Missing In The Glades
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“Oh no, you don’t,” he growled.
She felt, rather than saw, him lean inside to grab her from the driver’s side. She pulled herself toward the opening and dived like a world champion. There was a tug against her waist, a ripping sound, and then she was free! She rolled out of the way a split second before he landed on the ground where she’d just been.
She was already splashing through the marsh, sprinting for the cover of trees, when she heard his bellow of rage behind her. It wasn’t until she’d entered the much cooler air beneath the pines and knotty cypress, and felt the rush of air against her thighs, that she realized what her narrow escape had cost.
Her skirt.
* * *
JAKE STARED AT the surprisingly heavy handful of soft purple fabric in his hand. He supposed he should feel guilty. But once he’d recovered from his anger that Faye was getting away, he’d been too busy enjoying the view of her toned, gorgeous backside adorned in a lacy purple thong to do more than sag against his car and enjoy the show.
He shook his head in disgust. How had everything gotten so out of hand? He retrieved the rifle the half-naked pixie had pointed at him earlier, unloaded it and pitched the shells in the back floorboard of his car. Then he carried both the gun and the fluff of material to the tree line where she’d disappeared.
Taking devilish delight in knowing she’d have to spend hours cleaning it to make the gun usable again, he shoved the barrel of the rifle into the muck beside the road. With the butt of the gun standing up in the air, he was about to drape the skirt over the top when something heavy banged against the rifle. He felt along the fabric and found a hidden pocket, a deep pocket that contained the wicked-looking knife she’d threatened him with last night.
The evil-looking blade winked in the sunlight as if it were laughing at him. He carefully ran the rest of the fabric through his hands. But although he found more hidden pockets, they were empty. He draped the ruined skirt over the end of the rifle and added the knife to the rifle rounds in his floorboard.
He got back in his car and headed toward Mystic Glades again. He was just passing the alligator-shaped sign when he spotted something purple off to his left beside a tree. He braked and got out, drawing his pistol in case Faye had somehow managed to get past him to the other side of the road and had another gun hidden...somewhere.
When he reached the tree he discovered it wasn’t Faye hiding there. It was a purple backpack that so perfectly matched the color of her outfit it had to be hers. He crouched down and rummaged inside, cataloging the contents: bottles of water, power bars, a towel, a first aid kit. Not the kind of supplies someone generally carried for a “walk.” It was exactly the kind of supplies she might have if she were trying to find someone who’d gotten lost in the wilderness after a car wreck.
* * *
FAYE HAD RUN a good long way before she’d reached firm, dry ground. After finding a relatively clean-looking log, she perched on it to wait. She didn’t know how long she sat there. But from watching the way the shadows moved, she figured it was at least an hour, long enough that Jake would have given up by now and gone back to Naples.
To be certain that he was gone, she’d have preferred to wait longer. But time was a luxury she didn’t have. She couldn’t afford to waste any daylight. Searching at night had proved far too dangerous, in more ways than one. So she wasn’t going to do that again. But how could she search for Calvin if Jake Young was hanging around?
The battery on Calvin’s phone had died yesterday while he was talking to her and he was hopelessly lost. He couldn’t even give her any landmarks to help her find him. After surviving that horrendous crash, he’d foolishly headed into the woods instead of to the highway. His excuse was that he was afraid he was being followed, and he didn’t want to risk being seen. But Faye wished he’d at least have waited until she got there. She could have found him that first night and she wouldn’t have backtracked last night to restart her search and run into Jake Young.
Her only comfort was that Calvin had packed supplies as she’d instructed—something she always encouraged anyone to do before venturing into the Everglades—and he had the basics he needed to survive. Well, assuming he didn’t step on an alligator, of course. Or get bitten by a snake. Hopefully he’d heard enough of her own ventures in the ’Glades to know what to look out for. But no amount of book smarts could trump experience.
The sun was high in the sky now, about midday. She couldn’t wait any longer, especially since she didn’t have any weapons to protect herself out here. She was breaking all her own rules by being in the marsh without survival gear.
After a careful look around for predators, she jogged back toward the road. When she finally reached the archway over the entrance to Mystic Glades, she was relieved that the black Charger was gone. But discovering her ruined skirt fluttering in the breeze on top of her upside-down rifle, its nose shoved deep in the bog, had her cursing long and hard. If Jake were here right now she’d lob her knife, end over end, to bury itself in the dirt at his feet just for the pleasure of making him jump.
Wait, her knife. It had been in the skirt. She grabbed the fabric and groaned. It was far too light, which meant Jake had found—and taken—her knife. That was one more sin she could add to her growing list of grievances against the man, Sagittarius or not.
She tied the ragged edges of her skirt around her waist. It was a disaster, but at least it covered her bottom. It took three tugs of the rifle before the mud released it with a big sucking sound, making Faye stumble backward and reigniting her anger.
A car rumbled up the road. Was Jake returning already? She rushed behind the nearest tree. The car came around the last curve and she relaxed. Not Jake. It was Freddie, probably with cases of moonshine in her trunk to stock up before Callahan’s Watering Hole opened for business later tonight. Four more cars passed to and from Mystic Glades. Practically a rush hour for the amount of traffic that normally went up and down this road.
Most of the locals relied on swamp buggies for transportation and headed through the saw grass marsh behind town to barter and trade goods with others who lived the nomadic lifestyle. But it was occasionally necessary to make the long drive down Alligator Alley to bring back more substantial supplies, to exchange mail or even to go to a traditional job. Some of the town’s inhabitants worked on the Gulf Coast in Naples. Others worked for the DOT, keeping the wildlife fencing and roads in good repair. Still others worked at the rest stops along I-75.
Faye did none of those things. She lived above the little shop she ran, The Moon and Star. Thankfully, with the orders she received from her catalog, she made enough money to pay Amy to help her part-time. Amy was at the shop right now. Faye didn’t want to open herself up to questions about her state of undress. But she didn’t have a choice.
She hadn’t had a reason to bring her keys with her this morning, which meant she couldn’t go in through the back door. She’d just have to keep to the trees so no one would see her until she reached the store. Then she could duck inside, make up some kind of story to placate Amy, and go upstairs to shower and change. After that, she could start another search. But first she needed to retrieve the backpack she’d hidden before Jake Young drove up.
After making sure no more cars were coming in or out of town, she raced to the other side of the road. She reached for her backpack. It wasn’t there. She frowned. This was where she’d tossed it, wasn’t it? She turned in a slow circle but didn’t see the flash of purple anywhere. Instead, she saw muddy boot prints. She hadn’t misplaced her backpack.
Jake Young took it.
Cold dread snaked up her spine. Did he understand the significance of what she’d had in that pack? He might be a greenhorn but he didn’t strike her as dumb. After finding her at the crash site last night, and seeing the supplies she had in her pack, he had to have connected the dots. He had to know she’d lied and that she was trying to find Calvin.
She pressed a shaky hand to her stomach. Okay, no reason to panic. Not yet. Think this through. All she knew for sure was that a private investigator was trying to find Calvin. But he hadn’t mentioned anything about finding her. If someone from Tuscaloosa had hired him, they’d have wanted both her and Calvin, wouldn’t they? But Jake hadn’t tried to grab her...or kill her. Which meant he didn’t know about her connection with Calvin, and he wasn’t sent by any of Genovese’s associates.
So far, so good. That had to mean that whoever had hired Jake was from Naples. The worst that could mean, unless Calvin had done something really bad he hadn’t admitted to since moving to this area, was that he’d skipped out on some debts. Maybe a finance company had hired Jake to deliver a summons to take him to court.
Okay, that would be bad, too. That would put Calvin in the public eye again, which would make it easy for their enemies to find him, and her. Shoot. No matter how she looked at this it was bad. There was only one thing left to do.
She looked at the archway over the entrance to Mystic Glades, sorrow heavy in her heart. This was her home, the only place that had ever felt like home. But from the moment she’d met Jake Young, this was no longer her sanctuary. It was no longer safe to stay, either for her or the people she loved. It was time to leave. Time to find a new place to hide.
Chapter Four
Jake balanced his ladder-back chair against the wall behind him in the office of The Moon and Star, listening to his slightly inebriated new friend, Freddie, regale him with stories about a certain little golden-haired pixie. Since his latest run-in with Faye, when she’d nearly shot him—again—Jake didn’t feel even a little guilty about the lies he’d told her friends. Both Freddie and Amy, the young girl taking care of customers out in the main part of the store, now believed Jake and Faye had dated in the past and that he was here to surprise her.
She’d be surprised all right, especially since his car was hidden behind the shop so she wouldn’t know he was here until it was too late for her to avoid him.
Freddie—which Jake assumed was short for Fredericka—licked a drop of whiskey off her shockingly red lips and held the bottle up to top off Jake’s already half-full shot glass.
He hurried to cover the glass with his hand. It was still too early for him to indulge in more than the few sips he’d taken to keep Freddie talking. And he needed to keep his wits about him for the inevitable confrontation coming up with Faye.
“Thanks, but I’ve had plenty.”
Freddie shook her gray-streaked, faded orange hair in bewilderment and topped off her glass with more of the amber liquid. “No such thing as plenty when it comes to quality refreshment.” She tossed the whiskey back in one swallow, her throat working and her eyes closing as she obviously enjoyed the burn. “Ain’t nothing like Hennessey, my friend,” she said when she opened her eyes. “I was saving that bottle for a special occasion. And this is definitely a special occasion, meetin’ Faye’s beau.”
That formerly nonexistent guilt started niggling at Jake’s conscience. He didn’t want to go overboard with his fabrications and disappoint Freddie once she found out the truth. Apparently, in the thirteen months that Faye had rented this store and upstairs apartment from Freddie, she’d never once dated. Which seemed to make Freddie all the more eager to bring the two of them “back together.”
“Now, Freddie,” Jake said, “I didn’t exactly say I was her beau. I just said we used to be special friends back in high school.”
For perhaps the dozenth time since she’d started tossing back shots, Freddie giggled. Jake didn’t think he could ever get used to hearing that particular sound coming from a husky, bear of a woman who looked as if she could arm-wrestle just about any man and win—including Jake.
“I know what ‘special friends’ means,” Freddie said, punctuating her statement with air quotes. “I had a few special friends back in my day. Why, when I wasn’t much younger than you must be now, I had a very special friend, Johnny Green.” She shook her head and finger-combed a strand of hair that had escaped her ponytail. Her faded blue eyes took on a faraway look as she began to describe, in lurid detail, exactly what she and Johnny used to do that was so special.
After a decade as a cop and being in all kinds of crazy situations, there wasn’t much that could embarrass Jake. But he could feel his cheeks growing warm, listening to the graphic descriptions Freddie was using to describe things Jake really didn’t want to hear about. Especially from a woman old enough to be his grandmother. He was about to beg her to stop when the bell over the front door rang.
Saved by the bell. Thank God.
The low hum of feminine voices told Jake that Amy and Faye were talking to each other. Amy was supposed to tell Faye that Freddie was in the back and needed to see her. That little twinge of guilt reared its ugly head again. Amy couldn’t be a day more than eighteen and had been incredibly easy to fool with his lies. And here he was, corrupting her and getting her to lie, too.
There was probably a special place in hell waiting for him right now.
“Freddie, what are you doing back there?” Faye called out. “Is there a problem at the bar?”
“Nope, I’m just testing out my newest whiskey before I open tonight,” she yelled back. As if to prove her point, she tipped her glass and drained it.
“I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.” Faye’s boots clomped on the hardwood floor as she approached the back room. “You wouldn’t believe the morning I’ve had so far. I tore my skirt, lost my knife, and my rifle is ruined. I had a run-in with a mean-tempered city slicker who doesn’t know his ass from an alligator. It took a lot longer than I expected to get rid of—”
When she reached the doorway, her feet stopped faster than the rest of her. She had to grab the door frame to keep from pitching forward. She was still dressed in her lavender top. And her torn skirts were hanging provocatively low on her hips, held in place by two veils tied together. Her ever-present rifle was in her right hand, pointing up at the ceiling. The fact that she wasn’t pointing it at Jake was probably only because she was too stunned to react. Or, more likely, she was worried it would backfire with all that dirt and mud crammed into the barrel, assuming she’d even managed to find more ammo after he’d unloaded it.
Not eager to test his theories around a trigger-happy woman like Faye, Jake dropped the front legs of his chair to the floor and grabbed the rifle out of her hand.
She blinked as if coming out of a daze and aimed a wounded look at her friend. “What is he doing here?”
“I think what you meant to ask,” Jake teased as he set the muddy rifle in the corner, well out of her reach, “is why is Freddie drinking with a mean-tempered city slicker?”
Faye flushed a light red.
Freddie slammed her shot glass down and twisted around in her chair, looking behind her. “What city slicker? I don’t cotton to none of them.”
Jake grinned. Winning Freddie to his side had been easy. Faye was proving to be a lot more challenging.
“I was just telling Freddie that I’m an old friend of yours,” he said.
Faye’s eyebrows shot up. “You are? I mean, you were? Telling Freddie that?”
He nodded. “I told her some of those old stories about our high school days in Mobile.”
She went a little green. She had no way of knowing that Freddie was the one who’d told him where she’d gone to high school and that Jake still knew precious little about her.
“I also told Freddie how we planned on going to the University of Florida together but you ended up going to Florida State University instead. Funny thing is, I guess I got that wrong. Freddie said you didn’t go to FSU.”
Her face went from green to sickly pale. She glanced at Freddie, obviously wondering exactly how much she’d told Jake. “Um, no, no, I didn’t. Freddie, can you give us a—”
“University of Alabama, wasn’t that it?” Freddie wiped a trickle of whiskey from her chin, smearing her makeup like a brown streak of mud. “That’s where you went to school, right? ’Cause that’s where you and Amber met.” Freddie smiled up at Jake. “Amber Callahan was my niece. She and Faye used to come here every summer between semesters. Seems like the whole town watched Faye growing up into the fine woman she’s become. She and Amber both graduated from UA.”
“Explains the accent.” Jake lifted his glass in salute. “Roll Tide, roll.” He downed his shot of whiskey in one quick swallow. The urge to cough and wheeze was overwhelming, making his eyes water. But he managed to cling to his dignity, just barely, and make it through the storm. Good grief the stuff was strong. He suspected the name on the bottle had nothing to do with the contents and prayed he wouldn’t go blind drinking what had to be a homemade brew. It certainly wasn’t Hennessey.
He cleared his throat and met Faye’s look of impending doom with a smug smile.
“Faye, Faye,” Amy yelled from the other room. “Sammie’s in trouble out front. CeeCee has him wrapped up tight and it doesn’t look like he has his alcohol with him.”
Faye whirled around and ran down the hallway toward the front of the store.
Jake cursed and ran after her. CeeCee? Alcohol? He couldn’t begin to imagine what he was about to see.
He caught a mind-numbing, lust-inducing view of Faye’s gorgeous derriere as she raced out the door, her short, ruined skirt lifting up behind her before the door shut in his face. He yanked it open in time to see her pulling on the silver chain that hung around her neck. She lifted it out of her shirt and there were three small pouches hanging from it. She unsnapped the red one and dropped to her knees.
Right beside a man with an enormous snake wrapped around his neck and chest.
Ah, hell. Jake grabbed his gun and dropped to his knees beside her and a small group of people who’d gathered around the man being squeezed to death by the snake.
“Someone find the snake’s head so I can shoot it without shooting this guy,” Jake ordered.
“No,” the man writhing in the street choked out. “No one kills CeeCee.”
Everyone looked at Jake as if he’d just threatened to shoot a baby, or kick a dog.
Faye spilled the powdery contents of the red pouch into her hand. “Bubba, there’s his head, against Sammie’s throat. Grab it, hold it.”
Two older men, probably both in their fifties, reached for the snake’s head at the same time.
“Not you,” Faye said, motioning to one of them. “The other Bubba.”
The stronger-looking of the two grabbed the snake’s head and forced it back away from Sammie.
“Hurry,” Sammie whispered.
Faye leaned toward the snake.
Jake grabbed her around the waist, holding her back.
“I’m not letting you near that thing,” he bit out. “It could kill you.”
She gave him a surprised look. “I know what I’m doing. Let me go before CeeCee squeezes so hard Sammie has a heart attack.”
He hesitated.
“Trust me,” she said. “At least with this.”
Since everyone was staring at him as if he were the devil, he reluctantly let her go.
She immediately slathered the red powder on the snake’s nostrils and head. “Okay, everybody jump back. Bubba, release CeeCee.”
Jake swung Faye up in his arms and backed away from the now violently twisting snake. Faye blinked up at him, confusion warring with some other emotion on her face.
“Catch him, Bubba,” Sammie yelled. “I need to wash him off or he’ll hurt himself.”
Faye and Jake looked back at the street, but everyone had scattered. They were all running toward the trees between two of the buildings, including the man who’d had the constrictor wrapped around him just seconds earlier.
“I guess Sammie is okay.” Faye laughed.
“This happens a lot around here?”
She grinned. “Often enough for me to always carry a pouch of snake repellant. I’ve told Sammie to keep some rubbing alcohol in his back pocket to use if CeeCee ever confuses him with food. It works almost as well as my repellant. But Sammie tends to forget.”
Jake carried her into the store. “Sounds to me like he needs to let his pet go before it kills him.”
“That pet is the only reason he gets up every day. It’s what he lives for now that his wife is gone. He’s all alone except for CeeCee.”
He grunted noncommittally and headed down the hall.
Faye stiffened as he neared the staircase that led to her apartment. “You can put me down now. I’m not in any danger, not that I needed you to rescue me in the first place.”
“You’re welcome,” he grumbled.
She rolled her eyes.
He started up the stairs.
Her eyes widened in panic. “Wait. What are you doing? Put me down.”
He tightened his hold. “Not a chance. We need to talk. No guns. No knives. And no man-eating snakes. Just you, me and the truth.”
Chapter Five
Faye tensed in Jake’s arms. She waited until he reached the top of the stairs and set her down to open her door. As soon as he let her go, she rushed inside and whirled around to shut and lock the door. He shoved his boot in the opening, blocking her efforts. There was no way to win against his superior strength, not in a direct confrontation without any tricks. She reluctantly stepped back and let him inside.
Her skirt slid dangerously low. She was forced to grab the tattered edges and retie the veils holding it together. Her face flushed as Jake’s gaze followed the movement of her hands, lingering on her exposed tummy before sliding past the skirt to her naked thighs.
She’d flirted with him the first time she met him. But that had been so she could distract him and escape. Maybe he thought it was okay to stare at her like this because of how she’d acted last night. If he were anyone else, she’d have decked him already. But even though she was worried about his investigation, and what his presence here meant for her, she couldn’t ignore the punch in her gut every time she looked at him. Attraction sizzled between them. Why did she have to be so turned on by a man whose very presence threatened her entire world?
She stepped back to put some much-needed distance between them, and so she could meet his gaze without craning her neck back at an uncomfortable angle. “How did you figure out where I lived? And how did you manage to turn my friends against me in just a few short hours?”
“Mystic Glades isn’t exactly a big city. I drove down the main street and as soon as I saw a shop called The Moon and Star, I figured it had to be yours. When I pulled up front, Freddie came out of the bar across the street. I think she thought she was protecting you by asking me why I was there.”
“Let me guess. That’s when you lied and told her I was, what, your girlfriend?”
“I might have hinted at something like that. Freddie and Amy both thought the idea was sweet and helped me surprise you. Don’t be mad at them.”
“Oh, don’t worry. You’re the one I’m mad at, not them. You might as well turn around right now and leave. You’re trespassing.”
In answer to her edict, he kicked the door closed behind him. He moved farther into the center of the tiny living room-kitchen combo. “You live here? Above the store?” He peeked into the guest bedroom that opened off the right side of the living room. It was empty, except for the twin bed and chest of drawers that had come with the place.
“Where I live isn’t any of your business.”
As if she hadn’t spoken, he crossed to the left side of the living room to her bedroom and went inside. He flicked the ballerina-pink comforter on her bed before examining the collection of figurines on her dresser. When he picked up the centaur holding a set of scales, she marched forward and plucked it out of his hand. Had she really found him appealing a minute earlier? She never could stand a bully. And she resented him forcing his way into her private sanctuary. She carefully set the figurine back on the dresser.