Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle: Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, Shiver, Absolute Fear, Lost Souls, Malice, & an Exclusive Extended Excerpt From Devious (220 page)

“It’s your dad.”

Her heart froze.

“He’s in a hospital in New Orleans. Back injury.”

“Back injury?” she repeated slowly, remembering how many times she’s seen his face turn from color to black and white.

“He’s going to be okay.”

“You’re sure?” Dear God, no…she couldn’t imagine life without her father. She held Jay’s hand in a death grip.

“I think so.” But he was hedging; she saw it in his amber eyes.

“Damn it, Jay, tell me!”

He sighed. “Okay, here’s the deal,” he said. “Your father’s spine is bruised—”

“What?” Oh, God, no! Her father could never stand not being able to get around on his own.

“Hey, slow down. I said ‘bruised,’ not severed, so he’ll be okay eventually.”

“Eventually?” she asked.

“The paralysis will be temporary.”

“Oh, God.”

He held her hand a little more tightly. “The doctors feel confident that he will walk again, but it’ll take some time.”

Kristi couldn’t believe her ears. Had her father survived death only to be paralyzed? “But…he will walk on his own again,” she said anxiously.

“That’s the prognosis.”

“Then I want to see him. Now.” She looked up, trying to find a nurse. “I need to be released.”

“Kris, you’ll have to wait until you’re better.”

“Like hell! This is my dad we’re talking about. He was there, right? He came to save me! And…and what, he gets shot and…” Her voice failed her. “Oh, God…there was a storm that night.” She saw the image as clearly as if she’d witnessed it herself. “A tree was struck by lightning, that’s what happened, right?”

Jay just stared at her.

“Right?”

“Yes, but—”

“And a limb hit him?”

“I said he’s going to be all right.”

“I know what you said,” she admitted. “Now do what you can to get me out of the damned hospital. I need to see my father.”

“Okay, okay…hold your horses. I’ll come with you.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I know,” he snapped. “I don’t have to do anything, but I want to, okay? And I’m not letting you go through whatever it is you have to go through with your dad alone. I’ll be there.”

She was already out of the bed, reaching for her clothes when she stopped short. “Jay—”

“I love you, Kris.”

She turned and saw that he was smiling. “You do?”

“Uh-huh. Just like you love me,” he said confidently.

“I love you?”

“That’s what you kept saying over and over while you were out of it.”

“Liar!” she charged, but couldn’t help but nod. “So, yeah, okay, I love you,” she tossed back at him. “So what’re you going to do about it, McKnight?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well…like maybe ask me to marry you?”

“Mmmm. Maybe.”

She laughed. “You’re bad, McKnight,” she said, and reached for her jeans.

“Perfect for you, then, right?”

“Humph.”

“Come on, let’s go see your dad and on the way, you can try to convince me to marry you.”

“Yeah, right!”

EPILOGUE

“
…he’s holding his own….”

Rick Bentz heard the words but couldn’t open his eyes, couldn’t move a muscle to indicate to those around him that he was waking up. He’d heard them, of course, the doctors and nurses with their hushed voices, and his daughter, Kristi, who must have recovered, thank God, because she’d been around often…talking to him, insisting that he was going to get better, that he had to walk her down the aisle because she was going to marry Jay McKnight and write some damned book and…

Dear God, how long had he been here? A day? Two? A week?

He tried to open an eye. Montoya and Abby had been by and Olivia, of course, who’d been ever vigilant. He’d heard her soft voice, known she’d been reading to him, noticed every once in a while her words had faltered or her voice, that sweet dulcet voice, had quavered a bit.

Jay McKnight had been by as well, and he, like Kristi, had talked about marriage, asking for Bentz’s blessing or something like that. Or had he dreamed it?

It was about time his daughter settled down, stayed out of trouble….

The doctor left on squeaky shoes and he was alone again. He heard a steady noise, a soft beep, beep, beep, as if he were hooked to a heart monitor, and he wanted to move, God, he wanted to stretch his muscles.

His mouth tasted like crap and he was vaguely aware of footsteps in an outer hallway, a cart rattling, people talking…he drifted for a minute…an hour? A day? Who knew? Time, for him, was suspended.

Kristi was there again, talking softly to him about the wedding…the damned wedding. He wanted to smile and tell her he was happy for her, but the words wouldn’t come.

Her words slowed, her voice softened, and then was gone entirely. Had she left? If he could only open his eyes.

He tried and failed.

There was a slight stirring. Just a breath of cool air.

In that second he knew he wasn’t alone.

There was someone else in the room, someone other than Kristi.

His skin prickled. The temperature plummeted, as if a soft gust of wind had slipped through an open window. Within the cold was a fragrance…something familiar and vague that teased his nostrils, a woman’s perfume with an underlying scent of gardenias.

What was this?

He felt someone take his hand, then link smooth, slim fingers through his. “Rick,” a woman whispered in a soft voice that teased his psyche. A familiar voice. A faraway voice. “Honey, can you hear me?”

His heart nearly stopped in his chest. The room seemed suddenly silent, all noises of the hospital muted.

The fingers slipped from his and the stirring gust of wind kicked up again, brushing his cheek, as if someone had left an icy kiss upon his skin.

The perfume floated past him…the same intriguing scent Jennifer had worn whenever they’d made love….

Jennifer!

His eyes flew open.

His breath fogged in the coldness. He blinked his eyes several times, wondering at the phenomenon. He couldn’t move his head, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw the doorway to the room and beside it a chair. In the chair, Kristi slept, her head lolling forward.

In the doorway, backlit by the outside hall, was a woman in a black dress.

Tall.

Slim.

Mahogany-colored hair falling down her back.

Oh, God! It couldn’t be….

She looked over her shoulder and smiled.

That sexy, come-hither smile he knew so well crossed her red lips.

He felt as if he’d been thrown back in time. His heart nearly stopped.

“Jennifer,” he whispered, saying his dead ex-wife’s name for the first time in years. “Jennifer.”

He blinked.

She was gone.

“Dad?”

He slid his eyes toward the only chair in the room. Kristi was staring at him, her own eyes anxious, a line of worry creasing her smooth brow. Jesus, she looked like her mother!

“You’re awake!” Kristi was out of the chair in an instant, tears catching on her lashes. “Oh, God, you’re okay!” she said, standing over the edge of his bed, taking his hand and squeezing it. “You old fart, you nearly scared me to death!”

“Your mother,” he said anxiously, wondering if he was losing his mind. “She was here.”

“Mom?” She shook her head. “Wow, what kind of drugs are you on?”

“But she was here.”

“I’m telling you that’s the morphine talking.” Kristi was laughing through her tears.

“You didn’t see her?”

Kristi shook her head. “No one was in here, I was here all the time. Yeah, I dropped off, but…Jesus, it’s cold in here.” She shivered. “But I’m just glad you’re back,” she said. “I was so afraid…I mean, I thought you might not make it…But then you’re tougher than most.”

Bentz wasn’t deterred. “But she was here…your mother…I saw her…just walking out the door….”

“No way, Dad, it’s me. You’re confused.” She eyed him a little more critically, then glanced to the doorway. The empty doorway. “You know,” she said, turning back to him, “you’ve been in a coma for nearly two weeks and I know what it’s like. Weird as hell. Sometimes when you finally wake up, you’re all messed up in your head.”

“You didn’t see her?” He tried and failed to pull himself into a sitting position. His arms were weak and his legs…Hell, they still weren’t working. He couldn’t even feel them, not like he could his arms and shoulders.

“She wasn’t here,” Kristi said anxiously, and quickly. As if she, too, knew something odd had happened. “Look, I need to call the nurse and the doctor. And Olivia. She’s on her way back here already, but she’d kill me if I didn’t call her. And the staff. I need to let everyone know you’re awake.” She was already walking to the door, the very doorway in which Jennifer had stood only seconds before.

“She was here, Kristi,” Bentz said, certain he was right. This was no hallucination. No bad trip. No confusion from medication. Whether anyone believed him or not, he knew the truth.

Jennifer Bentz was back.

Dear Reader,

I loved writing Kristi Bentz’s story and it was a lot of fun to walk through the halls of All Saints College again. From the epilogue you know that there’s another book coming in the Bentz/Montoya/New Orleans series. That book is MALICE and I think it’s one of my best yet. I’ve never written anything like this before, but I think it’s an interesting concept.

You all know Detective Rick Bentz of the New Orleans Police Department. He’s Kristi’s dad and Detective Reuben Montoya’s partner. He’s also one of my most popular characters and right now he’s in a heap of trouble. If you’ve followed the series, you know that Bentz was first introduced in HOT BLOODED. In the next book, COLD BLOODED, he was the hero of the story. He met his future wife Olivia in the pages of COLD BLOODED, but we, as the readers, never really saw how he dealt with the death of his first wife, Jennifer.

That’s changed. In MALICE, Rick faces his most deadly enemy yet in a psychological game of cat and mouse. Jennifer Bentz seems to be back, even though Rick was the man who identified her body when she was killed in a single car accident.

So who is the woman he swears is her? Is Jennifer dead? A ghost? A figment of Rick’s imagination? Just who is the alluring female who takes him back to a time he’d rather forget? And how does his new-found obsession with this woman who’s haunting him affect his marriage to Olivia just when she wants to have a baby of her own?

Rick Bentz is torn and tortured. He’s determined to get to the truth behind “Jennifer” but he has no idea that he’s in for an emotional roller coaster that leads from the bayous surrounding New Orleans to secrets hidden beneath the glitter of Los Angeles. What he doesn’t expect is an enemy so seductive and deadly, everyone he loves is suddenly in mortal danger.

You can read on for an excerpt as well as visit
www.lisajackson.com
for more information on MALICE, which will be available in hardcover from Kensington Publishing in April 2009. While you’re visiting my website, you can learn more about MALICE as well as my other books. I think you’ll like this new book. It’s a bit of a twist for me, but I can tell you straight up, MALICE is truly one of my favorite books. I hope you agree.

Lisa Jackson

PROLOGUE

A suburb of Los Angeles

Twelve years earlier

“S
o you’re not coming home tonight, is that what you’re getting at?” Jennifer Bentz sat on the edge of the bed, phone to her ear and tried to ignore that all-too familiar guilty noose of monogamy that was strangling her even as it frayed.

“Probably not.”

Ever the great communicator, her ex wasn’t about to commit.

Not that she really blamed him. Theirs was a tenuous, if sometimes passionate relationship. And she was forever “the bad one” as she thought of herself, “the adulteress.” Even now, the scent of recent sex teased her nostrils in the too-warm bedroom, reminding her of her sins. Two half-full martini glasses stood next to a sweating shaker on the bedside table, evidence that she hadn’t been alone. “When, then?” she asked. “When will you show up?”

“Tomorrow. Maybe.” Rick was on his cell in a squad car. She heard the sounds of traffic in the background, knew he was being evasive and tightlipped because his partner was driving and could overhear at least one side of the stilted conversation.

Great.

She tried again. Lowered her voice. “Would it help if I said ‘I miss you’?”

No response. Of course. God, she hated this. Being the pathetic, whining woman, begging for him to see her. It just wasn’t her style. Not her style at all. Men, they were the ones who usually begged. And she got off on it.

Somewhere in the back of her consciousness she heard a soft click.

“Rick?”

“I heard you.”

Her cheeks burned and she glanced at the bed sheets twisted and turned, falling into a pool of pastel, wrinkled cotton at the foot of the bed.

Oh, God. He knows.
The metallic taste of betrayal was on her lips, but she had to play the game, feign innocence. Surely he wouldn’t suspect that she’d been with another man, not so close on the heels of the last time. Geez, she’d even surprised herself.

There was a chance he was bluffing.

And yet…

She shuddered as she imagined his rage. She played her trump card. “Kristi will wonder why you’re not home. She’s already asking questions.”

“And what do you tell her? The truth?”
That her mother can’t keep her legs closed?
He didn’t say it, but the condemnation was there, hanging between them. Hell, she hated this. If it weren’t for her daughter, their daughter…

“I’m not sure how long the stake-out will be.”

A convenient lie. Her blood began a slow, steady boil. “You and I both know that the department doesn’t work its detectives around the clock.”

“You and I both know a lot of things.”

In her mind’s eye she saw him as he had been in the bedroom doorway, his face twisted in silent accusation as she lay in their bed, sweaty, naked, in the arms of another man, the same man with whom she’d had an affair earlier. Kristi’s biological father. Rick had reached for his gun, the pistol strapped in his shoulder-holster and for a second Jennifer had known real fear. Icy, cold terror.

“Get out,” he’d ordered, staring with deadly calm at the two of them. “Jesus H. Christ, get the hell out of my house and don’t come back. Both of you.”

He’d turned then, walked down the stairs and left without so much as slamming the door. But his rage had been real. Palpable. Jennifer had known she’d escaped with her life. But she hadn’t left. She couldn’t.

Rick hadn’t returned. They hadn’t even fought about it again. He’d just left.

Refused to answer her calls.

Until today.

By then it had been too late.

She’d already met her lover again. As much out of retribution as desire. Fuck it. No one was going to run her life, not even Rick-effin’-Bentz, super-hero cop. So she’d met the man who was forever in her blood.

Slut!

Whore!

The words were her own. She closed her eyes and hung her head, feeling lost. Confused. Never had she planned to cheat on Rick. Never. But she’d been weak; temptation strong. She shook her head and felt black to the bottom of her soul. Who was she so intent on punishing? Him? Or herself? Hadn’t one of her shrinks told her she didn’t think she deserved him? That she was self-destructive.

What a load of crap. “I just don’t know what you want,” she whispered weakly.

“Neither do I. Not anymore.”

She saw a swallow left in one martini glass, and drank it down. Did the same with the second. The noose tightened a notch, even as it unraveled. God, why couldn’t it be easy with him? Why couldn’t she remain faithful? “I’m trying, Rick,” she whispered, gritting her teeth. It wasn’t a lie. The problem was that she was trying and failing.

She thought she heard a muffled footstep, from downstairs, and she went on alert, then decided the noise might have been the echo in the phone. Or from outside. Wasn’t there a window open?

“You’re trying?” Rick snorted. “At what?”

So there it was. He did know. Probably had seen that she was tailed, the house watched. Or worse yet, he himself had been parked up the street in a car she didn’t recognize and had been watching the house himself. She glanced up at the ceiling to the light fixture, smoke alarm, and slow-moving paddle fan as it pushed the hot air around. Were there tiny cameras hidden inside? Had he filmed her recent tryst? Witnessed her as she’d writhed and moaned on the bed she shared with him? Observed her as she’d taken command and run her tongue down her lover’s abdomen and lower? Seen her laughing? Teasing? Seducing?

Jesus, how twisted was he?

She closed her eyes. Mortified. “You sick son of a bitch.”

“That’s me.”

“I hate you.” Her temper was rising.

“I know. I just wasn’t sure you could admit it. Leave, Jennifer. It’s over.”

“Maybe if you didn’t get off bustin’ perps and playing the super-hero, ace detective, maybe if you paid a little attention to your wife and kid, this wouldn’t happen.”

“You’re
not
my wife.”

Click.

He hung up.

“Bastard!” She threw the phone onto the bed. Her head began to pound.
You did this, Jennifer. You yourself. You knew you’d get caught but you pushed everything you wanted and loved including Kristi and a chance with your ex-husband, because you’re a freak. You just can’t help yourself.
She felt a tear slither down her cheek and slapped it away. This was no time for tears or self-pity.

Hadn’t she told herself a reconciliation with Rick was impossible? And yet she’d returned to this house, this home they’d shared together. Knowing full well it was a mistake of monumental proportions; just as it had been when she’d first said “I do,” years before.

“Fool!” She swore under her breath on her way to the bathroom where she saw her reflection in the mirror over the sink.

“Not pretty,” she said, splashing water over her face, but that really wasn’t the truth. She wasn’t too far into her thirties and so far, her dark hair was thick and wavy as it fell below her shoulders, her skin was still smooth, her lips full, her eyes a shade of blue-green men seemed to find fascinating. All the wrong men, she reminded herself. Men who were forbidden and taboo. And she loved their attention. Craved it.

She opened the medicine cabinet, found her bottle of Valium and popped a couple, just to take the edge off and hoped to push the threatening migraine away. Kristi was going to a friend’s house after swim practice, Rick wasn’t coming home until God knew when, so Jennifer had the house, and the rest of the evening to herself. She wasn’t leaving. Yet.

Swoosh.

An unlikely noise traveled up the staircase from the floor below.

The sound of air moving? A door opening? A window ajar?

What the hell was going on? She paused, listening, her senses on alert, the hairs on the back of her arms lifting.

What if Rick were nearby?

What if he’d been lying on the phone and was really on his way home again, just like the other day? The son of a bitch might just have been playing her for a fool.

The “stake-out” could well be fake, or if he really were going to spend all night watching someone, it was probably her, his own wife.

Ex
-wife. Jennifer Bentz stared at her reflection in the mirror and frowned at the tiny little lines visible between her eyebrows. When had those wrinkles first appeared? Last year? Earlier? Or just in the last week?

It was hard to say.

But there they were, reminding her all too vividly that she wasn’t getting any younger.

With so many men who had wanted her, how had she ended up marrying, divorcing, and then living with a cop in his small all too middle class little house. Their attempt to get back together was just a trial and hadn’t been going on long and now…well, she was pretty damned sure it was over for good.

Because she just couldn’t be faithful to any one man. Even one she loved.

Dear God, what was she going to do? She’d thought about taking her own life. More than once and she’d already written her daughter a letter to be delivered upon her death:

Dear Kristi,

I’m so sorry, honey. Believe me when I tell you that I love you more than life itself. But I’ve been involved with the man who is really your father again and I’m afraid it’s going to break Rick’s heart
.

And blah, blah, blah…

What a bunch of melodramatic trap.

Again she thought she heard something…the sound of a footstep on the floor downstairs.

She started to call out, then held her tongue. Padding quietly to the top of the stairs, held onto the railing and listened. Over the smooth rotation of the fan in her bedroom, she heard another noise, something faint and clicking.

Her skin crawled.

She barely dared breathe. Her heart pounded in her ears.

Just your imagination—the guilt that’s eating at you.

Or the neighbor’s cat—that’s it, a scraggly thing that’s always rooting around in the garbage cans or searching for mice in the garage.

On stealthy footsteps she hurried to the bedroom window and peered through the glass, seeing nothing out of the ordinary on this gray day in LA where the air was foggy, dusty, and thick. Even the sun, a reddish disc hanging low in the sky over miles and miles of rooftops, appeared distorted by the smog.

Not the breath of a breeze from the ocean today, nothing stirring to make any kind of noise. No cat slinking beneath the dry bushes, no bicyclist on the street. Not even a car passing.

It’s nothing.

Just a case of nerves.

Calm down.

She poured the remains of the shaker into her glass and took a sip on her way to the bathroom. But in the doorway she caught sight of her reflection and felt another stab of guilt.

“Bottoms up,” she whispered and then seeing her own reflection with the glass lifted to her lips, she cringed. This wasn’t what she wanted for her life. For her daughter. “Stupid, stupid bitch!” The woman in the mirror seemed to laugh at her. Taunt her. Without thinking, Jennifer hurled her drink at her smirking reflection. The glass slammed into the mirror, shattering.

Crraaack!

Slowly, the mirror cracked, a spider web of flaws crawling over the silvered glass. Shards slipped into the sink.

“Jesus!”

What the hell have you done?

She tried to pick up one of the larger pieces and sliced the tip of her finger, blood dripping from her hand, drizzling into the sink. Quickly she found a single, loose Band-aid on the shelf in the cabinet. She had trouble, her fingers weren’t working as they should, but she managed to pull off the backing and wrap her index finger. But she couldn’t quite staunch the flow. Blood swelled beneath the tiny scrap of plastic and gauze. “Damn it all to hell,” she muttered and caught a glimpse of her face in one of the remaining jagged bits of mirror.

“Seven years of bad luck,” she whispered, just as Nana Nichols had foretold when she’d broken her grandmother’s favorite looking glass at the age of three. “You’ll be cursed until you’re ten, Jenny, and who knows how much longer after that!” Nana, usually kind, had looked like a monster, all yellow teeth and bloodless lips twisted in disgust.

But how right the old woman had been. Bad luck seemed to follow her around, even to this day.

Spying her face now distorted and cleaved in the shards of glass that remained, Jennifer saw herself as an old woman; a lonely old woman.

God, what a day, she thought thickly.

She needed the broom and dustpan, and started downstairs, nearly stumbling on the landing. She caught herself, made her way to the first floor and stepped into the laundry room.

Where the door stood ajar.

What?

She hadn’t left it open; she was sure of it. And when her lover had left, he’d gone through the garage…so…? Had Kristi, on her way to school, not pulled it shut? The damned thing was hard to latch, but…

She felt a frisson of fear skitter down her spine. Hadn’t she heard someone down here earlier? Or was that just the gin talking? She was a little confused, her head thick, but…

Steadying herself on the counter, she paused, straining to hear, trying to remember. Good God, she was more than a little out of it. She walked into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of water and noticed the hint of cigarette smoke in the air. No doubt from her ex-husband. How many times does she have to tell him to take his foul habit and smoke outside? Way outside. Not just out on the back porch where the damned tobacco odor sifted through the screen door.

But Rick hasn’t been here in two days…

She froze, her gaze traveling upward to the ceiling. Nothing…and then…a floorboard creaking overhead. The crunch of glass.

Oh, God, no.

This time it wasn’t a guess.

This time she was certain.

Someone was in the house.

Someone who didn’t want her to know he was there.

Someone who wanted to do her harm.

The smell of cigarette smoke teased at her nostrils again.