Blood on the Bayou (29 page)

A faint metallic crash, like a cookie sheet dropped on tile, echoes through the hall.

“That wasn’t on this floor.” Hitch turns back to the stairs. I grab his arm and point down the hall toward the office.

“There’s a back staircase. It comes out in the kitchen.”

Hitch nods, following at a trot as I jog down the hall. I peek into the office and the break room as we pass by, but both are empty. Lance and Jose must have seen the fairies outside and decided to take cover in the kitchen. From what I saw of their sprawling bachelor pad yesterday, it’s the only room without glass on at least one full side.

We hurry down the stairs, my sneakers virtually silent and Hitch’s booties making only the slightest
skinking
sound. It’s possible that Lance and Jose won’t hear us coming, and I don’t want to surprise them. I stop on the last landing, and turn back to Hitch.

I’m going to tell him I think we should announce our presence, but I don’t get the chance.

“Come down the stairs. Slow,” a voice announces from the other room. “With your hands on top of your head.”

“Cane?” I stumble off the landing and would have ended up surfing the stairs, but Hitch grabs my arm and pulls me back beside him.

“Annabelle?” Cane’s voice is noticeably softer, but when he steps through the archway, his gun is raised. Raised and propped up with his left hand and aimed uncomfortably close to my heart.

For a split second, I’m afraid. Not afraid of being seen with Hitch or caught lying to Cane or any of
the normal things I’d usually be afraid of in a situation like this. I’m afraid that Cane is going to
shoot
me; that the man who told me he loved me last night is going to pull the trigger and end my life this morning.

And he knows it. I see the second he recognizes my fear. It hits him hard, making his next breath come out ragged and his breastbone sag. His jaw clenches and his elbows bend with a rusty-looking jerk, pointing the gun toward the ceiling. “What are you doing here?” he asks in a hurt whisper that makes me feel rotten.

I should never have been afraid.

But then again, he shouldn’t have given me reason to be.

“What are
you
doing here?” I ask. “I thought you weren’t supposed to be out this way until noon.”

He pales. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a black man do that, but Cane manages to pull it off. The golden flush in his cheeks vanishes, leaving him gray, drawn and washed out. His eyes shift between me and Hitch. I see him wondering how much we know about his illegal errand. It
has
to be illegal. He’s not in uniform, he’s carrying a gun I’ve never seen before, and he looks. So. Fucking. Guilty.

“My meet time got moved up,” Cane says. “Currents weren’t strong today.”

On the off chance that he hasn’t already dug himself so far into a hole that there will be no climbing out, I say, “I haven’t told Hitch anything. Watch what you say.”

Hitch stiffens and his hand slides from my arm. “What?”

“I’ll explain later. Maybe.” I wonder how far I can take this bluff. Can I trick Cane into telling me what he’s doing out here? If I can get him alone, maybe I—

“I don’t give a shit what you tell Hitch.” The venom in Cane’s voice makes me flinch. “I’m not leaving my sister in that camp. She doesn’t deserve that. No person does. I’m bringing her to a place where she’ll be taken care of by good people, which I should have been able to do from the beginning.”

Comprehension dawns, loosening the knot of suspicion in my chest. Amity. He’s paying someone to smuggle Amity out of the infected camp at Keesler. He’s committing a crime, but he’s doing it out of love for his sister and his family. I should have guessed it was something like this. Cane’s weakness has always been loving people too much. He can’t let go. Even when the law tells him he has no choice.

“I’m sorry.” I wish I could go to him and wrap my arms around his waist and rest my cheek on his big barrel chest. But I can’t. He’s angry. And I am, too. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You . . . I . . .” His voice trails off and his gun drifts to his side as he realizes I’ve tricked him. I expect him to get angrier, but instead he shakes his head and motions over his shoulder. “We’ve got two men down in the kitchen. I’m not sure what killed them.”

“What?” Hitch’s hip knocks against mine as he
hurries down the stairs, but he doesn’t acknowledge the contact. Guess he’s angry, too.

Good. He might as well get angry and stay that way. He’s only going to get angrier when I ditch him to go find Marcy. I can’t leave her out in the bayou with no protection from the megaswarm, and I can’t risk bringing Hitch or Cane along until I know what’s going on. If Lance is one of the dead men, I’ll have to search his office until I find out where I was supposed to meet Marcy, and then find some way to get away from the men in my life and past the swarm.

But first. The bodies. The dead bodies.

“The first guy was dead when I got here.” Cane leads the way back into the kitchen. I follow, but stop in the doorway to cover my mouth and nose. The smell is awful, an acidic rotten stench that makes the dead fairies upstairs smell almost pleasant.

It’s the bodies. It has to be. Except for the two men on the floor, the kitchen is immaculate, and no greasy stove or trash basket could smell
this
bad.

My eyes flit from the closer body—Jose, I’m guessing, though I’ve never seen his face—to the form huddled in a fetal position by the oven. It’s Lance, looking even more ferretlike in death. His wide, empty eyes emphasize the sharp angle of his nose and his mouth hangs open, exposing the tips of his rodent teeth. I try to make myself go to him, to close his eyes and give the poor bastard some small bit of dignity, but I’m afraid I’ll lose control of my stomach if I take another step into the room.

Turns out dead bodies still make me want to puke,
even the dead bodies of people I didn’t like that much when they were alive.

Cane crosses the expanse from the door to the double oven in a few large steps. “This guy was rolling around a little. At first I couldn’t tell if he was in pain or . . . something else,” he says, an odd note in his voice.

“Then he started choking. I tried the Heimlich, but it didn’t help.” Cane squats beside the body. Hitch joins him, crouching down on Lance’s other side, peering into his lifeless face. “There wasn’t anything stuck in his throat.”

“Was he foaming at the mouth?” Hitch asks. “It looks like there’s something here, around the lips.”

He gestures to Lance’s mouth with two fingers, but doesn’t touch him. He’s in professional investigation mode. So is Cane. Both of them are in their element, focused on the body, ignoring the fact that Cane confessed his intention to commit a federal offense and that it’s completely awkward for the three of us to be in the same room after the Captured on Police Camera Kiss Fiasco.

Not to mention that Cane knows I’ve been sneaking around with Hitch behind his back. At this point he may think it’s purely professional sneaking, but then again, maybe not. He’s already suspicious or he wouldn’t have come to spy on me last night.

Remembering my other reasons for being angry with Cane makes me feel better. And worse. Better, because our lack of trust is mutual. Worse . . . for the same damned reason.

Cane cocks his head, considering Hitch’s question. “Yeah. You know, now that I think about it, he was. A little. You thinking poison?”

Hitch nods. “But I’m not sure what would take them both out so quickly.”

“Were they eating or drinking anything?” I finally manage to take a step into the room, but keep my eyes on the countertops.

The kitchen is an oversized galley-style, with a double oven and refrigerator on one side, sink and dishwasher on the other, and massive granite countertops between each appliance. The counters on my right, close to where Hitch and Cane are inspecting the body, are bare, but there are a few plates by the sink. I pad over to get a better look, but there’s nothing to see but a few crumbs, a greasy butter knife, and a wadded up napkin.

“Anything?” Hitch asks.

“Looks like some kind of pastry.” I lift the plate on top to peek at the one beneath. “Only crumbs left so it’s hard to tell.”

“Tough to get a significant amount of poison in a pastry,” Hitch muses aloud. “Especially something that wouldn’t start affecting the body until the person had eaten the whole thing.”

“As someone nearly taken out by a shrimp muffin, I have a different opinion.” I tug open the dishwasher, hoping the dirty dishes might offer up a clue.

“But that was a rare, severe allergic reaction,” Hitch says. “What are the chances both of these men had the same—”

“Wait a second.” I pull out the top rack of the washer, and pluck a teacup from inside. I lift it up and sniff, wrinkling my nose against the familiar smell. “The tea . . .”

“You think someone poisoned their tea?” Cane asks.

“No, I think . . .” The tea. Oh god. The tea I left out on the table last night like a dumb-ass. The tea that wasn’t on the table this morning. “Gimpy! The tea!”

Cane’s forehead wrinkles.

“I got a text from Deedee,” I explain. “Gimpy was sick and she and Theresa had to take him to the vet to get his stomach pumped. Yesterday, when I was here, Lance gave me some tea bags. He said they were a rare caterpillar fungus that’s supposed to clear out your system before a piss test. He’s been drinking it for months. That’s how he kept the FCC off his back about what I assume was his pot-smoking habit. I took the tea home and left it out on the table and—”

“Gimpy ate it,” Cane finishes, because he knows the ways of my cat.

“I bet he did. And then, when I saw him in the Hogans’ garden, he was acting really weird, even for him.” Remembering Gimpy’s performance makes me guess why Cane sounded funny when he first talked about seeing Lance. “You said Lance was rolling around when you came in, right?”

“Right.”

“And you couldn’t tell if he was in pain or something else.” He nods. “Like hot-and-bothered kind of something else?”

Cane looks relieved. “Yeah. I thought maybe he was on Ecstasy or something.”

I turn to Hitch, holding up the cup in victory. “It’s the tea. It must be poisoned.” But Hitch isn’t impressed. Or pleased. In fact, Hitch kind of looks like it’s his turn to fight the flight or puke response inspired by the stink of the dead men’s soiled pants. “What’s wrong?”

He stands, backing away from Lance with a small shake of his head. “Nothing.”

“Bullshit.” I put the cup on the counter and cross the room. I don’t stop until I’m close enough to smell the sweat breaking out beneath Hitch’s iron suit. “This has to stop, Hitch. We can’t keep—”

“I poisoned it.”

“What?”

“I poisoned the fungus,” his says, shock and misery mixing in his tone. “That was the business I had to take care of yesterday morning.” His throat works. “I drove up to St. Gabriel, boarded the barge upriver, and contaminated the compound.”

“Why?” I ask, the word barely escaping past the acid rising in my throat.

“It’s one of the items that keeps disappearing from the barges. It’s the source of fairimilus, the peptide I was telling you about yesterday.” He runs a shaking hand across his mouth, wiping sweat beads from his upper lip. “I thought if the test subjects got sick it would make the staff at the lab disorganized, and it would be easier for me to get in and out.”

“Jesus, Hitch.” I sway on my feet, the enormity
of what he’s confessed making me dizzy. “That’s . . . murder.”

He shakes his head. “No. I had no idea this would happen. The man who gave me the poison said it made people nauseous, that’s it. I didn’t—”

“You almost killed my cat!”

“He almost killed you.” Cane is suddenly by my side, his arm around my shoulders. “If you’d drunk that tea, you’d be dead.”

D
ead.

I glance down at Lance, his soulless husk hitting me on an entirely new level. Cane is right. I
would
have drunk the tea. I definitely would have, especially after what Tucker said this morning about the injections showing up in drug tests.

“Right.” My breath comes out a shaky hiss.

“I’m sorry,” Hitch whispers.

“I don’t think that covers it when you’ve killed people.” Cane’s voice is so deep I can feel it vibrate in my chest, the way it does when he’s really,
really
angry.

“I’m so sorry.” Hitch ignores Cane, eyes only for me. “I was trying to save Stephanie and the baby. I didn’t know what else to do. I—”

“You can remain silent,” Cane says. “And know that anything you say can and will be used against you in a—”

“Don’t Mirandize me!” Hitch turns on Cane, vein pulsing at his temple. “You don’t understand what’s happening here!”

“I understand these men are dead, and you
confessed to maybe havin’ something to do with that.” Cane angles in front of me, not intimidated by Hitch or his anger or the fact that Hitch is an FBI agent. In that moment, my respect for Cane grows a few sizes, though I’m not sure hauling Hitch down to the station is the right thing to do.

But he definitely needs reigning in. He’s not thinking clearly. If someone doesn’t knock some sense into him, more people are going to die.