Page 12 of Ace (The Deuces Wild #4)

“I am not just like you,” Keller groused as Miss Church answered the door.

Exhausted by the psychic battle to save Isaiah from—of all things—himself, Keller wanted to talk to her about what had just happened.

He wanted to understand how a bag of rocks and part of an ancient prayer held enough power to change the world.

This was magic he didn’t understand. This was something pure and holy, but it’d have to wait.

Keller now watched her deal with the wiry young man who’d shown up in a wrinkled denim shirt and just as wrinkled gray Dockers.

He’d expected Gran Mere’s doctor would be some older guy with gray hair, a seersucker suit, and maybe spectacles.

At least someone respectable—like her. But Doctor Rudy John was not that man.

The first thing he did once he cleared Gran Mere’s doorway was smooth a hand over his already slicked-down hair like some punk on a date instead of a concerned physician attending a tragic death call.

Lurching straight at Miss Church, he grasped both her hands and nearly pulled her against him. “You poor, poor thing. I came as fast as I could. Don’t you worry none, I called the mortuary on your behalf, darlin’. They’ll be here directly. Musta been terrible being alone with a dead body so long.”

Only her stiff-arming the guy prevented closer, more intimate contact. But ‘dead body’ ? Really? That was his idea of compassion?

“I haven’t been alone, Rudy John,” she said as she extricated herself from this guy’s proprietary and inappropriate grip. “Gran Mere’s spirit is still close by. She’s lingering. I can feel her.”

“Sho you can, cher. Sho you can. That’s just the shock of watching somebody you love die. You just keep on thinkin’ your granmama’s hangin’ ’round, and you’ll snap out of it real soon. Yes sirree Bob, you’ll see, darlin’. You’ll be fine.”

Keller bit his tongue at the patronizing sweet talk spewing out of this guy’s yap.

“No, umm, you’re wrong,” Miss Church told RJ, her voice clear and strong considering all she’d been through in the last couple hours.

“I’m not in shock, and I’ve never been afraid of being with Gran Mere, not even now.

Besides, I’m not alone, RJ. I’ve had help.

” She nodded at Keller. “Very good help.”

He sent her a subtle chin-lift of appreciation for the show of faith, but when she stepped away from RJ and scrubbed her palms up and down her bare biceps, she confirmed Keller’s opinion of the guy. Dr. John wasn’t there to take care of Gran Mere. He had designs on Miss Church, and she knew it.

“ ‘Very good help?’ ” the creep she’d called RJ mocked.

“But I just got here and—” His gaze followed Miss Church’s line of sight right over his shoulder and behind the front door he’d burst through.

The doctor could’ve given himself whiplash the way his neck cranked when he ended at Keller.

“’Scuse me, suh, but who are you?” he asked indignantly, his lips twisted.

“I’d ask you the same thing,” Keller replied drolly. Only I’d never call you suh like some backwoods slave, you pretentious oaf.

Miss Church rolled her eyes behind RJ’s back, and for a split second, Keller wondered if she’d heard that last unspoken comment. Damn, was he the only one who couldn’t read minds?

“Agent Boniface, this is Doctor Rudy John, the only physician around for miles. We call him RJ,” she said by way of introduction. That certainly explained why Gran Mere insisted this guy take care of her remains. Who else was there? “RJ, this is Special Agent Boniface.”

“Special Agent of what? Insurance? Immigration?” RJ’s brows narrowed and his beady eyes turned black. “You with the almighty Internal Revenue Service, suh? You a revenuer?”

Keller hadn’t heard that term except in history books.

“Federal Bureau of Investigation. Headquarters, Washington, DC.” He tossed his chin at the cocky charlatan, growing more certain RJ was involved in something illegal.

Why else would he have pulled the IRS out of his hat when there were so many federal agencies to choose from?

Moonshiners used to battle Revenuers during Prohibition.

What exactly was RJ running these days? Guns? Drugs? Women?

RJ’s nostrils flared. His upper lip curled as if he’d caught a whiff of noxious fumes. “A federal agent? What’s the FBI want with Miss Church here?”

The man reminded Keller of a crow. Everything about him seemed bird-like.

His build. His face. Even the long, thin blade of his long nose ended at an arrow-shaped point that could’ve passed for a beak.

The shadowy scruff on his narrow chin looked like he’d once entertained the idea of a goatee.

All it did now was emphasize his beak. A haircut wouldn’t hurt this guy.

He kept running his right hand over his head to keep the straggly, greasy bangs out of his eyes.

His hair was glossy black, shiny with a bluish, feather-like sheen.

His eyes were just as shiny, just as black. Piercingly black.

“That information’s between ‘Miss Church here’—” Keller couldn’t help the condescension that dripped off his tongue with a Southern twist, “—and the United States government, Dr. John .”

It gave him a morbid thrill to voice this joker’s last name.

Would’ve been better if it’d been Head. He looked like a Dr. Head.

Dr. Shithead. Might also do him some good to know Miss Church wasn’t the poor thing he seemed to want her to think she was.

“Fortunately, Miss Church is a capable woman. She had things well in hand when I arrived. She knows what her great grandmother wants. I’d listen to her if I were you. ”

Miss Church shot Keller a shy smile, and he telegraphed a nod of respect back. She was no idiot. He knew precisely what she was capable of.

RJ’s cheeks hollowed. Unshaven and sweaty, he gave off an antsy vibe for a medical practitioner. Most doctors Keller knew exuded calm to keep their patients from panicking. Yeah, something was very off-putting about this joker.

Keller one-upped the cocky ass, nonchalantly leaning against Gran Mere’s hutch with his arms folded.

Cocking his knee, he crossed one ankle against the other, and gave RJ a chin nod toward the settee that he had yet to glance at.

“Might want to check Mariposa Church for a pulse while you’re here.

She’s right over there.” In case you missed her.

“There’s never no need to disturb the body of a loved one,” RJ snapped, his double negatives inadvertently declaring that was exactly what he should’ve done. “You Northerners might stoop so low, but not a true gentleman of the South. Even an idiot can see she’s dead.”

Not one to let an insult slide, Keller volleyed back with, “Now you’re being insensitive. Where’s all that Southern charm I’ve heard so much about?”

“And you, sir, are being an antagonistic, pigheaded republican. State your business!”

Whoa, just whoa. Pigheaded republican? RJ was turning this visit into a political debate? Keller had more respect for Gran Mere than that. Sorry. Not happening .

He locked onto Miss Church’s pretty face.

There was no reason to stay, much less bait Dr. Shithead.

Now that she’d calmed, his duty was done.

She was no longer the frightened, angry great granddaughter who’d just lost her precious Gran Mere and had proudly told him to ‘beat it.’ She didn’t need Keller hanging around, and he knew it.

Yet her eyes glowed for reasons Keller couldn’t fathom.

She looked stronger. More confident. He didn’t understand why.

It had taken him more than a few years to be civil after Carol Marie’s sudden death.

For too long he’d been hateful and mean, surviving on booze, smokes, and venom.

There were still days he couldn’t bear to think about all he’d lost when she’d passed.

Didn’t want to. Her death had taken everything good from him.

Yet Miss Church seemed to have already processed her great grandmother’s death.

She was sad, but no longer undone. She knew something Keller didn’t.

Yes, her eyes were rimmed with red, and there was a tender vulnerability to her.

But there was also strength and conviction.

She had every right to break down, but she hadn’t.

He couldn’t bring himself to leave her alone with RJ.

Like Gran Mere’s spirit, Keller lingered, wondering if this Mizz Church would share her secret.

His inner suit pocket buzzed with an incoming call. Probably Tucker. Keller made a mental note to set his alarm for thirty-minute intervals from now on. Fingering his cell up and out of his pocket, he nodded politely to Miss Church. “Excuse me, ma’am, but I have to take this. ”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she replied.

Turning his back on Dr. John, Keller faced the kitchen altar with all its mystical paraphernalia still on display.

There was a time he’d thought all voodoo, magic, and witchcraft was evil like his mother, but Miss Church’s half-magic, half-Christian ritual had changed his mind.

Maybe there was some good to it after all.

“Boniface.”

“He died,” Tucker ground out, the pain in his voice raw and overpowering.

WTF? No!

But, WTF, yes. The clear image of Tucker Chase breaking down in a bright hospital corridor overwhelmed Keller.

Stumbling with a searing dose of empathy for this hard man still miles away, he took a chair before Tucker’s angst billowing through the connection dropped him to his knees.

“But Boss, I thought… I honestly thought…” God, what have I done?

All at once, Keller was a thousand miles north, inside the prestigious George Washington University Hospital west of DC, hovering over a bed, and watching Isaiah struggle to breathe through the oxygen mask strapped to his face.

Isaiah was gray, his lips blue, as Roxy, his adoring wife, clung to him, her face buried in his chest. Dressed in jeans and a light gray hoodie, the bottomless grief that racked her pregnant body overwhelmed Keller.

Every shudder and sob was another breath-stealing stiletto stab to his chest.

Miss Church was wrong? No. She couldn’t be...

Like an angry Navy SEAL, Tucker stood stock-still at the end of that bed with both fists clenched, primed to jump into action.

But there was nothing to be done. His rumpled dress slacks and white dress shirt looked like he hadn’t slept since yesterday.

His jaw flexed forward and back as he ground his teeth, fighting the same emotions as Roxy, but forcing a brave face for her sake. But so damned sick at heart.

For the first time, Keller really saw Tucker. He saw the man under the gutsy bravado. Tucker honestly thought of Isaiah as a kid brother. He adored Isaiah, and losing him hollowed Tucker’s heart. This hard, brash man was crying inside like a child, great gulping sobs he’d never let surface.

Fighting the image— Please let this be Tucker’s memory. Please let this be the past, not the present!— Keller tried again. “But Boss…”

“You did it,” Tucker choked. He could barely get the words out. “You… you saved him. It was all you. He flatlined, but all at once… Then you...” His voice turned incredibly tender. “You saved my boy, Kell. I owe you.”

My boy? Kell?

Keller swallowed hard as Tucker’s unvarnished love for Isaiah poured over him like a sweet, warm baptism instead of the wrath he’d expected.

Not that the rest of the Deuces Wild team didn’t also know that Tucker and Isaiah were close.

Whatever battles Tucker and Isaiah had been through, it had welded them into the unlikeliest of brothers—a flaming asshole and a genius, a hard-as-nails SEAL and a genuine guardian angel.

But Keller had also heard what no one had uttered in years, Carol Marie’s endearment for a kid who’d never known gentleness or love before she’d come along. He’d been someone back when he’d been hers. Back when he was— Kell.

But how the hell could Tucker have known? By then Keller could barely manage a hoarse, “Hey, Boss?”

“Yeah?” Tucker’s voice was the same trembling baritone, so low and so deep that only the barest murmur came over the connection.

“I’m taking a couple personal days.”

“Take a week.”

“Thanks. I might just do that.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Keller locked eyes with Savannah.

Her eyes glowed with something other than sadness.

But it wasn’t pity, either. Almost looked like compassion, as if she and Keller shared the same connection Tucker and Isaiah did.

Which was true. Savannah and Keller had saved a life today.

But they’d lost one, too. At least, she’d lost one.

In Keller’s mind, the negative canceled the positive, and he was back to zero.

Wasn’t that Nature’s way, to strive for a net sum of nothing?

Yet Keller also felt as if he’d found more than that net sum of zero.

He just wasn’t sure what.