Hunted

by Karen Robards

  “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.”

  Like Holly, she was looking at Reed, but something about the quality of Holly’s silence told Caroline that he agreed.

  “I’m going to trade her for Ant,” Reed said to Holly. Then he looked at Caroline to explain, “Holly’s little brother. He’s thirteen.”

  “I know that,” Caroline snapped, while at the same time Holly exclaimed, “Dick! That’s genius! It’ll be like a prisoner exchange.”

  “His name’s Reed,” Caroline pointed out irritably.

  “It’s short for Detective,” Reed told her.

  Then the truth burst upon her. She stared at him. “That was why you wanted me to bring Holly in to you. You knew then that you were going to kidnap me and trade me for his brother. There I was twisting myself into knots trying to keep you from being killed and the whole time you were planning to use me.”

  The way Reed regarded her steadily for a moment without replying told Caroline that she was exactly right.

  “Not the whole time,” Reed said, like that made a difference. “Only after Holly got there and told me about Ant. At that point, I had to improvise.”

  If she’d had a hand free, she would have smacked a palm to her forehead. “I cannot believe that I walked into that house. I cannot believe that I—that all of us—were that gullible.”

  “I mean to see to it that no harm comes to you, Caroline.”

  “You know what you can do with that,” Caroline threw at him, and pointedly turned her face away. She was still furious, but knowing that he’d deliberately used her hurt, too. What bothered her the most was realizing that he’d remembered her ten-year-old crush on him and deliberately capitalized on it. Then she remembered the EMP device. She’d been prepared to disable his bomb, and to get close enough to do that she would have been taking advantage of their previous relationship, too. So, touché.

  Looking behind them, she could see the mansion they’d left behind, or at least ascertain its location. Because of the multitude of lights around the house, it was enveloped in a pale glow that lit up that particular spot like a beacon. Smoke still rising from the scene looked like a hazy veil in the moonlight. The helicopters were easy to spot because their searchlights slashed through the night.

  Caroline wondered how long it would be before Dixon and the rest figured out that Reed and Holly—to say nothing of herself—were not in the house. She guessed it would take a full search. And, as Reed had pointed out, the house was big.

  Reed had turned the boat away from shore. They were at a narrow part of the lake now, and he was taking them straight across it. The small boat practically slid across the smooth surface. Caroline realized that they were going slower than she would have expected given the circumstances, and guessed that Reed was wary about kicking up wake. A ruffle of white in the midst of so much black water would make them easy to spot if anyone happened to look their way. Especially with how the moon was shining down on the lake.

  Sooner or later, someone was going to look their way.

  “Let me get this straight.” She fixed Reed with a condemning gaze. He was scarcely more than a dark shape as they gained the other side of the lake and were enveloped by the shadow of the bridge they were passing beneath, but it was a large, broad-shouldered, very capable-looking dark shape. As angry as she was with him, the idea that he had put himself in this life-threatening position—and there was no going back from it that she could see—made her sick with aggravation and fear. Fear for him, damn it, as maddening as it was to admit even to herself. The question she wanted answered was, why? Why had he embarked on such a stupid, self-destructive course to begin with? Drugs and alcohol as an excuse were out: she was fully convinced that the man was totally straight and perfectly sober. Insanity? Now, that was still a possibility. “You got fired today—yesterday. For taking a bribe, I heard. I’m sure you’re going to say you’re innocent, but at the moment that’s not the point. Then Holly got busted for drugs. He claims he’s innocent, too, that some bad cop planted the evidence on him, but they put him in jail anyway. You felt that the best way to prove your innocence and get him out of jail was to take a whole bunch of very important people hostage and threaten to kill them if Holly wasn’t released and brought to you, along with an escape helicopter in which you wanted us to stash a million dollars in cash. Now, in hindsight, I get that the helicopter and the cash were sort of a sleight-of-hand distraction so that you could sneak Holly away out a side door, but what I don’t get is why you did all this in the first place. I mean, did you never hear of filing an appeal? And how hard could it have been to get Holly out of jail? Do lawyers, judges, courts, bail bondsmen, and the entire legal and civil service systems just hold no appeal for you?”

  “Dick didn’t take no bribe. He was set up, just like I was. If he hadn’t gotten me out of jail, they would’ve killed me tonight,” Holly told her starkly. “I was pretty sure when they took me in, but then when I saw where they was putting me, there was no doubt. I know some of those dudes in there, and I got the word: I was getting ready to get a back-door parole.” Even as Caroline mentally translated that last to mean get murdered in jail and have his body-bagged corpse carried out of the prison via a back door, she shifted to look at him. He said earnestly to Reed, “I owe you, Dick.”

  “Yeah, you do. Big time. Don’t forget it.”

  “Who do you think was going to kill you tonight?” Caroline asked Holly, strugglin
g not to let her exasperation show.

  “Damn, woman, I’ve told you a bunch of times: the cops,” Holly responded impatiently.

  “Shut up, Holly,” Reed said, and from his tone it was obvious that he meant it. They were once more scudding through moonlight, going faster than before. The boat was kicking up wake now, but the bridge they had just passed beneath provided some concealment from anyone on the other side of it as the boat followed the shoreline into a small inlet. In the distance she could still hear sirens, but here in this quiet backwater the whirr of cicadas and other insects plus the croaking of the bullfrogs were equally loud. Reed added, “She’s going back, remember? If she knows too much, she won’t be safe.”

  Caroline looked at Reed. It was obvious that he believed every word Holly had just said. “You are in the advanced stages of paranoia,” she told him, then included Holly in her glare. “You, too.”

  Holly started to say something, but Reed silenced him with a gesture.

  “Quiet, both of you. We’re here,” he said.

  As Caroline looked around to see where “here” was, her eye was caught by something she had never expected to see: the silhouette of a helicopter flying in front of the face of the moon. It was so reminiscent of the bicycle across the moon scene in E.T. that she stared at it for a second before realizing what it meant.

  When she did, her breath caught and her stomach dropped clear to her toes.

  “Reed,” she croaked. “They’re searching outside for you.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  BOTH HELICOPTERS had peeled away from the scene of the crime and were circling over an ever widening area while their searchlights scoured the ground below. One appeared to be concentrating on the lake while the other combed the neighborhood surrounding the mansion. The white beams of the searchlights shot down through the darkness like tractor beams.

  Now that she was looking in that direction, Caroline could also see red pulsing lights streaking away from the scene and racing along the road on the opposite side of the lake from where she and Reed and Holly sat huddled in the boat. There were at least a dozen, one after the other. Heart in throat, she identified them as patrol cars, moving fast. Their sirens—yes, she could hear them as they drew parallel and flashed past. Though the sound remained thin and distant with the lake between them, the cars were definitely in full scream.

  “I’d say you’re right. Looks like they know we’re not in the house.” Reed’s voice was so untroubled that Caroline shot a look at him. Her pulse raced and her stomach knotted from just the idea that all those police officers were hunting them. Which was ridiculous when she thought about it: the “them” being hunted did not include her. She should have been cheering the searchers on, because she was the victim awaiting rescue here. Reed, on the other hand, was the perp, the target of all that manpower, the bad guy who would be imprisoned for decades or killed in a firefight if—when—he was found. But if he was worried or scared, she couldn’t tell it.

  Caroline had a lightning vision of her father, freed from whatever makeshift prison Reed had left him in, learning that Reed had escaped with Holly and taken her with him. He would be incandescent with rage, putting the fear of God in those on the scene whom he held responsible for what he would consider an inexcusable failure, ordering a full-out manhunt while he threatened everybody involved with ruined careers.

  Just the thought of her father coming after Reed in that kind of white-hot fury made her go cold all over.

  The others—the sheriff, the mayor, the city attorney—would be out for blood as well. Reed’s blood; nothing less would satisfy them.

  As she looked at Reed, Caroline felt a thrill of despair. After everything he had done, she could see no way out for him.

  Something unimaginably bad had to have happened for him to put himself in such a position.

  What? She frowned. Holly kept insisting “the cops” had done this or that. Reed had shut him up, like he thought there was some substance there. The identities of the hostages had to mean something, too.

  He wasn’t going to tell her what was going on, because he said knowing the truth would put her in danger.

  Frowning, Caroline turned the possibilities over in her mind. But she could come to no conclusion.

  Reed had slowed down the boat, and was steering it through overhanging willow fronds that dipped so low they brushed the top of her hair. The rustle of the leaves combined with the gentle rippling sound of the water would have been soothing under less fraught conditions.

  “They’re going to set up roadblocks on all the exit points to the subdivision,” Caroline said, her voice carefully even. She knew how this kind of manhunt worked. The warning emerged almost of its own volition. She was both a cop and a victim here, which definitely placed her not on Reed’s side, and was mad as hell at him to boot, but—but—

  Oh, admit it. You want him to get away.

  “Good thing we’re no longer in the subdivision, then,” he replied. Fortunately for him—and Holly—Reed knew how this kind of manhunt worked, too, Caroline reflected, which meant that he didn’t need her to tell him. He would know that the search would start with ground zero—the Winfield mansion—and work outward in ever-widening circles. Meanwhile, a perimeter would be established around the area. It was very possible that in the minds of her father and the others—oh, God, poor Dixon, he had to be going nuts about now—the lake would form a natural barrier to escape, and certainly they would conclude that any boat would be readily visible. The assumption would be that Reed had escaped on foot, because they would be certain that any vehicle attempting to leave the scene would have been instantly spotted and stopped. Still, the lake would be checked out just in case, and an alert would be issued advising officers to be suspicious of any type of moving vehicle. At this point, officers on the ground would be starting to search yards and outbuildings and unsecured vehicles, and blocking the roads. Next step, probably, door-to-door searches. Because Dixon and the others would not want to face the possibility that Reed, with her and Holly in tow, had gotten very far, it should be a while before the search expanded past Old Metairie.

  A BOLO—be on the lookout for—with their physical descriptions would have been, or would soon be, sent out over the wire. It would be transmitted to every officer in the state, and was probably going out right about now, as a matter of fact.

  The realization made her palms go all clammy with sweat on his behalf.

  Not quite sure whether she was warning him or taunting him, she mentioned the BOLO to Reed. He nodded acknowledgment: his expression made it clear that the thought had already occurred to him.

  “They catch us, they’re gonna kill us.” Fear plain in his voice, Holly stared up at the swooping helicopters as if fascinated by them. Now that the boat had passed beneath the willow-frond curtain, the helicopters were all they could see of the search. The racing police cars were blocked from their view, although the faint wail of their sirens could still be heard. Holly’s face was pale in the moonlight, and he wet his lips as he looked at Reed. “Oh, Jesus, Dick, you think we’re ever gonna be able to go home again?”

  He said that last as if the words had been wrenched out of him. His eyes were so full of despair that Caroline found herself hurting for him. He was scarcely more than a kid, it was Christmas—

  And she was very much afraid that the answer was no.

  “I don’t know. I hope so,” Reed said, as calmly and matter-of-factly as if he were discussing the weather, and nodded at something in front of them that, because Holly was in the way, Caroline couldn’t quite see. “When we get up there, jump up on the dock and grab this rope I’m going to throw you.” He was talking to Holly. “We’re getting off the lake.”

  “Okay.” Holly took a deep breath. Caroline got the impression that Reed’s response—not so much his words, but his imperturbable demeanor—had steadied him.

  They pulled alongside a weathered wooden dock that looked gray as a ghost in the darkness. One long p
ier jutted out into the water. It had maybe twenty boats of differing types tied up on either side of it, and was obviously part of some sort of commercial operation. As Reed nosed into an empty space, Holly scrambled out. Reed immediately threw him a rope.

  “Tie us to that cleat there,” he directed in a low voice as he cut the engine. As Holly obeyed, Reed got to his feet, staying low, Caroline presumed as the boat rocked, for balance. Water sloshed against the hull as the boat bumped the dock.

  She stood, then staggered a little as the boat bumped the dock again. Reed was right behind her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, steadying her before she could sit down hard, or worse. After that, she didn’t make the mistake of trying to climb out unaided onto the dock, which was approximately two feet higher than the edge of the boat. With her hands fastened behind her, her balance wasn’t all it could be and she had no way to catch herself if she should start to fall.

  For which she blamed Reed.

  “Grab her arm, Holly,” Reed directed as he helped her out. Holly did, and a second later Caroline found herself standing on the dock. Reed stepped up after her, navigating the height differential with ease, the backpack slung over his shoulder.

  “You want to cut my hands loose now?” she asked him. Her voice had regained its edge.

  “In a minute. Come on, let’s go. They’ve got a night watchman. Supposedly.” He caught her elbow again, hurrying her past the double line of boats toward the end of the dock. Holly walked ahead of them. Moving fast, they stepped off the wooden dock into a gravel parking area. The night seemed darker here. Caroline realized that it was because of all the tall trees ringing the parking area. The sound of their feet crunching over the gravel was all but drowned out by the piping of the tree frogs. To one side was a small, one-story frame building. It was dark and looked deserted. As they strode past it, Caroline read the sign in the large front window: Best Lake Tours and Boat Rental.