Half Past Dead

Justin looked at her with the most intense gaze she'd ever encountered. Then he caught her wrist and gently pulled her toward him. Sheer surprise caused her to stiffen for a moment, then heat shot from where he touched her and every nerve in her body went on alert.

What was he doing?

His lips came down on hers, warm and gentle as a spring breeze. He couldn't possibly be kissing her—but he was. His moist, firm mouth demanded a response, and instinctively her body arched toward his. His lips parted just a little and she could taste mint on his breath. He nibbled on her lower lip, then sucked it into the heat of his mouth. It was a simple, almost playful gesture, but her toes curled in response and moisture invaded the lower reaches of her body.

He released her suddenly, but smoldering heat still fired his eyes as they met hers. With a cool smile, he murmured, “Stay out of trouble.” Then he walked out the door.

The best way to love anything is as if it might be lost.

—G. K. Chesterton

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

“Y
OU'VE GOT TO KNOW
when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Above all, a killer instinct separates a winner from a loser.”

Texas Hold-'Em
was the man's favorite television show. If he wasn't home to see it, he recorded the program. Most contestants on the game were fair players. He would grant them that much. But if he'd been playing with them, the suckers would soon find out they didn't have killer instincts.

He knew he would never play Texas Hold-'Em on TV. His life was too important to devote so much time to the poker circuit. A pity. People had no clue what they were missing.

The man's attention was diverted from thoughts of poker by the task at hand. He trudged through Mississippi's waist-high underbrush in the dense forest of second-growth pine. He'd driven on one of the dozens of overgrown logging roads in the area, passing several hunting shacks hidden behind the dense brush. Like a carpet, cushy pine needles put a slight bounce in his step despite the slack load he lugged over one shoulder. The rank stench of the decomposing body made him breathe though his mouth.

He hadn't killed anyone in years, but he'd known this was inevitable. He accepted the risk the way he accepted a great many hazards. What else could be expected when he lived a double life? Risk brought a rush that ranked right up there with sex or money, and he'd come to crave it like a schedule two narcotic.

This snoop on his back had forced him to play his hand. A savage thrill coursed through him. Killing this blackmailer hadn't been as easy as he'd anticipated. She'd thrashed and moaned and bucked, but in the end her short, staccato breaths stopped and the life left her body like the air fizzling out of a party balloon.

His killer instinct had kicked in. Dump the body in the woods. By the time it was discovered, the advanced decomposition would give the authorities trouble identifying the corpse.

He pitched the woman into the thicket. Her carcass hit some branches and several snapped, a dry brittle sound in the darkness. A
whump
told him she'd landed on the ground, and he heaved a sigh of relief. Maggots and spring rain would take care of the trace evidence. What more could he want?

He turned to leave. But how could a man walk away from a fresh kill without admiring his handiwork? No way. He glanced over his shoulder. All he could see was her leg cocked at an odd angle in the underbrush.

Was he the best, or what?

He chuckled, the thick foliage muffling his laughter. The changing tides of destiny never failed to amuse him. Fate guided him and wouldn't ever desert him.

Some secrets should be carried to the grave. Dead men, dead women no longer have the opportunity to reveal your secrets. The power was his and always had been. This bitch couldn't be allowed to blackmail him and bring his life's work crashing down around him. Who was she? A nothing. He doubted anyone would report her missing.

Three months later

K
AITLIN
W
ELLS ONCE LOVED
sunrise, a time of hope, promise. A new beginning. Kat hadn't seen the sun come up for four years, three months, and forty-two days. But she never missed a sunset.

She trained her gaze on the meadow in the distance. Buzzards spiraled on outstretched wings, circling lower and lower to feast on some creature she couldn't see. Probably a squirrel or rabbit in the last throes of death.

On the horizon the sun sulked in a spring sky that was a bleak shade of gray. Trees loomed like sentinels, guarding the top of the ridge, dark silhouettes backlit by a sun that would blister the earth in another month.

A sound behind Kat brought home to mind. She could almost hear children kicking cans and yelling at each other, almost smell chicken frying in cast iron pans. She could almost see the sidewalks banked by azalea bushes laden with pink blossoms.

Almost.

Back home in Twin Oaks, day drifted lazily into night. Here, darkness fell with eerie swiftness. The sun had dropped behind the ridge now, and less than half of the orb was still visible.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you're doin'?”

She ignored the guard's voice behind her and remained standing on the toilet and gazing out the window. The image of home slipped out of her mind like a fleeting dream. She trained her eyes on the horizon beyond the barred window. The light of the dying sun glinted off the razor wire capping the concrete wall, but Kat hardly noticed. She refused to miss the sunset. It was the only thing in her life with the power to lift her soul out of its dark spiral into hell.

Whack!

The guard's nightstick slammed against the back of her thighs. She'd been expecting the blow. The pain shooting down her legs didn't bother Kat. Nothing could hurt her now.

“I asked what you're doin',” the guard repeated.

“Watching the sunset.”

“You've got company. A newbie.”

She'd realized having the small cell to herself wouldn't last. Like all prisons, the Danville Federal Correctional Institution was overcrowded. There were at least two inmates in every cell and sometimes three or four.

With a metallic click, the cell door slammed shut, but Kat didn't bother to turn around. The sun had vanished, leaving spectral-gray twilight. Out of nowhere appeared a skull-like moon. Its pale light intensified with each passing second.

“Which bunk should I take?”

The timid voice grated on Kat's nerves like shards of glass. She jumped off the toilet and glared at the new arrival. Red hair flowed over her shoulders like molten lava. Well, prison shampoo would zap its shine. The woman was probably in her twenties, but didn't look much older than fifteen. Her brown eyes were bloodshot and puffy from crying.

“Use the top bunk.”

The woman tossed her bag onto the upper bunk and stuck out her hand. “I'm Abby Lester.”

She made no move to shake hands. “Kat Wells.” She dropped onto the lower bunk and picked up the book she'd checked out of the prison's library. It didn't pay to be friendly with the other inmates, especially a newbie. New arrivals were encouraged to snitch. They often made up things just to get a pack of cigarettes or a Hershey's bar. Kat had learned this the hard way and paid the price.

Ad seg—administrative segregation—was what the authorities called it. But prisoners didn't try to be politically correct. To them it was solitary, or “the hole.” Kat had survived her time in the hole by mentally reviewing the new words she'd learned from
Building A Power Vocabulary.
She wasn't sure what she would do with words like
implausible
or
recuse,
but one day she would walk out of here. She wanted to be smarter than when she'd arrived.

“I shouldn't be locked up.” Abby's voice was barely above a whisper.

Kat didn't take her eyes off the page. She knew Abby was going to insist she was innocent. That's what everyone in the joint claimed. If they confessed their guilt, there had been a really good reason why they'd committed a crime.

“I didn't know my boyfriend was going to rob the post office. He never said a thing about it. Honest. I was just waiting for him in the car.”

Kat didn't respond. She tried to concentrate on Steinbeck's words. She'd read
Of Mice and Men
when she'd been preparing to go to college. She'd sobbed at the end, but this time she knew she wouldn't cry. Tears were a waste of time.

“My mother's using her retirement money to find me another attorney. He'll get me a new trial,” Abby said, her voice choked with tears.

Abby's mother loved her.

Kat's lungs turned to stone, and the blood drained from her heart. She forced her eyes closed, then quickly opened them. Steinbeck's words were slightly blurred.

Thank God her father hadn't lived to see her in prison. Unlike her mother, he would have come to visit every chance he could. Her mother hadn't written even one letter. Other inmates received care packages from home, but Kat's mother and sister couldn't be bothered.

 

“T
HE COUNCIL HAS TO VOTE
on appointing a new sheriff. We can't afford a special election. The council will go along with what I want.”

Justin Radner nodded slightly at Tyson Peebles, mayor of Twin Oaks. He was the first black mayor of the small town where Justin had grown up. Although Peebles was seven years older, he and Justin had a lot in common. Both had been star players on the Harrington High football team. They'd each been offered a much-coveted scholarship to Ole Miss. Tyson had gone on to become one of the university's top stars. From there he'd been drafted by the Steelers and had played seven years in the NFL until a tackle after the whistle nearly paralyzed him.

Justin had refused the Ole Miss scholarship and accepted one from Duke instead. Ole Miss was THE football school in the South. Who in their right mind turned down Ole Miss? Occasionally Justin wondered how different his life might have been had he stayed in his home state.

“I never expected Sheriff Parker to have a heart attack. He'd been around forever. No one was prepared to hunt for a new sheriff.” Filpo Johnson rocked back in his chair beside Justin and puffed on a Cuban cigar. “Thar's not much crime here, truth to tell. Kids 'n drugs mostly.”

Even though he was black, Filpo loved to play the white cracker. Forget it. Justin wasn't fooled. Filpo headed the city council, and he had a mind as sharp as a new razor. Filpo had graduated from the school of hard knocks. He ran several successful businesses on the “north side” where most of the black people lived.

“The
Lucky Seven
docks at Tanner's Landing. It's in the unincorporated area where we have a contract to provide fire and law enforcement services.” Peebles spread his hands wide and smiled. “The
Lucky Seven
has its own security. We don't have to worry about them.”

The riverboat was owned by a syndicate rumored to be controlled by the Sartiano mob family from New Orleans. Twin Oaks had been a dying town until gambling hit the Mississippi. Justin bet half the town was employed at the floating casino or relied on it financially in some way. He got Mayor Peeble's message. Let the
Lucky Seven
handle its own problems.

“There are five of us on the council,” Filpo drawled in a voice like warm honey. “Buck Mason will vote no.”

For a gut-cramping second, the world froze.

Buck Mason on the city council? Since when? Filpo was right, no way in hell would Mason vote for him. Did it matter? Unless he missed his guess, the mayor and his buddy already had enough votes to have Justin confirmed as sheriff until the next election. It would be up to him to do a good enough job to convince the voters to elect him then—despite Buck Mason.

Filpo added, “Mason's got a hard-on for you big-time.”

“Now you're scaring me.”

Filpo chuckled, adding, “Just warning you, my man.”

Justin shrugged, then stood up. “You have my cell number.”

He strode out of city hall. Along the way Justin walked by the mayor's secretary. She quickly averted her head and pretended to study some papers on the desk. Once she'd been all over him, but that had been when he'd been a football star. And Verity had still been alive.

Justin walked into the morning sunlight. The town square, like so many others in the South, featured a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier with a musket. Massive pecan trees planted after the First World War shaded the square, and bright pink azalea bushes lined the walks, their blossoms swaying in a breeze scented with honeysuckle.

A vague memory invaded his thoughts as he gazed from the top of the city hall steps. He was a kid again, standing beside his mother. Men in white—some on horseback, others walking—paraded around the square. He clutched his mother's hand, asking, “Ghosts?” She'd hesitated a moment before responding that these were just men pretending to be ghosts—she'd marched him swiftly away from the square.

Years later, he learned he'd witnessed the last legally sanctioned KKK march in Twin Oaks. Times had changed, he decided, starting down the steps. In a town that had roughly the same number of blacks and whites, Twin Oaks now had a black mayor and a black president of the city council.

He seriously doubted that meant folks around here were any less prejudiced. They'd just learned to hide it better. Twin Oaks was half an hour and thirty years away from Natchez. Change came with agonizing slowness to small Southern towns.

Prejudice was something he would have to deal with when he became sheriff. Yessir. He'd be offered the job. He'd left Duke and enlisted in the army, where he'd become a Ranger. After the military, he'd joined the New Orleans Police Department. He would still be there if a drug bust hadn't gone bad and a bullet damn near killed him.

He'd returned fire and taken out Buster Albright, whose brother, Lucas, had sworn to get Justin. The court had sentenced Lucas to ten years in jail, but Justin knew Lucas wouldn't cool off in prison. One day the man would come gunning for him.

Why in hell had he returned home to seek the sheriff's job when he'd heard Parker had died? The answer was simple. Twin Oaks was in his blood. You could move, but you never really left the place behind. The town was small enough to have that old-fashioned feeling, even though it had grown in recent years, and everyone didn't know each other the way they had when he'd lived here.

He checked the rearview mirror for traffic and caught the reflection of his deep blue eyes. His dark hair was a bit long, he admitted. He would need to get it trimmed before meeting the rest of the city council—especially Buck Mason.

Justin revved the engine and headed out to Shady Acres Trailer Village. What a joke. Three dozen single-wides that had been there since the seventies did not make a village. It was a half step from living in your car.

The original owner had entertained grandiose ideas. A fancy wrought-iron archway typical of New Orleans had soared above the entrance. Now it had rusted and pieces had broken off or been scavenged. Several majestic oaks with swags of moss were clustered around the entry. Beyond the trees, he spotted three rusting Fords on cinder blocks that had been there for as long as he could remember. Muddy pickups and battered cars languished near ramshackle trailers.

“Here goes nothing,” he muttered under his breath as he stopped near the single-wide he'd called home for the first seventeen years of his life. His mother had tried her damnedest to make the trailer look like a real home, but the white picket fence she'd painted every spring hadn't been touched since she'd died two years ago.

Justin stepped out of the Silverado. His boots hit the dirt with a thunk and dust billowed up to his ankles. Whoever was renting the trailer didn't appear to be home. Justin eased aside the gate dangling from one rusting hinge and walked up to the door. Wood slat steps with weeds jutting through the gaps between boards led up to the makeshift porch.

Justin could see himself sitting on the steps eating a mayo sandwich on white bread. His mother had never allowed weeds to sprout through the gaps, but even she couldn't keep out the snakes who liked the coolness during the ferocious summer heat. He'd dropped pebbles between the slats to see if any snakes were coiled below. A
plunk
told him he'd hit dirt, not a snake.

He shook off the memory and knocked. A Dixie Chicks tune blasted from the rear of the trailer park. With it came a gust of wind and the scent of rabbit stew. He wondered how many rabbits he'd shot and brought home for his mother to cook, when they hadn't had enough money to do more than pay the rent on the trailer.

No one came to the door. He tried the knob, but it was locked. He walked down the wooden steps and went around back where a propane tank supplied fuel to the trailer. The garden his mother had tended, even when she'd been so eaten up by cancer that she could barely walk, had been taken over by weeds and wild onions.

He didn't get it. He honestly didn't. From the moment he'd joined the Army and began making money, he'd tried to persuade his mother to move to a nicer place. To the end, she'd insisted this was her home.

“I'm glad you can't see it now, Ma,” he whispered to himself. “The place is a disaster.”

He saw a flash of red in the dense brush beyond the forsaken garden. What the hell? Wildlife thrived in the woods around Twin Oaks, but the only animal he could think of that color was a fox. The ones around here were gray, not red.

“I gots me a gun trained on yore back, sonny.”

There was no mistaking the three-pack-a-day rasp. Cooter Hobbs should have died long before Justin's mother had, but the old cuss was too ornery to kick the bucket.

“It's me, Cooter,” Justin said, turning slowly, his hands in the air.