Gator Bait (4 page)

I hurried beside her and traced the channels from my house to the place Ida Belle pointed to, an island sitting in a lake. “That looks right,” I said.
 

“Then what are we waiting for?” Gertie said. “Let’s go find Carter.”

Deputy Breaux held up his hands. “Ladies, I can’t let you head out into a potentially dangerous situation. I’ve called for backup and will check it out myself.”

Ida Belle put her hands on her hips. “By the time backup gets here, Carter could be dead and buried, and his mother cashing the insurance policy. Either grow a pair and get your ass out in the bayou or move out of the way and let us do your job.”

Ida Belle stormed past Deputy Breaux, who stood slack-jawed and helpless as we fled the sheriff’s department.
 

“There’s a small problem,” I said as I hurried after Ida Belle. “We don’t have a boat.”

Both Ida Belle’s and Gertie’s boats had met with disaster during some of our previous “work,” and neither had made it out of the repair shop yet.

“We’ll borrow Walter’s,” Ida Belle said as she turned past the General Store and headed for the pier.

“Shouldn’t we ask him first?” I asked. Walter, the owner of the General Store and Carter’s uncle, had been in love with Ida Belle since the crib, and would probably give her the boat if she wanted it, but it seemed only polite to ask before you stole a man’s pride and joy. Walter was deeply attached to his bass boat.

Ida Belle shook her head. “If we ask to borrow it, he’ll want to know why. Then he’ll want to come. If something bad goes down, that won’t work well for any of us, especially you. If he sees you in action, it won’t take him long to figure out you’re no librarian.”

“Oh, right.” It was a valid point, and cinched the boat stealing…uh, “borrowing” idea.
 

“Do you have your nine-millimeter with you?” Ida Belle asked me.

“In my purse…crap! I left it at the café.”

“I snagged it when we left the café,” Gertie said, huffing as she tried to keep up. “And I’ve got my forty-five, Mace, a dagger, and some Chinese throwing stars.”

I reached back to take my purse from her as we stepped onto the dock, not sure whether to be impressed or frightened. “Is all that hardware necessary for church?”

Ida Belle waved us into the boat. “Gertie’s afraid a zombie apocalypse or the rise of the Antichrist will happen Sunday morning.”

I hopped into the boat, Gertie stepping in behind me. “Well, it’s the best time for an attack,” Gertie said. “After all, a third of the town is in church.”

“And you think the Antichrist would begin his rise to power in Sinful?” Ida Belle asked as she untied the boat.

Gertie put her hands on her hips. “For all you know, she’s already here and running for mayor.”

“Hold it right there!” Walter’s voice sounded behind us and I whipped around to see him hurrying toward the dock.
 

Ida Belle shoved the boat away from the dock and leaped inside. “Put it on my tab,” she called out.

Walter yelled again but his voice was drowned out by the revving of the boat motor. Ida Belle glanced back. “Can’t hear you!” she shouted, then gunned the boat.
 

I should have had a better grip on the bench, but I was too busy trying to read Walter’s lips to concentrate on my balance. As the boat leaped forward, I fell backward off the bench and right on Gertie’s purse. Thank goodness I put my hands down to break my fall because one of those throwing stars caught me right in the center of my butt cheek. I flew back up onto the bench as if on springs.
 

“If that scars,” I yelled at Gertie, “you’re buying me a new butt.”

“Stop sitting on weapons and your butt will be fine,” Gertie shot back.
 

There was simply no winning with Gertie, so I studied the landscape as we flew by. I remembered the little yellow house on the corner of the bayou from yesterday evening, and the shrimping barge anchored at the edge of a pond. Ida Belle whipped the boat to the right and I clenched the seat, my mind finally locked in on the task at hand.
 

What had happened to Carter? Was someone shooting at him? Poachers? Maybe he’d tried to arrest them? Surely not. The penalty for poaching was hardly worth killing a law enforcement officer over. Maybe it wasn’t as dire as Deputy Breaux thought.

I got an SOS call…

The deputy’s words repeated in my mind and I felt my lower back stiffen. No way would Carter call for help like that, much less disappear afterward, unless things were seriously wrong. I took a deep breath and rolled my head around to loosen my neck.

Focus on the mission.

When I was on a mission, I was an efficient, nerveless, deadly machine. It was everything I’d been trained to be, and I’d been trained by the best. Missions were never personal. When things became personal, people made mistakes. But no matter how hard I tried to convince myself that this was just another day on the job, that knot of fear deep down in my stomach wouldn’t go away.

It seemed like forever before I saw the jut of the island where I’d had dinner with Carter. I grabbed Gertie’s arm and pointed. “That’s it!”

Ida Belle glanced at the island, then cut the speed on the boat to a slow coast. “I figure what Carter saw must have been out in the lake. I didn’t see anything questionable in the bayous.”

“Me either,” Gertie said. “The lake is huge. Where do we start?”

“Closest to the island,” Ida Belle said, “with the hope that Carter came straight here and didn’t meander around before setting up for dinner.” She reached in a compartment below the steering column and pulled out a pair of binoculars.
 

“I wish we would have had time to get supplies,” I said as I stood. “A scope would come in handy about now.”

Gertie picked up her enormous purse and dug out a package of Kleenex, two airline samples of vodka, a remote control for her television, and finally a rifle scope. I took the scope from her and peered into the purse. “I don’t suppose you have a cheeseburger in there?”

“If you’d have asked me yesterday, you would have been in luck, but I got hungry late last night. I have a dill pickle?”

Yuck. “Pass,” I said as I lifted the scope up and scanned the lake, looking for any sign of well, anything. For several minutes I moved from one position to another, hoping to lock in on something besides the miles of muddy water.
 

“There,” Ida Belle said, and pointed to our right. “I caught a glint of something—sunlight reflecting, maybe, but it’s too far away for me to see.”

I moved the scope to the right where Ida Belle indicated. A minute later, I found the source of the shine. “It’s the sheriff’s boat, and it’s sinking fast.”

Chapter Three

Ida Belle shoved the binoculars into Gertie’s lap and grabbed a handful of throttle. I dropped onto the bench and braced myself for the takeoff, praying that Carter was off the boat and swimming for shore. I had no idea how deep the lake was, but if he were unconscious, it wouldn’t matter if it was six feet deep or sixty. By the time we reached the boat, he could run out of air.

The tension on Ida Belle’s and Gertie’s faces was matched by my own. Despite all the dangerous situations and close calls I’d been in since I’d joined the CIA, I couldn’t remember being this worried about anything…except when my mom had gotten sick. Now my stomach was churning like that sad little girl who’d held her mother’s hand as she slipped away.

Damn it! Coming to Sinful had complicated everything. For the first time in my life, I’d formed relationships with people I cared about, and it had been a lump of heartache every time one of them had been in danger. But this…this was the worse by far. I’d spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that my relationship with Carter was casual and could never amount to anything, but sometime while I was busy thinking up reasons why I couldn’t fall for him, I did it anyway.

Gertie covered my hand with hers and leaned close. “He’s fine. I’m sure of it.”

I nodded, touched that she tried to comfort me, but I already knew he was in trouble. I knew it just as I knew the sun was shining and that I was no librarian.

It seemed to take forever, but finally, we made it to the spot where Carter’s boat had been. My heart dropped as we scanned the surface but saw no sign of him. The spotlight on the top was just dipping below the surface of the water. Without a moment’s hesitation, I yanked off my tennis shoes and sundress and dived over the side of the boat.

The water was so murky, it was impossible to see more than a foot in front of me, so I swam with both arms outstretched to avoid running headfirst into the hunk of sinking metal. I latched onto the rail on the top of the boat and used it to guide myself lower until I reached the bottom of the boat. I strained to see something…anything…but the most I could manage were shadows cast by large objects in the boat.
 

Focus!

I cleared my mind and scanned the shadows, looking for one that wasn’t made of straight edges. As I moved toward the rear of the boat, a hazy lump came into view. Using the bottom of the boat to propel myself forward, I ran straight into the lump. Immediately, I knew it was Carter.
 

The boat was still sinking, so I had no idea how far from the surface it had gone. Did I have enough air left to make it?
 

It wasn’t a question I had the luxury of dwelling on. I rolled Carter on his side and grabbed him underneath his arms, pulling him to a standing position along with me. Then I bent down, and pushed straight up as hard as I could, launching us both off the bottom of the boat and toward the surface.

I kicked so hard that my thighs and hips burned from the effort, and my free arm ached from my wrist to my neck and I pushed it up and down to increase our speed. The seconds ticked by, each seeming longer than the next, but the dark water still surrounded us. The increasing pressure on my chest made my ribs ache. I let out a bit of air to ease the pressure, but the urge to let it all out and drag in a huge gulp of fresh air was so overwhelming.
 

A wave of dizziness washed over me, and I felt my legs and arms weaken. Carter slipped in my grasp and the remainder of my air fled my body in a whoosh. Panic set in as I tightened my grip on him and pushed my spent body even harder than before. I kicked and pushed and strained, knowing that if I didn’t hit the surface soon, I’d lose consciousness and Carter and I would be together forever, but not in the way anyone wanted.
 

I struggled to maintain focus, but my body wouldn’t comply. I felt drowsy, almost as if I’d been drugged. Above me, a sliver of light blinked through the murky water, but I knew it wasn’t the surface. It was the end. Just as all those people had reported. This was it.
 

The light at the end of the Tunnel of Death.
   

I gave one last kick—one last burst of effort—before my body collapsed completely, and I slipped into darkness.

“Pull harder!” The voice drifted by as if echoing from far away.

“Stop yelling. She’s heavier than she looks.”

What the hell? They’re insulting my weight in heaven?

I felt my body being jostled, but it was almost as if I wasn’t completely inside me anymore. Then I felt a jab of something hard into my rib cage and I sucked in so much air I thought my chest would burst. A second later, I fell onto a flat, hard surface.
 

As I struggled to gain perspective, I heard the voices again.

“She’s breathing! Get Carter.”
 

A jolt went through me. Gertie! It was Gertie’s voice.
 

“One, two, three, breathe.”

I sucked in another breath and blinked, trying to clear my blurry vision. I pushed with one arm, but I didn’t have the strength to lift my spent body even an inch. Finally, I managed to roll on my side and blinked again.
 

The scene in front of me slowly came into focus.
 

I was on the bottom of Walter’s boat. Ida Belle and Gertie were hunched over Carter, giving him CPR. My heart leaped in my throat as I saw his lifeless body. I clenched my eyes shut and prayed harder than I ever had before, then I heard a single cough. I opened my eyes and Gertie turned Carter’s head to the side as water poured out. His chest moved up and down. His breathing was so shallow that he wasn’t out of danger, but he was breathing.

“Get to the hospital!” Gertie yelled. “I’ll watch him.”

Ida Belle jumped up from the bottom of the boat and shoved a life preserver under my head. “Don’t need you banged around any more than you already are,” she said and gave me a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t you worry. He’s going to be just fine.”

A second later, she hopped behind the steering column and gunned the engine. The boat practically jumped out of the water as it launched forward. Every time the boat came down on a wave, another jolt of pain rushed through my body, but none of that mattered. I was alive. Bruises and broken bones healed. The only thing that mattered was getting Carter to a hospital.

I heard Ida Belle call the sheriff’s department on the CB radio. A bit of hope trickled into my stream of consciousness when I heard her demand a helicopter. Then the boat slammed against another wave, and everything went black again.