Just Intuition (24 page)

"You," he said. "Why did it have to be you?" He glared at her and then eyed the shore.

"Derek, don't do this—"

"Duck!" Allie exclaimed.

Erin plunged underwater. His round house with the knife merely sliced through air. He dog-paddled in a circle, peering into the water. She burst through the surface behind him and again wrapped her arm around his neck like a vice. Her blood spilled a wet trail onto his skin and she took two deep breaths. Face reddened in his struggle, he pushed at her with meaty hands. The innate drive to breathe was more important than the urge to hurt her and he released the knife.

Tenaciously hanging on, she squeezed his throat and submerged, taking him down.
One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three
—she counted. She calmed her mind in the surety that she could outlast this panicked, oxygen starved man. Her lungs burned and her head throbbed but she kept him anchored to the riverbed. Finally his chest expanded to take in a lungful of water. When the tension in his body slackened, she kicked to the surface.

He burbled, spewing aspirated water while she towed him to shore. In her peripheral vision, Allie paddled feverishly to keep pace with them. Lacking experience, she struggled to maneuver the tethered canoes from the wrong end.

Erin set her feet on land first. She dragged Derek through the weeds and onto a patch of coarse sand. He coughed, water spurting from his nostrils, and Erin turned him on his side in the Universal Recovery Position.

"Bitch," he sputtered hoarsely, the bloodshot whites giving his pale eyes an eerie cast. He wearily laid his cheek on the sand.

Erin squatted beside him, chest heaving. She lifted the sleeve of her soaked T-shirt to examine her left bicep. Derek's knife had sunk deep into the muscle and she applied firm pressure to stop the bleeding.

A loud crack echoed inside her skull and
the ground suddenly warped into blue sky. Dazed, her vision narrowed to ragged treetops and she pitched forward. Coarse hands pushed her onto her back and Derek straddled her, pinning her with powerful thighs. A sour taste filled her mouth and she swallowed against it. Beside her on the ground lay the stick of weather scoured wood he'd used to nearly brain her.

Growling with rage, he pulled his fist back and smashed it into her cheekbone. There was a flare of light across her retina. The fist crashed into her face a second time and pain seared behind her eye.

"Stop it!" Allie's voice bellowed above the ringing in Erin's ears. "Get off!" The slide on the shotgun slammed forward and back in metallic warning and there was a stunned silence before the pressure on Erin's chest was gone. Allie stood over them, shotgun pointed directly at Derek's face. Dark fury blackened her eyes and her lips pressed together in a tight line.

He rolled away from Erin with a grunt and held his hands up, palms forward. His eyes locked on Allie, whose body language betrayed no weakness.

"Are you okay, honey?" Allie asked without taking her eyes from Derek's.

Erin
's fingers explored her blazing cheekbone, where there was soft mush under the skin below the orbital ridge. "I think so." Adrenaline had served to temporarily numb the pain but it would hurt like a son-of-a-gun later. The slash on her upper arm was a more immediate issue and she pressed her palm to stem the flow of blood.

"Your arm!" Allie
's eyes widened in alarm when she saw it.

"Okay, okay, you got me." Derek slowly lowered his hands and furtively searched for his stick.

Not about to be taken off guard again, Erin's attention snapped to his change in position. She leapt on him as soon as his fingers closed around the weapon. Wrenching it away, she pushed him to the ground. With one hand on either end, she forced the stick against the soft skin of his throat. His eyes bulged when she bore down with all the weight of her upper body. He gasped for air.

"Stop!" Erin snarled and Derek
's face turned purple beneath the pressure threatening to break his windpipe.

"Do it! Do it!" Lily
's voice hissed excitedly from somewhere behind her. "Do it!"

Erin
's arm throbbed and the pain in her cheekbone hammered, but one clear voice broke through her berserk anger.

"Enough!" Allie shouted.

She shook her head, and took in the motionless man on the ground beneath her. She had almost killed him. Almost. If Allie had not stopped her—. She released the pressure on his throat and Lily withdrew to a spot in the trees. The girl crawled up onto the safety of a rock to watch.

"Rope," Erin barked. "We tie him up." She glared at the stick she still held in her hand. As if it had suddenly become radioactive, she flung it into the river. Then she bent and retched into the purple blossoms of a patch of
Pickerel Weed.

Allie fetched the remainder of her yellow rope and together they made sure Derek
's limbs were securely tied. He lay on his side, coughing weakly. Lily eyed them with interest from her vantage point, rocking slowly back and forth. Her face was an unreadable mask, blank like a porcelain doll's.

Almost. Erin had almost killed Derek out of what? Anger? Revenge? She avoided eye contact, shame rising in her throat like acid. When Allie bandaged her wound, she tentatively stole a glance and was surprised to see her brow puckered in worry. Why? They had him. It was all over, wasn
't it?

* * *

It was nearly ten o'clock in the morning, by Erin's watch, when the steady grumbling of a motor approached. Soon, the shiny white hull of the Rangers' patrol boat came into view, one man standing at the controls and two others seated in front of the driver. Erin recognized Zimmerman and Striker, bodies angled forward like eager tracking dogs.

They had all set out in plain clothes but today the two were in full uniform, sidearms holstered on their duty belts. Zimmerman still carried Erin
's dad's hunting rifle and he stood, gripping it like Rambo in both hands. The ranger driving the boat slowed their approach to a crawl, the bow sinking back into the water until it was level. It idled in the river's current beyond the beached canoes.

"Is everyone ok?" Zimmerman called out above the powerful rumbling of the twin Mercury motors. In a quick assessment of the scene, his eyes flicked from person to person, lingering on the injuries. Finally, they settled on the shotgun in Erin
's tense fingers and his face tightened. To his credit, he did not press for immediate details. When Derek was in custody, there would be time enough to quiz her about what had happened and how it came to be that Erin's civilian girlfriend was here.

"He put up a fight, but we are all fine," Erin told him. She grimaced her apology to Allie. Now was not the time to detail
their injuries nor their very personal loss. "We caught up to him an hour ago."

"Sorry we missed the party," Zimmerman said. He shot a meaningful glance to Striker who bent in hurried discussion with the ranger. The patrol boat eased forward and gracefully landed, bow brushing the shore. The moment it touched, Zimmerman and Striker launched themselves into ankle deep water and hefted Derek to his feet.

"You have brought a world of trouble onto yourself, my friend," Zimmerman growled. Derek stared straight ahead like a prisoner of war. The police officer withdrew handcuffs from the leather pouch on his belt and snapped them around Derek's thick wrists. He loosened off the temporary yellow ropes. "Might as well get on in there," he ordered, and prodded him roughly toward the boat.

With hands tied, Derek lifted one leg over the side and then landed like a sack of flour on the floor. He coughed repeatedly. Zimmerman boarded and assumed guard position. He caught Erin
's eye with a wordless question and she gave a curt shake of her head in reply. No, the injured women did not need help into the boat.

With Derek securely restrained, Striker cautiously approached Lily like she was a wounded deer and encouragingly held out his hand. She skidded down off the rock and allowed him to assist her into the larger boat. He gently draped a wool blanket around her shoulders and seated her as far from the prisoner as possible.

"You're going to be okay," he murmured. She silently pulled up her knees and assumed her customary curled up position.

The ranger gestured and Erin threw him the painter line so he could reel in both canoes to secure them for towing. Allie was next into the boat and Striker fussed over her bandage but she stoically waved him off.

"It's nothing," she said and moved to make way for Erin, who was last to climb aboard.

The ranger introduced himself and shook her hand. Then he slowly turned the boat and they headed back downriver, canoes
trailing behind them like an alligator's tail.

"Are you really okay?" Zimmerman whispered loudly into Erin
's ear. "Your face is smashed up. Do you have a concussion? Can you even think?"

"He rung my bell, for sure,"
Erin admitted. "I think I'm okay for now. Might have broke my cheekbone, and the back of my head hurts."

Zimmerman
raised an eyebrow at the bandage on Erin's arm.

"The evil bastard cut me," she whispered through clenched teeth.

His other eyebrow joined the first in a look of disbelief.

"And I
'm worried about Allie."

"What is your girlfriend doing here?" He took in the bandage on Allie
's leg. "You two are sure a sight."

"It
's a long story," she replied evasively. Allie sat quietly beside her, staring at the floor. One hand absently fingered the dressing over puncture wounds on her calf and Erin knew what she was thinking. "The short version is that I found her stranded along the way."

Zimmerman
's head nodded but his expression implied he did not have a clue how that could have happened. Mosquito bites covered both forearms as well as his neck, and Erin didn't doubt he'd had an adventure of his own getting through the swamp to the forestry road yesterday.

"I received a call from Doctor Holloway this morning," he told her when they picked up speed. He scratched a cluster of red welts on the back of his arm. The sound of the motors ensured their voices did not carry to Derek
's position. "It seems the doctor had a conversation with Kathy Banks about poison. She sent the bottles you seized from Gunther Schmidt's shed to the Tox Lab. Since that was the only thing in the victim's belly, it's pretty likely that it was the source."

"Sure looks like someone had been poisoning Gunther for a long time."

"And Kathy still wants to talk to you about something else," Zimmerman reminded her. Erin would call when they returned.

Striker retrieved a bottle of spring water from the in-boat cooler and gave it to the girl. Lily guzzled half of it before stopping to catch her breath. She smiled shyly at him and he happily bobbed his head in pleasure. He closed the cooler with a solid thump and Derek eventually averted his thirsty eyes. "There
's no more," Striker said to him without a flicker of pity. "You can talk to the guards after you are booked in."

Erin and Zimmerman watched this exchange and frowned. "I would at least have given him water."

She shrugged, undecided on the mercy for child molesters issue. "Is Gunther going to make it?" she asked.

"The doc said they
've given him a blood transfusion and he's been awake and talking. The doc also says he's a tough old veteran and nothing short of an artillery shell was going to kill him."

"Gunther
's actually talking?"

"Well, more like grunting, but the doc says Gunther insists that Derek is a nice guy. He brings him a six pack of beer every couple of weeks."

"I bet he's nice. He's nice to Gunther because he wants to be extra nice to his little granddaughter!" she hissed in his ear. "And he pays the old man off every month for what? For access to the girl?" Erin's blood throbbed in her ears, magnified by the drone of the boat's motor. Was the ringing from her anger or her busted cheekbone? She whispered when she noticed Lily looking at her. "The kid told me an hour ago that Derek does bad stuff to her. She also told me that he was responsible for the fire that killed Dolores Johnson, for what happened at the Stop 'N Go, and for what happened to Gunther."

"We need to find out everything she knows. Keep her away from Derek. I don
't want her intimidated any more by him." Lily smiled at them and Zimmerman rested his hand on Erin's forearm. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Erin nodded a lie.

"If you're sure, you should interview her when we get back. You seem to have developed a bit of a trusting rapport." Lily inched closer to them on the bench seat and her eyebrows tilted in plaintive trust. "And she needs someplace to stay."

Erin gave the girl a small welcoming smile and Lily burst forward from her seat, burrowing into Erin
's side. She put her good arm around the thin waif and wrapped the blanket tighter.

"It was scary. Now I feel safe," Lily said, her pale green eyes penetrating.

Erin tried to grin at Allie but was unnerved when her girlfriend's expression darkened. The knuckles of one fist pressed her temple and the other gripped her seat as if she were afraid to be flung into the river at any moment. She looked from Erin, to the girl, to Derek, confusion clouding her eyes.