by Sandra Brown
He just gave her a sardonic look.
“A tightly tied bandana would work just as well.”
“Not even near.” He turned her around.
“Can you at least leave them in front?”
“Not while I’m asleep.”
“What could I do with my hands tied?”
“I’m not sure, but I don’t want to be surprised. Don’t move from this spot.” He went outside.
She didn’t move but she did conduct a visual search of the place. He’d hidden her phone. The phone battery. The car keys. Where, where, where?
When he came back inside, he was still buttoning up his fly. “Get in the backseat and lie down.”
“I’ll swelter inside that car.”
“You want me to take your clothes off?” At the look she gave him, he snickered. “I didn’t think so. Go lie down.”
“When are you going to call Panella back?”
“After he’s had time to think it over. Or, you could tell me how to contact Josh and we could be done here.”
“I can’t.”
“Then get in the car.”
“If you wait too long, Panella may—”
“Stop stalling. I’m tired.”
Unprepared to engage in another wrestling match, this time with her hands tied behind her, she went to the car, got in, and lay down on her right side. “My arm goes to sleep in this position.”
“When it does, roll over.”
“I’ll chatter, sing, keep you awake.”
“I’ll put a gag in your mouth.”
He went to the trunk and rummaged among the things in it. She listened to the clank of license plates, the thump of the tire iron, the rattle of empty plastic bottles and sacks of canned goods, trying to think of ways in which one or the other could be used to debilitate him, at least long enough for her to get off a 911 call.
The tire iron would be ideal, but even though he left the trunk open, what good was having access to its contents with her hands bound behind her?
When he came back into her range of vision through the open backseat door, he was carrying a folded bright blue tarpaulin, which he dropped to the floor. He turned to her and, as though he’d been following the track of her thoughts, addressed the helplessness she felt.
“I’ll leave your feet free. There’s not much you could do without the use of your hands. I guess you could try running to the main road before I chased you down, but whatever you tried, you’d fail.”
“If I’m going to die anyway, I had just as well try to escape.”
“I admire that fighting spirit, Jordie. Truly I do. The thing is, I don’t wake up in a cheerful mood on the best of days. If you woke me up trying some doomed-to-fail stunt, I’d be so pissed off I’d likely tie your feet together, gag you, shut the car doors, and then it really would be sweltering in there. Or I could always put you in the trunk.”
As he turned away, she said under her breath, “You’re not all that nice.”
He came back around. “What was that?”
“Nothing.”
He gave her a hard look, then his eyes tracked down the length of her body and all the way back up, pausing in places that grew warm under his scrutiny. “I’m not all that restrained, either.”
He always had the last word, disallowing her to enjoy even a small triumph. Resentfully she watched him unfold the tarp. “I suppose you use that to wrap bloody bodies in.”
“It comes in handy.” He spread the tarp over the grimy floor a few yards away from the car, then popped open the first two snaps on his shirt and pulled it over his head.
She quickly looked away to avoid the sight of his bare chest.
“Jordie.” He came to stand just beyond the open backseat door. “Jordie.”
Feeling foolish and cowardly, she jerked her head back toward him. “What?”
“Pistol.” He touched the holster at his hip. “Cell phone.” He patted his right jeans pocket. “Cell phone battery.” He patted his left jeans pocket. “You might manage to get one away from me, but not all three.”
His hands remained flat against his pockets, bracketing the frayed fly of his jeans, which she was relieved to see he’d finished buttoning. The waistband was low and loose, curled slightly forward away from his torso where skin and hair were sweat-damp.
Cowardly or not, she turned her head aside again and closed her eyes. She heard the worn soles of his boots scrape against the concrete as he stepped away, the rustle of the tarp, sounds of him settling. Then an encompassing, almost palpable quiet descended. The next sound she heard was the even breathing of someone who’d fallen instantly but soundly asleep.
He slept like a baby, while she was still trying to attach a definition to the way he’d touched her when he replaced her bra strap. She didn’t want to think of it as a caress, but that was what it had been. The most disquieting thing about it, the aspect of it that had stopped her breath, had been his absorption, his fixation on the textures of her.
Compelled by curiosity and a confounding restlessness, she raised her head so she could see him through the open car door.
He lay on his back, his shirt bunched beneath his head. One hand lay at his side. The other, the one that had handled the satin strap with such delicacy, maintained a loose clasp on the pistol grip.
But despite the rhythmic expansion and recession of his rib cage, she didn’t trust that he lay in the boneless lassitude of deep slumber. Any stimuli would bring him bolt upright, eyes slashing like sabers, muscles instantly reactive.
She laid her head back down and settled more comfortably onto the seat. If she lay still and quiet and allowed him to sleep, it might buy her more time. If she provoked him, he might follow through on his threat to shut the car doors, or stuff her in the trunk, or decide that for two million dollars he could live with the guilt of having killed his first woman.
Chances were good that he would reach that conclusion anyway. Even if he had to settle for less, he would squeeze as much as he could from Panella and finish the job.
The job contracted by Panella but prompted by Josh.
Why had her brother done this stupid, stupid thing? Where was he? Had he paused to consider the tragic chain of events this irresponsible act would incite? When he fled the safe house, had it been a spontaneous decision spurred by desperation? Or had he meticulously planned it?
Of course he’d planned it, she told herself. He wouldn’t have left anything to chance.
As always, thoughts of her brother were conflicting, suspending her between loyalty and resentment, anxiety and agitation. She worried for his safety and wanted to know that he was unharmed. But she also wanted to shake him senseless for continuing to cause so many people, herself included, untold distress and unhappiness. He’d stolen hard-gained funds from hundreds of people, but to her knowledge he’d never expressed remorse or compassion for his victims. In fact, on one occasion he’d disparaged them for being gullible and greedy, saying that if not for avarice, they wouldn’t have been eager to sink their life savings into investments so transparently bogus.
No, it hadn’t been Josh’s conscience that had compelled him to turn informant, but rather a fear of harsher punishment if he didn’t.
Even Shaw had recognized that everything Josh had done had been self-serving, but only she knew the extent of her brother’s selfishness. She hadn’t been bankrupted by his larcenous scheme with Panella, but she’d been the first and longest-standing victim of Josh’s manipulation.
When he’d acknowledged his alleged crimes to her, she had lent moral support. But in a private moment, when Josh, with hand-wringing indecision, asked her advice on what he should do, she’d told him without hesitation, Take your punishment like a man.
That being not what he wanted to hear, he’d predictably turned the tables and made her the villain for not taking his side, for not doing enough, for not fiercely denying any wrongdoing on his part.
True to form, he harkened back to the accident that
had ordained their relationship. It was Josh’s excuse for any shortcoming, his season pass to cover any transgression, his free ticket for unlimited self-absorption.
Those fateful moments in 1992 had charted a course from which she and her brother had never deviated. Through childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood, it had kept her tethered to him as securely as a ship is to an anchor.
She had remained Josh’s custodian until that day when he was escorted away by federal marshals. They weren’t playground bullies against which she could defend him. Josh wasn’t a child anymore. He was a man, and therefore accountable.
As she’d hugged him good-bye, she’d whispered in his ear, This is it, Josh. I’m done.
She had meant it, too. He’d wheedled his way out of facing felony charges and had been granted a second chance that was more than fair. It was up to him what he did with it.
And he’d blown it.
So, yet again, she was suffering the consequences of his bad judgment and self-interest. Wherever he was, was he aware of what had happened to her last night? Would he care? If she didn’t survive this, would he ever acknowledge, even to himself, that she had died because of his unrelenting selfishness?
Shaw— Had she thought of him as Shaw?
He wouldn’t kill her. Would he? Surely not. Not after touching her that way.
She breathed deeply, as though inhaling an anesthetic. Her hairline grew damp. Her cheeks burned. A rivulet of sweat trickled through the valley between her breasts. Drowsily she realized that they felt heavy and full and achy, and, had her hands been free, she might have pressed them.
Surrendering to the drowsiness that the stifling heat induced, and lulled by the rhythm of Shaw’s breathing, she closed her eyes.
Chapter 14
Disappointingly the noon newscasts didn’t yield any leads on the murder-kidnapping in Terrebonne Parish.
They did, however, motivate an Orleans Parish prosecutor to pay a visit to the FBI division office. His name was Xavier Dupaw, and the only thing loftier than his name was his ego.
He strutted into Joe’s office, announcing, “I was at lunch and caught the noon news. Looks like Shaw Kinnard is at it again.”
Joe Wiley, feeling downright hostile toward the ADA for declining to indict Kinnard when he was in custody, offered nothing by way of a greeting.
Hick was only slightly more cordial. “Funny how that works, Dupaw. You let killers go, they kill somebody else.”
Dupaw took umbrage. “My hands were tied. The police had nothing on him.”
“They were still digging.”
“Meanwhile an innocent man was languishing in jail.”
“He wasn’t—”
“Innocent until proven guilty,” the prosecutor said. “Ring a bell?”
Joe wanted to ring his bell, all right. The prosecutor shied away from a case if there was the remotest possibility of losing it.
“Do you have any solid leads on the Bolden murder and the Bennett woman’s disappearance?”
Hick glanced at Joe, who remained silent and sullen. Speaking for both of them, Hick said, “We have a crime scene unit assisting, but the Terrebone Parish SO is investigating Bolden’s murder.”
Dupaw frowned. “Do the personnel out there have the chops for it?”
“As murders go, it was straightforward,” Hick said. “Kinnard came up behind Bolden and shot him in the back of the head.”
“Yes, but the victim’s association with Billy Panella make it bigger than a straightforward murder. Do a bunch of country bumpkins have the know-how to—”
“The country bumpkins have balls,” said Joe, who had kept his cool for as long as he could. “When they catch Kinnard they’ll charge him for murder and won’t give a fuck how long he languishes in jail.”
Xavier Dupaw puffed himself up with righteous indignation and stalked out.
Joe stood, pushing back so hard off his rolling chair that it hit the wall behind his desk. Each minute that ticked by without something happening was making him crazy, because every minute that ticked by reduced the odds of Jordie Bennett being found alive.
If she didn’t make it, Joe would forever blame himself for not notifying her of her brother’s escape from the safe house as soon as they’d discovered him gone. Joe had mistrusted her just enough to withhold the information, then watch her to see if Josh would seek her out for help and, if he did, to see what action she would take: Shelter him, or surrender him to the authorities.
He might never know, and that was gnawing at him.
He and Hick had reviewed witness statements taken in the bar until they could recite them from memory. Deputy Morrow’s only lead—a woman who called the sheriff’s office and swore she saw Jordie Bennett being fed into a tree shredder—turned out to be the fabrication of a schizophrenic who’d gone off her meds. Her family apologized profusely, but investigators couldn’t recover the time it had taken to ascertain that it was a false alarm from a head case.
Now, feeling claustrophobic, Joe headed for the door. “I’m gonna go to the bathroom. Call Tennessee again. See if they’ve turned up something.”
Hick looked prepared to argue, but he reached for the desk phone. When Joe returned, Hick was hanging up in apparent disgust.
“Five minutes of conversation boiled down to two words: still nothing.”
Joe hadn’t expected there to be a breakthrough, but he shared Hick’s disappointment and chagrin. Josh Bennett had been missing for four days, and the only traces of him discovered so far were the ankle monitor and a set of sneaker prints leading from the safe house through a greenbelt about two miles deep that eventually fronted the access ramp of the east–west interstate, where it was assumed he had hitched a ride.
Frustrated, Joe returned to his desk chair and pinched the bridge of his nose till it hurt. “Where is that sniveling little shit?”
“He’s littler than when we last saw him.”
Joe lowered his hand from his face and shook his head in bewilderment. “What gets me is that nobody became suspicious when Bennett began making these cosmetic changes.”
“The dry eye was diagnosed by an ophthalmologist,” Hick reminded him. “He was even prescribed drops for it.”
“All right, but the drastic weight loss? I shed twenty pounds, Marsha might or might not notice if I’m standing in front of her buck naked. On Bennett’s frame you’d notice that kind of drop.”
“Not if he dropped it over a six-month time period.”
“I guess,” Joe sighed. “The bottom line, though? He played them like a freakin’ fiddle.”
“Played all of us, Joe,” Hick said grimly.
Joe’s scowl conceded that.
As the afternoon wore on, they decided to use the local evening newscasts to go public with Joshua Bennett’s fugitive status.
Joe called in the office’s media liaison. “Notify the local stations. Tell them in advance that I won’t be answering any questions. I’ll only read aloud a statement, so make it good.”
The agent said jokingly, “What am I supposed to say? Accountant at large? Armed with a deadly calculator?”
Joe didn’t think it was funny. “Say he’s wanted for questioning into his sister’s suspected kidnapping and Mickey Bolden’s murder.”
Hick looked at Joe askance. “He is? Since when?”
“Since I said so,” Joe retorted. “And it’s one hundred percent true. If Bennett hadn’t taken a hike, Panella wouldn’t have sent his favorite hit man and an accomplice after his sister. Mickey wouldn’t be dead, and she wouldn’t be missing. Last night would have been just another night of pool for Skull Head and his cronies, Deputy Morrow could have stayed to finish his victory pizza party, I’d have copped a feel off Marsha during ‘Take My Breath Away,’ and you’d have test-driven one of your promising relationships.”
By now he was boiling over. “That nerd has eluded law enforcement agencies for four days. Maybe the public can do our job better and find him for us. So I don’
t care if we label him a goddamn ax murderer or the sniper who actually shot Kennedy, I want Josh Bennett’s altered-state image on TV by five o’clock.”
The other agent scuttled out to write the official statement.
A few hours later, Joe and Hick watched the first edition newscasts while eating another carryout meal off the desk. While Joe was reading the statement, the stations showed file footage from their coverage of the Panella-Bennett case and placed a photograph of Josh taken at the time side by side with an artist’s sketch of how he’d looked when last seen in Tennessee.
“Well, let’s see if that shakes something loose,” Hick said as he muted the audio. “Wish you’d consulted me on your wardrobe, though.”
Marsha called to tell him she’d seen him and asked when he was coming home. He told her not to expect him any time soon. He could wait for a development at home just as well as here, but while uniformed officers were out beating the bushes and dragging the bayous, he felt he should be on duty, too.
He paced while Hick essentially ran their trot lines.
“Call Morrow back.”
“Joe, I talked to him an hour ago. He promised to call if anything…” He stopped arguing when the phone rang. He answered and identified himself. “That’s us.”
He listened for a moment, then sprang from his chair and motioned Joe out of his. “We’ll call you from our car for directions.” Promptly Hick hung up. Joe was already out the door. Hick followed.
They were moving down the hall at a fast clip when Joe worked up enough spit to ask, “Ms. Bennett?”
“Her brother.”
“Dead?”
“Alive.”
By the time they reached the elevator, Hick had explained that a man who lived in a small town near the Mississippi state line had called his parish’s SO after watching the evening news. He reported having seen Josh Bennett in a convenience store earlier in the day.
“This isn’t another schizo, is it?” Joe asked, and he impatiently jabbed the Down button repeatedly.
“Deputies followed up with the store’s cashier. She didn’t see the news, but they showed her the drawing of Bennett. She confirmed.”