figured, and with his entire life ahead of him, a few years in law school couldn’t hurt, right?
Yeah, right. He’d met Jamie there, which had led to meeting Melinda. The bloodsucker and the bitch.
Speak of the devil, or, at least, one of them…Jamie came out of her office across the street. Her hair was pulled back and clipped up in kind of a mess on the back of her head. She wore a red-and-white print dress that didn’t reach her knees, with a sweater that was more for looks than warmth, and she carried a briefcase and a bottle of water. Huge dark glasses covered her eyes, but he could tell she never looked toward the house before she slid behind the wheel of her characterfree black convertible.
He watched her back out from the space in front of her office, then drive off to the south. If he had any luck, she would keep driving south until she wound up somewhere deep in the Gulf of Mexico. But at the end of the block, she turned, jogged over to River Road, then headed north.
“Staring out the window doesn’t get the work done.”
He turned to find J. D. Stinson standing at the top of what had once been elegant stairs. They’d been chopped up along with the rest of the house sometime in the fifties, turning the place into cheap apartment rentals.
J.D. was a relative, too; his mother was Russ’s father’s youngest sister. He was an assistant vice president at Fidelity and oversaw all of Russ’s construction loans. Nothing like keeping it in the family.
“I always finish ahead of schedule and under budget,” Russ said mildly.
“And you usually have bonuses for doing so written into your contract.”
Russ shrugged. He had a reputation for doing good work at a fair price. If people were willing to pay him extra for doing it quickly, as well, why not? “What are you doing out of the office and on the site on a warm day like today?”
It was a family joke that J.D. had gone into banking not because his father was president and it was expected of him, but because it meant an air-conditioned job wearing nice clothes. Casual for him was khakis and a polo shirt. He owned more suits than all the undertakers in the county combined, and the only thing he thought worth sweating over was his girlfriend of the month.
“I had some business to take care of across the street.”
Russ resisted the urge to shift his gaze to the whitewashedbrick building that housed Jamie’s office.
“What business do you have with Satan?”
J.D. scowled. “You know, if I was half as ticked off with Jamie as you are—”
“I’m not ticked off at Jamie. I don’t like her. Under the circumstances, you shouldn’t be dealing with her, either.” Russ wasn’t talking about his divorce, though family loyalty, with the exception of Robbie, should count for something. No, having won a damn fine settlement against one Calloway, Jamie was after another, representing J.D.’s wife, Laurie, in their split.
“I’m not dealing with her. That’s why I waited until I knew she would be gone to come over this way.”
Russ did look down at the building then. There were two good-sized windows, one in reception and one in the office. And through the first, he could see Lys Paxton sitting at her desk, using the computer. Her black hair concealed the buds that were usually plugged into her ears, but her head was bobbing, her entire body moving to music only she could hear.
He looked back at his cousin. “Lys Paxton? Give me a break.”
His cousin bristled. “Lys and I used to date. There’s nothing wrong with her.”
“Yeah, right.” She was young, more than a little freaky and didn’t like Calloways. Plus she worked for Jamie and she’d once dated J.D. That was five strikes Russ could come up with in ten seconds.
“Besides, I haven’t even talked to her today. Jamie hadn’t left yet, so I came up here.”
“Yeah, well, she’s gone now.”
“Watching her, were you?” J.D. asked with a smirk.
Russ pushed away from the window, returned to the door where he’d been working when his first interruption had come along and crouched, pry bar in hand. “You know, J.D., going out with your estranged wife’s lawyer’s paralegal might rank as one of the stupidest ideas you’ve ever come up with.”
J.D. went to the window, no doubt watching Lys. “Knock it off, Russ. You’re not my father, my brother, my lawyer, my priest or my boss. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“Someone needs to.”
“Yeah, someone needs to set you straight, too, but I don’t see you taking advice from anyone.”
Russ scowled hard, focusing his irritation inward so he didn’t inadvertently damage the piece of trim he was removing. “My life is fine.”
“Yeah, you’ve got your work, your work and, oh, yeah, your work.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t have Jamie Munroe after my ass.”
“Anymore. At least I’m smart enough to hire Robbie.”
The pry bar slipped, leaving a mark in the plaster as well as the back of Russ’s hand. He swore silently. “Dracula has gone out, and the bloodsucker-in-training is alone in their lair. You wanna make life harder for yourself, go ahead. Have at it. Just get the hell out of here and let me work.”
J.D.’s smile was tight and hard, bearing an eerie resemblance to the only enduring memory Russ had of his father, who’d died when he was seven. “Yeah, well, like I said, you’ve got your work.”
Russ listened until his footsteps were drowned out by the other workers in the house, then heaved a deep breath. Damn straight, he had his work.
And it was all he wanted.
The office of the psychologist Jamie had come to Augusta to see was located in a small enclave of similar offices near the Medical College of Georgia. She’d spent two hours listening to him assure her beyond a shadow of a doubt that her client had suffered egregiously at the hands of her husband. Now what she needed was an expert witness for her expert witness, because she was pretty convinced that Laurie and the doctor had cooked up a scheme to wring big bucks out of J. D. Stinson.
“He’s a Calloway, you know,” the doctor had mentioned near the end of the conversation.
What the hell did that mean? Jamie wondered as she unlocked her car with the remote, then opened the door to let the heat escape. Were all Calloway men genetically inclined to dole out abuse to their wives? Did all Calloways share some sense of entitlement that made them above the law? Were all Calloways rich enough to pay off disgruntled exwives whether the wives deserved payment?
She set her bag on the passenger seat, then peeled off her sweater. The doctor’s office had been cold; the warm leather felt wonderful against her skin. Once the chill had seeped away, she stuck the key in the ignition and turned and…nothing. Another try, another nonresponse.
Grabbing her cell phone, she climbed out again and walked to the nearest shade under a lace-canopied tree. She knew nothing about mechanical things; popping the trunk told her as much about the engine as popping the hood did. So she did what she usually did when she was stuck: she called Lys. Within thirty sweltering minutes, a tow truck arrived to transport her car to the garage and soon after that, a car rental agency delivered a replacement. Jamie gratefully signed the paperwork, then slid inside, where the air conditioner was blasting on frigid.
Deciding to forego dinner alone, she headed back to Copper Lake. It was a lovely drive, quick on the interstate, peaceful on the two-lane state road. She’d never heard of the town until she’d met Russ and Robbie in law school and had visited only three weekends with Russ before he got married. Still, when she’d been looking for someplace to run away to after life had gone to hell in Macon and Robbie had suggested Copper Lake, it had seemed right. Immediately she’d felt as