And what then? What if they’d given up the search? Moved on to another island without even—
“Bailey!”
Faint. So faint she might have imagined it. “Please, God,” she murmured, “let it be him. Let it be my Daniel.”
A splash. Another fish? Was that what she’d heard? A deer swimming the creek? A wild dog? Were there wild dogs out here?
“Bailey! Where the hell are—”
“Daniel! Daniel!” she screamed. “I’m here. I’m here!”
She wiggled and squirmed through a clump of reeds, tripped and fell into water again. And when she splashed her way to the surface, she saw the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life—Daniel Catlin illuminated in the moonlight, paddling toward her in some sort of tiny primitive boat.
She swam toward him. Every inch of her body ached; she was cold to the core of her bones, and she felt as though she were a hundred years old, but she’d never felt as strong or as lighthearted.
“Damn, babe, but you’re a Tawes, all right. I’ve been hunting you for hours.”
Then his arms were around her, and he was pulling her over the side into the wooden boat and covering her muddy face with kisses. “I thought I’d lost you, babe.”
She squeezed him as tight as she could, heedless of the pain in her injured arm, no longer caring about the mud or the insect bites or the threat of Grace and her gun. She clung to Daniel, inhaling his earthy scent and savoring the feel of his warm body against hers. “You’re not dead,” she blubbered. “I thought you must be dead, or . . . or you would have found me.”
“I told you to hide,” he said between kisses, “not go Indian on me. Are you sure you’re not a ghost, woman?”
She ran her hands over him, over his face and hair, and felt him flinch. “You are hurt,” she said. “Are you shot?”
“Nothing a few blood transfusions and a new heart won’t fix.”
“Daniel?”
“Shh, shh,” he said, pulling her against him again. “I’m teasing you. I’ll be fine. She hit me once in the left calf, grazed my head, and nicked my right upper arm in that first barrage. Damned bird. I thought I had the drop on her. I think I’ve got a bullet in my thigh too. Lucky for me she had the twenty-two and not the three-oh-eight.”
“Grace . . . did you . . . Is she dead?”
“I hit her. I know I did. I found a blood trail. She’s somewhere on this island, but I doubt if she’s got enough left in her to come after us tonight. The police helicopters probably sent her into hiding.”
“If she’s alive.”
He nodded. “If she’s still alive.” Gently he settled her in front of him on the bottom of the boat. “Careful. The dugout won’t sink, even carrying two of us, but we don’t want another dip tonight.”
“Can you find your way out of here?” she asked, kissing his left arm and his bare chest.
“Out and home again, if some overanxious waterman doesn’t shoot us before we reach Will’s skiff. I talked to Cathy’s husband, Jim. Every waterman on the bay is hunting for you, babe. And I don’t doubt they’ve searched every inch of Tawes. By daybreak they’ll be hunting the beach for our bodies.”
“The authorities?”
“I imagine they’re out, too. But it will be fishermen, crabbers, farmers, the people who know this place like the back of their hands who’ll stand the best chance of finding us. Not just from Tawes, but from Deal, Crisfield, Smith, the Eastern Shore. We may have our own way of doing things, but we look after our own.”
“I don’t care if they do shoot me,” she said, nestling against him. “All I want is to be warm and dry and . . .”
“And what?”
“Have you hold me.”
“All you had to do was ask.”
“Daniel?”
“Yes, babe.”
“I’m asking.”
The first rays of dawn were breaking over the trees when Daniel watched a medical technician wheel Bailey’s limp body off the helicopter pad at Peninsula General in Salisbury and through the wide doors to the emergency room. He refused a wheelchair and followed them, clutching a wool blanket around his shoulders and ignoring the shouted questions of the TV reporter who’d appeared outside just as the helicopter was touching down.
“Can you verify that this is the kidnap victim?” the young black woman demanded. “What can you tell us about her injuries? Has the alleged perpetrator been apprehended?”
Two uniformed Maryland state troopers closed ranks behind Daniel. “There are questions we need to ask as soon as you . . .”
But Daniel’s eyes remained fixed on the stretcher ahead of him, which was being wheeled through another set of double doors and into a curtained-off area. When he’d found her, Bailey had seemed in good shape, despite the bullet hole in her arm, but once they reached Will’s skiff she’d collapsed. One minute he’d been stripping off her wet clothing to wrap her in a plastic tarp so she could warm up, and the next she’d seemed to go into shock. She’d slipped in and out of consciousness in the helicopter, and from what he could hear the medics saying, her vital signs weren’t the best.
He could have felt better himself, but Bailey was all that mattered now, not finding Grace Catlin or seeing to his own injuries. Everything in the world centered on that one small woman behind the blue-striped curtain, and he didn’t have the slightest intention of moving more than a few yards from her side until he was certain that she was in stable condition.
A dark-haired man in a white coat with a stethoscope hanging around his neck stepped from another cubicle. “Mr. Catlin?”
Daniel met the physician’s gaze. “Go to hell, Lucas,” he said quietly. “Get out of my way. Turn around and walk out, or I’ll call that reporter in here and blow your cover so high you’ll be spending the rest of your career counting counterfeit DVDs in Outer Mongolia.”
“That’s a bad attitude,” Lucas answered, taking a step closer. “Not wise, not after what you—”
Daniel dropped the blanket and shoved the agent into the nearest open door, which fortunately led to a small toilet. He stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind them. “What the hell is going on? What are you doing here?”
“Tying up loose ends. You know how David hates loose ends.”
“How many times do I have to tell you that I had nothing to do with Marshall’s blackmail or his death?”
Lucas glared at him.
“I imagine that if you looked hard enough, you could find a dozen people who wanted to be rid of him, including his own political party. If I found out about the drugs, who else knew?”
“Exactly. You’re a loose cannon. What’s to keep you from deciding to sully the senator’s reputation, or to topple a house of cards and bring down—”
“To hell with them all,” Daniel said. “Do you think I care about that now? I walked away from it, but I keep my word. Whatever I found out or didn’t find out when I was part of the agency, it’s buried as deep as Marshall.”
“You keep going back to the senator, Danny. Why is that?”
“He made a deal with the devil, and his note came due. I didn’t kill him.”
“You took Marker’s death to heart. And the woman’s.”
“Mallalai? Nobody forced her to strap a bomb to her waist and blow up that coffeehouse. I was wrong about her—about who she was and what side she was on. She was as much of a terrorist as Joe Marshall. The difference is, she did it for her ‘holy war.’ He did it for the money.”
Lucas brushed aside the white lab coat, and Daniel caught a glimpse of the butt of a Glock tucked into his waistband. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t wrap this up here and now.”
Daniel smiled. “Because I’ve left proof. Classified information. Names, dates. Pictures. Taped conversations. Members of Congress and other public servants who would be very unhappy if their dealings with the Afghani underworld became public. And they will. If anything happens to me—if I have heart attack, if I’m mugged by a c
rackhead on the street, if I go for a late-night swim and accidentally drown—it will all come out on the evening news. CNN, CNBC, FOX—”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Am I?” Daniel snatched the stethoscope off Lucas’s neck and tossed it into the sink. “I’m no crusader. So long as no one pisses me off or decides to use Tawes for a missile base, your photo and biography stay out of the newspapers. Just make it clear that Bailey Elliott and my brother are strictly off-limits. Do we understand each other?”
A muscle twitched along Lucas’s jawline. “I’ll have to clear—”
“So, clear it. Make it all go away, Lucas. And you go with it. Because if I ever get the slightest notion that you’re within a hundred miles of Tawes or of anyone I care about, you’ll have your one moment of fame.”
Lucas smiled with his mouth, but his eyes remained as expressionless as glass. “I told them that they were overreacting, that you could be reasoned with.”
“It never was about Marshall’s death, was it? It was always the coming election.”
Lucas shrugged. “I wouldn’t consider running for public office yourself, or writing a book. That would be . . . unwise.”
“Nothing further from my mind. I’m just a country carpenter, a burned-out bureaucrat who saw a friend blown to bits and decided—”
“He didn’t have the balls for this kind of work?”
“Let’s just say I left for health reasons. I lost my appetite when I discovered that some of our most respected members of the U.S. Senate, and others within spitting distance of the Oval Office, are partners with some of the world’s biggest drug-running warlords—”
Lucas touched his closed lips. “I think our conversation is over. We’re satisfied that Marshall’s death was accidental and that—”
“Was it true? Did he father Bailey Elliott?”
“There was a paternity blood test done several decades ago. Whatever else you might think of the senator, he wasn’t stupid. He wouldn’t have paid if he weren’t the biological father.”
“But Grace couldn’t know that.”
“No.” Lucas smiled. “I’m certain she can’t access the same information the agency does. It must have been a lucky guess on her part.”
“And blackmailing Creed Somers or the other men involved wouldn’t have been as lucrative.”
“Exactly.”
“Is your information accurate? Lab mistakes have been made before.”
“Not those reinforced by DNA tests twenty months ago.”
“How did . . . Never mind,” Daniel said. “Our business is concluded, other than that small matter of Grace Catlin’s eight-hundred-thousand-dollar bank account in the Caymans.”
Lucas adjusted the hospital badge that identified him as John Lazzaro, MD. “The amount you mentioned is correct, but you’re mistaken about the owner. That money’s all in your name, Danny-boy.”
“Drug money.”
“It all spends the same, and as far as the agency is concerned, it doesn’t exist.”
“Why in my name?”
“Insurance that that conscience of yours doesn’t cause us any more trouble.”
“Blackmail?”
“Call it a severance package. You start talking, you’re the first to go down. And you’ll never live to see the inside of a federal prison.”
“The money’s mine? No strings?”
“All yours—with the agency’s blessings.”
Without another word, Daniel turned his back on Lucas and the agency and hurried back to take up his vigil outside the cubicle where Bailey’s condition was being assessed. She was all that mattered now. He could sort out everything else later.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“It’s time we were getting you back to your bed, Mr. Catlin,” the nurse said as she entered Bailey’s hospital room.
Daniel glanced over his shoulder at her. “Give us a few more minutes.”
“That’s what you said thirty minutes ago. It’s time for Ms. Elliott’s blood work and . . .”
“Ten minutes.” He flashed what he hoped was his most charming grin. “Please.”
The nurse frowned and glanced at Bailey. “Ms. Elliott?”
“Five,” Bailey bargained.
Daniel edged his wheelchair closer to Bailey’s bed and took her free hand, the one not encumbered by the IV. Once they’d scheduled him for surgery late yesterday, he hadn’t been able to convince a nurse that he had recovered enough to leave his room or that he needed to see Bailey more urgently than he needed another X-ray of his thigh.
The physician had cut a .22 from his calf and one from his arm. The bullet that had cut a furrow through his scalp wasn’t a problem, and his surgeon decided that the safest course of action was to monitor his condition for another day before making a final decision on whether the last remaining bullet should be removed from his thigh.
It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon, and Bailey was receiving pain medication as well as IV antibiotics for her bullet wound, the extensive insect bites, and the infection she’d picked up from swallowing so much marsh water. Her face, hands, and arms were swollen and bruised, and her hair was still a mess, but she looked beautiful to him.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he said, picking up where they’d left off when the nurse had interrupted their conversation. “One minute you were joking with me, and the next I was trying to get a pulse. I was afraid you’d had a heart attack or you’d bled out on me.”
“Sorry,” she croaked. Her wan smile was genuine, but he could tell that she was in a lot of discomfort, despite her protests to the contrary. “I was cold. I’m still cold. I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold.”
“It must be the blood loss. You’ve got enough blankets on you for three people. You should have tried camping with me in midwinter in a tent in the mountains of Afghanistan. You’d have loved it.”
“ ‘Just hide, Bailey,’ ” she teased in a hoarse whisper. “ ‘Hide until I come for you.’ ”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“You damned well . . . took your time about it.”
He stroked the back of her hand, then lifted it, turning it palm-up so that he could press his lips to the underside of her wrist. Her skin was fair, and the veins ran blue just below the surface. She seemed so small and fragile, so precious to him, that it was difficult to keep his own voice from cracking. “I told you, it was your fault that it took so long to find you. When I told you to hide from Grace, I didn’t mean for you to hide so well that I couldn’t find you.”
Bailey closed her eyes and swallowed. “See if I can have some more ginger ale the next time Nazi nurse pops her head in. I’m so thirsty. I can’t get the taste of mud out of my mouth.”
“Most people don’t try to eat it.”
“Most people aren’t tied to rotting posts to drown and be used for target practice.” Her mood grew solemn. “She was frightening, Daniel. Grace wasn’t just jealous of my mother. She wanted to be Beth—to steal her life. It was creepy.”
“Not so creepy, if you consider what kind of family she came from. Sexual abuse, violence, alcohol. Her stepbrother’s doing life in Virginia for stomping a man to death in Virginia Beach.”
“She said things . . . awful things about her stepfather. Augie or Angie.”
“Arney Murrain. He’s dead, shot to death in an argument over possession of some stolen crab pots off Smith Island back when I was in college. Her mother froze to death in an alley outside a bar in Baltimore long before that.”
“It’s no excuse for killing all those people. It breaks my heart to hear of children being abused, but if they all became murderers . . .”
Daniel used a spoon to slip some ice chips between Bailey’s swollen lips. “You’re right. It’s not an excuse.” He grimaced. “But my brother will try to make it one. Matt’s already hired an expensive criminal lawyer to defend her.”
“When they find her.”
“If they find her.”
> She swallowed a little of the melted ice. “Not Forest?”
“Matt asked. Forest turned him down flat. Said he wasn’t qualified.”
Bailey glanced at the ice pitcher. “More, please.”
“As wily as Grace has proved herself, she might be getting a tan on some beach in the Caribbean by now.”
“You don’t think she’ll get away with it, do you?” Bailey’s eyes widened. “That she could come back to—”
“I highly doubt it. She’s the chief suspect in Joseph Marshall’s death, and that’s not the kind of crime you walk away from. The world’s not as big a place as it used to be.”
“I thought his death was ruled an accident.”
Daniel offered her a half smile. “That’s the official version. In my experience, the authorities don’t like loose ends when it comes to congressmen.”
“Loose ends,” she repeated softly. “Speaking of which, Elliott was here early this morning. He wanted to have me transferred to the hospital in Lewes to be closer to him. I thanked him for his concern and sent him packing.”
“That’s over, then?” he asked as lightly as he could manage.
She nodded. “I’m seriously considering having my legal name changed from Elliott.”
“To?”
She smiled with her eyes. “I don’t know yet. I was thinking about Tawes. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
He kissed her wrist again. “Since you’ve brought up the subject, I don’t think it’s as good a choice for you as Catlin.”
Bailey stiffened. “There are things we need to be absolutely certain of before—”
“I am certain of your biological father’s identity.”
Her lower lip quivered.
“I can tell you his name, and it isn’t Catlin.”
“Positively?”
“DNA confirmed. I just found out yesterday.”
“How did you . . .” She pressed pale lips together. “Tell me.”
“Your father was Senator Joseph Marshall, now deceased.”
“And there can be no mistake about that?”
He shook his head. “The agency doesn’t make mistakes of that sort.”
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