Possession (6 page)

“Actually, we do.”

Akela crossed her arms and waited.

“I’ve been talking with Lafitte’s attorney. Lafitte is about to turn himself over to authorities as we speak.”

Akela remembered the bits of conversation she’d overheard yesterday.

“He’s buying himself more time,” she said.

“Time for what? To make a run for it? Even you said you don’t think he has plans to leave town.”

“Does that mean we shouldn’t try to apprehend him?”

“Agent Brooks, I don’t know where you’re from, but wherever it is, obviously things work a
little differently there than here. Here in NO, we’re a little more civilized.”

“You mean lazy.”

One of the plainclothes officers nearer the door held up a paper and cleared his throat. “Brooks is from NO, Lieutenant.”

Alan seemed to stare at her more closely and she returned his attention. Then, breaking her gaze away, she gathered her map, folded it, then headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Chevalier asked.

“Out there on my own.”

“I’m the one in charge of this case.”

“Then do something to solve it.”

A
KELA DIDN’T LIKE
going over others’ heads. It didn’t bode well for any working relationship. People tended to be a little pissed when their authority was questioned then stepped on.

But she hadn’t been able to help herself. It was more than her career on the line. With every off-color question she was asked by reporters, every speculative glance she received from her co-workers and superiors, and after sitting across the table from her mother’s accusatory face that morning, she needed to clear her name, and she needed to do it
now
.

If her deep-seated desire also had anything to do with her own momentary flash of weakness when it came to Claude Lafitte, that was between her and the man in question.

She pressed her hand to the base of her throat, aware of the heat there. Though she wished she could blame that on the weather, she knew it had
more to do with her awareness that, while Lafitte hadn’t ravaged her as everyone suspected, she’d wanted him to ravage her. A man suspected of killing his lover. A man who had been in the arms of that same lover mere hours before he’d kissed Akela. But the fact remained that she’d wanted him to do much more.

The airboat sped through the bayous, sending spray up into her face, the sound of the large, propelling fan deafening. There were two boats and she was on the first one, her navy-blue slacks damp, her flak jacket heavy over her navy cotton T-shirt. No sooner had she made the threat to Chevalier than they were on the boats she’d secured, speeding toward a spot on the map where she hoped they would find Lafitte.

Nearby an alligator easily as long as the boat slid back into the water from where it had been sunning itself on the shore, the ripples it made minimal. Akela checked her firearm, resecured her mobile radio transmitter on her shoulder then looked at her watch. They’d agreed to cut the engines some five minutes away from the rendezvous point, not wanting to announce their approach to everyone within a twenty-mile radius. And that point was coming up….

The driver downshifted the engine and the boat
slowed to an easy coast on the shallow green water. Next to them, the second boat did the same.

There were ten members of the NOPD all told. Five on her airboat, five on the other. All of them checked their weapons, none of them saying anything. Everything had already been said. They would split up into two teams on the other side of the narrow peninsula, one approaching the cabin from the north, the other from the south. She knew a third team was approaching via the only road into and out of this area of the bayou—the same road Claude had used to take her there the day before.

Had it really only been a day since she’d lain cuffed to his headboard listening to the sounds of the bayou, wanting a man she’d had no business wanting? The experience was so outside anything she could compare it to that she found it almost easier to imagine it a dream—a very detailed, vivid dream that still made her limbs go limp and yearning pool in her abdomen.

“Two minutes out,” the boat captain said to her.

She nodded and indicated that the other boat should split off. She pulled a shotgun from where she’d secured it against the low side of the boat and cocked it, the sound loud and isolated in the comparative silence. A flock of vultures set off from a stand of trees, cawing in warning. She ignored
them even as she searched for a landmark she might recognize.

There. To her right she watched three dark sedans speed down the road toward Lafitte’s cabin. There would be no out for him now—at least not through conventional routes. And with their two boats, an escape via the bayou would be cut off, as well.

The airboat hit the side of a grassy knoll and she bolted onto the soft earth, the other men following behind her. She led the way through thick vegetation, her booted feet hitting soggy patches of land here and there until finally she burst through the brush and stood off to the west of the cottage where Lafitte had held her captive the day before.

On the other side, the other team was doing the same, the third team coming up from behind the cabin via the road.

Akela held up her fingers and counted down from three, then ran for the porch, taking the stairs two steps at a time until she flanked the right side of the door, another officer flanking the other. She didn’t bother with niceties. Instead she opened the screen door, the other officer kicked in the wood door and they both entered, training their sights on the interior.

The empty interior.

Damn.

She quickly searched inside.

“House secured. Spread out and search the area,” Akela said into her radio.

She heard footsteps outside then Chevalier was moving inside the house wearing his trademark rumpled trenchcoat and lighting a cigarette. “You won’t find him.”

Akela resisted the urge to point her shotgun at him, handing it off to a fellow officer instead. “If I didn’t know better, Lieutenant, I’d say you’re privy to information the rest of us aren’t.”

He smiled at her. “Not privy. Just mindful of.” He stepped toward the bed in the corner and considered the empty cuffs still fastened to the headboard. He raised a brow at her. “This where he held you?”

Akela didn’t answer. She’d already told him what had gone down the day before. Three times. She wasn’t about to tell him again.

Besides, just looking at that bed made her remember feelings she’d be better off forgetting—for good.

The scent of cigarette smoke reached her nose and she stepped out of the cloud.

“If we’d come last night as I wanted, we might have caught him,” she said, stepping back outside.

“If we’d come last night, we would have gotten lost,” Chevalier said, following her.

“If I recall, that wasn’t your argument then.”

He looked at her. “No. It wasn’t.”

Essentially his argument had been that she was emotionally overwrought and wouldn’t have been able to remember where Lafitte had taken her. So he’d told her to go home and get some rest—rest she had yet to get.

Akela walked the perimeter of the house back to the shower. She didn’t dislike Chevalier. While he was a chauvinist pain in the ass, he had been very adept at his job judging by the framed accolades on his wall, and what others had said about him. At least up until recently. And while with his sarcasm he made it seem he didn’t like her, she knew that he held a grudging respect for her and her position. And once he’d agreed to the raid, she hadn’t heard a single smart-ass remark. Well, at least until they’d figured out Lafitte wasn’t there.

Of course, it didn’t pass her notice that he was in some sort of trouble with the higher-ups at his station or else she would have had a more difficult fight on her hands when she’d gone in there this morning.

“The deed?” she asked when she’d come back around, directing the question at Chevalier where he stood with a few of his men.

“None on record,” he said. “There are some places out here that aren’t listed in any books yet.”

So essentially this place didn’t exist. There was no way to tie it in any official way to Lafitte.

Something shone in her eyes, briefly blinding her. She held her hand to her brow and squinted out across the bayou. The three teams were gathering back at the cabin. Akela started in the direction of the swamp, keeping her gaze fixed on the spot where she swore she’d seen the flash.

C
LAUDE LIFTED
the binoculars again, staring at the woman some two hundred yards away with what he told himself was little more than detached interest. Problem was, not even he was having any of it. He felt…well, almost proud, if truth be told. He was proud Agent Akela Brooks had not only remembered where the old cabin was but that she had brought enough firepower along to bring down a small town.

Akela seemed to look directly at him.

Claude dropped the binoculars and squinted in her direction. Of course she couldn’t see him. But the way her gaze had slammed into his through the glass made him believe for half a second that she had.

He fished for his cell phone and called a number he’d programmed in, then moved the binoculars back to his eyes. He watched Akela search for her cell. She apparently didn’t recognize the num
ber and for a moment he thought she might ignore the incoming call. Then she pressed the button and said, “Hello?” her gaze still scanning the area around where Claude hid.

“You found me.”

He watched her eyes go round. The police detective was looking at her curiously but rather than indicate that she had him on the line, she turned and walked away from the throng of police. “Obviously I didn’t find you, or else I’d be looking at you right now. And you’d be the one wearing handcuffs this time.”

Claude chuckled softly, finding her actions more interesting than her words. Why hadn’t she let on to her co-workers that she had him on the line? That he was obviously nearby?

“Can you see me?” she asked.

“I can see you.”

“So why don’t you come out and give yourself up?”

It was more of a comment than a question. Probably because they both knew there would be no giving up of anything. At least not yet. Not until Claude could prove his innocence.

“I can’t,” he said. “Why don’t you give up looking for me?”

He watched as she lifted her chin and smiled as
if she suspected he was looking at her head-on and wanted him to see her. “I can’t.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“Pretty much at a stalemate.”

“Mmm.”

She turned to look at the cabin. “This isn’t your place, is it?”

“Nope.”

“But you do have one nearby.”

“Yes.”

She scanned the area around her.

“You could stay behind alone and I’ll show it to you.”

“Why? So you can take me hostage again?”

“No, so we can continue what we started yesterday. But this time, as equals.”

He could have sworn he saw her shiver.

“I think the scales would still be a bit unbalanced.”

“Only because you want to arrest me.”

She didn’t say anything.

“You could try to help me prove my innocence.”

He watched her eyes as they squinted, filled with what he could only guess was wariness.

“That’s why I can’t give myself up.”

“Yet.”

“Yes, yet.”

“Why?”

“Because not even you believe in my innocence.”

“I don’t know you.”

“I think you know me better than either of us is willing to admit.”

“Agent Brooks?”

He watched as the detective in the overcoat came up behind her. She raised a hand to ward him off.

“If I stay?”

If she stayed…

Claude thought of the dangerous game they’d begun the day before. Could still taste the sweetness of her flesh on his tongue. Feel her thighs gripping his hips.

“You’ll have to be the judge of that.”

He watched as she slapped her phone closed then turned to face the detective.

Claude closed his own phone, then drifted back farther into the bayou shadows. While he’d correctly read Akela’s attraction to him, he hadn’t expected her to find her way back to the cabin so easily. He’d have to remember not to underestimate her from there on out.

He watched as the three teams of officers began to disperse, two of them with the airboats, the other backtracking toward the road. He suspected they might leave someone behind. He was mildly surprised when it was Akela.

A
KELA UNFASTENED
the pulls on her flak jacket, then let the heavy protective vest hang from her shoulders, her T-shirt underneath damp. The last of her support team had left about fifteen minutes ago, leaving her behind on her request. Sitting on the porch’s wood steps, she scanned the surrounding area, hoping Lafitte had watched them go, hoping even more that he’d noticed she had stayed.

She didn’t miss the irony of her actions. She’d come out here with every intention of bringing him into custody, where she felt he’d be safer. With her on the job, she wouldn’t have to worry about one of Chevalier’s rookies spooking and squeezing a shot at Claude.

She should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. Should have suspected it would take more than a few clever maneuvers to arrest the ex-marine.

She’d practically memorized his background check. Knew the details of his arrest at nineteen when he’d been found bleeding from a stab wound in the back—which explained the scar—and left for dead when a black-market sale of small arms had gone bad. He’d been the seller, and apparently the buyer had decided he didn’t want to pay for what Claude had stolen. It had been his first offense, during a time when the laws weren’t as un
forgiving as they were now, so the judge had given him a choice: prison or a stint in the military.

He’d chosen the military. Where he’d not only served, but served well. He’d worked his way up to a prime position in Elite Forces, going above and beyond in his duty as scout and sniper in both Kosovo and Somalia. The marines had tried to talk him into staying when his time was up, but he’d taken his honorable discharge, then gone into business with his older brother, buying scrapped watercraft, rebuilding the engines, then reselling them at triple the price. The business had grown over the years to include popular bayou airboat tours and now dealt in new as well as used and refurbished boats.

It was that business that Claude was now in the process of buying from his brother, a deal that would undoubtedly fall through if Claude couldn’t clear his name. And the only way she felt he could do that was by turning himself over to authorities.

She glanced at her watch then ran the back of her hand across her brow. It was even hotter today than it had been yesterday, if that was possible. The very air around her seemed to liquefy. The scent of green and decay filled her nose. And her heart beat so thickly she wasn’t all that convinced that she was physically sound. Obviously, her psychological soundness was already in question.

She shrugged out of the jacket and dropped it with a dull thunk to the wood steps. There wasn’t anything she could do about the pants but roll them up a few times, but she left her boots on.