Standoff, page 12
Brooke bit her bottom lip. “Kyle told me not to trust anyone.”
“Really. Did he name anyone specifically?”
“No.”
“Maybe he believes someone in your circle is crooked. Someone you interact with.”
That’s what she’d thought too. But who? Since most of the people she interacted with were in law enforcement, it would have to be a crooked cop. Not something she wanted to believe.
Luke pulled into the hospital parking lot, and once he parked, he came around to her side of the car and opened the door. “Why was Kyle so far away from everyone tonight?”
“You didn’t read the article in the paper?” she said.
“What article?”
“A reporter interviewed Kyle because of his photos from previous Perseids meteor showers. He’s won several photography contests with his pictures,” she said. “Anyway, in the article he talked about how he liked to get in his own spot, away from the crowds.”
“Anyone who read the article would have known where he planned to set up?” he asked.
“Generally, yes.” She followed him through the ER doors at Merit Health. It was like walking into a meat locker. “Why are hospitals so cold?”
“Keeps down germs,” Luke said.
“Aren’t you cold in that short-sleeved shirt?” The shirt he’d used to stanch Kyle’s blood was probably in the trash now.
Luke shook his head, then just before they reached the desk in the waiting room, he turned to her. “The receptionist may not want to give us any information. Let me handle it.”
They stopped at a desk manned by an older woman wearing a name badge.
“Cynthia,” Luke said. “Can you tell me where I can find Kyle Marlar?”
“Are you family?”
“Do cousins count?”
Cousins? Luke was no more a cousin than she was.
The receptionist’s mouth turned down. “I don’t suppose it’d do any harm to tell you. He passed away right after he got here.”
Brooke’s breath caught in her chest, and she blinked back the unexpected tears that threatened. She’d truly thought he’d make it.
“Is some of the family still here?” Luke asked.
“They may have left, but you can check the ER waiting room.”
“Thanks,” he said and took Brooke by the elbow. “Come on, let’s see if we can find them.”
A soon as they were out of hearing range of the information desk, she said, “I can’t believe you made her believe you’re Kyle’s cousin.”
“Social engineering,” he said. “It’s how you get information—she wouldn’t have told us if she hadn’t thought we were family.”
Social engineering. Baloney. “Doesn’t it bother you? Lying like that?”
“I didn’t lie.” His face sobered. “And you don’t understand. You do whatever to get what you need.”
Who was this man and what did he do with Luke Fereday? Maybe Luke had been a little wild, but she’d never known him to stretch the truth.
“Do you see Kyle’s wife?” he asked, scanning the waiting room.
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, but I do see Kyle’s oldest son,” she said, pointing to a man who stood near the ICU doors.
Bill Marlar looked toward them as they approached. After the two men shook hands, Luke said, “So sorry for what happened.”
“Thanks.” Bill nodded as Brooke added her condolences. He ran his hand over his eyes and then blew out a deep breath. “Were you there?”
“I was one of the first to reach him,” Brooke said.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know other than someone shot him. Is your mom here?”
“No, one of the ladies from church took her home. She’s going to stay with her until I get there. I’m waiting for whoever will take his body to Jackson for an autopsy.”
Autopsy. She hadn’t considered that. “Tell her I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know how we’re going to make it through this,” he said softly. “First Brandon and now Dad.”
She squeezed his hand. “I’ll try to get by to see her tomorrow.”
Bill nodded. “Thanks for coming by.”
“That’s tough,” Luke said a few minutes later as they stepped outside the hospital.
“Yeah.” Brooke knew a little bit about things being tough, but the Marlar family had experienced more. After the air-conditioning in the hospital, the humid night air felt thick enough to spoon into a bowl. Across the street, a bank sign registered ninety-one degrees. Natchez in August.
“Mind if I drive again?” Luke asked.
“You have the keys.” For once, she would rather someone else drove. Kyle’s death had brought the full force of her dad’s death back, and the thought of returning to her parents’ empty house left a bitter taste in her mouth. “How about if we drive up the Trace first?”
“You don’t want to go home either?”
She felt his gaze on her and glanced at him. The sympathy in his face almost undid her. “Not really. Do you mind?”
“Not at all.”
“Just watch for deer.”
Luke took a left out of the hospital parking lot, and they were soon cruising at fifty miles an hour on the Parkway. A few miles out from Natchez, she rolled her window down and opened the moon roof on the Escape, letting the lush smells of the woodlands drift in. Tree frogs serenaded them over the hum of the tires. They passed mile marker after mile marker in a comfortable silence on the deserted two-lane road.
“Why didn’t you come back to Natchez after you dropped out of Annapolis?” she asked, ending the silence. What she really wanted to ask was why he’d never called after he left.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know. I guess because I was trying to find my way. I ended up joining the army.”
“Did you find your answers there?”
“I suppose. How about you? Did you never consider leaving Natchez?”
She didn’t have a quick answer and glanced out her open window, briefly catching the beams of a vehicle in her side mirror. The approaching car seemed to be traveling faster than the posted fifty miles an hour. “I left once, went to college up at Starkville.”
“That’s still in Mississippi,” he said with a laugh. “We’re almost to Coles Creek. Would you like to stop and stretch your legs?”
“That sounds good.” The popular tourist attraction had a paved parking area and picnic tables. But when they reached it, instead of turning in, Luke looked up at the mirror again and sped up.
“What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he reached down and pulled his pistol from the ankle holster.
“Luke!”
“There’s a car right on our tail and the driver just now doused the headlights.”
The Escape lurched forward. It took her a second to realize what was happening. “It’s ramming us!”
“Call 911!”
Her hand shook as she yanked her phone from her pocket. “No service.”
“Hold on, I’m going to outrun them.”
Brooke held on to the armrest as Luke floored the gas pedal, but the Escape was built for gas mileage, not zero-to-sixty in ten seconds. She jerked against the seatbelt when the vehicle rammed them again. “Why—”
“Is there a crossroad nearby?”
She tried to think. “The Fayette turnoff should be just ahead.”
The vehicle pulled beside them and Brooke clicked a mental picture. Big SUV. Dark, maybe black. Windows darkened and she couldn’t see the driver or even how many were in the car.
The SUV swerved into them, and Luke slammed on the brakes, throwing her forward. The passenger window lowered and a yellow flash blazed from inside the car, followed by a whock and falling glass as their windows shattered.
Luke returned fire and another bullet whizzed by, embedding in the dash. The SUV rammed the Escape’s front fender, and the screeching metal sent shivers through her body. Luke fought the steering wheel, but the Escape veered onto the shoulder of the road.
Brooke braced her feet against the floor as the car careened off the road into a shallow ditch. Pain ricocheted through her shoulders as they plowed over saplings and through brush, coming to a stop inches from a towering live oak.
29
Steam poured from the radiator into the already humid air, mixing with the odor of gasoline. Luke twisted in the seat looking for the gun the wreck had jarred out of his hand. He didn’t see it, and he didn’t have the Glock he usually carried with him.
“You okay?” he asked a dazed Brooke. Her slow nod indicated she wasn’t 100 percent. Anger and frustration fueled him. He cocked his ear toward the road. The wreck had silenced the tree frogs, and in the stillness, tires screeched then transmission gears ground into reverse.
“He’s coming back.” Luke unbuckled his seatbelt as he spoke. When she hesitated, he unbuckled hers and then heaved his shoulder against the door. It didn’t budge. Evidently one of the trees they’d sideswiped had wedged the frame into the door. A quick glance showed that a pine tree blocked her door. “We have to go out through the roof.”
Brooke bolted upright, her lethargy gone. Luke didn’t wait for her to agree. He gripped the edge of the opening and pulled himself up until he could stand. Once he was out of the car, he turned to help her, but she was already climbing out. He assessed their situation. The car had come to a stop a hundred feet from the road in the midst of dense woods. He’d only brought the one gun and it was somewhere on the floorboard. With no idea of how many were in the other car, they had no option but to run.
The whine of tires grew louder, and he caught a glimpse of headlights on the road. Luke hopped off the car and then caught Brooke as she jumped down. “We have to get deeper into the woods,” he said. “Then we’ll circle back around to the road.”
“We’re not far past Mount Locust. We can work our way back. Should be cell reception there,” she said and sprinted ahead of him.
The crescent moon barely gave enough light for them to work their way through the dense undergrowth, but at least the darkness should make it hard to tell which direction he and Brooke took. Thorns caught his bare arms, ripping his skin. Brooke probably wasn’t faring any better. Long pants protected their legs, but that would be no protection against the snakes crawling around them.
Muffled cursing came from behind. Their assailant had discovered the empty Escape. Or assailants. They were too far away to tell how many there were, and with no weapon, they couldn’t hang around to find out.
They plowed through the undergrowth, and Luke knuckled the sweat off his brow. A branch slapped his cheek, and he bit back a grunt. They came to a break in the trees, and he yanked out his phone. “I have a couple of bars,” he whispered.
“Call the ranger station.”
He didn’t know the number and instead punched in 911. His fingers hit the wrong key and he gritted his teeth and switched to his left hand. This time he was successful, and an operator answered.
“I’m on the Trace at—” What was the last mile marker he’d seen? “Mile marker 16 and my car ran off the road near Coles Creek. Please send help! I can’t stay on the line,” he said and disconnected. He shut his phone off so it wouldn’t ring and alert whoever was after them. He heard a splash and searched for Brooke. Where was she?
“Luke!” Her frantic whisper came from below. She must have stumbled into the creek.
He cocked his ear as branches snapped behind them. Their pursuer couldn’t be more than a hundred yards away. Luke grabbed hold of a small tree on the bank and used it to slide quietly in the creek into water up to his knees. Something brushed against his leg, and Luke willed it to not be a snake.
He could barely see Brooke, who had crawled under a cave-like ledge. There wasn’t room for him. He clawed into the dirt until his fingers closed on a root, and he pulled himself flat against the bank.
“You all right?” he whispered and sensed her nod.
Footsteps stomped to their left. Sounded like one person, but he couldn’t tell for sure. A light beam strobed overhead and swept back and forth, bouncing off the trees across the creek. His arm ached from holding the root and trying to keep his balance on the slick bank. He couldn’t hold on much longer.
Was that a siren? Yes! Miles away came the definite wail of a siren. The 911 operator had sent in the troops.
Minutes later tires screeched away, and Luke released a shaky breath. “He’s gone.”
“You sure?”
“Yep. He must have heard the siren and took off,” he said and helped her out of her hiding place. They waded in the creek until they found a place to climb out. “You want me to give you a boost up the bank?”
“I think I can make it.” She grabbed hold of a tree limb that drooped near the ground and climbed out.
Luke used his left hand to pull himself up with the same limb. It didn’t take long to backtrack to the wrecked Escape, where Brooke walked around it, shaking her head.
“We were lucky we weren’t killed,” she said. “You think there was only one person?”
“Pretty sure. The gunfire came from inside the car, like maybe the driver was the shooter.” He searched the floorboard and found his Ruger and returned it to his wet ankle holster. When he looked around, she had her phone in her hand. “What are you doing?”
“I have a faint signal and I’m calling Dale Gallagher. He needs to know what happened.”
Gallagher was high on his list of suspects and it was all he could do to keep from snatching the phone from her hand. But if he did, she’d want an explanation. An explanation he couldn’t give. He relaxed when the call went unanswered.
“Why do you think this happened?” she asked.
He could think of only two answers. Either their assailant thought Marlar told Brooke something, or Wilson had recognized Luke and his cover was blown. Both were bad options, but if his cover had been blown, Boudreaux would have sent more than one person to take care of him. The problem with that theory was he didn’t know for sure how many had been in the SUV. “How long were you with Kyle before I got there?”
“I don’t know. Five minutes?”
“When I arrived, it was plain to see he was talking to you. If his shooter was watching, he could believe Kyle passed information to you.”
She frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. If Kyle had told me who shot him, the case would be solved.”
“True, but I’m talking about perception. I figure whoever killed him is running scared. He’s not thinking straight, and if he thinks Kyle told you something . . .”
She hugged her arms to her body. “Then he could have been trying to silence me.”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Something else is bothering me,” she said. “I don’t buy your ‘coincidence and common sense’ answer from earlier. And just now, you sounded more like a cop than I do. What’s going on?”
He forced himself to not look away. “The coincidence part is true, to a point. It was a coincidence that I was at your house last night when the intruder attacked you. That I was at Fort Rosalie tonight wasn’t. I wanted to make sure nothing like that happened again, so that’s why I was at the event. To watch over you.”
He couldn’t tell if she was angry or pleased. “You deceived that woman at the hospital so easily earlier, I’m not sure I can believe you, and it doesn’t explain why you sound like a cop.”
“I was an Army Ranger. Comes with the territory.”
The die was cast now. If Brooke ever discovered he was working undercover, she would know he played her.
30
Brooke did not need a protector, and while she hadn’t forgotten he’d been a Ranger, she’d never thought about it much. But it did explain his take-charge attitude. And made it harder to understand why he worked as a bartender.
“We need to cross the ditch to the side of the road so the first responder can see us,” she said as the siren drew closer.
“How are you going to handle this?”
“What do you mean?” She jumped across the water in the ditch, then scrambled up the bank while Luke followed suit.
“Are you going to investigate what happened tonight or turn it over to someone else?”
“I’m not turning this over to anyone else—it’s personal.”
“Then maybe we should play down the other car. Report that I swerved to miss a deer, because Dale won’t allow you to investigate your own attack.”
He was right. And this happened on government property. If she reported that the other car fired at their vehicle and ran them off the road, the FBI could very well take over the case. What would her dad have done? She didn’t have to think long. He would’ve investigated it himself.
“Something keeps nagging at me,” she said slowly. “The only person who could get close enough to my dad to kill him would have been someone he trusted—either a cop, or . . .” She winced. “Or a ranger.”
He nodded his agreement. “You’re probably on to something.”
The siren grew closer. But could she lie? The right thing to do was report everything. “Maybe I’ll write everything up in my report, just not turn it in right away.”
A flicker of amusement crossed his eyes. “You’ll learn that it’s not always in your best interest to tell everything you know, especially when you’re not certain who’s trustworthy.”
Brooke’s shoulder ached even while her mind spun. Was Luke right? Flashing blue lights rounded the curve, and she stared, mesmerized. She shook her head. What was wrong with her? The SUV pulled even with them. Gary was on duty tonight.
“Having trouble?” He climbed out of his car, hitching the belt that hung below his ample belly.
“A little,” she said.
Gary did a double take. “That you, Brooke?”
“It’s me,” she said. “Do you remember Luke Fereday?”
Gary shot him a quizzical glance, and then recognition lit in his eyes. “Played running back your senior year. What were y’all doing on the Trace this time of night? You both know how dangerous it can be, with the deer and all.”
