No Limits (28 page)

He could jog as fast as she was driving, and moved at a steady pace, sticking to what he gauged to be her blind spot. Even so, he kept under the cover of the brush, taking no chance of being seen.

There was only one reason he could think of for Lorna to have driven all the way to the library in Abbeville, gone inside for less than ten minutes, then driven out to the middle of nowhere without noticing he was behind her the entire way. Bear was waiting.

He’d obviously ordered Lorna to the library for something. Simon couldn’t think the old man was out here wanting a book. It had to be a document, a copy of a record of… what?

The only thing that came to mind, that kept coming to mind, prodding and insistent, was the information King had found about the treasure on Le Hasard. Simon couldn’t believe it, but at this point the why of Bear wanting something didn’t matter. All that mattered was the what Lorna had brought. Seeing movement up ahead of the truck as it slowed, he ducked low behind a thick growth of foliage.

“It’s about goddamn time, Lorna,” Bear said, jerking open her door before she’d come to a complete stop.

“It’s a long round-trip, Baby Bear.” She reached back, grabbed her satchel. Simon hadn’t noticed the bulk when she’d clutched it to her chest as she’d run to her truck. Maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe it was a book. One she’d had to keep hidden. One she’d stolen. But why?

He went back to thinking of documents and records. What in the hell was Bear doing?

What could he possibly need from the library that he couldn’t get anywhere else?

Bear grabbed Lorna’s satchel, dug inside for what looked to Simon like a Bible, and tossed her bag to the ground.

“Hey, B.B. That’s my best Dooney and Bourke.”

“I don’t care if it’s sewn from the Shroud of Turin.” He turned and headed back toward the shack, leaving Lorna to retrieve the satchel and scurry after him.

“Wait. Baby Bear, wait.”

God, what a whiner. Simon wondered how any woman could allow herself to become so pathetic, so controlled and dependent, then realized whom he was looking at, and who her controller was.

He shook off the distraction and crept closer, keeping low to the ground, his steps steady, stealthy, and soft. He figured the sound of the vehicles driving up had driven away the birds in the area, but he didn’t want to chance startling any that might stil
l
be around into flight.

Using first King’s truck, then Bear’s Scout for cover, he moved into position where he could see the front of the shack. Lorna stood in the doorway. Bear was inside, as he hoped were Micky and King and Lisa.

He could hear Bear talking, his words directed at someone other than Lorna, and when she shifted to the right, Simon could make out the shape of a body on the ground. He saw what looked like a piece of white clothing, which would most likely make the body King’s.

Except the hulking shape he was seeing appeared too large to be just his cousin, meaning he was looking at more than one body. He was looking at either Lisa or Micky, and since he knew for certain only one of the two was here…

Goddamn.

God fucking damn.

He couldn’t panic. Even if he couldn’t slow the blastoff speed of his pulse, he couldn’t panic. Number-one rule. He had to assess the situation calmly, make his move—if there was one to make—based on what he knew.

Not what he hoped.

Not what he guessed.

Not on emotion.

Lorna was an easy mark. He wrote her off. He had yet to see a weapon, but he couldn’t think of any other reason King was unmoving on the ground. The other body…it was too dark for him to see motion of any kind.

Bear was his objective. That was it.

He reached for his Smith & Wesson, released the safety, returned to the rear of Bear’s Scout. He could cover the area from there to the back wall of the shack in seconds, scope out the other side, and make for the front. Kick out Lorna’s legs, send her to the ground. Pivot on Bear and aim to shoot. To kill if he had to.

Gun at the ready, he pul
l
ed in a deep breath—only to be stopped by a shout and Lorna’s cry. A scuffle. Banging. A weak female voice. Silence. He breathed. In and out. In and out. Waited. Waited. Sweat sizzled down his spine. Dripped into his eyes. And still he waited, maintained his position, strained to hear more.

Finally it came. The sound. Not a voice, but footsteps, heavy, in no hurry at all. Simon crouched low and slipped from the Scout to King’s truck, peering through the windshield from the passenger’s open door.

Bear didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead. He jerked at the Scout’s tailgate, grabbed a gas can from the vehicle, and returned to the shack. He started at the back, pouring the fuel along the base of the wall.

Simon moved before it was too late, crossing the open space at a full-out sprint. He was at Bear’s back, his gun behind the other man’s ear, before he had straightened from his task.

“You’ve got a thing for setting fires, don’t you, boo?” Simon grabbed the can and tossed it away, patted down Bear’s pockets, found a book of matches and a lighter.

“Hedging your bets?”

Bear smirked. “Why do you think I sent Lorna to suck your dick twenty years ago? A smart man always does.”

Simon spun him around. “Goes to show that you are one dumb ass. Let’s go.”

Forty

“I cannot believe you’re here,” Lisa said to Micky while leaning into Terrill’s body, his arms wrapped around her waist, her hands on his hands, her voice weak and scratchy but so full of joy. “I mean, I am thril
l
ed that you are, but it’s just so impossible. Want to know the first thing I thought after realizing it was you?”

“What?” Micky asked, grinning.

“Your father is going to kil
l
you as soon as Greta finishes doing you in.”

Oh, it felt good to laugh. “I hope that wasn’t the first thing you thought.”

“Yeah, we
l
l , it was the first thing I thought after I realized we weren’t going to die together.”

It had been a pretty hairy scene, Micky had to admit. And it was something Simon did all the time, stepping into the unknown, putting himself into dangers far worse than what had happened today. But then so much more could have happened, and wasn’t that what he was afraid of? Why he wanted to send her away?

She looked over at him now, where he was talking to the other deputy sheriff, the parish sheriff himself, and two officers from the Louisiana State Police. How any of them had found this place in the back of beyond boggled the mind. Even more boggling was how lucky she, Lisa, and King had been that Simon had shown up when he had. He’d been too late to save Lorna. Bear had broken her neck. He hadn’t wanted the rest of them to get off so easily, he’d said. But Lorna had deserved that consideration.

No, Bear had wanted the crime to be so horrific that more attention would be paid to the gory details and the loss of a celebrity than to hunting down the criminal. He knew that that’s what the public would remember, that Michelina Ferrer had died in a fire, an excruciating, disfiguring death.

Thinking about it now, she shuddered, and then she caught Simon looking her way. The words he was speaking were for the ears of law enforcement, but his eyes were all for her. He gave her a small shake of his head, inhaled deeply, and pressed a fist to the center of his chest.

She read relief in the expression, saw even more, an e
motion deeper and incredibly tell
ing in his eyes. She wanted to get him alone, crawl all over him, touch his nose and his elbows and the soles of his feet. She had to know that he was al
l
right. That he was hers. Funny, when she was the one who’d been hog-tied and manhandled, when she was the one who’d thought she was going to die. The one who had wanted to see him one last time if she had truly met her fate.

“Hey, Micky,” Lisa said.

“Yeah?”

“I gotta know.”

“What?”

“What are you doing roaming the swamps with that outlaw Kingdom Trahan? I mean, I know you were looking for me, but with King?”

Micky pulled her gaze from Simon, gave her attention to her friend. Her entire face felt as if it were smiling. “Do you know how good it is to see you? All in one piece at that?”

“Stop avoiding. Answer.”

“And do it so I can get my wife out of here and to the hospital,” Terril said, as the sound of an ambulance siren could finally be heard.

He was right. Lisa was dehydrated, tired, weak, and so deathly wan, and so Micky did.

“King’s not so bad. At least now that he’s got his cousin to keep him in line.”

Lisa’s eyes twinkled as she grinned. “I can’t believe you of all people are the one taming the infamous Simon Baptiste.”

“You’ve heard of him?”

Lisa winked. “
Chère
, everyone in Bayou Allain knows of Simon Baptiste. Even those of us new to the swamp.”

Before Micky could respond one of the officers assigned to guarding Bear yelled,

“Fire!” hell breaking loose as all heads turned to see flames licking up the walls of the shack—the shack where they were holding the judge while they took all the witnesses’

statements.

No one stopped to question how he’d started the fire while in handcuffs, though Micky assumed he’d knocked over the lantern. They just ran. Terrill scooped Lisa up in his arms. Micky followed, seconds later feeling Simon at her back. King and the officers brought up the rear.

No one ran far, the whole group stopping when it became evident that there was no longer anything volatile inside to explode—or no chance of the person who’d set it surviving the blaze.

Forty-one

helle hadn’t really planned to say her good-byes to King in front of an audience Sunday morning, but she couldn’t deny the sweep of relief she felt at driving up and finding one waiting.

That was the thing about these long dirt roads. Sneaking up on people was out of the question. Not that she’d ever been able to sneak up on King the way he’d done to her. Strange, that was one of the things about him she was going to miss the most. She didn’t want to think about missing the sex. Their affair—and that’s all it had been really, all any of her relationships had ever been—had held such promise for more. She’d felt things for him she’d never felt for a man. What she’d felt was love, felt, too, that as strong as it was, he surely returned more than her passion. She’d assumed wrong, put feelings into his heart instead of taking him at his word that he had nothing to offer. The beer bottle on the back porch had been the last straw. She’d given him anything he wanted. He’d hidden everything from her. That was what she couldn’t handle, seeing what she had in his eyes, the emotion that contradicted the words he had spoken. He did have something to give her. He just hadn’t yet let himself do it. She pulled her car to a stop alongside his truck. It took a really deep breath for her to climb out, one that left her light-headed. When she looked up again, Simon and Micky were gone. Only King was there, his arms crossed over his chest, his backside braced against the edge of the porch, his booted feet crossed at the ankle. A big white bandage covered one side of his forehead. So typical. Too tough to admit he needed more care and observation than what he could get with tape and gauze. She wondered if this time he’d sat still for the stitches.

Then she started to sweat. “Did I scare off Micky and Simon?”

King gave her that trademark grin of his, al
l
wicked and knowing and raw. “I’m the scary one, chère. You ought to know that by now.”

The scariest part was that she did. She swallowed, walked as close as she dared—which sti
l
l left five feet between them—and kept her hands in the pockets of her skirt so he wouldn’t see them shake. “Were they afraid I was going to get al
l
weepy saying good-bye?”

“Is that what you came to do?”

Which one was he asking? Was she going to weep, or going to say good-bye? “I’m assuming they’ll be heading home soon. I wasn’t sure if I’d get another chance to see them.”

“To see them before they left? Or before you left?”

He just stood there looking at her, his comments goading her to admit she was walking away from Bayou Allain, walking away from him—even though it was something he already knew.

“I have to go.”

She swung her hands back and forth, her skirt swirling around her ankles. She thought of how many times he’d found his way beneath the yards of fabric she wore, either pushing them up or pulling them down. She really had to stop her thoughts from drifting.

“I’m surprised it took you this long to figure it out.”

Now he was making her mad. Was he doing it on purpose? “Figure out what exactly?

That I don’t fit in? That I’m not wanted?”

“Is that what you’ve felt here? Unwanted? And here I thought I was wanting you plenty.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What then,
chère
? Explain it.”