Obsession (Southern Comfort) (24 page)

“He started it.”

“I have no doubt.”

C
oncern replaced the sheepish look on his face.  “You have a headache.”

Kathleen knew it was bad if it was that obvious.  Or maybe Justin simply knew her too well.  Either way, it was a touch disconcerting.

“I’m surprised you don’t have one, too, given the fact that your eye looks like spoiled meat.  Anyway, I bought drugs.” She held up the package.

“Here.”
Justin took the bag, sat it and the sack of Murphy’s takeout he carried beside his feet.  Then he grabbed her hand, pressing, hard, into the fleshy web between her index finger and thumb.

“Alternative medicine, Doctor Wellington?”

“I’ve been known to stray outside official channels myself.  Are you sure you want to do this?”

“You’re the one that grabbed my hand.”

“Kathleen.”

She sighed.  “I don’t know if this is the same car or if I’m being paranoid
.  I don’t know if the two incidents – being run off the road and the doll – are connected.  I trust Mac and Josh to do their jobs, but having my hands tied is driving me crazy.  It’s my family.”

“Then you’re doing what you need to do. Better?”

“What?”

He studied her face.  “The headache. Your eyes look a little less glazed.”

“Oh.” She looked at her hand in his, realized the pain hadn’t entirely dissipated, but it had certainly receded.  “It is better.  Thanks.”

His phone let out a little chime.  Studying the text, Justin sent off a quick response before stuffing it back in his pocket.  “I, uh, need to get home. Besides, I don’t particularly want to be hanging around when Anthony comes back.”
  He gazed at her mouth.  “If I kiss you now, I’m not going to want to stop.”

Kathleen cleared her throat.  The air suddenly seemed about fifty degrees warmer. “Maybe you could hold that thought.”

“I’ve been holding it for about three years now, so I can probably hold it a little longer.  Not much, though.”  He reached down to pick up his bag.  “Call me.”

“I will.”

Kathleen watched him walk away, admiring the excellent view until he turned the corner.  When her breath rushed out on a sigh, she realized she’d been holding it. “Oh boy,” she said to herself. 

She crossed her arms, trying to hold onto some of that warmth while she waited for Anthony.
Her former lover.  And current PI.

Her life had certainly taken some interesting turns here of late.

Her head throbbed once, and while the pain was significantly less than it had been, Kathleen figured it wouldn’t hurt to get ahead of it before it could become a monster again.

She looked toward where the pharmacy bag had been sitting on the pavement.  And realized that Justin had accidently taken it along with his takeout.
   

Which meant he had her ibuprofen.

And the box of condoms.  

Well.  At least he’d know she had him covered
, so to speak.

Standing alone in the cold wind, Kathleen could only laugh.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

JUSTIN
grabbed the takeout bag from the passenger seat before sliding out of his brother’s SUV.  He didn’t know that switching the vehicles around was accomplishing more than making James feel marginally better, but since it was making his brother feel better, he hadn’t insisted on driving his own truck.

Justin hit the remote
to engage the lock, then headed toward the back door.  The plants beside the walk were trampled where the police had searched for evidence last night, and Justin felt himself growing tense.  The repeated violation of his personal space was more offensive than Justin had imagined.  He’d heard people talk about the psychological aftereffects of break-ins and robberies, but decided that it couldn’t be fully appreciated until you’d experienced it firsthand.

He thought of Kathleen’s situation, the fact that she
was willing to step a little outside the system – a system of which she was a part – to solve her problem and protect her family.

And felt better about the fact that he’d taken some steps of his own instead of relying solely on the cops.

He unlocked the back door, called out to his brother.  “Lucy! I’m home.”

Justin started to unload soda bread and beer-braised corned beef sandwiches from the bag
, then his hand encountered slippery plastic. 

He pulled out the pharmacy bag, realizing he’d accident
ally dropped it in with his takeout. 

Kathleen’s pain reliever.  Shit.

The acupressure had helped, but he doubted it had totally knocked the headache out.  Justin debated a second, then opened the bag, wanting to see if she’d purchased an over-the-counter med that could be easily reacquired, or if she’d filled a prescription.  He was relatively certain that she didn’t suffer from migraines strong enough to require narcotics or triptans, but he didn’t want to make assumptions when it came to her well-being.

The bag contained a bottle of ibuprofen. 

And a large box of condoms.

The blood rushed out of his head, pooling in a region farther south, when he gathered that Kathleen had bought the condoms because she’d finally made the break with Anthony.  And was ready to move on.

With him.

“I didn’t realize that Murphy’s had expanded their menu to include prophylactics.  It’s an interesting marketing ploy, but ‘fish and dicks’ just doesn’t have the same ring.”

Justin leveled a stare at his brother.

“Rough day in the OR?” James asked as he checked out Justin’s black eye.

“Corelli sucker punched me.”

“Huh.  That wouldn’t have anything to do with
a certain hot cop and that box of condoms you’re holding, now would it?”

When Justin continued to glare,
James simply grinned.  “Corned beef?” He shifted his attention to the Styrofoam cartons on the table.  “Excellent. I’m starving.”  He popped a hand-cut French fry into his mouth.

Justin tucked the ibuprofen – and the condoms – back into the bag.

“Nothing but the finest room and board here at chalet Wellington.  Want a beer?”

“I wouldn’t turn one down.”

Justin pulled two bottles from the fridge, and – with an image of his mother’s disapproving frown in his head – grabbed two plates so that they weren’t eating dinner straight from the takeout carton.  After handing one of each to his brother, he joined him at the table.  “So what’s the bad news?”

“Bad news?” James asked around a bite of corned beef.

“Your earlier text?”

“Oh.” James chewed and swallowed.  “I don’t know if it’s bad news.  Or even news at all, seeing as you might have been aware of it. And if you were aware of it, let me apologize in advance for screwing it up.”

Getting up from the table, James walked over to the counter, where he palmed a small object.  He tossed it onto the table.

Justin picked it up.  It was small and black, some sort of electronic component, if he had to guess. 
There was a crack across the front. “Am I supposed to understand why this is significant?”

James sat the sandwich he’d just picked up back
onto his plate.  “Shit. I was afraid of that.”

Justin frowned at the component, then at his brother.  “You wanna clue me in?”

“You know that wobbly shelf in the living room bookcase?”

“One of the braces
split.  I haven’t gotten around to replacing it.”

“Well, I was getting around to it for you.” James ran a hand through his hair.  “When I was emptying the other shelves so that I didn’t knock stuff off while I worked, I knocked something off anyway.  It didn’t break, thank God
.  Well, for the most part.  But… wait here for a second.”

James
left the kitchen, then came back with the model of the 1942 Ford pickup that Justin had put together when he’d been a kid.  He’d always had a thing for vintage trucks.

“Here.”

Justin looked at the model. “And the connection here would be?”

“Look at the left headlight.”

Justin did.  There was an empty space where the light had been.  He frowned.  “That’s not a big deal.  I can probably find a part to replace it.”

“Geez, you’re slow tonight.  When I dropped the truck, this fell out of the space where the headlight had been.”  He pointed to the electrical component.

The pieces started to fit together, and the picture wasn’t pleasant.

“I
s this what I think it is?”

James nodded.  “A nanny cam.  Wireless.
  I did a little research on them when I was writing a paper on contemporary wiretapping precedents.”

T
he beer he’d drunk seemed to rise back up his esophagus.  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“I was hoping that maybe you’d installed it yourself.”

“For what? To covertly watch you sit on the sofa?”

“Hell, I don’t know.  Maybe you’re a secret sex tape mogul and the surgeon thing is just a ruse.
Or maybe the hot cop likes to watch.”

Justin leveled another stare.

“Sorry.” James lifted his hands.  “I know you’ve got to be pissed.”

“Pissed doesn’
t begin to cover the intensity of my feelings right now.” Justin thought about the reticence he’d shown with regards to Mandy in the hospital elevator, and was glad he hadn’t known about this at the time.  He’d hate to be sitting in a jail cell right now for wringing her psychotic little neck.

“Is it still functional?”

“With that crack, I kind of doubt it.”

At least there was that.
“Do you know if there’s any way to… figure out where the feed was going, or whatever?” he asked his brother.

“Sorry.  That’s beyond my level of expertise.  Which is pretty much being able to identify that thing as a camera.”

Justin carefully sat it on the table so that he wasn’t tempted to crush it in his bare hand.

He wondered how long the thing had been there.  Flipping through his mental catalogue of stored memories, he tried to determine if there was anything significant that may have been caught on video. 

Plenty of sleeping on the couch.  Clay and Josh and a couple other guys were over for some football.  He and Kathleen had watched a few movies. And there was one night, when he and Mandy had been more off than on, that Justin brought home a woman he’d known in med school who’d been in town for a conference.

There’d been some heavy petting on the couch before they’d adjourned to his bedroom.

“How insecure,” he wondered aloud “would a woman have to be, to want to spy on a guy she’s dating when she’s not with him?”

“Women are crazy, bro.”

Justin scrubbed his hands over his already abused face. He wasn’t a prude by any means, but nor did he relish the idea of having his private moments broadcast for the viewing enjoyment of delusional ex-girlfriends.

“She needs to be locked down in a mental facility.”

“Um.”  James cleared his throat.  “I hate to bring this up right now, but I figure you’re going to arrive at this conclusion yourself when you cool down and start thinking clearly.”

Justin’s gaze was wary.  “What?”

James nodded toward the camera.  “A lot of times, those things are sold in packs.  That might not be the only one.”

Justin closed his eyes. 
Of course.  Of
course
it wasn’t the only one.

Sliding his full plate toward his brother, he pushed back from the table.  “Here.”  He hooked his beer in two fingers as he stood up
, and then took a healthy slug.  “I seem to have lost my appetite.”

KATHLEEN
sat in her rental car outside a slightly rundown apartment building on the city’s west side.  It had come back as the registered address for the tags she’d had Anthony run.  The name LaShelle Kinson hadn’t meant anything to her at first.  Not that she’d expected the car to be registered to Joe Palmer – that would be entirely too easy – but when Anthony had sent her a copy of the woman’s driver’s license, recognition struck.

And with it came doubt.

There was a perfectly logical reason for that car to have been parked in the lot beside Kathleen’s loft, considering the building that housed the pharmacy shared the lot with Murphy’s.  And the woman in question worked there.  Kathleen had seen her there herself.

She’d also seen her, quite recently, bringing her overdosing friend to the hospital.  And prior to that, she’d seen the woman immediately following the drive-by at Jugs.

She was Shelley, the former co-worker, and apparent roommate, of the waitress whom Justin had saved.

The results of the paint sample Anthony lifted from the front bumper of the car wouldn’t be
available for several days yet, so she had no conclusive proof.  And Kathleen couldn’t imagine – other than an odd sort of coincidence – why Ms. Kinson would have been behind her leaving the Isle of Palms, and driven, presumably, by road rage, to attempt to run Kathleen into a tree.