Kill Without Shame

  They would probably never know.

  “Anything else?” Lucas asked.

  Max hesitated, glancing toward the woman at Lucas’s side. “It’s not pretty.”

  “Mia—” Lucas started, only to be interrupted by his stubborn companion.

  “No.” Mia tilted her chin, her expression resolute. “I need to know.”

  The two men exchanged rueful glances before Max continued his revelation of what he’d learned. “Your father wasn’t a fool,” he told Mia. “He knew that if he used the pictures to blackmail Vicky he would be putting his life at risk. She’d already had her husband killed. There was nothing to keep her from killing him and destroying the photos.”

  Lucas arched a brow. He hadn’t actually considered how simple it would have been for Vicky to rid herself of George Ramon.

  “Makes sense,” he murmured. “What did he do to protect himself?”

  There was another short pause before Max answered. “He followed Tony into the swamps where he dumped the car. Then, after Tony left, he used his truck to pull the car out and took it to his own property,” he explained. “On the tape he gives the directions to finding it.”

  Mia gave a soft gasp, her face draining of color. “There was a dead body on the property?”

  Max nodded. “Sunk in the bog out back.”

  “Oh my God,” Mia breathed, squeezing her eyes shut in horror.

  Lucas sympathized with her distress. It wouldn’t be pleasant to know that she’d been living at a place where there was a dead man rotting in the trunk of his car. Still, he couldn’t deny that George was far more clever than he’d ever suspected.

  “Creepy, but smart,” he said. “Vicky had done everything in her power to convince people her husband had run off with the money. She couldn’t have his dead body showing up. It would have been easy to convince her to pay George the money he wanted.”

  Mia instinctively pressed closer to Lucas, although she maintained a rigid control over her emotions. Her courage would never fail to amaze him.

  Although he intended to have a long conversation with her about her decision to stay and put out the fire rather than simply disappear into the bogs. Vicky would never have been able to hunt her down.

  “I still don’t understand why she wanted me dead,” she said.

  Max gave a lift of his shoulder. “After your father passed away she must have feared you would try to do something with the property.”

  Mia bit her lower lip. “I did contact a recycling center about hauling off the cars and tearing down the old buildings.”

  “That would have spooked her,” Lucas said. “She would be desperate to find Paul’s car before someone else could.”

  “That’s why Tony’s lighter was out there,” Mia murmured.

  Lucas nodded. He could easily imagine his old friend returning night after night to search the property, only to come up empty. And when he couldn’t find the Mercedes he must have gone into the house to search for some sort of clue. Or maybe he just went inside to get out of the cold and have a smoke.

  “Next, Vicky tried to buy the land,” Lucas said. “She had to have been out of her mind with frustration when you wouldn’t sell.”

  Mia wrinkled her nose, but it was Max who spoke.

  “Frustrated enough that she managed to find out that you had a will that endowed your father’s land to a wildlife conservation group if you died,” he muttered. He’d revealed the night before that Teagan had discovered Vicky’s connection to the charity that Mia had chosen to leave the land to in case of her death. “It was simply a matter of giving a big enough donation to be named chairwoman.”

  Mia shivered. “The power of money.”

  “Exactly,” Max agreed.

  Another shiver shook Mia’s body and Lucas lowered his head to press a comforting kiss to the top of her head.

  “So she really was trying to kill me,” Mia breathed.

  “First she tried to convince Tony to get rid of you,” Max said.

  Lucas sent up a silent thank-you to his dead friend who’d refused to give in to his lover’s urgings, and had instead traveled to Houston to seek Lucas’s help. Even if he’d never made it to the ARES office, he’d alerted Lucas that Mia was in danger.

  “Did she admit to shooting Tony?” Mia asked.

  Max made a sound of disgust. “She’s lawyered up, but my bet is on Detective Cooper,” he said.

  “Which one?” Lucas demanded, remembering the older detective who worked in Houston.

  “Both.” Max allowed a wry smile to touch his lips. “The cops are already swarming over the Fontaine estate, searching for the gun that shot Tony, as well as questioning her staff. Eventually they’ll get the evidence they need to prove she was responsible.”

  Lucas nodded in agreement. Detective Cooper was like a bloodhound. Solid, stubborn, and ruthless when he was on the hunt.

  He wouldn’t quit until he had Vicky on trial for murder.

  Suddenly tired of the bitch who would hopefully spend the rest of her life rotting in jail, Lucas abruptly turned the conversation. “Are you headed back to Houston?” he asked his friend.

  Max narrowed his gaze, his jaw tightening. “Not until we have a little chat.”

  Lucas frowned before realizing why Max suddenly looked like he’d swallowed a lemon. “You’ve spoken with Hauk?”

  “He said you’re staying in Shreveport,” Max growled, his voice harsh with displeasure.

  Lucas shrugged. “I am.”

  Max parted his lips to argue, only to snap them shut when Mia held up a slender hand.

  “Can Lucas and I have a few minutes alone?” she asked, meeting Max’s glare without flinching. “Please?”

  “Fine,” the blond-haired man muttered, pointing a finger in Lucas’s direction. “But I’m not leaving town until we talk.”

  Lucas sighed as his friend reluctantly left the hospital room and closed the door behind him.

  “And you call me stubborn,” he muttered.

  Turning until they were face-to-face, Mia laid her hands on his chest. “They’re your friends,” she murmured in soft tones. “They aren’t going to accept your resignation, you know?”

  Lucas ignored the small pang at the thought of leaving ARES and the men who’d become family to him.

  If that was the price he had to pay to have Mia back in his life, there was no contest. Nothing was more important than this woman.

  “They’ll have to.”

  She smoothed her hands over the clenched muscles of his chest, sending tiny darts of pleasure through him. “I thought we were going to find some compromise.”

  His blood heated as he became increasingly distracted with the thought of having her naked in his arms. How long would it take to get from the hospital to the penthouse? Twenty minutes?

  “All I want is to have a place in your life,” he assured her, bending his head to press his lips to her forehead before trailing a path of kisses down to the corner of her mouth. “It doesn’t matter to me if that’s in Houston or Shreveport, as long as we’re together.”

  “I don’t see why we can’t do both.” Her hands skimmed upward so she could wrap her arms around his neck. “I spoke to Taylor this morning and she’s agreed to become an office manager.”

  Lucas lifted his head, struggling to concentrate on her words. “What’s that mean?”

  Mia shrugged. “She’ll deal with the day-to-day customers and take over the accounting.”

  He studied her lovely face with a searching gaze. “You’re okay with that?”

  “Yeah,” she said without hesitation. “She has the talent to take on more responsibilities, and even if she ends up getting married, I think she’ll be happier being in charge.”

  Lucas blinked. His need to get this woman naked really was clouding his mind. He didn’t have a damned clue what Mia was talking about.

  “Taylor is getting married?”

  She frowned in disbelief. “Surely you’ve seen the way
Detective Cooper looks at her.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been a little preoccupied.”

  She sighed at his lack of insight but, seeming to accept that he’d been obsessed with his need to protect her, she didn’t press.

  “I’ll still need to come to Shreveport to oversee the contracts and to design the landscapes for any new clients,” she continued. “But she can handle the day-to-day business, while Sonny can supervise the staff. We can spread our time between here and Houston.”

  A fierce joy clenched his heart. She’d accepted that they belonged together.

  Everything else was just icing on the cake.

  “What made you change your mind?” he asked.

  Pulling out of his hold, she reached into her back pocket and retrieved several sheets of paper that had been folded in two.

  “This.” She shoved the papers in his hand.

  “What is it?” he demanded.

  “The loans you made to me so I could expand my business.”

  Surprise streaked through him as he glanced down at the papers in his hand.

  “How?” He gave a sharp shake of his head. “Never mind,” he muttered, accepting that one or more of his interfering friends had decided to stick his nose in where he didn’t belong. “It had to be Max. Or was it Teagan?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mia said, obviously not about to narc on who was responsible.

  Not that Lucas was going to demand an answer. She was right. It didn’t matter. His friends might be a pain in his ass, but they’d only wanted to help.

  Wrapping her in his arms, he buried his face in the silken strands of her hair.

  “I felt that I’d lost my chance to be with you,” he admitted, “but I wanted to make sure you could follow your dreams.”

  “You never stopped caring.”

  “Never,” he said in fierce tones.

  She snuggled against him, her cheek pressed over the steady thud of his heart.

  “That’s all I ever needed to know.”

  Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of Alexandra Ivy’s next novel of romantic suspense,

  PRETEND YOU’RE SAFE,

  coming soon wherever print and eBooks are sold!

  First came the floods. And then the bodies . . .

  Jaci Patterson was running late.

  It all started when she woke at her usual time of four a.m. Yeah, she really and truly woke at that indecent hour, five days a week. On the weekends, she allowed herself to sleep in until six. But this morning, when she’d crawled out of bed, she discovered the electricity was out.

  Again.

  The lack of power had nothing to do with the sketchy electrical lines that ran to her remote farmhouse in the north-east corner of Missouri. At least not this time. Instead, it could be blamed on the rains that had started the first day of March and continued to hammer the entire Midwest for the past three weeks.

  When the lights at last came on at five, she had to rush through her routine, grateful that she’d baked two dozen peach tarts and several loaves of bread the night before.

  As it was she’d barely managed to finish her blueberry muffins and scones before she had to load them into the back of her Jeep. Then, locking her two black Labs, Riff and Raff, in the barn so they didn’t destroy her house, she headed toward Heron, the small town just ten miles away.

  Predictably, she’d driven less than two miles down the muddy lane that led to the small farm that’d once belonged to her grandparents, when she discovered the road was blocked. Crap. Obviously the levee had broken during the night, releasing the swollen fury of the Mississippi River.

  It was no wonder her electricity had gone out.

  Grimacing at the knowledge that her bottom fields, along with most of her neighbors’, were probably flooded, she put the Jeep in reverse. Then, careful to stay in the center of the muddy road, she reversed her way back to the lane. Once she managed to get turned around, she headed in the opposite direction.

  The detour took an extra fifteen minutes, but at least she didn’t have to worry about traffic. With less than three hundred people, Heron wasn’t exactly a hub of activity. In fact, she ran into exactly zero cars as she swung along Main Street.

  She splashed through the center of town that was lined with a small post office, the county courthouse that was built in the 1800s, a bank, and a beauty parlor. Farther down the block was a newly constructed tin shed that housed the fire truck and the water department. On the corner was a small diner that had originally been christened the Cozy Kitchen, but had slowly become known as the Bird’s Nest by the locals after it’d been taken over by Nancy Bird, or Birdie, as she was affectionately nicknamed.

  Pulling into the narrow alley behind the diner, Jaci hopped out of her vehicle to grab the top container of muffins that were still warm from the oven. Instantly, she regretted not pulling on her jacket as the drizzling rain molded her short, brown hair to her scalp and dampened her Mizzou sweatshirt and faded jeans to her curved body.

  With a shiver she hurried through the back door, careful to wipe the mud from her rubber boots before entering the kitchen.

  Heat smacked her in the face, the contrast from the chilled wind outside making the cramped space feel smothering.

  Grimacing, she walked across the floor to set the muffins on a narrow stainless-steel table that was next to the griddle that was filled with scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage, and sizzling bacon.

  The large woman with graying hair and a plump face, efficiently flipped a row of pancakes before gesturing toward the woman who was busily washing dishes. Once the helper had hurried to her side, she handed off her spatula and made her way toward Jaci.

  Nancy Bird, better known as Birdie, was fifteen years older than Jaci. When she was just seventeen she’d married her high school sweetheart and dropped out of school. The sweetheart turned out to be a horse patootie who’d fled town, leaving Birdie with four young girls to raise on her own.

  With a grim determination that Jaci deeply admired, Birdie had bought the old diner and over the past ten years had turned it into the best place to eat in the entire county.

  At this early hour her clients usually consisted of farmers, hunters, and school bus drivers who were up before dawn.

  “Morning, Birdie.” Jaci stepped aside as the older woman efficiently began to place the muffins on a large glass tray that would be set on the counter next to the cash register. Many of the diners liked to have a cup of coffee and muffin once they were done with breakfast.

  “Thank God you’re here.”

  “I’m sorry I’m late. The electricity didn’t come on until almost five.”

  Finishing, Birdie grabbed the tray and bustled across the kitchen to hand it to her assistant.

  “Take this to the counter,” Birdie commanded before turning back to Jaci with a roll of her eyes. “The natives have been threatening to revolt without their favorite muffins.”

  Jaci smiled, pleased by Birdie’s words. She’d learned to bake at her grandmother’s side, but it wasn’t until she’d inherited her grandparents’ farm that she considered using her skills to help her make ends meet.

  Leaning to the side she glanced through the large open space where the food was passed through to the waitresses.

  She released a slow whistle. The place hadn’t changed in the past ten years. The walls were covered with faded paneling that was decorated with old license plates and a mounted fish caught from the river. The floor was linoleum with a drop ceiling that was lit with fluorescent lights.

  There was a half dozen tables arranged around the square room with one long table at the back where a group of farmers showed up daily to drink coffee and share the local gossip.

  At the moment, every seat was filled with patrons wearing buff coveralls, camo jackets, and Cardinal baseball hats.

  “Damn, woman. That’s quite a crowd,” she said, a rueful smile touching her lips. The rains meant that no one was able to get into the fields.
“At least someone can benefit from this latest downpour.”

  Birdie sucked in a sharp breath, her hands landing on her generous hips.

  “I hope you’re not suggesting that I’m the sort of person who enjoys benefiting from a tragedy, Jaci Patterson,” the older woman chastised. “People want to get together to discuss what’s happened and I have the local spot for them to gather.”

  Jaci blinked, caught off guard by her friend’s sharp reprimand. Then, absorbing the older woman’s words, she lifted a hand to her lips.

  “Tragedy?” she breathed. “Oh no. Has something happened?”

  Birdie’s features softened. “You haven’t heard about the body?”

  “Body?” Jaci felt a tremor of unease. She’d already lost her father to a drunk driver before she was even born, and then her grandmother when she was seventeen. Her grandfather had passed just two years ago. She still grieved for them. “Like I said, the electricity went out last night and as soon as it came back on I started baking. Has someone died?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Who?”

  “No one knows for sure yet,” Birdie told her.

  Jaci frowned. What was Birdie talking about?

  “How could they not know?”

  “The levee broke in the middle of the night.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out when I discovered that the road was closed . . . oh hell.” She tensed as her unease became sharp-edge fear. The levee had broken before and flooded fields, but her closest neighbor had recently built a new house much closer to the river. “It didn’t reach Frank’s home, did it?”

  Birdie shook her head. “Just the back pasture.”

  “Then what body are you talking about?”

  “When Frank went to move his cattle to higher ground, he saw something floating in the middle of his field.”

  Jaci cringed. Poor Frank. He must have been shocked out of his mind.

  “Oh my God. It was a dead person?”

  “Yep. A woman.”