Sting (8 page)

“You've had twelve hours or more to negotiate a new deal with him. In the meantime, you're stuck with mouthy me here in these swell surroundings.” She pointed out a rip in the tin roof that looked like it had been made with an old-fashioned can opener. “Aren't you anxious to get to Mexico and that cerveza? What's holding you back?”

He scooped the last of the food from the can, dropped the spoon into it, and set it on the floor. He pulled the bandana from his pocket and wiped his mouth and hands, then stretched his legs out in front of him, folded his arms over his midriff, and crossed his ankles.

She noticed that the soles of his cowboy boots had seen a lot of wear. They'd been lived in. Like his face.

“You love your brother?”

The unexpected question snapped her gaze back up to his. “Why do you ask?”

“Just answer me.”

“Of course I love him. He's my brother.”

“He's a double-crossing chickenshit.”

Reacting as though he'd slapped her, she retorted, “What do you know about Josh, about anything?”

“Even a guy like me watches TV every now and again.”

“Triple-X pay-per-view.”

“Sometimes I catch the news. What I didn't know about the Panella case, Mickey filled in yesterday while we were trailing you.”

“Trailing me?”

“We followed you around town. Waited while you got your manicure. Parked down the street from your house.”

“Spying on me.”

“Not so much spying as plotting how we were gonna…you know.”

“You were formulating plan A. What
was
plan A?”

“Doesn't matter. It got scrubbed. Back to your brother—what was life like when you two were kids?”

“Why do you care?”

“Stop answering every question with a question.”

“Then stop asking me questions.”

“You don't like my questions?”

“I don't like your prying. Or is delving into the background of your victims part of your MO?”

“My MO?” That amused him. “I guess you watch some TV, too.”

He came as close to smiling as she'd seen, but it didn't soften his mouth or any other feature. If anything, it emphasized the harsh angularity of his face.

Nor did the semismile last. It faded as he tilted his head to one side and studied her, then said, “I've had an idea. But before I advance it, I want to know why the subject of your brother makes you twitchy and defensive.”

“It doesn't.”

He merely looked at her with an unflinching, I-know-better gaze.

After an interminable length of time, she relented, ran her hand around the back of her neck, stretched it, released a long sigh. “There was nothing extraordinary about our family life. We were typical. Middle class. There was Mom, Dad, me the big sister, Josh the younger brother.”

“Did you watch out for him?”

“More or less. Like older siblings do.”

“Which was it? More or less?”

“If I must pick, I'd say more.”

“Why?”

She caught herself shifting her weight—twitching—and stopped. “Every family has a unique dynamic.”

“Those are words that don't mean shit.”

“In our family they meant that I, as the older child, had an implied responsibility to protect my younger brother.” Actually her responsibility to safeguard Josh had been more than implied. Daily she'd been reminded of it, if not with a verbal admonishment then with sighs of disappointment or looks of reproof which were equally, if not even more, effective.

“To protect him from what?”

“Normal, everyday childhood hazards.”

“Hmm.”

With impatience, she added, “Like stepping on a rusty nail. Tripping down the stairs. Running with scissors.”

“Tiresome and thankless job for a kid,” he said, to which she didn't respond. “Did your protective tendencies carry over into adulthood?”

“No. We both grew up.”

“Josh grew up to be a thief. What did your mom and dad think about that?”

“What did yours think about what you became?” she fired back.

“Actually my dad was tickled. I followed in his footsteps and had big shoes to fill. In our line of work, he was famous.”

“Oh. Then your upbringing was anything but typical.”

He shrugged. “It was commonplace to me. I was a kid, didn't know any other kind of family life.”

She thought about that, then remembered his earlier reference to his mother. “Your mama taught you better than to molest a woman, but she was okay with the profession you chose?”

“No, she died wishing I'd taken another career path.”

“She's deceased?”

“Both of them. Dad shot her, then put the forty-five to his own head and pulled the trigger.”

She couldn't contain her shock. By contrast, his features remained unmoved and inscrutable.

Was he trying to stun her with cruel candor? Was he even telling the truth? There was no way of knowing. She reasoned that he could lie with nonchalance but could also reveal a terrible truth with matching indifference.

“Was Josh always a tattletale?” he asked.

“I don't want to talk about this anymore,” she said. “Especially not about Josh.”

“Well, see, you should open up to me about him.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because, Jordie, your little brother just might save you and your saucy ass.”

Ignoring the remark, she pounced on the substance of what he'd said. “How?”

“At some point during our long, overnight drive—”

“You were going in circles the entire time, weren't you?”

“Do you want to hear this or not?”

Subdued by his sharp tone, she fell silent and gave a small nod.

“Here's where your life does become your business. Because somewhere between midnight and dawn, it occurred to me that you might be more valuable alive than dead.”

Her heart rate ticked up. She glanced at the pistol, which remained set aside on top of the crate. “You're not going to kill me after all?”

“Depends. All you gotta do to prevent it is tell me where your brother is.”

Her flare of optimism flamed out. Slumping, she raised her arms to her sides and gave a dry laugh. “I don't have any idea where Josh is.”

“Jordie,” he said, speaking softly, “what did I tell you about lying to me?”

“That's the truth! When Josh turned informant, he was placed in protective custody. Even I don't know where. I'm not allowed any contact with him. He's being guarded around the clock by federal marshals.”

“Not anymore he's not.”

Her stomach swooped. “What?”

“Your baby brother Josh eluded his guards and—” he made a whooshing sound and accompanied it with a hand gesture like an airplane taking off “—flew the coop.”

The words and what they signified were so outlandish that at first she couldn't make sense of them. When the full meaning of what he'd said finally sank in, she was robbed of oxygen. Those scattered thoughts she'd tried to corral moments ago were swept away completely. “You're lying.”

Slowly he shook his head.

She sucked in a breath. “Josh…”

“Skipped.”

“He left the government's protection?”

“Sneaked away last Tuesday morning from wherever the feds had him sequestered.”

While she was still trying to assimilate this information, he stood and started walking toward her in a measured tread. “What I think? Panella doesn't have the thirty million he and your brother stole. Worse for him, he doesn't know where it's stashed. Josh does.

“And now nobody, not the feds,
nobody
is protecting Josh from Billy Panella.” Having reached the hood of the car where she sat, he placed his hands flat on either side of her hips and leaned over her. “Except you.”

F
rom the moment Josh Bennett determined that his best option was to make a deal with the federal government, he'd begun preparing for the day he would renege on it.

He'd been whisked to the safe house with only the clothes on his back and a small duffel bag containing a few personal items. The bag and its contents had been searched, but not that thoroughly. Special Agent Joe Wiley and company had been concerned about his secreting objects with which he could do himself in. Finding none, his duffel was returned to him with a few trinkets undiscovered.

More important than they, however, was the wealth of information he took with him inside his brain. Little did his jailers—that was not how they were referred to, but that was what they were—realize how many dozens of passwords, account numbers, credit card numbers, and such were committed to the hard drive of his memory.

Over the past six months, he could have outfoxed his guards and fled at any time, but he'd bided his time until a routine had been established, monitoring had loosened up, and the hubbub surrounding his turning FBI informant had died down.

Not that he'd been lax for that half year. He'd used the time to gradually alter his appearance. Pleading dry eye, he'd exchanged his contacts for eyeglasses. Pleading a loss of appetite for food as well as for life in general, he'd dropped the soft twenty pounds that had collected around his middle while he was cooking Panella's books.

Always before he'd been clean shaven, but he'd let his personal hygiene routine slip and shaved only every few days. His stubble grew in an unexpected ginger color, so even close acquaintances, and they were few in number, would recognize him unshaven and bespeckled.

He'd prepared well, and last Tuesday morning, he'd made good his plan.

He'd removed his ankle monitor, which was supposed to be impossible, but wasn't. Wearing two day's growth of reddish whiskers, and taking only a backpack full of things he'd pilfered over time, he'd slipped out of the second-story bedroom window and made it to the nearest highway on foot.

For the most part, the people of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana were friendly sorts. In a time when whack jobs would settle unfounded grudges with a grand-scale slaughter of strangers, Josh had counted on the milk of human kindness to help him escape and evade recapture.

Sure enough, in no time at all, he had hitched a ride with an old-timer in a pickup truck who was taking his pack of hunting dogs home after a month of training in Georgia. Every once in a while the hounds bayed from their kennels in the pickup bed, and Josh learned much more about blueticks than he ever wanted to know.

He and the dog owner parted company in Greenwood, Mississippi, where Josh went into a filling station men's room and applied a temporary tattoo to his neck. He put on sunglasses and a dirty, worn baseball cap that he'd swiped from a charity box while out shopping one day with his guards. So disguised, he walked to the center of town and joined the barely controlled chaos in a busy, crowded unemployment office.

He spent the remainder of the day filling out endless forms with information he made up as he went along. He was shuffled from one long line to another like dozens of other people being assisted by impatient and uncaring bureaucrats. It was an excellent hiding place.

When the office closed for the day, Josh tossed his stack of forms into the nearest trash can and used another men's room to wash off the tattoo and shave his whiskers down to a five o'clock shadow. He walked a few blocks to a motel, where he checked in under a false name and using a credit card that he'd successfully smuggled in his duffel when taken from New Orleans.

He'd spent most of Tuesday evening flipping through the channels on the TV. There was no mention of his escape on any of the news sources. He figured the U.S. Marshals Service didn't want to publicize their screwup. Law enforcement agencies would have been alerted to be on the lookout for him, but he hoped now, more so than ever, that he would blend into the woodwork.

It shouldn't be that difficult. He never courted attention. Indeed, he'd spent most of his life shunning it, avoiding it at all costs. He was so practiced at making himself invisible, he should easily slip through the cracks of everyday life.

Even so, he decided he'd rather be cautious than caught, so he opted to stay put and spend two more nights in that motel before moving on.

Friday morning, he dressed in his unemployed-burnout getup, but omitted the tattoo and liberally applied grease to his hair, so that what showed under the ball cap looked much darker than it actually was. He hitched a ride with a long-haul trucker who preached to him about the devil's cunning pitfalls, how to spot them, how to avoid entrapment.

Josh laughed up his sleeve, thinking,
If only you knew
.

After declining to be baptized but promising to think about it, he'd gotten out at the intersection of two state highways near the Mississippi-Louisiana state line and doubled back on foot to an Army Navy store he had noticed when they passed. He made a purchase, then walked to a nearby motor court and checked in.

It was there that his complacency had shifted to apprehension.

He no longer felt like laughing up his sleeve, and instead had restlessly paced the small room, waiting for something to happen but afraid of what might. He started at every sound. With the approach of every pair of headlights, he held his breath until they passed.

As the night wore on, his paranoia escalated, and he began to fear that he hadn't been as invisible as he'd thought. Had he outsmarted no one? Were people that he'd encountered along the way remembering him and providing a description to police? Were the authorities even now within closing distance of him?

Awful scenarios of arrest, trial, and imprisonment, all spotlighted in the media, spun round and round in his head. The room began to feel like a jail cell.

Now, in a state of high anxiety, he packed his few belongings and put on the khakis he'd purchased at the Army Navy store. He pulled the cap low over his brow. As he left the motor court, he tried to keep from looking over his shoulder, but the impulse was hard to resist.

It was well before dawn, but truckers were on the highway even at this hour. Only two passed him before one stopped and invited him to hop in. Almost immediately Josh regretted doing so. He wanted only peace and quiet in which to think, but the driver was gregarious and launched into lurid accounts of his wild—and what Josh suspected were fictitious—encounters with countless women.

Josh tuned him out, and brooded, and tried not to scream at him to shut up.

He had to hang on only long enough to get where he was going. He just needed to get there! Once he saw that everything was all right,
he
would be all right.

After crossing into eastern Louisiana, he asked to be let out at a wide spot in the road. He'd waited until the truck was out of sight, then walked along the rural highway to a convenience store. He needed a few basic provisions—no more than he could comfortably carry in the backpack—to tide him over until he implemented phase two of his getaway.

He did his shopping hurriedly and carried the items to the counter. Aware of the security cameras, he kept his head down so the bill of his cap would help hide his face.

The cashier gave him a friendly smile. “That everything, hon?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“How about a coffee to go?”

“I'm fine.”

Suddenly his focus was drawn from her blue eyeshadow to the television on the counter behind her. Specifically, to his sister Jordie's face on the television on the counter.

Jordan Bennett
was superimposed across the bottom of the screen with a red tagline:
FEARED KIDNAPPED
.

Instantly Josh broke a sweat. His knees almost gave way. “Changed my mind,” he said to the clerk and took a lottery ticket from the stack near the register. “Add this to my total.”

He concentrated on keeping his hand from shaking as he used the ballpoint pen with the fuzzy tip to mark his numbers while covertly keeping one eye on the morning news being broadcast from a New Orleans station.

Jordie's photograph was replaced by video of a crime scene demarcated by yellow tape. The super at the bottom switched to:
Live Coverage from Terrebonne Parish
. Josh recognized Jordie's Lexus in the background behind the reporter, who was standing just outside the flimsy barricade.

Another customer entered the store and greeted the cashier with familiarity. Josh kept his head down, meticulously coloring in spaces on the lottery ticket while following the action on the TV screen.

“You hear about this?” the customer asked the cashier. Out of the corner of his eye, Josh saw him gesture toward the television. “Turn it up.”

Josh pretended to be oblivious, but he hinged on every word.
Homicide. Apparent abduction. Detectives.
The reporter's inflections underscored descriptive words until it was all Josh could do to keep from screaming.

The reporter wrapped up by saying, “At this point authorities are left with more questions than answers about this brutal murder. However, our news team has learned that there is a person of interest.” A mug shot filled the screen. “Shaw Kinnard accompanied the victim into the bar and left with him. It's believed he may be responsible not only for the slaying but also for Ms. Bennett's disappearance. He's to be considered armed and dangerous. Notify the nearest law enforcement agency if you have any information. A spokesperson from Ms. Bennett's Extravaganza office has expressed concern—”

The cashier used the remote to lower the volume, even as her customer remarked, “Bet you anything that Billy Panella is behind this. Getting his payback on Josh Bennett.”

The cashier nodded. “If that lady's found a'tall, it'll be when somebody fishes her body out of a swamp.”

The man lumbered toward the dairy case, saying as he went, “Meanwhile that brother of hers got off scot-free. If she comes to harm, they ought to put that sumbitch in chains and lock him in a fuckin' dungeon.”

Josh's ears began humming noisily. He could barely control his breathing. Jordie had been
kidnapped
?

“Those the winners?”

Every muscle in his body contracted when he realized the cashier was addressing him. Josh gave her a tight smile as he passed her the lottery ticket. “One can hope.”

She registered his lottery numbers and totaled his purchases. He paid in cash, and it seemed to take her an eternity to sack up his purchases. When she was done, Josh thanked her and headed for the door.

“Have a nice day,” she called to him as he left.

He beat the hell out of there and walked along the shoulder of the highway until he saw a path angling off into the trees. He followed it for at least a hundred yards, and when he reached a clearing, he dropped his sacks, worked off his backpack, and collapsed onto the ropy root system of a gigantic live oak. Whipping off his eyeglasses, he pressed his forehead against his bent knees and breathed in and out through his mouth in heavy gusts.

Words from the newscast jumped out at him like spooks in a haunted house.

…brutal…

…Mickey Bolden, a suspect in numerous unsolved homicides…

…armed and dangerous…

…Ms. Bennett's brother, Joshua Bennett, was accused of…

…Billy Panella and Joshua Bennett allegedly…

…turned informant for federal prosecutors…

This was terrible news. Terrible!

The buzzsaw in his ears grew louder, accompanied by the fast pulsing of his heart against his eardrums. His nose dripped snot. He was clammy and claustrophobic. He felt lightheaded and sick to his stomach. The skin across his back drew up into the familiar, tight, unforgiving ache.

Jordie
kidnapped
? That couldn't be right. It just
couldn't
. The TV people had got it wrong. He wouldn't believe it until he heard it from Jordie herself.

Frantically he unzipped his backpack and withdrew the cell phone he'd taken from one of his guards within the first week of his confinement. For weeks after, he'd overheard the marshal bitching to his cohorts about losing it. Josh had replaced its SIM card with a new and untraceable one that he'd sneaked into the safe house in the lining of his duffel bag.

Once he found the phone, he couldn't immediately lay his hands on the battery that went with it. Growing increasingly desperate, he dumped the contents of the backpack onto the ground, then rifled through the clothing and various items, scattering them like a cyclone until he found the phone's battery. With clumsy fingers, gasping for breath, and blinking sweat out of his eyes, he managed to insert it and, as soon as he had a signal, began punching in Jordie's cell number.

But then his mind screamed,
Are you crazy?

He stopped his frenzied motions and took a moment to think.

Whether or not Jordie was dead by now, she wouldn't be answering her phone.

But someone else might. Her kidnapper, maybe. Possibly the police. Whoever answered would want to know who was calling her. What would he say? “This is her brother. The one who double-crossed both the ruthless Billy Panella and the federal government? The one who became a fugitive last Tuesday. Maybe you've heard of me?”

Thinking more rationally now, he leaned back against the stout tree trunk, closed his eyes, and forced himself to take deep, even breaths. Several minutes passed. His pores stopped leaking sweat. His heart rate slowed. His nose stopped dripping and his nausea subsided.

He got a grip.

He opened his eyes, found his eyeglasses amid the strewn articles on the ground, and put them on. As though they were fitted with magic lenses, he began to view the situation from a whole new prospective—that of Billy Panella.