Bullseye (7 page)

He glanced sideways where Karina was smoothing her thick hair back into its band. “You mentioned something about being able to fix my hair so I don’t look like a bombing victim. Want to give it a try?”

“Sure. My apartment’s not far.” She pointed at the street bordering the parking lot. “Turn right here, and then take the third left.”

Her apartment. And with Alex in juvy, they’d be alone.

Warning Klaxons sounded in his head as he shifted into Drive and headed in the direction she’d indicated.

TEN

T
he feel of Mason’s hair was so familiar it almost hurt Karina to touch him. How many times had she cut his hair over the years? She knew the way it grew, the slightly uneven hairline above his forehead, the almost-cowlick behind his right ear. Steeling her jaw against a tremble, she forced herself to maintain an impassive expression and tested the length between her fingers.

“Been a while since you had it cut?” Thank goodness her voice came out evenly despite the tide of emotions that swelled inside her.

“Yeah, I guess I’m about due.”

He sat in the chair she’d set in the center of her small kitchen, a black stylist’s apron secured around his neck. She ran a comb experimentally across his head, carefully avoiding the burned area above his left ear where the hair had singed down to the scalp.

I’ll pretend it’s a random haircut from a walk-in customer. Joe Blow, who strolled in for a trim.

She slid her clippers from their black case and plugged them into the wall outlet above the counter. “Who’s been doing your hair?” Not that she really wanted to know, but if she kept him talking about impersonal things, maybe she could forget whose head she was caressing.

“Nobody in particular. There’s a place not far from my house I go to. Seems like I get a different stylist every time I go in there.”

She reached for a guard, and then hesitated, her fingers hovering over them. “You know it’s going to have to be pretty short, right?”

Mason waved a hand beneath the apron. “Shave it if you have to.”

“I don’t think we need to be quite that drastic.”

She picked up a number three, attached it and flipped the switch. The clippers hummed to life. With her teeth set together, she tilted his head and started running the clippers across his scalp against the direction of growth. Hair fell to the floor with each swipe.

“So do you still go to Trinity?” He raised a hand to point at the framed watercolor hanging on the wall above the entryway.

The picture was of a plain wooden cross suspended above a filled baptismal. She’d painted it during high school art class, working from a snapshot Mason had taken of their church’s sanctuary.

“Not anymore.” She bent down to position the clippers at a good angle at the nape of his neck. “Alex and I go to Cornerstone Christian now.”

Trinity Community Church. When Mason moved away, she’d considered returning to the church where they’d met at youth group during their sophomore year in high school. But the memories were too vivid, too painful. Every time she walked into the sanctuary she couldn’t focus on the Lord, because Mason’s presence was everywhere.

“What about you?” she asked. “Where do you go to church these days?”

“I don’t.” His answer was brief, clipped.

Surprised, she paused and held the clippers a few inches from his head. “You don’t attend church at all?”

Mason had been an enthusiastic Christian during high school and college. Seeing his commitment had deepened her relationship to the Lord, and to the church. They’d even gone on a mission trip to Mexico with their youth group the summer after their senior year.

“Not anymore.” His mouth snapped shut, the brittle line of his lips announcing that he wouldn’t discuss the subject any further.

Karina continued combing through his hair with the clippers. What had happened to him? In the next moment she realized she knew the answer. Margie. His wife’s death must have created some sort of crisis of faith for him.

But, Mason, surely you don’t blame Jesus for what happened to Margie
.

The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed them. Some topics were too far beyond her ability to discuss calmly, and Mason’s wife was one of them.

After all, hadn’t she suffered her own crisis of faith when he broke up with her to marry Margie? Karina and Mason had been together for years, since early high school. They’d loved each other. Even now she did not doubt that. But they’d been young, and their relationship had grown predictable, too comfortable. They both knew it, but neither had admitted it to the other. When he’d proposed to her, she’d been overjoyed with the tiny promise ring he’d given her and had hoped it would renew the depth of the passion that had begun to cool. But then he’d met Margie. Bigger than life, vibrant, beautiful Margie.

She finished the cut in silence. As she worked, Mason’s face clouded over with painful memories, his thick brows sunk low over his eyes. Was he thinking of her, his dead wife? Karina clamped her teeth together. She should have kept her mouth shut. The last thing she wanted was for Mason to brood over his wife while sitting in her kitchen.

When she’d finished the clip, she removed the guard and trimmed a clean line at the back of his neck and around his right ear. The burned left ear she left alone. Then she
unsnapped the apron and removed it from his neck, careful to trap the hair fragments in its flimsy folds.

“There. All finished.” She pointed toward the bathroom a few feet away, down a short hallway. “Go take a look and see what you think.”

When he left the room, the atmosphere became noticeably lighter. Karina retrieved her broom from its storage place in the pantry and began cleaning the floor.

Mason returned within a minute and stood in the doorway. “It’s terrific. Thank you.”

She looked up at him, and her breath caught in her chest. The shorter hair transformed him. Stubble across his jaw gave him a rugged look. And the short hair did something to make his eyes stand out. They were so bright blue it almost hurt to look at them, like looking into the sun. Those were the eyes she’d gazed into countless times, had lost herself in. Had planned to look into for the rest of her life.

Until he broke her heart into a million pieces.

She tore her gaze away and turned to retrieve the dustpan. “You should wear your hair short all the time. That style looks good on you.”

“Feels good, too.” He ran a hand across his head. “Here, let me get that.”

He took the dustpan from her and knelt at her feet, holding it in front of the pile of dark hair. In a flash, Karina remembered another time Mason knelt before her. That time he’d held a ring in his fingers. Pain squeezed her throat shut.

With an iron effort she swept the hair into the dustpan, then nodded toward the cabinet beneath the sink, where the trash can stayed. She turned her back on him to put the broom away and spoke over her shoulder. “So where are you staying tonight? Did you make reservations somewhere?”

There was no answer, but the weight of his stare burned into the back of her head. With purposefully smooth movements, she put the broom away and shut the door before turning to look at him.

Something smoldered in those blue eyes. Something intimate and familiar.

“I was thinking maybe I should crash on your couch.” He moved his head in the direction of the living room and the sofa, but didn’t break the eye contact that held her captive. “You know. Some extra protection for you.”

What was he saying? Her pulse kicked up speed. Was he offering more than simply a protective presence for the night? The Mason she had known years ago would never suggest such a thing. He was too dedicated to the Lord, too determined to save himself for marriage. But that Mason was gone, and this man—this very attractive man—was someone she didn’t know. She couldn’t decide if she liked him or not. At times today she’d hated him for his casual, sarcastic tongue. At other times she appreciated his rough but thorough concern for her. And this evening she found herself strangely drawn to him. Which made him dangerous.

And yet, she
was
afraid to be alone. The day’s events had terrified her. What if the big man in the black car came back? What if whoever was responsible for burning her car decided to pay a visit to her apartment?

At the thought of Mason sleeping on her sofa all night long, just a few feet beyond her bedroom door, a desert invaded her throat.

Lord, I need You! Please help me
.

The prayer, an unspoken connection to Heaven, gave her a tendril of strength. Drawing on reserves of calmness she didn’t possess on her own, she replied in an even tone.

“You can’t stay here, Mason.”

Something flashed in those piercing blue eyes. Regret, perhaps? In a moment it was gone, and the smug grin returned.

“I figured you’d say that. It was worth a try, though.”

What was that supposed to be, an insulting comment? The insinuation that she might have relented, that a night on her couch might have led to something else, created an instant fury inside her. She drew herself upright, ready to pounce back with a verbal volley, something about him being the last man on earth she’d want sleeping on her couch no matter how much danger she was in, but the words went unspoken. Because at that moment his cell phone rang.

Straightening, he slid it out of his hip pocket and glanced at the screen.

“My friend in Atlanta.” He clipped the words short while he stabbed at the screen, then lifted the phone to his ear. “What have you got for me, Brent?”

His eyes went distant for a moment as he listened, and then a slow smile curved his lips. He didn’t lower the phone, but spoke to her. “Bingo.”

Karina’s pulse kicked into overdrive for the second time in as many minutes.

* * *

“At first it looked like I’d run into a dead end.”

Mason spared a moment to marvel at the technology of the small rectangle resting on the table between them. The quality of his voice through the phone’s speaker was nothing short of amazing. Not a trace of the tinny quality of most speakerphones. If Mason closed his eyes, he could almost picture Brent sitting right beside them in Karina’s tiny kitchen instead of talking through a cell phone.

“Casa del Sol Restaurante
is owned by a private company called Alimento Sabroso.”

Karina supplied the translation without raising her eyes from the phone. “That means
flavorful food.
”

“The outfit owns another restaurant there in Albuquerque called, predictably, Casa del Luna
.
You know—sun, moon. Anyway, the primary owner is listed as Jorge Sastrias.”

Mason’s ears pricked. Their waiter had said that he never got to wait on Maddox, because Jorge
always took care of him personally. He addressed the phone. “You said primary owner?”

“That’s right. Mr. Sastrias has a partner, another corporation. This one’s called Good Food Enterprises. Good Food also owns an interest in a half-dozen or so other restaurants in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, but only the two with Mr. Sastrias.”

“O-kay.” Mason processed this information. “So who owns Good Food Enterprises? Maddox?”

A chuckle sounded through the phone. “Not so fast. There’s no single owner listed. Good Food Enterprises is a subsidiary of a corporation called Grayscale Incorporated.”

Karina shook her head. “Wait a minute. I’m confused.”

“Now you’re feeling my pain,” Brent said. “It’s like an endless chain of corporations. Trying to track them down is like following one of those pencil mazes. But the trail ended at Grayscale. And guess who’s the chairman of the board of Grayscale Incorporated.”

Mason didn’t need to guess. He knew. With an effort, he managed to say the name without spitting. “Russell Maddox.”

“Exactly. And guess who owns Powerhouse Fitness.”

Mason didn’t bother to state the obvious. Instead, Karina did. “Grayscale?”

“Right again. It’s one of the few businesses owned outright by Grayscale.”

Mason drew the next line himself. “Let me guess. One of the other businesses is the Speedy Superette.”

“Nope. That would be too easy, wouldn’t it?”

He arched his eyebrows and looked across the table at Karina, who looked as surprised as he felt.

“Good Foods, maybe?” she asked.

“That would make sense, wouldn’t it? But no.”

Brent’s voice warmed. He was obviously enjoying making them wade through the process he’d followed to trace this information. Mason bit back an impatient suggestion that his buddy cut to the chase and just tell them what he’d discovered.

Karina was apparently okay playing Brent’s guessing game. “Is it Mr. Velesquez, Alex’s boss?”

“That’s partly right. It’s the same sort of setup as the restaurant. Benito Velesquez is the primary owner, in partnership with a company called Albuquerque Connections, Inc. And
that
company is a subsidiary of Landwise Associates, which also owns a realty company and a real estate management company.”

Mason tapped his fingers impatiently on the table. A guy needed to draw a map just to keep it all straight. “So how does that lead back to Grayscale?”

“It doesn’t.”

Karina jumped when he slapped his hand flat against the plastic tablecloth and a loud smack filled the room. He glared at the phone. “I thought you said you found a connection.”

Brent’s laughter sounded in sharp contrast to Mason’s frustrated tone. “Calm down, dude. Landwise Associates has a board of directors, too.”

He paused, but Mason refused to swallow the bait. He kept his teeth clamped together.

Karina asked the question Brent was obviously fishing for. “Is Russell Maddox the chairman of that board as well?”

“No. It’s better than that.” Brent paused, then delivered the tidbit. “The chair
woman
of the board is named Olivia Sullivan Maddox. Otherwise known as Mrs. Russell Maddox.”

Moving together, Karina and Mason both sat back in their chairs and let the news sink in. Maddox partially owned the restaurant where José had worked, and his wife owned the grocery store where Alex worked.

“There’s more.” Brent was enjoying this way too much, judging by the delight in his tone. “I found a couple of news articles referring to Mrs. Maddox as an invalid, so I did a little digging into her background. Apparently she had an accident almost ten years ago that left her paralyzed and bedridden. She still holds her position on the Landwise Associates board of directors, but she defers all decision making to… Want to take a guess?”

This time Mason spoke, but it was no guess. “Her devoted husband.”