J. Black - The Survivors Club

Finally he did. In the truck, he honked the horn once and gave her a salute.

Jaimie barely noticed. She was too busy looking for her dog.

Tess was now certain that the lion was purchased to kill Farley. The name on the credit card was made up, but DeKoven had been too cute about it. She looked up the word “Dom” in an online dictionary. “Dominus” meant “lord.” And Derring. She knew that “derring” was part of the term “derring-do.” Her mother had used that term all the time. It meant, basically, doing something that was daring. So it could be that Michael was saying he was superior to others—a lord—and he was, at least in terms of wealth and privilege. Michael was the scion of a wealthy and important family. And he would certainly think of himself as having plenty of “derring-do.”

Old-fashioned term for a young guy.

Derring-do—maybe it was an expression he learned from his mother or father. It took a whole hell of a lot of derring-do to go around the country killing people because you thought you could get away with it.

She wondered where the animal was now. If he had been in the cage with Farley, if he had been driven out of hunger to eat Farley, then there could be evidence somewhere.

The cage was the most likely piece of evidence left.

But how to find it? Michael DeKoven had money and means to do pretty much whatever he wanted to do.

He could have killed the mountain lion and buried him. He could have destroyed the lion cage. Break it up for kindling. Burn it. Melt down the bars. Leave it in a landfill, or push it down a mountain. Plenty of places to do that. There were infinite ways he could dispose of the evidence.

Trying to find the cage, trying to find the mountain lion—that would be like looking for the needle in the haystack. There was so much open county. Forest land. Canyons and washes out in the boonies. Junkyards. Trash heaps.

The lion was gone. The cage was gone. Tess knew it.

She was convinced now that DeKoven was killing people who had previously escaped death. People who should have died, but lived instead.

If it was a game, it was a rich kid’s game. Michael was in his midthirties, but Tess thought of him as a kid. Look at his toys. Look at that car, the Fisker Karma. Look at those expensive paintings. She thought of Jaimie as a kid, too. The two of them in it together?

That left the second-youngest, the girl. Brayden.

And Chad in Laguna.

Could all four of them be involved?

What were the odds of that?

Four siblings, in it together? She grouped them by age. Michael and Jaimie were closest, at thirty-five and thirty-four. Then came Chad at thirty-two—two years’ difference between Jaimie and Chad, and three years’ difference between Michael and Chad. From Chad to Brayden, the youngest, it was three years. Which made Brayden five years younger than Jaimie and six years younger than Michael.

Six years’ difference in age might make a difference. Michael might not have included Brayden in this.

Tess hadn’t met Brayden. She hadn’t met Chad, either.

She wondered which one of the family had tagged Alec Sheppard on top of the Hilton Atlanta.

CHAPTER 32

Tess collected her bag at the Tucson International Airport carousel and walked out to her car. She saw she had a message from Alec Sheppard. She punched in his number as she walked.

“Mr. Sheppard? I thought when people sat across from each other at a picnic table and listened to a band called the Blasphemers, we could at least call each other by our first names.”

“I’m ever the professional.”

“No doubt in my mind. I haven’t heard from anybody and wanted to know if there was a—what do you call it in cop lingo? Break in the case? Anything on Steve Barkman?”

“Nothing yet.” She wasn’t about to tell him about the micro disc. “I plan to talk to Detective Tedesco later today. Are you still in town?”

“As a matter of fact I am. I’m looking at houses.”

“Houses?”

“I’m thinking of relocating.”

“Relocating?”

“You know, as in moving here. To Tucson.”

“Why?”

“I like it here, and I don’t need to live in Houston…you have a problem with that? Me being in your jurisdiction?”

“Technically, you’d be in Cheryl Tedesco’s jurisdiction. So what kind of place are you looking for?”

“When I was a college student, I thought it would be pretty cool to live in one of those neighborhoods with the old houses, like the ones in Encanto. So I’m standing in front of this pink adobe pueblo-style monstrosity and I was wondering if you’d give me advice, since you’re a local. Wait, let me send you a picture of it.”

Tess’s heart sped up. She cleared her throat. “That’s not necessary. I’m here in Tucson. I could meet you there.”

Tess drove north on Palo Verde and ended up twenty minutes later outside a very pink house surrounded by desert on a street in a neighborhood called Colonia Solana.

Alec Sheppard was waiting by his rental car.

He looked good.

He was a good-looking man.

She liked Alec Sheppard. In fact, she liked him a lot.

They toured that house and two others. One was in the foothills. The sun was starting to get low. “We could have dinner,” Alec said.

Tess opened her mouth to say she had to get back. Instead, she excused herself and went outside to call Bonny’s extension. It was late and he was already gone. She left a long message detailing what had transpired in California. She sent photos from her phone of the area where Peter Farley had been buried by the mountain pool. She sent photos of the animal sanctuary.

Then she went to dinner with Alec Sheppard. The food was good. The conversation, better. However much she liked him the first time they went out together, she liked him even more now.

She went up to his room for a nightcap.

Not advisable. She knew she was letting herself in for big trouble. He was too attractive, too decent, too nice, too smart, too good a man for it not to cause a major wrinkle in her life, but it was all operations go from the moment they stepped inside. She wanted him and he obviously wanted her. It started to get warm and then hot, and Tess realized she was equal parts attracted to Alec Sheppard and angry with Max.

It was hard to stop. Like a pilot trying to pull a plane out of a dive. He wasn’t just a good kisser, but a good toucher, a good hugger, a good feeler, and she was getting to the point—quickly—where she would not be able to stop.

She might be there now.

They were more urgent now, lips, mouths, tongues, hands, hips, molding each other into an approximation of the act but with clothing between them—it was impossible.

They tangled on the bed. She unbuttoned his shirt. She ran her fingers down his chest and then below that. He was doing plenty of research on his own. It seemed physically impossible to break away.

Too late…too late.

But there was Max.

Maybe she and Max were over, but she couldn’t do it this way.

She managed to pull away. It was one of the hardest things she’d ever done.

She said, “I’m in a relationship.”

Alec looked at her. His face was a mirror of hers. Not shock exactly. He wasn’t bereft, or brokenhearted, or disappointed. More like the rug had been pulled out from under him and he’d hit the ground flat on his chin.

She felt the same way.

He sat up, rubbed his neck. Looked away.