Tangled Threat ; Suspicious

by Heather Graham

  Thiessen made a dive into the water. Jesse didn’t think the man could make it—not with a trained force on his heels, several of them Miccosukees who had grown up in the area. It was a last desperate attempt at freedom by a desperate man.

  They raced toward the canal. Thiessen had plunged deep, apparently hoping to surface at a distance, then disappear into the saw grass.

  Jesse streaked toward the water himself, then stopped.

  Everyone stopped behind him.

  There was a thrashing in the water. Droplets splayed high and hard in every direction.

  They were all dead still, watching the awful scene playing out before them.

  Alligators were territorial.

  And Thorne Thiessen had disturbed a large male in his territory. The dance of death was on.

  There was no helping Thiessen.

  He’d been caught in the middle of the abdomen, and now the mighty creature was thrashing insanely, trying to drown his prey.

  Thiessen let out one agonized scream.

  Then the alligator took him below the surface.

  Gentle as dewdrops, the last glistening drops of water fell back on the surface of the canal.

  And then all was still.

  Jesse heard a soft gasp, but even without it, he had known she was there. He knew her scent. Felt the air tremble around her.

  He turned, and her eyes were brilliant and beautiful and filled with tears. She had wanted justice, not vengeance, he realized.

  It had been a fitting end to Thiessen, he thought himself. But maybe he needed to learn a bit more about mercy.

  He took her into his arms. Felt the vibrance and life in her body.

  He drew her tightly to him. And he didn’t care about the tragedy they’d just witnessed, the mud that covered them both, or who heard his words.

  “I love you,” he said softly. “And it’s going to be all right.”

  Epilogue

  It was fall. The sun beat down on the water, but the air was gentle. Birds, in all their multihued plumage, flew above the glistening canal. Trees, hanging low, were a lush background for the chirps and cries that occasionally broke the silence.

  There had been a picnic. A week had passed since the events at the hummock. They had all spent hours in questioning and doing paperwork for both the tribal police and Metro-Dade.

  Michael Preston and Harry Rogers had both been horrified to discover that they had been under suspicion.

  Hugh had merely been indignant that he hadn’t been in on the finale.

  They had all attended the funeral for Hector and Maria. Julie and Lorena were fast becoming friends, just as she was a friend of Jesse’s.

  Now, with the picnic cleaned up, with the others having talked over everything that had happened and finally gone home, Lorena stared out at the strange and savage beauty of the area and smiled.

  Jesse, a cold beer in his hand, came up behind her, then took a seat at her side.

  She leaned against him comfortably, taking his hand, holding it to her cheek. “There’s one more monster out there,” she reminded him.

  “Yeah. We haven’t heard any reports about it, but we’ll arrange more hunts until we get it.”

  “And when you do...will you capture it or kill it?” she asked.

  He smiled at her. “When an animal is altered, it’s man’s doing, not the creature’s,” he reminded her. “But these things could mate. Undo the balance in the Everglades. I don’t like to make judgments, but if it’s up to me... I think the creature is too much of a risk. Too many people have died already. Your father died to protect people from creatures like it, and so...”

  “At least they didn’t kill the van driver,” Lorena said.

  “They thought they did, though,” Jesse said grimly. “John Smith thought the man was dead when he stole the carcass and drove the van into a canal. It’s a miracle that he came to and escaped.”

  “Every once in a while, we get a miracle,” Lorena said.

  “So...” Jesse murmured.

  “So...?”

  “So somehow I doubt that you plan to keep your position at Harry’s.”

  “I was thinking of doing something else.”

  “You want to leave,” he said very softly.

  “Actually, no.”

  “No?” His face seemed exceptionally strong then, handsome and compelling, his eyes that startling green against the bronze of his features.

  She sighed. “I know it’s soon, but I had been hoping you would ask me to stay here. My real love is the law. And causes. I’m great at causes, Jesse. It occurred to me that the tribal council could probably use a good lawyer now and then. And living here, with you...”

  He laughed. “I love you. You know that. I have to admit, I’ve had my fears.”

  “You? Afraid?”

  “This isn’t just where I live. It’s part of what I am. And you come from a world that’s...glittering. Clean. Neat. Sophisticated. Not that we don’t have our own ‘Miami chic’ down here, but... I’m not knocking anything, it’s just that here...well, there are alligators in the canals. Water moccasins, and saw grass hardly stands in for a neatly manicured lawn. And my nearest neighbor is...well, not near.”

  She laughed softly. “Hmm. Water moccasins.”

  “I’m afraid so. Though they’re not the vicious creatures they’re made out to be. They’re afraid of people.”

  “And alligators.”

  “Normally, they leave you alone if you leave them alone.”

  “Muck, mud, mosquitoes and saw grass.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She turned to him, touched his face. “But they all come with you,” she said softly.

  He caught her hand, eyes narrowing, a smile curving his lips. “Then you really would consider staying? I’d love a roommate, but I’d much rather have a wife.”

  Her heart seemed to stop. “Are you asking me?”

  “I’m begging you.”

  She threw herself into his arms.

  “Is that a yes?”

  “A thousand times over.”

  He gently caught her chin in his hand, thumb sliding over the skin of her cheek. Then his lips touched hers. The breeze was soft and easy. The birds went silent. The night was as breathtaking as his kiss.

  * * *

  THE WEDDING WAS a month later. They chose the Keys.

  The bride wore white. The groom was dashing in his tux.

  They were both barefoot, married in the sand at sunset.

  They’d taken the whole of one of the mom-and-pop motels, as well as rooms in one of the nearby chains. The attendance was huge, with Seminoles, Miccosukees, whites, Hispanics and, as Hugh, the token Aussie, commented, a bit of everyone in between. Even Roger had made it out of the hospital in time to attend.

  The sunset was glorious.

  The reception was the South Florida party of the year.

  And when the night wound down, they were alone in their room that looked onto the ocean, feeling the gentle breeze, aware of the salt scent on the air...

  And then nothing else, nothing else at all...

  Except for each other.

  * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from The Stalking by Heather Graham.

  The Stalking

  by Heather Graham

  Prologue

  The jazz band played a mournful tune under great oaks that swayed in the breeze, dripping moss as if the trees themselves cried.

  The priest moved forward, silent and somber, leading the funeral procession. Though it was the traditional funeral that should accompany the farewells for any member of Janine’s family, it all seemed so very wrong to Cheyenne Donegal.

  Step by step, they neared the cemetery, the Louisiana “city of the dead” where the body of Janine Dumas w
ould soon lie in the family tomb of her ancestors, ashes to ashes in the fierce heat of the Louisiana sun, in a year and a day, as they said.

  The special city of the dead began as a private, family cemetery, near an old mansion that was considered to be the most haunted for miles—perhaps in the state. It had a reputation for evil and death, and though that reputation had originated way back when, legends and myths never died. They just grew.

  The procession had not had to come far; the funeral parade had begun at the old Justine Plantation building, where Janine had lain for viewing for a night and a day after leaving the county morgue, and where, they said, the haunts of the old cemetery—begun by the Justine family in the early 1800s—came out to welcome the newly dead.

  Still, this area had been Janine’s home, where she had lived and loved and believed in a spectacular future for herself, adventure and excitement to come.

  No more.

  Janine had been just sixteen, a young and beautiful girl, full of energy and love and enthusiasm, a flirt, a tease perhaps, yet so full of life that her death still didn’t seem possible, even though her family and loved ones had seen her lying in her coffin, had seen her mother scream and cry and try to pull her body out.

  The coffin, drawn along in an old bier by two white mules, arrived at the cemetery. The jazz band, the pallbearers and the mourners entered the great ironwork gates of the cemetery and followed the row between the multitude of family crypts, coming at last to the one belonging to the family Dumas.

  Cheyenne Donegal stood at her mother’s side, along with their neighbors, teachers, friends and family as the rest of the procession entered the cemetery.

  They took their positions at the Dumas family grave as the priest stepped out of the line of mourners.

  Cheyenne heard her friends whispering to each other.

  “You look so bereft... Janine wasn’t perfect, you know,” someone whispered at her side.

  “She was so young,” Cheyenne murmured, turning to see the boy there—Christian Mayhew. He’d been in Janine’s class, three years ahead of Cheyenne.

  “She knew how to take me down a peg or two,” Christian murmured. “She could be...cruel.”

  Cheyenne didn’t reply; her mother was staring at her, frowning. At her mother’s expression, she sensed something was wrong—and then she remembered what.

  Christian Mayhew had died.

  By his own hand almost a year ago. Cyber and otherwise bullied at school, he’d apparently been able to take no more. A slew of drugs had been found by his bedside. He’d lain there, rumor had it, as if he’d chosen a long nap—and taken it.

  They had to have been wrong.

  As the priest continued to drone on, Cheyenne heard another voice.

  “Christian, I was never mean to you—yes, I might have teased you. But I was never mean to you on purpose.”

  It was a voice she knew well.

  Her cousin Janine’s!

  Cheyenne managed not to scream, shout—or collapse.

  Instead, she turned slightly. And there was Janine, next to Christian. Janine looked so beautiful, but then, she had always been a beauty, blessed with big dark eyes and sleek hair in the deepest brown, almost black.

  The priest was still talking, his voice rich, his speech powerful, and still Cheyenne couldn’t discern his words. How could Christian and Janine be there, standing slightly behind her, watching as she watched?

  “Great funeral,” Christian told her. “Mine was...not.”

  Janine didn’t seem to hear him. She was staring across the crowd, across the neat rows of tombs, some a picture of “decaying elegance,” lost to time, others meticulously maintained, kept up by those living but destined to join their family members within the mausoleums. Past angels and cherubs and Madonna statues, beautiful funerary art that could haunt the living and the dead. She was looking, Cheyenne thought, back toward the old plantation, now a mortuary chapel.

  Cheyenne could have sworn that her cousin clutched her shoulder, that she felt her hand.

  But of course, she did not. Her cousin was dead. Her earthly remains were being put into the family tomb, and there she would lie and decay, a year and a day in the blistering heat, down to bone and ash, scooped into the holding area, leaving room for the remains of family to come.

  “That’s him!” Janine cried. Her voice seemed to tremble. The hand that touched Cheyenne’s shoulder was shaking. “That’s him.”

  Him?

  The police believed, Cheyenne knew, that Janine, her beautiful young cousin, had been killed by a man they called the Artiste.

  His victims had been between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two, pretty, precocious and energetic. The first three had been working girls—vivacious, bright young women who had worked for an escort agency.

  The fourth had gone missing after telling friends she was meeting with a drop-dead gorgeous man she had met through an online site.

  The fifth had been a runaway, living in New Orleans.

  And the sixth had been Janine.

  Cheyenne looked at the man who was standing on the trail between the old plantation house and the tombs. And she knew who he was. Ryan Lassiter, a substitute teacher, sometime guitar player with various bands in New Orleans and all the way out to Lafayette, New Iberia and beyond. He was young, cool and hot. The kids loved him.

  “Mr. Lassiter?” she said aloud.

  “Cheyenne, dammit, don’t you think I know what happened to me?” Janine asked, a catch in her ghostly voice. “I was so stupid! I thought I was so cool. Yes, I flirted with him. I had a ridiculous crush on him, and I thought he was... I thought I was so hot, and I was flattered, since for sure I had to be something...something for him to want to be with me.”

  Christian was looking at her. “Oh, Janine!” he said. “We saw it... So many nerds saw it. Jody Baylor said that you told him you were meeting with Lassiter—here, as a matter of fact, to do research on the old plantation house. Jody said that it was sick, gross. He’s—older. You’re still a kid, Janine... You were still a kid. And he took those pictures of you...in life and then he fixed you all up and took the pictures of you...in death.”

  Janine heard his words but didn’t reply. She stared straight ahead at the man she claimed was her killer. “I was a fool...so ridiculously filled with myself and my infatuation. I thought he was going to wait for me to graduate, and then he’d marry me, and... You have to stop him, Cheyenne,” Janine pleaded. “Tell them, tell them that he did it, that he killed me, that he stole my life, that he left me...there!”

  Janine pointed to her casket and added, “I could be so careless of others... I could be self-centered, I know—selfish. But I would never want what happened to me to happen to anyone else, not my worst enemy. Cheyenne, don’t let him get away with it—don’t let him get away with what he did!”

  She was looking at her cousin’s killer—a man who acted so concerned, so kind, so giving with others. But he had done such cruel and horrible things to others; he had tortured women, mentally and physically.

  How could she prove it? No one else could see Christian and Janine—her friend, the suicide, and her cousin, the murder victim. Would they just say that she was crazy?

  “Do something, Cheyenne!” Janine begged.

  The priest was still speaking; the members of the funerary jazz band were preparing to start up with another song. The cemetery workers were waiting for them all to leave so that Janine, in her coffin, might be sealed into the family tomb.

  Ryan Lassiter was looking toward her then. Or was he? Here, just outside Fournier, the landscape curled and dipped. The old plantation house was up a very small rise, with a smokehouse, original kitchen, carriage house and other structures seeming to fall away just behind it; the cemetery sat down the hill and to the right of the sweeping entrance to the house.

  Cheyenne looked aroun
d; her parents were there, Janine’s parents, teachers, friends... Mr. Beaufort, the gym teacher; Mike Holiday, captain of the football team; Nelson Ridgeway and Katie Anson, seniors, a class ahead of Janine, but friends with whom she had studied and partied; Mr. Derringer, the organist from the church; Emil Justine, hereditary owner and operator here, tall and dignified, caring and capable; and many others who had come to pay their respects.

  Who was Lassiter looking at? Was it someone who looked back at him, as if they shared a confidence, as if someone else knew?

  “Cheyenne, it’s up to you!” Christian whispered. “You have to do something.”

  “Please,” Janine said softly, and then she turned to Christian, tears appearing to sting her eyes. “You could have been glad for what happened to me,” she said. “I wasn’t always so nice to you.”

  “You weren’t my friend—but you didn’t do this to me. It wasn’t you, it was many things,” Christian told her. “And I certainly forgive you. I hope that I am forgiven, too.” Christian stared firmly at Cheyenne again. “Now, Cheyenne! You’re the only one who can help right now.”

  “Please!” Janine said again.

  Cheyenne thought about what had been done to her cousin—and the other young women. They had been kidnapped; they had been kept alive. Pictures had been taken of them and sent to the newspapers—he’d forced them to smile. And then he had killed them and dressed them up and set them in strange death poses, and sent those pictures to the papers, too.

  And still, what could she do?

  Something, anything!

  She looked up for a moment at the massive winged angel kneeling above the family tomb. In a matter of minutes, the rite at the graveside would be over.

  And Ryan Lassiter would have watched the spectacle, chuckling inwardly over every tear shed, and walked away, handsome and charming, never a suspect...

  Free to kill again.

  Cheyenne really didn’t know what to do. And so she lifted her arm, pointing toward Lassiter, and she began to scream.

  “That’s him...that’s the man who had Cheyenne!” she said. She didn’t know how she would prove it, but more than one of their friends had seen Janine with him and they’d gossiped, that it was disgusting, the older man going for the teenaged girl. “Ryan Lassiter is the—the Artiste!”