Cold Hearts (16 page)

Reece snorted aloud. “Listen to your stupid self. You can’t turn me in, and you know it.”

Louis’s eyes welled. “Go away, Reece. Go away. I don’t feel like talking. I need to sleep.”

“Fine, I’m leaving, but just remember, you try to fuck me over and I’ll kill you first.”

“Perfect,” Louis muttered. “Go ahead and do it. I’m tired of you. I’m tired of this life. This life hurts.”

And just like that, all the rage slid out of Reece’s voice. “I’m sorry, Louie. I didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, you did, because you’re bad. You’re bad, Reece, and I’m tired. Go away.”

Reece left. He couldn’t face his brother after what he’d said. He would never kill Louis. They were twins, halves of one whole. Even if Louis didn’t like him sometimes, he was the only one who understood him.

* * *

Pinky locked herself in her motel room and turned out the lights. She was in a precarious situation right now, and until she got out of Mystic, she could still wind up in Reece’s mess. She took all the money out of her purse except for a hundred dollars in twenties, and hid nine hundred in cash on her person, putting some in her bra, some inside her panty hose and some inside her shoes. She hid the cashier’s check and the other thousand in cash inside a small tear in the lining of her coat, and then pinned the tear together with a safety pin. She shoved a chair under the doorknob and then sat in the shadows, trying to figure out a way to get out of town without waiting two days for a bus.

Thirteen

T
he miracle of Mack and Lissa’s reunion was how easily they fell back into the comfort of being in love. They ate their lunch together without worrying about embarrassing themselves as people did on first dates, then ate peach pie à la mode while laughing about the first time they’d made love.

“I didn’t even have my pants zipped back up when Dad pulled into the drive,” Mack said.

“And my bra was undone in the back, and I had to stuff my panties down the front of my pants because I didn’t have time to put them back on.”

Mack threw back his head and laughed. “Dad had to know something was up when he walked in, but he never said a thing. What I never told you was that before I went to bed that night he walked into my bedroom, dropped a half dozen condoms in the drawer of my nightstand and walked out without saying a word.”

“Oh, my Lord, I would have died,” Lissa said.

“You know what bothered me the most? The fact that he had them on hand.”

Lissa’s eyes widened as she got the implication, and then she burst out laughing.

“I didn’t know your dad dated.”

“Yeah, neither did I,” Mack said, and then lifted his cup of coffee. “To Dad and his secrets. May they all come to light.”

Lissa lifted her cup as well, as the seriousness of the moment overcame the earlier mirth. “To your dad.” Moments later she set her cup down, reached across the table and took his hand. “They will figure out why this is happening and catch the killer. I have faith.”

“God, I hope so,” Mack said. “In the meantime, I need to make that call to my security company and get someone over here ASAP. Right now your safety is my top priority.”

“I’ll get your phone for you. Is it in the bedroom?”

“Yes, on the nightstand.”

She left the kitchen in a run and returned moments later with the phone. Before she could hand it over, he grabbed her around the waist with his good arm and pulled her down into his lap.

“Just one knock-my-socks-off kiss and I promise I won’t ask for more,” he said, as he nuzzled the side of her neck.

“Don’t make promises I don’t want you to keep,” Lissa said as she very carefully slid an arm around his neck and aimed for his mouth, then changed her mind at the last second and bit his lower lip instead. She followed that with a flick of her tongue to temper the nip, and then kissed him full-on while his lips were still parted in shock.

His eyes were still closed when she took his hand off her breast and handed him the phone.

“Love you, Matthew Jackson,” she said softly,

Mack shivered as her sweet voice wrapped around his heart. “Love you, too—so much.”

There was a lump in her throat as she began clearing off the table. If this was a dream, she didn’t want to wake up.

Mack eased himself up from the chair and walked into the living room as Lissa began cleaning up. He sat down, scanned through his contacts until he found Cain’s personal number. He got a recording when he made the call.

“This is Cain. Leave a name and number. If I like you, I’ll call back.”

Mack grinned. “Pick up, you jackass, it’s me, Mack Jackson. I need help.”

There was a click, and then a deep rumble in his ear. “So whose body did you bury in the cement this time?” Cain Embry asked.

“No one’s yet, but if you find this son of a bitch, I’ll furnish the cement free,” Mack said.

And just like that, the joking was over.

“What’s up, boss?”

Mack began to explain in detail because, for Cain, the devil was always in the details.

Cain was silent as Mack spoke, interrupting only when he needed clarification on something.

Then Mack stopped talking.

“Is that it?” Cain asked.

“Yes, it’s everything we know.”

“I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Tell your lady I’ll be her shadow, so she can go about her life without concern. I’ll have her back.”

“Thank you, buddy,” Mack said.

“You’re more than welcome. I’m sincerely curious to meet the woman who finally took down Summerton’s most eligible bachelor.”

Mack ended the call, then dropped the phone in the pocket of his hoodie and leaned back in his chair. When he’d first come home, it had hurt to be in this house alone. Now Lissa was in the kitchen doing dishes, the faint odor of his dad’s cologne clung to the chair’s fabric, reminding him to stand fast against what threatened to break them, and all he could think was that for these few moments, all was right with their world.

* * *

Betsy stood on the porch watching her son drive away, and when he was out of sight she went back inside, then stopped at the security panel and set the alarm.

“Are you scared, Mom?” Trina asked.

Betsy glanced over her shoulder, wondering how long Trina had been standing there. It bothered her that there was fear on her daughter’s face.

“Oddly enough, now that I’ve admitted what’s been going on with me, not so much.”

Trina put her arms around her mother’s neck and hugged her close.

“Well, I’m scared for you. I don’t want anything to happen to you. You’re the hub of our family. You mean everything to us.”

“Please don’t think like that, baby,” Betsy said. “You know me. I fully believe that when it’s my time to die, it will happen, no matter what. And I won’t mind leaving this earth. I really miss your daddy. It will be wonderful to see him again.”

Trina started sobbing, and Betsy knew it had as much to do with her breakup with Lee as it did the fear of losing her mom.

“Come sit down and tell me what’s wrong between you and Lee. I thought you two had something special.”

“Oh, Mom, so did I,” Trina said, and sat down on the sofa beside Betsy. “It all started over nothing, and before I knew it he was accusing me of cheating. I kept trying to explain, but he didn’t believe me. He ruined everything with his jealousy. Even if he tries to make up, I don’t know if I want him back.”

“What happened to make him think that?” Betsy asked.

Trina’s shoulders slumped.

“I’m only going to tell you because you’re the one person I trust to keep a confidence. One of the employees is stealing at work. My boss, Freddie Miller, has me checking inventory against the daily printouts, trying to find out how the inventory keeps disappearing. Elton, one of the guys at work, is always hitting on me, making jokes about stepping into Lee’s shoes and into my bed, and when Lee came in to take me to lunch, he overheard part of what Elton was saying and said something to him. Elton lost his fucking mind and began talking about how good I was in bed. I socked him on the jaw, which was most ladylike, and then walked out of the shop. Lee decided I was angry at Elton for spilling the beans about my cheating and went ballistic. It hurt my feelings that he would believe it. I said stuff to him I shouldn’t have said, and it just kept getting worse. I told my boss I was going home and, well...here I am, bawling my head off because men can be so damned stupid.”

Betsy put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and pulled her head down into her lap just as she’d done countless times when Trina was small.

Trina wrapped an arm around her mother’s knees and cried until she began to hiccup from the stress and strain.

Betsy hurt for her girl, just as she’d hurt for Trey, and just as she still grieved for Sam, her oldest. Of all her children, Sam was the most broken. He’d loved only one woman in his life and then walked away from her because of continuing episodes of PTSD. Betsy hadn’t seen him in three years and often thought she was unlikely to see him again before she died. Trey was finally happy. Trina’s heart was momentarily broken, but Sam was her failure. She didn’t know how to fix him because Sam had stopped communicating.

However, Trina was her immediate concern, and right now there was one thing that Jakes women always did when shit was about to hit the fan. She patted Trina on the back.

“Move a second, honey. I need to get up.”

Trina reached for a handful of tissues as she sat up, while Betsy went to the kitchen. A couple of minutes later she came back carrying a partial bottle of Jim Beam and two shot glasses.

She sat back down, poured whiskey to the brim of both glasses, handed one to Trina and picked up the other one.

“To stupid men and the women who love them,” Betsy said.

“I’ll drink to that,” Trina said, smiling through tears as the sound of clinking glasses marked the moment of female camaraderie.

* * *

Cain Embry arrived in Mystic and located the address he’d been given, verifying it by identifying Mack’s SUV in the drive. He scouted the neighborhood carefully, mapping the layout in his mind and taking note of unoccupied properties. Then he drove the area again, checking off what would be the most accessible escape routes for a perp.

Once it got dark, Cain noted that all the streetlights in front of the Jackson property were working, ditto the motion-sensor porch lights, and he put a tracking device under Mack’s back bumper. It would help him keep track of Melissa when she left the house. The backyard had a six-foot privacy fence, but there was an access gate to the alley, and the lighting there was poor. When he slipped through the gate no lights came on. He got all the way to the back door without calling attention to himself and frowned.

Cain had accessed the DMV database for a picture of Melissa Sherman, so he knew what she looked like, but from the quick glimpse he’d gotten of her a few minutes earlier when she’d taken out the garbage, the photo did not do her justice.

He picked the lock on the door of the garden shed and set up shop right by the single window for the night. If anyone came into the backyard he would see them, and if Melissa Sherman left the house, he would be on her tail.

* * *

The late news had come and gone. Mack was propped up in bed struggling with his conscience.

He could hear water running in the bathroom down the hall, well aware Lissa was in there, wet and naked.

And then his thoughts would ricochet to his dad’s body, or what was left of it, in some drawer at the morgue, cold and naked.

His emotions were so scattered. He felt such sorrow, and at the same time joy. Lissa was the constant—the anchor to the rest of his life. His dad would be happy about their reunion, which was why he didn’t feel guilty for thinking about making love to Lissa in the midst of what should be a grieving period. He could just hear his dad’s voice.

The dead have no need for grief.
Life is for the living, so live it.

He swiped a shaky hand across his face as he heard the water stop. Fate had thrown them back together and kept him alive when he could have died. They had been given a second chance. Wasting it wasn’t an option. But how the hell he was going to make this happen without one or both of them getting hurt again was a whole other story.

Then Lissa walked into the bedroom wearing a bath towel and a smile.

Lissa had seen the want in his eyes all through supper, known he was tracking every step she took with a hungry-hound gaze that made her ache. It had come to her during the shower that there was a way to ease their mutual misery.

“I have an idea,” she said.

He groaned. “I had the same idea, but without a solution.”

“If you can comfortably lie down on your back without moving, I have your answer,” she said.

He eased himself down until the pillow was beneath his head instead of his back.

Her eyes narrowed warningly. “You have to promise not to move.”

“Quiet as a mouse here,” he said, but his heart was pounding.

“Are there still condoms in that nightstand?” she asked.

“Lord, I hope so,” he said.

She sauntered over to the bed and opened the top drawer, then smiled.

“Bingo,” she said as she dropped the towel and turned out the light.

“Sweet mercy,” Mack whispered as she crawled up onto the bed beside him and pulled off his sweats.

He could see the outline of her body as his eyes adjusted to the dark, and he watched her crawl toward him.

“Remember, don’t move,” she whispered, and then she proceeded to kiss him senseless.

Her breasts brushed across his chest as she moved back and then straddled his legs. He was already hard, so when she suddenly took him in her hands, and then leaned down and took him in her mouth, he got lost in the sensation of warm and wet. One minute rolled into the next, and then all of a sudden she rose up, unrolled the condom down onto his erection and, without missing a beat, eased down until he was inside her.

Warm and wet turned into tight and hot, and he thought the top of his head was going to explode. He tried to open his eyes, but the pleasure was so intense he got only a glimpse of her head thrown back in ecstasy as she rode him to the climax of his life.

He was already in pieces when she came, but when he heard her moan, he remembered that sound. Seconds later the tremors of her climax rolled around and then through him.