High Tide (15 page)

He caught Fiona by the arm just as she reached the cabin, and when he spun her around to look into her eyes, he drew in his breath at the rage he saw there. “What's happened?” he asked.

“Happened?” she said in a deceptively quiet voice as she turned back toward him. “What has happened?” She took a step toward him. “You have just accused my father—my eminently respectable father—of being a … a … I don't know what you were calling him, but I'll not hear it, do you understand me?”

With that she turned on her heel and went into the cabin, where she began to throw her personal items into her backpack.

“What are you doing?” Ace asked from behind her.

“I'm leaving, that's what. I'm going to do what I would
have done in the first place if you hadn't decided that
you
were in charge of my life. Thirty-two years I have managed without you, and now you think that I can't even decide my own future without your telling me what to do.”

Grabbing her upper arms, Ace spun her around to look at him. “I don't understand what you're talking about. Don't you realize that this is it? This is what we've been searching for for days. Now that we've found it, we need to explore it and—”

“Get out of my way,” she said as she used her backpack to shove him aside.

But Ace stayed where he was and didn't let her pass him. “I think you should sit down and let's discuss this.”

“No,” she said quietly, her jaw rigid. “I don't want to listen to another word you say. You got me into this mess, and—”

“Me?” he said, aghast. “Me? I didn't wake up with a dead body on top of me.”

“No, you just took me away from the scene of the crime and made the police think I was guilty.”

“Of all the ungrateful things I have ever heard of in my life, that wins the prize. Somebody murdered Roy Hudson in a very nasty way, and I didn't think it was you, and I knew it wasn't me, so that meant there was a killer at large. I saved your scrawny neck!”

“Are you finished?” she said. “Now may I go?”

“Go where? You didn't know where you were until minutes ago, so how can you leave? Plan to follow one of your father's maps?”

That's when Fiona slapped him. She hit him with a right arm that had been strengthened by years of carrying a portfolio that weighed the same as a sturdy toddler. And Ace,
caught off guard, took the full blow on his left jaw; his head jerked hard to one side.

While he was recovering from shock at her unexpected action, Fiona pushed past him and stalked out of the rickety old house.

But she only reached the bottom of the porch steps before a bullet whizzed past her head.

Ten
 

Anger kept Fiona from realizing what had just torn past her ear. For all she knew it had been an especially virulent type of Florida mosquito.

But Ace knew that sound. He was standing on the top step of the porch, and he flew, not jumped, but put out his arms, pushed with his feet, and flew through the air to land on top of Fiona, knocking her to the ground hard.

She couldn't get her breath, couldn't understand what had hit her.

“Stay down,” Ace hissed into her ear, his hands over her head, his body still on top of hers. “When I say the word, I want you to start running with me. We'll get to the car and get out of here. Understand?”

Fiona was still too stunned to answer him.

“Understand?”

When she didn't answer the second time, he put his arm under her waist as though he meant to carry her. “Up!” he said, then pulled her upright and did his best to run with her, but she was a hindrance as she tripped at every step. “Come on, come on,” he said. “What if Smokey saw what a wimp you've become?” he taunted when she nearly fell for the third time.

His words had the desired effect as Fiona remembered all that had happened in the last few minutes. Rage put muscle back into her legs, and she straightened out and began to run.

Away from him.

“Damn you!” Ace said as he turned and ran after her, catching her just as she disappeared into the surrounding jungle. Once again, he tried to tackle her, but this time Fiona was ready for him. She hadn't played years of team sports without having learned a thing or two. She evaded his tackle and kept running as best she could through the tangle of vines and plants.

The next time Ace tried to bring her down, he caught her heel and hung on as though his life depended on it.

Turning over onto her back, her backpack under her, Fiona kicked out and caught him a hard smack on the collarbone. “Let go of me,” she screeched. “I'll have you arrested.”

Ace was busy holding onto one foot while trying to catch the other that was kicking him. “I'm trying to save your life,” he said, trying to keep his voice down. “Don't you realize that that was a bullet that went past your head?”

That word stopped Fiona's struggles. But as she looked about her at the mass of vegetation, she thought, Who could get through this? “You're lying. You're lying about everything,” she said, meaning about her father, too.

But as she raised her foot to kick out at him again, there was another crack and this time she could feel the heat of a bullet as it went very close to her head.

“He wants you,” Ace said, “not me.”

His words were so chilling that she knew he was telling the truth, and her mind seemed to go blank. Nothing in her life had prepared her for such a situation as this.

But Ace didn't hesitate. “Let's go,” he said as he rose to a crouch and held out his hand to her.

Fiona took his hand and followed him, this time without stumbling. When he leaped over a fallen log, she leaped with him. When he ran across what looked like a piece of rotten fence over a stagnant pond, she was right behind him, never letting go of his hand. Only once did he let go of her hand and that was when he reached up to grab a horizontal tree branch and swung himself over a nasty-looking bit of mushy sand. She didn't want to ask if it was quicksand.

“Don't think,” he said. “Just grab it and swing toward me. I'll catch you.”

She did take time to give him a look of, Get real; then she grabbed the branch and swung hard—and landed half a yard
behind
him. “Can stubby little Lisa do that?” she said over her shoulder.

Ace almost smiled; then he grabbed her hand and started running again.

They had run through the wilderness for at least forty minutes when he suddenly plunged into the underbrush and grabbed a huge leaf. Under it was a car door.

“We made a circle!” Fiona cried, half in wonder, half in
annoyance. She knew that the car couldn't be too far from the cabin, which meant that they weren't far from the cabin.

While she was considering this, Ace had uncovered the other side of the car and was inside it and he'd started the engine. The car was already moving when Fiona threw open the door and jumped inside. “Were you just going to leave me there?” she said as she slammed the door.

“Throw that thing in the back,” he said, referring to her backpack, “and get down on the floor.”

When she bent over in the seat, he yelled at her that he wanted her curled up on the floor and that she was to hold on. She did the best she could to curl her long body into the small space. Fear made her obedient.

She was no more in the small space than Ace hit a bump that would otherwise have sent her through the ceiling. As it was, she hit her head on the underside of the dashboard. “Ow!” she said, rubbing the place and looking up at him as he jerked the wheel first one way then the other, swerving around potholes.

“Is he following us?” she shouted up at him, for the noise of the car and the gravel and crunching plants under the wheels was deafening.

“Yes,” Ace said, and his tone let her know that he needed to concentrate on driving, not on answering questions.

Three times she heard what sounded like a gun going off, but maybe it was the call of a unique and special bird, she told herself as she hugged her legs to her, making herself as small as possible. What had he meant when he'd said, “He wants
you?”

If tires could screech on gravel, then Ace would have laid rubber several times. Instead, he seemed to turn in one
ninety-degree circle after another until Fiona was as dizzy as she'd ever been on a carnival ride.

Just when it seemed that the harrowing ride was never going to end, Ace pressed the gas pedal to the floor and sent the car flying. It bottomed out when it hit something hard and solid, but it kept going, and Fiona felt the smoothness of asphalt.

“We lost him,” Ace said quietly, and after the noise of the last minutes, the car suddenly seemed almost silent. He held out his hand to help her uncurl from her painful position.

Gingerly, she pulled herself up onto the seat, but not before she looked out the window, almost expecting to see hordes of men with guns, all aimed at her.

“You want to tell me what's going on?” she said, trying to sound brave and strong, but there was a quiver in her voice.

“You have something to drink in that pack of yours? I find that I'm a mite thirsty,” he said.

Bending over the front seat and retrieving her pack gave her time to regain some of her composure.

“I always carry bottled water when I go to the office,” she said, but then she almost lost it, as her hectic office now seemed like a haven of peace and security.

“You did well back there,” Ace said as he took the water bottle from her. “Look, I'm sorry about what I said about your father. It's been a bad morning, and I took it out on you.”

At that Fiona looked out the car window and took a deep breath. They were on a highway, which highway she didn't know, and where they were going she didn't know, but she knew that “bad morning” in their situation was very bad. Very.

“All right, tell me,” she said as she took the water from him and drank from the bottle. “What's happened now?”

“I called my brother. Eric was killed.”

She didn't understand. “But isn't that good? He's the only one who says that you and I killed Roy. If Eric is dead, that means there are no eyewitnesses.”

Ace kept his eyes on the road. “He was killed while he was in the hospital under a full police guard. And they have two eyewitnesses who say they saw you and me in the hospital.”

“But we were here in the swamps. We weren't anywhere near the hospital.”

“And who saw you? Or me? Think the state trooper is going to identify us? Me with skin much darker and you with just your eyes showing? The distinguishing characteristic of the two of us is your height. Any dark-haired six-footer is going to be taken for you.”

“Thanks a lot. You make me sound like a freak.”

“No, just easily recognized and easily impersonated.” Reaching into his shirt pocket, he withdrew a round plastic object and handed it to her.

“What's this?” she said, then drew in her breath because she knew what it was. “It's a bug, isn't it?”

“Yes. It can be bought in any of those spy stores that are in the malls all over America.”

She held the thing but didn't want to. “Where did you find it?”

“After I talked to my brother and found out about Eric, I got suspicious. I couldn't get over the feeling that someone was outside last night, so this morning I started looking around. I found this in the kitchen stuck under the table.”

“But it looks new. It couldn't have been there for very long, and how did the killer know that's where we'd be?” she asked; then her eyes widened. “It wasn't put there before we arrived. It was put there …”

“Last night while we were both sleeping the sleep of the dead. I think a shotgun could have gone off and I wouldn't have awakened.”

“So much for my sex appeal,” she said under her breath, then was rewarded by a huge grin from Ace.

“That's my girl,” he said.

“So where are we going now?”

“It's a long shot, but Smokey had a house about twenty miles from here and—”

At the mention of the name, Fiona turned her head away to look out the window. She wasn't saying anything, but her body was rigid and her hands were gripping the seat so hard that her knuckles were white.

“I want you to listen to me,” Ace said softly. “I said that Smokey
knew
people. He did. He knew everyone: senators to drug dealers. He had a way about him that enabled him to work with anyone. I don't know anything about map making, but I know that he was a sort of liaison person between—”

“The underworld and good, respectable people like you,” she spat at him.

“I never said that. As far as I know, Smokey never took a drug, never sold one. He just … I don't know exactly what he did. He just used to say that he had an …” Abruptly he stopped and glanced at her; then his voice lowered. “He said that he had an angel to support.”