Page 11 of Diamonds in the Mud

His prints hadn’t appeared anywhere in the Taylor home. Yet.

Besides the fact that they owned half of the town, Pennington’s family was a mystery. The man had come into town more than five years back, reeking of wealth. The first thing he’d done was buy up half of the businesses and properties and raise rents everywhere.

I’d never seen the man without an expensive suit on and at least two secretaries following behind him getting anything he wanted. He oozed wealth and knew how to show it off. He wore arrogance as well as he wore his Armani suit.

I pulled up the digital files and compared them to the physical files to see what was missing.

It seemed to be timelines of the man’s schedule that I’d gotten from his secretary. One of the reasons I’d put him lower on the list of suspects was because he’d been out of town when Sharon had been killed, which had been estimated as between one fifteen and one forty-five in the morning.

None of the missing papers seemed all that important. Not that I could tell, at any rate.

I printed extra copies of the missing papers and replaced them in the files and then finished cleaning up and organizing my office. Then I took the files home with me.

By that weekend, I was seriously running on fumes. With only a handful of clues, which didn’t amount to squat, and a very small list of suspects, I was growing frustrated.

Chapter Three

“Life keeps throwing me stones.

And I keep finding the diamonds.”

–Ana Claudia Antunes

Jameson

There was little in this world that I hated more than seeing someone mistreat a person who was weaker than they were. Especially when I couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

Sitting on a barstool in Bayou’s near the back of the smoky bar, I watched Declan O’Malley twist the arm of his latest lady friend behind her back and laugh as she cried out in pain.

“Why so glum, Jameson?” Felix Woolf slapped me hard on the back as he stepped up beside me to order another round of shots for his crew, which filled the entire back room of the bar. I was pretty sure the moment we stepped foot in the dark place, everyone else left out of fear.

I glanced over at Felix and grunted. “Just horny as fuck,” I joked. That did the trick. Felix laughed and slapped me hard on the back again. I knew the man had a twisted sense of humor, and sex always made the guy laugh for some reason.

I’d be trying to worm my way into the organization without spooking Felix Woolf for almost a year now. A very long year in which I’d kept the guy off my scent.

Felix Woolf was one of the leaders of the Swamp Reapers Motorcycle Club. The Swamp Reapers had added me to their official ranks after a very long initiation phase that involved, well, more than I wanted to think about at the moment.

Declan O’Malley was a long-standing member of the Reapers and one I wanted to beat the living shit out of one day. The man was a snake. Hell, most of the Reapers were. But Declan was a special kind of snake, the kind that liked to toss around women. His latest victim, Evelyn, worked at Bayou Brews and Blues.

The pretty brunette didn’t deserve to be jerked around like this. No woman did. Still, there wasn’t anything I could do without catching the attention of either Felix or his right-hand man, Ben Blackwood.

Both men were my real targets.

The other dozen or so members of the Reapers were just collateral damage, as far as I was concerned. Sure, they did the bidding of Felix or Ben. Anytime either man told them to jump, they did so without question.

“Lay off it,” Felix barked at Declan when he’d grabbed Evelyn, causing her to drop a tray of beer that she’d been delivering to the group playing pool in the back. “You can fuck with her later on your own damn time. Right now, she’s got a job to do keeping us hydrated.”

Declan narrowed his eyes slightly at Felix, but then went and sulked in the corner like a kicked dog. The man had zero backbone when it came to dealing with Felix or Ben but sure as hell knew how to throw his weight around with everyone else.

It was my opinion that Declan was trying to weasel his way up the chain of command. He was nothing more than a kiss-ass and a bully. I was pretty sure that both Felix and Ben knew it.

“So…” Felix leaned against the bar as he downed the shot of whiskey he’d just gotten. “Which one are you thinking of fucking?”

I shrugged, trying to play it cool. “Almost anyone. I mean, it’s been”—I pretended to count on my fingers—“hours.” Felix laughed again. In truth, the last time I’d been with anyone was three goddamned years ago.

My number-one rule was to never mix business with pleasure. I might play a bad guy but there was no way I’d shack up with anyone while lying about who and what I was.

“You know Izzy has had her eyes on you for a while now.” Felix nodded to the pretty blonde woman leaning over the pool table.