Blown Away (19 page)

Being forced to literally hunt Cari down and kill
her was against his nature. He had acted impulsively and, yes, that had led him to killing Austin Ball, but he was not a cold-blooded killer. Or hadn’t been. But once he followed through on his plan tonight, that was exactly what he would be. And he didn’t only have to kill Cari. Through her deception, she’d pulled Michael Boudreaux into the situation, which meant he had to die, too.

He didn’t have a firm plan as to how to accomplish that, because he wasn’t sure what he would run into once he got there. All he knew was that they were in a motor home that, despite possessing all the bells and whistles, was basically still just a house on wheels. And all houses were alike in that they had doors and windows. This one had the added benefit of having a gasoline tank attached. Handy little thing, gasoline. Made engines run. Made fires burn hotter. An all-purpose liquid of life and death.

It occurred to him as he was dressing to leave that he should wear black. No need making a target of himself. He pulled a pair of black Nikes out of his closet. He thought about taking a handgun, but it would negate the whole impression of an accidental death if they were found with bullet wounds. Then he remembered the carcasses of dead animals still strewn about the countryside after the tornado and put a handgun in his pocket just in case he ran into some sharp-toothed scavenger having a late dinner.
On the way past his garden shed he picked up a rope, just in case, looped it over his shoulder and set off.

It took more than thirty minutes to get through the woods in the dark before he emerged from the trees to stand on the rise above the homestead. The lack of moonlight was to his benefit, although he couldn’t see where the hell he was stepping unless he used his flashlight. But now that he was this close to success, he couldn’t do anything to call attention to himself, so he put the flashlight in his pocket and hoped for the best.

He started down the hill with as much speed as he could safely manage, certain that whoever was in the motor home could neither hear nor see him from this distance. And since old Tippy had bought the farm during the storm, Lance didn’t have to worry about a barking dog. He did worry about them waking up before they were overcome by smoke and trying to get out the door, so he needed to make sure he jammed that up in some way. But there was plenty of debris around, so he could figure something out after he got there. All he had to do was wedge some two-by-fours against the door. The boards would burn up in the fire, so no one would know they’d been there. The deaths wouldn’t look like anything but a horrible accident.

As he started down the slope, his focus was on the two yellow squares of light coming from the motor home. It meant they were still awake. But they wouldn’t be awake forever. He would just get in place
and wait them out. A faint scent of dead flesh drifted past his nose, but he brushed it aside. It wasn’t the first time he’d caught wind of the smell, but since it was dead, whatever it was, it represented no threat to him.

He wouldn’t think about the possibility that Mike had told Cari’s story to others, or that he wasn’t the only one she had told. Did it even matter? If she’d already told the authorities, he would already have been hauled in for questioning, at the very least. Whatever she might have told anyone else would only be hearsay evidence and, without a body, unlikely to stick. Ball’s car had been found in the treetops. Common sense dictated a similar fate happening to Ball. He knew he could make this work—if he could just silence Carolina.

He was halfway down the back slope when he heard rustling in the grass off to his right. He stopped, listening intently, but the sounds had stopped when he did. He chalked it up to night critters and his own nerves, and started forward.

Again he heard something moving through the grass and swung his flashlight toward the sounds. All he saw was the rotting carcass of one of Frank North’s cows and a lot of tall, dead grass. He wrinkled his nose at the sight, although it did affirm the source of what he’d been smelling. It also alerted him to the fact that he could have walked up on feeding scavengers, which wasn’t good. His hand automatically went to the pocket with the handgun,
and he patted it once, taking comfort in the outline of heavy steel.

It was the sudden and shrill scream off to his right that stopped his heart. He’d grown up hearing that sound in the night, but never this close or this threatening. He grabbed the handgun from his pocket as he swung the flashlight in the direction of the sound.

It was the reflection of his flashlight off the big cat’s eyes that sent his heart into overdrive. When he realized he was between the cat and the carcass, he knew what was coming next. When the cat moved toward him, he swung the handgun up and fired. Once directly at the cat, then a second and third time at the blur of its retreating form.

Just as he was thanking his lucky stars for his foresight in bringing the gun, he realized what he’d done. Wildly he turned just as a door opened down at the motor home. There was a moment when Mike Boudreaux was silhouetted against the light, and then he disappeared. That was when Lance knew for sure that the surprise he’d planned had gone south.

“Well, shit,” he muttered, squeezing off a fourth shot and turning to bolt for home just as he heard someone shout.

“Don’t move!”

At the same moment, he was caught in the glare of a handheld spotlight. Before he could think beyond that, another voice yelled at him from behind.

“Drop the gun!”

That was when he lost it. He started to run, when a shot rang out. Suddenly
he’d
become the sitting duck.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” he screamed, and he dropped the gun as two men came out of the darkness.

Mike and Cari had been sitting at the small table in the kitchenette, looking at her reclaimed treasures. She was still wearing her nightgown, and Mike had on a pair of sweatpants. He was laughing at one of her stories about the summer she and Susan turned eleven and came down with chicken pox at the same church picnic. Between them, they had managed to infect thirteen other kids from her Sunday school class. He was still smiling when he heard the first shot. Within a heartbeat, he was on his feet and shoving Cari to the floor as the second shot rang out, followed by a third.

“Get down!” he yelled. “And stay down!”

He made a run for the bedroom, and came back seconds later wearing shoes and carrying a gun.

“Mike! No!” she screamed, but before she could stop him, he was gone.

When she heard the fourth shot a moment later, her heart nearly stopped. Was someone shooting at Mike? What in God’s name was going on?

Desperate to know what was happening, she jumped up and turned out the lights. If someone was shooting at them, she wasn’t going to be an easy target. Then she went into a crouch and felt her way
to the bedroom, where she found her tennis shoes and quickly put them on before heading back to the door. It might not be the smartest thing she’d ever done, but she wasn’t going to sit inside this tin box and wait to see if a good guy or a bad guy came through the door. She slipped outside, feeling along the ground until she found a good-size piece of lumber to use as a weapon, and disappeared into the darkness.

She realized there were lights on the hillside above the barn and knew that whatever was going on, was happening up there. She heard shouting, followed by Mike’s voice, yelling something up the hill. She couldn’t make out what he was saying, but the fact that he was alive and talking was enough. She froze, waiting beside the pile of rubble with the makeshift club still in her hands, and watched the bobbing lights as they started down the slope.

Lance had always been a man who thought fast on his feet. It was a necessary skill for his wayward lifestyle, but it wasn’t doing him much good tonight. The two men who’d come out of the darkness were strangers to him. Both big and burly, the kind of build he associated with bodyguards. The older of the two was clearly the one in charge. From what Lance could see, he was in his mid-forties, with a bald head and a pissed-off look on his face. The other was younger but bigger, which didn’t bode well for Lance. He was a lover, not a fighter, despite having graduated to killer.

When they retrieved his gun, then tied him up with his own rope before marching him down the hill, he knew he’d reached the height of humiliation and was as close to being ruined as he’d ever been. With every step he took, his mind was whirling from one scenario to another, trying to find a story that would fit with where he’d been caught and what he’d been carrying.

“I don’t understand!” he kept saying, as they pulled him along. “I didn’t do anything but protect myself from a panther. You must have seen it. It was coming at me. I had to shoot. Who are you people? What right do you have to treat me like this?”

All of a sudden he became aware of another figure coming toward them up the hill. He cursed beneath his breath. It had to be Boudreaux.

He was so fucked.

Then he heard Mike shout.

“Aaron?”

“We’re here,” the big bald man said, and pulled on the rope, causing Lance to stumble to his knees in the dark.

“Look out, damn it!” Lance cried, and then rocked back on his heels and looked up to find Mike Boudreaux towering over him.

The first thought that ran through his mind was that the man was built more like a dockworker than a high-powered money man. It was impossible to miss the guy’s rock-hard abs, and muscular arms and
shoulders, or the fact that he was only wearing a pair of sweatpants and tennis shoes. He wanted to be pissed off that the man had been with Cari, then remembered that he’d been planning to kill her.

“I demand to know what’s going on!” Lance said.

Mike reached out, grabbed the rope tied around Lance Morgan’s wrists and yanked him upright.

“You’re trespassing, so you’ve forfeited your right to demand anything, Morgan. And while we’re on the subject, what the hell are you doing on North property with a gun?”

“I was looking for some lost livestock,” he said, settling on the best of his lousy options.

Mike snorted. “In the dark?”

“There’s a flashlight in my pocket,” Lance muttered. “And I had a rope so that when I found them, I could lead them home, but your goons have tied me up with it.”

“What if I don’t believe you?” Mike said softly.

Lance shivered. He knew why Boudreaux would distrust him. Cari and her big fat mouth.

“Then I guess you’ll just have to call the parish police,” Lance said, and tried to pretend the notion of Boudreaux doing just that didn’t scare the hell out of him. “Is Susan down there with you? If she is, ask her. She’ll confirm that the cows were always knocking down fences. I’ve come here plenty of times looking for cattle, just like her uncle came onto Morgan’s Reach doing the same thing.”

Lance glared. He knew the bastard was lying, but he also knew he had them over a barrel.

“What were you shooting at?” he asked.

“A panther,” Lance said. “I accidentally walked between it and the carcass of a cow, which it must have come back to feed on. It came at me, so I fired to scare it off. These men must have seen it.”

Aaron nodded. “Yes, there was a panther there, and it did run off after he fired. But I’ve been following this guy ever since he walked onto the property, and he didn’t once look for a break in the fence anywhere.”

Lance jerked as if he’d been punched. “You were following me? What the fuck for?”

“Looking for looters,” Mike lied. “They’ve already been on the property once.”

“Oh,” Lance said. “Well…I am not a looter. I’m a well-respected member of this community, and as such, you had no—”

“Sorry, boss,” Aaron said. “I guess it was too dark for us to see the ‘well-respected’ sign on his butt.”

Lance glared at the man, but considering the fact that the others were the ones with the guns, he restrained himself from making more enemies.

“So…am I free to go?” he asked.

Mike shrugged. “It’s not up to me to say. This is Susan’s property, not mine. I think she’s the one to ask.”

Lance felt sick. He didn’t want to face Cari. He’d never been able to lie to her and get away with it. Still, what other choice did he have?

“Whatever,” he muttered, then let himself be led the rest of the way down to the motor home.

Cari was so scared she was shaking. Everything had come to a halt a few minutes ago, and she didn’t know why. The lights had stopped moving, and she could no longer hear anyone talking. All she knew was that Mike was up there with God knew who, and she was down here in her nightgown and tennis shoes with nothing but a piece of lumber for a weapon.

Just as she was thinking about going inside and finding her cell phone to call the police, the lights began to move again. When she realized they were coming this way, she didn’t know whether to be relieved or worry even more. Uncertain as to who was approaching, she stepped behind the trunk of a nearby tree with her makeshift club raised, ready to fight.

A few minutes passed before she began to hear the murmur of voices again. When she recognized Mike’s voice, then Aaron Lake’s, she began to relax. If Mike was with his security team, he was surely safe.

Mike hadn’t noticed until they were closer that the lights were all off inside. He could only imagine Cari’s fear, and while he was anxious to make her feel better, he didn’t think Lance Morgan being on the hill above her place with a gun was going to do it.

Lance couldn’t be any happier about having to face Cari, but he wasn’t letting on. He was walking
between the security guards with his head up and his shoulders back, full of defiance and indignation.

Just as they were passing a shattered tree and a large pile of debris between where the barn and the house had once stood, Mike called out.

“We’re coming in!”

In that moment Cari stepped out from behind the tree trunk, holding a two-by-four as if she was about to swing at a pitch. Wearing the gauzy, ankle-length cotton nightgown, she looked like a misdirected fairy godmother with an oversize wand.