CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Rain came sideways across the yard, needling through the porch light and turning the gravel drive into black soup. The palm tree at the ditch bent until its fronds scraped the flooded grass. Somewhere beyond the houses, a transformer coughed blue and the whole neighborhood blinked.
Neela shoved her arms into the borrowed yellow slicker and pulled the hood tight, hoping she wouldn’t be recognized.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Tank filled the kitchen doorway behind her. Bare feet. Gray T-shirt. One hand curled around the doorframe hard enough to whiten his knuckles. The generator’s uneven growl pulsed under his voice.
She kept her back to him and checked the plastic freezer bag inside her backpack. Four banded stacks. Twenty-five thousand dollars. Dry, so far.
“Move.”
“Where?”
“Out.”
“No.” He stepped onto the porch. “That ain’t an answer.”
“It’s the one you’re getting.”
Water hammered the tin awning. The weather radio on the kitchen counter repeated the warning in its flat mechanical voice: hurricane conditions expected by early evening, life-threatening storm surge, all residents should shelter in place.
Tank glanced toward the sound and then at the old dirt bike chained beside the shed.
“You’ve lost your mind.”
“Probably,” she shrugged.
“That bike’s got half a tank, bald tires, and no lights. You’d be better off taking the Harley.”
“It has a headlight, that’s all I’m worried about.”
He came down one step, broad shoulders blocking what little light escaped the kitchen.
“Tell me where you’re going.”
Neela lifted the backpack and slung it on. Its weight landed between her shoulder blades like a hand trying to push her down.
“No.” She knew it was coming. His incessant peppering with questions. He wasn’t going to let it go but she wasn’t going to answer him.
“Who are you meeting?” She stared at the rain. “Is it him?”
Her hand stopped on the bike key. Tank’s voice sharpened.
“It is. That little frat boy called you, didn’t he?”
“Go inside.”
“Luca, Terry, whatever name he’s wearing this week—he calls, and you jump on a bike in a hurricane?”
“Tropical storm right now.”
“Oh, good. Then this is sensible.” She unhooked the chain and let it fall into the mud. Tank caught the handlebar.
“Give me the key.”
“Let go.”
“Tell me where Olive is.”
Neela looked up at him. The question struck harder because he said the name softly.
“I don’t know.”
“Then tell me what you do know.”
“I know if you don’t take your hand off this bike, I’m going to break one of your fingers.” He leaned closer. Rain slid off his hair and down his face.
“You think threatening me makes this less stupid?”
“No. I think it makes the next five seconds clear.”
For a moment neither moved. The palms thrashed. A loose piece of gutter sailed across the neighboring yard and vanished into the dark. Tank released the handlebar.
“You got a gun?” he asked.
She refused to answer and swung one leg over the seat. Tank grabbed the back of the slicker.
“What’s in the bag?” Neela twisted free so fast the fabric tore at the shoulder.
“Touch me again.” His face changed—not frightened, not sorry, but careful.
“Neela. We deserve to know. We are one club or are you leaving when all this is done?”
“I said don’t.”
“You don’t know what he’ll do. Maybe he’s fucking tired of running from you and he’ll kill you. You have no idea what he’s capable of.”
“Neither do you.” She kicked the starter. The bike coughed, shuddered, died. Tank gave a bitter laugh.
“There. God gets a vote.”
She kicked again. The engine caught with a ragged snarl. The weak headlamp trembled yellow against the rain. Tank stepped in front of it.
“God voted yes. Move.”
“If you leave, I follow.” Now it was Neela’s turn to laugh.
“In what? The truck’s axle-deep behind the shed. The Harley’s will be swallowed up in this weather.”
“I’ll find a way.”
“Then find one after I’m gone.” She hesitated for a moment as he opened his mouth to speak, then she stopped him.
She tried the old bike again and it started, still coughing but it was alive.
“You wanted one clear thing? Here it is. If you follow me, Olive will disappear forever. That will be on you.”
He stood there another second, rain washing the anger off his face and exposing something more helpless underneath. Then he stepped aside.
Neela shot into the driveway before he could change his mind. The rear tire slewed the moment it hit the road. Neela put a boot down, corrected, and drove into the rain.
The world beyond the headlamp had been erased.
Houses appeared as pale rectangles and vanished.
Ditches overflowed across the asphalt in shining brown sheets.
Every gust shoved the bike toward the center line or the shoulder, and each time she fought it back with her elbows locked and her teeth clenched. Her phone buzzed inside the slicker.
Tank. She let it buzz.
At the highway, deputies had parked a cruiser sideways beside a ROAD CLOSED barricade.
Neela cut through the lot of a shuttered bait shop before their headlights found her, bounced over a curb, and followed a service road lined with drowned cane.
The bike bucked under her. Rain found the split in the slicker and ran cold down her spine.
The hospital had been empty since the flood three years ago. Its upper windows were boarded; its lower windows were black gaps. A strip of faded blue paint ran along the facade beneath letters that had once spelled ST. CATHERINE REGIONAL. Only CATHER remained, pale and crooked over the entrance.
Neela killed the engine beneath the emergency canopy. Silence rushed in, enormous except for the rain drumming on the metal roof. A red pickup sat near the ambulance bay with its lights off. Mud coated the doors. No plates.
She checked the time. 3:42. Early. Or he was.
She pulled the backpack tight and crossed to the sliding emergency doors. One hung shattered in its frame. The other had been forced aside enough to admit a body.
Inside, the air smelled of mold, wet gypsum, and something medicinal that had survived everything.
Her headlamp swept over overturned wheelchairs, a row of plastic chairs bolted together, and a reception desk furred with black mildew.
Paper signs curled from the walls. TRIAGE. RADIOLOGY. FAMILY WAITING.
The irony was so ugly she nearly laughed. An emergency room for the emergency Terry had made of her life. Everything was his fault.
“Luca?”
Her voice traveled down two corridors and came back thin. Nothing. She stepped farther in. Water ticked from the ceiling into metal pans someone had arranged beneath leaks. A curtain moved at the end of the trauma bay.
“Terry.”
A chair scraped behind her. She spun. He sat in the triage alcove with his feet on a dead computer terminal, a pistol resting loose across his thigh.
“You’re loud,” he said.
“You’re hiding.”
“Watching.”
“From behind a desk.”
“Still saw you first.”
Terry looked smaller than she remembered, but the room might have made him look that way.
His rain jacket was too big, his short beard patchy and uneven.
He had cut his hair since she’d last caught a glimpse of him.
But he was still damn sexy. After all these years, the innocent college boy could still make her want to take him to bed. His eyes settled on the backpack.
“You brought it?”
“Where’s Olive?” She said clenching her jaw. “You get nothing until you tell me where she is and show me proof.”
“Hello to you too,” he smirked.
“Where is she?”
“The money first.”
“Proof first.”
“We did this already.”
“No. You sent me a picture that could be six months old and a voice message with traffic behind it. That proves she was alive somewhere, sometime. It doesn’t prove you can take me to her.”
Terry rose. The barrel of the pistol stayed pointed at the floor, but his finger had slipped inside the guard. Be brave. Be brave, he repeated over and over again.
“You’re in no position to renegotiate.”
“I’m the only person in this building with twenty-five thousand dollars. That’s a position.” He glanced past her toward the entrance.
“You alone?” He knew she was. He knew because the men positioned on the roof, around the surrounding area, and on the other end of his comms line told him she was alone.
“Yes. I’ll put the bag on the desk and you tell me where she is.”
“Bag. Desk.”
“Olive. Where?”
Lightning flared through the broken doors. A second later thunder rolled through the hospital, shaking grit from the ceiling tiles. Terry stepped around the triage station.
“Don’t make me take it.” The team was completely impressed with him and his calm, cool demeanor. If they didn’t know better, they’d think he had done this before.
“If you could take it, you wouldn’t have asked me to come alone.”
“Take off the backpack,” he said. “You can’t be trusted.”
“And everything with you is obviously about money,” she smirked.
“I got Olive out.”
The words stopped her. Terry watched the effect with cold satisfaction.
“Out of where?” she asked.
“You know where. I’m the one that got her out of that hell-hole house you lived in, or still live in.
I’m the one that made sure she wasn’t raised watching drugs change hands and innocent kids being raped and beaten.
That was me! You were prepared to use our daughter and you still are.
” He sucked in a breath and calmed himself, then went back to his role. “Give me the money.”
“Name first.”
“Cash first.”
“We can stand here until Tank finds us.”
“Then neither of us gets what we want.”
“Neela?” Tank stopped outside. The door creaked under his hand.
She yanked the backpack off, opened it, and threw one banded stack at Terry. It struck his chest and dropped to the wet floor. His face twisted.
“All of it.”
“Name.”
“Count it,” she said.
“I will.” The door pushed against the gurney.
“Neela,” Tank said. “Move away from the door.” Terry stuffed one stack inside his jacket.
“Bayou Skillet near Houma. Shift’s five to eleven.”
The gurney lurched as Tank hit the door. Neela stepped aside. It burst inward, catching the overturned frame and throwing it against the wall. Tank came through low, a tire iron raised in one hand. Terry, or Luca was gone and so was Neela. He’d missed them both.
But then again. That was the plan.