He continued to watch the truck’s approach while behind him Micky scurried around grabbing up the evidence of her presence. He turned back long enough to see her snatch two eggshells from the pile on the stove, as if he wasn’t capable of downing the half dozen he’d scrambled.
The idea made him want to laugh. Micky’s panicked movements made him want to smile. Both responses were way out of line. Nothing about this scenario should have inspired so much as the thought of laughter.
But then Michelina Ferrer had no idea who he was. Or that small-town criminal minds were nothing in the scheme of what he’d faced as an operative for SG-5.
Ten
M icky huddled on the floor of the closet in the second-story bedroom farthest down the hal
l
from the stairs. She’d left the door cracked an inch for air and for light, but even that felt like too much exposure.
She wanted more than anything to close her eyes and sleep, but she couldn’t. Not until he came back and told her she was safe. Not until she knew more about what had happened after she’d left Red’s.
She hoped Simon would get her the answers. At least the ones that would explain who had run her off the road and why—and how Lisa’s disappearance fit in, if it did. Then there was the question of where she was, this house, her hideout. And the other one nibbling at her with tiny pointed teeth.
Who in the world was Simon Baptiste?
He owned this place. He lived in Manhattan. She lived in Manhattan. She’d taken refuge in this place.
She wasn’t a conspiracy theorist, but this fluke was too close for comfort. If he’d followed her here, if Papi had sent him, she wanted to know who he was. A bloodhound nose that good would be a big help in finding Lisa.
His following her she could buy—with a really big stretch of credulity. But her ending up in his house—out of al
l
the places along all the world’s bayous—she couldn’t buy as anything but a quirk of fate.
And that reasoning made it a lot easier to accept that he wasn’t in cahoots with the bad guys. That he really was on her side.
He couldn’t have known about the bil
l
board on East Houston if he hadn’t seen it or had someone tell him it was there. And even Papi wasn’t good enough to have hired a P.I.
—should that be what Simon was—who owned property in the town where she’d gone to lick her self-inflicted wounds.
Unless Papi had made the connection in the past, anticipating that one day she’d run to Lisa—and had arranged to have Simon in his pocket just in case. Or maybe Simon really didn’t own the house at all.
Stop! No more analyzing the situation to death. Her instincts insisted that her questions about Lisa had made someone uncomfortable, and that that someone had taken pains to make sure she didn’t ask them anymore.
She thought of Kingdom Trahan, Mr. Southern Hospitality himself. Had his Cajun charm been a ruse designed to get her to open up about her visit? How could he have known that having no luck elsewhere, she’d stop in at Red’s—except that Red’s was the only place to stop?
She thought back to the man who’d nearly knocked her flat on her way out of the bar. She wondered if he drove as recklessly as he walked, if he drove under orders to see that she met her end.
Now she was overanalyzing and overdramatizing. Except what she was thinking made too much sense not to be exactly what had happened.
And none of it would she ever be able to prove.
SIMON LEANED A shoulder against one of the beams flanking the stairs to the porch, tucked his fingers in the pockets of his jeans, and watched the approaching truck navigate the ruts in his road. He didn’t know any of the local bubbas who had the run of the bayou, but he doubted this visit was about seeing if the prodigal son had come home. He knew a whole lot of the folks in Bayou Allain blamed him for King’s troubles. They saw his time in the service as a dodge to keep him out of Louisiana and Kingdom out of his hair, when the truth was, with his cousin despising his position as landlord, he’d felt it best to make his life elsewhere.
But, no. This bunch of rowdies wasn’t expecting to find the owner of the property waiting to greet them. They braked the truck in its tracks when they saw his vehicle parked along the side of the house.
Simon pushed away from the beam—it was really in no shape to hold his weight, and falling flat on his face would kill his advantage—and moved from the porch to the top step.
At his movement, the truck started up again, though it seemed in less of a hurry than before, the occupants no doubt throwing together a quick story explaining why they’d ignored the posted
NO TRESPASSING
signs.
The truck rattled to a stop not far from where he stood, and two men he’d never seen climbed down from the cab. The driver left the engine idling. Simon would’ve complained about the noise making conversation difficult, except the noise would also mask any sounds coming from inside the house. “Mornin’, gents. What brings you out to my place?”
After a glance skittered between the two strangers, the beefier one moved his chaw from one cheek to the other, spit a dark stream of tobacco to the ground, and said, “Your place, huh? Guess that would make you Trahan’s cousin. Baptiste, right?”
Simon gave a single nod. “That would be me.”
“You got any identification?” asked the second one, a slender stick of a man. He slapped a palm on the hood of the truck, then moved his hand when the metal began to burn.
“You’re the one trespassing,” Simon said, biting back a laugh. “I could ask you the same.”
The first man stepped forward. “I believe you’re who you say. I’ve seen pictures from your trial.”
“That so?” Simon crossed his arms, raised a brow. “That trial was near on twenty years ago, boo. You doing a research paper or something? Digging into the local past?”
The man didn’t miss a beat. “You weren’t around when your cousin came home after he was sprung from Angola. The TV ran the whole story again. With pictures of you and King both.”
But no Lorna. Simon wondered if his cousin had even mentioned to anyone that Lorna had been there that night. “News around here must still be as slow as the bayou if that story got a rerun four years after the fact.”
Another stream of tobacco juice hit the ground, this one only inches from the bottom step of the porch.
“A family that’s suffered as much tragedy as yours tends to get a lot of attention. Not saying it’s deserving, mind you. Just that here we see to our own. We don’t run halfway around the world to solve problems others don’t want us involved in.”
If Simon had given a shit what these two yokels thought, he’d have been down the steps introducing them to Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson, whom he’d charged with enforcing his NO TRESPASSING signs.
But the greeting he’d been given was no less than he’d expected, so he looked from one to the other and did his best to piss them off with a smile.
“Guess the years have been good to me seeing that I’ve stuck in your mind al
l
this time.” Simon watched the first man’s face mottle up and grow red. “Now, since we’ve established that I’m who I say I am, let’s get back to you two.”
“We’re working with the sheriff ’s department. Search and rescue.” This from the man who’d been rubbing at his burned palm al
l
this time. “Not sure if you would’ve seen it, but a car went off the bridge last night. We can’t find hide nor hair of the driver.”
Simon knew the bayou, knew if a body didn’t surface, folks would assume that gators had eaten their fill. The idea of these two skunks getting away with murder because of Micky going into the water where she had rankled.
And realizing he hadn’t pictured that scenario earlier, that of Micky thrashing her way out of her car and into those steel-trap jaws, made the eggs in his stomach curdle. He’d seen a gator take down a deer. Thinking of Michelina Ferrer being in that situation…
“Course that’s not too surprising when you think about all the things that call that water home,” the skinny one finished.
Simon’s head came up. “Convenient for whoever it was who ran the car off the road.”
The big guy butted in. “The sheriff ’s not saying she was run off the road. Who told you that?”
“She? If you haven’t found the driver, how do you know you’re looking for a she?”
“Car’s a rental. Woman picked it up yesterday in New Orleans.”
If they were truly working with the sheriff, that meant law enforcement was aware of Micky’s identity—and very soon they’d realize they had a missing celeb. Before the story hit the press, she needed to get in touch with her family, let them know she was all right. Unless keeping everyone in the dark would get her to the bottom of this mystery sooner than were she to announce that she was alive and well and slumming at his place. He needed to think about this, weigh all the options.
He glanced from Laurel to Hardy. “If you’re here looking to man a hunting party, coun
t me out. I’ve seen all the kill
ing I care to for a lifetime.”
“We’re talking alligators, man. Not human beings,” said the scrawny one. “But we’re not going hunting. Not yet anyways. We’re looking to see if the woman managed to get herself to shelter. Your place is about as close to the bridge as it gets.”
“Then I’ll keep an eye out,” was al
l
Simon said. He didn’t want a lie to come back and bite him in the ass, so saying as little as possible under the circumstances seemed his best bet. “But right now, I need to grab the rest of my gear and get settled. If you’ll excuse me.”
Neither one moved. The larger one spoke. “That mean you’re sticking around for a while?”
“Only as long as my business takes.”
“So it’s true, then. You’re here to kick King out on his ass,” the larger man said.
“Is that the story going around?” Simon asked, his mouth tightening around the words.
“I guess anyone who’s interested will just have to wait and see what happens. But since you’ve got an accident victim to find, I figure my business with King is none of yours.”
The two strangers seemed conflicted, as if they wanted to stay and dig for more dirt but knew they’d blow their story if they didn’t go.
And so they both took to nodding, backing toward the still-running truck, climbing inside, and taking a minute for a meeting of the minds. It didn’t take long. Big guy, the driver, finally leaned out his window to call, “Be sure and let the sheriff know if you run across any sign of the woman.”
Simon raised a hand, not bothering to remind them that they hadn’t given him any information about what he should look for. No description, nothing. And so instead of answering, he waved them on their way, muttering, “Over my dead body.”
A THUD, THEN AN ECHO, jolted Micky awake. The darkness was everywhere, enveloping, only a slit of light branding her eyes. She was sitting, the surface beneath her hard, not soft like the bed she loved so much.
And the smell. Stale, musty,…old. Unused.
Where was she?
Yet no sooner had the question entered her mind than she knew, she remembered. She was freezing, shaking, her skin crawling with things she couldn’t see, but she didn’t dare shake them off.
Something had happened, out there in the room, to jerk her awake. She held her breath, waiting, tears scalding her skin as they fell, as she wondered again if she was going to die. And then the door opened, the light blinding her. She raised her forearm to shield her eyes, then felt his hand—Simon’s hand—close around her wrist and help her to her feet. She dusted off her backside and her legs, realizing if she was covered with anything it was only dust, though that didn’t stop her from brushing at the clothes she wore, at her hair, at the tingles and tickles that she couldn’t shake.
Then he was there, holding her, bringing her to his body, cupping the back of her head with his hand, soothing her, his voice soft and reassuring as it rumbled beneath her cheek.
“I’m getting you wet,” she squeaked out, pulling her face away from his shirt and swiping her palm over the tracks of her tears.
“I want you to do something for me,” he said, and as safe as he made her feel, she couldn’t imagine telling him no—a situation that was as unexpected as the way the heat of his body caused her heart to race.
She nodded, wiping her eyes, deciding it a more noncommittal response than saying,
“Anything.” She’d apparently lost her backbone in the water. She could only hope it surfaced soon.
“Here, look.” He turned her toward the room’s bed, a mattress and box springs and cast-iron frame. He had spread out a sleeping bag on top, readied another to use as a blanket. The tiny camp pillow he’d added looked like heaven in plaid flannel. She had never been this exhausted in her life.
“You need to sleep. You also need to see a doctor for that arm, but we’ll take care of that this afternoon.” He walked her to the bed. She climbed into it on her hands and knees, her eyes already closing again.
Once she was all tucked in—she tried to manage on her own, a small show of independence, not wanting to appear weak when that’s exactly what she was, and oh my, but did his hands feel good and solid and warm—she asked him, “Who was that? What did they want?”