Hostage At Crystal Manor

by Heather Graham

  “Really?” Dillinger said, intrigued.

  “Yeah. Really.”

  With that he shoved his way past Dillinger and headed toward the airboat.

  In minutes, it seemed that they indeed flew, the craft moving swiftly across the shallow water and marshes of the Everglades.

  * * *

  “SUCH AN INTERESTING PLACE,” Dillinger said, “this ‘River of Grass!’ If one wants to be poetic, I mean. Imagine Anthony Green. Out here, in pretty good shape. But he’s out of ammunition and there are a dozen deadly creatures you can encounter in every direction—with no real defense. Imagine being here. Deserted. Alone. With nothing.”

  Kody didn’t answer him or even respond, even though Vince looked at her nervously, apparently praying she had some clue as to what they were doing.

  They’d traveled for hours until she’d told them to stop. Now she held a map unfolded from the back page of one of the journals. She pointed in what she truly hoped was the right direction. “Anthony Green’s illegal liquor operation was out here, right on this hammock. When he had the place, he had workstations set up—chickees. But there was a main chickee where he set up a desk and papers and did his bookkeeping.”

  “Obviously, not here anymore, right?” Dillinger asked, eyes narrowed as he stared at her.

  “You’re sure this is the right place?” Floyd asked her.

  “I’m not sure of anything,” Kody said. “I know that there were four chickees and all the parts for having a distillery. I’m thinking that they were set about the hammock in a square formation, with the ‘cooking’ going on right in the middle by the water. Remember, land floods and land washes away. But I do think that we have the right hammock area…” She paused and looked over at Vince. “Right?”

  “The Everglades is full of hammocks,” Vince murmured. “Hardwood hammocks, with gumbo limbo trees, mahogany and more, and there are pine islands. Unless you really know the Everglades, it can all be the same.”

  “My sense of direction isn’t great,” Kody said. “But I believe that we did follow the known byways from the southern entrance to the park and that, if we were to continue to the north, we would come upon Shark Valley and Tamiami Trail. Naturally, we’ve really got to hope that this was the hammock. But—”

  “Great,” Floyd murmured. “We have to hope!”

  Kody ignored him. “Okay, so, the heating source they used was fire, but anything they might have used to create fire would have been swallowed up long ago into nature. But Green had a massive stainless-steel still and a smaller copper still—a present to Green from the real Al Capone—and other tools that were made of copper or stainless steel. If we can find even the remnants of any of the containers, we’ll know we’re in the right place.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Floyd told Dillinger. “Even if we find a piece of stainless steel, how are we going to find out where the chickees were? This has been an idiot’s quest from the get-go, Dillinger!”

  The way Dillinger looked at Floyd was frightening.

  Floyd quickly realized his mistake and lifted a hand. “Sorry, man. I just don’t see how we’re going to find this.”

  “There is hope,” Kody said quickly. “There are notes in Anthony Green’s journal about his chickees. He didn’t intend that his operations be washed away in a storm. Each one of the chickees was built with pilings that went deep into the earth. If we see any sign of pilings or of the remnants of a still, we’ll know we’re in the right place.”

  “Well, we know what we need to do.” Nick stepped forward, defusing the tension and getting the group to focus on the task at hand. “We need to all start looking. Span out over the hammock, but be careful. There are snakes that like to hide in the tall grasses. Vince and Kody, you stay to the center and see if you can find remnants of a still. Floyd, you and Dillinger, try the upper left quadrant over there. I’ll head to the right. We’re looking for any one of the sections where the workmen’s chickees might have stood.”

  It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Time passed. Decades. There were so few of them; there was so much ground to cover.

  “Let’s cover each other, crossing positions around here,” Vince suggested to Kody.

  She looked at him, smiled and nodded. He was a good guy, she thought. Afraid, certainly, but doing his best to be courageous when it didn’t look good at all for them.

  Vince didn’t know that “Barrow” was FBI. She longed to tell him but she wasn’t sure if that would be wise. Vince could still panic, say something.

  “We’re going to be okay,” she told him.

  “Yeah. We’re going to have to make a break for it somehow,” he told her. “Do you realize that if we really find this stash—oh, so impossible!—Dillinger will kill us?”

  “Maybe he’ll let us go,” Kody said.

  “He killed one of his own men!”

  “Yes, but that man deserted one of his friends. Maybe he does have some kind of criminal code of honor,” Kody said.

  Vince shook his head. “We have to get out of here,” he said.

  “But what is your suggestion on how?” Kody asked. “We’re in the center. The three guys with guns can focus on us in a matter of seconds.”

  “Two of them won’t kill us—neither Floyd nor Barrow,” Vince said, his voice filled with certainty. “We just have to watch out for Dillinger.”

  “Who has an automatic weapon,” Kody murmured. “We might be all right, Vince. Help will be on the way.”

  Vince let out a snort. “Yeah. Help. In the middle of the Everglades.”

  “Okay, so, to us it’s a big swamp. But there are people who know it well, down to each mangrove tree, just about. It’s going to be okay.”

  “Hey!” Dillinger suddenly called. “Are you two working out there?”

  “Yes!” Kody shouted.

  “Anything?” Nick asked.

  Kody turned, hearing Nick’s voice behind her. He was walking in quickly toward where they stood.

  But before he could speak, Vince stood and stared at her, shaking his head, a look of desperation in his eyes. “We’re going to die. If we just stay here, we’re going to die. I’d rather feed a gator than take one of that asshole’s bullets. I’m sorry, Kody.”

  He turned, ducking low into the high grasses, and began to run.

  “What the hell?” Dillinger shouted.

  He began to fire.

  Nick threw himself on top of Kody, bringing her down to the damp, marshy earth. The gunfire continued and then stopped.

  “Now, take my hand. Run!” Nick told her. He had her hand; he was pulling her. He came halfway to his feet and let go with a spray of bullets.

  Then, hunched low, and all but dragging her behind him, he started to run.

  Kody was stunned; she had no idea where they were going or why they had chosen that moment to leave. Vince had wanted to run…

  Where was he?

  Had he been shot?

  What about Floyd? Was he shooting at them along with Dillinger?

  Kody just knew that, for the moment, they were racing through a sea of grass and marsh. Her feet sank into mush with their every movement. Grass rose high around her, the saw grass tearing into her flesh here and there.

  “Low! Keep low!” Nick told her.

  Keep low and run? So difficult!

  She could still hear Dillinger firing, but the sound was nowhere near as loud as it had been.

  While Kody had no idea where they were running to, apparently Nick did. She felt the ground beneath her feet harden. They had come to a definite rise of high hammock ground, possibly a limestone shelf. She was gasping for breath and tugged back hard on Nick’s hand.

  “Breathe. Just breathe!” she gasped out.

  And he stood still, pulling her against
him as she dragged in breath after breath.

  Suddenly the sound of gunfire stopped.

  Now they could hear Dillinger shouting. “You’re a dead man, Barrow! You’re dead. I’ll find you. And I’ll let you watch me rip your pretty little pet to shreds before I kill you both. You’re an ass. If the cops get you, you’ll face a needle just like me!”

  Nick remained still, just holding Kody.

  “You can come back! You, too, Floyd! You can come back and we’ll find the treasure, and we’ll go on, free as the birds. I know where to go from here. I’ve got friends, you know that! They’ll see that we get out of here safely. We can be sipping on silly drinks with umbrellas in them. Hey, come on now. Barrow, just bring her on back. I won’t kill her, I promise. I just want that damned treasure!”

  Nick held still and then brought his finger to his lips. He started to walk again—away from the sound of Dillinger ranting.

  As they moved, though, they could still hear the man. “Vince! You idiot. Why did you run? I wouldn’t have killed you. I just need the knowledge that you have. You’re going to die out here. You have no way back in. I’m your way back in. Floyd! Oh, Floyd. You’d better be running. You are such a dead man. Such a namby-pamby dead man. I will find you. I will see that you die in agony, do you hear me? You are dead! You’re all dead! I will find you!”

  Only when Dillinger’s voice had grown fainter did Kody dare to speak. “What the hell was that? What just happened? You said that a child would die. That—”

  “Jason Tiger is out here,” Nick said. “I’m going to get you to him as quickly as possible, and then I’ll try to find your friend Vince.”

  “But the child. The little boy…”

  “Adrian Burke,” Nick said, smiling at her. He was studying her with a strange mixture of awe and disbelief. “Jason was still out there when we took off this morning. I met up with him earlier, looking for the pilings. Jason overheard Dillinger give up the boy’s location. He got a message through to Craig Frasier and the local cops. They searched all the buildings in the area that Dillinger mentioned and they found the little boy. He’s safe.”

  “Oh, my God! Really?” Kody asked. She wasn’t sure if she believed it herself. She was so relieved that she felt ridiculously weak—almost as if she would fall.

  “They found him—because of me confronting Dillinger?” she asked incredulously.

  “Yep.” He looked uncomfortable for a minute. “I should have trusted you,” he said softly. “I should have trusted in you earlier.”

  “I’m just—I’m just so grateful!”

  “Me, too. The kids…finding kids. It’s always the hardest!”

  She was still standing God-alone-knew-where in the middle of deadly wilderness, and it would be wise not to fall. She blindly reached out. Nick caught her hands, steadying her.

  “I have to get back around to where I can leave you with Jason Tiger,” he told her. “Then I can look for your friend.”

  “There was so much gunfire,” Kody said. “But Vince… Vince is smart. There’s a chance he made it.” She paused, as if to reassure herself, then said, “He was determined to escape. He was certain that Dillinger would have killed us.”

  Nick was quiet.

  “He would have killed us,” Kody said.

  “Most likely. Come on. We’re on solid ground here, and I think I know where I’m going, but I haven’t worked down here in Florida for years.”

  “You worked here—in Florida?”

  “I did. I’m from Florida.”

  “Ah. But…you know Craig?”

  “I work in New York City now,” he told her. “I often work with him there. I’ve been on a task force with Craig and his partner. We’ve been following Dillinger—Nathan Appleby—all the way down the coast. I was the one who had never been seen, and I know the area, so I fit the bill to infiltrate. Especially once we knew that Dillinger was down here. That he was forming a gang and pulling off narcotic sales, prostitution, kidnapping…murder.”

  She was really shivering, she realized.

  But it wasn’t just fear. The sun was going down.

  A South Florida winter was nothing like a northeastern winter, but here, on the water, with the sun going down, it was suddenly chilly. She was cold, teeth chattering, limbs quaking. And he was watching her with those eyes of his, holding her, and he seemed to be a bastion of heat and strength. She didn’t want to lean on him so heavily. They were still in danger—very real, serious danger. And yet she felt ridiculously attracted to him. They’d both been hot, covered in swamp water, tinged with long grasses…

  She was certain that, at the moment, her hair could best be described as stringy.

  Her flesh was burned and scratched and raw…

  And she was still breathing!

  Was that it? She had survived. Nick had been a captor at first, and now he was a savior. Did all of that mess with the mind? Was she desperate to lean on the man because there was really something chemical and physical and real between them, or was she suffering some kind of mental break brought on by all that had happened?

  She never got the chance to figure out which.

  “Come on,” he urged her.

  And they began to move again, deep into the swamp. She felt his hand on hers. She felt a strange warmth sweeping through her.

  Even as she shivered.

  * * *

  THEY WEREN’T IN a good position, but once Vince had suddenly decided to run, there had been no help for it.

  Nick couldn’t have gone after Vince and brought him down and go on pretending he was still part of Dillinger’s plan. If he’d brought Vince back to Dillinger, the man would have killed Vince.

  There had been nothing else to do but run then. Now all he could do was hope that Vince was smart enough to stay far, far away from Dillinger. And while Nick hadn’t seen Floyd disappear, it was pretty clear from Dillinger’s shouting that he’d used the opportunity to get away, as well.

  It was one thing to be a criminal. It was another to be a crazed murderer.

  Hurrying along at his side, Kody tugged at his hand, gasping.

  “Wait, just one minute. I just have to breathe!” she said.

  And Kody breathed, bending over, bracing her hands on her knees, sweeping in great gulps of air.

  Nick looked around anxiously as she did so. Naturally, Dillinger had seen the direction in which they had run.

  Nick believed he knew the Everglades better than Dillinger, at any rate. But, even then, he was praying that Jason Tiger had been watching them, that Tiger had followed him after they had spoken.

  “You…you think that Vince will be okay?” Kody asked him.

  “He’s smart. He needs a good hiding place and he needs to hole up. Dillinger has studied the Everglades on paper, I’m sure. Though he was hoping that the treasure might have been at the mansion, he thought that it might be out here. He had communication going with men who owed him or needed him. I’m sure he has someone coming out here for him soon. But he’s not a native. Vince is, right? He seems knowledgeable.”

  Kody stared at him. “He’s knowledgeable. I’m knowledgeable. But this? We’re on foot in the swamps! Oh, please! Who is at home out here and knows what they’re doing—except for the park rangers and maybe some members of the local tribes and maybe a few members of the Audubon Society. Dillinger was right—we don’t know what we’re doing out here.”

  “But Jason Tiger does,” Nick reminded her gently.

  “Oh! But where is he?”

  “He’s been watching, I’m sure. He’ll find us. Don’t worry. Ready?”

  She nodded. He grabbed her hand again and hurried in a northwesterly direction, hoping he had followed the directions he’d received from Jason Tiger.

  He’d been out in the Everglades o
ften enough. His dad had brought him out here to learn to shoot, and his grandfather had kept a little cabin not far from where they were now. But most of what he knew about the Everglades he’d learned from a friend, Jimmy Eagle. Jimmy’s dad had been a pilot from Virginia but his mom had been Miccosukee.

  One of the most important things he’d ever learned from Jimmy was that it was easy to lose track of where you were, easy to think one hammock was another. Waterways changed, and there could be danger in every step for the unsuspecting.

  He heard a bird call and stopped walking, returning the call.

  A moment later Jason Tiger stepped out onto the path, almost as if he had materialized from the shrubs and trees.

  “Right on the mark,” he told Nick. “Miss Cameron, excellent.”

  Kody flushed at the compliment.

  “I was excellent at running,” she murmured. “But…” She paused, looking at Nick and telling him, “Your expression when you came toward me…it was so…determined.”

  “I was trying to let you know that we’d be able to do something,” Nick told her. “I was going to let you know that Jason had found me while I was looking for the pilings of Anthony Green’s distillery operations.”

  “And Vince chose that moment to run,” Kody murmured.

  “You think he’s alive?” Jason Tiger asked Nick.

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “I’ll get you to the cabin, then I’ll look,” Jason said.

  “I wanted Kody safe with you,” Nick said. “As long as Kody is safe, I can go back out and search until I find Vince—and Floyd. Floyd deserves jail time, but he doesn’t deserve a bullet in the back from Dillinger.”

  “This way,” Jason Tiger said.

  He led them through a barely discernible trail until they came to the water.

  He had a canoe there.

  “Hop in,” he told them.

  Nick steadied the craft and gave Kody a hand. He stepped in carefully himself. Jason hopped in after, shoving his oar into the earth to send them out into the water.

  They were in an area of cypress swamps; the trees grew here and there in the water. Egrets, cranes and herons seemed to abound and fish jumped all around them. Nick saw a number of small gators, lazy and seeking the heat of the waning sun.