Blind Instinct-Chapter Sixteen

Sixteen

Marc walked into the Shreveport Police Station just before ten, and was shown through to Pete Rousseau’s office.

Courtesy of a fax from his office in D.C. and a raft of information on Delgado and his connections with the Chavez cartel, Rousseau had agreed to share information about both the Sawyer and Fischer cases. The detective was polite, but wary. Marc understood the reaction. With the Lopez case, local and federal jurisdictions had always been an issue, but current legislation allowing wide-ranging powers for the investigation of organized crime gave him the muscle he needed. Rousseau was also aware that Marc could pull rank if he wanted.

Rousseau took him through the notes on Sara’s file. Marc frowned when he read about the attack at the library. Sara had mentioned that Delgado was stalking her; she hadn’t said that he’d held a gun to her throat. Her account was confirmed by statements from a number of LSU students. Delgado was a professional hit man, but on this occasion, his method hadn’t been clinical. He had chosen to get up close and personal rather than shoot from a distance, probably because he had made the mistake of underestimating Sara. He had no doubt thought that because she was a librarian, she would be a pushover, and had blown the job. But if those kids hadn’t intervened, Sara would have been executed in the parking lot.

Rousseau slid Janine Sawyer’s file across the desk. The gunman had fired twice into her chest, killing her almost instantly. Sawyer was older, but from a distance, dressed in homogenous business clothes, she could easily be mistaken for Sara.

The phone rang. Rousseau picked up the call. Seconds later he hung up and reached for his sport coat. “Looks like they just found Delgado. He’s floating in the river just south of the Cities. He’s been shot—two in the chest, one in the head. Looks like your boys are going to be looking for a new hit man.”

Outside the air-conditioned paradise of the Bayard mansion, the air was hot enough to shimmer in the distance. The sun beat down, burning into Sara’s bare shoulders and arms, and the light was harsh enough that dark glasses were a necessity. As she walked across manicured lawns and stepped through a white picket gate into the wilderness of vast hay fields, the smell of grass spun her back to long, lazy summers spent running barefoot and wild. She and Steve and Bayard had climbed trees, built huts and swum in the water hole just below her parents’ house.

She climbed a stile and stepped into a mown hay field. The grass was short and spiky and browned off where the sun had burned the delicate lower stems. In a neighboring field, restrained by a taut wire fence, a few of Vance Pettigrew’s prize Black Angus breeding cows grazed, their coats impossibly sleek and glossy. The pungent smell of the animals drifted on the warm air, blending with the herbaceous top note of grass and the cooler, underlying scents of the river.

A fine film of sweat broke out on her skin as she walked, the heat and the easy rhythm of the exercise leaching away the tension that had strung her tight ever since she had seen Delgado in her apartment. When the heat became too intense, she scrambled down the riverbank and walked in the dappled shade of acacias and willows.

The peaked rooftop of the Fischer house appeared through the trees. She continued to follow the line of the river, which curved around the house. A pair of swallows dipped and darted through the air. Automatically, her eye followed the movement and fixed on the attic window of the house.

It was open.

Chills chased across her skin. She distinctly remembered closing the window when she’d left the other night, and she hadn’t been back since. Someone was in the house.

She reached for her phone, and searched for Bayard’s number. Before she could short dial, it buzzed. She picked up the call on the first ring.

“Where are you?”

Bayard. Her stomach tightened in automatic response to his voice. She kept her voice low. “I’m on the riverbank, on the bend directly below Dad’s place. Someone’s in the house.”

“Stay where you are. Get under cover and don’t go near the house. I’m on my way.”

When Bayard hung up she deleted the ring tone and switched the phone to vibrate. Slipping the phone back into her pocket, she retreated farther into the deep shade of the trees lining the bank. Bayard had told her to stay where she was and she understood his reasoning, but if she walked a few yards upriver she would still be under cover, and she would have a better view of the house.

She walked soundlessly between trees shrouded with rampant morning glory creeper, and scrambled around rearing slabs of basalt until she found the vantage point she wanted.

The breeze lifted, sifting through the trees and blocking out sound. A dark-haired man moved through the trees at the edge of the lawn, his step swift. He emerged into a small sun-dappled clearing, his head up and alert.

An image flashed into her mind. A Nazi SS officer, striding across an open field with that same predatory glide, his head moving as if he was scenting the air.

For a split second, the heat and the scents of the river dissolved and she was plunged into icy cold and darkness, pines towering over her.

Stein.

A small sound squeezed through the sudden constriction in her throat. A second later the clearing was empty, as if the man had vanished into thin air.

He must have heard her and reacted. Sara froze in place. She probed the shadows where he had been just seconds ago. He had to be nearby, probably concealed behind a tree.

Long seconds ticked by. The heat and the humidity increased as the cloud cover thickened, making the grove of trees even gloomier. Sweat trickled between her breasts and cooled on her skin as she strained to hear, but the breeze was gusting now, muffling sound.

A faint movement made her stiffen, and suddenly she could see him. Not behind a tree, but in front of one. He must have heard the small sound she had made, but he had probably thought it had come from a bird or a small animal.

His head turned. Light glanced off cheekbones, the sprinkling of gray at his temples, the line of his jaw.

Relief loosened some of her tension. He was dark, definitely Latino, and not tall enough to be Delgado.

Movement from the attic sent another spurt of adrenaline through her. The window had just been closed. Whoever was in there had probably finished what they were doing and was on the point of leaving.

When she checked on the dark stranger, the place he had been standing was empty. He must have moved while she’d been distracted by the window closing, and she didn’t know in which direction he had gone. The only certainty she had was that he hadn’t retraced his steps, because if he had he would have crossed her line of sight.

The two men were probably together, one searching the house for the items she had already removed and who knew what else, the other prowling the grounds keeping watch. She had gotten a good look at the Latino, enough that she could describe him to the police. If she could work her way closer, she would be able to see the second guy as he came out the front door.

Moving as quietly as she could, she retreated a few more feet so that a thick clump of vegetation screened her from the place the Latino guy had been, then she worked her way back down to the rocks, which would hide her completely. When she was certain she was out of sight, she walked around the bend of the river, far enough that she could safely cross without being seen. Then she walked into the water until it lapped at her thighs. Taking off her watch, she tossed it along with her cell phone onto the far side of the bank.

She took her sunglasses off and held them in one hand. Taking a deep breath, she crouched down and pushed off, sliding silently under and through the deep, green water to cut down on noise. In contrast to the steamy heat, the water was icy. One breaststroke and scissors kick with her legs and she was across and pulling herself up the bank. Seconds later, after pulling the pins out of her soaking hair and letting it fan over her shoulders and back so it would dry and also provide her bare shoulders and arms with some makeshift camouflage, she slipped her dripping sunglasses on top of her head. The sound of a helicopter registered. Retrieving her watch and the phone, she paused at the edge of the lawn in time to see a thickset, balding older man folding himself behind the wheel of a rented Lexus. The car was beige and she was abruptly certain that it had been the same vehicle that had followed her to her apartment the previous day. Her spine tightened when she noted that he had driven away without a passenger.

A faint sound jerked her head around.

Black metal gleamed. Adrenaline pumped when she identified the shape of a handgun.

Dennison pressed his foot on the accelerator, the Lexus fishtailing as he arrowed down the drive. The feds were circling. He had seen the chopper crest the horizon from the attic window, which was why he had cut short his search.

He couldn’t believe that Bayard had managed to track him from Grand Cayman. In an effort to avoid detection, he had flown to Mexico, then driven across the border in a rental, changed his identity three times and paid for everything in cash. He should have been invisible.

A flicker of movement in the trees caught his attention. A familiar, cold, dark gaze locked with his, and Dennison’s heart seized in his chest. Then he was past, the rooster tail of dust behind him obscuring the view from his rearview mirror.

Moments later the rear window exploded and blood blossomed on the back of his hands as tiny shards of glass peppered his skin. A second shot whined past his ear, vaporizing the front windshield.

Blood trickled down his dark glasses and adrenaline pounded through his veins as he stomped on the accelerator, his gaze glued to the ribbon of road ahead as the car slid around a corner. A second helicopter appeared in the distance, much larger than the first. A Blackhawk, probably with a SWAT team on board.

Now the big-budget bust made sense. The feds weren’t after him; it was Lopez they wanted.

He braked for the turn onto the highway. Back in the direction of the house the smaller chopper lifted off near the spot he had glimpsed Lopez and comprehension dawned. That chopper belonged to Lopez, not Bayard.

Dennison jerked the smeared dark glasses off his face and tossed them on the passenger seat. The smaller helicopter had already disappeared from sight. Lopez had escaped by the skin of his teeth.

But that wasn’t the biggest tragedy.

His retirement plans had just developed a fatal flaw.

Lopez knew he was alive.

* * *

Dark eyes locked with Sara’s as the heavy beat of a second helicopter filled the air. Bayard.

She let out a breath. He lifted a finger to his lips and signaled that she stay where she was. Then he was gone, moving soundlessly past her. She noted that he was wet to his thighs, which meant he must have forded the river downstream where it was shallower. He was also wearing a shoulder holster, the webbing almost invisible against his black T-shirt.

Time passed. She remembered her watch, and refastened it to her wrist. Water from her wet hair trickled down her spine, and her clothes clung stickily to her skin, making her feel even hotter. The brightness of the day dimmed as clouds rolled in. Thunder rumbled and fat droplets of rain began to patter on the leaves. The rain thickened, then just as abruptly, stopped and the sun reappeared, turning the landscape into a steam bath.