J.D. laughed. “Well, tell him hola from his Tio J.D. I’m going to hang down here a little longer. Tell Dad he can get Jasper Noble to take care of any boat maintenance issues that come up while I’m gone. Jasper loves being useful since he retired—”
“How much longer?” Luke couldn’t hide the surprise in his voice. Though Luke had been away from the family for ten years before his recent return to the fold, he’d apparently heard enough family gossip to know J.D. rarely visited Terrebonne anymore.
“A few days. No more than a week.” He hoped.
“Okay. I’ll tell everyone.”
“Thanks. Hey, is Gabe anywhere around?”
“He’s out unloading his boat. Just came in from a guiding job. You want me to have him call you?”
“Yeah, do that.” J.D. might not want the rest of his family to worry about him, but he wanted Gabe to know what he was really up to. After all, Gabe had put his life on the line to solve Brenda’s murder just a few weeks earlier, taking on a psychopath who’d been holding Alicia hostage.
A psychopath J.D. intended to visit in the Okaloosa County Jail up in Millbridge as soon as the visit could be arranged. Because Marlon Dyson wasn’t just a crazy stalker. He’d been partners with the man J.D. believed had killed his wife.
Gabe called a few minutes later, and J.D. gave him a quick rundown on his reason for heading south to Terrebonne in the first place. “I wanted to get the local view of things, just to be sure,” he told his younger brother.
“And what did you find out?”
“It’s our guy. I’m almost positive.”
Gabe was silent for a long moment. “Do you think he’s picked up a new partner?”
“That’s a question for your girl, I guess.” Gabe’s new girlfriend, Alicia, was close to getting her doctorate in criminal psychology, and she’d been the one who’d figured out there were two killers at work in the series of murders J.D. and his family had been trying to solve. Over the course of those years, the “alpha” killer, as Alicia termed him, had worked with at least two partners that they knew of—Victor Logan, who’d died in a mysterious house explosion a couple of months earlier, and Marlon Dyson. “And while you’re at it, I want you to have her call up her friend in the Millbridge Police Department and get me in to see Dyson.”
“J.D., are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I think it’s a damned good idea,” J.D. answered firmly, ignoring the wriggling sensation in his gut that belied the confidence in his voice. “Dyson helped that son of a bitch kill three women in the past year. Maybe more.”
“Even the FBI can’t get him to talk. What makes you think you can?”
“I’m motivated,” J.D. answered flatly.
“Yeah, I’m a little worried about just how motivated you are,” Gabe responded.
“Don’t try to stop me. You’re already on my bad side for keeping this information from me as long as you did.” His little brother had a bad habit of trying to protect J.D. when it came to this murder investigation. Some sort of misplaced guilt for having screwed up and gotten to Brenda’s place of work later than he’d agreed, J.D. knew. Gabe blamed himself, as if he could have stopped what happened to Brenda if he’d just been on time.
But he couldn’t know that. Nobody could. The cold air that November night had slowed decomposition, making it hard to be sure when she’d died. Could have been a few minutes before Gabe arrived. Could have been as much as an hour. He could have been on time and still been too late.
On the other hand, if J.D. had left the Navy when she’d wanted him to, she probably wouldn’t have been working at the trucking company in the first place—
“Maybe I should meet you in Millbridge,” Gabe suggested. “I could go in with you to see him—”
J.D. snorted. “Like you could stop me if I went after him.”
“I figure the guards would take care of that,” Gabe shot back flatly. “I’d be there to pay the bail.”
J.D. grinned at the phone. “I’ll be fine, Gabe. I promise.” His grin faded. “I’m this close to finding the son of a bitch who killed Brenda. I’m not going to screw it up by losing my head.”
Gabe’s answering silence was an unwanted reminder of just how close to the edge J.D. had gone over the past twelve years. Wild-goose chases, con artists trying to earn a buck off his grief, the emotional roller-coaster ride of chasing leads that never panned out—they’d all worked together to crush his fading hope and lead him to some very dark places over the past few years.
His family had worked overtime to keep him from falling apart. At times, they’d been all that kept him sane.
He broke the silence. “Will you see if Alicia can set it up? And call me back with when and where?”
“Of course,” Gabe agreed. “J.D., Luke said you haven’t even seen Mike yet. You left town two days ago. What’s the holdup?”
J.D. looked down at the files in front of him. “I don’t like him to see me this way.”
“Obsessed?”
“Focused,” J.D. corrected. “I’m looking at files I don’t want him to see.”
“You’ve been doing that for a lot of years now. Looking at things you don’t want him to see.” Gabe’s voice held no censure, only a bleak sadness that resonated in J.D.’s own heart.
J.D. knew he’d let his grief and rage steal too much time from his kids, not seeing until too late that he was throwing away moments, hours and experiences he could never get back. Thank God for his parents, who’d given his children the time, attention and unconditional love he’d been too broken to offer.
He was trying to repair the damage, one step at a time. But Cissy was nearly grown up now, heading into her junior year of college, and Mike would be entering high school this fall, taking giant steps toward an independent life of his own.
J.D. was running out of time to fix things with his kids.
“Alicia’s down in Millbridge this week, tying up some loose ends,” Gabe said when J.D. didn’t answer. “I’ll get her to talk to her friend Tony about arranging for you to visit Dyson.”
“That’s the cop ex-boyfriend?”
“Yeah,” Gabe said wryly. “He’s not happy about her leaving Millbridge to be with me, but he’s a decent guy. He’ll help you out if he can.”
“Thanks, Gabe. I owe you.”
“Not in a million years.” Emotion tinted Gabe’s voice, and J.D. knew he was thinking about how he’d let Brenda down. J.D. didn’t bother trying to talk him out of his guilt. He’d told his brother that he didn’t blame him. He’d said what needed saying. Now it was up to Gabe to work through his own guilt whatever way he needed to.
J.D. knew a lot about dealing with guilt.
He said goodbye to Gabe and hung up, his mind already fast-forwarding to what he’d say when he finally saw Marlon Dyson face-to-face. He’d wanted to visit Dyson in jail as soon as Gabe had told him the whole story behind the man’s involvement with the alpha killer.
Dyson had slipped up once and called him Alex to Alicia’s face before clamming up. J.D. wanted to see if he could use that small chink in the armor to get Dyson to open up some more. But to this point, the Millbridge Police had been stingy with Dyson, refusing to let J.D. visit the man in jail.
Dyson had been the alpha’s partner, apparently tasked with hunting and culling victims for the man he called Alex to stalk and kill. He’d been caught last month, attempting to go rogue