Forbidden (Southern Comfort) by O'Neill, Clark (free ebook reader txt) 📗

looming large behind her, JR cranked the volume and then stood, hands on hips, waiting to assess the damage.  They might have to cut their losses, get rid of the girl, and pull out of Charleston if this thing attracted too much attention.

The brunette started mouthing off about baseball and apple pie. And about thirty seconds into the newscast, dropped an unexpected bomb.

There was an FBI agent involved in the investigation.

Now, what the hell were the Feebs doing sticking their noses into a missing persons case that wasn’t even three hours old?  They had jurisdiction over kidnappings, but there should have been no indication that the girl had left the fairgrounds under anything but her own free will.

Behind him, Billy Wayne began to make angry noises of protest, but JR stopped him with a quelling look.

Then the camera panned out, showing a blond man and what looked to be his family. JR noted the badge on his hip.  He was dressed casually – not standard government issue – and was holding onto a dark-haired woman and a sleeping child.

From that JR surmised that the man probably had been off duty. Simply a matter of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.   Which meant the FBI wasn’t hot on their trail.

Lucky thing for Billy Wayne.

Then, just as JR was about to lose interest – after all, the locals would never be able to catch them – the off duty FBI agent kissed his wife on the mouth.  As she turned, JR caught a glimpse of her face.

Memories long buried erupted to the surface.

He tilted his head.  Squinted his eyes.  He couldn’t be certain.

The last time he’d seen her in person had been outside a crowded courthouse.  She hadn’t seen him, of course – he hadn’t wanted anyone to see him, to know that he’d been drawn as helplessly as a fish on a line – so he’d dressed as a homeless bum.  It had been his first attempt at disguise.

And he’d kept up with what you could call the main players for a number of years afterward.

Until…

Well. Until there hadn’t been any reason to keep up with them any longer.

Anger crept slowly back in, an unwelcome visitor with muddy feet, messing up the inner rooms he’d swept clean.

The woman turned more fully toward the camera, and doubt fled out the door so recently opened by his intrusive guest.  It was her.

Then his gaze slid toward the sleeping child.

A boy.

Tate Hennessey had a son.

An emotion even more foreign than anger caused the remote he held to tremble.

CHAPTER TEN

SHIT.

It was Clay’s very first thought of the morning.  Before he’d showered, before he’d had coffee, before he’d even taken a leak, he had his cell phone in his hand.

And what, he asked himself, was he planning to do with it?

Call Tate?

Saying what, exactly?

Hi Sugar, it’s me.  You know that man you kicked out of your life last night?  The one who has so far managed to drag you into an almost-mugging, give a peep show to your mother and your kid, disabuse any wide-eyed notions you might have about my big, bad FBI abilities to locate a missing teenager, and who all but forced himself upon you in my car’s front seat?

The one who is in town for no more than a few more days and has absolutely nothing to offer other than a couple of dates and some hair-raising sex, and will leave you and your little boy with some nice memories and a stupid purple bear?

Yeah.  That’s the one.  So do you want to have dinner tonight?

Double shit.  He’d lost his ever-loving mind.

Clay wondered exactly when he’d gone from being Clay Copeland, expert on human behavior, easygoing bachelor and master of the fine art of Avoiding Entanglements With Women, to Clay Copeland – total head case.

Maybe he could find a way to engrave those new credentials on his badge.

Forget Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity.  FBI – as pertaining to himself – now stood for Full Blown Idiot.

As he lay there in Justin’s guest room watching the morning light dance through the blinds, he realized that somehow, in the past few days, he’d succumbed to what countless hours of putting himself in the mindset of some of the country’s most evil and diabolical killers hadn’t managed to do. He’d gone off the deep end, blown a fuse, gone postal or whatever you want to call it.

Because the first thought he’d had this morning, the last notion in his head before he’d succumbed to fatigue – hell, the dreams that had plagued him all night – had all revolved around how exactly he was going to get his hands on Tate.

Not that he’d stop with his hands.

Oh no.

He wanted his mouth, and his tongue, and his… everything to suddenly fuse themselves to her like some kind of parasitic growth.

He wanted to taste her, to consume her, to frickin’ devour her. And then start the entire process again.  He wanted… Hell, he didn’t know what he wanted.

Liar.  He did, too.

He wanted to have Max crawl into bed with him in the morning, and for it to be perfectly okay for him to be there.

Because Tate would be there.

On a regular basis.

Really regular.

Like every day.

He felt himself freefalling into complete and utter mental chaos.  “Shit, shit, shit.”

When the phone in his hand started ringing, Clay nearly did that in his pants.   “Copeland,” he sighed into the phone, trying to keep the tone-of-a-man-who-has-lost-it out of his voice.

He sort of hoped it was his boss.  Cutting his vacation short.  Getting him out of this rabbit hole he’d fallen into so that the world could start making sense again.

“Agent Copeland?  This is Deputy Jones with the Bentonville sheriff’s department.  We spoke to each other last night?”

Well thank God.  Law enforcement.  He felt familiar ground begin to grow under his feet.  “Yes, this is Agent Copeland.  How can I help you, Deputy Jones?”

“Well, Agent Copeland, I understand that you’re on vacation, but I was hoping you