The Accused

by Jana DeLeon

  Alaina nodded. They’d gone over the plan a million times—every detail of every movement. She knew it was solid and she trusted Carter to protect her.

  “It shouldn’t take more than thirty minutes for me to get back,” Carter whispered.

  “I know,” she said, but those thirty minutes were the part that bothered Alaina the most. One thousand eight hundred excruciatingly long seconds alone in the house, locked up in the bedroom, fingers wrapped around her nine millimeter.

  He studied her for a moment, then leaned over and dropped his lips to hers. The brush of his skin on hers set her body on fire and reenergized her in a way mere words could never have done. When this was over—really over—she had a lot of thinking to do about Carter Trahan.

  He broke off the kiss and opened the front door, then with one final long look at her, he disappeared into the building storm.

  Alaina grabbed her pistol from the entry table and hurried upstairs. She did a quick check under the bed and in the closet, then locked the bedroom door behind her and turned off the overhead light before slipping into the corner behind the school desks.

  The light from the kerosene lamp on the dresser cast a dim glow over the room, reaching almost to the corners. She could easily make out the bed pillows, lined under the covers to look like someone sleeping. When Carter returned, she’d unlock the bedroom door and pretend to go to the bathroom. If they were right, the assailant would choose that moment to try and lure her downstairs or sneak into her room.

  Either way, Carter would be ready. If the assailant entered the room, he’d take him down. If the assailant attempted to draw her downstairs, Carter would use the servant’s stairwell to slip down into the kitchen and try to ferret him out in the darkness. Alaina was to remain secure in the bathroom until Carter came to get her. It wasn’t the best plan and certainly not the safest, but it was what they had to work with.

  They’d carefully checked every square inch of the servants’ stairs and the doors. Squeaky hinges had been oiled and loose stairs had been secured, allowing for silent passage. They’d released the bathroom window from the many layers of paint that had sealed it shut, and stored a climbing rope in the linen closet. If things went bad, she would scramble out of the window and drive to Calais for help.

  In the meantime, she was going to pray that things didn’t go bad.

  She glanced down at her watch and struggled for patience. Only three minutes had passed since Carter left. She had at least another long, agonizing twenty-seven minutes to go before he’d make his way up the balcony and she’d let him in through the patio doors. Thousands of opportunities for something to go horribly wrong and even more opportunity for her to imagine things going horribly wrong.

  For the first time in her life, the reality of what it truly meant to be a law enforcement officer struck her. She’d always respected the work cops did, even though they’d butted heads at times, and she’d never thought it was easy. But she’d also never imagined it being this hard. Surely, they all had their nerves cauterized during training. Or perhaps beta-blockers were issued right along with pistols and handcuffs.

  Her left foot began to tingle and she shifted her weight to her right side. It would be much easier if she sat, but sitting was hardly optimal if the need to flee came about. A dull ache, courtesy of an old track-and-field injury, started up in her right foot but she promptly ignored it. Heat and ice could come later, when she was certain she could sit still and be safe.

  As the minutes ticked away, the events of the past year played through her mind. So much had changed—some for the better and some not so much. A year ago, if anyone had told her she’d be in a spooky mansion, hiding in a bedroom and trying to catch a criminal, she would have had them committed. A year ago, if anyone had told her that her heart and body would be longing for a hunky small-town sheriff, she would have said they were crazy. A year ago, her life was so much simpler.

  And so empty.

  She stiffened at that thought. Had she really been so focused on her career that she’d never stopped to ask herself if she even wanted it? Had she used it to shield herself from forming the close personal relationships that were far more important than a job?

  She blew out a breath. Her two weeks in Calais were supposed to have been a time of reflection and decision making, but she hadn’t seen these huge revelations coming.

  Or Carter Trahan.

  Suddenly, a dull thud sounded somewhere in the house and she froze. One glance at her watch told her it was too soon for Carter to be back. Besides, Carter would enter the house from the bedroom balcony. The noise she’d heard had definitely come from inside. With her. Where she was all alone.

  Stay calm. Remember the plan.

  Yeah, right. The plan included Carter being here.

  She gripped her pistol with both hands and aimed it over the desks and at the door, her hands shaking even when propped on the desk seat. If anyone came through that door, she would empty her magazine into them. Given that they’d have to pick the lock or break down the door to get through it, no one could fault her for the shooting. It would definitely be a case of self-defense.

  She took a deep breath and slowly blew it out, mentally running through the case law for self-defense shootings. Silently reciting the cases and rulings calmed her, and the shaking in her hands decreased. She took another breath and continued her mental recital.

  The creak of a floorboard in the hallway right outside her room echoed through the still night air like a scream. She flung her hand over her mouth, stifling a cry. Seconds later, the door handle jiggled and she put her hand back on the pistol, her finger positioned on the trigger.

  Squeeze, don’t pull.

  She’d done it a million times at the gun range, shooting paper targets with deadly accuracy. Now it was time to put all that training to use. All she had to do was imagine that paper target and fire. She could do this.

  Then the jiggling stopped and she heard the hinges of a door squeak. He must have entered one of the other rooms off the hallway, but why? She and Carter had checked every square inch of this room. No servants’ passage existed. The only way in and out was the main bedroom door and the patio.

  A second later, she had her answer.

  The roar of a gunshot seemed to shake the wall beside her. She screamed as splinters of wood pricked her neck and bare arms as the round broke through the paneling. Instinctively, she flung herself flat on the floor as another round pierced through the wall right where she’d been squatting.

  She was a sitting duck. He could stand there firing as long as he had ammunition. Firing back would do her no good. Her nine millimeter wouldn’t pierce two walls of paneling. Her only chance was to run for it.

  Digging the toes of her tennis shoes into the wood floor, she pushed with her legs and pulled with her one free hand to drag herself over to the patio doors. Her heart thumped so strongly that it was like a hammer beating against the hardwood. A single bead of sweat ran down her forehead and directly into her eye, blurring her vision, and she clenched her pistol so tightly that her fingers began to ache.

  Another shot rang out and hit the kerosene lamp on the dresser—shattering it and pitching her into complete darkness.

  She took a breath and continued to push on. It couldn’t be much farther now. And just when her calves started to cramp, her hand hit the bottom frame of the French doors. She slid her hand up the door, trying to keep her head low while fumbling for the lock. After what felt like an eternity, her fingers circled around the dead bolt and she turned it.

  Two more shots fired and some of the glass panes on the doors shattered. Involuntarily, her hand jerked back and she had to force herself to reach up again for the doorknob. She closed her hand around it and pulled the door open wide enough to drag herself over the threshold. The broken glass dug into her palms and pierced through her T-shirt, cutting the sensitive skin on her chest and stomach.

  She bit back a cry, trying not to give away her positio
n in the room, and continued across the glass-littered threshold until she reached the balcony. Now came the really hard part. The rails of the balcony were too close together for her to fit through. She had to stand to get over the railing, and standing put her at huge risk for a lucky shot landing its mark.

  Carter had left the rope tied to the post in the middle. All she had to do was jump up, grab that rope and scale down the plaster column to the patio below. Then she’d run like she’d never run before. Reaching behind her back, she stuck her pistol in her waistband holster. She’d need both hands for the rope.

  She took a deep breath. On three. One. Two. Three!

  She bolted up and reached for the rope. Panic washed over her when she couldn’t find it in the thick vines circling the column. Another shot sounded and she felt it whizz by, inches from her head. She tore the vines from the column, digging for the rope in the pitch-dark night, holding in a cry of relief when her fingers finally wrapped around the coarse line.

  Her relief disappeared as the door to the bedroom burst open and the light from a flashlight struck her directly in the face, blinding her. She ducked as another shot rang over her head. The blood rushed out of her head as she accepted the fact that this was how it would all end. She was out of options.

  She cringed, waiting for the killing shot to hit her immobile body, but instead, a strangled cry came from inside the room. She saw the flashlight hit the floor and then looked up and saw what had caused the shooter to fumble.

  The shimmering white figure of her mother hovered two feet above the bedroom floor, floating directly between her and the shooter.

  She leaped up from the balcony and grabbed the railing, rolling her body over the top. A shot rang out and grazed the top of her arm before she let the railing go and dropped onto the patio below. Her left foot landed on a stone and twisted, wrenching her ankle, but she had no time to dwell on injuries. She ran into the swamp behind the patio as the shooter burst out onto the balcony behind her.

  He fired off several shots, the bullets whizzing by her in the dense, black swamp. She pushed herself through the thick foliage as fast as it allowed, her thighs and calves burning from the strain. When she reached the path to Amos’s cabin, she drew up short.

  What the hell had just happened? By all rights, she should be dead on that balcony and would be if it hadn’t been for her mother. Correction—her mother’s ghost.

  She shook her head, trying to clear the image of her mother, shimmering in light and hovering two feet above the floor, out of her mind. She’d deal with her thoughts on that later.

  If there was a later.

  Going to the caretaker’s cabin was tempting, but it was no place to mount a defense. Surrounded by the snaking bayou, there was only one way out unless she wanted to dive into the alligator-infested water and swim for it.

  She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and checked it, expecting nothing, given the dark storm clouds circling above. No signal. She put the phone away and pulled out her pistol. In the rustle of the brush in the stormy winds, she couldn’t hear the sound of pursuit behind her, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there somewhere, just waiting for a sound to indicate where she was hiding.

  The moonlight peeked out from behind a cloud long enough for her to scan the path in both directions. The path was clear. She waited until the clouds rolled back over the moon, then hurried across the path into the foliage on the other side. Maybe the killer would stick to that side of the path, thinking she wouldn’t cross it and go deeper into the swamp.

  He was wrong.

  * * *

  CARTER PARKED HIS TRUCK behind a stretch of thick brush about a quarter mile from the house. He’d intended to park at the caretaker’s cabin and make his way to the house by the path, but parking here saved him some of the drive and eliminated the possibility of being seen passing near the house. It would be a quick jog through the brush, skirting the road, and then a quick trip around the house to scale the balcony.

  When he was halfway to the house, the first shot echoed in the distance.

  He froze, certain he’d mistaken some other sound for a gunshot. But when the second shot fired—hollow and faint—he knew someone was firing a pistol inside the house. And for him to hear it this far out, it had to be high-caliber.

  He leaped through the brush and onto the road in a dead run for the house, all plans of subversive maneuvers gone right out the window. As he ran, he said a silent prayer that Alaina had gotten out of the house or returned fire. It was possible he couldn’t hear the nine millimeter at this distance.

  And it’s possible she had no chance to fire.

  He forced the thought from his mind and pushed his legs harder to increase speed, not even hesitating when he ran through the gates and into the courtyard. He fumbled with the key to the front door and cursed before finally shoving the unlocked door open and peering inside.

  The downstairs lights were still on, which surprised him, but made it easier to determine that he was alone—at least, it appeared that way. Before he could think of all the other possibilities, he dashed across the entry and up the stairs, clenching his pistol in his right hand. When he hit the landing, he saw the bullet holes through the bedroom door and his heart fell.

  He raced into the bedroom without a thought of his own safety and slid to a stop in the empty room. The evidence of the struggle was everywhere—splintered wood, broken glass, the patio door that stood open. He ran to the patio and looked over, but there was no sign of her on the patio below. Clenching the rail, he peered into the pitch-black swamp, wondering which direction she’d taken and how far she’d already run.

  Wondering if the killer had caught her.

  He clenched the railing at the thought and felt something moist on his palm. He lifted it into the light and saw blood smeared on it. His heart fell once again. Had a bullet pierced her flawless skin or was it the killer’s blood?

  Using the blood-smeared hand, he vaulted over the balcony, still clutching his pistol in his other hand. As soon as his feet hit the stone patio, he collapsed and rolled, letting the tumbling motion absorb all the energy of the drop. Thorns from the overgrown rose bushes pressed into his skin, but he barely noticed as he bounced to his feet, pausing only long enough to pull a penlight from his pocket.

  It took only seconds to identify the broken branches and compacted brush and he set off after Alaina, hoping he found her before the killer did.

  * * *

  ALAINA PUSHED THROUGH the thick swamp, pausing only long enough to make sure she hadn’t strayed too far from the path. Her sense of direction was better than most and she was managing to progress back toward the house while maintaining a distance of twenty or so feet from the path. Unless he was a skilled tracker, the killer wouldn’t notice where she’d entered the swamp on the other side of the path. She figured he would assume she ran down the path toward the house and would pursue her that way.

  She was tempted to set off down that path at a dead run. Even though she hadn’t been competitively on a track in ages, she knew she could outrun the vast majority of people she came in contact with. But even at her best, she couldn’t outrun ammunition. She had to be smart and agile—her life depended on it.

  So she pushed farther through the swamp, every second seeming like an hour. The night air had stilled—the calm before the storm—causing the humidity to soar. Sweat formed on her forehead and stung the cuts on her hand when she wiped it away. It couldn’t be much farther, she kept telling herself. Her pace away from the house was much faster, but she’d been trekking back toward the house far longer than she’d run away.

  Finally, a flicker of light pierced through the thick foliage. She inched closer to the path and light from the front entry creeping across the circular drive. Silently, she cursed at her car, parked directly in the brightest path of light. When she and Carter had made their plans that evening, it had seemed like a good idea to park her car right next to the house, where she’d left it every
night before. Unfortunately, it was in the one spot that risked the most exposure.

  Not only was the entire area surrounding the car illuminated by the entry light, but it was also impossible to reach it without crossing the circular drive, leaving her an easy target for even the worst of marksmen.

  She scanned the drive, looking for any sign of movement, any shadow that didn’t fit the angle of the house or bushes, but it appeared clear. The silence was almost deafening, as if the swamp was holding its breath right along with her. She felt her jeans pocket for the electronic key to her SUV. The technology allowed her to enter and start her vehicle without removing the key from her pocket, so no time was lost fumbling for keys, but still she hesitated.

  The quiet unnerved her.

  If the wind blew through the brush and the insects picked up their tune again, she would feel better, but right now, it was like a giant spotlight was on her—like everything was waiting and watching her next move. She mentally marked the distance between her hiding spot and the SUV. It was only twenty yards, but it had to be the longest twenty yards she’d ever seen.

  Still, the killer hadn’t passed her on the path, which she hoped meant he was still behind her somewhere, looking for her in the swamp. The longer she waited to make her move, the more opportunity he had to catch up with her. She clenched her gun and sprang out of the bushes, then sprinted for her car. With each stride, her hopes increased until finally, she slid to a stop next to the driver’s door.

  Before she could grab the handle, a gunshot boomed in the still night air, and the driver’s side window exploded. She grabbed the door handle.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a voice she recognized sounded behind her.

  A wave of dizziness washed over her as she slowly turned around to find Everett Winstrom III standing ten feet away, his forty-five leveled at her.