BRIDAL JEOPARDY (15 page)

Craig shook his head. “I’m one of the children who was born as a result of Dr. Solomon’s treatments. Somebody knows about us and is going after us.”

The guy lowered the rifle. “Yeah. My nephew was one of them kids. He’s dead.”

Craig sucked in a sharp breath.

“He was one of the ones who got together with another kid from the clinic—and croaked in bed with her.”

“I think my...girlfriend and I lucked out on that part. But somebody’s been chasing us since we met.”

“Where is she?”

“I left her at a B and B outside of town and came here to talk to a police detective who said he had some information for me.”

“Don’t never trust the cops.”

Craig was already having bad feelings about Broussard. “You may be right.”

His benefactor said, “You need dry clothes and a ride.”

“I’d surely appreciate it,” Craig allowed.

“I think I got something from my son that you can wear.” He turned and walked toward the shack.

Craig followed, sloshing as he went, then hesitated at the doorway.

“I’ll get your place wet.”

“The water will go through the cracks in the floor. Come on in.”

Craig followed the man inside. The interior looked a lot more comfortable than the ramshackle facade suggested. A lantern sat on a wooden table, illuminating a narrow bed, several chairs and a small kitchen area, all neatly arranged.

The old man opened a chest of drawers and pulled out a shirt like the one he was wearing and another pair of jeans.

Craig shucked off his wet clothing and put on the dry replacements. The pant legs were an inch too short, but they were better than what he’d been wearing. His shoes were still a muddy mess, but there was nothing he could do about that at the moment. His cell phone was ruined, and his wallet was soggy, but the money and credit cards inside would dry out.

“You got a way to get back to your place?” his benefactor asked.

“I left my car on the other side of the river,” Craig answered.

“I can take you across.”

They walked down the dock where Craig climbed into the boat and the old man cast off, using a paddle to propel them.

Craig looked back, seeing the dense swampy area where the shack was almost hidden from view.

“Thank you,” he said when they got to the other side. As he reached for his wallet, the old Cajun shook his head.

“No need.”

Craig climbed out and started along the shore, watching for the men who had chased him. It seemed they had given up the chase for the moment, but what about Stephanie? He made it to his vehicle and climbed in, torn between caution and speeding as he headed back to the B and B.

He wanted to rush to the cottage, but instinct had him stopping down the block and proceeding on foot, casting his thoughts before him, trying to contact Stephanie. He knew she had to be worried—and probably angry that he’d left her alone.

There was no mental sign from her as he approached the cottage, and he felt his chest tighten.

Then he saw something that stopped him in his tracks. It was Ike Broussard climbing out of a car and heading for the cottage.

As far as Craig knew, the bastard hadn’t kept the appointment at the restaurant. What was he doing here now?

Craig sped up, calling out a mental warning to Stephanie as he watched the man push open the front door.

He’d barely disappeared inside when a massive explosion shook the little building, throwing Craig to the ground.

Chapter Fifteen

Craig covered his head with his arms as debris rained down around him. As soon as he could, he scrambled to his feet and ran toward the building.

“Stephanie. Oh, Lord, Stephanie,” he called out as he surveyed the damage. The building simply wasn’t there, and the man who had stepped inside had vanished.

Craig’s whole body was shaking. He’d left Stephanie here when she’d begged him to take her with him. He’d thought he was doing the right thing, and now she was gone—the way Sam was gone. That had been the worst thing that had ever happened to him. This was a thousand times worse.

He heard a siren in the distance. The fire department and probably the cops. Instinct told him to get the hell out of there before the authorities arrived.

Quickly he backed away and ran down the block to the spot where he’d left his car.

* * *

“S
HE
’
S
IN
THE
CAR
.
We’re on our way,” the man in the backseat said into his cell phone. He listened for a minute, then said, “We expect to be there in forty-five minutes.”

Stephanie knew that John Reynard had a number of residences. One was a plantation house about forty miles from New Orleans. Which was where they were going, Stephanie surmised.

After one of the men had hustled her out of the cottage, the other had gotten something out of the trunk and gone back to the cottage, but she’d had no idea what he was doing.

He’d given his partner the thumbs-up when he’d climbed back into the car. Then the three of them had sped away. Toward her doom? Or could she somehow save herself—and get back to Craig?

She modified that thought. She had to get back to Craig. She belonged with him, not with the man she’d promised to marry because of misplaced loyalty to her father.

She’d felt guilty about her relationship with him, and she’d told herself that was her fault. Now she knew it wasn’t true. It had as much to do with him as with her, and it was too bad she hadn’t seen that a long time ago.

But her father wasn’t her immediate problem.
That
was John Reynard. Every time the car slowed to take a curb or stop at a traffic light, she thought about jumping out and making a run for it. But that would only confirm her guilt. And what was the chance that she could actually evade these men?

She would have to face John, but what could she say to him that he would want to hear—and that he’d believe?

It was hard to make her mind work coherently, and she was still trying to figure out what she was going to say when the car stopped at the gate across the access road. Once the house had sat in the middle of cotton fields. Now it was a fortified compound, guarded by men and a fence that circled the area around the house.

The barrier slid open, letting the car through, then slid closed behind her—like a prison gate clanging shut. The long drive was lined with live oak trees, making a majestic approach to the restored plantation house that had been newly painted white. It had a portico across the front that reminded Stephanie of Tara in
Gone with the Wind,
except that the entrance was on the second floor as in most Louisiana plantation houses.

When the car pulled up beside the wide front steps, Stephanie dragged in a breath and let it out, preparing for what was coming next.

Unable to move, she simply sat in the passenger seat.

“Get out,” the man in back said, climbing out and opening her door.

There was no point in trying to stay in the car. It wouldn’t do her any kind of good. She climbed out and stood on shaky legs, looking up at the steps.

When a figure appeared, she blinked. It was Claire Dupree, the woman who had been helping her in the dress shop for the past few months. Once the shop had been her life, but she hadn’t thought about her business or her assistant in days. Now she tipped her head as she stared at Claire.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“John thought you’d appreciate having some female companionship.”

“John asked you here?”

“Yes.”

As Stephanie tried to work her way through the implications, a lightbulb suddenly went off in her head. Claire had come to the shop looking for a job not long after Stephanie had met John Reynard. She’d offered to work for almost no salary.

Now it was pretty clear why. Stephanie had been paying her a small salary, but she’d really been working for John Reynard. He’d sent her to Stephanie so that he could keep tabs on his fiancée.

“We’ve been waiting for you. Why don’t you come in?” Claire said, as if she was the owner of the house inviting in a guest.

With no other choice, Stephanie followed the other woman up the stairs and into the house, which had been furnished with many antebellum antiques as well as some comfortable modern pieces. The wide front hall boasted a sideboard imported from England with a gilt mirror hanging on the wall above. Like her father’s house, but in much better condition. On the polished floorboards was a rich Oriental rug.

“Where’s John?” she asked.

“He’s in the lounge. There’s some very interesting news on television.”

The edge in Claire’s voice made her wary, but she followed the other woman down the hall to the sitting room that John had set up like a room in a turn-of-the-century men’s club, furnished with comfortable leather chairs and couches.

The walls were wood-paneled, and the only piece of furniture that looked out of character in the room was the flat-screen TV on the wall across from the sofa.

John, who had been sitting in one of the leather chairs, stood up.

He looked from her to the television, where an announcer was breathlessly reporting some catastrophe and it took Stephanie a few moments to orient herself. First she realized it was in Houma. Then she saw it was at a bed-and-breakfast. The reporter was pointing to what must have been a house or a cottage; nothing was left but a blackened hole in the ground.

“Police say there are no survivors from the explosion that destroyed one of the cottages at the Morning Glory B and B about an hour ago. At the time a Mr. and Mrs. Craig Branson were registered at the cottage.”

Stephanie tried to take that in. In the background she could see the main building, and it looked as if the blackened ruin was the cottage where she and Craig had been staying.

“Sorry to report that your friend Craig Branson was blown up in an explosion while you were en route here,” John said, the tone of his voice making it clear that he wasn’t sorry at all.

Unable to catch her breath, Stephanie swayed on her feet. Claire caught her arm and eased her onto the couch, where she sat gasping for air.

John tipped his head to the side as he stared at her. “It isn’t confirmed that your friend was in the cottage, but I presume that he rushed back home to you, opened the door and triggered an unfortunate incident.”

“No,” Stephanie whispered.

John glanced at Claire. “Go get Stephanie a glass of brandy. I believe she could use a drink.”

Stephanie watched the other woman leave the room. Then she swung back to John when he said, “You’re in a delicate position now.”

She answered with a small nod, wondering exactly where this conversation was going. She was still struggling to come to grips with her new reality—back in the clutches of John Reynard. If it was her new reality. The explosion was real, but what if by some miracle Craig was all right?

She had to cling to that. It was her only option, because if she admitted that he was dead, what was the use of her going on? Or to put it another way, what did it matter what John Reynard did to her?

He was speaking, and she struggled to focus on his words. “So whatever you’ve been doing with him, it’s over. And now we can take up where we left off.”

“Yes,” she managed to say.

“You refused to sleep with me until we were married,” he said suddenly, his words and his tone lancing through the wall she had tried to build around her emotions. “A very old-fashioned attitude, I must say. Did you sleep with him?”

She should have been expecting the question. Well, perhaps not so bluntly. Now she froze, knowing that she was skating on very thin ice.

Raising her head, she looked John square in the eye, calling on all the salesmanship she’d learned at the dress shop. “No,” she said aloud, and as she spoke, she did something else, as well—gathered her mental power and put it into her silent order to him.
You believe me. You believe I didn’t sleep with Craig Branson. You believe it because you want to believe it. That’s the answer you want to hear, and you believe me.

Would it work? She certainly hadn’t been able to do anything like that before she’d met Craig. The power had developed as a result of her connection to him.

A stray thought danced in her mind, a thought that gave her hope. Or was it false hope?

She brushed aside that last part. If she’d developed this power with Craig, could she still use it if he was dead?

She clung to that as she kept shooting her silent message to John, and maybe her faith that Craig was still alive made the suggestion stronger.

* * *

H
AROLD
G
ODDARD
HELD
UP
the duct tape he’d asked his man to leave for him at the shopping center. It was the tape that had been used to restrain Swift and Branson. It was stretched slightly out of shape, as if it had somehow been melted. How had that happened? Had Branson or Swift done something to it? And if so, what and how? The speculation was cut off when his cell phone rang. He put down the tape and clicked the on button.

“You have them?”

“No,” Wayne answered.

“You followed him, but you weren’t able to get your hands on him?” Harold clarified.

“We had him cornered, but he dived into the bayou.”

“And then what?”

The man on the other end of the line hesitated, and Harold could picture the scene.

“Did you shoot him?” he asked.

“We tried to wound him, but he got away.”

“And he didn’t go back to the bed-and-breakfast?”

Again the man seemed reluctant to answer. Finally he said, “When we didn’t find him, we went back to the place where they were staying.”

“And?”

“There was an explosion,” Wayne said.

Harold shouted a curse into the phone. He walked across the room and snapped on a news channel. A breathless reporter was giving the details of a mysterious explosion in Houma.

“I’ll get back to you later.” Harold advised.

“You want us to stay in Houma?”

“Yes.” He clicked off and focused on the report. It seemed that the man and woman who had rented the cottage were Craig Branson and his wife. Unless they’d gotten married in the past couple of days, that was a polite fiction.

But were they really dead?

He’d keep checking to see if they surfaced somewhere. Meanwhile, he’d look around for another couple he could send into each other’s arms.

* * *

F
OR
THE
SECOND
TIME
in his life, Craig Branson was completely devastated. Sam’s death had almost killed him. He’d survived. But now he was facing unimaginable heartbreak. He had no idea where he was going as he put distance between himself and the terrible explosion. He simply drove aimlessly, wanting to get away from the place where Stephanie had died.

Moisture clouded his vision, and he finally pulled over to the side of the road, thinking that he was a menace to other drivers if he couldn’t see straight.

He sat for long moments, gripping the wheel and trying to get his emotions under control. But grief rolled over him, drowned him, making him wonder if there was any use going on without Stephanie. What if he just drove his car into a bayou? There would be no one to miss him. No one to mourn him.

He’d lived his life a certain way because he’d thought he’d never find a woman he could love. Never marry. He’d found Stephanie, and it had been wonderful, except for the serious complications. Not just because she was supposed to marry the man responsible for his brother’s death, but because someone had tried to kidnap them. He’d tried to find out who it was and hadn’t succeeded. It flickered through his mind that figuring out who they were would give him a goal.

If he could pull himself together again. For the moment, he was too paralyzed with grief.

He started to swing back onto the highway, then stopped short as a car horn blared, and he realized he’d almost plowed into another vehicle.

Sorry,
he mouthed when the other driver gave him the finger. After that he drove slowly to the next town and found a downscale motel where he could hole up.

He debated using his credit card, then decided that if he was supposed to be dead, maybe staying dead was the best way to go, for now. He paid in cash, then pulled back the covers on the lumpy bed and threw himself down, wondering how long he was going to be there and what he was going to do next.

He let the notion of getting a gun and shooting himself swirl around in his head. That was what you did with an animal in pain, wasn’t it? It had a lot of appeal, but at the same time he hated the idea of giving up everything he had ever worked for.

Yeah, but what was it worth now? Without Stephanie.

* * *

J
AKE
H
ARPER
CRADLED
his wife in his arms. An hour earlier, Rachel had been struck by a thunderbolt. Not literally, but the effect was the same. She’d been standing in the kitchen loading the dishwasher when something had made her whole body jerk. Thank God he’d been there to catch her and take the plate out of her hand when she’d fallen.

He’d picked her up in his arms and asked her what was wrong, but she hadn’t been able to answer him, either aloud or in her mind. So he’d struggled to suppress his own fear as he cradled her in his lap and rocked her, waiting until the storm passed and she was able to function again.

Finally she raised her head and looked around as though she didn’t recognize her surroundings—although they were in one of the apartments Jake owned in New Orleans. Long ago he’d gotten into the habit of moving around the city. He had several comfortably furnished places, and he and Rachel split their time among them and the plantation in Lafayette where Gabriella Bordeaux and Luke Buckley lived. With funding from Jake, Gabriella had turned her family’s plantation house into a showcase restaurant called Chez Gabriella. She and Luke lived upstairs in the plantation house, and Rachel and Jake had one of the cottages on the property, where they stayed part of the week. All four of them were children from the Solomon Clinic. And all four of them often joined forces to practice their psychic powers together.