Reckoning and Ruin (4 page)

Chapter Eight

I slammed the trunk of the Camaro and put the phone to my ear again. “What the hell is he up to?”

Trey's voice held all the warmth of steel. “He's suing us.”

“I know what he's doing, I want to know why he's doing it!”

“Because he wants nine million dollars in damages, most likely to pay for his new defense.”

I flung myself behind the wheel and slammed the door. “Yeah, but he's up to something else too. Even he knows there's not a jury in the world gonna award a racist bastard like him that kind of settlement, not for a few well-deserved bullets and a kick to the knee.”

“Which is probably why he's serving as his own counsel in this matter. Because he couldn't find a lawyer who'd take the case.”

“Because it's ridiculous!”

“Yes, it is. But it's happening nonetheless.”

I cranked the engine, yanked the gearshift, and revved my car into a grass-spitting takeoff worthy of an Alabama dirt track. “The creepy son of a bitch who served me disappeared before I could ask any questions.”

“Process servers don't answer questions.”

“Oh, but this wasn't an official one from the sheriff's department. No, this one knew exactly what he was delivering, and then he hot-footed it out of there before I could yell at him. Jasper hired him personally, I know he did.”

“That seems likely as well.”

I grumbled some more, gunned the engine. God, I wanted to skewer that arrogant murderous, conniving…

I took a deep breath, blew it out. “What did Marisa say when she got her papers?”

“The same things you did, I imagine. Worse perhaps.”

That was the most outrageous part of the suit, Jasper's allegation that when Trey and I defended ourselves, we were acting not as individuals, but as agents of our respective businesses. Which meant that he was technically suing the gun shop for three million, which meant that my co-owner brother was about to get involved, and Phoenix Corporate Security for six million, which meant that Marisa and her platoon of lawyers were already involved.

“So she's mad?”

“Furious. Not at me personally, however, which is a good thing.” A pause. “She wants to meet tomorrow morning, as soon as she's done with church. At the office.”

“Do you need me to drive you?”

“Yes.”

“Because of your shoulder, or because she wants to see me too?”

“Both.”

I cursed and banged the steering wheel, accidentally blaring the horn. The guy in the pick-up beside me honked back. I ignored him. Traffic leaving a reenactment event was always a bear. Lots of pedestrians milling about, half of them in circa-1865 garments carrying plastic coolers and talking on their cell phones.

“This is why Garrity's involved,” I said, “because they're gonna make him testify about your resignation from the Atlanta PD. They're gonna imply you're damaged goods.”

“It was officially a retirement. And I left with a clean record.”

“Yes, but Jasper will twist and shred and…” I honked, this time with intent. “Get the hell out of the way!”

“Tai. Hang up and drive.”

Trey was right. I needed to concentrate before I ended up with a Confederate soldier as a hood ornament.

“I'll call when I leave the shop,” I said. “It shouldn't take long to unpack, and then I'll be on my way.”

“I'll be here.”

“And hey…” I felt the stubborn blush rising again. “Thanks for the roses.”

“You got them?”

“I did.”

He didn't speak for a second. “Okay. I'm glad.”

And then he hung up abruptly. I stared at the phone until another car honked at me.
Get it in gear, Tai
, I reprimanded myself, and pointed the car toward Kennesaw.

***

The almost-full moon cut through the clouds in a wash of light so bright I had to squint against it, illuminating the lot behind my shop. The building was shabby, but still standing, all two stories of it, with the shop on the ground floor, my dinky apartment on the second. I pulled the Camaro into the parking spot beside the back entrance and climbed out into the night, locking the car behind me.

A flicker of movement in the alley stopped me short. I automatically dipped my right hand into my carry bag until I felt the cool metal of my .38.

“Who's there?”

The shadow stepped forward, and the security light flared to illuminate a woman with dark bangs, short hair tucked behind her ears. I wrapped my hand around the grip of the gun and thumbed it free from its holster.

“Hope,” I said.

She kept her hands in her pockets. “I was wondering when you'd come dragging in.”

“You're supposed to be in jail.”

“Early release for good behavior.”

I snorted.

She tossed her head. “You can drop the attitude. I know the son of a bitch is in there.”

“I have no idea which son of a bitch you mean.”

“John. My husband. The one you've been trying to get back ever since he dumped you.”

John Wilde. My most infamous ex, the one who'd run off with Hope, returning briefly a year later to drag me into a stew of betrayal and double-dealing and Ku Klux Klan workings. And now here was Hope, fresh from the clink and spoiling for a fight.

I exhaled wearily. “John's not here. I haven't talked to him in five months.”

“Then why was your number the last one he called?”

She held up a phone and pressed redial. Sure enough, I heard my voice on the shop's answering machine. “You've reached Tai Randolph at Dexter's Guns and More, please leave—”

She thumbed it off and glared at me. “Care to explain?”

“Beats hell outta me. Ask your husband when you find him. Because he isn't in there.”

And then to my utter astonishment, Hope pulled a snub-nosed semi-auto out of her pocket and pointed the muzzle right between my feet.

“I don't think you're taking me seriously,” she said.

The gun trembled in her grasp. It was ridiculously tiny and probably less accurate than a slingshot, but she was barely twenty feet away, and shaky hands made for shaky trigger fingers. A year of training with Trey, and I snapped into survival headspace automatically. Unlike Trey, however, my hands trembled almost as badly as hers, especially the one plunged in my carry bag, wrapped around my revolver, heavy on my hip.

Hope waved her gun in that direction. “Get your hand away from that bag and let me in that goddamn shop right now!”

I kept my hand where it was. “Put that piece-of-shit gun away, and we'll talk.”

“I don't think so.”

I tried to keep my voice neutral. “You may think you did something smart, sneaking over here like this. I know you've spotted the security cameras—you always had an eye for those—and so you're staying in the alley, hunkered down in the blind spot. What you didn't think about, couldn't possibly consider, was the urban in-ground target detector.”

She stared at me. The gun didn't drop an inch.

“You're pretending you know what that is, but you don't, so I'll tell you. It's a device set in the ground right about where you're standing now, and it tripped the second you stepped on it. I don't know how it works—I don't even know where Trey finds these things—but as we speak it is pinging his phone with an intruder alert. So I'm guessing you've got anywhere from ten seconds to two minutes before he calls.”

She raised the gun higher. “Then you'd better get ready to tell him everything's fine.”

I snorted. “Like that'll work. The man's a human lie detector, you know that. If he hears me trying to pull one over on him, he's gonna drive that Ferrari over here like a bat out of hell. But he's gonna call the Kennesaw police first, and then the Cobb County police, and anybody armed and uniformed on his speed dial.”

She glared, the gun shaking in her hands.

“So before this phone rings, I suggest you either drop the Calamity Jane routine or get the hell off my property. Your choice.”

My phone buzzed, loud enough for her to hear, and she jerked in surprise. That was when I saw behind the bravado. She was shaking, but not from anger. From desperation and fear and probably sheer exhaustion. She wasn't here to shoot me. She wasn't here to shoot anybody, not even John Wilde, wherever the hell he was.

I kept my voice level. “Something's happened, hasn't it? Something worse than your husband sneaking off to be with me?”

She shivered, and the gun dropped a smidgen. The phone rang again, and she hesitated only a second before laying the weapon at her feet. She didn't run, though. She stood there, fierce and resigned.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and put it to my ear. “Hey boyfriend, I'm just—”

“The IGDT triggered. Someone's—”

“I know. I'm out here now.”

“Who is it?”

I hesitated. Despite what I'd told Hope, Trey couldn't detect shit over the phone. He'd either do what I told him, or he'd launch into emergency protocol, and I didn't really want SWAT cops helicoptering into my parking lot. Again.

Trey's voice was insistent. “Tai?”

“It's Hope.”

“She's supposed to be in jail.”

“Early release, she says.”

“You don't know that. I'm calling—”

“No cops.”

“But—”

“I'm serious. We're just talking.”

Across the lot, Hope stared. The post-adrenalin crash had me buzzed and cranky and a little confused, but I knew one thing—if things got official, Hope would bolt. And I didn't want her doing that until I'd figured out what was going on because there was no way in hell her sudden appearance wasn't a part of the mess Ainsworth Lovett was stirring up.

At Trey's end, I heard murmured conversation, the ding of the elevator. I gripped the phone tighter. “Trey Seaver, do not—”

“I'm coming up there.”

“No, you are not. For one, you've only got one good arm. For two, you're hopped up on painkillers, and for three—”

“I'm not driving, Gabriella is.”

I felt a cold knot in my stomach. “Gabriella's there?”

“She came to check on me.”

I bit back my response. Now was not the time to argue about his way-over-the-line ex. But the time was coming. Like a freight train it was coming.

Trey's voice was steady. “Did Hope come alone?”

“As far as I know.”

“Have you checked the car?”

“What car?”

“The one out front. I assume it's hers.”

Crap. I'd forgotten to examine all the angles on the security feed.

“I'll do that in a second,” I said.

“No, go inside the shop. Take Hope with you and keep her in sight at all times. And keep the surveillance channels open. I'll monitor them on the way in.”

“Only if you promise that we'll handle this without official interference. No 911.”

“Tai—”

“I'm serious. Promise.”

He was being even bossier than usual, and I felt a prickle at the small of my back. Eric had diagnosed this prickle as oppositional defiant disorder. I'd told him to shove it.

Trey exhaled gruffly. “Copy that. I promise. No 911. I'll be there in forty minutes. Don't let her out of sight, understand?”

“I understand. But—”

He hung up. Despite my annoyance, I was relieved to know he was on the way. I was capable of taking care of myself, but Trey was SWAT-trained and situation-ready, and with Hope, I needed all the back-up I could get.

Hope glared. “He's coming up here, isn't he?”

“Of course he is. He saved your life once, and he'll do it again if he needs to, but he will tolerate no nonsense. Neither will I. Are we clear?”

She started to say something, then bit it back. She looked like the only thing keeping her pilot light lit was pure anger, and now that it was burned up, her engine was running dry. I realized then that she'd wanted to find John here. That the alternative was too awful to comprehend.

“What's it gonna be, Hope? Deal with this all by yourself, or come into the shop and tell me what's going on?”

Hope hesitated for two seconds, then shoved past me toward the door. I caught the smell of sweat and stale fast food and knew she was truly desperate. Because out of all the people on the planet, I was the very last person she wanted to ask for help. Which meant she had no other place to go.

I picked up her pistol and followed her inside.

Chapter Nine

I unlocked the door and switched on the lights, keeping one eye on Hope the whole time. She was strangely calm, almost dead-eyed. I examined her gun, a cheap and badly maintained .22 barely bigger than the palm of my hand. It was a classic junk gun, not very powerful or accurate, but quick and dirty and disposable provided it didn't blow up in your hand.

I popped the mag, checked the chamber, then stuck everything in the gun safe under the counter. “What are you doing with a firearm? They'll violate you for that.”

Her eyes flashed. “You gonna call my parole officer?”

“Depends on what you say during the next five minutes.”

She stood at my counter, scanning the room for exits and cover and security cameras. I'd watched Trey do the exact same thing every time he entered an unfamiliar space.

“It's not mine, it's John's,” she said. “I found it in the glove compartment.”

“John hates guns.”

“I guess he changed his mind.”

“Why?”

She didn't answer. In the fluorescents, I could see her more clearly. Jeans, dirty at the knees. Dollar store flip-flops. She wore no make-up, and was thinner than I remembered, skinny now instead of willowy. Her clothes hung on her, and her eyes were red.

“I'll tell you what I know,” she said. “But first you have to turn off the interior cameras. There, and there. Audio and video both.”

I switched off the two corner cameras while she watched. I didn't look at the deer head mounted behind me. It was fake, but inside its hollow skull was a state-of-the-art covert surveillance system hooked up not only to the screen on the counter, but to a wireless feed. All Trey had to do was tap in the access code at his end, and he could see and hear everything happening in the front room.

We'd had long talks, he and I, about my need for space and privacy. This had been our compromise, that he could access the shop feed whenever he wanted, as long as I knew he was watching. I accomplished this by installing red lights behind the deer's glass eyes that came on whenever he logged in.

I caught a glimpse of the deer head in my peripheral vision. Its eyes glowed demonically.

“There,” I said. “Happy now?”

She took a seat at my counter, eyeing the glass cabinets filled with matte black handguns and CSA replica daggers. I sat opposite her, trying to keep every wit I had about me. I'd thought she was out of my life, but now here she was at my gun shop, just like John had been six months ago, and just as desperate.

“You gonna play his message or not?” she said.

I pressed the button on my uncle's ancient answering machine. The first two calls were Kenny, but then John's smoke-cured Alabama drawl drizzled through the line.

“Hey Tai, don't hang up. Long time no see, I know, but something's going on down here and I need to talk to you, soon as possible. Call me back.”

He recited his number. The next call was an hour later, and this time he was more agitated, nervous, tension flaying his voice. “I'm serious, Tai, I need to talk to you. I think there's trouble, big trouble, and it's probably headed your way too, so call me.”

I turned back to face Hope. “What trouble is he talking about?”

Her eyes skittered to the side. “Somebody's been following me. White pick-up with a camper top. No plates. It started a week ago, right after I got out—showing up at my PO's office, at the trailer, taking off the second I caught them looking. It happened again on Wednesday, and John lost his temper. Said he was gonna take care of it.”

“Which meant?”

“He wouldn't say. Said the less I knew, the better, me being on parole and all.”

Outside the shop, a car prowled down the street, and her head jerked in that direction. She was nervous to the point of paranoia, her eyes darting and quick, her skin practically crawling.

“Start at the beginning,” I said. “When's the last time you saw John?”

“This morning. He was on the way to work, and I had to report to my PO, so he dropped me off. He didn't come get me like he was supposed to, so I called him. No answer. I called Train's shop, but—”

“Wait, wait, wait. Train's shop in Savannah? I thought y'all were in Jacksonville?”

Her eyes hardened. “We lost everything. The house, the pawn shop. John got a mobile home in Savannah so he could be close to me, and Train hired him back at the shop.”

Train's tattoo shop was on the west end of River Street, steps from the Savannah River. It was where I'd met John, where I'd gotten my first tattoos—a flaming arrow on my bicep from Train and a sloe-eyed vixen fox in a more private and personal location, this one from John's talented hands. I knew something else too. John had debts in Savannah. Big ones.

Hope raked a hand through her hair. “I know what you're thinking, but he said he and Boone had come to an agreement about the money he owed.”

“What kind of agreement?”

“He said the slate was clean, that's all I know.”

I found that hard to believe. But we'd all changed over the past five months, for better or worse, and I supposed my uncle had too. Once upon a time Boone would never have forgiven a five-figure debt. But that was before his own son had tried to kill him. Maybe he had different priorities now.

“Okay, so what happened next?”

“I talked to Train, and he told me John had called in and said he couldn't make it, that he had personal business to take care of suddenly. I called everybody I could think of, even back in Jacksonville. Nothing. My PO felt sorry for me and gave me a ride home. I saw the car there, parked in the front yard crazy-like, all catty-cornered. No John. I called again and heard his phone ringing, found it in the car hooked up to the charger. Yours was the last number he dialed.”

“That the same car that's out front now?”

“Yeah.”

“Was his Harley gone?”

“It's in the shop.”

I didn't state the obvious—that if the Harley were missing, it was because John had ridden it out of town. I wanted to tell her John did stuff like this all the time. He'd done it to me, after all. I wanted to tell her this was nothing but payback for something she'd done to him, but I couldn't make my mouth form the words. They felt clichéd, slight, patchwork. Despite their fights and arguments and carrying on, Hope and John found their way back to each other. If John had suddenly vanished without telling her, something had happened. And whatever it was, it was bad.

“Tell me the truth, Hope. Can you think of any reason someone would be following you?”

“You mean besides the obvious one, that some of Jasper's crew are still out there, getting ready to put a bullet in me so I won't testify against him?”

“A fine theory. But it doesn't explain where John is. He's not testifying against anybody.”

“Maybe they were coming for me and John got in the way. Maybe I'll be getting a ransom call any second now.”

“But why?”

Her voice rose. “I don't know why! I just know he's gone!”

“That doesn't—”

The soft click of the back door shutting interrupted me. Trey. He'd slipped inside without a sound, deactivating the alarm. In the low light, his black workout clothes looked like urban tactical wear. Only the gym bag on his shoulder and the running shoes on his feet revealed him for the civilian he was.

Hope noticed me looking and whipped her head in his direction. Her eyes narrowed. “Well, hoo-fucking-ray. The cavalry has finally arrived.”