Night's Landing (32 page)

“Yes. He will. I know he will. So do you.”

She stood upright, the top of her head grazing the dirt and limestone ceiling of the cave. She couldn’t breathe. “You were there that day. With the snake. You saw.”

“Everything. You saved
him
, Sarah. You saved his life. He didn’t save you.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It
is
that simple. What happened that day isn’t what people believe happened.” Some of the friendly charm had returned to his voice, but he toppled back slightly, dizzy, undoubtedly, from the snakebite. He managed to keep his gun pointed at her. “Tell him about me. Tell him he has a brother. Once news of the pardon gets out, the press will be all over it. They’ll find out about me. I’ll be long gone, living in luxury, but the world will know who I am.”

Sarah forced herself not to let her thoughts leap ahead. “I’ll do as you ask. Just don’t harm Juliet or my parents.”

He seemed relieved. “All right, then. Go. Call the president. You have one hour.”

“What? Conroy—John Wesley, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to reach him in an hour!”

“An hour. If my man in Amsterdam doesn’t hear from me, he kills your parents and disappears.”

“You’re asking the impossible!”

“I’ll contact you. I’ll know when it’s done.” He smiled at her, as if she were a student he believed in who was having a crisis of confidence. “Trust me. President Poe will grant the pardon if you ask him. Don’t delay. Deputy Longstreet won’t last more than an hour where she is.”

Without warning, he bolted, disappearing around the far edge of the cave. He was agile, fit, and he knew the land.

Sarah crept gingerly out of the cave. She couldn’t hear him moving through the woods. A squirrel chattered at her from the branch of a cedar tree.

She had to find Nate, Ethan, get the police here, sort out what of Conroy’s story and demands was real, what was bluff—what was pure fantasy. She made her way through the woods toward the river and the path that led between her family home and the Poe house. Conroy—John Wesley—hadn’t shot her. He hadn’t beaten her up. Physically, she was fine.

You can do this.

She didn’t dare call out and risk Conroy hearing her, deciding she wasn’t cooperating. How could he have her parents? He was a loner—that was what had so worried Leola and Violet, the idea of a teenage boy out here living on his own, alone. Who could he have working for him in Amsterdam? Was he bluffing about having her parents?

Sarah stumbled on an exposed tree root but managed to keep her footing.

The snakebite would kill Conroy. She wasn’t sure if
he
had an hour. He had to get medical attention.

She pushed back the thoughts and kept moving toward the river, finally reaching the main path. She felt a burst of relief and started to run.

But she heard something and stopped, listening.

A mockingbird. More squirrels.

And something else. A muffled cry—or her imagination, turning the normal sounds of the woods into a human cry.

She was at the junction of the main trail that ran along the top of the bluff and a steep, narrow path, barely a foot wide, that curved down to a cave worn into the limestone above the river.

It had to be where Conroy had stashed Juliet.

Without hesitation, Sarah veered off onto the narrow path. One wrong move, and she’d be in the river. It was a vertical drop into the water, no real riverbank here. The path deteriorated into a foot-wide limestone ledge that led horizontally across the bluff to the cave, the same ledge where she’d come across Wes Poe that day with the snake.

The main path was twenty feet above her, the river twenty feet below her. If she fell, she didn’t know if she’d fare as well as Ethan had.

As she reached the mouth of the cave she heard the muffled yell again. The cave was only about four feet high and twelve feet wide, a dark, dank, claustrophobic slit in the limestone bluff. She and Rob used to like to sit on the edge and throw stones into the river, catch the occasional snake off guard and release it unharmed. But caves weren’t her favorite places.

With a quick intake of breath, she ducked and hurled herself inside.

Juliet Longstreet lay flat on the dirt and rock, in the shadows, her mouth gagged, her hands and feet bound.

Sarah scooted toward her. “You don’t have a bomb or something tied to you that’ll go off if I untie you?”

Juliet shook her head.

The bastard had used one of Ethan’s bandanna’s to gag her, so tightly the fabric cut into the sides of her mouth. Sarah carefully eased the gag down to her chin, until it hung loosely around Juliet’s neck. “Fucking snakes,” she spat. “Goddamn. There were two in here the size of Godzilla. I
hate
snakes. That bastard’s been bit. I hope it was a poisonous snake.”

“It was. I saw the bite. Are you okay? Were you bit?”

“I’m fine. Get these damn ropes off me, okay? Where’s Nate? He send you in here alone? What the hell’s the matter with him—”

“He’s with Ethan Brooker.”

“The gardener,” Juliet said sarcastically.

Sarah worked on the tight knots that bound Juliet’s wrists behind her. “Conroy thinks he’s the president’s brother. He used to live out here—he must have been a teenager at the time.”

“What, you two sit and chat awhile?”

The knots loosened slightly, but Sarah realized she wasn’t going to get them undone. She pulled and pushed on the rope, stretching it, noticing the marks on Juliet’s wrists that indicated she’d done the same. “He says he has my parents. He said you wouldn’t last here another hour—”

“I wouldn’t if another freaking snake slithered in here. Look, don’t be gentle, okay? Just get the fucking rope off me so I can go after this bastard.”

Using all her strength, Sarah clawed at the rope, felt it and her fingers digging into Juliet’s skin, but, finally, managed to get it below her thumb joints.

Juliet shook the last of the rope off and tackled the one on her feet. She was deathly pale, her lip swollen and bloody, her entire body shaking from pain and exertion. “What does this son of a bitch want?”

Sarah stemmed her rising sense of panic. “He wants me to get Nicholas Janssen a presidential pardon. He thinks Janssen will pay him five million dollars and the world will find out that he’s really the president’s brother.”

“Jesus Christ. The bite’ll slow him down.” Juliet freed her feet and gave a small, involuntary moan, then took a breath and turned to Sarah. “I’ll get him. I thought he was going to throw me in the river after he tied me up. I swear, I’d just as soon he did as be in here with the snakes.”

“Cottonmouths don’t nest the way you see in movies. When they’re born, they scatter. They’re very solitary.”

“Yeah.” She grinned feebly. “A solitary snake is plenty for me. Look, Fontaine let you go, right? He thinks you’re doing his bidding. You’re safe out there. So you go on, get to Nate, and fill him in. Otherwise, I’d have to stay and protect you, and I think we’ll all be better off if I go find this bastard.”

Sarah shook her head. “Juliet, listen to me. You’re in no condition—”

She crawled toward the mouth of the cave. “I’m never living this down. The guys at my apartment, this Brooker character, tied up and left to die in a goddamn cave.” She stuck her head out of the cave, into the sunlight, then rolled back. “Crap.”

“Is it Conroy?” Sarah asked, reaching for a loose rock, anything.

Juliet shook her head just as Ethan squatted at the mouth of the cave. “Nice little tea party you ladies are having, huh?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Juliet said. “Brooker, I’ve got a job to do. How did you get here? Why aren’t you drowned?”

“I’m a good swimmer. I picked up Sarah’s trail. The law’s right behind me.”

“I
am
the law.”

“You don’t look it. You look like a pretty lady who’s had the shit kicked out of her.”

She groaned in disgust.

“Juliet, Ethan’s right.” Crouching under the cave’s low ceiling, Sarah crept toward them. “Not about patronizing you, but about your condition. Ethan, tell me you have a SWAT team out there and not just—”

“No SWAT guys yet. Just Winter.” He settled back against the cave wall, his eyes glassy in the dim light. He had to be in almost as much pain as Juliet. “I’m not going to be much good to him with my head beat in. It wasn’t one of my smoother dives into the damn river.” He managed a grin. “Guess I’ll stay here and keep you womenfolk safe.”

Sarah suspected he was deliberately annoying them to cut through the tension, but Juliet gritted her teeth. “God, you’re even more obnoxious when you’re injured.” But some of her initial energy surge was going out of her. “Concussion?”

He shrugged. “Probably. I hit my head when you pushed me off the cliff.”

“I didn’t push you. I should have.”

Nate peered into the cave. “Juliet, Sarah—you two okay?”

Juliet nodded, but Sarah scooted to the edge of the cave. “Fontaine has my parents. He’ll tell me where they are if I get Nicholas Janssen a presidential pardon. If I don’t—if he doesn’t get word to his guy in an hour—my parents will be killed. I have an hour.”

Nate touched her hand. “We’ll get him, Sarah. Just hold on.”

She ducked out of the cave and stood up on the narrow ledge, pushing back a wave of vertigo at the steep drop to the river. “Conroy’s been bit by a cottonmouth. He’s not going to last long.” She could feel her heart racing. “He might not even last the hour.”

“Listen to me—”

“I have to find him before he dies and try to get through to him that I—” She placed a hand on the limestone layers to help keep her balance. “What he’s asking of me can’t be done. It’s impossible.”

“He could be bluffing,” Juliet said from within the cave.

But Sarah couldn’t wait any longer and moved as quickly as she could along the ledge. Nate could do what he wanted. Knock her into the river, follow her or stay put. It didn’t matter. She was going after Conroy Fontaine, aka John Wesley Poe.

She heard Nate behind her and thought, he could also shoot her.

“Keep going,” he said close to her ear. “I don’t want to end up in the damn river.”

“I know you’re worried Conroy’s hidden somewhere with a sniper rifle, but he’s in no condition—and he wants my cooperation.”

“Sarah.”

She nodded. “I’m going.”

Juliet figured that every nerve, muscle, vein and artery—every damn cell in her body—had been stripped raw. “If I don’t get out of this cave,” she told Brooker, “I’m going to go buggy. I have a cell phone in my coat pocket. My hands are too numb—can you get it?”

“No problem, Deputy.”

He crept toward her, his clothes soaked, his head swollen and bruised. He had to have a concussion. But she could see the ripple of muscles in his arms, sensed his overwhelming masculinity and felt an urge to carve out her own authority. He reached into her pocket and retrieved her cell phone.

She licked her cut lip. “I should be pissed at you for being such a retro chauvinist, but right now, I feel like such crap that I’m going to let the ‘pretty lady’ stuff go.”

He grinned at her, not moving back from her as quickly as he could have. “That was worrying me, you know,” he said lightly, clicking on her cell phone. “Battery looks good.”

“Any service out here?”

“Should be.”

She eyed him. “What are you, some kind of spook? Secret Service?”

But he didn’t answer, just handed her back her cell phone. She crawled out of the cave onto the narrow ledge, managing to sit with her legs dangling over the side. She stared at the readout screen but couldn’t make out the dial numbers. “My eyes aren’t working right. That bastard Fontaine—” She licked her lips again. “He smacked me on the back of the head before he left me in the cave. I think he knocked my eyeballs loose or something.”

Brooker moved in next to her. “What number you calling?”

Her head was throbbing. She struggled to remember the number Joe Collins had given her in the E.R., then recited it to Brooker. He dialed without a word and handed the phone back to her. “Winter talked to some FBI type on our way over here. He’s sending in the cavalry.”

Juliet had expected as much. One of the FBI agent’s flunkies answered. She told him to put on the big guy. She’d been smacked around one too many times today for anything approaching niceties.

Collins came on. “Where are you?”

“In a cave with snakes and some kind of spook who’s been playing the Dunnemore gardener. Listen to me. This Conroy Fontaine character had someone snatch the Dunnemores in Amsterdam. He says they’re his hostages.”

“We’re on it. We’ve got a team on the way to your location. Sit tight, will you?”

“I don’t have much choice. Nate and Sarah Dunnemore—”

Collins cut in again. “Winter says you found the guys who ambushed you this morning—dead.”

Juliet paused. “Don’t start with me, okay? I didn’t kill those men. Look, get word to the SWAT guys that Fontaine thinks he’s the president’s brother.”

“Jesus Christ,” Collins breathed.

“And he’s been bit by a cottonmouth. It’s bad. Sarah Dunnemore wants to find him before he dies.”

“Winter’s with her?”

“Yes.”

“All right. You know what to do.”

“Yeah. I’m getting out of this goddamn cave. Tell your guys I’ll meet them at the Poe house. That’s where the bodies are.”

She hung up and glanced at Ethan. “You’re armed?”

“Nine-millimeter Browning.”

“Not going to share, are you?”

He grinned. “Not a chance.”

She’d figured as much. “Well, are you game for getting out of here?”

“I had my fill of caves in Afghanistan. Let’s go.”

She grimaced at the river below her. “Fontaine told me the water’s forty feet deep here. Strong current. I’m not the best swimmer.”

“Relax.” Brooker grasped the rock at the top of the cave and pulled himself to his feet, glancing down at her with a wink. “It doesn’t matter if it’s forty feet deep. You can drown in six feet of water.”

Nate appreciated Sarah’s spirit and determination and understood her fear for her parents, but he wasn’t going to drag her through the woods to look for a killer. They were almost to the Poe house. When they got there, they’d wait for the SWAT guys. FBI, USMS Special Operations, Secret Service, local guys—whoever Joe Collins managed to get in there could go find Conroy Fontaine. For all Nate knew, they could be there now.