Everywhere She Turns (34 page)

The door opened, breaking the stare-off.

The goon from the porch stuck his head inside. “You got company, Ty.”

“What the fuck,” Tyrone muttered. “Grand fucking Central Station ’round here.”

CJ pushed past the goon. She was out of here. She came to an abrupt halt at the steps.

Braddock and Cooper did the same on the sidewalk.

“CJ.” Braddock’s face was pinched in frustration. “What’re you doing without Jenkins?”

Cooper looked from CJ to Braddock and back, obviously confused as well.

The goon moved up behind her. “The King said he ain’t taking no more visitors.”

CJ, taking advantage of the interruption, stamped down the steps and right past Braddock.

“CJ.” He came after her.

She wheeled on him. “Stay away from me.” She held up her hands when that didn’t slow him. “Just stay away.”

Don’t look back. Just move
. She hurried to her car, got inside, and drove away.

Jenkins followed her.

She didn’t breathe again until she’d reached her house.

Pressing her forehead against the steering wheel, she fought to catch her breath. She’d done it. Propositioned Tyrone and managed to make her fury at Braddock look real.

Right in front of Tyrone.

Was that luck or what?

But why had Braddock arrived? Had he been looking for her? What was he thinking? Jenkins had probably called him. But he would have had to be close by to get there so quickly. She dug the cell phone from her jeans pocket. Three missed calls from him. She’d been so caught up in the confrontation with Tyrone she hadn’t realized her cell had vibrated.

Just as well. She had accomplished her mission.

Now she needed a shower. She pulled the damp T-shirt from her chest. Tyrone was right. She smelled.

CJ felt human again after a cool shower. She wiggled into a pair of Shelley’s jeans and pulled on a blouse. Unfortunately she’d ruined the nice outfit Edward had bought her. It would never come clean.

She frowned when, even after tugging at the blouse, it didn’t cover her stomach. “You had that whole I’m-hot-look-at-me thing going on, didn’t you, sis?”

CJ pulled the blouse away from her skin and sniffed it. Smelled like her sister. God, she missed her.

Those painful thoughts tried to resurface, attempted to undermine her courage. CJ pushed them away. She couldn’t go there and get this done. She had a meeting with Tyrone tomorrow morning. Between now and then she had to decide what she was going to do about a tape. She hadn’t exactly lied to him. She had found a tape.

But it was blank.

Somehow she had to finagle a way to get him to tell her the name before she showed him the tape. There was an old television and VCR in the clinic lobby. If she was lucky, it wouldn’t work. She could tell him to just take the tape . . . as soon as he told her the killer’s name.

Surely her little performance outside his house was proof enough that she was upset with Braddock.

Maybe.

One step at a time. She should call Braddock and explain what she’d done.

Strike that. She wouldn’t have to call him. He was likely waiting outside her house right now.

She clipped her wet hair up and opened the door. She should eat. Braddock had insisted she have breakfast this morning, but she hadn’t thought about food since.

Right now she was starved.

She drifted down the stairs, tried to think what she’d noticed that was edible when she’d torn the kitchen apart.

“What the hell was that all about?”

CJ’s heart lunged into her throat. “Braddock.” He was standing in the middle of the living room.

“What,” he reiterated as he moved toward her, “was that little show in Nash’s yard all about?”

She opened her mouth to tell him, but there was too much to say. “Come on.” She grabbed his hand. “I’ll show you.”

Not about to climb into that dusty attic again, she sent him up there to see for himself.

When he climbed back through the narrow access, he dusted off his hands. “Looks like she was all set to go.”

“But she got interrupted.” CJ glanced around at the mess she’d made. Shelley had been doing exactly what she’d said she was doing. Getting her life together for real this time.

And CJ hadn’t given her the chance to explain.

Misery swelled inside her.

“What did you say to Nash?”

CJ lifted her gaze to Braddock’s. “I . . .” The smudge of coal soot on his jaw distracted her. Probably because she needed an excuse to touch him, she reached up and swiped the black
smudge from his jaw. He tensed at her touch. “Sorry. You had soot on your face.”

His gaze dropped to her exposed belly. She blushed but didn’t move to try to tug the blouse down. Wouldn’t have done any good, anyway. She let him look. Needed to feel something besides the pain of loss.

When he lifted his gaze to hers once more, there was no way to miss the desire there. It startled her a little. She didn’t see herself that way. Another reason she’d been so jealous of Shelley with Braddock. Shelley had been the sexy, flirtatious one. CJ had always been the bookworm.

“Nash,” he said, his voice a little thick. “What did you say to Nash?”

She gave herself a mental shake, ordered her heart to slow. “I told him I had you on video doing all sorts of bad things.” Then she told him about the other part she’d added, the talk of Nash’s activities. And about the meeting tomorrow morning.

“He won’t wait until morning.”

Fear trickled into her veins. “You think he’ll come after me tonight?”

Braddock nodded. “We were supposed to plan your meeting with him.”

She shrugged. “I found the video equipment and I got fired up. You weren’t here, so . . .”

“He could have forced you to tell him the truth right there in his house.” Braddock’s jaw started that flexing that meant he was pissed. “You went in his house and basically threatened him. You ordered my detective to stay in his car. If I hadn’t showed up—”

“I was already out the door when you showed up,” she argued. He wasn’t going to make her feel like a fool. She’d gotten a reaction out of the man. “It’s like you said, he’ll be on the move tonight. Attempting to find that tape. If he comes in here, that’s breaking and entering.”

Braddock shook his head. “It won’t be him. It’ll be some of his men. Like always.”

Had she done nothing right? “So what do I do? You’re the fucking detective.”

“You come home with me, where you’ll be safe.”

“Braddock, I can—”

“Don’t argue.” He exhaled a weary breath. Pain flashed across his face. “Celeste Martin’s body was found today.”

CJ’s heart sank into her stomach. “He killed her because of me.”

“No,” Braddock said firmly. “He killed her because he’s a low-life scumbag.”

She wrapped her arms around her middle. She’d known Celeste was probably dead, but hearing it . . .
Dear God
.

“Pack for an overnight stay,” he ordered. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

Wait
. She pushed away the misery. His suggestion would ruin everything. “What if Nash sees me leave with you? I didn’t put on that performance for nothing.”

“You leave in your car. Then I’ll leave. We’ll rendezvous at the cabin. I’ll keep you in sight to make sure you don’t have a tail. I’ll give Jenkins the night off.”

She nodded. “I can be ready in five minutes.”

She turned her back on him and bounded up the stairs.

As she shoved her nightshirt and a change of clothes into a bag, she paused. What if this didn’t work? What if Tyrone didn’t show in the morning?

Would she ever know who killed her sister?

She stared up at the small hole in the ceiling over the bed. Why couldn’t there have been a tape in there?

Someone had to know what happened.

Who had taken the tape out of that VCR?

Had Shelley hidden it? Taken it with her to blackmail the person she’d left with that night?

How the hell was she ever going to find out?

6:40
PM

It was cooler on the mountain.

Once she and Braddock had rendezvoused at the cabin, he drove her to Hampton Cove to pick up dinner at Mikato’s. It wasn’t like there would be any delivery service deep in the woods of the state park.

And for the first time since she’d gotten Braddock’s phone call, she was hungry. Really hungry.

She’d eaten her fill of steamed vegetables and fried rice. Now she felt tired and satisfied to some degree. She had called Lusk about the key. She hadn’t answered so CJ had left a voicemail. One way or another she was getting in that clinic tomorrow.

There were many things about her sister’s life that she now understood. Like the deceit and the inability to depend upon those who were supposed to provide protection. Like law enforcement officers . . . and medical personnel.

Lusk and Cost had taken advantage of Shelley. Had used her like she was some disposable product manufactured for their entertainment.

The idea made CJ sick. They wouldn’t get away with this. That was one thing she could ensure.

And Celeste. Poor Celeste. Nash couldn’t keep getting away with what he was doing to those women.

Braddock joined her on the couch. “You okay?”

CJ closed her eyes, drew in a deep, deep breath. “The one thing I’m certain of right now is that I’m not okay.”

“What those two did is criminal.”

Over dinner she had filled Braddock in on the confrontation between Lusk and Cost.

“I suppose”—CJ opened her eyes—“Carter Cost was the secret man in Shelley’s life.” It killed CJ to think that Shelley had been so happy. She’d thought she finally had a good guy. A guy who was somebody. And he’d only been using her.

Braddock nodded. “You know that makes him a suspect.”

He was right. “Oh, my God.” The words he’d screamed at Lusk finally made sense. “He said something like, ‘You don’t know what you’ve done.’ ” Her gaze lifted to Braddock’s. “Do you think he could have killed her because he thought she was pregnant?”

“Before Banks was murdered, I would have said that was very possible. But the MO used to murder Shelley was the same one used on Banks. I can’t see any reason Cost would have killed Banks.”

“True.” CJ made a disparaging sound. “I can guarantee he isn’t man enough to get close to that dog, much less use it as a murder weapon.”

“Sounds like you and Cost have a history.”

“Believe it or not”—CJ hated how this was going to sound—“back in college, Cost dropped Lusk and went after me for a while. Trust me, his motives were only related to nailing a virgin. He dropped me soon after he had attained his goal. I guess Lusk still carries a grudge.” Poor Shelley. How was she ever supposed to have gotten her life back with odds like this?

But she had been doing exactly that. There was no way to know if her determination would have withstood the pain of learning Cost had used her, had she lived.

CJ dropped her head on the sofa back. How could so many people associated with the village be so crazy? Evil?

Maybe it wasn’t all of them, just the ones she knew.

What did that say about her?

That she’d grown up in a dysfunctional, drug-abusing household.

Sad.

“I’ll have Cooper haul Cost in tomorrow just to rattle his cage.” Braddock smiled. “When she gets through with him, he’ll be a far humbler man.”

CJ touched his arm. “Only if I can watch.”

Braddock looked down at her hand on his arm, then lifted his eyes back to hers. That desire was there again. She should have moved her hand. Shouldn’t have just sat there staring at him. But somehow she couldn’t. He felt warm and strong. And she needed to feel those two things right now.

He took her hand in his, gently explored it. “So, you made it to college still a virgin?”

The rush of sensations, the pad of his thumb caressing her palm, those long fingers cradling the back of her hand, made a coherent thought impossible. “It’s weird, I know.” Flashes of him caressing her in other places, his hands all over her body, kept rushing through her head.

His fingers stilled and his eyes met hers once more. “Not weird at all. You were trying to do better for yourself.”

“As you say, I did a bang-up job. Carter was a colossal mistake. But I learned my lesson, I never let it happen again.”

“Meaning?”

The way he was looking at her . . . like he already knew the answer but wanted to hear her say it. “There wasn’t anyone else until you.” Memories of the other night, of him filling her so completely, set every single nerve ending in her body ablaze.

He leaned toward her, brushed his lips across hers. She eased forward, met his kiss. He tasted like coffee and Braddock, strong and caring.