Chapter 42
The cabin stood on its stilts over black water, cypress close on every side, the dock below ticking in the late afternoon heat. Herons worked the shallows. The light was already fading.
So now, it was a plan. Cara, Gabe, Wade, and Reagan would make the run to Bennion's door.
"Then I'm the one Bennion needs to see," Skye started.
"You're not, actually." Cara didn't soften it. "You're a couple days off a bullet and nowhere near as recovered as you're playing it. Besides, Tom’s amazing at what he does, but Owen needs a shield who shoots like you. That's not the small job, Skye. It's the one that matters."
Skye held her eyes a moment, then set the rifle down.
"I hate that you’re making sense." She swiped a lock of thick blonde hair out of her eyes and turned her attention to Gabe. “So who’s this contact of yours again? You’re sure Neptune hasn’t turned him?
I’d hate to have to disappear a federal agent. Way too much trouble.”
"Cole Thibodeaux," Gabe said. “He’s not Bureau. Not anymore. And yes, I trust him. He and I made it through four years and one very bad night in the Bureau together. Cole’s a lot smarter than me. He left way before I did. Went home to a parish in Northern Louisiana. He’s a sheriff now.
I trust him with my life. More importantly, I trust him with all of yours. ”
That short speech seemed to mollify Skye. It certainly made Cara feel better.
Gabe checked his watch. "He and his people should be in position in the next ten minutes or so. We can roll any time.”
"Not the Bureau," Skye persisted. "Not Barrett's people."
"We don't know what Barrett is yet, and Neptune's got plants in the Bureau and the Marshals both." Cara answered this time. "Cole's out of all of it. Not a channel. A man Gabe trusts."
Cole had answered Gabe’s text inside a minute. Tell me where and when, brother.
After one final handgun check, Wade rose. “How about we get this party started?”
After one last check of the comms, they rolled out as the light went copper over the marsh.
The road was a raised ribbon of crushed oyster shell, water on both sides and water everywhere beyond it, black and dead still, the color of steeped tea, broken only by the knees of cypress and the slow V-wake of something Cara decided not to look at.
Spanish moss hung off the live oaks in gray rags.
The air came through the windows thick enough to chew, brine and mud and diesel and green rot, and under all of it the drone of insects that never once stopped, a sound so constant it passed for silence.
Petit Marais came up two miles on, low and half-drowned.
A shuttered bait shop on pilings. A clapboard church with the paint blistered off its boards and a hand-lettered sign promising boudin and live bait.
Shrimp boats rusting at a dock the Gulf was reclaiming an inch at a time, nets hung up to dry and never taken down.
A town the water was politely, patiently taking back, everyone in it pretending otherwise.
The heat lay over the road thick as wet cotton, because nothing moved enough to stir it.
Cara had worn her nerves to the wire, on the flight down, in the long wait at the camp, every hour another turn of the same worry.
Not whether Neptune had found Suzette Bennion, but whether she'd trust them if they got there first. Eight months was a long time to learn that survival meant trusting nobody.
Wade pointed at a gray sedan parked where the road gave out, nose toward them, tucked in the shade of a live oak hung with moss. A fast-food bag on the dash. A phone propped where he could watch the house three lots down without lifting his head.
"One," Wade said. "Bored. Local hire."
And that was the thing Cara couldn't make sit right. One bored local, on a witness Cartwright had hunted for months. Where was the crew you'd send to take a woman off the board for good?
"We're early," Gabe said, reading her face. "Barrett bought us the jump."
"Maybe." She made herself set it down. The plan held either way. Get Bennion clear, leave the house breathing behind her, let Thibodeaux spring whatever came after dark. "Rescue first," she said. "The trap keeps without us."
Wade pulled around the bend and stopped. "I'll keep our friend busy. You get her out," he told Gabe, and slid into the wet heat toward the gray sedan.
Cara reached for the door. Gabe's hand found her arm first. "I’ve got you."
A ridiculous thing to say to the one walking up alone. It helped anyway.
"I've talked my way into worse," she said, and stepped out into the heat.