Cooper Vengeance

“I said I’m fine.” The words came out in a sharp snap. She flushed, looking embarrassed. He guessed Beckers didn’t make scenes in bars. “Thank you,” she added.

He saw her studying him closely, as if trying to take his measure. He wondered what she saw. At a distance, he knew he looked younger than his forty-four years, thanks to keeping up with his Navy fitness regime even after he retired. But up close, the years of grief and obsession showed around his eyes and mouth. Someone had once told him he had old eyes.

“What do you know about my sister’s murder?” she asked. “How do you even know about it? Where are you from?”

He reached into his pocket. She tensed immediately, her hand automatically sliding down to her waist, as if she expected to find a weapon there. Her lips flattened with anger.

J. D. Cooper finished pulling out his wallet to give her his Cooper Cove Marina business card.

“You work as a boat mechanic?” she asked.

“My folks own a marina up in Gossamer Ridge,” he said. “It’s a little place in the northeastern part of the state. When I got out of the Navy, I went to work for them doing boat repair and maintenance.”

She flashed a quick smile. He wondered why.

She laid the card in the middle of the table between them. “That doesn’t explain how you know about Carrie’s murder. Did it make the news up there or something?”

“You’re from a rich, influential family. One of you gets murdered, it makes news everywhere in the state.” He folded his wallet shut and put it back into his pocket. “The Gossamer Ridge paper didn’t give many details about the murder. Neither did The Birmingham News. But I know some folks around here, so I did a little digging.”

“Why?”

“Because I think the man who killed your sister is the same man who killed my wife.”

Chapter Two

Natalie sat back in her chair, watching him through narrowed eyes. “Your wife?”

He nodded. “She was murdered twelve-and-a-half years ago. Late at night while working alone at a secluded office building. Nothing else around for at least a half mile.”

The air in the bar seemed to grow chill. Natalie hugged her jacket more tightly around her. “Late at night—”

“Just like your sister.”

She swallowed hard. “What do you want?”

“Do you know anyone named Alex?”

The question threw her. “Alex?”

“That’s the name he uses. I don’t think it’s his real name, but it could be a nickname.”

“You know his name but you don’t know what he looks like?”

J. D. Cooper’s only answer was to pick up the business card and pull a pen from his shirt pocket. He wrote something on the back of the card and shoved it back toward her. “I’m going to be hanging around town a few days. Here’s where I’m staying. My cell number’s on the front of the card. I figure you’ll want to look into what I’m telling you, so I’ll leave you to do that.”

He unfolded his long legs until he towered over her like a giant tree, casting a shadow across the table. “I’m going to keep looking into your sister’s murder, whatever you decide. I just think it’ll be easier if we didn’t butt heads about it.”

He pulled out his wallet, laid a ten dollar bill on the table for the waitress and walked out of the bar.

It took a couple of seconds for Natalie’s legs to cooperate enough to go after him. By the time she burst outside the bar, he was driving away in the same black truck she’d seen at the cemetery earlier in the day. She noted the make and model—a Ford F-250—but couldn’t make out the license plate.

Torn between irritation and curiosity, she returned to the bar and retrieved his business card from the table.

J. D. Cooper, she read silently, her fingers tingling with the memory of his big, warm hand closing over hers.

She had a feeling he was going to be a boatload of trouble.

J.D. CALLED THE MARINA as soon as he reached the blessed coolness of his motel room. The place was cheap but clean, and the bed was big enough to look inviting to a man his size.

Waiting for someone to answer, he picked up the files he’d brought with him. It was twelve years’ worth of notes, police files and newspaper clippings he’d compiled since Brenda’s murder. Most of the pages were dog-eared and fading, while others were fresh photocopies of papers that had already started to fall apart.

He’d handled them all, at least once a day, for over a decade. An obsession, he supposed, but he couldn’t stop now. He was closer than he’d ever been, thanks to his brother Gabe’s recent trip to a college town three hours north of Terrebonne.

Ironic, that. Gabe being the one to blow the case wide open, since he was the one who blamed himself most for letting Brenda down the one night she really needed him.

His brother Luke answered the marina’s office phone, catching J.D. by surprise. Luke ran a riding stable and wouldn’t usually be there at this hour. “What are you doing there?” J.D. asked.

“I turned the stable over to Trevor and Kenny, and I’m meeting Abby here for dinner with the folks.”

God, he sounded happy, even though he had plenty of reasons not to be. Eladio Cordero, the South American drug lord who’d put a price on Luke’s life—and the life of anyone he loved—was still out there, biding his time. But at least Luke was home with his family now. The Coopers were pretty tough, always ready to guard each other’s backs. And Luke had that beautiful wife and kid of his to come home to every night.

J.D. tried not to envy his brother—all his brothers, really, who’d now found the kind of happiness J.D. hadn’t known in over twelve years. Even Gabe and Aaron had been bitten in the backside by the love bug. Aaron and Melissa were getting married in a couple of weeks, and Gabe had come home from his trip last month to Millbridge with a cute little college professor named Alicia Solano in tow. She still hadn’t said she’d marry him, but anyone could see she was crazy about him, too. And Gabe could be a bloody damned nuisance when he wanted something. J.D.’s money was on him.

“Have you picked up Mike yet?” Luke asked.

“No, not yet.” His thirteen-year-old son, Mike, had spent the last couple of weeks with his grandparents, right after his graduation from eighth grade. Brenda’s parents had come up to Chickasaw County to see their only grandson’s graduation and ended up taking Mike back with them to spend a few weeks.

J.D. had used Mike as an excuse to head south to Terrebonne, but Mike wasn’t due to come back home until just before Aaron’s wedding. J.D. hadn’t wanted his family to know his real reason for coming here until he found out more about Carrie Gray’s murder. They’d worry about him, and J.D. was tired of being the object of everyone’s concern.

“How’s Stevie?” he asked aloud to change the subject.

“He’s great!” Luke answered. “Abby’s been teaching him to speak Spanish, and he’s starting to get better at it than I am.”

J.D. laughed. “Well, tell him hola from his Tio J.D. I’m going to hang down here a little longer. Tell Dad he can get Jasper Noble to take care of any boat maintenance issues that come up while I’m gone. Jasper loves being useful since he retired—”

“How much longer?” Luke couldn’t hide the surprise in his voice. Though Luke had been away from the family for ten years before his recent return to the fold, he’d apparently heard enough family gossip to know J.D. rarely visited Terrebonne anymore.

“A few days. No more than a week.” He hoped.

“Okay. I’ll tell everyone.”

“Thanks. Hey, is Gabe anywhere around?”

“He’s out unloading his boat. Just came in from a guiding job. You want me to have him call you?”

“Yeah, do that.” J.D. might not want the rest of his family to worry about him, but he wanted Gabe to know what he was really up to. After all, Gabe had put his life on the line to solve Brenda’s murder just a few weeks earlier, taking on a psychopath who’d been holding Alicia hostage.

A psychopath J.D. intended to visit in the Okaloosa County Jail up in Millbridge as soon as the visit could be arranged. Because Marlon Dyson wasn’t just a crazy stalker. He’d been partners with the man J.D. believed had killed his wife.