River Road

by JoAnn Ross

  Her chin shot up again. "Protecting nurses' jobs and patients' safety is not a wacked-out cause."

  "Okay, I'll grant you that one." Finn's own maternal grandmother had been an LPN at the country's only remaining leprosarium in Carville. "But my point is that, just in case some nutcase out there has actually targeted you, your best bet to stay alive is with me. Because I'm the best there is."

  "You're also more than a little arrogant."

  "Thanks. I work at it."

  "Oh, I think you're being overly modest, Special Agent. I doubt it takes any work at all."

  She turned and began walking away again. Cursing beneath his breath, Finn reminded himself that he had two choices: Julia Summers or fishing. Which was no damn choice at all.

  Chapter 8

  Julia had been raised in an atmosphere that celebrated the differences in people. Her parents had taught her at an early age not to stereotype and even without that early instruction, she'd witnessed the danger of such behavior firsthand when the government had painted her parents with that broad anarchist brush during her childhood.

  Admittedly, they'd been social activists, embracing causes from saving the whales to stopping the war in Vietnam to the Equal Rights Amendment to reparations for American Japanese who'd been sent off to internment camps during the second world war. They'd also brought her up to fight for the rights of those who couldn't fight for themselves. But she'd always known that there was absolutely no way Peace or Freedom would have ever turned to violence.

  "They don't even eat meat," she muttered to herself as they left the terminal in a black Suburban which, like his dark suit, screamed FBI.

  When he slanted her a look, she realized she'd inadvertently spoken out loud. "My parents are vegetarians."

  He nodded. "I know."

  The simple acknowledgment only irritated her all the more. "Doesn't it bother you at all?"

  "What?"

  "That you make your living invading the privacy of your fellow Americans?"

  "No. Because I don't consider investigating the bad guys as invading privacy. And while it may be hard for you to fathom, from what I've been able to tell, most Americans don't feel that way, either."

  "Maybe they're just afraid they'll be thrown in jail if they admit their real feelings."

  His only response to the careless accusation, which Julia regretted the moment it came out of her mouth, was a slight tightening of his fingers on the steering wheel.

  "I recently closed a case," he said in a mild, dry, just-the-facts-ma'am tone. "There was this rich computer software mogul who hop-skipped around the country, picking up coeds and slicing them up. That would have been bad enough, but since killing apparently didn't give him a big enough rush, he'd keep them prisoner first, sometimes for weeks. Rape was probably the easiest of the stuff" he put them through."

  "Ronald Lawson."

  "I guess you've heard about the case."

  "It would have been hard not to, since it was all over the headlines when he was arrested. But I didn't follow it very closely." The murderous sexual crime spree had been too horrendous to think about.

  "Then you probably missed the part about him keeping trophies of the killings." His voice remained matter-of-fact, making her wish she could see his eyes behind the dark glasses he'd put on against the glare of the setting sun. "The night we raided his house, we found this walnut box in the safe behind a painting. The painting was from Picasso's Blue Period.

  "One of the things in the box was a wedding veil and a yellow bikini. Seems his fourth victim had planned to get married the next day, then she and her groom were heading off to Bora Bora for their honeymoon. Needless to say, she missed both the wedding and the trip. We figure it took Lawson about a week to get bored with her."

  As an actress, Julia was accustomed to putting herself in other people's skins. She shivered as she imagined the pain and terror the woman must have experienced. "Agent Callahan—"

  "You might as well make it Finn. Since it looks like we're going to be spending a lot of time together."

  "I'm sorry. I may have exaggerated." She'd never felt smaller.

  He looked over at her, his eyes still hidden by those damn glasses. "May have?"

  "All right." She threw up her hands. "I definitely over spoke. My only excuse is that I'm very uncomfortable with all this. And my early personal experience with your agency wasn't exactly positive."

  He seemed to consider that idea. Then merely nodded and returned his attention back to driving.

  When they drove past a cemetery, Julia's mind flashed back to a long-ago day. Rainbow's End Farm had been a warm and loving place where adults had gone out of their way to make the children feel loved. And safe.

  Then, when she was five, she'd been throwing sticks for Taffy, her cocker spaniel, when one of the sticks had gone sailing across the dirt road leading to the milking barn. As she'd watched in horror, the dog, in enthusiastic pursuit, had gone racing after it and was hit by a truck delivering propane to the farm.

  That was the day she'd learned firsthand about death. She'd been uncomfortable with the subject ever since, which made her wonder what kind of man could talk about such evils in such a matter-of-fact tone.

  She turned toward him, taking in a profile that looked as if it'd been hacked from granite. He was not conventionally handsome, but many women would consider his rugged looks very appealing.

  His heavily hooded eyes gave him a somewhat sleepy look that was deceptive, and his nose had a slight cant, suggesting it'd been broken. If his broad jaw was any indication, when they'd been handing out testosterone, Special Agent Callahan had gone back for seconds. Oh yes, Julia could see the appeal—not that he was at all her type.

  She'd always preferred artistic, sensitive men, fellow actors or musicians, and once, for a not-all-that memorable two months, she'd had an affair with a promising painter who'd called her his muse. Until he'd finished the last in a series of nude paintings.

  Declaring himself creatively blocked, he'd moved on to greener, more stimulating pastures. But not before borrowing a hundred dollars she'd known at the time she'd never see again. She'd recently received an invitation to his one-man show at a gallery in Taos. But still no check.

  Graham may have been boring. But at least he hadn't stiffed her.

  As they crossed the Mississippi River, leaving New Orleans behind them, an unpalatable thought occurred to Julia.

  "Are you carrying?"

  He glanced over at her. "Carrying?"

  "Isn't that what you call it? When you're armed?"

  "Yeah." The corner of his mouth quirked. "That's what we call it. And I am. Carrying."

  "I don't like guns." Even after having been mugged at the ATM last year, she hadn't considered buying a weapon, and had done a PSA with Tom Selleck about firearms safety. Ironically, it had drawn a firestorm of criticism from both the NRA and gun control advocates.

  "Now, there's a news flash," he murmured. "You might find yourself changing your mind if your secret admirer decides to re-create that photo. But don't worry. I usually try to read people their rights before I shoot them."

  "Did anyone ever tell you that you have a bad attitude, Special Agent Callahan?"

  "Finn," he reminded her. "And yeah, it's been called to my attention—recently, as a matter of fact. But unlike my arrogance, the attitude comes-naturally."

  It was the first thing he'd said she found herself unable to argue with.

  ***

  Since her parents believed that travel was broadening, Julia had been all over the world. She'd heard Big Ben strike the hour in London, marveled at the Renaissance beauty of Florence, listened to the hum of prayer wheels in Tibet, and had awakened to the sun rising over Mt. Kilimanjaro in Kenya. But the Louisiana bayou was a world apart, as foreign as anywhere she'd ever visited.

  They drove past seemingly endless waterways, root-laced swamps, and rivulets ribboning the marshland. Sun glimmered over the bayou, backlighting the hangin
g Spanish moss in ghostly gold.

  "Like a magician extended his golden wand over the landscape," she murmured.

  "Twinkling vapors arose. Sky and water and forest seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together," Finn surprised her by quoting the following line.

  "I hadn't realized they taught Longfellow at the FBI Academy."

  "Sure they do. It's an elective, squeezed in between the course on how to beat up on suspects without leaving any bruises and the one on falsifying reports."

  "The frightening thing is, I almost believe you."

  "Even more frightening is that I almost believe you believe me. And now who's the one doing the stereotyping?"

  Taking it as a rhetorical question, Julia didn't answer, though she secretly acknowledged his point.

  "As for me knowing that poem, you can't grow up here in the swamp without knowing the story of those two star-crossed lovers," he said. "There's an oak tree in St. Martinville that's supposedly where Evangeline waited for her Gabriel."

  "So you grew up here?"

  At first, when her question was met by silence, she didn't think he was going to answer.

  "My parents moved here from Chicago when I was seven," he said finally. "But my mother's people were part of the original group of Acadians expelled from Nova Scotia in le Grand Derangement."

  "That must have been quite a change for you."

  He didn't respond.

  "Well?"

  "I'm sorry." The steel curtain had drawn closed again. "Was that a question?"

  "Never mind." Julia refused to admit she was the least bit interested.

  He sighed. "Sure, it was a change. But when you're a kid, your family's more important than where your house is located."

  Remembering what he'd said about playing sandlot ball with his brothers, Julia was about to ask him about his family when he leaned forward and punched on the CD player. The down and dirty sound of Kiss's "Love Gun" came screaming out of the speakers, essentially cutting off any further conversation.

  As unhappy as he was with this baby-sitting assignment, Finn was even more disgusted with himself for nearly sharing personal stuff he never discussed with anyone else. Despite being an actress, which wasn't exactly the most down-to-earth career in the world, and that episode with the nurses, she hadn't followed all that closely in her parents' hippie footsteps.

  And although he'd throw himself off the Huey Long Bridge before admitting it, the fact that she was slated to be the next Bond Girl was pretty cool.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her drinking in scenery as different from L.A. or that bucolic commune she'd grown up on as Oz, and remembered how uprooted he'd felt when his father had brought his family to Louisiana, wanting to raise his children in a safe place, away from the mean and dangerous city streets.

  Finn was a little surprised she'd so immediately honed in on what he'd been feeling when he'd first arrived in Blue Bayou. But an actress was undoubtedly accustomed to trying on different roles. Even that of a seven-year-old boy.

  He wondered if such behavior had become second nature; wondered how a person would ever know whether or not they were seeing the "real" Julia Summers; wondered if she even knew herself who the real Julia Summers was—then reminded himself it didn't matter.

  His job was to keep her safe. Which he had every intention of doing. Then, after sending her off to Kathmandu, he could return to the life he'd been forced to put on hold.

  After all the miles of swamp and waving green fields of what Julia supposed was sugar cane, they drove across an iron bridge and came to a blue and white sign welcoming them to Blue Bayou.

  "It's very different from the other towns we've passed," she volunteered over the earsplitting music. The other communities had all stretched out on a narrow strip along the road, while Blue Bayou appeared to be laid out in squares, tree-lined cobblestone streets setting off pretty parks with bubbling fountains and lush gardens.

  "That's because most of the other communities grew up along the road, to save valuable land for crops. Blue Bayou's patterned after Savannah."

  They were driving through neighborhoods of brightly colored cottages and small, cozy white houses with wide front porches where people were sitting in wicker chairs beneath lazily circling ceiling fans. Several of them waved to Finn, who lifted a hand in response.

  "A mix of Creole, Acadian and Native Americans had lived here for a long time, but they'd been scattered along the bayou like everywhere else. Then a rich Creole planter visited Savannah for a wedding and liked it so much, after he came home, he hooked up with an African-American architect and this is what they ended up with. They named it Bayou Bleu, after all the herons that nest on the banks, but over the years it became Anglicized."

  "It's charming."

  "I suppose it is." He seemed a bit surprised by that idea. "When I was a teenager, I thought it was about as dull as dirt."

  Julia found herself unwillingly identifying with him. "It's hard at that age to live in a place where everyone knows your parents. Do yours still live here?"

  "They died."

  "I'm sorry."

  "So was I," he said, putting a damper on any further attempt at conversation.

  She'd already discovered that whenever a topic veered into the personal, he clammed up. Which was fine with her. Since she'd never see him again once shooting ended, she didn't need to know his life story. Though it was sad about his parents. Julia couldn't imagine a world without Freedom and Peace in it. She also wondered if the Callahans had died together, and whether their deaths might be what he'd been talking about when he'd said he knew what it was to be a kid and have the world pulled out from under you.

  Not that she was all that interested. Just naturally curious.

  They passed the VFW hall which, if all the trucks in the parking lot were any indication, was doing a bang-up business. The bumper stickers—Thank a Vet For Your Freedom, I Don't Care How You Did It Up North, Coon Ass and Proud, and Real Men Don't Shoot Blanks— were yet more proof that she was no longer in California.

  He pulled up in front of The Plantation Inn, which reminded Julia of a scaled-down Twelve Oaks. "It's beautiful," she murmured appreciatively. "Like something from a movie set."

  "The original inn, which housed troops during the Union occupation, blew away during a hurricane in the 1980s. It was a lot plainer, and the owners decided rebuilding in this style might appeal more to tourists."

  As she entered the inn, Julia decided the owners were right. The lobby boasted huge bouquets of hothouse flowers, lots of rich wood, exquisite antique furniture, and leafy plants. Though she barely got a glimpse of it all on her rush to the elevator.

  "Shouldn't we check in?" she asked as Finn put the coded card in the elevator slot and punched the button for the third floor.

  "It's all taken care of."

  The elevator door opened directly onto a corner suite which provided a view of the bayou in one direction and the flickering gaslights of what appeared to be the town's main street in the other.

  "You know, I want very much to be annoyed at you." She walked over to the gold silk-framed windows and drank in the sight of the water, which was gleaming a brilliant copper in the final rays of the setting sun. "But if you had anything to do with me being booked into this suite, I'm willing to overlook your manhandling me through the lobby."

  "There you go, exaggerating again."

  "What would you call humiliating me by dragging me across the floor in front of the entire cast of River Road?"

  "I'd call it doing my job. And I wouldn't think any woman who'd strip naked in front of the entire world could be that easily humiliated."

  "The entire world doesn't show up on the set. I also always wear a bodysuit or flesh-colored bikini. Besides, I was brought up to believe the human body is nothing to be embarrassed about."

  He gave her another of those slow looks that suggested he was recording her vital statistics for a Wanted poster. "I suppos
e that depends on the body in question."

  The statement, coming from left field, left Julia at a loss for words. Finn Callahan was unlike anyone she'd ever met, and she couldn't quite figure out how to handle him.

  But Amanda could. There wasn't a male alive who was a match for her feminine wiles. Julia had always left her character on the set, but as his slow, judicious scrutiny tangled her nerves, she decided to make an exception.

  "Gracious, Special Agent," she purred. "Is that a compliment?"

  "Merely an observation. You undoubtedly realize you're a stunningly beautiful woman. Otherwise you wouldn't have auditioned for that Bond Girl role."

  "It's a great part. Even if it's a little intimidating following in the footsteps of Kim Basinger and Terri Hatcher."

  Damn, why had she told him that? He was undoubtedly an expert at latching onto any little weakness and using it against a suspect. Not that she was a suspect. So why did she feel like one?

  "I don't think you have anything to worry about," he said, his tone dry and matter-of-fact. "So what's your name going to be?"

  "You'll laugh."

  "No, I won't."

  Julia supposed he was telling the truth. After all, the FBI wasn't known for its sense of humor. "Promise?"

  "Look, if you don't want to tell me, fine. I was just making idle conversation."

  "I doubt you've had an idle conversation in your life," she countered. "It's Carma Sutra."

  He didn't laugh, but his chiseled lips quirked again in that way that softened the rugged planes of his face a bit. Julia was waiting for him to say something, anything, when the phone on a Queen Anne desk across the room rang.

  He beat her to it, snatched up the receiver, barked out a brusque, "Callahan," listened a moment, then held it out to her. "It's for you."

  "Why, what a coincidence. Considering this is, after all, my suite."

  The call was from the director, reminding her of tonight's welcoming party in the inn's library. "Of course I remember," she assured Randy. "Yes. Seven-thirty." She stifled a sigh. "I'll be there."