Hot Pursuit (23 page)

“All right, but—”

A loud crack echoed from the darkening
bayou.

“Damn rednecks.” Chris glowered. “They better
not come around shooting birds tomorrow night when the reception’s
going on.”

Cold fear sliced down Matt’s spine. It could
be Cajuns out hunting in the bayou, but there were other
possibilities as well. Possibilities he couldn’t ignore.

“I gotta run.” He gave his sister a hasty
kiss on the cheek and strolled down the center aisle, whistling as
if he hadn’t a care in the world.

But once he passed out of sight of the
gardens, he broke into a run.

EVIE WAS GONE. MATT BLAZED through the rooms,
methodically checking for signs of her, but she wasn’t anywhere.
Two cakes sat on the counter and the house smelled like chocolate.
The front door had been locked, but the back door was open.

Fear turned his gut to ice. He sprinted for
the safe he knew his father kept behind the Early American
landscape in the study. He whipped the painting away and turned the
dial. The combination hadn’t changed in years and he was counting
on that still being the case. After the third click, he wrenched
open the door and reached for the pistol that’d always been
inside.

The safe was empty. Fine time for the old man
to remove it.

Matt swore again and took off for the back
veranda. He’d have to make do with a knife and years of intensive
combat training. A litany of all his fuck ups ran through his
brain.

He should have left the rehearsal sooner. He
shouldn’t have trusted that she would be fine, no matter that she
was tough and smart. He should have protected her.

He slipped into the backyard, scanning the
bayou in either direction. If a boat had passed by, it wasn’t
recent. There was no wake, no disturbance to indicate anyone had
been here. His next option was to head for town and see if he could
get a lead on her. Whoever had taken her couldn’t have gotten far,
whether by boat or car.

And someone had to have taken her. Evie
wouldn’t have left without telling him. He was certain of it. He
had to get it together and think like the machine he’d been trained
to be.

Or he could lose her for good.

Matt bounded up the steps and back into the
house, pulling up short when he stepped over the threshold.

Evie looked up from where she was sitting at
the island and shot him a weak smile. “They haven’t called yet. I’m
getting worried.”

She twirled her phone on the marble counter,
lines of sadness and worry bracketing her mouth.

Matt crossed the distance in two strides and
crushed his mouth down on hers. She gasped, clutching him. Heat and
want spiraled deep in his belly and made him long to strip her and
lay her out on the marble island while he took his fill of her. His
dick started to harden and he let her go abruptly, struggling to
find his center.
Focus, goddamn you.

She looked stunned. And aroused. Her pink
lips glistened. Her chest rose and fell a little faster than usual,
her skin flushing. God, he wanted to taste her. All of her. One
night wasn’t nearly enough.

“What was that about?” She sounded as
breathless as he felt.

“Where have you been?” He was proud of how
calm he sounded.

“In the garage. I was cleaning up the mess we
made.”

The garage. Shit. He hadn’t looked in there.
And why not?
Another indication he was losing his touch.
When he hadn’t found her in the house, he’d panicked. The garage
had been the furthest thing from his mind.

“Did you hear anything? Any noise?”

She frowned. “No. Did something happen?”

Matt shoved a hand through his hair. “No,
nothing.” He’d heard gunshots. Chris heard them too. Maybe it was
someone shooting birds, like she said. Or hunting gators, though it
was out of season. Anything was possible around here. He wasn’t
going to mention it to Evie and spook her, though.

“Why haven’t they called?” Frustration was
evident in her voice. “It makes no sense. Unless they’ve hurt
Sarah.”

Matt shook his head. “I’m not sure, but we
can’t think like that. Sarah is their leverage to get what they
want. Hurting her would be foolish.”

At that moment, the phone vibrated across the
marble. Evie gasped and looked up at him. Matt nodded.

She grabbed it, her expression collapsing.
“It’s another text message.”

“What does it say?”

She scrolled down, and he found himself
wishing she had a smartphone so she could see the messages easier.
“Oh my God, it’s them. Charlie’s. Ten p.m. Bring the files.” She
met his gaze. “Files?”

Matt swore. “It’s what I thought. We’re
looking for flash memory—a thumb drive or a media card—or even a
key card.”

She looked perplexed. “I don’t have a thumb
drive or a flash memory card. All the key cards I had went with the
restaurant, and they were turned over with everything else. I don’t
even have a computer anymore. I had to hock it for gas money.”

Matt didn’t like the sound of that, but then
he figured West probably wouldn’t have put the files somewhere as
obvious as her computer. Too much danger she’d discover them. “He
must have left something, Evie. Or at least they think he did. Do
you have a camera? Maybe he put the info on the media card that
goes there.”

She looked crestfallen. “Even if he did, I
lost the camera a couple of months ago. I left it on a table in a
restaurant, and when I went back, it was gone. It wasn’t a good
camera, so I figured I’d just have to buy a new one.”

Shit. “But David would’ve thought you have
the card, so maybe that’s the answer.”

“So what do we do now?”

He stared over her head, thinking. “We need a
media card. I’ll get Billy to build a mock-up of files we can
download onto a blank. It might buy us enough time to get
Sarah.”

“Who’s Billy?”

He’d called Billy by his team name earlier.
“The Kid. He’s a whiz with computers. He can make a file
complicated enough to look real. It must be accounting files or
business records for Rivera’s illegal activities that’ve got the
guy so worked up. Billy can incorporate enough real information to
fool our kidnappers… for a short while at least.”

Or so he hoped. If Rivera’s people traveled
with a computer expert in the group, it wouldn’t work. If Rivera
had simply sent enforcers, that was another story. Then Matt had a
good chance of pulling it off.

“Where do we get a blank card?”

“I’m hoping there’s one up at the house. The
computer’s there anyway, so if we’re lucky this’ll be a quick
trip.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s nearly eight thirty, so we
have a little time.”

“And if you can’t find one?”

“We’ll have to go shopping.”

Evie’s smile was more genuine this time.
“You’re really amazing, you know that?”

Her hand settled on his arm, stroked his
skin, and left a wash of sensation trailing in its wake.

“I’m just doing my job, Evie.”

“No.” Her eyes were shining. “It’s more than
that.” He started to protest, started to stop her before she
confessed she’d convinced herself he was in love with her and
happy-ever-after was right around the corner, but what she said
wasn’t anything remotely like he expected. “You care about people,
Matt. You can’t let anyone suffer if you think you can change
it.”

His chest felt tight. “It’s what I’ve been
trained to do. You’d do the same thing if you were me.”

“No, I don’t think I would.” She seemed
troubled, but she looked away and he thought he might have imagined
it.

“Let’s get up to the house.” He squeezed her
hand to reassure her. “We’ve got work to do.”

She snapped him a salute. “Aye, aye,
Captain.”

Matt laughed.

* * *

Sarah sucked back tears. It didn’t help.
Crying only made her head hurt worse. But the cabin was dark and
she was scared. The sounds of the swamp were deafening. Frogs,
whippoorwills, and cicadas, among other things, sang night songs
that penetrated the paper-thin walls.

Brianna and Julian had left over an hour ago.
They hadn’t said where they were going, when they’d be back, or
even turned on a light. And, aside from a fast-food burger earlier,
they hadn’t fed her in hours.

She wasn’t cold, but she was cramped and
hungry. And her freaking head hurt like it’d never hurt before. She
screamed, just in case a fisherman was out there in another cabin.
Or passing by. Someone could be frog gigging or night fishing. The
swamp at night was no big deal to some of these old Cajuns who’d
lived in it their whole lives. It wasn’t Sarah’s favorite place to
be, but at least she was inside four walls. No gator was climbing
the steps and opening the door to come eat her.

She yanked the cuff against the iron
headboard as if she could somehow free herself by sheer strength
alone. She knew she couldn’t. The only thing she accomplished was
rubbing her wrist raw. Her skin felt wet and sticky as something
oozed down to her elbow. She realized with a jolt that she’d made
herself bleed. What kind of night creature might smell the blood
and come to get her out here?

Sarah strained her ears against the noise,
finally heard the faint sputter of a motor coming closer. She had
to save her breath in order to yell when the boat was passing in
front of the cabin. She waited, her heart pounding so hard she
thought she’d have a heart attack. The throbbing in her head kept
time with her heart and her empty stomach churned.

The boat drew closer and the motor cut. Fresh
tears welled up. It was Brianna and Julian returning then, not a
fisherman. A few moments later, she heard voices. Male and female.
Then the door swung open and light from a lantern flooded the
cabin. Sarah blinked as the pale beam stabbed into her irises.

“So that’s her then?” The man who spoke was
someone new. She couldn’t see him behind the lantern light but he
didn’t sound like Julian or the other guy from last night.

Brianna sounded smug. “Yep. We picked her up
hitchhiking.”

Sarah’s tongue burned with the urge to
contradict the woman, but she kept her mouth shut. She hadn’t been
hitchhiking at all. She’d been walking into town and she’d been
dumb enough to get into the car because Brianna claimed to know
Evie.

“Stroke of luck,” the man said. “Amazing. And
your luck’s just gotten better now that you’re working with
me.”

“I’m counting on you. You better not fuck
this up or we’re both dead.”

The man laughed. “You can hardly turn back
now, can you, doll? You made your choice.”

“Don’t make me regret it.”

“You won’t. Soon as we get those files, we’ll
be safe. And rich.”

“Then let’s go get them.”

The light disappeared behind the closed door.
Sarah shifted until she was lying on her side with her arm
stretched above her head. She was tired of crying, tired of
yelling, tired of hurting. The motor fired up and sputtered into
the night.

* * *

“We better get back to the guesthouse.” Matt
logged off the computer and popped the media card out of the
slot.

Evie got to her feet and waited for him to
shut everything down. They had files to trade, though she didn’t
know how they were going to fool the kidnappers into believing this
was the information they wanted. How would anyone verify it? And
when would they be satisfied enough to turn Sarah over?

Matt said they had to take it one problem at
a time. He seemed to have a plan, but she didn’t know what it
entailed beyond getting to Charlie’s and making contact with these
guys.

She followed him through the house. She’d
always loved Reynier’s Retreat. Timeworn oak floors and soaring
fifteen-foot walls, decorated in plaster friezes, were all original
to the house. Priceless works of art decorated the walls. Antique
couches dressed in pale silk perched on top of intricate oriental
carpets. A grand piano, made of burled walnut, sat in one corner of
the front parlor.

A lush painting of the latest Mrs. Girard
hung over the fireplace. Misty Lee had impossibly large breasts and
the skinniest waist Evie had ever seen. She was draped in a flowing
fabric that clung to her many curves and left little to the
imagination. No doubt this was the sexiest painting ever to grace
the mansion’s antebellum walls.

The polished Japanese secretary desk pulled
Evie up short. It hadn’t been here when she’d been a kid. She
touched it with a finger, traced one of the Asian scenes painted on
its surface. Family photos decorated the open desk. There was one
of Matt in his uniform. He looked much younger, and she realized it
must be a photo from his days at West Point.

He drew up between the ten-foot-high pocket
doors and waited. “Misty Lee has done a great job with the decor,
huh? She kept all the original pieces, but she’s put her stamp on
it.”

Evie remembered the old house had always been
elegant. But it had also been a bit more sedate back when Matt’s
mother had been alive. Probably because she was sick for so
long.

“It’s an amazing house. Always has been.”

She’d spent her childhood in a
twelve-hundred-square-foot cottage in what was then the poorer
section of town. Since the neighborhood was declared historic a few
years ago, several new people had moved in and renovated their
properties. Mama had followed the trend, and now her home was a
cute bungalow with all the modern conveniences and a gorgeous plot
of land. But nothing in Rochambeau compared to Reynier’s
Retreat.

His expression clouded. “Yeah, I guess it
is.”

He looked sad and Evie walked over to touch
his arm. “What’s wrong?”

“After my mother died, it didn’t seem the
same.” He let his gaze travel the room. “I love what Misty Lee has
done. I even wish my mama could see it. I think she’d approve.”