The Best Revenge Read online

  He hit the brakes sharply enough that the seat belt locked up to halt his forward momentum. Thankfully, despite the new bridge and shopping center, there wasn’t much traffic at this time of day, and no one plowed into him from the rear after the abrupt stop. He put the rental car in Reverse and backed up and to the side of the road in one quick maneuver.

  And on the small knoll beside the road was the answer to all the questions he’d just been pondering. And the first campaign sign he’d seen. But it was not for Albert Alden as he’d expected.

  It was for Jessa Hill.

  “This is a bad thing, bad times.”

  Jessa sighed. She hadn’t expected everyone to agree with her decision, but she’d hoped at least her family would. Her mother’s objection, at least, she understood. She was afraid Jessa was taking on too much, and Jessa herself wasn’t sure she wasn’t right.

  But her uncle seemed decided that this was a bad idea for altogether different reasons. And whatever they were, Jessa figured she was about to hear them in his inimitable, seemingly scattered yet impossibly wise way. She tried to focus on her task, sorting through the store accounts. That computerized system was becoming a priority, she thought; doing this by hand as her father always had took far too much time. Just as her father had always given his regular customers too much time to pay without charging interest. But that wasn’t a change she was willing to make; there was a reason people kept coming here instead of driving up the highway to the newer, bigger store twenty miles north.

  “Sucking up everything in its path,” her uncle said in one of his typical non sequiturs. It was too early in the morning, she thought, for her weary brain to try and follow his twisted path.

  “But then,” he added, “evil does.”

  Jessa blinked. She hadn’t expected that one. The sheaf of monthly statements in her hand, she looked up at her uncle.

  “Old man Alden would be spinning in his grave about now, to see this.”

  She guessed he was referring to the current Alden’s grandfather, Clark Alden, who had died nearly twenty-five years ago. She’d only been five, but she remembered hearing her mother speak softly of Adam’s pain over the loss of his great-grandfather, to whom he’d been close. She knew too well now that there was no comfort for that kind of pain.

  She brought herself back to her uncle’s words. “You mean, how dare I challenge his grandson?” she asked, remembering what little she’d known of the gruff old man. “Backward, girl.”

  Her mouth twitched. “I’m going to assume that isn’t a personal description.”

  Her uncle laughed. “You know better, girl. You’re the brightest thing to ever come along in this family.”

  Thankfully, when it came to his love for her, her uncle’s frequent vagueness and cryptic observations became crystal clear. She smiled at him.

  “Meant that old man Alden had a lot of respect for your dad. And our dad before that. Didn’t care for politics himself.”

  She frowned. “You mean he wouldn’t like the idea of his grandson as mayor?”

  “He wouldn’t like much about him, I’m afraid.”

  The regretful tone reminded Jessa of what he’d said a moment ago. “Evil, you said,” she began.

  “Maybe too strong,” her uncle admitted, “but not by much.”

  For an instant Jessa’s breath caught. Did he know? Could he suspect what she had long known? She hesitated before going on. “Do you think anyone in this town,” she began carefully, “would believe that?”

  He looked at her steadily, with that unnerving perceptiveness he often exhibited. “I think at least one might.”

  “Uncle Larry,” she began, urgently now, but the sound of the front-door chime cut her off. She looked up through the small office window to see a man in a blue jacket, an old, gray wool driver’s cap and the darkest sunglasses she’d ever seen standing just inside the door. His hair was dark and long enough to brush his collar. His jaw was unshaven, just short of stubbled, and he looked a little pale for the end of summer. She wondered if he’d been sick, or if she’d just gotten too used to the complexions of people who worked outside.

  He was looking around, as people often did when they first came in; the store was comfortingly familiar to those who lived here and came in often, but to newcomers the plethora of goods was a bit overwhelming. The joke locally was you could find everything at Hill’s, but you couldn’t find anything. She’d floated the idea of organizing things a bit better with several of the most loyal customers, but the consensus—the rather vehement consensus—was that they liked things the way they were and rearranging it would only be more confusing.

  After a moment the man began to walk purposefully, as if he knew exactly where he was going. And apparently where he was going was here, she thought as he made his way straight toward her small office at the back of the store.

  Jessa stood up; the stranger must need something in a hurry and was looking for someone to ask, she thought. She stepped to the office doorway just as he reached it.

  “What can I help you find?” she asked in her best, helpful-proprietor tone.

  For a long moment she found oddly strained, the man said nothing. He seemed to be staring at her, although she couldn’t be sure with the dark glasses. Her gaze was drawn to a three-inch-long scar, thin and white, that ran along his jawbone on the right side. It looked old and rather jagged, as if the injury should have been stitched but wasn’t.

  “Most folks take those things off inside,” her uncle said with a gesture at the sunglasses that obscured the man’s eyes.

  Jessa winced inwardly, hoping the stranger didn’t take offense. Uncle Larry never did quite get the concept of tact with customers.

  “Perhaps he needs them, Uncle Larry,” she said, thinking he might have an eye problem that also explained the paleness. “Now, what can I help you with?”

  The man still said nothing, but he did, after a moment’s seeming hesitation, reach up and pull off the sunglasses.

  The moment she saw his eyes, Jessa realized why he kept the shades on; it must be embarrassing to have everyone stop dead midsentence the moment you looked at them. Because if she hadn’t already finished her sentence, that’s what she would have done. Those piercing blue eyes made what had before been merely an interesting face absolutely riveting. It wasn’t just the color, although that was striking enough, it was the sense that those eyes had seen more things than any five men, and too many of them not pleasant.

  She gave herself a mental shake; she didn’t usually fall into fanciful speculation about total strangers. But he was staring at her so intently, and it was giving her an odd feeling. Ordinarily she would have thought it was simply a response to an attractive man, but this was something more. Something different.

  “Can I help you?” She made the query again quickly, as much to shake off the odd effects as to get an answer.

  He seemed, oddly, to relax slightly. As much as he probably ever did, she thought, judging by the air of tense readiness that seemed to cling to him. After a moment, he shook his head in answer to her question.

  “Help you,” he said.

  She blinked. “Help me?”

  He nodded toward the campaign sign in the office window, the only indication in the store that she was running; she didn’t like the idea of cluttering up the place with reminders of what most folks in town already knew anyway.

  “Make that happen,” he said.

  She didn’t know if was something in the economy of his words or the flat, implacable confidence of his tone, but she knew he was utterly certain he could deliver on that promise.

  What she didn’t know about this dark, almost ominous stranger was why on earth he would.

  Chapter 4

  She hadn’t recognized him.

  He hadn’t expected her to, yet he wouldn’t have been surprised if somehow she had. That in itself surprised him, and warned him he’d better keep his guard up here in this place where old, creeping memories were stirrin
g.

  But he had recognized her immediately. She hadn’t changed all that much, even if it had been twenty years, and she’d been only ten when he’d last seen her. Her hair was the same sunny blond that had tumbled down her back as a girl, although now it was cut short, in a tousled cap that suited her. It made her neck seem even more slender, and bared a delicate nape that belied her strength and made a man want to—

  He cut off his own ridiculous thought with a jolt of shock. That was a road he had no business even looking at on a map, let alone considering traveling. This was Jessa, for God’s sake, the girl who’d been like a sister to him.

  But he couldn’t help staring at those eyes, those wide, beautiful eyes the color of the river, and almost as changeable; green in some lights, hazel in others. They were still full of that wisdom, that sanity that had once been the only thing that had kept a struggling boy’s head above water. He’d trusted her as much as he’d trusted anyone then, and she had never, ever let him down. And he hadn’t found it odd that he trusted a girl almost five years younger than he, he’d only felt gratitude that there was anyone he could trust at all.

  His throat tightened involuntarily. It was unsettling to realize that he was feeling…anything. He’d thought himself immune to even the harshest pressure of those memories, so thick and high was the wall he’d built around them.

  Higher. Thicker, he told himself. He could do that without even thinking about it. Nothing could be harder than what it had taken to build those walls in the first place; adding to them would be easy, wouldn’t distract at all from what he’d come here for. “Fascinating.”

  The low murmur came from the man leaning against the doorjamb just behind Jessa. St. John flicked him a glance; he’d noticed the man, as he noticed everything, the moment he’d seen movement in the office at the back of the store. But now he placed him; Jessa’s uncle, the oft-maligned but unexpectedly insightful Uncle Larry. He was grayer and heavier, but the sparkle was still in his green-gold eyes—Jessa’s eyes—and his smile still had that fey sort of look that made people wonder just what he was seeing, and if it was of this world.

  He gave that thought a fierce mental stomp; he had no time for such nonsense, let alone any inclination. Angry with himself, and not sure if it was for not being prepared for this, or for assuming he was, his voice was even more clipped than usual.

  “Won’t cut it,” he said, gesturing at the discreet sign in the office window.

  For an instant she drew back slightly, and he reminded himself this wasn’t Redstone, where everyone was used to his ways, and put up with them because he got the job done and made theirs easier. Out here, it just made people uncomfortable.

  Except Larry. St. John could feel the older man’s gaze on him. He wasn’t sure what the man was feeling, but it wasn’t discomfort.

  And not your problem, he told himself.

  “What,” Jessa was asking, “won’t cut it?”

  “Signs. Not a campaign.”

  She frowned. “I know that. I’m just getting started.”

  She had no trouble, he noted, following him. But then, she’d always been smart. Smart, quick, clever. And wise. Far beyond her years. Of all things, he remembered that.

  “Start right,” he said.

  “Who are you, one of those Machiavellian men-behind-the-throne types? Because as a speech writer, you’d be a failure.”

  He had, on occasion, been called exactly that: Machiavellian. But not a flicker of the faint jab of amusement he felt—a novelty in itself—made it to the surface.

  And then Larry moved, as if he’d come to a decision. He spoke to Jessa, but never took his eyes off St. John.

  “I’ll be about my business, honey.”

  St. John, who in turn heard Larry, but never shifted his gaze from Jessa, saw her nod. Easily. Whatever she was feeling, she wasn’t afraid of him. He registered the thought with some interest; half of Redstone was afraid of him. He knew that, knew he was part of the Redstone legend, and that speculation was rampant about everything from how and when he and Josh had met to why he was the way he was. He even knew about the betting pool they’d once run. Only the bravest had dared enter, since the goal was to make him laugh.

  No one had. So he’d declared himself the winner, claimed the pot, and Josh’s pet flight-school scholarship project had gotten a little richer.

  Of course, Jessa didn’t know who he was, didn’t know that a lot of very smart people walked warily around him. Didn’t know that she should do the same.

  And didn’t know she’d just come closer to making him at least chuckle than anyone had in a very long time.

  “I’ll check in on your mother on my way,” Larry added.

  “Thanks, Uncle Larry. She’s had a tough week.”

  St. John remembered Naomi Hill. Remembered her kindness to him, her gentleness. Remembered how she had adored her husband and her daughter, yet quietly kept them both on the right path. It had been his first realization that gentleness didn’t necessarily equal weakness, a revelation that had only cast his own mother in a sadder light.

  He knew, intellectually, that she must still be deep in grief, and he was more than a little surprised when he felt a flicker of physical response to the thought; his chest seemed to tighten a little. Odd, he thought. That didn’t happen. It must be the damned memories; she’d been nice to him when most would have ordered the dark, sullen kid he’d been to stay away from their precious, sunny, innocent daughter.

  Larry was still watching him as reached the office doorway. “Complete sentences are often overrated, but sometimes useful,” he said as he passed him.

  No, it wouldn’t be smart to take Larry Hill too lightly, St. John told himself. For all his eccentricities, the man was perceptive. As was his niece.

  Larry’s words echoed in his head as he watched the older man leave through a back exit and, St. John guessed, head toward the big, old house across the storage and parking area for the store. For an instant he wondered what it must be like, to live on alone in the house you’d shared for decades with one person.

  He yanked his mind back to the matter at hand, wondering why his usually laser focus was faltering.

  He could talk in actual sentences, he thought. It couldn’t be any tougher than remembering to speak in another language. But he wasn’t here to make people comfortable. He was here to stop a fiend in his tracks.

  “Want to be mayor or not?”

  Jessa studied him for a moment before answering levelly, and almost as bluntly, “Frankly, no.”

  St. John managed to keep from lifting a brow at her, but his gaze narrowed.

  “What I want,” Jessa said determinedly, “is to stop a man I don’t…trust.”

  St. John felt a knot deep in his gut, both at her hesitation, and at the word she finally chose. He’d done enough research to know that trust was Albert Alden’s primary commodity here in Cedar. His facade of upstanding, pillar of the community was carefully constructed and practically unassailable. “Why?”

  The word was out before he could stop it, and it startled him. He never spoke unthinkingly, never let things slip out helplessly. Never.

  But Jessa Hill always had been able to get him to talk. When he would talk to no one else, when the simplest of questions seemed dangerous to him, the little slip of a girl he’d first met that day by the river that would eventually be his salvation had always managed to get him to open up. Sometimes about things he’d never spoken of to anyone, before or since.

  “Who are you?” she asked, her tone and expression indicating that she thought she was a bit late with the question.

  “St. John,” he said, knowing a name wasn’t what she really wanted. She wanted to know why he, an apparent total stranger, gave a damn about a small-town election.

  He didn’t have an answer prepared for that. And that realization shook him. He, St. John, the master of planning, thinking ahead and anticipating problems hadn’t planned for this simple thing. Had he gotten lax, too
far removed from the days when that kind of thinking was the only thing that could save him?

  As soon as he thought it, he knew that wasn’t true. He did that kind of thinking every day. It was what made him useful—invaluable, Josh said—at Redstone.

  Which left him with a conclusion he didn’t care for.

  “Is there a first name that goes with that?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She lifted a brow and waited silently.

  “Not one I use,” he muttered, with more effort than he cared to admit.

  “Okay, Mr. No-first-name-I-use St. John, I repeat, who are you? And why do you care who’s mayor of Cedar? We’re only a blip on our own county’s radar, and not even that beyond.”

  “Reasons,” he said.

  “I can’t afford a…consultant, or whatever it is you are.”

  “No charge.” He saw suspicion flood her eyes. “Until it’s won,” he added. He’d have to figure that out later, he thought.

  “And if I lose?”

  “No charge.”

  “How do I know you’re not just some plant working for Alden?” she asked, showing more patience with his clipped answers than most outside Redstone.

  She had always been that, he thought, patient. But, as with her mother, not weak. He’d never forget the first time he’d glimpsed her fierceness, when he’d shown up at the place they met, the little clearing at the bend of the river, sporting new bruises. She’d been beyond upset, she’d been furious, and quite ready to fight for him. He’d never admitted to her who was responsible, although he knew she’d suspected even then. A reasonable suspicion, since it was common knowledge his mother didn’t have the courage to swat a fly.

  But she’d found the courage to end it….

  He shoved back the thought. He was furious with himself. He should have thought of this, should have had a believable answer ready.

  “Don’t,” he finally answered. “But listen. And win.”

  This guy, Jessa thought, has more energy than I ever thought of having. And smarts, as her father used to say.