Night's Landing (34 page)

“Did he ever ask you not to correct it?”

“Never. Not once. I think if I hadn’t been there, he’d have crawled into the cave and died. He wouldn’t have jumped in the river and committed suicide, but he would have seen the snake as confirmation of all he’d thought and doubted about himself that day. I don’t mind how the story’s been told. Wes understands what it’s like to be at rock bottom. He’s brought that into his public service. His political enemies would say he was a grown man saved by a seventeen-year-old girl, but the truth is far more complicated.”

“He’d never have granted Janssen a pardon on your say-so.”

It was a statement, but Sarah shook her head. “Never. He took an oath. He just wouldn’t—no, never. That Conroy—John Wesley—believed he would was a fantasy on his part.”

Nate took another swallow of tea. “This tea punch is growing on me. I still think it could use a pound less of sugar.”

“Are you drinking out of my glass?”

He leaned toward her, skimmed his knuckles across her cheek. “If this place wasn’t crawling with feds and you hadn’t just been bit by a cottonmouth, I’d be carrying you upstairs right now and drinking—”

“You’re determined to embarrass me, aren’t you?”

“Uh-uh.” He kissed her on her forehead. “Just to make you smile.”

The Dutch authorities released the Dunnemores into the protective custody of a deputy U.S. marshal sent in specifically for the task, who in turn not only put them on a plane but sat next to them for the duration of their flight to New York.

Juliet figured it was the only way to get them to their kids without another damn drama.

She inched her way out to the porch after she’d talked her E.R. doctors out of sticking her in a Nashville hospital and got a ride back to Night’s Landing from a very cute FBI agent with a southern accent.

She hurt all over. She figured she’d hurt until she was a hundred.

Sarah was still in her rocking chair. Nate had joined a million other feds down at Ethan’s cottage. They’d already gone through the fishing cabin that Conroy Fontaine had rented. Apparently he’d left behind a considerable amount of damning information on Nicholas Janssen, who was, allegedly, involved in illegal arms trading, extortion, murder, fraud—tax evasion was the least of his misdeeds.

“I thought you were being admitted to the hospital,” Sarah said.

Juliet gave her a crooked smile. “I had to threaten to shoot my doctor to keep him from strapping me to a stretcher. I hate hospitals.”

“More than most people?”

“Yeah. Probably.” She changed the subject. “Did I see you and Deputy Winter smooching out here?”

Sarah sighed, looking smart and pretty and not blushing even a little. “Maybe it’s the snakebite, but I think I’m falling for him.”

Juliet grinned. “It’s the snakebite.” She glanced out at the cottage and wondered where Ethan Brooker was now. “I knew he’d take off.”

“Ethan? Why didn’t you stop him?”

“He was the one with the nine-millimeter.”

Sarah put her feet up on the porch rail. “I hope someone gets to him before he does something he regrets.”

“Like kill Nicholas Janssen? I’m not sure he’d regret it.” Juliet eased herself slowly, painfully, onto a cushioned chair. “Joe Collins read me the riot act for not stopping him. Like I didn’t have enough to do with two dead bodies, the snakes, you in the river, Nate going Tarzan on us, this Conroy Fontaine character foaming at the mouth.”

“Collins is hard on you because he respects you.”

“He’s hard on me because he’s a prick.”

Sarah smiled. “And I suppose you told him that?”

Juliet realized that she’d come to like Dr. Dunnemore. “Yeah, as a matter of fact.”

“Ethan’s going after Janssen,” Sarah said.

Juliet nodded. “That must have been some woman he lost.”

Janssen cocooned himself in the fishy, salty-smelling woolen blanket and tried to stay warm deep in the bowels of the ancient trawler that was taking him to safety. Away from luxury, away from hope. He hadn’t slept in hours, because when he did, he dreamed of his mother crying for him on her deathbed, of Betsy Dunnemore smiling at him at eighteen and making his heart melt. He’d let them both down.

John Wesley Poe.

Conroy Fontaine.

He was the psycho who’d interfered in his life and shot the marshals in Central Park. Who’d tried to extort five million dollars from him for a pardon that was even more of a fantasy—a flight of fancy—than Janssen’s own dream of getting Betsy Dunnemore to intervene with the president on his behalf.

Conroy had weaseled his way into Janssen’s life last fall and learned everything about him.

No, not everything. Too much, certainly, but not everything.

Not the location of his safe houses. Not his backup plans once he knew there was little hope for a simple conviction on tax evasion charges.

Five years in prison? He’d be lucky now to avoid the death penalty.

Charlene Brooker, lowly army intelligence officer, had been pulling at the thread that would unravel everything and set him up for big trouble. Her meeting with Betsy—beautiful Betsy—was the last straw for Janssen.

But it was Conroy Fontaine with his crazy idea that he was the president’s half brother who’d destroyed the careful life Nicholas had constructed for himself, all in an attempt to extort money from him for a pardon and manipulate the president of the United States into acknowledging him as his brother.

The crazy fuck.

Now the authorities apparently had the concrete information they needed to turn the suspicions of a murdered military intelligence officer into a full-blown investigation of all his activities.

He had become one of the most wanted criminals in the world.

But he was prepared. He had a plan for just such a worst-case scenario.

He would survive. He’d always survived.

The Dutch police, the Swiss police, U.S. law enforcement, Interpol—they all wanted his scalp. But at least with them, even with all he’d done, it was professional, not personal. They would capture him and bring him to trial. They wouldn’t slit his throat in the night.

With Ethan Brooker, it was different. It was very personal.

The hatch creaked open. “Sir?”

“What is it?” Janssen asked irritably.

“I have news of the man you wanted me to—”

Brooker. “Yes, what?”

“The FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service want him for questioning in that mess that happened in Tennessee. He’s disappeared.”

Just as I feared.

Janssen had two choices. One, he could let Ethan Brooker come to him. Two, he could get to Ethan Brooker before Brooker got to him.

He pulled the blanket over him, shivering on the cold, skinny mat under him.

Those weren’t any choices at all.

The Dunnemores reminded Nate of wizards. Eccentric, dramatic, full of secrets and magic spells, but fun and a bit removed from lesser mortals. It wasn’t that they didn’t make mistakes or were arrogant—they were kind, funny, generous and intelligent. And, despite their oddities as parents, they loved their twin son and daughter. Nate saw that when they finally arrived in New York five days after their son was shot in Central Park, one day after their daughter almost got herself killed in Night’s Landing.

He hadn’t flown up specifically for the occasion. He’d simply realized he couldn’t hang around in Night’s Landing and had decided to return to New York, his apartment, his work, his life.

Both Betsy and Stuart Dunnemore had thanked him profoundly for everything he’d done, but all he could think of was the night he’d made love to their daughter in their kitchen.

He didn’t want to be thanked for anything.

He thought of his own family—Gus and his egg lady and his hole-digging dog, his sister Antonia and her senator husband, his sister Carine and her PJ husband. They were a different kind of family. Direct, argumentative, loud. Not much going on beneath the surface, not many secrets, except, these days, for the occasional de-ranged killer. It wasn’t subterranean stuff that got them into trouble—it was their keen sense of independence, their reluctance to rely on anyone but themselves.

Carine had learned better, Antonia had learned better.

Nate wondered if he ever would.

He walked down the hospital corridor with Rob, markedly improved but still with a long way to go. The Dunnemores were off to some health-food store to stock up on vitamins and herbs to aid in his recovery. He was getting out of the hospital in a day or two. In another few days, he could fly down to Night’s Landing. “Couldn’t you have told them Sarah’s snakebite wasn’t nonvenomous? Then they’d have to fly down there to see her.”

“She’s cooking casseroles and putting them in the freezer.”

“She’s
alone
.”

“Not that alone. She’s got the Secret Service camped out in the back yard.”

President John Wesley Poe was coming to Night’s Landing.

And so were the Dunnemores, just not soon enough to suit their only son. Sarah had urged them to stay with her brother at least until he was out of the hospital and give her a chance to get the house in order.

Wizards.

“I should have stayed on Conroy Fontaine,” Rob said. “I should have pushed harder. And Ethan Brooker. Nicholas Janssen. They were under my nose.”

“We’ll get Janssen. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Before Brooker does?”

“I hope so. Brooker’s all right. I’d hate to see him go down for taking out that murderous bastard.” Nate tried to smile. “Something about Longstreet seemed to get to him. Maybe he’s not so far gone in wanting revenge that he can’t make it back.”

“I knew my parents had hired him. I should have—”

“It worked out, Rob. We all got out of this thing alive.”

“No thanks to me.”

“Don’t do it to yourself. I was within yards of your sister when that sick bastard grabbed her. I was within
inches
when he threw the snake at her.” Nate could feel his pulse begin to race and knew he had to stop or he’d be no good to Rob, never mind himself. “Your damn tulips might have saved my life. Fontaine would have had a better shot if we’d stayed on Central Park South.”

“That’s something, anyway. I don’t know when I’ll be back on the job.” Rob shuffled another few steps. “Or if.”

“Just concentrate on getting well.”

He glanced at Nate with gray eyes that were so like his sister’s. “You?”

“It’s time I went home.”

Wes Poe arrived in Night’s Landing two days after Rob had made it home himself.

Except for the presence of the Secret Service, nothing had changed.

Visibly, at least. As he walked down to the dock and stared into the coppery water, Wes could feel the evil that had lurked here. He could taste the bitterness of how close he’d come to losing both Sarah and Rob.

He didn’t even remember Nicholas Janssen from Vanderbilt.

Sarah joined him on the dock. He smiled at her, saw that the snakebite had almost healed. “You always get in trouble when you’re between projects. Leola and Violet have been one huge, overarching project for you for a long time, but you broke it up into smaller projects—and every time you finished one, you’d get yourself into some sort of mess before you got started on the next one.”

“This was a big mess.”

“Nate Winter’s accepted a promotion to marshals’ headquarters in Arlington. He starts in a couple of weeks.”

He thought she squirmed, but she managed a quick smile. “Now, why do you think that’d interest me?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Because you’re in love with him.”

“I barely know him.”

“Sometimes you fall in love with someone first. Then you get to know them. It happened that way with Ev and me.”

“She’s a wonderful woman, Wes.”

Ev hadn’t come to Night’s Landing with him. This was his visit, his day of reckoning. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I think—” He slipped an arm over Sarah’s slender shoulders. “You and the cottonmouths are a big story around here. All over the country. I’m going to set the record straight on what happened out here fourteen years ago. I’m going to tell people what really happened that day.”

“Wes—”

“I should never have let it stand that I was the hero—that I’d been bit by a poisonous snake saving your life.” He squeezed her, holding her close. “I was bit by a poisonous snake. But you’re the one who saved a life that day. Mine.”

“You don’t know what you’d have done.”

“I wouldn’t have gotten medical attention in time. That I know.” He glanced at her. “You told our Deputy Winter?”

She nodded.

“That’s good. That’s very good, Sarah. You trust him.”

“I trust a lot of people.”

“But you don’t let them in, do you? You and Rob are so accustomed to being on your own, emotionally, physically. But you let Nate Winter in.” He didn’t wait for her to protest and argue and analyze, go Dunnemore and Ph.D. on him. “They tell me he’s solid. I wouldn’t want anything else for you. I remember that watery-eyed academic you brought home a few years ago—you rolled over him in two seconds flat. You need a man with backbone.”

“Wes! That was a perfectly nice man.”

“I’m sure he was.”

“Listen to those stereotypes. Never mind who saved whom from the water moccasin all those years ago, the media would skewer you for something like ‘watery-eyed academic.’”

He grinned at her. “I’m not making generalizations about every academic. I’m talking about you and this—what was he?”

“A well-respected medieval scholar.”

“Just what you thought you were looking for, hmm? I don’t think so. Your parents are worried Rob’s the throwback to Dunnemores of old. He probably is, but you—you are, too, Sarah, with a lot of Granny Dunnemore thrown in. You’re full of adventure, curiosity, drive. You hate being bored. Your father’s the same, but he managed to be a Dunnemore in a way that didn’t upset Granny after all she’d lost.”