Goes down easy: Roped into romance

by Alison Kent

  But he finally did, slapping himself a mental high five when he heard Perry’s muffled greeting. He’d then pushed the phone into his boxers and prayed that when Slacker Boy stopped the car, he could shake it down his pant leg to the ground and kick it out of sight.

  Not that it would’ve been easy, being blindfolded and all, but he’d never had the chance. The minute he’d been hauled to his feet, he’d been hauled away from the car. He’d listened closely before being pushed up what he thought were porch steps, trying to pick up exterior noises, but heard nothing he could identify.

  No traffic, no voices, nothing except what sounded like tree frogs, lapping water and rustling leaves. And that made a whole lot of sense considering everything around him smelled wet. The air was heavy with moisture. The ground squished beneath his feet. He smelled compost and fish and weeds. And the pungent bite of cypress.

  Drowning. This was it. What Della had seen. If he didn’t figure out where he was, if the cell phone call didn’t lead Franklin to this location…Jack didn’t even want to think of what Eckhardt had suffered because he was pretty damn sure he’d be suffering the same.

  He needed to know where he was. What he did know was that he’d ridden on his knees with his ass in the air for not quite an hour. He’d counted off the minutes until his legs had gone to sleep. He’d spent the rest of the ride trying to keep his head off the floor.

  Not knowing the area and not being good on directions with his internal compass bounced all to shit, he wasn’t going to be a whole lot of help letting anyone know where he was if he got the chance. But he was pretty damn sure he was in the middle of a swamp.

  He stumbled over the threshold when Slacker Boy pushed him across the porch and through the door. And then he was met with scrabbling feet, a lot of foul language and a loud female screech.

  “Kevin, you moron!”

  Kevin had hold of Jack’s elbow and jerked him to a stop. The shrill voice probably belonged to the love of Slacker Boy’s life, Jack mused.

  “Where’s the psychic? And who the hell is this?” Same voice. More attitude.

  “He’s the one who knew about the finger and about Eckhardt choking. She didn’t know any of that. She told me you and Chris were running out on me and Pauly.”

  Kevin rattled it off in such a hurry, Jack could almost hear the kid sweat.

  “And you believed her?” Shrill became a shrew.

  “Yeah, and you know why, Kelly?” Kevin’s voice rose to an ear-piercing decibel. “Because she knew about you coming back to the office when Chris worked late.”

  “God, Kevin, can you freakin’ forget about Chris for a minute?”

  Jack turned his head to the side, heard footsteps pacing a hardwood floor. The shrew went on.

  “So help me, if you’ve screwed this whole thing up because you’re jealous of Chris, I will never let you climb into my bed again, got it?”

  “What the hell’s going on, Kel?” This was another male voice, deep, beefy sounding.

  Kel blew out a heavy breath. “Kevin decided not to stick with the plan. He let the psychic go and brought us this guy.”

  “Who is this guy?” Beefy Boy asked.

  “Someone who seems to know more than he should,” Kelly said, the tone of her voice not exactly music to Jack’s ears since she’d gone from shrill to sinister. “Take him out back and tie him up. Tie him good, got it? Wait. Give me his wallet.”

  Kevin dug into Jack’s pocket for his wallet, ran across the bulge of his cell phone on the way out. “What the hey? He’s got a wire or something in his pants.”

  “Sheesh. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable.” Kelly was obviously not too happy with her man. “Where?” she asked, and seconds later Jack felt her cool fingers diving into his boxers. “It’s his cell phone, you moron. You brought him out here and left him holding his phone?”

  “He was tied up, Kel. It’s not like he could make a call.”

  “It looks like he did just that.” She paused, and Jack heard the snap of his phone closing, listened to her rustling through the papers in his wallet. “Oh, isn’t this just rich. He’s a private dick. From Texas.”

  And then Jack felt her up in his face. “What about it, dick? You working for that bitch, Cindy Eckhardt?”

  “Sorry. My client list is confidential.”

  It was when she shoved the barrel of a gun into his throat that he first got nervous. And it was when she whipped off his blindfold and got up in his face that he finally began to sweat. “Answer me.”

  He weighed Cindy’s right to privacy against his right to live and tell his grandchildren about this adventure. He looked down at the girl who was no bigger than Perry and said, “The Eckhardt family hired me, yes.”

  “What have you told them about us?”

  Where Perry was gypsy wild and gypsy hot, Kelly was a throwback to bad Goth with thick black liner ringing her eyes and burgundy black lipstick painting her lips. Layers of long-sleeved T-shirts clung to her body. She’d tucked the tops into the jeans that hung low where she should’ve had hips. A wide belt studded with eyelets served to hold up her pants and holster the gun she carried. And this hideout was nothing but a fishing camp. “Nothing. I don’t know anything about you.”

  “How’d you find Kevin then?”

  “Because I went looking for Dawn Taylor.” Jack was beginning to wonder if the laws of deduction applied only to him. “That was the direction you were pointing the authorities.”

  “Kel?” Kevin’s question barely drew Kelly’s attention. She did no more than bark out a sharp, “What?” before pacing the width of the tiny room.

  There wasn’t much to see here, but Jack took it all in. A brown Naugahyde sofa, a matching club chair, the material of both cracked and peeling and stained. The floor was the same planking as the walls. One door led off the main room toward what looked to be sleeping quarters—two walls lined with bunks.

  And then all that was left was the kitchen—no more than a hot plate, a sink, a small refrigerator, and all of it powered by what sounded like a generator running out back. Folding chairs sat grouped around a card table. Empty chip bags and candy wrappers and soda cans sat on top.

  “You weren’t coming back for me, were you?” Kevin was saying, trying to get Kelly’s attention and getting Beefy Boy’s instead.

  The bigger man stepped into Kevin’s space. “Leave her alone. Let’s figure out what we’re gonna do now.”

  “Get out of my face, Chris,” Kevin snarled, and headed toward the back room.

  O-kay, Jack thought, wondering how this bunch had managed to do anything right when it seemed the only thing they had in common was getting into Kelly’s pants. He shook off the thought, got back to thinking about the long shot of getting the hell out of here.

  It wasn’t being in the middle of nowhere that had his gut tied in a knot. It was being in the middle of a bunch of armed lunatics with a big fat morale problem and a bucket of life sentences hanging over their heads that had him just about ready to puke.

  “Take the dick out back, Chris,” she finally said. “I’ll figure this out.”

  Chris gave a laugh that curdled Jack’s stomach even more. “How ’bout I send him out to Eckhardt. The guy could probably use the company.”

  “No, not yet. We have to wait for Pauly, and that’ll give Kevin a chance to chill. Besides, I need time to think.” She stopped pacing, rubbed at her temples and a moment later looked up.

  Jack swallowed hard. The dark emptiness in her eyes was more malevolent than the gun in her hand, more deadly than the flat, lifeless tone to her voice when she said, “I need to decide what to do with this dick who just stepped up and ruined my life.”

  GREEN. Thick and ripe. Slithering. Deep. Verdant. Hues of grey and blue. Bottomless black.

  Crushed bone between teeth. Talons tearing, shredding. Ropes. Everywhere ropes. And cold.

  Life. A thread. Seeping strength. Seeping water. Wings. Fins. Scales. Fangs. Men.

  Red.
A heart beating. A heart slowing.

  A heart stopped.

  Rubbing her temple with one hand, Della took the stairs slowly, sliding her fingers along the brick wall wondering, as she had before, why Sugar stayed. If she had no choice. Or if she had found in death what she had missed in life. And, if that was the case, what it was.

  Knowing that Perry waited anxiously with Book in the kitchen, Della slowed her steps even more. What the rest of the day brought to this household would change the future for many. What she didn’t know was who would celebrate the highs, and who would mourn the lows.

  These were the times when her gift took on the guise of a curse. Nothing she had seen could possibly be of use in locating Dayton Eckhardt. Or, she feared, Jack. Admitting this to Perry felt like a failure. She knew her niece was looking for hope, and she had none to offer.

  Neither could she present Book with leads to follow or clues to unravel. She’d thought by taking time to free her mind of the day’s lingering anxiety, she might connect with Jack as she’d been able to do today in Dawn Taylor’s kitchen. She’d even hoped that she might find remnants of Kevin’s energy as he focused on getting to Kelly.

  The only thing she was able to find was a vast release of emotion flowing from Book. She thought she had driven him away by reaching into a past he didn’t want her to see. So to learn now of his affection, his tenderness, his passion was a pleasure almost too rich to bear.

  But this wasn’t the time to dwell on what was personal. So, schooling her features, she stepped through the beaded curtain and into the kitchen, stopping in the entrance as all heads turned her way. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to be of any help. I’ve seen thriving life.” She steepled her hands, offered the prayer to Perry along with a request for forgiveness. “But I’ve also seen death. I can’t identify anything more than what appears to be wildlife and wetlands.”

  Perry turned away, hugged her arms across her middle and stared through the window out into the dark. Della sensed the waves of worry, the fear for Jack’s well-being swirling like an undertow and sucking her niece down.

  She wanted to go to her, to offer comfort, but she had none to give. And so she turned her attention to Book, who was nodding his head, scanning his notes.

  “Believe it or not, this is good. This is good. The phone call that came in earlier tonight? It came from Montgomery’s cell. The last tower that picked up the signal showed him on the Lafitte-LaRose Highway headed south.”

  Book flipped through the pages in his notebook. “Kelly Morgan’s family owns several hundred acres down in the Barataria Swamp near Jean Lafitte. Been in the family for generations. I’d say we start there.”

  “HERE’S THE THING, dick,” Kelly said, stepping out onto the back porch of a house that Jack had decided, during the last couple of hours of freezing his ass off, was a hideout par excellence, sitting as it did on the edge of a swamp. If nothing else, this much they’d done right.

  He didn’t like his odds of being discovered. And he sure as hell didn’t like his odds of getting out of here alive. Pretty damn humiliating to make it out of Chechnya and the Sudan with a couple of bullet wounds, to spend a month in the hold of a cargo ship, crossing the Pacific three times while being held hostage by the trafficking ring before he’d escaped, given no light, little water, and even less food, only to succumb to some snotty kids in a swamp.

  He was old. He was soft. He didn’t like being either. And he missed Perry beyond belief. So much so that not telling her how he felt was going to be his life’s biggest regret.

  When the motley crew inside hadn’t been bickering like a flock of biddies, and his own teeth hadn’t been chattering loud enough to break glass, he’d heard a diesel pickup or two chugging in the distance. But that was it. He could’ve shot off a flare gun and still gone unnoticed unless he’d timed it just right.

  They’d tied him up, but they needn’t have bothered. It was the middle of the night. He had no idea where he was. And without more than a quarter moon to guide him, he wasn’t about to step onto a road and over a bump that might end up having bone-crushing jaws.

  He couldn’t imagine what Eckhardt must be going through. While securing Jack to the frame of a folding metal chair, Beefy Chris had taken great pleasure in pointing out where Jack would be able to see the other man once the sun rose over the swamp.

  And since his pleasure-taking had also extended to circulation-strangling knots, Jack couldn’t help but wonder about the pain of Eckhardt’s bonds, and whether or not he could see the house from where the gang had tied him to a cypress root and left him to rot.

  Kelly let the screen door slam shut behind her, pulled the string on the overhead light. Jarred back to the present by both, Jack glanced over.

  Kelly leaned her flat ass on the porch railing and crossed her arms. “Dayton Eckhardt owes a lot of money to me and the boys. Money he doesn’t have to pay us, you know why?”

  Because you didn’t leave him with his wallet when you left him to die?

  “Because when he tore the company out of our backyard like a big bad weed, he cut loose everyone but management. That included those of us with the biggest stake in Eckton’s new software. The one we developed. We. As in me and Chris and Pauly and Kevin.”

  And to think. I’d pegged you as director of human resources. Or maybe fashion.

  “Eckton filed the legal crap, the trademarks or copyrights or patents. Whatever. So Eckton owns the system. Our system. It was our teamwork, our vision. And it’s our work that within a year is going to turn that billionaire in Redmond, Washington into the last best thing.”

  I’m sure Mr. Gates is shaking in his Gucci’s.

  “And now we have nothing. No stock options. No income. No residuals. We have shit. Got it? So we figured it was payback time. Let Dayton Eckhardt learn what it is to not only have zero, but to be a zero.”

  That was when Jack finally opened his mouth. “This is revenge? That’s it?”

  “Revenge. Making a statement. Seeing the man suffer.” She shrugged. “Take your pick.”

  “Suffering. That’s the reason for the amputation?”

  “Seemed like fun, you know, putting the righteous fear into the cops and the wifey. You saw Pauly’s message in the warehouse, didn’t you? We’ve got what we want. A long, painful goodbye for Mr. Eckhardt.” She tucked her fingernails into her palm and studied them. “Only now we’ve got this big dick of a problem. Namely you. So do we leave you here? Or take you with us?”

  “Guess that depends on where you’re going to go,” he said, recognizing that smart-mouthing this chick wasn’t going to earn him any points but, hell on a pirogue, this was nothing but revenge?

  She snorted, started picking at the polish on one of her nails. “Funny thing about that. If you’d asked me earlier today, I could’ve told you. Now I’m not so sure.”

  Jack dropped his head back and cackled. “Then Della was right. You and Chris were loading up the Jeep to skip out on poor Pauly and Kevin.”

  Kelly’s gaze shot to his. “She told you that?”

  He shook his head. “She told Kevin that.”

  “God, he’s such a moron,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “And what does that make you, seeing as how you’ve been with him since eighth grade?” Jack prodded, watching for any glint of emotion.

  If he hadn’t been watching, he would’ve missed the flash that came and was gone. “Right now, it makes me the one everyone wants. The one everyone’s looking to for a decision.”

  “Heavy load for those shoulders of yours.”

  She shrugged. “You look smart enough to know that size doesn’t matter,” she said, and tapped a finger to her head. “It’s all about what’s up here.”

  “Then why don’t you use what’s up there and cut me loose.” He jerked once at the ropes. “Eckhardt, too. If we’re both good to go, then it’s no harm, no foul. We all get up and have our Wheaties for breakfast.”

  “Puh-lease,” s
he said, with a defeatist’s sigh and a shake of her head. “It’s Kevin who’s the moron, remember. Not me. I’m not planning to spend time behind bars.”

  “You didn’t think about that before you started this?” he asked.

  “All I thought about was putting Eckhardt through some heavy-duty shit. Just like he did with us. Payback’s a bitch, haven’t you heard?”

  “So, now what?”

  “Actually, I was thinking of ending it all right here.” She reached for the gun, shook her head, rubbed the mouth of the barrel along the side of her ear. A cold chill settled in to scrape at the pit of Jack’s stomach. Morons this bunch might be, but stupid they were not.

  “Okay, look. That’s not going to solve anything. And you’re smart enough to know deals are made all the time. Especially with a lot of juice to bring to the table. Which I’m pretty sure you have.”

  For several long seconds, she stared into Jack’s eyes. Hers were lifeless, cold, flat. He worried that it was too late, that he’d waited too long to speak, that he should have tried to bond with her, shown empathy instead of sarcasm, let her see he was on her side—even though he wasn’t—and talk her in off the ledge.

  Except then, in the next breath, she doubled over and spit out a laugh, waving the gun like a flag. “You really thought I was serious, didn’t you? Damn, am I good, or what? No wonder Kevin needed a psychic to tell him he’s out of the picture. I still can’t believe he couldn’t figure out for himself why we left him at the reporter’s house.”

  Jack closed his eyes, shook his head. Son of a flippin’ bitch. He and the horse he’d rode in on were both screwed. The only deal this one would be interested in was a part in a teen slasher flick—as the slasher.

  Biting down on a whole lot of words he knew he’d better not say, he looked back up. “What now?”