One Stormy Night

“You protect and serve even in the middle of the night. How diligent.”

This guy was a hunk. He didn’t need a weapon to make a woman swoon; just one good look at him in his current state of undress would do the trick. Tall, dark and hot. That meant he was Mitch Lassiter, and she’d been right on one point. He was the enemy. And she was pretending to be his best friend’s wife.

“I suppose you have a reason for harassing me inside my apartment.”

“Other than the fact that you’re supposed to be dead, no.”

“Dead? I assure you, I’m very much alive, Officer Lassiter.”

Jennifer Burton was alive, well and back in Belmar. Scowling, Mitch rubbed the throbbing area between his eyes. There was a lot he didn’t like about his friend. Though there was a lot he didn’t like about life in general, and Jennifer Burton’s return was probably going to add a few things to that list.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marilyn Pappano brings impeccable credentials to her career – a lifelong habit of gazing out of windows, not paying attention in class, daydreaming and spinning tales for her own entertainment. The sale of her first book brought great relief to her family, proving that she wasn’t crazy but was, instead, creative. Since then, she’s sold more than forty books to various publishers and even a film production company.

She writes in an office nestled among the oaks that surround her home. In winter she stays inside with her husband and their four dogs, and in summer she spends her free time mowing the garden, which never stops growing and daydreams about grass that never gets taller than two inches. You can write to her at PO Box 643, Sapulpa, OK 74067–0643, USA.

Dear Reader,

Hurricanes fascinate me, as much when I’m watching the news coverage as they did when I lived on the coast and kept a hurricane evacuation list handy. (First to go into the car: family photographs. Second: books, of course.) I never had an up-close-and-personal experience with a hurricane, though I did have to leave Charleston when Hurricane David hit, and I moved to Mobile a few weeks after Frederick. Being an Oklahoma girl, I never wanted to be up-close-and-personal.

Hurricane Jan is both an ending and a beginning for Jessica Randall. It brings her to the Mississippi coast and introduces her to Mitch Lassiter, who isn’t at all what he seems. I love heroes like Mitch – ones where you can’t figure out whether they’re really as bad as they act. It’s a question Jess wrestles with, because, like Mitch, her life depends on everyone believing she’s something she’s not.

Hope you enjoy the storm!

Marilyn Pappano

One Stormy Night

MARILYN PAPPANO

Contents

Cover

Excerpt

About the Author

Title Page

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Preview

Copyright

Prologue

The house creaked as the winds buffeted it. Jennifer Burton spared only a glance for the scene outside—night-dark sky, pouring rain, trees flailing wildly—before turning back to her task.

Hurricane Jan was just off the coast of Belmar, Mississippi, and everyone with any sense had already evacuated inland. Jennifer planned to join them just as soon as she found what she’d come to the house for. As chief of police, Taylor was far too busy to worry about what his wife was up to; he’d never dream that she’d returned to their house, a scant mile off the beach with Timmons Creek flooding through the backyard.

He would never dream she’d found the backbone to search for, much less run off with, evidence to use against him.

Something smashed into the house, vibrating through the boards and brick, making her jump as she opened the door into Taylor’s study. The forbidden room—that was how she’d come to think of it in the three years they’d been married. The day they’d returned from their honeymoon and moved her belongings into the house, he had taken her to the closed door. This is my room. You don’t clean it. You don’t look for anything inside it. You don’t even cross the threshold. Understand?

Her sister, Jessica, never would have allowed a man to ban her from entering a room inside her own home. She would have made a habit of going in just to spite him and she would have left traces that she’d been there.

Jessica never would have allowed much of what Taylor had done.

Encouraged by the thought of her sister, Jennifer stepped inside. The overhead lights flickered as the wind continued to batter the house. Phone service was already out and the roads were flooding—she’d had to take a detour to get there. Soon the storm would come ashore and damage or destroy everything in its path.

She hoped Taylor was in its path.

Her hand trembled on the flashlight she’d brought along just in case. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she knew in her bones that, whatever it was, Taylor was hiding it here. Financial records, perhaps; there was no way the city paid enough to account for even half of his extravagant lifestyle.

Maybe blackmail records. She’d heard whispers that the police department coerced and intimidated regular payments from most of the businesses in town.

Maybe…maybe… She didn’t know, and the thunder of a tree crashing into the house next door reminded her that she had precious little time to waste. She would take everything she could—the contents of the file cabinet, the desk drawers, the closet on the far wall.

She packed quickly, first into boxes, then slid the boxes into black trash bags to protect them from the rain. As she filled each bag, she carried it down the back stairs, then ran back to start again. She worked without thinking about what she was doing or about how furious Taylor would be. What he might do to stop her. How much she had once loved him.

Until she opened the closet door and found herself at eye level with a shelf of DVDs. Every one of them was labeled, in Taylor’s writing, with a date and a woman’s name.

Or a girl’s name.

She’d dropped several into her bag when she picked up the most recent, marked May of that year, along with the name Tiffani Dawn. Everyone in Belmar knew who Tiffani Dawn Rogers was. Pretty, blond, sixteen years old, grew up on the wrong side of town, wild and rebellious, in trouble on a regular basis since she was ten…and now dead. She’d gone missing after attending the rowdiest of the high school graduation parties, and her body had been found three days later.

Two days after the date on the DVD.

Dear God.

Hand shaking badly, Jennifer carried the DVD to the entertainment system that filled one entire wall. The press of one button turned on the television; another powered up the DVD player. It took two tries to press the Open button, three failures in opening the jewel case.

She didn’t want to see this. She’d accepted that Taylor wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. He was sometimes cruel, always arrogant and, though she’d denied it to herself for two and a half years, corrupt. He misused his position as police chief and abused his authority. He was petty, his charm a camouflage for a mean spirit and an ugly soul.

But, please, God, surely he’d had nothing to do with Tiffani Dawn Rogers’s murder.

Outside the wind howled, swaying the house fractionally. Still clutching the closed case, she went to the window to peer out, but darkness and churning rain blurred everything. She’d never been in a hurricane before. She was a California girl; earthquakes and mud slides were more her speed. She didn’t know how much time she had to escape.

But she needed to see the DVD. She needed to know whether her husband was just a common criminal…or a murderer.

She was turning away when a flash of light caught her attention. It was a car half a block away, moving slowly in her direction. Who, besides her, was so late in evacuating?

The answer came when the vehicle—an SUV, not a car—eased to a stop at the end of her driveway. It was black and white and bore the seal of the Belmar Police Department. Heaven help her, it was Taylor, probably come to retrieve his own valuables, accompanied by the assistant chief.

Panicked, she stared at the DVD. If he caught her with it, he would be enraged. Darting across the room, she shoved the tray on the DVD player shut, then turned off the power. Downstairs the front door slammed. She stretched onto her toes and dropped the case behind the decorative molding on top of the entertainment center. Voices sounded at the stairs, one muffled, the other growing louder as it came nearer.

Grabbing the bag with the other DVDs, she raced out of the room and toward the back stairs. She reached the turn in the staircase just as Taylor’s voice became audible and stopped, creeping from one step to the next.

“…take me a minute, then we can get the hell out of—”

His curse was loud and colorful. He must have discovered the door to his study open.

She was two steps from her goal—the kitchen, the gloom outside making the lights look brighter. They shone like spotlights on the two plastic bags there—would shine like a spotlight on her for the few seconds it would take her to dart out, then around the corner to the garage door.

One step…then Billy Starrett’s voice rang out. “Hey, Burton, why are all these lights on? And why’d you leave the garbage sitting in the middle of the kitchen fl—” He stopped in the doorway, eyes widening when he saw her huddled there on the last step. His hand groped automatically for his pistol but found his yellow slicker instead. While he fumbled to get it open, she balled the open end of the bag around her fingers and ran, not to the garage door but to the back door.

His yell for Taylor was snatched away by the wind as she ran, head ducked against the driving rain, bag cradled tight to her chest. She ran to the end of the deck, scrambled down the steps and tore off across the lawn. Waterlogged grass grabbed at her shoes, slowing her steps, but she pushed on, into their neighbor’s yard, sticking close to the solid shadows of the house as she headed toward the next yard.

She thought she heard Taylor scream her name, but that didn’t slow her. Heart pounding, legs pumping, she ran mindlessly, her only destination away. When a powerful flashlight beam sliced through the dark, she ran harder, veering away from the houses and their obstacles, cutting across open lawn. The street was beyond the houses to her right—faster for her, but faster for Taylor, as well—and Timmons Creek ran to her left, flowing over its banks, its normally sluggish pace churning now.

A crack sounded nearby—a breaking limb or a gunshot?—and she dashed toward the trees that lined portions of the creek. She gave the bag a great heave into the brush but didn’t slow even though her lungs were burning, her muscles quivering.

Just ahead her trail ran out. A six-foot-tall fence ran right down to the water’s edge. She could run along it, which would take her to the street, or she could go into the water. She was a strong swimmer. She would take her chance with the creek.

She was only a few feet from the water’s edge when something slammed into her from behind. Taylor. She would know his touch anywhere. She landed facedown, his weight suffocating her, half in the water, half out. Then the weight was gone. Kneeling astride her, he flipped her over, staring down at her with such rage that she hardly recognized him.

“You disloyal bitch!”

She struggled with him, bucking her hips, clawing at his hands, his arms, his face. They moved deeper into the water, the current tugging her one way, Taylor the other. She landed a few blows and took a few that made her vision go blurry.

And then suddenly the rushing water won, pulling her away. It lapped her face, eased her aches, and the upsurge blocked Taylor’s shouts as he splashed after her. Falling to his knees, he disappeared under the water’s surface, then struggled to his feet again and shouted a curse as she washed out of his reach.

For the first time since meeting him, she was free.

Chapter 1

By one o’clock on Tuesday morning, Belmar, Mississippi, was pretty much asleep. The stoplights on Main Street were turned to flashing yellow, the bars had had last call, and nothing remained open for business but the twenty-four-hour convenience stores and gas stations on the east and west ends of Main.

“This will never work,” Jessica Randall murmured as she cruised down a deserted street, making mental notes of places Jen had already told her about—the grocery store, the hair salon, the bank, the church she had attended with Taylor and, of course, the house she’d shared with him, as well as the police station. One place Jessica couldn’t avoid—and one she would try to stay hell and gone away from.

“Of course it will.” Jen’s face smiled at her from the screen of the cell phone mounted on the dash. “We’re identical, all the way down to the matching appendectomy scars, though I think mine is neater than yours. Besides, look at all the times we took each other’s places growing up—and we never got caught.”

“Me going out on a date for you is one thing,” Jessica retorted. “Trying to fool your husband—”

“Estranged husband.”

“—is totally different.”

“Taylor knows I have a sister, but he doesn’t know we’re twins. He also knows that we’ve kind of lost touch since the wedding. You won’t have any problem. Now, I’ve told you about the apartment, the house and the people. I have some things in a storage unit on Breakers Avenue. I don’t think I would have hidden anything there, though. I mean, it’s so obvious, and Taylor does tend to pick up on the obvious.”

Jessica’s mouth tightened. Kind of lost touch? For twenty-five years they’d been as close as two people could be, and it had taken less than a week for Taylor Burton to come between them. A stupid Caribbean cruise—that was where they’d met, where he’d charmed her into marrying him before the ship returned to Miami. And it wasn’t even supposed to have been Jen on the cruise. Jessica had made the reservations for herself, but when business had called her to Hong Kong, she’d persuaded Jen to go in her place.

It was fate, Jen had all but cooed when she’d finally resurfaced to tell Jessica—by phone, no less—that she’d gotten married, and without her twin.

Shouldn’t fate be good for more than three lousy years? Shouldn’t it take longer than thirty-four months for Prince Charming to turn into a toad? And a criminal-scum toad at that.

“Jess? Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah, I’m listening. You haven’t remembered anything else? What I’m looking for? Whether it’s bigger than a bread box?”

“Not a thing.” Jen sounded regretful. “I wish I knew, I wish I could retrieve it myself. But…”

She coudn’t. And because she couldn’t, the solution was obvious: Jessica would. She was the older—even if only by three minutes—the bolder and the braver.

She turned onto the other main street, Ocean Street, then moved into the right lane. All her driving and she hadn’t seen a single police officer out on patrol, though there had been three cars parked in the reserved lot behind the station. It looked as if when the town called it quits for the day so did the police department. Did the criminals also call a nighttime moratorium? Or in Belmar were the police and the criminals one and the same?

If their chief was anything to judge by, the answer to that was a resounding yes.

The Sand Dollar Apartments had once been the Sand Dollar Motel, until competition from the newer motels on the east and west sides of town had put it out of business. The building had been renovated into apartments, small, plain, nothing fancy. Jen’s was on the back side of the building, facing a narrow parking lot and a park complete with playground, soccer fields and noisy children on most nice days.

What had once been twelve units on the ground floor was now six one-bedroom apartments, with four two-bedroom apartments on the second floor, and every third parking space had been turned into a tiny patch of yard with spindly trees in some, flowers in others. She parked in front of #8 and cut off the engine. She’d seen Taylor’s three-hundred-thousand-dollar house, and yet Jen had spent her last two months in Belmar living in a converted thirty-dollar-a-night motel. How intolerable had the house—or, rather, the marriage—gotten?

Jessica hadn’t brought much with her—her laptop, a small bag with toiletries. She would wear Jen’s clothes, her perfumes, her jewelry. She’d already had her hair cut to match Jen’s short, sleek style and had indulged in fake fingernails in Jen’s usual pale pink to disguise her own shorter nails.

She was there and she was ready to begin the charade. As soon as she got a good night’s sleep.

Streetlamps at the corners of the parking lot drew halos of insects that buzzed ceaselessly. The air was muggy, both temperature and humidity higher than she was accustomed to. Dim lights burned in a few units, but there was no sign of life. No televisions blaring, no parties going on, no traffic on the street out front.

She gathered her belongings plus a grocery bag. Bring snacks, Jen had warned, and she’d stopped at one of the convenience stores for that and water. Singling the key from the others on the ring, she fumbled it into the lock, then swung open the door.

Musty. Unbearably hot. Stale. The apartment had been locked up since the hurricane, the air-conditioning off. Wishing she’d bought a can of air freshener or scented candles, Jessica flipped the light switch next to the door, but nothing happened.

The weak illumination from the parking lot lights showed a pale shadow about the right height for a lamp shade in the near corner. Jessica felt her way toward it, found a lamp, turned the knob—and again nothing happened.

Okay, Jen liked balance. If there was a lamp at one end of the couch, there would be another at the other end. Jessica eased her way along the edge of the couch, making it halfway before stubbing her toe on something. Glass toppled with a crash, then rolled off the edge of what seemed to be a coffee table and landed on the carpet with a thud.

Damn, she should have brought a flashlight—and worn tennis shoes. Her big toe was throbbing, and she’d probably chipped the polish, after subjecting herself to a pedicure at Jen’s insistence.

Finally she reached the end of the sofa, finding another table and another lamp that didn’t work. Great.

Surely the kitchen had an overhead light. She headed that way, bumping her hip hard into a side table on the way, knocking over something more substantial. Swearing softly, she extended both arms in front of her in the hopes of preventing any more damage to herself as well as Jen’s furnishings. Her hands connected with the smooth surface of a countertop, swept back to the wall, then up. She’d just found a couple of light switches when something hard pressed against the base of her skull.

“Police. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

The voice was male, deep, menacing, and it made swallowing all but impossible over the lump that had suddenly appeared in Jessica’s throat. Showtime, Jen whispered inside her head, but when she opened her mouth, nothing came out but a squeak.

She was the older, the bolder and the braver, she reminded herself.

And he’s got a gun!

As the protest formed, the pressure on the back of her head eased and she felt the space between them widening. He was backing off—the better to shoot her without getting blood and brains on himself, the hysteric in her warned.

“Hands in the air, then turn slowly.”

Her left hand was already in the air, she realized. She drew the right back from the light switch, raised it, as well, then turned slowly, as he’d instructed.

With the dim light at his back, all she saw was shadows, but that was intimidating enough. He was at least six foot two, with shoulders broad enough to fill the doorway. Hulk was the first word that came to mind. He had a gun and he worked for Taylor the scum.

And she was pretending to be Taylor’s wife.

She drew a breath, straightened her shoulders and said, “You protect and serve even in the middle of the night. I’ll be sure to tell my husband how diligent you are.”

For a moment the air in the room seemed to vibrate. Just as quickly, the moment passed, and there was a rustle of movement, the click of a switch, then light flooded the dining area. The enemy stared at her and she stared back.

She’d been close with hulk but definitely one letter off. This guy was a hunk. Tall, broad, great chest, narrow hips, long legs, muscular and golden brown all over. She could see that because he wasn’t wearing anything but boxers that rode low on the aforementioned hips. He didn’t need a weapon to make a woman swoon; just one good look at him in his current state of undress would do the trick nicely.

Tall, dark and hot. That meant he was Mitch Lassiter, and she’d been right on one point. He was the enemy.

His expression was impossible to read. Shock? Dismay? Suspicion? Doubt? He could be feeling anything or nothing, and she’d never know, thanks to the utter blankness on his features.

Feeling as if she were taking a chance she shouldn’t, she lowered her arms and crossed them over her middle instead. “I suppose you have a reason for harassing me inside my own apartment.”

He moved as if to put the gun away, but there was no place to put it. He settled for laying it on the glass dining table a foot to his left. “Other than the fact that you’re supposed to be dead, no.”

“Dead.” Holding her arms out to her sides, she turned in a slow circle. “I assure you I’m very much alive, Officer Lassiter.” Jen had never encouraged familiarity with any of Taylor’s employees, though she’d had little choice with Billy Starrett, the assistant chief. He and his wife, Starla, had constituted the bulk of their socializing.

Starla Starrett. Can you imagine? I’d’ve kept my maiden name.

His gaze narrowed as he studied her. His hair was dark brown and so were his eyes. If eyes were the windows to the soul, this man’s soul was hard. “Where have you been?”

“I wound up in a hospital, then a shelter. My sister came back to the U.S. after the hurricane, and I spent some time with her.”

“And you never thought to call your husband?”

The same husband who’d punched his wife and held her head underwater? It would be all Jessica could do to see him without smacking him hard. “Estranged husband,” she pointed out.

“Does he know you’re back?”

“I’m sure he will once you scurry home and call him like a good little police officer.”

His gaze narrowed even more, and a muscle clenched in his beard-stubbled jaw. I don’t like Mitch, Jen had said. Though she hadn’t mentioned it, the feeling was evi dently mutual.

“He’s been worried about you.”

“So worried that he tells people I’m dead?”

“You were seen leaving the apartment with your car loaded. Your car was found a few days after the storm where it had washed off the road near Timmons Bridge, with everything still in it. You didn’t call anyone.”