by Jana DeLeon
Tanner’s mind raced, trying to come up with the least-risky option. He wasn’t about to stand there and wait for Rob to kill them both, and that’s exactly what would happen. Rob had been smart. No one would believe the clearly disturbed Marquette if Rob had an alibi that had been bought and paid for.
He looked at Josie, wishing he could communicate with her somehow. She looked him straight in the eye and gave him a barely imperceptible nod. He felt a surge of adrenaline course through his body. She was letting him know it was okay to take a risk. That she knew they were out of options.
If only there were some way to distract Rob, even for only a second, it might be enough time to get off that one shot that could save them both. Then he realized the swamp had gone completely silent. The thought had no sooner entered his mind that a bloodcurdling howl rang out, piercing his ears with its volume and pitch.
“What the hell?” Rob jumped at the noise and glanced wildly around.
The instant the pistol slipped from against Josie’s head, Tanner lifted his gun and fired.
He couldn’t risk hitting Josie, so the shot was off to the side and grazed Rob’s shoulder. Tanner cursed his aim, but Josie took every advantage and scrambled away from him and into the brush. Tanner squeezed off another shot as Rob leaped into the dark swamp behind her.
As Tanner ran after them, dark clouds swept back over the moon, pitching them in darkness. He saw a glimpse of movement to the right and spun around, slipping in the loose dirt. He regained his balance, but before he could take aim and fire, a blur of gray flashed in front of him.
He heard Rob scream—a terrifying wail that made his blood run cold, but it was too dark to see what was happening. Without any regard for safety, he ran toward the scream and slid to a stop in front of a body that was sprawled on the ground. He pulled out his penlight and shined it on the ground, praying it wasn’t Josie.
Relief flooded through him when he saw it was Rob, his chest slashed across his shoulder and down to his hip. Blood poured from the wound, and Tanner knew there was no chance of saving the man. He’d bleed out before they could get him out of the swamp.
As he dropped beside the injured man, Josie ran up beside him.
“It was the creature,” she said, her voice shaking. “I turned when Rob screamed and saw it.”
“Where is it?”
“It ran the opposite direction into the swamp.”
“You’re sure?”
She nodded. “Listen.”
He stopped talking and realized what she meant. All the normal sounds of the swamp had returned.
“Is he dead?” she asked, looking at Rob.
“Not yet, but he will be soon.” As Rob leaned over the dying man, he opened his eyes.
“Why does Shore want this property? Why is it so important?” Tanner asked.
Rob shook his head.
“You’re dying. At least give your wife and children some reason to think you weren’t as bad as this looks.”
He coughed and blood trickled out of the side of his mouth. “He’s making weapons in his factory in New Orleans, but there’s been some heat there recently and his buyers are afraid the cops will catch on. They want to move the weapons manufacturing somewhere remote....”
“And this property offers a lot of bayous that lead to the shipping channel,” Tanner finished.
Rob nodded.
“Not to mention lazy law enforcement,” Josie added. “They could have manufactured tanks here and Bobby wouldn’t have noticed.”
Rob coughed again and Tanner could hear the rattling in his chest. He didn’t have much longer.
“The tattoo,” Tanner said, “what does it mean?”
“No. They’ll kill my family.”
“Not if you give me enough to dismantle them. It’s organized crime, right? And you guys are recruited out of the military as mercenaries for hire?”
Rob reached up one shaky hand and grabbed Tanner’s shirt. “I have a sick daughter. Promise me that she’ll get medical care. She’s the reason I did this. Promise me, and I’ll tell you what I know.”
“I promise,” Tanner said.
“There’s a man in New Orleans who runs it all, but I don’t know his name. Shore was only one of his chiefs.”
“A man with this tattoo murdered my father, Walt Conroy, over twenty years ago. Why?”
“I don’t know. We only know our own assignments.”
“Guess, then. Why would these men want him dead?”
“Because he was involved with them and wanted out, or he caught them using his business or money for their interests, and he had to be eliminated.”
Tanner nodded. With his father’s portfolio of companies and deep pockets, either could fit. It would be up to him and his brothers to find out which it was.
“Remember,” Rob said. “Remember your promise.”
Rob’s head fell back onto the ground, his vacant, dead eyes staring up into the darkness. In the distance, Tanner heard sirens approaching.
“Vernon must have managed to rouse the sheriff,” Tanner said.
“I completely forgot—I was calling the sheriff when I answered the door. I dropped the phone, but I bet they traced the call.”
“You, Vernon, I don’t care as long as someone with handcuffs shows up. We need to get back to the house and let Vernon know you’re okay.”
He started to walk away, but Josie grabbed his arm.
“Wait,” she said. “I didn’t get the chance to thank you for saving my life.”
“Seems it was the least I could do, especially after the way I hurt you.”
“I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt there, and assume you weren’t trying to hurt me. But I’d be lying if I said I understood why you didn’t tell me that we shared a past, no matter how slim.”
He stared down at the ground for a moment. Was it really worth it, laying it all out? The chance of rejection was huge, but even worse was the fear of living the rest of his life without taking the chance.
“Since we’ve gotten to know each other,” he said. “I’ve told you about some of my past. There’s a lot more that I’ve never told anyone, and I don’t know that I ever will. This town doesn’t hold good memories for me—my entire childhood doesn’t. There are some things you’re better off leaving in the past.”
Her expression softened and he knew she got it. In her own way, she’d been trying to do the same thing by returning home.
“I worked for your father in the fields,” he said, before he could change his mind.
She nodded.
“One day, he caught me watching you ride in the round pen when I was on break. He quickly let me know that you were better than me and off-limits. I understand now, why he did it. He loved you and he knew I wouldn’t be good for you. But it was a hard thing for a boy to hear.”
“I’m sorry my dad said that. It was wrong of him, regardless of his intention. I’m beginning to wonder how much of the animosity against me in this town was created by my focus on leaving and my dad’s putting me up on a pedestal.”
“Maybe it all played a part, but none of this is your fault. You need to believe that. Greed and envy were the only reasons for this. Mostly greed.”
“Well, you’re not greedy or envious, so why didn’t you tell me the truth?”
Tanner sighed. “If I’d shown up at your door and told you I was the son of the town drunk and had been in love with you since high school, would you have let me in the door?”
Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “In love...”
“I left here as soon as I could, and I had no intention of ever returning. I thought it was the worst karmic joke of the century when my first case brought me not only to Miel but back to the one woman I’d never gotten over, no matter how far I ran.”
“But you didn’t even know me.... How could...” She shook her head. “You were just attracted to me. That’s all it was.”
“At first, of course it was. You were
a beautiful girl and you’re the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen. But it was far more than that. You were smart and worked hard in school. You were kind to people, even when your friends weren’t. I heard you chiding some of them one day in the gym for being mean to another student. You huffed out of there and for an entire week, you ate lunch with the guy they’d been picking on and ignored them.”
Her mouth dropped open. “I haven’t thought about that since high school.”
“I have. And every other thing you did that made you stand out from the crowd.” He lifted a finger to stroke her cheek. “There is no other woman like you. There never has been.”
A single tear rolled down her face and she swiped it away with the back of her hand. “Oh, Tanner, what am I going to do with you?”
“Whatever you’d like.”
She hesitated for a moment, and he felt his heart drop. Then she flung her arms around him and kissed him soundly.
“Promise me,” she said, breaking off the kiss, “that you’ll never lie to me again, even by omission.”
His throat tightened. She knew exactly who he was and accepted him, anyway. It was everything he’d wanted and the one thing he’d never expected. The past no longer mattered—yesterday or ten years ago. All that mattered was the future.
“I promise,” he said, and lowered his lips to hers.
Chapter Eighteen
“We have to make it fast,” Tanner said as they rushed into the general store. “Everyone will be here in an hour.”
“I know. I know,” Josie said, and jumped out of the truck with a package wrapped in pretty red paper and a gold bow.
They hurried inside and Ted broke into a huge smile when he saw them approaching the counter. He yelled into the storeroom and his wife, Annie, stepped outside to greet them.
“Merry Christmas!” Josie said, and handed them the gift.
“A gift for us?” Annie asked.
“I think you’ll really like it,” she said.
“Go ahead,” Ted said, and watched as his wife pulled the paper off the silver picture frame. Inside the frame was a document.
Ted leaned over his wife’s shoulder and started reading. Her hands shook as she read out loud. Before she could even finish, Ted pulled the frame from her hands, placed it on the counter and grabbed his wife in his arms, twirling her around.
Josie and Tanner laughed as he set his wife down and ran around the counter to hug both of them.
“This is the best news ever,” Ted said. He picked up the frame and stared at the piece of paper that verified Annie’s admission to a drug trial, an almost reverent expression on his face. “I can’t believe it’s really happening.”
“The scientist is thrilled,” Josie said. “The clearance came a week ago for his trials. Part of his contract with the drug company was the stipulation that Annie and Emmett were the first in his test group. You’re not only going to get the best care in the country, you’re going to get paid to do it.”
Tears streamed down Annie’s face as she came around the counter to hug Tanner and Josie. “It’s the best Christmas present ever. I’m going to hang this next to my bed, where it’s the first thing I see every morning. Thank you both so much, and thank Emmett for us the next time you see him.”
“How’s he liking retirement?” Ted asked.
“He’s taken to it remarkably well,” Josie said. “He’s working part-time running a bayou tour business in New Orleans and having a blast.”
“Is the Honey Island Swamp monster part of his tour stories?”
Tanner smiled. He and Josie had never completely agreed about what had killed Rob that night in the swamp. They’d found the gray-haired costume in Marquette’s apartment, along with a bottle of a rank-smelling musk and an MP3 player with an earth-shattering howl loaded on it. They knew Rob had been responsible for impersonating the beast.
But there were still the unexplained things, like the height of the creature Tanner had chased in the woods that first day, the creature at the barn that had been eating raw meat and the hush that came over the swamp immediately before the creature appeared. Had it been a trick of light and shadows? Had their imagination and the stress of the situation caused them to see things that weren’t really there?
They’d never know the answer for certain. What Tanner was certain of was that no one had seen the creature since that night, and the swamps remained alive with the sounds of all things living there. Ray and his crew had returned to work, and the crew leader had pronounced the swamp balanced once more.
Tanner’s mind turned back to the conversation in the general store as Josie was wrapping it up and telling them goodbye. He shook Ted’s hand, gave Annie another hug and they made their way out of the store, almost running into Sheriff Reynard when they stepped onto the sidewalk.
“Merry Christmas,” the sheriff said.
His attitude had changed remarkably since the night he’d come out into the swamp to arrest Marquette and call the coroner for Rob, but there was still that last thread of standoffishness when it came to Josie.
Right now, however, not a bit of it showed. He looked at Josie, then down at the sidewalk for a couple of seconds. Josie glanced over at Tanner, who shrugged. He had no idea what was up with the man.
Finally, Bobby looked back up at Josie, a slight flush on his face. “I want to apologize for treating you so poorly. I thought things about you that weren’t true, mostly because of high school.”
“You don’t have to—”
Bobby held up a hand to cut her off. “Yes, I do. I’ve been holding a grudge against you for over a decade and I want to explain. I asked you for a date in high school, and you turned me down. That was humiliating, of course, as it is for most teenage boys, but that’s not why I was angry. There was a note in my locker that evening signed from you. It said that you would never go out with a fat, stupid, poor loser like me and not to embarrass you by asking again.”
Josie’s eyes widened. “I never—”
“I know you didn’t. Marquette left a diary, and I’ve been going through it with the federal police. She’s the one who did it. She was jealous of you way back then. I guess she’s what doctors would call unstable. Your return to Miel set her off again, especially when Sam dropped her cold and started chasing after you.”
“Oh, wow.”
“I’m not the only person she did it to. As soon as I have clearance, I’m going to turn a copy of the diary over to you, and I’m going to contact every person mentioned in there who Marquette waylaid and let them know the truth. We also found a key to your house in her apartment, so I’m sure it was her or Rob who was in your house that night. No telling what they had planned.”
“The whole thing is so sad,” Josie said. “I know she tried to hurt me, but I can’t help feeling sorry for her. It must be hell to be trapped in her mind.”
“It is sad, but at least she’s got a medical excuse for her behavior. I don’t. I understand if you never forgive me, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you what I’d found and apologize for being the biggest jackass this side of the Mississippi River.”
Josie leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Apology accepted. I have a new take on life—no looking back.”
“I like that,” the sheriff said, breaking into a slow smile.
He looked over at Tanner. “How’s the investigation into your father’s murder going?”
“Good. It’s a massive undertaking that will likely take years to get to the bottom of, if that’s even possible, but the New Orleans police and the FBI are dismantling the organization one piece at a time, starting with Frederick Shore.”
“Did you ever figure out...” The sheriff trailed off, probably not certain how to word his question.
“Our father’s involvement?” Tanner nodded. “We hired a forensic accountant to go through all his company’s records from the date of his murder to five years before. His CFO was laundering money through his businesses. They arrested him d
oing the same thing with a company in Baton Rouge six months ago. When questioned, he admitted that our father was killed because he caught the discrepancies, but claims he had nothing to do with the actual murder.”
The sheriff shook his head. “I’m sorry that happened at all, but I’m glad that at least you and your brothers were able to find out your father wasn’t involved.”
“Me, too.”
The sheriff extended his hand to Tanner. “Merry Christmas!”
Tanner shook his hand and gave the man a nod before grabbing Josie’s hand and pulling her toward the truck. “Let’s get out of here before anyone else sees you and wants to confess their sins.”
She laughed and swatted at him with her free hand before jumping in the truck. “They said they’d be here at one. We still have thirty minutes to get everything ready.”
“Uh-huh,” Tanner said, knowing Josie would think of a hundred other things to make everything “just perfect” before his brothers and their wives showed up for the Christmas Eve celebration.
It had taken some convincing, and Tanner had finally shown Josie a portfolio statement that spelled out just how much money his dad had left him, before she’d accepted money to get the bank off her back. He’d found an unexpected ally in Josie’s friend Adele, and had taken an instant liking to the spry older woman. They’d driven her to the airport in New Orleans the day before to catch a flight to spend Christmas with her son, who was stationed in Germany.
Despite his and Adele’s pushing, Josie had insisted on going through with the bed-and-breakfast plan because she wanted to make the income for the ongoing payments herself, but Tanner figured sooner or later, she’d come around to his desire of wanting the house all to themselves.
He was a patient man. It had taken over a decade before Josie Bettencourt was part of his life, and he’d never in a million years thought it could happen. Waiting a while longer for complete solitude was a small price to pay.