J. Black - The Survivors Club

(They were fake.)

When he’d first stared at her across the bar, she couldn’t believe it. He was absolutely gorgeous. Only when he came over to talk to her did she feel uneasy.

Really, like he was targeting her. Like a predator who wanted to eat her.

That creepy smile of his.

But it wasn’t just that.

He gave her the impression he’d studied up on her. He had a familiarity with her family—at least that was how it sounded. He didn’t come right out and talk about her little girl, or her ex, or her family, or what she did. But she got the idea from context that he knew stuff.

When he went off to the bathroom, she decided to grab her purse, pay her part of the tab, and get out.

The next day, he’d called her.

Mel had given him her number.

Brayden made some excuse, managed to get off the phone.

When Mel and Daffy wanted to get together tonight, she’d thought about saying no. But they were going someplace else, way on the other side of town, and while Tucson wasn’t a big city, it had plenty of bars.

When she got there, he was sitting with them.

She was about to turn around and walk out when Mel saw her and waved.

His back was to her—he hadn’t seen her. Brayden ignored Mel’s waving and slipped into the crowd—so many people at the bar tonight—and worked her way through and out the door. Out into the cool night, the moon riding high in the sky.

Walked briskly to her car.

“Hey, Brayden!”

She kept walking. Only fifty yards or so and she would be there.

She heard his footsteps quicken.

“Hey,” he said, grabbing her arm. “What’s the hurry?”

“I have to get home.”

He got up close to her. Infringing on her space, his face looming over hers. “What’s the matter? You seem spooked.”

He looked puzzled, but Brayden knew his puzzlement was a fake. Like everything else about him.

“I have to go.” She dug into her purse for the alarm remote. What if he accosted her here in the parking lot?

She heard him jog a couple of steps to keep up with her. His breath on her neck as he touched her arm again.

She said, “Look. I have a boyfriend—”

“No you don’t.” He grinned his crooked grin, his face close. “Don’t you want to know where I saw you?”

“What?”

“Where I saw you.”

She shook her head. “I’ve got to go.”

“Atlanta. Ring any bells?”

Her heart seized up for a second. “That wasn’t me. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Okay,” he said. “I wasn’t there. Maybe it wasn’t you, but you know what I’m talking about.” He leaned in close to her. “We have a lot to talk about.”

She managed to pull away. Fumbled at the remote button, unlocked the car.

As she slid onto the seat he rested his arm on the roof. “We really should talk.”

She turned the key to the ignition but it didn’t seem to catch so she turned it again—the grinding clash of gears shrieked across her nerves. But the engine was running. She put the car in gear and it lurched forward. Barkman stepped back.

Brayden floored it, and watched him in the rearview mirror.

He was laughing.

CHAPTER 10

Tess at home: Feed the cat. Decide what to eat for dinner. Watch the sun set from her porch swing, watch the lights wink on in the house across the way.

Before she figured out which frozen dinner to heat up in the microwave, the phone rang.

She knew it was him even before she saw the readout.

Max said, “I miss you .”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you more.”

Tess said, “God, we’re annoying.”

“We should live in the same place,” Max said. “Then we wouldn’t be annoying.”

“You can move in with me. You want me to call the moving van company?”

“Sure. Can you put up the cast and crew?”

Tess looked around. The living room to her rented house was small, and the kitchen was smaller. “It’ll be tight. We’d have to stack them like cordwood.”

“They’re used to it. The orgies.”

“I forgot.”

“How can you forget? Hosting orgies—it’s one of my best assets.”

“I thought your strong chin was your best asset.”

“Nah, it’s gotta be the orgies. Unless it’s my entourage.”

“You have an entourage?”

“Okay. I don’t have an entourage. I’m down to one lonely, dorky guy—all I’ve got is my sidekick.”

Tess smiled. By now she’d seen most of his movies. Max’s characters always had a sidekick. All of Max’s sidekicks were a little on the homely side, but lovable. She said, “Is he lovable? Does he have soulful eyes?”

“How would I know? I’m a guy.”

“But he’s your wingman.”

“Guess you could call him that.”

“Is he secretly in love with me?”

“Oh, yeah. You know the type. Guy’s always moping around, just hoping to get a glimpse of you. I guess he still thinks he has a shot.”

“He doesn’t. Even though you don’t really appreciate me the way you should, and your sidekick …” Tess fished around and came up with: “Marshal.”

“Marshal?”

“Marshal.”

“You sure?”

“That’s his name.”

“I would have named him Ned, but okay. Marshal worships you from afar. He gets to know the real you, because I’m too busy squiring famous actresses to events to notice the love of my life right under my nose.”

“It’s true—poor Marshal and I spend most of our downtime together.”

“Meanwhile,” Max said, “I go on my merry way, doing my own thing, not knowing that every day in every way I’m—”

“Breaking my heart?”

Silence.

Tess wished she hadn’t said that.

Max said: “ Am I breaking your heart?”

“No, not really. Could be I’m already beginning to forget you.”

“Forget me? How is such a thing possible? I’m the leading man.”

“I have the tabloids so at least I can remember what you look like.”

There was another pause. He said, “I can fly out. Next week, it would have to be quick. Overnight—or you could come here.”

Tess thought about Bonny, new here as undersheriff. Bringing her to Santa Cruz County with him. She was his right hand. And there would be Danny’s merciless teasing. Razzed unmercifully about the “movie star.” She wouldn’t mind being razzed. She wanted so badly to see Max right now, this minute, but Tess also knew she had to concentrate on this case. She’d be gone long hours. She only had a limited window of opportunity on Hanley—the longer without a break there was, the more unlikely the case would ever be solved. Still, Max would be here.

Tess said, “You can’t really get away, can you? You’re on a schedule.”

“I could call it an emergency.”

“You know you can’t do that.”

He sighed. She knew he was thinking there was no getting away from responsibility. So many people depended on him. And she couldn’t go there.

And yet the physical yearning was almost unbearable.

He said, “When can you come out here?”

“Not now.”

Quiet for a moment. “We can plan for something later. We’re both too busy.”

“Yes.”

“But it doesn’t mean this won’t work out,” he added.

“No.” She remembered how thin and pale he’d been in the hospital after the shooting. Max Conroy, star of stage and screen, kidnapped and held for ransom in her county. In Bonny’s county.

And Tess had ended up in the middle of a deadly romantic triangle, trying to help a displaced movie star on the run from kidnappers and a scheming wife who would have been happy to play the part of a grieving widow.

Max had been damaged. Badly. But he had survived, and somehow they had ended up together.