The Perfect Murder--A Novel

by Kat Martin

  If there was any chance at all, he had to take it.

  It was better than just dying.

  * * *

  Kenzie and Reese went back to the Holiday Inn to wait for Tabby’s call. As they approached the door to the room, Kenzie heard voices inside. Hawk would be meeting them there, but there was more than one person speaking.

  Reese eased her behind him and pulled his weapon. It surprised her how naturally it fit in his hand, as if he had held it dozens of times. After watching him with Eddie, everything she’d thought she knew about Reese had changed. He was harder, tougher, less forgiving. And yet he was still Reese, the man she was so desperately trying not to love.

  Using his key card, Reese turned the knob and shoved the hotel room door open with his boot, taking a shooting stance as he surged into the living room.

  Three semiautos drew down on him at the same time.

  “So I guess we’re all a little on edge,” Chase drawled as he holstered his weapon. Hawk did the same.

  Kenzie recognized the third man as Brandon Garrett, youngest of the brothers. Dark brown hair and eyes a lighter shade of blue than Reese’s, his complexion less swarthy, though his carved features were no less handsome. Reese had once mentioned that Bran was a highly decorated former special operations soldier.

  Seeing the dark look on his face and the hard line of his jaw as he holstered his weapon, Kenzie didn’t doubt it.

  Then he grinned and the impression vanished as if it were never there.

  “I thought you were in Denver,” Reese said to him, gripping his brother’s shoulder in greeting. “What are you doing here?”

  “Chase has been keeping me up to speed. The way things were going, I figured you might need some help. Got to Dallas just in time to catch the jet.” He walked over and pulled Kenzie in for a quick, hard hug.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Bran said. “We’re all here now. We’re going to find your boy.”

  Her eyes burned. “Thank you for coming,” she managed.

  Brandon grinned. “Are you kidding? Stay in Denver and let these guys get all the glory?”

  The words made her smile, his confidence easing some of the fear inside her. Reese looked at his brothers and emotion surfaced in his face. Then it was gone, his control back in place.

  He drew Kenzie against his side, an arm possessively around her waist. “We’re waiting to hear from Tabby. There’s a chance she’ll come up with Griff’s location.”

  Reese went on to give them the kidnapper’s names and explain what had happened at the casino. He told them about Eddie’s cell phone and that Tabby was trying to ping Nolan Webb’s location.

  “We’re working on the assumption Webb is still with Griff. If he is, we may be able to find him.”

  “Amen to that,” Chase said.

  The men began to mill impatiently around the room, waiting for a call that could still be some time away—if it came at all.

  Then Hawk’s phone started playing some country tune. He stepped away to take the call, and the lines of his face turned grim. He said something Kenzie didn’t catch and the call ended.

  Hawk turned toward them. “That was a guy named Buddy Brackett, one of my informants. I put word out it was worth big money for info on Jeremy Bolt. Buddy says he knows where to find him, but I need to get there now.”

  “Bolt’s our ticket to proving Kenzie’s innocence,” Reese said. “Add to that, he shot your friend. If you’ve got a line on him—”

  “Go,” Chase finished, his gaze going to Bran and Reese. “We’ve got this covered.”

  The edge of Hawk’s hard mouth curved up. “Yeah, looks that way.” He turned to Kenzie. “With luck, I’ll solve at least one of your problems.”

  “Be careful,” Kenzie said as she had before.

  Hawk smiled. “Yes, ma’am.” Pulling his pistol, he dropped the magazine to check the load, shoved it in with the flat of his big hand, and slid the gun back into the holster at his waist. “If you need my help, just call.”

  “We’ll keep you posted,” Chase said. “You do the same.”

  As Hawk’s big, muscular frame disappeared out the door, Reese kissed the top of Kenzie’s head, which didn’t go unnoticed by the men. “Anybody else here hungry?” he asked. “Because I’m calling room service and ordering something to eat.”

  “Count me in,” Bran said.

  Chase went to the desk and picked up the room service menu. “Pastrami on rye or burgers?”

  “Both,” Reese said.

  Kenzie realized food was just something for the guys to do to break up the waiting.

  “I’ve got an idea.” She headed for the kitchen table, where she’d set up her laptop. “Eddie said DeMarco owns property all over the state. County tax parcel records are public. I’ll call the Houston office. Rick Holloway and his people in acquisitions deal with that stuff every day. He can get us a list of all the property DeMarco owns.”

  Reese nodded. “Good idea. Real estate, oil well leases, Rick knows how to find out who they belong to. Even if DeMarco owns the land in the name of a corporation, Rick should be able to track it down.”

  “It won’t give us an exact location,” Chase said, “but at least it will narrow the possibilities.”

  The atmosphere in the room subtly altered as everyone got moving. Hawk was hunting Bolt. Food was on the way, and Kenzie had found a means of tracking down DeMarco’s property. If nothing else, it gave them something to do.

  When the sandwiches arrived, there was plenty to eat, but the thought of food made Kenzie slightly nauseous. Reese must have noticed her reluctance. Opening one of the burgers, he put it on a plate and brought it over to where she was sat behind the computer.

  “I know you’re too worried to eat, but you’ve got to keep up your strength.”

  “I’m just... I’m not hungry.”

  “Do it for me.” He held the burger out to her, and since she would do just about anything for Reese, she took a bite. It tasted wonderful and she found herself eating more, drinking some of the Coke he had ordered for her—the real thing instead of Diet because he said she needed the sugar. She managed to finish most of the burger and had to admit she felt better now that she had eaten.

  The guys were just cleaning up their trash when Reese’s disposable rang. He picked it up and checked the screen.

  “It’s Tabby.” He put the phone on speaker and Chase and Bran clustered around the table beside them.

  “I got a partial location,” Tabby said. “No calls after the one to Eddie’s phone this morning but I was able to ping the tower closest to that call. It’s in the middle of nowhere, only limited cell service. There’s nothing around, no town, not even a gas station.”

  “That’s probably why we couldn’t reach him earlier,” Reese said.

  “He’s somewhere with no cell service,” Kenzie added.

  “Or maybe Webb got antsy,” Bran said. “Destroyed the phone so he couldn’t be tracked.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Tabby agreed. “But he could also be out there somewhere. It’s thousands of acres. Without service, there’s just no way to track him.”

  “Send me the cell tower coordinates,” Reese said.

  “Will do. The tower’s located southeast of Shreveport in an area called Loggy Bayou. You can find it on Google Maps. That’s all I’ve got.”

  “Loggy Bayou. Thanks, Tab.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on Webb’s phone. Let you know if his location changes. Good luck.” Tabby ended the call.

  Kenzie’s heart was pumping with hope. There was a chance they’d found some connection that would lead them to Griff.

  Reese’s intense blue eyes locked on her face. “You get anything from Rick Holloway yet?”

  “Let me check.” Kenzie hurriedly checked her email, found an incoming message from Rick t
hat included an attachment. “I’ve got something.”

  “Now that we know the location of the tower,” Bran said. “Maybe Holloway’s intel can pinpoint a parcel DeMarco owns in the area.”

  She clicked the attachment and Reese walked around to look over her shoulder. “Rick sent a list of properties the tax rolls show in DeMarco’s name. He’s working on the corporate info. He’s says it’ll take a while.”

  “Tell him to keep at it,” Reese said. “Top priority. And we need tax assessor’s maps to locate the parcels he’s already found.”

  “Hold on, I think that’s here.” Kenzie opened a second attachment, which included county maps of property in Louisiana that matched the parcels owned personally in Sawyer DeMarco’s name.

  “Anything in Loggy Bayou?” Reese asked.

  “Let’s see where it is.” She went to Google Maps, typed in the location, and the area popped right up. Amazing what satellite imagery could do. “There’s a lot of land out there. Tabby was right. It’s thousands of acres.”

  She checked the property maps for anything DeMarco owned southeast of the city near the cell tower, and her hope deflated. “I don’t see anything he owns in that direction, nothing in Loggy Bayou.”

  “Get back to Rick. Tell him to focus specifically in that area. Maybe DeMarco owns something in a corporate name.”

  She nodded, sent Rick an email, which he answered right away.

  I’m on it, his message read.

  “What do we do now?” she asked.

  Bran grunted. “My least favorite thing.”

  “We sit back and wait,” Chase finished for him.

  “Unless Hawk calls and needs help with Jeremy Bolt,” Bran said hopefully.

  Reese stared at his younger brother and just shook his head.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Reese hated waiting almost as much as Bran. Forty minutes had passed and still no email from Rick. Then Kenzie’s cell phone started ringing, not the disposable, which meant it could be DeMarco or one of his men.

  Kenzie checked the caller ID. “Blocked,” she said, pressing the phone against her ear. Reese moved into position beside her.

  “This is Kenzie.”

  “So I guess you two don’t like following orders. Or maybe you just want me to put a gun to the kid’s head and pull the trigger.”

  “No!” Kenzie started shaking. “No, please. Please don’t hurt him.”

  This time the call was not distorted. It was a man’s voice, deep and raspy, like a smoker. Reese took the phone out of Kenzie’s hand, put it on the table, and hit the speaker button. “I’ve set everything in motion just the way you wanted. The deal will be canceled before your deadline.”

  “Why are you in Shreveport? By the way, Eddie says hello.”

  Reese softly cursed. He glanced at his brothers. Chase looked resigned. Bran’s features had gone iron hard.

  “I asked you a question,” the caller said. “Why are you in Shreveport. Who’d you talk to that led you here?”

  Reese considered his answer. Best to stay as close to the truth as possible. “Griff is Arthur Haines’s grandson. We figured Haines had the most to gain from taking over the Poseidon deal. We looked into his background and figured he owned you a big-ass gambling debt, thought maybe you were the guy in charge. Which meant you probably had the boy stashed somewhere in Shreveport. We wanted to be close by when you let him go.”

  DeMarco chuckled, a grating sound that zipped up Reese’s spine. “If you think I’m buying that, you’re dumber than I thought. Who’s the big guy? I warned you not to drag your brothers into this.”

  Hawk. “He isn’t my brother. Just a friend who owed me a favor.”

  “All right, here’s the deal. Now that you’ve figured all of this out, you may as well assign your position in the purchase directly over to Black Sand Oil and Gas. And since you decided to play detective, you’ve got a new deadline. Get this done by ten o’clock tomorrow morning you get the kid back alive. Fuck up again, he’s dead.”

  Kenzie’s face went bone white. Reese held on to his control by a thread. “Fine, we’ll do whatever you want. But we’ll still need proof of life before I sign the final documents.”

  “One more phone call. You talk to the kid, but if the deal isn’t closed, the kid disappears without a trace and there’s no way to prove who killed him. You understand?”

  Reese’s hand tightened into a fist. “I understand.”

  “You’d better.” The line went dead.

  Kenzie walked away from the phone into the bedroom and Reese could hear her crying. He wanted to go to her, tell her everything would be okay, but it was a promise he wasn’t sure he could keep.

  “It was a fairly long phone call,” he said. “Think Tabby can trace it?”

  “No point,” Chase said. “He’ll be using a disposable and we already know where to find him.”

  A penthouse apartment above the casino. It was common knowledge in Shreveport.

  “You’re right,” Reese said. “It’s Griff’s location we need to find.”

  “Wherever Griff is,” Bran said, “now that DeMarco knows Reese is in Shreveport, he’ll beef up security around the boy. We’ll be going up against a small army.”

  Reese flicked a glance toward the bedroom, saw Kenzie wiping tears from her cheeks. He forced himself to focus. He phoned Derek Stiles and told him what he needed him to do. Black Sand Oil and Gas would be substituted in the contract, taking over the purchase of the platform. Whatever it took, the deal needed to be completed by tomorrow morning.

  Derek wasn’t happy, but he would do what Reese asked.

  When the call ended, he checked Kenzie’s computer screen, felt a rush when he spotted an email from Rick Holloway.

  Did a little digging. Found a piece of property in Loggy Bayou owned by DeMarco’s grandfather. Attaching an assessor’s plat map and deed description. Hope this is what you’re looking for.

  Reese clicked open the attachment and examined the map. He felt Kenzie moving up behind him, caught her hand, and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Holloway found a piece of property in Loggy Bayou owned by DeMarco’s granddad. Got to be where they’re holding Griff.” A least he hoped so.

  He felt Kenzie’s pulse accelerate, pounding in the delicate bones in her wrist. She looked down at him and managed a worried smile. “Let me in there. I’m better at this than you are.”

  Reese smiled back and felt a sense of longing. How had this woman managed to get through his carefully guarded defenses?

  “You’re right,” he said. “You are better.” He slid out of the chair. “Help us figure out what we’re up against.”

  * * *

  This was Kenzie’s domain. Handling problems, coming up with solutions. Blocking thoughts of Griff and the kidnappers’ new deadline, she brought up Loggy Bayou, overlaying parcel map details with the angles of meandering streams and what looked like dirt lanes. She cross-checked, using the legal description on the deed, along with longitude and latitude coordinates on Google Earth.

  Finally satisfied, she leaned back in her chair. “There it is, guys. I’ll bring up the satellite image.”

  Bran and Chase moved closer to Reese, who looked over her shoulder. The bayou landscape was forbidding, nothing but green for miles, a huge mass of swampy land cut by overgrown creeks, heavy thickets of trees, and dense, leafy foliage.

  Kenzie went to Google Earth and zoomed north and south around the property. It was mostly a sea of green.

  “Looks like a big bunch of nothing,” Bran grumbled.

  “The map shows a couple of hunting camps in the area,” Kenzie said. “You can see a few buildings here and there, but none of them are near DeMarco’s property.” She zoomed in as close as possible.

  “Looks like there’s some kind of structure on the land,” Reese said. “But it can’t be
very big.”

  “You mentioned hunting camps,” Chase said. “Maybe that’s what this is.”

  Bran started nodding. “A cabin the old man built for hunting. Got to be plenty of game out there.”

  “White tail deer, otter, turkeys, skunks, turtles, bobcats, opossums, and just about everything else,” Chase said.

  “Not to mention alligators and snakes,” Bran added glumly.

  Kenzie suppressed a shiver. “How can we be sure that’s where they’re holding Griff?”

  “Nolan’s last call came from a tower in Loggy Bayou,” Reese said. “No more calls since then. I think he’s there.”

  Chase and Bran exchanged glances. “Then let’s go get him,” Bran said.

  Kenzie’s heart raced. The men were going after Griff.

  “We need supplies,” Chase said.

  “Weapons and clothes,” Bran agreed. “We brought most of what we need, but going into Loggy Bayou isn’t the same as blasting our way through the halls of a casino.”

  “We’ve got tactical vests out in the rented SUV,” Chase said. “But we need one for Reese and some miscellaneous outdoor gear. And we could use a couple of pairs of night vision goggles.”

  “We need an army surplus store.” Brandon took out his cell and started searching. “Bob’s Army/Navy. That ought to do it. Toss me the car keys.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Chase offered. “Might see something else we need.” He looked at Reese. “Anything special we can pick up for you?”

  “I could use a pair of cargo pants. New boots are a bitch, so I’ll make do with the ones I’m wearing. Make sure we’ve got face paint and plenty of ammo.”

  “Will do,” Chase said. He and Bran disappeared out the door. Reese walked over to the living room window and stood with his back turned, hands braced on his narrow hips.

  Kenzie came up behind him. Sliding her arms around his waist, she rested her cheek against his back. “I know we have to do this, but I’m scared. I’m terrified of losing my son, and the prospect of you being shot or killed—”