The Rapids

by Carla Neggers

  “It’s okay. I could use some positive energy.”

  Maggie returned to her room and changed into shorts and trail shoes, noting how quiet the sprawling old house was. She debated calling Rob but decided it was better she didn’t. There was no point in him getting any wrong ideas about her or their relationship. A kiss was one thing. Of the moment. Over and done with. But she was a DS agent posted overseas, and he was a U.S. Marshal posted in New York. End of story, as far as she was concerned.

  Except, on another level, he felt like just the kind of man she’d always wanted—charming and sexy and not to be underestimated.

  And carrying the baggage of being seriously wounded on the job.

  A “mustn’t touch,” she thought, then warned herself that she was jumping the gun, to say the least. She and Rob had been through a trauma together. A tragedy. Tom’s death must have stirred up everything Rob had gone through in the spring. A quick kiss when the opportunity had presented itself had been inevitable.

  Maggie didn’t want to make more of it than was there.

  She scooted back downstairs out the front door, the air warm and a bit less humid than yesterday. But that wouldn’t last. Thunderstorms were forecast again for later in the day and overnight.

  Good, she thought. She’d sit through a storm or two, then head back to the Netherlands and admit to Bremmerton that she’d grasped at a mentally ill man’s fantasies because he’d invoked her father’s memory.

  She’d have to admit her mistake to the marshals, too.

  That didn’t excite her.

  She followed the stone path around to the back of the house past the fountains and the gardens, until it became a wide lane that led through an apple orchard, narrowing when it hit the woods. Soft ferns brushed against her bare legs. She breathed in the earthy smells and heard the rush of water below her, down a steep hill, through the birches, beeches and pines.

  When she reached the creek, Maggie slowed her pace, the frenzy of the past week falling away. The coppery water was shallow, flowing over a gravel bottom strewn with rocks and boulders. The raging rapids that came with the early spring runoff had quieted, only a few treacherous stretches of white water now left in late summer.

  She stood on a boulder jutting out over the river and listened to the gurgle of water tumbling over rocks, the rustle of leaves in the morning breeze. New York and its millions of people were just an hour or so to the south, but they might have been on another continent, another planet.

  But then she stiffened, spotting something in the rocks and shade toward the middle of the river.

  A flash of light.

  Sun on metal.

  Maggie jumped down from her boulder to the riverbank for a better view.

  A leg. A running shoe.

  Not again.

  A body—a man—was caught on the rocks.

  She ran into water up to her ankles. It was surprisingly cold, the current pushing at her, but she quickly climbed onto a large, flat rock, slippery from just the film of water that ran over it.

  The man was on his back, his face out of the water. His torso had caught on a series of small, jagged rocks, but his lower half was bobbing in deeper water.

  There was no obvious sign of injury.

  Maggie splashed into the water up to her knees and nearly lost her balance in the current. She made her way to the jagged rocks, squatting down next to the man. He was unconscious, she thought, but not dead. Surely not dead.

  She checked his airway.

  He was breathing.

  He had spots of blood on his neck and arms, and a tear in the shoulder of his black T-shirt.

  Had he fallen? Slipped?

  His skin was cool to the touch. She needed to get him out of the water, if possible, then find help.

  He gave a small cough.

  “It’s all right,” Maggie said, trying to sound reassuring. “I’m going to get help—”

  “What’re you doing here?”

  His question was abrupt, antagonistic. His dark eyes focused on her, but she had no idea if he recognized her.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  She might not have spoken. He latched on to her wrist with one hand and, using it to anchor himself, stood up. Water streamed off his clothes and down his bare arms.

  Maggie, rising next to him, noticed the raw, nasty lump on the back of his head and remembered that head injuries could make people belligerent, throw them off for a few minutes or even much longer.

  “I must have slipped.” His voice was ragged, and he didn’t sound or look entirely coherent. He seemed to struggle to focus on her. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m staying at the inn. I was taking a walk.”

  The dark hair, the dark eyes. The black graphic tattoo.

  The Texas drawl.

  Ethan Brooker.

  In that split second, Maggie recognized him and knew she was too late.

  He stepped onto her toes and, with both hands, butted her in the chest. Even before she realized he’d moved, she was sprawling backward into the deep pool of water just past the jagged rocks.

  Plunging to the bottom, she gulped in river water. Her arms raked across the gravel bottom. She got control of her sprawling, butt-first dive and burst up and out of the water, coughing and choking for air.

  The water was up to her waist, the current slamming her against another rock. She grabbed it, then hoisted herself onto it.

  “Brooker! You’re hurt! You need a doctor!”

  She heard nothing but the crows, the water and the wind.

  Ethan Brooker was gone.

  Hell.

  She charged through the river to the bank, then ran, soaking wet, up the path.

  He’d made it to the edge of the apple orchard before collapsing against an oak, still on his feet but breathing unevenly. And swearing.

  She heard a crunching sound behind her and spun around.

  William Raleigh stood under a pine tree. He had on a red madras shirt, another pair of threadbare khaki pants and his sport sandals, but he didn’t smell as much of cigarettes in the open air.

  Maggie stiffened. “What in hell—”

  “What am I doing here?” He seemed at ease with having a half-conscious former Special Forces officer slumped against a tree and a federal agent dripping wet. “Let me just say, Agent Spencer, that you are as thorough as I’d hoped you’d be. I expected you to make a few calls and check the Internet. Instead, you get on a plane first thing Sunday morning, and now here we are in Ravenkill.”

  “Brooker—”

  “His injuries aren’t my doing. I’m not sure they’re anyone’s doing. He probably slipped.”

  “That doesn’t matter right now. He needs to get to a doctor. If he’s not hurt, he’s faking it well.”

  “I’m not faking a goddamn thing,” Brooker said, using the tree trunk for support as he got to his feet. He looked at Raleigh. “My backpack’s under another tree. Let’s go.”

  Maggie shook her head. “Wait just a minute—”

  Raleigh touched her hand. “Ethan’s too miserable to talk right now. I’ll take care of him and be in touch.” He smiled, a twinkle in his pale eyes. “Go get dried off.”

  The breeze on her wet clothes and skin gave her a chill.

  She looked at the two men, and she suspected they both knew fourteen ways to disarm her and tie her to a tree if she didn’t cooperate, gun or no gun, training or no training. They’d simply done more dirty work than she had.

  But if she’d meant to take either of them in, she’d have handled everything differently.

  She nodded, knowing she was taking a risk. Breaking dishes, as Raleigh would have said. “Be in touch,” she warned, then let the two men go.

  “I just knocked your DS agent in the creek.”

  Rob braked halfway up the driveway to the Old Stone Hollow Inn. The voice on the other end of his cell phone was male with a Texas accent. “Who is this?”

  “Redhead. Rea
l pretty eyes. Armed.”

  Rob tensed. “Brooker?”

  “It wasn’t her fault. I thought she was on the attack. I hit my head on a rock or something—I don’t remember.”

  “Where are you now?”

  No answer.

  Rob checked his cell phone readout. Private number. But Ethan Brooker had shown up at Longstreet’s apartment last night. She’d just finished explaining the situation to Rivera before Rob headed north.

  “Hell.” It was Brooker again, sounding as if he were in pain. “My head’s a mess. She hauled ass after me. Thought she might shoot me. She’s on her way back to the inn. I don’t think she’s hurt, but you might want to go find her.”

  The connection ended. Rob jumped out of his car and ran across the driveway into the orchard, the tall grass almost up to his knees. There were Indian paintbrushes and black-eyed Susans in bloom, and the branches of the old trees were drooping with ripening apples. The ground was uneven, spotted with knobby apples that had already fallen, and he was suddenly aware of just how strange his life had gotten since he’d heard Maggie Spencer had received the tip that led to Nick Janssen’s arrest.

  What the hell was Ethan Brooker doing in Ravenkill?

  But when Rob got to the woods, he found Maggie alone.

  She was soaked, with bits of rotted leaves and mud splatters on her legs and puffy, pink scratches on her arms. And when she saw him, she swore under her breath.

  “Where’s Brooker?” Rob asked.

  “On his way to the E.R., if he’s smart. He’s got a good goose egg on the back of his head.” She brushed back a soaked lock of hair, a darker red when it was wet. “I found him unconscious in the creek.”

  “How did he get there?”

  “Says he might have slipped.” She didn’t sound convinced. “When he came to, he was out of his head. He didn’t know if I’d attacked him.”

  Rob observed her a moment, deciding she wasn’t telling him everything. “So he dumped you in the river?”

  “Correct. It’s my own damn fault.”

  “Maggie—”

  “He’s a good guy, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m glad I didn’t shoot him.” She coughed, spitting river scum into the grass. “God. What’s in the Ravenkill? Anything toxic? I think I drank a gallon of it. It tastes like trout. Or maybe trout tastes like the Ravenkill.”

  Rob tried to smile. “I think Ravenkill trout was on yesterday’s menu. Maggie—”

  “Did Brooker call you?”

  “Yes.”

  “He had your number?”

  “I’m guessing he used Juliet Longstreet’s cell phone and it’s on her caller list.”

  “How—”

  “He was at her place last night.”

  Maggie coughed again, not spitting this time. “They’re an item?”

  “She says not. She came home yesterday afternoon and found him sitting on her doorstep. She let him spend the night. He took off in the morning.”

  “With her cell phone?”

  Rob shrugged. “He left a note.”

  “And Longstreet just let him—” But Maggie stopped herself, sighing. “But I did the same thing. I let him go.”

  “He must be persuasive.”

  “He didn’t persuade me of anything.” She wiped a drop of water off her nose. “I need to get on dry clothes.”

  Rob took a sharp breath. “You need to talk to me.”

  She nodded. “That, too.”

  “You’re leaving something out. Brooker—”

  “My guy from the cathedral was here,” she said casually, flicking a glop of mud off her knee. “Raleigh.”

  Rob tensed, but she started toward the inn, then stopped suddenly and kicked off her wet running shoes.

  “They’re squishy,” she said.

  “Maggie—”

  “George Bremmerton went to the hospital after Charlene Brooker was killed last fall and helped identify her. He thinks he should have done more to get answers to her murder. Pushed harder.” She scooped up her shoes. “Ethan Brooker shouldn’t have had to go off half-cocked to find his wife’s murderer himself.”

  “Bremmerton didn’t let you come here out of a sense of guilt.”

  “No, he didn’t.” She squinted back at Rob, the ends of her hair curling as water dripped onto her shoulder; her soaked cotton shirt clung to her. “Charlene Brooker was on to Nick Janssen before any of the rest of us. I can cut her husband some slack if I want to.”

  “About Raleigh. He and Brooker are hooked up?”

  “Somehow. I don’t have the details. Raleigh didn’t hit Brooker on the head. Brooker says he doesn’t remember what happened.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  She squeezed water out of the end of one curl. “Right now, I don’t know that I believe anyone. I’m damn lucky I didn’t hit my head on a rock.”

  “Brooker would have grabbed you before you did. Even half out of his head.”

  “He’s that good, is he?”

  “Yes.”

  They came to the driveway, but Maggie stayed in the grass. “I’ll meet you on the back porch. I’m in enough trouble with you marshals without dripping all over one of your cars.”

  Not that she was worried, Rob noticed. He watched her walk along the edge of the driveway, swinging her running shoes by their laces.

  She was wobbly.

  But, he thought, probably she wouldn’t want him pointing that out right now.

  Fourteen

  Libby arranged fresh-cut asters in pottery vases at a long wooden counter in the inn’s kitchen and tried to keep her hands from shaking with that familiar mix of fear, exertion and exhilaration.

  If he wasn’t such a damn bull of a man, Ethan Brooker would be dead.

  Although he was on Janssen’s target list, it was just as well the army officer was still alive. She’d be able to collect her hundred thousand dollars for his death, but there’d be a body to explain. That he’d survived his fall into the creek meant that she’d still have to deal with bereaved, out-of-control Major Brooker—and the DS agent and her marshal friend would want to know what Brooker was doing in Ravenkill.

  Libby stabbed a particularly tall red aster into the middle of a vase, pushing back her irritation with Star, who was sniffling and muttering to herself at the sink. “Star, please. What’s wrong?”

  “Maggie Spencer.” Star gulped in a breath, her skinny shoulders hunched against her distress. “Did you see her? She came in just a little while ago. Something happened—”

  “It looked to me as if she slipped and fell in the river.”

  “Why was she armed?”

  “Because she’s a federal law enforcement agent.”

  “But diplomatic security—”

  “I know, I know.” Yanking out the too-tall aster, Libby snipped another inch off its stem and tried to smile through her own tension. “It’d be easier if she were a florist. Which I clearly am not. Do these flowers look okay to you?”

  Star sniffled again—it was maddening to Libby—and nodded. “They’re lovely. It’s hard to go wrong with asters. Aren’t they so cheerful?”

  Cheerful. Libby hadn’t thought of them that way. She’d picked them upon her return from the creek, as a reason for her to have been outside, out of view. It wasn’t as if she’d thought through any kind of alibi or even had anticipated needing one. As with Tom Kopac on Saturday, she’d had to think on her feet and take action.

  Ethan Brooker was a problem. He’d been since his wife’s death last fall.

  A pity, Libby thought, that Nick Janssen hadn’t hired her for that job. And the one in May. She’d have done far better than the men Janssen had sent. The fools had ended up dead themselves.

  How had Brooker ended up in Ravenkill?

  Why?

  He could be trailing Maggie Spencer, or he could have come here for the same reasons she had.

  Whatever those reasons were.

  This time wh
en Libby jabbed the red aster into the vase, its stem bent. She tossed it aside, feeling her tension clawing at her. Star’s whining didn’t help.

  Libby had prepared herself as best she could for the inevitable questions she’d be asked if Brooker turned up dead. But how would she explain herself if the police checked into her whereabouts for the past week and discovered she’d been in the Netherlands? In particular, in ’s-Hertogenbosch?

  Again, she thought, just as well Brooker wasn’t lying dead in Ravenkill Creek.

  Star sniffled again, loudly, and heaved a dramatic sigh. “Oh, God.”

  “Star, it’s okay. Honestly. Nothing’s happened on inn property.”

  Libby tried not to indulge in unnecessary emotion. She was confident, at least, that Brooker hadn’t seen her. She’d spotted Maggie Spencer in the apple orchard and had followed her, then taken a different, faster route down to the river. She’d planned to get to a spot that intersected with the path the DS agent was on and wait for her, try to gauge what she was up to.

  Instead, Libby had come upon Ethan Brooker, recognizing him instantly from the photos of him she had stored on her laptop.

  The rush of water, even in late summer when the river was at its shallowest, must have prevented him from hearing her on the path above him. If he’d caught her, she’d have claimed she was picking wildflowers or off to dip her feet in the Ravenkill on a warm August morning. He’d have no idea who she was.

  She didn’t know whether she’d panicked or had simply attempted to seize the moment. She’d wanted Brooker dead. She knew that much.

  She didn’t have her Beretta and silencer with her, but she wouldn’t have used it—if Ethan Brooker was going to die in Ravenkill, it had to look like an accident. She had to take her chances and at least disable him, impede him from doing whatever he was in Ravenkill to do.

  She’d dismissed jumping him. He’d pick her off him like a bug.

  Given her limited options, she’d tossed a pebble into the river in front of him, distracting him for a split second, and pelted him on the back of the head with a baseball-size rock.

  He’d had the grace to fall, hitting another rock and landing in the shallow river. As beat up as he was, he’d managed to stagger to his feet, stumble around for a few seconds, then fall on his back in the water, halfway to the other bank.