by Sandra Brown
“She stabbed you.”
“But she didn’t know then that I’m a federal agent. She knows better than to shoot a federal agent, or even to brandish a weapon at one, especially when she’s within full view of the fucking FBI building.” As he reached the end of all that, he was shouting.
“Please stop referring to me in the third person.”
“You’re holding two federal officers at gunpoint, and that’s what you’re worried about? Third person?”
“I’m worried about the well-being of my brother.”
He looked over at Wiley and said as an aside, “Lifetime pattern.”
“Enough, Shaw! Put the car in gear and drive.”
“I can’t do that and keep my hands where you can see them.”
“Stop being cute. I’m serious.”
“You’re really going to do this? Face criminal charges?”
“If I have to.”
“The chances of succeeding here are nil, Jordie. Wiley and I are both armed. Raised hands or not, between the two of us we can—”
“You’re not going to hurt me.”
“Right, I’m not. Because you’re going to come to your senses and give me the pistol. Now.” He pushed his right hand between the front seats.
She yanked the small handgun out of his reach.
“Give me the friggin’ pistol.”
“Or what?”
“I’ll take it from you if I have to,” he warned softly. “I don’t want to hurt you, but if it comes to that, I will.”
“No you won’t.”
“What makes you think so? You and me last night? That was a time-out. We’re back to business now.”
That smarted, but she stayed focused. “You won’t do anything—”
“Don’t count on that.”
“—because I know where Josh is.”
She could tell he hadn’t expected that. He looked over at Wiley, and, when he came back to her, his eyes were as razor-sharp as they’d been the first time she’d seen him in the bar. But now they were also glinting with anger.
“You’ve known all this time?” Then, shouting again, “All this time?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I swear on my soul. Not until Agent Wiley mentioned Bayou Gauche. Then I knew.”
She couldn’t tell whether he believed her or not. His gaze was still hard and demanding. “All right, where is he?”
“Drive.”
“We’re not budging an inch till you tell us where to find Josh.”
“I’ll direct you to where I believe he might be, but only after we get to Bayou Gauche. Not before.”
“This standoff is wasting time, Jordie.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“You’re willing to give Panella time to find Josh first?”
“No, you are by sitting here!”
“Shit!”
With the expletive reverberating, Shaw faced forward, dropped the gear stick into Drive, and steered the car into a hard turn. “Feel free to read her her rights,” he said to Wiley. “Or are you scared of her?”
Wiley frowned at the rebuke, but turned to Jordie. “Okay, you’ve got our attention. Start talking.”
“You’ve seen Josh in what you referred to as freak-out mode.”
“He comes apart at the seams. Easily.”
“Correct. If he’s cornered by U.S. marshals and state troopers, who do you think he’ll best respond to? Armed officers? Or me?”
Wiley looked over at Shaw. “She has a point. She convinced him to take the prosecutor’s deal when neither Hick, nor I, nor his own lawyer made a dent. If anybody can persuade him to give himself up now, it’s her.”
Shaw didn’t comment, but his body language came through loud and clear. He was chewing his inner cheek, driving fast, his fingers clutching the steering wheel so tightly, they’d turned white. For letting his pistol get lifted, he was probably madder at himself than he was at her.
Wiley asked her, “So where do we find your brother?”
“I don’t know that we’ll find him, but I know where to look. You know the Christmas festival and boat parade they have on Bayou Gauche?”
“I know about it. Never been. Marsha says we should take the kids one year.”
“I’m glad you brought this up,” Shaw said. “Remind me to book my reservation.”
She ignored him. “After the…accident, our family no longer celebrated Christmas at home, so we went the first year they held the boat parade. My dad’s elderly aunt lived in Bayou Gauche. We picked her up at her house and took her to the waterfront with us.
“Josh worked at spoiling every family outing. That night he was particularly sullen. Bent on ruining everyone’s time. He said he’d have rather stayed away from the crowd. Why hadn’t we just left him at the aunt’s house? He could’ve watched the parade from there.”
She paused, studying first Shaw’s and then Wiley’s expressions. Both were skeptical, but neither spoke.
She plowed on. “To me her house seemed isolated. No neighbors to speak of. On the edge of a swamp. Its distance from town was deceptive, however, because the road to it winds around town. As the crow flies, it was much closer.
“When Josh said he should have been left behind, he pointed out to me that from the banks of the bayou where we were watching the parade, you could see the light poles from Great-Aunt’s boat dock. Just barely. But every once in a while you could catch the light from them twinkling through the trees.”
“Twinkling?” Shaw’s penetrating gaze was fixed on her in the rearview mirror. She avoided his scornful remark and stayed on Wiley.
He asked, “Is the old lady still alive?”
“She died not long after that. I hadn’t thought of her or that occasion in years, not until you mentioned Bayou Gauche.”
“What became of her house?”
“I have no idea. Dad wasn’t an heir, if that’s what you’re thinking. We never went there again.”
Wiley frowned. “What I’m thinking is that it’s—”
“A crock of crap,” Shaw said.
“—very incidental,” Wiley finished.
“Ordinarily, I would agree with you,” she said, addressing Wiley’s comment, not Shaw’s. “But Josh isn’t ordinary. He fixates on things. Never forgets anything. If he remarked on her house, even incidentally, when he was a boy, it’s still in his mind. Besides, he has no other connection to that town. What else would draw him back there even long enough to send a package?”
Shaw said, “It’s so farfetched, it’s—”
“It’s something!” she snapped. “Do you have anything better?”
Wiley raised a hand, signaling for a truce, and asked her if she had an address or any portion of one for the house.
“No.”
“That true, or are you just not sharing?”
“It’s true, but I wouldn’t share if I knew. You’d inform the marshals and everyone else, and they’d get there ahead of us. I want a chance to talk with Josh first.” She raised the pistol slightly. “I demand it.”
His annoyance plain, Wiley looked across at Shaw, who seemed to have run out of sardonic commentaries. Wiley came back to her. “Do you remember how to get to the house?”
“I was a child and didn’t pay attention to directions, things like that. But once we hit town, I think I can follow my nose.”
Wiley studied her for a moment, then said sternly, “You had better not be jerking us around, Ms. Bennett.”
“I’m not.”
“She’s not.” Shaw steered the car off the road so swiftly, Jordie and Wiley were slung aside in their seats. She managed to keep hold of the pistol as the car skidded to a sudden halt on the shoulder.
Shaw turned to her. “Don’t you think I’d notice that the pistol in my boot was missing?” Then he turned to Wiley, who was looking at him agape. “I just wanted to see what she’d do with it. Since she didn’t shoot us, I think she’s told us the truth.”
Josh didn’t know how Panella had
learned about the house formerly owned by his great-aunt. After she died, it had stayed uninhabited for years and had become known by locals as the “haunted house.”
When he’d inquired about it, the realtor had been glad to finally unload it. He’d bought it under a fake name and had been scrupulous not to leave a paper trail leading back to his ownership. He had thought it was a refuge known only to him.
He supposed it no longer mattered, though, how Panella had discovered it. He had.
He’d come in the early-morning hours, not at night, when Josh would have expected him. He’d been sitting at the kitchen table fiddling with the box of toothpicks as he was wont to do when contemplating a problem, like what his next move should be, when suddenly the back door was thrust open and Panella had stormed in.
Josh had nearly wet himself.
“You double-crossing motherfucker. Did you really think you’d get away with this?”
It was a rhetorical question. Panella had hauled him out of his chair with such force, his teeth snapped together, catching his tongue between them. He tasted his own blood. Panella threw him against the wall and held him there, his left hand pressing Josh’s Adam’s apple, vowing that if Josh didn’t tell him what he needed to know, he would suffer hours of medieval-caliber torture before being allowed to die.
Now Josh’s gaze moved from the man’s unblinking eyes, to the pinkie ring that glittered from his left hand, and finally to the pistol held in his right.
Josh needed to pee, wanted to cry, wanted to tear out his hair in outrage, pitch a fit to end all fits. He’d been so close…so close to getting away. Now things weren’t looking too good for his future, immediate, or long range.
“That banker must be mistaken,” he said. “A password for Jordan Bennett? For Jordie? Why would she have a password to your account?”
Panella just stared. His expression never changed.
“Maybe it’s her company name. Extravaganza. That could be it. No, that’s probably too long. And passwords often require a combination of numerals and letters, don’t they? They’re usually case sensitive, too. Upper. Lower. Maybe her birthday? Her birthday backward? Our mother’s maiden name?”
Realizing that he was babbling, he stopped, huffed several breaths to stave off hyperventilation, and tried to stop the pending onslaught of crippling anxiety. But he looked into Panella’s face, and the panic attack roared toward him like an unstoppable freight train.
He had to produce that password.
Chapter 38
With only a few miles remaining until they reached Bayou Gauche, Shaw, Wiley, and Jordie discussed terms.
The two men agreed to hold off notifying the law enforcement teams already conducting a search for Josh for the reason specified—that Jordie held more sway over her brother than anyone.
“The less pressure he feels, the better our chances that he’ll see reason and surrender,” she told them.
Addressing Wiley, Shaw backed her. “Besides, if we get a bunch of eager beaver lawmen hopped up before we even know that there is a house and that Josh is there, then my cover’s blown for no good reason, and you look like an idiot for believing in a tale about twinkling lights spun by the fugitive’s sister.”
“I’ll go along,” Wiley said, speaking over his shoulder to Jordie. “And you’ll get your chance to talk sense to him. But if he doesn’t surrender within a few minutes, or does something the least bit nutso, I’m calling for backup. And I mean it. And I don’t care if you do shoot me. Got that?”
“Goes double for me,” Shaw said.
“Give me five minutes with him.”
“Three,” Shaw said.
She could tell by his stubborn tone that he wasn’t giving on that.
“All right, three. And promise me that Josh won’t be harmed.”
“Can’t promise that, Jordie,” Shaw said with all sincerity, “because we can’t predict what he will do.”
He was right, of course. She wished for a peaceful, casualty-free outcome, but neither Shaw, nor anyone, could guarantee it. The denouement depended largely upon her brother’s emotional stability, and that wasn’t a reassuring prospect.
“Something else to consider,” Wiley said. “We might run into Panella.”
“Nothing to consider,” Shaw said. “We run into Panella, he gets no more time to surrender than instantly before I blow him to kingdom come.”
After that, the three of them lapsed into a somber silence like soldiers mentally gearing up for a dangerous mission.
Another grim possibility had occurred to Jordie: Before they reached Josh, he might be located by another law officer. If he tried to get away, he could be wounded or killed in the attempt. She felt that time was running out for her brother and willed Shaw to drive as fast as he could.
But as they entered the town of Bayou Gauche, she was seized by dread and uncertainty as to how the day would play out.
“Okay, which way?” Shaw asked from the driver’s seat.
“If I’m remembering correctly, the house was on this side of town and off in that direction.” She pointed. “Take a left at the first stoplight.”
Just as they made the turn, Wiley’s cell phone beeped. He checked the readout. “Hickam’s mom.”
“Take it.” Shaw pulled into a filling station parking lot. “I have some rules of engagement to talk over with Jordie.”
Wiley got out and answered his phone as he stepped away from the car.
Jordie, unhappy over the delay, said, “Rules of engagement?”
“Nonnegotiable rules. First.” Shaw extended his hand through the space between the front seats.
She hesitated, then laid the pistol in his open palm. “It was a rash move, I’ll admit. But would you have brought me along otherwise?”
“No way in hell. Would you have shot me?”
“I seriously considered it when you called last night only a time-out.”
“I said that to test you, see what you’d do.”
“I realize that now.”
They shared a meaningful look, then he gave his head a small shake as though to pull him back into the here and now. “The threat of being shot didn’t convert me to your way of thinking. You made sense. If we find Josh, you could be a valuable asset.”
“Thank you.”
“Hold off on that thanks, because there’s something else.” His serious tone arrested her attention. “I told Wiley about Costa Rica.”
She had expected him to, of course, but the implications were daunting. “Does he see me as an accomplice?”
“He’s thinking it over. Reason I’m telling you now is in case you’re planning to bamboozle us, help Josh get away, something like that. It would make you look really bad in the eyes of the law.”
“I won’t.”
“Okay.”
“I swear to you.”
“Okay.” He held her gaze for several seconds, then said, “Now…the other rules.”
A few minutes later, Wiley opened the passenger door and got in. “Sorry that took a while longer than it should have. The lady is so relieved she couldn’t stop talking. Hick’s regained consciousness. He’s alert. Responds correctly to the questions put to him.”
Jordie exclaimed her relief.
“That’s good news,” Shaw said.
“Not for you,” Wiley said. “He woke up mad as hell. Remembered the hoodie, thought it was you who’d shot him.”
“I hope somebody told him different.”
“He still doesn’t like you. But nobody does, right?”
Shaw looked in the rearview mirror and shot Jordie a look. She smiled back, but then her features returned to being taut with anxiety.
Following the directions she gave him, Shaw angled off the main road onto one whose bends were dictated by the winding bayou which it ran alongside. The swampy landscape on either side was a panoply of sameness, one perspective exactly like every other. With no signposts, either natural or man-made, one could get easily lost. He b
egan to doubt Jordie’s recollection.
But then she said, “There. On the right.”
The turnoff was marked only by a rusty and dented metal mailbox. It sat atop a steeply leaning wooden post that seemed to be relying on the surrounding weeds to keep it from toppling. A quarter of a mile farther along the narrow gravel road, a house came into view.
“That it?” Shaw asked.
“Yes. I’m positive.”
It didn’t look at all hospitable or even habitable. There wasn’t a sign of life about the place, not a blade of living grass or green shrubbery. Even the surrounding trees had been suffocated by the Spanish moss that hung from their bare branches.
“Looks like a haunted house,” Wiley said.
“That would appeal to Josh,” she said. “He likes video games with supernatural and horror themes.”
Shaw stopped the car about fifty yards away from the house, but he kept the engine running as they assessed it. It was built in a typical Acadian style, supported on stout cypress beams, with a deep porch on three sides, shaded by the overhang. The exterior might once have been white, but the elements had stripped so much of the paint that the structure had been left a mournful gray that matched the monochromatic setting. Rust had taken over most of the tin roof. Snaggletoothed hurricane shutters hung crookedly from the windows.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Shaw said. “Which is why I hate that there are so many windows. We’re sitting ducks for anybody who might be inside looking out.”
“Josh wouldn’t shoot anybody,” Jordie said.
“Wasn’t referring to Josh.”
“Panella?” Without waiting for an answer, Wiley drew his weapon just as Shaw did. “No car here.”
“I noticed that,” Shaw said. “Not sure what it means.”
“Maybe it means that I was wrong,” Jordie said. “That no one’s been here in ages.”
“I don’t think so.” Shaw couldn’t explain why he felt that. It was a gut thing.
“I should call for backup,” Wiley said.
“No!” Jordie said. “Let’s at least determine that Josh isn’t here.”
“Or that he is,” Shaw said. “Sink down.” He took his foot off the brake and drove slowly toward the house, then stopped about ten yards short of the steps leading up to the porch. He opened the driver’s door and got out but remained crouched behind the door. Wiley did the same on the passenger side. Shaw looked across the car’s interior and said, “This is your show.”