The murky water reduced visibility dramatically. She barely saw the giant lizard cruising silently with its prize struggling in its jaws. Normally an alligator took a prey down into the water and started turning over and over, letting its sharp teeth tear its victim to pieces.
Slipping in, the straight razor tight in her fist, knowing that Deke would be dead in seconds once the alligator started turning, Kate swam down on top of the alligator and wrapped her left arm under its chin while she laid her cheek on its neck and held on.
The alligator’s powerful body writhed at the unexpected contact, trying to shake her off. She held on tightly, then shoved the straight razor into the flesh of the alligator’s neck just beneath her left arm, and cut the creature’s throat. She slashed as deeply and as quickly as she could.
For a long moment, the alligator simply glided through the blood-darkened water. Kate was afraid to let go, and equally terrified by what she’d done. If she’d actually stopped and thought about what she was about to do—if she hadn’t just been attacked—she wouldn’t have gone into the water.
It had been reflex, pure and simple. Her predicament reminded her of what Shane had said. I’m a simple man. You just caught me in a really complicated situation.
Now look at the situation she was in. Afraid to stay, afraid to let go.
Then, abruptly, the alligator went limp. Deke still struggled, but his efforts were weaker. A lot of the blood darkening the water was from him.
Kate let go of the alligator’s neck and took hold of its snout. She jammed a boot against the alligator’s lower jaw—Still not the most foolish thing you’ve done tonight!—and grabbed the upper jaw in her hands. She pulled and pushed at the same time and the alligator’s mouth opened.
Deke floated free.
Before Kate could reach him, Shane was there. He grabbed the young man by the shoulders and hauled him toward the surface. Already trembling from adrenaline overload, Kate swam after them.
They surfaced only a few feet from the johnboat.
“Help me,” Shane called.
Wary of the water, Jolly reached down and caught the back of Deke’s shirt. Kate joined them as Ernie leaped from the ladder and dropped into the boat, mewling in fear for his cousin.
Jolly pointed the pistol at her. “I’ll take that straight razor, Ms. Garrett.”
Only then did Kate realize she still had the blade in her hand.
Jolly waved to the bottom of the johnboat. “Just throw it over there.”
For a moment, Kate thought about dropping back into the water and swimming for it. Then she knew that was stupid. If there weren’t other alligators in the nearby water, there would be soon. The blood smells—man and alligator—would draw them.
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to just do what Jolly ordered. She held the straight razor over the water, feeling Shane’s eyes on her, and dropped the blade into the water.
“Okay.” Jolly smiled. “That’ll work too.”
In the end, they had to take Deke back into the mobile home. Continuing on with him in the johnboat would have been tantamount to homicide. Jolly hadn’t wanted to stay, but in the end he hadn’t had the heart to leave Deke behind or subject him to a night in the boat when the empty mobile home was right there.
If Jolly had chosen either one of those courses of action, Shane knew he would have fought him over it. From the grievous nature of Deke’s wounds, though, Shane didn’t hold out much hope for a recovery.
She jumped in the water to save him, Shane realized, knowing that she was risking her life. He still couldn’t believe he’d actually seen her do that.
Kate worked by candlelight. Whoever had put this mobile home high in the trees had chosen to leave the generator somewhere below, probably off the ground, Shane reasoned, but definitely not out of reach of the storm surge. During a second search of the house, they’d found candles and a fairly complete first-aid kit.
Deke lay in one of the beds, the sheets already covered with blood.
Going to be a hell of a crime scene for someone, Shane thought. He stood at Kate’s side and helped her as much as he was able.
Deke’s waist was covered in lacerations. Some of them were just cosmetic, but it was hard to know which was which until Kate probed with her glove-covered fingers.
Shane respected what she was doing, just as he had done when she’d dealt with Tyler Jordan. When Kate was finally finished, hours later at 2:00 a.m., she looked pale and exhausted. They took time to transfer Deke to another bedroom where the bed wasn’t soaked with blood. The whole time, Ernie had stood worried outside the door, asking questions and dreading answers.
“Is he going to be all right?” Shane asked quietly out of earshot of Ernie.
Looking at the young man lying unconscious on the bed, almost a pale imitation of himself, Kate sighed. “I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.”
“You ever heard of somebody surviving something like this?”
“Yeah. People do.” Kate took another deep breath and let it out. “And people don’t. He’s lost a lot of blood that we can’t replace.”
“What about a blood transfusion?”
She looked at him as if he’d just sprouted a second head.
“I could give him blood.”
“That’s awfully generous.”
Sarcasm. Shane got angry enough to react before he knew it. A harsh response was on his tongue before he curbed it. He made himself let it go. If anybody had the right to act somewhat antisocial, it was Kate Garrett. “It was a sincere offer.”
She looked away, and maybe she looked a little ashamed. “Do you know what blood type you are?”
“O,” he said, remembering that much from the times he’d been shot and had been in surgery.
“O what? Positive or negative?”
Shane thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t know.” Evidently blood type wasn’t one of those useful bits of information that stuck with someone like a social security number.
“I bet you don’t know Deke’s blood type either,” she went on.
Standing, Shane went outside the room to where Ernie sat on the floor with the shotgun standing between his knees.
Ernie looked up, worry and fear etched deeply into his big, broad face. In the darkness, he looked like he had a new bruise by his right eye, and his nose appeared swelled. Shane didn’t know when that had happened, but he suspected it was when Ernie and Kate Garrett were in the mobile home alone. Before they had both come down the ladder so rapidly
“Is…is he okay?” Ernie asked.
“He’s still alive,” Shane said. “Thanks to Kate.”
At least Ernie had the decency to look a little ashamed. “Good. I don’t want to have to go back an’ tell his momma he passed on.”
Going back would be a bad idea in general, Shane couldn’t help thinking. The police and the FBI will be waiting for you there. Then he blew out a breath and tried to force away some of the hostility he felt. Maybe Kate wasn’t the only one with an anger-management problem at the moment. “Do you know Deke’s blood type?”
Ernie’s eyes widened in panic, gleaming in the candlelight. “No,” he answered nervously. “Don’t know my own.”
That makes two of us, Shane thought.
“But we’re cousins,” Ernie went on. “We share blood. It’s probably the same. I can give him what he needs. Ever’ drop if I have to.”
“Doesn’t work like that,” Shane said. “Just because you’re cousins doesn’t mean you’re the same blood type. And if we give him the wrong blood—if we were even able to find a way to transfuse blood—giving Deke the wrong kind could kill him.”
Ernie leaned his head back against the wall. “Just let me know what you need me to do. Until then, I’m gonna sit right here outside his door an’ pray for him. Might help if y’all prayed for him too.”
Quiet, derisive laughter came from the living room. Glancing in that direction, Shane barely made Raymond Jolly
out in the darkness. A cigarette ember glowed orange-red for a moment, highlighting Jolly’s harsh features. In addition to another .357 Magnum and ammunition and food and clothing, they’d also found a carton of cigarettes.
Jolly let a stream of gray smoke out through his nose and didn’t say anything.
Shane couldn’t imagine Raymond Jolly praying. Despite how he felt about Ernie, Shane dropped a hand on the guy’s shoulder in support, then turned and went back into the bedroom where Kate sat with Deke.
“Ernie doesn’t know Deke’s blood type,” Shane said.
“Surprise,” Kate said bitterly. “It wouldn’t have mattered. I’ve never transfused blood before. I could kill him just as easily as help him.”
Shane stood next to her. Everything in him screamed out to take her into his arms, hold her and tell her that everything was going to be all right and that she’d see her kids again soon. But that would be a lie. The one thing FBI Special Agent Shane Warren knew was how uncertain life could be. A person never knew where a road was going to take him. Or her. Hell, none of them might live to see morning.
Deke’s labored breathing filled the room. Lightning danced outside, slicing the shadows inside the room to pieces while it lasted.
Kate sat quiet, contained. Shane watched her, calm—at least on the outside—where most other women he knew outside of female FBI agents would be falling apart.
And the way she’d jumped into the water was nothing short of amazing. Despite what he thought of her as a strong individual, he kept remembering how she’d looked in the shower the night before. The gleaming curves of her body had haunted his dreams.
Lost in the quiet of the moment, Shane wondered if telling her that he was an FBI agent would help. But he decided against it. Knowledge was power. She could use that against him, turn the tables between Jolly and him and make the situation even worse. He still couldn’t take the chance.
“If he was in a hospital,” Kate said softly, “he’d get better care.”
“I know,” Shane said. “But that’s not going to happen tonight.” He rubbed his face. “Maybe if he makes it through the night, we can do something like that.”
Her dark-green eyes turned hard and distant. “Sure,” she said.
He knew she didn’t believe him, but that was the real crux of the problem. When the Director had given him the assignment to gain Jolly’s confidence and break him out of prison, the stipulation was that no one would get hurt. Now Phil Lewis was mysteriously dead, and Deke had a foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.
Not one of your more inspiring performances, Warren, Shane told himself.
Thunder woke Kate. Or maybe it was the cramped position she was sleeping in. She’d curled up as best as she could in the armchair that overfilled the bedroom. Mobile homes were designed for Spartan living at best, and whoever lived here was pushing the envelope.
A blanket covered her. She frowned. She hadn’t put it there. It bothered her that someone had touched her—Almost touched you, she corrected herself to ease the paranoia that slammed into her—and she hadn’t known it. The blanket, instead of providing warmth, was a further indication of how vulnerable she was.
Memory of the rough treatment she’d had at the hands of Monte Carter and Ernie Franks had made her restless. She’d also felt the hunting knife bite deeply into Carter’s thigh again, and had relived the horror and guilt of knowing she’d killed the man even though it had been him or her. And she’d kept seeing Deke in the alligator’s jaws over and over. Only this time the young man hadn’t escaped and bits and pieces of him kept floating up at her. Sometimes it had been Tyler Jordan in the alligator’s jaws and not Deke Hannibal.
She pushed the blanket off, resenting its implied accusation that she couldn’t take care of herself. Then, chilled because her clothes were still damp although no longer running with water, she pulled the blanket back on.
Shane Warren lay in the middle of the floor. He had his shoes and socks off, probably to prevent foot rot. She’d done the same thing. He had his hands behind his head and was snoring softly.
He had a different appearance in the jeans, T-shirt, and flannel shirt he’d buttoned up to stave off the cold. Watching him sleep, Kate felt that he was somehow softer and more vulnerable. As though somehow he didn’t belong with Jolly and Ernie any more than Deke did. Her conflicted feelings about Shane Warren annoyed her. If she had the chance to escape and could get away without him, she wondered if she’d feel guilty leaving him behind. Then she put that out of her mind.
He’s a convict, she told herself. He’s killed people. Sold drugs. He’s not out here because he’s innocent.
She looked back at Deke, lying so silent and still in the bed. Of all the escapees, Deke was the innocent. Going by how he’d acted, how protective of her he’d been, as well as how reluctant he’d been to take part in any violence, Kate felt that maybe Deke had gotten trapped with his cousin in a manner not too unlike her own situation.
Listening to his ragged breathing, she worried about Deke. He was going to die, she knew, if he went untreated. Allowing that went against everything Kate believed in. On her trips, she took care of people. When she had Steven and Hannah, she took care of them too.
Thunder continued to boom in the distance. Rain pelted the mobile home’s tin roof in a constant staccato of sound. The home swayed gently in the trees instead of being tossed.
Deke shifted a little then, mumbling, “No, Ernie! Don’t kill her, man! She’s begging you!” His face knotted in pain.
At first, Kate thought Deke was remembering the earlier events before the alligator attack. But she hadn’t begged. And, Deke hadn’t asked his cousin not to kill her; he’d only—
“Listen to her! She’s begging. I know you don’t speak Spanish, man, but I do. She’s askin’ you not to kill her!” He twitched, quivered and moaned. “You shot her, Ernie! You shot her in the face!”
Then he went still for a long time and Kate thought maybe the nightmare had killed him. A moment more passed, then Deke took a long, slow, wet breath.
Breaking out of the hypnosis the story had instilled in her, thinking that maybe she knew how Desiree Martini had met her fate, Kate glanced at her watch and saw that it was 4:47 a.m. If she moved now, maybe she had a chance. Otherwise she was certain she was going to end up just like the missing heiress.
Tonight, no one had secured her with the handcuffs. Easing up from the chair, she hooked her fingers through the shoestrings of her hiking boots, tucked into them the dry pair of socks she’d taken for herself from the home, and moved slowly across the floor.
Out in the hall, she crept to the living room, ignoring the side door because Ernie had complained it was stuck when he’d tried to go out it. Her best chance was the front door in the living room.
Ernie was asleep on the couch, the shotgun cradled in his arms like a lover. She didn’t feel too wicked for hoping that the man rolled over wrong and blew off his own head. But she knew she’d never be able to get the shotgun from him without a fight.
Raymond Jolly slept in the big easy chair, his bare feet splayed out before him. The .357 Magnum was tucked between his hip and the chair arm, his hand resting lightly over it.
At the door, Kate took a deep breath and put her hand on the doorknob. Her fingers trembled and she felt weak. Please, she thought. I just want to get home. Nightmares about Steven and Hannah getting caught in the flood, or getting hurt by some faceless criminal named Hugh Rollins that Bryce had betrayed had plagued her waking thoughts and her sleep.
She didn’t know Hugh Rollins. But if he was a career criminal, and if he was no worse than Jolly and Ernie and Monte Carter, Kate knew her son and daughter were in danger.
If Bryce had told her the truth of what was going on, Kate knew she wouldn’t have left that night. Or, at least, she wouldn’t have left the children there at her house.
She worked hard to tell herself that Megan had gotten the kids to safety or that her dad had
come by and taken them to safety.
She steeled herself and turned the doorknob.
The knob ratcheted only slightly.
That wasn’t enough noise to wake anyone! she told herself desperately. No one could have heard that!
Then the menacing triple click of a revolver being drawn back to full-cock echoed inside the small room.
“Don’t, Ms. Garrett,” Jolly said softly.
Kate froze. Her body trembled, waiting to be released and spring into action. She made herself remain still.
“Good,” Jolly went on. “Now come away from the door before I make those kids of yours orphans on their mother’s side.”
Hot tears of frustration and fear burned Kate’s eyes. The hiking boots felt like lead weights at the end of her arm. She turned toward the man, hating him with every fiber of her being. Her throat was locked tight in inarticulate rage.
Don’t cry, she told herself. Whatever you do, don’t you let him see you cry.
“You move very quietly when you want to.” Jolly stood, towering above her. “You might even have gotten away.”
Kate knew Jolly said that to taunt her, to let her know how close she’d come to getting away. Biting her lips, she didn’t react.
“What’s going on?” Shane stood in the hallway, his blond hair in disarray, looking windblown and tired.
“We almost lost our guide,” Jolly said laconically. He held up his hand and let the handcuffs dangle. “See that it doesn’t happen again. I don’t fancy trying to swim out of here in alligator-infested waters. She makes another attempt, I’m going to cuff her hands behind her back, tie a beefsteak around her neck, and drop her into the water. We’ll see how well she does at alligator-wrestling then.”
The pop-pop-pop-popping of an outboard motor sputtering to life woke Kate. Blearily, she gazed around the dark room and listened to the sound of rain. With the storm continuing, she didn’t know if it was early or late. The handcuff on her wrist held her securely chained to the nearby window mechanism.
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