Guns and Roses (35 page)

She took a drink and her nose wrinkled. “Ugh. Black. I like a little cream and sugar.”

He tapped her on the end of her nose with his fingertip. “I’m sure you like it hot, too, so I waited for you to come out before I ordered you one. How did it go?”

“Good. Gideon Cross agreed to give the reward to the Parker family. That’s where it should go.”

“He didn’t question why you’d give away a half million dollars like you would a five dollar bill?” Not to mention the two million dollar finder’s fee for the return of the diamonds...

“No.” She smiled. “I’m sure he thoroughly researched my portfolio before I ever stepped foot into his very impressive office.”

Jake’s brows rose. “How rich are you?”

“Let’s just say I’m very good at my job.” Her smile turned into a grin.

“Damn. Got me a sugar mama. How’d I get so lucky?”

Ana licked her lower lip. “Wanna get luckier?”

“Hell, yeah.” He caught her hand in his and they set off

*****

SYLVIA DAY

Sylvia Day is the national bestselling author of over a dozen novels. Her resume includes a variety of odd jobs ranging from amusement park employee to Russian linguist/interrogator for the U.S. Army Military Intelligence. She’s presently a full-time writer. Her stories have been translated into Russian, Japanese, Portuguese, German, Czech, Italian, and Thai. She's been honored with the RT Book Reviews Reviewers' Choice Award, the EPPIE award, the National Readers' Choice Award, the Readers' Crown, and multiple finalist nominations for Romance Writers of America's prestigious RITA
^®
Award of Excellence. She’s now hard at work on her next book, but would love for you to visit with her at
www.sylviaday.com
.

Karin Tabke

R
EBEL
R
OSE

Chapter One

“Somebody sure didn’t like that girl, Detective Cantrell,” Sorrel Nelson said.

Excellent deductive work
, Cash Cantrell thought as he squatted next to the dead half-naked co-ed on the floor. What Einstein didn’t mention was that this murder was eerily reminiscent of one that occurred five years ago, a year before Cash came to work as a police officer in the small west North Carolina college town of Lockerby. That murder had never been solved. Had the killer returned for an encore?

His gut told him, he had.

Like the victim five years ago, this one was a white, female, twenty if she was a day, and beat the hell up. She was spread eagle on her back, still wearing her panties and bra. In a manner of speaking. The panties were nothing more than a piece of glorified dental floss and didn’t hide anything they were supposed to.

With a sigh, he looked up at the gangly campus security guard standing next to him.

Sorrel had a forgettable face but unforgettable accessories. With his slicked-back, Elvis-style hair, mutton chop sideburns, and excessive jewelry, the other man reminded Cash of a scrawny rooster, always crowing because none of the other chickens in the coop took him seriously. None of it helped his cause. Sorrel was a Lockerby PD Reserve Officer on the handful of days when he was needed, but the rest of the time he was a Gilman University campus security guard. In either capacity, the man wasn’t much use. He'd botched up so many investigations that Cash knew if he didn’t get Sorrel away from this crime scene ASAP, the investigation was going to shit faster than a twenty-dollar hooker dropping to her knees on a Saturday night.

“You know her?” Cash asked.

Sorrel scratched his head, careful not to mess up his hair. “Don’t know her name, but I’ve seen her ‘round.”

Cash had seen her before, too—oh, not her, exactly, but a girl who’d died in a very similar manner. For the second time since he arrived on scene, Cash’s hair on his arms stood straight up.

“I need you to clear the house pronto, then set a perimeter and enforce it. Officer Bacone is on his way to lend a hand, but your priority is getting me the names of every person in this house and verifying them with photo IDs.” Cash shook his head as he looked over the trampled floor. “This scene’s a damn mess. Lord only knows how many of those drunktards downstairs were in here and took pictures which are probably all over Facebook by now.”

Damn frat parties. They were getting more and more out of hand. He knew the boys liked their fun, but murder was taking things to an entirely different universe. Glancing up at the slacking campus security guard, Cash stood so that he towered over Sorrel. When he’d arrived on scene fifteen minutes ago, the hallway outside of the third floor study room had been crowded with a bunch of hung-over frat boys and their gawking girlfriends. Cash had warned them within an inch of their lives not to go any farther than downstairs and videotaped each one of them before he entered the kill room.

Praise the lord Sorrel’d had enough sense to shut the door and keep everyone from going back in. But plenty of hung-over partiers had gotten into the room and got a good look at the deceased.

 “Tell me again what you saw when you arrived on scene,” Cash said.

“Well, I got the call from Mags—you know Mags—she’s our dispatcher, ‘bout a half hour or so ago, sayin’ there was a passed out girl with blood on her, here at Kappa house. I came forthwith to discover a passel of kids all crowded in the doorway. I shooed ‘em all out an’ once the room was clear, saw the same thing you’re lookin’ at now. I didn’t touch her, well except to officially check for a pulse. I know a dead person when I see one.”

“So you didn’t try to resuscitate her? Did anyone else?”

“Like I said, Cash, I know a corpse when I see one. Far as I know, nobody else touched her. But I’d have ta’ ask ‘round ‘bout that.”

“It looks like a heard of feral pigs went traipsing through here. I want the names of each one of the kids that were in this room when you arrived, and those who were just rubber necking.”

“Cash, I don’ know everybody by name on this campus.”

“Start with the residents here and those you recognized. Then ask each one of them to identify who else they saw here. If you get jammed up, I videotaped the crowd on my cellphone as I came up the stairway. Give your dispatcher a call and find out who called it in.”

“I kin do that.”

“I want to speak to that person as soon as they’re ID’d.” Cash looked around the room. Morning sunlight poured through the dirty windows, exposing the kill room in all its ugliness.  The sour stench of beer and the overwhelming evidence downstairs of a party the night before belied the deathly quiet that had settled like a pall on the frat house.

“What was going on here last night?” he asked Sorrel.

“Cinco de Mayo party. I think the whole campus was here at one time or anothah.”

“Is this the only house that threw a party?”

“Naw, a bunch of ‘em were celebratin’. What with all that free booze—”

“How’s that when we’re a dry county?”

“Oh, those distributors manage to slip some in. More ‘n some, a lot. It’s right obscene if you asked me.”

“You must have been busy last night.”

Sorrell rubbed his neck. “I was busy enough. A few super men last night had to sleep it off in the office, but nothin’ I couldn’t handle. You know how they get that liquid courage goin’.”

“I do indeed. Go on now and confiscate every one of their cell phones and tell those kids if one picture of this girl so much as shows up anywhere, they’ll be arrested for interfering with a murder investigation.”

Sorrel saluted and said, “Yessuh!”

Turning back to the body, Cash said over his shoulder, “I’ll call you if I need you.”

Sorrel nodded and moved to step over the body. Cash growled. “Go around her, man, the exact way you came in, not over her. The crime scene’s contaminated enough as it is.”

“Sure, Cash.”

Cash shook his head and silently cursed the lack of quality law enforcement in Lockerby. Those who were considered seasoned veterans were more like hayseeds. Cash was as southern as cotton and grits, but he wasn’t ignorant. He had more common sense in his little finger than most folks had in their entire brain and he’d learned early in life not to hold the lack of it against others. But damn if it didn’t get his goat in his career choice. Because in his mind, you couldn’t be an effective cop if you weren’t blessed with common sense. Something most of the good ol’ boys he worked with didn’t possess. Frustrating was what it was. Budget cuts aside, the small, one-horse college town had served his purposes well.

He’d gone to college here on the GI bill while he did what he loved most, police work. Now, with his degree in hand, he was moving on up in the crime-fighting world. At the end of the week, he was out of this mountain college town and headed for Raleigh. But before he left, he was going to solve this murder.

It was an ugly one, and from the looks of it, a crime of passion. This girl had pissed someone off in a big way.

“I bet you dollas to donuts the boyfrien’ did it,” Sorrel drawled.

Cash looked up at the lanky guard who stood at the threshold waiting expectedly for him to agree. “You got something to tell me, Sorrel? Tell me now.”

The security guard scratched his head and looked like he was choosing his words carefully. “She runs with that Prebe boy.”

Cash cocked a brow. “As in Judge Jonathan Prebe’s boy?”

Sorrel shrugged and rubbed his neck, disturbing the wave of gold chains hanging like an anchor. “Yessuh, the judge’s youngest son.”

Cash muttered a curse and shook his head. Just what he needed, a judge breathing down his neck.

“I saw ‘em fightin’ the other day out by the cafeteria dumpsters.”

“And why do you think this wasn’t important until now?”

“I dunno. Drew seems like a good kid.” Sorrel swiped his hand across his face, shuffling his feet, suddenly finding something more interesting on the floor then looking at Cash.

“What?” he asked the fidgety guard.

“Those Prebes, they um, they pretty thick with that Stratton clan.”

Whoever said that bigotry was dead hadn’t met the Medford County Strattons. Up here in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Strattons were KKK royalty. Didn’t matter to them if you were all black, half like Cash, or a hundredth black. They hated you and let you know it. And in a county like Medford that was ninety-six percent white, he stood out a little bit. “I’d heard that, Sorrel, and I appreciate the heads up.” Cash couldn’t begrudge the man a new respect. Just eluding to the fact that a prominent North Carolina family was linked to a KKK dynasty was like hanging out a neon sign that said,
Tar and feather me now
.

“You gonna call in the SBI fur some help on this one, Cash?”

Cash leveled a stare at the Elvis wannabe. “I don’t need help from them.”

“I hear what you’re sayin’ an’ I respect a man’s pride, but those Strattons and Prebes, thur mean an’—”

“Don’t worry about me. My mama didn’t raise no fool and what foolishness there was left, the Corps took care of.”

“I forgot you were a MP. I’m sure you soldier boys investigated lots of murders.”

“Marine, not soldier, Sorrel. And, yeah, I investigated a few.”

“Well, you probably don't need to investigate, Drew. I'm sure he an’ the girl just had a spat.”

“One of the first rules of investigating, Sorrel, is everyone is as suspect until they’re ruled out.”

“Am I a suspect then?”

Exasperated, Cash shook his head. “If you don’t get out of here and do what I told you to do, you’re gonna be.”

“I’m gone!”

“Make sure nobody gets in that isn’t supposed to get in,” Cash called after him. “And I want the name of anyone who tries to get into the scene or anyone who is officially allowed on scene.”

“Yessuh,” Sorrell yelled back. Three seconds later he popped his head in the doorway. “But, ken ya tell me who the officials are that will be stoppin’ by?”

Cash pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, closed his eyes and counted slowly to ten. When he opened his eyes to the expectant security guard, he slowly enunciated, “That would be another cop or someone from the ME’s office. The guys with badges.”

“Yessuh,” Sorrell said again, this time dropping his head and shuffling out as if he’d been sent to the dunce corner. Cash didn’t care much about hurting Sorrell’s feelings. The guy was about as useful as a trap door in a canoe. Feelings weren’t on his crime-solving agenda. With the chief on vacation, the second and third of three uniformed officers out sick, that left Cash and the other uniform, Mike Bacone, the only ones to work the case. And seeing as how Mike was a rookie, all the heavy lifting sat squarely on Cash’s shoulders. Which was fine with him. He’d double as the CST as he usually did; hell, if the coroner was jammed up, he’d step into the ME role too. Out here in the mountains of North Carolina, you improvised, adapted and overcame the travesty of budget cuts and the inherent ignorance that often plagued the local gene pool.