Dangerous Loves Romantic Suspense Collection (58 page)

Fiona pulled out a large Smith and Wesson 44 Magnum and handed it to Vega. The kick alone from firing such a weapon would toss Fiona on her butt.

“Good Lord, what were you thinking?” She had to wonder about her sister sometimes. “Have you even tried to fire this monster?” She handed Fiona the Beretta and pocketed as much of her sister’s revolver as would fit into her coat.

“Keep the bead trained on his forehead and the flashlight beam in his eyes,” she instructed. “I’m going to help him get dressed now.”

Fiona held the beam of light steady. Vega could only guess her sister did the same with the Beretta. “How will I know when to shoot?” Fiona asked. Matt shouted out a string of profane protests and squirmed against the handcuffs, making the job of unlocking them twice as hard.

“Don’t you dare pull that trigger unless I’m unconscious and well out of shooting range.” Vega pushed a shirt into Matt’s hands. “Put this on.”

* * * *

The next morning Vega set out early to question Grayson’s childhood neighbors with Fiona tagging along like a hungry puppy.

“I should get half the fee,” Fiona said in the car. Vega took her eyes from the road for a moment to glare at her.

“I helped you pull that poor, confused man off the streets. He was a hazard to himself with all those guns and explosives,” Fiona pointed out. “Now he’ll get the psychiatric care he needs. I should get half the reward.”

“Okay,” Vega said when Fiona showed no sign of giving up.

“How much?”

“Nothing.” Vega shot a smile Fiona’s way. “It was a freebie. Jack set it up for me.”

“Oooo…what a waste of my talent.” Fiona sank a few inches in the seat. “I don’t understand why we’re questioning these old neighbors of Grayson’s, either. I’ve already been here. I’ve already talked to them. Every single one. They don’t know anything.”

“They might.”

That stopped Fiona short. She was surprisingly quiet for the rest of the three-hour drive to the small town of Millville in southern Georgia, which suited Vega just fine.

She needed to think. Grayson had anticipated her last night. Certainly he didn’t lure her to Atlanta intended just to taunt her? There had to be a reason.

By interviewing friends and neighbors who knew Grayson when he was growing up, she hoped to gain a deeper understanding of his patterns. Experience had taught her that when placed in a stressful situation, such as running from the law, people tended to fall back on instinctual behaviors forged at a very young age. By learning how Grayson behaved as a child would open a window to anticipating his actions now.

Fiona should understand that. Vega didn’t feel like she was stomping on her sister’s toes. Well, maybe just a little.

Millville, Georgia reminded Vega of one of those new retro communities, a throwback to the 1950s where the houses hugged the sidewalks, large live oaks shaded the streets, and children biked to the school adjacent to downtown where the town hall served as the central focus. Only this community wasn’t retro. The houses, though well cared for, were all much older than Vega was. Behind the town’s pride and charm hid snatches of poverty in the empty storefronts, the ancient rusty stands at the ballpark, and in the rural neighborhood a mile outside town limits.

Grayson’s family lived in this rural neighborhood, his father surviving just five years longer than his mother, who died at the early age of forty-nine. Luckily, many of the neighbors enjoyed better health and unlike the younger generation, lived in the same house for a lifetime. Vega and Fiona talked with five former neighbors who’d known Grayson when he was growing up. They heard generalities about him as a boy, nothing really useful.

Pearl Sampit, one of the Walker’s closer neighbors, was their last stop for the day.

A rabid-looking brown and white dog with a blunt snout and a torn ear snarled and snapped at the door of Vega’s rented SUV as she pulled into the gravel driveway of Pearl’s simple bungalow. Faded green paint flecked off the asbestos shingles, and the roof sagged in the middle as if some giant had chosen to use the home as his seat for ten or so years. Dry stalks of dead flowering plants in the front yard’s once loved garden rustled in the winter breeze.

“Pumpkin,” a frail woman, whose back curled so severely she nearly folded in half, called from the front porch. “Pumpkin, come over here.”

The mutt ignored the woman and started tossing himself to the side of Vega’s door, snapping with an unquenchable frenzy and scraping his gangly nails down the side of the SUV as he fell back to earth.

“The rental company’s going to love this explanation,” Vega muttered.

The woman turned her neck to one side to get a better look at Vega and Fiona. “Don’t worry yourself none about Pumpkin. He’s a kitten.”

“Don’t believe her,” Fiona said. “He ripped off a sleeve and part of my pants leg before I got to the house last time.”

“Figured.” Vega rolled down her window. “Can you offer him a snack, ma’am? Something big and juicy?”
A kitten
? Pumpkin weighed at least fifty pounds more than the fattest kitten she’d ever seen.

The woman shrugged, disappeared into the house, and returned a few minutes later with a raw steak still wrapped in the grocery store’s cellophane package. Pumpkin must have caught the scent. He took off for the porch like a thundering bolt of lightning and snatched the meat out of the woman’s powerless arms before she managed to break the cellophane seal. With the prize tucked in his mouth, he pranced off around the house and disappeared into the back yard.

“Let’s go,” Vega said and opened the car door.

“I wish I’d thought of that last time. That beast ruined a new cashmere sweater of mine,” Fiona complained as she walked beside Vega up to the house.

“Mrs. Sampit, I’m Vega Brookes. We spoke on the phone.”

Pearl clasped Vega’s hand with a limp embrace. “Yes, you’re the darl’n who wants to know more about the Walker boy. Please, call me Pearl. Everyone does.” She released Vega’s hand and labored to return inside. Fiona held the screened door open for her. “The cold hurts deep in my bones.”

Vega believed her. Pearl’s joints couldn’t have been any stiffer. She’d done a good job keeping the damp southern winter from invading her house, though. While the stifling hot air in the living room threatened to singe Vega’s lungs, a furnace continued to roar in the attic.

After settling into the plastic-covered sofa and accepting glasses of sweet tea, Vega successfully steered the conversation to Grayson.

Pearl leaned her head back in her easy chair and pressed her carefully styled silver hair against the chair’s lace covering and smiled. “Such a sensitive boy, Gray.” Her eyes glazed as she became lost in a memory.

Fiona, sitting on the edge of the sofa and looking uncomfortable as if sharp pins were poking her, lost her patience first. “As I had explained a few weeks ago, we need to find him. Do you know if he stayed in touch with any neighbors that might no longer be around?”

Pearl’s eyes cleared. She sat forward. “Did he break your heart, darl’n?” she asked Vega, not Fiona. Vega bristled at the accusation, but kept her mouth shut.

“Even as a young thing, women were falling head over heels for him. Twisted that young kindergarten teacher all around his little finger—that he did.”

“Yes,” Fiona jumped back in with the questions. “But what connection did he have with an Etta…?”

“What was his family like, Pearl?” Vega interrupted Fiona and asked, hoping to direct the frail woman back to what she was about to tell them. Direct questions tended to muddle up details. Vega liked to let them unfold on their own when conducting background interviews. She didn’t know what important pieces of information Pearl might know, and she couldn’t guide the conversation with specific questions until she listened to the stories Pearl was willing to offer.

Fiona glared at Vega but after a minute, copied her relaxed pose.

“Mabel was a beautiful lady…and caring. The Walkers lived just next door, you know. In the canary colored house. It was purple when Mabel lived there.” Pearl leaned forward. “She was superstitious you know,” she whispered.

Vega had no idea why painting a house purple would mark Grayson’s mother as a superstitious woman, but she nodded and smiled anyhow.

“That purple paint didn’t do one lick to keep that evil man from her, now did it?” Her expression drew her soft wrinkles down; her lower lip trembled. “He killed her as sure as if he pulled out that shotgun of his and shot her. But no one really knew, never questioned her death. Too poor for them to care, I suppose.”

“Grayson’s father beat his mother?” Vega asked when Pearl’s narrative faded to silence.

“Oh yes, Gray had run away from us years before. To escape his father…if you ask me. That man had no right to be raisin’ a child. Broke Gray’s arm in a drunken rage, once. Mabel did the best she knew how, taking herself and Gray away whenever things got tough. Disappeared, she would. He’d search and search, but couldn’t ever find them. I hid from him, too. But he wouldn’t touch me. I wasn’t one of his belongings, and he was a coward really, that no good flea—only picking on those who couldn’t fight back.”

“And you knew where Mabel would take Grayson when she’d run away,” Vega said.

A sly smile lifted years from Pearl’s frail features. “I don’t know about where you’re from, darl’n. In this community, folks don’t discuss other folk’s dirty laundry. Don’t matter anyhow, now does it? Gray’s left Millville far behind him. Never come back once…not even for the funerals. Thought we’d see him when his mother passed, but we didn’t.”

Pearl sighed and leaned the back of her head against the chair again. “Such a sensitive boy, too. You won’t find him running here.”

No amount of prodding could pry any new information from Pearl’s lips. She fiddled with her chair’s tatted covering and played up the part of the helpless southern lady, which only irritated Vega. Before she felt pushed into spouting a lecture on the subject of womanly strength, she rose from the sofa, thanked Pearl politely, handing her a card, then fled with Fiona back to the car.

Thankfully, Pumpkin was nowhere in sight.

“Told you this trip wasn’t going to be useful,” Fiona said an hour into the trip back to Atlanta. She’d been brooding silently in the passenger seat up until then.

“Probably wasn’t,” Vega conceded. “But I had to try.”

“You should have believed me.” Anger flowed out of Fiona and filled the car. “I already questioned them. You didn’t even bother to read the notes I’d taken. Really Vega, you treat me like I was stupid or something.”

“You don’t have the experience or the training I have,” Vega explained. Surely Fiona understood?

Fiona hurled a wordless growl.

“I don’t think you’re stupid.”

Vega’s phone chirped. Fiona plucked the phone from the car’s dash and answered the call before Vega could think to protest.

“Don’t talk to me like that, asshole. I should hang up on you.”

That caught Vega’s attention. “Who is it?”

“Oh, you meant all that for my sister? Well, jerk-off, I’m not going to pass any of that crap along.”

“Who is it?” Vega controlled herself and didn’t wrestle the phone away from Fiona. “It’s Grayson, isn’t it?” He intended to taunt her for failing to capture him yesterday. She could just sense it.

“Okay, okay, I’ll put her on. You don’t need to shout.” Fiona pressed the phone into Vega’s hand.

Vega drew a deep breath. If this was Grayson, she needed to do some quick thinking. A couple of well-placed questions just might tease out a clue to his new hiding place.

“Hello?” she said and listened for any identifiable background noises.

“Vega, damn you. Why the hell did you ditch me in Detroit? I thought we had an understanding.”

Butch.

Shoot. She’d forgotten all about Butch.

He deserved an explanation, the rough kind that could only be given face-to-face. “You’re in Atlanta I suppose? Meet me tonight.” Vega glanced at her watch. They wouldn’t get back to the hotel until after six, and she’d need time to change. “At nine?”

“Where?” Butch grumbled.

Not at the hotel. Someplace neutral. Vega didn’t know Atlanta well, and the places she knew weren’t exactly the kind of places she’d voluntarily revisit. “Carl’s on Peachtree,” she said off the top of her head.

Yesterday she’d passed a brick building that had been painted black. Large red letters on the side of the building proclaimed the place to be ‘Carl’s Bar on Peachtree’. There’d been several nice cars in the parking lot, so it wasn’t a complete dive. Without knowing anything else about the bar, Vega supposed Carl’s was as good a meeting place as any.

Butch agreed.

* * * *

Since meeting Butch wasn’t exactly business, she changed out of her usual urban-combat wear and into a short, brown skirt and a baby blue cashmere sweater-set her mother had given her for Christmas, insisting the color matched her eyes. Vega spent several minutes fiddling with her makeup and piling her hair on top of her head so that the blondish loose strands cascaded down her neck. Appearances were especially important when breaking off a relationship with a man, Vega had learned the hard way years ago. She needed to look her best.

At a few minutes to nine, she left Fiona at the hotel to fend for herself. “If you follow me, I’ll tie you to the chair the next time I go out,” she’d warned.

The interior of Carl’s Bar stank of stale beer and tobacco smoke. Vega took a deep breath of the night’s clean air before fully committing herself by stepping inside. Her watchful gaze skimmed the crowd, at least those who were visible. Dim, yellowed lights created long shadows where lonely souls who wanted to watch, but not be seen could sink deep into a booth and disappear. A deep thump, thump, thump of the recorded music vibrated the room and the crowd inside. Swirling, colorful lights lit up an empty dance floor in the middle of the room.

This wasn’t the place for long, intimate conversations.

Good.

She wasn’t exactly in the mood for talking.

Butch’s cowboy hat stood about a head above everyone around him at the bar. He wore those familiar battered jeans with a fairly new flannel shirt. He propped his elbow against the bar top, the heel of his boot tucked into the metal railing that ran along the base of the bar. A smile loosened those tense lips of his when he noticed her approach. He turned away from her for only a moment to speak to the bartender. A glass of beer was waiting for her by the time she stepped up next to Butch, who, she noticed, was drinking his usual bourbon and soda.