by Sandra Brown
She’d witnessed him commit cold-blooded murder. Although he hadn’t treated her cruelly, never once had he let her forget that she was his hostage and under threat of death. He had kept her frightened and unsure. Her fate had been at his whim.
The moment I laid eyes on you, your life was spared. Truth? Or just nice words to keep her off balance? She’d been inclined to believe him. She’d wanted to badly, not as a hostage, but as a woman.
And that was the most frightening aspect of the entire experience. That was what had her caught in a whirlpool of conflicting and incomprehensible emotions.
As she’d watched the ambulance speed away with him in shackles, she should have been weak with relief. Instead, all she’d felt was despair. She’d inflicted his wound, but it pained her that he was suffering so terribly. If he lived, he would face harsh punishment for his crimes. Knowing that should have been gratifying. It wasn’t.
The thought of his forbidding face didn’t cause her to shudder with revulsion, as it should have. Instead, she ached to look into it again. Recalling his touch, she didn’t flinch. Rather, she had a bone-deep yearning to be touched again. She didn’t try to erase his kiss from her mind but avariciously clung to the memory of it, deeply regretting that he had limited himself to only one.
She should have been brimming with happiness just for being alive. And she was.
But there was no real joy in it, because of her profound sense of loss over possibilities unrealized.
Chapter 24
Josh anxiously awaited daybreak.
He sat at the kitchen table, fiddling with a box of toothpicks, nearly jumping out of his skin at every sound. He was reminded of a popular bumper sticker from a few years back: YOU’D BE PARANOID TOO IF EVERYBODY WAS AFTER YOU.
The darkness made him jittery, but he was afraid to turn on the lights, now even more so than before. A light had brought about Shaw Kinnard’s capture. That was just one of the surprising tidbits that had been on the late newscasts.
According to the report, a fisherman had spotted light inside a building that had been abandoned for years. He had alerted local authorities to it, and that had led to Jordie’s rescue and her abductor’s arrest.
Good fortune for her. Disaster for the perpetrator.
Since Josh fell into the latter category, he’d taken the lesson to heart, switched off the TV immediately, and had kept every light off since. Total darkness was safer, but hell on his nerves. Throughout the wee hours, he’d crept from window to window of the house, afraid that when he looked outside he would see armed men in uniforms sneaking up on him, surrounding the house, spreading a net he couldn’t escape.
He wasn’t that good with guns, but he kept a loaded pistol within reach on the table next to the box of toothpicks. He was glad he’d planned ahead and had left the gun here in the house along with the frozen TV dinners and stocked pantry. It gave him peace of mind. With it close at hand, he didn’t feel so naked and exposed.
He detested being naked and exposed. Even in his own shower. Because occasionally, as much as he tried to avoid it, he would accidentally catch a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror and see his grotesque scars.
The passage of time had faded them. They were no longer red and pink but slick and white and shiny, like repulsive worms crisscrossing his back. He remembered being told how lucky he was that his clothing would conceal them. Even Jordie had told him that once.
“Nobody will ever know they’re there, Josh.”
He had yelled at her that he knew they were there.
That indisputable fact had shut her up. She’d never tried that platitude on him again.
Frustrated over the reminder of his deformity, he knocked the box of toothpicks over the edge of the table. They spilled onto the floor. Still feeling restless, he reached for one of his cell phones and bounced it in his palm. He’d removed the battery from the one he’d used to call Joe Wiley. This was a new phone, new battery, and it was charged.
He was tempted to call Wiley again, ask him if what they’d reported on TV about Jordie was true and that she really had come through her ordeal unharmed. He also wondered if Wiley had asked her about Costa Rica yet.
She would probably be mad at him for telling the FBI agent about her and Panella’s little getaway. From the day she’d returned from Central America, the junket had been a closed subject. Taboo. Off-limits. Josh’s tentative inquires about it had been met with frigid silence. She was probably still touchy on the topic.
But he’d had to give Wiley something last night, hadn’t he? Would Jordie rather have remained at the mercy of Shaw Kinnard, hardened criminal? They’d said on TV that he had been “gravely wounded,” but they hadn’t disclosed the nature of his injury or how he’d sustained it.
Josh hoped he’d died.
He knelt, gathered up the toothpicks by feel, and replaced them in the box. Then he made another circuit of the ground floor of the house, tiptoeing through the dark rooms, taking peeps out the windows. No need to check the second floor. He’d done so twice.
Outside, nothing was moving. He was okay.
But the suspense to know about Jordie was killing him. Yielding to temptation, he returned to the kitchen, picked up the phone, and tapped in Joe Wiley’s number. After three rings, the agent answered, sounding groggy, as though the call had woken him up.
“I heard about Jordie. Is she really all right?”
“Hi, Josh. I wondered when you’d break down and call me. I had a bet going with my wife that you—”
“Is she?”
“She’s fine. But why don’t you come see for yourself? I’ll come get you, drive you straight over to her.”
“Is her kidnapper dead?”
“Last I heard, no. But you’re not the only one who hopes he’ll die.”
Josh recognized that statement as a dangled carrot. Nevertheless, he couldn’t resist it. “I’m sure Jordie does. Did he do something to her? Hurt her?”
“She says no. But I wasn’t referring to her. I talked to Billy Panella tonight.”
Josh snorted. “Liar.”
“A few hours ago.”
“Liar!”
“Have you ever known me to lie to you, Josh? Think about it. I’ve always leveled with you even when I didn’t want to.”
“Panella’s in South America.”
“Possibly, but I brought him up to speed on what’s going on here.”
“You’re just trying to scare me.”
“You decide if you should be scared or not.”
“What’s that mean?”
“When I told Panella that Kinnard was in custody and that Jordie was alive and well, he said the F word. And the tirade didn’t stop there. I had to look up some of the words.”
“That’s not scary,” Josh said. “He always says the F word when he’s mad, and he was mad because his plot to kill Jordie failed.”
“This time. I figure he’ll try again, because…well, here’s the thing, Josh. I sorta let it slip that you were once again trading his secrets to get on our good side.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Are you scared yet? You’ve got good reason to be.”
Josh began to blubber.
“Be smart, Josh. Tell me where you are.”
Shaw resented sleep. He considered it a waste of time and disliked the vulnerability that necessarily accompanied it. He slept only when he had to and never for more than a few hours.
But he hadn’t been conscious for long before wishing he could slip back into oblivion. Any given morning a hospital was a busy place, but it seemed that everybody on staff at this one had some business in his room.
Probably they just wanted to take a gander at the man handcuffed to his bed.
His vitals were taken. Twice. His blood was drawn. At least a quart. His floor was mopped. The guy seemed to delight in banging the mop into all four wheels of his bed. His IV was checked a dozen times by a dozen different people. His dressing was changed. The row of stapl
es, like a miniature railroad track holding him together, was probed to test its durability. His piss output was measured and recorded before the bag was replaced.
Shortly after that humiliation, a male nurse showed up to give him a bed bath. He bent Shaw like a pretzel, causing him to swear viciously. “Where’d you get your training? Guantanamo?”
The next guy who breezed in was dressed in blue scrubs. “Remember me?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think you would.” Skinny and spry, he introduced himself as the surgeon who’d worked on him the day before. “We did several X-rays and scans, didn’t find any organ damage. Your large intestine was missed by this much.” He left a half inch between his thumb and index finger. “You also got by without a major blood vessel being cut. The wound was nasty, getting infected. I cleaned it out. Could have been a lot worse.”
Shaw said, “What’s the bad news?”
“Your oblique was sliced through like a steak. Using a dull knife. Had to take lots of stitches, layers of them, starting deep inside and working out. So it’s gonna be sore for a while. Take it easy. No heavy lifting. No strenuous exercise.”
He seemed to remember the restraints keeping Shaw secured to the bed, and looked like he wished he could take back that last bit. He continued briskly. “You were given a tetanus shot. If you start running a fever, get checked for infection. We’re giving you IV antibiotics, and you’ll leave here with a butt-load of them plus capsules to last several weeks. Take them till they run out. Any questions?”
“When will the staples be removed?”
“Tomorrow if all is looking good. They’re only a safety net. A physical therapist will get you up today, start you moving around.”
Shaw rattled the handcuffs.
“They’ve stationed a deputy outside the room,” the surgeon said. “He’ll be on hand to…assist.”
“When can we pull that thing out of my dick?”
The surgeon gave a lopsided grin. “I’ll send somebody in. But if you can’t pee on your own, back in it goes.”
“Then I’ll make damn sure I pee on my own.”
“Good luck to you.”
He breezed out. Fifteen seconds later, a uniformed man stalked in.
Shaw rested his head on his pillow and closed his eyes.
“Morning.”
Shaw didn’t return the greeting, but the officer didn’t take the hint. Shaw sensed him advancing into the room, stopping at the foot of the bed, looking down on him.“I rode in the ambulance with you yesterday, but you were pretty out of it. Clint Morrow, Terrebonne Parish—”
“I remember you,” Shaw said. “The man who tracked me down.”
“Wasn’t much of my doing. I got a good lead.”
“What was a fisherman doing in a swamp during a thunderstorm? Let me guess. Some crazy Cajun.”
“Takes all kinds.”
“My luck,” Shaw muttered.
After a brief pause, Morrow asked how he was feeling.
“How do I look?”
“Like shit.”
“That pretty much covers it.”
The deputy waited a beat, then got down to business. “I need you to answer some questions.”
Shaw raised his head, opened one eye, and took a look around the room. “I don’t see a lawyer.” He closed his eye and returned his head to the pillow.
Undeterred, Morrow began relating facts that Shaw already knew about the fatal shooting of Mickey Bolden. “Do you want to comment on any of that, Mr. Kinnard?”
“Still don’t see a lawyer. But if you stick around long enough, you might get to watch them remove my catheter.”
“When did you become acquainted with Bolden?”
He asked a few dozen questions. Shaw responded with sighs, yawns, and once by asking if Morrow would mind scratching an itch for him. “It’s a lot to ask, I know, but it was washed during my sponge bath.”
“Okay, talk smart,” Morrow said. “Sooner or later you’ll realize that it’s in your best interest to cooperate.”
“No, it’s in your best interest for me to cooperate.” Looking beyond him, Shaw added, “Unless I miss my guess, she’s here to run you out.”
Morrow turned to the nurse who’d entered the room. “I’m sorry, but your ten minutes are up,” she told him. “You can come back this afternoon between one and three.”
Shaw said, “That is if you have absolutely nothing better to do between one and three, because I’m not talking to you without a lawyer present.”
“Actually I do have something better to do. Agent Joe Wiley—you remember him?”
“Prince of a guy.”
“He invited me to sit in when they question Ms. Bennett. You…” He looked pointedly at Shaw’s cuffed hands. “You’ll keep.” He put on his hat and brushed the brim of it with his index finger. “Ma’am,” he said to the nurse and started for the door.
“Wait a minute.” Shaw tried to sit up but was able only to lever himself onto his elbows. “Is Josh Bennett still at large?” Seeing the deputy’s hesitation, Shaw said, “His capture wouldn’t be kept secret. It’ll have been on the news. I can ask her,” he added, indicating the nurse, “or you can just tell me.”
Morrow said, “Still at large.”
“And the feds think his sister can lead them to him?” He made a scoffing sound. “Wish them luck.”
Morrow came back to the bed. “Why do you say that?”
Shaw gauged the deputy’s apparent interest, then said to the nurse, “Beat it.”
Her sizable chest swelled with indignation. “I beg your pardon?”
Shaw fixed his coldest, most intimidating stare on her. She gathered her dignity and marched out. He returned his attention to Morrow. “Jordie Bennett doesn’t know anything. Not about her brother. Not about Panella.”
“That’s what she told you.”
“I was trying to squeeze more money out of the deal. I grilled her under pain of death. I put her through hell. Didn’t she tell Wiley all this?”
“She alluded to your death threats and persistence. But there were gaps in her story that Wiley wants filled.”
“What kind of gaps?”
The nurse reappeared, bringing with her a staff supervisor and the deputy guarding his room. The guard said, “Sorry, Sergeant Morrow. They’re kicking you out.”
Morrow said to Shaw, “I’ll be back later.”
“Wait a goddamn minute! These gaps in Jordie’s statement. Are they regarding her brother? Panella? What?”
“Probably all of the above. You included.”
“If she’d known anything about Panella or her brother, she would’ve told me.”
“Or stabbed you.” Morrow held Shaw’s gaze for several seconds, then the corner of his mouth hiked up in a quasismile. “Kinda makes you wonder who rooked who, doesn’t it?”
He turned to go. The people grouped in the open doorway parted for him. In a voice too low to hear, he said something to the deputy, then walked away. The others dispersed. The nurse Shaw had insulted shot him a spiteful look and pulled the door partially shut.
As he resettled on the hard pillow, his thoughts swirled around Jordie, star of his drug-inspired, X-rated dreams, sister of a criminal, object of Billy Panella’s affection.
Although she’d denied that, it was logical to assume. Panella had the hots for her, she’d spurned him, and he—
Or had she spurned him?
Morrow hinted that Shaw had been a chump to trust her. Obviously the FBI doubted her trustworthiness. She’d left gaps in the account she’d given Joe Wiley, and it was bedeviling Shaw to wonder what they were.
Hearing murmured voices just outside his room, he raised his head as the door was eased open. When he saw who his new visitor was, he swore under his breath.
“Not a very nice greeting.” Xavier Dupaw, assistant district attorney of Orleans Parish, came to the side of his bed and took him in from head to toe, tsking. “My, my. Look at you.”
The prosecutor tried and failed to contain a smirk. “You are in deep, deep doo-doo this time, Mr. Kinnard. Up to your ungroomed eyebrows in Panella’s doo-doo.” More tsking. “Of course, a day and a half spent alone with Jordie Bennett was a fringe benefit.” He winked.
Shaw wanted to tear out the guy’s jugular with his teeth.
“No wiggle room for you this time, my friend.” Dupaw leaned down and whispered with devilish glee, “Let’s get this party started!”
Chapter 25
Jordie kept the television in her bedroom tuned to the network morning shows, anticipating the local stations’ break-ins. Because of their brevity, her rescue was only touched upon, and there was no mention of Shaw’s condition. She paced until Gwen knocked on her door and told her that their Continental breakfast had arrived.
While sipping a cup of strong coffee, it occurred to Jordie how ill-advised it would be to meet with Agents Wiley and Hickam without having legal representation there. She didn’t want to appear guilty of any wrongdoing. But she wasn’t naïve, either.
She borrowed Gwen’s phone to call the lawyer who’d been at her side when she was questioned six months earlier and therefore was familiar with the case.
Adrian Dover was in her forties, sharp, no pushover. Better still, recognizing the implications of Josh’s escape and Jordie’s abduction, she was willing to adjust her schedule and come to Jordie’s aid on short notice. On Jordie’s behalf, Gwen called Joe Wiley and asked if the interview could be moved back to noon, allowing Jordie time to confer with her lawyer. He granted the request.
A few minutes before twelve Gwen ushered Jordie and the attorney down a corridor in the FBI building and into an interrogation room, although it was not identified as such. Jordie had been through this drill before.
Wiley and Hickam were already there. Everyone was painstakingly polite. Jordie thanked Wiley for agreeing to the postponement. He said it was just as well, because one of the toilets at his house had overflowed, creating a minor flood in an upstairs hallway.
Jordie curbed her impatience for as long as she could before interrupting Wiley’s anecdote about his wife’s encounter with the indifferent and unhurried plumber.