Bad Road to Nowhere

by Linda Ladd

  In that moment, Novak found himself wanting to pretend, too, just for a little while, that Mariah really was Sarah and that his wife was really back in his arms, her own arms tight around him, kissing him as eagerly and ardently as Sarah had always responded to his unquenchable desire for her. The woman in his arms felt like Sarah, soft and pliant and small and warm, looked like Sarah, and she wanted him as much as he wanted her to be his dead wife. They kept it up for several minutes, both losing themselves in the moment, until he finally came back to his senses and pushed her back away from him. Both of them were breathing hard, staring at each other, wanting more. Novak was shocked by his own lack of self-control. At what he’d done, what he’d pretended. At what he’d started. It had been a mistake, the kiss, the conversation, the promise of what might come, all of it.

  Mariah still sat on his lap, and she spoke first, so breathless that Novak could barely understand her. “So it’s okay with you if I stay here awhile longer? See what happens between us?”

  Novak stared into her green eyes, openly full of desire and questions. Sarah’s green eyes. He drew in a deep breath himself. “You can stay as long as you want. You know that.”

  Mariah broke into a pleased smile. “So think about us getting together, Will. I will be Sarah for you. I will. I want to be. I want to make you happy again. I want to be her and be here with you for the rest of your life. We can be happy together. You can be happy again. It’s time, Will. It’s time for you to move on. With me.”

  Novak swallowed hard and had to look away, astonished he’d let any of this happen. Even more stunned that he had enjoyed the kiss, too, probably as much as she had. He didn’t answer for a moment, and then he said, “It wouldn’t work. I know it wouldn’t work.”

  Mariah pushed herself up to her feet and stood there a few seconds, looking down at him. “Well, you can think about it, can’t you? Think about that kiss. Weigh the pros and cons of us getting together. That’s what I want. That’s what I’ve always wanted. Since the very first day I met you when you were new at our school. The day we skipped class and I drove you down to the beach.”

  She was shrugging off his rejection and his lingering doubts, showing a bit of the old Mariah’s arrogance. She reached down and stroked his cheek. “You need to shave. Don’t want to get scratched up next time.”

  Then she smiled, and he watched her limp her way back out into the hall. He shook his head, thinking he had made a serious mistake by kissing her like that. Even one time. Or maybe it wasn’t a mistake. Maybe she was right. Maybe they did belong together. Conflicted with strange thoughts and emotions and misgivings and memories, he swiveled his chair and stared outside at the garden. No, it could never work. Not for long anyway. He already felt guilty about kissing her like he had. He could see his wife’s empty grave from where he sat. He had arranged his desk so that he could gaze out the window and see her white angel. No, it would never work, not in a million years. But he wished it could. He really wished it could.

  Chapter Thirty

  A raging thunderstorm was headed inland off the Gulf of Mexico. The television stations were alive with dire warnings. The torrent of wind and rain was supposed to sweep in that evening and buffet New Orleans within an inch of its life, but it would gain landfall close to Bonne Terre. The thunder and lightning were beginning to appear already. Weather reports said it was destined to slam the southernmost bayous the hardest and then move due north and saturate north Louisiana and parts of southern Arkansas. The big trees on Bonne Terre were already bending under the fierce gales. The smell of ozone was in the air. The currents pushing up Bayou Bonne were getting stronger by the hour. No hurricane warnings yet, and Novak was heartened by that, but police were telling citizens to secure their boats and/or steer them inland for the duration. It was going to be a bad few days. No doubt about it. Novak had seen such storms in the past. They could weather it. No problem.

  The Sweet Sarah was a different story. She was being rocked relentlessly around and knocked against the tire moorings. He could see that some of the ropes had come loose and allowed the stern to be pulled out from the berth. That wouldn’t do. Novak checked around and found that Mariah was already asleep in bed, tired out from being on her feet too much that day. Ryan was in the grand foyer playing with a Star Wars light sabre that Novak had bought his own son many years ago. Novak told Ryan he was going down to check the moorings on the boat, and then he pulled on the black rain slicker hanging beside the back door. He armed himself, just in case, and then picked up the heavy all-purpose flashlight and headed down the back steps. The rain was coming down hard now, in an absolute torrential downpour, and slanting into him like needles of ice, making the ground soggy and muddy.

  When Novak reached the boat, he worked quickly, tying the stern down, making the knots good and tight this time. Rain spattered and dripped off his slicker, and his face was wet, rain thrown in his eyes by the windblown gusts. He knelt under the covered dock where he and Ryan had moved the boat a day or so ago in anticipation of the storm. He got more ropes on the stern and strapped the rocking craft down so tightly that nothing could probably budge her. Then he moved up toward the bow for one last test of the ropes.

  Lightning suddenly lit the entire bayou like daytime, the jagged streak of white coming down south of them, but very close. He glanced up at the house, waiting for the loud boom of thunder that would follow. It came quickly, hard enough to shake the ground, then another streak of bright lightning. As night faded into darkness again, he saw the headlights. Racing down his driveway. Two vehicles headed straight for his front gallery. Novak dropped the rope in his hand and jumped down off the boat onto the dock, his eyes fastened on the house. That’s when he saw a Molotov cocktail hit the west gallery. The gasoline flamed up, and the blaze ran like liquid along the floor of the gallery, lighting up the entire side of his house.

  Then Novak was running up to the house. He heard the faraway booms and staccato cracks of gun blasts, long guns, it sounded like, and then he was running harder, up through the muddy field, slipping and sliding on the wet spongy ground, his weapon out and gripped tightly inside his right hand, moving as fast as he could against the wind and rain that was pummeling him in the face. They had found them. Oh, God, somehow Emma and her men had found them. They had come for Ryan, just the way the child had feared they would. Novak had to get up there!

  By the time he reached the back steps, half the porch was ablaze, and smoke billowed out over the railing. Rain slanted straight into the gallery and was putting out some of the flames. Novak ran around the house through billows of caustic black smoke that burned his eyes. He stayed on the ground and met one of the intruders at the back corner. The guy had another Molotov cocktail in his hand, and Novak fired point-blank at him and then took cover. The guy went down, a direct hit in the chest, and didn’t move again. But there were other men, inside his house, shouting and shooting their weapons, and it sounded like Mariah might be returning fire. He could hear the gun battle as he leapt up and vaulted the gallery rail and burst through the kitchen door.

  The house was dark, but he could hear Ryan screaming his name and more shots going off, and heavy feet thudding around on the old hardwood floors. He got to the grand foyer but they were already dragging Ryan outside. He could see them forcing the boy into the backseat. The kid was still yelling for Novak to help him. Mariah was trying to get to him, on her knees beside the front door, firing her Ruger outside at the intruders. Novak raced past her and out onto the front gallery, but the cars had accelerated and were already halfway out of the drive. The second car was fishtailing around, spraying white shells all over the place. Novak raised his gun and let loose a few shots at the tires, but he couldn’t make himself fire any more than that, not in the rain or wind, for fear he’d hit Ryan.

  The gallery was still burning, and he headed for the kitchen fire extinguisher, yelling for Mariah to stay out on the porch until he could put out the flames. By the time he got back outside
, the wind was hurling enough rain on the fire to help him douse it without too much trouble. When it was finally extinguished, he headed back inside, ready to make sure Mariah was okay and get her back into her bed. He pulled out his phone as he ran back, dialed 911 and asked for the Lafourche Sheriff’s Office, and told them what had happened, told them to put out an AMBER Alert, described the boy, and told them that Emma Adamson couldn’t get far with the abducted child, not on the mud-slick and isolated bayou roads around Bonne Terre, and not in this kind of storm roaring through the parish.

  Novak clicked off the call and hurried down the grand foyer to the front door, hitting light switches as he went. He saw Mariah still lying where she’d been when he’d run back inside to put out the fire. She still had her weapon in her right hand, and now in the light, he could see her face. His heart just stood still. Her green eyes were wide open and staring straight ahead. Her pink nightgown was stained with blood that he hadn’t seen when he’d first run past her. It looked as if her body had been riddled by a hail of bullets.

  Novak stood there a long time, and then he walked slowly to her and stood above her body. He knelt down and lifted up her arm and felt for her pulse, just like he’d done in that safe house up in Georgia. There wasn’t one this time. She was dead this time. Novak took her hand in both of his and placed his forehead down the back of it and heard his own groans coming from deep inside his gut. The sound he made was terrible, full of guilt and misery and disbelief. He couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe he’d allowed her to be murdered, inside his own house, under his protection. After that, he couldn’t seem to move or get up or do anything. He just sat there beside the open front door, holding her hand, listening to the sounds of the rain and cracks of thunder. Mariah was dead, just like Sarah. Ryan was gone. All of it was Novak’s fault. He had brought them both to Bonne Terre, told them it was safe there, pledged to protect them. But he hadn’t. He had failed them both.

  Not long after the attack, Novak jerked up his head at the sound of a cell phone ringing. It was a low chime, one he hadn’t heard before. He left Mariah’s body and walked across the hall. Persistent ringing led him into the formal dining room. A dead guy lay on the floor on the other side of the table. Mariah had probably managed to shoot him before he got her but she’d been too late. He had killed her. He found the cell phone in the dead man’s coat pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the screen. It was unlocked. He answered it. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

  “Mr. Novak, I presume.” Emma’s voice. Very soft but quite distinctive. Enveloped with all that phony innocence and charm. “So you thought you could take my son away from me? No way in hell would I ever let you get away with that. You lost tonight, Novak. Better cut your losses and concentrate on burying my BFF, Mariah. I should have gotten rid of her with that steak knife, and maybe my man lying there beside you wouldn’t be dead. Your move now, baby.”

  The line went dead. A curious emotion began to rise up inside Novak then, a strange, debilitating, mind-shattering rage that he had not experienced since the day he’d watched the South Tower buckle and fall with his family inside. The kind of fury that made him mute and numb, overcome with dark, lethal determination. He began to shake; his stomach churned with pure, unbridled hatred. He was so full of the thirst of vengeance and the need to take Emma Adamson down that it was hard for him to get a grip on his nerves. To draw breath. Because he didn’t want to stop that fury that was building up so fast inside him. He let it come up full force, let it balloon into a dark and terrible mass inside his chest, let it take over his body and his mind and every inch of his being. That’s when he lifted his face and cried out his frustration, a long, hard yell of grief and loss. The furious cry echoed up through the floors of his silent house until he stopped and drew ragged breaths.

  After that, he sat still and let those terrible black emotions settle deep inside his soul. He hungered to keep the hardness, the edge, the viciousness alive. He wanted it. He needed it. He needed to feed his thirst for retribution. He needed that hatred beating relentlessly inside him. He was going after Emma and every one of the men who had attacked him. He would not rest until he got them. All of them. He was going to get Ryan back first, get him to safety, and then he was going to kill Emma Adamson. He hungered to kill her, looked forward to seeing the light go out of her eyes. She was already in her grave. She had taunted him with her challenge, and he was going to bury her.

  * * *

  It took over a week for Novak to make the necessary funeral arrangements. He had cooperated with the Lafourche Sheriff’s Office once they had arrived and interviewed him. He had gotten himself together by that time, enough to talk to them in a rational manner, containing his overwhelming emotions enough to function properly. The detectives who came to Bonne Terre were friends of Claire Morgan’s. She had worked with them once upon a time, solved a dangerous case while she was in their office. He knew them fairly well now, too, through her, and they knew him. Nancy Gill had shown up at the plantation first. She was the medical examiner, and she believed the story he told them. So did Detective Zee Jackson and Sheriff Russ Friedewald.

  Novak calmly explained the situation, mostly telling the truth, about what he’d done and why he’d done it. They didn’t argue. They didn’t ask him a lot of questions. They put out an AMBER Alert, both state and nationwide, and told him the storm was going to cause disruption in attempts to find the assailants after so much time had passed. But that they would find them. They assured him of that. He hoped they didn’t. Not before he found them first.

  Once the initial investigation was complete and in order, and Mariah’s body had been cremated at a funeral home in Thibodaux, he buried her in his rose garden in a plot near her sister’s, where she had told him she would like to be laid to rest. She had related that not even a week ago. There was no family left to mourn her in Australia. She’d told him that, too. Just Novak. He was her family. She had nobody special in her life, and she’d died at his house where he hadn’t protected her. He should have sent Mariah back to Sydney the moment she left that Atlanta hospital. She and Ryan both. He should never have let Mariah talk him out of doing that. And now little Ryan was right back in hell with a mother he was terrified of. Novak’s fault. All of it was Novak’s fault.

  * * *

  On the morning of Mariah’s funeral, not long after Novak’s good friend Jack Holliday and Mariah’s two FBI colleagues, Mason and Carson, had left Bonne Terre Plantation after attending her brief service, Novak sat outside in his rose garden, all alone, for a very long time. He sat on the marble bench that he’d placed in front of his wife’s and his children’s graves, and stared at their angels and at the fresh dirt on Mariah’s grave. Too young, too brave, too gone forever, all of them. Now it was his turn to go. Now it was time for him to kill everybody he could find who had anything to do with what had happened to his sister-in-law.

  Novak sat there in that quiet place, thinking about how he was going to find them and if they’d made it to their final destination yet. Because Emma Adamson did not do things halfway. She had a plan to attack Bonne Terre, and she would have a place where she’d made her plans and a safe place chosen in which to hole up. And that’s exactly what he wanted her to do. Burrow down into her safe haven, where she thought she’d be hidden from him and from the authorities searching for her. A place where he could take them out, one by one, every single damn one of them who had stepped foot on Bonne Terre. He would do it, and he would do it quick and hard and deadly.

  When a loud crunch of automobile tires sounded out on the shelled driveway and filtered into his deep state of reflection, Novak stood up quickly and headed back into the house. Maybe he had just gotten a lucky break. Maybe Emma had decided not to wait, to surprise him by coming back and finishing him off before he found her. He ran through the house to the dining room door, edged around the wall, weapon out and ready to fire. Whoever had showed up was standing outside the front door. He inched there,
grabbed the handle, and threw the door wide, his .45 pointed directly at Claire Morgan’s head.

  Claire didn’t jump back or move a single muscle. She stood very still and just stared calmly at him. Then she said, “What the hell, Novak?”

  Novak stuck the .45 back into his waistband. “Thought you were somebody else.”

  “Well, I hope to hell so. For God’s sake, Novak.”

  Novak turned around and walked back inside, not at all pleased that she had come. Any other time, great. Right now, not so much. Claire followed him, frowning big time now. She was a good-looking woman, natural blond, fit, tall, and gutsy as hell. Today she looked better than usual, had a dark golden tan from the Hawaiian sun, and looked fine, despite the fact that she’d been through her own brand of hell on earth, and not so long ago, either.

  “I don’t particularly like this kind of welcome, Novak,” she was telling him as she trailed him down beside the long antique dining room. “But I can understand it. Nancy told me about Mariah Murray and what happened to her. I’m sorry, Novak, I really am.”

  Turning quickly, he just stared at her for a moment. “Where’s Nick?”

  “Los Angeles. Had a patient there who was threatening suicide.”

  “So why aren’t you there with him?”

  “I never go to California with him.”

  “Why not?”

  Claire looked away. Then she said, “Sad memories.”