Touch of Evil (16 page)

A flat, oblong shape plunked free from the sweatshirt’s pocket, and Justine pulled out a handkerchief to pick it up.

“Here’s our cell phone,” she said softly as she flipped it open. It flickered once before the screen darkened, going dead as every man who’d ever been a part of Hangman’s Bayou.

Dead as Justine feared Laney Thibodeaux was, too.

Or at least, that was what Justine thought until she heard the first notes, not of evening birdsong but of a woman’s voice that hung like a mist among the shadows, a voice that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

—Michel de Montaigne

Held close to earth by the boughs above, the echo reverberated from damp tree trunks. In such surroundings, it was all too possible to believe they’d heard a dead woman singing.

“Laney,” Ross called, whipping around in an attempt to figure out where the voice was coming from. For he knew his cousin’s voice when he heard it, no matter how strained or muffled. “Where are you, Laney? It’s Ross. I’m here to take you home.”

“Listen,” Justine whispered, her left hand on her flashlight and her right clutching her drawn weapon. She looked coiled, prepared to spring into motion in an instant. “Just be still and listen.”

A fragile set of notes drifted their way. Not singing, he realized. Laughter. Laughter that raced up the scale before disintegrating into an animal-like keening that made Ross’s stomach clench.

Was Laney hurt, hysterical? It was impossible to know.

“That way,” Ross said, turning toward his left. “It’s coming from over…”

His voice trailed off as he looked behind them. “Or is she back there?”

Justine fixed him with a stern look. “Stay here. Do not move an inch unless I call you.”

He didn’t get his mouth open to argue before she added, “Not a word, Ross. We don’t know who’s with her. Or what this person might do if he sees us.”

Pressing his lips together in a grimace, he nodded. But knowing she was right didn’t do a thing to dampen his desire to take the lead on this, to be the one to save his cousin and protect Justine from harm.

Anne’s memory drifted toward him like a specter. Anne, who had left their lunch date early—and angry, thanks to their argument—to meet and interview the victim of a sexual assault. Who hadn’t made it halfway to the scene when an unrelated police chase sent a fifteen-year-old car thief in a Hummer bursting through a red light and into the passenger side of her car.

If Ross had only been there, he might have stopped the bleeding in time. Or if he’d only kept her with him in the restaurant a minute, even seconds, longer…

But Justine was gone already, hurrying, her head lowered, into the undergrowth. Almost immediately, she disappeared completely, moving with an athletic grace that somehow looked out of place amid all the mud and tree limbs.

Followed by laughter, another slurred scrap of song floated in his direction: a tattered vestige of Laney’s singing voice. Skin prickling with cold, Ross realized he was hearing the sounds of intoxication. Had she come out here alone to drink away the memories of her lost band or escape from them with drugs?

A flare of anger cut through his chill. Though he suspected he’d be more forgiving of a grieving stranger who’d resorted to chemical relief, he was furious to think Laney would shun her family, all the people in her life who would be glad to listen, to come out here and risk her life in these conditions. Damned thoughtless of his cousin to turn her back on him and Trudy, to indulge in self-destruction without a thought to how badly she might frighten or hurt others.

But even as he thought how much he’d like to throttle her, Ross knew, at least in part, that he was reacting out of fear. How long had she been out here, under the influence and possibly soaked, her body heat trickling away like the rain draining into Bone Lake? It took all of his self-control to stay still and quiet instead of running to where he could wrap her in the blanket and rush her to Justine’s truck.

Laney’s voice faded like the waning day, the echo dying last. In its wake, the silence expanded, an ominous weight that tempted Ross to shout her name again.

But before he could break his promise, a sharp crack filled the air. A sound that could only be a single gunshot.

Not three feet to Justine’s right, a trunk splintered, a bullet zinging off it in a noisy ricochet. But as she darted behind the thick base of a bald cypress, all her attention was fixed on a spot at her two o’clock, the place where she had glimpsed a muzzle flash and heard a branch snap.

She couldn’t see the gunman, for the woods were dense, and dusk had thickened in this shaded patch of bottomland. But Laney’s singing—or at least, Justine thought it was Laney—hadn’t come from that direction, so unless Laney had moved almost as swiftly as the bullet, she couldn’t have been the one who’d fired.

Breathing hard, Justine switched off her flashlight. Her mind whipped through the risks, from losing her chance to catch the shooter, to getting her head blown off by failing to withdraw. Both training and good sense prompted her to wait for the backup she’d called earlier.

But it was the thought of two civilians so close by that kept Justine from blindly returning fire. And the thought of the personal attacks against her that prevented her from calling out and identifying herself as a law officer.

Still, she couldn’t let this go, not while the chance remained of capturing or killing what might well prove to be
their hangman. Plus, she was personally pissed off now, realizing how close she had come to getting head-shot. She zigzagged forward, darting from tree trunk to tree trunk at a diagonal to the shooter’s last known position.

When she paused, she heard something crashing through the heavy brush. The receding steps assured her she had him on the run, at least, so she cast aside caution and ran after him in earnest, hoping to catch up—or at least catch sight of the shooter for a visual ID.

Pumped with adrenaline, she barreled through a thorny patch and sprang over a log, not worrying about her own noise, since the runner was making so much of his own. The blood rush of the pursuit took over, inuring her to the throb of her still-healing head and the stitch developing in her side.

He was heading down a slope toward the water, she thought. Downhill, where she could trap him—unless he wanted to brave the lake and the resident alligator population.

But it was altogether possible he had a waiting boat, she thought, picking up speed as the grade grew steeper. Picking up so much speed that when one foot snagged on a tree root, she pitched forward and went down hard—

Only to have something—
someone
—land heavily atop her back and send both her flashlight and her firearm spinning from her grasp.

A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.

—Martin Luther King Jr.

It was Justine’s cry of alarm that got Ross moving, had him parting the veil of Spanish moss to follow the path she had taken. Even if he could have gotten his phone to work in this dead spot, Ross couldn’t wait helplessly while God alone knew what was happening to her and Laney.

Keeping his flashlight off but in hand, he tried to estimate the direction of the shot, tried to differentiate it from the echo that had followed.

He hadn’t gone far when he heard soft whimpering to his right. Turning, he saw a silhouetted form stagger through the underbrush, a form so small it looked childlike.

“Laney?” he called softly. “Laney, is that you?”

He reached her within seconds, recognizing the long tangle of her wet hair and the waxy-pale features in spite of the weak light. “Oh, Laney,” he said, and hugged her to him, feeling in an instant the cadaverous chill of her flesh and the shuddering that racked her body.

He’d been right to think of hypothermia, he realized. She was so cold, it could already be too late unless he got her inside and to a hospital quickly.

Pulling the blanket off his shoulder, he bundled it around her tightly before wrapping her in his arms. “Have you taken something? What’s happened to you, Laney?”

She didn’t answer, only hummed tunelessly as she slumped
against him. Even as he worried about his cousin, Ross was straining to hear Justine.

What he heard instead, from the direction of the water, was the rough rumble of a boat motor receding. Was it whomever Justine had shot at? Or had she been fired on instead? Had the single cry he’d heard been a cry of pain as she lay dying?

The boat motor faded, leaving him with yet another fear: What if this maniac was taking Justine with him? Taking her to hang her, as he’d hanged every other person standing between him and whatever sick plans he’d had for Laney?

“I’ll be right back,” he told his cousin as he lowered her to the ground with the blanket wrapped around her.

“Don’t—don’t leave,” she stammered, her voice barely audible.

Ross hesitated, torn between the need to help the woman he was fairly certain he could save and the marrow-freezing image of Justine, shot or strung up like the others. He could end up hurt or killed, too. And there was no way Laney was strong enough to get out on her own for help.
And Laney’s your responsibility. Laney, not Justine.

But it was Justine Ross went running after. Justine, out of the foolhardy resolve that he would somehow save them both.

She should have listened to her brother. Listened when he’d shouted that she couldn’t make it back inside to save their old dog, Jelly, a fat black spaniel mix who could barely walk on his good days.

Instead, Justine darted away from him and ran upstairs—or tried to. But something happened as she reached the first steps, some part of the ceiling caved in. Something heavy and unyielding struck her on the back and pinned her at the bottom of the staircase.

Funny how she couldn’t smell the smoke now. How she couldn’t feel its thick heat roiling in her lungs. She saw it, though, the dark cloud that obscured her vision, and she screamed again, screamed at her brother to stay outside, to stay away from her.

Because she knew now what she hadn’t at the time. Knew she would survive somehow, crawling from the house after he dug her out from under the debris. Escaping after a blazing beam, collapsing from the burned-through second story, had struck Eddie, killing him as he had tried to follow. Killing him because he’d pushed her on ahead. Because she’d loved that sick old dog too much to heed her brother’s warning.

But the weight was gone from her back. The weight was gone, the smoke had vanished, and Justine dragged in breath after panicked breath while something in the woods rushed toward her.

Reality sucked her back into its vortex, pulling her through the decades—past her father’s accusations and her mother’s vain attempts, before her own death, to heal the rift between them. Catching up to Justine in time for her to make a wild grope for her gun, her heart throbbing as she sought to shoot before the killer reached her.

Except she couldn’t find the gun, and a familiar voice called, “Justine.”

“Ross?” she cried, and tried to push herself up out of the muddy pile of leaves where she had landed. Everything ached, from back to ribs to head and ankle, but her vision was clearing enough to make out his big form squatting down beside her.

“How bad is it?” he asked, running his hands over her so quickly she couldn’t protest. “How badly are you injured?”

She paused and tried to focus, decided that no pain stood out above the others. With a shake of her head—which started the world rocking—she said, “Someone jumped me
from behind. I think he must’ve stunned me for a minute or I blacked out or…something.”

“You’re still recovering from a concussion—a fall might’ve been enough to do it.”

“Damn it—I think he might’ve gotten my gun, too. Do you see it?”

Ross flipped on his flashlight, but rather than searching the ground, he used it to look her over. “No blood, thank God. I heard the shot. And then you cried out. I thought—”

“One of them fired at me,” she said. “Came close but didn’t hit me.”

“You mean there was more than one?” he asked, as he shone the light on the ground around her. Though the gun was nowhere in sight, a glint sparked off the metal barrel of Justine’s flashlight.

Justine grabbed it. “Definitely more than one,” she said. “And the second managed to surprise me. Do you know where they went?”

“Gone, I think. I heard a boat leave. But we can’t sit here talking. We have to get back to Laney. I found her, but we have to get her warmed up or we’ll lose her—she’s seriously hypothermic and maybe drugged or drunk.” Ross held out a hand to her. “Do you think you can stand?”

Still feeling unsteady, Justine let him help her to her feet. As they staggered uphill, he kept his arm around her, and she didn’t feel inclined to argue with the consoling sense of safety his touch offered. Nor did she feel up to chewing him out for ignoring her order to stay put.

Slipping her hand inside her pocket for her cell phone, she said, “I need to check on my backup. And get an ambulance out here for Laney.”

“My phone wouldn’t get a signal,” Ross said. “And anyway, we can move her to the truck and get you both help a lot faster. Let me drive and—”

“I don’t need help,” Justine insisted. For one thing, every step was clearing her head. For another, she’d been blindsided and overpowered
twice
now in the space of three days. It didn’t speak well of her competence, especially considering that she’d lost her gun. Maybe her father had been right from the beginning: Maybe she belonged indoors, working regular hours cataloging evidence rather than trying to lead men and capture criminals.

But no sooner had the thought occurred than she crushed out her own self-pity, gritted her teeth, and stepped out of Ross’s embrace. “Thanks for coming for me, but I’ve got it from here,” she said, hearing the streak of stubborn independence in her own voice.

Hearing it and liking it just fine.

Or at least, she did until Ross stopped in front of her so abruptly, she walked into his back.

Shining the light into an indentation in the leaves, he picked up the blanket. “This is where I left her. Where is she? Where would she go—especially without this?
Laney!
”

Justine’s light found a trembling bush and a spot where Spanish moss appeared to have been torn down from an overhanging tree limb. “This way,” she said, and took off, her desire to find Laney overriding both headache and caution.

She hadn’t far to look, thank God. “Here,” she said, seeing that Laney had wandered only about a dozen yards into the brush before she’d collapsed, legs curled tight beneath her, near the base of a huge live oak.

Only a step or two behind, Ross knelt beside her. “Laney, can you look at me?”

When there was no movement from the still form, Justine’s breath froze in her lungs. But Ross did something—Justine could have sworn she saw him pinch his cousin’s earlobes—that made Laney gasp and weakly fight to pull away.

“Let’s get her to the truck and crank the heat up.” He wrapped her in the blanket and gathered her in his arms.

Ross hurried back toward the road, his long strides so quick that Justine had to run to keep pace. “Wait, Ross. Let me help you carry her,” she called, thinking of the surgical scar on his chest.

But Ross didn’t slow at all, reaching her vehicle in minutes. Once they had Laney on the bench seat between them, Justine fired up the engine and cranked the heat on high. Panting from her own exertion, she said, “I’m fine to drive. You work on Laney.”

He glanced up at her. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Definitely,” she swore, still aching but grateful for the height and strength she’d cursed all through school.

“The toxicologist told me earlier that Tyson and Willets both tested positive for scopolamine,” she told Ross. “I think it’s a fair bet that Laney’s been drugged, too.”

“Thanks, Justine,” Ross said as he grabbed his medical kit from the backseat. “Thanks for everything.”

As she sped toward the county hospital, Justine wondered if Ross would still be thanking her if his cousin failed to make it. Or if he’d forever regret leaving her to rescue a woman who ought to have been capable of caring for herself.