Dead on the Delta (29 page)

And I suddenly have the feeling I’m not alone.

Careful not to make more noise than I have
already, I sit the glass in the sink and turn back to the kitchen table. I snag the gun from its holster, but don’t arm it … yet. I don’t want to alert my visitor of my presence. Besides, there’s a chance it’s Cane in the other room. Maybe he came over to talk after filling out Amity’s paperwork, let himself in, and decided to stay for a nap.

Except that I locked both doors this morning, and Cane doesn’t have a key. No one does, not even Marcy. Whoever is in my home broke in.

As I creep toward the bedroom, I cast a glance at the front door, grateful for the odd design of the house. From where I stand, I can see that the front door is still locked and all the windows shut tight. My intruder must have come in through the bedroom window. It wouldn’t be hard to pull out the air conditioning unit, crawl in, and stick the unit back in place.

Especially if you’re a man … a big man, so long your feet stretch past the end of the bed and your boots dangle in the air even when you’re propped up on a mound of pillows.

Even as I arm the gun and aim it at my visitor’s midsection, a part of me can’t believe there’s a stranger in my house. He seems … unreal. Maybe it’s the way his threadbare blue jeans cling to his obviously well-muscled legs, or how his white T-shirt pops against his out-in-the-sun-all-day tan. Maybe it’s the big smile on his face or the long hair—dark blond locks too feminine to top such a masculine form—tumbling over his shoulders.

More likely it’s the sky-blue eyes and overall drop-dead gorgeousness of the criminal that make me pause a second too long. No one expects the bad guy to be so …
pretty.
Or lounging on the bed with a tattered paperback copy of
The Bourne Identity,
or smiling like he’s been looking forward to being discovered. It’s too peculiar for my grief-addled brain. It slows my reflexes, makes my trigger finger sluggish, even when Gorgeous flings his book at the wall, revealing a hypodermic needle the size of my hand, and lunges for me.

Before I can shoot or scream or take a step toward the door, he’s on me, knocking the gun from my hand. We fall to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. The breath rushes from my lungs as he straddles my waist and brings one large hand down on my mouth. His skin is dry and rough against my lips, but smells of soap.

Who knows what kind of blood-borne diseases this guy might have, but I would have taken my chances—and a chunk out of his hand—if his thumb hadn’t locked beneath my chin, hooking my jaw, pinning my mouth closed.

Biting is out, so I scream. Muffled or not, Bernadette might hear if she’s eavesdropping hard enough. I suck in air through my nose and howl for help until Gorgeous grins and sticks his pinky finger in my right nostril. I can still breathe, but … but … someone else has
their finger in my nose.

It’s such a weird feeling that I freeze up again, giving
the man on top of me the chance to jab his needle into my thigh and hit the plunger. For a second, I can’t feel anything except the stab of a big-ass needle fighting its way through jeans and skin. Then, whatever he’s injected me with hits my bloodstream, and I scream again.

This time, it’s a sound of pure, blinding agony. The toxin catches fire, spreading from my leg to my guts to my heart and blooming with a
whoosh
inside my brain. It’s like being burned alive from the inside, blood and bone and organs eaten away as I buck and thrash and struggle to find some way out of the pain. But I can’t run from my own body. There’s no way out, nothing except a slice of black at the edge of my vision, a place I sense there will be no return from should I choose to slip inside.

Still, I might have gone to it, might have leapt unthinking into the abyss if the man hadn’t bent down and whispered in my ear.

“Breathe. Breathe, Annabelle. This isn’t going to kill you, you’re going to be just fine,” he says, the certainty in his words cooling the fire, taking the pain to an almost manageable place. “I’m Tucker. I’m here to help. You need what I just gave you. It’s going to make it all better.”

My eyes flutter open, straining to focus on the face so close to mine.

He pulls back, staring until his look squirms inside me, stealing more fuel from the flames. “But I need you to promise me something, okay? You can’t tell
anyone about this. Or me. Don’t show the injection mark on your leg. Don’t ask your doctor for a second opinion. Just forget this happened until you hear from me again. Do you understand?”

I narrow my eyes and wait for him to pull his hand from my mouth so I can scream for help. But he doesn’t, he just stares harder, as if my intentions are written on the backs of my eyes.

“Seriously, Red. If you say a word, your life is over,” Tucker says, each syllable firm and deliberate. “It won’t be me. It’ll be someone you’ll never see comin’ until it’s too late. You listen to me now, and do what I say when I make contact, or chances are you won’t live to see your next birthday.”

Something in his tone, in his expression, in the way his fingers caress my cheek as he lifts his hand, makes me believe. Crazy or not, I can’t tell anyone about this. I
won’t
tell. He smiles and springs to his feet, heading for the back door. I try to call out, try to sit up, but I’m frozen on the ground.

Still, I hear him loud and clear when he speaks from the doorway, delivering a final warning only a little less confusing than the first. “And stay away from the Breeze house and that woman. She’s going to get what’s coming to her, for Grace and all the rest of it.”

I swallow, but still can’t form words. What does he mean? Does he know who killed Grace?

“But if the Big Man sees you talking to her again, you won’t get another warning. You’ll just get dead.
He knows she’s got his stuff,” he says, his face appearing at the edge of my vision as he walks a few steps back into the room. “You’re just lucky it was me out scouting today and not him. He doesn’t want any more new recruits. Not government types like you, anyway. He would have killed you.”

“Getting … shot up … so much better.” I force the words out, though my throat is so raw it feels like I’ve got the world’s worst case of strep.

Tucker laughs. “Girl, you have no idea how much better it can get. Just don’t trust anyone you can’t see. Except me, of course.” Slowly, like the Cheshire cat fading out of Wonderland, Tucker’s face disappears, until only his bright eyes and killer smile hang in the air. “See you later, Red.”

And then he’s gone, stomping through the kitchen and out the back door.

M
y thoughts race like dominos tumbling over each other in their haste to get to the big finish.

I’m not losing my mind. There
are
invisible people. One of whom shot me up with a drug he swears will help me—though it doesn’t appear to be working so far—and others whom I need to “beware.” Including the man from the swamp who now knows I don’t have his drugs, but isn’t interested in keeping “government types” alive.

The rest of Tucker’s gobbledy-gook is hard to comprehend, but that much I heard loud and clear. As well as the warning to keep our meeting and my injection a secret, and the strong encouragement to stay away from “her,” the one who will pay for killing Grace, the one Tucker saw me talking with today.

Percy.
It
has
to be Percy. Tucker must have seen me by her car and decided to come lie in wait at my house. The more I think about it, the more it makes
sense. Percy is one of the family, took care of Grace for years, and had complete access. She could have poisoned the girl with her mother’s pills a year ago, just as Benny suspected. She could have kidnapped Grace from her room—or even smothered her in her bed—and then carried her to the barn to await the opportunity to dump her body outside the fence. And if Percy is responsible, and if her daughter saw something that made her suspect her mother, it would totally explain Deedee’s odd behavior lately.

Her assertion that her mother will “kill her” takes on a whole new meaning, making me flop uselessly on the floor.

Percy is looking for Deedee now. What will she do to her if she finds out Deedee told me about finding Grace in the barn and stealing her necklace? I don’t want to believe Percy would hurt her own kid, but she’s a big woman. Big enough to do damage, big enough to leave those footprints in the ground outside Grace’s window.

Big enough to carry a refrigerator out of the swamp and lug it over to Fernando’s, in an attempt to frame him for the murder and throw suspicion off herself and the family. How she’s involved in the Breeze operation, I can’t say, but the way Tucker said “stuff” makes me certain it’s drug stuff. What other kind of “stuff” is going down around here?

Invisible people. More than one. That’s definitely “stuff.”

Whatever. My gut assures me the voice of reason
is on crack and that Tucker was talking drugs. Selling Breeze would certainly explain how Percy pays for Deedee’s nice clothes, and I don’t doubt that she’s got the guts to get into the drug business. Most people—even those tempted by the big cash payoff of selling Fairy Wind—would be too afraid of a bite to venture out to a Breeze house. But Percy wouldn’t have any trouble getting safely in and out of the bayou. She has use of the iron-sided Beauchamp family van and probably even some sort of suit. The storage unit I spotted in the back of the van certainly looked like an iron suit container.

The only piece that doesn’t fit is Amity’s attack. If she knows Fernando is in on the operation, she has to know Percy is a player, as well. So why was she so certain that
I
was the one hiding the stash?

“She must have already questioned Percy, and Percy made her believe she didn’t have it,” I tell the ceiling, wincing only slightly. It hurts less to speak than it did a few minutes ago and my tongue actually feels … normal. More normal than when I came in after my run.

I do a swift body scan, relieved to find my aching head is also faring better. There’s no more throbbing or pounding, only a faint … buzzing. It isn’t a sound, but a sensation, a low-voltage stream of electricity that courses through my nervous system, keying me up, focusing my energy, enhancing that “sharp” feeling I had this morning in the bayou. It makes me wonder how my eyes are doing.

If only I could move the rest of my body, I might be able to get to a mirror and find out.

Trying to sit up only results in another fish-flop on the floor, and then another, and another, until the frustration of not being able to control my body is replaced by a deep, pressing fear. What if I’m paralyzed? What if that injection lands me in a wheelchair? Will I still feel it’s best to keep my mouth shut about my and Tucker’s interlude then?

Hell, no. We’re calling 911 as soon as you can move your fingers,
one part of me insists, while another part assures me that
keeping quiet is our only choice, we
have
to trust this guy, at least until we know more,
and yet another voice—one that sounds a lot like the Marcy of my teen years—reminds me that
the devil always comes wearing a pretty face.

“He’s not the devil,” I whisper. I don’t believe in the devil.

But then … I didn’t believe in invisible people until a few minutes ago.

Tucker really
was
invisible when he walked out my door. He was probably invisible when he broke in, as well. That means no one will have seen him coming or going. There will be no witnesses, and a search for the man would prove futile. He can
vanish at will.
Even if I run straight to Cane and have him put out an APB, I’ll be shit out of luck. And I would have broken an inplied promise to Tucker. Despite the easy smile, I have a feeling that’s a bad idea.

Still, I need some explanation for why I’m going
to be late to my review with Stephanie. Assuming I make it to the station at all. Right now, it’s not looking good. I’m still horizontal, muscles twitching, incapable of even dragging myself over to the phone to call for help.

Shit!
I have to get up, I have to throw off this poison and—

“Miss Annabelle?” The door creaks on the hinges. “Miss Annabelle?”

Deedee. What’s she doing at my house? At my back door, no less?

“Miss Annabelle, are you … ” Deedee’s words end in a gasp. “Miss Annabelle? Are you okay? Are you dead? Miss Annabelle, are you—”

“I’m okay, Deedee.” I cut her off before hysteria can morph into a full-fledged meltdown. “I just … fell and hurt my back.”

“What did you hurt it on?” Deedee’s tear-streaked face appears above me, her eyes puffy. Even her lips look swollen, as if she’s had one of those epic crying jags that leave your head feeling like an overstuffed pillow filled with snot.

“I just fell. Wrong. I fell wrong.” The lie sounds like a lie.

Deedee wrinkles her nose. “You don’t look good.”

“I’m okay.” I try to shrug, but end up twitching my neck. “I’m going to be fine.” I hope.

“Can you get up?” she asks.

Can I? Excellent question. “Maybe. With some help.”

I will my hand toward her, funneling all my energy into those few muscles, imagining how my shoulder bone should rotate in the socket. After a twitch or two, I achieve movement. Eureka! Maybe that’s all I need to do: focus on one piece at a time. Of course, help wouldn’t be a bad thing. I’m over the whole “lying on the ground looking up noses” thing. Poor Deedee’s is leaking in a major way. If I don’t get out from underneath her, it’s only a matter of time before I’m christened by snot droplets.

“Just grab it and pull. Don’t be afraid.” Tentatively, she takes my hand. “Go ahead, pull hard. You won’t—Ah!”

My words end in a scream as Deedee hauls me into a seated position with more strength than I was expecting. My back cracks, my tailbone grinds against the hardwood, and for a second I’m afraid I’ll fall back onto the floor. Thankfully, my abdominal muscles engage at the last second, clenching tight, holding me in a hunched-over, trollish version of upright.