Po returned to the hotel in the early hours of the morning. By then Tess had already deduced that there was no imminent threat from Sower’s people. They hadn’t left the map coordinates only to come for her while she slept. She’d excused Pinky from guard duty and returned to her room, intent on finding exactly where she was supposed to go. Google Maps pinpointed the coordinates to swampland on the shore of Hammock Bayou, due south of New Iberia, west of Morgan City. Since discovering the location, she’d waited for her companion to get back, and it had been frustrating. She felt as if fire ants had invaded her clothing, she was so jittery, anxious to get moving. When she heard Po bumping around in the adjoining room she practically leapt for her door and into the corridor. She rapped on Po’s door.
‘It’s me. Tess,’ she announced, imagining Po approaching the door with his gun in hand.
The door snicked open. ‘I knew it was you, I heard the racket you made leaving your room.’ Po held out a palm. ‘C’mon in.’
But Tess halted, and it wasn’t because he held a sidearm or anything else. He’d stripped to the waist, the top button of his jeans loosened. Unbidden, her gaze swept from the tight weave of muscles in his abdomen, up to the thatch of dark hair on his chest, and down again, and in the next instant she was reminded of Pinky with his arched eyebrow and wagging finger. I’m more inclined to look elsewhere for my eye candy, he’d said and she didn’t believe a word of it. She quickly averted her attention to Po’s face, but, damn it, by the twinkling of his turquoise eyes, he’d caught her staring. ‘I was just about to shower,’ he said, and put a hand to his bare chest, again drawing her gaze. ‘Does this bother you?’
‘Could you, uh, pull on a shirt or something?’ Tess asked, bustling over to his bed, where she laid down her iPad and the envelope. She kept her back to him, but swore she could feel heat radiating off him, and it was difficult not to check his state of undress. ‘While you’ve been out, I’ve been busy working,’ she said, and her tone was as flustered as the manner she rearranged her iPad on the bed, while listening to the faint rustling of cloth. Finally she couldn’t help looking.
Po had closed the door to the hall, stood with his back to it, hands on the handle, barring her escape. He’d pulled on his shirt but it hung loose, still displaying more than was comfortable in the confines of the small room. But he wasn’t totally shameless; he dipped his head and frown lines creased his brow as he stepped away from the door. ‘I spoke with Pinky. He told me about your visitors. I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Tess, but I’d something to do that I couldn’t put off.’
‘I know. You’re not the only one who talked to Pinky.’ She wondered exactly what Pinky had told him, and if he’d mentioned the admission Pinky made about whom he found attractive, and the one he’d also teased from her. She was positive her face was burning. ‘Anyway,’ she said in a rush, ‘it doesn’t matter. Nothing bad happened.’
To get back on track, she explained how her brother had run the plates for her and how they’d come back to Rutterman Logistics, and how she’d connected John Torrance to Albert Sower. Then she told how the street guy had played messenger boy for Torrance and his buddies, and how she’d figured that Sower’s people wanted her to follow the clue they’d offered her.
‘Torrance and his buddies,’ Po asked, ‘there were more than the two we’ve already seen?’
‘There was a third man in back,’ she said. ‘But the guy didn’t say much about him, claimed he didn’t see him, but I think he was lying.’
‘Frightened?’
‘Crapping his pants,’ she said. ‘All he’d say was something like “no good would come from looking into a face like that”. He claimed he was just given some cash to deliver this to me.’ She slipped the card from the envelope and held it out to him. Po walked over, took it, angled it so he could read it, and his mouth quirked down. The coordinates wouldn’t mean a thing to him. ‘Sit down. Let me show you where they are on a map.’
Tess sat on the bed, and Po joined her, his knee brushing hers. She pitched the iPad so he could see the screen, discreetly shifting away an inch or so to break the physical contact, but could still sense the ghost of his touch as a faint buzz of electricity up her thigh. In the corner of her eye she caught him studying her face in profile, and thought he too had been conscious of their closeness, and was checking if she was too. ‘Look here,’ she said, diverting his scrutiny, and tapped the map to zoom it in. ‘Do you know this place?’
‘I’ve been to Cypremort Point before; it has some great restaurants and it’s also a popular spot for family picnics,’ said Po, indicating a small waterside community a short distance to the west of where the coordinates were pinned on the map. He swept his fingers over the land adjacent to Hammock Bayou. ‘But that’s all untamed swamp. If you want to go there we’ll need to get you some appropriate clothing. You won’t last more than a few minutes in those pumps.’
‘I’ve Clancy’s credit card. We can buy what we need on the way.’ Tess got up, eager to be off.
‘What? You want to go now?’ Po leaned back, bracing his weight on both hands. His shirt slipped a fraction, and despite her resolve, Tess’s gaze was drawn to his tight body. She turned away, telling herself she’d misread the undertones of his question.
‘Why not?’ she said, and her tongue darted across her suddenly dry lips. ‘We’re both awake. The sooner we get going, the sooner we get to the bottom of this.’
Po shook his head. ‘You do realize what we’re going to find?’
Sadly she knew exactly, and understanding brought her focus back to her job.
‘A couple more hours won’t make any difference to a dead man,’ he counselled. ‘In fact, it’s unwise going there. I know we agreed not to earlier, but you should call the cops and hand things over to them. You’re going to have to if we find Wynne out there. Why put yourself through it when you don’t have to?’
Po had changed his tune. Not surprisingly. He’d spent the evening at a murdered man’s grave, and was likely to spend his morning at another. She could understand his reluctance, but they’d journeyed to Louisiana to find Crawford Wynne, and she had to be the one to do that. Again he showed that ability of reading what was on her mind; was she so transparent?
‘I’ll go with you,’ he reassured her. ‘I just want you to think about what we might find.’
She expected no less than what she’d witnessed in Mitch Delaney’s autopsy report. ‘My stomach can handle it.’
‘I’m not talking about Wynne. What if it’s a set up? What if Sower’s people are waiting for us? Maybe Wynne won’t be the only one left to rot in the mud.’
‘We’re armed.’
Po grunted. His gaze flickered to her damaged wrist. Tess scowled at him. ‘I’m not a damn invalid,’ she said.
‘Didn’t suggest you were. It’s just that we might be walking into a trap. They’ll have the advantage of knowing where we are; we’ll be stumbling about as good as blind.’
‘You grew up around there. Sower’s people are from up north. This terrain is alien to them. I’d bet on you spotting them before they do us.’
‘Huh.’ Po smiled with little humour. ‘Flattery will get you everywhere. But it’s not me I’m worried about, Tess.’
‘OK, I’m a northerner too. And, yeah, I’ll struggle in the swamp, but going there’s something I’m prepared to do.’ She was about to add ‘with or without you’, but that wouldn’t engender the hoped-for response. She had no desire to alienate Po and it was time to admit that. ‘I’m counting on you keeping me safe while I see this through. I want you to come with me, Po.’
He held up his hands. ‘I said I’ll come. I just want you to understand that it isn’t the best idea I ever agreed to.’
‘Noted. It’s on me if the crap hits the fan,’ she said, crossing her chest. She offered a deal-making smile, and it warmed his face.
‘OK, so do I get chance to visit the bathroom before we go?’ said Po. ‘I was about to shower, remember.’
She hadn’t forgotten. How could she when the closeness of his partially bared torso, and her less-than-surreptitious study of it, made certain of that?
‘I’ll go get my stuff,’ she said, and hurried to escape her train of thought.
Back in her room she braced her shoulders to the door, her hands clasped round the handle, a similar pose to the one Po had struck minutes ago. She shook her head in disbelief, exhaling. Get a grip, Tess! You’d think you’d never been alone in a room with a half-naked man before, she admonished herself. But that only forced her to picture Po again, and also to admit that though she’d been uncomfortable and embarrassed by his semi-nudity, it wasn’t entirely unenjoyable either.
To divert her attention off him and back on her job, she grabbed her purse and searched for her phone. Checking the screen by auto-response she saw she had a new email. It was from Alex and came with an attachment. She opened the mugshot he’d sent of John ‘Jacky Boy’ Torrance. The man driving the Toyota Avalon like a stock-car racer was one and the same. OK, he was older now, with shorter hair, but there was no denying she’d identified one of their enemies. If she’d the time to spare she thought she’d easily identify the fair-haired man who she’d eyeballed on more occasions, if not the third man so easily, but they could wait. She stuffed her phone in her bag, but left the paperwork scattered on her desk, except for one sheaf. She didn’t believe she required the legal papers she was supposed to serve to Crawford Wynne, but she took them anyway: she could live in hope that they’d find him alive, though it was only the smallest grain.
By the time she locked her room, Po emerged from his, hair damp and finger-combed back off his forehead, and he’d donned a fresh shirt and jeans. They hustled downstairs and out the exit, again with a nod and smile for the night manager, who didn’t bother returning the gesture this time. Tess strode for the Honda.
‘Uh-nuh,’ Po said, and jingled keys. ‘We aren’t taking that chicken shack. We leave it, and the damn transponder, right here. No sense in advertising that we’re on our way.’
‘So how do we get to the bayous?’
‘Think I walked to my father’s grave and back, do you?’ He nodded towards a sleek Mercedes-Benz GL450 SUV parked in the opposite row. ‘Pinky loaned me his wheels. You didn’t really believe a guy like him drove an old Dodge panel van?’
Honestly, she hadn’t given Pinky’s choice of vehicle much more thought than that the van was inconspicuous during a stakeout, but now that Po mentioned it …
‘Even a Merc isn’t extravagant enough for Pinky,’ she pointed out.
‘I had a choice of cars,’ Po smirked. ‘The others I turned down flat.’
‘They were so flamboyant they challenged your masculinity?’
‘Nope. Too flashy. This was the least expensive of the bunch.’
Her eyes widened. Hell, the Mercedes probably retailed upward of sixty thousand dollars, and it was the least expensive of Pinky’s fleet?
‘Anyway, if we’re going into the bayous, I want something more reliable than the Chicken Shack, and something that can handle a little mud if needs be. Go on, jump in, why don’t you?’
‘OK, OK, you’ve sold me on it,’ Tess said, and aimed for the SUV. Behind her she suspected Po was grinning in triumph, maybe even flipping the bird to the abandoned Honda minivan. So allow him his moment, there might be fewer happy moments in the coming hours.