Deadly Act Read online

  She typed in: Yes, I am!

  Kylie watched the dancing dots, and then: That’s such an exciting job to have! Congrats! Have you got any ideas on what might have happened to Jessica? I know her family’s up the wall and would appreciate the help.

  Kylie frowned, then picked up the phone and called her boss…again.

  Again, no answer. In her month of working there, he had yet to answer her on his cell phone. She didn’t think he had much experience when it came to them. She pictured him on the road, wondering why the heck his pants were buzzing so much.

  Well, Mr. Starr, I tried.

  Which was true. She really had tried to call him, and phone records would prove it. Not that she was officially investigating anything. Just lunch with a friend. At least, she kept telling herself that as she locked up the office and walked the block to the café.

  She’d picked the place because it had patio seating. She didn’t trust that she could leave Vader alone in the office and not return to a pile of chewed-up paper and other destruction. She’d made that mistake once with her little Mazda, and now she no longer had a headrest, and the whole passenger’s seat was a lumpy mess of stuffing she’d had to shove back in.

  “What are you giving me that droopy look for?” she asked Vader as she pulled on his leash. He was dragging his feet. On their regular walks, Vader was usually up front, and she had to run after him full speed, until she not only lost her breath but her will to live. But now, it was almost like the enormous dog knew that Kylie was up to no good. “I’m not doing anything wrong.”

  Did the big teddy bear of a dog just shake his head in disappointment?

  “Hey. I promise to be good if you will,” she said, knowing she’d probably feed him half her meal under the table, like a total sucker. He might have weighed more than she did, but he still had those big, black puppy-dog eyes she couldn’t resist.

  When she got to the Corner Café, she recognized Bethany at once, even though it had been a while since she’d last seen her. Her dark hair had blue streaks in it, and she had a model face with big black eyes that rivaled Vader’s for their intensity. She was also wearing ridiculously high heels on her small feet. If Kylie’d attempted to wear anything like that, she’d die after the first step.

  Bethany was sporting a sleek, fashionable all-black outfit and carried a designer purse, which made Kylie think she must’ve been successful since leaving school. Or had charged all her credit cards to the max.

  “Hey!” Bethany said, pulling Kylie into a one-armed hug. Bethany’s perfume was definitely too much of a good thing, causing Kylie’s eyes to water from all the competing scents on her.

  Bethany had always been the high-maintenance type. Looked like that hadn’t changed too much. She looked at Vader and sniffed like she’d caught wind of something bad. “Guess we should get an outdoor table?”

  Kylie’s college friend didn’t seem thrilled at the prospect, since it was kind of hot and humid outside, the norm for late August, but she had no choice. Kylie nodded, getting the distinct feeling Bethany wasn’t a dog person. Or an outside person. In fact, she realized she didn’t really know Bethany at all anymore.

  “Sorry,” Kylie said as she motioned to the hostess. “I bring him everywhere. He’s very good.”

  She wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure on that, though. He’d only been having obedience lessons with Linc Coulter for a month. Linc was practically mute, totally infuriating, but she kept him around because his Dog Whispering ways had saved her from hog-tying Vader to a post. Plus, he was quite dreamy in the looks department. Since she started the lessons, she’d been losing fewer and fewer things to Vader’s jaws, even though he still behaved like a total nutcase a lot of the time.

  As if the dog knew that Bethany wasn’t a fan, he jumped up on her, nearly knocking her petite frame back. She rocked on those devastatingly high heels, like a Weeble, only saved by the presence of the hostess stand.

  Kylie pulled Vader back and scolded him as Bethany wrinkled her nose and looked down at her black blazer, which had the faint outline of paw prints. When Kylie apologized profusely, Bethany said, “No, it’s fine,” even though she sounded more than a little perturbed.

  The hostess guided them to a table away from the rest of the clientele, wisely, and Vader sat on her feet as she tied his leash to the armrest of the plastic chair so he couldn’t get away. He saw a squirrel in a nearby tree and whimpered, so Kylie fed him a couple of treats she’d packed in her purse, saying a quick prayer that it would be enough to get him to calm down.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” she said under her breath to him, then smiled at her lunch date and ordered a lemonade.

  “A Perrier for me. It’s very cool that you’ve been working as an investigator,” Bethany gushed as the waiter finished filling their water glasses. “I always thought you’d take the world by the horns and do something amazing with your life when you graduated.”

  Kylie opened her mouth to make the correction that, technically, she hadn’t quite graduated yet, but Bethany kept gushing, so she decided that little detail wasn’t important.

  “I was thinking about you just the other day. I was thinking that Kylie Hatfield is such a live wire. She has that spark, you know?”

  Kylie smiled. “I could say the same for you.” It was a total lie, but it seemed wrong to tell Bethany that she hadn’t thought of her since the last time she saw her. “What have you been up to?”

  Bethany scanned her menu. “Salad! I’m dying for a salad.” She closed it and heaved a sigh. “Well, nothing all that exciting, like you, unfortunately. I’m doing sales for Blue Oasis.”

  Kylie raised an eyebrow. “Blue Oasis? You mean the bottled water company?”

  “Yeah. Glamorous, right?” The sarcasm was profuse.

  Geesh…kind of a sad-trumpets turn to her friend’s life. Bethany had always struck her as the type of person who’d find a gorgeous and successful husband the second she graduated and move away to live a fantastically sophisticated life in, she didn’t know, a villa in Tuscany or something.

  “I like their water!” was all Kylie could think to say.

  “I know, I do too. It’s totally spring-fed, none of this factory-purified shit, you know?”

  Kylie nodded, losing interest as she always did when people discussed their boring jobs.

  “God! I miss the old days. College was so much fun. Remember our candle ceremony? That was freaking wild. I don’t keep in touch with my sisters so much. Do you?”

  Kylie stared at her. “Yeah. The old days. Seems like forever ago,” she quickly said. As much as she loved gossiping about old times, she was there for business. “I keep in touch with some of the Delta Gammas, yeah. So…about Jessica?”

  Bethany immediately straightened, growing serious again. “Oh yeah, so, Blue Oasis. That’s how I know Jessica. She works as a part-time receptionist in the office. She hasn’t shown up there all week, and that’s totally not like her. Didn’t even call the boss to say she’d be out, so we’re all scratching our heads.”

  Now, that was weird. “Wow. Really?”

  Bethany nodded. “Sweetest thing too. Pretty. And ambitious. She was working days at the store and had been taking classes at night for a few years. Wanted to go into education. It’s not like her to go missing like that without a word to anyone. I mean, right?” She took a sip from her water. “Is that how you know her? From UNC?”

  Kylie stared at her, momentarily confused, until she remembered that Jessica was supposed to be their mutual friend. “Um. Yes. Right.” Vader looked up at her, and she stroked his ears. Even he didn’t believe her. She found herself babbling on. “Wow, Jessica. She’s just great. So fun. Talk about a live wire, right? She had that spark too.”

  Bethany’s eyes narrowed. “Um, not really. Total bookworm. Sedate. Well, maybe she was different when you knew her, but she’s a lot more reserved now. Very focused. Kind of shy. Keeps to herself a lot.”

  “Oh. Right. Sometimes she c
ould be closed off,” Kylie fudged and knew she should shut her mouth but kept rambling on. “Definitely reliable and responsible. Never missed an assignment from what I hear. Good ol’ Jessica.”

  “Right?” Bethany nodded vigorously. “She never missed a day of work. Heck, she was never even late, always early. So, it’s super odd. And no wonder everyone’s freaked out, right? She just disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “Yeah, that’s very concerning,” Kylie said, trying to connect all the dots being hurled her way.

  “I know. That you can see someone every day, and then, poof. Gone. Like, where did she go? Did she just have some kind of crisis and decide to quit life and move away? Is she laying in her apartment, dead from having choked on a potato chip? You just don’t know. We’re all kind of dying to find out.” She winced at her poor choice of words, and tears filled her eyes. “Sorry…I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Kylie squeezed her hand. “It’s okay. I knew what you meant.”

  Bethany dabbed a napkin at her eyes. “It’s just that we’ve all kind of been theorizing at work.”

  “Yeah. You know if the police have been involved?”

  Bethany nodded. “They have. They were around asking questions a few days ago. But I don’t know what they found. We all thought they weren’t being totally serious about it. I don’t think they suspect foul play. I think they think she just ran off. Even though we told them that behavior like that wasn’t like her at all.”

  “Hmmm. So tell me. Did she have any boyfriends? Any weird co-workers hanging out near the office, wanting to talk to her?”

  Bethany tilted her head, looking deep in thought. “Not that I can remember. She never mentioned anyone. But Jessica didn’t seem to be the type to have a slew of boyfriends.”

  Kylie reached into her bag to pull out her phone so that she could start writing notes. Bethany’s eyes followed her closely, like she should’ve known those details if Jessica was, in any way, her friend. “I haven’t been in touch with her in a while,” Kylie said. “That’s how I knew she was missing. Her sister from Oregon called the office, wanting our help.”

  “Miranda called you?” Bethany’s eyes widened. “Oh, she must be out of her mind with worry, huh? So, does this mean you’re going to take the case?”

  Truthfully, from the first moment she heard about Jessica’s disappearance during that phone call, Kylie had been hooked. The case wasn’t hers to take, but that didn’t matter. She knew there was no possible way she’d be able to stop thinking about it. And she could stay on the periphery, do some digging without getting fully involved, right?

  “Well,” Kylie began. “I—”

  Vader jumped to his feet, ears perking up. His body vibrated with some emotion she didn’t understand. Kylie shuffled closer to him, remembering the training techniques Linc had taught her as she reached for Vader’s leash.

  “Hold—”

  But the dog let out a sharp bark and bounded away, causing the leash to burn a path over her palm. Vader then ran around her chair, effectively belting her in with his leash. That he was tied to the chair on which she was sitting didn’t stop him. “No, Vader!” she said as the fabric dug into her thighs. “Wait.”

  She struggled to her feet, trying to get rid of the pressure, which happened to be the totally wrong thing to do, because the second she got up, he bounded over the railing, the chair flying out from under her. It jammed into her knee and knocked over the goblets of water as it flew between them, following Vader over the railing.

  “Holy shit!” Bethany shouted as the upended glasses sent a cascade of water rushing over their lower halves.

  Kylie yelped, stars flashing through her vision as she watched Vader bolt across the street, narrowly missing a car. The owner swerved, nearly jumping a curb, and laid on the horn.

  Oh, for shit’s sake.

  “Vader!” Kylie shouted, but he didn’t stop. As usual. He ran down an alley and disappeared, his leash and the plastic chair clack-clack-clacking after him.

  She dropped the napkin on the table to swab up some of the water. It was like putting a bandage on a gaping wound. “I’m so sorry. He never does this,” she explained, apologizing again before screaming, “Vader!”

  Bethany said nothing, just looked at her wet clothing. Kylie didn’t think she could have possibly believed her any less.

  The waiter appeared. “Our chair—”

  “On it!” Kylie cried, embarrassed to her core. “I’ll be in touch!” she called to Bethany as she threw her legs over the railing and set off to chase her crazy dog.

  Again.

  3

  Damn people.

  There were way too many of them in the world. Couldn’t even find a damn parking spot in front of the hardware store. What the hell? Were they giving shit away in there? Didn’t any of these people have jobs?

  Linc Coulter checked the time on the dashboard. It was after noon. Lunchtime.

  He probably could’ve planned this shopping trip for a better time, when there were fewer people around. But that was the problem. There were always people around down here, no matter the time of day. It was like a plague of locusts. Worst. At least locusts only came seven or so years.

  Linc parked in front of the bank down the street and told Storm to wait in the truck while he went in, leaving the engine running so the German Shepherd wouldn’t overheat in the August sun. He wasn’t worried. Good luck to anyone who tried to steal the vehicle. His dog would take a piece out of any person who so much as opened the door.

  Storm was a good girl. The best dog he’d ever trained.

  Then he skirted around some assholes who clearly thought they owned the sidewalk, from the way they were walking down the dead center of it. One of them laughed too loud, and another one tossed a half-full Big Gulp in the trash, spraying sticky blue shit all over the sidewalk and his hiking boots.

  Nice fucking manners.

  Linc went inside, cracking his knuckles, trying to remind himself that this was why he lived on a mountain, away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Downtown Asheville wasn’t exactly a massive metropolis, but it had enough people to piss him off.

  People were just damn…disappointing.

  As he weaved his way down the crowded aisle toward the lumber he needed for a new set of boarding kennels, Linc found himself counting down the moments until he could be back in his truck. Just him and his dog.

  As he loaded the wood onto a trolley, Linc went through all the things he had to do once he got out of this hellhole. His brothers might have thought he did nothing up in his old farmhouse all by himself, but that was far from the truth. In addition to humanely breeding select farm animals, he had an online seminar at three p.m.—Basics of Training a Scent-Discriminating K9—that would be attended by hundreds of search and rescue people all across the country. After that, his afternoon obedience class would keep him busy until dinnertime.

  Life of leisure, my ass. He worked hard.

  He also loved every minute of it, so it didn’t feel like work. He doubted his brothers and father, all attorneys, could say that. Everything they did was with big dollar signs in their eyes. Maybe the actual work brought them joy, but Linc would rather stick needles in his eyeballs. He wasn’t interested, no matter how many thousands of times they’d tried to convince him.

  Which was why the people he avoided most were members of his own family.

  He finished paying for the lumber and rolled the trolley out the automatic double doors, down toward his parking space, once again dodging the assholes. Storm watched calmly from the front seat of his pickup as he lowered the hatch.

  As he reached for the stack of new pine planks, a black streak of lightning hit him straight in the chest, pushing him backward. A furry one.

  Vader, his newest and most overexcited pupil.

  “Whoa, boy.” Linc reached for him as the big dog bounded around the trolley, nearly getting hit by oncoming traffic in the road. Linc took hold of his lea
sh, which was still attached to a plastic chair, and drew him closer. Firmly, he told him to, “Sit.”

  The dog automatically calmed and did as he was told, though his tail was still wagging in unbound excitement. Linc untangled the leash from the white plastic armrest and set the chair down on the curb.

  When that was done, he looked around for Vader’s owner.

  Vader’s sexy but completely mind-screwing owner, Kylie Hatfield.

  She was nowhere to be seen. Vader might have had a nose for trouble. But Kylie? When it came to trouble, her whole body was made for it.

  This wasn’t good.

  Linc crouched down and looked the dog over, making sure he wasn’t hurt. “Where’d you come from, boy? Where’s Kylie?”

  In response, Vader panted and licked Linc’s hand. All right, the dog didn’t seem too worried. Just happy to see a friend. That was a good sign.

  Linc looked in the direction he thought Vader had come from and spotted the petite little firecracker come racing around the corner of a building, her cheeks flushed. He didn’t want his pulse to skyrocket, but it did. He leaned against the side of his truck and crossed his arms as Kylie approached, noticing she was walking with a little limp and had a big wet spot on the front of her jeans. She was breathing hard.

  Just like she’d been breathing the day she’d kissed the shit out of him.

  It had all started the day he’d innocently gone to the vet, taking Storm to get her shots. Kylie had been there with Vader, having just witnessed the dog being hit by a car.

  Linc still felt a little guilty for assuming Kylie was the reason for the dog’s pain. He’d thought she was one of those owners who didn’t know shit about taking care of a good dog and had let the mutt get in harm’s way.

  Well, it was partly true. She didn’t know shit about owning a dog, but to her credit, she only had one because of her kind heart. And she had been bringing the lumbering beast to obedience training. She was trying.