Wade (15 page)

“Come on!” Wade called.

Chloe glanced back over her shoulder toward where their guests were hidden among the cedars. The two children had still slept when she and Wade made
their way down to the highway. The Uzbek father had been fashioning a snare for small game from a roll of nylon line he'd found in the tool bag, as if his need to feed his family was paramount.

“There's not enough room for everybody,” Wade objected, as if reading her mind. “Let's go. Now.”

She was already moving, running toward where the driver had reached across to shove open the door. A Sikh, he was complaining volubly about Wade's crazy methods, also of how he'd been instructed not to pick up refugees and only stopped because he could see that Wade was not such a person. He was still talking in high excitement long after Wade had boosted Chloe to the passenger seat and climbed up beside her and the truck was moving again. He didn't shut up, not until they'd reached the old caravan terminus of Peshawar and he set them down in the city center.

After that, it was almost ridiculously easy. A hired car to Rawalpindi, toiletries picked at a newsstand followed by a good wash and repairs in the rest room, and they were soon waiting in the gate for their flight to be called. This was the most trying time, as they scanned every face, every man who stood around them, expecting to see Ahmad. Finally the boarding process began. They found their seats, the plane doors were closed and they pulled back from the gate. Minutes later, they were airborne.

They had done it. They were leaving the Middle East. It was over. They were safe. They were free.

With her head pressed against the seat back as they climbed into the bright blue sky, Chloe turned her
head to look at Wade. She met his eyes clearly, without obstruction, since she had discarded her burqa, once and for all, in the airport rest room. He held her gaze for long seconds, then he smiled and reached to cover her hand with his. His grasp was warm, firm. Feeling it, she realized how cold her own fingers were, how nervous and afraid she'd been until this moment. Turning her hand, she placed her palm against his and meshed their fingers, holding tight. Her gaze rested on that clasp with momentary amazement for how impossible it would have seemed only a few days ago, and how right it felt. At least for now.

A jumble of feelings crowded her chest, from disbelief to doubt about Ahmad's whereabouts and trepidation over what lay ahead. Sorting them out was too much however, when nothing could be done about any of it for the next twenty-four hours.

She looked up again at Wade, wondering what he was thinking, what he was planning for when they finally landed in New Orleans. His eyes were closed. He was asleep.

Her lips twisted in a wry smile. Then she let her own lashes drift down, soothing the graininess of exhaustion, shutting out the light. Sleep settled over her like a thick fog. But she did not release Wade's hand.

It was in Zurich that she had the first sense of dislocation. The airport was huge, incredibly clean and streamlined, and the echoing announcements in multiple Western languages fell strangely on her ears. Most unnerving, however, were the clothes people wore. They exposed amazing amounts of skin, and
had what seemed a colorless and vapid chic that allowed the personality of the wearer to dominate. By contrast, her long-sleeved, high-necked blouse of aqua-blue and matching skirt bordered at the ankles in gold embroidery managed to appear both exotic and dowdy at the same time. She not only looked unusual, but was uncomfortably aware of having worn the same clothes for the best part of three days and nights, since changing at the RAWA safe house. She didn't blame people for the way they stared, still less for how they kept their distance. Their layover time in Switzerland allowed no time for leaving the airport to shop for replacements, however, even if she'd had the money. Her main consolation was that Wade had much the same problem.

By the time they reached Hartsfield International in Atlanta, the two of them were half-blind with fatigue, punch-drunk from jet lag and dehydrated from endless hours of flying. Their layover was more than three hours, however, allowing extra time for customs. Chloe was afraid that the passport provided by Wade, with its computer-aged and -enhanced photo of her, would be scrutinized more closely than in Europe, that she might even be pulled aside for questioning. The wait in the long line of passengers was excruciating, especially since Wade left her to hold their places while he used the phone. Her relief when she saw him returning was disturbing since it showed clearly how lost she felt, and how dependent she was becoming on him. Regardless, she was glad he was close as they were processed through customs.

“Your call was to your family?” she asked as they
sat in the departure gate, eating ice-cream cones and watching strangers with blank, distracted faces walk past in a steady stream.

He made a sound of agreement. “Getting an update on what they've been doing since my call from Rawalpindi. I also arranged a rental car.”

“Where are we going, I mean from the airport?” It was odd that she hadn't asked sooner, she thought, but they'd been so exhausted that somehow it hadn't seemed to matter. The whole thing was only becoming real in her mind now that they were on American soil.

“Home. At least at first, until you can find your feet and decide what you want to do. Got any ideas?”

“Not…not really.”

“Understandable.”

His concentration was on his ice cream as he caught a drip with his tongue. Chloe watched the muscular agility of that movement while an odd sensation curled in the pit of her stomach. Finally she said, “I suppose I'll get an apartment. But first I'll need access to whatever money I'm supposed to have.”

“No problem.”

Her own ice cream was dissolving faster than she was eating it. She took care of the problem, relishing the cold, rich sweetness. A thought struck her and she swallowed with difficulty. “I'd also like to see…to see where my father's buried.”

“Whenever you're ready.”

She looked up as he spoke, but his gaze was on her lips. She licked them, reaching up to wipe one
corner as she realized she still had a leftover bit of stickiness there. Wade blinked, returning his gaze to his cone. But not before she'd seen enough heat in his eyes to melt the ice cream in his hand.

Their flight was called then. A short time later, they were landing in New Orleans. Suddenly it seemed too soon, too abrupt a transition. She wasn't ready. She wasn't ready at all.

The people crowding around them were different from those in Europe. They smiled and laughed and talked nonstop with rich drawls that rose and fell in almost musical expression. Many of them seemed to know each other, or were part of family groups. Some business suits were in evidence, but the majority of those streaming back and forth wore T-shirts, jeans and running shoes, as if the combination constituted a kind of uniform. The women with their short hair and expertly applied makeup particularly caught Chloe's attention. They seemed unaware of the emphasis placed on their breasts and hips by their close-fitting clothing, and unselfconscious about the way men looked them over as they walked by. They were free in their movements and speech, so at ease with their natural sexuality that they were almost oblivious to it. They appeared so casually sophisticated, in fact, that they made Chloe feel out of place and incredibly repressed. And she wondered with mordant curiosity if there was a single virgin like her among them.

Chloe would have followed the stream of passengers headed toward baggage claim and public transportation, if Wade hadn't touched her arm. “This way,” he said, indicating the main terminal. “We can
get a taxi that's dropping off passengers without having to stand in line for it, then ride downtown to pick up the rental.”

“But the sign says there's a rental desk downstairs.”

“The lines will be miles long there, too. This will be faster.”

She was too tired to care one way or the other. Obediently she turned in the direction he indicated, not even bothering to pull away as he put a hand at the small of her back to guide her around an elderly woman in a wheelchair.

A man came at them from the side when they were less than three yards from the entrance doors. He moved fast and quiet, skimming between a pilot pulling a black case on wheels and a chubby guy with a sunburn and a straw hat that said St. Thomas, V.I.

Wade clamped an arm around her waist and spun Chloe behind him. Then he dropped into a fighter's crouch as he faced the threat.

“Damn, Wade!” The would-be assailant skidded to a halt and threw up his hands. “If this is the way you greet kinfolk, what the hell do you do with enemies?”

“Shit, little brother. Don't do that to me.” Wade sighed, and straightened. Then he took a long stride forward and folded the newcomer into a quick, back-pounding hug.

As they broke apart, Chloe looked from one to the other. Wade's brother was a fraction shorter, his hair a little darker, and his eyes vivid blue instead of green. Despite these obvious differences, they were
more alike than not. Their features were the same, as was the proud set of their shoulders and their bearing that had such confidence it bordered on arrogance.

“Didn't mean to yank your chain,” Wade's brother said. “I was afraid you were about to get away before I could reach you. I just got here myself, after dropping Adam off at Arrivals to watch for you.”

“You didn't say you'd be meeting us.”

“Didn't know it. Family decision, last minute, as usual.” The younger Benedict tipped his head, trying to see around Wade. “So do I get an introduction to the lady, or you keeping her to yourself?”

“Guess I'll risk it, since I know that you've got your hands full with Janna. Chloe Madison, meet another Benedict, my brother Clay.” Wade stepped aside as he spoke, and held out a hand to beckon her forward. As she moved to his side, she saw his brother's gaze widen. Then it traveled slowly from the top of her center-parted hair down to where it hung well below her waist. He inspected the soft leather sandals on her feet and, on the way back up to her face, the curves of her hips, slim waist, and front of her blouse.

“Oh,” he said in a blank, almost stunned, tone of voice. “Oh. My. God.”

“Well put,” Wade said with dry humor in his voice. “You can take that as a compliment, Chloe, since this guy isn't the impressionable type.”

“You said when you left that you had to go rescue a kid,” Clay objected, though without looking at his brother. “I wasn't expecting a goddess.”

“Ditto,” Wade answered. “I only found out after the unveiling.”

Clay's brows shot up toward his hairline. “You'll have to explain that.”

“Later. For now, we want a hot bath and a cool, clean bed, in that order.”

“Right.”

“Separate baths, separate beds,” Wade added with cut-steel precision in his voice.

“Sorry.”

That single word was repentant enough, but didn't quite match the gleam of conjecture in his brother's eyes. Chloe thought the younger Benedict had missed nothing of Wade's rigorously correct attitude. It was no great surprise that he didn't get it, of course. She didn't quite understand, either.

Even as these thoughts ran through her head, Clay turned with a broad gesture toward the door. “This way, ma'am, your chariot is waiting, and about to run over its five-minute parking limit.”

The vehicle he was talking about was a dove-gray SUV with four doors, mud-grip tires, leather seats and far more luxury than anything she had seen in the past decade. Wade handed Chloe into the back seat, since the plan was to drive around to the lower level to pick up Wade's older brother waiting there. It took several minutes because of traffic and construction, but they finally pulled up near the line of waiting taxis outside the Arrivals area.

“There he is,” Clay said, and bumped his horn.

A man turned from where he leaned on a concrete
support, watching the door. Obviously another Benedict, he lifted a hand and started toward them.

Abruptly a flat report smacked the air. For a second, Chloe thought one of the taxis had rear-ended the next in line. Then Wade reached for her, dragging her off the seat to the floorboard. At the same time, he gave a shout. “Down! Incoming fire!”

Clay ducked, crouching over the wheel. The front passenger door was wrenched open, then slammed shut again. Two shots punched the back glass and zinged past overhead. Glass shattered inward in sharp-edged bits like a rain of ice-cream salt.

“Drive! Drive!” The order came from the addition to their number, somewhere above and in front of Chloe. Outside could be heard yells, screams, car horns and the staccato reports of more firing.

They pealed away with a screech of tires. The SUV swerved into a wide turn that slung her against the seat back, then straightened again, gathering speed. Chloe could see nothing, do nothing except clutch Wade's shoulder for balance and try to control the rage that filled her.

She'd thought she was safe, at least for a little while. She'd thought that even if her stepbrother came after her and Wade, it would be days, even weeks before he found her.

She'd been wrong. He had not come after them at all.

Ahmad was already here.

“W
e definitely have company,” Wade said, his voice grim as he looked back to see Ahmad and two buddies pile into a late-model green sedan and pull into traffic behind them. He couldn't help wondering what the trio would have done if he and Chloe had walked out of that airport exit alone. Shot them on sight? Surrounded them and put a knife to their ribs before driving somewhere for a slower end to it all?

It hadn't happened so there was no point thinking about it. The real question was, what now?

Clay spoke up then as if in cheerful answer to his mental query. “They picked the wrong folks to follow. Not to mention the wrong town for it.” He accelerated in a smooth surge of power. Swinging around the curves of the airport exit lanes with easy control, he emerged on the highway.

“They're still back there,” Adam said as he watched his side mirror.

“Not for long,” Clay answered.

The comment was followed by a rapid change of lanes. Brief seconds later, or so it seemed, they were merging onto Interstate 10. The sedan kept pace, but
only by cutting off two vehicles and passing another one on the right. With any luck, Wade thought, the police would pick up their tail. He just hoped they didn't flag the SUV, since it felt as if it might sprout wings at any second.

As he glanced ahead again, he suddenly realized they were eastbound. “What gives? Why aren't we heading for Turn-Coupe?”

“Mom gave instructions to bring you back to her place.” Clay checked his mirrors, then cut across two lanes of traffic to avoid rear-ending a pickup towing a bass boat.

“We can't do that,” Wade said instantly. “If that crew back there can track airline schedules, they can figure out where she lives.”

“In that case, we have to go see about her,” Adam said in hard response.

“You're right,” Wade said, wiping a hand over his face. The strain of the past few days must have clouded his brain more than he realized. His mother might not be a Benedict anymore, since she'd resumed her maiden name, but would still be a prime target. They'd be hamstrung, all of them, if she was taken hostage.

He glanced at Chloe. Her face was white. It wasn't surprising, since she knew better than any just what her stepbrother was capable of doing in his dedication to his fanatic ideas of right and wrong. However misguided the guy's beliefs and principles, Wade had to
appreciate how he stuck to them. Reminded him of the Benedicts in a peculiar sort of way.

The beep of a horn brought his head around again. Clay was traversing traffic lanes again, asking for and getting concession from a fast-moving taxi before making a dive for a long, straight exit lane. As Wade craned to check the rear window again, he saw the rental car almost cut off by a big tanker truck, though the driver whipped around it to make the exit. Two cars following the truck slammed on their brakes with the sound of squealing tires and blasting horns.

Now the chase was really on, not that Wade doubted how it would end. Clay might be a backwoods boy who spent more time snapping art photos of alligators than prowling around New Orleans, but he didn't neglect visiting their mom or taking Janna and Lainey to town on medical visits and pleasure trips. He knew the city. It was a good thing, too, because it wasn't an easy place to navigate. The old French Quarter with its narrow streets was its heart, lying in the half-moon-shaped bend in the Mississippi River that gave it the name, the Crescent City. More modern thoroughfares either followed the great curve to avoid the Quarter, stopped just before they reached it, ran at odd angles to intersect with it, or bypassed it with a tangle of overpasses and underpasses. Then there were the many parks and big cemeteries to be circumvented. The result was a maze, streets that might run only a few blocks before vanishing altogether, alternate between one-way and two-way traf
fic, or change their names three times between Downtown, the French Quarter, and Uptown. It took a native or someone used to following obscure boat channels through uncharted swamps to make sense of it. Clay belonged to the latter category.

They lost their tail between City Park and Claiborne. A short time later, they pulled into the backyard of a French Quarter row house on Dumaine Street where their mom and her visitors had parking privileges. Keeping a sharp eye out for company, they walked the three blocks to her apartment that was located above a bar and grill where the odor of stale beer vied with the knock-you-down smell of boiling shrimp.

They rang the bell at the tall side door, identified themselves, and waited for the buzz of the lock's release. Entering a dim hallway, they climbed a spiral staircase with a wide mahogany railing and treads worn a half inch deep. Their mom waited at the top with a wide smile, hair hanging over her shoulder in a silver-threaded brown braid, and arms that were held wide and appeared wider due to the expanse of a blue cotton caftan that she'd picked up in Morocco years ago. The closer they came to the apartment door, the more blatantly obvious it grew that she was responsible for that aroma of hot shrimp that was anathema to many but ambrosia to a true son of Louisiana. She was cooking. Of course.

“Honey,” she said, folding Wade into the soft,
scented, bone-crushing hug that was her specialty. “Thank God.”

“Yeah, yeah, I missed you, too,” he said, his voice a little husky, and not only from the pain of having his slashed side thoroughly squeezed.

Everybody else got a hug as well, including Chloe. It was just the way his mother was, a hugger, a toucher, a feeder of hungry souls. Sometimes he wondered if that wasn't what she tried to do with her art as well.

“Get dressed, Mom,” he began as Chloe emerged, dazed, from that enveloping embrace. “We have to go.”

“But you just got here. Sit down a minute. Have something to eat.”

“We don't have time. I mean we have to get out of here, all of us, and right now.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, breaking across what he was saying. “Come here again.”

“Mom…” he began as she caught him close with one arm and lifted a hand to his face.

“You have fever, and I think I felt something here. She poked his side. “Right, a bandage. What have you done to yourself?”

“Nothing. Listen to me…”

“He has a what?” Adam scowled at him over his shoulder as he closed and locked the door.

Chloe spoke up then. “It's a knife wound, and probably needs attention and antibiotics.”

“Figures,” his mother said in exasperation.

“Later,” he said with an accusing glance in Chloe's direction. “I'm telling you we have to get a move on.”

“What's the hurry?”

Just then, a timer went off in the kitchen. His mother released him and moved away in that direction without waiting for an answer to her question. He followed her, talking with all the persuasion he could muster while watching her take a huge pot of broth swimming with shrimp, potatoes and corn on the cob from the gas range and pour it directly into the sink to drain. Steam redolent of pepper and spice rose to sting their eyes as they all crowded into the small room. His mother paused to stare at him over her shoulder as he reached the most salient part of his story, the arrival of Chloe's stepbrother with murder on his mind. Then she pulled a large plastic container from under the cabinet and began to scoop shrimp and vegetables into it.

“Didn't you hear me?” he demanded.

“If you think I'm leaving my good food here for a bunch of killers, you've got another think coming.”

“There's no time,” he insisted in exasperation. He looked at his brothers for support.

“We have to eat,” she returned unanswerably. “Especially you, since you need your strength. We'll take this with us.” She glanced at Adam. “Dump the ice from the fridge into that little ice chest behind you, will you, honey?”

“Mom!”

“You may as well stop arguing and help her,” Clay said. Glancing around, he picked up two loaves of French bread in their white bakery wrappers and tucked them under one arm.

“I know just the place to go,” his mother said with a smile of approval for her younger son. “That old place on the River Road where I stayed back in the spring, painting
en plein
air. Nottoway, it's called. They were wonderful to me.”

“We can't involve other people.”

“It isn't other people, it's a hotel. Well, sort of. Besides, it's closer to Turn-Coupe.”

“A hotel is definitely out. We can't risk having anything show up in a credit card database. These guys may be medieval in their thinking, but they have computer capability.”

“No problem. I know the manager. Besides, you were thinking maybe of Grand Point?”

Wade swiped his fingers back through his hair. “I don't know. It doesn't seem right to involve the family.”

“We're already involved,” Clay pointed out. Reaching over his mother's shoulder, he snagged one of the jumbo pink shrimps just before she closed the lid on her plastic container. Blowing on it to cool it, he peeled it with two quick moves and popped the morsel into his mouth.

Wade's saliva glands kicked into overdrive. It had been ages since he'd tasted really fresh seafood. Even as he recognized his weakening resolve, he was aware
of Adam's almost casual drift to a point where he could see out the kitchen window to the street below. With a narrow glance from one brother to the other, he asked, “Meaning?”

“I called Roan,” Clay answered. “Adam got in touch with Luke and Kane, too, since there's no telling how many limbs these jihadis mean to lop off the family tree. We all agreed that choosing a single point to defend was best. Grand Point is being turned into a fortress as we speak.”

That had a good sound to it. Roan was the sheriff of Tunica Parish where the old home place, Grand Point, was located. He could bring in some heavy law enforcement artillery if necessary. Luke and Kane had a comprehensive knowledge of the lake and the swamp that backed up to the house, and also the consummate skill with weapons of men who had hunted since they were kids.

“Fine, but Wade needs a doctor first,” his mother said. “Who knows what kind of infection he may have picked up over there?”

“She's right,” Chloe agreed. “My friends and I did the best we could, but it wasn't a lot.”

“I'm sure you did fine,” his mother said hastily.

“Doc Watkins could come to the house,” Clay suggested.

The look his mother gave him was unimpressed. “I doubt that old man has so much as picked up a medical journal since he retired a decade ago. Besides, these two are dead on their feet.” She swung
on Chloe. “When was the last time you really slept, either of you? Or had a decent meal, for that matter?”

“A while,” Chloe answered.

“That's what I thought. So it's settled.” She turned to the refrigerator and took out what appeared to be a bowl of potato salad and a large bread pudding. Handing one to Adam and the other to Clay, she lifted a brow. “There now, we're ready. So why are we still standing around here?”

Nottoway, located at the town of White Castle some thirty minutes or so from Baton Rouge, had once been a plantation house in the grand manner, the center of several thousand acres devoted to sugar cultivation. A huge pile in shining white, it had columns that soared three stories tall, miles of verandas, and at least a couple of hundred windows. According to the brochure Wade picked up in the reception area while his mom went in search of the manager, it was the largest antebellum home ever constructed in the South, with sixty-four rooms that included a bowling alley and a ballroom. The main house was open daily for guided tours, while the overseer's cottage and the
garçonnière,
where younger sons and visitors had once been housed, were fitted out as guest rooms. Set back in the center of a walled enclosure, reached only by entrance through a separate building that housed the gift shop, it had a secluded air and surprising degree of natural security.

“Now isn't this perfect?” his mother asked as she
led them to a back room on the second floor of the overseer's cottage and threw open the door.

Wade allowed Chloe to go first, then followed her inside. The place was actually a minisuite, with a table for two placed between a pair of windows, desk in one corner, fireplace with the bed opposite, a second, smaller bedroom that had an armoire and single bed, and the requisite bathroom. The furnishings, including the white-painted iron bedstead, looked like authentic antiques instead of reproductions. Though not particularly posh as hotel rooms went, it was comfortable. For him, brought up at Grand Point, it felt like home.

“Seems all right,” he said in half grudging acceptance.

“I love it,” Chloe said, gazing around with a serious expression on her face.

“There, that's the kind of answer I like,” his mother said with approval. “Now, let's eat. The manager was kind enough to call the doctor from her cell phone so there'll be nothing to connect it to any of us. He'll be here in half an hour.”

The accommodations were a little cramped for feeding a group, but the five of them managed. Wade wolfed down his share with more dispatch than finesse, and was happy to see Chloe doing the same. When he'd caught up with his appetite, he peeled a few extra shrimp for her, since she seemed to be having trouble. The smile she gave him as she accepted them was a better reward than any medal.

“So what about Janna and Lara?” he asked as he reached for the bread pudding. He spooned a serving into one of the plastic bowls they'd picked up when they'd run by a discount store for a couple of changes of clothes and other things to make life more comfortable. “They're at Grand Point?”

“Lara was out of the condo, out of New Orleans and on her way to Grand Point five minutes after you called,” Adam answered with a shake of his head. “She's been telling me for three or four days that she had a bad feeling about you, and thought we ought to be there because you were coming home.”