Serendipity (Southern Comfort) (34 page)

Jordan dropped into his chair.  He’d been so ready to blame Sheppard that he’d gotten tunnel vision about the whole thing.  He knew better – years of experience with the law, with criminal investigations had taught him at least that much – but then thinking with the heart tended to cloud the head.

“Okay.  So Sheppard is clean.”  It was a bitter pill, but he’d swallow it.  And he’d simply have to lay down the law with Ava when he saw her later. This had gone on long enough.  “I appreciate you checking into it for me, Evan.  Send me your bill.  I’ll just try to make it back from you next poker night.”

“Sure.”  Evan hesitated, and Jordan got a funny feeling in his stomach.  Evan never missed an opportunity to rub in the fact that he was their resident card shark.  “Before I go…you remember that I used to be counter narcotics?”

“Of course.” 

“Well…”

When he paused again the funny feeling turned into a pitch and roll.  “Whatever it is, just say it, Evan.”

“Well, I was checking on this Sheppard, and of course your vet’s name popped up as they lived together for a little while, and I got to thinking: Martinez, Martinez.  Not an uncommon name, but why does it seem so familiar?”

Jordan watched a battered oak leaf get plastered to the window, felt everything else recede.

“Look, Jordan, if you’re not already doing so, you might want to sit down.”

“SHIT,” Ava muttered as she waited on Katie to lock the clinic’s front door. 

Rain pounded the rooftops, the trees, the thirsty ground like angry fists, tearing leaves that the wind picked up in its bitter breath and blew angrily against the glass.  Water ran in a filthy torrent, displacing pine straw, churning into mud, and the azaleas shivered as the last of their blossoms fell like bright drops of blood.  

The lash of it – wind and rain – stung her skin and whipped her hair into a slick tangle.  In his carrier, One-Eyed Jack howled indignantly as bullet-like drops pelted him through the vents. 

“I know, I know.  I should have brought an umbrella.  At least you’ve got fur,” she pointed out with some annoyance.  “Cotton scrubs just don’t cut it.”

“I’m sorry.”  Katie, peeking out from a bright green rain slicker, hustled through the door.  “Forgot my phone.  Go ahead and lock it and get out of this mess.  I’m going to go home, make a big pot of tea and pretend I’m in England, where at least you’ve got all those misty, windswept moors and broody romantic heroes if it’s going to rain like this.”

“There’s a comfort.”

“Easy for you to mock, you’ve got a hot lawyer waiting to keep you warm,” she said as she dashed out into the rain.

Not for long, Ava thought darkly and waved her friend off.

Thunder rumbled, mean laughter, and the clouds overhead roiled.  Already soaked to the skin, Ava hurried toward the parking lot.  She could barely make out her car through the river of rain.  “Mother Nature’s feeling bitchy,” she decided just as a bolt of lightening split the sky.  When the air crackled, she basically threw herself into the car. 

“What’s next?  Toads?” Peering warily out the windshield, she shivered and cranked the heat along with the motor.  Their sunny, eighty degree day had probably dropped twenty degrees.  “Guess I should have listened to Jordan this morning, huh?”

Jordan.

Just saying his name felt like a bruise on her heart.  She’d managed to dodge his calls twice today – the first time because she’d been genuinely unavailable; the second because she simply couldn’t find the strength to say what needed to be said. 

How could she tell this man that she didn’t want to see him anymore?  See him, ever again?  She’d worked it out in her head.  And it had to be another man.  That was the only excuse he would believe at this point, because it was more than clear that she found him attractive, that she enjoyed having him in her bed.  But she hadn’t admitted to anything beyond that, had been very careful to avoid telling him what was in her heart.  So if she claimed to be in love with someone else, there was at least a chance he would believe it.

She’d considered using Sam Bailey, but that just didn’t seem fair, and was extremely unprofessional to boot.  Sam was an important client, a good friend, and she wouldn’t feel right abusing either relationship.  Plus, she thought as she released Jack from his carrier, watched him jump out of the thing like it was on fire, Jordan seemed to be hung up on Michael as the source of every ill.

And she’d feel much less guilty about using him toward her own end.

Jack glared at her from the passenger seat before he started licking the rain from his paws, and Ava glared right back before setting the climate control to defrost.  Yes, it would have to be Michael.  She’d never gotten over him, she was looking to reconcile – maybe actively in the process.  Last she’d heard, Michael was seeing someone, but Jordan didn’t have to know that – and was sorry for misleading Jordan in any way. 

End of story, she thought as she turned her wipers on high, her lights on low, and crept out of the parking lot.  End of relationship.  

With that thought depressing the hell out of her, Ava eased into the traffic along Abercorn Street, which moved like sludge.  Heavy rain was to the south what crippling blizzards were to regular, sane people, so everyone drove like their ninety year old grandpas or else they didn’t drive at all.  Vehicles sat off to the side of the road, hazards blinking like frantic eyes, and the occasional truly stupid individual stopped right in the middle of the damn street. 

Impatient by nature and in a particularly foul mood due to both weather and circumstance, Ava wasn’t shy about using her horn. And on one occasion, her middle finger.  Ava decided Katie would have been mortified. 

Katie was also going to be less than pleased when Ava told her she’d dumped Jordan, to say nothing of how Lou Ellen was going to react.  Jordan had brought Lou Ellen flowers the other day, for pity’s sake, something about her doing him a favor.  Ava had pumped Lou Ellen for information, but her landlord, her friend, had simply said that it was between her and Jordan.

Exactly what was Ava supposed to make of that?

By the time she finally made it home, the storm was at full rage overhead.  The evening had gone black as the mouth of hell, and water cascaded down the stairs to her apartment.  Ava sloshed through, slipped once, and nearly sent Jack into a panic that had him clawing at her as she unlocked the door.

“Should have left you in the stupid carrier.”

Lightening crashed in an electric burst that literally lifted the hairs on her neck.

“Holy shit.”  Dripping, swearing, and shaking from cold, Ava dropped the cat and reached inside to hit the switch for the lights.

Nothing happened.

“Just great,” she muttered.  And stepping into the dark living room, slammed the door closed behind her.  That last lightening strike must have knocked out the power.

She pulled off her jacket, hung it on the hall tree.  Toed off her wet sneakers and kicked them under the bench.  She was trying to remember where she’d left the damn flashlight when another bolt of lightening temporarily illuminated the room. 

The shadow behind her became a man, and the man’s hand clamped over her mouth.

“Don’t.  Scream.”

It backed up in her throat.  But she caught the familiar scent, grabbed at the long fingers to yank them away, and whirled toward her uninvited guest.

“Jordan, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Pushing at her bedraggled hair, she gave him a basilisk glare.  It was too dark to see his face, his expression – too dark for him to see hers either, for that matter – but she knew the smell of him, the feel of his hand nearly as well as she did her own.  “You almost scared me to death.  For a moment, I thought you were someone else.”

“That makes two of us.”

Ava fell back a step at the tone.  She’d heard him angry before, felt the heat of it that morning he’d found the window smashed in, but never had she heard the sort of cold fury as she did now.  The chill of it practically burned her. 

“How did you get in here?” she thought to ask.

He held something up, though in the dark it was difficult to make out exactly what it was.  “Spare key. Your landlord was kind enough to lend it to me.”

“Something I’ll be sure to discuss with her at the first opportunity.”  Keeping her own tone even as she could manage, Ava tried to control the wild thumping of her heart.

All sorts of thoughts flitted through her head, but she couldn’t say any of them were good.  But instead of addressing his obvious anger, she took the coward’s way out.  Again.

“I might not have been so startled if I’d seen your car in the drive.”  She wrapped her arms around herself against the chill.  “I guess I was too focused on getting inside.”

“My car’s not in the drive.  I parked a couple of streets over, and walked.”

“In this weather?”  Her laugh was brittle, chunks of ice that broke as they fell.  Shaking, she moved farther into the shadowed room, wanting to put some space between them. 

He knew.  Knew something, though the question was, what?  Not just what, but how much?  And how was he going to use it against her? 

Of course, she’d been kidding herself to think it wouldn’t come to this.  She’d expected it, hadn’t she, from the moment he’d walked into her clinic.  “Not exactly the best evening for a stroll,” she pointed out.

“I didn’t want to take a chance on your uncle’s men following me.”

Ava froze, muscle by muscle, bone by trembling bone.  The memory of the final scene with Michael blew through her in a frigid gale.  And because it did, because she’d been here before, in nearly the same position with a man she loved, she took the cold, embraced it, because it was so much better to be numb.

“How did you find out?” she asked over her shoulder, relieved that her voice didn’t crack.  How much worse, how much more painful, if he knew her heart lay quivering at his feet.

Although in reality, it couldn’t have been better timing.  She wouldn’t have to use Michael to get rid of him now.

“I was worried about you.” Ava didn’t trust the softness, the deceptive tone.  She’d already heard his disgust for what it was.  “The car that followed us,” he said.  “The slashed tire.  The broken window.  The visitor at your clinic with the clove cigarette.”

He’d eased back to within touching distance now, though he made no attempt at contact.  “I hired someone to do some checking.”

At that, Ava whirled around.  “You… you hired someone to check up on me?”  She was so fired up that the ice cracked.  How dare he?  How dare he? “You paid someone to dig into what I told you was none of your business?”

“Actually, I hired him to check up on your ex.  Imagine my surprise when he turned up cleaner than you did.”

At that, a storm built inside her to rival the one outside.  “I see.  So I’m guilty by association.  I’m not the prosecutor here, but I’m pretty sure that charge doesn’t stick.”

“No.”  Jordan grabbed her arm.  “But how about failure to report a crime, impeding an investigation.  How about kidnapping and accessory to murder?”

Ava’s sharp indrawn breath told Jordan everything he wanted to know.  He grabbed her other arm and shook her, not bothering to be gentle.  “Did you help them kill Leslie?  Or simply stand by and watch while they did?  Or what… you got squeamish at the last minute and decided to back out?  The murder of an innocent woman might buy you some time, but maybe you realized that knocking off a prosecutor is a pretty damn serious offense.”

She started shaking beneath his hands. “You…”  She gulped in air.  “You think I had anything to do with that?” 

Where was her anger, Ava wondered again?  She needed her anger to warm her up.  To fight off the unbelievable hurt.  “How…” Oh, she cursed the tremor in her voice.  “How can you even think that after –”

“After sleeping with you?”  Even in the dark, she could see the disgust plainly in his eyes.  Whether for her or for himself she couldn’t be sure.  “Wasn’t that part of the plan?  Seduce the one guy that could put you away, so that when he figures everything out he’ll be so compromised by his relationship with you that you’ll wind up getting off?”

That did it.   Ava found her anger in spades.  “You ignorant son of a bitch.”  She shook his hands off and shoved him in the chest, hard enough that he actually stumbled back.  “First of all, if you’ll search your memory, you’ll recall that you kept trying to seduce me.  I wanted nothing to do with you.”  She threw her arms out to her sides.  “You think you’ve put it all together, do you?  Well you don’t have a clue.  You want to know what my impression of you was that night, when I happened upon you in that trunk?  That you were a big, stupid fool.  I spent ten minutes trying to get you to move, ruined my best pair of pants, broke at least three nails, got blood stains on my damn car, and… oh yeah… risked my freaking life to haul your ass out of there before they could kill you.  You think I want to be related to him?  You think I asked to be a part of this?  I wasn’t around to see what happened to your friend, and I’m pretty much regretting that I was around to see you.  If I had it to do over, I would have closed the trunk and pretended I never laid eyes on you.  You have been nothing – nothing, nothing, nothing – but a pain in my ass since I did.”  She emphasized her point by drilling her finger into his chest.  “So unless you have some charges you’re willing to press, some reason for being in my face, why don’t you hand over my damn key and get the hell out of my life!”