“Not helpful, Iona. Now please, get out of my head.”
“Talking to yourself is one thing, Mia. Having a conversation isn’t quite as healthy.”
Mia slid her eyes sideways, but didn’t turn as Ryder fell into step behind her. “I’m not talking to you one way or the other, Detective Ryder.”
“Lieutenant,” he corrected.
She waited until the borrowed truck was loaded and the engine coaxed to life before asking, “Where are we going, and are you sure the killer won’t hurt Desdemona for letting us stay here?”
“I’m sure, and we’re going deeper into the swamp. Desdemona’s old friend has a house there. It’s only accessible by boat.”
“And murderers are notorious for not being able to operate motorboats.” She huffed out a breath. “You’re cutting us off, Ryder.”
“One way out, one way in. If the killer shows, we’ll see him coming.”
“Unless he comes while we’re sleeping, paddle in hand, knife between teeth.”
“You want to go back to New Orleans, don’t you?”
Did she? She stared into the swamp. “I want to live,” she decided. “I know what the murderer looks like now. I remember the expression on Helene Dubose’s face when she died. I want him to pay for what he did, not only to her, but to however many of the other victims he killed as well. Also, if possible, if he has a reason, which he must, I want to know why he did it.”
“You might never know that last thing, Mia.” But she saw a muscle in Ryder’s jaw tick when he spoke. “It can take years for some murderers’ motives to be established. The guy we want might or might not be killing on his own behalf. Whatever the case, the six deaths we know about don’t appear to be connected.”
“Except for Helene Dubose’s and the first woman’s.”
“Madeleine Lessard.”
She cast him a shrewd look. “I assume Crucible’s authority strongly supersedes that of the New Orleans police.”
“Quite strongly. Your point?”
“What would he do to you if we were to go back tomorrow?”
He shoved the old truck into gear. “Nothing I wouldn’t deserve.”
That was all he had to say about crime, punishment or any other subject for the next two hours. They drove, hiked and finally made their way down to a short shabby dock where a small boat bobbed at the end of a time-worn rope.
“O-kay.” Mia inspected the craft from various angles. “The bottom’s been patched at least seven times, and there’s water in the bow.”
“Rainwater.”
“Who owns it?” she asked.
“Benny. He likes to fish on Saturdays.”
“Ryder, Benny weighs 130, soaking wet. You, me, food, our bags and gear—I hate to think.”
He gestured at the narrow waterway. “We could swim instead. Your choice.”
She barely suppressed a snarl. New Orleans was beginning to look better and better. “I still have my gun,” she reminded him. “And a whack of doubts as to why I’m trusting you enough to do this.”
He helped her down. “I sense a reluctant ‘but’.”
“There’s a voice in my head I can’t shut out. It’s telling me that while I certainly could be by now, I’m not dead. And if you add a ‘yet’ to that statement, I’m back in the truck and gone. Savvy?”
He smiled, albeit grimly, and lowered the motor into the water.
Fifteen minutes later, and riding much lower than Mia preferred, they were cruising along, following the lazy curve of the shore.
“I can’t tell the difference between alligator heads and rocks.” Ryder avoided a clump of gnarled roots by less than six inches. “You?”
“If you see rocks with knobs where eyes should be, they’re gators. My advice? Sit in the middle of the boat.” Not missing a beat, she asked, “How does Desdemona know your aunt?”
He swept his gaze through the surrounding trees. “They were childhood friends. The friendship sustained. I don’t remember not knowing Desdemona. We lost touch for a long time and then met up again in Florida. But life moves on, and so did she. To New Orleans. She rented a studio apartment there for a while. She was tight with a handful of psychics and a voodoo queen who was really a scam artist. But then I imagine only one in a thousand would be genuine.”
“Try one in ten thousand, and that’s probably a generous estimate.” Mia shrugged. “Desdemona swears the woman who owned the antique shop before her had the sight.”
“Desdemona also talks to dolls as if they were people.”
“One doll,” she corrected, but feeling edgy, let the subject drop.
Although she was tempted to trail her fingers in the cool water, Mia knew better than to do it. Instead, she sat cross-legged on the bench and watched the dense bayou plant life slide by.
“It’s strange—and don’t take this to mean I trust you—but every once in a while I feel like we’re floating downriver on the African Queen.”
“With me in the role of the gin-drinking captain and you as the pious prude?”
She tried not to grin. “You surprise me, Ryder. I’d have pegged you as an action hero fan.”
“I am. But my first high school crush was a retrospective movie buff. She liked Hitchcock’s Suspicion, I preferred pinball. She read poetry, I read Stephen King. She had a purebred poodle named Lulu, I had a mutt from the pound called Scar.”
“Sounds like a match made in heaven.”
“It was. Until Scar knocked Lulu up. Relationship went south from there.”
“My first crush was the front man—well, boy, really—for a local rock band. He had hair down to his nipples and a bad-ass stepbrother who was into hydroponic gardening, cigarettes and black leather. As soon as I met his sexy step, my fascination with rocker boy died. I was fifteen at the time and extremely impressionable. Lucky for me, my grandmother was older, wiser, and she knew what ‘hydroponics’ really meant.” Mia cast a dubious look at the blackening sky. “Are you using a map, or have you been to this place we’re going before?”
Ryder’s lips twitches. “I came here once when I was fifteen. Benny and one of his fishing buddies tried to drown me.”
“And you responded by…?”
“Giving Benny an underwater punch in the balls, kicking his friend in the same general area and taking their boat.” He steered theirs into a narrow channel. “Do you hear something?”
Unfortunately, she did, and memory told her it wasn’t thunder. “We should probably turn right at the next waterway…Or not,” she added as they rounded a bend and she spied the piecemeal craft eighty yards ahead.
A loud boom reverberated through the air. Mia saw the water in front of the craft explode. Moments later, two or three men began to hoot.
“Poachers?” Ryder guessed.
She nodded. “We really don’t want to get mixed up with them. They might be harmless. They might also be drunken hotheads.”
When two rifle shots rang out, Mia ducked. “Okay, hotheads. Can we run?”
“Only if we ditch our belongings and the food.” Bending low, Ryder climbed over the seat and positioned himself ahead of her. “Take the tiller, stay down, and head for shore. I’ll keep them busy.”
“I should have voted for New Orleans,” she muttered.
Bullets whizzed past as the poachers—thankfully only two of them—caught sight of the interlopers and opened fire. Mia maneuvered through a complex series of tree stumps and was closing in on the shore when it occurred to her that the rifle shot was fading rather than growing louder. Risking a quick look back, she saw the poachers making for an open area of the river.
Relieved, she eased them away from the weeds.
“Well, that was ten minutes of gut-wrenching terror I could have lived without. What made them turn tail and run?”
Ryder shoved the Glock back into his waistband. “I got one of them in the arm, shot the other guy’s rifle out of his hands.”
“Impressive.”
“It would be
except for one thing.” He nodded toward the front of the boat. “One of their bullets put a hole in our side. We’re taking on water, Mia, and we don’t have a pump.”
* * *
Naturally, rain started falling in sheets almost as soon as the poachers vanished. Ryder jammed a piece of wood into the hole while Mia followed his directions and steered them toward their destination. He bailed the excess water inasmuch as he could, given that the boat wasn’t the only thing that had been hit.
“Is that a dock?” Shaking the hair from her eyes, Mia pointed through the streaming rain.
Ryder drew a mental map, hoped his memory was sound and nodded. He threw a jacket on over his T-shirt, readied the line and gave her top marks for a smooth glide alongside what remained of the ragged planking.
“House is up there.”
She tipped her head way back. “I see a shack, Ryder, not a house, and at least forty questionable steps leading up to it.”
Very questionable, Ryder thought, but held his tongue. Desdemona insisted the bones of the staircase were solid, and she liked Mia too much to be lying.
Once the boat was tied off, he loaded up, regarded the steep stairs, then told Mia to hold onto his jacket and stick close. If she slipped, he figured he’d either save her or they’d both be gator bait.
Thunder began to rumble halfway up. Sheet lightning accompanied it. Ryder felt his mind starting to haze. His right side had gone numb. But he’d gotten them into this mess, and he intended to get them out of it.
If he died after that, no problem. He’d miss out on making love with Mia, but that was his own fault for not letting Grogan…What, he wondered as the haze became a looming cloud of gray. For not letting Grogan make love to her instead?
Mia poked him from behind. “You’re climbing in slow motion, Ryder.”
“I’m carrying your suitcase plus whatever Desdemona loaded into two large backpacks,” he pointed out.
“Well, it’s not food. I’ve got that, and she sent enough of it along to feed ten people for six months, so climb faster before either I collapse or the stairs do.”
With a glance at the top, he upped the pace and hoped like hell he’d done the right thing bringing her here.
The lightning that flashed lent an atmosphere of fairy-tale entrapment to the swamp. Go in and never come out. Or find your way out as Helene and Madeleine had done and wind up dead.
Thunder was crashing directly overhead by the time they reached the shack. Ryder pulled the key Desdemona had given him from his pocket, worked it into the lock and would have kicked the door in if he hadn’t heard the click.
A blast of damp air and a hint of spice greeted him. Ryder dropped Mia’s suitcase and the backpacks, felt for a match on the sill and struck it.
Mia brushed past him while he held the flame to the first of two hanging oil lamps.
“Wow.” She turned a slow circle. “This place is amazing. Iona would love it. It looks like a swamp version of a voodoo palace. You are not going to tell me Desdemona’s friend actually lives here.”
“She used to.” He unhooked and handed her one of the lamps. “There’s a generator outside the back door. Fuel’s in the shed next to it. Shower’s in the loft. You’ll find a small fridge just outside the kitchen. Plumbing’s decent. There’s a TV, but no cell or Internet service.”
Swinging to face him, Mia started to speak. Then she stopped and raised the lamp. “Ryder, are you—Oh, my God, you’re not all right, are you? Is that blood?” She snatched his jacket aside, causing him to hiss in a sharp breath. “That’s not a scratch.”
“It’s not a snake bite either.” But it burned like one. He stopped her hand before she could yank his T-shirt up. “The bullet went right through, okay? I don’t think it hit any major organs.”
“Ryder, skin is a major organ, and blood’s vital. You should have said something.”
He fixed his eyes on hers, as much to steady himself as anything. “We had to get here, Mia. We made it, and I’ve told you what you need to know.” Enough anyway, he hoped. “There’s no way in except up those stairs. You hear someone coming, you shoot. Do you understand?”
“I hear, I shoot.” She caught him when he swayed. “Ryder…”
He shook off her alarm. “Bleeding’ll stop. I’ll be fine.” The room wavered and began to dissolve. “Just need to sleep for a while. Stairs creak, Mia. You can’t miss…”
He knew she said something, but he couldn’t hear her over the thunder. Or the jackhammer beat of his heart. The room went dark in stages, until all that remained were her mist-green eyes.
In a distant part of his brain he heard a final snap. A second later, the room, Mia’s eyes and everything around him went black.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ryder couldn’t escape the slimy cesspool that was alternately ice cold and scorching hot. Wherever he was, whatever part of hell he’d landed in, it had claws and teeth, and it used them with gleeful abandon.
It also called him a bastard more than once. Then it smiled and thrust a pair of fiery spikes into his side.
He wrestled with the leading edges of pain, but mostly he just searched for a way to stay ahead of it.
One way in, one way out. Or was it the other way around? Or simply a circle with no end?
Think twice, act once. Okay, there was an expression he remembered. His grandmother had lived by those words. Because of him, she might have died by them. Grief didn’t mix well with alcohol, and he’d been tied up on a case the night she’d arrived in New Orleans…
He saw her face through a child’s eyes. She’d been a stunningly beautiful woman in her youth, but there hadn’t been a clairvoyant bone in her body. He’d heard her sigh over the lack more than once.
“Just a touch, you would’ve thought. Ah, but gifts and other things go how they go. It’s not for me to question what is. And, who knows, maybe a gift like that is more of a burden than a blessing in the end.”
He hadn’t understood what she meant. And as he’d grown, he’d stopped being curious about cryptic remarks.
He’d wanted to be a cop. To solve homicides. To solve anything, really. If a crime went cold, he wanted a shot at finding the answer. So how could he have done anything other than waylay Grogan in that dockside bar?
Protect Mia LeMay. That was the assignment. It wouldn’t be easy, but he was up to the task. He’d protected other witnesses on other cases.
He’d just never used one as bait to trap a killer.
Grinding his teeth, Ryder sweated out a renewed burst of double-edged pain. Desdemona’s voice reached him on its blistering heels.
“Always something you don’t count on gonna jump up and bite you, Ricky. You loved your grandmamma, that part’s easy. But now you’re starting to love the pretty woman who believes in you, who trusts you. Suddenly, tables are turning, maybe all the way around. You can’t bring back the dead, even if you love them. But you can keep the living alive, and if you’re lucky and she don’t clobber you for deceiving her, you might find a whole different kind of love.”
Yeah, find it after everything was too screwed up to fix.
Ryder drifted for a while, trapped in a churn of guilt. He saw Mia’s face, her mysterious eyes. He heard her voice as well, if not the words she spoke. If she was actually talking and not putting a voodoo spell on him.
“I should,” she said and, oh yeah, he knew she was talking to him then, because those haunting eyes hovered over him and she was pressing something that felt like a red hot poker into his side.
“You’re a lucky man, Ryder, that I have no psychic ability, no power to bend people to my will.” He sensed her cool smile. “All I have is my Magnum and a clever mind. Now, go back to sleep and pretend you’re on the African Queen.” She bent close to whisper, “Cut to the part where a bunch of leeches attach themselves to the reluctant hero’s half-naked body.”
Fair enough. He deserved to have that thought planted in his head. As for the fire in his side…
/> He felt her lips moving against his cheek, or thought he did. Might be delirious. Dreaming. Wishing. “Sleep a bit longer, Lieutenant, and be grateful you can, because I’m going to have my way with you very, very soon.” Catching his earlobe between her teeth, she gave it a sharp nip. “You think you know pain, Rick Ryder, but you weren’t raised in the bayou. Here, we take care of our own.”
Her eyes gleamed as she rose above him. And showed him her knife.
* * *
She could do this, Mia thought. She could do anything she set her mind to. But the feathers and bones and teeth scattered around the room made doing it here a great deal more daunting. Not to mention the sensation she couldn’t shake of someone hanging over her shoulder, watching her every move.
Imagination, it had to be. Whose mind wouldn’t overreact in bizarre circumstances like these?
She needed to shove it aside and use the knife. A quick thrust, a quicker twist, and it would be done.
Kneeling on the floor beside him, Mia stared at Ryder’s face. The man was so damn sexy. But the damn sexy man had lied to her. He’d dangled her like a carrot at the end of a string.
Should she punish him for that? Maybe. Should he die for it? She sighed.
Outside the shack, lightning continued to flash. It made the swamp seem grotesque and evil. But swamps weren’t evil; people were. And there was one person she knew who truly did deserve to die.
Exhaling, Mia banished her jitters, firmed up her grip on the knife, and plunged the blade into Ryder’s flesh.
* * *
He woke as he’d gone under. In stages. First there was muffled noise, then a glimmer of light, and finally, a combination of the two, with gray and black shadows playing over the walls and scratchy music grating on his nerves ends like coarse sandpaper.
He could close his eyes and block the shadows, but the music kept on scraping at his nerves.
“If you want me dead, Mia, use the knife I saw you holding and kill me quickly.”
He heard movement, a rustle of cloth. When he cracked his eyelids, there it was: her stunning face, directly above him. Watching him.
He managed a fuzzy smile. “You look like an avenging angel. Sort of.”
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