T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 03 - Southern Peril

SOUTHERN PERIL

PREVIOUS WORKS BY T. LYNN OCEAN

Fool Me Once

Sweet Home Carolina

Jersey Barnes Series

Southern Fatality

Southern Poison

A Jersey Barnes Mystery

T. LYNN OCEAN

MINOTAUR BOOKS
NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

SOUTHERN PERIL.
Copyright © 2009 by T. Lynn Ocean. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.minotaurbooks.com

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-38347-3

ISBN-10: 0-312-38347-9

First Edition: July 2009

10    9    8    7    6    5    4    3    2    1

SOUTHERN PERIL

March, twenty-one years ago

Near the campus of Duke University

Durham, North Carolina

Will was unanimously
designated as the driver since he had drunk only Dr Pepper, and he tried to remain a good sport about it despite John’s and Mike’s obnoxious behavior. After all, every med student had to cut loose once in a while, especially after grueling midterm exams. He and his frat brothers were invited to another party tomorrow night, where he’d be the designated drinker. Somebody else could drive.

“Guys, cut it out already, would you?” His friends playfully slapped each other on the backs of their heads, and John, the front-seat passenger, rolled into Will’s lap each time he reached over the headrest to retaliate. “I’m trying to drive here.”

They were only about ten miles from the apartment the trio shared, but Will had taken an unfamiliar shortcut through the wooded back roads. It neared two o’clock in the morning, and the only other cars on the main roads at this time of day would likely be cops. Even though he hadn’t been drinking, Will knew it was best to avoid
a confrontation with the law. They loved to give college kids a rough time, especially frat boys, and especially in the middle of the night. He couldn’t wait to get home and crawl into bed. He was tired.

Overhead, low-hanging clouds began spitting mist, and on the ground, a set of blinding high-beam headlights flew at the boys from the oncoming lane. The other driver either didn’t care or didn’t notice when Will flashed his lights in protest. He depressed the windshield washer button, hoping that clean glass would cut the glare, but the fluid container was empty. Moving wipers smeared a fine layer of mist and bird droppings across the windshield. Squinting, Will slowed and concentrated on the serpentine road, trying not to look into the other car’s headlights.

“Heeeeeere’s Johnny!” Mike leaned in from the backseat, trying to get a clean shot at John’s face. Will was about to yell at them to stop when somebody fell across his right arm and the steering wheel jerked to the right. The front tire wrenched off the pavement and spun in loose gravel as the inside of the tread scraped the road’s edge.

Will yanked the wheel hard to the left. “Dammit!”

The boys’ car overcorrected and fishtailed across the center line. The oncoming vehicle swerved to avoid a head-on crash with them and went airborne over a water-filled ditch. It clipped something and flipped onto its roof, spun in a 360 as it continued toward a clump of trees, and rotated back upright before slamming to a stop against the trunk of a thick oak with an earthshaking boom.

Panicked, his heart revving, Will stomped the brake pedal and they squealed to a stop. If the other car hadn’t reacted so quickly, he realized, he and John would have gone through the windshield. Maybe even Mike, too, from the backseat. They all could have been killed.

Forcing a deep breath into his lungs, Will made a U-turn and drove the hundred yards back to the wreck, his mind recalling emergency response procedures for accident victims. All three boys ran to
the damaged car—one of its wheels jutted out, still spinning—and Will yanked open the driver’s door to see two men. The one in the passenger’s seat moaned. The driver, his face bloodied, pointed a gun at them. “You tell Denny he can go to hell,” the man snarled.

Stunned, Will froze, but only for a split second. He grabbed the driver’s wrist and fought to get the weapon pointed in any direction other than at him and his friends. The pistol went off with a sharp pop that sent a jab of pain through his eardrums. A spray of blood and pulp coated the crumpled car’s interior as the bullet punched a hole through the passenger’s skull. Will felt some stray bits sting his face.

“You made me shoot him, you bastard,” the driver growled. Will stopped grappling with the stranger when he realized the gun’s muzzle was now pressed directly into his stomach. It felt hot. “You still ain’t getting the money.”

The driver spat out a mouthful of blood and teeth. Illuminated by the car’s yellowish dome light, his face looked like one of those gory rubber Halloween masks that cover the entire head. But this man was not a ghoulish prankster. The coppery smell of blood was real, and the metal of the gun pressing into his skin was real. Will’s body went numb. He would probably die. It all happened so
fast.
One minute, he’s driving his friends home from a frat party. And a minute later—not even a full sixty seconds later—he witnesses a shooting. And it looked as if he could very well be next.

He struggled to remember the prayer he’d learned during Sunday school classes at church. Growing up, he hated getting up early for church. His mother always made him, up until he reached sixteen and told her he believed in science—not God. The prayer was something about darkness. Or was it light? He wondered if he’d go to heaven, even though he hadn’t seen the inside of a church in years. He wondered if he’d feel pain as the bullet ripped through his midsection. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to finish school.
He’d wanted to be a doctor ever since the third grade, when he went to the emergency room with his parents after his sister jumped on top of a glass coffee table. He couldn’t recall the prayer. Sweat beads popped through the skin all over his body. A wall-mounted epidermis chart flashed through his mind. That had been a test question at some point in his life, the one about the skin being the largest organ. Most people didn’t think of their skin as an organ, just like the heart or the liver, but it was. Will couldn’t remember the prayer. He wondered if the man was truly going to shoot him. He debated as to whether he’d die instantly or lie in the grass slowly bleeding to death, like in the old westerns. He wondered if he’d ever be able to watch a movie again. He loved movies.

“We don’t know anybody named Denny, I swear,” Will heard himself say. The man’s fingers were now curled around his shirt collar. “Me and my friends don’t even know you. We only stopped to help.”

The driver gurgled out a laugh and pulled the trigger. The revolver misfired. When he hesitated for a split second to look at the malfunctioning gun, Will slammed his forehead into the other man’s. A shot violated Will’s eardrums for the second time, and pain exploded in the center of his head. He sucked in a breath and opened his eyes to find the shooter slumped over the steering wheel.

Will had been next to corpses only in a sparkling clean and brightly lit laboratory, and then they’d been laid out on stainless-steel tables. But he knew without checking for a pulse that the driver was dead. The man had mistakenly shot himself in the head, just like he’d accidentally shot his passenger. The driver was a really bad shot. The scene might somehow be funny, Will thought, if he were watching it at the movies. Or maybe not. It might just be gruesome.

“Crap, crap, crap,” one of his buddies screamed behind him. “Who
are
these guys?”

Will disentangled himself from the dead man’s grip and backed away from the car. He moved his arms and legs and felt his stomach
to make sure he wasn’t wounded and then took inventory of his friends. Both were standing, unharmed. John bent over to heave up some of the vodka punch he’d drunk at the party.

“I don’t know who they are.” Will’s ears hurt, and his voice sounded like it was echoing in the distance. “He tried to shoot me. He thought somebody named Denny sent us. He thought we were after their money.”

John wiped vomit from his chin with a shirtsleeve. “What money?”

“Who cares what money?” Mike said. “We’ve got to go get help.”

Will’s entire body was shaking. He spread his stance to balance jerky legs. Adrenaline, he thought. Just like the textbooks said. “They don’t need help now. They’re both dead.”

The three boys stared at the lifeless strangers. Noticing something wedged behind the driver’s seat back, Mike cocked his head. It was a large canvas duffel bag with thick leather straps.

“See what’s in it,” Mike said.

John giggled.
“You
see what’s in it.”

“Shut up!” Will screamed. “Shut up! Shut up, both of you! Two men are dead. This is serious.”

“We didn’t kill them,” John said. “Did we?”

Will told his friends to shut up again. He needed to think. Using his shirttail to open the back car door, he worked the duffel bag loose. It was heavy, like a laundry bag of folded clothes, but much more dense. He slung the leather straps over a shoulder and moved to the rear of the car. The trunk lid was half-open, ripped off at one hinge, and displayed an empty cargo area, except for a pair of boots and a small ditty bag. If the men had more luggage, it must have flown out during the wreck. A warped New Jersey license plate hung by a single screw from one corner. He was debating whether or not to search the men’s pockets for driver’s licenses when fat drops of rain started to pelt his face. He looked around and saw faint pinpoints of distant
headlights filtering through the darkness. Somebody was coming. Self-preservation instincts overrode his need to learn more about the man who’d just tried to kill him. “Let’s get out of here.”

He herded his subdued friends back to their car just as the drizzle escalated to a downpour. Good, Will thought, driving to their apartment. The rain will wash away any signs that we were ever there. The approaching vehicle never caught up with them, and Will figured its driver must have spotted the accident and stopped to help. The police would be summoned. Would they think the bizarre scene to be an accident? With gunshot wounds, probably not. Maybe it would be ruled a murder-suicide. Or maybe a double murder. But then, the car had swerved off the road and crashed. Would police think the passenger shot the driver, causing the car to flip? A flood of possible scenarios rushed through Will’s head. None seemed fully plausible.