The big rig was parked between him and Holly and the back of the building, its position designed to block the security camera mounted on the corner of the convenience-store-cum-diner-cum-shower-facility from seeing anyone climbing into the passenger side, as Holly was about to do. The truck’s driver, Julio Perez, was already behind the wheel, waiting for Holly to get in. Its engine was running, the sound a low-grade rumble. The smell of diesel exhaust tainted the air. Elsa Casta, the manager of the truck stop, waited nearby, staring off toward the McDonald’s,
absorbed in her own thoughts. Like a lot of people Reed came across in the course of his job, she had an elasticized view of what was against the law. Mostly, Reed had learned to leave the little fish alone and concentrate on the big transgressors. Elsa was one of those little fish, with her finger in many illegal pies but no violence or viciousness to her. Short, plump, and fiftyish, her black hair streaked with gray and pulled back into a bun, Elsa thought the sun rose and set on Reed since he had saved her idiot nineteen-year-old son from being murdered by the gang of drug smugglers he’d ripped off, then arranged for him to testify against the ringleaders in return for probation. Now twenty-five, the son was the manager of a grocery store in Houston and had never, as far as Reed knew, stepped outside the boundaries of the law since. A lot of criminal types—drug smugglers, gun smugglers, illegal immigrant smugglers, just to name a few—came through the truck stop, and Elsa knew them all. She had made the arrangements to have Perez and his truck waiting to pick them up after Reed, knowing that he and Holly were going to need a fast, anonymous way out of the country once he’d gotten Holly out of The Swamp, had contacted her earlier.
“Here.” Reed handed Holly a wallet that contained, among other things, a fake ID—they were ridiculously easy to get if you knew where to go—and five hundred dollars in cash. Because the banks were closed on Christmas Eve and there was a daily cash withdrawal limit, the money was part of the two thousand that was all Reed had been able to get out of his bank account via the ATM when he’d strode out of police headquarters after his confrontation with Internal Affairs and the superintendent.
“When are you and Ant coming?” Holly thrust the wallet into
the pocket of his hoodie. The way Holly’s eyes clung to his, Reed was reminded that to Holly and his brother he had become the answer to all their problems.
The weight of their faith in him felt almost tangible.
“As soon as I can get us there. Not more than a couple of days, max.” Reed pulled open the truck’s passenger door and motioned Holly toward it. “Somebody will be waiting to pick you up at the other end. Go.”
Holly hesitated, looked at him, and nodded. Then he got into the eighteen-wheeler’s cab and Reed shut the door. A moment later, with a hiss and a rumble, the truck got under way.
As the rig pulled around the building on its way to the highway out front, Reed was already near the Dumpster handing over the thousand dollars in cash he’d promised Elsa. She might profess to love him, but she was also a businesswoman. Reed understood: that was how the world worked.
With Holly on the move, and with the groceries Elsa had put into a plastic bag hanging over his arm, Reed walked away into the dark, appreciating the obscuring shadows as they enfolded him, not wanting even Elsa to know too much about how he had gotten there and how he was leaving. Wary of the security cameras that were everywhere these days, he’d made a circuitous approach to the truck stop, which had involved pulling the Mazda into the field that ran up on the establishment from behind. He’d left the car parked there in the dark, with Caroline inside.
She was in the backseat, cuffed and belted in. No blindfold necessary because he’d come up with the easy solution of facing the car the other way around, so she was looking out toward a whole lot of nothing—more empty fields, woods, and swampland,
all shrouded by darkness—rather than the truck stop. He’d had to put duct tape over her mouth again, though, just in case. He’d hated doing it, but he couldn’t risk his and Holly’s life on the hope that left alone she wouldn’t start to scream her head off. She’d hated it, too, as she had made abundantly clear, but the bottom line was he just didn’t trust her enough to stay silent if, say, a cop car should pull into view. He’d known that he wasn’t going to be long, a fact that had mitigated some of his guilt, but when he’d shared that with her, it hadn’t seemed to appease her at all. Last he’d seen of her, she’d been rigid with fury, but as he had told her, it was better than leaving her tied to a tree—who knew what kind of creature might come upon her in the dark? It was also better than putting her in the trunk of his car, which would have been quick and easy, and pretty tempting, considering the problem she posed. She would have been safe, and she only would have been in there for maybe ten minutes. But even for so short a period, the trunk would have been airless and cramped and miserable. Then he’d started thinking that if things went south, if maybe Elsa betrayed him or a stray squad car should spot him or anything at all untoward happened that ended up with him being incapacitated or dead, it might be a long time before anyone thought to look in the trunk of a nondescript car parked at the edge of a field.
She could die.
For the fraction of a second that he’d entertained it, that thought had stopped him in his tracks.
That
he wasn’t about to chance.
At least if he got killed at the truck stop and she was fastened
into the backseat, when the sun came up in the morning someone would see her there.
Like keeping Holly and Ant alive, getting Caroline home in one piece was something that he was prepared to give his life to do.
Not many people meant much to him anymore. Holly and Ant did. Seemed like Caroline did, too.
The instant he’d heard her husky voice with its distinctive little rasp over the phone line, he’d recognized it. Even before she had identified herself, he’d been instantly transported back ten years. For a minute there, it had been as if he could see her: seventeen years old, succulent as a just-ripe peach, offering him anything he cared to take, nakedly hero-worshipping him.
For just a minute there he’d wished, fiercely, that he could be that brash young man again.
A lot had changed since then.
He
had changed since then. And she had grown up.
As he strode through the waist-high weeds that clogged the field, Reed found himself revisiting the impulse that had caused him to lift her hand to his mouth. It had been meant as a way of apologizing, of wordlessly saying sorry for any pain he might have caused her. As soon as his mouth had touched her skin, though, he’d known that he had made a mistake. Fleeting as it was, that brush of his lips against her wrist had turned into something different from what he’d meant—something combustible.
Jesus, she turns me on.
Not a news flash, he told himself drily. He’d known that for ten years now. He’d seen her around, after that long-ago summer.
Found out that contrary to what he would have expected, she’d become a cop. Caught occasional glimpses of her, spoken to her a few times in passing. Been aware that the sexy, sassy, pretty girl who had tempted him had grown up into a beautiful, self-possessed woman. Heard the guys talk about the superintendent’s hubba-hubba daughter, make crude jokes about how much they’d like to get it on with her. That last had irritated the hell out of him, every single time.
Bottom line was, he’d always been aware of her.
When he’d cut the zip tie, and she’d shaken her hands and come out with that tiny pained moan, he’d known he had hurt her and his conscience had smote him. Even though he knew he’d only done what he had to do to survive, he’d still felt like the biggest bastard alive. The protectiveness she had engendered in him all those years ago was still there, he’d discovered, and still strong. So, too, was the sizzling physical chemistry between them that when she’d been seventeen he had forced himself to fight like hell. Now there was no reason to fight it except that his life, which he’d finally managed to halfway patch back together after the accident, had just spectacularly imploded. Whatever he might feel for Caroline, there was nowhere to take it. After tonight, if he even had a future, it wasn’t anything that she was going to be able to be a part of. When being on the run for the rest of his life seemed like the best of outcomes, his future was the opposite of bright.
He’d forced Caroline to come with him tonight, meant to use her to get Ant back. He couldn’t see that he had any other options, but that was as far as he meant to take it.
What he was putting all his energy into—what he had to put all his energy into—was surviving the night.
Knowing that she was as attracted to him as he was hot for her was what was driving him a little insane. It was something he needed to strive to forget.
Forgetting was damned hard.
He hadn’t missed the way her pulse had jumped when he had pressed his lips to her wrist. Just like he hadn’t missed the way she looked at him, or how her nipples had hardened and seemed to push into his palms when he’d run his hands over her breasts as he’d frisked her, or the sexy way her body had curled into his chest when he’d carried her in his arms, or how round and firm her ass had felt nestled against his crotch—
Goddamn it. Stop right there.
Slamming the mental door on that line of thinking, he cast his eyes up at the velvety black sky, eyed the full yellow moon that kept being partially obscured by a stampede of racing dark clouds, did a lightning review of all possible ways he might die in the next twenty-four hours or so, and finally succeeded in pushing the last erotic image of Caroline out of his mind.
Forget about sex. What he needed to be focusing on was keeping himself, Holly, and Ant alive.
The question was, how to do that.
What about running to the nearest local TV station, or placing a call to CNN, and spilling everything he knew, or thought he knew, to some eager reporter, with the promise of a look at those pictures Holly had taken as a chaser?
For a moment, Reed brightened, seeing a possible way
out. He had to be a hot topic on the news channels right now. Suppose he called one, or waltzed into a TV station, and offered them an exclusive about why he’d taken most of New Orleans’ top brass hostage. Once the media heard about the murders, all hell would break loose. The NOPD would be investigated. Questions would be asked, and answers demanded, on what would probably balloon into a nationwide stage. With the spotlight turned their way, he and Holly and Ant would be safe.
Or would they be? The more Reed thought of running to the media, the more pitfalls occurred to him. First, whoever was holding Ant would almost certainly kill him the instant anything about this started to come out to the public. Why wouldn’t they? If they killed the kid, they had only to dispose of the body and disavow all knowledge of him. On the other hand, if they didn’t kill him and the media found him, Ant would sing like a bird, spilling everything he knew to the cameras.
If he were to put himself in the shoes of whoever was holding Ant, leaving out his own personal aversion for harming kids, the smart action to take was a no-brainer: kill Ant.
It was like Nixon with the tapes: if he’d burned them, he probably would not have been the first American president to resign, but instead would have ridden out the storm that was Watergate and finished out his second term.
Moral of the story for bad guys: when in doubt, dispose of the problem.
Reed was as sure as it was possible to be that after thinking things through for themselves, whoever was holding Ant would come to that same conclusion. Ant would be safe for precisely
as long as his captors thought they had more to gain by keeping him alive.
With Ant dead, if Holly started to talk before they could capture and silence him, they could paint Holly as a street thug, a gang member, a drug user with a rap sheet just trying to make trouble for the cops. Nobody would believe Holly. Hell, if Reed hadn’t known Holly, and the situation, he wouldn’t believe the kid, either.
Then there was Reed himself. Looking at it objectively, he knew talking to the media wasn’t going to work any better for him. There was an excellent chance that whoever was calling the shots on this—right now, his money was on Superintendent Wallace, but he was open to other possibilities—would be able to spin it so that Reed, who had admittedly committed an impressive number of felonies in the last six or so hours, came out looking like a criminal, a nut job, a dirty cop with an axe to grind. They might claim he had Photoshopped the pictures. They might claim—hell, they might claim anything.
He might find himself arrested, tried, convicted, and thrown in jail for the rest of his life.
He might find himself shot on sight, or later, out of sight.
Holly had already been arrested for possessing crack cocaine. Reed knew that was a lie. How many others would believe it was a lie, though? Would a TV reporter believe it? Would a judge and jury believe it?
Reed rated the odds that anyone would believe Holly was telling the truth as at best fifty-fifty.
Not great odds when you’re gambling with your life.
So, going to the media as a solution was probably out.
What did that leave?
Not much.
His department? In the wake of the superintendent’s betrayal, everyone was suspect. Even his partner, Terry—Reed couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t be sure of anyone anymore, or anything. Besides, they were all hunting for him now. Not just the NOPD, but all the cops from the surrounding parishes, too. After tonight, even the cops who were innocent of any involvement in the events in the cemetery would, best-case scenario, arrest him, worst-case scenario, shoot him.
Brows knit, glancing thoughtfully past the golden arches without really registering them, Reed could see the expressway, see the concrete cloverleaf curving up toward it. An eighteen-wheeler chugging up the entrance ramp caught his eye. Impossible to make out any identifying marks at this distance, but Reed was almost positive that it was the one Holly was in. He watched it gain the top of the entrance ramp, pull out into sparse traffic, and accelerate away, keeping his eyes on it until he couldn’t see it any longer. Then he blew out a long, slow breath of relief.
Go with God, kid
. With Holly now almost certainly speeding out of harm’s way, the situation became slightly less dire. One rescued, two (including himself) to go. By tomorrow night, the kid should be safely out of the reach of the not-quite-long-enough arm of the New Orleans law. Reed felt some of the tension that had been keeping his muscles as tight as wound springs start to ease.