Tangled Threat ; Suspicious

by Heather Graham

  Jesse started up his motor.

  The sound was like the sudden whirr of a thousand birds, rising from the swamp.

  She gripped her chair, still feeling cold. Hugh waved.

  She couldn’t wave back.

  The wind lashed around her, whipping her hair around her face. She closed her eyes.

  She was startled when the motor died, along with the forward motion of the boat.

  She opened her eyes. They still seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.

  There was a hummock where they had come to rest, land that wasn’t covered in the deceptive saw grass that grew where the water ran, making a person believe that there was terra firma beneath.

  And yet in all directions, she still saw only wilderness.

  There was no sound, except for the cries of birds, the rustle of foliage.

  She swallowed, frowned, and stared at Jesse uneasily.

  “Where are we?”

  “My place,” he said. “And you can talk to me here, tell me the truth, or we’ll just head downtown, to the FBI office. Here’s your chance, Lorena. Truth or dare. What do you know, and what the hell are you really doing here?”

  Chapter Seven

  Despite the fact that there was a well-maintained dock, Jesse could see that Lorena was more than a bit concerned about where they were going when he helped her out of the airboat.

  His house had been built on a hummock and, he thought, combined the best of tradition and the modern world. There were still members of his tribe who made their homes in chickees, but for the most part, beyond the village and the other tourist stops, tribal members lived in normal houses, concrete block and stucco, sturdy structures that offered the same comforts as those enjoyed by everyone else.

  He was lucky to own the land, which had been his father’s. And it was a good stretch of hummock, rich with trees and foliage, and high enough to keep it from flooding during hurricanes or the rainy season. As they came in from the rear, winding along the path from the canal, the first sight was a chickee. Chickees had first come into being when various tribes—once grouped together under the term “Seminoles”—had moved deep into the Everglades to escape persecution and the white determination to export every last Native American to the western reservations. High above the ground, the chickee offered protection from snakes and gators. The open sides allowed the breezes to pass through continually, keeping the inhabitants cool year round.

  Lorena gave the chickee a nervous glance, and he saw the relief on her face when they rounded a bend and she saw the house.

  There was a screened-in patio with a pool, and sliding glass doors that led from it into the house. He owned a fairly typical ranch-style dwelling, with the large rear, “Florida room” extending the width of the back. He had a good entertainment center and comfortable sofas and chairs, which often led to him being the one to host Sunday football get-togethers. His home probably differed from some in that it was filled with Indian artifacts: Miccosukee, Seminole and others, including South American and Inuit. He had totem poles, lances, spears, shields and buffalo skulls, all artistically—at least in his mind—arranged, and he had come to love the feeling that he was surrounded by both past and present, tradition and the need for all Americans to be aware of the modern world. He considered education the most necessary tool for any Native American, and finding the path between prosperity and ethnicity was not an easy one.

  “Thank God for bingo,” he murmured aloud.

  “What?”

  Her eyes were wide; he could tell that she was decidedly uncomfortable, yet apparently relieved at the same time.

  “Coffee? Tea? Soda? Beer or wine?” he asked. “Sorry, that’s all I keep around.” He left her standing in the Florida room and walked through the hall, hanging a quick left into the kitchen, where a bypass over the counter opened to allow him to keep an eye on her.

  She shook her head uneasily. “I’m fine.”

  “Then I’ll have coffee.”

  He reached into the cupboards for the paraphernalia he needed, watching her as he did so.

  Some of the trepidation in her face had eased. She was walking around, studying the various pieces on the walls. She turned suddenly, as if feeling him watching her.

  “Have you always lived here?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

  “In the general area, yes. This house is new, though.”

  “Ah.”

  “And, let’s see...you were raised in Jacksonville. Attended the University of Florida. Where you did indeed earn a nursing degree.”

  “Yes,” she murmured, looking away.

  “And a law degree.”

  Her eyes flew to his again. Belligerent, defensive.

  “All right, so I’ve spent the last few years with a law firm. My nursing credentials are still good. You seem to know everything, so you must know that, too.”

  “I do,” he assured her grimly. “Sure you don’t want a cup of coffee?”

  “All right,” she murmured.

  She walked around to join him in the kitchen. He wondered how she could have spent the late afternoon in an airboat in the swamp and still manage to retain such an alluring scent.

  “Sugar...cream,” he said, indicating the containers.

  She added a touch of cream to her cup, not looking at him. Her fingers were shaking as she stirred, but she quickly returned to the Florida room, taking a seat on one of the sofas that looked out over the pool.

  “All right,” he said, taking a seat next to her. “We need to start communicating here. This is serious. Shall I continue, or do you just want to talk to me?”

  “You’re going to try to get me out of here,” she said, not looking at him. Then her eyes shot to his. “And I’m not inept. Actually, I’m a crack shot.”

  “Your life seems filled with accomplishments,” he said with obvious irony.

  She blushed, looking away. “I thought I wanted to go into nursing...but then I wound up taking some legal courses related to medical ethics and I found out that I liked the law. I was able to work part-time in a hospital while I went back to college. I was lucky. My dad was associated with a firm that was known for going to bat for the underdog. They hired me right out of law school.”

  “Which has nothing to do with why you’re here,” he said softly.

  “Actually, in a way it does,” she murmured, staring down again. Then she looked up at him. “One thing about studying the law is that you learn you need proof to go to court.”

  He shook his head, looking at her, then taking the cup from her and setting it on the coffee table. He took both her hands. “All right, here’s the rest of what I know. You’re going under the name Fortier because that was your mother’s maiden name. Your father was Dr. Eugene Duval, working for Eco-smart, a company that, among other facilities, ran an alligator farm. He died last year after a fall down a stairway. So why does that bring you here?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t fall.”

  “Lorena, I’ve read the police reports. He was alone in the building at the time.”

  “No. He did not just fall.”

  Jesse sighed, squeezing her hands. “Lorena, I know what it’s like to desperately seek something behind the obvious. Your father fell down a stairway. He broke his neck.”

  “No,” she said stubbornly.

  “Why are you so convinced it wasn’t an accident?”

  “Because he had something. Something that his killer wanted.”

  “And that was?” Jesse persisted.

  She hesitated, realizing that he didn’t know everything.

  He squeezed her hands more tightly. The lingering scent of her cologne wafted around him, seemed to permeate his system. He realized that his own heart was pounding, that the blood was rushing in a hot wave through his system. He was torn between the desire to gently touc
h her face and the equally strong desire to draw her into his arms, shake her, tell her none of this was worth her life.

  He desperately wanted to hold her. And more. The texture of her skin was suddenly so fascinating that he longed to explore it with the tips of his fingers. Her features were so delicate, elegant and determined that he was tempted to test them with the palm of his hand.

  He fought the desire that had begun to build in his system the first time he had seen her. She was angry, lost, determined...and trusting. He knew he should pull his hands away. He didn’t. He couldn’t. He had to get answers from her—now.

  “Lorena, what did your father have?” he demanded.

  She stared back at him, clenching her teeth; then she shook her head. “You mean you don’t know? It’s obvious. He had a formula.”

  “A formula for what?”

  “Well, basically, steroids,” she said flatly. “There were other ingredients, but the formula was based on steroids.” She inhaled, exhaled, looking away but not drawing away. “My father was a great man. He wanted to feed the world. He worked with all kinds of animals, trying to find a way to improve the amount and quality of their meat without creating the chemical dangers you so often find in farmed meats. He saw alligators as the wave of the future. A creature that had been endangered—nearly wiped off the face of the earth—then raised in captivity to return with a vengeance. In his mind, we were going to be looking to a number of basically new food sources, new to the American public, at least. Emu. Beefalo. Different fish. Eels. And alligators. He thought they were magnificent creatures, with hides that could be used for all kinds of things and meat that could be improved in taste, quality and quantity. So he began working on a formula. Now he’s dead and someone else has it—and I think Harry’s place may be involved.”

  Jesse stared at her blankly, wondering why something like this hadn’t occurred to him. Because it was right out of a science fiction novel, that was why.

  “Lots of people work with alligators,” he said, his tone sharper than he had intended. “Lots of scientists work with formulas to improve breeding and supply.”

  “Maybe, but my father had found one that improved the creatures’ size to such an extent that...that he destroyed his own specimens.”

  Jesse felt frozen for a moment. It was all beginning to make sense. Too much sense. He was accustomed to drug-related crimes in the Everglades, or illegal immigrants, and the big money and guns that came with both. He knew the tragedy of greed, gangs, and the jealousy and fury behind domestic violence, and the tribulations brought on by the abuse of alcohol. And now industrial espionage might well be exactly what they were looking for. A formula that was dangerous, but that could take a business to the top of the heap? It made way too much sense. A couple killed for what appeared to be nothing had probably seen something they shouldn’t see. A man who knew the Glades like the back of his hand, dead, killed by an alligator. But what kind of an alligator? Perhaps one scientifically induced to grow bigger—and more dangerous?

  “All right, your father was working on a formula, but he’s been dead for more than a year. There are all kinds of establishments working with alligators, all through Florida, Georgia, Texas and more. What brought you here?” he asked.

  She hesitated. “I finally cleaned out all my dad’s business communications. An old e-mail I found from Harry’s Alligator Farm and Museum seemed to point in this direction.”

  “Was Harry Rogers ever in Jacksonville? Did he know your father?”

  She shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

  “I assume your father communicated with a lot of other institutions.”

  “Yes, but...none of the others were...well, located in such a wilderness. A place where it’s possible to hide so much.”

  “Exactly what did the e-mail say, and who was it from?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t signed. It was just a query, but there was something off about it. Something greedy. My father wrote back that he couldn’t help.”

  “Then...?”

  “It came right after there had been an article about my dad that mentioned the kind of research he was doing. So I came here, and...that couple got killed, and you found a piece of an alligator there, and then that poor man was...eaten.”

  “Still...”

  “Jesse, I’m telling you, there was nothing else to go on, nothing.”

  “What about the other employees where your dad worked? What did they say?”

  She shook her head in disgust. “According to everyone, my father had destroyed his research, the formula and his specimens. He worked for a very aboveboard corporation. When he said his research had taken a dangerous turn, they gave him the freedom to start over. So now they’re all sorry, and they all understand that I’m upset. But as far as they’re concerned, it was an accident.”

  She stared at him, then grasped his hands. “But it wasn’t an accident. I know it. Harry—or someone here—got my father’s formula, and they killed him to do it. You have to believe me! And now they’ve lost a few of their specimens, and those gators are running around the Glades killing people. They’re trying to track them down, but they don’t want to get caught, and I think that’s why your friends were killed. Whoever was out there picking up the specimen decided that Hector and Maria had seen too much. But what really scares me is that I think they’re still trying to use the formula. Jesse, please, think about it. You said that Hector and Maria were wonderful people, that they couldn’t have been drug-running. So you have to go to the next conclusion—that they were killed for something they saw, for what they might know. Come on! Why else would anyone kill your friends? They were shot because they saw the alligator. And the killers dared to murder them because they knew everyone would just assume it had something to do with drugs. Jesse, I’m right, and you know it.”

  He drew away from her at last, then stood and walked to the glass doors, looking out at the pool and the deep, rich green of the hummock beyond, not seeing. “Lorena, your dad has been dead more than a year, right?” he said softly.

  “Right.”

  “And his research went back several years. But alligators, even pampered hatchlings, only grow about a foot a year. To get a creature big enough to kill a man would take well over a decade.”

  “Jesse, you don’t understand just what can be done once man starts messing with nature. My father began his studies about five years ago, and with the alterations he could create, a gator could grow as much as four feet in a year. You figure it out. Do the math. See where we’d be right now,” she said softly.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said, but he wondered, Was it possible?

  “You’ve got to get out of here,” he said flatly. “This is about the wildest theory I’ve heard in my entire life, but if there’s any truth in it whatsoever, someone is going to find out who you are. You’ve got to get away.” He spun on her. “And another thing. Why the hell didn’t you tell me about this when you arrived down here?”

  “Hey! The second time I ever saw you, you were at Harry’s. Sally told me you come there all the time. How could I know for certain that you weren’t involved somehow?”

  He sighed, looking down. “I’m a cop, Lorena. And just like I said at the beginning—a real one.”

  She rose, staring back at him. “And you’re going to tell me that there haven’t been dirty cops?”

  He lifted his hands; then his eyes narrowed, and he strode over to her, taking her by the shoulders, ready to shake her for real. His fingers tensed where he held her, his teeth locked. He fought both his temper and his fears for her. At last he said, “You couldn’t tell? You couldn’t tell by getting to know me that I wasn’t crooked?”

  She inhaled, staring at him, eyes wide. She parted her lips, ready to speak, but words didn’t come. She moistened her lips, ready to speak again, then just shook her head and, to his surprise,
leaned it against him.

  He wrapped his arms around her. Time ticked away as they stood there and he felt the soft force of her body against his, his own emotions washing through him with the force of a tidal wave. Heat began to fill him. He was torn, ready to rush out and pound his fist into anyone who would so coldly kill and let loose such a danger. But he was a police officer, sworn to uphold the law. He’d been a detective, trained to find out the truth before ripping into something like a maniac.

  But he was also simply a man.

  And here she was, in his arms. She had elicited emotion and longing in him from the first time he had seen the green-and-gold magic in her eyes, heard the tone of her voice. He’d been irritated, angered, enchanted. He’d seen the empathy in her eyes for others, the spark of fire when she was angry.

  This wasn’t the time.

  He had taken her away from Hugh, and Hugh would be angry now, telling the tale to everyone.

  And at Harry’s, they might be suspicious....

  “You can’t go back there,” he said, and he lifted her chin, his thumb playing over the flesh of her cheek.

  Her eyes met his. Her fingers moved down his back, dancing lightly along the length of his spine. “I have to go back,” she whispered.

  “No,” he said. And he brought his lips to hers. She didn’t protest or hesitate for a second. It was as if they had both been simmering, awaiting the boiling point, and when they touched at last...

  She melted into his arms, breasts and hips fitting neatly into his form. Her fingers threaded into his hair; her mouth tasted of mint and fire.

  They broke apart. “I have to...” she said, and her meaning was unclear, because they fused together again, and her hands worked down to his hips, then below, cupping his buttocks, drawing him closer.

  At last he caressed her face as he had longed to, exploring texture and shape. Then his fingers fell to the buttons of her shirt, and the fabric obediently parted. His fingers slid along the flesh of her throat, stroked, then careered down the length of her neck. Beneath the cotton of her shirt, he found her bra strap, slipped it away, and his lips dropped to her shoulder, while his fingers continued to disrobe her, baring more flesh for the eager whisper of his tongue. He felt her hands at his belt, then realized his gun was there. He released her long enough to discard his gun belt, then drew her back quickly, fevered, heedless of anything then but the wanting and the heady knowledge that she was just as hungry as he was.