She was stalling, looking around for an escape route.
“No, Pheebs, you’re not. You’re more like the kid sister I never had.”
The words made her shiver. And yet...
“I felt like you were the brother I’d always wanted.” The truth. As a man who hadn’t threatened her, he’d been able to get closer to her than anyone but Audra. “Why, Kev? Why couldn’t you have left Audra alone, let her be really happy for once in her life?”
“I would have done anything for her. She was a fever in my blood. I told her that, tried to make her see I was the right man for her.”
“She would never have left Boone.”
“But I had to have her.”
“So you killed her because you couldn’t have her?”
“I only meant to kill him. I figured if something happened to Calderon, she’d turn to me for comfort.”
Audra wouldn’t have gone back to Kevin. The diary had made that clear.
“So you planned it.” Suddenly seeing an escape on the other side of the house—a trio of airboats lined up along the dock, she started fidgeting, pacing, subtly moving closer to her goal. “What went wrong?”
“I came up behind Calderon while he was sleeping in a lounge chair. I held a gun to his head in a way that would look like suicide...and then I pulled the trigger.”
Kevin’s absorption in his tale gave her the freedom to move more directly in line with the airboats.
One quick dash...
“I didn’t know anyone was there until I heard her scream. I didn’t even mean to kill her. I just reacted. Raised the gun and shot. She was at the edge on the other side of the pool and fell right in. Then I dumped Calderon’s body and dropped the gun in the water. Cleanup was easy with so much water around.”
“You got lucky,” she said sarcastically, starting to focus for her run to freedom. “How do you sleep at night?”
“As best I can. It’s getting easier.”
“Will killing me be easier, too?”
“I’ll survive it,” he muttered.
Sensing some doubt in him, she jumped on it. “But face-to-face, Kev? Too bad old Bubba didn’t finish the job for you.”
“Bubba doesn’t know that I exist. I gave you a fifteen-minute head start to the Osprey Nest, where I ‘borrowed’ what should have been a death-mobile.”
“Did you borrow the alligator, too?”
“I hired a couple of guys who wrestle alligators as a hobby to play a joke on a friend. I took care of the lock myself.”
Muscles taut, ready to sprint for freedom, she was waiting for her opening. “Just imagine your surprise when I showed up this morning.”
“Part of me was relieved. I thought it was a sign, hoped maybe you’d leave it alone now. But then you found the videotape.”
“I thought you got it from Jimmy Bob until I took a look for myself.”
“He was getting the equipment back for me as a favor. I told him if anyone found it, people would think Miss Audra wasn’t a nice woman. Besotted bastard didn’t want that. I might not have known you’d found the videotape at all if you hadn’t left it in the machine...now you’ve left me with no choice. Sorry, Pheebs, but your luck just ran out. Now it’s your turn to die. For real.”
Kevin glanced away from her as he removed the safety on his gun—just the break Phoebe had been waiting for. She flew under the house along the carport, crushed shells crunching beneath her sneakers.
She barely heard Kevin’s “You won’t get away this time, Pheebs” over the pressure of her own racing pulse filling her ears.
She did, however, hear the sharp discharge of his gun and feel the breath of the bullet as it whizzed by the side of her face.
THE GUNSHOT HURTLED Simon forward to the opening in the Glades, but he wasn’t prepared for the sight of Phoebe jumping into an airboat, an armed Saltis on her heels.
Damn the near-blind old man who’d had no business driving at night and had caused a minor traffic altercation that had been impossible to get around. Realizing where Saltis was headed, Simon had abandoned the truck and had continued his pursuit on foot, taking a shortcut through the swamp.
The airboat roared to life and pulled away from the dock, more shots following, even as Simon flew forward, keeping to the shadows as he stalked Phoebe’s partner.
Saltis commandeered the next boat in line—the one with the faulty starter. He didn’t waste much time at it, but even those precious seconds gave Phoebe a respectable lead. Her partner shot off a few more rounds, before abandoning the cranky airboat for the third.
Surely he didn’t have many bullets left. Not that it made him any less dangerous. Kevin Saltis had a powerful build—he could kill Phoebe with his bare hands.
Simon couldn’t get to the dock fast enough to keep him from getting away. The bastard was off like a bullet, leaving him to kick-start the airboat with the faulty engine, and pray that he’d be able to run interference for the woman he loved before it was too late.
PHOEBE SPED ACROSS open water toward the maze of narrow channels that cut through the mangroves, knowing she was already lost. Once in, she’d never find her way out, but maybe that was a good thing.
Maybe Kevin wouldn’t be able to find his way, either.
Jerking the rudder, she made a too-sharp turn, considering her lack of expertise. The craft slid around sideways and sent up a sheet of water over what looked to be a couple of logs, but she knew the “logs” to be alligators. The airboat threatened to swamp her, turn her into gator bait.
Refusing to succumb without a fight, she lifted her foot from the accelerator and finessed the rudder. The hull righted itself with surprising ease. She took the next curves slower, accelerating down long stretches.
She should have lost Kevin. Instead, she heard his engine more distinctly even through the padded ear covers. He had to be getting closer. Sometimes it even sounded like two engines.
A narrower channel set between the mangroves lay just ahead. She took it, then charged down another that was practically claustrophobic. She glanced back briefly—and turned forward just as the airboat plowed into a spiderweb that spanned the channel bank to bank.
Foot popping off the accelerator, Phoebe shrieked and fought not only the silken threads, but several large black-and-white striped spiders, as well. One crawled down her back where she couldn’t reach it. Another dropped from her shoulder to the boat floor—Phoebe prayed it wouldn’t crawl up her pant leg. A third got tangled in her hair. She could feel it swinging against her neck.
“Ah-h-h!”
She leaned over the boat and shook her head until the damn thing dropped off into the water. Then she flapped her shirt until the one on her back freed itself. Her flesh crawled as she stared ahead where several more mega-webs, complete with occupants crisscrossed the channel.
Behind her...the sound of an engine drawing closer.
No choice!
Using a curved arm to shelter her face, she ducked low in her seat and stomped on the accelerator, trying not to retch as she felt enveloped and crawled upon.
Once through the labyrinth, she let up on the gas long enough to shake loose everything that didn’t belong to her before taking off again.
But Kevin had zeroed in on her and the distance between them was closing. A bullet whizzed by. And another pinged against the metal hull. Phoebe made a run for it but couldn’t lose him in the network of passages again.
Then she zigged when she should have zagged and found herself in open water—a prime target!
A glance back revealed not only Kevin on her tail, but the silhouette of another airboat farther back. She didn’t need to see the man to know who followed.
“Simon!”
By some miracle, he’d answered her silent call.
Thinking all she had to do was keep Kevin at bay long enough for Simon to catch up to them, Phoebe was horrified when she approached a section of saw-grass prairie that, oddly, rose higher than she sat. The stuff normally gr
ew only to three or four feet. Circling to stay in clear water would take her back in Kevin’s path.
Again left with no real choice, she jammed down on the accelerator. The airboat’s shallow metal hull lifted fractionally as it darted forward, cutting a path through the fragile environment. She’d heard of patches that grew to a dozen feet—this was somewhere in between.
Whipping across the river of grass, she felt as if she’d entered a different world.
Isolated. Dreamlike.
But it wasn’t long before she was brought back to reality with a jolt.
Her engine coughed once, and then her craft bucked and stalled out.
Phoebe hit the starter. No response. She tried not to panic as her vehicle floated to a decisive stop.
Her situation was desperate.
She’d just run out of gas.
SIMON COULDN’T PINPOINT the exact moment the other airboats stopped, but he gradually realized he no longer heard their engines. Had Saltis caught up to Phoebe? He’d disappeared from view.
Without warning, Simon was upon the other two craft, both abandoned. He swerved to miss them and came to a dead stop a dozen yards distant. Tearing off his headset and jumping down to the wetland, he took stock of the situation. His eyes were better than most at night, and fortunately the moon was cooperating.
He expected Phoebe had taken off on foot with Saltis right behind. He could see the impressions made by their bodies as they tunneled through the saw grass. His hearing was as finely tuned as that of any swamper, and they weren’t trying to be quiet.
Simon followed through wedge-shaped blades so high and thickly rooted together that a man could lose himself. Their sharp edges could also be nasty, and he steeled himself against the occasional sting.
As if in a dream, the landscape suddenly shifted, the grasses shorter, sparser. His heart pumped like mad when he recognized the hardwood hammock rising above the wetlands. Though the Glades constantly shifted and changed, he would never forget where the swamp had claimed his father.
A screech set his skin crawling.
“Let go of me!” Phoebe shouted.
And suddenly he was upon them.
Kevin was dragging a kicking, screaming Phoebe toward the willows limning the hammock. Knowing what lay ahead, Simon gathered all his forces.
With a feral grin, he attacked.
SIMON’S WAR CRY was followed by a jolt that freed Phoebe from Kevin’s grasp and sent her reeling toward what looked like open water. She tried to stop herself, but she was breathless and staggering, not in control of her own body.
Landing with a splash, she looked up to see the two men locked in a deadly dance, Simon holding Kevin’s gun hand out to the side. The weapon misfired. Kevin’s arm jerked. The gun went flying and plunked into the water somewhere to Phoebe’s right.
Having gotten her breath back, she tried to rise, but the bottom was mushy. The mud sucked at her sneakers and got hold of her feet. Trying to move forward, she felt as if she were sinking instead.
“Oh, no!”
Couldn’t be.
She told herself not to panic—but when she tried to move one foot, the other sank to the ankle. And in trying to pull that foot free, the other leg became trapped nearly to her calf. It was no use. With her every movement, the swamp seemed more determined to suck her farther down, an inch at a time.
Horrified, Phoebe stared at the struggle on the grasslands through eyes that filled with tears. Kevin seemed to be choking the life out of Simon.
They were both going to die and no one would ever know...
Then Simon suddenly exploded with strength, his forearms knocking into Kevin’s, effectively breaking the death grip of the other man’s fingers.
Simon smashed the heel of his hand into Kevin’s face. Her partner screamed and something dark and wet spurted over Simon.
Blood from a broken nose?
Hands to his face, he fell back, at least temporarily incapacitated.
“Phoebe?” Simon called, his voice hoarse. “Are you all right?”
“Over here. I’m—ah-h—stuck.”
“Don’t move!”
Hearing the panic in his tone did not reassure her. “Trust me, I’m trying not to.”
“I’ll find something for you to grab.”
He was already searching the ground frantically.
And despite the fact that she stayed put, hardly breathed, Phoebe continued to sink.
To the top of her knees...
The middle of her thighs...
The bottom of her buttocks...
She closed her eyes and prayed as the muck squiggled up around her hips.
“Got it!”
“Thank you,” she breathed as Simon held out what appeared to be a gnarled root several feet in length. She curled her fingers around it. “Got it,” she echoed gratefully.
“Hang on and let me do the work. If you struggle...”
He didn’t have to finish. Struggling would sink her farther.
Simon started to inch back. Slowly. Steadily.
The root started to slip through her hands.
Phoebe tightened her grip, then felt the muck budge as her upper body stretched out over the water toward Simon.
“It’s working!” she gasped as she felt her lower body lift slightly.
Simon kept on.
He inched backward. She slid forward.
He pulled. She hung on, her hands burning with the strain.
Then Simon stopped moving, dug in his heels and started pulling at the root, one hand over the other.
Her buttocks popped free...
Then her thighs...
Then her knees...
She was practically lying across the water, half of her freed when her hands came within reach of his.
He stepped forward and grabbed onto her wrists. She grabbed onto his in return, sealing their fates together.
When he started to pull again, her arms felt as if they would separate from her shoulders, but she clenched her jaw against the pain and felt her calves slip free.
“I’ll anchor and you pull,” Simon ordered.
For once she did as she was told without question.
Suddenly the swamp gave up its hold and freed her completely.
Tautness gone, Simon went crashing onto his back in the grass with her atop him.
“You did it!” she cried.
Not their night to die, after all.
“This time,” he said roughly, wrapping his arms around her back. “Thank God.”
He had to be thinking of that other time when he’d been unable to save his father. Maybe some of that burden of guilt would lift from his shoulders now. She hoped so.
Suddenly, she said, “Kevin!” and glanced around frantically. “He’s gone!”
“I doubt he’ll get far.”
Prophetic words.
Even as Simon got to his feet and helped her up, a roar of sound raised the hair on her head.
“What—”
“Gators. Probably bulls.”
And then frantic inhuman screams and snapping sounds made her blood run cold. She clutched Simon until the screams stopped.
The snapping continued.
The swamp had provided them with a wild brand of justice that she never could have imagined.
PHOEBE WASN’T CERTAIN she would ever get over Audra’s murder and so determined that group counseling with other people who’d lost family members to violence was in order. At least now she could focus on something other than finding the real killer.
The videotape and the diary she’d found in the shoe box—an account of Audra’s affair with Kevin, which had ended when she’d begun to fear him—together with her and Simon’s firsthand account were more than enough for the authorities and the media to change their tune.
Simon hadn’t said a word about the diary when she produced it. But the look of disappointment he gave her was enough to break her heart.
Then he disappeared back into his sw
amp.
Phoebe waited two days—long enough for him sleep off the exhaustion and stress—and when he didn’t show his face, she decided whatever was going to happen in this relationship was up to her.
Relationship...
What should have been a scary concept now intrigued her. She’d gone through so much over the past week that she couldn’t imagine her world ever being the same. Couldn’t imagine being alone again, content with short-lived, comfortable affairs.
She wanted to share and fight and most of all love, and she only wanted to do that with one man, Simon, who had risked everything for her.
And so she was waiting for him on the screened porch and getting to know Minerva and Serena when he brought in an airboat after a morning of taking tourists fishing.
He couldn’t miss her convertible parked on the pad. That he knew she was there was obvious from the set of his shoulders, though he avoided looking for her.
She gave each of the parrots treats and scratched their necks as she’d seen Simon do.
“So what do you think, girls?” she asked them. “Could you stand some extra attention on a regular basis?”
“Awwwk, Simon says no. Simon says no.”
“We’ll see about that,” she muttered, when in her heart it was her greatest fear.
“See about what?”
He’d sneaked up on her. She turned around to face him. Leaning against the doorjamb, he was dressed in an old T-shirt and ripped jeans, his face sported at least a ten-o’clock shadow, and his eyes...oh, they were issuing an invitation that no part of her could resist. Tension suddenly radiated from her every pore.
“We’ll see whether you’re ready to take me to bed and keep me there until I’m unable to walk away.”
He didn’t move but asked again, “Why, Phoebe?”
She took a deep breath. This was the moment. The scariest one in her life. But she knew how she felt about him now and had sworn she would tell him.
“Because I love you, Simon Calderon, and I want it all. The sharing. The fighting. The sex.” Pointedly, she said, “Especially the sex.”
“Simon says no! Awwwk!”
“Shut up, you silly bird,” Simon muttered as he finally made his move. He slipped his hands around Phoebe’s waist and pulled her to him tightly. “Simon says yes. A very definite yes.”
A Lover Awaits Page 18
