Raymond Jolly stood in the doorway. The .357 Magnum was thrust through the waistband of his pants. He smiled. “Good morning, Kate.”
She didn’t say anything, centering herself so that nothing he did could touch her.
Outside, the outboard engine stuttered and died.
“We seem to be having a little trouble with the engine this morning,” Jolly told her. He sounded hard and distant, as if preoccupied by another matter. “I don’t think it’s anything Shane can’t figure out. He’s pretty handy with things. Escapes. Boats to the Grand Caymans. That kind of thing. But I have to admit, I liked him a hell of a lot more before you came along. He was more…tractable. Like his interests went along with mine.” He shrugged. “Which they did. After all, he was cutting himself in for part of the ransom money.”
Kate watched the man. She didn’t know why he was talking so much, but the experience was unnerving.
“When a man’s greedy,” Jolly said, “you can count on him to do exactly what he says he’s going to do. Or what you know he’s going to do. Which is, whatever he has to in order to get the money.”
On the bed, Deke moved weakly. The young man was still alive. Kate felt a bit hopeful. If Deke could make it through the night, there was a good chance he could live long enough to get to a doctor who could finish what she had started.
The outboard engine surged to brief life again before fading out.
“Then you entered the picture,” Jolly said. “Not just once, which I could understand, but twice. Like some kind of damned albatross.”
“I don’t believe in luck,” Kate said.
“Neither do I,” Jolly said. “Which means I have to wonder what the hell you were doing out on that road when Shane’s escape plan came apart.”
“Getting my day started,” Kate said. “I was on my way to a campsite—” She was talking because she was getting afraid that if she didn’t he’d kill her due to his own paranoia.
“Shut up!” Jolly ordered. His face turned red and he spat when he spoke.
Kate read the anger in the man then, and knew that it wasn’t any of her doing. Jolly’s own personal demons were getting the best of him. Maybe he was tired and scared, starting to think he wasn’t going to get out of the swamp, much less the state of Florida.
“As if having you along screwing with Shane’s head wasn’t bad enough,” Jolly went on. “Now I’ve got to deal with this!” He pointed at Deke.
A bad feeling coiled restlessly in Kate’s stomach.
“If we’d been on our own when that damned alligator jumped up and got Deke, he’d have been gone,” Jolly said. “In a heartbeat. But you had to jump in with him, with just a damned straight razor. And you somehow saved him.” His chest rose and fell rapidly.
Kate shifted on the chair, drawing in her legs so she could defend herself against him if it came to that. Of course, if it came to that, arms and legs weren’t going to stop a .357 Magnum round.
“To make matters worse,” Jolly said, “this poor, dying bastard won’t have the decency to go ahead and die.”
“Deke made it through the night,” Kate said calmly. She named the young man, hoping to make him more of a human being than a problem for Raymond Jolly. “He’s young. He’s strong. There’s the possibility that he can make it.” She paused, hoping to get through to Jolly. “If he gets medical assistance.”
“But that’s the rub, isn’t it, Kate?” Jolly showed her a cold smile. “We can’t exactly take Deke to a hospital, can we? I mean, we just got out of prison, we’ve got money to get, and I don’t plan on going back.” He stepped in close to the bed and looked at Deke. “So we have to come up with a new plan. Something that frees us up a little.”
Cold menace filled Kate in a way the rain and the sea surge hadn’t. She tried to think of something to say, but before anything came to mind, Jolly picked up a pillow from the bed and held it over Deke’s face. Jolly leaned on the pillow as Deke woke and tried to fight back.
Leaping up, Kate ran toward the bed. The handcuffs brought her up short, biting into her wrist. Jolly and Deke remained just out of reach.
Chapter 11
“Shane!”
The ragged cry came from the mobile house stuck in the trees above Shane. He stood in the stern of the johnboat, the carburetor partially disassembled so he could clean out the debris that was choking it down. Blue plastic tarp covered him so the rain wouldn’t get into the engine and cause even more problems.
“Shane! Shane!”
Adrenaline laced Shane’s system as he pulled out from under the tarp and turned toward the ladder. They’d moored the johnboat to the nearest tree.
“Shane!”
Leaping from the johnboat, feeling it slide across the smooth water away from him, Shane clawed at the rope ladder leading up to the covered porch. He didn’t make the distance, dropping into the water and sinking immediately.
Panic gripped him as the water closed over his head, and he thought about the alligators he’d seen only that morning. They’d evidently been drawn to the area by the one Kate had killed. The corpse had gotten tangled up in some branches beneath the mobile home.
He heard Kate’s cry again, sounding more distant while he was underwater. Kicking out, he swam to the surface and caught the rope ladder. He climbed rapidly, hands and feet moving together as he hauled himself up.
His breath was short by the time he reached the landing where Ernie was thumbing shells into the shotgun after cleaning it.
“What the hell?” Ernie asked, racking the slide to chamber a round.
Shane resisted the impulse to rip the shotgun from Ernie’s grip and knock the big man into the water. That would have been overplaying the hand that he’d been dealt and would have cost him the opportunity to find Desiree Martini’s body when cadaver dogs and search teams hadn’t been able to do it.
Kate’s yelling, he told himself. That means she’s all right.
He raced through the mobile home to the bedroom where Deke was and where Kate had been left handcuffed. After she’d almost escaped last night, Shane hadn’t tried to fight for her freedom from the cuffs.
In the room, Jolly stood by the bed, looking bored and a little put out. He jerked a thumb at Kate, who stood straining at the end of the handcuffs.
“Man, she’s gone totally psycho,” Jolly said. “Screaming and yelling and carrying on.”
Shane looked at Kate, who was staring at Deke on the bed. Tears flowed down her cheeks and she looked more scared than he’d ever seen her.
“He killed Deke,” she accused. “He put a pillow over his face and smothered him. Deke was still alive.”
Crossing to the bed, Shane looked down at the young man. Deke stared up sightlessly, his eyes glassy in death. Shane picked up one of Deke’s arms and let it drop. The young man hadn’t been dead long.
“Do you know CPR?” Kate asked. “Maybe you can do CPR.”
Shane shook his head. “It’s too late.”
“Get these cuffs off me!” Kate ordered. “Get them off now! Maybe it’s not too late!”
Turning to Jolly, Shane said, “Give me the key, Raymond.” He held out his hand.
“It’s a waste of time, man,” Jolly said. “That boy’s done passed.”
“It hasn’t been long!” Kate cried. “There’s still a chance!” She looked at Shane with those dark-green eyes. “Let me try!”
“The key,” Shane said, with more force in his voice. “Please.” But he wasn’t asking; he was telling. And Raymond Jolly knew it.
For just an instant, Jolly’s hand slid dangerously close to the .357 at his waistband. Then he smiled and took the handcuff key from his shirt pocket. “Sure, Shane. You just don’t let her get away while she’s going through all these theatrics.” He tossed the key into the air and left the room.
Shane caught the key and crossed to Kate.
“Sorry about your cousin, Ernie,” Jolly said as he passed the big man. “He was a brave young man.”
“Thanks,” Ernie choked out, wiping tears from his eyes. “He was, wasn’t he? The salt of the earth.”
As Shane watched, Kate threw herself on the bed, on top of Deke, and put her hands on his chest after measuring where she wanted them to go. She pushed on his chest for a moment, then slid off, pinched Deke’s nostrils, opened his mouth and breathed into his lungs a few, measured breaths.
Then she went back to the chest and started shoving again. Tears rolled down her face. She was crying the whole time she was striving to bring life back into the young man, as if his death were all her fault and she hadn’t tried everything she could do twice last night to save him.
She worked at it for over five minutes before Shane walked over to her and put his arms around her from behind. Holding her, even then, during such an emotionally charged time, felt like the most natural thing in the world.
“Kate,” he whispered in her ear as she fought to get him off her.
“Let me go!”
Shane hung on, riding out her efforts to free herself. “Kate, you did everything you could.”
“I can save him! I’ve brought people back that were gone longer than he’s been!”
Wrapping her with his arms, Shane held on to her. He knew he was leaving himself open to attack. She could knee him, punch him or bite him at any moment. The fact that she didn’t meant that she knew she needed to accept what he was saying.
“Listen,” he whispered. “You did everything you could do. He just didn’t have much left to give. He’s gone. You just can’t call back someone that far gone.”
Gradually, she stopped struggling and stopped crying. She turned rigid in his grasp.
“Let me go,” she whispered hoarsely. “Let me go.”
Shane did, unwrapping his arms and stepping back.
Without a word, Kate turned on him and slapped him so hard it turned his face. He tasted blood as his already split lips reopened. He throttled the savage instinct in him to respond in kind. Maybe he hadn’t had that coming, but she’d needed to hit somebody. He could understand that. He’d been feeling like that himself the last couple days.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
She walked away from him, causing Ernie to step back hurriedly.
Ernie took his ball cap off and held it. “I appreciate what you tried to do for Deke, Ms. Garrett. Truly I do. And I’m sorry about what happened last night. I mean, sometimes I just can’t control myself.”
“That’s some friend you have there,” Kate accused as she stopped in front of him. Then she looked back at Shane. “Both of them.”
Red-faced, Ernie looked down at his feet.
Entering the bathroom, Kate slammed the door behind her. And locked it. He knew she was aware the flimsy door wouldn’t hold, but he also knew she needed some kind of wall between her and her enemies.
Shane let out a long, low breath and looked at Deke dead on the bed. Ernie walked slowly over to his cousin’s side, then dropped on to his knees by the bed, put his hands together before him like a child, and started praying for Deke.
Anger, dark and relentless, stirred inside Shane. He needed out of this assignment. He needed to get it finished. And he was prepared to do that. Mr. and Mrs. Martini would have to wait just a little longer to find their daughter’s body. Sooner or later it would turn up. They nearly always did.
But he was going to put a stop to Raymond Jolly’s hit parade. Right now.
Shane strode into the living room and found Jolly out smoking on the porch under the tin canopy. He appeared to be watching the rain, as though nothing had ever happened in that back room.
“Don’t come at me riled up,” Jolly said, removing the cigarette from his mouth. “That damn woman was lying about everything she said in there.” He shifted, coming around, his hand a scant inch from the .357’s butt.
Shane held up, knowing if he kept approaching Jolly in the mood he was in that the man would draw and fire before he could reach him.
“She was lying,” Jolly repeated, “just the way she was lying the other night when she put on that act like you and her were planning on taking the ransom money.” He breathed out smoke, then hit the cigarette again. “She’s trying to split us up, Shane. Any fool can see that.” His eyes narrowed. “I guess my question is, are you going to get bent out of shape about it? Or are you going to go with me today to get that ransom money?”
Today? The opportunity buzzed into Shane’s head. Today. He took a deep breath and let it out. Just one more day.
“She wasn’t lying about you killing Deke,” Shane said. “I know you killed him.”
Jolly’s smile spread, but he didn’t look relaxed. He rested his hand around the gun butt. “You think so, do you?”
“I know you did,” Shane said. “Smothering someone can cause petechiae. It nearly always happens with ligature strangulation.”
“What’s petechiae?”
Shane kept himself calm, detached. He’d had a lifetime to learn how to do that. He pointed toward his eyes. “It’s caused by small blood vessels rupturing in the eyes.” He paused. “Deke had petechiae. You smothered him.”
“How do you know about petechiae?”
“One of my mother’s boyfriends strangled her,” Shane said. For just a moment he was back in that small one-bedroom apartment in Mobile, Alabama, and his mother was on the couch, hours dead and already cold to the touch. That was the trick to doing good undercover work: cutting the lie with so much truth that the lie almost wasn’t a lie at all but just one turn that hadn’t been taken. Sometimes he wondered how he kept from becoming the person he so often portrayed. “I found her in the living room the next morning.” Years of telling the story kept his voice from breaking. “I was eight years old. It’s something that kind of sticks with you.”
“Man, you are all out of family, aren’t you? Dead father. Dead brother. Dead mother.”
Shane kept all the old pain from balling up on him through a sheer effort of will. “Keeps the Christmas card list short.”
Jolly looked a little uncomfortable but didn’t say anything.
“I know,” Shane heard himself say, as though he was someone else entirely, “that you did what you had to do with Deke. There’s no way we could have taken him with us. And he would have died anyway.”
“Yeah,” Jolly said.
“If you look at it right,” Shane made himself say, and added a slight smile, “what you did was put Deke out of his misery.”
Jolly nodded. “Damn right I did.”
“And out of our misery.” Shane took a breath, knowing that Jolly was taking in the callous attitude with a newfound respect. It also better balanced out the shift in power since Kate Garrett had shown up. Both of them had weaknesses now, and they both knew what they were. “I don’t think Ernie’s going to be that understanding or generous about his cousin’s death.”
“You’re probably right,” Jolly said. “So it would be in our best interests not to tell him, wouldn’t it?”
“It would.”
Jolly took a deep breath. “What do you want, Shane?”
“We’re down to three people,” Shane said. “I want a full cut of the ransom. Three and a third million dollars.”
“You’re getting greedy.”
“Some might say that. But when we escaped prison, you were in for twenty percent of a ten-million-dollar pie. That’s two million bucks. With Phil, Deke and Monte out of the way, you’re up over fifty percent.”
“A fifty-fifty split between Ernie and me sounds better,” Jolly said laconically. “Minus what you and I agreed on for a finder’s fee on the boat.”
“Sure,” Shane said. “If Ernie could get you a boat out of Florida, you’d probably be better off doing that. But he can’t.” He paused. “I can. More than that, I can watch your back if Ernie starts thinking too hard about how conveniently Deke died before we left today.”
Jolly flicked his cigarette butt into the water far below. “All right,” he said. “J
ust don’t get too greedy, Shane.”
“Sure,” Shane said. But he couldn’t wait to find the ransom and Desiree Martini’s corpse so he could take Jolly off the board. All he had to do was make sure he kept Kate and himself alive while he did it.
In the hallway, Kate stood frozen, replaying what Shane and Jolly had just said. She couldn’t believe Shane could be so cold, so callous. Then she thought about the losses he’d suffered in his life. All of his family was dead.
If it’s true. Still, she remembered his eyes when he’d told her about his granny and his father and brother. She’d believed him. She still did.
Not having family made a difference. She knew that from having seen it in people she knew and clients she’d met. Even Tyler Jordan was better off having a father who was a functioning alcoholic than having no one.
But Shane had just sold away the truth of Deke’s murder. For a few million dollars. Maybe it was easier, she decided, when the numbers were bigger. Big numbers had always attracted Bryce, and he had had a family he’d walked away from time and again.
For a moment, Kate was lost in thought, exhausted by everything she’d gone through, especially the guilt over Deke’s death—It was murder!—and the realization that Shane Warren had reached an all-time low in her estimation even though he’d dived into the water with her to rescue Deke from the alligator.
All of the parts of the man, even in the short time she’d known him, were confusing. She still couldn’t reconcile what Shane had done with what she knew about him.
“You all right?”
Startled, Kate looked up. Shane stood at the other end of the hallway. His blond hair hung wetly down to his shoulders.
“Yeah,” she answered, lifting her chin and crossing her arms over her breasts. “I’m fine.” She stared into his eyes until he finally looked past her to the bedroom.
“How’s Ernie doing?” he asked.
“Don’t know.”
Shane nodded. “We’re going to be pulling out in a few minutes. Get your stuff together or you’re leaving without it.” Cold and impersonal, he turned and walked away.
Storm Force Page 15
