by Sandra Brown
Beside Shaw, Jordie was trembling, but she didn’t speak.
“I know you’re in there,” the deputy said. “A fisherman saw the light going on and off.”
Shaw looked at Jordie with reproach, but she didn’t make eye contact, just kept staring at the door.
It was slowly pulled open, the creak of the hinges distinct despite the rainfall. A man, crouched with pistol drawn, appeared in the opening, silhouetted against his car’s headlights, a tall form beneath a cowboy hat. He took one step into the building, but Shaw ordered, “Far enough.”
He halted. “Shaw Kinnard?”
“The pleasure’s all mine. You have a family, Deputy Morrow?”
“What?”
“You heard me. If you want to see your loved ones again, back away. Otherwise I’ll shoot you.”
“And then I’d see your flash and shoot you.”
“No you won’t. Because you might hit Jordie Bennett who’s handcuffed to me.”
The deputy hesitated then ducked out of sight. “Ms. Bennett,” he called from outside, “are you all right?”
She looked at Shaw, who nodded his permission for her to speak.
“Yes. But…but I am handcuffed to him, and he has a gun, and—”
“Enough!” Shaw said.
“We need an ambulance!” she shouted.
“Who’s hurt?” the deputy shouted back.
“Don’t say another word.” For emphasis Shaw yanked on her handcuffed hand. He envisioned the deputy speaking softly but urgently into the mike clipped to his shoulder, alerting a dispatch operator to the hostage situation, requesting backup and EMTs.
“He’s good,” Shaw said with grudging respect. “Took him less than the three days I allotted. Of course he had your help with the spotlight.”
Jordie looked at him with evident anxiety. “What are you going to do?”
He thought about it for a moment, keeping pain, nausea, and unconsciousness at bay by a sheer act of will. “Getting captured is one thing. It happens to the best. But being played for a fool is something else.”
Moving swiftly, he hooked his left hand around the back of her neck and pulled her face to his, aligning their foreheads and pressing hard. “I turned down two million dollars, plus what I fantasized would be a really great fuck, in the hope that you’d take me to your brother and his thirty mil. You can tell me now. Would you ever, ever, have done that?”
“I couldn’t.” She angled her head back so she could meet his eyes directly. “I don’t know where Josh is. Or the money. Or Panella. I don’t know anything. I never did.”
They held that way for a moment, then he stifled a laugh of self-deprecation and withdrew his hand from her neck. “Morrow! You ready to parley?”
Chapter 20
Agents Wiley and Hickam had a bumpy helicopter ride back to New Orleans. Marsha wouldn’t have liked knowing they were dodging lightning and wind shears. Joe himself was relieved when they set down at the heliport.
They drove directly to the office, where Joe surrendered his phone to a techie who swapped it out with another, to which Joe’s calls were rerouted. Specialist agents would attempt to pinpoint Josh Bennett’s location using the call he’d made to Joe’s cell, but Joe didn’t hold out much hope for success. Joe had called the unknown number several times since Josh clicked off, but it hadn’t been answered.
“He probably stripped that phone of its battery and SIM card as soon as he hung up,” Joe said to Hick as they paused at their side-by-side cars in the parking garage.
“Where did he get a phone? When?”
“Where? Anywhere. When? Hell I know,” Joe grumbled. “He may have had it secreted somewhere all along. He could have a dozen of them. An inexhaustible supply of disposable SIM cards.”
“He sounded scared, though.”
“Well he should be. If he talks himself into believing that Panella is willing to let bygones be bygones, he’s an idiot.”
“I don’t think he’s an idiot.”
“Neither do I. For all his bluster, he’s scared. Why else would he volunteer that information about Jordie?”
“Do you think it’s true?”
Joe rubbed the back of his neck. “Don’t know. But—” He broke off when his phone chirped. He reached for it quickly, thinking that maybe the fugitive was calling back. But after seeing the caller ID, he said to Hick, “Morrow,” and braced himself for bad news. Had Jordie Bennett been found? Or only what was left of her?
“Hey, Morrow.” Joe listened for several seconds then frantically motioned Hick toward the driver’s side of his car, saying into the phone, “We’re on our way.”
Even if he and Hick would have been comfortable taking the chopper back out, Joe wouldn’t have asked a pilot to risk flying in this weather. So they had to drive, and it was like doing so underwater. Windshield wipers were useless against the cascade.
An hour and a half outside New Orleans, Hick was leaning forward over the steering wheel and gripping it with both hands. Joe said, “Is there a black equivalent to ‘white-knuckling’?”
Without taking his eyes off the road, Hick gave a wry smile. “Don’t know of one, but it applies.”
“Should be coming up on the turnoff soon.”
To Deputy Morrow’s knowledge there wasn’t a physical address for the barnlike structure in which Shaw Kinnard was holding Jordie Bennett hostage. But he’d provided Joe with the nearest highway intersection, which Hick had located by using the car’s GPS. From there, Morrow had given him oral directions by phone.
Now, as they rounded a bend in the rural road, Hick said, “This must be the place.”
Through the rain, light bars of several squad cars were flashing their tricolor warning. Some of the vehicles were parked end to end along the shoulder; one was sideways in the middle of the road. A state trooper, outfitted in a slicker, alighted from the passenger side and came over as Hick rolled to a stop and lowered the driver’s window.
A waterfall of rainwater flowed from the brim of the trooper’s hat as he dipped his head and peered in at them. “Agent Wiley?”
“I’m Wiley. This is Agent Hickam.”
The trooper acknowledged them in turn and introduced himself. “The building’s about half a mile up the road, which has turned to mush in this rain.”
“Is this the only road in and out?”
“Yes, sir. Dead-ends at the building, which backs up to wetlands.”
“We don’t know if he has a vehicle, but we have to assume so. If he somehow eludes us—”
“He’ll have to get past all of us here, and that ain’t gonna happen.”
Joe liked the trooper’s confidence. “We don’t know what kind of arsenal he has, so be careful.”
“Y’all, too.”
The trooper backed away and signaled the driver of the unit parked sideways to pull forward. Once they were past the roadblock, Hick followed the trooper’s flashlight as he motioned him into a left turn.
The road was mush. They slip-slid for the approximate half mile until they came to a ditch on the verge of overflowing. Beyond it loomed a structure described to Joe by Morrow as a cross between a barn and a garage on steroids.
Parked in front of it were numerous squad cars, several official SUVs, and two ambulances. Law enforcement personnel were outfitted in rain gear, making it difficult to differentiate the various departments represented unless their backs were to Joe and he could read the reflective letters on their slickers. Most reassuring to him was that there were plenty of them, signifying a lot of firepower.
As Hick carefully steered their car across the road spanning the swollen ditch, one of the officers separated himself from the rest and came slogging toward them. It was Morrow. Beneath the brim of his hat, his face was set with tension.
Joe motioned for him to join them inside the car. He opened the backseat door and got in, mumbling an apology for slinging rainwater. Joe asked him if there had been any change since they’d last talked.
<
br /> “Nothing.”
“So you don’t know for sure that she’s still alive.”
“She was when I got here. Last thing Kinnard said was that he would surrender to you and you only. Since he laid down that condition, there’s been nothing from him but silence, and I’ve tried several times to engage him. Her, too. Not a peep. But if he’s killed her, he didn’t use a gun. No shots have been fired.”
“She didn’t tell you why an ambulance was needed?”
“No. I asked several times which of them was hurt. Got no answer. I guess the son of a bitch meant it when he said he wouldn’t talk to anybody except you.”
Joe considered the hulking building and dragged his hand down his face. “Okay. Showtime. Pass me that slicker, please.”
Morrow took it from the backseat and handed it up to him.
“If you think I’m letting you go in there by yourself, think again,” Hick said.
“That’s what the man wants.”
“Screw what he wants. You investigate stock fraud and other scams. This is a job for the cowboys.”
“Which he swore to shoot one by one if they stormed the place,” Morrow said.
“Till they kill him,” Hick argued.
“Or he kills her.”
Joe’s words fell like bricks and crushed Hick’s argument. He said shit under his breath and turned to address Morrow. “You’re sure there’s no other way in or out?”
“Not unless there’s a tunnel underneath, and, you know, dig a hole in Louisiana, it fills up with water, so I don’t think a tunnel is likely. Risk is too high to try going in through the roof in this weather. No other doors, and I’ve had men examining the exterior walls plank by plank looking for a concealed one. None of the lumber is rotten enough for us to bust through without giving him plenty of advance warning.”
The deputy hitched his chin toward the front of the building. “That door is the only access. It’s stood ajar like that since I backed out of it. I thought he might poke his head around, take a look-see. But if he’s come near that opening, we missed it. No motion inside at all.”
Hick exhaled in frustration and looked at Joe. Joe gave him a vapid smile. “I’m wearing a vest.”
“He’s a head-shot guy.”
Neither of the other two said anything to contradict or qualify that, and Joe sort of wished that one of them had. “Well, we gotta get her out of there.” Without further ado, he checked his pistol, tucked it into the holster at the small of his back, then pulled on his slicker.
Once he and Hick had protected themselves as well as they could from the downpour, the three got out and approached the building, using the parked vehicles as cover. Morrow’s squad car being the closest to the door, they crouched behind it.
Hick chambered a bullet in his pistol. “Just so you know. He kills you, I’m sending him to hell.”
In all seriousness, Joe said, “I would appreciate that. Thanks.”
“Then I’m making a move on Marsha.”
Joe looked at him with disdain. “That certainly gives me the will to live.”
“But your crap wardrobe goes straight to Goodwill.”
Morrow had retrieved a bullhorn from his car. He duckwalked over to where they were hunkered and passed it to Joe. “Press that button and talk into it.”
Joe took the bullhorn from the deputy and looked at Hick. “You have a patron saint you pray to on a regular basis?”
“Several.”
“Now would be a good time.”
“Plus, my aunt on my mama’s side dabbles in voodoo.”
Grimly Joe said, “Even better.”
Shaw had been aware of the assemblage beyond the door, but neither he nor Jordie had remarked on the arrivals of other vehicles, the new sets of voices, the lights periodically slicing across the entrance and penetrating the holes and cracks in the walls.
He’d heard the men scuttling along the exterior, looking for a way in, or a possible escape route for him. They were wasting their time. There wasn’t one.
It was coming up on two hours since the deputy had arrived, and time had become an important factor. Shaw was fully aware that his body was being poisoned by bacteria. Several times Jordie had pleaded with him not to wait for the FBI agent to arrive, but rather to surrender himself to the officers already there, to let paramedics take emergency measures before transporting him to the nearest hospital.
It had been a tempting proposition, but he remained undeterred. “We wait on your fed.”
Having grown increasingly lightheaded, he’d been lying down for the past twenty minutes. Jordie sat beside him, her knees raised, her forehead resting on them in a posture of despair.
He thought back to how she’d looked in that seedy bar. A knockout. Upon getting his first up-close look at her, his center had tightened and warmed with awareness and want, and he’d thought, Damn.
Of course the male animal in him had immediately zeroed in on seeing her naked.
But his more objective professional side had also kicked in and registered the details of his target: the casual but smart outfit, the pale manicured fingernails, the dark and satiny hair left to do its own thing, plush lips brightened only with a transparent sheen. All of which had told him that she was well maintained but unembellished. Classy without fuss or muss.
Comportment-wise, she’d been cautious, but controlled. Cool.
By contrast, her clothes were now stained with blood. It was caked underneath her fingernails, some of which had been broken when she was scrabbling for the propeller fragment. Her hair had lost its shine and was gathered into a makeshift ponytail; her lips were dry and tightly seamed together.
He’d reduced her to this. No two ways about it: He was a bastard.
She stirred, raised her head, and looked down at him. No longer controlled and cool, she looked desperate and close to unraveling. “You won’t kill anybody else, will you?”
“All depends on how it goes.”
She sniffed. Until then, he hadn’t realized that she was crying. For the first time since Mickey had been shot dead right in front of her, she was shedding tears but doing so silently and with admirable dignity.
“I don’t want anyone else to die because of me,” she said. “Please. Don’t do that to me. Promise.”
He held her gaze for several seconds, then closed his eyes. “No promises, Jordie.”
She made a near inaudible hiccupping sound, but said no more and bent her head over her knees again.
“Know what I keep thinking about?” he asked. “Panella.”
“What about him?”
“I’ll bet he’s fit to be tied, wondering if you’re dead yet. He probably expected me to get back to him within minutes of our last conversation and tell him you were history and ask how to go about collecting my money. You know he’s gotta be climbing the walls. He doesn’t like to be crossed.”
“No. He doesn’t.”
“Huh. Spoken like you know that for fact.”
She didn’t respond. Shaw raised his right hand, the one cuffed to hers. Hers remained limp against his as he gently tugged on a strand of hair that had worked itself out of the bandana holding her ponytail. He kept pulling at it until she turned her head back to him.
“You got on Panella’s fighting side? How come? Wha’d you do?”
“I avoided him.”
“I’ve seen pictures. He’s not bad looking. In fact, Mickey called him a pretty boy.”
“Only on the outside.”
“So you do think he’s attractive.”
“I admit he’s handsome, but I dislike him intensely and have made no secret of it.”
“Ah.”
All this time, he’d been absently playing with the strand of hair still in his grip. Now she pulled it away from him. “Don’t say ‘ah’ like you know what I’m talking about. You don’t.”
“I can take a couple of guesses. One, Panella treated Josh like a lackey. That crawled all over you.”
“
True. They were supposed to be equal partners, but the Panella Investments Group bore only one name, and there was no question as to who was in charge. Panella relied on Josh’s acumen. Without it, he couldn’t have made the numbers work for as long as he did.
“But he treated Josh like a doormat and Josh permitted him to. He did what he was told and rarely crossed Panella. I hated that. But their working relationship was between the two of them. I stayed out of it.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“I doubt it. Want to know why? Because Panella seems to resent you almost as much as he despises your brother.” He waited for her to comment and when she didn’t he asked for one.
She said, “There’s no love lost between us.”
“Hmm. Interesting choice of words. I asked Mickey what your relationship was with Panella. He said he didn’t think you had one. That you were just Josh’s next of kin, and, as such, you were a pawn, and that was all there was to it.”
“There you have it.”
“No, I don’t think so. In my experience, if a man wants a woman dead to the tune of two million, his reason usually involves R-rated activities. What I’m thinking—and tell me if I’m getting warm—”
“Just drop it, please?”
“Panella had a lech for you.”
She didn’t say yea or nay.
“You turned him down.”
She didn’t respond.
“Which irked him, and he’s still irked. But he must have gotten some satisfaction from scaring off your boyfriend.”
Her reaction to that was swift and angry. “What do you know about it?”
He gave a meager, nonapologetic shrug. “Mickey liked to gossip, and we had time to kill.”
“While you were tailing me all over Tobias.”
“What happened with the boyfriend? Panella edged in on him?”
“No. There’s never—ever—been anything remotely romantic between Panella and me. From either side.”