Awash (The Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense Series Book 6) (11 page)

Boudreaux regarded her for a moment. “Are you doing it out of a sense of obligation or because of your rebellious nature?”

It took Maggie a moment to find her answer. “I’m doing it because you asked me,” she finally said.

“What about Wyatt?” Boudreaux asked quietly.

Maggie swallowed hard. She hadn’t had time to consider that factor. “I’ll talk to Wyatt.”

“I’m afraid he’s going to dislike me quite a bit more than he already does,” he said.

“You underestimate Wyatt,” she said. “He already despises you pretty completely.”

“That’s understandable,” Boudreaux said. They stared at each other for a moment. “If I were a more selfless person, I would absent myself from your life.”

Maggie saw him, soaking wet and pale, slowly bleeding to death in her woods. “I’ve known you to be fairly selfless, Mr. Boudreaux,” she said quietly.

Neither of them said anything for a moment. Maggie felt that they were each trying to see inside the other.

“Not selfless enough, apparently,” Boudreaux finally said.

Maggie thought a moment about the wisdom of her question before she asked it. “Why is that, Mr. Boudreaux?”

For his part, Boudreaux seemed to consider the wisdom of his answer as well. “I would miss you,” he said at last, and the frankness in his eyes was disarming.

Maggie wanted to blink, but held his gaze. “I would miss you, too,” she said.

Boudreaux gave her a small smile, but he seemed to need to work for it. “My apologies,” he said.

Maggie gave a shrug that looked more casual than she felt. “There’s no need. I’m a grown-up.”

“Would you like me to speak with Wyatt?” he asked her quietly.

Maggie shook her head and smiled without feeling it. “No, I like you both too much.” She hadn’t known she was going to say that, and it made her feel self-conscious. It was worse when she looked into those eyes. “Even though you like to keep secrets,” Maggie said.

Boudreaux stared at her a moment, his expression unreadable. “Secrets,” he said.

Maggie wanted to shut up, but didn’t. “You and my father.”

Three months earlier, she’d watched Boudreaux and Gray as they met for some sort of discussion out on Lafayette Pier. She’d suspected that her father was Boudreaux’s alibi, or worse, in a thirty-eight year old case. When she’d gotten the courage to ask, Boudreaux had denied it. He’d refused, on the basis of honor, to explain anything else.

Boudreaux took a drink of his wine, then scratched gently at one eyebrow. “Maybe you should talk to Gray about that,” he finally said.

She’d never worked up the courage to push her father for answers. If he’d lied to her, she would have known it, and that would have broken her heart

“I suppose I will, eventually,” she answered.

“Well, in the meantime, I believe Amelia has a presentation on the care and feeding of her mother,” Boudreaux said as he stood and held out a hand. “We were unable to put together a documentary on such short notice.”

W
hen Maggie arrived at work the next morning, a
café con leche
in each hand, she headed straight for Wyatt’s office. When she reached his open door, he was standing at his desk, talking on his phone. He smiled at her and held up a finger. She leaned in the door way and waited.

“What time Monday?’ he asked. He waited a moment. “Okay. At the courthouse?” He grabbed a piece of scratch paper and a pen, wrote something down. “Suite 404. Okeydoke. Got it. I’ll be there.”

He hung up his desk phone and turned to face Maggie.

“Hey,” he said.

Maggie pushed off from the doorway. “Hey,” she said back.

He let out a big breath. “So, I’m going to Tallahassee Monday.”

“What for?”

“Meet with the FDLE guys and your new sheriff.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know.” He looked at the coffee in her hands. “Is one of those mine?”

She held one out to him. He took it, and took a long drink.

“How do you feel about it?” Maggie asked.

“The same way I felt yesterday. The same way I felt last month.” Maggie stared at him, and he stared back. “It’s a change. But some changes are good.”

“Okay,” Maggie said flatly.

“Could you at least try to look like you believe me?”

“I do. I’m just a little overwhelmed.”

Wyatt sighed. “What would you do for me, Maggie?”

Maggie blinked a few times. “A lot.”

“There you go,” he said dismissively.

Maggie felt the pressure of guilt in her chest.

“I need to talk to you about something,” she said. “You won’t like it.”

“What’s it about?”

“I went over to Boudreaux’s house last night,” she said.

He looked at her a moment, his expression unreadable.

“Why?”

“He asked me to. He needed a favor,” she answered.

“Hold on,” Wyatt said. He put the coffee down on his desk. “What favor?”

“His housekeeper’s ex-husband died, and Boudreaux’s flying with her to Louisiana for the funeral,” Maggie answered. “He asked me to take care of Miss Evangeline.”

“The little old lady?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Wyatt’s jaw had tightened, but he kept his tone even. “Maggie, whenever your eyes start darting around my chest, I know you’re about to say something I’ll hate, so let’s go ahead and tell and hate.”

“I’m staying at Boudreaux’s house.”

“Hell you are,” he said quietly.

“It’s only for one night, and it’s not like he’s going to be there,” Maggie said.

“I don’t care if he’s gone and simultaneously dead,” Wyatt said. “No.”

Maggie wanted to take umbrage, but even she knew she had no basis for it. Wyatt’s reaction was expected and justified.

“I said ‘yes’,” she said quietly.

“Of course you did,” Wyatt said.

He opened his mouth to speak again, but Dwight popped his head through the doorway.

“Hey, Wyatt, Burt needs—oh, hey, is this personal?”

“Beat it, Dwight, and shut the door,” Wyatt said quietly.

Dwight pulled the door closed. “Go away, Burt,” they heard him say in the hall.

Maggie turned back around to face Wyatt. His arms were folded across his chest.

“Evan called for you a little while ago,” he said. “I took it for you.”

The change of subject threw Maggie. “What?”

“The nurse’s kid didn’t graduate from Gainesville; he was asked to leave.”

“Why?”

“A complaint of date rape,” Wyatt said. “The mother convinced the girl and her parents not to press charges, but the school asked him to take off.”

He reached behind him and grabbed a fax from his desk. “This is your scumbag, here.”

Maggie took the fax, a copy of the kid’s driver’s license. His name was Stuart Martin, and he was twenty-years-old. Five-six and one hundred-thirty pounds, close enough to Zoe’s description. Maggie looked at the picture. He had dirty blond hair cut in a surfer boy style, and an insolent look to his hazel eyes.

“He has hazel eyes,” Maggie said.

“Hazel can look brown, especially in the dark. Especially if you’re terrified,” Wyatt said. “The history can’t be ignored, especially since his mommy got Zoe out of the house two weeks after he got home. Maybe she saw something hinky.”

“Yeah, I know. Just mentioning.”

“Evan’s gonna go with, since it’s out of our jurisdiction and this is just a look-see.”

“Okay,” Maggie said again, as Wyatt walked around his desk and picked up Zoe’s file. “So, let’s go.”

“No, you will go, and I will get out there and help Dwight look up some more of our local creeps.” He handed Maggie a scrap of paper. “Go call Evan back.”

Maggie stood there, feeling stupid, as she watched him head for the door.

“I thought we were working together today,” she said.

“We were. We are,” he answered. “But not so close together that I can reach your neck.”

He opened the door and held it open for her. It took her a moment, but she finally started moving.

“You have a nice day, now,” he said as she passed him.

Maggie set her coffee and purse on her desk, and dug her phone out of her purse. She stared at it for a while, trying to recover sufficiently before she had to sound normal to Evan Caldwell.

Wyatt had every right to be upset, and she knew that he did. She had also known that last night, before she gave Boudreaux her answer. She knew he’d be angry and he was. Maybe hurt, but she hoped just angry.

Even so, it gave her a clenching sensation in her stomach to have him unhappy with her, and she took a moment to resituate herself, focus on helping Zoe, and dial the number.

“Hello?” Evan answered on the second ring.

“Hey, Evan, this is Maggie Redmond,” Maggie said.

“Hey, Maggie. Wyatt give you the lowdown on your guy?”

“A little bit,” she answered. “I was thinking I’d meet you at the station and we could go in one car or the other. That sound okay to you? You can fill me in on the way.”

“Sounds good,” he answered. “I’m finishing up some things here, but I’ll be ready in about forty-five minutes if that works for you.”

Maggie looked at her watch. It was a thirty minute ride to the Port St. Joe PD, more or less. “Okay, I’ll be there around nine.”

They said their goodbyes, and Maggie picked her purse back up and headed out.

As Maggie drove across the bridge that connected Eastpoint to Apalachicola, she composed conversations with both Wyatt and Boudreaux. She would tell Boudreaux she couldn’t do it. She would tell Wyatt she wouldn’t do it, and then try harder not to be so impulsive when it came to Boudreaux.

She wasn’t willing—yet—to give Boudreaux up, and when she put it to herself that way, when she considered him as something to be given up, she worried about herself just a little. She had been drifting from herself since the day she’d first sat across the table from Boudreaux at Boss Oyster and found herself liking him against her will.

She was softball and Scrabble, chickens and kitchen gardens, her parents and her kids. She was Wyatt. She was not a consort of criminals, or typically drawn to things and people that weren’t good for her.

She’d known Boudreaux most of her life, but superficially, first as her father’s main buyer then as the Sheriff’s Office’s most wanted. Before June, they’d never exchanged more than ten words. How had he become so important to her in just five months? Would he have been so important if he hadn’t saved her life? If she hadn’t saved his?

She would have loved to talk to somebody about that, but the only person she thought she’d feel comfortable discussing it with was Boudreaux, which helped her not at all.

She drove across the bridge, through Apalach, and on to the Port St. Joe Police Department without coming up with any answers that she liked, so she put the questions out of her mind. When the Sheriff’s investigator got out of her Jeep, she left the woman behind in the car. At that moment, Maggie felt the woman was too stupid to be useful.