Hunted

by Karen Robards

  If Holly died tonight, it would be Reed’s fault. He should have taken the kid seriously in the first place. He should have gotten all his ducks in a row—or at least made sure Holly and Ant were safely out of harm’s way—before he did anything else. Having spent a good portion of the thirty-six hours following the cemetery killings conducting a rudimentary investigation of Holly’s claims, he had been staggered by what had turned up. He should never have gone to Martin Wallace once he had decided for himself that at least one member of the NOPD, and possibly more, were involved in the shootings in the cemetery. But who the hell could have guessed that the superintendent would react as he had?

  Who the hell could have guessed that the superintendent was part of it? The fact that Reed still didn’t know exactly what it was didn’t matter: not two hours after leaving the superintendent’s office, he’d been called in to Internal Affairs, where he’d been stunned to find himself accused of accepting a bribe for letting a suspect in a drug-related murder walk. There were eyewitnesses, he’d been told, including a confidential police informant and one of his fellow officers, whom they refused to name.

  Reed had been so shocked by the accusation that it had taken him until they’d demanded his weapon and badge to start putting the pieces together. Then he’d stormed out of Internal Affairs and gone straight to the superintendent. In the shouting match that had ensued, Reed had been fired, punches had been thrown, and, with all kinds of alarm bells going off in his mind, he had fled headquarters about two steps ahead of being placed under arrest.

  Laying low until he could figure things out had been his intent, but then he’d gotten word that Holly had been busted for crack possession. Thing was, Holly might take the occasional toke off a joint, but to Reed’s certain knowledge he had never done any harder drugs in his life. Magnolia’s downfall was to thank for that: as Holly had told him not that long ago, no way was he ever going to let himself get that messed up.

  That’s when Reed had known for sure, just in case there had still been any doubt in his mind, any thought that what he had just been accused of could possibly have been no more than an honest mistake: he—and Holly—were being set up. By taking Holly’s suspicions and his own confirming observations to the superintendent, he had walked into a hornet’s nest, all unknowingly.

  In the future—if he had a future—Reed promised himself that he’d be a hell of a lot warier about taking things, and people, at face value. Not that he was naive or anything: he’d known that the good guys weren’t always good. But these people were his people: the NOPD was—had been—his tribe. This felt like—no, it was—betrayal.

  Three years ago, he hadn’t been able to save his own son’s life. Tonight he was prepared to do whatever it took to save the lives of these two kids who were depending on him.

  “It’s okay, it’s me,” he told Holly. Then on his next breath, in a warning tone meant to make her understand that he was now the one in charge, he said to Caroline, “I don’t want to have to hurt you. Don’t make me.”

  Beneath his hand, she took a deep breath and muttered something. He took it for acquiescence.

  “Holy shit, I thought I was a goner.” Holly seemed to sag a little. “I thought they was gonna blow my head off for sure.”

  “Night’s still young,” Reed replied, easing his hold on Caroline just a little. She was stiff, wary, and he was careful not to give her enough room to try anything.

  “So get us out of here already,” Holly begged, taking a couple of uncertain steps toward him before stopping. Shrouded in shadows, Holly stood there in the middle of the hall swaying a little, his head craning in Reed’s direction, clearly scared to death and discombobulated by not being able to see. “And get this fucking rag off my face.”

  Reed said, “Hang tight, I need to deal with this first.”

  “This” being Caroline. He could feel her continuing agitation in the heaving of her chest, in the shuddering breaths she was trying to take beneath his hand, but she was no longer making any attempt to fight free. That was good: he didn’t want to hurt her. The Caroline he remembered had been sweet, sassy, sexy, in dire need of affection and protection, and she’d had a thing for him.

  Of course, she’d also been seventeen. He might be making a mistake—a fatal mistake—if he assumed she hadn’t changed since then.

  It was a mistake that he couldn’t afford to make. He’d already made enough of them over the last two days to nearly get himself and Holly—and now it seemed like Ant, too—killed.

  “You can’t scream,” Reed warned her, tightening his hold on her a little to emphasize his point. She felt slimmer than he remembered, and stronger, too, in his arms. A grown woman now, not a girl. “Or give me any trouble. Understand?”

  She gave a curt nod.

  Cautiously he took his hand away from her mouth.

  “You don’t have a dead man’s switch.” Her tone made it a statement, not a question, and it surprised him. It took him a second, but then he knew exactly what she was talking about.

  “It wasn’t a dead man’s switch.” Sounding almost angry, she tried to look at him over her shoulder. “Was it?”

  He realized that by having both hands free and available to grab her he had given himself away, because, clearly, if he’d had a dead man’s switch, he wouldn’t have been letting go of it. Not that it mattered now. The answer was that, no, the slim canister of personal-size pepper spray he’d been holding threateningly in his hand for the benefit of the hostages and the camera had not been a dead man’s switch. But he had modified it just enough to make it look like one, and was mildly gratified to have further confirmation (besides his hostages’ shuddering reactions to it whenever they had happened to look in its direction) of how well the bluff had worked.

  Not that he was about to confess that it had been a bluff to Caroline. At this point, everything he did was on a need-to-know basis, and that she certainly didn’t need to know. Instead of answering directly, he said, “I need you to hold still and stay quiet.”

  “Okay,” she said. She was still breathing hard, still agitated. Given the direness of the circumstances, the surprise would be if she wasn’t. She was clearly on edge, clearly afraid of him, and he regretted that. What seemed like a lifetime ago, he’d felt a lot of affection for the smart-mouthed, too-hot-for-her-own-good teen who had tried to disguise vulnerability with attitude. She added, “I’m here to try and help you, you know.”

  “You armed?”

  “No.”

  “I need to check.” He was wired, jazzed, running on pure adrenaline. He’d had almost no sleep or food since he had gotten a good look at the pictures on Holly’s stolen phone and decided that there was indeed something there worth looking into. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her, though, so he handled her as gently as possible even as he did what he needed to do.

  “Just tell me one thing: Why? Why are you doing this?” she asked as he pulled her arms behind her back—she didn’t resist—and, holding them there by the simple expedient of crooking an arm around her bent elbows, began giving her a one-handed pat down. He knew she wasn’t asking why he was frisking her. Rather, she wanted the why behind the hostage taking, the bomb threat, and the whole extremely criminal shebang in which he was currently engaged.

  “I needed to get Holly out of jail.” He gave her the short version. In a lightning decision, he rejected the idea of telling her about what Holly knew, what he now knew, about the deaths in the cemetery and Magnolia and the rest. He didn’t know what she knew or whose side she was on. He didn’t know if he could trust her. He did know that he and Holly might very well end up dead because of what they’d discovered. And if she wasn’t involved—he was pretty sure she wasn’t, but as previous events proved, his judgment in that regard didn’t seem to be worth shit—he didn’t want to chance putting Caroline at risk, too.

  “You couldn’t just bail him out?” Her indignation almost made him smile.

  He couldn’t resist. “Low
on funds.”

  “You want to hurry, Dick?” Holly’s voice was thin, and the way he was breathing told Reed just how nervous he was. “We don’t got all damned day.”

  “I’m hurrying,” Reed assured him.

  “What have you done with the hostages?” Caroline craned her neck to try to look at him again.

  “The hostages are fine,” Reed assured her.

  Checking the pockets of her windbreaker, he extracted a cell phone and set of car keys, which he thrust into his pants pocket. Then he ran his hand beneath the lightweight jacket and discovered a flak vest along with a mesh belt and holster holding one very weird weapon. One that he didn’t have time to take more than a cursory glance at as he pulled it out.

  “Fine?” Her voice was sharp. “Where are they?”

  “Look, I’m done answering questions. Quit asking.”

  “Screw that. Where are they?”

  He ignored her question in favor of asking one of his own. “What’s this?”

  He held it up for her to see. In the dark, the weird weapon looked like a DustBuster. Some kind of oversized stun gun, maybe? Whatever it was, he was 99.9 percent sure it wasn’t deadly. Given that, at the moment he had scarier things to worry about than whatever the hell the thing was.

  “Radar gun.” Her grim reply came as Reed tucked the weapon into his jacket pocket. He didn’t believe her and didn’t have time to care, mentally labeling it a mystery to be explored later. Then he pulled the chest plate on her body armor out of the way and unzipped the flak jacket to make certain that the only things beneath it were soft curves of the natural kind. The shirt she was wearing was definitely not cop issue. From his vantage point behind her he couldn’t really see it, but the top felt satiny smooth and sexy as all hell and her skirt, he discovered as he ran his hand down her thigh and encountered silky bare skin, was tight and short. He was just registering that she was still as smokin’ hot as he remembered, but definitely all grown up now, when Holly said, “Cops out there were saying you have this place all rigged up with a bunch of bombs. Where’d you go getting any bombs?”

  Reed shot Holly a shut-up look—useless with the blindfold—and didn’t answer.

  “You don’t have a dead man’s switch,” Caroline said slowly, and he knew that his nonanswer had resonated with her as she asked, “Do you even have a bomb?”

  “You saw that big black backpack the mayor was holding, didn’t you? What do you think was in it?” he countered, not yet ready to admit the truth even though she was now his prisoner and there wasn’t a thing in the world she could do with the knowledge. Somewhat to his surprise, he had discovered that he wasn’t a big fan of death, especially when it came pointing its fickle finger straight at him. And death was in the cards for both him and Holly tonight if he screwed this up.

  For Ant, too, maybe. Jesus, would they really murder a thirteen-year-old boy? Reed had barely finished asking himself the question before he remembered the kid with the bullet hole between his eyes in the cemetery and had his answer: hell, yes, they would.

  His gut tightened. His anxiety level rose and he felt his heart accelerate in response. He had to work to dial it back down.

  “You don’t, do you?” She sounded angry. “You don’t have a bomb. What were you thinking? Do you realize they’re going to kill you?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Reed replied, answering her second question because it was easier than the first, and completed his pat down by sliding his palm around the back of her trim waist as Holly exclaimed on a note of horror, “You were faking it about the damned bombs? How the hell are we gonna get out of here if there are no damned bombs?”

  “You’re not going to get out of here,” Caroline said. Angry as she sounded, Reed could feel some of the tension leaving her body. He translated that to mean that she was no longer quite as afraid of him as she had been.

  Holly groaned. “This blows, Dick. This really blows.”

  “How about you just shut up and stand there for a minute while I finish up here?” Reed said to Holly. He could hear the edge in his own voice, but he was absolutely not in the mood for Holly’s shit.

  Holly was undeterred. “You seen how many cops are out there? There’s a fucking army. What’ve you got, one gun? We’re dead. We need a bomb that’s for real.”

  “Think about it: there’s as much of a real bomb now as there’s ever been,” Reed growled, while at the same time Caroline tried one more time to look at him over her shoulder as she snapped, “What have you done with my father?”

  Given what he knew about how she’d been treated by her father, Reed was surprised at the question.

  “He’s safe. All of them are safe.”

  “Safe?” Her voice went perilously shrill. She was looking all around, like maybe she thought he had them tucked away somewhere in the shadows. He wasn’t mistaken: there was a definite lessening in her fear level, which for the sake of his plan probably wasn’t a good thing. “Safe where?”

  Before he could answer that—not that he was going to answer it—Holly chimed in with, “You got a plan to get us out of here, right? ’Cause Ms. Cop here wasn’t kidding when she said they’re going to kill you. And me, too. Like, any minute now. Red dot on the forehead and then bang.”

  Great image. Thanks, kid.

  “Yes,” he told Holly. “I have a plan. You could help it along by just standing there and shutting up.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Holly wasn’t going to shut up—Reed had known Holly long enough that he hadn’t had any real expectation that the kid would, although hope always sprang eternal—and as for standing there, he was twitching and grimacing and hopping from foot to foot with apprehension. Reed ignored him to concentrate on Caroline.

  “What are you doing?” Caroline’s voice was sharp. But she didn’t resist as he quickly and prudently secured her wrists behind her back with the zip tie he’d extracted from his pocket. He might feel a little bad about it, but he couldn’t afford to take any more chances. Until he had reason to change his mind, she was his hostage.

  “Being careful,” he replied, and let her go. She turned sharply toward him, glaring at him through the darkness.

  “This isn’t helping,” she snapped. “Take it from me, you’re out of time. Do you want to get yourself killed?” She nodded at Holly. “Do you want to get him killed?”

  “Yeah, Dick, what about me?” Holly almost wailed.

  “Not especially,” Reed answered Caroline. She didn’t have to tell him he was out of time. He could almost hear the proverbial clock ticking. But there were things he had to do, and they had to be done right if he and Holly were to have even a sliver of a chance of getting out of there alive. Grimly he focused on Caroline. “Sit. Right there on the floor.”

  Caroline looked at him with disbelief. “What?”

  “Do it,” he ordered her. “I don’t have time to argue about it. Either sit or—” He left the rest of that blank, gave her a threatening look instead, and had his answer in her indignant huff as she folded herself toward the floor.

  “Good girl,” he said—he kept having trouble remembering she was no longer seventeen—and she responded by snapping, “This is the stupidest thing you could do.”

  “She’s got the keys to the cuffs on her.” Sliding one foot in front of the other like he didn’t trust the floor beneath them, Holly came scooting toward him. Keeping a cautious eye on Caroline, who was clearly growing less afraid of him by the second, Reed moved to meet him. If she did something like, say, jump up and take off running, he didn’t like to think what he was going to have to do. “You want to get ’em from her and get these things off me. And the blindfold. Like, now.”

  “I’ve got the key.” Reed pulled the blindfold off Holly’s head as he stepped behind him to free him from the handcuffs. God, he was jacked up on adrenaline. It was as if he could feel his nerve endings jumping under his skin. Every muscle in his body was taut. His blood raced through his veins. He was sweating, and h
e, born and bred in the sultry Louisiana swamps, almost never broke a sweat. Keeping his cool, keeping his focus, was a necessity, so he gritted his teeth, narrowed his eyes, and channeled his inner Zen master. Even as he inserted the damned tiny key into the damned tiny lock, more by feel than by sight, he did what he could to keep his body’s instinctive response to the deadly peril it was in under control. Silently counting to ten, he rolled his neck to loosen it and shrugged his shoulders up and down to slow his breathing. Dixon and company had something in the works for him, he knew. They wouldn’t have caved so easily otherwise. How much time did he have before whatever they had planned for him started going down? The closest he could come to an answer had to be, not much.

  “He’s better off with the handcuffs on,” Caroline informed him. “When it hits the fan, he’s less likely to get shot.”

  “We’re gonna be out of here before then, right?” Holly tried to look over his shoulder at him as Reed succeeded in unlocking the cuffs. “Dick?”

  “If we’re lucky,” Reed replied, then as Holly said, “Shit,” Reed added, “Edie tell you who took Ant?”

  “She thought it was somebody from child welfare.” Holly shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  The handcuffs fell away, and Reed stuffed them into his pants pocket along with the key. Later, they might come in handy. “Me neither.”

  Holly grabbed his arm so hard that Reed could feel each individual finger digging into his flesh through his jacket. “We got to get him back safe. You hear?”

  “We will.”

  “You don’t think they’ve done anything to him already?” Reed could hear the nervous strain in Holly’s voice.