3 Bad Guys Get Caught (26 page)

Chapter 2

As she exited the lobby of her building,
Claire had a funny feeling that she was being watched: the eerie, nagging sensation
one gets when being stared at. She looked around, but seeing that the street
was empty, she attributed her discomfort to the dress she was wearing. It was
new, and to her mind, way too revealing. She had bought it at her friend’s,
Amber’s, suggestion, and now she wished she had opted for a different outfit.
Claire pulled on the hem of her dress that barely covered her mid-thigh.
Usually, she never wore skirts above the knee, but Amber had insisted that she
look super-hot for the party. There would be fashion models and movie starlets,
and if Claire were not careful, David’s eyes just might wander, Amber had
cautioned her. Claire had laughed Amber off. It took more than flashy looks to
impress David, but she had bought the dress nonetheless, along with a set of
Spanx, which was now pinching her behind mercilessly.

Claire could hardly believe her eyes
when she spotted an empty cab heading her way. She waved her hand, instantly
checking for possible competition. The simple act of hailing a cab could easily
turn into a battle on the Upper East Side.

“Mercer and Houston,” Claire gave the
cab driver the directions and leaned back against the car seat. She opened her
purse and checked her reflection in the mirror for the umpteenth time.
Normally, she was not one to fuss about her looks, but when it came to David,
she wanted to look perfect.

She had been dating David Lawson for
almost a year. Eleven glorious months to be precise, and at times, Claire still
could not believe that of all women David had chosen her. After all, David
Lawson had not been hailed New York’s most eligible bachelor by the tabloids
for no reason. At thirty-three, David had the world in the palm of his hand:
blond, six three, with rock hard abs and a smile that could melt the snows of Antarctica,
he was the sole heir to the Lawson real estate empire. His father, Allan
Lawson, owned half of Manhattan, and David was to follow in his father’s
footsteps. He had just recently been promoted to vice president of Lawson
Enterprises, and everyone knew that one day, sooner rather than later, David
would run the company. Sure, the fact that he was the owner’s son contributed
to his advancement in the firm, but David had proven himself fair and square by
learning the business from the bottom up, putting in long hours, and most
importantly, coming up with groundbreaking ideas. But all of these impressive
attributes were not the reason why Claire Chatfield was swept off her feet by
David Lawson. She was not impervious to good looks and money, but she looked
for much more in a man, and she had found it in David: he was kind, reliable,
and he took great pride in his profession.

But eleven months ago, all Claire knew
about David Lawson was that David was a handsome heir who charmed his way
through life. His womanizing reputation preceded him, so when David approached
her at one of Amber’s mixers, Claire had pretty much blown him off. She had
been polite, but that was where it ended, and when David tried to get her
number, she feigned an excuse and left the party.

Her surprise was too big for words when,
upon coming in to work the next morning, Claire found two dozen white roses on
her desk with a note from David. Her fingers trembling, she dialed Amber and
shared the mind-boggling news. Somehow, the idea of receiving flowers from
David Lawson did not quite fit into Claire’s mind. Who sent flowers these days?
Of all the men she had dated (granted, there had not been that many) this was a
first for her.

“That’s because David is a true
gentleman,” Amber had countered, “and it was really stupid of you to blow him
off last night. He really liked you, you know.”

“Somehow I doubt that David Lawson has a
shortage of dates,” Claire had retorted. “And I’m not about to become his next
one-night stand.”

“Well, I think you’ve made that
perfectly clear. Hence, the flowers. Just don’t overdo it, okay?”

“You mean there’s more to come?”

“I imagine he’s going to ask you out.
That’s how men usually act when they like a girl, not that you’d have any idea
with the hermit lifestyle that you’ve been practicing.”

“I’m very happy with my life, thank you
very much.”

“Just go out with David already, okay?
I’m a PR agent, not a matchmaker. It’s bad enough he had to call me to get your
phone number. I don’t want to be the messenger between the two of you.”

“Fair enough. I’ll go out with him to
get him off your back, but that’s where it ends.”

“Aha. Let’s wait and see what you’ll be
saying after your date with him.”

At the time Claire had scoffed at
Amber’s reply, but her friend’s words turned out to be prophetic after all. It
had only taken a handful of dates for Claire to fall for David Lawson.

Lost in her reminiscences, Claire did
not notice that the cab driver had already reached the destination and was
waiting to be paid. She quickly handed him the fare, ran her hand over her hair
one last time, and opened the car door.

“Claire. I was looking forward to seeing
you all day.” David was by her side as soon as her feet had reached the curb.

“David.” Her heart surged as she wrapped
her arms around her boyfriend’s neck.

“I’m so sorry you had to trudge over
here in a cab. I was stuck at the office.”

“That’s all right.” She smiled dreamily
at him, thinking that as long as she wound up in David’s arms, she did not care
how she got there.

“Let’s go inside before it gets too
crowded.” David pulled her closer to him, and feeling secure with his arm on
the small of her back, Claire followed.

“Claire!” Amber air-kissed her on both
cheeks. “Isn’t this a great turnout?”

“As usual, you’ve outdone yourself.”
Claire surveyed the vast crowd, spotting familiar faces she remembered from ads
and magazines.

“By the end of the evening, Club Metro
is going to be the hottest club in town.” Amber shook her platinum blond hair
with exuberance. “And, of course, I have to thank two of my closest friends for
supporting me.” Amber flashed David a playful smile. “Having David Lawson as a
guest at an event immediately raises the hotness status by two hundred
percent.”

“Well, you’re looking hot enough to
light this place up all on your own, Amber.” David pinched Amber’s cheek.

“Such a tease!” Amber giggled, her
lashes batting playfully over her sky-blue eyes. “You two go upstairs, into the
VIP lounge. I’ve got to work the grind here.”

“We’ll see you later, Amber.” David
flashed one of his dazzling smiles, reaching for Claire’s hand.

“By the way, Claire, you look awesome in
this dress,” Amber whispered. “Aren’t you glad you let me talk you into buying
it?”

“Thanks, Amber. You’re looking great
yourself.” As usual, Amber was not to be outdone. Dressed in a sequined
mini-dress that clung to her lanky, model-like body, she looked like she was
wearing a gown of melted silver.

Upstairs, they were immediately whisked
into a VIP booth, where a bottle of Dom Perignon awaited them in an ice bucket.

“Pretty swanky, huh?” David uncorked the
champagne without so much as a whisper of a sound. He poured the sparkling
liquid into Claire’s glass and filled his own. “Here’s to my girl.”

Claire smiled and lifted the glass to
her lips. She loved it when David called her his girl - there was something so
sweetly old-fashioned about it.

“So, how was your day?” she asked him.

“There was only one good thing about it:
looking forward to seeing you.” David squeezed her hand, and Claire thought she
was going to literally melt under his gaze. He had had this effect on her ever
since they met, and at times, she wondered if she would ever start taking David
for granted. At the moment, it seemed impossible. “And that’s all I care to say
about my day at the office on a Saturday. How was your day, baby?”

“I had the craziest morning.”

“Oh? What happened?”

“I got a new neighbor, and he was
playing his music really loud...” The image of Alec’s bare torso materialized
in Claire’s mind as she remembered him moving to the sensual tango music.
Flustered, she halted into silence. Here she was, sitting across from the most
desirable man in all of New York and most likely in the world, having
ridiculous thoughts about her impertinent neighbor.

“So the two of you thought you could
slink away, did you? I know all the hiding places.” Amber sidled into the seat
next to David.

For once, Claire was glad of Amber’s
interruption.

“Aren’t you two going to dance?” Amber
asked.

As if on cue, a deafening blast of
techno filled the room.

Claire glanced at the empty dance floor
and shook her head. “Oh, you know us, Amber. David and I don’t dance.”

“That’s right.” David nodded. “I can
think of far better things to do with my girl than grinding on the dance
floor.”

Even David Lawson had an imperfection.
It was his utter lack of rhythm and musical timing - a flaw that Claire had
found most endearing when she had overheard David singing in the shower. David
took care to stay off the dance floor, and Claire adored him all the more for it.

“Suit yourselves.” Amber rose from her
seat. In her usual devil-may-care fashion, she approached a Calvin Klein
underwear model whose picture Claire remembered from a billboard. In no time at
all, the two were in the center of the dance floor. Amber’s body slithered this
way and that as she pressed herself against the taut, muscular body of the
underwear hunk, undaunted by the fact that they were the only couple dancing.
Of course, that did not remain the case for long. Ever since her cheerleading
days in high school, Amber had possessed an uncanny ability to get people to do
what she wanted, and she did not fail now. In a handful of moments, the dance
floor became flooded as everyone in the room rushed in to follow Amber.
Everyone but David.

“What do you say we call it a night,
baby?” David glanced at Claire across the table.

Claire nodded with relief. That was
another thing she adored about David. Most people would have never suspected
that despite all the publicity and the flashy events he had to attend, deep
down David Lawson was a homebody.

To continue
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This Tangled Thing Called Love
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About Danielle Stewart:

Writing is a way to make a lot of
different people do exactly what you want them to do. When I can’t get my
toddler to listen to me, I turn to my characters. They always cooperate!

I currently live in Charlotte, North
Carolina with my husband and three year old son. I have perfected the ability
to write in a noisy house and create story lines while folding laundry.

Chasing Justice is book one in my Piper
Anderson Series. It follows the evolution of a woman who feels unworthy of love
and introduces a colorful and endearing cast of characters who are hellbent on
proving her wrong. Due to be released in May 2013 with additional books to
follow closely behind.

I love hearing from my readers and
always answers all of my email personally. Join my mailing list at
www.authordaniellestewart.com
for updates on
contests and new book releases!

PROLOGUE

The world is full of terrible peopl
e. I’m sure
you’ve heard that before, maybe even said it yourself. But when you say the
“world” you don’t mean your world. You’re not thinking about your supermarket,
your children’s school, the place you work. You’re thinking about those big
cities with those big problems, not your neighborhood.

This kind of talk makes me sound
paranoid, and maybe I am. But I’m also right. I know the pedophile blurs into
the role of coach. The violent sex offenders deliver your mail or bag your
groceries. So often we find out too late the laws that are meant to protect the
innocent instead shield the offenders. There was a small window of time in my
life when I thought I could be one of the “good guys,” and I use the term
lightly as I happen to be a woman. I believed I could follow the letter of the
law and still take part in cleaning this world up a little. But I was wrong.
You can’t do things the right way and still win when the villains have no code.
The only way to get anything done is to be just as wicked, but with righteous
intentions.

My ideals aren’t something I’ve formed
half-heartedly. They’ve been forged like steel, burned in a fiery pit and then
hammered relentlessly. I’ve been hurt. I’ve faced death. I’ve made many
mistakes. My spirit was broken and I believed the only way I could repair
myself was to knock a little piece of evil off this planet.

One afternoon, as I stared outside, I
came face to face with my opportunity. I had left my window slightly open so
the breeze could balance the stale, recycled feeling of the air conditioner.
Late summer in North Carolina was usually humid and stagnant, but I remember on
that day the wind was moving nicely through the trees. I had hoped it would
blow new life into me.

The rear of my townhouse faced an alley
where an Italian restaurant backed up to the bank. Out the back door of the
restaurant stepped a man familiar enough for me to take notice, but not so much
that I could place him. From behind him came a girl, who even from the
distance, I could see was half woman and half child. She was dressed in
mismatched clothing not suited for her age.

The two looked like a peculiar pair.
They were clearly not father and daughter, not student and teacher. There was
something about their demeanor, the way the man was moving with force and the
girl creeping behind him timidly, that made my skin break out in goose bumps.
Something was not right.

Suddenly the man turned on his heels to
face the girl. He cocked back his fist and before she could even raise her
hands to protect herself he struck her hard across the face. The girl stifled a
yelp as her hands rushed to her nose which had instantly begun bleeding. She
slouched forward, and the man straightened her by grabbing the loose ponytail
on the back of her head. He leaned in close and hissed into her face. “You
don’t get to talk to me here. You don’t get to know me here. This is my real
life and you are a whore who I screw when I feel like it. If you ever approach
me in public again I will end you, and there isn’t a soul in this world who
would even know you were gone. No one misses a fourteen-year-old hooker.” He
tugged again at her hair to make sure she understood, and she nodded through
the pain. In a moment of clarity I suppose, the man looked over his shoulder to
see if anyone had been within earshot. I ducked back behind my curtains. As he
turned again toward her I realized where I had seen the salt and pepper in his
hair, the lines on his red doughy face, the roundness of his bulbous nose.

He looked different without his black
robe but there was no doubt—he was a judge whose courtroom I had sat in while
shadowing a lawyer a few weeks earlier. There he was standing in an alley
beating an underage prostitute who had the unfortunate judgment of addressing
him outside the confines of whatever seedy motel they usually frequented. This
man of stature and prominence in our community was a sex offender.

Any reasonable person would stop what
she was doing and immediately call the police. But I believed I could do
something about this on my own. To understand why, you would need to know what
makes me different from the general population. You would have to understand
what brought me to North Carolina in the first place. No, I’m not an assassin
who spent her childhood being groomed by monks in the art of ancient jiu jitsu.

As a matter of fact, even if my life
depended on it, I’d be hard pressed to do a chin-up. I’m about as graceful as a
seasick flamingo. My overall endurance makes me pretty sure I’m one of those
people who is thin on the outside and fat on the inside. I don’t have a weapon,
I don’t have any allies, and I don’t really have a plan.

I have no particularly impressive skills
besides perhaps valuing my own life so little that I’m willing to risk it even
when the odds are stacked against me. I’m delusional and I’m damaged, but I’m
brave. That’s really all I have right now.

So how did I get here, how did I get to
a point where I thought I could take justice into my own hands? I arrived in
North Carolina two years before I had witnessed the judge’s assault. The life
that lay before me was blank. I was given a clean slate; clean to a degree that
many people would envy considering the circumstances that led me there. Yet to
me, the void stretching before me was suffocating rather than liberating. I was
adrift in a new town, a new world. I was twenty-three years old and essentially
born again, burdened with the ignorance of a child and the expectations of an
adult.

My “relocation,” as I have come to
internally label it, had afforded me a small place to live. It was paid
outright, and it was mine. I had a sum of money that, in my naïve, unworldly
experience, seemed like a small fortune. In truth, it was just enough to be
swallowed up by the reality of existing on my own. As it turns out, barricading
myself in my townhouse and ordering delivery pizza couldn’t be a long-term
solution. It was as bad for my mental health as it was for my desire to fit
into my skinny jeans.

I was the warden in my own prison. That
realization hit me on a Tuesday and by the following Monday, I had enrolled in
college. It was something I had never allowed myself to consider in the past. I
was breaking free of the chains, and embracing my new life.

It made perfect sense to me that I
should major in criminal justice. I had the unfortunate experience of seeing
the system up close and personal from a very young age. The first year was
thrilling in its fairy-tale-like explanation of our justice system. I was
slightly older than many of the other students who were fresh out of high
school, but no one seemed to notice. The excitement of the large lecture halls
with stadium seating like I had seen on television made muddling through my
general requirement courses a little more bearable. It was text books and study
groups. It was me practicing my new life, my new name.

Because I had more time than the average
student I enrolled in a few classes that would have normally been reserved for
the following year. I was completely captivated by the curriculum in my
criminal profiling and theories of crime classes.

The philosophies I learned were
idealistic and stirred something within me. I had a newfound feeling of
empowerment and pride. My entire life had been so turbulent, such a mess, but
now here I was in college dreaming of something better. It seems ridiculous
looking back on it now, but I believed I could change the world. Maybe I
couldn’t do anything about my own past, but someone else’s future could be
shaped by my actions, my hardline belief in the system.

During my second year it was time to
plot out the direction of my career. How would I apply this degree? So I went
out into the world. I ventured into the streets of this new town I had been
dropped in—Edenville, North Carolina. Its population was just over fifteen
thousand, but it had pockets of small town charm, and I lived right in the
middle of one of those communities. This place was so different than the world
in which I had grown up. There were times I felt like I had been transported to
Mayberry.

To get started, I set up appointments at
the courthouse to shadow criminal attorneys and police officers. I toured the
prison two towns over and visited the child protection agency. I was enamored
with the thought of making a difference. Then, slowly, reality began to set in.
People, bad people, were let back into society because of clerical errors or
loopholes.

I observed eight cases, and as far as I
was concerned, six of them were completely disheartening. I saw children torn
away from caring and loving foster homes and placed back with drug-addicted
parents, all in the name of “keeping a family together.” I saw a rape victim
being persecuted for the low-rise cut of her jeans and the long line of
boyfriends she had leading up to the attack. There were drug dealers who walked
free because the police made several errors bringing the case to trial.

The picture slowly became very clear to
me. A trial is a game where the truth is of secondary importance and each side
aims to win regardless of the collateral damage.

My naïve exuberance turned quickly to
disdain. These were the people who failed me; they were no different.

So the moment I saw the judge punching
the young girl behind my house I found my purpose. It made me realize that just
because I could not arrest or prosecute someone for a crime didn’t mean I
couldn’t punish him. And just like that, I dropped out of school. I tossed my
books in the trash and ignored emails from my professors.

I, Piper Anderson, was unwilling to
accept the world through the eyes of a defeatist. My life up until that point
had been wasted. I wasn’t going to spend another minute watching the system fail
people. The time I had spent in school showed me that a man like that judge
would never be held accountable for his crimes. I’d need to find a way to do it
myself. There had to be a place in this world for my idea of justice, and if
there wasn’t I was damn sure going to do everything I could to make room for
it.

Chapter One

Short of grabbing tights and a cape,
Piper had to think long and hard about what channels she would follow in order
to right the wrong she had witnessed that day. She was a no one in this town
and the judge was certainly a someone. He made decisions and had important
friends, many of whom would probably defend his character out of obligation.
Would she depend on finding some diligent assistant district attorney who would
believe her? Perhaps she’d contact the FBI, though they didn’t seem to have a
toll-free number floating around.

Piper knew Edenville’s size would make
it all the more challenging to poke around and go unnoticed. It was an
insulated suburb on the fringe of Durham, North Carolina.

This place was so different than the
world in which she had grown up. Brooklyn, her hometown, was a place where
anonymity was as easy as losing yourself in the crowd of morning commuters.
That wouldn’t be an option here in sleepy Edenville where everyone was a
familiar face.

There seemed to be no limit to the
number of times you might run into the same person day after day. The
courthouse, the bank, the post office, and town hall were all housed in drafty
old brick buildings with Main Street addresses. The mainstays of downtown
dining included the diner, the deli, and the general store. At lunchtime you’d
find the same people ordering the same meal at the same time every day, and
folks seemed quite content to be known as regulars in any of the
establishments. The rest of Main Street was made up of florists, hobby stores,
and consignment shops. There were banners advertising an upcoming festival
celebrating Edenville’s textile mill heritage. It had the quintessential small
town façade, but now Piper knew it hid big city secrets.

The one thing that worked to Piper’s
advantage was her ability to be insignificant and overlooked. She found this to
be ironic since she had spent the majority of her life attempting to draw the
attention of men, regardless of whether that attention was good or bad. Before
she moved to Edenville, getting a man to look her way, to engage her in some
flirty banter, was a hobby of hers.