Carla Neggers - Night’s Landing

“Is it Conroy?” Sarah asked, reaching for a loose rock, anything.

Juliet shook her head just as Ethan squatted at the mouth of the cave. “Nice little tea party you ladies are having, huh?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Juliet said. “Brooker, I’ve got a job to do. How did you get here? Why aren’t you drowned?”

“I’m a good swimmer. I picked up Sarah’s trail. The law’s right behind me.”

“I am the law.”

“You don’t look it. You look like a pretty lady who’s had the shit kicked out of her.”

She groaned in disgust.

“Juliet, Ethan’s right.” Crouching under the cave’s low ceiling, Sarah crept toward them. “Not about patronizing you, but about your condition. Ethan, tell me you have a SWAT team out there and not just-”

“No SWAT guys yet. Just Winter.” He settled back against the cave wall, his eyes glassy in the dim light. He had to be in almost as much pain as Juliet. “I’m not going to be much good to him with my head beat in. It wasn’t one of my smoother dives into the damn river.” He managed a grin. “Guess I’ll stay here and keep you womenfolk safe.”

Sarah suspected he was deliberately annoying them to cut through the tension, but Juliet gritted her teeth. “God, you’re even more obnoxious when you’re injured.” But some of her initial energy surge was going out of her. “Concussion?”

He shrugged. “Probably. I hit my head when you pushed me off the cliff.”

“I didn’t push you. I should have.”

Nate peered into the cave. “Juliet, Sarah-you two okay?”

Juliet nodded, but Sarah scooted to the edge of the cave. “Fontaine has my parents. He’ll tell me where they are if I get Nicholas Janssen a presidential pardon. If I don’t-if he doesn’t get word to his guy in an hour-my parents will be killed. I have an hour.”

Nate touched her hand. “We’ll get him, Sarah. Just hold on.”

She ducked out of the cave and stood up on the narrow ledge, pushing back a wave of vertigo at the steep drop to the river. “Conroy’s been bit by a cottonmouth. He’s not going to last long.” She could feel her heart racing. “He might not even last the hour.”

“Listen to me-”

“I have to find him before he dies and try to get through to him that I-” She placed a hand on the limestone layers to help keep her balance. “What he’s asking of me can’t be done. It’s impossible.”

“He could be bluffing,” Juliet said from within the cave.

But Sarah couldn’t wait any longer and moved as quickly as she could along the ledge. Nate could do what he wanted. Knock her into the river, follow her or stay put. It didn’t matter. She was going after Conroy Fontaine, aka John Wesley Poe.

She heard Nate behind her and thought, he could also shoot her.

“Keep going,” he said close to her ear. “I don’t want to end up in the damn river.”

“I know you’re worried Conroy’s hidden somewhere with a sniper rifle, but he’s in no condition-and he wants my cooperation.”

“Sarah.”

She nodded. “I’m going.”

Juliet figured that every nerve, muscle, vein and artery-every damn cell in her body-had been stripped raw. “If I don’t get out of this cave,” she told Brooker, “I’m going to go buggy. I have a cell phone in my coat pocket. My hands are too numb-can you get it?”

“No problem, Deputy.”

He crept toward her, his clothes soaked, his head swollen and bruised. He had to have a concussion. But she could see the ripple of muscles in his arms, sensed his overwhelming masculinity and felt an urge to carve out her own authority. He reached into her pocket and retrieved her cell phone.

She licked her cut lip. “I should be pissed at you for being such a retro chauvinist, but right now, I feel like such crap that I’m going to let the ‘pretty lady’ stuff go.”

He grinned at her, not moving back from her as quickly as he could have. “That was worrying me, you know,” he said lightly, clicking on her cell phone. “ Battery looks good.”

“Any service out here?”

“Should be.”

She eyed him. “What are you, some kind of spook? Secret Service?”

But he didn’t answer, just handed her back her cell phone. She crawled out of the cave onto the narrow ledge, managing to sit with her legs dangling over the side. She stared at the readout screen but couldn’t make out the dial numbers. “My eyes aren’t working right. That bastard Fontaine-” She licked her lips again. “He smacked me on the back of the head before he left me in the cave. I think he knocked my eyeballs loose or something.”

Brooker moved in next to her. “What number you calling?”

Her head was throbbing. She struggled to remember the number Joe Collins had given her in the E.R., then recited it to Brooker. He dialed without a word and handed the phone back to her. “Winter talked to some FBI type on our way over here. He’s sending in the cavalry.”

Juliet had expected as much. One of the FBI agent’s flunkies answered. She told him to put on the big guy. She’d been smacked around one too many times today for anything approaching niceties.

Collins came on. “Where are you?”

“In a cave with snakes and some kind of spook who’s been playing the Dunnemore gardener. Listen to me. This Conroy Fontaine character had someone snatch the Dunnemores in Amsterdam. He says they’re his hostages.”

“We’re on it. We’ve got a team on the way to your location. Sit tight, will you?”

“I don’t have much choice. Nate and Sarah Dunnemore-”

Collins cut in again. “Winter says you found the guys who ambushed you this morning-dead.”

Juliet paused. “Don’t start with me, okay? I didn’t kill those men. Look, get word to the SWAT guys that Fontaine thinks he’s the president’s brother.”

“Jesus Christ,” Collins breathed.

“And he’s been bit by a cottonmouth. It’s bad. Sarah Dunnemore wants to find him before he dies.”

“Winter’s with her?”

“Yes.”

“All right. You know what to do.”

“Yeah. I’m getting out of this goddamn cave. Tell your guys I’ll meet them at the Poe house. That’s where the bodies are.”

She hung up and glanced at Ethan. “You’re armed?”

“Nine-millimeter Browning.”

“Not going to share, are you?”

He grinned. “Not a chance.”

She’d figured as much. “Well, are you game for getting out of here?”

“I had my fill of caves in Afghanistan. Let’s go.”

She grimaced at the river below her. “Fontaine told me the water’s forty feet deep here. Strong current. I’m not the best swimmer.”

“Relax.” Brooker grasped the rock at the top of the cave and pulled himself to his feet, glancing down at her with a wink. “It doesn’t matter if it’s forty feet deep. You can drown in six feet of water.”

Nate appreciated Sarah’s spirit and determination and understood her fear for her parents, but he wasn’t going to drag her through the woods to look for a killer. They were almost to the Poe house. When they got there, they’d wait for the SWAT guys. FBI, USMS Special Operations, Secret Service, local guys-whoever Joe Collins managed to get in there could go find Conroy Fontaine. For all Nate knew, they could be there now.

In the meantime, it was his job to keep Sarah Dunnemore alive.

She didn’t see it that way. She walked just ahead of him, her energy not flagging even slightly. “You’re not responsible for me. It’s my decision to go after Conroy.”

“You have your own way of looking at things.”

“That’s right, I do.”

The trail had descended toward the river-they were only fifteen feet above the water now-and cut steeply back up toward the Poe house. Conroy Fontaine had the skills to hide in Central Park in the middle of a rainy early May day and pick off two marshals. He’d killed two presumably highly trained bodyguards. He’d wormed his way into the Dunnemores’ lives. Nate had believed the guy was just another reporter looking for a story.