Under the Magnolia (11 page)

"It always matters," she
countered, looking at him suddenly. "Sometimes the visions are a
warning, and sometimes they're a promise. We've just got to help the
Fates out a little bit. They're too busy to take care of it all."

He ground his teeth together. "Then
what do we
do
?"

Granny just smiled. "You
concentrate on driving, son. I'll tell you everything you need to
know."

Addie had no idea how much time had
passed when the truck finally stopped again. They'd rolled over so
many twisting dirt roads that she imagined they'd covered every back
road between Carter's Bay and wherever it was they'd ended up. Her
stomach complained bitterly, and she peered up into the darkness when
Stu pulled the tarp from over her head again.

But it wasn't Stu; it was the man
from her vision. His eyes wandered over her in a blatantly assessing
manner. "Good evening, Miss Gardner. I trust you had a pleasant
trip?"

She blinked her eyes, trying to
focus. "I trust you wouldn't care either way," she said
before she could stop herself. Her mind was occupied with a different
problem—changing her vision enough to keep Wes alive.

"That's where you'd be wrong,
Adelaide. My buyers prefer unmolested merchandise." His accent
was odd, stilted. Foreign.

"Oh?" She shifted enough
that she could stare up at him. "I've been tied up in the back
of this truck since morning in wet clothing with no food and no
water. How pleasant do you think my trip was?"

"We can remedy that," he
told her, his dark eyes inscrutable in the dark of evening. "There's
a motel nearby." He snapped his fingers. "We will go there
at once."

"No!" The word slipped out
of her before she could stop it, but the obvious fear in her voice
was something she could use. She let it fill her eyes as she stared
up at him. "No, I…I saw—"
Careful,
Addie...don't oversell it.

His eyes narrowed. "You saw
what?"

She had to be careful, had to make
him believe that she was scared out of her mind and not desperately
trying to play him. "You need me alive," she whispered. "I
won't be if we go to the motel."

The man just leaned down, his voice
soft and vaguely menacing. "And just what happens to you,
Adelaide?"

Addie didn't have to pretend to
flinch back from him. "Drug bust," she said, her mind
scrambling for an explanation that didn't have anything to do with
imminent rescue. "Stray bullet. Two in your leg, one in my
chest."

He stared at her for a moment before
smiling. "Then I apologize, but you will just have to remain
cold, wet, and hungry." He straightened and snapped his fingers
again. A tall blond man appeared beside him. "We will wait for
Hardegree here. Watch her, and keep her bound. I have some calls to
make."

Addie stayed motionless as the blond
man looked down at her, nothing but vague curiosity in his gaze.
She'd seen her students stare at science experiments with the same
look, judging the possible entertainment value against how much work
they'd have to do.

The only thing that kept her from
panicking was the fact that she was apparently meant to remain
unmolested. Being stared at as if she were a particularly interesting
lab rat wasn't comfortable, but it was better than having him touch
her.

They stared at each other, her bound
and helpless and fighting against fear, him seeming more and more
bemused by something. She was almost at the point where she was ready
to ask him what was so damn funny when a familiar voice cut through
the still night air.

"Let her go."

Relief welled up in her, followed by
a surge of overwhelming terror.
Please
let this be enough,
she
thought as she shifted slowly, trying to figure out where his voice
had come from. She'd changed the future that she'd seen in her
vision, but she had no idea if she'd changed it enough to keep Wes
safe.

The blond man started to reach for
his gun, but froze as Wes spoke again, his voice pure steel. "Don't.
You won't have time before I put one in your head. Back away from the
truck."

He raised his hands, but obeyed
slowly. "There's just you?"

"And twenty troopers in the
woods around the dock," Wes answered steadily, finally coming
into Addie's view. He held his gun on the blond man and glanced over
at Addie. "You okay?"

She nodded and then spoke in a soft
voice. "There's another one. He's on the phone somewhere."

"Okay." He didn't move,
just kept his eyes and his gun on the man before him. "Drop your
gun."

Something moved, brushing Addie's
ankle. She stifled a cry, biting into her lip hard enough to draw
blood, and realized something was tugging on the knotted rope.
Wes.
She tried to stay still as he manipulated the knots, not even daring
to breathe.

The blond man spoke. "And what
will happen if I don't drop my gun?"

"Then I'll shoot you."
There was no hesitation in his voice, no uncertainty.

The dark-haired man with the accent
stepped out of a copse of trees, gun in hand. "If there are
really twenty troopers out there, why did they let you come in here
alone?"

"Let's just say this is
personal." His hand tightened on the gun.

The man smiled. "Or you're
bluffing."

Wes’ throat worked as he
swallowed. "Either way, you shoot me and your man here is dead."

"Oddly enough, I find myself
willing to take that chance." Not even a breath passed before he
fired three shots, hitting Wes square in the chest.

For one endless moment Addie
couldn't believe what had happened. The world moved in slow motion as
Wes fell out of her line of sight. She forgot about the fact that she
was tied and bound, forgot about the men with guns, forgot about
everything
.
"Wes!"

She lunged without thinking, not
realizing until she rolled out of the truck bed that her ankles
were
free. Wes had undone the rope, expending valuable concentration that
could have kept him alive.

It was her fault. She hit the ground
hard enough to knock the wind out of her, and the fact that her legs
were untied didn't matter. Rolling over was torture, rising to her
knees worse. Her limbs were numb enough that even crawling was a
challenge, but none of it mattered as she dragged her aching body to
Wes’ side.

He was gasping for breath, barely
moving, and she collapsed to the ground next to him with a low sob
and struggled to lift her bound hands. "Wes…God, I'm so
sorry, I'm sorry—"

She was peripherally aware of light
flooding the darkened woods and of shouts and activity, but all of
her attention was focused on Wes as he dragged in a breath and
exhaled on a ragged groan. "God
damn
,
that hurts."

Addie made a choked noise as she
fumbled at his chest, the lack of blood only now piercing her haze of
panic. She tugged at his shirt, heaving in a desperate breath.
"You're not… You're--"

"Vest," he wheezed, even
as her frantic hands uncovered the black bulk of Kevlar. "I
thought I might need it."

A man with brown hair and a brown
uniform approached and knelt next to them. "You're a crazy son
of a bitch, Saxon," he observed with a whistle. "What if
Guerrero had aimed for your thick head?"

Wes choked out a laugh and sat up.
"I had it on good authority he wouldn't. Stan, this is Adelaide
Gardner. Addie, this is Stanford Shikoba, Florida Highway Patrol."

He tipped his hat. "Ma'am. I
guess you belong to that lovely lady currently giving one of my best
troopers absolute heck."

Addie vaguely noticed Wes’
gentle hands on her wrists, loosening the ropes that had cut into her
skin. She stared at Officer Shikoba blankly then looked to Wes. "You
brought my
grandmother
?"

"You come by that stubborn
streak honestly, baby," he murmured, rubbing at her wrists.
"That woman will not take no for an answer."

She stared at him for so long that
he probably thought she'd lost her mind. And maybe she had, because
she slumped against his chest and dissolved into laughter edged with
hysteria. "Oh, God," she gasped out, then hiccupped.
"Please tell me she didn't—didn't bring the shotgun."

Shikoba reached under his hat to
scratch his head. "She gonna be okay, Saxon?"

Wes just pulled her into his arms.
"It's been a hell of a couple of days, Stan. I guess you need
statements?"

The older man snorted. "To say
the very least. Let's get you two into a squad and make sure that
granny of hers hasn't snatched Leroy Miller bald."

Chapter Seven

It took several hours to extract
them from the clutches of the Florida Highway Patrol. Addie was fed
and given dry clothing, related her version of events—vague
though it was—and promptly fell asleep with her head in
Granny's lap.

Wes had to placate Stan Shikoba by
telling him that Howie had managed to triangulate a location from
Addie's cell phone, which Stu the brain trust had forgotten to turn
off. What Shikoba didn't need to know was that the phone had been
useless, since its battery had died before they'd even gotten off the
island that morning.

There were a lot of unanswered
questions, but Shikoba just nodded, took notes, and happily accepted
the brief explanations Wes gave. Ernesto Guerrero, one of the
Southeast's leading exporters of psychics, had been caught red-handed
and apprehended without departmental injury, and that was going to
look very, very good in his personnel folder when review time rolled
around.

Too many hours and too many cups of
coffee later, Wes was finally given leave to take his two exhausted
ladies home. He carried Addie, and Shikoba abandoned his
hunt-and-peck typing long enough to help Granny Gardner to the truck.
She gave him a winning smile and told him that the little redhead
down at the bank would be perfect for him.

Shikoba was still scratching his
head when they drove away.

The sun was high in the sky by the
time Wes dropped Granny off at his mother's and made a beeline for
his house. Once he had Addie safely stowed in his bed, he sat in his
leather reading chair by the window and watched her sleep.

He'd come close to losing her before
he even had her, and to say that didn't sit well was the
understatement of the century. To make matters worse, she regularly
put herself in harm's way when she went tearing off across the
countryside, chasing storms or chasing visions. If she kept doing it,
his nerves would be wrecked.

But if he tried to stop her, to
change her, then their budding relationship would be destroyed. He
knew that much. He just needed to find some way to deal with it.

Finally, Wes pulled off his boots
and stretched out beside Addie, still watching her, one hand stroking
through her hair. She made a quiet noise and shifted closer to him,
her eyes fluttering open. "Wes?"

He trailed his thumb over her cheek.
"Rest, baby. I'm here."