Carla Neggers - Night’s Landing

Juliet figured it was the only way to get them to their kids without another damn drama.

She inched her way out to the porch after she’d talked her E.R. doctors out of sticking her in a Nashville hospital and got a ride back to Night’s Landing from a very cute FBI agent with a southern accent.

She hurt all over. She figured she’d hurt until she was a hundred.

Sarah was still in her rocking chair. Nate had joined a million other feds down at Ethan’s cottage. They’d already gone through the fishing cabin that Conroy Fontaine had rented. Apparently he’d left behind a considerable amount of damning information on Nicholas Janssen, who was, allegedly, involved in illegal arms trading, extortion, murder, fraud-tax evasion was the least of his misdeeds.

“I thought you were being admitted to the hospital,” Sarah said.

Juliet gave her a crooked smile. “I had to threaten to shoot my doctor to keep him from strapping me to a stretcher. I hate hospitals.”

“More than most people?”

“Yeah. Probably.” She changed the subject. “Did I see you and Deputy Winter smooching out here?”

Sarah sighed, looking smart and pretty and not blushing even a little. “Maybe it’s the snakebite, but I think I’m falling for him.”

Juliet grinned. “It’s the snakebite.” She glanced out at the cottage and wondered where Ethan Brooker was now. “I knew he’d take off.”

“Ethan? Why didn’t you stop him?”

“He was the one with the nine-millimeter.”

Sarah put her feet up on the porch rail. “I hope someone gets to him before he does something he regrets.”

“Like kill Nicholas Janssen? I’m not sure he’d regret it.” Juliet eased herself slowly, painfully, onto a cushioned chair. “Joe Collins read me the riot act for not stopping him. Like I didn’t have enough to do with two dead bodies, the snakes, you in the river, Nate going Tarzan on us, this Conroy Fontaine character foaming at the mouth.”

“Collins is hard on you because he respects you.”

“He’s hard on me because he’s a prick.”

Sarah smiled. “And I suppose you told him that?”

Juliet realized that she’d come to like Dr. Dunnemore. “Yeah, as a matter of fact.”

“Ethan’s going after Janssen,” Sarah said.

Juliet nodded. “That must have been some woman he lost.”

Janssen cocooned himself in the fishy, salty-smelling woolen blanket and tried to stay warm deep in the bowels of the ancient trawler that was taking him to safety. Away from luxury, away from hope. He hadn’t slept in hours, because when he did, he dreamed of his mother crying for him on her deathbed, of Betsy Dunnemore smiling at him at eighteen and making his heart melt. He’d let them both down.

John Wesley Poe.

Conroy Fontaine.

He was the psycho who’d interfered in his life and shot the marshals in Central Park. Who’d tried to extort five million dollars from him for a pardon that was even more of a fantasy-a flight of fancy-than Janssen’s own dream of getting Betsy Dunnemore to intervene with the president on his behalf.

Conroy had weaseled his way into Janssen’s life last fall and learned everything about him.

No, not everything. Too much, certainly, but not everything.

Not the location of his safe houses. Not his backup plans once he knew there was little hope for a simple conviction on tax evasion charges.

Five years in prison? He’d be lucky now to avoid the death penalty.

Charlene Brooker, lowly army intelligence officer, had been pulling at the thread that would unravel everything and set him up for big trouble. Her meeting with Betsy-beautiful Betsy-was the last straw for Janssen.

But it was Conroy Fontaine with his crazy idea that he was the president’s half brother who’d destroyed the careful life Nicholas had constructed for himself, all in an attempt to extort money from him for a pardon and manipulate the president of the United States into acknowledging him as his brother.

The crazy fuck.

Now the authorities apparently had the concrete information they needed to turn the suspicions of a murdered military intelligence officer into a full-blown investigation of all his activities.

He had become one of the most wanted criminals in the world.

But he was prepared. He had a plan for just such a worst-case scenario.

He would survive. He’d always survived.

The Dutch police, the Swiss police, U.S. law enforcement, Interpol-they all wanted his scalp. But at least with them, even with all he’d done, it was professional, not personal. They would capture him and bring him to trial. They wouldn’t slit his throat in the night.

With Ethan Brooker, it was different. It was very personal.

The hatch creaked open. “Sir?”

“What is it?” Janssen asked irritably.

“I have news of the man you wanted me to-”

Brooker. “Yes, what?”

“The FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service want him for questioning in that mess that happened in Tennessee. He’s disappeared.”

Just as I feared.

Janssen had two choices. One, he could let Ethan Brooker come to him. Two, he could get to Ethan Brooker before Brooker got to him.

He pulled the blanket over him, shivering on the cold, skinny mat under him.

Those weren’t any choices at all.

The Dunnemores reminded Nate of wizards. Eccentric, dramatic, full of secrets and magic spells, but fun and a bit removed from lesser mortals. It wasn’t that they didn’t make mistakes or were arrogant-they were kind, funny, generous and intelligent. And, despite their oddities as parents, they loved their twin son and daughter. Nate saw that when they finally arrived in New York five days after their son was shot in Central Park, one day after their daughter almost got herself killed in Night’s Landing.

He hadn’t flown up specifically for the occasion. He’d simply realized he couldn’t hang around in Night’s Landing and had decided to return to New York, his apartment, his work, his life.

Both Betsy and Stuart Dunnemore had thanked him profoundly for everything he’d done, but all he could think of was the night he’d made love to their daughter in their kitchen.

He didn’t want to be thanked for anything.

He thought of his own family-Gus and his egg lady and his hole-digging dog, his sister Antonia and her senator husband, his sister Carine and her PJ husband. They were a different kind of family. Direct, argumentative, loud. Not much going on beneath the surface, not many secrets, except, these days, for the occasional de-ranged killer. It wasn’t subterranean stuff that got them into trouble-it was their keen sense of independence, their reluctance to rely on anyone but themselves.

Carine had learned better, Antonia had learned better.

Nate wondered if he ever would.

He walked down the hospital corridor with Rob, markedly improved but still with a long way to go. The Dunnemores were off to some health-food store to stock up on vitamins and herbs to aid in his recovery. He was getting out of the hospital in a day or two. In another few days, he could fly down to Night’s Landing. “Couldn’t you have told them Sarah’s snakebite wasn’t nonvenomous? Then they’d have to fly down there to see her.”

“She’s cooking casseroles and putting them in the freezer.”

“She’s alone.”

“Not that alone. She’s got the Secret Service camped out in the back yard.”

President John Wesley Poe was coming to Night’s Landing.

And so were the Dunnemores, just not soon enough to suit their only son. Sarah had urged them to stay with her brother at least until he was out of the hospital and give her a chance to get the house in order.