Such incidents happened all the time.
And in Claude’s mother’s case, it might have been an older, maybe widowed man from another part of the bayou who could have been a companion to her, a father of sorts to her sons. But she hadn’t chosen that route.
Strangely, Claude didn’t appear to be apologizing for his mother’s behavior. He was merely stating fact.
“Did you know him growing up?”
“My father? No. He died when I was three. I have no memory of him. Not that I would have even if he had survived.”
She nodded. Of course not. The woman would have raised her bastard son on her own, allowing for the gossiping around her, never asking for anything from the man who had fathered the child.
Akela wasn’t sure which way was worse: her own mother’s or Claude’s mother’s.
“Come.”
He took her hand and led her down the steps then around the house. They’d walked for some time before he reached the car he’d used to drive her out there.
She asked, “Aren’t you afraid I’ll remember the way?”
Claude looked at her, then handed her into the passenger’s seat. “If you can remember your way back here, then I deserve to be found.”
She looked around even as he climbed in next to her and started the car.
“So you’re letting me go, then,” she said quietly.
“So I’m letting you go, then.”
Akela wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that. A few short hours ago she would have been elated. Would have been planning exactly what she would do and how she might go about apprehending the man who had taken her prisoner.
Now she could only stare out at the sights around her, the bayou, the swamps, listening to the utter quietness as Claude turned the car around and drove in the direction of the nearest highway, seemingly unconcerned with her taking mental notes on their whereabouts.
She feared the reason for her ambivalence was that she didn’t want him to let her go. Not yet.
Somehow she felt as if the past few hours had existed as time outside of time. The bayou and perhaps even Claude himself had worked their way under her skin. And, she discovered, she was worried about what would happen from there. Worried about Claude. Worried that if her instincts were right, and he hadn’t killed Claire Laraway, that he would never be able to prove it.
She stared at his hands where they gripped the steering wheel. Thick, long and calloused, they seemed incapable of touching her as gently as they had. She rested her own hand against the side of her neck, noting the heaviness of her pulse there. She had the feeling that Claude’s hands weren’t all that unlike the man himself. Hardened by a difficult upbringing, he still had a gentleness that touched her on a level she had been helpless to protect herself against. And she couldn’t help thinking that somehow her short time with Claude Lafitte had changed her, possibly forever.
“AGENT BROOKS, AGENT BROOKS! Officials report their fear that the suspect sexually mistreated you. Any comment?”
The following morning Akela ducked inside the front doors of Eighth District Police Station, keeping her chin down, her eyes straight ahead, no matter how much she wanted to refute the allegations that had swirled around her ever since Jean-Claude Lafitte had set her free a block away from where he’d taken her prisoner the night before.
The chaos that had ensued immediately afterward was enough to make anyone sick. From accusations that she’d had a prior connection to the “modern-day pirate,” to stories that she’d actually helped him escape, the city’s rumor mills were running overtime with decadent possibilities. One morning-radio show personality had actually begun running a verbal serialization of the ordeal, providing a fictional account of what might have happened for entertainment value alone.
But, of course, no one but she and Claude really knew what had happened. Nothing.
Akela’s cheeks burned in the cold air-conditioning as she climbed the stairs to the second floor. Well, almost nothing had happened.
Twelve hours had passed since Claude had handed her out of the car as easily as if they’d gone on a date, then lightly kissed her temple, his fingers hot against her skin. And she had left her gun in her holster, not even attempting to place the fugitive under arrest.
“You should surrender yourself to authorities,” she’d whispered even as her eyelids had fluttered closed under the tenderness of his chaste kiss.
“I will, chere. But not yet. Not yet.”
An NOPD detective waved a morning paper at her as she entered the second-floor bull pen room. “Says here you’re due to give birth to Lafitte’s love child in nine months.”
Akela stared at him. “I’m sure it also says in there that aliens founded our fair city and the time clock is ticking on its destruction.”
“How did you know?”
A few detectives chuckled as she continued on toward the glassed office at the end of the large room. She rapped briefly before letting herself in, the cast of characters inside ones she’d gotten used to since last night.
Chief Detective Lieutenant Alan Chevalier sat behind his desk, his feet crossed on top, his fingers tented against the wrinkled front of his shirt.
“Agent Brooks,” the man in question said, “I didn’t expect to see you in again so soon.”
She ignored the sarcasm in his voice. Most local law-enforcement agencies didn’t appreciate federal involvement in any case, much less one as highly visible as this one. It was a territorial thing. In her case, however, she was there strictly in an observational capacity. Her own superior had released her from duty so she could assist in the apprehension of the fugitive that had bruised the FBI’s image by taking one of their own hostage.
She asked, “Have you gotten an address on the Lafitte house?”
“In the bayou? No.”
She took out a map from the inside pocket of her jacket. “I put my head together with a geologist at the field office. Here’s a rough outline of what I think we’re looking at.”
“Rough outline?”
“Mmm. A map. I already have a native lined up to drive us out there—or should I say, airboat us out there.”
“Agent Brooks, I wasn’t aware that the FBI had taken over control of this case.”
“We haven’t.”
Chevalier slowly removed his feet from his desktop, his gaze steady on her. “Then I’d appreciate you not trying to take control.”
She held his gaze. “Are you interested in catching Lafitte or not?”
She noticed a tick in his jaw. “Of course.”
“Then act like it.”
Chevalier sat forward, obviously insulted, which helped none of them at all.
Akela took a deep breath. This wasn’t the first time she’d been placed in the position of selling an idea. She just hadn’t thought she’d have to here. “Look, ever since your men picked me up last night outside the hotel, you’ve been treating me like I’m the suspect, behavior I’m not very happy with. And now you want to try to lock me out of any attempt to apprehend a man who held me captive for six hours.”
“The last place Lafitte would go back to is the bayou,” Chevalier argued.
“Oh, yes? Well did that little pearl of wisdom form before or after I was released last night?”
Alan stared at her.
“Look, the last thing I want to do is undermine your investigation, Chevalier. But unless you have any other leads you’re working on—”
“Actually, we do.”
Akela crossed her arms and waited.
“I’ve been talking with Lafitte’s attorney. Lafitte is about to turn himself over to authorities as we speak.”
Akela remembered the bits of conversation she’d overheard yesterday.
“He’s buying himself more time,” she said.
“Time for what? To make a run for it? Even you said you don’t think he has plans to leave town.”
“Does that mean we shouldn’t try to apprehend him?”
&nb
sp; “Agent Brooks, I don’t know where you’re from, but wherever it is, obviously things work a little differently there than here. Here in NO, we’re a little more civilized.”
“You mean lazy.”
One of the plainclothes officers nearer the door held up a paper and cleared his throat. “Brooks is from NO, Lieutenant.”
Alan seemed to stare at her more closely and she returned his attention. Then, breaking her gaze away, she gathered her map, folded it, then headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Chevalier asked.
“Out there on my own.”
“I’m the one in charge of this case.”
“Then do something to solve it.”
8
AKELA DIDN’T LIKE going over others’ heads. It didn’t bode well for any working relationship. People tended to be a little pissed when their authority was questioned then stepped on.
But she hadn’t been able to help herself. It was more than her career on the line. With every off-color question she was asked by reporters, every speculative glance she received from her co-workers and superiors, and after sitting across the table from her mother’s accusatory face that morning, she needed to clear her name, and she needed to do it now.
If her deep-seated desire also had anything to do with her own momentary flash of weakness when it came to Claude Lafitte, that was between her and the man in question.
She pressed her hand to the base of her throat, aware of the heat there. Though she wished she could blame that on the weather, she knew it had more to do with her awareness that, while Lafitte hadn’t ravaged her as everyone suspected, she’d wanted him to ravage her. A man suspected of killing his lover. A man who had been in the arms of that same lover mere hours before he’d kissed Akela. But the fact remained that she’d wanted him to do much more.
The airboat sped through the bayous, sending spray up into her face, the sound of the large, propelling fan deafening. There were two boats and she was on the first one, her navy-blue slacks damp, her flak jacket heavy over her navy cotton T-shirt. No sooner had she made the threat to Chevalier than they were on the boats she’d secured, speeding toward a spot on the map where she hoped they would find Lafitte.
Nearby an alligator easily as long as the boat slid back into the water from where it had been sunning itself on the shore, the ripples it made minimal. Akela checked her firearm, resecured her mobile radio transmitter on her shoulder then looked at her watch. They’d agreed to cut the engines some five minutes away from the rendezvous point, not wanting to announce their approach to everyone within a twenty-mile radius. And that point was coming up….
The driver downshifted the engine and the boat slowed to an easy coast on the shallow green water. Next to them, the second boat did the same.
There were ten members of the NOPD all told. Five on her airboat, five on the other. All of them checked their weapons, none of them saying anything. Everything had already been said. They would split up into two teams on the other side of the narrow peninsula, one approaching the cabin from the north, the other from the south. She knew a third team was approaching via the only road into and out of this area of the bayou—the same road Claude had used to take her there the day before.
Had it really only been a day since she’d lain cuffed to his headboard listening to the sounds of the bayou, wanting a man she’d had no business wanting? The experience was so outside anything she could compare it to that she found it almost easier to imagine it a dream—a very detailed, vivid dream that still made her limbs go limp and yearning pool in her abdomen.
“Two minutes out,” the boat captain said to her.
She nodded and indicated that the other boat should split off. She pulled a shotgun from where she’d secured it against the low side of the boat and cocked it, the sound loud and isolated in the comparative silence. A flock of vultures set off from a stand of trees, cawing in warning. She ignored them even as she searched for a landmark she might recognize.
There. To her right she watched three dark sedans speed down the road toward Lafitte’s cabin. There would be no out for him now—at least not through conventional routes. And with their two boats, an escape via the bayou would be cut off, as well.
The airboat hit the side of a grassy knoll and she bolted onto the soft earth, the other men following behind her. She led the way through thick vegetation, her booted feet hitting soggy patches of land here and there until finally she burst through the brush and stood off to the west of the cottage where Lafitte had held her captive the day before.
On the other side, the other team was doing the same, the third team coming up from behind the cabin via the road.
Akela held up her fingers and counted down from three, then ran for the porch, taking the stairs two steps at a time until she flanked the right side of the door, another officer flanking the other. She didn’t bother with niceties. Instead she opened the screen door, the other officer kicked in the wood door and they both entered, training their sights on the interior.
The empty interior.
Damn.
She quickly searched inside.
“House secured. Spread out and search the area,” Akela said into her radio.
She heard footsteps outside then Chevalier was moving inside the house wearing his trademark rumpled trenchcoat and lighting a cigarette. “You won’t find him.”
Akela resisted the urge to point her shotgun at him, handing it off to a fellow officer instead. “If I didn’t know better, Lieutenant, I’d say you’re privy to information the rest of us aren’t.”
He smiled at her. “Not privy. Just mindful of.” He stepped toward the bed in the corner and considered the empty cuffs still fastened to the headboard. He raised a brow at her. “This where he held you?”
Akela didn’t answer. She’d already told him what had gone down the day before. Three times. She wasn’t about to tell him again.
Besides, just looking at that bed made her remember feelings she’d be better off forgetting—for good.
The scent of cigarette smoke reached her nose and she stepped out of the cloud.
“If we’d come last night as I wanted, we might have caught him,” she said, stepping back outside.
“If we’d come last night, we would have gotten lost,” Chevalier said, following her.
“If I recall, that wasn’t your argument then.”
He looked at her. “No. It wasn’t.”
Essentially his argument had been that she was emotionally overwrought and wouldn’t have been able to remember where Lafitte had taken her. So he’d told her to go home and get some rest—rest she had yet to get.
Akela walked the perimeter of the house back to the shower. She didn’t dislike Chevalier. While he was a chauvinist pain in the ass, he had been very adept at his job judging by the framed accolades on his wall, and what others had said about him. At least up until recently. And while with his sarcasm he made it seem he didn’t like her, she knew that he held a grudging respect for her and her position. And once he’d agreed to the raid, she hadn’t heard a single smart-ass remark. Well, at least until they’d figured out Lafitte wasn’t there.
Of course, it didn’t pass her notice that he was in some sort of trouble with the higher-ups at his station or else she would have had a more difficult fight on her hands when she’d gone in there this morning.
“The deed?” she asked when she’d come back around, directing the question at Chevalier where he stood with a few of his men.
“None on record,” he said. “There are some places out here that aren’t listed in any books yet.”
So essentially this place didn’t exist. There was no way to tie it in any official way to Lafitte.
Something shone in her eyes, briefly blinding her. She held her hand to her brow and squinted out across the bayou. The three teams were gathering back at the cabin. Akela started in the direction of the swamp, keeping her gaze fixed on the spot where she swore she’d seen the flash.
>
CLAUDE LIFTED the binoculars again, staring at the woman some two hundred yards away with what he told himself was little more than detached interest. Problem was, not even he was having any of it. He felt…well, almost proud, if truth be told. He was proud Agent Akela Brooks had not only remembered where the old cabin was but that she had brought enough firepower along to bring down a small town.
Akela seemed to look directly at him.
Claude dropped the binoculars and squinted in her direction. Of course she couldn’t see him. But the way her gaze had slammed into his through the glass made him believe for half a second that she had.
He fished for his cell phone and called a number he’d programmed in, then moved the binoculars back to his eyes. He watched Akela search for her cell. She apparently didn’t recognize the number and for a moment he thought she might ignore the incoming call. Then she pressed the button and said, “Hello?” her gaze still scanning the area around where Claude hid.
“You found me.”
He watched her eyes go round. The police detective was looking at her curiously but rather than indicate that she had him on the line, she turned and walked away from the throng of police. “Obviously I didn’t find you, or else I’d be looking at you right now. And you’d be the one wearing handcuffs this time.”
Claude chuckled softly, finding her actions more interesting than her words. Why hadn’t she let on to her co-workers that she had him on the line? That he was obviously nearby?
“Can you see me?” she asked.
“I can see you.”
“So why don’t you come out and give yourself up?”
It was more of a comment than a question. Probably because they both knew there would be no giving up of anything. At least not yet. Not until Claude could prove his innocence.
Possession Page 6
