Carla Neggers - Night’s Landing

Despite his obvious doubts, Collins had assured Sarah that the FBI was leaving no stone unturned and promised to call the minute he heard anything.

Before his call, she’d found an inscription in her mother’s freshman yearbook from Nicholas Janssen, telling her he would miss her and appreciated her for being his friend. Sarah had looked him up on the Internet and found the same picture Conroy Fontaine had-a wanted poster on the FBI Web site. But Janssen was just a tax evader, if a very wealthy one. He’d made his money in real estate and had homes in Virginia and south Florida. He was divorced with no children, the only child of a northern Virginia pharmacist and a homemaker. He was just eighteen when his father died-it was the reason he’d had to drop out of college.

Sarah doubted her mother had done anything illegal in talking with this guy at the Rijksmuseum. That he also knew Wes Poe had set off alarm bells, but nothing explained what had happened to her parents.

Where were they?

Nate came out onto the front porch. He’d taken a call on the living room phone. Sarah knew he was doing his own checking, with sources he had within the Marshals Service. That was where he got his sketchy information on Ethan. But he’d just finished with another call, and from his obvious impatience, she suspected the news wasn’t good.

“Your pal Conroy needs to answer some questions. Looks like he might not be who he says he is. There’s a real Memphis reporter named Conroy Fontaine, but he’s sixty-four and just retired to Phoenix.”

“Maybe the Conroy we know is his son? Why don’t we just go over there and ask him?”

Nate leaned across the table and filled two glasses with ice, poured the tea, making his own attempt at normalcy, Sarah thought. She could see the butt of his gun under his open jacket. “I’m not leaving you here alone,” he said, “and I’m not taking you with me. Juliet’s flight got in almost two hours ago. She’ll be here soon.”

Having another armed deputy here would give him more room to maneuver. He handed Sarah a glass of tea, but she just stared at it. “I hope this all turns out to have nothing to do with what happened to you and Rob. It smells like politics and journalistic shenanigans to me. My mother-”

“Don’t jump ahead. We have no idea what your mother knew or didn’t know about Janssen, why he approached her at the museum-”

“Do you think he had anything to do with the murder of Ethan’s wife?”

“I’m not doing the thinking on this one, Sarah.”

Maybe not officially, she thought. She tried the tea. “I looked up Nicholas Janssen on the Internet. I’m sure you all have a thick file on him, but-” She’d known nothing about her mother’s former classmate. “His mother died over the winter while he was on the lam. It was unexpected-he couldn’t go home for her funeral. That had to be hard. I wonder if it’s part of the reason he sought out my mother. Maybe he was just lonely.”

“People don’t think things through when they take off.”

“I suppose if he’d been in prison serving his sentence-well, it can’t be easy to lose a parent under any circumstances.” She immediately regretted her words, remembering his own childhood loss of both parents. “Not that I’d know.”

But his attention wasn’t on her-she wasn’t even sure he’d heard her. He set his glass of tea back on the table and started for the steps, drawing his weapon. “Brooker! What’s going on?”

Sarah dropped her glass on the floor as she jumped up, tea splashing on her feet, ice cubes skittering under the chairs and tables. Nate charged down the porch steps.

Ethan was staggering past his cottage, soaking wet, half-drowned and in obvious pain.

He collapsed onto his knees in the grass.

Nate got to him first, Sarah just behind him.

Ethan was shivering from the chilly water and the cool breeze on his soaked clothes. Blood dripped from a swollen gash on the side of his head. “Fontaine’s got Longstreet. The only reason I’m alive is because she distracted him.” He was breathing hard, a thin stream of blood winding down his left temple and along his jaw. “She fell into me, pretended to faint. I went into the river. He dragged her off. I couldn’t-” He tried to get up. “I hit my head on my way over the bluff. There was nothing I could do.”

Nate helped him to his feet. “Did you see which way they went?”

“Into the woods between here and the Poe house.”

That left hundreds of acres in which to hide. Sarah pushed back a stab of fear, dread. “It was Conroy? You’re sure?”

Ethan brushed angrily at blood that had trickled into his mouth. “The fucker thinks he’s the president’s brother or something. He killed two of Janssen’s men.”

Nate swore under his breath. “Where?”

“Poe house. Maybe an hour ago. Longstreet and I spotted the bodies-she was on her way back here to make sure you two were okay when Fontaine ambushed us.” His dark eyes settled on Nate. “She said they were the men who attacked her this morning.”

Sarah slipped in the grass, heading for the back door to the cottage. “I’ll get ice and the phone, call the police.”

“Wait,” Nate said.

But she was already inside and grabbed the portable phone, ran for the freezer. Her mind was racing. Janssen’s men? What did that mean? She pulled out an ice tray, hit the 9 for 911.

A hand came down hard over her mouth, a gun to her right temple. “Not a sound or I’ll kill you here on the spot. Understood?”

She nodded, but the hand and the gun stayed in place. There was nothing charming about Conroy Fontaine now.

He kept the gun on her and dropped his hand from her mouth, but she didn’t scream, believed he’d kill her if she did. He wrapped his free arm around her middle and pushed her out the front door, moving fast, half dragging, half carrying her into the woods below the cottage, out of sight of Nate and Ethan.

“I warned you. I told you not to tell anyone.” Vines and brush slapped at her face and legs as he concealed them within the thick undergrowth. “I told you to wait. I told you if I could get to your brother, I could get to you. Did you think I was joking?”

“I-”

“Don’t talk! Now people will die because of you.”

Her parents. Rob. Juliet. Sarah didn’t breathe. It was as if she were in the treetops, watching what was taking place below her.

“You have one last chance to cooperate.” His voice was low, his face close to hers. “Do exactly as I say and your parents might yet live.”

Oh, God.

She landed hard back into reality.

Conroy Fontaine-whoever he was-had her parents.

“Juliet?”

“They have a chance. If you cooperate.”

“What do you want me to do?”

He didn’t answer, dragging her deeper into the woods, away from the river. He was obviously familiar with the woods, unintimidated by any thought of snakes, unworried about getting lost, stumbling into a sinkhole. He didn’t seem to care if Nate or Ethan followed him. But Sarah knew she had to buy them time to contact the authorities, figure out their options-for them to come after her. They had to know by now that Conroy had her.

He drew her down a rocky slope, then into a shallow cave within the hillside. He let her go, keeping the gun on her, and she pulled up her knees and leaned against the cool rock. The cave was head-high but only a few feet deep, damp, smelling of the earth, its limestone sides crumbling in places. Sarah had played here with Rob as kids.

And Conroy-whoever he was-had lived here.

She knew now who he was.

“You want me to help prove who you are,” she said.

“Money. I want money. The rest will come out. The truth.”