After Midnight (21 page)

Twenty-six hours later, the last of the flames had sputtered out, the barge crew had been fully accounted for, and Jess ached in every muscle and joint in her body. Yet she insisted that Steve drive her by the hospital before they went home to eat, shower and collapse.

They met Eileen Babcock in the burn unit. Her auburn hair tumbled haphazardly from its clips and she’d cried away every trace of make-up, but her delicate face lit with joy when Jess rapped softly on the door.

“Colonel! Come in!”

Jumping out of the chair she’d pulled up beside her ex-husband’s bed, she rushed across the squeaky clean tile floor. Her hand came out, as if to shake Jess’s, then she abandoned all pretense at formality, threw out her arms, and gave the colonel a fierce hug.

“I could have lost him,” she said when they separated. Her throat working, she fought the tears that rushed into her eyes. “I came so close to losing him.”

Jess wasn’t sure whether the petite redhead referred to her divorce or Babcock’s close brush with death, but from the woman’s fierce expression, it was clear Eileen didn’t intend to let Ed slip away from her again.

The heavy load on Jess’s heart eased a fraction. She still faced a hell of a mess and long-term clean-up efforts. The investigation into the explosion would probably take months. She’d have to weasel funding for a new dock and pipeline out of headquarters. Yet out of disaster had come the small, piercing joy of watching Eileen Babcock return to her husband’s side and gently take his unbandaged hand.

“Colonel Blackwell’s here, Eddie.”

The NCO was swathed in gauze bandages. An IV dripped into his arm, and the head he slowly turned on the pillow was missing big patches of hair. His lips pulled back in what Jess sincerely hoped was a grin and not a grimace.

“Thanks for…pulling me…out from under…the gang…plank,” he rasped in a hoarse croak.

She smiled down at him. “Thanks for shoving me into the bayou. The docs say you’re going to be okay. Do you need anything?”

His glance drifted to the woman holding his hand. “I have every…thing I…need.”

Jess had another stop to make at the hospital, but she put it off until she’d checked on Lieutenant Ourek and those of the barge crew who’d required medical attention. Impatient to get back to his fuels operation, the lieutenant had already badgered the docs into releasing him.

That left only Bill Petrie.

He’d received treatment in the ER and spent the night in the Cardiac Care Unit. According to the charge nurse, he was due to be transferred to a civilian facility for follow-on care later that day.

With Steve beside her, Jess made her way to past the CCU’s glassed-in cubicles. The click of life support equipment and familiar, piney scent of antiseptic brought back haunting memories of her mother’s last days. As a consequence, she couldn’t force even a semblance of a smile when she reached the cubicle where Bill Petrie lay.

Like Eileen Babcock, his wife hovered at his side. She was a thin, nervous woman whose eyes went wide with fear when Jess introduced herself.

“You’re the one,” she whispered.

Shrinking against the bed, she clutched her husband’s hand. Her glance darted to Steve, took in the badge clipped to his belt. A little whimper escaped her lips.

“It’ll be all right.” In a ragged whisper, Petrie tried to reassure her. “I’ll make it right.”

“Don’t talk to them, Billy Jack! Don’t tell them anything!”

“I have to, sweetheart. I can’t…” His eyes closed, opened slowly. “I won’t carry this burden any more.”

With a calm that suggested he’d anticipated just such an eventuality, Steve stepped around Jess. “Before you say anything, I need to advise you of your Miranda rights.”

Shock rippled through Jess as she listened to him remind Petrie of his right to an attorney…and that anything he said could be used against him later in a court of law.

Petrie’s face whitened during the brief recital, but he ignored his wife’s plea that he talk to a lawyer and forced himself to meet Jess’s eyes.

“I’m sorry about what we…” He stopped, swallowed, started again. “I sorry about what we did to your momma. I was drinking that night. We all were. I know that’s no excuse.”

“You’re right,” Jess agreed with ice in her heart, “That’s no excuse.”

“Whittier said she just got what she wanted,” he continued after a painful moment. “Old man Calhoun agreed. But we couldn’t to put it out of our mind.”

“We being?” Steve asked, the cop in him determined to nail down every detail.

“Me, Ron, Delbert.”

Petrie looked beyond them to the window. Sunlight streamed through the mini-blinds, as if in grotesque mockery of the dark memories that had invaded the cubicle.

“That’s when Delbert found the Lord. He spent the rest of his life trying to do good and praying for forgiveness. Ron and me… We just lived from day to day.”

He dragged his gaze from the window to Jess.

“Until you came back. We none of us ever thought Helen’s daughter would come back.”

“But I did.”

“You did. Ron near ‘bout shit a brick when he ran a credit check on the colonel who wanted to lease a condo from him and saw her mother’s name. That’s when we…”

“Billy Jack!” his wife begged. “Don’t say anything more!”

“That’s when we got together. All six of us. Out on Delbert’s boat.”

“Six?” Jess said in surprise. “But I thought…”

Steve silenced her with a quick chop of his hand.

“The storm whipped up so quick that day,” Petrie whispered, his tortured gaze going back to the window. “Just like it did yesterday.”

Jess’s breath caught. The Reverend Delbert McConnell went overboard and drowned the day Tropical Storm Carl hit. Her glanced whipped to Steve, but all his attention was focused on the man in the pale blue hospital gown.

“We weren’t far off shore,” Petrie recounted in his papery whisper. “We hadn’t planned to got out on the bay. All we needed was a private place to talk, where no one could see us. Or hear us. Delbert wanted to tell the truth. He was always wanting to tell the truth. We shouted at each other over the wind, argued until the swells got too heavy. Delbert insisted we had to come in and went to start the engine.”

Steve stepped into the heavy silence that descended. “And that’s when his leather-soled shoes slipped on the wet deck?”

“Billy Jack,” his wife cried in anguish. “Please!”

“That’s when Sheriff Boudreaux shoved Delbert overboard,” Petrie said quietly. “He hit his head on the gunwale going in. We stood there, all of us, and let him drown.”

Jess didn’t speak another word until she and Steve walked out of the hospital into the blinding sunlight. Her mind numb, she paid no attention to the startled stares her scorched uniform and oil-drenched hair snagged from passers-by.

Only after Steve escorted her to the cruiser and tucked her into the passenger seat did she break her stunned silence.

“I can’t believe it. Sheriff Boudreaux was blackmailing them for all these years. All five of them.”

Steve didn’t want to believe it, either, but he couldn’t deny the truth that had been staring him in the face for the past two days. His mentor, his friend, the man who’d personally selected him as his successor, had skimmed a share of the profits from Whittier’s drug trade.

Now Steve knew that Boudreaux had also traded his silence about Helen Yount’s rape for Congressman Calhoun’s political support through four elections. He’d strong-armed Ron Clark into cutting him a deal for his farm, a deal so sweet that any jury in the world would consider it extortion. He’d bled Bill Petrie and his wife dry of their savings. He’d even harangued Delbert McConnell into campaigning for him from his pulpit. Then he’d shoved the reverend into the bay to silence forever his guilty conscience.

Just as he’d shoved Jess’s Mustang through the guard-rail of the Mid-Bay Bridge.

A coldness settled in Steve’s gut.

“I’ll take you home,” he told Jess, keying the ignition.

“Me? What about you?”

“I’m going fishing.”

“No, Steve! You can’t go after Boudreaux. Not alone, anyway. I won’t let you. There’s been too much hurt, too many deaths already.”

“You’ve done your job the past few days, Jess. Magnificently, in my opinion. Now I have to do mine.”

Jess adamantly refused to let Steve drop her off at her condo. The best he could do was extract a promise from her to stay in the cruiser when he led a small convoy of patrol cars through the patchwork quilt farms north of DeFuniak Springs.

He’d taken a few moments at his office to splash cold water on his face and change into his uniform. His eagles glinted at the collar of his gray shirt. His green trousers with their gray stripe down the legs showed knife-edged creases. He carried an extra clip for his .45 on his belt, and two boxes of shells for the rifle mounted on the rack behind him. Cinnamon spurted with every pop of his gum as he drove past mile after mile of peanut fields.

The sun was directly overhead when they reached the turn-off to Boudreaux’s place. Steve had timed their arrival deliberately to eliminate the shadows that might obscure his line of sight. The dirt road that stretched straight as a scar through the ripe fields would announce them, just as it had the last time Steve came up here to fish. He didn’t worry about the dust pluming out behind the vehicles. His instincts told him Boudreaux was expecting him.

His instincts proved right. Cliff Boudreaux lounged against one of the pillars that supported the wrap-around porch. His ball cap rode low on his forehead, shading his eyes. His belly strained the buttons of his shirt. He carried a double-barrel shotgun tucked in the crook of one arm.

Steve halted the cruiser well outside the shotgun’s range. The patrol cars pulled up on either side. Reaching behind him for the rifle, Steve speared Jess with a hard look.

“Stay in the car.”

She wasn’t about to risk his life by pulling his attention from Boudreaux.

“I will.”

Shouldering open the car door, Steve climbed out. The brim of his peaked hat shaded his eyes, but Jess couldn’t miss the grim set to his jaw as he instructed his troopers to position themselves behind patrol cars.

“Keep him covered,” he ordered softly, “but do not – I repeat – do not fire unless or until I give the order.”

Steve made the walk to the porch slowly, his eyes on Beaudreaux. His predecessor greeted him with his standard drawl.

“Hey, sheriff.”

“Hey, yourself, sheriff,” Steve replied.

“I’ve been expecting you.”

Sighing, Boudreaux hefted the shotgun a little higher in his arm. Steve heard the thud of rifles hitting the patrol car roofs behind him. Slicing his hand in a vicious arc, he signaled to his men to hold their fire.

“Took you long enough to figure things out,” Boudreaux commented. His glance flicked to the cruiser. Something close to regret drifted into his eyes. “I didn’t like going after your woman, but you know how it is. Once you get into these things, there’s no easy way out.”

“No, Cliff. I don’t know.”

“No, I guess you don’t. You’ve always been squeaky clean, haven’t you, boy? You couldn’t even pump a bullet through the bastard who murdered those babies at the YMCA.”

He cocked his head. A small smile played at his lips.

“Didn’t think I knew about that, did you? Hell, I made it my business to learn everything there was to learn about you before I took you on.”

Steve said nothing.

Boudreaux’s smile didn’t waver. “Think you can pump a bullet into me, boy?”

“I don’t think. I know.”

“That’s what I’m counting on.”

Steve whipped up his rifle at the same instant Boudreaux swung the shotgun. Before either could pump the trigger, one of the deputies fired. The crack of his rifle spooked a second deputy.

Cursing, Steve dropped to the dirt as a fusillade zinged in from both sides and spun the figure on the porch around in two, staggering circles.

Jess propped her bare feet on the rail of the Gone Fishin’, angled back her deck chair, and tipped her face to the moon. Water dripped from her hair to the deck. The deep-throated croak of bullfrogs crooned a soporific lullaby.

It was late. Past eleven, she thought. But the night that had witness so many sleepless hours now rocked her in a cradle of sheer exhaustion.

She should go below. Curl up next to Steve. Let him work more healing magic with his hands and mouth and hard, driving body.

Smiling at the needles of anticipation that pierced even her thick blanket of fatigue, she closed her eyes. She’d just sit her for a few minutes more and listen to the frogs while the bay dried on her skin.

Steve found her sound asleep, one leg hooked over the rail and her body slumped awkwardly in the deck chair. Shaking his head, he scooped her up against his naked chest.

“What?” She lifted her head, blinking. “Is it time for work?”

“No, Jess. It’s just a little after midnight. We’ve got all night yet.”

“No, we don’t,” she grumbled in protest. “The night’s half over.”

He hesitated, remembering how she’d shied away from any talk of a future before, yet couldn’t hold back the soft promise.

“We’ll have more. A whole lifetime of nights.”

“And days,” she muttered sleepily into his neck. “I want days.”

Grinning, he carried her across the deck. “You got ‘em, kid. As many as you can handle.”

THE END

A career Air Force officer, Merline Lovelace served at bases all over the world, including tours in Taiwan, Vietnam, and at the Pentagon. When she hung up her uniform for the last time, she decided to combine her love of adventure with a flare for storytelling, basing many of her tales on her experiences in the service.

Since then, she’s produced more than ninety action-packed novels, many of which have made
USA Today
bestseller lists. Over eleven million copies of her works are in print in 30 countries. Named Oklahoma’s Writer of the Year and the Oklahoma Female Veteran of the Year, Merline is also a recipient of Romance Writers of America’s prestigious Rita Award.