Mimosa Grove (20 page)

Justin frowned and then pulled her close against him. She was trembling, and her tears were so close to spilling over. He wanted to make everything okay, but he didn’t know how. All he could do was be there for her.

“Then let’s go make that call,” he said gently, brushing his mouth across her lips.

When he would have pulled away, she took his face in her hands and held him close, kissing him back with a slow, hungry need.

Justin groaned.

“Oh, Laurel, Laurel…you are in my heart so deep I don’t know where I stop and you begin.”

“I know,” Laurel whispered. “I feel the same.” She started to move, then stopped. “Justin?”

“What, baby?”

“How did you come to be here?”

He slapped a hand up the side of his head.

“Damn… I’ve got melted ice cream on the seat of my truck.”

“What?”

He grimaced. “I was coming out of the grocery store when I felt this…for lack of a better word…
overwhelming
sense of fear. It took me a few moments to realize it wasn’t my fear I was experiencing. It was yours. I drove straight here and found you on the floor.”

Laurel was listening, but it was difficult for her to wrap her mind around everything he was saying.

“You
felt
fear?”

“All the way to my toes. Scared the hell out of me. So I’m telling you now, for future reference, you can’t ever accuse me of not knowing how you feel, because honey…I was inside your skin.”

“Oh, Justin,” she whispered, and hid her face against his chest.

“Look at me,” he said, then put a finger beneath her chin and pushed just enough to tilt it upward.

Her eyes widened as their gazes locked.

“Sometimes what you do scares me, but not in the way you’re thinking. I’m afraid for you…not of you. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

“So let’s go make that call, and remember, no matter what they say, I’m behind you all the way.”

“Ah, Justin…”

He saw it on her face, but he wanted to hear it from her lips.

“Say it, baby. Say what’s on your heart.”

“I didn’t think I would ever find a man like you.”

“What kind of a man is that?” he asked.

Saying the words was as frightening as anything she’d ever said before, but she could no more deny her heart than she could have quit breathing.

“A man I could love.”

Justin sighed as he slid his arms around her waist.

“And am I that man?”

“You know you are.”

“Then say it,” he urged. “I need to hear it.”

“I love you, Justin. So much.”

Emotion swelled within him, making his answer much harder to say than he’d intended.

“You’d better,” he said gruffly. “Because I’m so connected to you that I’m discovering I don’t know how to function without you.”

She smiled. “I don’t have anything to do with that.”

“It wasn’t a complaint. It’s just overwhelming, that’s all.”

“I know. For me, too,” she said, and took him by the hand. “Now, let’s go make that call.”

Marie was off the phone when they got downstairs.

“Tula’s comin’ right over with a tisane. It’ll make you feel better, baby girl.”

“What’s a tisane?” Laurel asked.

“Sort of a cobbled-up assortment of herbs that’ll make you feel better.”

“Well, okay,” Laurel said. “But it better not taste bad.”

Marie rolled her eyes.

“It’s tea. You’ll drink it and like it.”

Laurel managed a grin.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Go make your call,” Marie said. “I’ll tell you when she gets here.”

F
or the first few minutes out on the highway, Trigger drove like a man gone crazy, weaving in and around traffic, trying to put as much distance between himself and the gas station as possible. He kept glancing in the rearview mirror, afraid that he would see a highway patrol car on his tail, but when the miles passed and it didn’t happen, he began to realize that if he got stopped by the highway patrol, it would be for speeding and not kidnapping, so he slowed down.

Scanlon had bled all over the front seat of his rental, but that didn’t concern him as much as the fact that the man was still unconscious. This shouldn’t have happened. If he’d left well enough alone and kept driving, then followed Scanlon like he’d planned to do, he wouldn’t be in this fix. But he hadn’t, and now he had a whole new set of problems. He needed to talk to McNamara, and he needed a fix. He cursed the man for miles because he had not called. The fact that he was in prison was not an excuse. All prisoners were allowed phone time.

A short while later, he realized he was approaching another small town, which meant he was going to have to slow down. The last thing he needed was to get caught in some local cop’s speed trap.

He glanced at Scanlon, grimacing at the blood all over the man’s face and hair, as well as down the front of his clothes, and knew it would be a miracle if he got through the town without being seen and stopped.

That led to a panic he didn’t know how to control. The easy way out would just be to get off the main road, finish Scanlon off and bury the body. But he didn’t have a shovel and wasn’t sure how Scanlon’s death would play out for McNamara. If Scanlon was gone, they would have to assign another prosecutor to the case, and then McNamara would demand that Trigger get involved even deeper to make things go his way. He even thought about turning his gun on himself, but he was too big a coward to linger long on the thought. He wanted to live, but to do that unfettered, he still had a loose end to tie up. Scanlon had been talking to his daughter when he’d gotten suspicious, which meant he’d probably told her who’d given him the ride. And that meant that when Robert Scanlon went missing, the first person they were going to want to talk to was the last person to see him alive. Since that wasn’t an option Trigger wanted to consider, now he really needed to find Scanlon’s daughter, but not to put her on ice, as McNamara had suggested. He needed to shut her up permanently, so she couldn’t report where her father had been—and with whom—and hope that the new SOB that took McNamara’s case was more willing to deal than Scanlon had been.

As he continued to drive, he noticed a small cemetery up ahead on his side of the highway. Like all cemeteries in Louisiana, there were tombs and crypts of all sizes and shapes in which to leave the dead. With the land being prone to flooding and at sea level or below in most areas, coffins had a tendency to float up from the ground, never staying where they were planted. To alleviate that problem, centuries ago people had begun leaving their dead in what amounted to small houses above the ground.

It occurred to him then that it was the perfect place to hide Robert Scanlon. He wasn’t dead yet, but this would be as good a place as any to let it happen. The authorities damn sure wouldn’t think to look for his body in a place like this.

Confident, for once, that he was doing the right thing, he drove through the open gates of the cemetery and took one of the small, narrow roads toward the back fence. He drove slowly, as if looking for a loved one’s final resting place, when in fact he was constantly looking into his rearview mirror for the moment when he could no longer be seen by traffic on the highway.

A large clump of willows grew on the northwest corner of an area near the fence, right beside two matching crypts with a large concrete angel standing between them its arms outspread. Trigger tapped the brakes, glanced in the mirror and smiled. He couldn’t see the highway, which meant that no one could see him.

He stopped, then killed the engine and got out. A quick reconnoiter of the crypts revealed that both doors had been sealed, but a tire iron from the trunk of the car proved just the right tool for prying.

The ground was hard and dry, the grass thin and wispy, due to the shade of the trees and obvious lack of rain. It seemed impossible to believe that anything buried beneath ground this hard would come up like a bad meal, but he knew for a fact that it did. With one quick glance around to make sure he was still unobserved, he headed for the crypts.

A half hour later, with blisters on his palms and skinned knuckles on both hands, he’d managed to get the door open and was dragging Scanlon’s limp body inside.

The air inside the old crypt had been stale and all but nonexistent until the door had opened. Now the heat of the day and the constant buzz of cicadas and other insects intruded upon the inner sanctum of George Henry Gooden’s final resting place.

Trigger dumped Scanlon and his personal belongings against the concrete pedestal upon which George Henry’s coffin had been laid to rest and moved toward the door without looking back. Even though he didn’t believe in ghosts, the place gave him the creeps.

He stepped outside, then tried to pull the door shut. As he did, dust shifted on the floor, lightly coating Robert Scanlon’s shoes and the legs of his pants. When the movement of the door suddenly stalled, it felt as if an unseen hand had caused it to stop. Trigger’s heart skipped a beat. Then he saw the small rock that had gotten wedged beneath the door and laughed nervously at himself, kicked it aside and finished his task.

The door swung shut with a solid thump, and as it did, something clicked. Trigger tested the door by giving it a strong push, and when it didn’t budge, he began to grin.

He’d done it. By God, he’d done it. He looked around again, just to make sure he was still undetected, then tossed his tools back into the SUV. When he slid into the driver’s seat, he was reminded that his job wasn’t quite finished. There was blood on the seat that had to be removed. Luckily, the upholstery was leather, so in lieu of water, he used a bottle of his after-shave and one of his undershirts to clean it off. After tossing the undershirt across the fence into the neighboring pasture, he got into the car. The scent of after-shave was everywhere, sickening in its intensity, and he was forced to drive for some distance with the windows down.

By the time he got to Bayou Jean, it was nearing twilight. He stopped for gas and something cold to drink, and began a conversation with one of the locals, intent on finding the location of Mimosa Grove. The sooner he finished what he’d come to do, the sooner his life was going to be back on track.

He smiled at a couple of kids who were riding by on their bicycles, then began washing his windshield with the squeegee furnished by the station. As he was moving to the passenger side, a young woman in a vintage Mustang pulled up to the pumps and got out.

“Nice car,” Trigger said.

She tugged at the hem of her T-shirt and flashed him a grin.

“It belonged to my daddy when he was young. He gave it to me for my seventeenth birthday.”

“What a great dad,” Trigger said. “You’re a very lucky lady.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said, and began pumping gas in her own vehicle. “You done with that?” she asked, pointing to the dripping squeegee dangling from Trigger’s fingers.

“Oh! Yeah. Forgot I had it,” he said, then handed it to her and smiled, as if it was a joke on him. “I’ve been driving so long I’m punchy,” he said. “Don’t suppose there are any bed-and-breakfast places around here? I was checking online before I left California. I think I remember a place called Mimosa Grove in this area. Do you know it?”

She laughed out loud. “Mister, everyone around here knows that place, and trust me, it’s not any bed-and-breakfast.”

“Are you sure? I could have sworn—”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Go see for yourself. Take the highway south out of town five miles. You can’t miss it. You’ll know you’re there when you start seeing all those creepy mimosa trees. The old house is just up the drive, but you’re not gonna find a place to stay there.”

“Hmm, I was certain that was the name, but I could be wrong.”

“You’re wrong, all right,” she said. “The only thing moving around there are ghosts and voodoo.”

He frowned. “I don’t believe in that stuff.”

She winked. “If you go out there, you will,” she promised, then returned the nozzle to the pump, tossed the squeegee into the bucket of dirty water and sauntered into the station to pay for her gas.

Trigger was still watching as she drove off without looking back, but for once, he didn’t care that he hadn’t scored. He’d gotten the information he needed. He paid for his gas, then headed out of town. His pulse accelerated as he thought of what was to come. Before the night was over, he would be in the clear.

Laurel sat curled up in an old overstuffed chair near the front window, staring blindly out onto the grounds. Her hair was in tangles where she’d run her hands through it over and over, and her white T-shirt and seersucker shorts were crumpled from having slept in them.

She’d called her father’s office and spoken directly to Clausing, his boss. Clausing’s reaction had been about what she’d expected. He’d chided her for claiming “psychic” abilities had led her to believe her father was in danger. Then she’d tossed out the name DeLane, and he’d stopped laughing. Accusing a four-star general of kidnapping and treason was crazy, but nothing to ignore. He’d said he would check it out. Now she had no recourse but to wait.

Light was fading, sending long blue shadows creeping toward the fishpond near the road. Parrots and cockatoos were coming home to roost. A pair of barn swallows kept flying through the air in long, graceful swoops, snagging mosquitoes in flight as they skimmed close to the ground.

Outwardly, it was an idyllic setting, but Laurel knew better. She’d learned the hard way that there was no such thing as peace on earth. Not when the evil men practiced spilled over onto the innocent. Her father was either dead or dying. She could feel it, but she didn’t know where he was. It wasn’t fair. All the times she’d been able to help others, and the one time she needed it to help herself, her powers wouldn’t work. She needed a connection—something of her father’s or some place he’d recently been. She kept going over and over her last conversation with him, hearing him say that he’d had car trouble, knowing when he’d told her that someone who was not a stranger had given him a ride, and certain that whoever it was, was going to do him harm. He’d told her DeLane’s name, but he hadn’t told her where he was, and she didn’t know where to start looking.

Then Justin walked in, carrying a cup.

“Tula’s come and gone, but she left your tea. Said for you to drink it slow.”

He handed her the cup, and she took it without speaking, then had a first sip. It wasn’t as bad as she’d expected, so she continued to drink until it was all gone.

As soon as she set the cup aside, she felt Justin’s hand on the back of her head. She looked up, saw the concern on his face and dissolved into tears as he held her in his arms.

“He’s dying,” she said. “I can feel it, but I don’t know where he is.”

“What can I do? Tell me and I’ll make it happen,” he said.

Her arms were around his neck, her fingers clutching the fabric of his shirt as if he was all that was keeping her upright. Her voice was shaking, and she felt sick to her stomach.

“Oh, Justin…God…just tell me this is all a bad dream.”

He hurt for her in so many ways and would have done anything to keep her from harm. But this was something completely out of his experience.

“Honey…I would tell you anything if it would make this better, but I don’t know what to say.”

“I know, I know,” she muttered, then hid her face in the curve of his neck. “I’m losing control, and that can’t happen.”

She pulled herself out of his arms, then swiped angrily at the tears on her face.

“Damn this helplessness!” she shouted, and stormed out onto the veranda.

The suddenness of her arrival sent a pair of roosting peacocks into a frenzy. Their squawks and shrieks were echoes of the way she felt inside, but if she started screaming, she might never stop. She strode down the steps and started walking with no destination in mind, unaware that Justin was only a step behind.

He caught her before she got far, then spun her around and into his arms. His breath was warm on her face, his grip firm as he held her close.

“Stop it,” he said.

She struggled to get free.

“Damn it, Laurel. Stop it! Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“Crazy! I’m going crazy!” she yelled. “Just like my mother!” Then she went limp in his arms. The anger was gone as suddenly as it had come, leaving her weak. She looked up at Justin, ashamed that he’d seen her like this. “Just like my mother,” she echoed softly, and let him hold her as night crept onto the land, swallowing the shadows and hiding everything, both good and bad, within the darkness.

Finally Justin picked her up in his arms. Her head lolled against his shoulder, but she didn’t fight him. She couldn’t feel her father within her anymore. At that point, hope died.

Justin carried her inside as lights from the hunters’ lanterns danced intermittently through the trees. They were looking for the trespassing panther she’d heard earlier in the day. Somehow, it didn’t seem right that man was willing to hunt a four-legged enemy quicker than a two-legged one.

Attorney General Andrew Clausing was sick to his stomach but with no time to throw up. Interrogating a four-star general in his own home had been daunting, but he was up to the job. He hadn’t, however, expected to see someone of John Franklin DeLane’s integrity crumple like yesterday’s newspaper. But after a search of the house that had revealed bank accounts and trips out of the country coinciding with large deposits into a bank account in the Cayman Islands, it hadn’t been the general who’d come up guilty. It had been the son.