Cooper Vengeance. Пола Грейвс

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ