T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 01 - Southern Fatality Read online

  More raves for

  SOUTHERN FATALITY

  “High satisfactory escapist entertainment!” —Star-News

  “Ocean puts the D in dangerous.” —John Hart, New York Times

  bestselling author of The King of Lies and Down River

  “Fast-paced narrative and cleverly written dialogue grab you from the first page and keep your attention to the end.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Reads like a string of firecrackers—one bang after another. The action is nonstop and the tone is smart and sassy.”

  —Carolyn Haines, author of Penumbra and Fever Moon

  Praise for T. Lynn Ocean’s

  SWEET HOME CAROLINA

  “Thoroughly yummy!” —Orlando Sentinel

  “Another must for vacation reading.”

  —Sandlapper, the magazine of South Carolina

  “This story is engaging and well worth staying with to the end.”

  —Roanoke Times

  MORE…

  “Full of humor and heart with a dash of romance and even drama thrown in.” —Jackie K. Cooper, Georgia Public Broadcasting

  “Perfectly captures the eccentricities and warmheartedness of small town life. Readers will cheer for these likeable characters as they rally to save their town.” —Booklist

  “Charming.” — The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)

  “Delightful characters that will make you swear you know them.”

  —The Item (Sumter, SC)

  “Ocean’s latest is delightful and entertaining, revealing Jaxie as a special breed of Southern womanhood. She’s a tough yet tender character whose city-girl smarts are the perfect antithesis to the folksy humor of the colorful Rumton residents.”

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

  “Hits the bull’s-eye for an amusing read.”

  —Star-News (Wilmington, NC)

  “Homespun heroes.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Fun-loving characters.” —The State (Columbia, SC)

  “Has all the elements of a perfect summer beach read.”

  —The Sun News (Myrtle Beach, SC)

  “City girl meets small town…Sassy, sexy, sunny, and sure to please.”

  —Carolyn Hart, national bestselling author

  of the Death on Demand series

  “Hilarious and highly entertaining book not to be missed.”

  —Cassandra King, bestselling

  author of The Same Sweet Girls

  “A clever, entertaining story…a delight to read.”

  —New York Times bestselling author

  Mary Jane Clark

  “Mixes memorable characters, great humor, small town Southern culture, history, and mystery for a delightful romp of a read.”

  —Emyl Jenkins, author of Stealing with Style

  “Who wouldn’t love a book where not just the characters are eccentric, but the occasional goat isn’t ‘right in the head’? What a fun and entertaining read, right down to the betting that goes on in a courtroom.” —Susan Reinhardt, author of

  Not Tonight, Honey: Wait ’Til I’m a Size 6

  “Fast-paced fun that includes romance, scandal, mystery, and even a sexy pirate, this is a delectable read.” —Celia Rivenbark,

  author of We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier

  “T. Lynn’s poem ‘Simple Things,’ just after the cover page, is well worth the price of the book.” —Brunswick Alive! (Shallotte, NC)

  ALSO BY T. LYNN OCEAN

  Fool Me Once

  Sweet Home Carolina

  SOUTHERN FATILITY

  T. LYNN OCEAN

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  SOUTHERN FATALITY

  Copyright © 2007 by T. Lynn Ocean.

  Excerpt from Southern Poison copyright © 2008 by T. Lynn Ocean.

  All rights reserved. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175

  Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007019021

  ISBN: 0-312-37368-6

  EAN: 978-0-312-37368-9

  Printed in the United States of America

  St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition / September 2007

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / August 2008

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175

  Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To all the folks who happily answered hypothetical questions, including Steve Lawson, professional SUTS, and Tamie Nixon, a commercial boat captain who served in the Marine Corps.

  To manuscript readers Dave Barnes, Nancy Lawson, and Ted Theocles for their time and honest input.

  To my author friend Delano Cummings, who gave me the inspiration for a Lumbee character.

  To all the people lucky enough to call Wilmington home and who make the vibrant port city what it is today—a wonderful setting for Southern Fatality.

  To Katie, a terrific editor, and all the savvy people at SMP and Holtzbrinck.

  To all the fiction-loving folks who read Sweet Home Carolina and sent e-mails to say they were eagerly awaiting my next novel (your feedback is my fuel).

  And to all the fabulous booksellers who make the publishing world go ’round by putting books in the hands of readers.

  Many thanks!

  Contents

  Chapter - One

  Chapter - Two

  Chapter - Three

  Chapter - Four

  Chapter - Five

  Chapter - Six

  Chapter - Seven

  Chapter - Eight

  Chapter - Nine

  Chapter - Ten

  Chapter - Eleven

  Chapter - Twelve

  Chapter - Thirteen

  Chapter - Fourteen

  Chapter - Fifteen

  Chapter - Sixteen

  Chapter - Seventeen

  Chapter - Eighteen

  Chapter - Nineteen

  Chapter - Twenty

  Chapter - Twenty-One

  Chapter - Twenty-Two

  Chapter - Twenty-Three

  ONE

  The custom-made brace strapped to my left leg made it difficult to navigate the mountain of steps that stretched up to the South Carolina state supreme courthouse, and as I neared the main doors, it occurred to me that I could have taken the zigzagging wheelchair ramp. I was not thinking like a handicapped person. Breathing deeply, I reminded myself to get into character.

  Well concealed inside the brace, two pieces of a .410 derringer snugly taped to opposite sides of my knee were only slightly irritating. The barrel easily separated from the action and I’d timed myself reassembling it, in the dark. Three seconds. Five, if I also loaded the buckshot shotgun shells.

  Hurried people glided around me as I paused at the top of the courthouse steps to admire the historic building. It was magnificent, really, from the engraved granite beneath my feet to the stately columns at my sides. I resituated my crutches and adjusted the shoulder strap of my leather attaché, deciding that the weather was perfect. It was a beautiful day to shoot somebody.

  Smiling, I found the handicap-friendly door that opened automatic
ally with the push of a lever and entered the huge, airconditioned lobby. Directly in front of me, a wall was laden with framed portraits: a male-saturated time line of those chosen to judge the rest of us and decide our fates. To my left stood a well-groomed security guard wearing an expensive dark suit, his look screaming retired Secret Service. To my right were three state-employed security screeners. Two of them processed the flow of visitors through metal detectors while the third monitored an X-ray machine. A bored cop leaned against the wall, watching the activity around him, perhaps wondering what his wife would be cooking for dinner.

  Struggling to stay upright while using the awkward crutches, I concentrated on walking toward the group. Plant the rubber tips of the supports, swing the bulky brace. Plant, swing. By the time I reached the screeners, I had a steady rhythm going and swayed when I stopped to hold up the press pass I’d made earlier that morning. I’d hung it around my neck and just for good measure, attached a few pins to the lanyard: a blue rotary club, a pink breast cancer awareness, and a yellow smiley face. The ID declared that I wrote for Business Track magazine.

  “Good afternoon,” I said to a screener with a deep breath that made my size D implants arch out. “I’ve got a deadline to meet, but unfortunately, I’ve also got stainless steel pins in my leg. I’m pretty sure they’ll set off the metal detector.”

  He gave me the once-over and grinned. “Heck of a getup you’ve got there.”

  Smiling through a grimace, I noted that the other screener was paying zero attention to us. The private security guard, on the other hand, was covertly following our conversation. With a slight grunt, I shifted my weight on the crutches. “You got that right. Tore my knee up pretty good water-skiing. From now on, I think I’ll stay inside the boat.” I shook my head, as if remembering the incident. “Should I go around the tunnel?”

  “I’ll have to use the handheld wand on you. Move over here, please, Miss …” He leaned in much closer than necessary to read the name on my press pass. “Miss Lawson. And put your bag on the table for X ray.”

  When I removed the strap of my attaché, the tip of a crutch caught on the edge of the table leg. I rocked back and forth for a split second, trying to catch my balance, and fell hard onto the floor with a yelp. The attaché dropped from my grip and landed safely beyond the entrance to the tunnel.

  Several men jumped to my assistance.

  “Are you okay?” It was the Secret Service—looking guy. “Can you get up?”

  I stayed on the ground, clutching the leg brace and biting my lower lip. “I think so. That was really stupid. I’ve got to learn how to use these damn crutches.”

  He offered an arm, allowing me to hoist myself up at my own pace. With some effort, I managed to get back on my feet. Seeing that everything was under control, the crowd around me dispersed and the security screener handed over my crutches. Feeling foolish, I apologized.

  “No problem,” he said, laughing in response to the awkward moment. He was just glad that I hadn’t hurt myself worse, he told me. He ran the handheld metal detector around my waist, beneath my arms, and up and down the outside of the leg that wasn’t encumbered by a brace. The private guy held the sign-in clipboard while I scribbled a signature, after which he retrieved my attaché and returned to his post near the front doors.

  After thanking everyone and apologizing a second time, I hobbled around the metal detector and made my way into the handicapped stall of the first restroom I came to.

  I quickly stripped down. The brace came off. A small tool kit was transferred from the hollow handle of a crutch to my handbag. The derringer was assembled and placed into an ankle holster beneath tan slacks. The white athletic shoes were exchanged for black leather flats. The bright red blouse came off to reveal a solid black silk T-shirt and a lightweight cropped white blazer. The bobby pins came out of my reddish brunette hair, allowing it to fall loosely around my shoulders. I removed the brown contacts to reveal my God-given hazel-green irises, and flushed the lenses down the toilet, using my foot to depress the handle. Last, I wiped away my fingerprints, including those on the stall’s doorknob, the crutches, and the brace.

  As soon as the restroom was empty, I shimmied beneath the stall door, leaving it locked from the inside. I taped a note to the outside, declaring the toilet out of order. Maintenance probably wouldn’t get around to investigating until later that evening, after the courthouse had closed. Even then, they wouldn’t know what to make of the bulky leg brace and crutches that rested in one corner, or the bright red sweater that hung from them.

  Entering the bathroom, I’d been a reporter with a knee injury. Leaving it, I looked like any other professional. A casually dressed attorney, businesswoman, or a paralegal, perhaps.

  Getting into the courthouse had been surprisingly easy. Getting into the judge’s chamber was even easier. I’d correctly guessed that her entry code would be the same as her home security alarm code and I didn’t have to use my tool kit. Six-two-eight-seven. Oats. Short for Oatmeal, the name of her Yorkshire terrier.

  There were two entry doors into the judge’s chamber and I had to wait only forty minutes before I heard the electronic beeping of a code being punched into one of them.

  I stood and aimed the gun. “Bang. You’re a dead woman.”

  She let out a shriek and spun around to face me. When she realized who I was, the look of fear on her face morphed into a mixture of relief and anger.

  “Good Lord, Jersey,” she said, holding a hand over her heart. “You scared me to death.”

  I dropped my stance, letting the gun point to the floor, and smiled. “That was the idea, Judge. You need to be a little scared. Your security around this joint sucks.”

  She looked at the gun with a raised eyebrow and loosened the collar on her black robe. “Tell me that thing isn’t real. Surely you didn’t get a real gun through security.”

  “Of course it’s real. And very effective at close range, especially when loaded with shotgun ammo instead of .45 longs. A staggering drunk could hit you with this. Not to mention the escaped animal who has methodically murdered five women.”

  She paled beneath cocoa-colored skin and took another look at my gun.

  “It’s not loaded, Judge. I got the ammo through security, too. But I’d never point a loaded weapon at you.”

  She sat down heavily. “That’s good to know.”

  “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t aim a weapon at anyone unless I fully intended to shoot them,” I said with a shrug. “But I needed to make a point.”

  “You’ve made it.” Studying me, she frowned. “How did you get in here?”

  “Piece of cake.”

  “Good Lord,” she said again. “You’re a harmless-looking petite thing. You can’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds.”

  “One twenty-nine,” I corrected. “And five feet, eight inches tall isn’t petite. Sometimes, if I wear heels, I actually tower over most people.”

  “Well, you look like a damn Barbie doll. And you just waltz into a state supreme courthouse, right through top-notch security, with a deadly weapon. And then you mosey on into my chambers, where incidentally, I just had new electronic locks installed.”

  “That’s why I earn the big bucks,” I told her, twirling a chunk of my hair and shooting her a dumb-blonde look, even though my hair was currently a mahogany red. I actually had been a blonde on many occasions with the government.

  She smirked at me. “You do the bimbette look well, Jersey. But seriously, isn’t there anything you’re afraid of?”

  “Chickens. Put me in a yard full of clucking chickens and I’m totally freaked out.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “I’m serious. Can’t stand to even look at a picture of one.” I had a vague childhood recollection of my father making me watch my grandfather slaughter a chicken for dinner. After he chopped the head off using a hatchet and a tree stump, he threw the bird to the ground and laughed as its decapitated body continued running. In the nightmare
s I had afterward, a headless chicken chased me incessantly around the house.

  The judge frowned, determining if I was trying to be funny or not.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, “and dead people. I’m terrified of dead people. It’s irrational, obviously, since a dead person can’t hurt you. But I’ve never been to a funeral. I can’t even stand to be at a crime scene before the bodies are carried off.” I shrugged. “So there you have it, the dirt on Jersey Barnes’ phobias.”

  “You’ll take on terrorists, but you’re afraid of live chickens and dead people.”

  I smiled but my mood turned serious. “This security breach was a freebie for a good friend. You saved my ass once, Judge. And now I’m trying to save yours, by giving you a wake-up call. He is a ruthless killer who hates women and you are the female who put him behind bars for life. It could have been him standing in your chambers instead of me. Or someone he hired.”

  She nodded, but was still not accepting reality. “My private guard is quite good. He used to be—”

  “Let me guess. Secret Service? Tall dude in the navy suit, stationed in the lobby?”

  She nodded.

  “Nice guy,” I said. “He’s the one who helped me up after I fell, and handed me my attaché. Which, by the way, holds a package of what looks very much like plastic explosives along with a motion-activated timing device. It was never X-rayed.”

  The judge sat down, stood up, paced, sat back down.

  “See, Judge, if I was the bad guy and was worried about not being able to get away after shooting you, I’d blow you up instead.” I pointed to the case. “I could stash it beneath your chair one night and be slurping an icy margarita in Cancún by the time you sat down to read the day’s docket and activated the motion sensor.”