True Vision (16 page)

Logan cocked his head, then gave Noah’s shoulder a light shove. Noah reeled back. His butt hitting the bed kept him from landing on his ass on the floor.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so. I’ll send someone to check on Charlie,” Logan said before he turned and left.

 

It was no longer a secret that he had no innate talent as a sniper. He hadn’t even known what kind of gun to use. Not that he’d had access to a sniper rifle. Stupid hunting rifle that used to be his dad’s was it.

Maybe the police department had been right when it had rejected his application. He was an idiot. And he was sure he would hear all about his idiotness as soon as word got out that he’d fucked up. Again.

Christ, he should put the goddamn gun to his own head and put himself out of his misery. He would never win. Never.

No matter how hard he tried, he’d fuck up every time.

Okay, he thought. I can do this. I can save it.

Maybe the cop would get the hint. Or at least be incapacitated enough to stay away from Charlie Trudeau long enough for him to take her out.

There was money on the line. Lots and lots of money.

And pride. And self-respect. He needed them both back—bad. Or he’d never be able to get it up again.

All he had to do: find Charlie Trudeau.

And kill her.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE

C
harlie felt groggy from a sleepless night as she walked to the elevator, her head still aching. At least she’d managed to cover her black eye with makeup. Hell, she had on so much makeup it felt like a mask. But she preferred to think of it as another part of her disguise, a supplement to the cheery straw beach hat that hid her hair and the sundress she’d picked up in the gift shop. Charlie Trudeau in a bright yellow sundress was about as incongruous as grilled grouper with a slab of melted Velveeta on top.

She had no idea what she would say to her mother, but she wanted to talk to her without Noah being there. Maybe her mother would be more inclined to be honest. She could hope.

The elevator door slid open, and she stepped on, casting only a brief glance at the rumpled man huddled in the corner. She did a double take at the same moment that she smelled booze and sex.
Mac.

He straightened away from the wall. And wobbled.

She couldn’t speak, too shocked to form words. He was
drunk
. Mac, the guy who feared becoming an alcoholic more than losing his hair. What the hell was he doing? And who had he been with? Not that it mattered. Just last night she’d been smooching Noah Lassiter in this very elevator. Clearly, they’d both moved on.

“Hey,” she said and faced the closing doors.

He didn’t respond, and her heart sank. So he wasn’t going to talk to her.

And then he spoke, disbelief lacing his tone: “Charlie?”

Her shoulders relaxed some as she realized her disguise worked at first glance. “Yep.”

“What—”

“Long story,” she cut in, then looked him up and down. “You?”

“Longer story.”

Silence. This was turning into a long ride down.

He sighed, shook his head. “Look, I’m sorry. I said . . . some things . . .”

Her throat closed as relief rushed in. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. I screwed up. I didn’t mean to . . . hurt you.” He leaned his head back and banged it a few times against the wall. “Jesus, it seems all I’ve done lately is hurt you.”

She looked sideways at him, the muscles in her chest wrenching at what they’d lost. They’d been best friends before Nana died, before she’d turned to him for comfort and they’d fallen into each other’s arms. Fools. “We both made mistakes,” she said.

“Yeah, but mine aren’t the kind we can recover from, are they?” He roughly scrubbed his hands over his face then sighed heavily. “I made the wrong choice, Charlie.” He dropped his arms to his sides and peered at her with intense, reddened eyes. “I don’t want that damn job. I want you.”

She took a stunned step back. “What?”

“I’ll get a different job, whatever it takes. Just let me make it up to you.”

Oh, right, he was trashed. He had no idea what he was saying. She shook her head and looked away. “You’re drunk.”

“And thinking clearly for the first time in months. I’m dead serious.”

“It’s too late, Mac.”

“How can it be too late?”

She thought of Noah and their kiss last night, how she’d felt it to the soles of her feet. It was
way
too late. “It just is. And, besides, it’s awfully easy to give up a job that you think might not be around this time next week.”

“You think I’m saying this because I know the newspaper’s about to go down in flames?”

“Why not? You can’t have your first choice, so you’ll settle for your second.”

“That’s so fucking unfair, Charlie.”

He crowded her into the corner, but she shoved him back harder than she’d intended. “You’re pouring your heart out to me while you reek of another woman. What the hell is wrong with you?”

He dropped back from her as if she’d slapped him. Turning away, he faced the elevator door and dropped his head back. “You’re right. I’ve been drinking all night. I’m too wasted for this right now.”

She clenched her jaw. “It’s over. We didn’t make it past our first challenge as a couple. Let’s just leave it at that.”

He said nothing, didn’t look at her, and she studied the side of his face, saw the muscles working in his jaw.

The elevator dinged its arrival at the lobby level, and he waited for her to walk out ahead of him. Pissed off and loaded but still a gentleman.

Sighing, she turned to him. “You’re not planning to drive, are you?”

“No time to sober up. Duty calls.”

She caught his shirtsleeve before he could brush by her. “I’ll drive you.” She couldn’t let him get into his car in this condition. He could have an accident and get injured, or injure someone else. She’d never forgive herself. And it worried her that he was willing to chance it. Also not like the all-about-responsibility Mac she knew.

“All I need is coffee,” he said.

“We’ll stop and get some on the way.”

He hesitated, and before he could respond, she said, “I’m not taking no for an answer. Either you sober up before you go or I drive you. Which is it going to be?”

“Fine,” he grumbled, and gestured for her to lead the way.

He didn’t speak again until they were in her rental car.

“What’s with the car?” he asked.

“I had a little accident yesterday.”

He tensed beside her. “You’re okay?”

“I’m fine. Just some bruises.”

“So were you at the Royal Palm with Logan?”

“What? No.”

“I mean, it’s you and him now, right? That’s why you won’t give me a second chance.”

She choked off the urge to scream. “There’s nothing between Logan and me. He was at my place the other day when you called because someone broke into the house. He stayed overnight because I was . . . scared.”

“Big of him.”

She swallowed down the hurt that surged into her throat. She’d had a break-in and a car accident in a matter of days, and all he could come up with was a snide remark? It didn’t matter that he didn’t know she’d almost died both times, that someone was actually trying to kill her. If he truly cared, he should have been able to do better than that.

He sighed as he looked out the passenger-side window. “I like it here, you know. In Lake Avalon.”

The change of subject threw her. Okaaay. “There’s a lot to like about it.”

“It’s been my haven. My sister’s haven. It was tough to pick up and leave Philly, to talk her into leaving behind her friends. But it’s grown on her. I think she’s finally happy. I mean, she has her moments. Skipping school, mostly. But she’s better now, better than she was after Mom died and Dad . . .”

He didn’t have to finish. She already knew what came next: After their father drank himself to death and left Mac in charge of his younger sister. Yet he’d spent the night drinking. Not that she feared one night would turn him into an alcoholic, but he’d always been so careful about how much he drank, limiting himself to one beer or glass of wine no matter the situation. And never going for the hard stuff. She’d admired his discipline, his absolute devotion to making his sister’s life better.

“You’ve done a great job, Mac,” Charlie said. “Jennifer’s lucky to have you.”

“If I lose my job, we’ll have to start all over again somewhere else.”

Her heart dropped into the pit of her stomach. Oh, crap. Suddenly she got why he had been so unreasonably angry at her. She hadn’t even thought about what it would mean if he had to leave Lake Avalon for another job.

“Do you know how hard that’s going to be for her?” he asked. “She’s a senior in high school. At least when we moved here she was a freshman. She was the new kid, but everyone in her class was new to high school. If we have to move, she’ll have to leave her friends behind all over again. Be the new kid all over again, only this time it’ll be worse, because she’ll be arriving where everyone else has already formed their bonds.”

“I’m sorry, Mac,” Charlie said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know—”

“I know you didn’t. It doesn’t change the complete shittiness of the situation, though, does it?”

She didn’t know what to say as she slowed for a stoplight. She’d screwed up on so many levels that she might have set a record.

Mac’s cell phone started to ring, and he pulled it out and checked the caller ID screen. Flipping it open, he didn’t bother with a greeting. “I’m on my way, all right? Keep your damn pants on. I don’t know what—” He broke off and listened. “Shit, are you kidding? Where?” Another pause, this one almost a minute long. The more seconds that ticked by, the straighter he sat in his seat, then, “We need to get someone over there right now. Who’ve we got? . . . Jesus, that’s it? . . . Fine, send her. She wanted a shot, so this is it.”

He snapped the phone closed and dropped his head back against the headrest. “Fuck.”

“What’s going on?”

“Scanner traffic’s been going nuts this morning. First, some guy got shot at a gas station, and now we’ve got a body at a house on Tarpon Bay Street. A woman bludgeoned to death with a hammer.”

A white light burst inside Charlie’s head, followed by the scent of wet paint and the memory of the blunt end of a hammer smashing into skull.

“Christ,” Mac mumbled. “It’s going to be a long fucking day.”

CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO

C
harlie turned onto Tarpon Bay Street, in a middle-class area of Lake Avalon, and followed its palm-tree-lined curves until she found the house with all the cop cars out front. Neighbors and other gawkers milled around across the street from the small, yellow stucco house that had had no reason to stand out before it became the site of murder. She parked the Sebring up the block and walked back to the growing crowd.

“What’s going on?” she asked the first person she encountered, an elderly man wearing a white-and-green-striped golf shirt, matching shorts and black socks with sandals. His gleaming bald head seemed to redden in the sun as Charlie watched. Must be new to the area, she thought, if he didn’t know to sunscreen the top of his head.

“Just moved here from Detroit and already got a dead neighbor. Property values are dropping as we speak.”

She bit back the urge to get sarcastic. Yeah, dead people really suck for the rest of us. “What happened?”

He looked her up and down, his faded blue eyes suspicious behind black-rimmed glasses. “Who the hell are you?”

She gave him a polite smile and moved on. She knew a man who couldn’t be charmed when she saw one. She was about to strike up a conversation with a young woman who had a baby on her hip when she spotted Sara Jansen, the obits writer from the
LAG
, wandering around like a kid who’d lost her mother in the grocery store.

Charlie strode over to her. “Sara?”

Sara turned toward her, long, red hair flying as relief flooded her freckled face. “Charlie, hey. Thank God you’re here. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Charlie took in the reporter’s notebook clutched in the girl’s hand and felt a moment of shock. This inexperienced girl was so young that she still had baby fat rounding out her face, yet Mac had sent her to cover a murder scene. What the hell?

“Have you talked to any of the cops yet?” Charlie asked.

“I tried, but they keep blowing me off.”

Of course they did. They had no idea who she was. “Follow me,” Charlie said, and headed for the front door of the house. Over her shoulder, she said, “You have to act like you belong here. You’d be surprised what they’ll let you get away with if they think you know where you’re going.”

Sara nodded and made a note in her notebook, pen grasped by fingers tipped with stubby, orange-painted fingernails. Under normal circumstances, Charlie would have laughed, but her heart was knocking against her ribs as she walked through the open front door and inside. The first thing that hit her was the smell. Not wet paint as she expected. Death.

And then she saw the body. Or, rather, the top of the body’s head. Curly black hair matted with blood and bits of something white. Oh, God, bone?

She stopped in midstep, still on the entryway’s square of tile, only vaguely aware of Sara bumping into her from behind. She heard Sara gasp and gag, sensed the girl whirl away and run back outside.

Charlie stood, riveted, as a police officer draped a white sheet over the body, hiding it from view. She blinked and tore her gaze away to take in the modest living room with its well-used gray carpeting and nondescript furniture. The most striking thing about the room, besides the corpse in the center of it, were the plants. Spider plants, ficus trees, philodendrons, aloe plants, jade plants. They were everywhere, on every available surface, crowding every corner. Verdant life amidst pale death.