Janelle Taylor

by Night Moves

  Or was it partly because she craved close contact with him: the kind of intimacy they had shared last night?

  A little of both, she admitted to herself…

  And then she heard it again.

  A thump.

  It had come from somewhere outside.

  Perhaps just the wind. Or maybe a tree branch hitting the house, Jordan thought, as her heart began pounding.

  But she didn’t remember seeing any trees nearby.

  Maybe it was just deck furniture, then. Maybe it blew off somebody’s deck—or even one of ours—and was swept against the side of the house by the wind.…

  As she tried to quell the wayward fear that had suddenly surged inside her, Jordan heard another sharp, sudden sound.

  Breaking glass.

  Spencer stirred in her lap as she jerked her head toward the sound—and the nearest set of French doors leading to a deck….

  Just in time to see a black-gloved hand reaching through the shattered glass panel to turn the knob from the inside.

  Beau clenched the controls as the little plane bounced violently. He reminded himself that storm chasers flew into hurricanes all the time.

  But they were experts.

  And maybe they had a death wish.

  He didn’t.

  Not anymore.

  If he survived this, he would never again entertain thoughts of suicide. Not even for a moment. He had never wanted to live as badly as he did right now.

  His chances of doing so had never been slimmer.

  He was close to the Carolina coast, but he wasn’t going to make it past. He wasn’t going to make it to the airport on the Outer Banks. He wasn’t going to make it to any airport. He had lost communication with the tower that had been trying to guide him in at Elizabeth City.

  He had to put the plane down now—literally on a wing and a prayer.

  All he could hope for, at best, was a long, deserted stretch of highway below. What were the chances of finding one? At night, in a storm?

  He descended another thousand feet.

  He was flying by instruments alone. He could see nothing. It was pitch black outside the windows.

  Panic swelled within him.

  He pushed it back.

  Panic now would be deadly. If he managed to keep his wits about him, he might be able to survive a crash landing.

  He cursed, wrestling with the wind for control of the plane.

  He should be able to see lights below as he descended.

  He went down another thousand feet.

  Again, he nearly lost control of the plane.

  Memories rushed back at him. He could feel the plane spiraling earthward, could taste the metallic flavor of fear in his mouth, could hear Jeanette’s screams, Tyler’s frightened whimpering …

  No.

  That was then. This was now. Now, he was alone. If he lost control and this plane went down, it would carry only him with it.

  And he wasn’t going down without waging one hell of a battle.

  He descended again. He was flying dangerously low. Coming in for a landing, if he could just find a place to land. He glimpsed occasional lights through the rain-shrouded mist…. Twin pairs of white lights. And red lights.

  Head and taillights, he realized. There was a road down there.

  But it wasn’t deserted.

  He cursed.

  He couldn’t put the plane down on a highway full of cars.

  Not full of cars, he told himself. The lights were few and far between. This wasn’t a well-traveled road. Maybe if he just…

  No.

  He couldn’t take even the slightest chance of placing innocent men, women, and children in harm’s way.

  He descended lower, the little plane jarring and bumping along its turbulent course as he frantically sought a place to put it down.

  He could now see a vast black patch below, devoid of lights. It was either a large empty field, or water. From here, it was impossible to see which.

  Water…

  He remembered the sickening smell of jet fuel mingled with the dank scent of the bayou.

  The terror of surfacing alone with nothing but black sky overhead and black water all around.

  The ominous, barely-there current signaling him that a large gator or snake was moving silently through the murky water nearby.

  The sickening knowledge that an encounter with either of those predatory bayou creatures would be nothing compared to facing the chilling, heart-wrenching certainty that everything that mattered to him was lost forever in the twisted metal wreckage mired in muddy water.

  The plane jerked violently. He wrestled it lower.

  That was then.

  This is now.

  This is only about me, alone in the plane—about my survival.

  He would have to come down right here, and right now.

  No, it isn’t just about me.

  If I die, Jordan and Spencer will be on their own.

  If I make it, I can get to them. I can save them.

  Once again, in a cruel twist of fate, the lives of a woman and child hung in the balance with his own.

  He scanned the sprawling darkness below.

  If it was a large, flat patch of farmland, he might survive.

  If it was water …

  Oh, hell. Was it water?

  There was only one way to find out.

  He braced himself for the answer.

  The shadowy figure blew into the room in a swirling gust of wind and rain.

  Seized by terror, Jordan felt a strangling scream lodge in her throat.

  Spencer was slowly sitting up on her lap, rubbing his eyes. She squeezed him tightly against her, warily staring at the intruder as the child squirmed, trying to pull free.

  The man’s clothing was black, as was the eye patch that left only one frighteningly dark eye to glare at Jordan and Spencer as he crossed swiftly toward them.

  Jordan’s thoughts whirled.

  She had to do something.

  She couldn’t just sit here and wait for the stranger to attack.

  But there was no escape. There was no way she could lift the struggling child into her arms and run. She wouldn’t get anywhere.

  “Jordan … what are you … doing?” Spencer tried to wrench himself from her viselike grasp, then twisted his head to look up at her face.

  He followed her gaze …

  And screamed.

  “Shut up!” the intruder rasped.

  “The pirate! Jordan!” Spencer buried his face against her shoulder, crying.

  “On second thought, go ahead and scream,” the man said. He was standing over them now, a murderous gleam in his eye. “Nobody’s around to hear you.”

  Jordan found her voice. It emerged low, trembling, stricken with fear, and she fought to keep it level. “Who are you?”

  “Didn’t you hear the kid? I’m the pirate.” He laughed, a sinister sound that sent icy fingers of dread down Jordan’s spine.

  “What do you want? Why are you here?”

  “Just following orders, ma’am,” he said mockingly. “The man I work for, he doesn’t want the kid around spreading stories. He doesn’t want the kid around at all.”

  Jordan’s stomach lurched.

  She saw the man reaching into his pocket as he continued talking.

  “I tried to leave you out of it, lady. My boss, he doesn’t like things to get more complicated than they have to. I tried to take care of business back at your place, like he wanted. But the kid had to wake up and you had to come running.”

  “You really were in my town house,” Jordan said, dread mingling with a new emotion that sprang forth deep inside her.

  It was fury.

  Fury that this man had been prowling in her home in the dead of night.

  That he had taken a defenseless little boy from his bed.

  That he had come here to finish the diabolical deed.

  She had to buy time.

  To keep him talking.


  If she did, maybe Beau would get here….

  Though the stranger kept his hand concealed at his side, she glimpsed the familiar dark metal object he had removed from his pocket She knew it was a gun. She knew he was going to use it to kill both her and Spencer.

  And even if Beau showed up any second now and caught him in the act, he couldn’t save them. He would only be shot, too.

  Spencer was whimpering, his face buried against her breast, soaking her with hot tears. His entire body was quaking in fear. She stroked his hair, wanting to soothe him with words, but afraid to trigger a violent response in the intruder.

  Jordan knew she had to do something. Fast.

  “How did you find us here?” she asked, as though it mattered.

  He laughed again, as though she were a source of great amusement. “You can’t be serious.”

  She was silent, waiting.

  He had left the doors open.

  Rain was blowing in, and the wind’s gusts banged the doors repeatedly against the walls, rattling the panes. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “It wasn’t difficult to find you,” he said with a shrug. “You were careless. I was watching.”

  “You didn’t follow us here.” She tried not to let her eyes drift to the gun in his hand. Forced herself to hold his gaze with her own, to keep him focused, and talking.

  “No,” he agreed. “I didn’t follow you. I didn’t have to.”

  “Then how … ?”

  “Mr. Beau Somerville.”

  The mere mention of Beau’s name sent a ripple of hope through Jordan. He had promised to come back. She hadn’t even known him for a week, and she didn’t know much about him, but she was certain of one thing: he was a man who didn’t make promises lightly. He would be back. She just had to keep herself and Spencer alive until he got here.

  “Beau Somerville told you where we were?” Jordan asked, as though that were an actual possibility.

  “Do you think he would do that?”

  She forced a shrug, clinging tightly to the terrified little boy in her arms. “I have no idea. Did he?”

  He greeted her question with one of his own. “Do you know how easy it is to trace a license plate, Ms. Curry?”

  So that was it. He had seen Beau’s SUV parked at the curb in front of her town house and traced the plate.

  “The plate led me to a lease in the name of an architectural firm in Washington. Your friend should be more careful who he tells about his plans. One phone call to his business partner was all it took for me to find out where Mr. Somerville had gone off to.”

  Jordan searched for something to say—anything. She had to keep the conversation going, knowing that when it died, they would die.

  “Beau’s partner just came right out and told you where he was?” she asked.

  The man nodded, looking pleased with himself. “He thought I was a potential client. I said I would only speak to Mr. Somerville himself… and here I am. But unfortunately for both of us, he isn’t here, is he?”

  “No. He isn’t here.”

  “I didn’t see the car.” But he looked as though he didn’t quite believe her. Almost as though he half-expected Beau to leap from a hiding place any second now and wrestle him to the ground.

  Oh, Lord, if only that could happen.

  “He isn’t here,” she repeated, hearing an edge creeping into her voice, and forcing it back.

  She perceived the slightest movement of this hand holding the gun. Panic welled within her. How much time did they have? Was he just going to shoot them here and now? Would Beau come in and find their bloody bodies?

  She knew what that would do to him.

  The man had already lost his wife and child.

  She and Spencer weren’t his wife and child—not anything close to that—but Beau felt responsible for them.

  He was already riddled with guilt over the accident that had stolen his loved ones. If he came back here and found an innocent child murdered, he would be destroyed. He cared deeply about Spencer.

  And what about you, Jordan?

  Does he care deeply about you as well?

  She shoved the thought from her mind. Now was not the time to ponder what she might mean to Beau.

  The wind gusted and the French doors banged against the walls again, punctuating the tense silence.

  “How did you get up to that deck?” she asked the intruder.

  “I climbed. With a rope. You didn’t know how vulnerable you were, did you?”

  I did know, she thought fiercely. I knew, and there was nothing I could do about it. We were trapped here.

  “What about the storm?” she asked, fighting against her growing panic.

  “What about it?”

  “How will you get back to the mainland? You’re trapped here, just as we are.”

  “That’s my problem, isn’t it?” he said, sounding impatient now. His one glittering ebony eye seemed to probe into her soul, seeing the stark trepidation that was rapidly overtaking her.

  She looked away.

  Her gaze fell on the coffee table.

  On the flickering, dying flame of the candle.

  And the pile of nautically themed books beside it.

  And the sculpture.

  The seagull sculpture that Beau had said weighed a ton.

  Jordan shifted her weight on the couch, so imperceptibly that the intruder couldn’t possibly notice. She slowly slipped her right arm out from beneath Spencer’s weight, holding it poised.

  Just in case.

  Just in case there was the slightest chance that she could act.

  “Get up,” the pirate ordered suddenly. “Both of you. Get over there against the wall.”

  He gestured with the hand that was holding the gun.

  This was it.

  It was now or never.

  As she stood, Jordan calculated the distance between her and the pirate, and how long it would take her to cover it.

  “Go!” he barked.

  Spencer whimpered as she set him on his feet. “What’s he going to do?”

  Jordan didn’t answer.

  Instead, she shouted out in surprise, as though she had glimpsed something shocking behind the pirate.

  He instinctively whirled around to see what it was.

  In one swift movement, she swooped over the statue, knowing before her hands closed on it that this might be her fatal mistake. Beau had said that it was heavy. She had no idea how heavy, or whether she could even budge it.

  Fueled by adrenalin and sheer desperation, she hoisted the sculpture off the table.

  “Spencer, run! Run! Downstairs, outside! Run!” she shrieked as she swung the massive hunk of stone toward her target.

  It all happened at once.

  The little boy obeyed, barreling toward the stairway.

  The pirate cocked his gun and fired after him.

  The bullet ricocheted off the railing.

  Spencer disappeared from view, his feet pounding down the stairs as Jordan’s makeshift weapon made contact with the stranger’s skull.

  It wasn’t water.

  It wasn’t water!

  It was a farmer’s field, heavily planted with a low, leafy, green crop.

  It was rough, but it wasn’t even a crash landing. The plane remained intact.

  Beau maintained control until the wheels touched down on the marshy surface. Even then, even as the plane careened across the field, it was nothing like what he’d expected. It was almost as though an invisible hand had reached out of the sky and guided him in.

  He was alive.

  Alive!

  He hadn’t even lost consciousness.

  Exhilaration swiftly gave way to pain and urgency.

  Wincing, he extracted himself from the cockpit. Suddenly, he ached all over. Weariness seeped into him, but he couldn’t afford to give in to it. Couldn’t even acknowledge it.

  He had to get to Jordan and Spencer. There was no time to waste.

  He began hiking across
the field toward a distant house, barely conscious of the steady wind-driven rain that soaked him. He had to bend his head against the tremendous gusts, trudging through the mud that soon caked him from head to toe.

  As he slipped and went down with a splash amid the muck, he realized he was still wearing his suit and his polished dress shoes.

  The thought of being dressed like this in a place like this was so ludicrous that he would have laughed aloud if there were anything remotely funny about the situation. But he was consumed by worry.

  He tried to calm his fears. Tried to tell himself that Spencer and Jordan were fine. That she would have known enough to call the police to evacuate them from the house.

  But what if she didn’t realize the mandatory evacuation was in effect?

  Or that their portion of the Outer Banks was only fifteen feet above sea level—low enough to be completely underwater with the storm surge if the hurricane made landfall at high tide.

  He had to get to her.

  He could only take comfort in the knowledge that if he was having this much difficulty in locating her and Spencer, Gisonni’s hit man wouldn’t get there easily, either.

  At last he reached a house, an unremarkable clapboard structure. Behind it was a small orchard of laden fruit trees and an old pickup truck beside a leaning barn. The windows of the house were dark, but he could see the eerie beam of a flashlight moving through a room. They must have lost power in the storm.

  He knocked several times on the back screen door.

  The howling wind seemed to drown out the sound.

  Finally, he pushed the door open—it was unlocked—and poked his head inside. “Hello? Anybody home?”

  He took several steps into a small kitchen with worn linoleum, laminate countertops, and ancient appliances.

  “Stop right there,” a voice said.

  Across the shadowy room, an old man in a white sleeveless T-shirt aimed a shotgun squarely at him. Beside him, and old woman in a short floral housecoat and curlers trained the flashlight’s beam directly on Beau, momentarily blinding him.

  He lifted his arms to shield himself—whether from the light or from a potential shotgun blast, he wasn’t sure.

  “Wait!” he called out. “I need help.”

  “You one of them looters they been talkin’ about on TV?” the old man asked, eying him suspiciously.