Obsession (Southern Comfort) (18 page)

“
Looks like the cavalry is here. We need to call Rutledge,” she told her partner.  “He’s not going to be happy that his witness is no longer among the living.”

Kathleen’s phone vibrated, and she
unclipped it from her belt, moving further into the alley as Mac strode off to brief the forensic techs.  

The incoming text was from her sister Maureen’s husband.
And as she read it, the tension eased from her shoulders.  Grinning, she shot back an answering text, pocketing her phone just as Mac reached her.

“Good news?”

“Another generation of Murphy women is about to be born.”

“God help us.” But when Kathleen punched his arm, Mac
only grunted.  “If you want to take off, I’ll stay. Not much more we can do until after the techs do their thing, anyway. You can call Rutledge on your way. And attend the autopsy in the morning.”

“The hidden agenda comes out.”

“Hey, I took the last one.”

“We
both
took the last one.  The autoerotic asphyxiation that wasn’t so auto.”

“Guess it just seems like I suffered through that one
by myself.  Seriously though, go be with your family.” He gently squeezed her shoulder. “Attending a birth should be a nice change of pace.”

Kathleen looked past him, to where some other mother’s child lay dead in the alley.

Life was a cycle. But Mac was right; it would be nice to spend some time at the other end of the cycle for a change.  

WEARY,
Justin pried the lid from his coffee, because sipping wasn’t going to cut it.  The scent hit him like an open-handed slap and he leaned closer, inhaled.  The first taste powered through his mental fog, by the third he felt almost human.

He hadn’t slept.  Not that he wasn’t used to doing without, but generally that was because he was busy in the operating room.
When he wasn’t in surgery, he’d learned – the hard way – to catch sleep whenever and wherever he could.  He’d been known to nod off at his parents’ dining room table, mid-conversation.

But last night, after the cops had left his house, he hadn’t been able to settle.  He’d been… uneasy.  In his own home.  And it seriously pissed him off.

Follow that up with a six hour surgery on a kid who’d been dumb enough to attempt to mattress surf off the porch roof of his frat house, and Justin was forced to acknowledge that he was fried.  Mentally and physically.

Wondering what was taking the elevator so long, Justin realized that he hadn’t pressed the call button.
Correcting that oversight, he leaned against the wall.

And could only close his eyes when he heard the shrill tone of the voice behind him.

“You bastard.”

Turning, Justin looked down into Mandy’s
outraged face.  And strove to keep his own face impassive, despite the fury simmering in his blood.  “I can’t talk to you.”

“Oh, you’re going to talk to me.” She ground her finger into his chest.

“No.” He grabbed her finger. Fought to keep his temper in check. “I’m not.  Back off. And keep your voice down, before you embarrass yourself further.”

“Embarrass
myself?
Myself?”

The elevator dinged, the doors opening behind him and spilling its occupants into the hall.  Luckily none of them were hospital employees, who would no doubt be captivated by the little production unfolding before them.
  The workplace gossip had been a bit lackluster of late.

Ignoring Mandy, as any further confrontation could do him no good, Justin strode into the car.

Mandy followed.

“Don’t,” she his
sed, getting all up in his face as the doors closed behind her “walk away from me when I’m speaking to you.  You called the
cops
on me.” Her normally rosy cheeks turned fuchsia.  “What the
hell
is wrong with you?”

Reminding himself that
it was pointless to engage her in a debate on exactly which of them it was with issues, Justin pressed the button for his floor.

“Mandy,” he said with as much equanimity as he could muster. “I did not call the cops on you. 
I called the cops, period.” Much to his displeasure. “If they chose to speak with you, it’s because they considered you a person of interest.”

“A person of interest? How quaint.  And how about the other women you’ve fucked – or should I say: fucked over? Are they
persons of interest
as well?”

Insult layered over anger.  But his tone was
cool.  “You’ll have to ask the police.  I have no say in how they conduct their investigations.”

And he had to remind himself to let the police do their job. To gather the evidence, and if the evidence pointed to Mandy – a foregone conclusion in Justin’s mind –
to follow up with the appropriate legal steps.  Justin might have preferred to handle things himself, but with three brothers in the legal profession – one of them a defense attorney – he’d spent much of his sleepless night reminding himself that people were innocent until proven guilty.

Even crazy women.

“Six months.  I dated you, slept with you, exclusively, for six months
.  We’ve been acquainted for almost three years. And you don’t know me any better than to believe I could break into your house?”

Because there was hurt
, just a thread of hurt, mixed with the fury in her voice, Justin forced himself to meet her eyes.  “No.  I don’t know you any better. And I’m sorry for that.”

“You think that makes this
okay?
”

“There is nothing okay about this.”

“And what about your precious Kathleen? I bet they didn’t interview
her. 
She’s one of them after all.”

The tone that had previously been cool w
ent cold and hard as steel.  “Leave Kathleen out of it.  This is between you and me.”

“No,
she
was between you and me, the entire time we were dating.  You think I’m too stupid to know that?”

Justin almost grabbed her arm as anger, fueled by guilt and fear, rose inside him. But he took a deep breath, reached instead for control.

“It’s over, Mandy.  All the way over.  Just let it go.”

Her palm cracked across his cheek as t
he elevator car slowed to a halt.  “You’ll pay for this,” Mandy gritted when the doors slid open and an older couple waited to board.  She stalked off, nearly knocking the paperwork from the startled man’s hands as she brushed by him, and Justin’s free hand bunched into a fist.

“Believe me
,” he muttered.  “I already am.”

“Um, we’ll catch the next one,” the female half of the couple said before the doors closed again, and Justin wondered exactly how menacing his expression must have been.

Rubbing the sting out of his cheek, he leaned against the wall, the sound of Muzak swelling to fill the sudden silence of the car.

It took his tired brain a moment, but then he could only laugh without humor when he recognized the song.

Bad Romance.

“Yeah,” he told whatever higher power it was with such a twisted sense of humor. “No kidding.”
     

KATHLEEN
studied the floral selection in the cooler of the hospital gift shop, then shifted her gaze to the assortment of pastel-colored stuffed animals.  Teddy bear or flowers?

Maybe both.

Hell, after pushing another human being out of her body in the most uncomfortable way possible, Kathleen figured Maureen deserved a medal.  And a month’s vacation at a spa.

But since neither of those was an option at the moment, she would definitely spring for the enormous fistful of bright gerbera daisies and the Volkswagen-sized pink teddy bear.  The tutu and tiara it sported gave Kathleen a moment of pain – did they have to be so stereotypical? – but then if her new niece was anything at all like her mother, that girly stuff would be a huge hit.

Oh well. Kathleen figured she had plenty of time later on to teach the kid to throw a decent punch. 

Scooping up her selections, she took them to the register, chatted with the volunteer who rang them up.  Winced a little.  Vol
kswagen-sized teddy bears didn’t come cheap.

Carrying her booty toward the elevator
, Kathleen scanned the directory, found the floor for the maternity ward.  As many times as she’d been in this particular hospital, it was a floor she’d visited rarely.  She’d spent far more time in the morgue.

That struck her as just a little depressing.

Well, the next several months should balance things out somewhat, considering Tate and Sadie’s babies had yet to be born.

Better set aside a gift fund, Kathleen mused as she considered the small fortune she’d just dropped.  Either that, or buy
the stuff beforehand, from someplace less opportunistic than the hospital gift shop.

“Yeah, right,” she snorted.  She was, after all, the woman who did most of her holiday shopping on Christmas Eve.

The elevator doors slid open, and Kathleen shifted the bear as she waited for the car to unload.

Which meant the stuffed animal took the brunt of the impact when the man plowed into her.

“Hey,” she said and a masculine voice muttered “Shit.” Then louder. “I’m sorry.”

Shifting the bear again, she started to make a pithy remark until she recognized the
masculine voice’s equally masculine owner.

“Justin.”  The heat hit her first, the impact as solid as the physical bump had been.  But then
she got a good look at his face and concern banked the fire. “You look like hell.”

“Thanks.” His tone was wry.  Then he took in the bear. “You look like
the Build-A-Bear Factory on steroids.”

“Maureen had her baby.”

“Really?” Some of the fatigue eased from his face as it lit with unfeigned pleasure.  “That’s fantastic.  Congratulations.  Have you seen her yet?  The baby, I mean.”

“I’ve only caught a glimpse so far, as they had her in the nursery doing… whatever it is they do with newborns, but I spotted her right off, as she was the one with red hair and a temper.”

  Well, this,” he tugged on the bear’s enormous, ballet slipper-clad foot “should earn you some Favorite Aunt brownie points.”

“
Hey, I’m a newbie,” she said by way of explanation. She knew she’d gone overboard. “I guess this is all old hat for you.”

“Nah.  It never gets old.  And just wait until the kid’s a
little bigger.  You can buy the loudest, most annoying toys you can find to pay your siblings back for all of the torments they visited upon you during childhood.”

“Justin,” she said softly because she could see the strain underlying the good cheer. And because she couldn’t seem to stop herself, sh
e shifted the bear, the flowers aside again to lay her hand against his cheek. “Are you okay?”

Surprise at the tenderness of the gesture flashed into his eyes.  Embarrassment threatened, but when she would have lifted her hand away, Justin covered it with his own.  This time his expression was something more akin to
hunger.

“I am now.” He turned his mouth into her palm, kissed it, and then kept her hand trapped in his as he lowered them.  He took a deep breath. “I need to talk to you, but now’s not the time.  You have a
new niece to visit.”

She searched his face.  And felt the heat
begin to simmer again.  “I’ll be free later tonight,” she told him.  “If you want to… talk.”

He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything there was a commotion in the lobby.

Turning, Kathleen saw a pretty young black woman all but carrying another dark-haired woman across the tiled floor.

“I could use some help here,” she called out, and
a hospital volunteer rushed over while directing a security guard to send someone after a wheelchair.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said, clearly flustered, as the volunteer propped herself under the
incapacitated woman’s other arm.  “I meant to go to the emergency room entrance, but I got turned around, and then she started to pass out on me again so I figured it didn’t much matter what entrance we used.”

“Hey,” Kathleen said, as recognition dawned.  “Isn’t that –”

But she was talking to Justin’s back.

“
Shelley,” he said to the black woman as he lifted the other woman’s head, used his fingers to pry open her eye, then check her pulse.  “What happened?”

“Dr. Wellington.” There w
as relief, something else in Shelley’s voice as she grabbed his arm, clung there.  “I don’t know.  I came in from work, and Natasha, she was just lying on the couch.  White as paper.  It took me a good five minutes to get her to come around.  Scared me to death.  She roused a little, and I managed to get her into the car.  Is she alright?  Tell me she’s gonna be alright.”