One Stormy Night

“I called my sister.”

He looked as if he wanted to say something to that, but she didn’t give him a chance. “It’s late, Officer Lassiter. I’m tired. And I’m sure you’re just dying to get to a phone so you can report in to Taylor. Please close the door on your way out.”

A moment passed before he finally picked up his pistol, then turned to the door. His muscles were taut—heavens, he had a great back and backside, too—and his movements graceful as he stalked across the room, walked outside and left the door standing open.

Another moment passed before Jessica was able to move. Lacking his grace and trembling more than a little, she hurried over, closed and locked the door, then put on the security chain for good measure. Not that it would stop someone determined to come in, but it gave her a small measure of extra comfort.

As she righted the items she’d knocked over in the dark—a vase on the coffee table, a statue on the side table—she admitted that she was probably going to need whatever comfort she could get in the days to come.

Jennifer Burton was alive, well and back in Belmar.

As Mitch dialed Taylor’s number, he wondered how his boss would take the news. He was sure as hell disappointed by part of it. Not that he wished Jennifer dead, of course. But he had thought that if she’d escaped the hurricane alive, she would have had the sense to not come back to Belmar. After all, it was Taylor’s own private kingdom, where she was his own private property. He wasn’t the sort to let a woman go unless he wanted her gone, and there had seemed something not quite right about her car at the Timmons Bridge. As if the scene had been staged.

About half of the town had presumed she was dead, and Taylor had been among them. If it had been his wife, Mitch wouldn’t have given up hope until there was none left to hold on to. He would have personally searched every shelter, walked every inch of the county looking for a clue and gone to every hospital, clinic and doctor’s office within a three-state area. He would have printed flyers and offered rewards.

Not Taylor. And yet all through their separation he’d sworn he loved her and wanted her back.

On the third ring, Taylor picked up, his voice groggy, his words slurred. “Thish better be ’mergency.”

“Depends on your point of view, I guess.”

“Hey, Bubba.” That was followed by a loud yawn. “What’s up?”

That was what Taylor had called him ever since they were kids, when Mitch had come to Belmar to live with his grandmother just down the road from the Burtons. They’d been nine years old and adversarial in the beginning. After Mitch—three inches shorter and fifteen pounds lighter—had whipped Taylor’s ass, they’d become good friends and remained so, though not as close as they once were. After college, Taylor had returned to Belmar, while Mitch had taken a job in Atlanta. They’d kept in touch, though, and eventually Mitch had found himself back in town again.

Mitch wasn’t sure about the etiquette for breaking the news to someone that his loved one wasn’t dead, so he said it bluntly. “Jennifer came home tonight.”

There was utter silence on the line. Mitch would give a lot if he could see Taylor’s expression. Most people weren’t as good at hiding their feelings as Mitch was. Just a flicker could tell him a lot.

“So she’s alive.” Taylor sounded wide-awake now and his voice was quiet. Thoughtful. “Is she all right? How does she look?”

“Fine.” Mitch smiled without humor. She looked so damn much better than fine that it was laughable. Jennifer Burton was a beautiful woman. Blond hair, blue eyes, a cute little nose, a mouth made for kissing. She was five-six, maybe five-seven, slender but with enough curves to make a man grateful. Whatever part of the female anatomy a man preferred, she fulfilled every fantasy and then some. She was sexy as hell in a wholesome girl-next-door type of way.

The married girl next door.

“Did she say anything about where she’s been?”

Mitch repeated what Jennifer had told him.

“Her sister, huh?” Taylor said, then the silence returned. He’d never met Jennifer’s older sister and had never wanted to. Jennifer’s life was with him, in Belmar, he’d proclaimed. Everything and everyone in her past should stay there.

As if you could just shut out family because someone else told you to. Mitch hadn’t even been raised in the same state as his brothers, but he still had regular contact with them.

“She’s alone?”

“Apparently.”

But the rustle of background noise on the phone, followed by a murmur—a sleepy female murmur—indicated that Taylor wasn’t. When he’d mentioned the marriage in a call to Mitch six months after the fact, he’d joked about how long he would be able to stay faithful to his wedding vows.

Jeez, his wife had presumably died only three weeks ago, and he had another woman in his bed.

Scowling, Mitch rubbed the throbbing between his eyes. He and Taylor had been friends for more than twenty years, but there was a lot he didn’t like about the man. Though there was a lot he didn’t like about life in general, and Jennifer Burton’s return was probably going to add a few things to that list.

“Thanks for calling, Bubba.”

“Are you going to see her?” Mitch asked, aware it was none of his business.

“I’ve waited three weeks. Another night won’t matter. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Slowly Mitch hung up. In the first week after the hurricane, Taylor had been the personification of the grieving husband, especially after Billy Starrett had located her car. Even his worst enemies—about half the town—had felt sorry for him. Now, fourteen short days later, his dear, beloved wife had suddenly rejoined the living, and he couldn’t be bothered to leave his girlfriend in bed to go see her.

Mitch moved his gun to the nightstand on the right side of the bed, then went to the kitchen to get a bottle of water from the refrigerator. He stood at a counter identical to the one where he’d first spotted Jennifer and stared disinterestedly. The room was the standard motel room turned into a living room, a dining area and a tiny kitchen. The former connecting door led into the bedroom and bathroom. The cheap motel shag had been replaced by a decent-quality carpet, and the walls had been painted bland off-white. It was boring but clean, everything worked and it wasn’t even in the same universe as the worst place he’d ever lived.

Though it well might be the worst place Jennifer Burton had ever lived. It was sure as hell a huge step down from Taylor’s house over on Beachcomber Drive. She was a tad materialistic. Though she’d worn jeans and a sweater tonight, he would bet they were hundred-bucks-plus jeans, and the sweater was probably silk or cashmere. She was expensive, Taylor had often said with pride, because he could afford to keep her.

He made sixty-two thousand dollars a year and paid his officers less than a third of that. Yet he lived in a four-thousand-square-foot house in the best part of town, drove a Hummer that was less than a year old, took regular ski vacations to Colorado, an anniversary cruise every summer and three-times-a-year gambling trips to Las Vegas. His wife dressed in designer clothes and had enough jewels to stock a small shop. His fishing boat must have set him back forty grand, and her recently junked Beemer had had less than five hundred miles on it.

Something wasn’t right in Belmar, and Mitch wanted in on it. Taylor had promised him the time was coming, but he was growing tired of waiting. This apartment might be a hell of a lot better than the worst place he’d ever lived, but it was also a hell of a lot worse than the best. He wanted to move on.

Water gone, he returned to the bedroom. He’d rented furniture when he’d moved in—bed, nightstands, dresser and a desk, plain and functional. The sheets were white cotton, the bedspread light brown. The only items of a personal nature in the room were his pistol, his wristwatch and his laptop.

There was nothing personal he wanted anyone in Belmar to see.

A thump came from next door, drawing his gaze to the connecting door that had survived the renovations. Jennifer’s bedroom was on the opposite side of that door. Her bathroom backed up to his, and sometimes, before the hurricane, he’d heard her shower running while he’d been in his. Sometimes he’d fantasized…but not often. She was a married woman. Married to his boss. His oldest friend.

That meant something to him even if it didn’t seem to matter to Taylor.

He slid between the sheets, shut off the light and, with a weary sigh, closed his eyes.

The rumble of a finely tuned engine woke Jessica Wednesday morning. She blinked, needing a moment to remember where she was, then rolled over to glare at the drape-covered window. To her, cars were transportation, nothing more, nothing less, but whoever owned this one—likely male—was probably extraordinarily proud of the noise it made.

Probably next-door male, she reflected. Mitch Lassiter.

The prospect of seeing him wasn’t what drew her out of bed and across the room. She just wanted to see if it was daylight yet—such grumbling should be illegal between the hours of sunset and sunrise.

She parted the curtains an inch or so and peered through the gap. The car, parked a few spaces away, was an old Mustang, midnight-blue and a convertible. That was the best description she could offer. The owner was next-door male, and he was fiddling with something under the hood.

He wore clothes this morning—khaki trousers, khaki shirt with dark green epaulets, green tie, black shoes and black gun belt, complete with gun. Black and lethal was the best description of that she could offer. His hair was a shade short of shaggy, and his jaw was clean-shaven. He looked sinfully handsome. Dangerous.

He straightened, wiped his hands on a rag, then closed the hood. Abruptly he looked over his right shoulder. She dropped the curtain, then took a few steps back for good measure. Her face flushed, as if she’d been caught spying on him. Granted, she had, but the odds that he knew that were minimal. He couldn’t possibly have seen her, couldn’t even know she was there.

Unless he noticed the slight sway of the curtain as it settled.

Shivering in the morning chill, she grabbed her robe, adjusted the thermostat, then went into the bathroom. When she emerged thirty minutes later, showered, shampooed, powdered and lotioned, the Mustang’s rumble was gone.

Older, bolder and braver, she scoffed. Officer Lassiter could intimidate her with nothing more than his presence—and he wasn’t even the real danger. According to Jen, Taylor was the boss in both his law-abiding and lawbreaking pastimes. Everyone else, including Mitch, just did what they were told.

Not that he struck her as much of a follower.

In the kitchen, she rooted through the grocery bag for something to calm her stomach. The choices were chips, popcorn, cookies, cupcakes and a half-dozen of her favorite candy bars—her idea of “staples.” She settled on popcorn, washed down with a bottle of diet pop, then sat down at the glass table.

She was going to have to face Taylor today. Given her choice, she wouldn’t see him at all, but the odds that he would let her waltz into town after having been missing for three weeks without seeing her were somewhere between slim and none. Belmar was a small town. The first time she walked out that door, the gossip would start to fly. People would be watching Taylor for a reaction, and he wouldn’t let them down. She wouldn’t let them down.

Every weekday, according to Jen, Taylor had breakfast at the diner across the street from the police station. Joining him were a select few of his officers—his corrupt officers. She thought they did it as a show of force, reminding the other customers that they stood together, that they were in charge and there was little anyone could do about it.

A restaurant seemed as good a place as any for Jessica to meet her brother-in-law—correction: her pretend estranged husband. Public. Safe.

She dressed in a skirt and blouse from the closet. The labels were pricey, the fabric and workmanship excellent, but puh-leeze…the skirt was a floral print that covered her knees and the blouse had a ruffle around the modest V-neck. Granted, it was a wide, kind of flirty ruffle that draped nicely, but she hadn’t voluntarily worn ruffles since she was two, when they’d covered the butt of her diaper-padded sunsuit.

“Oh, Jen,” she said on a sigh as she studied herself in the mirror. “What did he do to your fashion sense?”

She applied makeup with a very light hand—Taylor likes the natural look—and sprayed on Jen’s top-dollar perfume, then grabbed her purse and left the apartment. The clothes made her feel more like an impostor than ever.

The day was sunny, and already the combination of heat and humidity was oppressive. She drove the half-dozen blocks downtown and found a parking space in the middle of the block. Flipping down the visor, she checked her face in the mirror, then cut her gaze to the cell phone dangling from her purse strap. “I could use a little encouragement,” she murmured, but the phone remained silent.

With a breath for courage, she got out of the car, walked to the restaurant and stepped inside. The dining room was full, but locating Taylor was easy; he and his officers occupied the largest table and made the most noise. At least until they became aware of her.

The place literally fell silent as Taylor stood. He was exactly as Jen had described him—blond, blue-eyed, tanned, with a cleft in his chin and a crook in his nose. He had a nice body, though not as nice as Officer Mitch, a devil whispered in Jessica’s head. He looked strong, capable, authoritative, the kind of man who had always appealed to Jen’s fragile-woman sensibilities. How sad that she’d fallen so hard for his outside that by the time she’d learned what he was like inside it was too late.

When he smiled, it would probably stop women in their tracks, but he wasn’t smiling now. He simply stared, showing no surprise, no emotion at all. Of course, he’d had about seven hours to get used to the idea that she was back. Since her oh-so-nosy neighbor had blabbed.

And speaking of the devil, sitting to Taylor’s left was Mitch himself. Unlike everyone else in the place, whose attention was ping-ponging back and forth between her and Taylor, his gaze was fixed on his boss, watching him as if he might see straight through Taylor’s head and into his thoughts.

Curious.

Now what should she do? Approach Taylor? Snub him? Join him at his table and see if he would send everyone else away? Take a table of her own and wait for him to come to her?

He came to her before she could decide, stopping too close, but she held her ground. “Jennifer. Nice of you to come back.” His expression was bland, his words very soft, but he was very angry. She didn’t need to know him to recognize that.

“Taylor.” Her fingers itched to punch him just once…okay, as many times as she could before his goons pulled her off. She wanted to hurt him, to make him pay for what he’d done to Jen.

That’s why you’re here. To make him pay. Never forget that.

“Were you planning to let me know you were back?”

“You knew. Our friendly neighborhood cop told you, did he? But even if he hadn’t, I would have called you today. Tomorrow. Sometime.”

He smiled thinly and lowered his voice to a chilling whisper. “It wasn’t nice of you to let us think you were dead.”

“Sorry about that. I was more concerned with recovering from my injuries than with what people back here were thinking.”

His jaw tightened, his gaze narrowing. “You took something that belongs to me. A lot of things. I want them back.”

When she’d walked inside the diner, it had been only a few degrees cooler than outside. Suddenly she was so cold that she thought she might never get warm again.

Whatever Jen’s evidence was, as long as he’d thought it had disappeared with her, it was only a minor worry. Virtually any type of evidence—paper, computer CD, flash drive, photographs—would have likely been destroyed in the storm.

But if Jen survived, so did the threat to him. And that made him an even bigger threat to Jessica.

“Sorry,” she said again. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get some breakfast.” With a polite nod—and a private sigh of relief—she moved around him, walked to the nearest empty booth and sat down.

Taylor stood motionless for a moment, staring where she’d stood. Abruptly he came out of it and actually snapped his fingers at his men. Everyone jumped to his feet except Mitch, who rose but slowly.

When he came even with Taylor, Taylor stopped him, murmured something, then followed the rest of the officers out the door. Jaw taut, Mitch returned to his chair, settled in and picked up his coffee. He didn’t look like a happy camper.

Hands trembling and heart pounding double time with delayed reaction, Jessica ordered the morning’s special, then downed a glass of water. It was foul but still left a better taste in her mouth than the encounter with Taylor had.

Jen had warned her that coming here would be dangerous, that Taylor would kill her if he got the chance. Their brief encounter had left Jessica with no doubts about that. Taylor Burton was one very angry man. His career, his freedom and his life were at stake. He wouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep if he killed his supposed wife to protect himself.

He might want her dead but not until he recovered whatever Jen had taken.

A group of diners left and another came in, a posse of old men wearing faded work clothes and gimme caps. They headed automatically toward the large table but stopped when they saw it was occupied. One of them flagged down the nearest waitress. “It’s after nine o’clock,” he grumbled. “That’s been our table for twenty years. They get to use it before nine. Not after.”

The waitress looked at Mitch—who was ignoring them and showing no intention of leaving—shrugged helplessly and headed for the kitchen with an armful of dishes.

While the men complained among themselves none too softly, Jessica slid to her feet and walked to the table. “I take it you’re the designated…babysitter? Spy?”

Mitch studied his coffee cup for a time before meeting her gaze with open hostility. It was his only response.

“I figured. Why don’t you keep tabs on me from over there—” she gestured to her booth “—and let these gentlemen have their table.” Without waiting for an answer, she returned to her seat and began eating the breakfast that had been delivered in her absence.

He slowly stood, dropped what looked like a ten on the table, then started her way. No one else from his group had paid, she realized. They’d left their plates mostly clean and walked out without so much as a quarter for a tip. Free meals and good service—two of the benefits of being a cop, Taylor the scum used to say.

Dear God, Jen had told her so much that she felt as if she knew the man.

A moment later, the air took on a shimmer of tension, then Mitch sat down across from her. She chewed a bite of ham, took a nibble of buttered toast, then sprinkled salt and hot sauce over her hash browns. “This is some job you have, Officer Lassiter. Surveilling the boss’s wife.”

“Estranged wife,” he corrected.

She allowed a small smile. Once Hurricane Jan had blown through, Hurricane Jen would have swept Taylor right into divorce court—and, hopefully, criminal court. He would have soon been her ex-husband and grateful to see the last of her. But she hadn’t gotten the chance.

“Would you like my schedule for the day?” she asked helpfully. “When I leave here, I’m going to the bank. That should take about ten minutes. Then I need to stop by the post office—five minutes or so, depending on the line. Then the grocery store. I cleaned out the refrigerator before the hurricane, so I need to restock. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if you already knew that.”

She raised her gaze to his face, watching the muscles in his jaw tighten. “Truthfully, I wouldn’t be surprised if you people had been in my apartment on numerous occasions in the past three weeks. Searching for signs that I’d planned to evacuate, looking for clues, for evidence, for…oh, whatever might catch Taylor’s fancy.”

His hard gaze turned even harder as she murmured, “No, I wouldn’t be surprised at all.”

Chapter 2

Mitch’s coffee had long since gone cold, so he quit pretending interest in it. He was pissed off at being assigned babysitting tasks, pissed even more by Jennifer’s condescending recital of her morning plans and most of all by her implication that he’d done something wrong in checking out her apartment.

“No response, huh?” She looked as if she expected nothing more. “What is it Taylor says? ‘Admit nothing. Deny everything.’”

Yeah, he’d gone to her apartment, gotten the key from the manager, let himself in and searched the place, but it had all been part of a missing-person investigation. Taylor had met him there, and they’d looked through her closet, her drawers, her cabinets. Taylor had made a list of the obvious things missing—some clothing, two suitcases, makeup and photographs—and then he’d asked Mitch to leave him. He’d wanted time alone in the apartment.

And Mitch had left. Separated or not, Jennifer was still Taylor’s wife. He’d feared the worst from the beginning. He’d been emotional. Though not too emotional this morning upon seeing her for the first time since he’d thought she’d died.

Mitch studied her, making no effort to hide it. She looked pretty damn good in a married-minivan-soccer-mom sort of way, but he liked her better in last night’s tight jeans and snug top. There was something entirely too demure about the over-the-knee skirt and the prissy top.

Seeing that she was married, estranged or not, he should find “demure” good. He shouldn’t be thinking that she needed to show more leg, more skin in general, or that she should only wear clothes that hugged her curves.

He shouldn’t be thinking about her as a woman at all.

“You don’t have much to say about your work, do you?” Jennifer asked. “Let’s try something else. Where do you come from? You’re obviously not from around here.”

“‘Obviously’?” he echoed cynically. “I lived in Belmar from the time I was nine until I went away to college. You’d think Taylor would have mentioned that.”

Her cheeks tinged a faint pink that quickly faded. “Taylor tells people what he wants them to know when he wants them to know it. All he ever said was, ‘Bubba and I go back a long way.’ With Taylor, that can mean a month or twenty years.”

“Twenty-four years, to be exact.”

That was an accurate description of Taylor, though. Hadn’t he talked to Mitch a half-dozen times after his wedding before he’d mentioned it? Even then, he’d been stingy with information. Jennifer Randall. From California. No one you’d know. Over the next couple years he’d offered little more: they’d met on a cruise; she’d taught grade school in California; she had an older sister; she wasn’t much of a cook.

Taylor liked holding his cards close.

“Does your family still live here?” she asked.

“They never did. I lived with my grandmother. She died while I was in college.”

“I’m sorry.” She sounded as if she meant it. “So where does your family live?”

“My mother’s in Colorado. My brothers live in Georgia.”

“And your father?”

“Died when I was nine.” The child-support checks had stopped coming, and his mother had sent him to her mother. It sounded an awful lot like abandonment but hadn’t felt that way. He’d liked his grandmother and she’d liked him. Living with her had been easy.

“So you came here, but your brothers didn’t. Were you a problem child?” She asked it with a wry smile that he couldn’t read. Because she was stating the obvious or because she didn’t really believe he’d been bad enough to send away?