Swamp Sniper (10 page)

“When I yell,” I said to Gertie, “I want you to cut the engine and swerve to the left about a foot.”

“Okay,” Gertie said.
 

No pause. No questions. Not even so much as the lift an eyebrow. I wasn’t sure whether to be overwhelmed by her confidence in me or frightened.

I pushed myself up into a crouching position behind the middle bench and peered around Gertie. Bitch-slap was only about ten feet behind her. When he reached five feet, it was time to launch.

Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five…

“Now!” I screamed as loud as I could.
 

Gertie cut the engine completely and the boat slammed down onto the bayou as if someone had hit the brakes. As a startled Bitch-slap blew by us, I jumped up and whacked him with the oar, sending him careening backward.
 

He yelled as he fell, clutching the motor handle with a death grip to keep from launching into the bayou, and pulled the entire thing around as he fell back on the bench. The boat shot off to the right and ran straight up the bank and onto the road that ran parallel to the bayou.
 

Where it promptly crashed into the side of Carter’s truck.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, dropping down to the bottom of the boat again.

And that’s when I realized the bottom of the boat was filling with water.

“I think maybe my repair failed,” Gertie said. “I probably should have put that patch on with something stronger than duct tape.”

I peered over the side of the boat in time to see Carter jump out of his truck and start yelling at Bitch-slap.
 

“The dock’s just over there,” Gertie said. “We’ll have to swim for it.” She bailed over the side of the boat and started swimming for the shore.
 

Seeing no better alternative, I popped up from the bottom of the boat and dove in beside her. I swam underwater as long as I could to avoid identification by the good deputy, hoping I swam in the direction of the bank. When I finally had to pop up for air, I was pleasantly surprised to see the boat launch less than twenty yards away.
 

I looked around for Gertie and was surprised to see her only a couple of feet behind me, executing a perfect crawl. I launched into my own Michael Phelps routine and practically ran up the launch as soon as my feet hit solid ground. I didn’t even look back as I dashed for my Jeep.

I threw it in reverse and peeled backward toward the boat launch, making it to the edge of the bayou just as Gertie crawled up the ramp. She clutched at the bumper of the Jeep to pull herself upright, then dashed to passenger’s seat and fell inside.
 

As I took off, I glanced across the bayou and saw Carter standing at the edge of the opposite bank, shaking his head at me. I pressed my foot down on the accelerator, determined to go straight home and lock myself in my house, just as Carter had suggested I do earlier. At least for the rest of the night.

As I pulled onto the street, I looked over at Gertie, who sighed.
 

“Just like I told you,” she said. “You never know when someone may start shooting.”

Chapter Eight

I dropped Gertie off at her house and made her promise to go inside and stay there until tomorrow morning. I didn’t even want her walking out the front door to check the mail. I was beginning to wonder if Carter wasn’t onto something with that whole hibernation theory of his.
 

The trip to see Walter hadn’t provided any information to speak of. Even worse, it had sparked more ridiculous ideas with Gertie, and then I’d gone right along and agreed with them. I shook my head as I pulled into my garage. I’d been running from fire to fire since I’d arrived in Sinful, and most days it felt like I was trying to put them out with a teaspoon of water.
 

As soon as this crisis with Ida Belle was over, I would seriously rethink how I handled the rest of my stay in Sinful.

I stood under the shower spray until I used every ounce of hot water in the house, and scrubbed my entire body with exfoliating gel and a loofah. I’d thought that kind of thing too girly, but my dip in Sinful Bayou had changed my mind. Losing a layer of skin may be the only thing that made me feel like the crud was off of me.

Unfortunately, even a thousand gallons of hot water and a pound of sandpaper gel hadn’t eliminated the sewer smell of bayou mud, so I threw on shorts and a T-shirt and ran downstairs to stick my nose in a can of coffee grounds.
 

The grounds did the trick
and
made me want a cup of coffee, so I brewed up a pot and deliberated between a handful of Gertie’s chocolate chunk cookies or a slice of Ally’s latest creation, a chocolate pecan pie. I finally decided that since the day had been doubly hard, I was twice as deserving of dessert and served up both before pouring myself a cup of coffee and placing my sugary buffet on the kitchen table.

I’d taken one heavenly bite out of the first cookie when my doorbell rang. I looked over at my pistol on the kitchen counter and seriously considered threatening whoever was at the door so that they’d leave and never come back.
 

The second buzz was more insistent and I rose from the chair with a sigh, but refused to put down the cookie. I shoved the pistol in a kitchen drawer before stalking to the living room. I threw open the front door, then froze when I saw Carter standing there.
 

“Please tell me you have more of those cookies,” he said.
 

“Maybe?” I said. He didn’t look angry or aggrieved so I wasn’t sure of his angle.

“I don’t suppose I could have one?”

I stepped back and waved him inside, then followed him back to the kitchen. Might as well find out what he was up to.
 

“Coffee?” I asked.

“That would be great,” he said and slid into a chair at the kitchen table. “I hope you don’t mind. It’s been a long day.”

“Ha. Yeah, that’s sorta an understatement.” I placed the coffee and a plate of cookies on the table in front of him and slid back into my seat.
 

“I should probably go ahead and get this out of the way,” he said. “I’m not here to arrest you.”

I swallowed a huge bite of pie. “About time, especially as I haven’t done anything.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Well, if I wanted to be a pain, I suppose I could haul you in for assaulting Shorty Johnson with an oar.”

“Since he was shooting at us, I would just claim self-defense and make you look like a woman-hater.”

Carter dropped his cookie and stared. “Shooting at you?”

“It was a pellet pistol. But those things sting and it ruined a perfectly good T-shirt of mine. Besides, people shooting anything at me tends to piss me off.”

He laughed. “I’ll bet. Since Shorty neglected to inform me of the shooting part of the event, I guess I’ll let you off.”

“So let me get this straight—you knew I assaulted Shorty with an oar but didn’t know it was because he was shooting at us. Yet the first thing you said when you walked into my house was that you weren’t going to arrest me. Why the heck not?”

He shrugged. “Knowing Shorty, I guess I figured he’d done something to deserve it, which turned out to be accurate. Besides, he trashed the side of my truck and since he doesn’t have any insurance on that boat or is probably broke, I’m either going to have to pay for it myself or file on my own insurance and watch my rates go up.”

“Sounds very reasonable…and very boring.” I took a sip of coffee. “If you didn’t come to arrest me, are you planning on telling me why you are here?”

He smiled. “Maybe I’m just here for the cookies.”

“Oh, that’s a story I could definitely buy except that you didn’t know I had cookies until I answered the door.”

“I’m a pretty good detective. Are you sure I didn’t know?”

“Unless you broke into my house, I’m sure.”

He laughed. “No, I’ll leave all the breaking and entering to you and the Trouble Twosome.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m sure.” He took a drink of coffee and stared out the window for several seconds. Finally, he turned his gaze back to me. “Look, the reason I came is to ask you for a favor.”

“Really? Of all the things I imagined, that one was nowhere on my list. What in the world can I do for Sinful’s finest?”

“You can keep an eye on Ida Belle for me—make sure she’s never alone and do your best to keep her from interacting with the general population.”

I frowned. “You want to tell me why you’re asking me to babysit a woman old enough to be my grandmother?”

“As you witnessed this morning, emotions are running high, and a lot of people aren’t making good decisions. Ida Belle is an easy scapegoat for fools and Sinful has more than its share of those.”

He glanced out the window again and blew out a breath, then looked back at me.
 

“This isn’t easy for me to admit, but I’m worried about the way things are going in this town. I know I gave you a hard time this morning, but I don’t think you have anything to do with this mess, or any of the others. You just seem to have the incredibly bad luck of stepping in the middle of it.”

I heard the part about my bad luck and Carter not thinking I had anything to do with Sinful’s troubles, and normally, I would have taken a second or two to gloat. But instead, my entire focus was on his first sentence and the tone of his voice when he’d delivered it. It was surprising enough for Carter to admit he was worried, but it wasn’t just worry I heard in his voice. It was also fear.

“It’s just weird timing,” I said. “All of it hitting at once. I know it’s a lot on you, but it’s not like any of the murders are related.”

“I know, but they’re all a big glaring neon sign that this town has changed and not for the better.”

“Oh.” I sat my coffee mug down and leaned back in my chair. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

He sighed. “Yeah. When my time was up with the Marine Corps, I thought I’d come back home and try to forget those eight years in Iraq.”

A wave of sympathy washed over me and I wished I could commiserate with Carter as the real me. Sandy-Sue Morrow, librarian extraordinaire, wouldn’t have a clue what Carter had probably seen and done overseas, but Fortune Redding knew all too well what went down during war.

“I don’t blame you,” I said quietly.

“I was eighteen when I left Sinful for boot camp, and convinced this was the most boring town on the face of the earth. When I came back, I hoped like hell I’d been right.”

“But it’s not.”

“It seemed that way at first—a honeymoon phase, I suppose—but now…” He shook his head. “Sinful’s changed.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but you’ve changed, too.”

He looked at me, a flicker of surprise passing over his face.

“You came back home,” I continued, “hoping to find the same town you left as a boy, but you returned a man, with a whole different set of experiences shaping your view of the world. Even if Sinful hadn’t changed, I bet you’d still see it differently.”

He gave me a small smile. “You know, sometimes you can be pretty smart.”

“Only sometimes?”

“You
did
have your foot stuck in my toilet this morning.”

I laughed. “Well, if you’re going to get picky…”

“Attention to detail is sorta part of my job.” He glanced down at his watch. “And I need to get back to it. Will you please consider what I asked?”

I nodded. “I’ll do my best to keep Ida Belle contained in her house and in front of witnesses who would look good at a trial, but I can’t make any promises. She’s sorta wily.”

“Ha,” he said as he rose from the table. “That she is.”

I followed him to the front door, where he stopped and turned around, standing only inches from me. “You said that my asking you for a favor was nowhere on the list of things you’d imagined I came here for. What else was on that list?”

It was just like the bad romance novel Gertie had made me read the week before as part of my induction into normal society. The smoldering eyes, the sexy smile…all so cliché. And damn it if it didn’t work.
 

My pulse quickened and I felt a tingle in my belly.
 

My God, I’m officially a sixteen-year-old girl.

He brushed a strand of bangs away from my cheek with his finger and my body went into overdrive. Every inch of skin tingled from the brush of that one finger. Then he leaned forward and I knew he was going to kiss me.

My mind warred between shoving him out the door and locking it behind him and throwing him on the floor and molesting him on my living room rug. It was a rush of overwhelming emotion that made my head spin. Never had I had such an adrenaline reaction to a man before. Not even one I was about to kill.

I’d just decided to stand my ground and see what happened when my doorbell rang. The loud, annoying buzz broke the moment completely and sent us both backward in an attempt to put space between us.