Lucky's Lady (26 page)

CHAPTER
                        

18

THE POWERBOAT ROARED THROUGH THE SWAMP AT
a speed that wouldn't have been prudent even in daylight. The water was an obstacle course of snags and deadheads and cypress knees that were hidden now by the high water level. Lucky opened the throttle a little more and eased the wheel right, then left to narrowly avoid hitting a log. He focused straight ahead, trying to channel all his energy into navigating the boat. He knew this swamp better than anyone. All he had to do was focus, visualize the path and react mentally a split second before he needed to react physically.

He had run out of Mouton's like a man with the devil at his heels, stopping at his pirogue only long enough to grab his gear bag before commandeering the craft he was piloting now. He wore his infrared glasses, which allowed him to make out something of his surroundings, but not enough considering the speed he was traveling. The 9mm Beretta was strapped to his shoulder. He would have liked to have his rifle, but it wasn't something he kept in the pirogue and there was no time to go get it.

He had known the instant the pieces had come together back at Mouton's that time was of the essence. What he'd found at Chanson du Terre had confirmed his worst fears. Odille had seen Serena leave the house and walk down the lane toward Arnaud's. The Arnaud girl had watched her walk off toward the bayou. At the end of the service lane along the bayou Serena's purse had been lying abandoned, a can of Mace not far away.

Willis and Perret had her. Lucky thought he had a good idea of where they would take her. Willis had a place where he kept his fighting cocks. It was supposed to be a secret hideout, so they would undoubtedly feel perfectly safe taking Serena there. They wouldn't count on Lucky knowing the place. They wouldn't count on him turning down the attentions of the blonde either. He would have the element of surprise. He only hoped he wouldn't be too late.

The thought of Willis and Perret with their hands on Serena filled his head with a red haze, and he had to make a conscious effort to pull back from the image. Rage was ready to consume him. He could feel it roaring at the edges of his control, ready to sweep in and obliterate all else. He had to keep it leashed. He wouldn't do Serena any good if he came tearing in like a wild animal.

He called on old skills and instincts, reached deep within himself for a sense of dead calm. This was a mission. He would get the boat through the swamp. He would find Willis and Perret. He would kill them for touching his woman.

His woman.

He was in love with Serena Sheridan. He had been able to deny it before, but knowing Serena was in jeopardy put everything into perspective. What he felt for her went deeper than desire. It had from the first. That knowledge brought no comfort or joy to Lucky's heart. In fact, what it made him feel was bleak and desperate. He could offer her nothing. He was little more than a shell of man, just managing to get himself from one day to the next. How could he take on the responsibility of love, of a wife? He didn't want it, couldn't handle it. Love changed nothing.

He cursed it as he swung the wheel of the boat to dodge a cypress knee at the last second. The only thing this love was doing was distracting him from his task. If he wasn't careful, it would get both himself and Serena killed.

The bayou took a slow bend to the east, and Lucky throttled down, instantly cutting the roar of the motor. He would go on foot from here. Guiding the boat in along the bank as close as he could, he shut it off and stuffed the key in the pocket of his fatigue pants. He tied the boat to an overhanging willow branch and jumped to shore.

As silent as a stalking cougar he moved through the woods, his mind playing back fragments of other missions. For the briefest instant he could smell the rain forest, hear the distant sounds of guerrilla gunfire. He felt his mind start to slip, but he pulled it back with an effort. If ever there had been a time for him to hang on to his sanity, it was now. He pulled the Beretta from its holster and cradled its familiar weight in his hand as he made his way through the dense growth.

It was a warm, still night. The air was heavy with the scent of honeysuckle and mud. The songs of frogs and insects combined into one high-pitched hum that floated across the whole swamp. Lucky strained to catch other sounds, thinking Willis might have stationed Perret somewhere as a lookout, but all he heard was the normal range of rustlings and squawkings that filled the nights. There were no shouts, no screams.

The last thought raised a knot in Lucky's throat.
Bon Dieu
, he couldn't bear the idea of Serena suffering at the hands of men like Perret and Willis. They were little more than animals—cruel, cunning, base. They would enjoy terrifying her simply because that was their nature, but they would take added pleasure in hurting her because they knew she was his. They would make her pay for everything he'd done to thwart their poaching business.

For one excruciating second he had a clear picture in his mind of Serena tied down, her face twisted in pain, a scream tearing from her throat, tears streaming from her eyes. His vision blurred and he pressed the heels of his hands to his temples and forced back the image and the terrible rush of fear that accompanied it.

He would kill Shelby for this. The thought drifted like smoke around the dark edges of his mind. She had bought her own sister's death. Serena had been an inconvenience to her, just as his baby had been an inconvenience to her, nothing more than a stumbling block in the path of her goal. The idea brought a rush of hatred burning through him. He gritted his teeth and fought it under control. This was no time for emotion. He needed to pull himself into the eye of the storm, be calm, detached, focused.

He stopped and leaned back against the trunk of a tree for a moment, willing his body to relax. Taking a long deep breath, he cleared his mind of everything but cool white light.

Serena stumbled through the door of the cabin and fell across the dirty linoleum floor as Willis released her. The only light in the place came from behind the cracked yellow shade of an ancient black iron floor lamp in one corner. The room was filthy and smelled of mice and urine. A low green sofa squatted above the pitted linoleum floor with stuffing and springs sticking up through the cushions. A coffee table made from a heavily shellacked slab of wood sat in front of it. On the opposite side of the room stood a bed with a rusty iron headboard and footboard. There were no sheets, just a thin mattress covered with stained ticking.

Not the kind of place she had ever imagined staying in, let alone dying in, Serena thought as she struggled to her knees. Her gaze swept around the room automatically looking for an escape route. There was a back door, but it looked an awfully long way away as Willis stepped in front of her. He reached down and hauled her up off the floor by her sore arm and shoved her onto the bed.

“Make yourself comfortable, sweetheart,” he said, chuckling.

“It's kind of hard to be comfortable with my hands tied this way,” Serena said, blocking the pain as she pulled herself into a sitting position on the edge of the mattress. “You might as well untie me. I know when I'm beaten. I obviously can't get away from you.”

“That's right.” Willis bent over the coffee table, then turned to face her with a whiskey bottle in one hand and his revolver in the other. A smile of smug triumph twisted his mouth. “You can't get away. And with your hands tied, you can't get a hold of a gun either, and you can't scratch our eyes out while we have our little bit of fun. Nice try, Miz Sheridan, but no go. I like you just the way you are.”

He took a swig from the bottle, whiskey dribbling down his chin as he swaggered toward the bed. Serena watched him warily, trying to gauge his level of intoxication. He'd had several cans of beer on the way. He may have been drinking before that as well. If he drank enough, he might not be able to participate in the festivities, but there was still Perret to contend with.

He stood in the doorway with the shotgun in his hands, laughing nervously as he watched Willis advance on her. Serena was almost more afraid of him than she was of Willis. Willis was cruel and calculating, but Perret had a wild gleam in his eye when he looked at her that made her think he was teetering on the brink of a dangerous kind of frenzy.

Willis sat down beside her, his thigh pressing against hers, his hip brushing her hip. He braced himself upright with the whiskey bottle against the mattress and leaned over into Serena's face. The smell of his breath and the sour scent of his body was enough to make her want to draw back, but she held her ground. As long as she kept her mind working and the fear at bay, she had a chance. The second she buckled under the weight of terror, she would be lost; they would be on her like wolves on a lamb.

“See, if I untied you,” Willis said, his mouth a scant inch above hers, “then you might just try to stop me from doing this.”

He brought the pistol up, and Serena's heart lodged in her throat as he drew the end of the barrel slowly along her jawline, down her throat, over her breastbone. He traced the lacy edge of her bra, the cold steel pressing into the flesh of her breast. A shudder passed through her from head to toe, and Willis smiled and chuckled.

“You like that, Lady Serena?” he asked, stroking the gun barrel across her nipple. “You'll like this even better.”

Serena breathed a sigh of relief as he set the .38 aside on the bed, but gasped in the next instant as he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her backward onto the mattress. He leaned over her, looking like something from a horror movie with his twisted smile and one eye swollen shut. Chuckling low in his throat, he raised the whiskey bottle over her. Serena tensed and squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the blow, but none came. Whiskey splashed onto her chest, soaking into the fabric of her bra and running in rivulets down her sides. The scent of it filled her nostrils.

Willis bent over her and took her nipple into his mouth, sucking hard at her through the wet silk. He jammed a knee between her thighs, forcing her legs to part and lowered himself onto her, grinding his erection against her.

Serena fought the tears that stung the backs of her eyes as the last of her hope was crushed beneath the weight of Gene Willis. She'd had her chance to escape, and she'd blown it. She wished they had simply killed her. She wished that the last thing she was to endure on this earth wasn't defilement and debasement. She didn't want to die with rape as her last memory.

Close your eyes and think of England
. That was the line Victorian women had been schooled to remember in the face of sexual relations.
Close your eyes and think of Lucky
. The tears pressed harder for release as Willis sucked noisily at her breast and thrust himself against the apex of her thighs. Serena bit her lip until she tasted blood. Revulsion shuddered through her and rose in her throat to gag her. This was violence in one of its ugliest forms.

“Hey, who says you get her first?” Perret demanded, suddenly looming up behind Willis. His droopy eyes were narrowed and his mustache twitched as he worked his jaw angrily from side to side. The shotgun was still clutched loosely in his hands and his fingers twisted on the stock and barrel.

Willis raised his head from Serena's breast, but didn't deign to look at his partner. “
I
say I get her first,” he said, his tone low and dangerous.

Serena watched Perret with interest as his face flushed and his mouth moved back and forth as if he were working up the nerve to spit the words out. The feral gleam in his dark eyes intensified as his gaze fastened on her chest and the wet fabric that covered her breasts. “You said before, I'd get her.”

“The hell I did,” Willis grunted. He ground his hips against Serena's and began to lower his head again, dismissing the man behind him.

“You did!” Perret insisted. “You said I could have her first.”

“Looks to me like his promises don't mean very much,” Serena said. Her deflated hopes lifted a fraction. Her skill with minds and words was the only weapon she had. If she could turn the two men against each other, she might yet have a slim chance to live through this ordeal, and a slim chance was better than no chance at all.

Willis scowled at her. “You shut up.”

“Why should I listen to you?” she countered. “He's the one with the shotgun.”

“That's right,” Pou said militantly, his hand stroking up and down the barrel of the gun. “Me, I got the shotgun, Willis. Get off her. I wanna do her first.”

“Go to hell.”

“I can shoot you, you lyin' bastard!” He swung the barrel of the shotgun around as if he had every intention of making good on his threat, but instead of pulling the trigger, he jabbed the nose of the gun in Willis's back.

Willis swore through his teeth. “All right. Jesus, let me up.”

Perret stepped back and lowered the gun. Willis rose slowly, adjusting his jeans, glaring at the smaller man. In a quick move that belied his cumbersome size, he snatched the shotgun away by the barrel and swung the stock end at his partner like a baseball bat, narrowly missing Pou's head as he ducked back.

“You stupid coonass trash!” Willis shouted. “You can't even get her from the goddamn boat to the house without screwing up! You can damn well wait your turn!”

“You said I got her first!” Perret shouted back.

Serena watched them argue. They yelled back and forth, issuing threats and insults, all the while inching away from the bed and toward the other side of the room. Nothing stood between her and the front door. She could make another run for it. She doubted she would get away, but there was a chance. Perhaps they would shoot her instead of chasing after her, too, and that seemed infinitely preferable to suffering the kind of violation they had planned.

She leaned forward, bracing herself to make a running start. Willis turned suddenly and set the shotgun beside the door. He sent an angry glance Serena's way.

“All right, all right,” he snapped, waving his hands in Perret's face to shut him up. “We'll flip for first chance.”