“Which is why Holly should have kept his ass on that truck to Mexico,” Reed replied savagely, already making plans as he pulled on his boxers. Bottom line was, he wasn’t Rambo. Last thing he wanted to do was try to take on an unknown number of armed cops alone in an effort to get Ant out and safely away. But try as he might—and he had tried and would continue to try—he couldn’t think of anybody he hadn’t already contacted to bring in as backup. Terry had a wife and new baby; he was out. Besides, Terry, like any of his fellow cops who weren’t involved in the murders or whatever the hell had led to them, would now consider him an armed and dangerous fugitive. Their duty was clear: they could either arrest or shoot him on sight, or else they’d be guilty of aiding and abetting at the very least. Even if a few of them might have been disposed to listen, he wouldn’t be given time to make his case. Once he was taken into custody, he’d be accorded the same treatment that had been waiting for Holly: a back-door parole within hours.
Not a happy thought. Especially now that he was discovering that he really did want to live, when before he hadn’t been entirely sure. He wanted to live, and have his life. He wanted a future.
Because of Caroline. Maybe even with Caroline. She’d given
him something to hope for, to look forward to. In the process, she’d also given him way too much to lose.
Fuck.
He should’ve kept his pants zipped.
“You can’t keep putting your life on the line for them,” Caroline said. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
Having pulled on his boxers, he was just getting ready to step into his jeans. He paused to look at her. Her face was pale and tight. With fear for him, he knew.
Hell, he was pretty sure he’d gotten to her just like she’d gotten to him.
“I can’t walk away from them, and I won’t,” he said with finality. “They’re my responsibility.”
“Let me go get Holly,” Caroline said. She was clutching her clothes in her hands, looking at him with an intensity that told him how serious she was. “Nobody’s going to shoot me on sight. If I should get caught, I can just say I escaped from you. But I won’t get caught. I can get Holly away from there, get him somewhere safe, and then—”
“Caroline,” Reed interrupted. Having put on his jeans, he was zipping them up and fastening them. He was touched by this further evidence that she was now completely on his side, and even more touched by her apparent readiness to put her life on the line for him. But as he told her: “Me hide out while you go after Holly? Not gonna happen, cher. And you know it.”
She must have seen that he meant it, because she didn’t try to argue anymore. Her only response as she headed to the bathroom was a shake of her head and a tart, “You ever hear, stubborn idiocy killed the cat?”
He had to smile. “I think that was curiosity.”
“Not in your case,” she replied, and shut the door.
When she reemerged she was fully dressed, with her face washed and her hair brushed. She looked so pretty that he paused while loading and checking his guns—he had his service weapon, plus a backup he’d been hauling around in the backpack in case he needed more firepower, and enough ammo to fight a small war—to run his eyes over her appreciatively.
Under the circumstances, it was a sad state of affairs when just looking at her made him hot.
“I’ll take this one.” She grabbed his spare gun off the table. He was still frowning at her when she checked the magazine before expertly pulling back the slide. That reminded him once again that she was a cop, and because he really didn’t want to see her thrusting a gun down the back of that sexy skirt, which was probably way too tight to hold it properly anyway, he simply slid his holster toward her with a terse, “Here.”
Thing about it was, his plan was the mirror image of her suggestion. He was going to stash her somewhere safe before he went after Ant—going in there would be dangerous as hell, and the idea of Caroline in deadly peril made his blood run cold—but to save time and energy, he wouldn’t tell her until the very last possible minute. Trading her for Ant was still a possibility, but if he could get the kid out first, before anybody was expecting him to try, that might be a better option. He wouldn’t decide until he had secured Holly and scoped out the situation for himself.
“I found something on the phone earlier.” She looked up at him from adjusting the holster’s straps so that it fit her better. He caught himself wondering how she’d look in just the holster
and gun and nothing else, and quickly shut down that line of thought. “While you were outside. I meant to show you, but—”
“You got distracted,” he finished for her as her voice trailed off, and their eyes met. The memory of the sexy parts of that distraction hung in the air between them, making the atmosphere sizzle suddenly, and he watched with interest as her cheeks turned pink. But she jumped off Memory Lane to say, “Officers Stoller and Rice are in three groups together that I’ve been able to find so far. One’s a softball league, one’s a boating club, and one’s a charity. There are pictures online.”
“Show me,” he said instantly.
“See, here’s the thing,” Caroline said once the pictures were opened. “These are all police-sponsored organizations. Two of them—the softball league and the boating club—are big, but they have only NOPD officers as members. But the charity—it’s called Rescue New Orleans—is different. Look . . .” She pointed to the charity photo, which showed—he did a quick count—twenty-four officers, all labeled with name, rank, and police department. “Besides the NOPD, there are cops from Jefferson, St. Bernard, and St. Tammany Parishes. It’s such a small group to have so many different departments represented.”
“Where did you find that?” he asked, frowning at the picture.
“I did a search on Stoller and Rice’s names. This came up in the department files.”
“Hmm.” He turned away, although the picture stayed in his mind. “Something about the name kind of rings a bell.” He thought about it, but whatever it was proved to be elusive. He added, “The point is, one of these things is not like the others.”
“What?”
“It’s a kind of yardstick I always use when I’m working on a case: what it means is, if something doesn’t fit, there’s probably a reason and it needs to be looked at more closely.” He shook his head. “I’ll keep thinking about it. You should finish getting together whatever you want to take with you. I’m going out to turn off the generator. Then we’ve got to go. If I know Holly, he’ll find a way to get into trouble before too long.”
He closed up the shanty with practiced efficiency, then placed one more call to DeBlassis—no luck—and the guys at the Justice Department—likewise no luck. After leaving messages with both identifying Stoller and Rice as suspects, he checked to see how many minutes he had left on the disposable phone, discovered he was down to just a few, and accepted it philosophically: he needed to be getting rid of it anyway. Even though it was supposed to be untraceable, keeping it too long made him antsy just on principle. He also wanted to get rid of Elizabeth Townes’ phone, but the evidence on it made that impossible. Hiding it somewhere occurred to him, but that brought with it the problem of potentially not being able to come back for it. Unable to come up with a good solution, he dismissed that particular problem for the moment. At least he had a glimmer of an idea about how to get to Ant without getting caught or killed: he could call the fire department and report a fire at Six Flags, then go in under the cover of the fire trucks when they came. The plan had a number of flaws, but he thought it might be workable and, anyway, for now it was the best plan he had.
Having disconnected the generator, he paused beside it for a last look around. Dusk was falling, stealing over the trees and water in varying shades of purple. The birdcalls, the
plop-plop-plop
of fish jumping out of the water, and the vague rustlings of animals in the undergrowth were as familiar to him as the sound of his own breathing. The shanty had been part of his life for a long time, and in the weeks and months following his son’s death it had been his refuge. The knowledge that he might not see it again would have depressed him if he’d let it. But he had become an expert in armoring himself against pain, and anyway in the whole scheme of heartbreak, places just weren’t that important.
People were what mattered.
On the way back to the porch, his eye was caught by bushy clusters of rose-colored plants that he must have passed many times but never noticed before.
Now he did, because the deep pink flowers were shaped like hearts, and that made him think of Caroline.
Smiling wryly at his own idiocy, he stopped, picked several, and reentered the shanty clutching a handful of shaggy blooms like some lovesick swain on a TV show.
She was over by the table stowing away two bottles of water in his backpack. As he entered she looked up, and her eyes almost immediately zeroed in on the flowers.
He walked toward her, feeling like ten kinds of a fool.
As he reached her, her eyes lifted to his with a question in them.
“I thought I’d try for a little more finesse on the dismount this time.” His smile felt crooked as he held the nodding pink blossoms out to her. “Hearts and flowers, cher.”
“Oh.” Voice soft, she took the flowers, looked down at them, took a breath, and looked up to meet his eyes. Hers were glowing, the golden hazel infused with green. The way she was
holding the flowers, he knew the gesture meant something to her. He also knew that on the whole scale of relationships that were or were not happening, he’d just taken a big ol’ step over the happening line. He didn’t care. For what it was worth, he meant it.
“Oh,” she said again, even more softly, then, “Reed,” and slid the hand that wasn’t clutching the flowers up over his chest and around his neck as she went up on tiptoe to kiss him. Her hand was slim and cool, and her lips were soft and warm, and he could feel every gorgeous, curvaceous inch of her pressed up against him like ink on paper, and he was instantly hard again. His mind went a little unfocused while his body zeroed in on the one thing he was trying not to focus on, which was taking her to bed. The kiss that had started out all gentle and tender immediately turned fiery hot, and it was all he could do to break away.
“We’ve got to go,” he said again, hating to cut the moment short. Electricity crackled between them, and for a moment she simply looked up at him with her eyes as unfocused as he was feeling and her lips parted and damp from his kiss. Then she sank back on her heels, and stepped away.
“Thank you for the flowers,” she said simply. Reed knew she wanted to say more. He didn’t press her, instead nodding and turning away to snag the backpack, before sweeping the shanty with one last look. After that, they were out the door. The thought of Holly doing God knows what as he waited for him quickened Reed’s step.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Caroline said as she followed him down the steps. “I thought, watching you with my father when you were holding him hostage, that you knew
him better than most detectives would know the superintendent of police. Was I right?”
He looked at her, considering. Some things were secret, not to be talked about. But he knew better than most what Caroline had been through. And maybe this was something that she ought to know.
“I went to a few AA meetings after the accident. I found out that I’m not actually an alcoholic, so I stopped going.” He paused to wait for her to catch up to him. “Your father was there. We started talking some. He told me that he’d been attending weekly meetings for the last five years.”
“He drank,” she said slowly. “Some of the worst times—”
She broke off, and he could tell from her expression that she didn’t want to finish the thought. He respected her privacy enough to let it go if that was what she wanted.
They’d reached the fallen log that served as a bridge across the finger of muddy water by that time and he was reaching for her hand to help her up onto it when he noticed that she was still carrying the flowers.
“I didn’t mean for you to bring them with you,” he said with a quick frown. “You should have left them.”
She shook her head, and her hand tightened protectively around the stems. “No way.”
Their eyes met, and what he saw in hers made his gut tighten and his heart beat faster. But this was no time to explore it, no time to say the things that maybe he might want to say.
Later. If there was a later.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
W
ITH DARKNESS FALLING,
the bayou had turned ghostly and full of shadows. The earth let off steam in the form of mist, which wafted skyward in pale, vaporous fingers. Long tendrils of Spanish moss hung over the path. Its touch was dry and feathery as they brushed through it. Luminescent eyes glowed everywhere, following their progress. An alligator swam slowly past. A cacophony of insect sounds filled the air. They walked back the way they had come, with Caroline mostly following in Reed’s footsteps to navigate the trail. He held her hand, partly to make sure that she didn’t fall into anything hideous, but also because he wanted to. Her hand felt like it belonged in his now.
Leaving her was going to be hard.
Once they were in the car and
on the road, he could feel his tension building. It was dark enough so that they needed headlights, dark enough so that no one passing could see inside the car, but because it was Christmas Day, there were very few cars on the road. After the isolation of the shanty, he felt exposed, and he didn’t like it. He was afraid of I-10 because of the search efforts that were likely still concentrated on it, so kept to the back roads as he drove toward the city.
“Are you still going to call my father at eight?” Caroline asked. She’d been quiet since they’d gotten in the car, and he guessed that she was feeling the strain, too. Her face was pale and drawn, and she’d been letting her head rest back against the seat.
“Yes.” He’d been thinking about that, and the conclusion he’d come to was, he would go ahead and set up the exchange. He hoped not to have to use it, but it would be better to have it in place just in case. It would also serve as an effective way of fooling whoever was holding Ant into a false sense of security. If the kid was to be exchanged later, no one would expect anyone to try to rescue him beforehand.