Sweeter Than Sin (26 page)

“I don’t know. It depends on her. What she decides to do.”

“So I take it that this is a big secret.”

A harsh laugh ripped out of him. “She wouldn’t say, but … yeah. I think it’s going to be monumental.”

“If you can tell me, then you will.” She tipped her head back to look at him.

He rubbed his cheek against hers. “Yes.”

“Okay.”

It was enough.

*   *   *

They left holding hands.

Layla sat there brooding over her whiskey and Coke—the cheapest shit whiskey around and she could only afford the one. Her credit card was just about maxed out and she had no idea how she was going to pay it. She needed the fucking drink, though, and there was
nobody
in there to buy her a drink, either.

Willie T. hadn’t shown up.

And the fireworks she’d expected from Trinity and Noah just hadn’t happened.

Trinity Ewing and Noah Benningfield walked out of there holding hands and smiling.

It was sickening.

Fury burning inside her gut, she tossed back the rest of the drink and stood. She wobbled a little on her heels before she managed to get her balance, and halfway across the floor one of her feet went out from under her. She nearly pitched forward flat on her face, but a pair of hands caught her, steadied her.

“You seem to have a shoe problem.”

She jerked away, glaring up at Caine Yoder. His face, solemn and unsmiling, stared down at hers and she sneered at him. “You seem to have an asshole problem,” she snapped. Then she looked down at her shoes and could have shrieked.

A few years ago, she’d managed to talk one of the guys she’d been seeing—she couldn’t even remember his name, but he’d been hung and loaded—into buying her a pair of red Louboutins. And the fucking
heel
had just broken. She wanted to scream. Bending down, she took off the shoes, staring at the one with the broken heel.

“Son of a bitch,” she muttered.

“You can get it fixed.”

“Caine.” She smiled at him sweetly. “Go fuck yourself.” Then she shouldered past him and headed to the door. Fuck waiting for Willie T. to show up. She was heading to his place. He always had plenty of booze, and he had always had weed. Plus, she was in the mood to hurt or be hurt. He was always happy to accommodate on at least
one
level.

*   *   *

Willie T.’s instincts had proven to be rather sharp.

It was a good thing he’d been prepared for that, because he’d hidden himself well. The solid oak secretary on the upper level had protected him from several of the bullets. Several, not all. And he had gotten a good shot off. Willie T. was lying on the floor, gut shot, the dark, ugly blood pouring from him and staining the floor.

His cell phone was by the front door.

One blessing,
he thought. Maybe God was with him.

Willie T. was close to one of the house phones—if he got lucky, he might be able to crawl to one.

Of course, he didn’t plan on letting Willie T. get lucky and it wouldn’t matter anyway. The first thing he’d done when he got inside was unplug the cordless unit and disconnect the more basic landlines.

“You are a dead son of a bitch when I get ahold of you,” Willie T. said from down below.

“Well, you’d have to get ahold of me first,” he said easily enough as he managed to wrap a makeshift bandage around his arm. There was blood. He had to figure out how to cover it up or clean it up. There was no way to completely remove blood, but there were ways to destroy it so thoroughly it wouldn’t do the techs any good. He had to get out of here, too, and soon. Very soon, or he was going to be discovered. The longer he was here, the more likely it was to happen.

“Boy, you think I can’t handle you?” Willie T. said, his voice thin, tight with pain.

In the dim light of the landing, he just smiled. So far, Willie T. was proving to have handled him better than the others. But Willie T. was the one bleeding to death from a gut shot. And he just had a flesh wound. He’d taken worse when he’d been in the military … awful years. Just plain awful. But it had taught him a lot. Discipline. How to ignore pain. How to handle a weapon. How to do what needed to be done.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, he braced a hand on the floor and moved into position. He had to get up. He wasn’t hurt much. His head spun a little as he started to bring himself to his feet, using the secretary for protection as he glanced around to check on Willie T. Jerking back, he grimaced as wood splintered from the desk.

Willie T. was in fact getting slow … and he wasn’t aiming well, either. If he had, that would have been his head catching that bullet.

But really, Willie T. shouldn’t have fired that last shot. If he was right, the man lying on the floor might have one bullet left in the Glock he carried.

He’d taken a desperate shot, something you did when you saw death staring you in the eye.

Desperation could make you stupid.

Another thing he’d learned in the army.

Letting an edge of mockery show in his voice, he called out, “You’re just about out of bullets in that Glock, boy.”

“Why don’t you come out here and face me like a fucking man?”

“Because you aren’t a man. You’re a child-raping dog, and I’ll put you down like the sick dog you are.” He held his breath, listened as the silence stretched out. “What? Nothing to say about that? Aren’t you going to defend what you did to those boys?”

“You wouldn’t understand, you sack of shit.”

“No. I don’t believe I would. Nor do I ever want to.” Slowly, he stood up, taking a risk, because he wanted Willie T. to see who was acting as judge, jury and executioner.

Willie T.’s face went almost comically blank. And before he could form another word, he lifted his gun. Pointed.

Willie jerked his up, but he was dead before he could even aim.

Put down, just like the sick dog he was.

Sighing, he turned and looked at the blood staining his shirt. He’d have to hide that. There was a spare shirt in his car and he could cover it up, then destroy the shirt once he got home. But first, he had to deal with the blood.

*   *   *

He’d just finished taking care of that when he heard the knock. With the fumes of bleach strong in the air, he straightened, his back groaning as he eyed the front door.

This was a pisser.

He hadn’t left his car out front.

He knew better than that.

But it wouldn’t matter if he was seen here.

A second later, an angry voice sounded from the porch. “Willie T., open up.”

He narrowed his eyes and looked down at Willie T.

Willie T. wasn’t going to be opening that door.

And just why was Layla here?

Moving down the stairs, keeping his back to the wall, he eyed the door. It was still locked, but that didn’t keep her from rattling the doorknob or banging on it like she wanted to knock it down.

“Damn it, Willie. I need…” her voice tripped. “Let me in, will ya? I’ve had a bitch of a day. I need a drink. I need … I just need you to let me in.”

Layla never knew what she needed. It was a sad, miserable fact but a fact nonetheless.

And she wasn’t going away, either. He grimaced as she kicked at the door and when that didn’t yield a response, she started to swear and scream. He headed for the back, but even as he hit the kitchen, he caught sight of her shadow and pressed his back to the wall, watching as she disappeared into the small greenhouse between the garage and the house.

There she stayed.

He tapped a fist against his thigh, waiting, biding his time. Brooding.

Nearly five minutes passed before she came out, and when she did she had a mean smile slanting her lips and as she started toward the back door, she put a joint between her lips.

I’ll be a son of a bitch,
he thought sourly.

She’d found that out in the greenhouse; he’d bet his right nut on it.

Before the thought even finished, she shouted out, “I hit your fucking stash, Willie T. If you don’t let me in, I’ll just keep going back.” She stumbled past his line of sight and he gauged the distance between him and the back door. There wouldn’t be much time—

Blowing out a breath, he moved.

Planting himself between the door and the wall, he waited.

As she came in, he moved.

He tried to catch her before she hit the floor, but he couldn’t and she went down hard.

Sighing, he rubbed the back of his neck and then bent down to check on her. Before he left, he disposed of the joint and made sure the note was in place.

Willie T. Number 3. Pardon the accidental rhyme. He was something of a challenge. If you question Glenn Blue, he may or may not tell you the truth, but this man helped initiate him … and I believe he also had a hand in harming Lee Brevard. May his soul rot in hell.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

She had the taste of a stale joint in her mouth.

Her head pounded something terrible.

And something smelled
awful
.

Groaning, Layla rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling while a muddled cloud obscured just about every damn thought she had.

It was dark and she couldn’t quite place where in the hell she was.

She’d been coming to Willie T.’s.…

Blinking, she went to jerk upright, but the pain in her head screeched and she groaned, reaching up to touch her scalp. She felt something raw and crusty. Pulling her hand back, she saw the dark flakes on her fingers. “What the hell?” she muttered.

Sighing, she shoved upright and checked her clothes, looked around.

“What the fuck is that
smell
?”

She had her purse. Not that she had anything to steal, but …

Hitting the lights, she looked around, checked the silverware drawer and lifted up the organizer, saw where Willie T. kept a stash of cash. It was all there, four hundred in cash. Smirking, she slipped out a few of the twenties and tucked them into her pocket. It would take him a few days to realize it was gone, more than likely, and then she’d already have spent it.

Probably on an entire vat of bleach … Wrinkling up her nose, she pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and tried not to gag. It smelled like Willie T.’s sewer lines had backed up or something—the stink of shit fouled the air. Well, one thing was sure: She definitely wasn’t hanging around here.

Maybe she could—

She stopped in the doorway, her hand falling limp to her side, as she took in the sight before her.

Her brain just didn’t want to process it.

The dark stain, almost black, spreading across the floor and drying. The gun that lay beside Willie T.’s open hand.

His eyes were wide open and shocked as he stared, like he couldn’t believe somebody had actually gone and killed him.

She swallowed and took another step deeper into the room, unconsciously shaking her head. Her fingers trembled as she dug her cell phone out of the tight front pocket of her jeans and she had to try three times before she finally managed to dial 911.

Her eyes all but burned when she started to read the note.

Layla Chalmers didn’t have a lot of lines. She didn’t much care about anybody other than herself. Well, herself and her son. And maybe that was why this pissed her off. Because she could so easily see her little boy being hurt. Hurt like—

She cut that thought off before she was sick, right then and there, in front of Willie T.’s dead, useless corpse.

A tinny voice rang in her ear and she realized she’d forgotten the phone in her hand.

“I need the cops to come out to Willie T. Merchant’s house,” she said, her voice coming in a thin, reedy gasp once the operator came on the line. “He’s been shot. And … and there’s a note.”

The operator’s voice was a buzz in Layla’s ear, but she barely heard it as she lowered the phone and disconnected, staring long and hard at that note. Then she turned and tucked the phone away, striding back into the kitchen.
That son of a bitch.

She grabbed the rest of the money from the silverware drawer; then she ran upstairs, taking them as fast as she could. She almost fell flat on her face when she saw the bottle of bleach there, open, the stink of it flooding the air. Scowling, she edged around it and headed into the bathroom. Willie T. kept more cash in there, tucked in his shaving kit.

Another cool three hundred. He didn’t need it.

And it felt good to take something from him. The cock-sucking monster.

*   *   *

She wasn’t really whom he needed to talk with.

He shouldn’t talk to anybody just then. He needed to calm down, get his mind in order. Plan the next step.

But Lana appeared at the foot of the steps that night, and judging by the look in her eyes, she wasn’t going to go away.

He sighed and rose, walked inside to get himself a cup of coffee and check on things. It was all quiet, the bandage on his arm neatly in place.

So far, nobody had reported Willie T.’s death.

He hadn’t hit Layla hard, just a nice, solid knock on the back of her head. She’d been out of it, and considering the life she liked to live, she might sleep for a while. She could probably use it—the sleep, a few good meals. Some plain and simple rest.

Not that he’d been concerned about that when he knocked her out. He just needed to get away from there before she saw him.

Moving back out onto the porch, he found Lana sitting on the lowest step, her elbows braced on her knees, her gaze focused on the water.

She didn’t look back at him.

“I missed the river,” she said quietly.

“I’ve had to leave here a time or two in my life,” he murmured quietly, thinking about those times. “I never really thought about the river much until it just wasn’t there. But I missed it, too. I was always glad when I could come back.”

She looked down, then, her gaze on the ground beneath her feet. Her slim shoulders stiffened, and then slowly she looked up and turned her head, staring at him. “You
chose
to leave. I didn’t have a choice—you didn’t
give
me one. I left because of you. And I never
thought
I’d be able to come back.”