by Leona Karr
“It’s a nice name,” Neil responded as evenly as he could. If he could get her distracted by talking, she might get careless. “How did you decide on Jesse?”
“Buzz’s grandpa was named Jesse,” she mused as she stroked the baby’s soft head with her free hand. “I didn’t like it real well, but when Buzz insisted, I finally said, okay. You don’t argue with Buzz when he sets his mind.” Her eyelids flickered as if she remembered a time when she’d learned that lesson.
“He sounds like a smart man,” Neil said, as his mind raced to find a way to use the woman’s fixation on her dead partner. He knew if the demented woman lost it, she might begin shooting. Thank God Courtney wasn’t with him. Billie might have shot her on sight.
“Damn right, Buzz is smart. We hit a dozen banks. Got away scot-free every time.” She laughed again. “We had them cops going in every direction. Left a few of them lying in the dust, too.”
He took a quick breath to steady his voice. “Buzz wouldn’t want Ja—Jesse to get hurt, would he?”
Neil knew he’d said the wrong thing when her expression changed and her whole body stiffened. She frowned and nodded as if listening to instructions from someone.
Neil’s worst fears were realized when she stood up, centering a hard, unwavering gaze on him. “Buzz says you’re inching for a bullet between your eyes.”
“No, Billie, no. Don’t do it. Someone will hear the shots,” Neil quickly warned her.
She hesitated as Jamie began to cry, getting louder and louder with every breath. As she stood there, her gun poised to fire, she seemed torn between the baby’s care and her need to carry out Buzz’s orders.
“Someone will hear him crying,” Neil warned.
“Shut up!”
“He’s probably hungry or needs his diaper changed. Courtney said you always took good care of Ja—Jesse.”
The cold indifference that had been on her face was slowly replaced by a faint acknowledgment of his compliment. “Better than she did. A lot better. Jesse knows it, too.”
The baby was thrusting his arms and legs in every direction. His wails were getting louder and louder. Neil saw Billie glance at a pocket in the carrier lying a few feet away. An empty bottle stuck out of one pocket. In her haste she must have only brought one bottle, he thought. Courtney had found the others in the refrigerator.
Billie sat down beside the crying baby, but there was little she could do to placate him, and still keep a gun on her hostages.
“Why don’t I heat a bottle for him, and change his diaper?”
“I don’t have any more.”
“I bet these folks have some milk in the fridge that I could heat up,” Neil offered, playing for time.
“He has to have formula,” Billie repeated firmly as if she’d heard Courtney instructing her.
“Oh, Ja—Jesse’s a big boy now. A bottle of real milk won’t hurt him. He’s not going to settle down until he’s fed and changed,” Neil said firmly. “Someone’s going to hear him.”
As if his words were magic, the door vibrated with a loud knocking. Even as he prayed it wouldn’t be, when Billie jerked open the door, Courtney stood there. If Billie’s gun hadn’t been pointed at her heart, Neil would have jumped Billie from behind, but he couldn’t take a chance of the gun going off.
Courtney’s startled eyes didn’t focus on Billie or the gun, but on her baby. Neil doubted if Courtney even heard the flow of swear words as Billie motioned her inside and ordered her down on the floor a good distance from Neil and the other two hostages.
“Do as she says,” Neil warned Courtney. He was afraid if she ran over to Jamie, Billie might shoot her before she reached him. “The baby’s hungry. She’s going to let me fix him a bottle, aren’t you, Billie?”
“Any funny business, and I’ll kill the lot of you. Got it?” she demanded, keeping the gun on Courtney.
“I got it.” He rose slowly to his feet. “I’ll wash the empty bottle, heat the milk, and change Jesse’s diaper. My sister has a baby the same age,” he added, in hopes that it would reassure her he knew what he was doing.
She turned the gun in his direction as he took the empty bottle out of the carrier’s pocket, and found one diaper left in the bottom.
“Be damn quick about it,” Billie ordered as the baby continued to cry.
He sent a silent warning to Courtney as he crossed the floor within inches of where she was sitting.
“I could help,” the older woman spoke up to everyone’s surprise. She’d stopped her cowering sniffles, and her husband put a warning hand on her shoulder.
Billie’s face flushed with fury as she pointed the gun at her. “Shut up! One more peep out of you, and it’ll be your last. I’m running the show here, and don’t you forget it.”
The kitchen was at the far end of the RV, just outside a door leading into the bedroom. Neil was in plain view of the sitting area as he moved about. He found a half quart of milk in the refrigerator and decided against taking time to sterilize the bottle and nipple, trusting that the steamy hot water would suffice.
Courtney kept her eyes glued on her infant son. The torture of sitting just a few feet from him was beyond belief. How could she cower on the floor when her baby was crying and needing attention? Every motherly instinct threatened her self-control.
Billie sat down beside Jamie, and for the moment, the baby accepted his pacifier again. Staring at Courtney, the woman frowned and seemed to be listening to that inner voice. Several times, she nodded, and once even laughed and said something under her breath.
Goose bumps prickled on Courtney’s neck. Now she knew. There hadn’t been any radio in her room! This crazed woman had been laughing and talking to herself into the night. Courtney shuddered as a flood of memories came back to haunt her, and the present moment seemed totally unreal.
She’d waited for Neil to meet her as arranged, and when he didn’t show, she’d started walking in his direction, expecting to meet him. When she neared the end of the camping site, she ran into a couple of kids sitting on a log, eating lunch.
When she described Neil and asked if they’d seen him, one of the boys nodded. “I saw him go in there a little while ago.”
He pointed at a luxurious RV a few campsites away. Even before she’d reached the door, she heard a baby crying.
Now she feasted on the sight of Jamie like a starving person lusting for food. She ached to pick him up and hold him close, but fear of the woman sitting beside him kept her motionless. Her baby was alive and well, she kept telling herself. For the moment that had to be enough.
As her eyes shifted to the older couple huddled on the floor, her heart sickened. She realized Billie had four hostages in her power, and would callously use every one of them to her advantage.
By the time Neil returned with the full bottle and the diaper, Jamie had spit out his pacifier and was starting to cry again.
“Do you want to feed and change him?” Neil asked, offering them to Billie.
For a second Billie’s eyes flickered in indecision. Then she smiled as if she realized he’d been trying to trick her.
“How stupid do you think I am?” She leveled the gun at him as she stood up and motioned for him to take her place on the daybed.
As he replaced the baby’s wet diaper with a dry one, his mind raced to find a way to get the firearm from her. No telling what the voice in her head was saying. At any moment, she could turn the gun on Courtney and finish what she’d failed three times to do. Time was running out. He had to do something before it was too late. The baby was the main thing she cared about. The baby was her Achilles’ heel, and he decided on a desperate move.
He finished fastening the diaper and then lurched to his feet. Holding the baby out in front of him, he faced Billie. “Here catch!”
As he feigned to throw the baby at her, she shrieked, dropped the gun and prepared to catch the baby.
Neil moved quickly, kicking the gun over to Courtney, and then backing up with Jamie o
ut of Billie’s reach.
Courtney grabbed up the army revolver, and held it with both hands as she got to her feet. Her hands were surprisingly steady and her expression purposeful as she pointed it at the woman who had murdered two innocent people and put her through hell.
The rage she had felt so many times swelled up within her. Her finger trembled on the trigger, and in that frozen moment, it was her baby’s cry that jerked her back from the edge of revenge.
“Take Jamie in the bedroom and feed him,” Neil ordered as he carefully took the gun and handed her the baby.
Billie seemed totally confused. She started to follow Courtney. Neil stepped in front of her and buried the end of the gun in her stomach.
“Give me one reason not to blow your guts out.”
“Buzz will take care of you,” she snarled like a cornered cat as she backed up. The wild look in her eyes sickened Neil.
“I got some rope to tie her up,” the older man said with renewed spirit as he helped his wife to her feet.
“Good, get it.”
They forced Billie to sit down in the passenger’s seat of the RV and tied her firmly in it. Then Neil took out his cell phone and dialed the number McGrady had given him.
When the detective answered, Neil said simply, “We got her.”
“What?”
“We’ve got Billie Mae Kessel. She’s tied up, ready for delivery.”
Neil wished he could have seen McGrady’s face when he heard the story of her capture. There was relief and disbelief in his quick response. “We’ll be there in a few minutes. Can you keep things under control until then?”
“We’ll try, sir,” Neil responded solemnly. A broad smile crossed his lips as he hung up. He turned to the owners of the RV. “Are you folks all right?”
“We are now,” the man responded. “I’m Ned Waits, and this is my wife, Alice. We’re mighty grateful you took care of her the way you did.”
“We thought we were goners,” his wife admitted.
“Try to relax, if you can. Police officers will be here shortly,” Neil told them.
“I’d better make some coffee,” Alice said as she visibly straightened up and squared her shoulders.
Neil smiled, recognizing she came from the old school, like his mother, who met every crisis with food and drink. “You keep an eye on our prisoner,” she told her husband, knowing he needed to be kept busy, as well.
Neil hurried into the bedroom to make sure Courtney and the baby were all right. She was lying on the bed with the sleeping baby in the crook of her arm. As she smiled up at him with an expression of total happiness, he thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
They just looked at each other as love radiated between them. Then he lay down on the bed, facing her, with the baby between them.
Smiling tenderly at her, he whispered, “We ought to do this more often.”
“Yes,” she whispered gratefully.
“Like forever?”
“Forever and ever.”
When he leaned over and kissed her, she knew that somehow, in the midst of a terrifying ordeal, they had become a family.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-3266-2
SHADOWS ON THE LAKE
Copyright © 2005 by Leona Karr
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