Chapter Six

A black Honda Accord with tinted windows was already idling at the curb when they pulled up in front of the house.

“I take it he was pissed,” Bea wheezed, and took a drag on her cigarette. There were already three butts in the ashtray, all with her signature red lipstick on the filters. She narrowed her exotic dark eyes and her mouth was a grim slash accentuating her regal features. “You’re sure he won’t follow you?”

“I trust him, Bea. Now, you have to trust me. What happened the night you brought Evie to Wylde House?” she asked and wondered how anyone with as many bad habits as she’d witnessed could still pass for much younger than she had to be.

“When we got there he was out like a light. She managed to tell me that he’d beat her unconscious and when she woke up she was lying on a shower curtain. The vase was on a bedside table and she grabbed it and hit him when he bent over to wrap her up.”

“You never told me that.”

“It was for your own protection. If there was a chance that I was wrong, I didn’t want you involved. She was afraid she’d killed him but we didn’t know that until we got there. We called 9-1-1 for him and got her out of there.”

“You should have called the cops. Who are we?”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t ask me that. She told us hubby was wired into the department and she didn’t think anyone would believe her side of the story. There was already a record of him trying to get her committed, saying that she was unstable because of her drug use.

“He must have come to because if the shower curtain had still been on the bed when the EMTs arrived, I think the police would have had more of a reason to look at the doctor instead of Evie.”

Val couldn’t hide her shock but Bea only shrugged. “If anyone goes to jail for hiding her it will be me and me alone. I’ve been where she is now and if someone hadn’t helped me I’d still be in jail for defending myself.”

She hadn’t known that either. “Is there anything else I should know before I talk to her?” Val asked, wondering why they were taking a more circuitous route than normal.

“Anything else, she’s going to have to tell you herself. You know the way it works,” Bea said and glanced in the rearview mirror. “Do you know anyone in a red Caddy?”

Val glanced in the side mirror and shook her head. “How long has it been with us?”

“I noticed it a few minutes ago. Hang on,” she said as she made a sharp turn and the Accord fishtailed, glancing off the side of a parked SUV. “Shit,” she hissed, ash from the cigarette dangling from her lips sparking before it fell.

Val held on to the roof and thanked God that the airbag hadn’t been triggered but Bea had stomped on the gas. The Caddy didn’t relent and kissed the Accord’s back bumper, sending them through a four-way stop. She tried to get to her phone but Bea took a corner and turned the wrong way down a one-way street and her purse slid off the seat.

The first shot took out the back window and Val screamed as the car started spinning. The Caddy rammed them in the back passenger door as the oncoming police car slammed into the car’s nose and the airbags finally deployed.

* * * * *

Jack had been watching from the top of the hill where he was still parked when he’d glanced in his rearview as Bea’s Accord turned the corner at the bottom of the hill. He’d noticed a familiar red Cadillac pull out of a driveway where the street formed a T intersection. He’d never moved so fast in his life. Now he grabbed his pistol off the truck’s seat as the police car slammed into the Accord’s front end and Cedric Blood jumped out of his car and shot at him. Jack shot through the open window of the truck’s cab, narrowly missing the bastard as Blood darted toward the Accord.

Jack jumped out of the truck. “Here I am, you son of a bitch!” he yelled, firing so fast that he barely registered Blood returning fire until he saw the pimp’s body jerk, his shot going wild and taking out the back passenger window before he finally fell.

Jack heard somebody yelling into his radio that they needed an ambulance but he was already on autopilot. There weren’t any screams. There wasn’t a sound coming from the car. This was his fault. This was the thing he hadn’t considered.

Val wasn’t the only one who pissed people off.

The doors were locked so he scrambled up onto the back and finished kicking out the window that Cedric’s shot had shattered. He lowered himself inside and reached for the side of Val’s neck before she moaned. He felt for a pulse anyway and started to shake when she murmured, “Thank you.”

He was still shaking as he followed the ambulance to the hospital and had barely gotten it under control by the time Val had been wheeled into the emergency room.

Cedric Blood was the thing he’d been missing. Fresh out of prison, with a nasty reputation for retaliation, Cedric’s standard MO was to target his enemy’s loved ones. The entire time they’d been looking for people Val had pissed off and it had been him.

Cedric might never have remembered her if Jack hadn’t come home. If he hadn’t been looking for Evie Masterson. If he hadn’t used a cowardly excuse to inch his way back into Valentine’s life.

After they’d closed the curtain around Val while they examined her, he kept going over what had happened. Bea’s car had just pulled away from the curb when he’d seen Cedric Blood’s familiar red Caddy pull out of a driveway at the bottom of the hill and make a beeline for the parallel street and had known that Blood was going to cut them off at the next intersection. He had run every stop sign trying to intercept the Caddy.

He hadn’t made it. The Caddy had slipped between them, shooting out of a side street seconds before Jack. He’d sped up but the street had been too narrow for him to squeeze past the Caddy and run interference for the Accord.

He’d turned on his siren and called for backup and heard an answering siren before the Accord shot through a four-way stop but everything after both the Caddy and the police cruiser had crashed into Bea’s car was pretty much a blur of activity that would get sorted out when he filed the report.

* * * * *

Val and Bea were scared and bruised but otherwise fine. Neither had responded to his apology for being responsible for Blood targeting them. Both were stoic and silent, sitting in their wheelchairs while he checked Val out.

“You owe me a favor, Sutton,” Bea finally rasped. “Don’t pull any of that probable-cause bullshit with me and come bashing in my door.”

He nodded and watched for a reaction from Val that didn’t materialize.

They’d all waited until a beat-up jeep that looked as though it had seen action on too many fronts pulled up to the curb to collect Bea. Jack nodded to the white-haired driver who looked as if he’d seen as much action as the jeep. He looked like an aging Marlboro Man and barely acknowledged Jack as he scanned the perimeter while Bea was being helped into the front seat.

Val knew Bea would be changing transportation before she reached her destination. Changing cars without being detected was something she had perfected over the years. Anyone following was going to end up staking out a vacant warehouse or neighborhood bar.

Jack had barely spared them a glance. He was gripping the wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white. He was either pissed or still beating himself up.

“I didn’t really think I was going to die until I saw him walk up to the car,” she said as they pulled away from the curb and turned in the opposite direction. “I was so scared. Hell, I was terrified. All I could think of was that I wished you were there.” She was still shaken and seeing Jack again had been all she could think about since Cedric Blood’s bullet had taken out the back window.

“Jesus, when you didn’t accept my apology I thought you were finished with me for sure this time,” he said softly, relaxing his grip on the steering wheel. “I knew if I missed, he probably wouldn’t. I’d lose you for good and it would have been my fault because I wasn’t smart enough to look past the obvious.”

“There wasn’t any reason to, Jack. There wasn’t anything that screamed someone might have been coming at you through me. We hadn’t been together for six months.”

“Also my fault,” he ground out.

“You listen to me, Jack Sutton. I was just as angry and afraid as you were six months ago. I screamed just as loud and thought all of my reasons not to marry you were sound. I just didn’t tell you about all of them.

“Don’t beat yourself up—trust me, it doesn’t do any good. It doesn’t change anything for the better. Don’t let it take years for you to figure out.”

He looked slightly relieved. “I don’t suppose I’m going to be lucky enough for you to also overlook the fact that it took McCoy to give me an excuse to walk through your door?”

“I’m still not happy about that but I think you were right when you said that if we make this about winning and losing we don’t stand a chance. And as disturbing as I find the fact that I may owe your return in some small way to Archer McCoy, I’m not so angry that I want to spend another six months without you.

“I should have trusted you enough to tell you about Katie Ann a long time ago. You aren’t the only coward sitting in this truck. Maybe we both deserve another chance.”

“It’s a good thing we’re home,” he said gruffly, but he never got a chance to finish his statement because his phone rang just as they were parking.

He flipped it open and grimaced before he uttered a brusque, “Sutton.” His mood didn’t seem to improve with whatever he heard—if anything it got grimmer when he handed her the phone. “It’s for you.”

“Yes,” she answered and listened to Bea’s instructions. “How did you get Jack’s number?”

Now she knew why Jack looked as if he were ready to go to war. She flipped the phone shut and set it on the seat between them. “McCoy is questioning Bea at the station. Did you know that?”

“She just told me.”

“Did she just tell you that Evie Masterson is coming in but only if you bring her? Did you know, for this to work, she has to resist arrest?”

“Yes,” he answered, then didn’t say anything else, just listened intently to her instructions and watched the rearview mirror. She wouldn’t put it past McCoy to have them tailed. Apparently, neither did Jack.

* * * * *

Evie Masterson resembled a terrified elfin Goth princess with a bad dye job and bruised knuckles. Dull black hair curled around her ears and her pale skin would have looked much better against hair the color of its honey-blonde roots. Of course, she’d gone paler at the sight of her husband, who was arguing with Archer McCoy.

She was nearly vibrating in place and looked as if she would bolt until Jack put a hand in the middle of her back to steady her.

Dr. Elliot Masterson, middle-aged and soft around the edges, would have gone unnoticed in a crowd except for the fact that he was ruthlessly groomed from his styled, wispy blond hair to his expensive shoes. He turned around when Archer McCoy’s gaze zeroed in on Evie. She didn’t look at McCoy though. Her attention was focused on the very angry man stalking out of McCoy’s office.

“Take those off her,” Masterson sputtered, pointing to the restraints circling Evie’s thin wrists. “I’m dropping the charges.”

Just as Evie had told them he would.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Masterson,” Jack said. “Mrs. Masterson resisted arrest and is being charged.” He hadn’t pointed to the blooming bruise on his cheek that was beginning to match the one on Evie’s knuckles but the insinuation was clear. “It’s a very serious charge.”

Masterson glared and his eyes resembled dark marbles in his pasty face. “She needs professional help, not incarceration. She has a problem,” he sputtered but Jack didn’t remove the restraints. McCoy’s rigid expression seemed to infuriate the good doctor even more.

“I’m calling my attorney,” Masterson sputtered and stalked away but not without a backward perusal of his wife. Jack watched the glare transform the doctor’s bland features into a half-second sneer. Apparently, so had McCoy because he whisked Evie into his office and shut the door.

Jack had only seen McCoy’s poker face twice and in both instances the man had walked away from the table with the pot. Masterson was going to need his attorney because tonight he was going to be questioned and his storage facility was going to be searched. The warrant had been in the works since he’d listened to Evie Masterson’s account of the night she’d run for her life, beaten and bloody.

* * * * *

Dr. Elliott Masterson was a collector and even to the untrained eye the glass-fronted curio cabinet in his storage vault in the U Store It facility held items that were not as curious as they would be to someone who hadn’t been forewarned.

The ceramic mother and child figure that had belonged to Evie’s mother had been tightly arranged in pieces as if they’d just been swept off a shelf. The same could be said of the jagged shards of her grandmother’s white crockery with its cheerful red bands. Had he honestly smiled and said “whoops” when he’d dropped it? How brave did you have to be to destroy someone bit by bit and smile about it?

A further search revealed what he’d come after. Evie had told them that her husband never disposed of anything he’d broken so that he could show it to her whenever she disrespected him. There was a folded shower curtain at the bottom of the cabinet. The cheap plastic was stained and if he wasn’t mistaken the results would match the blood on Elliot Masterson’s shirt from the night of the 9-1-1 call. The blood he had explained away with the fairy tale about his assault at the hands of a dangerous, drug-addicted wife. A sample of which still existed from the evidence gathered that night.

Masterson’s lawyer could probably make a case for the fact that after a month any drugs she may have been addicted to could be out of her system. And it would probably be better if they were if Jack was right about the dangerous combination of antidepressant drugs they’d found in the Masterson residence.

Jack was betting that singularly or combined, the pills could be capable of producing anything from extreme anxiety and erratic behavior to suicidal thoughts. It was very possible that the doctor was Evie’s only drug dealer.

He made the phone call that he knew McCoy had been waiting for and advised him that he might have been mistaken about Evie Masterson getting the drop on him. He’d accidentally pinched her wrist while putting on the restraints and she’d instinctively jerked. Her fist had connected with his cheek. End of story.

McCoy informed him that he hadn’t been contacted by anyone requesting special treatment for Dr. Masterson and it was beginning to look as if he might have fabricated his connections to keep his terrified wife cowed.