Survival Clause Read online

  “Prob’ly gonna keep doing that for as long as I’m here, darlin’.” He gave Pearl a scratch between her furled ears, and dropped a kiss on top of Carrie’s curly head—she was kicking her feet in her bouncy seat— before he came over to me. And backed me up against the counter before he framed my face with his hands and leaned in for a kiss. By the time he lifted his head, those fingers had migrated into my hair, and the water in the pot was bubbling.

  “Nice to see you, too,” I said breathlessly and reached for the box of angel hair. “Dinner in five minutes.”

  “Guess I’ll shower later.” He moved a few feet so he could tickle Carrie’s feet and make her giggle.

  “The threat’s over, though,” I said, as I nestled the pasta into the pot. “Isn’t it? You caught the guy who lead the neo-Nazi group, and put him away. along with his second-in-command. The third guy gets off because he didn’t do anything except shoot at paper targets.”

  “He’s a nasty little tick,” Rafe said, “but yeah. He gets off.”

  “So what’s the SWAT practice for? They already gave it their best shot at the dedication of the bauta in The Bottoms. It didn’t come off, or at least not the way they’d hoped.” Way fewer casualties than they’d hoped for, I was sure. “Isn’t it over?”

  “Mostly we think it is. Clay’s still working at the body shop in case someone shows up looking for Lance or Rodney, but so far it’s been quiet.”

  “I didn’t realize Clayton was still here,” I said. Clayton Norris was a young associate of Rafe’s from the TBI, who had been brought to Columbia to infiltrate the neo-Nazi gang and report back. “I haven’t seen him.”

  Nor, as far as I knew, had Rafe.

  My husband smiled. “You’re not supposed to see him, darlin’. That’s what undercover work’s all about. You can’t be seen in public with the people you’re reporting to, or your cover’s blown.”

  Well, yes. I guess that made sense.

  “So you haven’t seen him, either.”

  He shook his head. “He’s a neo-Nazi skin-head. He has a reputation to uphold. Can’t be seen with the likes of me.”

  No, I guess he couldn’t. “So who is he reporting to?”

  He eyed me.

  “You can tell me,” I said. “Who am I going to tell?”

  “You know a lotta people. But I don’t imagine any of‘em would be putting Clay in danger.”

  Not likely. “So…?”

  “Yvonne,” Rafe said.

  My eyes widened. “You conscripted Yvonne?”

  He chuckled. “Not really. He goes in there and has breakfast every couple of days.”

  I grinned. “Let me guess. He has an expense account?”

  Rafe grinned back, but didn’t confirm or deny the existence of any such thing. “She asks him how he is. He says he’s fine. If he ever says anything else, she’s supposed to contact me.”

  “And you run to the rescue?”

  “Not hardly,” Rafe said, leaning his posterior against the island and folding his arms across his chest. The viper tattooed around his bicep flexed. “Yvonne calls me, I call someone else, and somebody shows up at the body shop with a rattle in the engine of their car. While Clay takes a look, he passes on the message. Then that message comes back to me the same way, and I determine what needs to be done.”

  Fascinating. “But that hasn’t happened yet.”

  He shook his head. “So far, everything’s been fine. No need for interference.”

  Hopefully that would continue to be the case. I fished a strand of angel hair out of the pot, bit into it, and caught the dangling ends. “This is done.”

  “I’ll get the plates,” Rafe said and headed for the cabinet while I took the pot to the stove and drained the pasta into the colander that was waiting there.

  “So what’s going on with the serial killer case?” I asked three minutes later, when we’d gotten the food onto plates and were sitting side by side at the kitchen island digging in. “Any news?”

  “Not on the serial killer.” He put a forkful of pasta in his mouth and tucked the dangling ends tidily in at the end. When he’d finished chewing, he added, “The ME said the COD was manual strangulation.”

  “He wrapped his hands around her throat and squeezed,” I translated.

  Rafe nodded. “Face to face and with his bare hands.”

  So a fairly intimate way to commit murder. Except— “There’s no reason to think he knew these women, right?”

  Rafe shook his head. “He mighta known one or two. Most likely the first. They often start with someone they know.”

  ‘They’ being serial killers, I assumed. “Have you looked into the first victim this guy killed?”

  “Today I’ve been looking into the last,” Rafe said and tucked another forkful of angel hair into his mouth.

  “Did you find out anything you didn’t know this morning?”

  “Spicer and Truman tracked her down to the truck stop down the street from your old apartment, down there by the bridge. A waitress in the restaurant said she was there in the early part of the day, but she don’t know what happened to her after that.”

  “Cameras?” I twirled my fork around in the angel hair and conveyed it to my mouth.

  He shook his head. “Nothing on’em that we can use. Spicer and Truman checked. If this is a route he’s been driving for two decades, he knows how to avoid the cameras.”

  Clearly. “I don’t suppose they keep track of the trucks that come through?”

  “No,” Rafe said. “It’s just like any other gas station and market along the interstate, only for bigger vehicles. The truckers don’t have to check in or nothing.”

  Of course not. That would be too easy.

  “So pretty much all we know is that sometime between the early part of the day, when the waitress saw her, and whenever the body was discovered at the truck stop here in Maury County, she got into somebody’s vehicle.”

  “That’s it,” Rafe nodded.

  “It’s only about an hour’s drive, maybe a little less, so where were they during the five or six or however many hours they were together?”

  “Coulda been parked in a corner of the lot in Nashville,” Rafe said. “Coulda been parked in a corner of the lot here. Coulda been parked somewhere along the way.”

  “Wouldn’t somebody have heard…” I hesitated, “something?”

  He arched a brow. “Screaming? Not sure anybody’d notice. A lot of the truckers pick up women, and when they park outta the way, the other truckers generally assume it’s for privacy. Besides, it’s easy to soundproof the cab of a truck. A lot of truckers do it just ‘cause the engine’s loud.”

  And whatever they did to keep the sound of the engine out would work equally well to keep any sounds from within the cab in. Right.

  “So nobody saw or heard anything.”

  “Nobody I’ve talked to so far,” Rafe said.

  “What’s next?”

  He shrugged. “Talk to more people. And I oughta find out if somebody like the FBI has some sort of a task force going. If they do, they’re gonna want in. And they ain’t gonna be happy if they find out we kept it from them.”

  I shook my head. “Probably best to stay on the right side of the FBI.”

  Rafe nodded, and pushed his plate away. “I’m gonna go grab a shower if you don’t mind. Rinse some of the sweat and frustration off.”

  “Go ahead,” I told him. “I’ll clean up.”

  “Thanks for dinner, darlin’.” He dropped a kiss on top of my head on his way out of the kitchen. I finished eating while I listened to the rushing of water in the pipes. Pearl was snuffling on her pillow, and Carrie was cooing in her seat, trying to get a foot up to her face so she could gnaw on it.

  When the phone chirped, I pulled it closer with one hand while I kept feeding myself pasta with the other. And saw Charlotte’s name and New iMessage on the screen.

  “Uh-oh.”

  New video, Charlotte told me.


  I followed the link to Jessica Rabbit’s page, and saw that she—probably she—had uploaded another snippet of film of my husband, in his SWAT clothes and boots this time, leaving the police station and getting into his car. There were the usual heart-eyed emoji and verbal sighs, but less than last night’s and this morning’s video. Hopefully the rest of the public at large was starting to lose interest. And if that happened, maybe Jessica would lose interest, too. There was just the chance that she—probably she—was doing this for attention and not because she had any particular interest in my husband.

  That wasn’t my biggest concern at the moment, though.

  The pasta started to taste like sawdust in my mouth, so I stopped eating and started clearing the island, and putting the dishes into the dishwasher. When the kitchen was neat and tidy again, I stuck the phone in my pocket and picked up Carrie and her seat. “We’re moving to the parlor,” I told Pearl. “You can stay here if you want, or come with us.”

  She contemplated me for a second, but when I headed across the floor and into the hallway, she got up and stretched and padded after me, her nails clicking on the hardwood floors.

  Rafe joined us a couple of minutes later, dressed in faded jeans and a soft T-shirt, with his feet bare and his hair—what little he has—still wet.

  “Come and look at this,” I told him. “Jessica Rabbit posted another video of you.”

  He watched it in silence. It wasn’t long.

  “Did you notice her this time?”

  He glanced over at me. “Can’t say as I did, darlin’.”

  “She didn’t call your name?”

  He shook his head.

  “If she’d had a gun,” I said, like I’d said earlier, “you’d be dead.”

  He nodded. “Looks like I’m gonna have to be more careful tomorrow.”

  “I wish you would. I’d also like to know whether you noticed anybody following you home tonight.”

  “No,” Rafe said.

  “No, you didn’t notice? Or no, nobody—”

  His voice was clipped, but I don’t think he was upset with me. “Nobody followed me home. It takes training and experience to shadow somebody. And I’ve been trained to look for a tail. She’d have to be really good for me to miss her, and I don’t imagine she is.”

  Most likely not. Most people aren’t good enough for that. And very few people have been trained.

  “So she doesn’t know where we live.”

  “I don’t imagine so,” Rafe said, and his voice slowed into more of his usual drawl when he continued. “Sorry, darlin’.”

  “Goodness,” I told him, “you don’t have to apologize. I know you don’t want this.”

  “No. Bringing something like this home’s the last thing I want.” He glanced over at Pearl, who had curled up on her pillow with her snout on her back legs. “Good thing you have protection.”

  She might look placid now, but we both knew that if someone threatened me, Pearl would be all up in their business in no time, and it wouldn’t end well.

  I nodded. “She’s healed well from the gunshot last month. I’d hate for something else to happen to her, but I’m glad to have her.”

  We sat in silence a moment and watched the baby kicking her feet on the blanket and Pearl supervising.

  “Looks like she’s trying to turn over,” Rafe said.

  It did. “It’s about time for that. According to the books. She’s over four months.”

  We watched for a little longer. Down on the floor, Carrie was rocking back and forth from side to side.

  “After that,” I added, “she’ll start crawling.”

  Rafe gave me a look. “Not sure I’m ready for that.”

  I nodded. “I know. Me either. Once she starts moving around, she can run into things, and fall down the stairs, and get hurt…”

  Rafe shuddered. Visibly. Down on the floor, as if to prove the point, Carrie rocked far enough onto her side that she tipped over on her stomach. Her little squeak of surprise made Pearl lift her head to make sure that everything was all right. Seeing that it was, she put her head back down again.

  “She did it,” Rafe said. His voice was flat.

  I nodded. “No going back now.”

  He leaned his head against the back of the sofa and groaned. Over on the pillow, Pearl raised her head and gave him an inquiring look.

  “It’s OK,” I told her. “He’s just being dramatic.”

  Rafe rolled his head in my direction and grinned. “No stopping time, I guess.”

  I shook my head. “I’m afraid not. We brought her into the world. Now we’ve got to deal with bringing her up.”

  “I suppose there are worse things,” Rafe said.

  “Much worse. Besides, we both made it to adulthood.” Him at considerable odds. “She’ll be all right.”

  “She ain’t the one I’m worried about,” Rafe said.

  Five

  He was up bright and early the next morning. That was usual. What wasn’t, was that I was right behind him. When he got out of the shower, I got in, and by the time I dripped my way out of the bathroom, he was dressed and on his way down the stairs.

  “Don’t leave without me,” I told him.

  He glanced at me—wet hair wound up in a towel, a second towel wrapped around my dripping body—and grinned. “Is it Bring Your Wife to Work Day?”

  “Not as far as I know. Just don’t leave.” I dashed into the bedroom and started throwing on clothes. Five minutes later—and any woman out there will appreciate what a sacrifice this was—I was dressed and had picked up the baby, changed her diaper, and carried her downstairs. My hair was still wet, now bundled into a messy topknot, and I had no makeup on.

  “Good.” I dropped onto one of the stools. “You’re still here.”

  My husband, who was making himself toast on the other side of the island, arched a brow. “What’s going on, darlin’?”

  “I just don’t want you to leave before I’ve had time to feed the baby,” I said.

  “’Cause?”

  “I’m following you to work.”

  “Some reason you think I can’t get there on my own?” He leaned against the counter and folded his arms.

  “Of course not,” I said, hitching my shirt up for the baby.

  “Thinking I’m stopping off somewhere on the way?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” I glanced up at him and saw that his lips were curved. “You’re not serious. Good.”

  “Why’d I wanna stop off anywhere when I got you at home?” He wandered over and dropped a kiss on my mouth, and then wandered back to catch the toast as it popped out of the toaster.

  “No reason at all,” I told him. “I’m not driving in with you. I’m taking my own car.”

  “I figured. You wanna see Tammy or something?” He reached for a butter knife to smear some of the yellow stuff across the piece of bread.

  “Not today. I mean… I’m always happy to see Grimaldi. But today I’d rather see the person who’s skulking around filming videos of you.”

  “Ah.” He bit into the toast. It crunched, and crumbs dropped. He caught them in his hand and flung them into the sink. “You think you’re gonna catch somebody in the act.”

  “Somebody’s doing it,” I said, “and probably not from the building across the street. Most likely whoever it is, is in plain sight, outside or maybe in a car. And if so, I should be able to see him or her.”

  Most likely her, but you never know. Rafe’s been known to set the pulses fluttering on gay guys from time to time, too.

  “This something you’re worried about, darlin’?”

  “Enough to look into it,” I said. “Neither of us wants a repeat of Elspeth Caulfield.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Better if Grimaldi could give you a bodyguard, I suppose—”

  He looked deeply offended at the idea that he couldn’t take care of himself, or that anyone else could take care of him better than he could, “—but she
probably doesn’t have anyone to spare. Not if all this person is using to shoot, is a camera. A gun would be worse.”

  “No kidding,” Rafe said. “No reason to worry about that, though.”

  No more reason than usual, anyway. He’d been shot just a few weeks ago. Or grazed, at least. And while it didn’t seem to bother him much, I remembered every time I got him naked and noticed the—still pink, still healing—scar.

  Not the first one on his body, either. He had plenty. And I’d like it a lot if he could refrain from getting any more. Although there’s a big difference between getting injured in the line of duty, when you’re someone who has signed on for a job where you run toward trouble when everyone else runs away, and getting shot by some fruitcake who has seen you on social media and decided you look good.

  “Just let me finish with Carrie, and we can go. I’ll just follow you there, and hang back a little. Park around the corner or something, and take a look around.”

  “Better if you head out first,” Rafe said, “so you can park and get into position before I get out of the car.”

  Good idea. And nice of him to enter into the plotting with so much gusto, especially when he probably figured it was nothing to worry about, and mostly a big joke.

  “I’ll do that,” I said, as I moved Carrie from one arm to the other. “What’s going on with you today?”

  “Just more digging. Tammy’s determined to find this guy.”

  “How does she plan to do that? He’s probably not even from around here.”

  He didn’t answer, and I added, “Right?”

  He shook his head. “Prob’ly not. No.”

  “He could be from anywhere between Mobile and… where?”

  “Gary, Indiana,” Rafe said. “And there’s no saying he’s from somewhere along the I-65 corridor. He could be from somewhere else and just drive up and down the interstate.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  He shrugged. “Job?”

  “Sure. But doesn’t it make more sense that he’s from somewhere not too far from I-65, or he wouldn’t have taken a job driving up and down I-65? I mean, if he lives in Memphis, say, it would make more sense to drive I-40, and kill women there instead.”