- Book info
- Sample
- Media
- Author updates
- Lists
Synopsis
"It's cold. And dark. I can't breathe." Successful, ambitious state prosecutor Grace Courtemanche is at the top of her game. Then she gets a chilling call from a young woman claiming to be buried alive. Desperate to find the victim before it's too late, Grace will do whatever it takes . . . even if it means excavating the darkest secrets of her own past and turning to the one man she thought she would never see again. FBI agent Theodore "Hatch" Hatcher is a man without roots-and that's the way he likes it. But when a grisly crime shatters Cyprus Bend, Florida, Hatch is dragged back to the small town-and the one woman-he hoped was in his rearview for good. Forced to confront the wreckage of their love affair, Hatch and Grace may just find that sometimes the deepest wounds leave the most beautiful scars-and that history repeating itself may just be what they need to stop a killer . . . and save their own hearts.
Release date: October 28, 2014
Publisher: Forever
Print pages: 384
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
Reader buzz
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
Author updates
Close
The Buried
Shelley Coriell
Chapter One
Momma was wrong.
Good things didn’t happen to good girls.
Tears seeped from Lia Grant’s eyes, and she inched a bloodied hand to her cheek and brushed away the dampness. She couldn’t see the tears. Or the blood.
Too dark.
But she felt the slickness running down her palms and wrists, the slivers of wood biting into the fleshy nubs of what was left of her fingers, and the heaviness pressing down on her chest, flattening her lungs.
Yes, Momma was wrong. Bad things happened to good girls.
A thick, heavy fog crept across her body, pushing her deeper into the earth.
She always tried to be a good girl, just like Momma wanted. Church every Sunday. Straight As in her first year of nursing studies. A job as a volunteer greeter at the Cypress Bend Medical Center. But that was far away from the dark, cold place where she now lay.
In a box.
Underground.
Somewhere on the bayou.
Chunks of earth thudded onto the wooden box that encased her body. She pressed her face to an ill-fitting corner and breathed in the sweet decay of the swamp above, a place where kites and warblers cried, gators splashed, and people walked and talked.
And breathed.
She pushed back the fog. Fought for another ragged breath. “Let me out. Please let me out.”
The thudding stopped, and a voice from above said, “I’m afraid that would be against the rules.”
Rules? There were rules that governed bad people doing bad things?
A scream coiled in the pit of her stomach and rushed up her throat. She beat her fists against the rough-hewn lid of her tomb.
Thud.
She kicked her sneakered feet.
Thud.
She bucked her hips and shoulders, her body a battering ram. Soupy earth oozed through one of the uneven seams, blotting out a ribbon of blue. She clawed at the sky. “No! Come back!”
Thud. Thud!
The whispers of air seeping through the gaps thinned. The fog pressed harder. She inched her arms above her head, easing the ache in her lungs. Something clattered, like bones rattling in a coffin. Was it a hand? A foot? An elbow? Dear God, she was falling apart.
She spread her fingers and found something cold and hard, small and square. Not a bone. More like a deck of playing cards. Did the devil who’d buried her alive want her to amuse herself as she suffocated?
Her sticky fingers slid over the small box, and a half breath caught in her throat. A phone. Had her captor dropped a phone? Would a phone work underground? She fumbled with the power button.
Light, glorious light, glowed on the face.
“Momma, oh, Momma! I’m here. Your good girl’s here.” Lia Grant reached up from her cold, dark grave and with bloodied fingertips punched in Momma’s phone number.
* * *
Grace: 345. Bad guys: 0.
Grace Courtemanche always kept score, a relatively easy task at this point in her career.
“Hey, counselor, one more picture.” A photographer from the Associated Press motioned to her as she stepped away from the microphone centered on the steps of the county courthouse.
Grace turned to the photographer and smiled. Lips together. Chin forward. Left eyebrow arched. Her colleagues called it her news-at-eleven smile, and tonight it would be splashed across television screens and newspapers throughout the Florida panhandle, right next to the stunned mug of Larry Morehouse. Morehouse, the former commander-in-chief of the state’s largest ring of prostitution houses masquerading as strip clubs, had just been slammed with a few not-so-minor convictions: conspiracy to engage in prostitution, coercion, money laundering, racketeering, and tax evasion. As lead prosecutor, Grace had dealt the blows, swift and hard, and she’d loved every minute of the fight.
Her step light, she wound through the buzzing crowd to the offices that housed the team of prosecutors from Florida’s Second Judicial Circuit. She pushed the button on the elevator that would take her to her third-floor, garden-view office and to defendant Helena Ring. Ring was the twenty-four-year-old meth user who’d given birth to a son in a rest stop toilet off Highway 319 and left the newborn to die amidst human waste. Florida v. Morehouse was over, and she couldn’t wait to dig into Florida v. Ring.
The phone at her waist buzzed. Call display showed RESTRICTED NUMBER. She banished the call to voicemail where it would be saved so she could forward it—and the six others she received today—to the sheriff’s department. Again she jabbed the elevator button. The calls from restricted numbers had started months ago when the Morehouse camp had approached her with a bribe, suggesting she offer the whorehouse king a deal down. She laughed then and now. The day she took a bribe was the day she dined with alligators. Both were dumb and dangerous, sure to bite you in the ass. With the elevator stuck on the second floor, she spun on her gray sling backs and took the stairs.
Inside her office, a man sitting in silhouette on the windowsill bent in a sweeping bow. “I shall buy you furs and chocolate bonbons and place diamonds at your feet,” her boss, Travis Theobold, said.
She switched on the light. “I’m sure your wife will take issue with that.”
“Nah. She knows you too well.” A man with a mop of silvery hair and a politician’s easy grin, her boss served as the state attorney for Florida’s Second Circuit. “Damn, Grace, you buried that son of a bitch and made us look brilliant.”
Some called her a justice-seeking missile. Those with less tact called her the Blond Bulldozer. In her youth her father had simply called her a winner. For the briefest of moments, she raised her gaze heavenward and allowed the corners of her mouth to tilt in a grin that wasn’t practiced, a little girl smile that came from a heart some defense attorneys claimed she didn’t have.
See that, Daddy, I won.
“Why don’t you knock off for the day? Come to Jeb’s with the rest of the team and celebrate?” Travis asked.
“Can’t. Helena Ring needs my immediate attention.” She settled behind her desk and switched on her computer.
Travis cupped his hand over hers. “You’re off the Ring case.”
She jammed her hair behind her ears. She must not have heard correctly. “Excuse me?”
“It’s about the bribe.”
“You mean the one Morehouse’s people offered and I didn’t take?” She made no attempt to keep the sharp edge out of her voice. She was fed up with Morehouse and his minions.
“This morning I received information about a bank account in Nevis in your name. Deposit records show a six-figure transfer from one of Morehouse’s companies.”
In her dreams. Until payday she had a whopping fifty-six dollars to her name. “This is clearly a twisted case of identity theft.”
“I agree, and when we’re done investigating, I hope to rack up a few more counts against Morehouse, but for now, I need you on vacation.” He held out his hand and waggled his fingers. “Keys, please.”
She recoiled as if those fingers were five baby cottonmouths. “You can’t be serious.”
His hand slithered closer.
Ten years ago, when her personal life had been slammed with a class five hurricane, this job had been her refuge, a safe place to land, a solid foundation on which to rebuild.
“Work with me on this,” Travis said. “Anyway, after the Morehouse case, you deserve a vacation.”
Her computer stared at her with its giant, unblinking blue eye. In the decade she’d worked at the SA’s office, she hadn’t taken a single vacation day. “Exactly what do people do on vacation?”
Travis gave her a devilish grin. “How about something with your new housemate?”
“Hah!” Last week her new housemate ruined her favorite silk suit, and this morning he broke the back door. “He’s about to be evicted.”
“How about your new place? Doesn’t construction begin soon?”
A hint of a smile chased away her scowl. Four months ago she’d been a player in a bidding war for the old Giroux place, twenty prize acres of land on the Cypress Bend River near Apalachicola Bay. There she planned to build her dream home, a two-story Greek revival with tennis courts and a tire swing.
Another win, Daddy. See it?
Travis had a point. It might be good to be home for a few days to oversee the start of construction. “Earth movers begin clearing tomorrow morning,” she said.
“So go home, drink champagne, and celebrate that you, dear Grace, are living the dream, that you are one of the privileged souls who gets everything you ever go after.”
A face with eyes the color of a July sky flashed into her head. No, not everything.
She jerked open her briefcase, dug through the mountain of papers, and finally unearthed her keys. As Travis plucked them from her hand, her phone vibrated again. With a jab and a glare, she sent the call to voicemail.
“Another Morehouse crank?” Travis asked.
“Eight calls today from a restricted number. Fits his M.O.”
“You’ll report this to the sheriff’s office?”
“Of course.” She was independent, not stupid.
“Seriously, Grace, be careful out there. Your new place is remote, and with Morehouse in jail, his people are riled.”
With Travis’s footsteps fading in the hall, she turned to her computer and flexed her fingers. If she was going on vacation, Helena Ring was going with her. She typed in her pass code and hit, Enter.
Denied.
She rekeyed the information.
Denied.
After ten years, her boss knew her well. “Okay,” she said with a laugh, “I’m going on vacation.”
She turned off her computer, and her unknown caller buzzed again. Cranks thrived on reaction, but she might as well see what she could get for the sheriff’s office. “Grace Courtemanche.”
A pause stretched along the line followed by a sharp intake of breath, almost a gasp. “G…g…grace, is it really you?” The voice was soft and female, low and scratchy. “I’ve been trying to reach you, but no one answered. Got your voice mail. Over and over. Why, Grace, why didn’t you answer your phone?”
The words pricked at the base of her neck. “Who is this?”
Raspy breath. “L…Lia Grant.”
“Listen, Lia Grant, or whoever you are, I—”
“It’s cold. And dark. I can’t breathe.” Hollow rattling poured across the line, like stones rolling about a wooden box.
“I don’t know who you are or what you want—”
“Help! I want help. I’m in a box. Underground.” A cracked sob, as if the caller’s body had been torn in two, followed. “I need your help.”
Grace ran her fingers along the scattered pearls at her neck. Not just help. Your help. Which made no sense. Grace didn’t know Lia Grant, had never heard of Lia Grant, and there was no reason for Lia Grant to call her if she was in trouble.
“Please, Grace, help me.” The whisper burrowed deeper, the hushed words bone-chilling cold. If this was the Morehouse camp orchestrating another crank call meant to unnerve her, they’d hired a damn good actress. “Tell Momma I tried to be a good girl. I tried…” Another strangled sob poured out of the phone followed by a long, broken wheeze.
Cold shot across Grace’s body, freezing any further arguments. “Lia?”
No words, just a faint push of breath.
“Lia. Where are you?”
More breathy whispers.
“Lia, talk to me. Tell me where you are.”
Click.
The lights on Grace’s phone flickered out. Lia Grant was gone. The air in her office thinned. No, Lia Grant was not entirely gone. She called up her voicemail, her heartbeat quickening at the eight messages. She pushed, Play.
Beeeeep. Dial tone.
Beeeeep. “Um…my name is Lia Grant and I need your help. Please call me as soon as possible. This is”—cracking voice—“an emergency. Um…thank you.”
Beeeeep. “It’s Lia again. Call me. Please.”
Beeeeep. “Listen, Grace, I need your help. This is going to sound crazy but someone put me in a box and…and buried me. The box isn’t airtight, but it’s getting harder to breathe. I’m not sure where I’m at, somewhere in the swamp, maybe near Apalachicola. Please call me. Please.”
Beeeeep. “Dammit, Grace, pick up your stupid phone!”
Beeeeep. Sob. “I’m sorry for yelling. I’m in a bad place, Grace, really bad.”
Beeeeep. Dial tone.
Beeeeep. Cough. “Hey, Grace. It’s me again. Lia. The phone, it’s dying.” Choky sob. “This may be my last call. Please call my momma and tell her I love her. God bless.”
Click.
The tendons at Grace’s wrist strained under the heavy silence. In her ten years with the State Attorney’s office, she’d encountered real fear and real terror in the voices of victims who’d been violated and in the whispered truths of witnesses who’d come face-to-face with evil. And there was something about Lia’s voice, something grave and desperate and real.
An uncharacteristic tremor rocked her hand as she retrieved her contacts on speed dial.
“Franklin County Sherriff’s Department, Criminal Division,” a cheery voice answered. “How can I direct your call?”
Chapter Two
Gulf of Mexico, Off Florida Coast
Hatch Hatcher adjusted the jib, propped his bare feet on a five-gallon bait bucket, and tilted his face to the sun-soaked sky. He had steady winds, low chop. Should be straight-line sailing. At this rate, he’d arrive in New Orleans with time on his hands.
He ran a hand through his hair. Too long. He should probably get a trim before his presentation in the Big Easy. He was giving a talk to regional law enforcers on crisis negotiations and would be representing the Blue Suits. He tugged off his T-shirt and balled it under his head. Or not. He grabbed an icy longneck from the cooler at his side. Natalia lived in New Orleans. Clara, too. He uncapped the beer. His was a good life. A job he loved, beautiful women in every port, and time to travel the world on a boat called No Regrets.
He raised his beer, toasting the sun and sea.
His satellite phone rang. Caller ID showed a number from Cypress Bend. The bottle froze midway to his mouth. He knew one person in Cypress Bend, but she wanted nothing to do with him. She’d made that clear ten years ago when she’d sent him sailing from Apalachicola Bay. His fingers tightened around the bottle, the veins in his forearm thickening and rising.
Nope. Not going there. Because he wanted nothing to do with her, either.
He pushed away the past. Gathered in the peace.
Always peace.
As he reached for his fishing pole, the call went to voicemail and he noticed the blinking light on the phone. One other message, this one from the Box, headquarters for the FBI’s Special Criminal Investigative Unit. His team. He couldn’t ignore that call.
“Hey, Sugar and Spice, miss me?” Hatch said when his teammate Evie Jimenez answered the phone. Evie was the SCIU’s bomb and weapons specialist, and he loved getting her fired up.
“I refuse to feed your gargantuan ego,” Evie said. “You may have every woman east of the Mississippi charmed by that syrupy drawl, but not me, amigo. Speaking of your ego, we got a call from Atlanta PD. The kid you talked into giving up his boom box at the high school got a seriously mentally ill designation. He’s in a treatment center and getting his life together. One of the Atlanta news stations wants to do a feature on you.”
“Tell ’em I’m on assignment.” Hatch’s role as a crisis negotiator was simple. Get in. Defuse. Get out. “Park around?”
“Yep, but he’s in the communications room with some techie. Computer crashed again.”
Hatch grinned around another swig. The Box was a huge glass, chrome, and concrete structure on the rocky cliffs of northern Maine, and while the SCIU’s official headquarters looked like an ultra-modern marvel, it had a notoriously cranky computer system.
“I’m returning his call,” he said. “You know what he wanted?”
Evie paused, which sent warning sirens blaring through his head. His fiery teammate never paused for anything.
“Okay, Evie, what’s up?”
Another beat of silence. “Have you checked your e-mail?”
“Not today.” Technically, not for a few days. His work featured long, intense moments of negotiation with men and women in the throes of crisis, insanity, rage, or a soul-sucking combination of all three. So when time allowed, Hatch set sail, which was why he’d ended up with Parker’s team. His boss understood his need to disconnect. Hatch had spent the past week anchored near the sugary sand dunes of Islamorada in the Florida Keys hunting for buried treasure.
“Then you haven’t heard about Alex?” Evie continued.
“Alex?”
“Alex Milanos.” The quiet stretched on. “Your son.”
A burst of laughter shot over his lips. “Good one.” He was careful about these things. He didn’t do long-term commitments, and his disastrous relationship with his old man had cured him of any parental longings.
“This isn’t a joke, Hatch. A woman from Cypress Bend contacted the Box and insisted on talking to you. Parker finally took her call. Name’s Trina Milanos, and she claims her daughter, Vanessa, knew you, as in the biblical sense, and that Vanessa’s thirteen-year-old son is yours.”
Hatch studied an icy bead on his longneck as if it were a tiny crystal ball. Vanessa Milanos? He couldn’t picture a face. The name didn’t ring a bell either, and he certainly didn’t associate it with Cypress Bend. Cypress Bend was Princess Grace’s kingdom. Grace Courtemanche was royalty, and he’d told her that every night as they lay intertwined on the deck of No Regrets, drenched in sweat and moonlight.
But this call from Cypress Bend had nothing to do with Grace Courtemanche. Some other woman claimed he had a thirteen-year-old son. He did the math. The timing could work. In his college days, he’d spent a number of summers on St. George Island, one of the barrier islands below the Florida panhandle. He’d taught sailing to kids at a posh summer camp, and before the summer of Princess Grace, he’d had a string of women on his boat and in his bed. But he was careful about these things.
“At the risk of being blunt, I don’t leave bits and pieces of me around,” he told Evie.
“That’s part of the problem. Sounds like Vanessa Milanos wanted you in the worst way, and she admitted to her mother that since she couldn’t have you, she’d settle for a piece of you. She sabotaged your efforts at protection. Take a look at the picture in the e-mail. Same shaggy blond hair. Same baby blues. Same killer dimples. Plus Parker, being Parker, had a rush DNA test done.” Evie paused. “It’s a match, padre. He’s your son.”
Hatch’s throat constricted, and he stretched his neck, trying to ease the way for words. As a crisis negotiator, words were his tools, his constant companions, always at the ready.
“There’s more, Hatch,” Evie added. “The granny needs you in Cypress Bend pronto. It appears your son has gotten himself into trouble. He’s in jail.”
* * *
Grace needed a bomb. Nothing fancy. Nothing complicated. Just something with the ability to blow up the attitudinal Ford compact she now called her own. She unbuckled her seatbelt, reached across her car, and took a hammer from the glove compartment. Hitting something sounded good.
“’Nother dead battery, Miss Courtemanche?” The security guard that prowled the government buildings clucked his tongue as he walked up beside her.
“This month it’s the starter.”
“Man, you didn’t have problems like this when you owned that fine Mercedes. Now there was a car. You need some help, counselor?”
Help me!
Then call me! Grace shot a look at her phone on the dash. Ringer on. Fully charged. And painfully silent. No more calls from Lia Grant. And no update yet from the deputy at the sheriff’s department who promised to look into the calls immediately.
“Thanks, Armand, but I can take care of it myself.”
An hour later and with Lia Grant’s voice still echoing through her head, Grace turned onto a rutted road winding into the swamp and drove to a one-bedroom shack with a sagging front porch and rusted metal roof. Feathery cypress branches filtered the retreating sun, but even the seductive cover of lacy shade couldn’t soften the wretchedness of her new home. She climbed the rickety porch steps and tripped over a knobby column of white. Another bone, this one a grisly joint speckled with bits of dried flesh.
“Dammit, Allegheny Blue, how many of these do you have?” An ancient blue tick hound sprawled in front of the door opened a cloudy eye. He heaved himself up and rested his head against her thigh. She nudged him away with her knee. “Don’t even pretend we’re friends.”
She tossed the bone into a trashcan on the porch, where it clunked and rattled among the dozen already there. “No more bones.”
Her new housemate licked his lips, sending a line of drool across the hem of her skirt, and followed her inside where she reset the alarm, not that the shack held anything of value. Most of her furniture and home electronics were in storage. But her boss was right; her new place was remote, a good half mile from her closest neighbor, hence the security system.
With Blue at her heels, she filled the dog’s food dish with dry chow, softened with warm water. When he looked at her with drooping eyes that had seen way too many doggy years, she said, “You’re going to die of clogged arteries. You know that, don’t you?”
He licked his lips.
She sighed and opened the refrigerator.
It’s cold…Help me!
“I did!” Grace grabbed a piece of cooked bacon and slammed the door. Another wave of frosted air prickled her skin. “Okay, after the ninth call.” She tore the bacon into bits and threw them in Blue’s bowl. “What more am I supposed to do?”
Winners do, Gracie, and doers win. Not Lia’s words. Her daddy’s.
She breathed in his calm and confidence. “You need my help, Lia? Fine. You got me.” She set Blue’s bowl on the floor with a clank. The old dog thumped his tail against her leg and dug his nose into his dinner.
Grace dug out her phone and called Jim Breck, the internal security chief and her go-to guy with a local wireless phone company. The SA’s office regularly turned to him for wiretaps and call records.
“Counselor Courtemanche, why does it not surprise me that you’re working after hours?” Jim said. “Haven’t you heard there’s life beyond the office? Things like families and hobbies.”
She laughed. “Not for souls like you and me, Jim. Now, did someone from the sheriff’s department contact you this afternoon for a call search?”
“Not yet.”
Probably because the deputy didn’t have Lia Grant screaming in his ear. “I need to know the subscriber’s name and contact information on a series of calls I received.”
“Got the paperwork?”
No, and she wasn’t likely to get a subpoena, not while on vacation. “This isn’t an official investigation,” she said.
“Sorry. Can’t move forward without a subpoena.”
Sometimes you had to bulldoze past a few roadblocks. “I received nine calls from a stranger begging for my help. This whole thing could be a series of crank calls from associates of a convicted felon who’s been harassing me. Or it could be a young woman in danger and running out of time. I’m seriously leaning toward the latter.”
Jim said nothing. She said nothing, letting her track record speak.
“Let me see what I can do,” he finally said. An excruciating two minutes later he came back on the line. “Interesting.”
Without a subpoena, they were walking a fine line. “Can you verify the subscriber’s name?” Grace asked.
“No.”
“Can you verify the subscriber’s address?”
“No.”
No surprise there. “Can you verify it was a prepaid phone?”
“Yes.”
“And let me guess, the subscriber is listed as Mickey Mouse.”
Jim cleared his throat and said with a cough, “Clark Kent.”
Much like Allegheny Blue and his search for bones, Grace couldn’t let go. “Where was the phone purchased?”
“Retailer in Port St. Joe.”
“If I give you the time of the calls, can you tell me the location?” She rolled her shoulders and flexed her wrists, a warm-up of sorts, like in tennis.
“Caller didn’t activate GPS functionality, but according to the Call Data Record, the call came off the Cypress Point cell tower. It’s an OmniSite covering a three-mile section. Topo map shows dense swamp, a handful of high-end resort properties, and a few residences.”
Her wrists stilled mid-circle as she peered at the shades of gray outside her kitchen window. Lia Grant’s calls had been made within three miles of her home. Creepy coincidence? She gave both hands a shake. Even more reason to keep digging.
After thanking Jim, she called up a search engine and searched for “Lia Grant” and “Florida.” A dozen hits turned up, including one about a young woman who lived in nearby Carrabelle. Within fifteen minutes Grace had a full page of notes on the nineteen-year-old nursing student, including a current address and—she grabbed her cell—a phone number.
After eight rings, a groggy voice came on the line. “’lo.”
“Lia Grant, please.”
“Lia’s not here.” Yawn. “Who’s this?”
“Grace Courtemanche. She called me this afternoon.” Nine times. “I’m returning her call.”
“You spoke to Lia today?” Something rustled, and when the voice spoke again, all fuzziness was gone. “I’ve been trying to reach her all day. Last night she had a volunteer shift at the hospital, and she borrowed my car but hasn’t returned it. If you talk to her, tell her to get her ass and my wheels home.”
“I’ll be sure to relay the message.” Because Grace was going to find this girl. She phoned the Cypress Bend Medical Center, and the woman manning the welcome desk said Lia had not shown for her volunteer shift.
“Quite odd for Lia,” the chatty woman said. “Although she’s young, she’s a responsible little thing, a real good girl.”
Tell Momma I tried to be a good girl.
Grace hung up and reached for her purse. “No, Lia, I’m not going to talk to your mother because you’re going to tell her yourself.” The lump of dog struggled to his feet. “You’re not going with me. You shed and drool, and you stink.” She opened the front door and Blue lumbered past her, a slow-moving avalanche. “Dammit, Blue! Get back here.” He plodded across the drive and planted his butt near her car. Tonight she didn’t have time to fight. She opened the passenger door. “The vet said you’re supposed to be dead by now.”
This time her car started on the first crank, and Grace took the route from Lia’s apartment—the place she was last seen—to the medical center—the place where she never showed. She crept along the two-lane highway bordered by swamp, pine forests, and a deserted oyster processing plant that reeked of long-dead fish. No stalled vehicles. No signs of foul play.
The employee section of the hospital parking lot had two security lights, both burned out. She aimed her headlights at the rows of cars, slamming on the brake when she spotted a blue hybrid. She checked the license plate number Lia’s roommate had given her. A match.
“This is too easy,” Grace said to Allegheny Blue as they got out of the car.
The hybrid was locked. No obvious damage, but between the front tires, Grace spotted something white and knobby, like one. . .
Momma was wrong.
Good things didn’t happen to good girls.
Tears seeped from Lia Grant’s eyes, and she inched a bloodied hand to her cheek and brushed away the dampness. She couldn’t see the tears. Or the blood.
Too dark.
But she felt the slickness running down her palms and wrists, the slivers of wood biting into the fleshy nubs of what was left of her fingers, and the heaviness pressing down on her chest, flattening her lungs.
Yes, Momma was wrong. Bad things happened to good girls.
A thick, heavy fog crept across her body, pushing her deeper into the earth.
She always tried to be a good girl, just like Momma wanted. Church every Sunday. Straight As in her first year of nursing studies. A job as a volunteer greeter at the Cypress Bend Medical Center. But that was far away from the dark, cold place where she now lay.
In a box.
Underground.
Somewhere on the bayou.
Chunks of earth thudded onto the wooden box that encased her body. She pressed her face to an ill-fitting corner and breathed in the sweet decay of the swamp above, a place where kites and warblers cried, gators splashed, and people walked and talked.
And breathed.
She pushed back the fog. Fought for another ragged breath. “Let me out. Please let me out.”
The thudding stopped, and a voice from above said, “I’m afraid that would be against the rules.”
Rules? There were rules that governed bad people doing bad things?
A scream coiled in the pit of her stomach and rushed up her throat. She beat her fists against the rough-hewn lid of her tomb.
Thud.
She kicked her sneakered feet.
Thud.
She bucked her hips and shoulders, her body a battering ram. Soupy earth oozed through one of the uneven seams, blotting out a ribbon of blue. She clawed at the sky. “No! Come back!”
Thud. Thud!
The whispers of air seeping through the gaps thinned. The fog pressed harder. She inched her arms above her head, easing the ache in her lungs. Something clattered, like bones rattling in a coffin. Was it a hand? A foot? An elbow? Dear God, she was falling apart.
She spread her fingers and found something cold and hard, small and square. Not a bone. More like a deck of playing cards. Did the devil who’d buried her alive want her to amuse herself as she suffocated?
Her sticky fingers slid over the small box, and a half breath caught in her throat. A phone. Had her captor dropped a phone? Would a phone work underground? She fumbled with the power button.
Light, glorious light, glowed on the face.
“Momma, oh, Momma! I’m here. Your good girl’s here.” Lia Grant reached up from her cold, dark grave and with bloodied fingertips punched in Momma’s phone number.
* * *
Grace: 345. Bad guys: 0.
Grace Courtemanche always kept score, a relatively easy task at this point in her career.
“Hey, counselor, one more picture.” A photographer from the Associated Press motioned to her as she stepped away from the microphone centered on the steps of the county courthouse.
Grace turned to the photographer and smiled. Lips together. Chin forward. Left eyebrow arched. Her colleagues called it her news-at-eleven smile, and tonight it would be splashed across television screens and newspapers throughout the Florida panhandle, right next to the stunned mug of Larry Morehouse. Morehouse, the former commander-in-chief of the state’s largest ring of prostitution houses masquerading as strip clubs, had just been slammed with a few not-so-minor convictions: conspiracy to engage in prostitution, coercion, money laundering, racketeering, and tax evasion. As lead prosecutor, Grace had dealt the blows, swift and hard, and she’d loved every minute of the fight.
Her step light, she wound through the buzzing crowd to the offices that housed the team of prosecutors from Florida’s Second Judicial Circuit. She pushed the button on the elevator that would take her to her third-floor, garden-view office and to defendant Helena Ring. Ring was the twenty-four-year-old meth user who’d given birth to a son in a rest stop toilet off Highway 319 and left the newborn to die amidst human waste. Florida v. Morehouse was over, and she couldn’t wait to dig into Florida v. Ring.
The phone at her waist buzzed. Call display showed RESTRICTED NUMBER. She banished the call to voicemail where it would be saved so she could forward it—and the six others she received today—to the sheriff’s department. Again she jabbed the elevator button. The calls from restricted numbers had started months ago when the Morehouse camp had approached her with a bribe, suggesting she offer the whorehouse king a deal down. She laughed then and now. The day she took a bribe was the day she dined with alligators. Both were dumb and dangerous, sure to bite you in the ass. With the elevator stuck on the second floor, she spun on her gray sling backs and took the stairs.
Inside her office, a man sitting in silhouette on the windowsill bent in a sweeping bow. “I shall buy you furs and chocolate bonbons and place diamonds at your feet,” her boss, Travis Theobold, said.
She switched on the light. “I’m sure your wife will take issue with that.”
“Nah. She knows you too well.” A man with a mop of silvery hair and a politician’s easy grin, her boss served as the state attorney for Florida’s Second Circuit. “Damn, Grace, you buried that son of a bitch and made us look brilliant.”
Some called her a justice-seeking missile. Those with less tact called her the Blond Bulldozer. In her youth her father had simply called her a winner. For the briefest of moments, she raised her gaze heavenward and allowed the corners of her mouth to tilt in a grin that wasn’t practiced, a little girl smile that came from a heart some defense attorneys claimed she didn’t have.
See that, Daddy, I won.
“Why don’t you knock off for the day? Come to Jeb’s with the rest of the team and celebrate?” Travis asked.
“Can’t. Helena Ring needs my immediate attention.” She settled behind her desk and switched on her computer.
Travis cupped his hand over hers. “You’re off the Ring case.”
She jammed her hair behind her ears. She must not have heard correctly. “Excuse me?”
“It’s about the bribe.”
“You mean the one Morehouse’s people offered and I didn’t take?” She made no attempt to keep the sharp edge out of her voice. She was fed up with Morehouse and his minions.
“This morning I received information about a bank account in Nevis in your name. Deposit records show a six-figure transfer from one of Morehouse’s companies.”
In her dreams. Until payday she had a whopping fifty-six dollars to her name. “This is clearly a twisted case of identity theft.”
“I agree, and when we’re done investigating, I hope to rack up a few more counts against Morehouse, but for now, I need you on vacation.” He held out his hand and waggled his fingers. “Keys, please.”
She recoiled as if those fingers were five baby cottonmouths. “You can’t be serious.”
His hand slithered closer.
Ten years ago, when her personal life had been slammed with a class five hurricane, this job had been her refuge, a safe place to land, a solid foundation on which to rebuild.
“Work with me on this,” Travis said. “Anyway, after the Morehouse case, you deserve a vacation.”
Her computer stared at her with its giant, unblinking blue eye. In the decade she’d worked at the SA’s office, she hadn’t taken a single vacation day. “Exactly what do people do on vacation?”
Travis gave her a devilish grin. “How about something with your new housemate?”
“Hah!” Last week her new housemate ruined her favorite silk suit, and this morning he broke the back door. “He’s about to be evicted.”
“How about your new place? Doesn’t construction begin soon?”
A hint of a smile chased away her scowl. Four months ago she’d been a player in a bidding war for the old Giroux place, twenty prize acres of land on the Cypress Bend River near Apalachicola Bay. There she planned to build her dream home, a two-story Greek revival with tennis courts and a tire swing.
Another win, Daddy. See it?
Travis had a point. It might be good to be home for a few days to oversee the start of construction. “Earth movers begin clearing tomorrow morning,” she said.
“So go home, drink champagne, and celebrate that you, dear Grace, are living the dream, that you are one of the privileged souls who gets everything you ever go after.”
A face with eyes the color of a July sky flashed into her head. No, not everything.
She jerked open her briefcase, dug through the mountain of papers, and finally unearthed her keys. As Travis plucked them from her hand, her phone vibrated again. With a jab and a glare, she sent the call to voicemail.
“Another Morehouse crank?” Travis asked.
“Eight calls today from a restricted number. Fits his M.O.”
“You’ll report this to the sheriff’s office?”
“Of course.” She was independent, not stupid.
“Seriously, Grace, be careful out there. Your new place is remote, and with Morehouse in jail, his people are riled.”
With Travis’s footsteps fading in the hall, she turned to her computer and flexed her fingers. If she was going on vacation, Helena Ring was going with her. She typed in her pass code and hit, Enter.
Denied.
She rekeyed the information.
Denied.
After ten years, her boss knew her well. “Okay,” she said with a laugh, “I’m going on vacation.”
She turned off her computer, and her unknown caller buzzed again. Cranks thrived on reaction, but she might as well see what she could get for the sheriff’s office. “Grace Courtemanche.”
A pause stretched along the line followed by a sharp intake of breath, almost a gasp. “G…g…grace, is it really you?” The voice was soft and female, low and scratchy. “I’ve been trying to reach you, but no one answered. Got your voice mail. Over and over. Why, Grace, why didn’t you answer your phone?”
The words pricked at the base of her neck. “Who is this?”
Raspy breath. “L…Lia Grant.”
“Listen, Lia Grant, or whoever you are, I—”
“It’s cold. And dark. I can’t breathe.” Hollow rattling poured across the line, like stones rolling about a wooden box.
“I don’t know who you are or what you want—”
“Help! I want help. I’m in a box. Underground.” A cracked sob, as if the caller’s body had been torn in two, followed. “I need your help.”
Grace ran her fingers along the scattered pearls at her neck. Not just help. Your help. Which made no sense. Grace didn’t know Lia Grant, had never heard of Lia Grant, and there was no reason for Lia Grant to call her if she was in trouble.
“Please, Grace, help me.” The whisper burrowed deeper, the hushed words bone-chilling cold. If this was the Morehouse camp orchestrating another crank call meant to unnerve her, they’d hired a damn good actress. “Tell Momma I tried to be a good girl. I tried…” Another strangled sob poured out of the phone followed by a long, broken wheeze.
Cold shot across Grace’s body, freezing any further arguments. “Lia?”
No words, just a faint push of breath.
“Lia. Where are you?”
More breathy whispers.
“Lia, talk to me. Tell me where you are.”
Click.
The lights on Grace’s phone flickered out. Lia Grant was gone. The air in her office thinned. No, Lia Grant was not entirely gone. She called up her voicemail, her heartbeat quickening at the eight messages. She pushed, Play.
Beeeeep. Dial tone.
Beeeeep. “Um…my name is Lia Grant and I need your help. Please call me as soon as possible. This is”—cracking voice—“an emergency. Um…thank you.”
Beeeeep. “It’s Lia again. Call me. Please.”
Beeeeep. “Listen, Grace, I need your help. This is going to sound crazy but someone put me in a box and…and buried me. The box isn’t airtight, but it’s getting harder to breathe. I’m not sure where I’m at, somewhere in the swamp, maybe near Apalachicola. Please call me. Please.”
Beeeeep. “Dammit, Grace, pick up your stupid phone!”
Beeeeep. Sob. “I’m sorry for yelling. I’m in a bad place, Grace, really bad.”
Beeeeep. Dial tone.
Beeeeep. Cough. “Hey, Grace. It’s me again. Lia. The phone, it’s dying.” Choky sob. “This may be my last call. Please call my momma and tell her I love her. God bless.”
Click.
The tendons at Grace’s wrist strained under the heavy silence. In her ten years with the State Attorney’s office, she’d encountered real fear and real terror in the voices of victims who’d been violated and in the whispered truths of witnesses who’d come face-to-face with evil. And there was something about Lia’s voice, something grave and desperate and real.
An uncharacteristic tremor rocked her hand as she retrieved her contacts on speed dial.
“Franklin County Sherriff’s Department, Criminal Division,” a cheery voice answered. “How can I direct your call?”
Chapter Two
Gulf of Mexico, Off Florida Coast
Hatch Hatcher adjusted the jib, propped his bare feet on a five-gallon bait bucket, and tilted his face to the sun-soaked sky. He had steady winds, low chop. Should be straight-line sailing. At this rate, he’d arrive in New Orleans with time on his hands.
He ran a hand through his hair. Too long. He should probably get a trim before his presentation in the Big Easy. He was giving a talk to regional law enforcers on crisis negotiations and would be representing the Blue Suits. He tugged off his T-shirt and balled it under his head. Or not. He grabbed an icy longneck from the cooler at his side. Natalia lived in New Orleans. Clara, too. He uncapped the beer. His was a good life. A job he loved, beautiful women in every port, and time to travel the world on a boat called No Regrets.
He raised his beer, toasting the sun and sea.
His satellite phone rang. Caller ID showed a number from Cypress Bend. The bottle froze midway to his mouth. He knew one person in Cypress Bend, but she wanted nothing to do with him. She’d made that clear ten years ago when she’d sent him sailing from Apalachicola Bay. His fingers tightened around the bottle, the veins in his forearm thickening and rising.
Nope. Not going there. Because he wanted nothing to do with her, either.
He pushed away the past. Gathered in the peace.
Always peace.
As he reached for his fishing pole, the call went to voicemail and he noticed the blinking light on the phone. One other message, this one from the Box, headquarters for the FBI’s Special Criminal Investigative Unit. His team. He couldn’t ignore that call.
“Hey, Sugar and Spice, miss me?” Hatch said when his teammate Evie Jimenez answered the phone. Evie was the SCIU’s bomb and weapons specialist, and he loved getting her fired up.
“I refuse to feed your gargantuan ego,” Evie said. “You may have every woman east of the Mississippi charmed by that syrupy drawl, but not me, amigo. Speaking of your ego, we got a call from Atlanta PD. The kid you talked into giving up his boom box at the high school got a seriously mentally ill designation. He’s in a treatment center and getting his life together. One of the Atlanta news stations wants to do a feature on you.”
“Tell ’em I’m on assignment.” Hatch’s role as a crisis negotiator was simple. Get in. Defuse. Get out. “Park around?”
“Yep, but he’s in the communications room with some techie. Computer crashed again.”
Hatch grinned around another swig. The Box was a huge glass, chrome, and concrete structure on the rocky cliffs of northern Maine, and while the SCIU’s official headquarters looked like an ultra-modern marvel, it had a notoriously cranky computer system.
“I’m returning his call,” he said. “You know what he wanted?”
Evie paused, which sent warning sirens blaring through his head. His fiery teammate never paused for anything.
“Okay, Evie, what’s up?”
Another beat of silence. “Have you checked your e-mail?”
“Not today.” Technically, not for a few days. His work featured long, intense moments of negotiation with men and women in the throes of crisis, insanity, rage, or a soul-sucking combination of all three. So when time allowed, Hatch set sail, which was why he’d ended up with Parker’s team. His boss understood his need to disconnect. Hatch had spent the past week anchored near the sugary sand dunes of Islamorada in the Florida Keys hunting for buried treasure.
“Then you haven’t heard about Alex?” Evie continued.
“Alex?”
“Alex Milanos.” The quiet stretched on. “Your son.”
A burst of laughter shot over his lips. “Good one.” He was careful about these things. He didn’t do long-term commitments, and his disastrous relationship with his old man had cured him of any parental longings.
“This isn’t a joke, Hatch. A woman from Cypress Bend contacted the Box and insisted on talking to you. Parker finally took her call. Name’s Trina Milanos, and she claims her daughter, Vanessa, knew you, as in the biblical sense, and that Vanessa’s thirteen-year-old son is yours.”
Hatch studied an icy bead on his longneck as if it were a tiny crystal ball. Vanessa Milanos? He couldn’t picture a face. The name didn’t ring a bell either, and he certainly didn’t associate it with Cypress Bend. Cypress Bend was Princess Grace’s kingdom. Grace Courtemanche was royalty, and he’d told her that every night as they lay intertwined on the deck of No Regrets, drenched in sweat and moonlight.
But this call from Cypress Bend had nothing to do with Grace Courtemanche. Some other woman claimed he had a thirteen-year-old son. He did the math. The timing could work. In his college days, he’d spent a number of summers on St. George Island, one of the barrier islands below the Florida panhandle. He’d taught sailing to kids at a posh summer camp, and before the summer of Princess Grace, he’d had a string of women on his boat and in his bed. But he was careful about these things.
“At the risk of being blunt, I don’t leave bits and pieces of me around,” he told Evie.
“That’s part of the problem. Sounds like Vanessa Milanos wanted you in the worst way, and she admitted to her mother that since she couldn’t have you, she’d settle for a piece of you. She sabotaged your efforts at protection. Take a look at the picture in the e-mail. Same shaggy blond hair. Same baby blues. Same killer dimples. Plus Parker, being Parker, had a rush DNA test done.” Evie paused. “It’s a match, padre. He’s your son.”
Hatch’s throat constricted, and he stretched his neck, trying to ease the way for words. As a crisis negotiator, words were his tools, his constant companions, always at the ready.
“There’s more, Hatch,” Evie added. “The granny needs you in Cypress Bend pronto. It appears your son has gotten himself into trouble. He’s in jail.”
* * *
Grace needed a bomb. Nothing fancy. Nothing complicated. Just something with the ability to blow up the attitudinal Ford compact she now called her own. She unbuckled her seatbelt, reached across her car, and took a hammer from the glove compartment. Hitting something sounded good.
“’Nother dead battery, Miss Courtemanche?” The security guard that prowled the government buildings clucked his tongue as he walked up beside her.
“This month it’s the starter.”
“Man, you didn’t have problems like this when you owned that fine Mercedes. Now there was a car. You need some help, counselor?”
Help me!
Then call me! Grace shot a look at her phone on the dash. Ringer on. Fully charged. And painfully silent. No more calls from Lia Grant. And no update yet from the deputy at the sheriff’s department who promised to look into the calls immediately.
“Thanks, Armand, but I can take care of it myself.”
An hour later and with Lia Grant’s voice still echoing through her head, Grace turned onto a rutted road winding into the swamp and drove to a one-bedroom shack with a sagging front porch and rusted metal roof. Feathery cypress branches filtered the retreating sun, but even the seductive cover of lacy shade couldn’t soften the wretchedness of her new home. She climbed the rickety porch steps and tripped over a knobby column of white. Another bone, this one a grisly joint speckled with bits of dried flesh.
“Dammit, Allegheny Blue, how many of these do you have?” An ancient blue tick hound sprawled in front of the door opened a cloudy eye. He heaved himself up and rested his head against her thigh. She nudged him away with her knee. “Don’t even pretend we’re friends.”
She tossed the bone into a trashcan on the porch, where it clunked and rattled among the dozen already there. “No more bones.”
Her new housemate licked his lips, sending a line of drool across the hem of her skirt, and followed her inside where she reset the alarm, not that the shack held anything of value. Most of her furniture and home electronics were in storage. But her boss was right; her new place was remote, a good half mile from her closest neighbor, hence the security system.
With Blue at her heels, she filled the dog’s food dish with dry chow, softened with warm water. When he looked at her with drooping eyes that had seen way too many doggy years, she said, “You’re going to die of clogged arteries. You know that, don’t you?”
He licked his lips.
She sighed and opened the refrigerator.
It’s cold…Help me!
“I did!” Grace grabbed a piece of cooked bacon and slammed the door. Another wave of frosted air prickled her skin. “Okay, after the ninth call.” She tore the bacon into bits and threw them in Blue’s bowl. “What more am I supposed to do?”
Winners do, Gracie, and doers win. Not Lia’s words. Her daddy’s.
She breathed in his calm and confidence. “You need my help, Lia? Fine. You got me.” She set Blue’s bowl on the floor with a clank. The old dog thumped his tail against her leg and dug his nose into his dinner.
Grace dug out her phone and called Jim Breck, the internal security chief and her go-to guy with a local wireless phone company. The SA’s office regularly turned to him for wiretaps and call records.
“Counselor Courtemanche, why does it not surprise me that you’re working after hours?” Jim said. “Haven’t you heard there’s life beyond the office? Things like families and hobbies.”
She laughed. “Not for souls like you and me, Jim. Now, did someone from the sheriff’s department contact you this afternoon for a call search?”
“Not yet.”
Probably because the deputy didn’t have Lia Grant screaming in his ear. “I need to know the subscriber’s name and contact information on a series of calls I received.”
“Got the paperwork?”
No, and she wasn’t likely to get a subpoena, not while on vacation. “This isn’t an official investigation,” she said.
“Sorry. Can’t move forward without a subpoena.”
Sometimes you had to bulldoze past a few roadblocks. “I received nine calls from a stranger begging for my help. This whole thing could be a series of crank calls from associates of a convicted felon who’s been harassing me. Or it could be a young woman in danger and running out of time. I’m seriously leaning toward the latter.”
Jim said nothing. She said nothing, letting her track record speak.
“Let me see what I can do,” he finally said. An excruciating two minutes later he came back on the line. “Interesting.”
Without a subpoena, they were walking a fine line. “Can you verify the subscriber’s name?” Grace asked.
“No.”
“Can you verify the subscriber’s address?”
“No.”
No surprise there. “Can you verify it was a prepaid phone?”
“Yes.”
“And let me guess, the subscriber is listed as Mickey Mouse.”
Jim cleared his throat and said with a cough, “Clark Kent.”
Much like Allegheny Blue and his search for bones, Grace couldn’t let go. “Where was the phone purchased?”
“Retailer in Port St. Joe.”
“If I give you the time of the calls, can you tell me the location?” She rolled her shoulders and flexed her wrists, a warm-up of sorts, like in tennis.
“Caller didn’t activate GPS functionality, but according to the Call Data Record, the call came off the Cypress Point cell tower. It’s an OmniSite covering a three-mile section. Topo map shows dense swamp, a handful of high-end resort properties, and a few residences.”
Her wrists stilled mid-circle as she peered at the shades of gray outside her kitchen window. Lia Grant’s calls had been made within three miles of her home. Creepy coincidence? She gave both hands a shake. Even more reason to keep digging.
After thanking Jim, she called up a search engine and searched for “Lia Grant” and “Florida.” A dozen hits turned up, including one about a young woman who lived in nearby Carrabelle. Within fifteen minutes Grace had a full page of notes on the nineteen-year-old nursing student, including a current address and—she grabbed her cell—a phone number.
After eight rings, a groggy voice came on the line. “’lo.”
“Lia Grant, please.”
“Lia’s not here.” Yawn. “Who’s this?”
“Grace Courtemanche. She called me this afternoon.” Nine times. “I’m returning her call.”
“You spoke to Lia today?” Something rustled, and when the voice spoke again, all fuzziness was gone. “I’ve been trying to reach her all day. Last night she had a volunteer shift at the hospital, and she borrowed my car but hasn’t returned it. If you talk to her, tell her to get her ass and my wheels home.”
“I’ll be sure to relay the message.” Because Grace was going to find this girl. She phoned the Cypress Bend Medical Center, and the woman manning the welcome desk said Lia had not shown for her volunteer shift.
“Quite odd for Lia,” the chatty woman said. “Although she’s young, she’s a responsible little thing, a real good girl.”
Tell Momma I tried to be a good girl.
Grace hung up and reached for her purse. “No, Lia, I’m not going to talk to your mother because you’re going to tell her yourself.” The lump of dog struggled to his feet. “You’re not going with me. You shed and drool, and you stink.” She opened the front door and Blue lumbered past her, a slow-moving avalanche. “Dammit, Blue! Get back here.” He plodded across the drive and planted his butt near her car. Tonight she didn’t have time to fight. She opened the passenger door. “The vet said you’re supposed to be dead by now.”
This time her car started on the first crank, and Grace took the route from Lia’s apartment—the place she was last seen—to the medical center—the place where she never showed. She crept along the two-lane highway bordered by swamp, pine forests, and a deserted oyster processing plant that reeked of long-dead fish. No stalled vehicles. No signs of foul play.
The employee section of the hospital parking lot had two security lights, both burned out. She aimed her headlights at the rows of cars, slamming on the brake when she spotted a blue hybrid. She checked the license plate number Lia’s roommate had given her. A match.
“This is too easy,” Grace said to Allegheny Blue as they got out of the car.
The hybrid was locked. No obvious damage, but between the front tires, Grace spotted something white and knobby, like one. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
