by Jana DeLeon
If Ahmad had done the same thing, he could be anywhere, looking like a totally different person. New facial features, colored contacts, bleached hair, and no one would be the wiser. I doubted he could approach me without all the hair on my body rising, but he could easily blend in a crowd and probably go unnoticed. I leaned forward and pulled the laptop closer to reply to the email.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
I was worried about your dad. Thanks for the update. I’m glad he is feeling better but frustrated that the police don’t think they’ll catch the responsible party. I guess your dad was too busy trying to get out of the way, so he didn’t see anything. Maybe he needs to take the bus for a while instead of walking. People have gotten so careless with cars. We’d probably all be safer if we got off of sidewalks.
Things at the farm are going good. Nothing is ever simple but things have a way of working out eventually. I’m sorry you still haven’t seen your cool breeze yet. Remember when we took that trip back in 2009 expecting cooler weather and it was nowhere in sight? Everyone says it’s global warming, but I figure things have always changed one way or another. Hopefully, things will improve soon.
I reread the message to make sure Harrison would understand. The first paragraph was a warning to both of them to watch their backs. I didn’t think he needed it, but it never hurt to reinforce an idea, especially with assassins, as we tended to fancy ourselves invincible. I hoped the second paragraph reminded him of the previous target and his plastic surgery. If it registered with him, then he could begin to think about how to track Ahmad’s movements differently. And he’d have everyone on alert for any newcomer on the scene.
Satisfied that I’d been as directly vague as I could be, I pressed Send, then reached for my beer. I was on my second handful of cookies when Ida Belle and Gertie arrived. I served them up requested sweet tea, put the plate of cookies on the table, and waited for the ideas to start rolling off their tongues. Instead, they both ate their cookies in absolute silence.
“Really?” I said, finally breaking the stagnant air. “If you guys don’t have any ideas, I’m not sure who does.”
Ida Belle put down the partially eaten cookie and sighed. “I’ve been thinking about it all day, and Gertie and I talked on the way over to your house, but the bottom line is that we have never heard of a meth problem here.”
“Carter already said that,” I said.
“Yes,” Gertie said, “but Carter wouldn’t be privy to things people intended on keeping secret. Nosy old ladies, however, have ways of hearing about things that law enforcement doesn’t.”
“I see.” I considered this for a moment and frowned. Gertie was right. Unless they got careless, it was unlikely for the sheriff’s department to be unaware of the dangerous and illegal habits of residents, but it was a whole other thing completely for people like Ida Belle and Gertie to have no one on radar that might be involved.
“Maybe we’re losing our touch,” Ida Belle said. “Look at all the things that have happened the last month, and all of them going on right below our noses.”
“I don’t think so,” Gertie said. “I think criminals are getting smarter and worse is all.”
“They’re not that smart,” Ida Belle said. “After all, we’ve caught all of them eventually.”
“Yeah, but they’re getting smarter than the average Sinful mental acumen,” Gertie said, “or they wouldn’t have gotten away with things as long as they did. I think it’s more of an issue of lack of exposure on our account.”
“Gertie makes sense,” I said. “I mean, I’m new here, but based on what you’ve told me, the town never had big issues before now, at least, not that you were aware of. If it was a normal rash of poaching or theft or drunken idiocy, you guys would be all over it because that’s what you’re trained to clue in on, but this stuff…”
Ida Belle nodded. “You’re probably right. Gunrunning, murder, and now meth. I know plenty of people who smoke weed, but aside from the random few who’ve gone to New Orleans and gotten screwed up on the harder stuff, I don’t know of anyone from Sinful who has a problem, and certainly no one who lives here now.”
“Who do you know that smokes weed?” Gertie asked.
“I’m not telling you,” Ida Belle said. “You’d be silly enough to try it.”
Gertie shrugged. “I heard it was good for the eyes.”
“For glaucoma,” Ida Belle said. “It doesn’t cure nearsightedness.”
Gertie cross her arms across her chest. “How many times do I have to tell you, I’m not nearsighted. I just need reading glasses.”
Ida Belle rolled her eyes. It was an argument that the two of them would probably take to the grave, even though Gertie didn’t have a leg to stand on.
“If I had to guess,” I said, “drug problems would start here with the younger generation—probably in high school. You two aren’t exactly dialed into the youth of Sinful.”
“That’s true enough,” Gertie said. “Once I stopped teaching, I pretty much wanted the rest of my life to be child free.”
“Maybe we should ask Ally,” I said. “She’s young and may have picked up on something at the café.”
“True,” Ida Belle said, “but that means telling her about Carter’s suspicions, which means getting her involved in something that can’t possibly end well.”
I sighed. “There is that. Maybe I can figure out a way to broach the subject without asking her outright.”
Gertie laughed. “You want to try to coax the information out of her through general conversation…without letting on that you’re fishing? You have a lot of skills, Fortune, but lack of directness isn’t really one of them.”
“I can be vague and indirect,” I said. “Sort of. Maybe. Fine, I won’t ask.”
“Probably best,” Ida Belle said, “but your point about taking a harder look at the young people in Sinful is a good one. I just don’t know how we go about it.”
“There’s always the dance,” Gertie said.
I frowned. Dancing sounded awful enough. Dancing with a lot of teenagers sounded like some form of hell that was just asking for a Wikipedia page. “What dance?”
“The Fourth of July dance,” Ida Belle said. “It’s always held on the fifth because of the fireworks show on the night of the fourth. Teens started getting together the night after probably fifty years ago, and the tradition stuck.”
“And they dance?” I asked.
“Oh,” Gertie said, “there’s probably some of that twerking going on, but I doubt many go to dance.”
I glanced over at Ida Belle, who gave me a slight shake of her head. Clearly “twerking” was lost on her as well, but since the word originated with Gertie, I felt it best to leave off asking for an explanation.
“Mostly,” Gertie continued, “I think they sneak their dad’s beer in and stand around a bonfire.”
“And what good does that do us?” I asked.
“It’s against the law for more than two teens to congregate in public unless they’re with an adult or it’s a sponsored event,” Ida Belle said.
“Or unless they’re fishing or hunting,” Gertie added. “People think teens just hanging out are looking for trouble.”
“But teens carrying fillet knives and guns are not an issue,” I said.
“Of course not.” Gertie looked confused.
“The point is,” Ida Belle said, “the town requires adult chaperones for the event, so if we wanted a good reason to mingle among teens without looking suspicious, the dance is it.”
“Aren’t the chaperones already in place?” I asked.
“Probably not,” Ida Belle said. “No one wants to spend their night sweating around a bonfire in July. The mosquitoes are so thick they can carry you off.”
Gertie nodded. “That’s what they say happened to Lucy Franks back in ’84.”
Ida Belle sighed. “Sixteen-year-old Lucy Franks ran off with the forty-year-old scho
ol janitor who used to be her father’s fishing buddy. Her father’s a deacon, so he opted to go with the mosquito story.”
It seemed reasonable. “So we volunteer for this torture and what? I can barely communicate with adults. How am I supposed to get information out of teens?”
“I don’t know that we can,” Ida Belle said, “but it’s worth a shot.”
I blew out a breath. “This is the thinnest line of investigation we’ve ever had. What about the location of the lab? Surely that would give us something to go on.”
“Maybe,” Ida Belle said, “but we need a way to get there. Right now, we’re completely out of boats and the only one we could easily steal, we already sank.”
“What about Walter’s boat?” I asked.
“Walter locked the boat keys in his safe after we borrowed it last time,” Gertie said.
“And you don’t know the combination?” I asked Ida Belle. “That seems like something that would already be in your bag of tricks.”
Gertie laughed. “Despite the fact that Walter’s been in love with her since grade school, that doesn’t mean he trusts her any further than he can throw her.”
That’s because Walter was a smart man, but I wasn’t about to say so. “Ally’s boat is small but doesn’t go very fast. I’m sure she’d let us borrow it, but I’m not sure it’s a great idea. I mean, if anything happened while we were out there…”
“We’d be sitting ducks,” Gertie said. “No speed and no place to hide in a boat that shallow.”
“There’s got to be something,” I said, feeling frustrated.
“Let me work on it,” Ida Belle said. “I might be able to come up with something.”
A knock on my front door had us all straightening in our chairs. I glanced at my watch. It was only 7:00 p.m.—too early for Ally, and besides, she had a key. And Carter wasn’t supposed to be there until dark.
I headed to the front of the house and swung the door open, surprised to see Carter standing there smiling and holding a bottle of wine. “If I had to spend another minute with my mother watching me rest, I was going to shoot her,” Carter said.
I grinned. Emmaline had almost lost her son just days before, so she was doing the required hovering, but I knew that to Carter, it probably felt like someone slowly squeezing the air out of him. I’d feel the same way. “Come on in,” I said. “I was just having some of Ally’s incredible chocolate chip cookies with Ida Belle and Gertie.”
Carter frowned as he stepped inside. “You three aren’t up to anything you’re not supposed to be, are you?”
“Of course not,” I said as I headed for the kitchen, glad that he couldn’t see my face when I answered. I was an expert liar, but lately, I’d found that my feelings for Carter made it harder and harder to keep a straight face when I was telling him something untrue.
Carter stepped into the kitchen and gave Ida Belle and Gertie the once-over. “Ladies. Fortune assures me you’re not up to no good. Since you’re awake, I’m not convinced.”
“Jeez,” I said, “sit down and have a cookie. It will probably improve your mood. And if you must know, the only thing they’re ‘up to’ is wrangling me into helping them supervise some kids’ dance tomorrow night.”
Carter raised one eyebrow. “You two are supervising the dance?”
“It’s our civic duty,” Ida Belle said. “Everyone’s got to take rotation sooner or later.”
“What’s the matter?” Gertie asked. “You think we can’t handle a bunch of kids?”
Carter shook his head. “I’m more worried for the kids.”
“Damn straight,” Gertie said and rose from the table. “Let’s make ourselves scarce. If three’s a crowd, then four is an invasion.”
Ida Belle hopped up and gave me a nod, then headed for the front door.
“We can let ourselves out,” Gertie called. “But let’s do breakfast. That whole vicarious thing…”
I stared after her and Carter laughed at my dismay.
“Do you think video would work for her?” he asked.
“Don’t give her any ideas,” I said. I turned around and reached for the wine, figuring a big, tall glass would calm me down, but Carter pulled the bottle away and grabbed me around the waist with his other arm. He sat the wine on the counter and pulled me close to him, then lowered his head.
“I’ve wanted to do this all day,” he said as he lowered his lips to mine.
Against all common sense and training, I didn’t even try to resist. Kissing Carter was as thrilling as an assignment and, in my case, held the same level of danger. No matter how many times I’d gone over the reasons for why getting involved was a horrible idea, I found myself drawn back in, as if my heart and body had my mind held hostage.
I wrapped my arms around him as I pressed my body against his, my hands running over his muscled back and shoulders. He deepened the kiss, and I felt my knees weaken. Another couple of minutes of this, and I was going to rip his clothes off right there in the middle of the kitchen.
Then my cell phone signaled I’d received a text message.
Under normal circumstances, I would have ignored it and carried on, but nothing about my existence in Sinful was normal, so I was afraid to let it slide. Not to mention that I’d never be able to enjoy the kitchen undressing because I knew my mind would keep slipping off to wonder what the message was.
“I need to get that,” I said as I broke away and reached for my phone. I held in a sigh of relief when I saw it was from Ally and completely innocuous.
Staying in town for fireworks. Will be home after.
“Anything wrong?” Carter asked.
“It’s just Ally. She’s staying in town for the fireworks.”
“No chaperone. Yikes. We better move outside where the neighbors can see before I suggest things I’m not medically cleared to do.”
I laughed and grabbed some plastic wineglasses out of the cabinet. “Cookies?”
“Hell yeah.” He lifted the plate off the kitchen table, grabbed the bottle of wine, and headed out the back door. I grabbed a corkscrew from the kitchen drawer and followed him out, an odd range of emotions coursing through me.
On the one hand, I was relieved that Ally’s text had interrupted our moment in the kitchen. On the other hand, I was disappointed that we’d been interrupted. It seemed my entire relationship with Carter had been that way—one step forward, ten seconds jogging back. And that was all on me. Carter had been clear about his intentions from day one. Even when he was only flirting, I knew he was interested. I may be socially inept, but my female parts still worked fine, and they had a normal response to a sexy man putting out the signals.
The problem was the lie. The great, big, enormous honking lie that created the chasm between us that only I could see. I knew it wasn’t fair to get involved with Carter without telling him the truth, but it was better for Carter’s safety if he didn’t know, at least not until the situation with Ahmad was resolved. Sometimes I worried that simply getting involved at all put him at risk. If Ahmad’s men made me in Sinful, Carter would be perceived as a threat. Given Ida Belle and Gertie’s age, and the fact that no one in Sinful knew the real story behind their military service, they would probably be safe.
Because she was currently living with me, I worried about Ally as well, but the construction company assured her the repairs to her house would only take three weeks. If they kept on schedule, she’d be back in her own space soon enough, leaving me the lone target. Well, and Merlin, but he seemed to have more than the requisite nine lives, so no matter what happened, I figured he’d come out fine.
Carter was dragging two lawn chairs over to the edge of the bayou when I walked outside. He grabbed a cooler from next to the hammock and put it over in front of the chairs to serve as a table. The sun was just starting to set, and it made pretty ripples of orange and yellow over the bayou. I sank into the lawn chair and Carter popped open the wine and poured.
Carter lifted his glass. “Here�
��s to that one day of peace and quiet we got yesterday.”
I tapped my glass against his. “If I’d known things were going to go south this quickly, I would have stayed awake for more of it.”
“Ha! Can you believe that before you came to town, I actually used to get bored?”
“Correlation does not equal causation.”
Carter smiled. “A lot of criminals use that same defense. But no, I’m not saying things happening around here are your fault. How could they be? Jeez, some of them have been going on for years or happened years ago. You appear to be a woman of many talents, but I don’t think time travel is one of them.”
“If it were, I’d have already won the lottery—twice.” I looked out over the bayou and frowned. It seemed so peaceful, but I knew firsthand that awful, deadly things lurked beneath the surface. In that way, the entire town seemed to be mimicking the bayous that surrounded it. On the surface, everything appeared fine, but clearly, Sinful was brimming with problems.
“Gertie, Ida Belle, and I were talking about that earlier,” I said.
“Time travel?”
“No. How things used to be quiet around here. Ida Belle seemed upset that so many bad things were happening right under her nose.”
Carter nodded. “The law enforcement part of me wants to say that little old ladies shouldn’t be crime fighters, but the practical, small-town boy in me knows that the little old ladies usually have the dirt on everyone. Ida Belle’s had her finger on the pulse of this town since she returned from Vietnam, practically running it if people were to admit the truth of things. I can see where it would bother her to be caught by surprise on the depth of issues here. It certainly bothers me.”