by DeLeon, Jana
You’re reaching.
I blew out a breath. Was I? Sure, it would be convenient if Max were Jamison’s man. No one liked him, he was already dead, and it explained why the money was in Sinful. But it didn’t explain why he’d come back to Sinful to begin with. All these years since he’d disappeared, no one had seen Max in Sinful. Why come back now? It couldn’t be personal. His business with Celia was over long ago, and wasn’t the kind worth revisiting decades later.
I had a feeling that if I could figure out the answer to that question, I could bust this mission wide open. I had a name and address for Max. Hopefully, the address wasn’t as fake as the name. That was the first place to start. Just as soon as I could get away from Sinful.
Feeling better now that I had a course of action, I stepped off the picnic table and startled myself when water came right up to the ankles. I shone my flashlight at my feet and saw the bayou swirling around me. The tide must have started coming in while I was talking to Harrison. Something moved to the right of my feet and I directed my penlight that way, praying it wasn’t an alligator.
My prayers were answered. It wasn’t an alligator.
Unfortunately, it was a snake. A really big snake.
It must have been looking for a place to land because it darted straight for my legs. I tried to jump back onto the picnic table, but it was too late—the snake wrapped around my ankle and clenched as if it had just secured the last raft on the Titanic.
I tried not to panic, but all those stories Gertie had told me about water moccasins jumping into hunters’ hip waders ran through my mind like the credits to a movie. If that snake headed up my yoga pants, Ahmad wouldn’t have to kill me. I’d have a heart attack and die on the spot.
I shook my leg a little, but the snake just tightened more.
Think.
My phone was right where I’d left it on the corner of the picnic table and out of my reach, unless I took a stroll, which didn’t seem like the best option given the circumstances. My pistol was in my sports bra, but I couldn’t shoot it without shooting myself, so that was out.
I watched as the water moved up another half inch. The snake shifted.
That was it! The snake was trying to get out of the water. If I waded in deeper, he might take off.
Or crawl up higher.
Shit.
There was only one thing left to do. Call for backup.
I wasn’t sure yelling would work and I didn’t want to take a chance of aggravating the snake, so I did the only smart thing I could do. I shot a round through the bedroom window where Ida Belle was sleeping. I only had a little bit of moonlight to work with, but it was enough to illuminate the outline of the window. I aimed high, and the bullet pierced the glass at one of the top panes. I heard the tinkling of glass and mentally added that to the list of things I had to repair.
I waited to hear commotion from inside the house, but aside from my heavy breathing, it was like a cone of silence had descended on the backyard. Since Merlin had decided to start prowling the house yowling, I knew Ally had put in earplugs before she went to bed, but I had no idea why the other two hadn’t responded. I was just about to fire again when I heard the back door creak open.
“Ida Belle?” I half yelled, half cried.
“Fortune?” Ida Belle’s voice sounded back. “Where are you?”
“At the picnic table.”
“Did you fire that shot?”
Then it clicked. Ida Belle’s first assumption was that Ahmad’s men had fired the shot. She wasn’t ignoring it. She was being cautious. “Yes. That was my cry for help.”
Ida Belle turned on her flashlight and started across the yard toward me. “It was a damned loud cry. Almost gave me a heart attack, and you took out one of the globes on the ceiling fan.”
“I’ll put it on my list, assuming I’m around to make the repairs.”
“What the hell is wrong? And what were you doing out here in the first place? Are you stuck?”
“Sorta,” I said, figuring answering the last question was the easiest. As Ida Belle stepped up in front of me, I pointed to my foot. “The tide came in and I acquired a passenger.”
Ida Belle shone the light on my foot and took a step back. “Holy shit!”
“You are not making me feel better about the situation.”
“Sorry. Okay, give me a minute to think.”
“In a minute, I’m shooting my own leg off.”
“What’s all the racket?” Gertie’s voice sounded behind us. “I got up to go to the bathroom and heard yelling.”
The fact that she’d slept through the gunshot was beyond troubling, but we could address that another time. Assuming I had another time.
“Fortune’s got a situation,” Ida Belle said.
Gertie tromped across the yard and stepped up beside Ida Belle. “The tide’s coming in. Try walking toward the house and you won’t be standing in the bayou. This hardly rates yelling, and it was far too simple to be a situation.”
“Would you like me to walk in the house with this?” I grabbed her flashlight and trained it on my leg.
Gertie let out a strangled cry and leaped for the picnic table, crawling up to the top to stand. “Holy crap. Shoot it or something.”
“I can’t without hitting my leg,” I said.
“You don’t need both of them, do you?” she asked.
“I was kinda thinking I might,” I said. “But I’m willing to reconsider.”
“Shut up, you two,” Ida Belle said. “I’m trying to think.”
I stared. “You’re telling me you two have never seen this before? It didn’t happen to Mary Jo or Billy Bob on the third night of the full moon in March or something and now there’s a town law about it?” My voice began to trail up in volume and pitch. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was starting to panic a little.
Ida Belle looked up at Gertie. “This isn’t a constrictor. Water snakes wrap around things all the time…just usually not a person’s legs.”
Gertie nodded. “When they jump into hip waders, the person wearing them hops out.”
“I can’t hop out of my ankle, so we need a different plan.”
“The snake is trying to get out of the water,” Ida Belle said, “so what about wading in deeper?”
“I thought about that, but what if he runs up my pants leg? All kinds of bad things would happen then.”
“Pull up your pants leg first,” Gertie said. “If you got it up around your knee there wouldn’t be a gap for the snake to get into.”
“That’s a start,” Ida Belle said. “Maybe if you get the pants leg up, then wade in, the snake will loosen a bit, then we can pull it off your leg.”
“I do not understand this ‘we’ of which you speak,” Gertie said. “I’m staying right here until all snakes have cleared the area.”
“I’ll do it, you sissy,” Ida Belle said, but she didn’t sound completely convinced. “Pull up your pants leg, Fortune.”
I sat my pistol on the picnic table and inched the yoga pants up my leg. The snake looked up, but didn’t move. So far, so good. I pulled the pants up another couple inches.
“Slow and steady,” Gertie said as she leaned over to watch the progress.
“What do you think I’m doing?” I asked and pulled on the pants until they slipped over my knee and stuck.
“Is it tight enough on your leg?” Ida Belle asked.
Slowly, I reached down and rolled the yoga pants over several times, pulling them up on my leg until I darn near cut off the circulation. “It is now. Let’s get this over with before my leg goes numb.”
“That could be a good thing,” Gertie said. “Then you wouldn’t feel if the snake bites you.”
“Are you ready?” I asked Ida Belle.
She looked at the snake and frowned, then handed Gertie her flashlight. “Give me your nightshirt and make sure you keep that light trained on the snake.”
“What?” Gertie said. “I’m not giving you my nightshi
rt.”
“I’m not grabbing that thing bare-handed, and there’s no time to go looking for gloves.”
“Then use your own nightshirt,” Gertie said.
“This is silk,” Ida Belle said. “It’s not thick enough. Yours is flannel since you’re always cold. You sleep in a sports bra. It’s no different than being out here in your bathing suit.”
“Says the woman who doesn’t have to take off her clothes,” Gertie grumbled as she pulled her nightshirt over her head and tossed it to Ida Belle.
“Says the woman who has to grab the snake,” Ida Belle corrected and wrapped the nightshirt around her right hand and up her forearm. “Okay. I’m ready.”
I nodded. “I’m going to step to the right to get out of the way of the picnic table, then I’ll step back.”
Ida Belle moved in front of me and as I took the step to the side, she mirrored my movement. Gertie stood bent over on the edge of the picnic table, shining the light on my leg.
Ida Belle leaned over, her right hand outstretched and ready to grab. I took a deep breath and blew it out.
“One. Two. Three!”
Chapter Nine
I took a big step backward, Ida Belle moving in sync with me. As soon as my leg went underwater, I felt the snake loosen. Ida Belle reached into the water and grabbed the tail of the snake, then pulled. I closed my eyes and waited for the bite that I was sure was coming but instead, the snake unraveled and sprang loose, reaching backward toward Ida Belle. Just before the head made it around to her hand, Ida Belle yelled and flung the snake.
Right at Gertie.
Gertie brandished the flashlight like a sword and attempted to whack the snake away from her, but she lost her balance. She fell off the side of the picnic table, crashing into Ida Belle and me and knocking us all down into the water. All of a sudden, the water thrashed with three sets of frantic, tangled limbs.
“Get off of me!”
“You’re on my leg!”
“I can’t move!”
“The snake is coming back!”
It was probably only a couple of seconds, but it felt like it took an eternity to get out of the water and run like a madman for dry land. We stopped about twenty feet from the picnic table and stood there, huddled and dripping.
“Who has a flashlight?” I asked.
“I dropped Ida Belle’s in the water.”
I pulled my penlight out of my pocket and clicked. Nothing. “It’s ruined. Where’s your light, Gertie?”
“I think it’s still on the picnic table. If I didn’t kick it off.”
My phone!
I froze as a string of curse words raced through my mind.
“My cell phone was on the picnic table,” I said. “I have to have it.”
“I’m not going anywhere near that water,” Gertie said. “In fact, I’m seriously considering moving to the desert.”
“Then there’s rattlers,” I said.
“At least they give you a warning.”
I was just about to head back inside and rustle up another flashlight when a beam of light shone on us from behind. We all turned around, hands over our eyes, trying to see into the light.
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” Carter said, “but I suppose it’s my job. What the hell is going on here? I got reports of gunfire and screaming, then I show up and the three of you are standing here soaking wet and dressed, well, weird.”
I looked over at Gertie, who stood there in her camouflage sports bra and matching underwear, and Ida Belle, who wore some thin, short red silky thing, and then down at my pants leg, which was still wrapped around my thigh.
“I heard a noise and came outside to check it out,” I said. “Then a snake wrapped around my leg and I shot my pistol through the bedroom window where Ida Belle was sleeping to get some help.”
Carter directed the light down at the ground so that the glow reflected back up but allowed us all to see. He looked at my leg with the offending pants leg. “Is that going numb?”
“A little. Anyway, I left my phone on the picnic table, but we lost our flashlights in the great snake-wrangling adventure, then fell in the water, and now we have no light and I need my phone.”
Carter shook his head. “If you had your phone, why didn’t you just call for help?”
“Because my phone was out of reach and I was afraid to move, but since my pistol was in my bra, I had a backup plan.”
“Your mind is scary on so many levels,” Carter said. He directed the flashlight away from us and set off for the picnic table, sloshing in the water as he went. He returned holding my phone, my pistol, and Gertie’s small flashlight. “Will you three please go inside and stay there at least until daylight?”
“We can probably manage that,” Ida Belle said.
“Please do,” Carter said, then looked at me. “Do you realize that every time I get a call about random gunfire in the middle of the night, I automatically start driving this way? I don’t even have to hear the address first. What does that tell you?”
“That no one else in Sinful is living it up, apparently,” I said.
“I wouldn’t call getting my ankle felt up by a snake ‘living it up,’” Gertie said, “but it’s definitely not boring, like everyone else in this town.”
“The entertainment value aside,” Carter said, “which was probably high if I’d shown up ten minutes sooner, I’d really appreciate it if you’d become boring until tomorrow.”
He turned around and headed across the lawn.
“He’s in a mood,” Gertie said.
“He hasn’t slept in two days,” I said. “And everyone who gets a hangnail in this town calls to tell him about it.”
“He’s exhausted,” Ida Belle agreed. “And he’s still not fully recovered from the concussion. Then all this business with Celia, the election, the sheriff debacle, and now Max. It’s a lot to manage with a full night’s sleep and at top-notch health.”
“I hadn’t thought about all that,” Gertie said. “Now I feel a little guilty that he had to come out here, even though for once, it wasn’t really my fault.” She turned to look at me. “What were you doing out here anyway?”
“Harrison called,” I said, seeing no reason to lie about having a call with my partner. I simply wouldn’t give them all the details of the call. “I didn’t want to risk Ally overhearing, so I came outside. I was sitting on the picnic table and didn’t realize the tide was coming in until I stepped off and became a dry dock for the snake.”
“What did Harrison say?” Ida Belle asked.
I was about to answer when the back door opened and a flashlight hit us. “What the heck are you guys doing out here?” Ally asked. “Gertie, where are your clothes? Are you all wet? For Christ’s sake, get inside before you catch a cold.”
“Later,” I said.
Ida Belle nodded and we headed for the house.
I was happy for the interruption. It gave me a chance to formulate a reply. The more planned my answer was, the better I was able to let the lies slip off my tongue and have them sound legit. With average people, I could lie on the fly. I’d even managed some doozies with Carter, but then Carter didn’t know my true identity. With Ida Belle and Gertie, it was hard to get away with anything. For one, they were trained in the art of deception. For two, they knew who I really was. They would be expecting me to lie to them, and they’d be ready to jump on any twitch or blink that led them to believe I was hiding the truth.
I looked at my cell phone and checked the time. With all the excitement and the lack of air-conditioning, everyone would probably be up at the crack of dawn. That gave me a couple of hours to come up with a way to manage my own involvement in the investigation while keeping them out of it.
I hoped something came to me, because right now, I was drawing a blank.
###
I spent an hour tossing and turning while trying to come up with a good cover story for Ida Belle and Gertie, and finally dozed off close to dawn. I had just slipped in
to a solid sleep when the power came back on and everything in the house surged. The air-conditioning roared on, lights flashed, and alarms went on the blink, firing off all over the house.
I jumped out of bed and hit the ground standing, pistol in hand, then relaxed when I realized what had happened. Merlin had leaped straight up when I did and was currently perched on top of the lamp, glaring at me as though it was somehow my fault. A second later, the sound of breaking glass sounded down the hall. I crouched a bit and waited to hear what followed next before heading out. Ally stood frozen across the hall in her bedroom, her eyes wide.
“What the heck are you doing?” Ida Belle yelled. “You’re going to kill someone.”
“The noise startled me,” Gertie said. “It was an accident.”
“Why are you sleeping with throwing stars?”
“Turns out it was a better choice than my gun.”
“Good God.”
I headed out into the hallway, Ally trailing behind me. Ida Belle stood in the doorway of the bedroom Gertie was using, shaking her head in dismay. I peered into the bedroom and saw a hole in one of the windowpanes. Another item for the list. Walter was going to retire off my house repairs.
Gertie climbed out of bed and yanked the cord for the alarm clock out of the wall. “Why was this thing on in the first place?”
“I think there was a power surge,” I said. “Things are going off all over the house.”
Ida Belle put her fingers in her ears and nodded. “Let’s track them all down and turn them off before we go deaf.”
I headed downstairs with Ally, who went to work on the stove, while I went out on the porch and tried to figure out how to shut off the doorbell, which was ringing over and over and over again. I was just contemplating shooting it when Ida Belle walked up behind me with a crowbar and popped the entire thing off the wall.
