T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 01 - Southern Fatality Read Free

the dirt on Jersey Barnes’ phobias.”
    “You’ll take on terrorists, but you’re afraid of live chickens and dead people.”
    I smiled but my mood turned serious. “This security breach was a freebie for a good friend. You saved my ass once, Judge. And now I’m trying to save yours, by giving you a wake-up call. He is a ruthless killer who hates women and you are the female who put him behind bars for life. It could have been him standing in your chambers instead of me. Or someone he hired.”
    She nodded, but was still not accepting reality. “My private guard is quite good. He used to be—”
    “Let me guess. Secret Service? Tall dude in the navy suit, stationed in the lobby?”
    She nodded.
    “Nice guy,” I said. “He’s the one who helped me up after I fell, and handed me my attaché. Which, by the way, holds a package of what looks very much like plastic explosives along with a motion-activated timing device. It was never X-rayed.”
    The judge sat down, stood up, paced, sat back down.
    “See, Judge, if I was the bad guy and was worried about not being able to get away after shooting you, I’d blow you up instead.” I pointed to the case. “I could stash it beneath your chair one night and be slurping an icy margarita in Cancún by the time you sat down to read the day’s docket and activated the motion sensor.”
    “Unlikely anyone besides you could get in here. Especially not that monster. Everyone’s on the lookout for him.”
    I took a deep breath and studied the ceiling. It was a shade of drab beige.
    “The man has money. Why chance getting caught when he can hire someone to kill you?”
    A translucent tear slid down her cheek as she stared at the top of her desk. I’d finally gotten through to her. She knew that to him, it was all a game. There was no telling when, how, or where he would strike. If I could get to her so easily, so could someoneelse. And I’d been welcomed like a buyer on a car lot. They all but fawned over me.
    After checking her appearance in a compact mirror, the judge called her private guard. Seconds later he entered her chambers and stood at attention while she cut into him. He launched into an explanation of how he was on the lookout for the escapee, not a female.
    “And you were Secret Service?” I said.
    His face colored.
    I explained how I’d gotten in with a simple diversion, one of the oldest tricks in the book. The judge’s humbled daytime guard listened with half-shaded eyes as I rattled off a rundown of precautions they needed to implement. I relayed that, before I flew home, I would meet with Axis Security to discuss the judge’s overall protection plan, including her private residence in Columbia.
    “Thank you, Jersey,” the judge said when her retired Secret Service fellow left the chambers. “I protected your cover when you were involved with busting that warden who was on the take, sure. But you really may have saved my ass today with your … ‘wake-up call,’ as you put it.”
    “You put yourself in danger to keep my cover that night, Judge,” I countered. “You could have been killed, were I found out.”
    Transitioning back to her normal tough demeanor, the judge dismissed my comment with a wave of her hand. “I’d do it again to help put that loser on the right side of the prison bars.”
    I sat across the desk from Pete Hammons, owner of Axis Security. Axis was a small but prestigious security contractor that specialized in personal protection for high-profile clients, and they were the folks who provided the judge’s private bodyguards. After landing in Atlanta, I’d headed straight to his office, hoping wecould get the meeting over with quickly. I wanted to catch a five o’clock return flight to Wilmington, North Carolina, to make my dinner date with Bill.
    Pete and I made small talk until another man joined us. After introductions, I learned that he was Pete’s new man in charge of recruiting and training. He was ex-military and