Crazy Sexy Revenge Read online

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  To the perceived notion of happy endings

  Acknowledgments

  This emotional journey has finally come to an end and I’ve enjoyed walking this road with each and every one of you. Life and every good story are filled with ups and downs, revelations, discoveries, and confrontations. Relationships have been formed, love has been lost, and the truth revealed.

  I am going to miss these people: Desi Green, Lonnie Adebayo, Jordan and Claire Gatewood, Olivia, and finally, her ghosts, Julian Gatewood and Ida Green. They have all served me well and I hope that I have done the same for them.

  Thank you as always, Monique Patterson, for your vision, patience, and encouragement. You are and have always been that angel (and sometimes devil) sitting on my shoulder, whispering in my ear, as I have told my stories. Thank you, Sara Camilli. I consider myself fortunate to have a warrior like you on my side. And my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation goes out to my readers, some who have been on this road with me since the beginning and others who’ve joined me along the way. Your encouragement is what keeps me going.

  Now it’s time to put this baby to bed. Read on and enjoy! And while you’re doing that, I’ll be hard at work on the next project and looking forward to starting a brand-new adventure with all of you.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Epigraph

  Crazy

  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

  Sexy

  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

  Revenge

  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

  Also by J. D. Mason

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Jordan’s eyes locked onto Lonnie’s and suddenly the world was void of everyone and everything except for the two of them. He turned and walked toward her. She needed him.

  “Don’t you dare!” his wife, Claire, commanded from behind him.

  For some reason he would never understand, Jordan froze in his tracks.

  Lonnie held on to the stair rail and slowly dropped to a seated position on one of the steps, lowered her head, and raised a trembling hand to her chest.

  “Oh!” she cried out as she saw blood seeping from her chest through her silk blouse.

  Lonnie! he screamed in his head. Or maybe he’d said it out loud—he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. She needed him and he needed to be with her!

  “You made me do it!” Claire called out. “I wouldn’t have—I did it for you! I did it because of you!”

  “Shit! Go back! Go back inside! Hurry the fuck up!” he heard a man say.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw a couple, a white woman and a black man, run back toward a room at the other end of the building and all of a sudden he remembered where he was and most importantly, who he was.

  He was Jordan Gatewood!

  Jordan turned to look at Lonnie who lay back on the steps, clutching her chest, crying, gasping.…

  Out of the corner of his eye he noticed curtains to one of the other motel rooms suddenly close. From some faraway place, he could hear Claire crying, sobbing like a child. And if he listened intently enough, if he truly focused, he could’ve sworn that he heard Lonnie fighting to take her last breath.

  He was Jordan Gatewood!

  Jordan stood in that spot long enough to watch the woman he’d loved die. Lonnie lay still, her hand dropping from the railing she’d clung to so desperately. Claire cried in the background. And—there were witnesses.

  He was Jordan fuckin’ Gatewood!

  Jordan turned and marched over to Claire, picked up the gun she’d dropped at her feet, grabbed hold of her arm, and dragged her back to his car parked next to hers in the lot.

  He flung open the passenger door. “Get in!” he commanded, shoving her forcibly into the vehicle.

  The lump in his throat was as big as a fist and it threatened to choke him to death.

  “I did it for us!” she protested, looking up at him tearfully. “I did it … You drove me to do this!”

  “Get the fuck in the car!” Jordan shoved her so hard that Claire hit her head on the way in. He slammed the door shut and marched over to the driver’s side.

  He was Jordan Gatewood and he could not be here! He could not be a part of this—this—murder!

  Claire had shot Lonnie! She’d pulled that trigger, not him!

  Instinct kicked in, shoving reason out of the way. Jordan climbed in behind the steering wheel, and glanced into his rearview mirror. People had seen him here! They watched him get into the car and they saw what Claire had done to Lonnie. He started the engine, put the car in reverse, and backed out at a dangerous speed, then peeled out of the parking lot with tires squealing.

  She was gone! He didn’t need to see her again to know it! Jordan could feel it. His gut told him that Lonnie Adebayo was dead and it warned him, tortured him with the truth that he had been seen by too many people, which was fuckin’ unacceptable because he was Jordan Gatewood, goddamnit!

  Claire’s sobbing was driving him crazy. “Shut up, Claire!”

  “Oh God! I didn’t mean—”

  “Shut the fuck up!” He wanted so desperately to hit her, to punch her hard in the face for what she’d done! He wanted to punish her, to make her bleed, to feel bone break under his fist!

  The rage bleeding from his psyche was terrifying, even to him. Jordan had to do something and he had to do it quick, and beating the shit out of Claire was not the best use of time.

  He pressed the Bluetooth button on his steering wheel.

  “Call Edgar!” he demanded the phone system.

  “It’s late!” the old man answered gruffly.

  “I need you,” Jordan said, gritting his teeth.

  “What? What is it?”

  He glanced at Claire in disgust, and then chose his words carefully. “Lonnie’s been shot!”

  “What? You shot her?”

  “No! She’s been shot! She’s dead, Edgar.” He swallowed, and unex
pected tears clouded his vision. Jordan blinked them away. “She’s at the Fairmont Motel off 635,” he explained, choking up.

  “What the hell happened, Jordan? Who’s that?” he asked, referring to the sound of Claire crying uncontrollably. “Is that … Claire?”

  Jordan ignored the question. “People were there and they saw us, Edgar! Too many people saw what happened.”

  Edgar would know what to do. The old man was cunning and capable and Jordan would bet his last dollar that Edgar had been in predicaments like this before and had come out shining like a new penny on the other side.

  “Nobody can know that I was there. Do you understand?”

  He didn’t know how it could be done, but it could be done, and he didn’t give a damn how!

  “I need to be a fuckin’ figment of those people’s imagination, Edgar! I need to not exist to any of them! And Claire…”

  “She was never there either,” the old man finished wearily.

  If ever this old man were to prove his loyalty to the Gatewood family, this was the time to do it. Jordan had never needed someone so much in his life until now. Edgar was all he had.

  “Whatever it takes,” Jordan continued, as he took a deep breath and slowed his speed. He didn’t need to be pulled over. Not now.

  “Hang up,” Edgar said, hanging up before Jordan had a chance to.

  Edgar could fix this. Jordan took another breath and held it before finally releasing it through his nostrils. If anyone could fix it, Edgar could. Edgar would.

  If you’re going through hell—keep going.

  WINSTON CHURCHILL

  Crazy

  Chapter 1

  Who was he? Plato could see the questioning looks coming from all of them as he climbed out of the car. Was he a detective? That dead woman lying on the steps of that shitty motel looked expensive enough to command an investigation from the grave, even from where he was standing. Maybe he was her husband, who’d somehow known that his woman was here and in trouble. Was he like the rest of them, just passing through, stopping here to sleep for the night? Hardly.

  He studied each of them intently: hoes, addicts, homeless. These were desperate people, and desperate people were one of two things: afraid … or dangerous.

  “Damn, he got here quick,” he heard someone murmur.

  “That the po-po?”

  “Too clean to be the po-po.”

  “A pimp? Her pimp?”

  “Maybe.”

  Plato walked over to the woman. Beautiful! Even in death, or especially.

  Waves of ebony hair fanned out on the steps beneath her. Red-stained lips parted slightly, making her look as if she was just about to whisper a secret. Dark eyes fixed on the stars above. Damn shame. Plato didn’t have much time, ten, maybe fifteen minutes at the most before the Dallas Police Department started to arrive. It was an expensive fifteen minutes, but if you had the money and the power, you could afford it.

  There was a door open on the second floor. Had she come from there? Plato stepped over the lovely figure and casually climbed the stairs. He looked inside and saw crumpled bedsheets and a towel tossed on the floor. Plato went into the bathroom to get another towel, then began wiping down every surface that could possibly contain a fingerprint, the faucets in the shower and bathroom sink, the linoleum counter, a small table and chairs in the main room, along with the headboard, nightstands, and finally, the doorknob, inside and out. He threw the towel on the bed and closed the door behind him.

  He was down to eight minutes.

  The crowd had begun closing in on the dead woman’s body. Curiosity drew them to her, that and greed. Some of them eyed those gold bangles on her arm like they were candy. Diamond earrings called to them like sirens from the sea. Shit like that could buy a lot of nights in this dump or some good-ass hits of whatever it was these fools shot into themselves.

  “Anybody see what happened?” he asked, eyeing them all suspiciously.

  “I did.” An overachieving, dirty white girl spoke up.

  “Shut up, Lisa,” her dirty black boy said, sliding up to her from behind.

  Plato focused on the girl. Tracks had left her arms bruised and looking like someone had been chewing on them. “What did you see?”

  “A black man, kinda tall, like you. He went inside that room you just came out of and then she came and went in. I think I heard them getting it on, but…” She rolled her eyes. “He came out and she was screaming and then this other broad came out of nowhere and shot her.”

  There was no sound. The silencer stole the sound. There was just the gun. And blood. And wide eyes that had probably been ocean blue before the drugs, now gray, staring back at him in disbelief, before rolling back into her head. Her body fell at her dirty man’s feet.

  Plato looked at each of them. “Anybody else see anything?”

  An old man with one leg, balancing on one crooked and socked foot, wearily shook his head, and slowly began backing up toward what was probably his room. The dirty black boyfriend of the dirty white girl held his mouth open to release a scream that refused to come. Two young prostitutes held on to each other’s hands and stared wide-eyed and shocked at Plato.

  He had five minutes.

  “Can we go?” one of them asked helplessly. “Please don’t kill us.”

  He started walking toward the front office. The two girls took off running.

  The dude behind the counter was a relic, tethered to this place by some ungodly connection that only made sense to him. The portly man played some kind of game in his mind, make-believing that he ran a five-star hotel in the heart of Dallas instead of a dump on the edge. The green-and-gold bow tie he wore threatened to choke the breath out of him as it clashed violently against the brown-and-lilac button-down, short-sleeved shirt. His khakis were perfectly pressed, with sharp creases running down the front of his legs.

  Plato could read it in his eyes that the man was afraid. He’d seen too much. He knew too much, and this fool would start talking to the first cop who showed up on the scene. Hell, he’d probably been the one to call them.

  Plato stood across from the man with the counter separating the two. Being six-five, just about every man he came into contact with was shorter than he was. Plato’s size struck fear into people who had something to hide. And this one looked like he had plenty, but Plato only cared about one thing.

  “Y-yes … sir?” he asked Plato nervously. “May I h-help you?”

  He contemplated the man, realizing as he studied him that this man’s fate was sealed the day he took his first breath from his momma’s womb. Plato could see the recognition in the man’s eyes, as the revelation slowly took root in his own mind, and he began to panic at the thought of his impending death.

  “Room 204,” Plato said. “Who was it registered to?”

  The man hesitated. Ethics made him do it. “I’m sorry, s-sir, but I’m not at liberty to say.”

  Plato almost admired his conviction. Almost.

  He took a step closer to him and slowly repeated the question. “Who was it registered to?”

  Conviction took hold of ethics’ hand and dragged its ass right out of the front door. The man frantically began typing on the keyboard to his computer.

  “Smith,” he said quickly. “John Smith.”

  “Who paid for it?” Plato probed.

  The man swallowed. “Ross. Franklin Ross. He paid over the phone by credit card.”

  Plato had no idea who Franklin Ross was, but he knew that the man was a goddamned idiot using his own credit card to pay for a room registered to John Smith.

  Plato turned to leave, and then he turned back to face the man, one last time.

  Time was up.

  Plato stepped out into the parking lot and could hear the sirens whirring in the distance.

  “Only the dead have seen the end of war,” he murmured, quoting his namesake.

  Now the police didn’t have just one murder to solve. They had three. They had no witnesses. Maybe they
’d find the killer of that beautiful woman someday. Maybe not. Maybe they’d even catch up with Plato’s ass. Maybe not. But for a while, the police would stumble and scratch their heads trying to figure out what these three people could’ve possibly had in common. They’d wonder why they’d all been shot on this night at this place. Naturally, the first thing the cops would try to do was to connect the three killings, but Plato knew that any detective worth his badge would soon see that there was no connection between the murder of the woman and the desk clerk or the junkie in the parking lot.

  Plato climbed back into his car and turned on the engine, but before backing out of the parking space, he pulled out his cell phone and made a call.

  “How bad is it?” Edgar Beckman asked as soon as he answered the phone.

  “There’s a woman lying dead on the steps. I’d say that’s pretty bad,” he said coolly.

  “Witnesses?”

  “Several.”

  “Should we be worried?”

  “Death should always leave you worried.”

  The old man sighed irritably. “Do you think anyone will say anything to the police?” he asked impatiently.

  Plato knew people, and he especially knew these kinds of people. They were the throwaways, the forgotten-abouts, the kind of people that were on their way to someplace else. The woman lying on those steps wasn’t one of them. He could tell by the clothes she wore, the perfection to which her hair and makeup were done. He glanced back in the rearview mirror and saw the small scattering of the motel residents crouch around her body, begin riffling through her purse, and take whatever jewelry she wore.

  “No,” he finally said, satisfied in the affirmation he’d been so divinely blessed with in this moment as he watched those people that he truly did understand them. “I don’t think you have to worry about any of them saying a goddamned thing.”

  “Who was registered in that room?”

  “John Smith, but he’s not the one who paid for it,” Plato said.

  The man paused. “Who paid for it? How?”

  “Franklin Ross paid for it with his credit card. You know that fool?”

  The old man sighed. “Thankfully, no, not personally.” He hesitated and then continued. “And what about the car?”