Breathless: The Mia Kazmaroff Mysteries, #3

By Susan Kiernan-Lewis

They hadn't spoken in fifteen years but when their child is kidnapped, Sandy Gilstrap and Detective Jack Burton's worlds collide with a resounding crash.

After a nasty divorce, an illegitimate child and twenty years working at a small south Georgia town nail salon, life was finally going Sandy Gilstrap's way until an indiscretion from her past crawled into her charmed new life—and threatened to destroy everything that mattered.

The day Detective Jack Burton discovers he's a father is the same day his daughter is snatched on her way home from school.

Is it money the kidnapper wants or revenge? Can Jack find the girl before the kidnapper decides which it is? And can he do it before Mia loses patience with all Jack's secrets and uses her "gift" to take matters into her own hands?

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Kiernan-Lewis
• Release date: Sep 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223442691

Susan Kiernan-Lewis

USA TODAY Bestselling Author Susan Kiernan-Lewis is the author of The Maggie Newberry Mysteries, the post-apocalyptic thriller series The Irish End Games, The Mia Kazmaroff Mysteries, The Stranded in Provence Mysteries, The Claire Baskerville Mysteries, and The Savannah Time Travel Mysteries. Visit www.susankiernanlewis.com or follow Author Susan Kiernan-Lewis on Facebook.

Book preview

1

Jack studied the can of creamed corn in his hand. He glanced up the narrow aisle of canned goods in his mother’s neighborhood Piggly Wiggly, shrugged and dropped the can into his wire basket. It reminded him of the fact the French didn’t tend to use corn in their dishes, relegating vegetables to the class of what livestock eat.

But when he’d offered to cook one last dinner before he returned to Atlanta, his mother was insistent that creamed corn figure into it.

Just one more day…

It was a sure bet she wasn’t going to love the crevettes sauce boursin he was planning to make. Although if he called it Jack’s Cheesy Crawfish, she just might.

One more day and he’d be back home, back in the condo he shared with Mia Kazmaroff in Atlantic Station…and picking up where he left off in the very delicious new chapter the two of them were starting. He stood in the middle of the grocery store aisle as a long-playing repeat video spun in his head of Mia, her dark hair tossed back over her shoulders, her eyes mischievous and inviting, as she peeled her jeans down over her round, perfect—

The punch seemed to come from somewhere between the succotash and the French green beans and hit him square in the stomach. The pain shot up his chest and momentarily disabled his limbs. He dropped his basket and reached out for the shelving to steady himself when the second punch nailed him in the kidneys.

Bastard! Think you can just come down here and do what you want…

Jack’s ribs screaming in pain, he swiveled on the ball of one foot to face his attacker. Standing at least as big as his own six-four—when he wasn’t doubled over—the man held an aluminum baseball bat in his hands, his eyes glittering with malice.

Who…? Jack gasped, attempting to adopt a defensive stance. He heard a woman scream behind him.

Do you know me now? the man shouted, bringing the bat over his head with both hands.

Jack rammed his head into the guy’s midriff, bringing him down into the shelving. Cans rolled and bounced around them. The public address system blared: The police have been called! I repeat, the police have been called.

His assailant dropped the bat and the two men grappled and rolled across the floor, punches landing impotently across Jack’s back. His stomach still aching, Jack flipped the man facedown onto the floor. Jack’s knee went into the guy’s back and he grabbed his right hand and twisted it behind him.

Let me up, you bastard, the man said, breathing hard. I swear I’ll kill you.

What’s your name, jackass? Jack said, twisting the man’s wrist and prompting a squeal of pain from him.

"You know my name."

Fine. Tell it to the cops. I’ll find out when they book you.

I’m Sandy’s husband, you bastard!

Jack froze momentarily, then relaxed his grip on the man. I’m going to let you up, he said. But if you come at me again, I’m going to break your arm. Understand?

The man grunted and Jack stepped off him and backed away. The man got up, his face sullen and red as he leaned over to pick up the bat. Jack kicked it away.

He wasn’t going to ask what the man’s problem was or why he attacked him. If the guy was Sandy’s husband, Jack already had a pretty good idea why he wanted to kill him.

The instructor was stocky, with a squat build and a no-nonsense buzz cut. He stood at the front of the class in the community center classroom, his hands held out as if in welcome. But Mia wasn’t fooled. From her spot on the front row, she could see several rampant nose hairs fighting for freedom from the instructor’s Irish pug nose. Mia tried not to look.

She’d originally found a nice comfy spot in the back row, but the instructor had moved her forward. Guess I’m the class idiot, she thought, trying to mimic his hand motions along with the rest of the class—twenty other people interested in mastering basic police self-defense moves.

"Chin na is the most powerful of all the Chinese martial arts moves used to control your opponents, the instructor said in a nasal drawl. There’s a reason why most police forces train their officers in this method as opposed to any other. Is it self-defense?"

There was a beat of silence and then a low-grade murmur of Noooo, that came from the rest of the class.

That’s right. It’s not. If you want self-defense, he said, walking over to where Mia stood and staring at her, go take a women’s empowerment class.

That got a ripple of laughter. Mia held his stare.

"Chin na is not for fending off attack, he said loudly to the class, but speaking only to Mia. It is for controlling your enemy."

Is he talking about me? Mia forced herself not to blink.

All right, sweetheart, he said, holding out a hand to her. Will you be our first volunteer?

Oh, this isn’t going to go well. She held out her hand. The minute he grabbed it, she confirmed what she already knew. He was a bully. He was angry. Mia got a quick sense of another woman. A hard woman, a taunting one—alcohol or maybe drugs involved somehow.

Crap….was it his mother?

Fighting her fear of public speaking and trying to ignore the anger her gift was receiving from him in record amounts, she let him position her in front of the room.

The instructor spun her around until she faced away from him. Mia looked over the heads of the people in the class, refusing to meet their stares. She felt the instructor place his hands on her arms from behind and she realized he’d been talking.

It didn’t matter. This was going to go down exactly as he wanted it to regardless of what Mia did. That much she knew.

Your assailant comes at you from behind, he said loudly into her ear. You weren’t paying attention. You were not aware of your tactical environment. You were thinking something girly and stupid like what reality show you were going to watch or what shoes you wanted to buy and then suddenly, he was there.

Mia felt his arms give a spasmodic jerk as he pulled her back against this chest. She fought the rising panic as his arms squeezed tighter around her. There’s no way anyone could get out of this! She began to wriggle and twist in his grip.

Oh, he likes that! the instructor said. Oh, yes, sweetheart, the more you squirm, the better.

Mia lifted her foot to ram it onto his instep but he shifted his hips to move her out of range.

Most rapists like a little spirit in their victims, the instructor said, so you won’t upset them in the least by attempting to fight back. The class laughed but when Mia brought her eyes down to look at them they wouldn’t meet hers.

The women in the class weren’t laughing.

I give up, Mia said.

The instructor released her. That’s fine. But you just got raped.

As she walked back to her place in line, she felt his hand pat her bottom. She whirled on him, her face aflame with indignation. He looked at her with surprise.

What is it, honey? Did you think of something you could’ve done besides roll over on your back?

No one had seen it. It was her word against his.

Actually, I did, she said. I should’ve asked my rapist for a twenty. Isn’t that what your mother charges?

Mia sat in her car outside the community center and waited for the rest of the class to let out. The instructor had not really expelled her, but Mia was wise enough to know an exit line when she uttered it. It didn’t matter. Another instructor would be teaching the same class in an hour. Worked better for her schedule anyway.

Autumn was coming slowly to Atlanta this year. Early October and the leaves were still firmly attached to the trees, the air still warm. Mia watched the canopy of green wave overhead from the sweet gums that studded the community center’s landscaping. She wondered if the instructor hadn’t been such a tool, would her gift still have gotten in the way? The last thing she needed was some sociopath’s complete dossier flying through her head while she was trying to break his death hold on her throat.

Her phone vibrated and she snatched it up, thinking, hoping…

But it was only Jess.

Hey, Mom, she said as she watched the class file out of the building. What’s up?

Her mother’s voice was calm and cheerful. Just checking to see how your self-defense class went today.

Apparently they don’t call it that, Mia said. It’s a modification of the same moves police candidates get in officer training school.

I should think your gift would make it difficult to handle being…handled.

I imagine being handled when you don’t want to be is tricky no matter.

So you didn’t feel any special challenges when you had to put your hands on your partner?

We don’t have partners yet, but I’ll keep you updated when that happens.

You sound tense. Did something happen?

"Let me ask you a question, Mom. Have you ever not had a person’s whole life history pass through you when they touched you? I mean, is there ever a time where you don’t get all the flashes?"

If I understand you correctly, then no, you’ll feel whatever story is behind whatever you’re touching. Which is why it’s important to learn to filter and control what you feel.

I can’t do that.

It’s a lifelong effort. I still struggle with it myself.

While I have you on the subject, Mia said, watching the instructor strut out of the building and hop on his motorcycle in the parking lot, can I ask you about how the gift works with…sex.

Jess Kazmaroff sighed on the other end of the line. Darling, if you’re with a good man, it doesn’t matter.

"So it is something to overcome. It’s not an enhancement…at all?"

I have to admit to not being comfortable talking about this with you.

Yeah, okay. Nothing like being twenty-eight years old and talking to your mom about losing your virginity. You know I’ve had only one phone conversation with Jack since he laid his bombshell on me earlier this week.

About the child?

"I don’t really know that it is a child, Mom. The kid could be eighteen years old. All I know is Jack is stonewalling me."

Is he refusing to answer your questions?

He says he wants to do it in person.

Sounds reasonable. Didn’t you say he was coming home tomorrow?

Mia watched the instructor scoot down the street on his motorcycle. There are so many people out there with really debilitating emotional problems. And they’re all going through life—interacting with the rest of us…

Mia?

Sorry. What?

Come to dinner, darling. It won’t be haute cuisine like you’re used to with Jack, but it will be good down-home Southern cooking like you were raised on. Besides, you sound like you could use a little family time.

In addition to being a partner with Mia in their private investigation agency, Jack had a thriving personal chef business Mia was sure was single-handedly responsible for the five extra pounds she had gained over the summer.

But like her mother she also believed there was something about basic Southern food that could ease any woe, soften any blow. Just the thought of her mother’s collard greens with chicken and dumplings and biscuits dripping in lavender honey gave Mia a feeling of warmth that spread through her chest.

Screw the class.

I’m on my way, she said, starting up her car.

Marvella Burton’s ranch, located in a tired neighborhood in an outer suburb of Valdosta, was tidy but old. She’d raised both her boys there after their dad died. Jack had long gotten used to the chores and maintenance an older house demanded. He mused it was probably the reason he’d bought his own post-war ranch in Garden Hills.

The one that burned to the ground last spring.

Is that you, Jack? his mother called through the screen door. She hurried to open it for him, although he only carried one bag of groceries. He remembered someone once telling him that after an adult child left home, every time you came back you saw your parents age a little bit each visit.

After Steven died, his mother had sped up the process considerably.

Yep, he said, walking into the kitchen. His mother returned to her seat at the dinette table, a steaming cup of coffee in front of her.

He’d bought her an espresso machine a few days after the funeral and was frankly surprised to see how quickly she’d made it a new habit. He looked around the kitchen. It was clean but pieces of sidewall were flaking off the ceiling and the walls. Steven had never been much of a handyman, and that was before he’d decided to spend the rest of his pathetic life wasted on drugs and alcohol.

Jack hadn’t been surprised to get the call two weeks ago that Steven had finally overdosed. The only surprise was the lack of relief he felt when it finally happened. And the grief at losing a brother he never really knew.

Oh my, you’ve got so many goodies. I will not know what to do when you go back to Atlanta.

You could always come with me, Jack said as he began unpacking the bag on the counter.

Can you imagine me in Atlanta?

You make it sound like it’s Paris.

Might as well be. Everyone in my parish would think I’d lost my mind.

Or maybe they’d think you have a son who lives in Atlanta.

His mother folded her hands around her cup of coffee and smiled into it. He knew she was craving a cigarette. He could smell the smoke in the air from the one she’d just had.

You know, I don’t mind if you smoke, Mom. This is your house.

Well, I’m just being hospitable is all, dear. I’m not hooked, you know.

The idea of addiction hung between them like an unwanted guest. Jack glanced at his mother. He knew for a fact Steven never came to see her. It wouldn’t be Steven she’d miss. It’d be the idea of him. The fact she couldn’t say my boys ever again.

I hate to leave you down here alone, he said, digging out a pot and placing it on the gas stove. He adjusted the flame under it.

I’m not alone and your life is in Atlanta, she said, smiling. She was seriously overweight and that worried him. A lifetime of chicken and okra fried in bacon fat with a side order of buttered biscuits had padded the face he loved with two extra chins. Her heavy arms sagged on the table in front of her. That is as it should be, she said. Do you ever see Diane?

Not really. He chopped up an onion and peeled a clove of garlic. The divorce was final last fall.

I always liked her.

Yeah, me too.

I don’t suppose you ever see Sandy Gilstrap?

Jack cut a wedge of butter and tossed it into the pot, where it sputtered and skidded across the bottom. Didn’t she move to Atlanta?

I know I told you that, dear. She won the Georgia Powerball two years back. She and her mama and the little girl all moved to Atlanta.

I’m pretty sure the little girl is in high school now.

I bumped into her husband at the store.

Eugene Gilstrap? His mama told me he took it hard when Sandy divorced him last year.

Yeah, he looked really cut up, Jack said drily, scraping the chopped onion into the pot and following with a handful of peeled and deveined shrimp.

I know she would love to hear from you, Jack. Didn’t you two used to date?

You know the answer to that, Mom, he said, wagging a spatula at her.

That child is a serious problem for her.

How so?

Drinking, mostly. Maybe drugs, too.

That’s too bad. He poured two cups of chicken broth and a cup of long grain rice into the pot and put a lid on it before turning down the heat. He turned to her. Are you good? Because I think I could use a drink.

Twenty minutes later, Jack stood in his brother’s bedroom with a vodka tonic. He heard the television set on in the other room and was glad his mother was returning to her normal routines. He’d delayed his return to Atlanta longer than he wanted to because he was worried about her.

In the two weeks since he’d been home, he’d spent a good deal of time in Steven’s room looking at pictures of his brother, younger by two years, in high school, on prom night, on vacation with the family just before their dad died. He picked up a framed photo of Steven at Hilton Head. The person in that picture—smiling and holding up the wriggling bass he’d just caught—showed nothing of the man his brother would become. The smiling face on the kid posing for the school yearbook, working on the school paper, opening up presents on Christmas morning…nothing warned of the hopeless degenerate Steven would become.

Married twice, no kids, thank God. Unemployed after he was fired from his last position as assistant manager at the neighborhood convenience store. And then ten years of uninterrupted mayhem—drug busts, domestic batteries—before giving them all a break with a long blissful period of no communication at all.

He sat on his brother’s bed and looked at the flag football trophy, the framed and hung elementary school artwork, all the detritus of a normal boyhood. Jack’s own bedroom was equally preserved. Over the years, Jack had spent no more time in the carefully maintained shrine his mother called his bedroom than had Steven.

Jack went over to Steven’s desk wedged up under the window that overlooked the backyard and their tree house—unused now for thirty years. He’d found the snapshot tucked under the desktop blotter the first time he’d come in here—just before the funeral when he was looking for something to show or say about his brother that didn’t sound like Jack thought the guy got what was coming to him.

I don’t think that, do I?

That was when he’d found the picture—a pretty young girl with a big orange heart drawn in a thick marker around her face. Unmistakable. The spitting image of Sandy at that age, it had to be the little girl, Twyla. The unfortunate result of a drunken and misguided night of passion between Sandy and Jack sixteen years ago—a rocky period in her marriage colliding with a moment of boredom for Jack during a weekend visit home after he graduated from the police academy and before he started at the Atlanta Police Department.

Were you her supplier? He looked around Steven’s room. Did you get her hooked? Or did you just keep her coming back for more? He tossed the photo on the desk.

One thing was sure, if Steven was responsible for Twyla’s substance abuse problems—whether he started them or just contributed to them—Jack could no longer feel okay sitting on the sidelines. He wasn’t sure what he could do to fix the downward spiral everyone claimed the girl was in the midst of, but he knew he owed it to her to at least try.

But first, somehow, he was going to have to explain all this crap to Mia.

2

Valdosta to Atlanta was a straight shot up I-75, but Jack always tended to envision it as a set of bed sheets tied together and tossed out a high-rise window.

Nothing felt more like an escape to him than the moment he watched the Valdosta skyline disappear in his rearview mirror. Probably most people felt that way about their hometown. An image of Eugene came to mind, bloodied, humiliated and furious as he stumbled his way out of Piggly Wiggly.

Well, maybe not most people.

He’d barely cleared the outer loop of Valdosta before he called Mia. He knew he’d been holding her at arm’s length these last few days, and he didn’t want anything more right now except to tell her he was finally on the way. Plenty of time to tell her what he had to—when she was trapped in his arms and couldn’t run away from what he had to say.

Hey, she said, picking up immediately. You on your way?

Just now. Probably be at least five by the time I get there.

You’ll hit traffic on the south side.

Probably.

I’m making dinner.

He bit back his first response of is that wise? He wasn’t sure teasing was the right foot to start out with.

That’s cool, he said. "But don’t