“I’ll be damned,” Adam said softly.
Lara could only agree.
Ten
Raising her voice, she called, “Aunt Kim!”
“Oh, Lara, thank God.”
“Coming out. Don’t shoot.”
Her aunt sent her a fast glance, then looked beyond her toward the thicket. Her eyes were wild, and her dark lipstick made her mouth appear black in the white mask of her face. The weapon in her hand wobbled for an instant before she steadied it. “Where’s Adam?”
“Here,” he answered, stepping into the open and moving toward them.
Lara had no time to wonder what kind of reconnaissance or tactic had kept him. Her attention was on her aunt and the despair emanating from her. “Are you okay?” she asked in concern. “You’re not hurt?”
“I turned an ankle stumbling around in the dark in these heels, that’s all,” Aunt Kim said. “But I need to get out of here, and I’m not sure what to do with this trash to keep them from following me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t just shoot them in cold blood. I mean, I’d rather not. I know they came after me, and all that, but…”
“We didn’t want to kill you,” the injured man began.
“Shut up,” Aunt Kim said, centering the gun on his chest once more so that Demarius cringed away as if trying to present a smaller target. His associate cursed in virulent dislike of his helplessness.
“You’re sure this is the same woman you described to me?” Adam asked, his voice dry as he moved to Lara’s side. “The misunderstood beauty with little internal fortitude?”
Lara caught from Adam’s clothes the scent of smoke and wax, as of a freshly lit birthday candle, along with the caustic odor of drain cleaner. It was a strong hint that a slow-burning fuse in homemade plastic explosive was left somewhere behind him. She frowned even as she began, “I didn’t mean—”
“Of course you did,” Aunt Kim corrected, her voice strident, “and you were right. But deal with cruelty every day, as I did with Ernesto, and you either die or become mean enough to fight back. Ernesto thought I was weak as well. He underestimated me.”
“So did I,” Adam said. “Not to mention these two.”
“You had other things on your mind,” Lara’s aunt said with an unsteady laugh. “Besides, I intended it that way.”
The two men in front of them cursed. Demarius eased forward a half step as if he thought to use the moment of distraction to try for the gun.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Adam warned him. “You don’t want to upset Mrs. Belzoni any more than you have already.”
“Oh, hell no. That wouldn’t do, would it? She’s a crazy woman. Get that piece away from her before she kills somebody with it. Or make that somebody else—” The hired thug closed his lips abruptly as Adam took a step toward him.
“You see?” Aunt Kim said. “What am I going to do? They won’t give up. They’ll find me wherever I go. I’ll never be free.”
“The easiest thing is to call the police,” Adam said in grim conviction.
Lara’s aunt ignored that as if he hadn’t spoken. “I thought about the trunk of their car as a place to put them, only I wasn’t sure I could walk them back to the house and make them get in it. But maybe they’ll cooperate now that there are three of us.”
“And then what?” Lara asked. “Ernesto’s uncle will still send someone after you.”
“At least I’ll have a head start!”
“Oh, Aunt Kim.”
“Call the Tunica Parish sheriff’s office,” Adam insisted. “Ask for Roan.”
“And I guess you think I should stick around until he gets here? I won’t. I can’t stand being locked up. I told you I that.”
“It might not come to it.”
“It will! Help me get them to the house. Do you have any duct tape, Lara? We can at least tie them up.”
“What about when it’s time to let them go?” she asked, willing her aunt to meet her eyes.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you siding with Benedict against your own flesh and blood?”
“It’s not a question of sides but of common sense,” she insisted. “I’m afraid of what may happen to you if Belzoni’s men run you down some place far away from here.”
“You are with him. They won’t find me, not if you charge them with destruction of property and disturbing the peace.” Her aunt’s face mirrored triumph as she brought out her solution.
“Charge them? You mean—you’re agreeing to let Adam call the police after all?”
“Don’t be silly. I dialed 911 ages ago.”
The prisoners began to babble again, until Adam silenced them again with a hard gesture. Turning back to Aunt Kim, he demanded, “You called Roan? He’s on his way?”
“I couldn’t let anything happen to Lara, now could I? I never meant to make trouble for her.”
The rich affection and gratitude that rose inside Lara threatened to push tears into her eyes. “Oh, Aunt Kim.”
“I could never forgive myself if you were hurt because I came here, honey. I’m not that kind of monster.”
“Then you know why I can’t stand to see you in trouble. But don’t you think…” Lara paused, amazed at what she’d been about to say, uncertain it was the right thing.
“What? Tell me quick, because we don’t have much time.”
Did she dare? Could she trust Adam that far when she’d seldom been so dependent on anyone, much less a man? And yet, it seemed the right thing to do. She’d love to see her aunt get away once and for all, see her installed someplace where she could finally relax and be eternally unafraid. But there was no such safe haven, not after what she’d done. If that was anyone’s fault, then it was her aunt’s, the result of the bad choices made over a lifetime.
“Give Adam the gun,” she said, her voice turning firm as she spoke. “Let him hold these men until the police come.”
“He’d do that?” She sent him a disbelieving stare. “He’d take over so I can go?”
Lara shook her head. “So you can stay and talk to Adam’s cousin and also the police in New Orleans. So you can take advantage of Adam’s influence, and his help.”
“Lara,” Adam began.
She turned toward him, her gaze steady. “You will help, won’t you? You’ll stand by her, see that she’s protected whether it’s in prison or out and regardless of the information she may have about the Belzoni crime family? You will do whatever you can so long as it doesn’t compromise your word?”
He met her gaze, his own closed in, guarding his thoughts and his feelings. Taking a chance, going once more on instinct, she allowed him to see her acceptance of whatever he might decide. She abandoned all her carefully erected internal defenses while hoping he would do the same. With consummate trust, she gave him what he asked on the chance that he would allow her what she needed. She opened her mind to him like a book that he could read if he only accepted the capability.
The instant expanded, becoming endlessly elastic until it seemed that they were alone in a place far away from the others. Then his gaze cleared, becoming as stunningly transparent as a Caribbean sea. His smile was slow and edged with wry humor as he said, “You should have been a lawyer.”
“Will you?” she insisted, needing the words as well as the feeling.
“If I can’t, and if there is no guarantee of immunity for your aunt in return for her cooperation, then I give my word that I won’t turn her in to the NOPD.”
It was more than she’d expected, an enormous concession in return for her own. Turning back to her aunt, she held out her hand. “You heard Adam. Isn’t that better than running scared, hiding out, jumping every time a door slams or a truck backfires? Give him the pistol. Please.”
“Really, Lara. I can be far, far away by daylight.”
“And how much farther will you have to go before you can breathe easy? Tell me something? Why didn’t you just divorce Belzoni as you did the others?”
“He said I’d never get away from him, that he’d find me and kill me, no matter how fast or far I ran.”
“Out of love?”
Her aunt’s face twisted. “Out of obsession, maybe, or else his right to own me. He claimed that if he couldn’t have me, then no one else would. I think he really hated me for making him feel inadequate, so that killing me was to be his final revenge.”
“Exactly,” Lara said, and watched her aunt as her face changed with the realization that nothing was different, that her dead husband’s uncle would be just as vengeful. “Where can you go? How long before they find you? You can’t kill them all. Even if you could, it’s no way to live.”
“Oh, Lara,” Aunt Kim whispered as her face crumpled into lines of grief. “Then it was for nothing. I might as well have let Ernesto murder me.”
“Not if you’ll trust Adam now. You have information the police can use. In exchange, they may give you a new life.”
Aunt Kim looked at Adam. “Is that true?”
“I can’t promise,” he answered, looking up from checking his watch by the light of the moon to meet her anxious gaze. “But I’ll do everything in my power to see that it happens.”
She looked back at Lara. “You believe him?”
Lara met the gaze of the man at her side for interminable seconds while a rich and deep current of something so powerful it had no name flowed between them. “I believe him,” she said. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be standing here with him.”
From the distance, there came the sound of a siren. Aunt Kim jerked and gave a moan of distress at that audible warning that time was running out. The two men she still covered looked at each other and began to edge into the darkness.
“Aunt Kim?” Lara’s voice was sharp.
She whispered a curse, shuddering where she stood. She glanced down at the pistol in her hand.
It was then that the third man emerged from the darkness and walked forward. He stopped with his legs spread and a snub-nosed assault rifle at the firing position in his hands. “Hold it right there, folks,” he said in a thick New Orleans accent that sounded like Brooklynese. “This is my party now.”
Aunt Kim turned toward the intruder with the pistol pointed at his midsection. The man bared his teeth and tightened his trigger finger on his assault rifle. Adam turned in the same instant, his muscles tightening as he prepared to lunge.
It was then that the night was blasted apart and the plum thicket behind Adam became a fountain of fire. The concussion rolled toward them. A split second before it struck, Adam slammed into Lara and her aunt, knocking them to the ground and covering them with his body.
The roar passed over them, fading almost as fast as it had begun. Immediately, Adam rolled away and sprang to his feet. In his hand was the pistol that he had retrieved from Aunt Kim.
Demarius and the other thug were scrambling on the ground, trying to crawl away. The man with the assault rifle rolled in the grass, trying to put out the blue flames that licked the sleeve of his shirt. Adam stepped back a pace so he could cover all three. Above the crackle of fire, his voice rang out. “Hold it right there, all of you. On your feet.”
The goons struggled upright then turned slowly back to face him with their hands in plain sight. Then they all stood in silence as the police car’s siren came ever closer.
Sheriff Roan Benedict was efficiency personified. Minutes after he and his deputies appeared, the Mafioso trio were disarmed and ensconced in the back of a patrol unit, the two separate fires were out, and Aunt Kim was in protective custody. After closing the passenger side door where her aunt huddled in his patrol unit, he turned and sauntered with rangy grace toward Lara and Adam as they stood near the front steps of her house.
“I should say thank you for coming so quickly,” she told him with real gratitude. She tried to smile, but her lips felt stiff and cold. The night’s events were beginning to take on a surreal quality that wasn’t helped by the flashing blue-and-red lights of the pair of police cars that illuminated the driveway area or the smoke that still drifted in the air.
“No problem. Your aunt told dispatch that Adam was in a spot of trouble. We Benedicts look after our own.” He grinned at his cousin as he spoke, and gave him his hand in what looked like a bone-crushing grip.
“I owe you one,” Adam said, his smile crooked.
“Nah. Seems to me you had everything pretty much under control.”
“Yeah, well, except for not knowing what the devil to do with any of them once I had the drop on them.”
“My specialty, putting people away.” Roan turned to Lara. “My deputies can stick around to be sure the fires are under control, if you like. No danger to the house that I can see, but somebody needs to keep an eye on them in case they blaze up again.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Adam said.
Roan tipped his head back, giving him a long look from under the brim of his Stetson. “That’s the way it is, huh?”
“Possibly,” Adam agreed, though he didn’t look at Lara. “So how is Tory?”
“Good, good. She’ll be better when this ten-ton kid she’s carrying around decides to join the family.”
“And maybe you’ll get out of the doghouse, too?”
“Literally.”
Hearing the wry fervor in the sheriff’s voice, Lara had to smile even as she felt a small pang for the strong current of love and concern for his wife that she heard in his voice.
“Shouldn’t be so prolific, Cuz, or so competitive. I mean, just because the rest of the guys in the clan got off to a fast start at filling the nursery didn’t mean you had to join them.”
“Tory’s idea,” Roan said. “Not that I objected too much.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Adam said, his voice dry.
“Or that it would have done me any good if I had.” Roan cleared his throat with a rasp. “Guess I’ll hit the road, since I don’t like leaving her alone just now. You’ll be all right, here, you two?”
“Fine,” Adam said.
It wasn’t his assurance Roan was looking for, apparently, since he didn’t move but only watched Lara with careful assessment in his eyes.
“I’ll be all right, too,” she said.
He studied her for a moment longer, then gave a slow nod and touched a finger to his hat brim. “You give me a call if you’re not. Okay?”
The warm sense of belonging that his words created inside her was startling but also gratifying. “Yes,” she said simply. “I’ll do that.”
Roan moved around to the driver’s side of his vehicle. Lara reached in at the passenger side to hug Aunt Kim, promising to be in constant touch. The doors shut and the patrol cars moved out, leaving her and Adam alone in front of the house.
“I don’t think my cousin trusts me,” Adam complained when the noise of the departure allowed him to be heard.
Lara gave him an amused glance. “I think he’s just a cautious and caring man.”
“Another convert to the Sheriff Benedict fan club. I guess you’ll be calling him night and day, just like everybody else in the blessed parish.”
“Something wrong with that?”
“Not a lot. Except I have a better idea.”
“Do you now?” she asked, her voice cool.
“You could come home with me.”
She hadn’t seen it coming, which was nothing short of amazing. Or maybe it was just that her perceptions had been blunted by everything else that had happened. “Why would I do that?”
“You need protective custody as much as your aunt. Suppose Belzoni’s uncle decides he can still get to her through you, maybe kidnap you so she’ll think twice before remembering too much about her husband’s family?”
He had a point, but that was all she was ready to concede. “Moving into your condo seems like a drastic solution.”
“Who said anything about moving in with me?”
She turned her head to frown at him. “My mistake. I thought that was what you meant.
”
“Not that I’d mind, understand. But I figured you could come with me to Grand Point. There’s going to be this big family reunion where you could meet all the Benedicts, Kane and Luke and their wives and offspring, my brother Clay and his wife and daughter, maybe even my other brother, Wade. Roan will be there, too, of course, if that’s any incentive.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I know very well that he’s devoted to his wife, not to mention to his half-grown son, his dad, his home, his dogs, and his job.”
“Ah, well. Guess you’ll have to settle for me.”
Settle? Did he really think any woman would feel she was settling for anything when offered his company? “I suppose,” she said judiciously, “that I could get by with that.”
He nodded. “Thought so.”
“Did you now? You were positive that you had only to suggest and I’d agree?”
“Something like that.” The look he gave her was a shade smug, but also carried a wicked glint that made every inch of her skin’s surface feel hot.
“Because you’re so masterful and irresistible, I suppose?” The sarcasm was sheer self-defense.
“I don’t know,” he said with a lifted brow. “Am I?”
“Also the most infuriating…”
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I think you’re the most gorgeous, intelligent, and bravest female I’ve ever met, too.”
“But all wrong.”
“Now what makes you say that?” His tone was almost indulgent.
“I’m not a Benedict kind of woman, sweet-tempered, church-going—normal.”
“I told you before that you don’t know me if you think that’s important. And you sure as hell don’t know the Benedict women.”
She wanted to believe him, which was the problem. “You need somebody different.”
“You’re about as different as they get.”
“I mean different from me,” she said in exasperation.
“What, somebody uncomplicated who will believe every word I say, no matter how unreasonable?”
With a Southern Touch: AdamA Night in ParadiseGarden Cop Page 9
