No Limits

by Alison Kent

  Would she be better off on her own than caught in the middle of a man-on-man feud? Or was taking what she could get better than nothing? “When I got to town, I had no luck getting information on where I might find Lisa. If her neighbors were home, they weren’t answering their doors. I stopped at the bar. He helped me.”

  “How so?” His question was curt.

  Her answer was the same. “I told you. He pointed out Judge Landry. I took it from there.”

  “Did you tell him who you were?”

  “I introduced myself, if that’s what you mean. I didn’t detail my whole life story.”

  “And I’m assuming you told the judge,” he said, the shift in his focus disconcerting.

  What was he digging for? What did he want to know besides what he was asking? “Of course. I had to explain my connection to Lisa. I didn’t think he’d help me otherwise. Not that he did.” She decided she didn’t like being interrogated. “Why? Does it matter that they know who I am?”

  “It might have narrowed down the list of anyone out to get you personally.”

  “Might have?” Now she was getting worried.

  “The car was a rental. Everyone involved in the case knows who you are.”

  Ah, that. “Not really,” she said, wondering what he’d make of her admission.

  “How so?”

  “The rental records only show who rented the car.”

  “And that’s not you?”

  “Yes and no. I always fly under my own name, but my executive assistant makes my travel arrangements and often books the rest of my accommodations under hers.” Micky had a duplicate of Jane’s driver’s license—at a quick glance, they looked a lot alike—and additional copies of her credit cards in Jane’s name. “The car was rented to Jane Mitchell. Not Michelina Ferrer.”

  Simon pushed away from the truck. “So as far as the authorities know, it’s your assistant who went off that bridge and is missing. Though by now they’ve probably been in contact with her employer—”

  And that would be me, Micky thought, afraid she might choke. “God. I need to let Jane know I’m all right.”

  She’d been so intent on keeping a low profile after the debacle with her underpants, hoping the press would lose interest—what fun would the story be if they couldn’t track her down and hound her to the ends of the earth?—that she hadn’t thought about the authorities searching for info on the missing Jane Mitchell. Or about Jane panicking when she realized it was Micky they were really looking for.

  She needed to call her. She had no cell. “You don’t have a phone, do you? I made it out of the car with my purse since I was all wrapped up in the strap, but everything inside was drenched and is useless.”

  “I’m not sure you could pick up a signal this far out anyway—”

  She sighed. That’s what she’d been afraid of.

  “—but I do have a satellite phone.”

  He was halfway to the front of the truck before she registered what he’d said. Once she did, she started to follow, stopped when she remembered that she needed to stay on the porch in the shadows and that she wasn’t wearing any shoes.

  It occurred to her again while she waited for him that she still knew nothing about this man, who he was, how he happened to show up mere hours after she’d taken refuge in his house, which was obviously abandoned.

  Very few people drove around with satellite phones. Very few people needed to access that technology. The few who had reason to…

  “You never did tell me.” And she doubted he would now. “Are you some sort of federal agent? Did you move from the military into government work?”

  The phone in his hand, Simon looked at her as he powered it on and waited for a signal. “What makes you ask that?”

  He knew exactly. He was stalling, avoiding. “Who else would just happen to have a satellite phone handy?”

  He gave a careless shrug, the tail of his hair sweeping his neck. “Someone who might need to stay in touch with the civilized world even from the back of beyond?”

  Again, with the logic, the evasion that made more sense than her wild imagination. “Who do you need to be in touch with? A wife and kids?”

  He shook his head, fought a smile. “No wife, and no kids that I know of.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be.” He handed her the phone. “Dial your number.”

  She took it, stared frowning at the keypad. “What do I tell her? I mean, besides the fact that I’m all right, how much should I say?”

  “Find out if anyone’s contacted her yet about the accident, who it was, and what she told them. Since she’s the one assumed missing, they may have tried family and friends first.”

  “Or, like you said, her employer?”

  He nodded. “The sheriff’s department doesn’t have a lot of manpower. They may still be out on their search and rescue and won’t start in on the phones until they’re forced to call it off for the night.”

  He was making a lot of sense—in that logically evasive and aggravating way that he had. She held the phone in both hands, punched the number with both thumbs, brought it up to her ear, and waited.

  “You’ve reached Jane Mitchell in the Ferrer office. I’m currently unavailable but will return your call as soon as I’m able. Leave all the pertinent info. Ciao.”

  “Jane, it’s Micky. I’m fine. I’m in Louisiana. I need to know if anyone has called about you being in an accident here, and what you told them. If you haven’t talked to anyone, don’t. Call it identity theft or whatever.

  “Basically, you’re in the dark. I’m out of town visiting a friend. I didn’t tell you who or where.” And that wasn’t even a lie. “I’ll call you later tonight or tomorrow and explain all.”

  She disconnected and handed the phone back to Simon. “Was that okay? Will that work?”

  “Sounded like a pro.”

  “A pro what?” Liar?

  “A pro at covering your ass.”

  She would’ve laughed if his assessment hadn’t been entirely spot on. Then she wondered if it took one to know one. “Trust me. I’ve got it down to a science.”

  He looked at her curiously. “It’s too bad that’s something you’ve had to refine.”

  She shrugged. What could she say? It had been her life so long it was second nature. “It’s my own fault. I was born into the public eye. I just wasn’t ever cut out for it.”

  “Charm school didn’t take?” He headed back to the truck, stored the phone.

  “Are you kidding? Miss Clare’s Academy for Proper Young Ladies closed its doors rather than let me back in.”

  “Back in?” he asked upon his return.

  She held up three fingers. “Miss Clare had her own three-strike rule. Unfortunately, Papi and his money insisted the strikes were mistakes easily corrected with a scholarship fund and a fully outfitted computer lab.”

  He had settled his back against the porch beam, obviously taking in and enjoying the true story of Michelina Ferrer. “She turned him down?”

  What could it hurt to tell him more? He was listening. He seemed interested. A rarity in her experience that told her only sensationalism drew a crowd.

  “She did. Apparently she was offered a position as a private tutor to the children of a Saudi prince. Even Ferrer money couldn’t compete—though I heard my father telling Greta that the offer hadn’t dropped into her lap. Apparently, Miss Clare had put out word that she was desperate to find work in a single-family environment.”

  “As long as that single family wasn’t named Ferrer?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Who’s Greta?”

  “My father’s personal assistant.”

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “Good question. I haven’t seen her since I was ten.”

  “Was that before or after Miss Clare’s?”

  “Around the same time, and yes, I’m sure my being a charm school dropout is directly related.” Except tha
t had been twenty years ago and she wasn’t behaving much differently now, was she?

  Running away instead of staying to face music she didn’t want to hear had nearly gotten her killed. Still, she couldn’t regret what had happened. If she hadn’t come to Louisiana, she never would have known about Lisa, and for all the efforts being made to find her, the other woman might have remained a missing person forever. At least Micky would be able to make sure that never happened.

  She looked up, realized that she’d drifted away, realized, too, that Simon had patiently watched her go and waited for her to come back. This being contemplative wasn’t like her at all.

  There hadn’t been much of her old self in evidence since she’d crawled soaking wet and sputtering through the open window of the rental, crouched on the higher ground as the nose was sucked into the same mud that had taken her shoes, the taillights flickering until the water extinguished all the life from the car’s electrical system the same way it could so easily have taken hers.

  Until Simon squatted in front of her and wiped his thumbs over her face, she hadn’t realized she was crying. The hitch in her breath, her sobs, the moisture on her face, she’d thought those all in her mind.

  She shook her head, murmured, “I’m sorry.”

  It wasn’t what she’d wanted to say, but the words were the only ones that would come.

  “It’s okay. You have nothing to be sorry for. Being a charm school dropout is not the end of the world.”

  She tried to laugh. The sound came out as a hiccup, one that sounded so ridiculously pathetic that she buried her face in her hands to keep from breaking down completely, hysterically. But breaking down seemed the only thing she was able to do.

  He was teasing, trying to lighten the mood, and she was reverting to the basket case she’d been when he’d pulled her from the closet—the one she’d never had time to be when she was fighting her way out of the swamp.

  “All I wanted to do was spend time with my girlfriend. To eat, drink, and talk ourselves silly over a Sex and the City marathon. And look at me. My mind takes one wrong turn and I’m back at the bridge living through the accident again. And Lisa, God, if they were so ready to get rid of me, what did they do to her? I can’t even think about it. I’m not sure I can handle knowing.”

  His hand was cupping her cheek, his thumb smoothing over her cheekbone. “You’ll handle it just fine, but you don’t have to think about it now. You need to take care of you.”

  “I need to make sure someone is looking for Lisa. Really looking.” She shook her hair from her face, dislodging his hand, telling herself she was strong enough to deal with this, with it all. “I don’t believe for a minute that the judge cares about anything but what she might have said before she went missing. He was more interested in her note—”

  Simon stiffened. “What note?”

  “It arrived in the mail about a week ago. She told me it had been too long and I should come visit if I could tear myself away from the wild life. She made it a point to keep up with what the press found newsworthy about me when I wasn’t good enough to stay in touch.”

  She wasn’t going to tell him about Monday night in case he hadn’t yet heard. “But that was it. A don’t-be-a-stranger reminder. She said it was bad enough that her family kept her out of the loop, that I didn’t need to.”

  “What do you think she meant by that?” he asked, sitting back on the balls of his feet, his elbows on his knees. “Being out of the loop?”

  It had seemed so innocent. An offhand remark. Or she’d been too caught up with herself to read between the lines. “I didn’t take it as anything cryptic. Just maybe that southern hospitality ran out at the Mississippi River.”

  “How long have she and Terrill been married?”

  She counted quickly. “Eight years.”

  “Any complaints before now about feeling left out? Or like not part of the family?”

  “None at all.” That she could say with no reservation. “It’s only Lisa, Terrill, and his father. She always thought the judge was full of himself, but she adores Terrill. I don’t think she’s ever mentioned disagreeing with him about anything.”

  “What does she do?”

  “Besides playing Martha Stewart inside, landscaping outside, and lately working on the Landry genealogy?” Micky smiled, pictured her girlfriend in the various roles. “There aren’t a lot of career ops for a marketing major in the bayou. I tried to get her to come to New York for a few months and brainstorm a new Ferrer campaign with our ad people, but she didn’t want to leave Terrill.”

  “What about the genealogy? Has she mentioned anything about that?”

  “You mean has she dug up any deep dark Landry secrets? Any illegitimate heirs birthed to young slave girls on the plantation?” She shook her head. “Not a thing.”

  “So being left out of the family loop…”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Simon thought for a minute, got to his feet. “I’d like to see her research notes. Find out what she might have uncovered.”

  She snorted. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble getting permission.”

  He didn’t miss a beat. “Who said I was going to ask?”

  Okay. This was interesting, this confidence, this entitlement, this cheek. “Who are you, Simon Baptiste?”

  Laughing, he headed for the door, gesturing for her to come inside, too. “Someone who’s been sitting behind a wheel too long, unloading double his weight in supplies, swinging a hammer in a shirt that doesn’t breathe, and needs a shower before he can even think of rustling grub for dinner.”

  He sounded like a cowboy. It made her smile. “Fair warning. The water pressure is pathetic, and the hot-water valve needs help,” she said.

  “That’s okay. A cold shower sounds like just the thing.”

  She cocked her head. “I hope you’re not saying that needing one’s my fault.”

  “You never know,” he said, his grin a devilishly delicious thing.

  The whole world is my native land.

  —Seneca, Roman philosopher, mid-first century A.D.

  The Landry family Bible held an amazing secret, a secret neither my husband nor his father had hinted at knowing even once during the eight years of my living in Bayou Allain. I let that bother me for a while, let myself pout privately about being left out of the loop. I pouted semiprivately as well, dropping a note to my best girlfriend, knowing she’d pick up on things not being quite right.

  But then I realized how stupid that was. Terrill shared everything with me. He told me personal things I knew he’d never trusted anyone else to know. Since he hadn’t mentioned that a Civil War treasure was buried on the family’s land, it made sense that he, too, was in the dark. Before telling him, however, I needed to know more, to figure out exactly how the code pointing to the cache of gold worked.

  The inconvenience of having to go to the parish library so often was minor. The Bible, though the family’s property, was considered a historic find, having been unearthed during the razing of a tumbled-down barn that was part of the original Landry homestead. The judge had agreed to let the book remain on public display.

  I have no idea why the letter in the binding hadn’t been discovered before. Maybe it had. Maybe the decision was made to leave it where it had been found. Or maybe the lack of resources for restoring the worn leather meant no one had ever looked at the cover carefully.

  The minute I read it, I knew what I had—but only because I’d been looking through the boxes in Bear’s attic, and the list of codes the letter referenced was fresh in my mind. It wasn’t a complicated cipher, but a series of dots and dashes resembling Morse code that referred to books, chapters, and verses in the Bible instead of representing the alphabet.

  Alone, the markings meant nothing and were virtually worthless, but the handwritten letter in the leather binding made them worth, well, whatever the key to a buried treasure was worth! And, honestly, it wasn’t that hard to figure out
how they worked after I read the note….

  My name is Ruth Callahan Landry. I am the lawful wedded wife of Samuel Jonathan Landry. We have not been blessed with children for me to tell what has happened, and my Samuel will be dead and soon in the arms of the Lord, though I would wish him to stay on this earth as my husband for fifty more years were the Lord willing and had not the gangrene set in before he got himself home for me to tend to the gunshot wound.

  I know what he did was sinful but I am a woman alone and I am not of a mind to face the Union soldiers even now in New Orleans to return the gold my Samuel took when he knew he was going against the Lord. The satchel is safely buried in the ground, and I have made markings in the Old Testament books of Ruth and Samuel 1 to serve as a guide to the location should I have a need to settle monetary obligations I am unable to satisfy with the fruits of honest labor. The clarification of how the markings are to be read have been recorded with this letter.

  If no such need arises before I am joined again with my beloved Samuel at the feet of the Lord, the gold will remain in its final resting place until it is discovered and returned to whom it rightfully belongs.

  After reading Ruth Callahan Landry’s words, I couldn’t wait to work out the symbols for myself. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find the treasure, or if almost a hundred and fifty years later there was anything left to find, but I wanted more than anything to surprise Terrill with an amazing inheritance that was by all rights his.

  When I went back to the attic for the codes, a newspaper clipping slipped loose from a folder containing several more. I picked it up, glanced at the story, and that’s when I knew the puzzle was bigger than a cache of gold—and more than I could solve on my own.

  Fifteen

  H aving realized four hours wouldn’t be enough time to go through even half the documents boxed up in Bear’s attic, Terrill had carried all he could find to the trunk of his patrol car last night. His father would never miss them. He would never even know they were gone.