“I almost crapped my pants when those bombs started going off. There must’ve been a thousand of them. They were you, right? Yeah, they had to be.” Holly was chattering, probably from nerves. His head had popped out of the can, and he was looking at the two of them—well, Reed really. “I thought you said you didn’t have no bombs.”
“They were flash bangs,” Reed replied over his shoulder, which explained a lot to Caroline, who’d likewise had an extreme anxious reaction when the explosions had begun. To wit, her first, horrified thought had been that he’d blown up the hostages. She’d managed to rationalize it away before she’d had a complete nervous breakdown, but she still wasn’t quite recovered from the trauma. “Noisy, disorienting, but harmless.”
“That was awesome.” Holly dived back into the can. “Man, them cops parted for us like the Red Sea.”
Awesome
wasn’t quite the descriptive word Caroline would have chosen.
“The explosions didn’t scare you, did they?” Reed asked her, apparently perceptive enough to read something in her face. “If I’d thought about it, I would’ve given you a heads-up, that they were only flash bangs.”
The look Caroline gave him was positively evil.
His eyebrows contracted in response. His expression changed subtly, but she couldn’t read it. The moonlight cast the hard planes and angles of his face in harsh relief. His eyes gleamed darkly down into hers. For an instant, as she took in his black hair and sensuous mouth, registered her own bound hands and the unfamiliar sensation of near helplessness she was experiencing as he schlepped her around like a bride on her wedding night, she was reminded of the pirate ancestry that ran heavy in the Creole bloodlines.
Thing was, there was no captive maiden ancestry in hers, which she meant to spell out for him first chance she got.
“We taking all this stuff with us?” Holly asked, causing Reed to glance around. Although she could no longer see him, his voice made it apparent that he had surfaced from the depths of the can again.
“Yes,” Reed replied. “The fewer things we leave behind, the longer it’s going to take them to figure out where we went.”
They had reached the very edge of the lake, Caroline saw as he set her back on her feet. The ground beneath her was marshy and wet. She could feel the brush of weeds around her bare legs. Cattails were all around them, standing taller than even Reed, hiding much of their surroundings—and undoubtedly them—from view. The buzz of insects—or maybe that was still the ringing in her ears—seemed inordinately loud. He kept his hands on her waist to steady her, which was probably a good idea. She felt a little dizzy, a little light-headed. Her tongue hurt where she had bitten it. Her feet and calves tingled. So did her fingers.
And, yes, it was probably fair to say that she was pissed.
Tilting up her chin, she fixed Reed with what she was certain had to be the most speaking look she had ever given anyone in her life.
It wasn’t saying nice things.
“If I take off the duct tape, you can’t scream,” Reed warned. “You can’t even talk loud.”
She nodded once to indicate her acquiescence. Leaning toward her, wincing preemptively, she presumed on her behalf, he began to gently peel away the tape.
It felt like a layer of skin was coming off along with the tape.
Pissed
no longer even began to cover it.
Behind Reed’s head, she saw a hazy cloud of smoke drifting skyward. The distant roar she had been vaguely aware of since the lid was lifted from her plastic prison began to differentiate itself from the ringing in her ears, which was gradually subsiding. She realized now that it was a medley of shouts, sirens, and the
thwump-thwump
of the helicopters she could see swooping around like dragonflies in the near distance. A searchlight from one of those helicopters swept down out of the sky over the roof—the roof was the only part that she could see—of the mansion from which she had just been hijacked.
Incredible as it was for her to process, Reed’s scheme had actually worked. He and Holly had managed to get through a police net that was as tight as anything she had ever seen. Alive. And apparently undetected.
By using two stolen SWAT jackets and a garbage can.
What that said about the efficiency of her colleagues left her aghast.
Having been sent in to disarm the hostage-taker’s bomb, she had wound up being kidnapped.
What that said about her own efficiency made her want to hang her head, and that in turn made her furious.
The last of the tape came off. Her lips felt dry and slightly swollen. The skin around them stung a little. She licked her lips, worked her mouth. Reed watched her, his expression impossible to read. They stood face-to-face. He had one steadying hand still on her waist. With the other, he was rolling up the duct tape between his fingers into a little ball.
“Better?” he asked her.
She looked him straight in the eye and snarled, “You
jackass
.”
He blinked, clearly surprised.
She followed up with a fierce, “You brain-dead son of a bitch, what the hell did you do to the hostages?”
His eyes widened a little. Then his lips twitched, and he smiled. A real, genuine, amused smile. White teeth flashed. A dimple—she remembered that dimple; a long time ago she’d thought it was mega hot—appeared in his right cheek. His eyes danced. Okay, so the man was handsome. At this point she didn’t give a flying—
“Locked them in a couple of upstairs closets. Except for the ones I let go. No real harm done to any of them. Unless somebody actually crapped his pants when the explosions started going off.” He paused reflectively. “Which is a possibility. I left your father and the mayor with what they thought was a bomb.”
“You’ve got to be absolutely bat-shit crazy.” She was so mad her voice shook. “A lunatic. A reckless, selfish, stupid
jerk.
Some of those hostages could have had a heart attack. You could have gotten two innocent people—and by that I mean Holly and me, because you’re sure as hell not innocent—killed.”
“You
are
pissed,” he said.
“You stuffed me into a garbage can at gunpoint.” She was talking through her teeth now. “You bound my hands. You put duct tape over my mouth.
You scared the hell out of me
. And for what? You want to tell me? For what?”
“I had no choice,” he replied, sliding a hand around her elbow. Even through the sleeve of her windbreaker, she could feel the size and strength of that hand. “About any of it. Like I said, you have no idea what’s going on here. And keep your voice down.”
She tried to jerk free. He wouldn’t let go.
Fine
. With his long fingers fastened immovably around her arm, she stood her ground and verbally lambasted him. “If your Butch Cassidy thing had gone wrong, I could have been shot. Holly could have been shot. Of course, you could have been shot, too, but that would just be a matter of getting the inevitable over with. You know what you are? You’re a dead man walking. You’re going to get caught. You’re going to get killed. You’re—”
“Much as I’m enjoying this conversation,” he said, interrupting, “we’re going to have to save the rest of it for later.” He looked past her at Holly. “Get in,” he told Holly. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
It was then, as she followed Reed’s gaze to find Holly, who’d left the can behind to beat them to the water’s edge, that she saw the boat. It was a small, flat-bottomed, open fiberglass vessel barely visible among the weeds. Having apparently just finished tossing things into it, Holly was clambering into the bow.
“Really? You think nobody’s going to hear a boat?” Caroline’s eyes snapped back to Reed as he pulled her toward it.
“It’s electric. It’s silent. It’s used for bird-watching,” he replied. “So, no.”
“They’ll see it. Helicopters, remember? They’ll sweep the lake. And, by the way, you want to cut this zip tie off my hands?”
“They won’t search the lake until they figure out we’re not in the house. It’s a big house, so I’m guessing we’ve got a little time. And I’ll cut the zip tie off later. When I’m sure you won’t dive overboard. See, I remember how well you swim.” His eyes caught hers. In their sudden reminiscent glimmer she saw full evidence that he remembered tossing her into the pool after she’d kissed him, then standing there watching as she’d surfaced and swum with swift, powerful strokes to the edge. He’d waited until she’d pulled herself out, probably because letting the superintendent’s daughter drown could not be considered a career enhancer, then said, “Don’t try that again, little girl” in the teeth of her spluttering outrage. “Get in the boat.”
“No.” She shook her head. And planted her feet. And figuratively dug in her heels. “You’ve escaped. Not for long, probably, but that’s for you to worry about it, not me. I’ve done everything I can to try to save your life, but if you’re determined to commit suicide by cop there’s really nothing I can do about it. Except to not be around to watch when it happens. And I want this zip tie
off
.”
“You could still get your chance to save me.” His tone was soothing. His mouth curved until it was dangerously close to breaking into another smile. “Who knows when I might need to hold you up in front of me as a shield?”
“You think that’s funny?” She was seething. “It’s not. You’re in denial. It’s pathetic
. You are going to get hunted down and killed
. But, bottom line, you are no longer holding any hostages, so you are officially not my problem anymore. I’m not going anywhere with you. If you’ll cut this zip tie off—or even if you won’t—I’ll find my own way back.”
He seemed to sigh. His hand on her elbow tightened. “Caroline, I know you’re mad, and I don’t blame you. But I really don’t have time for this. I’ll cut the zip tie off as soon as I can, I promise. For now, I need you to
get in the damned boat
.”
“No.”
They stared measuringly at each other. Then Reed solved the impasse by scooping her up off her feet again.
That caused her to leave pissed so far behind that it was like she was looking down on it from another planet.
“Where the hell do you get off manhandling me, anyway? You think you can just pick me up and carry me off and there won’t be any repercussions?” Caroline growled, struggling, as he took two long strides and stepped into the boat with her. Screaming for help occurred to her, but the thought of the duct tape plus the maddening truth that she really, truly, when all was said and done didn’t want to bring the hunt down on him kept her volume reasonably low. “Next time I’m with someone who wants to put a bullet through you, I’ll give them a big thumbs-up. No, wait, screw that. How about I just save everybody a lot of trouble and do it myself, first chance I get?”
“Quit squirming or you’ll tip the boat,” he warned.
“This is kidnapping,” she snapped as the boat rocked and she stopped struggling because she really didn’t want to drown, which, if she went in the drink with her hands tied behind her, she just might. “A federal crime.”
He laughed. “At this point, the feds will have to get in line.”
“Careful, Dick,” Holly warned as the boat rocked some more, and then Reed put her down on the narrow seat in the center of the boat. His arms dropped away from her and he sat down himself in the stern. Caroline looked at her long slim legs, bare to the tops of her thighs because her skirt had ridden up some more and she didn’t have the use of her hands to pull it down, and felt steam figuratively coming out of her ears.
“They’ll call in the FBI,” she told Reed with relish as he used a paddle to push them away from shore. “The FBI will launch a nationwide manhunt.”
He’d set her down facing forward, but she turned on the seat so she could see him, and watched as he did something—pushed a button?—that caused the engine to start.
The sound was a gentle hum, no louder than a cat’s purr.
Caroline mentally harrumphed.
“Nobody’s going to call the FBI. I guarantee it,” Reed said with calm certainty as he worked the throttle and rudder so that in moments they were skimming along the water just a few yards from shore. “If they were going to call the FBI, they would already have done it and I would have been dealing with an FBI negotiator instead of you. See how well things work out?”
“You are delusional,” she said. “Delusional, and
wrong
. Soon to be
dead
wrong.”
He didn’t reply. Glancing shoreward, she saw that houses lined the lake all along their path. They were considerably smaller in this area than the mansions that filled the section from which they had just come. A number of them still had some interior lights on despite the fact that it was the wee hours of the morning. Caroline was surprised at it until she remembered that this was actually Christmas Eve turned Christmas morning and there were likely to be sleepy parents up doing the Santa Claus thing. She didn’t know whether she was more worried or hopeful that they would be seen, but there didn’t seem to be much chance of that: the yards sloping down to the lake were big and there was a lot of vegetation in the way. Since the lake was smooth as black glass, the ride was only a little bumpy. The air rushing past felt cool, and Caroline guessed that the temperature had dropped to maybe the high sixties. At any rate, she was glad of her windbreaker.
“You really don’t think they’ll call in the feds?” Holly, in the bow, turned to ask Reed with obvious anxiety.
“No,” Reed replied. “They want to keep this local if they can.”
“They can’t,” Caroline said with relish. “Because, for one thing, you just kidnapped me. That rates an automatic call to the feds. Because it’s a
federal
crime.”
“Um, so why are we taking her with us?” Holly asked. Caroline saw that he had discarded the SWAT jacket and was once again wearing his hoodie, and remembered that it—soft cotton with a really sharp zipper—had been one of the items bouncing around beneath her buns.
“Good question,” Caroline concurred. “I mean, since you’ve chucked your garbage can and you no longer need me to make part of a pretend bomb anyway, I’d think I’d just be in the way.”