Cooper Vengeance

Gabe called a few minutes later, and J.D. gave him a quick rundown on his reason for heading south to Terrebonne in the first place. “I wanted to get the local view of things, just to be sure,” he told his younger brother.

“And what did you find out?”

“It’s our guy. I’m almost positive.”

Gabe was silent for a long moment. “Do you think he’s picked up a new partner?”

“That’s a question for your girl, I guess.” Gabe’s new girlfriend, Alicia, was close to getting her doctorate in criminal psychology, and she’d been the one who’d figured out there were two killers at work in the series of murders J.D. and his family had been trying to solve. Over the course of those years, the “alpha” killer, as Alicia termed him, had worked with at least two partners that they knew of—Victor Logan, who’d died in a mysterious house explosion a couple of months earlier, and Marlon Dyson. “And while you’re at it, I want you to have her call up her friend in the Millbridge Police Department and get me in to see Dyson.”

“J.D., are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“I think it’s a damned good idea,” J.D. answered firmly, ignoring the wriggling sensation in his gut that belied the confidence in his voice. “Dyson helped that son of a bitch kill three women in the past year. Maybe more.”

“Even the FBI can’t get him to talk. What makes you think you can?”

“I’m motivated,” J.D. answered flatly.

“Yeah, I’m a little worried about just how motivated you are,” Gabe responded.

“Don’t try to stop me. You’re already on my bad side for keeping this information from me as long as you did.” His little brother had a bad habit of trying to protect J.D. when it came to this murder investigation. Some sort of misplaced guilt for having screwed up and gotten to Brenda’s place of work later than he’d agreed, J.D. knew. Gabe blamed himself, as if he could have stopped what happened to Brenda if he’d just been on time.

But he couldn’t know that. Nobody could. The cold air that November night had slowed decomposition, making it hard to be sure when she’d died. Could have been a few minutes before Gabe arrived. Could have been as much as an hour. He could have been on time and still been too late.

On the other hand, if J.D. had left the Navy when she’d wanted him to, she probably wouldn’t have been working at the trucking company in the first place—

“Maybe I should meet you in Millbridge,” Gabe suggested. “I could go in with you to see him—”

J.D. snorted. “Like you could stop me if I went after him.”

“I figure the guards would take care of that,” Gabe shot back flatly. “I’d be there to pay the bail.”

J.D. grinned at the phone. “I’ll be fine, Gabe. I promise.” His grin faded. “I’m this close to finding the son of a bitch who killed Brenda. I’m not going to screw it up by losing my head.”

Gabe’s answering silence was an unwanted reminder of just how close to the edge J.D. had gone over the past twelve years. Wild-goose chases, con artists trying to earn a buck off his grief, the emotional roller-coaster ride of chasing leads that never panned out—they’d all worked together to crush his fading hope and lead him to some very dark places over the past few years.

His family had worked overtime to keep him from falling apart. At times, they’d been all that kept him sane.

He broke the silence. “Will you see if Alicia can set it up? And call me back with when and where?”

“Of course,” Gabe agreed. “J.D., Luke said you haven’t even seen Mike yet. You left town two days ago. What’s the holdup?”

J.D. looked down at the files in front of him. “I don’t like him to see me this way.”

“Obsessed?”

“Focused,” J.D. corrected. “I’m looking at files I don’t want him to see.”

“You’ve been doing that for a lot of years now. Looking at things you don’t want him to see.” Gabe’s voice held no censure, only a bleak sadness that resonated in J.D.’s own heart.

J.D. knew he’d let his grief and rage steal too much time from his kids, not seeing until too late that he was throwing away moments, hours and experiences he could never get back. Thank God for his parents, who’d given his children the time, attention and unconditional love he’d been too broken to offer.

He was trying to repair the damage, one step at a time. But Cissy was nearly grown up now, heading into her junior year of college, and Mike would be entering high school this fall, taking giant steps toward an independent life of his own.

J.D. was running out of time to fix things with his kids.

“Alicia’s down in Millbridge this week, tying up some loose ends,” Gabe said when J.D. didn’t answer. “I’ll get her to talk to her friend Tony about arranging for you to visit Dyson.”

“That’s the cop ex-boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” Gabe said wryly. “He’s not happy about her leaving Millbridge to be with me, but he’s a decent guy. He’ll help you out if he can.”

“Thanks, Gabe. I owe you.”

“Not in a million years.” Emotion tinted Gabe’s voice, and J.D. knew he was thinking about how he’d let Brenda down. J.D. didn’t bother trying to talk him out of his guilt. He’d told his brother that he didn’t blame him. He’d said what needed saying. Now it was up to Gabe to work through his own guilt whatever way he needed to.

J.D. knew a lot about dealing with guilt.

He said goodbye to Gabe and hung up, his mind already fast-forwarding to what he’d say when he finally saw Marlon Dyson face-to-face. He’d wanted to visit Dyson in jail as soon as Gabe had told him the whole story behind the man’s involvement with the alpha killer.

Dyson had slipped up once and called him Alex to Alicia’s face before clamming up. J.D. wanted to see if he could use that small chink in the armor to get Dyson to open up some more. But to this point, the Millbridge Police had been stingy with Dyson, refusing to let J.D. visit the man in jail.

Dyson had been the alpha’s partner, apparently tasked with hunting and culling victims for the man he called Alex to stalk and kill. He’d been caught last month, attempting to go rogue by stalking and killing his own choice of victim—Alicia, with whom Dyson had worked as lab instructors at Mill Valley University.

So far, he hadn’t admitted to anything but the attempt on Alicia’s life, although police and prosecutors were gathering circumstantial evidence to build a case against him for the three coed murders committed in Millbridge over the last six months.

But J.D. hadn’t had a crack at him yet.

For now, however, it was dinnertime and he was starving. He’d seen a little hole-in-the-wall diner down the road that had looked like a good bet for some home cooking.

At the diner, he ordered a barbecue-pork sandwich and beer-battered onion rings from a woman he quickly learned was the diner’s owner, Margo, a bottle-blonde in her late forties. She’d pegged J.D. as new to town immediately and, like a lot of Southerners when strangers came to their small towns, Margo was friendly but wary—until she heard J.D.’s slow, Southern drawl and realized he was Alabama born-and-bred. She quickly warmed to him, sitting with him at his solitary table while he ate and telling him everything she knew about everyone in the diner.

By the time he polished off a bowl of peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream, he felt as if he knew the business of everyone in town.

He turned the discussion to Carrie Gray’s murder, certain Margo probably knew more about what was going on in Terrebonne, Alabama, than even the cops knew. “I ran into her sister—Natalie, I think her name is.”

Margo’s eyes lit up at the mention of the name. “Oh, lord, that girl sure knows how to stir up a mess. When she decided not to go into the family business, you could hear old Darden Becker whoopin’ and hollerin’ all the way to Mobile.”

“He didn’t think she should be a deputy sheriff?”

“Good grief, no. The girl went to Yale, for pity’s sake. Can you imagine sending your girl to a place like that for four years, only to see her up and join the sheriff’s department after all that schooling? I’m surprised he didn’t ask for his money back!” Margo laughed with delight. “Oh, Natalie’s a fine enough deputy. She was promoted to investigator just this past spring. Don’t reckon old Roy Tatum would’ve done so if she wasn’t pulling her weight around there.”

“Is she married?” J.D. asked, though he wasn’t sure why. It didn’t really matter, did it? He hadn’t even thought to ask about her marital status earlier, when he’d been asking people in Millie’s Pub about her.

But that was before you got an up-close look at those big green eyes, Cooper.

Margo’s gaze fell to the wedding band on his left hand, then snapped up to look him in the eyes. “Why do you ask?” Her voice was suddenly wary.

He felt a flush warm his face, as if she’d caught him at something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. He forced himself not to cover the ring with his other hand. He wasn’t pumping Margo for information about Natalie Becker so he could ask her out on a date, after all. He had nothing to feel guilty about. “No reason, really. Just wondered if her daddy disapproved of her choice in men, too.”