“Then let’s go get them.”
The light disappeared behind the closed door. Sarah shifted until she was lying on her side with her arm stretched above her head. She was tired of crying, tired of yelling, tired of hurting. The motor fired up and sputtered into the night.
*
“We better get back to the guesthouse.” Matt logged off the computer and popped the media card out of the slot.
Evie got to her feet and waited for him to shut everything down. They had files to trade, though she didn’t know how they were going to fool the kidnappers into believing this was the information they wanted. How would anyone verify it? And when would they be satisfied enough to turn Sarah over?
Matt said they had to take it one problem at a time. He seemed to have a plan, but she didn’t know what it entailed beyond getting to Charlie’s and making contact with these guys.
She followed him through the house. She’d always loved Reynier’s Retreat. Timeworn oak floors and soaring fifteen-foot walls, decorated in plaster friezes, were all original to the house. Priceless works of art decorated the walls. Antique couches dressed in pale silk perched on top of intricate oriental carpets. A grand piano, made of burled walnut, sat in one corner of the front parlor.
A lush painting of the latest Mrs. Girard hung over the fireplace. Misty Lee had impossibly large breasts and the skinniest waist Evie had ever seen. She was draped in a flowing fabric that clung to her many curves and left little to the imagination. No doubt this was the sexiest painting ever to grace the mansion’s antebellum walls.
The polished Japanese secretary desk pulled Evie up short. It hadn’t been here when she’d been a kid. She touched it with a finger, traced one of the Asian scenes painted on its surface. Family photos decorated the open desk. There was one of Matt in his uniform. He looked much younger, and she realized it must be a photo from his days at West Point.
He drew up between the ten-foot-high pocket doors and waited. “Misty Lee has done a great job with the decor, huh? She kept all the original pieces, but she’s put her stamp on it.”
Evie remembered the old house had always been elegant. But it had also been a bit more sedate back when Matt’s mother had been alive. Probably because she was sick for so long.
“It’s an amazing house. Always has been.”
She’d spent her childhood in a twelve-hundred-square-foot cottage in what was then the poorer section of town. Since the neighborhood was declared historic a few years ago, several new people had moved in and renovated their properties. Mama had followed the trend, and now her home was a cute bungalow with all the modern conveniences and a gorgeous plot of land. But nothing in Rochambeau compared to Reynier’s Retreat.
His expression clouded. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
He looked sad and Evie walked over to touch his arm. “What’s wrong?”
“After my mother died, it didn’t seem the same.” He let his gaze travel the room. “I love what Misty Lee has done. I even wish my mama could see it. I think she’d approve.”
“I’m sorry she died, Matt. You know that.”
“Yeah. It was long ago, though.” He shrugged. “I think I’ll always feel like I missed out on something, but I’m fine now.”
She wasn’t quite sure she believed him. He said it too quickly, too casually. She did not doubt he was over the grief that had gone with losing his mother at such a young age. But the pain? She didn’t think that was something that ever quite went away. There was always a hole you couldn’t fill.
He took a deep breath as if he were pushing his feelings into a box and looked at his watch. “We need to get going.”
They slipped out onto the sweeping veranda and down the stairs. Evie could hear laughter and voices raised in conversation coming from the side of the house. It must be the rehearsal party.
A party Matt was missing for her.
“We’ll head straight for Charlie’s.” He sounded so calm and focused; she took comfort in it. “You go in and sit at a table and I’ll scout the perimeter.”
Evie strode by his side through the darkness, her pulse pounding at the thought of what she had to do. She could not screw this up. Sarah might not have been able to count on her for the past ten years, but Evie wasn’t failing her sister now. She’d die first. “How will they know where to find me?”
“They know who you are, Evie. They’ll be watching for you.”
They were almost to the guesthouse when Matt stopped. He threw his arm out in front of her, drawing her up short.
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure. Something.” He listened for a few moments, his eyes scanning the darkness around them, before he motioned her forward again. She followed him up the steps.
Pain shot through her as she was knocked against the wall. The full length of Matt’s body pinned her tight. He’d thrown her sideways and pressed his back to her front, covering her, but she didn’t know why. Her cheek mashed against his broad back and she drew in a deep breath, preparing to tell him to give her some room. The rumble of his voice sounded in her ears, but it took her a second to make it out.
“Someone’s been inside. Soon as I move, you lie flat on the ground, hear me?”
She squeaked out an affirmative that seemed to satisfy him and then the pressure of his body was gone. Evie dropped to her stomach on the whitewashed boards of the porch. Blood pounded in her ears, her heart racing along like an Olympic skier on a slalom run.
Matt hadn’t been gone more than a minute when a crack rang out in the night air. Evie’s stomach dropped to her toes. She bolted up out of pure instinct. No way in hell was she lying here when Matt could have been shot.
The sound echoed from the rear yard and Evie took off, hugging the side of the house as she went. The yard was dark as pitch and she stumbled to a stop. Her night vision was good, but something big and black seemed to swallow the yard whole at a certain point.
The bayou.
Before she could get her bearings again, a motor roared to life. Seconds later, the whine of it was shooting down the bayou, rapidly moving away between the cypress trees. The acrid scent of diesel fuel hung in the air.
“I thought I told you to stay put.” Matt’s voice cracked like a whip in her ear and she jumped sideways, colliding with him.
“Don’t do that,” she hissed as strong arms caught her close and steadied her. Her heart hammered like crazy, the blood rushing loud in her ears. “I heard a gunshot and I thought you might need help.”
He let out a half-strangled sound, grabbed her hand, and squeezed. “Get up to Reynier’s Retreat and stay there until I come for you.”
“I’m going with you, Matt. We have to be at Charlie’s in half an hour.”
“Evie—”
“No.” She pressed her trembling fingers to his lips. “I’ll stay in the rear, I’ll get down when you tell me, and I won’t do anything stupid, but I am going with you. It’ll waste too much time if you have to come back and get me.”
He was still for a moment and she knew he was trying to figure out how to get around the facts. But then he swore and grabbed her hand. “Sonofabitch, I hate it when you’re right. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WHAT HAD SHE GOTTEN HERSELF INTO? Evie gulped as Matt pulled her down the dock. She could do this. She could.
He jumped into the small pirogue tied up at the end of the dock and tried to crank the motor. The sharp scent of carbon filled the air. Her blood turned to ice, her chest constricting until she had to work to get air into her lungs. No, no, no.
She dug deep for her courage. It had been years since she and Julie capsized their canoe in the bayou. Years since she’d sputtered and coughed and thought she was going to die because she wasn’t a very good swimmer. The long, ugly water moccasin had slid across the water toward her, and Evie couldn’t even scream because she couldn’t stay afloat.
If not for the guys who’d come along in their fishing boat just then, she’d still be
at the bottom of the swamp.
Yet she knew Matt wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She trusted him. He wouldn’t capsize the pirogue, and he wouldn’t make her swim in the dark, dank bayou with snakes and gators.
“Get in.” He glanced at her before turning back to the motor and trying again to crank it.
She swallowed hard, forcing her feet to move until she stood at the edge of the dock. Slowly, so bonelessly she didn’t even feel herself do it, she slipped down to sit on the wood planking.
Good, very good.
Now put a foot into the pirogue. She stretched her right foot out, touched her toe to the narrow canoe bottom. Her whole body shook with the effort. Matt didn’t seem to notice. He was still bent over the motor, trying to get it started.
He didn’t know about her and Julie and the canoe because it was the summer before his senior year and they hadn’t been hanging out anymore. He’d been preoccupied with other things then. And it had been years since they’d gone swimming together—or what passed for swimming for her. Standing in the shallows and watching him cut through the water like a fish.
He’d never dunked her—or at least not after the first time when she’d screamed and cried and tattled on him for it.
“Fuck, they’ve ripped out the fuel line.”
Evie wilted—until another thought occurred to her: what if he wanted to pole the thing into the bayou?
Pirogues were extremely narrow, flat-bottomed boats that could move through shallow water, which made them popular in the marshes and swamps. They didn’t need motors, though fishermen often added them for increased maneuverability and speed. But there wasn’t much sense in chasing after someone in a motorboat when your own motor was shot. Or so she hoped.
“What do we do now?” She wanted to sound brave and strong even when her mind was gibbering at her in cold terror. If Matt didn’t think they needed a motor to follow whoever fired that shot, they’d soon be gliding through murky water in the dark and she’d be fighting just to keep conscious.
“Try something else.”
Relief made her light-headed.
He sprang from the boat and helped her to her feet, seemingly oblivious to the fear that had nearly paralyzed her. “We have to get to Charlie’s. Whoever was here didn’t get what they were looking for, so we need to move on.”
“How can you be certain?”
“Because he didn’t get into the garage, and that’s where all your things are. The door was still locked.”
It amazed her that he’d had the presence of mind to check, but of course he would have done so. Matt was a precision machine in many respects. His mind worked in ways hers didn’t, and she thought only part of that was thanks to his training.
They hurried up to the house and slipped through the unlocked back door. He didn’t turn on the light. She didn’t need to ask why not. They could both see better in the dark now, and there was no sense in becoming a giant backlit target for whoever had taken that shot, just in case they turned around and decided to try again.
“Stay on my six, Evie. Don’t stray.”
“Your what?”
“Right behind me.”
When he reached the door to the garage, she felt his arm stretch upward and heard his fingers running along the jamb. He must have been satisfied with what he found, because he opened the door and pulled her into the garage. He reached to his right and a flashlight flicked on. A quick sweep of the light across the room and then he was crossing to the Beemer.
“Stand here.” He dropped to his stomach, the light arcing beneath the car. A handful of minutes later, he was on his feet again, opening the passenger door for her.
“I left my purse inside.” She felt ridiculous for saying so.
He laughed softly, surprising her. “So I won’t ask you to drive, okay?”
He came around to the driver’s side and popped the hood. She couldn’t see what he did, but he fished around in the engine compartment for a couple of minutes before slamming the hood down and jumping behind the wheel. Then he was turning the key and pressing the remote. The garage door ticked upward and Matt gunned the car in reverse before the door reached the top of the track. Evie grabbed the handle over the door as they slipped underneath and Matt whipped the wheel around. The tires spun for a second before finding purchase; then they shot down the driveway.
“What were you checking for back there?” The oaks sped by in a blur, and her heart clawed its way into her throat.
Matt didn’t even spare her a glance. “Explosives.”
Explosives?
He swung the car into a sharp turn and she instinctively threw a hand up to brace against the center console even though the seat belt locked her in place.
Her neck was stiff from clenching it. “Do you have to drive like a maniac?”
“The only place that boat could be going is Charlie’s. It’s the first place on the bayou where someone could leave a car. I don’t know why they came to Reynier’s Retreat, or what they thought they’d find, but I want to be waiting for them when they arrive, if at all possible.”
Though they were already going at what seemed like light speed, he shifted one final time and the car responded with a throaty growl, leaping forward to burn up the asphalt.
Evie stifled a groan and closed her eyes. “Look, I don’t care if we beat them or not, I just want to live through this.”
“Relax. I know what I’m doing. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve done this hundreds of times. It’s part of the training.”
“Training for what? The Indy 500?” Okay, so her voice was a little high-pitched there.
“Escape and evasion.” He shot her a look. “Nobody said this’d be easy. In fact, it’ll probably get worse before we’re through.”
Great. “So long as we get Sarah back alive, I’ll do what I have to do to make it through.”
“You’re interesting, you know that?”
The compliment warmed her. “I appreciate it, but I’d trade interesting for mundane and boring right now.”
“Boring can be nice too.”
She doubted he could do boring. “I don’t know how you do this all the time.”
“You do what you have to do.”
“But you didn’t have to—that’s the point.”
He whipped the car into another sharp turn, then straightened it out. “And you didn’t have to leave home to be a chef, did you?”
“There was nothing for me here.” Except Mama and Sarah, and God what she’d give to have them both safe and well and for none of this to have ever happened.
“That’s my point.”
She didn’t have an answer for that. Before today, she hadn’t understood how anyone could come from the kind of wealth and privilege he did, could have a beautiful home like Reynier’s Retreat and a job as an oil executive waiting for him, and could choose instead to drive getaway cars, deflect bullets, and rescue little sisters.
But she was damn glad he did.
*
Julian was fucking pissed. She’d ditched him. The bitch had ditched him here on the dock at this joint called Charlie’s Diner over an hour ago. She’d claimed she had something to do, that Rivera had a last-minute task for her. If Julian liked his balls any less, he’d call Rivera and find out if the cunt was telling the truth.
As it was, he’d sit here at a corner table, eating fried oysters and sipping a beer, and wait. She swore she’d be back before Evie Baker arrived. That she’d be here to meet with Evie while he scouted out the woman’s military escort—oh yeah, they knew the guy would come with her—and that she’d let him take the prick out if he got in the way.
Fucking military asshole. Thought he was one badass motherfucker, no doubt. Well, Julian had spent a tour in the Marines. Wasn’t no motherfucker badder than a former Marine motherfucker. Former Marine, not ex. Once a Marine, always a Marine.
Semper fi.
This was a busy place. He watched the doors open and close so many times h
e stopped paying complete attention. A band played Zydeco at one end of the rustic room, and people twirled on the dance floor. The place was a diner, but unlike any diner he was used to. The building sat on pylons over the water, and a dock stretched out into the bayou. Boats tied up, people coming and going from them in a steady stream.
The door to the dock opened and Brianna rushed in, her blond hair messy and wild. She smoothed it quickly as she strode toward him.
“Where the fuck you been? It’s almost time.”
She yanked out a chair and sat down. “I’m here now, aren’t I? Stop whining.”
Whining. If Rivera ordered him to shoot her between the eyes tomorrow, Julian would do it without a shred of remorse.
“I need you to get back to the cabin,” Brianna said before he could ask her how she planned to follow Rivera’s orders and take care of Evie Baker after they’d gotten the goods.
Julian stared at her. “What? What’s this shit? That wasn’t the plan, Bree.”
“I’m changing the plan. Get back there and watch the girl.”
“You better tell me what’s going on.” He narrowed his eyes at her, pouring every ounce of meanness he had into his glare. If she was fucking with him, he’d whack her in a heartbeat.
“Evie’s not going to give me what she’s got without some proof her sister’s alive. You need to be there so I can call.”
“You couldn’t think of this earlier?”
Brianna shrugged. “I did think of it, but it took me longer than I thought to get back.” She glanced at her watch. “You’ve got about ten minutes. Better hurry.”
Julian’s gut churned. He shoved the chair back and got to his feet, glaring down at her. “You can pay for the food. When this is over, I’m talking to Rivera about you.”
“You do that, Julian. Boat’s wedged into a spot between two cuddy cabins toward the end.”
“How do you plan on getting back later?”
“I don’t. You’ll bring the girl out. I’ll let you know.”
“Fuck,” Julian said, then strode through the doors and down the broad wooden planks. He found the motorboat, jumped into it, and cranked the engine before turning to untie the anchor rope. “What do you want?”
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