Beverly Barton 3 Book Bundle

by Beverly Barton

  “You’d best get somebody out here right away,” Jewel said. “I don’t know how much longer she’s gonna last.”

  She handed Foy the phone, then told him to bring her the pillow she kept in the car for their road trips.

  “Ain’t no telling what kind of germs she’s got,” Foy said. “Besides that, she’s bloody as a stuck hog.”

  “Get me that pillow, old man. This gal is one of God’s creatures and He expects me to look after her and show her a little human kindness.”

  When Foy returned with the pillow, Jewel eased it under the woman’s head. Poor thing. She was a terrible sight. Just terrible.

  The battered woman moaned again and then gasped for air. Jewel’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “I think she’s trying to say something,” Foy told his wife. “Look how she’s working her mouth.”

  Jewel leaned down real close to the woman’s face and asked, “What is it, gal? You trying to tell me something?”

  “Grr … rrr … the sound purred from the woman’s parched lips.

  “What was that?” Jewel asked.

  “Griff,” the woman said.

  “Griff?” Jewel looked up at Foy. “What’s a griff?”

  “Never heard of such a thing.”

  The woman repeated the word one more time, then passed out.

  “It’s getting cold out here,” Jewel said. “Go get my coat and bring me that old blanket out of the trunk so I can cover this gal up. She’s shivering something awful.”

  Foy grumbled all the way back to the car. Let the old fart grumble. Jewel knew she was doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord.

  Pudge hoped he had killed the bitch. He knew he had shot her in the back. Maybe she was lying dead somewhere. But whether she was alive or dead, he couldn’t stay at Belle Fleur. It would be only a matter of time, after they found Nicole’s body, before they started searching the area. They were bound to discover that a distant cousin of Cary Maygarden owned extensive property in the area and they would put two and two together. A search warrant would come next, and they’d pay a visit to the plantation, go through his house, and find his trophy room in the basement.

  He had nearly passed out before he’d made it back to the house. All he remembered was pulling his dirt bike up to the back door and hollering for Allegra. Apparently, she’d called her daughter and the two of them had brought him here to the clinic. They’d probably saved his life. He’d have to remember to reward them. But first things first. Right now, he needed to get out of here. He had to go home and make plans as soon as possible to leave the country.

  “Please, lie still, Mr. Everhart,” Dr. Morrow said, then looked at his nurse. “Call County General and arrange for transportation. Mr. Everhart is going to need surgery as soon as possible.”

  Morrow was a young kid, new to the local clinic, but he seemed to know what he was doing.

  “I can’t go to the hospital,” Pudge said. “I have some important business that I have to take care of tonight.”

  “You can’t go anywhere tonight,” the doctor told him. “I’m sending you over to County General. You lost a great deal of blood and—”

  “Just patch me up and release me. Give me some antibiotics and pain pills and Allegra and Fantine will take me home. I’ll come back tomorrow, if you think it’s necessary, but I am going home this evening.”

  “Mr. Everhart, I advise you to—”

  “Allegra!” Pudge bellowed. “Have Fantine bring the car around. We’re going home just as soon as the doctor finishes up in here.”

  “Mr. Everhart, please. You had a nasty accident. That sharp stick did some major damage. It’s lucky you knew not to try to remove it. If you had, you would have bled to death before you managed to get back home. You owe your housekeeper your life. But I’ve done all I can for you. You need immediate surgery and I’m afraid we’re not equipped for it here at the clinic.”

  Pudge reached up and grabbed the lapel of Dr. Morrow’s white coat. “You don’t understand. My life depends on—”

  The doctor grabbed Pudge’s hand. “Your life depends on your having immediate surgery, Mr. Everhart.” He motioned to the nurse, who came over and gave Pudge an injection while the doctor held him down.

  “I’ll sue you. You can’t force me to …”

  Pudge realized the injection had been a sedative. Apparently, a fast-acting one. His last coherent thought was: he hoped Nicole Baxter was dead.

  Nic heard strange sounds. Buzzing. Humming. Quiet thumping. And voices. Soft voices. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she open her eyes? Why was she so sleepy? Was she dead? Was she in some halfway house between heaven and hell?

  “The poor dear,” a female voice said. “She’s lucky to be alive.”

  I’m not dead!

  She opened her mouth and tried to speak. What was that in her mouth? Yuck. Something was stuck in her throat.

  “Mmm … mmm …” She tried to talk, but only a weird mumble came out.

  “She’s waking up,” another female voice said.

  She felt a warm hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right, miss. You’re in Baton Rouge General in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. You’re safe and you’re going to be all right.”

  What was she doing in Baton Rouge? She didn’t know anyone in Louisiana. Was she here on official business?

  Why am I in the hospital? What happened to me? Why is my mind so screwed up?

  She mumbled again. Damn!

  Somebody help me.

  “Don’t try to talk,” the softer voice said. “You’re on a ventilator. Temporarily.”

  Nic managed to move her eyelids, lifting them partially open. Her vision was blurry, but she could make out the shape of a full face and short, curly hair.

  “Well, hello, there. I’m Geena Kilpatrick. I’m one of the nurses here in ICU.”

  Hello, Geena. I’m Nicole Baxter. Special Agent Baxter. I’m an FBI agent.

  “You’re probably feeling pretty groggy,” the nurse said. “You’re recovering from surgery and we’re keeping you medicated for the pain.”

  Surgery? Why did I have surgery?

  “Should I call Sheriff Mitchum?” the other female voice asked.

  “Yes, go ahead. He wanted us to let him know the minute she woke up. But tell him that she’s not going to be able to talk to him this morning.”

  Nic lifted her arm and reached for the nurse who stood directly by her bed. Suddenly her vision cleared enough so that she noticed the tubes connected to her arm. When she held out her hand, the plump, sweet-faced nurse clasped Nic’s hand gently.

  Nic mumbled again and again. Frustrated that she couldn’t speak, she squeezed the nurse’s hand and looked up at her pleadingly.

  “Oh, dear, you want to say something really bad, don’t you?”

  Nic nodded.

  “I’ll get you a pad and pen and you can see if you can write down what you’re trying to say.”

  Doing her best to smile, Nic nodded again.

  Nurse Geena disappeared.

  Nic glanced around while she waited. She was hooked up to various monitoring equipment and she noticed an IV drip. They were probably giving her some high-powered painkillers and that’s why she couldn’t think straight, why she couldn’t remember.

  Just relax and think. What’s the very last thing you remember?

  Griffin Powell.

  They had made love. More than once.

  He had spent the night with her. At her home in Woodbridge.

  How had she gotten from Virginia to Louisiana?

  She had awakened after their night of fabulous sex. Griff had been asleep, so she’d tiptoed into the bathroom, put on her sweats, made coffee, left him a note, and gone for a morning walk.

  “Here we go,” Nurse Geena said as she placed an ink pen in Nic’s right hand and a small notepad in her left. “You are right-handed, aren’t you, sweetie?”

  Nic nodded.

  Staring at the notepad, she clutched the pen in
her hand.

  She remembered going for her morning walk. She had been almost back to her house when—Oh, God! Someone had shot her.

  But if she’d been shot in Woodbridge, Virginia, what was she doing in a hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana?

  She needed Griff. He’d know what was going on. Griff would handle everything. He’d take care of this whole mess.

  “Want me to raise the head of your bed just a little?” the nurse asked.

  “Mm … mm …” Nic nodded yet again.

  She pressed the pen into the notepad and with great effort managed to scribble the letter G and then an R and finally an I before she had to rest.

  Nurse Geena glanced at the pad. “Are you trying to tell me your name?”

  Why didn’t they know her name?

  Nic shook her head, then scrawled the letter F and showed the word to the nurse.

  “Grif?”

  Nic nodded.

  “Is that part of your name?”

  Nic shook her head and wrote four letters, slowly, laboriously, with great difficulty. She tapped the notepad repeatedly.

  “Grif Powl? Is he your husband?”

  Nic shook her head.

  “Is it the name of the person who shot you?”

  She shook her head again, growing more and more agitated by the minute.

  Someone had shot her. Yes, she remembered. Images flashed through her mind. Chains on her ankles. Handcuffs. Woods. The roar of a dirt bike.

  Nic screamed, the terrified sound echoing in her mind, but it came out of her mouth as a muffled, gasping moan.

  Nurse Geena called out something to someone as she held Nic’s shoulders, trying to keep her still. Nic’s struggles ended when the other nurse slid a hypodermic needle into the tube that connected her arm to the IV solution.

  Geena had been an Registered Nurse for twenty-five years, the past ten spent as an intensive care nurse. She’d seen some horrible things in her time, but she didn’t think anything could compare to what had probably happened to their latest Jane Doe. She’d been shot in the back, though luckily the bullet hadn’t hit any vital organs or her spine. That in itself was a miracle. But the large gash in her back, just below her left shoulder blade had been infected. Also, she had been malnourished and on the verge of being dehydrated. From the bruises on her body, the healing welts on her back, and the cuts and scrapes on her legs and feet, the sheriff’s department surmised that she’d been tortured.

  When she had arrived at Baton Rouge General, she’d been near death. If the old Centerville couple hadn’t found her and called for help, she would have died within hours.

  As Geena sipped on her cola, she eyed the notepad where their Jane Doe had scribbled a name. Or at least Geena thought it was a name. She had called her daughter and asked her to Google the two words, “Grif Powl.” It was possible that it wasn’t a person’s name.

  “I’ll run a check, Mom, and call you back,” her daughter had told her ten minutes ago.

  Isaac Felton, another ICU nurse, came over and sat down beside Geena. “What do you have there?” He glanced at the notepad Geena was absently patting.

  “Oh, it’s something our Jane Doe wrote down. But she got so upset when we didn’t understand what she was trying to tell us that we had to sedate her.”

  “Mind if I take a look?” Isaac asked.

  Smiling, Geena handed him the pad. “We think it’s a name. I’m having my daughter Google it to see if she can come up with something.”

  Isaac read the words aloud. “Grif Powl. Hmm …” He repeated the words several times. Then, just as he said, “Griff Powell. Griffin Powell,” the telephone rang.

  “Is that a name you recognize for some reason?” Geena asked before taking the call.

  “Mom, it’s me, Megan. I think I may have found out about that name.”

  Geena held up an index finger as a signal for Isaac to wait a minute. “Yeah, honey, go ahead.”

  “There’s a super-rich private detective named Griffin Powell. He’s got offices in Knoxville, Tennessee. And guess what else? He used to be some big hotshot football player for the University of Tennessee, back before I was born.”

  “Is there a telephone number listed for this guy? An office number?” On the off chance that this Griffin Powell was the person their Jane Doe wanted, Geena decided she’d at least check it out.

  “Yeah, there’s an office number and an e-mail address.”

  “Give me the number,” Geena said, then looked at Isaac. “Write this down.”

  He nodded. She repeated the number Megan gave her, then hung up and turned to her coworker.

  “I guess Megan told you that Griffin Powell is a football legend,” Isaac said. “The guy was Mr. UT football before anybody knew Peyton Manning’s name.”

  “I should probably call the sheriff’s office and let them do this, but that poor girl in there needs somebody who cares about her and she needs them now. I’m going to call this guy and describe our Jane Doe and see if he might know her.”

  Griff hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours. Today was day twenty-three. Nic’s body hadn’t shown up anywhere. The Hunter hadn’t called. Nobody knew what the hell was going on.

  Sanders didn’t know exactly when Griff would break, but it would happen. Today. Tomorrow. Next week. His old friend was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and not even he or Yvette could prevent the inevitable.

  Barbara Jean called Sanders’s name. He turned from where he stood on the patio, the cold afternoon wind whipping around him, and faced her. She remained inside, just beyond the half-open French door.

  “Rick Carson is on the phone. He’s calling from the office in Knoxville. He says it’s urgent.”

  Sanders hurried inside and closed the door behind him. “Did Rick say what this was about?”

  “He said it was in regard to Nicole Baxter.”

  Sanders’s chest constricted tightly. Was this the call they had been anticipating? The call they had dreaded?

  “Did he say anything else? Is she—?”

  “He didn’t go into detail. He just said for you to call him immediately.”

  Sanders nodded, then hurried down the hall and toward the state-of-the-art home office. He opened the door and flipped on the switches that activated all the lighting in the huge room, which was divided into three separate work areas. After seating himself behind one of the desks, he picked up the phone and called the Knoxville office. The receptionist put him through to Rick Carson immediately.

  “Did they find her body?” Sanders asked the minute Rick answered.

  “No,” Rick replied.

  A whoosh of air left Sanders’s lungs as a feeling of intense relief spread through him. “Then this call is not about Nicole Baxter?”

  “Yes, it is,” Rick said. “Or I think it is. I just spoke to a nurse who works in the ICU at Baton Rouge General. She called wanting to speak to Griff. It seems she’s got a patient, a Jane Doe, who had surgery for a gunshot wound and who they believe was tortured and left for dead on a back road somewhere down there. I know this doesn’t fit the Hunter’s MO, but this woman—she can’t speak because she’s temporarily hooked up to a ventilator—scribbled Griff’s name down on a notepad.”

  “The nurse who called, did she give you a description of the Jane Doe in her ICU?”

  “Sure did.”

  “And?”

  “Late twenties, early thirties. Tall, probably five nine or ten. Dark brown hair. Light brown eyes.”

  Sanders’s heartbeat accelerated. “It could be Nicole.”

  “Yeah, but it might not be. What are you going to do? How are you going to handle this?”

  “I’m going to tell Griffin.”

  “But what if it turns out not to be Nicole Baxter?”

  Sanders knew that what Rick did not understand was the depth of Griffin’s despair, that nothing that happened could take him any further down into the hell in which he now resided.

  “If it is not Nicole, Grif
fin will deal with it.”

  Five minutes later, Sanders knocked on the closed study door.

  “Go away,” Griffin said, his voice a hoarse growl.

  Disregarding Griffin’s command, Sanders opened the door and walked into the room. He snapped his head around and glared at Sanders.

  Bloodshot eyes. Two-day growth of beard stubble. Rumpled clothes.

  A half-empty bottle of Scotch rested on the floor beside the sofa.

  Griffin had an obsessive habit of being clean-shaven. A left over quirk from his days in captivity when he had not been allowed to shave. Knowing that Griffin had not touched a razor in days told Sanders more accurately than anything else did that his old friend had allowed himself to sink into the quagmire of hopelessness.

  “I thought I told you to go away.”

  “There is possible news about Nicole,” Sanders said.

  Griffin sat up straight and looked Sanders in the eye. “They found her body?”

  “No, but there is a young woman—badly injured, but alive—in an ICU in Baton Rouge who fits Nicole’s general description. It seems this woman, who is unable to talk, managed to write your name on a piece of paper.”

  Griffin shot up off the sofa. “Call Jonathan and tell him to have the plane ready to go ASAP. Come with me and fill me in on the details while I take a shower, shave, and change clothes.”

  Chapter 21

  Griff had lost faith. He’d given up. He had been waiting for two days for word that Nic’s body had been discovered. And then he had received a miracle. Even the chance that this woman in the Baton Rouge hospital might be Nic was more than he had dared hope. On the flight from Knoxville, he had struggled to maintain a balance between hope and reality, between what his heart told him and what his head told him. Under any other circumstances, he would have chosen harsh reality and common sense, but not today, not when Nic might be alive.

  Although Sanders and Rick Carson had traveled with him, he had spent the trip in relative silence and appreciated that they had respected his desire for solitude. He needed time to prepare himself for whatever they found when they arrived at the hospital. If Nic was alive, he would move heaven and earth to help her. But if the woman wasn’t Nic …