Distortion (Moonlighters Series) Read online

  BOOKS BY TERRI BLACKSTOCK

  THE MOONLIGHTERS SERIES

  1 Truth Stained Lies

  2 Distortion

  THE RESTORATION SERIES

  1 Last Light

  2 Night Light

  3 True Light

  4 Dawn’s Light

  THE INTERVENTION SERIES

  1 Intervention

  2 Vicious Cycle

  3 Downfall

  THE CAPE REFUGE SERIES

  1 Cape Refuge

  2 Southern Storm

  3 River’s Edge

  4 Breaker’s Reef

  NEWPOINTE 911

  1 Private Justice

  2 Shadow of Doubt

  3 Word of Honor

  4 Trial by Fire

  5 Line of Duty

  THE SUN COAST CHRONICLES

  1 Evidence of Mercy

  2 Justifiable Means

  3 Ulterior Motives

  4 Presumption of Guilt

  SECOND CHANCES

  1 Never Again Good-bye

  2 When Dreams Cross

  3 Blind Trust

  4 Broken Wings

  WITH BEVERLY LAHAYE

  1 Seasons Under Heaven

  2 Showers in Season

  3 Times and Seasons

  4 Season of Blessing

  NOVELLA

  Seaside

  OTHER BOOKS

  Shadow in Serenity

  Predator

  Double Minds

  Soul Restoration

  Emerald Windows

  Miracles (The Listener/The Gifted )

  The Heart Reader of Franklin High

  The Gifted Sophomores

  Covenant Child

  Sweet Delights

  ZONDERVAN

  Distortion

  Copyright © 2014 by Terri Blackstock

  ePub Edition © February 2014: ISBN 978-0-310-28939-5

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Blackstock, Terri, 1957-

  Distortion / Terri Blackstock.

  pages cm. -- (Moonlighters series ; Book 2)

  ISBN 978-0-310-28314-0 (trade paper)

  1. Moonlighting--Fiction. 2. Women private investigators--Fiction. 3. Murder--Investigation--Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3552.L34285D57 2014

  813’.54--dc23

  2013037375

  Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

  Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover design: James Hall

  Cover image: Getty Images

  Interior design: Mallory Perkins

  Printed in the United States of America

  14 15 16 17 18 19 20 /RRD/ 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is lovingly dedicated to the Nazarene.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AN EXCERPT FROM TERRI BLACKSTOCK’S RESTORATION SERIES: BOOK ONE: LAST LIGHT

  ONE

  TWO

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  Juliet Cole watched her husband through the windshield, wishing he’d stop brooding. His jaw popped as he stood at the gas pump, scowling at the dollar amount of the fuel going into the U-Haul truck. She couldn’t say she blamed him for his foul mood tonight. This was the fourth time in the last year he’d taken the day off from his practice to help her sister Holly move, and it had been a long day.

  A white Camaro pulled up between her silver Caravan and the U-Haul truck Bob was about to return, illuminated by the gas station’s lights. The man inside looked toward Bob, then turned to peer at Juliet. Did she know him? Just in case, she lifted her fingers in a wave. The man looked away and pulled on through.

  Bob put the gas pump back into its cradle. He grabbed the receipt, then climbed back into the box truck. He pulled out without a word, expecting her to follow. Maybe when the truck was returned and he was back in the van, she could coax him into a better mood.

  She followed him down the highway where sleazy clubs with neon signs lined the streets, Friday night partiers’ cars crammed into the parking lots. Juliet would have preferred a safer location after dark, but this was the only U-Haul store that had the size truck they needed, and they’d been instructed to return it to the same place they’d rented it. Her husband’s left-turn signal came on, and she pulled in behind him. There were no lights in the parking lot. Uneasy, she clicked on her locks.

  Though the parking lot was empty, she pulled between the white lines of a parking space, facing the depository box forty feet away. Bob drove the truck to the empty space among the other rental trucks, off to her left at the back of the lot. He jumped down from his seat and slammed the door. Then he trudged across the asphalt to put the key in the night depository.

  Another car pulled into the lot, drove just past the building, and did a U-turn, putting the driver on the side of the depository box. He stopped in front of the box, obstructing Juliet’s view of Bob. The car’s interior light didn’t come on; the man didn
’t get out of the car. Juliet stiffened, her hand on the door. Was he talking to Bob?

  A blast as quick as a balloon pop jolted her. She strained to see. Her car sat at an angle to the box, her headlights aimed to the left, barely illuminating the driver. He had turned sideways, his back to her, and was leaning out the window closest to Bob. Another blast, then another, shook her breathless. As he turned back to the steering wheel, she saw the quick outline of a gun.

  Dread choked her. Tires squealed and the car screeched off, leaving thick darkness in its wake. Then she saw him . . . a hump on the ground.

  “Bob!” She fumbled for the door handle, then the lock. Throwing the door open, she stumbled out of the van. “Bob!” she screamed. “Oh, God, please don’t . . .” She went toward him, walking at first, then running.

  As she fell to her knees beside him, Juliet gasped at the blood pooling around his head. He wasn’t moving. Screams shredded her throat. Her phone—where was her phone?

  Trembling, she lifted his head, warm liquid coating her fingers. Blood? No . . . please, God . . . The exit wound—she tried to apply pressure, but the wound was too big. She groped for a pulse, couldn’t find one.

  “Help! Somebody, please . . . !”

  No one came. Her phone. Was it in her purse in the van? She carefully laid Bob’s head back down, then forced herself to abandon him and stumbled back to the van. She grabbed her purse with bloody hands and groped for her phone. She pulled it out, tried to punch in the digits as she ran back to him. It took three tries to get the number right, but she finally hit CALL.

  “Bay County 911, what is your emergency?”

  “Help!” she said, breathless. “My husband’s been shot!”

  The maddeningly calm dispatcher demanded to know an address. Juliet had no idea. “The U-Haul place. He’s bleeding!” she cried. “Hurry, please!”

  “Ma’am, I need an address. Which U-Haul store?”

  “The U-Haul store . . . on Highway 57.” She looked around for a sign or some kind of landmark. “Across from RK’s Plumbing Supplies, near the KFC. Please hurry!”

  She screamed again for help from someone, anyone on the street, but her cries were ignored. Cars drove by, their drivers oblivious. Silhouettes passed in the streetlight, indifferent pedestrians ignoring her screams as her husband’s life slowly bled away.

  CHAPTER 2

  The parking lot had filled with police cars, their blue lights strobing. Juliet felt as if she were outside her body as police and EMTs surrounded her husband. She shivered, freezing. Why wouldn’t they load him into an ambulance?

  They had told her he was dead, but she knew he wasn’t. He would be okay if they just got him to the hospital. They could replace the blood he’d lost, use a defibrillator, revive him somehow. Bob did it for patients all the time. Why wouldn’t they listen?

  She sat in the back of a police car, the door open, staring at him across the parking lot, desperate to cover him.

  He must be cold. She wanted to shoo away the crime scene photographers who stood over him as if he were just some object. A policeman knelt on the pavement next to where she sat, trying to pry information from her, but she didn’t know how many times she had to tell him. “Please,” she wept, her voice raspy and hoarse, “get him to the hospital and maybe—”

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but we have to leave him there. It’s a homicide scene. We’ll take him soon. Right now I need to ask a few more questions.”

  Hadn’t he asked her enough already? “What?”

  “You were carrying a gun in your car.”

  She met his eyes, wondering if he thought she had shot Bob. She had given them permission to search the van because she had no reason not to. “Yes . . . it’s registered. I have a concealed weapons permit. I work part-time as a private investigator. It wasn’t my gun that shot him. You can take it. Test it.” She looked at the eaves on the building. “There’s a camera on that building. If you get the security video, maybe you can see who did this.”

  “We’re working on that.”

  “I didn’t shoot my husband.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that you did. What kind of investigative work do you do?”

  She tried to organize her thoughts. “Mostly desk-type stuff. Background searches, workers’ comp fraud, adoption searches, divorce cases . . . that kind of thing. Do we really have to go over this right now?” She waved a hand toward her husband’s body. “He’s just lying there. How can you leave him lying on the ground? His head . . .”

  The officer’s gaze softened as he got to his feet and blocked her view. She leaned to see around him. “Ma’am, I think it would be best if I took you to the police station.”

  “No, please! I want to stay with him!”

  “Ma’am, it’s not doing you any good to stay here. It can take a long time for them to examine the crime scene. We’re looking for evidence that can lead us to his killer.”

  “A white car,” she said again. “I told you, it was a white car. The man, he was white—really pale . . . and he . . . he had greasy hair that strung into his eyes. He was wearing . . . a T-shirt, I think. Please . . . just go find him!”

  “Ma’am, we’ve called it in and we have people looking for him. The white car, have you ever seen it before?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” She stared toward her husband. Why had she agreed to rent the U-Haul from this place? They should have just hired movers for Holly. She thought of Bob sulking at the gas station, not even looking at her. The tightness on his face as he pumped gas.

  The white Camaro . . . the man staring at Bob, then glancing at her.

  “Wait,” she blurted. “It was a Camaro. A white Camaro.”

  “A Camaro? You’re sure?” he said.

  “Yes. We stopped at the gas station.” She pointed up the road. “The one a block up. We put some gas in the truck. You have to return it full. There was a guy there in a white Camaro. He looked at us. I thought he might know Bob, but he didn’t wave or talk to him.”

  “Was it the same man who shot your husband?”

  She touched her throat. “Yes, I think so. He must have followed us here.”

  The cop quickly spoke into the radio, turning his back to her.

  What did it mean? If someone in a Camaro had followed them from the gas station . . . Had the man figured her husband was an easy mark, going to a dark, unlit place?

  She begged God to make this a silly nightmare from which she would wake. To get Bob up off the ground . . .

  But it wasn’t a dream.

  CHAPTER 3

  Holly stood in the middle of her new living room, surveying the boxes that had been unloaded and left for her to unpack. Cathy and Michael were unloading dishes in the kitchen, something that embarrassed her. She never liked for her successful sister to see her Solo cup aesthetic, and it horrified her that Michael, her boss and mentor, was getting a close-up look at the true state of her life. She’d rather they didn’t know that she ate mostly off paper plates and drank from plastic cups she’d picked up at convenience stores. Cathy had a fully stocked kitchen the first time she moved into an apartment of her own. Her plates all matched her cups and bowls, and she displayed them in doorless cabinets like art. Holly was grateful that her cabinets had doors.

  At twenty-eight, Holly knew she should be living like an adult rather than a high school dropout. She had graduated from high school—barely—and she’d lived a minimum-wage lifestyle since she opted out of college. Though her sister Juliet had been so helpful every time she moved, her brother-in-law was getting fed up with her. But what else could she do? Six months pregnant, she couldn’t lift heavy boxes. And she had barely scraped up enough to cover the down payment on this house, much less the money to hire real movers.

  Overwhelmed, she walked through the house, dodging boxes, and found her brother, Jay, kneeling in the master bedroom, patching the hole in the drywall. “Is that going to work?” she asked, standing at the door.

  Jay looked
up at her. “Oh yeah, it’ll be fine. Just let it dry a day or so and then you can slap some paint over it.” He stopped spackling and nodded toward the photography equipment she had unpacked on her bare mattress. “What’s all that?”

  “Tools of the trade,” she said.

  “Taxi driving?”

  She laughed. “No, my other trade. I use them for surveillance.”

  “That’s some expensive equipment. Does Michael pay for it?”

  “Yeah, thank goodness. Those zoom lenses make my job a lot easier when I’m watching subjects.”

  He scraped the extra joint compound back into the bucket, then looked up at her. “So this is getting to be a real thing? Not just a hobby?”

  “Seriously?” she said. “You’re just now getting that?”

  “I mean, I knew you were all helping Michael. But I didn’t know he’d made actual investments in you.”

  “Yeah, imagine that. Somebody investing in me.”

  He got up and wiped his hands. “You know what I mean.”

  Holly went to the bed and loaded the equipment back into her camera case. “He’s even paying us now. Not much. Just ten bucks an hour, whenever we can put time in. But we’re kind of liking this gig. Even Juliet, though she’d probably never admit it.”

  “So . . . how do you do surveillance from a big yellow taxi? You must stand out like a sore thumb.”

  She shrugged and snapped her case. “A taxi fits right in at the hotels, where cheating spouses like to go. And when I get a taxi call, I can leave and make a run. For everything else, Michael has an agency car he lets me drive.”

  “What’ll you do when you have the baby?”

  “Take him-slash-her with me.”

  “Great.”

  “Nothing to worry about, bro. It’s utter boredom most of the time. I vow not to take him-slash-her on any high-speed chases.”

  “Okay, that doesn’t make me feel better.”

  “Trust me, Jay. I’ll be even more protective of my baby than I am of Jackson.”

  Jay nodded, clearly remembering that she’d risked her life for his five-year-old son.

  “Besides, I like being called a PI a whole lot better than Taxi Driver. It sounds better at parties.”

  “And it’s important to sound good at parties,” he said in a dull voice. “So . . . did the previous owners leave any paint cans?”