Obsession (Southern Comfort) (29 page)

“I guess it is.”  Justin
sat down his glass, his expression growing more serious.  “I had an… interesting conversation today.  With Natasha Griffin.  The waitress from Jugs?”

“The one who OD’d.”

“Yeah.  About that.  She believes someone tried to kill her.”

“Really.” Interest piqued, Kathleen leaned on the counter.  “
Well. That’s a convenient way to sidestep a narcotics charge.”

“Which is what I thought, also. 
But I looked over her medical record, at her suggestion.  There’s no indication she’s ever abused drugs, prescription or otherwise.  It’s not uncommon for individuals who’ve been through the sort of trauma she has to develop an addiction to pain meds, but usually there’s a pattern of them attempting to acquire them through the easiest channel first – which would be getting their physician to renew their prescription.  Her record indicates that she expressed her dissatisfaction with the side effects of oxycodone to her doctor.  And I can verify that her sister was researching natural alternatives, because I bumped into her a few weeks back.  She asked me about it, as they both appear to have been concerned.  It seems that Natasha had a fairly rough childhood, health-wise, and is leery of medication in general.  Then there’s the fact that Natasha’s roommate is a recovering addict. What?”

Kathleen realized she must have made a face at the mention of the roommate.  She tapped her fingers on the counter as she moved around the puzzle pieces in her head.

“Last night,” she told him.  “When I had Anthony run the tags of that car in the parking lot?  They came back registered to LaShelle Kinson.  Shelley.  Natasha’s roommate.”

Justin leaned back against the stool, his face hardening.  “You think Shelley ran you off the road?”

“I don’t know.  I can’t know if it was her car that hit me until Anthony gets the lab report back regarding the paint.  And even then, it will only give the make of the car and probably the year it was manufactured, which may indicate that it was a car
like
mine, but doesn’t prove it was my car, specifically.  Unfortunately, there was no paint transfer on my car to offer further comparison.  But I’m trying to figure out why she would want to run me off the road in the first place.”

“I’m probably the last guy to ask why a woman would do anything,
but for what it’s worth, I talked to Sam Harding the other day, because she knows her pretty well.  She said that she found it unlikely Shelley was using again, and as her counselor, she almost certainly would have picked up on the signs.  However, I’ve recently gotten a conflicting report from Natasha’s sister. She believes Shelley is, and I quote, dangerous.  If Shelley were using, anger and rage aren’t uncommon side effects with opiates.  She did get a little heated when Anne – that’s the sister – implicated her in Natasha’s overdose.  There seems to be a great deal of antagonism between the two. Shelley and Anne, that is.  And I don’t think Shelley was very happy with me for not immediately leaping to her defense.”

Which would possibly explain why she hadn’t wanted to wait on Justin at Murphy’s.
Her feelings had been hurt.

“
She admires you,” Kathleen said.

“Ah.”  A hint of embarrassment colored his tone.  “I don’t know.  I guess.
Natasha seems to believe that her attempted murder, as she called it, stems from the fact that she can identify several members of the gang involved in the shooting,” Justin added, clearly eager to change the subject.

Kathleen considered.  “I’ve never known those guys to b
e cagey in their methods.  If they wanted her dead, she’d be dead, either by bullet or blade.  Poison – and an overdose certainly falls into that category – tends to be a woman’s weapon, statistically speaking.”

“I had the same thought, earlier.  Not about the poison, but about the modis operandi of the gangs.
  I’ve seen enough bodily trauma inflicted by their members to know that subtlety is not their forte.”  He searched her eyes.  “Do you think Natasha is lying? Or that Shelley slipped her the drugs and accidentally overdosed her?”

“That’s the question.  I just find it odd that her name keeps coming up.
” Kathleen tapped her fingers on the counter.  “I saw her that night – Shelley, I mean – when she brought her friend in.  She was beside herself.  Of course, if she’d given her friend the drugs, and inadvertently caused the overdose, that would make sense.”

“But Natasha insists that she didn’t take any drugs willingly.”

“Which begs the question: how did the drugs get into her system?  What motivation would Shelley have to drug her without her being aware?  Attention?  What’s that syndrome…” she tapped her fingers as she tried to think of the name.

“Munchausen
Syndrome By Proxy,” Justin said.  “Usually that applies to parents, specifically a mother, who purposefully makes her child sick. I don’t know that it doesn’t happen in other relationship types, though.  I could look through some medical journals, research it a little further.”

Kathleen had Anthony running tags for her, and now Justin was offering to research. 
She was essentially running her own ad hoc investigation. 

“This puts you in a bind,” Justin concluded after a moment.  “I’m sorry.”

“No.” Kathleen stilled her fingers.  “Don’t be.  Even assuming that it was Shelley’s car that ran me off the road, I can’t make a connection between her and the incident with the doll.  Not without more evidence, anyway.  So until Anthony gets back to me with the lab report, this is all based on weird coincidence and an itch between my shoulder blades.  I’m not discounting the itch, because I’ve learned to respect it, but…” She sighed.  “I should tell Gage Rutledge.  About Natasha’s claim.  We have some overlap, since Mac and I have the lead on the murder of the other witness, but technically, she’s his witness and this is his case.”

“She won’t like that,” Justin said “as I don’t think she’s too fond of
Rutledge, but you do what you feel you have to.”

Kathleen felt like
she was trying to find her way through a maze, blindfolded.

But then, that’s what she’d always loved about detective work.  The challenge.

It just wasn’t quite so appealing when she or the people she loved were personally involved.

“Hey.” Justin leaned over the counter, tipped her chin up with his finger.

And kissed her.

“I don’t like that I put that look on your face.”

“You didn’t put it there,” she assured him.  “It’s just the situation.  A lot of stuff seems to be circling overhead right now, like someone took my life and shook it up like it was a snow globe.  I’m just trying to dodge the pieces as they fall.”

“I know that feeling.”

“I know you do.”  His aggrieved tone reminded her how badly his life had been shaken up recently, too.  She tilted her head, studied him.  His eyes were such an understated shade of gray.  Steady eyes, she’d always thought. 

“The changes,
though,” she finally said.  “Some of them are pretty nice.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“If you come join me on this side of the counter,” he told her “we’ll see if I can do better than
nice.”

She smiled.  “That wasn’t a challenge.”

“Well, I took it as one all the same.  You know how competitive we physicians are.”

With her
hand trapped in his, he pulled her around the edge of the counter until she stood between his spread legs.  She slid her hands into his hair, the short locks thick and surprisingly soft around her fingers.

She smiled, ready to make another crack about
bonus points and scorecards, but the look in those steady gray eyes stopped her.

Shook her.

It wasn’t just lust – or even playfulness – that she saw there.

Where that morning had been all haste and hunger – the flash of leaping flames – here was warmth.  A
quiet simmer. 

And it pulled from her an aching tenderness.

Kathleen loved.  She was capable of great and enduring affection – you couldn’t grow up in the family she had, and survive as a stoic.  Murphys not only wore their hearts on their sleeves, but pretty much all over their whole wardrobe.

But never, in her romantic dealings, had she met anyone who could coax that affection out of her with so little effort.  With no effort.  It seemed to
simply… swell in her whenever she was with him.  For years, she had mistaken it as the affection for a dear friend.

But it wasn’t that – or wasn’t merely that.

The ache told her it was so much more.

“Justin.”
  Because her voice shook, ever so slightly, she closed her mouth.  Was tempted to take a step back.

But his hands – big and strong and capable of intricate heroics – slid
along her hips. Around her back, pulling her closer.  His fingers stroked the skin he exposed as he gently lifted her sweatshirt away from her body.

Kathleen shivered.

“Cold?”  His lips followed the trail blazed by his fingers, brushing softly, causing her blood to pulse under her skin.  When they reached her breast, closed warm and wet, suckling her through the lace, her head dropped back on her neck, boneless with pleasure.

“No,” she finally managed to say, although the word sounded strangled.  “God, no.”

His hand slid up her back, unhooking her bra as it went, slipping into her hair to cup her head, bring it up so that she faced him. 

His lips were wet, his hair tousled from her hands
.

“No,” he said, stilling her when
she reached to slide the straps of her bra from her shoulders. “Let me.  Let me take you, Kathleen.”

The liquid heat that had her clenching her thighs
surprised her.  She wasn’t the type of woman who romanticized being swept away by a big, strong man.

But this was Justin.  And she sensed his request had little to do with dominance, with a need to take, and everything to do with his desire to give.
 

Swamped by him, she allowed her hands to fall to her sides.  Acquiescent.

The quiet heat in his eyes leapt into flame.

In a quick and careless show of strength, he came to his feet, sweeping her up in his arms.  As his mouth fastened to hers, Kathleen thought:
Okay. 
Maybe now she understood the appeal.

Using his shoulder to nudge open the door to her bedroom, he then kicked it shut behind him, all the while feathering kisses over her face, her neck.
  His teeth nipped gently at her ear.

He laid her on the bed and then stood beside it for a moment, looking.  Just looking.

“You are,” he murmured “the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

A flush colored her skin
, surprise mingled with pleasure.

One corner of his mouth lifted in the barest of smiles before he grasped the waistband of her pants, slid them down her legs.  Kathleen felt like she should be doing something,
saying
something – some sort of wisecrack to break the spell that he was weaving around them.  But the words stuck in her throat.

He pulled off his own clothes – undoing buttons, lowering zippers – efficiently but without haste.  It was
as if time had slowed, become liquid so that it ebbed and flowed as lazily as a summer stream.

He was beautiful, too, but she didn’t know how to tell him without sounding like an idiot.  Kathleen felt like a blushing virgin, and that appalled her so much that she almost demanded they start over.  Keep this
casual and fun, the way it started that morning.

When he joined her on the bed,
his eyes said all the things her mouth held silent. 

This was more than casual. 

More than fun.

As th
ose eyes dreamed into hers, so full of tender warmth, of heated promise, Kathleen felt herself fall.

He entered her then, a long, slow slide that left her gasping.  “Don’t close your eyes,” he whispered in her ear, and Kathleen pried them back open, though
her lids felt weighted as if by lead.

The intimacy, the connection was almost more than she could bear.

His mouth covered hers, tenderly coaxing, and her breath began to come in short spurts.  The air around them heated, adding a subtle sheen to their skin.  Rhythm quickened, need rising until she felt coiled, spring-tight.

“Let go,” he urged, riding her
as the tension finally broke. 

It wasn’t until she lay spent, limp as a noodle beneath him that he allowed himself his own release.

She had no words.  Before, they’d seemed to stick in her throat.  Now, it was as if her mind had simply been wiped clean.

Justin kissed her
– softly, tenderly – before lowering himself onto his side, and gathering her against him.  The tenderness, more so than any passionate encounter she’d ever shared – left her feeling bruised.

They lay, quiet and for her at least, overwhelmed, until Justin leaned up on his elbow.