Nemesis (Southern Comfort) (35 page)

“Not nearly enough, but he’s not breathing.”  But just to be cautious, just to be safe, she made sure to palm the gun.  His brother was probably still out there.

Declan swayed, stared at the corpse.  “I should probably feel something,” he concluded.  “Other than satisfaction.”

Sadie suspected he’d feel it later, and hated Billy for causing more guilt.  Unlike the bastard bleeding out next to them, Declan had a conscience that would give him trouble.  “You did what you had to,” she told him.  “You saved yourself, saved me.”  She helped him climb awkwardly to standing, supported his weight as he started to lean.

“What were you thinking?” he suddenly yelled, even though he wobbled and winced from the chore.  “Tackling a man more than twice your size? Not to mention the nine millimeter.  I nearly had a heart attack on the spot.”

   “I was thinking that I love you,” she just came out and said it, with a little bit of defiance mixed in.  He wasn’t the only one who’d suffered heart palpitations.  That gun had been aimed at him.  “And if you insist on hollering and throwing your Y chromosome around, how about waiting ‘til we get inside to do it.  I don’t feel real comfortable out here in the open.”

He stopped lurching forward and simply stared at her, unblinking.  Somehow managed a cocky, delighted grin.

“Was it my charm or the manly vomiting that convinced you?”

He was talking about her I love you, she knew.  “If you must know it was your facile mind that did it.  Any guy who can use the phrase
brackish water reverse osmosis
in the same breath as
wouldn’t care if it tasted like piss
is a man with many layers of interest.  And you told me I smelled like ass.  How’s a girl to resist?”

She shook, nerves trying to settle, as she helped him up the porch stairs.  His balance was off, unsteady.  Despite the banter keeping the horror at bay, they both still reeled from shock.  A man lay dead not twenty feet away, and both of them wore his blood.

“We’ll get you cleaned up,” she told him.  “We have a gun now for protection, in case Doug decides to show up.  Maybe we can rest a while, then set out.”

“It hurts now,” Dec admitted.  “The bastard went right for my ribs.”

“I’m so sorry,” she told him.  “I’d be happy to shoot him again, if I thought it would do any good.”

“You did enough.  That’s a damn good arm you’ve got, honey.”

Sadie helped him lower himself into a chair pulled out of sight of either window.  Then she locked the front door.  Grabbed the first aid kit, and more water.  When she came back, arms burdened with loot, it was to find him fishing around in his pocket.

“You ever operated a four-wheeler?” he asked.

“Once.”  She dropped the kit onto the table. “Any particular reason you asked?”

“You can drive, then.”  He laid some kind of key on top of the red cross emblazoned on the kit.  “This was hanging on the wall in that shed.  The machine it operates is big enough to fit two, but at this point I wouldn’t trust my navigation.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

WORRY
was a nasty pill that Kathleen tried to swallow as Anthony came into the observation room.  Miller was on the phone organizing the surveillance teams for the Mayhew homestead and working on accessing the GPS chip in Sadie’s cell.  Josh was busy getting a positive ID on their John Doe at the morgue, Anthony had just finished up his interview with Sadie’s security guy, and she was going crazy. 

Not outwardly, mind you. Outwardly she was cool.  But inside she was wound like a corkscrew.  Kim had just called with the news that Rogan had been officially released from the hospital, that he’d suffered no more pain of any sort for the past half hour, and Kathleen was a head case over what exactly that meant.

That Declan was okay?

That he and Rogan’s… thread, or whatever had broken?

That there’d been no connection between the two to begin with, and this was all just coincidence?

That shit, Declan was dead?

She looked at Anthony, willed herself not to panic.  She absolutely could not afford to lose it now.

“So what’s happening?” the other detective asked as he came over.  And the warmth in his gaze was a comfort.

Kathleen took a deep breath and then filled him in on the John Doe.  He nodded, scrubbed a thoughtful hand across his forehead, then slid that hand into his pocket.  It came out with Doug Johnson’s business card.

“You have any idea how your friend came across her contractors?”

“Uh… the Yellow Pages, I think.  Why?  You got something?”  She looked through the mirror, into the room where the man in question sipped a bottle of Coke.

“Nothing, really.”  Anthony tapped the card against his wide palm.

Kathleen knew evasion when she heard it.  “Spill it, Corelli.”

Frowning, he hesitated another few seconds.  “I’ve got nothing concrete.”

Kathleen realized that, unlike her, Anthony might not be comfortable trusting his instincts.  He needed something solid, something tangible, before he’d pursue a lead.  Mac was like that, which was why they worked so well together.  It was an admirable trait – except in those instances when it was frustrating.

“Why don’t you let me have a talk with him?”

Anthony shook his head.  “Think about it, Detective, and you’ll realize why that’s a bad idea.”

The reasons were probably legion, but that didn’t stop her from wanting a
chance.  “You think he knows more than he’s saying?”

“
I don’t know.  But –” Anthony paused, tapping the card again. “You know what I mean.  When you’ve been doing this long enough, certain behaviors give people away.  He said the right things, but he was almost too chatty.  Every question I asked, he gave me extra information. Like he really wanted to be helpful.  Which, hey, maybe he does. But he kept scratching behind his ear.  Maybe he just has dandruff, but…”

But
in an interview context, those were both classic signs of lying. 

“It might be nothing,” Anthony warned.  “Or at least nothing related to your brother’s disappearance. And regardless, we can’t hold him based solely on some questionable body language.
  You know that as well as I do.”

Kathleen peered through the one-way glass.  The guy just sat there, looking innocuous.  Could be he had a bunch of unpaid parking tickets he didn’t want them to know about. 
Could be cops just made him nervous.

Could be he was perfectly innocent. 

But nevertheless, she felt like holding him there until he told her what she wanted to hear.  Which was another reason cops should never be emotionally invested in a case.  Emotion led to bad judgment, and she wasn’t the sort of public servant who believed in throwing her weight around and abusing people’s rights.  No matter what her instincts screamed.

While her worry
did battle with her reason, her phone vibrated against her hip.  She was tempted to let it go to voice mail, but under the circumstances she couldn’t afford to.  There were too many irons in the fire just now and if she ignored one it was likely to burn.

“Murphy,” she said, after ascertaining from her readout that it was an unknown caller.

Except that the voice on the other end of the line was one that she knew quite well.

“Kath?  It’s me.”

It took her a second to process the fact that it was Sadie.  Then she gestured frantically to Anthony, indicating the significance of the call.  They hadn’t expected it to come so soon, nor had they expected it by way of anything other than Sadie’s cell phone.   

But regardless, if Kathleen steered the conversation in just the right direction, Sadie might be able to hint as to their situation.  And so depressing the speaker button so that Anthony could listen in, Kathleen grasped the conversational wheel. “
Sadie? How are you enjoying that camping trip?  I hope it’s every bit as romantic as it sounds.”

There was a laugh, a sob, some background noise that Kathleen didn’t understand, until Sadie finally pulled it together.  “That’s a good one.  I knew you would figure it out.  But we’re okay. We’re okay, Kath.  Declan shot the bastard and… God, we got out and we’re okay.”

As if repeating it would ensure it was so, Sadie said it a few more times, while Kathleen’s brain separated the wheat from the chaff, the key points from the delirious ramblings.

Sadie and Declan were alive.  And somehow, they’d escaped. She shared a look of surprise with Anthony.  Surprise and profound
relief.  “Where are you?”

“We’re at Beaufort Memorial hospital.  Declan’s pretty worse for wear and that stupid four-wheeler wasn’t exactly a smooth ride. They’re taking x-rays of his hand and
his ribs right now. But… I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.  I know I’m making absolutely no sense, but… God.  Okay.  It was on my answering machine, Kath.  The guy that used to live there was killed and he left this, this deathbed sort of message on the machine about some murder here in Beaufort.  Nora Beth somebody.  And I was listening to it and Doug came in… my security contractor, Kathleen.  Declan shot Billy – the bastard’s dead – but you have to arrest his brother.  He’s –”

Kathleen lost the thread of the conversation as she and Anthony both
whipped their heads toward the two-way mirror.

And let out a violent, vicious curse when only an empty Coke bottle looked back.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

SADIE
stroked the arm above the splint on Declan’s hand, feeling the firm pressure of lean muscle.  Declan was so hard on the outside in so many ways, but inside he was a big marshmallow.  A marshmallow with a high smart-ass content, but a marshmallow nonetheless. 

He’d obviously been afraid to expose himself for what he was – marshmallows were easily burned – but he’d taken the risk here lately and just shoved himself on
to the proverbial roasting stick.  The reunion and subsequent conversation she’d witnessed between him and his father hadn’t left a dry eye amongst the three of them.  There were a lot of years of misunderstanding between father and son, but with Declan finally coming clean with his father over his supposed role in what happened to his mother, there was no more reason for a lack of communication.  No excuse for either of them to hold back.  And they hadn’t.

There were pockets of emotion in Declan, the depth of which she’d only just begun to plumb. 

Patrick hugged Sadie to him afterward, making her go all mushy when he invoked blessings upon her for coming back home.  She’d tried to deny credit, citing the unfortunate circumstances she and Declan had so recently experienced as an example of her juju maybe not being that good.

But
Patrick, of course, had simply gushed about how she’d always been like part of the family anyway.  And that he couldn’t want a better woman for his son. 

Which okay, had sort of freaked her out.  She’d just gotten used to the idea of loving him.  No one had discussed anything about making it permanent.

But when she’d checked Declan for signs of his own brain melt at what his father implied, he’d just smiled and pulled her over for a kiss.  Of course, he’d been pretty heavily medicated by that point so there was a chance he had no clue what anybody was saying.  Percocet wasn’t exactly known for its ability to induce fine reasoning.

Still, it was something to think about.

She looked down at him now, his dark hair tangled against the ugly green of the hospital bedding, his diabolical goatee in direct contrast with the peaceful set of his mouth.  Sadie noted that despite a bumper crop of bruises that lent him the mug of a barroom brawler, when he was sleeping, he looked almost angelic. 

And the funny thing was that she knew that was total bullshit. He was rude, raunchy, cranky, sarcastic, opinionated, and about as politically correct as a mastodon – and she wouldn’t have him any other way.  Because mixed in with all that other stuff was just enough genuine goodness to make him not only a rock solid human being, but a hell of a lot of fun.

Who would have guessed she craved rough edges?

Rick, with all his polish and smooth perfection had been too slippery for her to hold onto.  Like an unblemished, shiny sheet of ice, she’d
always felt she had to tread carefully to keep herself from tumbling headlong into disaster.  But Dec – Dec had plenty of bumpy outcroppings.  And she wasn’t afraid to throw salt down should she ever feel unsure of her footing.

This – this ability to be herself, speak her mind, in a relationship – served to remind her of what a fool she’d been.  To have doubted her own worth, thereby pretending to be something she wasn’t.  Never again would she try to fit herself into somebody else’s mold.

Declan stirred, murmuring in his sleep.  And his good hand crept across the bed, unconsciously seeking out Sadie’s.

She twined their fingers, heaved a sigh full of gratitude.

They’d been so close to never having this opportunity.

The Beaufort police had been in to speak with her about the message she’d heard on the answering machine, and according to Kathleen there was a full-on manhunt for Brady Marsh
all.  That was Doug Johnson’s real name.  Apparently the man had been in police custody, sort of, but at that point he’d been no more than a person of interest to be interviewed.  So no one stopped him when he’d walked right out of the Mount Pleasant police station.  He hadn’t been under arrest so the interview room wasn’t locked. And somehow, with the instinct of a sociopath for self-preservation, he must have gotten the feeling that they were starting to grow suspicious.