“Hey, Dex, you out there?” he called quietly, as if fearing to wake the dead. “Quit playing, man. It’s me, Carlos.”
He heard footfalls thump on the walkway ahead. This time he was certain that it wasn’t his imagination. Carlos moved faster. When he reached the dock, he saw a figure standing in the mist at the far end and looking out over the saw grass swamp waters.
The figure turned, but Carlos couldn’t identify him. The man raised something to his mouth, and three odd melodic notes drifted through the eerie haze.
Carlos paused. What the hell was Dex doing out there? And why didn’t he answer? Before he could hail his boss again, something massive and terrible rose from the green water to his left. Its huge dripping mouth opened and fell over Carlos.
The policeman’s bone-chilling shrieks died swiftly, as he was drawn kicking and screaming beneath the water by the powerful creature. The agitated surface suddenly became still, and again a baleful silence blanketed the swamp.
The figure walked briskly along the walkway past Dex’s house, climbed into the dark pick-up parked down the road, and calmly awaited Dex’s arrival.
Chapter 19
Jackson’s chartered plane taxied to a stop in front of a row of private hangars that loomed like specters in the depressing gloom blanketing the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport. Warm drops spilled from the low clouds as Teddi and Jackson dashed from the plane into the hangar where a dry limousine awaited them.
“What’s this?” Teddi asked hesitantly, pointing to the limo. The bean counter in her brain screamed over budget!
“Transportation.”
Teddi perfunctorily surveyed his all white outfit for the umpteenth time; it fascinated her more than bothered her. White linen slacks and shirt, and a white Panama hat. She had never been in the company of anyone like him. In fact, she had never seen anyone like him, except on television reruns of Hawaii Five-O and Fantasy Island.
“I could’ve called us a cab,” she said.
“As a rule, I don’t use cabs. They’re unreliable.”
She shot him a surprised glance. “You’re pretty picky.”
He merely nodded. “I would tend to agree. Shall we go? Time’s a wasting,” he reminded her, gesturing at the open rear door. The stiff-postured driver held a pair of clean and precisely folded towels on his arm.
Teddi was taken back. “Such service.”
Jackson grabbed a towel and patted his face dry. “Get used to it. Besides, towels are a necessity around here these days.”
“No lie. I’ve been down here over a week and haven’t seen more than an hour of sunlight – total.” Teddi took the proffered towel and hurriedly ducked inside the limo.
“Where to?” the driver asked Jackson, as he slipped behind the steering wheel.
“Gator Creek Police Station,” Teddi quickly replied.
The driver ignored her request and stared at Jackson.
Jackson shrugged. “You heard the lady.”
“Yes sir,” he replied, and closed the door.
“I’m quite capable of answering questions that are directed at me,” Jackson said reproachfully. “Please remember that in the future.”
Teddi slumped back against the plush leather upholstery. “Sorry. I was in a hurry.”
Jackson merely closed his eyes and remained silent for the entire drive west to Gator Creek.
They arrived at the police station as the last vestiges of gray light faded to darkness, and Teddi was chagrinned to see Ryan’s SUV still parked out front. Her ex-husband glanced up curiously as she and Jackson entered. His interest escalated to vexation.
Ryan abandoned his workstation and greeted them mockingly. “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” he said, glancing at Teddi’s wet, rumpled clothing. He turned to Jackson. “If I’m not mistaken, you’re Swamp Jack.” He offered his hand.
Jackson cleared his throat and glowered at the FBI agent.
“Yes, I remember you now. The name’s Two-timer, isn’t it?” Jackson clasped Ryan’s hand tightly. Too tightly.
Ryan’s eyes were thunderheads. He yanked his hand from Jackson’s vise grip and doubled his fists at his sides.
“Just what’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded, his lower jaw thrust out in simian anger.
Jackson smiled and stepped forward until the two men were mere inches from each other. “A meaning as hideous as Swamp Jack.” He enunciated the two words with contempt. “I’d appreciate it if you’d kindly refrain from using that moniker.”
“Likewise the two-timer bit.”
“Agreed. Now, where can we find Dex Lowe?”
Ryan retreated, glowered at Teddi, and then glanced back to Jackson. He roughly grabbed Teddi’s elbow and pulled her aside. “What’s he doing here?” he sputtered.
“Charlie’s orders,” she hissed. “If you’ve got a problem with Jackson, then call Charlie.” Suddenly, she remembered that she was still heading this investigation, and that she shouldn’t reveal too much of Charlie’s strategy. Ryan was the front man, while she and Jackson would do the real investigating behind the scenes. Let Ryan think what he wanted. She knew the truth. No use letting him get under her skin.
Jackson cleared his throat again, and spoke directly to Ryan. “I’m not in the habit of repeating myself, but for you I’ll make an exception. Where’s Dex Lowe?”
“I haven’t seen him,” Ryan replied curtly. “You want him, you find him. I’m not at your beck and call.”
“Obviously,” Jackson commented, with a flash of disdain.
One of the other agents spoke up. “We sent that cop Fuentes to find his boss, but we haven’t seen either of them since.”
Jackson nodded. “Thank you.” He turned to Teddi, who was coming out of Dex’s office. “Do you know where Dex lives?”
“Sure.”
“Then let’s make haste.”
The limo’s tires crunched as they rolled over Dex’s gravel driveway. The driver parked by the front walk and extinguished its lights. The windows were dark. Teddi noticed the patrol car parked on the side of the house. No sign of life there, either. Rain hammered the roof as Jackson opened his carry-on case and withdrew a 9mm Colt semiautomatic.
“Pretty standard stuff,” she remarked, as she slid the clip into her Beretta.
“I’ve made some small modifications.”
“Why am I not surprised?” she muttered.
He raked the slide, and a bullet slid into the firing chamber. He then screwed a silencer on the end of the barrel. “You’ve got a silencer, too, if I’m not mistaken.”
“That’s right.”
“I suggest you attach it. If push comes to shove, we wouldn’t want to wake the neighbors,” he recommended.
What was with this guy? He was as persnickety as a little old lady about the strangest things, but she complied in the spirit of teamwork. When she had finished attaching the silencer, she held the gun up for his inspection. “Satisfied?”
He managed a slight grin. “Don’t point guns — it’s not polite.” Jackson switched off the interior dome lights and instructed their driver to park a couple blocks away and wait for a pickup call. The driver responded evenly with a quick bob of his head, as if he dealt with perilous situations every day.
Jackson turned to Teddi. “Let’s go.”
They bailed from both sides of the limo into the steady drizzle and carefully scanned the immediate area for signs of trouble. Lightning flickered to the east, followed by low rumbling.
“More frigging rain on the way,” she groaned.
Jackson tapped her shoulder. “Let’s check the house first. Got a key?” he whispered.
Teddi fished Dex’s house key from her light jacket pocket, and led the way to the front door. “I’m way ahead of you. I found the key in Dex’s desk drawer while you were enjoying Ryan’s hospitality,” she commented facetiously.
They were drenched by the time she unlocked the door and gave it a cautious shove. The hinges emitted a single sque
al before the door rebounded from the baseboard doorstop. She ducked, and Jackson hugged the stucco beside the doorway.
They waited one suspenseful minute before scrambling inside, one breaking left and the other breaking to the right of the open door. Teddi directed a narrow beam of light into the blackness, and after a preliminary sweep, the living room appeared deserted.
Jackson switched on his penlight and edged deeper into the house. He ducked behind a sofa and waited. No sounds. Not even a bubbling aquarium pump. He gestured toward Teddi with a curt wave of his gun. That was her cue to join him.
She was halfway to the sofa, when a familiar voice froze her to the spot. She flattened herself on the carpet.
“Put out those damned flashlights,” it ordered. “And get down!”
Chapter 20
Thunderclaps rattled the windows of the silent house as Teddi remained motionless on the floor. Lightning strobed, and the brilliant flashes blinded her to the darkness that followed. She could no longer discern the unfamiliar silhouettes in the room. They melded with the intermittent blackness. She raised her head to search for the source of the voice.
“Get down, for chrissakes!” the voice commanded gruffly.
Teddi glanced over to where Jackson was parked behind the sofa. The hair on her neck prickled. He was gone! How did she miss him leaving? His white clothing certainly wasn’t a practical night camouflage outfit.
A wind gust rippled her blouse, and she turned toward the open doorway. Lightning flashed and held longer than usual. Long enough for her to witness a cluster of writhing snakes slither across the threshold! Looked like a dozen of them! It was impossible to make out whether they were poisonous or not, but that didn’t really matter. She hated snakes. All snakes.
Despite her confining situation, Teddi managed to reposition her Beretta and fire a quick round into the wriggling lump. She fired another round, and then another, until the lightning displayed a flattened, inanimate mass.
The eastern storm finally arrived and pounded a furious tattoo on the roof. The chimes outside the front door gyrated and clanged wildly in the surging wind. Lightning crackled every few seconds, followed by quaking cannonades.
“Identify yourself!” Teddi shouted over the maelstrom.
“Goddamn it, it’s Dex!”
“Dex? Why didn’t you answer when we called to you?”
“There’s someone outside with an itch to kill me, that’s the hell why!”
“We didn’t see anybody?”
“Well, he’s there. Take a look at the wall to your left. You’ll see what I mean.”
Teddi raised her head and chanced a peek.
“Goddamn it, stay down!”
Teddi chastised herself for being so reckless, but she realized that she was more than a little edgy. First the startling voice — then, a disappearing Jackson — and last, a bunch of writhing invaders. What next? Alligators?
Teddi crawled on her stomach around the chair blocking her view of the wall. When she finally succeeded, the incessant lightning flickers made it difficult to see anything, much less evidence of a shooter. The exploding thunderclaps frayed her already raw nerves, igniting an intense flush beneath her skin. She tried to shake off her anxiety and just do her job, but it refused to fade away.
She was acting like a rookie! Anxiety was an invitation to death — one oversight or impulsive move, and she’d be history. A twenty-one-gun salute to Meathead McCoy. A flag-draped coffin. An eternal dirt blanket.
And Ryan would be laughing his ass off at the cemetery, boasting to his associates that he had warned her . . . had “told her so.” That really steamed her.
She vividly recalled his debasing philosophy. She’d heard it many times. “Women and danger don’t mix, babe. Better stick to the typical female rigors like avoiding a hot stove, not bullets. Now, be a good girl and resign. We’re married now. I can support us both.”
Oooohhh!
Teddi’s pent-up fury flushed her anxiety, and revived her professional instincts. Teddi scrutinized the wall between lightning bursts. After several moments, the flashes subsided and she saw it. A roaming red laser light — a laser scope!
“I see it, Dex,” she shouted.
“Good gal. Now stay low, and we’ll wait this bastard out.”
“Do you have any idea who might be out there?”
“Probably the same asshole who murdered my old friend, Ike Noonan, this morning.”
“Our perp?”
“Yeah. He must think I discovered somethin’ at Ike’s that would lead us to him, but I’ll be dogged if I can figure out what it is.”
“Did you find the 1856 newspaper articles we were looking for?”
“Yeah, and that guy kidnapped hefty women, too.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothin’ I want our perp to hear about,” he replied testily.
“Right,” she shot back. “Are you hit?”
“Nah, I’m fine. Just banged my shin on the damned dinin’ room table when I hit the deck earlier.”
“We can’t just lie here. We’ll be easy targets if he decides to sneak inside,” she argued.
“He won’t.”
“And how do you know that?” she demanded.
“I do, that’s all. Instinct. Just wait him out, Teddi. He’ll give up and leave before dawn.”
Teddi’s eyes followed the moving laser as she vented her frustration. Just lie there? Was he nuts? She recalled the painting hanging behind the desk of her Washington office. Three smirking sitting ducks were seated in front of a bullet-riddled wall. She pictured herself in the painting. A dead duck.
“We’re not staying here, Dex,” she informed him. “We’re going to take the offensive.”
“You tryin’ to get me killed, Teddi?”
“You know better than that. I have a hunch that the killer wants us to stay put. That’s why he’s letting us see his laser beam. It’s a lame ruse, Dex.”
“I saw the damned laser beam outside, too, and I barely made it in here from the garage alive. Bullets were flyin’ all around me! I didn’t think I could still move that fast.”
Teddi bit her bottom lip. “Doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd that a man with a laser sight would miss that badly?”
Silence.
“Maybe,” he begrudging conceded.
“Then there must be a reason he missed, right?”
“I suppose, unless he’s that bad of a shot. Remember, he’s used to air guns.”
“Bad argument. I’ve got a better idea.”
“All right, you’ve almost got me convinced. What’s on your mind?”
Before she could reply, the red light vanished.
Teddi searched the rest of the room for the beam, but she saw nothing. “Damnit!” she swore. “I hope we’re not too late!”
“What now?” Dex asked urgently.
“The beam’s disappeared.”
“Shit. He could be anywhere.”
Teddi glanced sideways, and her eyes locked on the laser beam planted on the carpet beside her. Sweat leached through her pores as her angst returned; she gripped her Beretta so tightly that her trigger finger throbbed.
Think, Teddi, think! Remember your training! But she wasn’t trained for a situation like this. She was instructed to avoid situations like this. Her only chance of surviving was to pull a John Wayne stunt — roll and fire . . . without getting killed in the process.
“Don’t try anything stupid, Teddi,” a faint warning came from the doorway. The cracking thunder and torrential rains nearly drowned out the man’s voice.
Teddi squeezed her eyelids shut. There was nothing she could really do now. The shooter had her in his sights. One stupid heroic move now and . . .
She thought of the dead duck.
Chapter 21
Teddi guardedly rotated her head toward the speaker, hoping that it wouldn’t be her last move. Lightning sliced the sky again, and she was shocked to see a white Panama hat perched on the man�
�s head. Relieved, she rolled on her side.
“Jesus, Jackson. You scared the shit out of me!” she berated him.
Jackson switched off the laser pen. “Stay where you are,” he urged. “This isn’t over yet.”
A shadow approached from the far end of the room; Jackson stiffened, kicked the dead snakes outside, and eased the door shut against the blustery gusts. The shadow was Dex. Before Jackson could warn the police chief to stay low, a side window exploded, peppering Dex with shattered glass. He dropped immediately to the floor.
“Damn!” he groaned.
“Dex!” Teddi yelled over the din from the downpour.
“The bastard winged me,” Dex retorted.
“You need a doctor?” she asked, worried.
“A damned head doctor for fallin’ for that old distraction ploy!”
“I agree,” Jackson muttered. “You might’ve gotten killed.”
Another window exploded, and a bullet whizzed past Jackson’s hat, missing it by inches. He tore the hat from his head and sailed it across the room. It landed softly behind the sofa.
Teddi remained flat on the carpet and trained her Beretta on the first blown-out window. Another bullet zinged over her head and penetrated the wall behind her, kicking up gypsum dust. Was the gunman using a night scope to target them? That theory appeared implausible, because the lightning flashes would’ve blinded the shooter. So how was he doing it?
She rolled over and over until she reached the sofa, and Jackson quickly crab-walked from the foyer and joined her. Teddi glanced over the back of the sofa and chanced a peek outside. The drapes danced and flapped from the fierce winds that whistled through the glassless opening. At first, she saw nothing but wildly waving trees and silvery sheets of rain. Then she saw what she was searching for in the crotch of a nearby tree! A circular glint of a highly polished lens reflected the lightning bursts from about ten feet above the ground. The shooter was utilizing a regular riflescope and the lightning to pinpoint their positions inside the house.
She ducked as a rifle flash rent the blackness around the tree. A bullet knifed through the sofa upholstery above her head and showered Jackson and her with tufts of latex foam filler.
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