Chapter 7
Chapter 7
Y ou can’t judge a book by its cover.
Vicky had heard the saying her entire life, and it almost amused her now that she had thought Adrien to be no more than a blustering braggart of a ladies’ man.
She almost smiled as she followed him again through the dangerous terrain. On her own . . .
Well, she probably wouldn’t be out here on her own. If it hadn’t been for Adrien, she’d have admitted that as much as she loved and appreciated the wild beauty of the Everglades, she was no expert.
But he hadn’t treated her once as if she was too delicate, too local, too anything not to be able to keep up. And he knew they were equally determined to stop a man who brought so much fear and misery to so many lives.
They walked quickly along in silence. Ahead of her, Adrien suddenly stopped, bringing a finger to his lips to warn her about speaking. She frowned and watched him, and he indicated she should listen. She heard sounds, but the same sounds she’d become accustomed to through the time they’d already traversed the swamps. The ruffle of wings as birds took to the air. A strange whisper like a sliding sound as an alligator slipped deeper into a pond. Bird calls and the faint rustle of leaves when a breeze drifted on by.
He pointed. He was obviously indicating an area just ahead of them. She wasn’t sure why, but it seemed prudent to nod. He knew where they were; he knew what to listen for—and when the simple sound of silence was something to be heard, as well.
“Head slightly southwest, parallel to me around that group of cypress. There’s a marsh just the other side of it that isn’t far from one of the well-traveled airboat streams. He’s trying to get to someone. He’s managed to lure help to get him out of here, someone with an airboat that he can hop on and from there . . . anyway, I’m going to make noise and let him come after me. He’ll know you’re near me, but he won’t know where.”
“If you let him see you—”
“I’m trusting you’re faster than I am. And, of course, I’m going to tell him to drop his weapon.”
“You’re putting a lot of faith in me!” Vicky said.
He smiled at her. “I am. Let’s do this.”
She nodded. She couldn’t fail him.
She wouldn’t fail him. That simple.
“Hey!” Adrien shouted. “Save yourself some pain and misery. We know who you are. We know just about everything you’re doing and all about the criminal ring you’ve got going. But the key thing here is we know who you are, Andrei Hasani. No matter where you try to go, we’ll be there. We know your aliases. And I guess you’re not that great with history, because officers from both the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes, who know the wetlands better than anyone else, are here. Hell, they’re the descendants of those who survived three Seminole Wars by hiding out down here! Andrei Hasani, come out, surrender, and we won’t have to shoot you!”
He knew that the only route Hasani could take to have a prayer of getting out of the wetlands and hammocks where he’d been fleeing to take refuge was the route they were on now.
Hasani was before him, close, shielded by the trees.
He could, of course, take a shot at Adrien, but Adrien kept himself crouched low to the ground and moving.
Moving targets were always harder to hit.
And as he had hoped, the man stepped out from the trees, his gun aimed at Adrien.
“What are you, an idiot?” Hasani asked.
He was as he’d been described, a tall man of about six-one with dark hair, a decent countenance, and in fit shape.
Adrien wondered briefly what could have made such a man into a manipulative criminal. He had the look of someone who could make it at anything he attempted.
But Adrien knew he would have needed many more classes in profiling and psychology to understand what made one person’s desires so strong they didn’t care if they hurt others, down to taking the most precious gift of all from them—life itself.
“An idiot?” Adrien asked. He shrugged. “No, I was just hoping you’d want to stay alive and therefore, you’d surrender to me.”
Hasani shrugged in return. “All I need to do is shoot you and keep going. As you’ve seen, I’m also well-acquainted with the area.”
“Again, authorities now know who you are. You won’t get far, no matter what you do,” Adrien told him. “I mean, come on, just use logic. A man like yourself? If you’re alive, you can manipulate your way into the right relationships and perhaps escape from a federal prison. If you’re alive. If you’re dead, you’re dead. No hope for the future.”
Hasani laughed. “I’m the one aiming at you.”
“Yeah, but my partner is aiming at you.”
“The girl? The redhead I may still get my hands on?” Hasani asked, amused.
“Top of her class in marksmanship,” Adrien told him, shrugging again. “Come on, Hasani. Live. Give yourself a chance. Just drop the weapon now.”
“I don’t think I can do that.”
“If you don’t, you’re a dead man. Or, at the very least, an injured man. Maybe she’ll sever your spinal column, and you’ll be a cripple the rest of your life,” Adrien suggested. “Hard to escape then. Maybe not just a cripple. Maybe you’ll be paralyzed from the neck down, forced to live in that truly captive state until death does mercifully claim you.”
“Your partner is out there, aiming at me? What if I have a few men behind me?” Hasani asked. “Once she fires—and misses me—my people will know where she is. They’ll fire back, and she’ll be the dead one. Though, honestly, now I’m feeling a little vindictive toward her. I’d rather get her alive and place her with a few buyers who will truly make what’s left of her life a living hell!”
“Bull,” Adrien said lightly. “Last chance. Throw down your weapon.”
Andrei Hasani had what they called a “tell,” and Adrien saw it. He was ready to fire.
“Now!” Adrien shouted, as he dropped down into the tall grass.
And Vicky fired. He heard Hasani scream in pain and fall into the grass, as well.
The man was still alive. Vicky could have killed him, Adrien knew. And after what he had said, she’d probably wanted to.
But maybe she wanted him to suffer in prison, injured . . .
“Careful!” he shouted.
The man could still be heard thrashing and moaning. That might mean he was still holding his gun—just waiting for them to approach so he could get off a clear shot.
“Hey, I learn from the best!” Vicky shouted back. “Caught him dead center in the upper chest, shattered his collarbone and shoulder.”
“Still—”
“Yeah, yeah!”
He saw her moving carefully through the grass, staying low, as he was doing.
He reached Andrei Hasani first.
Vicky really had to have been top of her class. She had carefully avoided the heart, but the force and impact of her bullet had shattered the man’s bone in such a way, his arms and hands had been incapacitated.
“Good job!” he told her.
“Bitch!” Hasani spat out. His eyes had closed and he moaned, but he opened them and stared at Vicky. “I will get you!” he swore. “You will pay for what you’ve done to me! You have no right, you’re supposedly a cop. This is police brutality!”
“Right. I know. I’m going to pay—as you intended the other young women to pay. Right now, I’m thinking you’re going to make one heck of a good bitch for some big guy when you go to prison for the rest of your life.”
Hasani kept swearing.
Adrien retrieved Hasani’s weapon—which had fallen well out of the man’s reach—and pulled out his satellite phone. He reported to Eames they’d gotten Andrei Hasani. And yes, he was sorry, but once again, they needed medical attention for the man.
“You didn’t shoot to kill?” Eames asked him.
“I didn’t shoot at all. We tried to get him to surrender. No dice. But Vicky got him before he could shoot either of us.”
Adrien reported their location, and then put calls through to both Mike and Lance to let them know the situation. As he ended that call, he frowned.
He’d thought he’d heard the distant drone of an airboat.
Now . . .
He didn’t hear anything at all except a rustle of trees as a flock of ibises suddenly took flight.
“Get down again!” he told Vicky.
She instantly went flat to the earth.
They heard voices coming from the area of the trees directly by the water.
“He should have been there,” one man said nervously.
“Hey, I’m not leaving without him. Do you know what happened to Leroy Perkins?”
“That was an accident—”
“My ass it was an accident! We have to find him.”
Andrei Hasani tried to moan out a warning; he didn’t have the breath to do it.
The two men who had been talking suddenly appeared. They walked into the prairie of high grass where Hasani lay and where Vicky and Adrien were crouched and waiting.
They didn’t appear to be armed, but they were at a distance, and the protective grasses also obscured their vision. One seemed to be about fifty, white-haired, stout. The other might have been a decade younger. He was slim and looked frightened and probably been the speaker who had wanted to run.
Adrien nodded at Vicky.
He was going to confront the men, trusting her again to cover him.
“Stop right there,” Adrien commanded. “FBI!”
“Oh, God, oh no—” the younger began. “Oh, no—”
“Rather the FBI shoot me than I face Hasani,” the older man said, drawing a weapon from behind his back.
“We have Hasani!” Adrien shouted. “Don’t get yourselves into more trouble than you need to be in!”
Vicky stood, her weapon aimed at the two men.
The younger one began to sob. “I didn’t do anything. I swear, I didn’t do anything! We were just told we needed to get him, because he’d been hanging around in the Everglades but his airboat gave out on him. Don’t shoot me, please don’t shoot me, please, please!”
“Drop the weapons,” Adrien said.
“Please!” The younger man begged as he looked at the older man.
And at last, the older man dropped his gun. Adrien and Vicky hurried forward to cuff the two men.
“We’ve got a bit of a wait,” Adrien murmured, looking at Vicky with a grimace. “We need medical for Andrei Hasani—”
“Medical? He’s really down? You’re not lying?” the older man asked.
“You can hear him moaning away,” Adrien said flatly.
“But . . . he’s still alive?” the younger man asked.
“He’s alive,” Vicky said.
The younger man started to tremble. “You can’t let him talk to anyone, anyone! He has . . . he has people across the state, and when he wants revenge, he . . . gets it.”
“People? Like you? Were you supposed to kill others to get him out of here?” Vicky asked.
“No, no!” the younger man said. “We’re not killers. We just . . .”
“The idiot is addicted to pills,” the older man said impatiently.
They didn’t have a chance to reply. A shout alerted them to the fact that help had come. Mike was walking toward them quickly, followed by a team of EMTs and cops. The EMTs were hurrying along, bearing a stretcher.
“Hey, thanks!” Adrien shouted. “Two to take to headquarters, one to the hospital.”
“Yeah, we heard,” Mike said. “Hospital, not the morgue, right?”
“These fellows were just out here to give Mr. Hasani a ride, but they’ve already had a minute or two to warn us about what might happen if he’s able to speak with anyone,” Adrien said. He left the area where they were standing with the two airboat would-be rescuers and motioned for Mike and the EMTs to follow as he led them to the place where Andrei Hasani remained in the grass.
“Nothing vital,” Vicky murmured to the EMTs.
One of them looked at Vicky and arched a brow, but he nodded with admiration. He obviously considered her to be a good shot.
Adrien saw her smile and nod in return to the EMT, but then he saw her frown. And he knew her thoughts exactly.
Was it really a good thing that she was a good shot?
Andrei Hasani would first be seen by doctors, who would patch him back together. Because doctors and law enforcement had sworn oaths, because they were the “good” guys, Andrei Hasani would have his chance to ask for an attorney.
And who knew just what the attorney would do, whom he or she might talk to, and what danger then might lie ahead for others?
“We’ll get these two in,” one of the cops promised.
“Hey, wait, what are you going to charge us with?” the older man asked. “Walking around the Everglades? Taking an airboat ride? You have no right to—”
“At the very least, we have twenty-four hours,” Adrien said pleasantly. “See you later.”
The EMTs had Andrei on the stretcher; one was on a satellite phone, listening to instructions from a doctor. They, too, were following the law.
But one of them tripped on something in the ground, causing him to drop his end of the stretcher. Andrei Hasani let out a scream of agony and began to curse the man, shouting with a voice that was down to a hoarse breath of wind, “You did that on purpose; you will pay!”
“Whatever,” the young EMT said. “Sorry, I’m not a hiker, and I hate mosquitoes!”
They moved off toward the water.
Adrien pulled out his phone to call Eames again.
“Good work, the two of you,” Eames said. “Amazing work.”
“Thanks. People are coming into the station who need to talk,” Adrien said. “We need—”
“They need to talk, yes. But you and Vicky need to get some rest. Please, take off at least a few hours. Take a shower. I’m sure you need showers. Give it a few hours; shake it off. Mike is with you now; Lance will be bringing in an airboat. He’ll get you where you need to be to get back to civilization. We’ll let these people sit and stew. You know that’s a wise move. We have some time. Take a bit of it to get yourselves back in order.”
“If you’re sure—”
“I’m not your boss, since you are with the bureau, but this was still left under my jurisdiction, so I’m asking you, please. Come at all this fresh. And as for Hasani, he’ll be in surgery for a while,” Eames told him.
“He can’t be trusted. Even in a hospital, he can’t be trusted.”
“It’s all right; Hank and a few others will be at the hospital. We’re all aware that holding him is going to be like holding a wet snake. We know. Tell Vicky what I said. I am her boss. I don’t want to see her face here for at least ten hours.”
Vicky was looking at him with a frown.
“He expects us in—”
“Uh, no,” Adrien said, and handed the phone to her.
Vicky listened to her boss, then said, “But—”
Adrien couldn’t hear Eames’s interruption, but at the end, Vicky said simply, “Yes, sir.”
She ended the call and handed the phone back to Adrien. “Okay, so . . .”
The EMTs had moved on along with the cops and the two men who had been about to aid and abet Andrei Hasani.
Mike walked over to the two of them. “Um, this way—your chariot awaits. Okay, it’s not a chariot, but . . .”
Vicky managed a laugh, and she told Mike, “Thank you! Yeah. As much as I love our amazing ecological system, I’m ready to get the hell out of here.”
She was silent as they walked through the trees to the water, where Lance was just arriving with an airboat. She was polite and charming, thanking both Mike and Lance, who in turn applauded her and Adrien for finding their suspect in a veritable jungle.
It wasn’t until they were alone again, near the car, that she shook her head and said, “I know Eames is thinking like a boss about what’s best for the law, and what’s best for us, but . . . I don’t want to go home. I don’t think I can sleep. Okay, the shower thing I get, but . . .”
“Don’t go home,” Adrien told her.
“What?”
“Come with me back to the ranch. There’s plenty of room there. You can shower and play with the dogs. I’ll introduce you to the horses. Show you how to play cowboy, or, whoops, sorry, cowgirl!” He frowned. “Okay, I’ve heard the term cowgirl , and I haven’t actually heard the term cowwoman , or for that matter, I haven’t heard the term cowman . Just cowboy and cowgirl.”
She laughed softly.
“Um, thanks. I don’t want to be a burden—”
“Not a burden,” he assured her. “I . . . I guess I’m restless, too. And I know my brother and his wife. She’ll have clean clothes you can wear. And knowing her, she’ll have something that won’t fit you too badly at all. Then, if you want, when we get close to interrogation time, we can go by wherever it is you live and get whatever you want.”
She was smiling at him. The woman really had the most beautiful face. Was he making a mistake? Was he admiring her a little too much, wanting to be with her... ?
Hey.
They had gotten him. They had tracked and found Andrei Hasani, and they had taken them down. Maybe it was okay for them to enjoy a little peaceful time together, to laugh and . . .
Oh, bull. He was attracted to her, seriously attracted, and he admired her and . . .
Crazy.
Maybe not so crazy.
After all, he had now been assigned to the local office.
Maybe she was crazy, Vicky thought, listening to the thrum of the airboat motor.
Go home. She should really—really, really, truly—just go home. Get a good shower, wear her own clothing, sleep . . .
Okay, she was never going to sleep. The day had just been far too eventful.
That’s what she should do. But . . .
She wanted to go back to Adrien’s family’s ranch, see how the dogs were doing, meet the horses, relax with good things that existed in the world.
Lie.
She just wasn’t ready to leave the strange partnership with Adrien. Not partnership. She had a partner, Hank, and he was a great guy, a good partner, a solid cop. . . .
And Hank wasn’t going to care. He’d be glad she was having a good day—
No, no. Couldn’t call it a good day. A successful day, maybe. Partially. They had caught their quarry, but now they knew Andrei had a massive network throughout the state.
“Back to the car and I leave it all to you!” Lance said. “Best work between agencies I think I’ve seen, and a monster is out of tribal, state, federal, and private land. Thanks!”
“Hey, thanks to you and Mike. I mean, I guess we could have hopped a ride back with the cops and the forensic crew, but this was so much faster,” Adrien told him.
Vicky balanced her way over to Lance and gave him a hug. “Thank you!”
He smiled and told her, “Any time! Hey, come for some fun stuff out here, too, huh?”
“I do love the fun stuff out here,” she promised him. “Hey, maybe Adrien and Mike can play some kind of a concert out here again.”
Adrien groaned. “Trust me. I just wasn’t that good. Hey, if I had been, I might have been a rock star instead of an agent.”
She laughed softly. “Today, you were a rock star! And thanks,” she assured him. “So, you’re sure—”
“Not a burden in any way. Eames should know better. The sleep thing isn’t going to happen right now. My mind is moving like a bullet. In fact, I very much appreciate the fact you want to hang around. My brother and Mandy had to go straight from work to an event at the boys’ school, so . . . we’ll have the place to ourselves until just about time to head to the station, so . . .”
“Ah, you could have been alone.”
“Yeah, yuck.”
“Oh, so, I can’t just go prying in your sister-in-law’s closet!”
“And you won’t need to—she has a closet of extra stuff.”
“You’re kidding. Why? I mean, who keeps a closet for friends—”
Adrien laughed. “The extra stuff are things my sisters left, and things she bought that don’t fit. And since they live out here on a ranch, they get guests who may have come for dinner and just decided to spend the night. Mandy is one of the most social people I’ve ever met. She loves company, including overnight guests—oh, and any family members who come home at any time. Strange . . .”
“What’s strange?” Vicky asked him.
“My parents are great. They were so perplexed. They thought they should sell the place and split the proceeds between us, or even keep them to make sure they had enough to live on throughout their lives. They’re very independent people and didn’t want any of us having to support them at any time. But we all had a fit, and my brother was already married with a kid on the way, so the rest of us secretly turned the property over to him—he is the oldest, the ‘heir,’ one might say. But, of course, he didn’t want charity from his siblings, so he went and secretly put it back in all our names. But we respect it as his home. He won’t leave it, we all get to come ‘home,’ and it’s been . . . well, I guess we were lucky. We all felt the same way.”
“Incredibly lucky!” Vicky said. “And nice. You guys must all be pretty amazing.”
He shrugged. “I like to think so.”
“No ego, huh?” she teased.
“Me? Ego? Hmm. Um, enough to get by?” he mused.
“Get in the car!” she told him.
In a few minutes, they were at the house. She saw several horses grazing in one of the paddocks, and she glanced at Adrien.
“I thought they worried—”
“The horses can be in the paddocks. Old Mac lives in a small place that was a tack room or something else years ago, and he watches out for them.”
“Old Mac?” she asked.
“My parents said that he came with the house,” Adrien told her. “Seriously, he was a caretaker for the previous owners, and he’s in his seventies now, but all my folks had wanted him to do was keep an eye out when they were off somewhere, and he did. Now he does the same thing for Jeremy. You can meet him, too, you know.”
She nodded. “But let’s start with the showers.”
“We’ll start with the showers. Oh, hmm. Maybe I should let you choose some clothing first.”
“Oh, yeah, maybe!”
Adrien had a key, and of course he knew the alarm code. In a minute, they were inside, and he led her down the hallway that led toward the bedrooms. It was a big, sprawling house.
At the end of the hallway, he opened a door to one of the bedrooms. She saw there was a suitcase sitting on one of the bureaus—his, she imagined.
“The ‘family’ room for visiting siblings,” he said. “But it also has the ‘extra’ closet. There . . . look at what you will. I mean, I’ve seen you all professional, and in that cute little sundress, so you ought to be able to find something, right?”
Vicky walked over to the closet. She glanced at him and then started moving hangers around. She found a halter dress that appeared to be the right size, maxi-length and in a black-andred flower pattern. She drew it from the closet and saw there was a black sweater that went with it.
“Um . . .”
He laughed.
“Well, we’ll have to go riding on another day, but I figured I’d just walk you around and—oh, yeah, when we’re both set, we’ll go meet the dogs.”
“Perfect. I really can ride—”
“Will you come back?”
“Will you be here? You’re not transferring back—”
“I think I may stay here awhile,” he said with a shrug. “It’s been . . . odd to say under the circumstances, but nice to be back.”
“Okay. Cool. I’m not kidding. I’d love to go riding with you out here.”
“Great. Okay, so, for now. There are three bathrooms, but this one is supplied. Mandy is always ready for company, like I said. So, I’ll leave you here, and we’ll meet in the living room whenever. Take your time, have fun, enjoy!”
“Great!”
Adrien left the room. Vicky collected the dress and sweater and went into the bedroom’s private bathroom. As she turned on the water, waiting for it to heat, she found herself thinking again that he wasn’t at all what she had first imagined.
He hadn’t teased her about the shower. He hadn’t flirted. He hadn’t tried to do the least thing sexual. Which, of course, would have been crazy. They were professionals working together. That was all. She barely knew him. And yet she felt she knew him better than she did many people she had known forever. She liked the sound of his voice, the look of him, his humor, his strength and his ethic and . . .
She just wasn’t one of those people who fell easily into things. She’d never had a one-night stand. She . . .
What was she thinking?
No, no, no, no, no . . .
Walk out of the room. Find him. Suggest they shower together?
And what if he looked at her in shock, refusing . . .
She set the clothing on the little ledge beneath the medicine cabinet and began to strip, seeing as she did so he hadn’t lied, there was soap, shampoo, and several big, fluffy towels ready for use. There was also a toothbrush on the sink and a razor, and she remembered she was in the room where Adrien was staying.
She stepped in the shower, inwardly giving herself a firm lecture. She couldn’t just assume a man wanted sex . . . they had been on an intense manhunt all day and . . .
Something slithered around her ankle.
And despite the fact she was a trained officer with admirable skills, she let out a terrified scream that would have done a child proud.
And, of course, within the blink of an eye, Adrien was there, clad in a towel, staring and anxious and demanding, “Oh, my God, what’s wrong, what happened?”
Of course, she felt entirely ridiculous, standing naked in the shower—staring down at a perfectly harmless little ringneck snake, common in the area, not in the least lethal or dangerous.
“Uh . . . it just startled me!” she said, and she couldn’t think of what to do—grab the shower curtain to cover herself?
“I am—so—so sorry!” she stuttered. “So, so, so . . .”
“Let me rescue the little invader!” he said as he reached down and captured the tiny snake, then leaning past her to open the window, manipulate the screen, and toss the snake outside. Of course, as he did so, his naked flesh brushed hers and . . .
He drew back in. They stared at each other.
Then he murmured, “Ah, hell!”
And she winced and echoed his words. “Ah, hell!”
He stepped over the ledge, joining her in the shower, pulling her into his arms.
They hadn’t even kissed before . . .
They did then. Kissed, and kissed . . .
Their bodies hot with the heat of the sluicing water, slick and filled with tension and electricity, close, almost as one . . .
And then they weren’t kissing. He was smoothing her hair back, their bodies still flush, and he was looking into her eyes. She just smiled and whispered, “I don’t want to be a burden!”
His smile went very deep and he assured her, “You’re not, not in the least, but . . .”
“Your back. And your front. They need washing.”
“And so do yours.”
Then they were laughing. In each other’s arms. Soap and shampoo did come out, and their bodies were smoother and slicker and closer and . . .
Finally, they were rinsed.
Squeaky clean . . .
And they emerged and dried each other, smiling, teasing, laughing . . .
And then they were in bed. It would be later, so much later, that Vicky would begin to wonder how it all ever happened, when she wasn’t the girl who fell easily into things, when she couldn’t remember feeling the way that she . . .
If she had ever felt the way that she did.
Maybe he was a cowboy. And that was really quite okay!