The Huntress: full-length sexy romantic suspense (23 page)

Johnson kept Vega close to his side while they rode the elevator down to the lobby. “I just got a call about a kidnapping. A witness saw that Walker fellow grab your sister right in front of the Atlanta police station.”

Fiona? She couldn’t breathe for a moment.

“That’s impossible.”

“It’s very possible. So tell me. What the hell were
you
doing kissing him?”

Her phone chirped. She ripped the tiny silver phone from her pocket.

“Hello?” It could be Fiona…or Grayson.

“Vega.”

Butch.

She didn’t say anything. Her mind had frozen.

“Vega, listen to me. Fiona’s gone.”

“I know.” This was impossible, unthinkable. Grayson wouldn’t do this to her. He couldn’t.

“I spotted him on the road a few minutes ago. I followed for as long as I could but lost him in the traffic on the interstate. I lost him, and he’s got Fiona.”

Oh God. What if Grayson had been playing with her emotions just to confuse her? What if he had intended to kill Fiona all along?

She’d kill him.

Chapter Eighteen

But why would Grayson kidnap Fiona?

A whole day and a half had passed. No calls. No demands. This silence was the worst kind of torture. It prodded Vega to question and re-examine all her assumptions.

She paced in her hotel room.

Where would he take Fiona? Why take her at all?

Jack had booked the next flight to Atlanta minutes after her call. By late afternoon, he’d arrived and taken control of the situation. The police were combing the metropolitan Atlanta area street-by-street, searching for clues, while the FBI picked apart Six-Star Enterprises and its subsidiary companies. They all were doing all that could be done, Jack assured hourly.

“Face it, he fooled you. You’re not the first person to believe a well-practiced criminal,” Jack said, trying his best to comfort. “You won’t be the last.”

Vega didn’t want comfort. “I’ve got to find him.”

“We will. The whole state of Georgia is looking for him. He won’t get far.”

If only Vega could believe that.

She’d screwed up royally and let Grayson slip under her defenses to take Fiona. What else had she missed?

Well, she’d completely dismissed the legwork Fiona had completed in the weeks she’d been recuperating in Detroit. Perhaps that had been a mistake. Perhaps there was something in Fiona’s notes that would provide a key.

Vega spent hours scouring Fiona’s notebook. Her sister had been thorough. Her entries were neat and easy to follow. No surprise, really. Fiona was an excellent researcher.

Researching was safe, respectable. Dismissing her sister’s work as meaningless had been wrong. A protective mechanism to keep Fiona at an arm’s length with bounty hunting, yes…but wrong.

Buried in the notebook was a notation hastily written in the margin—a scrawled name, “Etta Gray” with, “ask Pearl Sampit about her” written beside it.

Just three days ago, Vega had stopped Fiona from asking Pearl a direct question. Another mistake. After hitting herself upside the head with guilt, Vega picked up the phone and dialed Pearl’s number to ask the question she should have let her sister ask.

“Etta Gray,” Pearl paused, as if the name answered all the questions in the world. “Etta is Grayson’s grandmother.”

“No she isn’t.” Grayson’s parents and both sets of grandparents were long dead. And none of them had the surname
Gray
. Vega’s research had been thorough.

“Not by blood, child.” Pearl turned adamant. “Mabel…Mabel, dear woman. She was a good mother to Grayson, but she couldn’t run to her parents when things got bad. She did that once, but he found her. Things were bad, back then. Etta—she lives in the neighborhood—took pity on poor Mabel and her young son, Grayson. She gave her a place to run to when trouble brewed at home. A place where that rotter of a husband couldn’t find her or the boy.”

“So Mabel would hide at a neighbor’s house? I don’t see how that would be much better than running to her parents.”

“Don’t be so thick, child. Etta has a summerhouse. She just returned from spending the Christmas holidays with her family there. It’s far away, mind you, up the coast in South Carolina. That’s where she’d take Mabel and Grayson. No one knew about it but me and Etta.”

Perhaps this was why Grayson seemed worried about Vega poking around Millville. People tended to follow patterns. Turn the heat up too high and he’d go to the only place he’d ever felt safe.

“He wouldn’t bring trouble to Etta’s doorstep though…” Pearl let the thought trail off.

“But you said Etta has recently left the summer place? So, it would be deserted right now. Right?”

“Yes, child. It’s been closed up for the winter for the past several days. Won’t be a soul going out there until May.”

You won’t find him running here
. Pearl Sampit had said the other day as if she knew where he would go. She’d said it because she did know. This summer place would be the last place he’d run while “Grandma Etta” and her family were staying there. Now that they were gone, the place would be free for his use. What perfect timing—like a setup.

Take Fiona and run someplace far away and safe.

But why take Fiona?

“You’re too green, too innocent for this kind of rough work,” her father used to say. “That damned innocence is going to get you into trouble.”

And it had. Because she’d begun to trust Grayson, to believe that someone was trying to set him up, he’d wedged his way into a powerful position. While she let down her guard and flirted with gentle yet dangerous feelings like love, he was able to steal the one thing that could hurt her the worst.

Fiona.

He was the one who’d turned this into a cat and mouse game. He was the one who’d kidnapped Fiona in the first place just to lure Vega back into the chase.

The reasons for tormenting her might not be clear. But, to Vega, one thing was guaranteed. It was past time to put an end to his game.

She packed an arsenal of weapons and equipment into the back of her rented SUV. Butch had called three times, offering to help. Each time, she’d refused. She didn’t want Butch around muddling her thoughts. For Fiona, she needed to stay focused.

“Don’t you worry, we’ll get him,” Johnson stopped by the hotel to report that afternoon. He scoffed at her suggestion that Grayson would run to a neighboring state. The borders had been sealed, the idea far-fetched. “That sure sounds like a wild goose to me.”

“Fiona believed Etta Gray is the key. I’m not going to dismiss her ideas any longer. She’s good, better than I give her credit for,” Vega insisted.

Jack sniffed loudly and turned away.

“What about Joshua Whitfield?” Vega asked. “Are you any closer to making an arrest there?”

“Those files on the CD are a mess. We’re digging and finding what looks like dirt. We’re building a case showing that Whitfield was acting as the financial arm of a major organized crime ring.”

“Spider?”

“Yes, Spider. They’ve got their fingers in drugs, terrorism, and general mayhem in many of the major cities around the country. They were paying thugs like the Finn Kayne you encountered in Detroit to act as regional crime bosses. Finding this Whitfield/Six-Star connection is a huge break for us at the FBI. I hope to be able to charge Whitfield in the next couple of days.” Johnson scratched his chin and frowned. “Unfortunately Whitfield’s gone to ground. No one knows exactly where he is. His lawyers promise he’s staying at his Miami estate. Between you and me, I’m worried. If he weren’t so politically powerful, I’d haul him into custody. But I can’t. I can’t touch him without rock solid evidence.”

“I’m not surprised. How about those files? Is there anything you can tell me about what Six-Star Enterprises was doing to help us figure out how to find Grayson Walker?”

Johnson only shook his head. “Best we can tell, neither Harper nor Walker were involved with Spider. But then,” Johnson placed his hand on Vega’s shoulder, “we’re doing everything possible to find your sister. No matter what, we’ll find her.”

Vega didn’t find any hope in his assurances.

“Why don’t you get out of Atlanta for a while? You’re just underfoot, you know. Go somewhere and sleep for a couple of days, you look like hell.”

“Sleep is grossly overrated these days.”

An hour later, Vega was in her rented SUV and heading down to the coast of South Carolina to follow up on Fiona’s best lead. Jack had acted only too happy to get her out of the hotel. He pushed her all the way to the door, telling her he’d call if he heard anything.

* * * *

Spanish moss drooped off the limbs of the sprawling oaks, green even in the middle of January. A cool mist rose like an enchanted breath from the damp marshes. A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature crept down Vega’s spine. She turned off the highway onto the road that marked the entrance of McClellanville. It was as if Fiona’s own hand had led her to this impossibly small town not much more than a handful of roads, a few paved.

The sun dipped behind the pine trees to the west just as she found the address she was looking for. The dying afternoon sky blazed crimson, giving the unpainted, weather-beaten Victorian cottage with a lazy porch encircling the exterior a supernatural glow. While the water in the bay beyond appeared to open up and feed the night its darkness.

A small sign tacked beside the wooden door had the words, “boat rentals” printed in navy blue paint. Vega parked the SUV in front of the house.

It had taken her most of the day to get to this town on the rural coast of South Carolina. She was just a few miles away from Tommy Fisher’s bar, the Broken Cricket, where this jinxed adventure had all started. And again, Vega was not at all certain she was in the right place. After Fiona’s abduction, she was beginning to question her hunches, even the strong ones.

Vega knocked on the heavy pine door. The quick raps echoed high in the thick canopy of trees surrounding the house. It took no more than a moment or two for the yellow light on the porch to turn on. Her senses alert, she kept a keen eye on the growing shadows around the property, watching for movement.

“Yes?” a voice from inside the house asked. The rusty hinge wailed when the door opened a crack. A single ancient eye, nearly entirely white from a heavy cataract, peered out at her.

“I’m looking for Etta Gray’s place,” Vega said. “I’d been told you could guide me to her summer home.” And that was why Vega had been drawn to this clapboard house.

The man sighed and stepped back from the door. The place looked like a museum, only much more disorganized. Stacks of antique furniture, folk art, and mysterious wooden crates narrowed the front hallway from floor to ceiling.

“I’m Vega Brookes.” The man appeared to be nearly blind with those white, cloudy eyes of his, but nothing seemed wrong with his hearing. The wrinkles on his face, a testimony to his wisdom and experience, pulled down toward the floor as he turned back toward her. “Pearl Sampit sent me.”

“That old gossip?” the man snorted. He didn’t offer his name and Vega chose not to pursue it. “Might as well make yourself comfortable.” He gestured toward the living room where more treasures upon treasures had been heaped. A sweet, musty smell filled Vega’s nostrils when she perched on the corner of an ornate sofa that, in a museum, it would’ve had a velvet red rope hanging across the faded red velvet cushion.

He picked a battered easy chair that held no value besides comfort. “It’ll cost you one hundred dollars a day plus fifty dollars for me to draw you a map and give instructions on how to find your way through the marsh.”

“Okay.” He’d lost Vega. “One hundred dollars a day for what?”

“For the boat, of course.”

“The boat?”

“Pearl told you nothing. Etta’s summer home is on a marsh island. I’ll give you instructions on how to navigate the maze of channels to get you to her island—not that’ll be easy, mind you. You’ll most likely get lost.”

“I won’t get lost.”

The old man chuckled. “I require cash, up front. For fifty more dollars, you’re welcome to stay the night.”

“Stay the night?”

He snorted again. “An outsider like yourself couldn’t find the ocean, much less a small house in the middle of this marsh at night. Be lucky to do it during the day.”

That night Vega slept upstairs in the man’s sprawling old Victorian home on what felt like a cardboard mattress with the room’s expansive windows open. Teams of cicadas droned in her ears while confusing images of Fiona and Grayson haunted her dreams.

* * * *

The next morning, water whirled along the side of the fiberglass hull of the two-man boat Vega had rented. The bottom of the boat was wide and shallow. The craft glided down the creek with very little resistance from the tugging tide. A soft hum from the boat’s tiny trawling motor was the only sound for miles. Two wooden oars lay at her feet, she intended to switch off the motor and paddle her final approach to the island circled with a red pen on her map.

Navigating through the narrow marsh channels proved a disorienting challenge. Rough blades of marsh grass, winter brown in color, towered over both sides of the boat and over her head, even when she stood. The grasses blinded Vega, forcing her to rely solely on the hand-drawn map, which wasn’t easy. The pull of the tides created several narrow paths and openings that looked nearly identical to the navigable channels.

But Vega took her time and managed to find her way to the unmistakable fork in the channel where a folly of palms rose up from the grasses. Etta Gray’s secluded island, according to the map, should be just a few more turns down the creek’s winding channel. She shut off the engine and opened her black backpack holding her mini-arsenal. She tucked a loaded Beretta into her hip holster so it nestled in the small of her back. And in each pocket of her leather coat, a pair of handcuffs and an air gun Taser with a fifteen-foot range, and a shock guaranteed to overwhelm an assailant’s central nervous system.

She needed to take Grayson alive. If he didn’t have Fiona with him on the island, she would wrestle the information out of him.