“I’m sorry she died, Matt. You know
that.”
“Yeah. It was long ago, though.” He shrugged.
“I think I’ll always feel like I missed out on something, but I’m
fine now.”
She wasn’t quite sure she believed him. He
said it too quickly, too casually. She did not doubt he was over
the grief that had gone with losing his mother at such a young age.
But the pain? She didn’t think that was something that ever quite
went away. There was always a hole you couldn’t fill.
He took a deep breath as if he were pushing
his feelings into a box and looked at his watch. “We need to get
going.”
They slipped out onto the sweeping veranda
and down the stairs. Evie could hear laughter and voices raised in
conversation coming from the side of the house. It must be the
rehearsal party.
A party Matt was missing for her.
“We’ll head straight for Charlie’s.” He
sounded so calm and focused; she took comfort in it. “You go in and
sit at a table and I’ll scout the perimeter.”
Evie strode by his side through the darkness,
her pulse pounding at the thought of what she had to do. She could
not
screw this up. Sarah might not have been able to count
on her for the past ten years, but Evie wasn’t failing her sister
now. She’d die first. “How will they know where to find me?”
“They know who you are, Evie. They’ll be
watching for you.”
They were almost to the guesthouse when Matt
stopped. He threw his arm out in front of her, drawing her up
short.
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure. Something.” He listened for a
few moments, his eyes scanning the darkness around them, before he
motioned her forward again. She followed him up the steps.
Pain shot through her as she was knocked
against the wall. The full length of Matt’s body pinned her tight.
He’d thrown her sideways and pressed his back to her front,
covering her, but she didn’t know why. Her cheek mashed against his
broad back and she drew in a deep breath, preparing to tell him to
give her some room. The rumble of his voice sounded in her ears,
but it took her a second to make it out.
“Someone’s been inside. Soon as I move, you
lie flat on the ground, hear me?”
She squeaked out an affirmative that seemed
to satisfy him and then the pressure of his body was gone. Evie
dropped to her stomach on the whitewashed boards of the porch.
Blood pounded in her ears, her heart racing along like an Olympic
skier on a slalom run.
Matt hadn’t been gone more than a minute when
a crack rang out in the night air. Evie’s stomach dropped to her
toes. She bolted up out of pure instinct. No way in hell was she
lying here when Matt could have been shot.
The sound echoed from the rear yard and Evie
took off, hugging the side of the house as she went. The yard was
dark as pitch and she stumbled to a stop. Her night vision was
good, but something big and black seemed to swallow the yard whole
at a certain point.
The bayou.
Before she could get her bearings again, a
motor roared to life. Seconds later, the whine of it was shooting
down the bayou, rapidly moving away between the cypress trees. The
acrid scent of diesel fuel hung in the air.
“I thought I told you to stay put.” Matt’s
voice cracked like a whip in her ear and she jumped sideways,
colliding with him.
“Don’t do that,” she hissed as strong arms
caught her close and steadied her. Her heart hammered like crazy,
the blood rushing loud in her ears. “I heard a gunshot and I
thought you might need help.”
He let out a half-strangled sound, grabbed
her hand, and squeezed. “Get up to Reynier’s Retreat and stay there
until I come for you.”
“I’m going with you, Matt. We have to be at
Charlie’s in half an hour.”
“Evie—”
“No.” She pressed her trembling fingers to
his lips. “I’ll stay in the rear, I’ll get down when you tell me,
and I won’t do anything stupid, but I
am
going with you.
It’ll waste too much time if you have to come back and get me.”
He was still for a moment and she knew he was
trying to figure out how to get around the facts. But then he swore
and grabbed her hand. “Sonofabitch, I hate it when you’re right.
Let’s go.”
WHAT HAD SHE GOTTEN HERSELF INTO? Evie gulped
as Matt pulled her down the dock. She could do this. She
could
.
He jumped into the small pirogue tied up at
the end of the dock and tried to crank the motor. The sharp scent
of carbon filled the air. Her blood turned to ice, her chest
constricting until she had to work to get air into her lungs.
No, no, no
.
She dug deep for her courage. It had been
years since she and Julie capsized their canoe in the bayou. Years
since she’d sputtered and coughed and thought she was going to die
because she wasn’t a very good swimmer. The long, ugly water
moccasin had slid across the water toward her, and Evie couldn’t
even scream because she couldn’t stay afloat.
If not for the guys who’d come along in their
fishing boat just then, she’d still be at the bottom of the
swamp.
Yet she knew Matt wouldn’t let anything
happen to her. She trusted him. He wouldn’t capsize the pirogue,
and he wouldn’t make her swim in the dark, dank bayou with snakes
and gators.
“Get in.” He glanced at her before turning
back to the motor and trying again to crank it.
She swallowed hard, forcing her feet to move
until she stood at the edge of the dock. Slowly, so bonelessly she
didn’t even feel herself do it, she slipped down to sit on the wood
planking.
Good, very good
.
Now put a foot into the pirogue
. She
stretched her right foot out, touched her toe to the narrow canoe
bottom. Her whole body shook with the effort. Matt didn’t seem to
notice. He was still bent over the motor, trying to get it
started.
He didn’t know about her and Julie and the
canoe because it was the summer before his senior year and they
hadn’t been hanging out anymore. He’d been preoccupied with other
things then. And it had been years since they’d gone swimming
together—or what passed for swimming for her. Standing in the
shallows and watching him cut through the water like a fish.
He’d never dunked her—or at least not after
the first time when she’d screamed and cried and tattled on him for
it.
“Fuck, they’ve ripped out the fuel line.”
Evie wilted—until another thought occurred to
her: what if he wanted to pole the thing into the bayou?
Pirogues were extremely narrow, flat-bottomed
boats that could move through shallow water, which made them
popular in the marshes and swamps. They didn’t need motors, though
fishermen often added them for increased maneuverability and speed.
But there wasn’t much sense in chasing after someone in a motorboat
when your own motor was shot. Or so she hoped.
“What do we do now?” She wanted to sound
brave and strong even when her mind was gibbering at her in cold
terror. If Matt didn’t think they needed a motor to follow whoever
fired that shot, they’d soon be gliding through murky water in the
dark and she’d be fighting just to keep conscious.
“Try something else.”
Relief made her light-headed.
He sprang from the boat and helped her to her
feet, seemingly oblivious to the fear that had nearly paralyzed
her. “We have to get to Charlie’s. Whoever was here didn’t get what
they were looking for, so we need to move on.”
“How can you be certain?”
“Because he didn’t get into the garage, and
that’s where all your things are. The door was still locked.”
It amazed her that he’d had the presence of
mind to check, but of course he would have done so. Matt was a
precision machine in many respects. His mind worked in ways hers
didn’t, and she thought only part of that was thanks to his
training.
They hurried up to the house and slipped
through the unlocked back door. He didn’t turn on the light. She
didn’t need to ask why not. They could both see better in the dark
now, and there was no sense in becoming a giant backlit target for
whoever had taken that shot, just in case they turned around and
decided to try again.
“Stay on my six, Evie. Don’t stray.”
“Your what?”
“Right behind me.”
When he reached the door to the garage, she
felt his arm stretch upward and heard his fingers running along the
jamb. He must have been satisfied with what he found, because he
opened the door and pulled her into the garage. He reached to his
right and a flashlight flicked on. A quick sweep of the light
across the room and then he was crossing to the Beemer.
“Stand here.” He dropped to his stomach, the
light arcing beneath the car. A handful of minutes later, he was on
his feet again, opening the passenger door for her.
“I left my purse inside.” She felt ridiculous
for saying so.
He laughed softly, surprising her. “So I
won’t ask you to drive, okay?”
He came around to the driver’s side and
popped the hood. She couldn’t see what he did, but he fished around
in the engine compartment for a couple of minutes before slamming
the hood down and jumping behind the wheel. Then he was turning the
key and pressing the remote. The garage door ticked upward and Matt
gunned the car in reverse before the door reached the top of the
track. Evie grabbed the handle over the door as they slipped
underneath and Matt whipped the wheel around. The tires spun for a
second before finding purchase; then they shot down the
driveway.
“What were you checking for back there?” The
oaks sped by in a blur, and her heart clawed its way into her
throat.
Matt didn’t even spare her a glance.
“Explosives.”
Explosives?
He swung the car into a sharp turn and she
instinctively threw a hand up to brace against the center console
even though the seat belt locked her in place.
Her neck was stiff from clenching it. “Do you
have to drive like a maniac?”
“The only place that boat could be going is
Charlie’s. It’s the first place on the bayou where someone could
leave a car. I don’t know why they came to Reynier’s Retreat, or
what they thought they’d find, but I want to be waiting for them
when they arrive, if at all possible.”
Though they were already going at what seemed
like light speed, he shifted one final time and the car responded
with a throaty growl, leaping forward to burn up the asphalt.
Evie stifled a groan and closed her eyes.
“Look, I don’t care if we beat them or not, I just want to live
through this.”
“Relax. I know what I’m doing. If it makes
you feel any better, I’ve done this hundreds of times. It’s part of
the training.”
“Training for what? The Indy 500?” Okay, so
her voice was a little high-pitched there.
“Escape and evasion.” He shot her a look.
“Nobody said this’d be easy. In fact, it’ll probably get worse
before we’re through.”
Great.
“So long as we get Sarah back
alive, I’ll do what I have to do to make it through.”
“You’re interesting, you know that?”
The compliment warmed her. “I appreciate it,
but I’d trade interesting for mundane and boring right now.”
“Boring can be nice too.”
She doubted he could do boring. “I don’t know
how you do this all the time.”
“You do what you have to do.”
“But you didn’t have to—that’s the
point.”
He whipped the car into another sharp turn,
then straightened it out. “And you didn’t have to leave home to be
a chef, did you?”
“There was nothing for me here.” Except Mama
and Sarah, and God what she’d give to have them both safe and well
and for none of this to have ever happened.
“That’s
my
point.”
She didn’t have an answer for that. Before
today, she hadn’t understood how anyone could come from the kind of
wealth and privilege he did, could have a beautiful home like
Reynier’s Retreat and a job as an oil executive waiting for him,
and could choose instead to drive getaway cars, deflect bullets,
and rescue little sisters.
But she was damn glad he did.
* * *
Julian was fucking pissed. She’d ditched him.
The bitch had ditched him here on the dock at this joint called
Charlie’s Diner over an hour ago. She’d claimed she had something
to do, that Rivera had a last-minute task for her. If Julian liked
his balls any less, he’d call Rivera and find out if the cunt was
telling the truth.
As it was, he’d sit here at a corner table,
eating fried oysters and sipping a beer, and wait. She swore she’d
be back before Evie Baker arrived. That she’d be here to meet with
Evie while he scouted out the woman’s military escort—oh yeah, they
knew the guy would come with her—and that she’d let him take the
prick out if he got in the way.
Fucking military asshole. Thought he was one
badass motherfucker, no doubt. Well, Julian had spent a tour in the
Marines. Wasn’t no motherfucker badder than a former Marine
motherfucker.
Former
Marine, not ex. Once a Marine, always a
Marine.
Semper fi
.
This was a busy place. He watched the doors
open and close so many times he stopped paying complete attention.
A band played Zydeco at one end of the rustic room, and people
twirled on the dance floor. The place was a diner, but unlike any
diner he was used to. The building sat on pylons over the water,
and a dock stretched out into the bayou. Boats tied up, people
coming and going from them in a steady stream.
The door to the dock opened and Brianna
rushed in, her blond hair messy and wild. She smoothed it quickly
as she strode toward him.
“Where the fuck you been? It’s almost
time.”
She yanked out a chair and sat down. “I’m
here now, aren’t I? Stop whining.”