One Stormy Night. Marilyn Pappano

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      What Jimmy Ray did best, Mitch thought, was threaten people. He looked so young, so harmless, that no one suspected he was mean as the devil until it was too late. Not that he would ever do anything without Taylor’s order. Tough as he was, he knew Taylor was tougher.

      “But I want you to watch her at night and on weekends.”

      Mitch stared. He’d like to believe Taylor wasn’t serious, but he’d lost whatever illusions he’d had about his old friend weeks ago. “I’m not being paid—”

      “You will be.” Taylor’s voice was as level as his expression. “You keep an eye on Jennifer on your time off and you’ll find a nice raise in your next paycheck.”

      Mitch settled back, crossing one ankle over the other knee. “Using department resources and department money to investigate your wife… And I suppose if I find anything that could be useful, say, in a divorce, that would probably earn me a nice departmental bonus, wouldn’t it?”

      “I’m not worried about a divorce,” Taylor said dismissively. “You have a problem with making some extra cash?”

      Mitch considered it, then lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Depends on how much cash we’re talking.”

      “It’ll be enough. Trust me. Just keep an eye on her. She’s a beautiful woman. It won’t be hard. Okay?”

      Again Mitch waited a beat before agreeing. “Okay.”

      He was at the door before Taylor softly added, “Bubba? Just an eye. You lay a hand on her…I’d hate to consider the consequences, what with you and me going back so far.”

      Mitch opened the door, then glanced back. “I don’t fool around with married women.” He looked pointedly in Megan’s direction. “There’s something about those vows…”

      Taylor didn’t even look uncomfortable, much less guilty.

      As Mitch returned to his car, he wondered what had happened to Taylor over the years. His parents were still together after some forty years; they spent summers in Alaska and winters in South Florida and they’d always seemed happy. His father had been a lawyer, his mother a stay-at-home mom, and in their retirement they did regular volunteer work with children’s charities in both states.

      Through high school and college he and Mitch had had far more in common than not. They’d shared an apartment, taken the same classes, even had the same plans of going into law enforcement. Taylor had returned home to Belmar, though, while Mitch had gone to Atlanta for big-city police work within a few hours’ drive of his brothers.

      Somewhere along the way, though, Taylor had changed. He’d become more controlling, more self-centered, less honest. He’d always been a little on the wild side and more than a little full of himself, but within limits. Back then he’d given a damn about something besides himself and power and money. Mitch felt as if he hardly knew him anymore.

      Felt as if he hardly knew himself.

      One thing about working law enforcement in a town where most of the police department was corrupt—there wasn’t much other crime to investigate. Since coming to Belmar, Mitch’s days were mostly spent writing traffic citations, with the occasional teenage vandalism, burglary or drug bust. People on the chief’s good side got special attention when they were the victim of a crime and a blind eye when they went speeding through town. That had been the toughest problem Mitch had faced since coming to town—keeping straight who was on the chief’s good side.

      Until Jennifer had returned.

      “Don’t lay a hand on her,” he scoffed. As if he needed to be told. He’d kicked Taylor’s ass twenty-four years ago and could easily do so again in a fair fight. Not that Taylor fought fair. He used his badge, his authority and his department to intimidate and frighten. He was rarely seen without one or more of his officers. He believed in making a show of force and in letting others do his dirty work.

      That was the man Mitch had called friend for twenty-four years.

      He drove to the north edge of town, where an abandoned gas station stood across the street from a big, relatively new truck stop. What the station owner hadn’t hauled away, thieves had, and vandals had broken the rest. The only thing that still worked on the premises was the pay phone, only because it was around the corner, on the side of the building where weeds grew tall. He backed his car into the weeds, beaten down because it was one of his few routines. With the highway coming into town and the speed limit dropping from fifty-five to thirty in the space of a few hundred yards, it was a good spot to work radar.

      Leaving the coolness of his car, he dropped a few coins into the pay phone, then dialed his brother’s cell phone.

      “Calloway.” Loud music played in the background, raunchy and punctuated by louder, rowdier male voices.

      “Jeez, it’s not even noon and you’re already in a strip joint?”

      “It’s noon somewhere,” Rick said. “Besides, I get paid to be here. I’m tending bar. You still in Mississippi?”

      “Where else?”

      “How does the small time compare to Atlanta?”

      “I’m more likely to die of boredom here than there.”

      “Yeah. Some guy gets bored and shoots you to liven up his day.”

      Mitch had heard the joke before, but he still grinned. Wouldn’t that be something—after eleven years on the streets in Atlanta, to get killed in the line of duty in a nowhere place like Belmar. “The only person liable to shoot me down here is my boss, and that’s only if I get too friendly with his wife.”

      “She worth getting shot over?”

      He didn’t even need to close his eyes to summon up an image of Jennifer in last night’s second-skin jeans and sweater. When he’d first come up behind her in the dark, he’d smelled her fragrance, subtle, just enough to tease a man, and felt the heat radiating from her before he’d taken a step back for safety. His, not hers.

      “She could be, if she wasn’t married,” he replied, earning a grunt from Rick. Funny thing about Mitch and the Calloway boys—having a father who wouldn’t keep it in his pants had given the meaning of fidelity one hell of an impact. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d told Taylor there was something about those marriage vows.

      “Other than the boss being a tad possessive about his wife, how’s it going down there?”

      “Okay. He offered me a raise if I keep an eye on her.”

      “She’s worth getting shot for, and he’s not sticking close enough to keep track of her himself?”

      “They’re separated. Remember? She went missing in the hurricane, he thought she was dead. She’s not and she’s back, and he wants to know everything she does.”

      “Why doesn’t he hire a private investigator who specializes in divorce cases?”

      “When he can let the city pay me to watch her?” Mitch scowled as a car sped past on the way into town. The city manager’s teenage son was behind the wheel and he was at СКАЧАТЬ