Truth and Consequences (18 page)

An insistent ringing jerked her from a dreamless slumber. With Jason’s murmured protest in her ear, she reached for the phone without checking the caller ID screen. “Hello?”

“Put Jason on.” Jim Ed’s malevolence drove the lazy pleasure from her body.

She sat up, hugging the sheet to her breasts as if he lurked in the room with them. Anger and hatred burned in her chest, and she pushed the emotions into her voice. “He’s sleeping.”

“Wake him up.”

The mattress shifted and Jason’s hand covered hers on the phone. “Give it to me.”

He moved to sit on the edge of the bed, hunched over the phone. “Yeah?” He fell silent, Jim Ed’s deep voice a tinny rumble she could still hear. “What’s going on? Now?”

Kathleen pulled her knees to her chest. She eyed the distance between them and shivered against the icy sensation slithering through her body. She’d known reality would intrude, that the insulated world they created by making love wouldn’t last, but Jim Ed’s call dissipated the warmth and security of Jason’s touch like heat mirages sliding away on hot asphalt.

“I’ll be there.” Another tense silence hovered in the room. “I
said
I was on my way. Yeah.”

He clicked off the phone and dropped it on the bed. His head dropped, tension plain in the line of his neck and shoulders. Kathleen reached for him, but drew her hand back.

“I’ve got to go.” He stood and tugged on his trunks, sliding his wallet back into the pocket.

He didn’t look at her and fear tingled through her chest. “Jason?”

“I’ll call you.” He jerked a hand through his hair and moved toward the door.

She scrambled from the bed, keeping the sheet wrapped around her body, not understanding the impulse to cover what she’d so freely offered him. But this tense man wasn’t the wild, tender lover she knew. “Wait. What’s—”

“I don’t know what’s going on.” He turned at the door, a glimpse of that lover showing for just a moment. His hand cupped the back of her head and he pulled her in for a quick kiss. “I’ll call you. As soon as I can.”

“Do you want me to call Tick?”

A tight smile played around his lips and vanished. “No. Just lock the door and be careful.”

He disappeared down the hall, and a few seconds later, the quiet click of the door closing behind him filtered through the house.

Kathleen pressed a hand to the burning fear in her chest, closed her eyes and offered up a swift prayer for his safety. Jim Ed’s tight voice played through her head again and she frowned. She knew that tone. Where had she—

The burning turned to cold, slick ice.

The smug malevolence had colored Jim Ed’s voice the day the boys had died.

What the hell was Jason walking into?

Yeah. Sure. And if Tick Calvert had the opportunity to spend the day fishing, he wouldn’t take that either.

He eased into the passenger seat of Jim Ed’s truck. His cousin stared into the darkness behind Jason’s trailer. Jason snapped his seatbelt into place. “So what’s going on?”

Jim Ed shifted the truck into reverse. “Drug raid.”

“Yeah? Is the drug squad coming along?”

“No.”

The headlights cut across the blacktop road into the woods on the other side. A pair of eerie green eyes glowed then flickered away. Gravel spit under the tires when Jim Ed turned onto the highway.

Jason shot a glance at his cousin. The red light from the dash highlighted Jim Ed’s profile, casting shadows beneath his eyebrows and throwing his cheekbones into prominence. The weird mingling of crimson light and darkness created the illusion of a devilish Halloween mask. A chill trickled down Jason’s spine.

“So what’s Palmer like in the sack?”

Anger flushed the chill from his body, but he pushed casual arrogance into his voice. “Enthusiastic.” He chuckled and made a show of gripping his injured side. “The woman’s trying to kill me.”

“Yeah?” Jim Ed slowed to make a left. “Always thought she’d be a dead lay. Rumor has it she wasn’t giving McMillian any at all their last year.”

“McMillian?”

“Her ex. The district attorney.”

Curiosity overruled his reluctance to discuss Kathleen with his cousin. “They’ve been divorced how long?”

“Six, seven years. Stacy knows more about it than I do. That woman loves to gossip. The story is that McMillian didn’t want the divorce, but why he wouldn’t after going without for a year, I don’t know.” He reached out and nudged Jason’s shoulder, hard. Pain shot through Jason’s stitches and he bit back a curse. “Maybe he just didn’t find the same buttons you did, huh?”

“Maybe.” He didn’t want to think about another guy trying to find Kathleen’s buttons.

“Now you’ve got Palmer out of your system, Stacy wants to set you up with her friend Mandy. Talk about a hot little number—”

“Who said Palmer was out of my system? Besides, I thought you wanted me to keep her out of your hair.”

“I think she’s handled. You
like
her or something?”

He forced another male chuckle. “I like what she does to me, that’s for sure. The woman’s crazy for me. You think she’s gonna stay out of the way if I dump her?”

“She will if she knows what’s good for her.”

Jim Ed swung into a wide right turn and a street sign flashed in the headlight beams.
Smokehouse Road
. On both sides of the road, Haynes County units sat waiting, including the sheriff’s unmarked car.

Foreboding took hold of his stomach and Jason shot a glance at Jim Ed. “Who are we raiding?”

“Johnny Mitchell.”

Behemoth. Oh, hell.

He didn’t have a good feeling about this at all.

“Jim Ed, man, if this is about what happened—”

“Don’t flatter yourself, cousin.” Jim Ed’s dark laugh filled the truck’s interior while he steered to a stop behind the sheriff’s car. “Johnny didn’t make his payment this month, so he pays the consequences instead. But trust me, he’ll pay for cutting you, too.”

Before Jason could reply, Jim Ed pushed his door open and climbed down from the tall truck, leaving Jason no option but to follow. Deputies milled around or huddled in small groups, some pulling off uniform shirts to don the bulletproof vests usually left lying on backseats of patrol cars. Others checked firearms.

His own vest was out of commission, the result of his previous dealings with Johnny Mitchell.

Ahead of him, Jim Ed conferred with Bill Thatcher. The sheriff laughed and slapped Jim Ed on the back. Jim Ed gestured, drawing the men around him.

“We’re going in on foot. I don’t want him to know we’re there until we’re coming in the door.”

The men moved through the woods lining the road. The wet ground and chirping of indignant frogs muffled their footsteps. Jason, reminded of army night maneuvers, walked behind Jim Ed, using his large frame for cover. Across the road, a dog barked.

Blue-white mercury light spilled over the yard. The broken railing still hung at a drunken angle from the deck. At a signal from Jim Ed, the deputies fanned out to surround the house. Another gesture beckoned Jason. “Stay with me.”

Jason bristled at the whispered command, clenching his teeth until his jaw ached. He was thirty-one years old, damn it. A Gulf War vet. Not a wet-behind-the-ears, twenty-year-old rookie. He didn’t need his hand held.

The front steps squeaked under Jim Ed’s weight and Jason’s muscles tightened. Floorboards rumbled inside the trailer. A bead of sweat crawled down his spine. He gripped and regripped his gun, waiting for the door to burst open and emit a cursing, shooting Behemoth. He eyed the line of his cousin’s back and wondered if Jim Ed’s body would keep a bullet from going through his.

The deputy in front of Jim Ed positioned himself on the other side of the door, Jim Ed took the lead entry point and Jason the backup spot, his side against the trailer wall. Any shots would most likely come high, so he hunched down, his head level with Jim Ed’s waist.

In disbelief, he watched Jim Ed back up and prepare to kick the door in. Surely he wouldn’t. That was a for-television-only kind of thing that guys without proper training tried. Macho crap that got people killed.

With a loud crack, the door splintered inward.

Surrounded by yells and screams, still anticipating gunfire, Jason followed Jim Ed into the trailer. The aroma of onions and stale grease hung in the air. Jason’s heart thudded against his ribs and he gave the small living room a quick appraisal. A thin woman with frizzy bleached hair huddled on the couch, two squalling children clutched in her arms.

No one moved to search her or secure the room. Didn’t these guys know how to do anything?

She pulled the children closer and eyed them with a wild expression. “What do you want?”

Jason slanted a look at Jim Ed, who watched the woman with a dispassionate expression as she started to cry. Jim Ed holstered his gun. Jason bit back a groan.

“Shut up, Rhonda Lynn,” Jim Ed said, his voice cold. “Where’s Johnny?”

She shook her head, but her gaze skittered toward the kitchen. Pulling his gun again, Jim Ed glanced at Jason and tilted his head in that direction. At the kitchen doorway, Jason stepped over a GI Joe doll lying face down and tried to tune out the children’s terrified snuffling.

The kitchen held barely enough room for two people to turn around. Jim Ed and Behemoth wouldn’t be able to stand together without touching. The room provided no hiding space, but a bifold door lay to the left, the entrance to the standard mobile home utility room. Jim Ed nudged him and moved that way.

Jason eyed the door, a trickle of unease moving under his skin. This was too easy. He glanced around the room again. A metal slab covered a space designed to hold a gas furnace.

No way.

Behemoth couldn’t fit in there. Hell, the guy’s
shoulders
wouldn’t fit in there. But he’d seen Iraqi soldiers in impossibly small spaces. Gaze locked on the slab, he reached out to tap Jim Ed’s arm.

His cousin swung the bifold door open.

The metal slab crashed to the floor and Jason stared down the barrel of a handgun.

Behemoth’s finger tightened on the trigger.

Jason fired, several shots in rapid succession.

Blood exploded on the yellowed wallpaper. Johnny Mitchell’s body dropped to the floor, the revolver clattering against the linoleum. A crimson flood spread out from Mitchell’s torso, but his fingers continued twitching. Ice flashed through Jason’s body.

He’d seen fingers twitch like that once before, when he’d been an eighteen-year-old kid in desert fatigues and hadn’t had a choice but to kill or be killed. Afterward, one of his buddies had held his head while he puked his guts out in the sand.

Hell
. Jason glanced at Jim Ed’s pale, expressionless face. Bile pushed up in Jason’s throat, his teeth chattering.

Jim Ed pushed his hat back and scratched his forehead. He reached for Jason’s gun. “Told you the son of a bitch would pay for cutting you.”

Fighting the urge to retch, Jason crouched sideways against the wall, head in his hand, elbows on his knees. In the living room, a child wailed, Rhonda Lynn shushing it with a shaking voice.

He’d killed a man.

God, what would Kathleen think of him now?

He’d stopped shaking and the nausea passed by the time the GBI arrived. The sensation of being outside himself, hovering above the proceedings as an outside spectator, remained. He’d expected Kathleen and Altee; instead, Will Botine, the agent in charge of the Moultrie office, put in an appearance.

With a weird detachment, Jason wondered where Kathleen was. In the living room, he recounted his story for Botine. Through the kitchen doorway, he watched the coroner zip the body bag closed. The rasp etched into his nerves.

“Son, did you get hurt?” Botine reached out and lifted the hem of Jason’s shirt, clinging wetly to his side. Jason glanced down; blood seeped through the light gauze bandage again. Bet he’d torn a couple of stitches. When he didn’t have a clue.

Lifting Kathleen in the bedroom. Coming through the woods. Bursting through the door.

He shut the memory of her out of his mind. He didn’t want her connected to this. Later he’d take out the image of her under him on the blinding purity of those sheets.

Blinking, he stared at the pool of crimson on the dingy white tile. The crime scene techs took photos of blood spatter, their conversation drifting over the chatter in the living room.

“Nine damn shots.”

“Yeah. Perfect center mass grouping, too.”

“Wouldn’t want the guy pissed off at me.”

Nausea churned in his stomach again.

A young agent wearing a GBI polo stepped to the doorway and held aloft a plastic evidence bag. “Mitchell had a switchblade in his pocket. Looks like dried blood on the handle.”

Botine glanced from the knife to Jason’s side. “Why don’t we finish this conversation over in Moultrie. We can have a cup of coffee and a little sit down.”