All he could do now was play the hand he had dealt himself.
“I can’t just up and go. Ant don’t have nobody but me.” There was real anguish in Holly’s eyes. He uncrossed his arms long enough to chew a ragged fingernail.
“He has me, too.” Reed heard the grimness in his own voice. It was there because much as he hated to face it, he was telling the truth: sometime over the course of the last few hours, he’d mentally shouldered the full mantle of responsibility for Ant, and Holly, too. Whether he liked it or not, they were his problem now.
“I should’ve left it alone. If I hadn’t gone poking around in things, this wouldn’t be happening. It’s all my fault,” Holly said, his voice thick with remorse.
“Yeah, well, maybe next time I tell you to mind your own damned business you’ll listen,” Reed replied. Then he relented. “It’s not your fault. Hell, if it’d been my mama got killed, I’d have done the same thing.”
“Somebody must’ve seen me following those dudes to the cemetery. That’s all I can figure out, ’cause I swear I never told nobody nothing about being there.”
Walking over to the truck stop from the car, Reed had grilled Holly pretty hard on that point. After witnessing the killings in the cemetery, Holly had stayed the night at Reed’s house and told him everything he knew, including every rumor he’d ever heard that might have the slightest bearing on what was going on. The only thing Holly left out, Reed had thought at the time with an inward roll of his eyes, was the possibility that a UFO had descended over the city to drop off alien assassins. Holly insisted that he and Ant had kept quiet as clams and gone about their lives as usual.
He’d still been reeling with shock when they’d arrested Holly on that trumped-up charge. Reed had known then, if he’d still been harboring any doubts at all, that what Holly had been saying all along had at least some basis in fact: it was the cops (some cops? a rogue few? Couldn’t be the whole damned department out there killing people, or else he’d been totally left out of the loop). The most conservative read on the situation said that somebody on the police force was involved in killing the four victims in the cemetery. According to Holly, cops had killed Magnolia as well. From what Reed had uncovered in his own very quick, very cursory investigation, within the last six months there had been at least four other murder cases involving at least thirteen victims with the exact same MO as Magnolia’s and the one in the cemetery. Meaning that whoever had killed the four in the cemetery had probably killed Magnolia, her dealer, and the thirteen other victims as well. In other words, a cop or cops had been involved in the murders of at least nineteen victims. That he knew of so far. Why? Who the hell knew? Who exactly was involved? Who the hell knew that, either? Although Superintendent Wallace’s reaction to what Reed had told him made it a pretty sure bet that he at least knew what was going on, which meant that this thing was more widespread, and went a lot higher up, than he would ever have believed possible.
He hadn’t foreseen it, any of it. He’d been caught flat-footed, unable to do anything but watch and try to stay one jump ahead of the fallout as his life, and Holly’s and Ant’s, too, got blown to shit.
Reed said, “You sure you didn’t catch a name on those cops who arrested you?”
Holly had already told him his version (sanitized, Reed was sure) of how it had gone down: he’d been hanging with a group of friends on Dumaine just after dark on Christmas Eve when a squad car had pulled over and ordered them all to the ground. They’d been searched, and one of the cops had held up a plastic bag with two crack rocks in it that he claimed to have found in Holly’s pocket. That was just a straight-up, fucking-ass lie, Holly had indignantly told Reed, which he believed, knowing Holly’s proclivities didn’t run to crack. The cops had been rough and menacing, and by the time he’d wound up in The Swamp, Holly had been convinced that he was being set up to die.
Reed believed that, too. If he hadn’t, he would have gone the lawyer route that Caroline had suggested.
“I guess they forgot to introduce themselves.” Even under the circumstances, Holly’s sarcasm made a corner of Reed’s mouth twitch up into the briefest of unexpected smiles. “I told you: they was cops. Blue uniforms. One big, burly dude with dark hair. One big, burly dude who was bald.” He shrugged. “That’s all I know.”
“They must have been looking for you.” Reed had come to that conclusion the minute he’d heard what had happened, and Holly had further reinforced it by reporting that they’d let the others go. The names of the arresting officers should be in a number of places, including the arrest report and the jail admissions file. Reed vowed to find them: identifying those officers would at least be a place to start.
Holly tugged nervously on one of the silver hoops in his ears. His voice was full of remorse. “I should’ve stayed out of it. I should’ve listened to you.”
“That’s a first,” Reed said, responding to the uncharacteristic admission. His eyes ran over Holly. The kid looked like he was on the verge of coming unglued. “Quit beating yourself up. You witnessed a crime. The fault lies with the people who committed it.”
“Sounds real good, except you notice we’re the ones out here running for our lives.”
That acerbic observation left Reed with no counterargument to make. “You got me there.”
“What if they kill Ant?”
“Like I said, the only way they’re going to kill Ant is if they catch you and me and kill us first. Right now he’s their ticket to keeping us quiet.” Reed didn’t share the thought that was worrying him most: if whoever had set the dogs on him and Holly had taken Ant—which he was all but 100 percent sure was the case—and they found out that Ant had been at that cemetery, too, Ant would become a target just as much as he and Holly now were. Never mind that he was a thirteen-year-old kid and as far as Reed knew hadn’t even witnessed the actual murders. He assumed that their purpose in taking Ant had been to make sure he and Holly kept their mouths shut, but in the end it would be stupid to let Ant live. Ant might not have seen everything, but he had seen enough to serve as a corroborating witness for Holly. The thought made Reed’s hands curl into fists. It was not, however, something he needed to share with Holly. “Which is why you’re getting on this damned truck and getting the hell out of here. Now.”
The big rig was parked between him and Holly and the back of the building, its position designed to block the security camera mounted on the corner of the convenience-store-cum-diner-cum-shower-facility from seeing anyone climbing into the passenger side, as Holly was about to do. The truck’s driver, Julio Perez, was already behind the wheel, waiting for Holly to get in. Its engine was running, the sound a low-grade rumble. The smell of diesel exhaust tainted the air. Elsa Casta, the manager of the truck stop, waited nearby, staring off toward the McDonald’s, absorbed in her own thoughts. Like a lot of people Reed came across in the course of his job, she had an elasticized view of what was against the law. Mostly, Reed had learned to leave the little fish alone and concentrate on the big transgressors. Elsa was one of those little fish, with her finger in many illegal pies but no violence or viciousness to her. Short, plump, and fiftyish, her black hair streaked with gray and pulled back into a bun, Elsa thought the sun rose and set on Reed since he had saved her idiot nineteen-year-old son from being murdered by the gang of drug smugglers he’d ripped off, then arranged for him to testify against the ringleaders in return for probation. Now twenty-five, the son was the manager of a grocery store in Houston and had never, as far as Reed knew, stepped outside the boundaries of the law since. A lot of criminal types—drug smugglers, gun smugglers, illegal immigrant smugglers, just to name a few—came through the truck stop, and Elsa knew them all. She had made the arrangements to have Perez and his truck waiting to pick them up after Reed, knowing that he and Holly were going to need a fast, anonymous way out of the country once he’d gotten Holly out of The Swamp, had contacted her earlier.
“Here.” Reed handed Holly a wallet that contained, am
ong other things, a fake ID—they were ridiculously easy to get if you knew where to go—and five hundred dollars in cash. Because the banks were closed on Christmas Eve and there was a daily cash withdrawal limit, the money was part of the two thousand that was all Reed had been able to get out of his bank account via the ATM when he’d strode out of police headquarters after his confrontation with Internal Affairs and the superintendent.
“When are you and Ant coming?” Holly thrust the wallet into the pocket of his hoodie. The way Holly’s eyes clung to his, Reed was reminded that to Holly and his brother he had become the answer to all their problems.
The weight of their faith in him felt almost tangible.
“As soon as I can get us there. Not more than a couple of days, max.” Reed pulled open the truck’s passenger door and motioned Holly toward it. “Somebody will be waiting to pick you up at the other end. Go.”
Holly hesitated, looked at him, and nodded. Then he got into the eighteen-wheeler’s cab and Reed shut the door. A moment later, with a hiss and a rumble, the truck got under way.
As the rig pulled around the building on its way to the highway out front, Reed was already near the Dumpster handing over the thousand dollars in cash he’d promised Elsa. She might profess to love him, but she was also a businesswoman. Reed understood: that was how the world worked.
With Holly on the move, and with the groceries Elsa had put into a plastic bag hanging over his arm, Reed walked away into the dark, appreciating the obscuring shadows as they enfolded him, not wanting even Elsa to know too much about how he had gotten there and how he was leaving. Wary of the security cameras that were everywhere these days, he’d made a circuitous approach to the truck stop, which had involved pulling the Mazda into the field that ran up on the establishment from behind. He’d left the car parked there in the dark, with Caroline inside.
She was in the backseat, cuffed and belted in. No blindfold necessary because he’d come up with the easy solution of facing the car the other way around, so she was looking out toward a whole lot of nothing—more empty fields, woods, and swampland, all shrouded by darkness—rather than the truck stop. He’d had to put duct tape over her mouth again, though, just in case. He’d hated doing it, but he couldn’t risk his and Holly’s life on the hope that left alone she wouldn’t start to scream her head off. She’d hated it, too, as she had made abundantly clear, but the bottom line was he just didn’t trust her enough to stay silent if, say, a cop car should pull into view. He’d known that he wasn’t going to be long, a fact that had mitigated some of his guilt, but when he’d shared that with her, it hadn’t seemed to appease her at all. Last he’d seen of her, she’d been rigid with fury, but as he had told her, it was better than leaving her tied to a tree—who knew what kind of creature might come upon her in the dark? It was also better than putting her in the trunk of his car, which would have been quick and easy, and pretty tempting, considering the problem she posed. She would have been safe, and she only would have been in there for maybe ten minutes. But even for so short a period, the trunk would have been airless and cramped and miserable. Then he’d started thinking that if things went south, if maybe Elsa betrayed him or a stray squad car should spot him or anything at all untoward happened that ended up with him being incapacitated or dead, it might be a long time before anyone thought to look in the trunk of a nondescript car parked at the edge of a field.
She could die.
For the fraction of a second that he’d entertained it, that thought had stopped him in his tracks. That he wasn’t about to chance.
At least if he got killed at the truck stop and she was fastened into the backseat, when the sun came up in the morning someone would see her there.
Like keeping Holly and Ant alive, getting Caroline home in one piece was something that he was prepared to give his life to do.
Not many people meant much to him anymore. Holly and Ant did. Seemed like Caroline did, too.
The instant he’d heard her husky voice with its distinctive little rasp over the phone line, he’d recognized it. Even before she had identified herself, he’d been instantly transported back ten years. For a minute there, it had been as if he could see her: seventeen years old, succulent as a just-ripe peach, offering him anything he cared to take, nakedly hero-worshipping him.
For just a minute there he’d wished, fiercely, that he could be that brash young man again.
A lot had changed since then. He had changed since then. And she had grown up.
As he strode through the waist-high weeds that clogged the field, Reed found himself revisiting the impulse that had caused him to lift her hand to his mouth. It had been meant as a way of apologizing, of wordlessly saying sorry for any pain he might have caused her. As soon as his mouth had touched her skin, though, he’d known that he had made a mistake. Fleeting as it was, that brush of his lips against her wrist had turned into something different from what he’d meant—something combustible.
Jesus, she turns me on.
Not a news flash, he told himself drily. He’d known that for ten years now. He’d seen her around, after that long-ago summer. Found out that contrary to what he would have expected, she’d become a cop. Caught occasional glimpses of her, spoken to her a few times in passing. Been aware that the sexy, sassy, pretty girl who had tempted him had grown up into a beautiful, self-possessed woman. Heard the guys talk about the superintendent’s hubba-hubba daughter, make crude jokes about how much they’d like to get it on with her. That last had irritated the hell out of him, every single time.
Bottom line was, he’d always been aware of her.
When he’d cut the zip tie, and she’d shaken her hands and come out with that tiny pained moan, he’d known he had hurt her and his conscience had smote him. Even though he knew he’d only done what he had to do to survive, he’d still felt like the biggest bastard alive. The protectiveness she had engendered in him all those years ago was still there, he’d discovered, and still strong. So, too, was the sizzling physical chemistry between them that when she’d been seventeen he had forced himself to fight like hell. Now there was no reason to fight it except that his life, which he’d finally managed to halfway patch back together after the accident, had just spectacularly imploded. Whatever he might feel for Caroline, there was nowhere to take it. After tonight, if he even had a future, it wasn’t anything that she was going to be able to be a part of. When being on the run for the rest of his life seemed like the best of outcomes, his future was the opposite of bright.
He’d forced Caroline to come with him tonight, meant to use her to get Ant back. He couldn’t see that he had any other options, but that was as far as he meant to take it.
What he was putting all his energy into—what he had to put all his energy into—was surviving the night.
Knowing that she was as attracted to him as he was hot for her was what was driving him a little insane. It was something he needed to strive to forget.
Forgetting was damned hard.
He hadn’t missed the way her pulse had jumped when he had pressed his lips to her wrist. Just like he hadn’t missed the way she looked at him, or how her nipples had hardened and seemed to push into his palms when he’d run his hands over her breasts as he’d frisked her, or the sexy way her body had curled into his chest when he’d carried her in his arms, or how round and firm her ass had felt nestled against his crotch—
Goddamn it. Stop right there.
Slamming the mental door on that line of thinking, he cast his eyes up at the velvety black sky, eyed the full yellow moon that kept being partially obscured by a stampede of racing dark clouds, did a lightning review of all possible ways he might die in the next twenty-four hours or so, and finally succeeded in pushing the last erotic image of Caroline out of his mind.
Forget about sex. What he needed to be focusing on was keeping himself, Holly, and Ant alive.
The question was, how to do that.
What about running to the nearest local TV st
ation, or placing a call to CNN, and spilling everything he knew, or thought he knew, to some eager reporter, with the promise of a look at those pictures Holly had taken as a chaser?
For a moment, Reed brightened, seeing a possible way out. He had to be a hot topic on the news channels right now. Suppose he called one, or waltzed into a TV station, and offered them an exclusive about why he’d taken most of New Orleans’ top brass hostage. Once the media heard about the murders, all hell would break loose. The NOPD would be investigated. Questions would be asked, and answers demanded, on what would probably balloon into a nationwide stage. With the spotlight turned their way, he and Holly and Ant would be safe.
Or would they be? The more Reed thought of running to the media, the more pitfalls occurred to him. First, whoever was holding Ant would almost certainly kill him the instant anything about this started to come out to the public. Why wouldn’t they? If they killed the kid, they had only to dispose of the body and disavow all knowledge of him. On the other hand, if they didn’t kill him and the media found him, Ant would sing like a bird, spilling everything he knew to the cameras.
If he were to put himself in the shoes of whoever was holding Ant, leaving out his own personal aversion for harming kids, the smart action to take was a no-brainer: kill Ant.
It was like Nixon with the tapes: if he’d burned them, he probably would not have been the first American president to resign, but instead would have ridden out the storm that was Watergate and finished out his second term.
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