Goes down easy: Roped into romance (14 page)

He thought back to yesterday morning, to their time in bed before she’d had him find the stick in the attic. He knew she’d been trying to help, to make him feel better.

He just didn’t see how anyone could understand the guilt he lived with when he didn’t understand it himself. Then again, he hadn’t given her a chance.

Of all people, Della would be the one to see the pent up emotion and the history behind what he’d stored. But now she wasn’t here.

He’d been harsher than he’d meant to be, when all she’d been was concerned. Yeah, he knew he put in too many hours. Thing was, it was never enough.

Didn’t the fact that she wasn’t here prove it?

He’d brought her home this morning, after her visions during the warehouse visit had proved to be too much. He’d made sure Kachina would be around until Perry returned. All of that, and Della still wasn’t safe.

He hadn’t been able to keep her safe when that was
the one thing he knew how to do. Was trained to do. And yet, his experience didn’t mean diddly.

She’d been snatched out of her own kitchen with her niece not fifty feet away, and a brand-new door between her and the world.

He didn’t even want to think what she was going through. As strong as she was, she was still so fragile. So sensitive to the world around her.

He knew she was a survivor.

He just didn’t know if she’d come home the same woman she’d been when she’d left. That frightened him, because that woman was the woman he loved.

And he didn’t know what he’d do without her.

A
FTER DIGGING
furiously through papers stashed in his computer case like so much loose change—a mess Becca would kill him for making—Jack located Dawn Taylor’s home address in his notes.

He couldn’t remember when or where he’d found it, or why he’d written it down. He was just damn glad that he had.

His GPS navigator mapped out the drive, leaving him free to work at making sense of everything that had happened in the last two days. The fact that Eckhardt had been held at the warehouse—and recently—was indisputable, as was Della’s vision of the severed finger before Perry had even found the damn thing.

What he was having trouble reconciling, however, was Della believing Eckhardt to be dead, then believing him to be drowning. And since nothing about her way of looking at things was scientific, there wasn’t much he could do with the information but file it away.

If he’d been anywhere else, he might have started searching bodies of water. But New Orleans sat smack in the Mississippi delta, way too close to where the
mouth of the river said hello to the Gulf of Mexico. And then there were the area’s lakes and bayous and swamps…a needle in a haystack would be easier to find.

Most of all, however, he couldn’t figure out what the kidnappers expected to gain by grabbing Della—except for the obvious. They’d taken Della to keep her from revealing to the police her visions about Dayton Eckhardt and his whereabouts. And damned if that wasn’t eating at Perry.

Perry had barely been able to talk to the officers who’d responded to Franklin’s call. And Jack hadn’t been able to hang around for support. He’d wanted to be there for her; it killed him to leave. But he’d had this one window of opportunity to act.

He was supposed to stay out of the way, to mind his own business.

Like he could. Like he would. Time was still on Della’s side, and Jack wasn’t about to waste a second more than he already had.

He circled the block before parking two houses down and across the street. The neighborhood wasn’t what he’d expected, and the house certainly wasn’t one he would’ve imagined belonging to a reporter and a warehouse foreman.

Then again, the posh modern house could easily have been widow’s spoils. Or a kidnapper’s booty. Except that there hadn’t been a demand made or paid out. Cindy had filled him in when he’d talked to her earlier today. She’d been glad to get the update, to see that he’d been busy.

Yeah, he’d been busy…cleaning up broken glass, replacing and painting doors, sitting for a psychic reading, falling for the psychic’s niece and losing himself in her body. Not exactly how he was supposed to be earning his per diem.

To be fair, he had spent time in interviews, researching newspaper archives, following what leads he’d managed to turn up. Right now, however, none of that seemed like enough. If he’d done enough, he wouldn’t be in the middle of breaking and entering and putting his PI license on the line.

It was almost as if he was losing his edge…

He’d knocked at the front door, watched for movement at the neighboring houses, checked the garage windows and a couple that were hidden by high growing hedges before making his way to the back of the house.

The door nearest the driveway opened into a utility room that opened into the kitchen. He found nothing on any of the entrances indicating an alarm, but he still planned to get in and get out quick like a bunny.

Problem here was, he had no idea what he was looking for. It wasn’t like he expected to walk into the dining room and find Dayton Eckhardt digging into a bowl of gumbo.

Or to find a war board set up in Dawn Taylor’s den outlining each step of the kidnapping plans. Though he wouldn’t mind discovering a series of arrows on the floor, pointing his way to the end of the maze.

The biggest challenge to digging up clues was deciding what was a clue and what wasn’t. The
obvious didn’t always pan out, even while those were the easiest onto which he could hook his trailer. Yet it was the tidbits of what seemed like useless minutia that often held the keys to opening the biggest doors.

But when he took his first step into the kitchen, he slammed to a halt, all thoughts of clues and minutia sailing right out the window of his mind. Della sat blindfolded at the eating nook table, her hands bound to the frame of the white garden chair.

She frowned and tilted her head to one side, listening as if knowing someone unexpected had arrived. He started to speak, to let her know he was there, but didn’t have time. A twenty-something punk slacker stepped out of the pantry and back into the room.

“Dude.” He dropped the box of Raisin Bran he held. He dropped his jaw as well. “What the hell are you doing here? No one’s supposed to be here.”

He was a scrawny pup, wearing black slip-on Vans, baggy khaki-colored jeans and a white logo T-shirt over a long-sleeved striped one. A black skullcap sat snugged low over his ears, causing the ends of his hair to stick out from beneath like so much dry straw.

He wasn’t wearing anything over his face, which meant any second he was going to snap to the fact he’d just been made. And if there hadn’t been a Browning automatic stuck barrel-down in his waistband, Jack wouldn’t have hesitated asking him the same.

“Just doing my job,” he finally said, and when he did, Della smiled.

“What the hell is your job? Who the hell are you?”

Obviously a brighter bulb than you, kid. Might be
a good idea to get the players straight in whatever game you’re playing
. Jack opened his mouth to answer, to talk the kid out of his gun and his hostage, but Della stopped him.

“He’s the one who holds your fate in his hands.”

Her voice came from that low, calm and soothing, but totally spooky place, the one she’d reached into when she’d spoken during Jack’s reading. And he could see trepidation in the kid’s eyes.

“Yeah, sure,” the slacker boy sneered, gesturing with the gun he’d tugged from his pants. “You. Sit. And tell me what the hell you’re doing here.”

“I’m here for her,” Jack said, glancing at the eating nook’s cushioned bench, then pulling out a second chair from under the table. “What else?”

“How did you know she was here?” He’d moved to stand behind Della, his free hand gripping the lattice back of her chair.

Jack’s gaze followed the slow rise of Della’s chin, the cock of her head to the side as if she was taking measure of her captor and how close he was to the edge.

And then she said, “He’s the one who found the finger. He’s the one who brought me to the warehouse.”

“Nuh-uh. I don’t believe it. Kel said…shit.” The kid looked ready to bite off his tongue. “I was told it was the other way around, you see. That you’ve been the one seeing…stuff.”

A lackey. That’s all this kid was. Left to stand guard over a female psychic half his size, twice his age and
with a bandaged foot to boot—a thought that had Jack wondering what the boy would do if he realized how easily Della could reduce a grown man to a sniveling idiot.

Then he wondered how to get her to do just that, to see if between them they could get Slacker Boy to hightail it out of here in a panic, and lead them to the rest of the crew and to Eckhardt.

But it seemed she was one step ahead of him—else she’d picked the idea straight out of his brain—because she said, “All I can see is that you’re wrong about the reasons Kelly left you here.”

The kid shook his head, stared down at the top of Della’s, his gun hand hanging at his side, his trigger finger twitching too much for Jack’s comfort. “She left me here because she knew I could keep you out of the way while she and Pauly and Chris finished up with…shit. Shut up. Just shut up.”

Dim, dim, dim, and about to sputter right out. Whoever Kelly was, Jack mused, Slacker Boy here was definitely her weakest link. And though he wasn’t exactly thrilled with the way the kid’s gun hand was wiggling like a worm on hot concrete, Della wasn’t deterred by his orders.

She twisted on the seat, trying to face him. “It’s not about keeping me out of the way. It’s about not wanting you around anymore.”

The kid was shaking his head. “Nuh-uh. What’re you saying?”

Della took a deep breath, blew it out slowly, let her head fall forward in a slow, bouncing nod. “Kelly
wants to be with Chris now. They’re loading his Jeep to leave. She’s done with you. She’s set it up so Mrs. Taylor thinks her house has been burglarized. So she’s going to be showing up here soon, with the police, who will discover you here holding me.”

Slacker Boy shook his head, his eyes wide as he waved the gun around. “I don’t believe you. Kelly wouldn’t do that to me. She said they’ll swing by and get me and leave you tied up here. Kelly said no one will believe Taylor when she says she has nothing to do with all this. That she didn’t arrange it all for revenge. If the psychic’s here, tied up so she can’t shoot her mouth off to the police about where Eckhardt is, until it’s too late for that dude. Shit. Just stop talking already.”

Jack had no idea how much of what Della was telling the kid was true, but it was working. He backed across the kitchen, his soles squeaking on the floor, and placed the gun on the kitchen counter to pull a Sidekick unit from his pocket and frantically type out a message with his thumbs.

“I wouldn’t send that if I were you,” Jack said, hoping it wasn’t too late.

“And why not?” the kid shot back, still typing, not even looking up. “Kelly will prove the psychic’s wrong.”

“What if she proves that she’s right?”

He stopped typing, one thumb shaking over the keypad. “How’s she going to do that?”

“Say Kelly doesn’t answer.” Jack nodded toward the messaging unit in the boy’s hands, gauging his chances
of getting to the gun before the kid snapped. “You’ve just let her know that you’re onto her. You’ve given her and Chris time to skip out and dump on you and Pauly.”

Slacker Boy stared at what he’d typed for several seconds, then turned and stared out the window that faced Taylor’s side garden. “This is all so bogus. Kelly’s been with me since eighth grade. She only met Chris when we were working at Eckton.”

Eckton. Glory freakin’ hallelujah. The connection Jack had been looking for. This kid and his cronies knew the man, knew the company. Had no doubt been caught up in the layoffs, same as Bob Taylor. But instead of jumping off the closest bridge, they’d cooked up their own special payback for their ex-boss.

Jack would give the kid a couple of minutes. Let him mull over his choices. Wait for him to figure out that his cohorts were the ones in the driver’s seat, that he’d been left behind and was about to be roadkill.

Once he got that far, then it would be time to explain that saving his own hide meant making a deal—and he’d do it while working to part the kid from his gun.

“You know that it’s genuine,” Della said softly, and even Jack glanced over at hearing that voice that chilled blood. “You were wondering about Kelly and Chris long before all of you lost your jobs. They started coming in to work earlier than you. You saw them sitting close in the employee cafeteria. The nights when you left early and Kelly stayed, Chris stayed, too. You know that. And in your heart, you know they weren’t working.”

Jack waited, watched the kid squirm, the color drain from his face, the soft echo of Della’s voice settling like a friendly noose around his neck.

“That bastard.” Slacker Boy tossed the messaging unit across the countertop and picked up the gun. “He swore they were just friends. I am so going to rip his face off.”

He paced the width of the kitchen, his long gangly arms swinging, his shoes screeching on the floor. And then he stopped and said to Jack, “Get up. Untie her. We’re outta here.”

“All of us?” Jack asked cautiously, pushing to his feet.

“Yeah. What, you think I’m going to leave you here to rat me out to the cops?”

“You can’t get out of here with both of us,” Jack said, working at Della’s bonds. “Two against one?”

The kid snorted. “Two against me and the Browning, you mean.”

Jack indicated Della with a nod. “She’s blindfolded. She hasn’t seen you. Can’t I.D. you. So just take me. Leave her here. She’s not a threat.”

“I don’t know that. She pretty much seems to know everything about Chris and Kel.”

Sweat broke out on Jack’s nape. “She doesn’t know half of what I do.”

The kid looked over, his eyes wide and red. “What do you think you know?”

“She can tell you what’s going on with your people.”
Steady, ol’ boy. Steady
.

“Bullshit.”

The kid appeared more bewildered than ever. And so Jack pressed. “You don’t need both of us, dude. You take on two more hostages, you’re really screwing with your odds of making it out of this thing in one piece. Not to mention screwing things up even worse with Kelly.”

“All right, all right. The psychic stays here. Stand in front of her and let her tie your hands. And leave the blindfold on, lady. But first, you—” he started jerking open kitchen drawers, finding an apron and tossing it to Jack “—tie this around your eyes.”

Jack took the apron and folded it into a long thick strip, slipping his keys from his pocket into Della’s hand when he turned. She squeezed his fingers in understanding, and once he was trussed to Slacker Boy’s satisfaction, he let the kid guide him toward the door.

“You, lady. Keep the blindfold on and don’t move until we’re out of the garage and gone. Wait thirty minutes. I swear, if I see a single cop before then, your hero here gets a bullet in the head.”

P
ERRY SAT
at the table in her aunt’s kitchen, her head down on her crossed arms. She couldn’t bring herself to move. She didn’t think she could answer another single question. She would, of course, if anyone could come up with anything new and useful to ask.

But the repetition and circles weren’t getting them any closer to locating Della or finding out who took her and why. She hadn’t heard from Jack since he’d left to check out Dawn Taylor’s house, and since he still hadn’t given her his cell number, Perry couldn’t call.

Book had returned and was talking to the federal agents who’d arrived twenty minutes ago. His visit to the
Times-Picayune
offices had turned up the reporter in the middle of the interview she’d claimed to have scheduled when she’d flown out of Sugar Blues earlier in the day.