Ryder picked up and pocketed the key she’d brought for him. “It’s too late for warnings, Desdemona. The bad’s my shadow now. And you, me and Billy all know, there’s only one way to eliminate a shadow.”
* * *
Pushing her doubts firmly aside, Mia stripped off her clothes and braved the shower in Desdemona’s bathroom. Afterward, she pulled on a pair of black pajama pants and a white sleep tank, and sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed to think. However, when all she could bring to mind was Ryder, a steamy-as-hell kiss and someone’s eyes—not sure if they were Ryder’s or Billy’s—she gave up and reached for her phone.
Which was dead, she recalled and tossed it back in her purse. Okay, Ryder’s it was. As it was undoubtedly government issue, she had no qualms about using it to call Henri in New Orleans.
She discovered he had a message and held the phone up to the hazy moonlight that streamed through the window. From Desdemona’s reaction to him tonight, she suspected her rogue protector also had secrets, some of them leaning toward, if not actually walking on, the dark side.
The message was a text, sent less than an hour ago. Open it? Ignore it? She waffled for thirty seconds before curiosity got the better of her, and she tapped it open.
The words, all upper case, leaped out at her.
YOU SCREW THIS UP, RYDER, YOU’LL BE AS DEAD AS SHE IS. AND I PROMISE YOU, BRO, YOU’LL DIE JUST AS PAINFULLY.
Ryder couldn’t settle. Couldn’t claw past the guilt that crawled in his belly and threatened to worm its way into his heart.
There’d been no problem at first. Concept was easy. Then he’d met Mia, and a significant part of the concept had become reality. Beautiful, hot-blooded reality, the kind that turned intent on its head and ground resolve to dust. Short version? He was screwed.
He prowled the tangled mess that had once been a glorious garden behind the antique shop. The swamp was close, but not close enough to worry him. If he followed through with his original plan, tomorrow might be a very different story.
Feeling like slime, he strode through a riot of untamed bushes, tangled vines and stone statues rendered all but invisible by an invasion of weeds.
A headache throbbed in his temples. Mia trusted him. She believed he’d been sent to keep her safe. And she tasted like fine red wine.
Swearing, he pushed through a bed of heavily perfumed oleanders. Because he’d gone deep into the garden, he almost missed the sound of the storage shed door rolling open. What he didn’t miss was the sound of the old Dodge engine struggling to turn over.
Cursing, he vaulted over the garden fence and set his sights on a black void where the oversized door should have been.
The truck’s engine caught and roared. Ryder reached the shed, saw Mia in the truck—alone, thankfully—and pounded his fists on the hood.
“What the hell are you doing?”
She didn’t answer, just slammed the Dodge in gear and shot forward. It was either jump out of the way or be knocked down, because she wasn’t listening and she definitely wasn’t stopping.
“Do not need this,” Ryder said through his teeth. He followed at a jog to see which direction she took, saw her fishtail to the left and he ran for the shop.
When he crashed into Desdemona on the staircase, he realized she’d heard Mia leave as well.
“Car keys are on a hook next to the front desk,” she puffed. But she grabbed his arm before he could leave. “What’d you do to make her bolt like that?”
“Nothing, damn it. I was beating myself up in the garden. You?”
“Working on a sure-fire rat trap.” She released him, made an agitated shooing motion. “Go on, then, go. Catch her before the real bad does.”
If the real bad was out there, and Ryder suspected he was, the guy had a better than even chance of overtaking Mia before he did, given that Desdemona drove a Fiat, circa 1970. Still, the car had guts, and the turn Mia had taken gave her only one option road-wise for the next ten miles. The trick wouldn’t so much be to catch up as to get ahead of her on this uneven stretch of gravel.
That he spied the Dodge within five miles of Desdemona’s shop had nothing to do with his driving skills and everything to do with the live oak lying across the road. She’d already doused the headlights and killed the engine, but a thin beam of moonlight revealed a figure moving through the trees, and he didn’t know of any animals in the area that ran on two legs.
She understood the swamp better than he did, Ryder conceded. She seemed to know instinctively which obstacles to circumvent and which ones she could safely scale. Even with his longer stride, it took him several minutes to close on her. When shouting didn’t work, he let another few minutes elapse while he searched for a way to cut her off.
“Mia, for God’s sake,” he called to her. “I don’t want to tackle you.”
“Then don’t,” she called back.
“You can get killed in the swamp at night.”
She swore at him.
“Stop it,” he warned.
To his amazement, she did. Stopped dead thirty feet ahead of him. And whipped around with her Magnum double-handed and aimed directly at him.
Sucking in badly needed air, he showed her his raised palms. “No weapon here, okay? And no intention of drawing one.”
“That’s really excellent news. For me anyway. Not so much for you. I’ve got the trigger most of the way squeezed.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that. So let’s both of us just calm down and keep our heads while you tell me what set you off.”
“Oh, come on, Ryder, this is a highly explosive situation. Shouldn’t you be there, there-ing me?”
“Pretty sure that’d get me blown away at this point.”
“So our time together hasn’t been completely wasted. You believe I’ll shoot, and I believe you’re scum. It’s Rick, right? Your name? Rick Ryder?”
Although his eyes narrowed, he held her gaze. “Is that a problem?”
“Rick or Ricky as in Richard, I assume. Not Reid, as in what Crucible said in the message you showed me.” At Ryder’s crude curse, Mia smiled. “We’ll call that a yes. My phone’s dead, Rick. Guess you didn’t notice I borrowed the one on your dash back at the diner. I still had it in my bag when we got to the antique shop. You got a text message, by the way, although I use the term ‘message’ loosely. It was really a threat. Aimed at you, and sent, I imagine, by the phone’s actual owner. I’m paraphrasing, but it went something along the lines of if you screw up you’ll be as dead as me, only your death will be more painful. No sign off.”
“Mia, look—”
“I did look. Very thoroughly. Obviously, I replayed Crucible’s video. According to him, Reid’s one of the best in the business. Not sure how I missed that when you played it for me in my New Orleans office, but then I only knew you by your surname until Desdemona called you Ricky. Guess I was too stressed to twig right away. Would have gotten there in time, I imagine, but time wasn’t necessary in the end.”
He saw the glitter of fury in her eyes as she circled away from him, and he couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.
“Tell me, Rick Ryder, and you might as well be honest, because whoever sent you that message called you ‘bro,’ which imparts a world of information in three small letters. Are you and the man who murdered Helene Dubose brothers? Think eye color before you answer.”
“We’re not brothers, Mia. We’re not related at all. The eye color’s a coincidence, and not a particularly uncommon one. Lots of people have hazel eyes.”
“Gold.”
“Only in low light.” His gaze flicked from the gun to her face. “The phone belongs to a man named Reid Grogan.”
“Yep. Got that.”
“He’s the person who’s supposed to be guarding you. He’s Rogue.”
“He’s crap, and if crap’s the best Crucible’s got, I’m better off on my own.”
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“About Rogue, yes. The brother thing
’s a harder sell.” She raised her gun a notch. “Who are you, Ryder, and why did you kidnap me?”
Slime, he reminded himself. With his hands still raised, he took a cautious step toward her. “I lied to you, Mia. I didn’t kidnap you.”
“Why?”
Here he was, on that boggy middle ground between concept and pond scum.
Ryder eased sideways, more out of habit than having a plan. Never stop moving, he’d been taught. An opportunity might present itself.
“I’m a cop.” He forced both a neutral tone and a steady gaze. “I worked in Jacksonville for eight years before I transferred to New Orleans. You already know that’s where the first of the killings took place.”
“So, as a cop, a homicide cop, I presume, you wanted to be part of the investigation.”
“The first victim was a blind woman.”
“The first and the worst,” she recalled. “Strong allusion to voodoo. Killer—probably not mine—gouged her eyes out. I remember the conversation.”
“It wasn’t a complicated scenario. Crucible stepped in—undoubtedly due to the gore factor—and the department stepped out.”
“You didn’t like that.”
“Cop, Mia. No, I didn’t like it. Crucible had his own ideas about how the investigation should be handled. He also had his own team of agents. City cops didn’t make the grade.”
“Simple as that, huh?”
He worked up a smile. “Not really. It took some doing, but I got hold of a list of Crucible’s agents. I discovered I knew one of them. Not well, but enough to take the connection deeper.”
“Enter Reid Grogan.”
“We butted heads once on a case in Florida. He’s…unconventional.”
“As compared to your by-the-book attitude.” The moonlight gave her sea-mist eyes an intriguing silver sheen. “You lied to me, Ryder. You impersonated a government agent. You damn near got me killed. And now we’re in the middle of a big old swamp, each knowing that a killer, who’s not about to go away, could be ten miles or ten yards from us at this moment. Don’t move,” she said when he would have stepped to his left.
He glanced down, saw nothing and raised his eyes. “Snake, alligator or quicksand?”
She smiled. “Skunk.”
“I think I prefer alligator. How close?”
“Three feet. He’s considering.”
“I don’t suppose you’d ‘consider’ firing a warning shot.”
“That’d just piss him off. Could be he’s considering because there’s a snake in the water next to him.” Mia arched guileless brows. “Snake Scream Swamp, Ryder. And we both know snakes don’t scream any more than alligators read, so…Their world.”
Before he could respond, he heard a loud hoot. When a tiny animal shrieked, the skunk’s tail snapped up.
Choosing the lesser evil, he dove for Mia. The snake—Jesus, there really was one gliding through the shallow water—passed right over his boot when he landed. He ignored it and Mia’s gun, snagged her by the waist and got them both out of harm’s way on higher ground.
She could have kicked him, or kneed him, or hell, shot him if she’d wanted to, but she settled for a shove that cost her both her grip on the gun and her footing on the slippery rise.
“You’re a bastard, Ryder,” she accused from her knees. “Whether you’ve told me the truth tonight or not, you’re still a card-carrying, badge-wearing bastard with the scruples of rat.”
“I’ll accept that.” Reaching down, he pulled her to her feet. “Minus the card-carrying part. I’m not a murderer, Mia. And I’m not a murderer’s brother.”
“So you say—What are you doing?” she demanded when he hauled her against him. “You won’t get around me with anything as feeble as a—”
“Quiet.”
“—kiss,” she finished on a low hiss.
He searched the trees, a difficult task in the dark with strands of moss hanging like a thousand broken cobwebs from the branches. Finally, he nodded ahead. “Someone’s using an infrared scope.”
She stopped fighting and followed his gaze. “Could be a hunter, poacher, whatever.”
“Yeah, and that whatever might be after human prey.” He held fast when she would have pushed free. “Your choice, Mia. The guy behind the scope or me.”
“I don’t trust you. I’m not sure I’ll ever trust you again.” Mutinous eyes rose to his face, before she glanced into the trees. The sound of branches being eased aside receded as both the person and his scope moved away from them. With a frustrated sound, she whispered, “Damn you to hell, Rick Ryder.” And grabbing him by the hair, yanked his mouth onto hers.
CHAPTER TEN
“I’ll go back for the car in the morning,” Ryder said when they returned to Desdemona’s antique shop in the swamp.
But Mia wasn’t listening. She’d kissed him. She hated him—or wanted to—and yet she’d taken one look at his mouth and kissed him until her mind had gone blank, and all she’d been able to think about was having sex in a predator-infested swamp.
As logical moves went, she’d have been better off staying in New Orleans.
“Not happy.” She yanked her clothes off in Desdemona’s guest room. “Not dealing. Not properly.”
“Not dead either, little kitten…”
The voice in her head could have been Iona’s or Desdemona’s. It sure as hell wasn’t hers. Fine, she wasn’t dead. But Ryder had lied to her. She felt alone, angry. And, God help her, she still wanted to have sex with him.
“Cracking up,” she said to the shadows that seemed to be everywhere in the room.
Also hungry, she realized when she discovered it was after 10 p.m. Maybe that’s why she’d kissed him. Her brain was starved for nutrition.
Whether that made sense or not, she went with it. She’d go with anything that would get her back to the level-headed person she’d been. Or thought she’d been, but apparently hadn’t.
Okay, enough, she decided. Forget kisses and killers and lies. Desdemona had told her to raid the kitchen any time she felt hungry, and she was going to take her hostess up on that offer.
Pulling on her pajama pants and tank, she took a flashlight from the dresser and made her way down to the shop.
The ticking clock sounded louder than before, but she chalked that up to perception and twitched away the sensation of ants crawling on her skin.
The floor creaked beneath her—no way to avoid that—while she carefully forged a path toward the rear of the building.
Spotting Billy in his chair, she paused to play her light over him. Had he been smiling earlier? She didn’t think so. And she was sure his eyes hadn’t been wide open.
“Spooky,” she murmured.
Raising the beam to the high shelves, she noticed a collection of other dolls, most of them made of rags, none of them particularly riveting.
“So what is it about you, B-Billy?” His name stuttered out when she brought the beam back down. Stepping back quickly, she stabbed an accusing finger at his face. “Okay, you’re not smiling. Why aren’t you smiling? You were a minute ago. And we’re the only ones here…I hope.” She looked away, then back. And jumped halfway across the aisle when she saw Billy’s mouth was now open in a silent scream.
“Stop it. Just stop it, right now.” Temper surged. “It’s been a really bad day, and I’m in no mood to play games.”
The air behind her stirred unexpectedly. A rough hand covered her mouth, and a man’s rusty voice croaked in her ear. “If games aren’t your thing, lady, you busted into the wrong establishment. Because while this here place might not be yours or mine, seeing as we’re both standing in it, I say, game on.”
* * *
Mia didn’t know what happened next. Confusion reigned, and it began with the man behind her emitting a broken yelp in her ear.
The hand on her mouth vanished. She fell forward, almost knocking Billy out of his rocker. With her palms braced on the wall, she steadied herself, and then pushed upright.
&n
bsp; The yelp became a gurgle, followed by a high-pitched plea for air. Shaking her head to clear it, Mia located the flashlight she’d dropped and swung it around to the shelves behind her.
“What in God’s name are you doing, Ryder?”
“Catching a fox in the henhouse.” He hauled a tall, wiry man away from the shelf, spun him around and shoved him against it—back first. “This is Desdemona’s son.”
“The bar owner.” Mia recalled him.
“That’s the one. Fortunately, she has two other sons who’ll watch out for her after we’re gone.” He shifted his attention to the man he currently held by the throat. “Tell the lady you’re sorry, Benny.”
“Mama didn’t say you were coming, Ryder.” Benny offered Mia a lopsided smile. “I am most deeply sorry, ma’am, that you’re a guest and not a thief come to rob Mama blind.”
Mia laughed at the apology. Her life probably would get more bizarre, but at the moment, she honestly couldn’t see how. Still smiling, she looked down at Billy. And felt the blood turn to ice in her veins.
Billy’s chair was there. But Billy the doll was gone.
* * *
“He just fell from his seat in the tussle, is all.” Desdemona brushed the doll’s hair back in place, blew the dust from his cheeks. “There you go, Billy, right as rain. I even polished up your rocking chair. What do you think, Mia? Isn’t Billy a handsome boy?”
“Yes, very handsome.” She made herself smile. “Are you sure you’ll be all right when we’re gone?”
“Sure as can be. Got three sons, two of ’em big as linebackers. And Benny’s bar isn’t called the Fox for nothing. You just go, and don’t worry about the bad chasing after you. Ricky’ll keep you safe.”
“Yes. Well.” Mia hugged the older woman. “Thank you. For everything.”
* * *
The morning had dawned hot and steamy with a low overcast that spoke of something more ominous than a light summer rain. Where was Ryder taking her today? No idea. Why she was going with him? Even more of a mystery.
“Not dead, little kitten…”
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