Blood on the Bayou (25 page)

“No, not a friend,” I assure him, not wanting Hitch to think I’m buddy-buddy with the people who have put his child’s life in danger.

“Aw, Belly-welly, that hurts.” Tucker’s easy laugh makes me want to strangle him. On some level I’ve acknowledged that Tucker is a dangerous man, but I honestly never believed he’d kill
me,
let alone a
baby
. He’s going to have to make this right.
Now
. Not after Hitch blows up this stupid lab.

I meet Hitch’s eyes and make him a promise. “I’ll do whatever I can to convince him to help Stephanie and the baby.”

“Thank you.”

“But you have to promise me you’ll stay here in the truck until I get back.”

Hitch shakes his head. “No. I’m not letting you go out there without backup.”

“Hitch, please, I—”

“Just because I can’t see this guy, doesn’t mean I can’t make him bleed.”

“Now I’m startin’ to feel offended.” Mean frosts Tucker’s tone. I’ve always guessed he could pull off menacing. Now I know. And fear. For Hitch, mostly, but I have to admit I’m not looking forward to getting out of the truck.

What if Tucker’s talk about being a friend of the cause is pure bullshit? What if he’s planning to kill me as soon as I open the door?

“He only asked
me
to get out, and this will go a lot better if it’s just me and him.” I know better than to say Tucker’s name. Hitch hasn’t connected this voice with my “cousin” and it’s better if it stays that way. The less Hitch knows, the safer he’ll be. “I don’t think he’ll hurt me.”

“Now I’m flat-out offended.” Tucker’s drawl is humorless. He’s genuinely angry, and I need to get out there and do damage control before he gets any angrier.

“Stay,” I warn Hitch. Before he can say a word, I’m out the door and slamming it closed. Tucker steps back a pace or two, but he’s still close enough for me to smell his salty, grassy, sun-baked scent. He always smells like the best of a summer day, but right now it’s not comforting.

I can feel how angry he is; hear it in the stiff scuff of his boots as he leads me away from the truck. I follow his creeping shadow and the puffs of dust rising from the road, refusing to look back and give Hitch any encouragement to come after us. Still, as the road bends and Tucker keeps walking, I start to worry. There’s no way Hitch will stay in the truck if I walk out of his line of sight.

“We’ve gone far enough.” I stop. “He won’t be able to hear us.”

Tucker’s shadow pauses and shifts in a circle as he turns around. “But he’ll be able to see us. Won’t he, Red?”

I shrug. “So?”

“And he’ll be able to
shoot
me if he gets the mind to.”

“He won’t shoot you.”

“You sound pretty sure of him.” Tucker’s footprints puff closer, and his shadow falls across my face. “Why don’t you sound that sure of me?”

I look up, guessing at where his eyes would be if I could see them. “Why should I sound sure of you? The first time we met you broke into my house and stabbed me with a needle.”

“For your own good.”

“And since then all you’ve done is sneak around, spy on my private moments, and make lying to me your new hobby.”

“I’ve
never
lied to you.” He has the balls to sound hurt. Like this is about his feelings or my feelings or that feelings matter when a woman and a baby’s lives are at stake.

My lip curls. “You’re even crazier than I thought you were.”

“I’m not the one telling secrets that aren’t mine to tell, or inviting the FBI into the Big Man’s business. Seems to me you’re the—”

“Hitch is
already
involved in the Big Man’s business, and you know it,” I say, voice shaking with anger. “How could you be a part of this?”

“A part of what?”

“Don’t bullshit me, Tucker. I want to know who did it.” I cross my arms, dig my fingers into my strangely cool skin. “Did the Big Man do the job himself, or did you drive down to New Orleans and attack a pregnant woman in her own home? And poison her? And maybe
murder
her and her baby if Hitch and I don’t find this stupid cave in time?”

“You’re not going to find a cave down that road,” he says, bypassing my questions. “That’s the way to the Big Man’s compound. You drive into the middle of that, and he’ll kill you.”

“What?” My arms fall to my sides. This can’t be right. It
can’t
be.

“Maybe he’ll kill you now. Maybe he’ll decide to let you and the spook go about your business for him first, and kill you later. But you’ll be dead. He doesn’t want you knowing any more about his operation. Not anytime soon. And he sure as hell doesn’t want the FBI knowing where he’s based.”

“That’s . . .” A part of me wants to keep pushing about the poisoning, but I can’t, not if what he’s saying is true. I point back over my shoulder. “Someone
told me that was the way to the cave. Down that road, and then right, and then the second left.”

“Someone told you a lie. Keep to those directions and you’ll land in the middle of the Big Man’s secret hideaway.”

“Fuck.” That fucking fairy
bastard
. He was trying to get me killed. No wonder he called off his winged assassins. He set me up to walk into the jaws of death on my own two feet.

“Who was it?” Tucker asks. “I can arrange for him or her to feel really bad about lying to you.”

I pull off my sunglasses, ignoring the faint pain that flashes through my head. “Don’t ever offer to hurt anyone for me,” I whisper. “It makes me sick. I hate what I’ve learned about you today.
Hate
it.”

“You haven’t learned anything about me,” he says. “I didn’t hurt that woman. And I won’t—Hold up.”

I feel his fingers on my chin and flinch away. “My eyes are messed up again. Like right after I was bitten. That’s one of the
many
things I was trying to talk to you about while you were busy fondling Barbara Beauchamp.” Which reminds me . . . “Why are you even here? Did your
massage therapist
call in sick? Or did you decide to skip the rubdown to come spy on me?”

“Barbara passed out on the couch in the parlor,” he says, confirming Fernando’s stories about Barbara’s taste for Kendall Jackson Chardonnay for breakfast. “I could tell you wanted to talk, so I came looking for you. I saw you and Hitch headin’ through the gate, and I followed you on my scooter. I wasn’t—”

“You ride a scooter?”

“Hybrid scooter. Goes forever on a tank of gas. Quiet, too.”

Guess that explains why Hitch and I didn’t hear him following us. “I’ll keep that in mind the next time the Big Man offers me a present. You know, if my eyeballs don’t explode before then.”

“You’ll be fine,” he says. “You’re just burning through the injection too fast.”

“Why?”

“Probably need to lay off the hard alcohol. It interferes with protein absorption near the end of a cycle. You should start feeling better once your body processes whatever you’ve drunk, but you’ll need another shot sooner than later.”

“So it’s a protein.” I decide it’s not the best time to bring up the fact that I’ve lost track of the injections. Hopefully, now that we’re on the same page, I’ll be able to convince Hitch to tell me where he hid the shots and their loss will be a nonissue.

“Yeah. It’s a protein. Partly,” Tuckers says. “So?”

“Just good to know. I was starting to wonder if I was shooting up some kind of bioweapon,” I say, taking a stab at confirming Hitch’s theory. “Like the one that makes you invisible.”

Tucker snorts. “Your doctor friend really is dumber than you think he is.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Blinking out is part of being what we are,” Tucker says. “Has nothing to do with bioweapons.”

Okay. But then . . . “So why can’t I disappear?”

“I don’t know if we’re ready to talk about that yet.”

“Jesus, Tucker.” I kick the dirt at our feet, making it swirl around his legs and settle in the folds of his jeans, giving him shape from the knees down. “Why don’t you grow a set?”

“I have a set. I also have orders.”

“Right.” I roll my eyes hard enough to make my headache worse.

“Damn right, that’s right.”

“Really, Bubba,” I say, voice oozing contempt. “Can you even take a shit without the Big Man leaning over the toilet telling you it’s coming out okay?”

His hands are on my face again, but this time I can’t pull away. His fingers dig into my neck, holding me still as his blue, blue eyes swim into focus. Only his eyes, like an overgrown Cheshire Cat. “If the Big Man wants to own someone, he owns them, Annabelle.” It’s the first time he’s ever said my name, and it makes me shiver. “He’s got no moral shame. If anything or anyone gets in his way, or even
thinks
about gettin’ in his way, he takes care of the problem. Do you understand me?”

“No,” I whisper.

“Don’t ever love anyone more than you do right now.” His grip gentles, becoming more caress than capture. His fingertips trace the line of my jaw with a tenderness that makes me ache for him, for whomever it is he loves, for the person I’m pretty sure he doesn’t get to touch like this anymore. “Don’t ever let him have that on you.” His floating eyes are full of pain, and I want to offer some kind of comfort.

But you don’t hug a man who does the things Tucker does.

No matter what his reasons.

“If Stephanie or the baby die, I won’t keep quiet anymore. I’ll tell everyone—the police, the FBI, Fairy Containment and Control, doctors, scientists. I’ll tell them everything, and I’ll keep talking until someone believes me.”

His hands fall from my face. “That would be suicide.”

“I don’t care. This is too much.” I pray Tucker will realize that I’m right. “These are two innocent lives.”

“That woman is FBI. I’m sure she’s nowhere close to innocent.” There’s something personal behind his words. Tucker definitely isn’t a member of the FBI fan club, but I don’t have time to figure out why.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “The baby hasn’t even been born. It’s as innocent as—”

“So is it even a baby yet?”

“What?”

“It’s still within the time limit for a legal abortion. Some people would say it’s not even technically alive.”

His words leave a sour taste in my mouth, but not as sour as if I thought he believed them. “It’s alive to Stephanie. It was the first day she found out she was pregnant. This should be her and Hitch’s choice,” I say. “I need you to make this right.”

He sighs, frustrated, but weakening. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“The Big Man’s the only one with the antidote.”

“So there
is
an antidote?”

“There is,” Tucker says. “I promise he’ll be good to his word. If the doctor takes care of the lab, the Big Man will take care of his wife and baby.”

I wish his promise made me feel better, but it doesn’t. “Why Hitch? Why does he have to do this? Why doesn’t the Big Man blow up the cave himself?”

“He doesn’t know where it is anymore. They’ve changed up the locations.”

So what Hitch heard about the lab being mobile must be true, otherwise Tucker would have said “location” not “locations.” Still, that leaves the question: “Why not have you or one of the other invisible minions find it and get the job done?”

“I’m nobody’s minion.”

“You know what I mean.”

“We need a fed,” Tucker says after a moment. “The Big Man wants the lab shut down permanently and those people out of his territory. The doctor is supposed to download a few files before he rigs the place to blow. Once he turns those over to his superiors, there’s no way the people behind this will be able to bring the project back to life.”

“Because they’re FBI, too?”

Tucker’s eyes dip as he nods. “They’ll know how close they are to exposure and back off, and the Big Man will be able to move on with his own plans.”

“Which are . . . ?” I know I’m pressing my luck, and I’m not surprised when Tucker answers my question with a question.

“Who told you the way out here, Red? I need a name. If someone in our organization is trying to get you killed, I need to know about it.”

“It’s not someone in your organization.”

“You can’t know that,” Tucker says. “The Big Man has other people in town, people you’d never think are part of this. People you might think you can trust.”

“Interesting.” I refuse to start imagining who else among my friends and acquaintances might not be what they seem. “But I know it wasn’t one of the Big Man’s people.”

“You can’t—”

“It wasn’t a person.” I take advantage of his stunned silence to spill the entire story—starting with the dreams, through the attack yesterday, and finishing with the fairy in my bathroom pooping on my soap. I tell him about the Gentry and Grandpa Slake’s threats and I’ve just gotten around to my deal with the fairy and his helpful directions out to the Big Man’s compound when Tucker starts cussing a blue streak.

“I know, right?” I say. “He’s a motherfucker.”

“Motherfucker,” Tucker repeats.

“But you don’t sound surprised.” I shift into the shade of his shadow, direct sunlight too much to take without my glasses on even if my head is feeling better. “Why didn’t you tell me fairies can speak English? I thought I was losing my mind.”

“They can’t speak English.”

“Beg to differ.”

“Take a listen to yourself next time you think you’re speaking English to one of those critters,” he says. “Think you’ll find it pretty interesting.”

“Interesting how?”

“You’re speaking their language; they’re not speaking yours.”

“
What?
” Could he be right? When I came out of the bathroom after my bargaining session with the fairy, Hitch
had
asked if I was feeling okay. He’d said he heard me coughing a lot. I dismissed his concern—thinking Bernadette must be getting a cold—but fairy noises are pretty guttural. At least they sounded that way to me before . . .

“But how’s that possible?” I ask. “How could I speak fairy without—”

“You moved a truck around with your mind yesterday, and you’re asking me how something magical is possible?”

Right. One point for Tucker.