Night's Landing

by Carla Neggers

  Conroy Fontaine—John Wesley Poe—wasn’t so lucky. By the time they reached the hospital, there was nothing doctors could do for him. He died fifteen minutes later.

  He’d lied about so much, but not that John Wesley Poe was his real name.

  When she was a teenager, his mother had heard about the Poe sisters and the baby they’d found on the doorstep. Pregnant, unmarried and broke, she created the fantasy that her baby and Leola and Violet Poe’s baby had the same father. She named hers John Wesley—why she’d given her child the same name as the man she would later tell him was his half brother remained a mystery—and changed her name legally to Poe.

  Agents searching out Conroy Fontaine’s background in Memphis had dug up that story with little effort. Francine Poe was long dead. After Wes Poe was elected governor and then president, everyone who’d known her and her little boy remembered her crazy tale.

  Nate came out onto the porch and sat on another rocker next to Sarah. His arm was freshly bandaged, and she’d overheard an E.R. doctor giving him a stern lecture about taking it easy for a few days. You’ve been shot, need I remind you?

  Sarah sipped more of the tea punch, her snakebite aching, her mind fighting off the memory of going into the river with the fat, wriggling cottonmouth. Once it realized it was in the water, it released its grip on her neck and tore off to safety. “Conroy—it’s hard to think of him as John Wesley—would have had a better upbringing if his mother had left him on Leola and Violet’s doorstep, too.”

  “They were up there in age when he was born, weren’t they?”

  “They’d have seen to it he got to a good home.”

  “Why didn’t they do that with the president? Not that there was anything wrong with their home, but two maiden sisters living alone out here on the river, World War Two raging—” He shrugged. “It can’t have been an easy decision to keep him.”

  “They believed he belonged here.” And Sarah left it at that, angled a quick smile at him. “You’ll have to watch my documentary.”

  He smiled back at her. “Sarah Dunnemore, Ph.D.” But he tilted back in his chair and hoisted his feet up onto the porch rail, a warm breeze bringing with it the smells of grass, flowers, river. Nate, who’d been in marshal mode for hours, glanced at her with those incisive, impatient blue eyes. “Why would our young John Wesley Poe think the president would grant Nicholas Janssen a pardon if you asked him? It’s got to be more than your pretty gray eyes.”

  Sarah looked straight ahead, across the shaded lawn to the river and didn’t answer.

  “What do you have on the president?” Nate asked quietly.

  “You have a suspicious mind, Deputy.” She laid on the sexy southern accent but still didn’t look at him. “The Dunnemores and Poes have been neighbors for a lot of years. I’m sure we can tell many tales about each other.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s going to come out now. The media’s descending. You’ve got the Secret Service crawling all over this place. The FBI, the marshals, the ATF, your local sheriff—they’re all going to want to know why Conroy Fontaine/John Wesley Poe thought President Poe would grant a fugitive a pardon if only he could manipulate you into asking him.”

  “And I could tell them I have no idea,” she said. “I could tell them that Conroy never discussed his reasoning with me when he had me in the cave.” She glanced sideways at him. “Here’s a question for you. Should I have tried to scream when he grabbed me in the cottage kitchen and put the gun to my head?”

  “You should have trusted your instincts, which is what you did.”

  “How long before you and Ethan realized he had me?”

  “Seconds. We didn’t want to get you killed.” His eyes narrowed, darkened. “It was not a good moment.”

  She felt a rush of warmth, but warned herself against reading too much into it, too much into the sparks that had flown between the two of them for days. They both had so much to process. And yet, she didn’t want him to go back to New York. She wanted to keep him right here, sitting with her on the front porch.

  “I trusted you to deal with your snake,” he said.

  Back to what she had on the president of the United States. She was smart to remain on her guard. “I left you no other choice.”

  “I could have kept you from doing that kamikaze, feetfirst dive into the water, or I could have gone in with the two of you.”

  “And got bit, too.”

  “The point is that I trusted you to handle yourself.”

  “Thank you, and I trust you to do your job as a marshal and therefore tell your superiors if I tell you something about the president, who is, after all, your ultimate boss.”

  “So you’re saying you do have something on the president?”

  She groaned.

  “All right. Don’t tell me. I’ll read about it in the papers.”

  He didn’t seem irritated or even that curious, just satisfied that he was right and she did have a presidential secret.

  He tilted back in his chair. “I’ll bet it has something to do with snakes.”

  “You’re like the cottonmouth that had hold of my neck. You won’t let go, will you?”

  “Ah, Sarah.” He grinned at her, his tiredness evident underneath, but a light of humor and pure, deliberate sexiness shone in his eyes. “I’d love to latch onto you in about a dozen different ways right now. But don’t compare me to a snake, okay?”

  “You’ve seen more cottonmouths since being here than I’ve seen in the last ten years—” But she sighed, and set her glass down, gazing again at the river. “Wes was a self-made businessman when I was in high school, a millionaire with political ambitions and a desire to serve the public. Leola and Violet were still alive. He’d drive out here to see them. Evelyn, his wife, often didn’t come.”

  “Sarah…”

  She pretended not to hear him. “It was a hot day. Muggy. Rob and I were home from school. I didn’t know Wes was here. As I told you, I’d been visiting Leola and Violet—they didn’t know, either. He and Ev had just lost their fourth child. Ev was very depressed. There were rumors she was suicidal.” Sarah shut her eyes and rocked back into the chair, feeling herself at almost seventeen, practically skipping back from the Poe house. “Wes believed he was at fault, that his ambition, the pressures of his work, had hurt their chances of having a child. He came out to the river to pull himself together. It was the low point in his life, in his marriage.”

  “He told you all this?”

  She nodded, opening her eyes, wishing she could slow her mind, stop the pace of the images repeating themselves. “He was standing on that narrow ledge in front of the cave where Conroy had taken Juliet. I heard him from the path. He was sobbing. I don’t think—” She broke off a moment, searching for the right words. “He’s not one to cry in front of other people.”

  Nate picked up her iced-tea glass and took a sip. “Think he was going to jump?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll never know.” She rocked back in her chair. “I don’t think he intentionally went out to the ledge to jump. I think he just found himself there. It’s not that much of a jump—there’s no guarantee he’d have died even if he had planned to commit suicide.”

  “Water’s deep there, current’s strong.”

  “He’s an excellent swimmer. Not that it matters if he’d wanted to die.”

  “Was he drunk?”

  “Who’s telling this story?” But he’d brought her back to the present, and that was where she needed to be to continue. “He surprised a water moccasin on the ledge. I saw it. It came after him—they can be very aggressive when they’re startled. Wes panicked.”

  “And you?”

  “I grabbed the snake and threw it in the water.”

  Nate smiled. “You and these snakes.”

  “The story got told differently than how it was.”

  “That’s one way of putting it. He said he saved you from the snake. That he saw you on the ledge and you were the one who panicked.”
>
  “Ah. You’ve done your research. No, he said none of that. It was how the story got told. It was how people wanted it to be. A high school girl and a man who would be president—wouldn’t you want him to be the one to save her from the snake?” She looked out at the river, smelled it on the breeze. “He simply never corrected it.”

  “Did he ever ask you not to correct it?”

  “Never. Not once. I think if I hadn’t been there, he’d have crawled into the cave and died. He wouldn’t have jumped in the river and committed suicide, but he would have seen the snake as confirmation of all he’d thought and doubted about himself that day. I don’t mind how the story’s been told. Wes understands what it’s like to be at rock bottom. He’s brought that into his public service. His political enemies would say he was a grown man saved by a seventeen-year-old girl, but the truth is far more complicated.”

  “He’d never have granted Janssen a pardon on your say-so.”

  It was a statement, but Sarah shook her head. “Never. He took an oath. He just wouldn’t—no, never. That Conroy—John Wesley—believed he would was a fantasy on his part.”

  Nate took another swallow of tea. “This tea punch is growing on me. I still think it could use a pound less of sugar.”

  “Are you drinking out of my glass?”

  He leaned toward her, skimmed his knuckles across her cheek. “If this place wasn’t crawling with feds and you hadn’t just been bit by a cottonmouth, I’d be carrying you upstairs right now and drinking—”

  “You’re determined to embarrass me, aren’t you?”

  “Uh-uh.” He kissed her on her forehead. “Just to make you smile.”

  The Dutch authorities released the Dunnemores into the protective custody of a deputy U.S. marshal sent in specifically for the task, who in turn not only put them on a plane but sat next to them for the duration of their flight to New York.

  Juliet figured it was the only way to get them to their kids without another damn drama.

  She inched her way out to the porch after she’d talked her E.R. doctors out of sticking her in a Nashville hospital and got a ride back to Night’s Landing from a very cute FBI agent with a southern accent.

  She hurt all over. She figured she’d hurt until she was a hundred.

  Sarah was still in her rocking chair. Nate had joined a million other feds down at Ethan’s cottage. They’d already gone through the fishing cabin that Conroy Fontaine had rented. Apparently he’d left behind a considerable amount of damning information on Nicholas Janssen, who was, allegedly, involved in illegal arms trading, extortion, murder, fraud—tax evasion was the least of his misdeeds.

  “I thought you were being admitted to the hospital,” Sarah said.

  Juliet gave her a crooked smile. “I had to threaten to shoot my doctor to keep him from strapping me to a stretcher. I hate hospitals.”

  “More than most people?”

  “Yeah. Probably.” She changed the subject. “Did I see you and Deputy Winter smooching out here?”

  Sarah sighed, looking smart and pretty and not blushing even a little. “Maybe it’s the snakebite, but I think I’m falling for him.”

  Juliet grinned. “It’s the snakebite.” She glanced out at the cottage and wondered where Ethan Brooker was now. “I knew he’d take off.”

  “Ethan? Why didn’t you stop him?”

  “He was the one with the nine-millimeter.”

  Sarah put her feet up on the porch rail. “I hope someone gets to him before he does something he regrets.”

  “Like kill Nicholas Janssen? I’m not sure he’d regret it.” Juliet eased herself slowly, painfully, onto a cushioned chair. “Joe Collins read me the riot act for not stopping him. Like I didn’t have enough to do with two dead bodies, the snakes, you in the river, Nate going Tarzan on us, this Conroy Fontaine character foaming at the mouth.”

  “Collins is hard on you because he respects you.”

  “He’s hard on me because he’s a prick.”

  Sarah smiled. “And I suppose you told him that?”

  Juliet realized that she’d come to like Dr. Dunnemore. “Yeah, as a matter of fact.”

  “Ethan’s going after Janssen,” Sarah said.

  Juliet nodded. “That must have been some woman he lost.”

  Thirty-Three

  Janssen cocooned himself in the fishy, salty-smelling woolen blanket and tried to stay warm deep in the bowels of the ancient trawler that was taking him to safety. Away from luxury, away from hope. He hadn’t slept in hours, because when he did, he dreamed of his mother crying for him on her deathbed, of Betsy Dunnemore smiling at him at eighteen and making his heart melt. He’d let them both down.

  John Wesley Poe.

  Conroy Fontaine.

  He was the psycho who’d interfered in his life and shot the marshals in Central Park. Who’d tried to extort five million dollars from him for a pardon that was even more of a fantasy—a flight of fancy—than Janssen’s own dream of getting Betsy Dunnemore to intervene with the president on his behalf.

  Conroy had weaseled his way into Janssen’s life last fall and learned everything about him.

  No, not everything. Too much, certainly, but not everything.

  Not the location of his safe houses. Not his backup plans once he knew there was little hope for a simple conviction on tax evasion charges.

  Five years in prison? He’d be lucky now to avoid the death penalty.

  Charlene Brooker, lowly army intelligence officer, had been pulling at the thread that would unravel everything and set him up for big trouble. Her meeting with Betsy—beautiful Betsy—was the last straw for Janssen.

  But it was Conroy Fontaine with his crazy idea that he was the president’s half brother who’d destroyed the careful life Nicholas had constructed for himself, all in an attempt to extort money from him for a pardon and manipulate the president of the United States into acknowledging him as his brother.

  The crazy fuck.

  Now the authorities apparently had the concrete information they needed to turn the suspicions of a murdered military intelligence officer into a full-blown investigation of all his activities.

  He had become one of the most wanted criminals in the world.

  But he was prepared. He had a plan for just such a worst-case scenario.

  He would survive. He’d always survived.

  The Dutch police, the Swiss police, U.S. law enforcement, Interpol—they all wanted his scalp. But at least with them, even with all he’d done, it was professional, not personal. They would capture him and bring him to trial. They wouldn’t slit his throat in the night.

  With Ethan Brooker, it was different. It was very personal.

  The hatch creaked open. “Sir?”

  “What is it?” Janssen asked irritably.

  “I have news of the man you wanted me to—”

  Brooker. “Yes, what?”

  “The FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service want him for questioning in that mess that happened in Tennessee. He’s disappeared.”

  Just as I feared.

  Janssen had two choices. One, he could let Ethan Brooker come to him. Two, he could get to Ethan Brooker before Brooker got to him.

  He pulled the blanket over him, shivering on the cold, skinny mat under him.

  Those weren’t any choices at all.

  Thirty-Four

  The Dunnemores reminded Nate of wizards. Eccentric, dramatic, full of secrets and magic spells, but fun and a bit removed from lesser mortals. It wasn’t that they didn’t make mistakes or were arrogant—they were kind, funny, generous and intelligent. And, despite their oddities as parents, they loved their twin son and daughter. Nate saw that when they finally arrived in New York five days after their son was shot in Central Park, one day after their daughter almost got herself killed in Night’s Landing.

  He hadn’t flown up specifically for the occasion. He’d simply realized he couldn’t hang around in Night’s Landing and had decided to return to New York,
his apartment, his work, his life.

  Both Betsy and Stuart Dunnemore had thanked him profoundly for everything he’d done, but all he could think of was the night he’d made love to their daughter in their kitchen.

  He didn’t want to be thanked for anything.

  He thought of his own family—Gus and his egg lady and his hole-digging dog, his sister Antonia and her senator husband, his sister Carine and her PJ husband. They were a different kind of family. Direct, argumentative, loud. Not much going on beneath the surface, not many secrets, except, these days, for the occasional de-ranged killer. It wasn’t subterranean stuff that got them into trouble—it was their keen sense of independence, their reluctance to rely on anyone but themselves.

  Carine had learned better, Antonia had learned better.

  Nate wondered if he ever would.

  He walked down the hospital corridor with Rob, markedly improved but still with a long way to go. The Dunnemores were off to some health-food store to stock up on vitamins and herbs to aid in his recovery. He was getting out of the hospital in a day or two. In another few days, he could fly down to Night’s Landing. “Couldn’t you have told them Sarah’s snakebite wasn’t nonvenomous? Then they’d have to fly down there to see her.”

  “She’s cooking casseroles and putting them in the freezer.”

  “She’s alone.”

  “Not that alone. She’s got the Secret Service camped out in the back yard.”

  President John Wesley Poe was coming to Night’s Landing.

  And so were the Dunnemores, just not soon enough to suit their only son. Sarah had urged them to stay with her brother at least until he was out of the hospital and give her a chance to get the house in order.

  Wizards.

  “I should have stayed on Conroy Fontaine,” Rob said. “I should have pushed harder. And Ethan Brooker. Nicholas Janssen. They were under my nose.”

  “We’ll get Janssen. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “Before Brooker does?”

  “I hope so. Brooker’s all right. I’d hate to see him go down for taking out that murderous bastard.” Nate tried to smile. “Something about Longstreet seemed to get to him. Maybe he’s not so far gone in wanting revenge that he can’t make it back.”