Hunted (18 page)

“Mom, I’ll hold it if you’ll unwrap it,” Cara Lynn said, apparently unwilling to let go of the journal. Betty carefully lifted each corner of the delicate-looking cloth and let it fall over Cara Lynn’s hand. The slow reveal allowed the diamonds and rubies and sapphires and emeralds in the tiara to sparkle and shine to maximum effect.

Cara Lynn gasped, as did the entire room. Whether by accident or design, Betty had chosen the perfect place to reveal the tiara for the first time. They were standing under a huge crystal chandelier, which caught the reflections from the gems and turned them into thousands of multicolored sparks of light that danced across the walls and floor.

Cara Lynn turned the tiara so she could look at the large diamond in its center. The whispers and murmurs grew louder and louder until within a few seconds, the sound was deafening.

Jack himself was mesmerized, but not by the sparkly tiara, nor the journal under Cara Lynn’s arm. He was caught by the open, unfettered joy on his wife’s face.

“Oh,” she said, clutching the journal more tightly and looking from the tiara out over the crowd of people, 80 percent of whom were related to her. “I...can barely speak,” she said breathlessly, her gaze sweeping across the faces until she met Jack’s. The smile that shone on her face made him want to cry. “I’ve never been so happy as I am right now.”

Jack blinked and averted his gaze. It was like walking on hot coals to look into her eyes and hear her talking about her happiness. He turned away and found himself toe-to-toe with a tall, fit man in his late forties. Jack took a better look at him. His hair was dyed black, which made him look more like a cartoon than a real person, because nobody’s hair was that black naturally. His eyes were dark brown, and right now they were fixed on Jack.

“You’re Jack, Cara Lynn’s husband,” he said firmly, as if he was worried that Jack didn’t know. “And your last name is...?” He embellished his unfinished question with a flourishing gesture.

“Bush,” Jack responded, offering a small smile to counteract his flat response. Then with a wider smile he said, “Jack Bush.”

“Bush,” the man said thoughtfully.

“And you are?” Jack asked, resisting an almost overwhelming urge to run his finger along the inside of his collar. The way the man said his name made Jack second-guess his decision to take the name Bush. These people were as much—maybe more—old New Orleans as his family. Any one of them might know enough French to make the connection. Broussard was from a French word meaning
brush man
or
bushman
. At the time, he’d thought he was being clever. Now he wished he’d chosen Smith or Johnson.

He looked back at the man and waited for him to introduce himself. Finally, after shooting his cuffs and smoothing his school tie with a hand weighted down by a large Austrian crystal-studded ring, the black-haired man lifted his nose slightly. “Paul Guillame.”

The name sent a streak of adrenaline through Jack.
Paul Guillame
.
A cheating, lying skunk who helped Con’s wife frame me for murder,
Granddad had written about him.
Watch your back
. Jack kept his expression neutral and waited, but Guillame did not offer his hand, so Jack didn’t, either. “You’re related to the Delanceys?” he asked innocently.

Paul straightened and looked down his nose at him. “Senator Delancey’s wife was a Guillame,” he said. “The Guillames are a very old family here. But you, Jack Bush.” The man gestured around vaguely. “I hope you realize that you have committed a serious crime against the Delanceys and that they are even now preparing your punishment.”

Jack looked at him, stunned into silence.
Crime? Punishment?
What was the man talking about?

Guillame leaned forward. “Are you satisfied that the crime was worth whatever punishment will be meted out? Can your love for our pretty little youngest survive the wrath of the Delanceys?”

So that was it. His
crime
against the Delanceys was stealing their youngest. His paralyzed vocal chords loosened. “Sometimes something is so beautiful that it must be had, at any cost or any punishment.”

Again, as he’d hoped to do when they first came in, he tried to sound worldly, but he wasn’t sure if he’d pulled it off or if he’d just sounded silly.

Paul Guillame smiled. He reminded Jack of the Cheshire Cat in
Alice in Wonderland.
“Be aware, young Mr. Bush, our Cara Lynn has four brothers and four cousins. That’s eight descendants of Con Delancey. So anyone who hurts her faces death times eight.” Paul raised a hand with an impeccable manicure and pointed a finger at him. “Now, Monsieur Jacques, you add your sword to the pledge, which makes it death times nine.”

All the blood rushed from Jack’s head at Guillame’s use of the French pronunciation of his name. For a split second he felt as though he might pass out. But he kept himself composed and managed not to look around to see if anyone had noticed Paul calling him
Jacques
. He hoped his hand was not visibly shaking as he placed it over his heart. “I so pledge,
Monsieur
.” He sketched a little bow. When he raised his gaze to meet Guillame’s, the man’s black eyes were on the box again, but only for a brief instant, then he turned back to Jack.

“So, tell me Jack, where are you from anyway?”

As a Southerner, Jack understood the question. When asked
where are you from,
a Southerner knows the asker is not interested in where you live, or even where you grew up, He wants you to lay out your family’s history as far back as you know it.

Jack had prepared for this question and his brain was already queuing up the background he’d invented for himself. “My family originally came from—”

The room went dark. Pitch dark.

Startled, Jack took a second to orient himself. Screams and yells came from all around him. Someone tall bumped against him in the dark and almost knocked him off balance. He righted himself, reaching around him for something, anything, to grab in order to break his fall. His fingers brushed a sleeve. The sleeve was pulled away immediately, but Jack noticed that the person who’d bumped into him had been tall—at least as tall as he, and wearing a suit jacket or sports coat. The material that had brushed against his fingers was a thick, heavier fabric, the kind used to make men’s coats.

Then Jack heard a sound that penetrated all the other sounds around him. It was a shriek and a cry of pain.
Cara Lynn
.

At that instant the lights came back on. Jack, who was standing less than six feet from where Cara Lynn had been holding up the bejeweled tiara, saw her, crumpled on the floor in her satin gown, not moving.

“Cara!” he cried, just as someone, maybe Cara’s mother, screamed. “Oh, my God, Cara Lynn!” From another part of the room someone cried out, “The tiara! It’s gone!”

People were milling around everywhere. Jack saw the Delancey men moving in concert, as if they were all part of one company or battalion. In sync, they divided up. Some headed toward Cara Lynn and her mother. Some headed for the front doors. One of them—it looked like one of the twins—pulled out his cell phone, calling the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office, no doubt.

When Jack got to Cara Lynn, two of her brothers were already there, bending over her, and a third Delancey was running toward them. He heard someone shout, “There he goes. Out the side door!” Jack leapt up onto a chair and spotted a man dressed in black, hurrying toward a pair of French doors on the side of the large hall. The man glanced backward, then threw open the doors and bolted. He was cradling something close to his chest like a football. Jack couldn’t tell what it was.

Around the doors, people were crying out and pointing, and Jack saw Delancey men pushing their way through the crowd, but the man in black obviously had a huge head start.

Jack’s muscles tensed and his tendons tightened, although intellectually, he knew that if the Delanceys—cops, military men and investigators—couldn’t catch the thief, he had no chance. But just at the instant when he was about to spring down off the chair and try to lend his help, he heard Cara Lynn’s voice.

“Jack?”

It was raspy and choked, but it was her. He turned back toward her. She had three of her big, capable Delancey protectors hovering over her, but she wasn’t paying any attention to them. She was looking straight at him. Horrified, he saw blood streaming down the side of her face and her expression was twisted in pain.

“Cara?” he whispered. Then his gaze rose to the table where the journal and the tiara had sat. All that remained was the square of old cloth. The bejeweled crown and the book were gone. Jack cared nothing—less than nothing—for the tiara. But that journal, if it really was Lilibelle Guillame’s last journal, could exonerate his grandfather from any wrongdoing, if his grandfather’s theory was true and Lilibelle was the one who’d killed Con Delancey.

Jack glanced in the direction of the French doors. Then he looked at his wife, whom he’d duped into marrying him so he could find
that journal
.

He took a deep breath.
The journal!
his brain screamed.
Get the journal
. But his head didn’t stand a chance against his stupid heart. Berating himself, he rushed to his bride’s side, bent down and used his thumb to wipe blood away from the small ridge just above her brow. Instantly, the three men turned on him.

“Don’t touch her,” one said.

Before Jack could react, the second one, who’d been talking on the phone, said, “We’ve got cars coming from everywhere. That guy won’t get far.”

“Right. Lucas took off after him. He’ll have him in handcuffs before the cruisers even get here,” the third one said.

Before he finished speaking, someone in the direction of the French doors shouted. “Look! He dropped the tiara! See it—”

“Nobody move!” a voice boomed. “Hey! Pipe down! Barton, get that crown! Everybody—Shut! Up!”

“Did you see anything?” one of the brothers asked Cara Lynn as another pressed a handkerchief to the cut on her forehead.

“Has anybody got any water?” the third man shouted.

To Jack, their voices sounded like a swarm of bees around his head. It occurred to him that this was what Cara Lynn had been talking about when she’d described how she’d spent her life being suffocated by her brothers. He wanted to swat them away and take care of her himself. She might be their sister, but she was his wife.

Then he noticed that one of the straps of her gown was broken. And sure enough, just as he’d predicted, without the strap, the entire left side of the dress was quickly headed south, toward a serious wardrobe malfunction. Jack shrugged out of his jacket and placed it around her shoulders. She looked up at him gratefully and pulled the lapels of the coat closed and stuck her arms into the sleeves.

Her brothers glared at him but didn’t say anything, so Jack stayed there with his arm around her.

By the time everybody was convinced that Cara Lynn was fine mentally, emotionally and physically, and no ambulance needed to be called, Lucas was back.

Everybody turned to look at him. Even Jack could read his expression like a children’s book. No luck.

“He disappeared,” Lucas said, a disgusted frown on his face.

“Oh, my God,” Paul said from behind Jack. “Did he really drop the tiara?”

Lucas leveled a grim glare at Paul. “We recovered the tiara, but he got the journal. Did any of you get a look at his face? Cara Lynn?”

Beside Jack, Cara Lynn shook her head.

Lucas pushed the fingers of one hand through his hair, then shouted at no one in particular. “How in hell did he get in and grab that stuff in the middle of a room full of cops?”

Copyright © 2014 by Rickey R. Mallory

ISBN-13: 9781460337301

HUNTED

Copyright © 2014 by Beverly R. Long

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