aforementioned elephant-sized bug up your ass—”
Jude interrupted before his brother could continue with what he admitted was a well-deserved rebuke. “Look, I know I was a fucking asshole to the squirt. And to be honest, I don’t know why I let her get to me. It’s just that she looked so improbable last night. Christ, everyone else on the squad was armed with equipment up the wazoo. They looked like they knew what they were doing. Fuck it, they were even writing down their findings. But Specs didn’t have so much as a goddamned pen in her hand. No, she just walked the scene for five and a half hours as if those weighty windows she wears were all she needed to capture the essence of the crime. Fuck. Who does she think she is, Cassandra the Entangler?”
“Sheesh, bro. Callin’ on the Greeks to divine the quintessence of the sprite? Man, she really got to you, didn’t she? Wanna tell me why…or should I tell you?”
Jude sneered. “Oh please, mighty all-knowing one, elucidate me. Tell me why the squirt studied every square inch of the scene and never spoke to a soul for the entire night. Including you, Jared, her supposed friend. And then while you’re at it, tell me why any woman needs to dress like a fuckin’ bag lady. Christ, I couldn’t tell a goddamn thing about her ass or her tits under those ugly shreds she wears.”
Jared returned his glare, his eyes dancing with a mix of amusement and scorn. “Hmm, bro, let’s start with the fact that the only other person I saw studying the scene without so much as a pen, and who spoke a total of twelve crisp, barked commands the entire night, was you. Could it be that you saw someone who analyzes a crime scene the way that the infamous Jude Justice does? By implanting every improbable detail into his Intel Xeon Phi Processor? And that in the process, you look as weird as she does? Must have been unsettling, bro, to see a mirror image, a kindred spirit. Especially when she didn’t
have the decency to flash her tits and ass so you could categorize her as worthy or unworthy of your attention.”
Jake added to his brother’s chastisement with a sly grin. “Add to that, after she finished polishing off the doughnuts, and without so much as a dainty burp, Ms. Hughes went to the heart of the crime scene, arriving at precisely the same place you did.”
He held up his hand, stopping Jude’s protest. “Uh-uh. Don’t bother disagreeing, bro. When she laid out her analysis, the look of amazement and consternation on your mug was priceless. Trust me, Jared and I will remember it for years to come. Jude Justice, the crime scene sorcerer, coming face to face with his doppelganger. A half-pint, spiky-haired girl at that. Priceless, I tell you!”
Feeling his face heat, Jude put up his hands. “Okay, okay, enough. You’ve outed me. I’m the insufferable asshole who prides himself on reading a crime scene like no one else can. And, as you so nicely pointed out, Jared, I’m also a chauvinistic boor to boot. We’re in agreement. Now, if it isn’t asking too much, will you please tell me who the hell ‘Hercule fuckin’ Poirot in drag’ is?”
Jared chuckled gleefully. “Too bad we’ve sworn off the booze for breakfast, buddy. You probably coulda used it to grab hold of these details. Okay, so who is Skylar Hughes? You were chasing hajis when Sky hit the tabloids. But even you might have heard about the sixteen-year-old mathematical whiz who not only hacked the IRS computer network, but spent a few weeks hanging out in the DOD’s deepest, darkest informational jungles. Naturally, the Fibbies tried to squash the publicity, not wanting to look like the compromised assholes that they were. If they’d had their way, Skylar would have spent the rest of her days in a padded cell with no access to an electric shaver, much less a computer.
“Fortunately for Sky and the rest of us mere mortals, her father is none other than Morton J. Hughes, the MIT mathematical mastermind. Being a DOD advisor, not to mention his connections to several prominent politicians including the secretary of defense, Hughes was able to keep his only child out of prison. After which, to what I’m sure was Professor Hughes’s distress, make that fury, his preternaturally talented daughter decided not to follow in her father’s academic footsteps. She decreed that she liked the bloodier side of the human psyche and insisted that she wanted to be a criminologist. Five years and four degrees later, the DOD hired her, planting her at the DEA, which, no big surprise, is where I met her.”
Jared shrugged. “I’ll grant you that she is odd. That kind of brainpower and the fact that she grew up as the companion of a brilliant and overpowering genius helps to explain her unusual personality. Not to put too fine a point on it, her father may be one of the most imperious men I’ve ever met. He controls his world and everyone in it—except to his surprise and distress, his ‘unusual’ daughter. Add to that, her mother bailed on them when Sky was four. Thanks to her domineering father, she never had the benefit of normal teenage crisis like catty girlfriends or rutting pimpled boys trying to get in her pants. So yeah, she’s unusual. Let’s just say that her social skills lag behind her intellectual ones. But according to Hailey and the other female cops, once you get past her ‘oddness,’ they find her as funny and clever as I do.”
Jared’s expression hardened and his voice dropped dangerously. “She’s also shy and vulnerable as hell, bro, so I’d appreciate it if you’d let up a bit.” Before Jude could answer, his brother added, “Oh, and by the way, it isn’t only her brain that’s beautiful. Skylar is one of the more attractive women I’ve ever met.”
He rose to his feet and shoved back his chair. As he headed to the door, Jared said over his shoulder, “You might want to give her a fighting chance, dude. Don’t know about you, but I’m thinking that we can use all the help we can get to make sense out of this fucking nightmare.”
Watching the door slam behind his clearly annoyed brother, Jude dragged his hands through his tousled hair. Thoroughly embarrassed by Jared’s well-deserved chastisement, Jude glanced at Jake and strove for self-deprecating gallows humor.
“You have to admit, bro, those glasses are something else. Talk about wearing protective armor to keep away chauvinistic assholes—like me.”
Chapter 4
“Congratulations, Sky. I heard that last night you finally met the biggest and baddest of the Justice brothers. And most importantly, you survived!”
Hailey Michels’s sky-blue eyes sparked with excitement as she raised her glass to Skylar.
“Isn’t Jude amazing? I mean, good God, the whole bunch of the Justice men are as gorgeous men as ever walked the earth, but to say that they are a tad overwhelming is an understatement! And from what I’ve seen, Jude is the most overpowering of all. But, my goodness, even their eighty-year-old grandfather can scare the bejesus out of you by just frowning at you.”
Hailey’s excitement morphed into concern as she glanced around the table and heaved a troubled sigh. “Sorry, ladies. I shouldn’t make light of what has to have been a horrible night. Do you want to talk about it, Sky?”
Mitzi Olson and Tara Peterson, who like Hailey were uniformed officers, didn’t hide their interest.
Mitzi grabbed the conversational ball as she always did and shot to the crux of the matter.
“Yeah, Sky, out with it. I hear you were involved in the whole fucking murder scene and even participated in the debriefing this morning. From what the guys told me, we should hope that we never see anything like it if we ever want to eat or sleep again.”
Sky felt her cheeks heat, remembering how annoyed Detective Justice was with her that she ate two doughnuts at the briefing. She still didn’t understand why he seemed angry. She wasn’t sure what she’d done wrong. For goodness sakes, why did they put the doughnuts on the table if they weren’t intended to be eaten?
She hadn’t realized that she sighed until Mitzi prodded, “C’mon girl, out with it. Did Hank Parker really have a metal pipe shoved up his ass, and did the perps also rape that haughty bitch of a wife of his? And punch her eyes out, and cut out her tongue? Probably to keep her from chastising them for messing up her precious living room.”
At Sky’s shocked gasp, Mitzi flushed. “Sorry kiddo. Tough cop talk at best. It’s the way we hardened asshole cops keep from feeling things the way normal human beings do.” She gave Skylar a sympathetic nod. “It must have been a true nightmare.”
Skylar frowned, trying to imagine the murder scene through Mitzi’s eyes, or Tara’s, or Hailey’s. It was challenging since she’d already begun her arduous cataloguing process, making it difficult to conjure up the scene as a whole.
Fortunately Hailey was on to another topic, one that Skylar knew little about. “God, can you imagine how hard it was for all of the brothers and their grandfather to walk into that ghastly nightmare? I’ve never seen Jared or Lieutenant Justice as upset as they were last night. When I got him alone for a few moments, Jared confessed that as awful as it was, they were mostly concerned about their grandfather.”
Sky hesitated and then forced herself to ask, “I…I know from what you have told me, Hailey, that their mother and father were killed when their motorboat exploded. And of course, they would be worried about their grandfather. I understand that the boys’ father was his only son.”
Mitzi nodded. “Yeah, old man Justice was a sitting judge at the time Joshua and his wife were killed. Judge was known throughout the state, was even mentioned for the Supreme Court. The real tragedy was when what was first thought to be a horrible boating accident turned out to be a carefully-planned murder. The Judge had sentenced a man to life in prison, and the motherfucker was killed by a rabid prison gang. They discovered that his son had decided that it was the Judge’s fault, and set out to get revenge.”
Skylar was shocked. She had never heard the whole story, just that the parents of the four Justice brothers had been killed in a boating accident. Thinking back on last night, remembering the profound grief on all the Justice mens’ faces, Sky struggled against the tears burning the backs of her
eyelids. As if she were observing herself from the outside, she realized that this was the second time in two days that she had fought against tears. Given that she couldn’t remember the last time she had cried, it was a startling observation, one that she would have to analyze later when she was by herself.
Tara Peterson interrupted Sky’s introspection. “While it is as horrible a crime as we’ve ever had in this city, if we’re as lucky as you, Skylar, at least we’ll get to work it with Jude Justice.”
She turned to Sky and explained. “When Jude got out of the Army he joined the LAPD, and the most we got to see of him was when he came home for holidays.” Giggling, Tara couldn’t hide her excitement. She said, “I don’t know who was a badder badboy when we were growing up, Jared Justice, or his older brother Jude. All I can tell you is that there wasn’t a girl in this town who wouldn’t get down on her knees to have a taste of either one of them.”
As if seeing Hailey’s pained expression for the first time, Tara quickly corrected herself. “Of course, I mean that’s what Jared was like before he met you, Hailey.”
Mitzi glowered at her cohort. “Damn, girlfriend. Why don’t you just shit in her face?” Turning to Hailey, Mitzi said, “I gotta confess. I never thought I’d see Jared Justice fall for anyone. But I’m telling you, Goldilocks, Jared is ass-over-elbows in love with you, and every damned one of us is jealous as hell!”
Tara flushed and reached for Hailey’s hand. “God, Hailey, I’m sorry. It’s just that as many women as Jared—”
She stopped in mid-sentence at Mitzi’s harsh growl, then raised her chin defiantly. “Well, even you have to agree, Mitzi, that Jude Justice is an even bigger player than his brother is—I mean, was. And to prove my point, here comes a woman to rub all our noses in how spectacular he is.” She added with a sniff, pointing her chin at the woman approaching their table and explained to Skylar under her breath, “One of Jude’s many G2Gs. That’s Justice speak for ‘Go-to Girls.’ ”