Reckless Read online

  Reckless

  Book 1 of the Mia Kazmaroff Mysteries

  Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  San Marco Press

  Contents

  Description

  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

  What’s Next?

  About the Author

  Reckless. Book 1 of the Mia Kazmaroff Mysteries. Copyright 2014 by Susan Kiernan-Lewis. All rights reserved.

  * * *

  Mia Kazmaroff has a gift nobody wants. She's able to tell the story behind any object simply by touch. It’s a gift that comes in handy when her only brother, a detective in the Atlanta Major Crimes Division is murdered. Determined to find his killer, Mia reaches out to the one person in Atlanta she believes can help her—Dave’s partner Jack Burton.

  Unfortunately, Burton is also the prime suspect.

  Together, Mia and Jack create a partnership that breaks all the rules, skirts every law, and lobs as many sparks and landmines at each other as if they were adversaries–which half the time they are—all while attempting to ignore their undeniable mutual attraction.

  Can two people so different—one intuitive and inexperienced, the other cynical and by-the-book—work together to solve the murder?

  And can they do it before the killer turns his attention to Mia?

  Books by Susan Kiernan-Lewis

  The Maggie Newberry Mysteries

  Murder in the South of France

  Murder à la Carte

  Murder in Provence

  Murder in Paris

  Murder in Aix

  Murder in Nice

  Murder in the Latin Quarter

  Murder in the Abbey

  Murder in the Bistro

  Murder in Cannes

  Murder in Grenoble

  Murder in the Vineyard

  Murder in Arles

  A Provençal Christmas: A Short Story

  * * *

  The Stranded in Provence Mysteries

  Parlez-Vous Murder?

  Crime and Croissants

  Accent on Murder

  A Bad Éclair Day

  Croak, Monsieur!

  Death du Jour

  Murder Très Gauche

  Wined and Died

  A French Country Christmas

  The Irish End Games

  Free Falling

  Going Gone

  Heading Home

  Blind Sided

  Rising Tides

  Cold Comfort

  Never Never

  Wit’s End

  Dead On

  White Out

  Black Out

  * * *

  The Mia Kazmaroff Mysteries

  Reckless

  Shameless

  Breathless

  Heartless

  Clueless

  Ruthless

  Ella Out of Time

  Swept Away

  Carried Away

  Stolen Away

  The French Women’s Diet

  1

  The brick wall in front of Mia appeared to be moving on its own accord. She let out a long breath and felt her horse tense beneath her. Wasn’t deep breathing supposed to make her mount more relaxed? A light sheen of sweat popped out on Mia’s brow.

  Knock it off, Mia! He won’t relax unless you do!

  She knew she was transferring her nerves to him. And all the breath blowing and mind-controlling exercises were exactly useless right now as the two of them trotted to the first coop in the long line of higher and higher fences.

  Anyone else would notice the perfect autumn day, sunny with a light chill, the kind of day that the foothills of north Georgia were famous for. If her guts weren’t all tangled up in knots, Mia would probably be able to detect the light tang of barbecue in the air, mixed with the scent of burning leaves.

  Somewhere in a far off place in her mind she heard the public address system squawking. She heard her name being mangled as she was introduced.

  “Mia Kazmaroff riding Shiloh, a sixteen-hand mixed-breed in the center ring.”

  Screw you, she thought, blowing out hard again and gripping the reins tightly. She knew she’d written thoroughbred cross on the registration form.

  Her legs closed around Shiloh and she felt him quiver beneath her like a strummed bowstring.

  Not good.

  She glanced at the other riders lining the white slat fence, waiting their turns. Without exception, they were all in their mid to late teens. Mia suddenly felt idiotic attempting to compete with them at the overly ripe old age of twenty-eight. What was she thinking? Was there a point to this? It was supposed to be fun. When had it started to matter?

  Her hands felt sweaty in her gloves. At least Shiloh couldn’t feel that. But everything else…oh, yeah, he was picking up on everything else in spades.

  She tried to block out the movement of the crowd as it milled about on both sides of the outdoor arena. Her mother was there somewhere—and probably Dave. He’d promised he’d come but whether or not he actually would…

  The crowd was clapping now as she trotted toward the line of fences. Most of the people attending the gymkhana probably weren’t even looking at her. They were too busy at the concession stand or fussing with their own horses, or seeing to their trailers parked in the adjoining pasture. She knew there wasn’t anyone really focused on how she performed in this set.

  Bring it down a notch, she chided herself.

  To prove to herself she was in control, Mia leaned over and gave Shiloh a confidant pat on the neck. He was a good horse, steady as they came and not shy in any way. Her perfect horse, her mother had told her more than once. Always rock solid when Mia was all nerves and emotion.

  Stop it! Stop telling yourself that!

  The fences and walls were lined up directly in front of her. They were nearly identical to the ones she’d jumped hundreds of times at her barn where she boarded Shiloh.

  Do, it Shiloh, she said. Take me there, boy.

  Leaning forward in the saddle to give him his head, she tightened her calves around his sides to urge him out of the trot. His stride stretched into a canter, immediately self-correcting to adopt the right lead although she’d forgotten to ask him for it. She tried to force her stomach to relax into the rocking chair gait.

  Remember when this used to be fun?

  Just do one lap around the warm-up ring, she thought, trying to unclench her fingers from his reins, and then go for it.

  She let him carry her, languid and easy, down the long line of spectators toward and then past the first fence, and then rode him back to the beginning, staring down the barrel of the eight waiting fences.

  That was the moment the thought came into her head as fast as an adder’s strike.

  I am not ready for this.

  But Shiloh was already moving. Watching the jump as it came ever closer, Mia forgot to count his strides, forgot to move out of the saddle for the lift off, forgot to give him the extra rein as he stretched his neck.

  In her mind, it was almost as if she were watching from the sidelines. Mia saw herself on Shiloh as they rushed forward. She saw Shiloh stop sharply in front of the fence, the grassy clods beneath his hooves coughing up chunks of red Georgia clay, and she saw herself pitch headfirst over the jump, her hands flailing in the air
to reconnect with the reins that had been jerked out of her hands. The audio backdrop of the crowd’s intake of horror—and one lone scream from the woman who loved her—filled her head and all her senses as she was finally flung free of her fears.

  Jack Burton tossed his cell phone onto the desk a little more forcefully than was absolutely necessary. The other detective, Elliott Johnson, sitting two desks away in the bullpen of the Atlanta Police Department Detective Squadron looked up at the noise.

  “Wrong number?”

  Burton looked at him and grimaced. “Something like that. Working out the end game with Diane.”

  Johnson got up with his coffee mug and approached Burton’s desk. “Normally that’s the kinda BS you do when there’s kids involved,” he said. “Thought this was a slam dunk.”

  Burton ran a hand through his hair. It had been a longer than usual shift. His partner, Dave Kazmaroff, had taken the afternoon off for some kind of family bull crap and then called to say his sister was in an accident and he’d be in late tomorrow.

  “Yeah, I thought so, too,” Burton said.

  “What is it? Money?” Johnson slurped his coffee.

  “What else?”

  Burton stood up, effectively ending the budding chat fest with Johnson. He liked the guy okay. Big black dude, new on the squad but pulled his own weight.

  Johnson shrugged and moved back to his desk. “You hear what happened to Dave’s sister?” he said over his shoulder.

  “No,” Burton said, scooping up his cellphone and jamming it into his blazer’s breast pocket. “Just that she’d been in an accident.”

  “You going to the hospital?”

  Burton looked up at the detective in confusion. “Hospital?”

  “The one where his sister was taken.”

  “What the hell for?” He stared at Johnson long enough to receive a look of reproof. He felt his annoyance bloom into full-on anger. “I’m glad you’re fitting in so well here, Elliott,” he said, spitting out the words. “But I don’t have the same kind of bromance with Kazmaroff that you have with Henderson. I appreciate how alike the two of you are, and don’t get me wrong, I’m glad for you…”

  “Whatever, man,” Johnson said, sitting back in his seat.

  Burton was pretty sure he heard him mutter asshole as Burton stalked past him to the door. He hadn’t made it to the elevator before his phone was vibrating again. He stepped onto the elevator and squinted at the screen, cursing the fact that he practically needed damn reading glasses now just to see who was calling him. It was Diane again. He hit Decline on the screen and pushed the phone back into his pocket.

  “Your fan club?”

  Burton looked up to see Deputy Chief Maxwell’s wife, Carol, standing in the corner of the elevator. He was surprised. If she were here to see her husband she’d just missed her stop.

  “Hardly,” he said, hoping his grimace looked close enough to a smile for her. Carol was trouble and everyone on the force knew it. Maxwell’s second wife, she’d been responsible for him losing the first one—who’d been worth ten of Carol in Burton’s opinion—and Burton hadn’t seen the man in a good mood for five minutes since.

  She stepped out of the shadows and he could see she was dressed to go out to dinner. Her jacket was nipped tightly at the waist over a dress with a plunging neckline. Carol had plenty to fill that neckline and she wasn’t above letting a good deal of it flow over either.

  Burton felt a quickening in his groin that heralded the betrayal of his body over his mind. He turned and jabbed the ground floor button.

  “In a hurry, Jack?” Carol purred.

  He could feel her coming to stand too close to him. Her perfume was light and floral—the opposite of her, he thought. If the doors opened right now, even though he was facing away from her, it wouldn’t look good. He reached into his jacket as if looking for something, effectively nudging her away with his elbow.

  “Ouch, big fellow,” she said teasingly, taking a half step back. “You really fill a space, don’t you? Not that I’m complaining.”

  The comment wasn’t much on the face of it. It was the way she said it that made Burton feel like he’d just been propositioned. Hell, maybe he had. He continued to pat down his coat pockets.

  “Well, this is my stop,” he said as the doors opened onto the lobby. “Take care of yourself, Carol.” He nodded in her direction without looking at her and bolted through the open doors.

  In the lobby, he caught a glimpse of Bill Maxwell going through security. Burton remembered Maxwell had started as a detective doing undercover in youth and sex crimes.

  Careful not to catch Maxwell’s attention, Burton flipped up his collar and hurried out the front door of the Atlanta Police Department headquarters onto Spring Street. It was a beautiful fall day in Georgia. The late afternoon sun mingled with the chill in the air. It was the kind of day, if you had leaves to rake or a backyard football game to organize, you pretty much were thanking God you lived in Atlanta in October.

  Burton, however, wasn’t into any of that crap.

  He jogged over to where his Jeep Cherokee was parked. Any weekend plans that might have involved the weather, and the desire for that weather to be good, had imploded six months ago when he and Diane decided to go their separate ways. Or rather, when Diane had decided. True enough, it had been a crap marriage for months, maybe even years, but Burton’s expectations obviously hadn’t been as high as Diane’s. He’d been genuinely shocked when she said she wanted out.

  So why was the crazy bitch calling him now every hour on the hour?

  As he pulled out into Atlanta afternoon rush hour traffic, the replay of Johnson’s face when Burton said he wouldn’t be going to visit Kazmaroff’s sister in the hospital came back to him.

  That slimy, self-serving bastard, Kazmaroff. There was no doubt he had once again tried to derail Burton’s transfer request. Just thinking about it ratcheted up Burton’s fury as he clutched the steering wheel.

  Why the hell? He hates me as much as I hate him. The only reason to try to roadblock the transfer is the pleasure the bastard gets from screwing with me!

  Just shy of one year as partners and now he and Kazmaroff had the distinction of creating the record for most cases solved in any year. No wonder Maxwell didn’t want to break them up.

  But he’d be damned if he’d go sit at his sister’s bedside like he gave a crap about anyone or anything connected to that jerk.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw an SUV in the parking lot of the one of the ubiquitous jiffy marts that pocked midtown Atlanta. He’d always wondered if anyone actually shopped there. Mostly, as far as he could tell, they were just places where drug dealers met up. Today, he saw a guy standing outside an SUV, the back passenger door open. The guy had a long lead line wrapped around his arm.

  Before he even knew he was doing it, Burton swerved into the northern quadrant of the parking lot. It was probably nothing. But his hunches were almost always based on something odd and hard to explain. And there was something about how the guy was standing by the open door that looked definitely odd.

  Burton put the Jeep into park and watched the guy through his rear view mirror. Suddenly a kid—about ten, white, middle-class, good clothes, good haircut—appeared from out of the front passenger side of the car. He was moving like he was on fire or being chased.

  What the hell? Burton’s hand was on his door handle as he watched. Was the kid going to run into traffic? Burton glanced around the parking lot. A few homeless men were looking on with mild interest but there didn’t seem to be anybody chasing the kid. Burton opened his car door and when he did his driver’s side mirror caught the guy with the rope in full view and Burton saw the rope was really a long leash attached to a small white dog.

  And the guy was kicking it.

  Burton was out of the car at a run, not bothering to shut the door. The surrounding audio suddenly cranked up where he could hear the roar of the heaviest traffic day of the week over the boy’s
pleading, tear-choked voice and the terrified yelps of the dog as the guy’s foot connected with it.

  For reasons Burton would never be able to explain later, when he grabbed the jerk by the shirtfront and twisted him around for the first punch, all he saw was Dave Kazmaroff’s laughing face.

  Mia opened her eyes in an effort to make him stop tapping on her wrist. She knew it was Dave. He used to do this irritating wrist-tapping thing in his annoying-big-brother way ever since she could remember. She didn’t like it then and she liked it even less now with a broken foot, two cracked ribs and a throbbing concussion.

  “Stop it,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. He sat hunched over the hospital bed, his arms draped around the bed railing like a drunk holding on for dear life. His clear blue eyes were already smiling at her before his lips were.

  “Time to go, Sis,” he said softly. “Doc says you’re ready. Mom’s getting you checked out.”

  “I thought I’d sleep a little more,” Mia said, turning her head from him and immediately regretting the movement. Thunder bolts of pain shot through her skull. She groaned.

  “You okay?” Dave stood up and loomed over her like the angel of death ready to sweep her away to his evil kingdom.

  “Just swell,” she said, closing her eyes again.

  “Come on, Mia,” Dave said picking up her hand as if about to start tapping again. “Doc said you’re done and we need to get you home. Don’t you want to go home?”

  She sighed. “You mean Mom’s home.”

  “Someone’s gotta watch over you,” he said, disengaging the bed rail and pulling it down. She watched him, dreading the moment she’d have to actually sit up.