40 Souls to Keep - 18. Chapter 18

A four-dollar fee to get a lousy ten bucks? Hadn’t there been some recent exposé on the legality of exorbitant ATM fees? Not that it mattered. It wouldn’t change the fact that he needed money, or that there were three increasingly impatient people behind him, each dying to pay their own four-dollar fee.

“Unbelievable,” Lucas muttered darkly. He punched the button to withdraw his last ten dollars, grabbed the cash and his receipt, and stalked toward the doors to the cafeteria. In less than ten minutes, he was riding the elevator back to Jase. It stopped on both the second and fifth floors, picking up the graveyard shift and letting off the daylight. The corridors were flush with nurses, doctors and food carts. But on the sixth, nothing moved. The few nurses at the station worked quietly in the low light, bent over computers and charts, not even chatting among themselves. He slowed to peek through open doors as he passed, but every single patient lay still, silent and unmoving. Only the machines whirred and beeped.

“We definitely scored the quietest floor,” he told Jase as he spread out their breakfast.

Jase marked his place in Amanda’s diary. “Top floor is usually the quietest. It’s the last stop,” he said, taking the tray from Lucas. “You don’t spend too much time in hospitals, do you?”

“Yeah, actually, but I hardly leave the ER.”

Jase hummed his approval at the cheese omelet slopping over the edge of his plate. Munching a slice of bacon, he said, “These people are dying. Most only hours or days away. It’s quiet here on purpose, out of respect for that.”

Lucas grunted. A last measure of peace was the most anybody could hope for. It soothed him, in a way, that certain places did their best to add dignity to the end. “Do you think you believed in predestination before...you know, before?”

Jase sectioned off a piece of omelet before answering. “I don’t believe in God.”

So he’d said, and neither did Lucas, in the strictest sense, but most people, put in Jase’s position, would look for a higher power to blame for their predicament.

“Okay, wrong word. Predetermination, then.”

Jase shrugged. “I think it’s human nature to believe in free will.”

“But you don’t believe free will exists?” That was the type of unsettling concept that could put Lucas off his blueberry waffles.

“I don’t know.” Jase pushed his fork through the hash browns crowded to one side of his plate. “I’ve become a child of the opposite, I suppose. My life is defined by causal chains of events, but those events aren’t set in stone. Is it a cop-out if I say I believe free will exists, but it’s not as free as we believe?”

Philosophy had never been Lucas’s strongest subject. Little of it could be boiled down to the type of simple formula he lived by, so he gave it a pass, both literally—he’d taken the one required class in college, but no others—and figuratively. He kept his feet on the ground and left the deep thinking to other people.

Jase had turned all that upside down.

“I read over more of the diary while you were gone,” Jase said, rerouting the conversation.

Lucas happily let it go. “Anything catch your eye?”

“Maybe.” Jase pushed his plate to the side. “When you were gone that day at the condo, when you went to call Swift, Macy and I talked some.”

“Yeah?”

“Mostly I listened. She told me all about her house. Not the one—”

“Yeah,” Lucas interrupted. “I figured you meant her old place.”

“She spoke of it fondly. I think they’d lived there her whole life. And then—” he reached for the diary on the bedside table, “—her mother mentioned it a few different times. Hang on.” He flipped through the pages. “Here. ‘Macy won’t stop talking about her old room and all the things she left behind. I think the worst part might be that she doesn’t seem to be lashing out, angry that we had to leave. It’s as though she’s trying to preserve the memory of it, of us, before everything got bad. Before we changed.’”

Lucas chewed thoughtfully.

“There’s more,” Jase said.

“Let’s hear it.”

“‘Today, Macy asked if we could fix the garden by the pool. There’s no fixing what’s dead and gone, Gordon told her. She cried. I know she’s thinking about the flower garden we planted this spring and of how our fruit trees smelled in the fall. But they’re not our trees anymore. We’ve ripped her away from the only place she’s ever loved.’”

Lucas had sat in on enough therapy groups with his kids to know depression when he heard it. “No wonder she was so eager for a friend. And the vodka.”

“Thought you didn’t judge,” Jase said, gaze measured.

He tried not to. Easier said than done, especially when the innocent suffered. Sometimes Lucas just wanted to grab people by the shoulders and shake them until their teeth rattled. “What are you getting at with all this?” He gestured at the diary.

Jase answered by pushing a stack of Macy’s art into his lap. “Look at these.”

Lucas paged through them as Jase pointed to the house she’d drawn in nearly every picture. There was nothing spectacular about it, nothing to differentiate it from ninety-five percent of the other middle-class home in Naples. What made it special to Macy was that it had been hers. It reminded Lucas a lot of Martinez’s house, except that Macy’s bungalow was a soft peach with red pansies spilling out of window boxes. “Cute.” He tossed the papers aside. Jase appeared to be waiting for something. “What?”

Jase’s finger tapped wrinkles into the drawing. “Just that Swift has taken everything else away from her, right? If the house means so much, why not try to rip that away as well?”

“Um...because he already has?”

“He probably was responsible for them having to leave. But the house itself is still there. That alone would have given Macy comfort, and maybe hope. Don’t you agree?”

Lucas gave a grudging nod.

“It’s a shot in the dark, like you said, but it gives us somewhere to start.”

“You’re banking that our theory is valid. We have no clue if it is.”

“We have no clue about anything,” Jase reminded him. “The more I think about this, the more I like it.”

Lucas nodded as he stacked the empty plates. “Okay.” He wasn’t convinced. With a million conceivable hiding places in this city alone, why would Swift take Macy somewhere he had a chance of being discovered? Just because his actions to date didn’t follow a rational pattern—from their point of view—didn’t mean he was stupid. But as Jase had eloquently pointed out, where else was there to start?

He set the empty tray on the floor outside the door and detoured to the nurse’s station. “Do you have a phonebook I could borrow?”

“What area?” she asked, as vivacious as the night nurse had been dull.

“Greater Naples.”

He flipped through the pages while standing at the desk, and it only took him a few seconds to see there was no listing for Pearl, Gordon or Pearl, Amanda.

“They’re not listed in the phone book,” he said upon his return. “It could be they lived outside the metro area, but I don’t think so. We might have better luck online, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

“What’s our next best option?” Jase pulled a light blue scrub shirt over his head. The bloodied shirt got wadded up and thrown in the trash.

Lucas bit his lip. The next best option didn’t like him very much. “I’ll call Martinez. The Pearls’ old address should be in their file. I know they were both found with ID because that bastard Swift showed it to me.” He went to reclaim the phone book from the nurse’s station.

Jase came to sit on the rumpled sheets next to him while he thumbed through the white pages, and Lucas let his eyes close for a moment as their shoulders touched. He reached for Jase’s hand, not even caring that it made him look needy. They scanned through about a hundred listings for Martinez before finding the address Lucas remembered in Golden Gate. “Bingo.”

Martinez answered on the first ring. “The caller ID says Naples Community Hospital,” she said upon picking up, “which means you’re either looking for a donation or you’re Lucas Jacobson.”

Close enough to hear the greeting, Jase smirked.

Everyone fancied themselves a comedian these days. Scowling, Lucas tugged at their joined hands, but the harder he pulled, the tighter Jase held on. “Listen, Martinez,” Lucas said, “I need a favor.”

“I figured. I’m actually relieved this isn’t a social call.”

“It’s not,” Lucas conceded, petting her ego.

“My morning is looking cheerier by the second. What do you need?”

“The last valid mailing address for the Pearl family.”

He waited through a long pause before she answered with another question. “Why would you want that?” Her voice faded, then returned. Something began to sizzle in the background, an appropriate complement to Lucas’s rising temper.

“Does it matter?”

“Not in the slightest. Sorry, Jacobson. I can’t give you that information.”

“Why not?” he asked, trying not to sound like a petulant child.

“I can’t,” she said, faltering on the last word. “I just can’t.”

Goosebumps broke out over Lucas’s arms as Jase’s fingers tightened enough to send pain shooting up through his elbow. The morning nurse bustled in, holding a fresh pink plastic pitcher. “Not right now,” Jase snapped.

She stopped so suddenly that water sloshed onto the floor, then turned and ran the other way. Too unnerved to deliver a scolding, Lucas gripped the receiver tighter. “Martinez,” he cajoled. “Please.”

“I just can’t.”

Jase confiscated the phone. “Martinez.”

Lucas heard a distinct click and then a busy signal. Jase gave the redial button a workout, then slammed the receiver down when her voicemail greeted him for the third time. “She’s not picking up.”

Which meant they were screwed, but only for the moment. All doubt as to where Swift and Macy were had been erased. They could schlep out to Martinez’s house, but that would take time, and who knew? Maybe Swift had instructed her to call him if Lucas or Jase came around. In hindsight, involving Martinez at all hadn’t been the best idea. “We’ll have to risk a trip to the station.”

Jase stood and slipped on his sneakers. Fully dressed, he straightened, trying to cover a wince of pain. Lucas ground his teeth and pretended he hadn’t seen it. “Maybe not,” Jase said, snapping his fingers. “Don’t we have Gordon Pearl’s resume?”

It was such a brilliant idea—and so obvious—that Lucas felt stupid and ecstatic all at once. “In the backseat of the car.” Whether the address on the resume was valid was another matter. “Do you think it’s the one we’re looking for?”

“I think he would’ve wanted the address on his resume to match his driver’s license. He could’ve used a fake address, but that seems risky.”

Too true. Hope swelled in Lucas’s chest.

They enjoyed the most expedited hospital discharge in history, thanks to a few words from Jase. The Jetta was where Lucas had left it the night before, and on the floor of the backseat was a resume for one Gordon Pearl, 844 Palmetto Drive, Naples. Jase traced it with his finger. “Think it’s a real address?”

Lucas plugged it into the GPS. “Calculating,” the helpful British voice intoned. “Please drive to highlighted route.” A map lit up on the screen with a purple line zigzagging east, away from the hospital.

Lucas smacked his palm on the dash. “Yes!”

Jase exhaled forcefully and leaned back against the headrest.

“Are you ready for this?” Lucas asked as he pulled into traffic. Jase covered his discomfort well, but Lucas hadn’t missed the tentative way he moved.

“Don’t worry about me, Lucas.”

Little late for that, wasn’t it? Lucas kept that thought to himself, because stinking up their simpatico camaraderie with romantic declarations wouldn’t help Macy, and maybe the fates knew what the hell was about to happen, but Lucas had no clue. That it might have been predetermined for a thousand years or more made the blueberry waffles do a slow, sick roll in his gut.

“I’m serious. Don’t worry.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

“Turn right on Pine Road,” GPS lady said.

Like a good little boy, Lucas turned right.

* * *

Palmetto Drive arced like a half-moon, bisecting shorter, perpendicular streets, forming pie-shaped lots that Lucas imagined went over well with house hunters. Even if the structures were packed together on the street side, the spacious backyards offered something a bit different than the standard rectangular slice of homeowner heaven. But imaginings weren’t reality. For Sale signs dotted the scrubby lawns as they did everywhere these days.

Lucas pulled the Jetta to the side of the road behind an SUV, and Jase’s fingers, which had taken up a nervous tapping on his thigh, stilled. “Is this the place?”

“No, it should be a few houses up. I didn’t want to pull right up front.” Stay invisible as long as possible; that was prudent planning. It wasn’t as though they had a slew of other weapons at their disposal. Even Jase’s power of persuasion would be useless. Plus Swift had a gun. Lucas hadn’t forgotten that part.

The inevitability of Jase’s mission pulled at Lucas like a vicious riptide. Today, soon, his gut told him, Macy would almost die and Jase would save her. Maybe.

“Rain moving in,” Jase said softly, glancing up through the windshield as his fingers danced over the bruise on the back of his head.

To stall, Lucas followed his gaze. The morning’s brilliant sunshine had begun to turn dappled as tendrils of gray clouds moved in. “I could do without the symbolism.”

Parked up the street as they were, Lucas couldn’t see 844 Palmetto, and he was both curious and reluctant to do so. Seeing Macy’s home would be painful. Lucas had no ability to distance himself from the people who’d lived there. They were no longer faceless, part of a crowd. Macy had brought humanity into the mix, stirred his empathy, when often, he simply had little to give.

Too many people needed him, and the well wasn’t bottomless. The world was numb with suffering; Macy was right.

He glanced sideways. Jase was the picture of calm. Even the nervous tapping had stopped. He must have felt how things were twisting to the end as keenly as Lucas did, yet his face was unlined. Untroubled. No matter the stakes, he believed that whatever happened would be exactly what was meant to happen. Jase didn’t put stock in wildcards.

Lucas, on the other hand, lived his life by them.

His deep sigh caught Jase’s attention, and he reached over the console to squeeze Lucas’s arm. “Stay here.”

What the hell? Seriously? “You can’t expect me to do that.” He was proud of his response, considering the rage that had boiled up at the command. The urge to protect the other man was as deep as the primal attraction Lucas had been feeling since they met. “I’m going in.”

“You’re going in.” Jase’s face quirked into a sad smile. “Okay, Lucas.”

Lucas bit back his sarcastic response. Why had Jase done that? Put anger and resentment between them when they needed the exact opposite. Lucas gripped the steering wheel, trying to bring his reeling emotions under control. They were wasting time.

“We need to go,” he said, reaching for the door handle.

Lightning quick, Jase grabbed his arm, and Lucas tensed, ready to fight, hating that it had come to this, but Jase surprised him again, as if his only goal in life was to keep Lucas off guard. “Don’t be angry. I had to say it.”

“The hell you did.”

“This is my task.”

Lucas jerked his arm away. “Spare me the mystical bullshit.”

“That mystical bullshit has taken us this far.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Lucas muttered, and he didn’t. He’d never hated anything more. “I have a responsibility to that girl that has nothing to do with you. So let’s stop playing games and get moving.”

Finally Jase’s calm showed signs of unraveling. “I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t think I could take that.” He closed his eyes. “I couldn’t take that.”

And I don’t want you to bugger off to God knows where when the wizard behind the curtain gives you your memories back, so cope and deal. After all, Lucas was managing—ignoring his tight chest and the frantic desire to beg Jase to stay—so it seemed only fair the heartache got passed around. “I’ll be fine,” he offered lamely.

“You always say that.”

Lucas turned off the engine and pocketed the keys. “It’s always true.” Take that, fate.

He turned willingly when Jase caught him in a clumsy embrace and opened his mouth to the kiss, telling himself it was passion and not desperation he felt in the ungentle exchange of lips and tongue. “Be careful,” Jase whispered against his mouth, kissing him again when Lucas tried to get closer without actually climbing over the console.

“You too,” Lucas said. But he didn’t let go, and neither had Jase. At this rate, they’d get around to saving Macy by nightfall. Jase twisted in his seat, leaning forward until they were as close as possible in the cramped space, and kissed him again. This time, Lucas did taste desperation.

No. He refused to let that be the last emotion between them. “We have to go,” he said, shoving at Jase’s chest.

With their goodbyes behind them, every second that ticked by put Lucas further on edge.

“I know.” Jase opened his mouth, then thought better of whatever he’d been ready to say. He pulled the door handle and stepped out just as a soft rain began to patter onto the pavement.

An omen? Lucas wouldn’t put it past whatever power was pulling the strings on this crazy puppet show. Fate was such a drama queen. Turning the collar on his shirt up against the lazy drips, he joined Jase on the sidewalk. “Do we have a plan?”

“Would it freak you out if I said no?” Jase peered up the street. He didn’t brush at the water falling against his face.

Yes. “No, it’s fine.”

Clearly, his tone wasn’t as neutral as he’d hoped. Jase flashed a sardonic smile at the sidewalk. “Do you have a plan?”

Touché. “Go in guns blazing,” Lucas said. Swift deserved a lack of subtlety. The idea of kicking down the front door and gunning down the bad guy appealed to the romantic in him. “You be Butch and I’ll be the Sundance Kid.”

“You remember how that movie ended, don’t you?”

“They go to Bolivia and live happily ever after.”

Jase’s expression softened. At least Lucas could still manage to ease his mind.

They were arguing the fine points of attack—or stealth, depending on who was leading the conversation—when a silver Camry gliding around the bend caught Lucas’s eye. “Son of a bitch.” He put a restraining hand on Jase’s arm when he turned, aware that Martinez’s arrival could be either good or bad, although all signs pointed to bad, considering how tightly Swift had her pressed under his thumb. Jase, however, perked up and dared to look pleased.

Martinez coasted to a stop behind the Jetta and got out to join them on the sidewalk. No uniform for her today, and no skimpy nightshirt either. Her long, curly hair was tied back in a sloppy ponytail, as if she’d pulled it up without the aid of a brush or mirror, and her wardrobe had been chosen with an equal lack of care—jeans ripped along one knee and a paint-splattered T-shirt. A lightweight leather jacket completed the ensemble.

Hardly the picture of professional law enforcement.

“This is a surprise,” Jase said.

“Yeah, well here’s the thing, Jacobson’s friend—sorry, I don’t remember your name. After this asshole called, I kept wondering why the sudden interest in Pearl’s old address. Weird thing was, every time I started thinking about it, my mind would veer off to something else, like I couldn’t focus.” She shifted her weight, which was when Lucas noticed she was packing; the glint of a gun in a shoulder holster flashed beneath her jacket.

“And what did you make of that?” Jase asked, as though they were discussing the symphony over fish eggs and hundred-dollar martinis. He shushed Lucas when he started to speak.

“Something really weird is going on,” Martinez snapped. “That’s what I made of that. And then...”

Jase waited out the long pause with the patience of a saint, while Lucas threw nervous glances up the street toward number 844. Not that he wasn’t enjoying Martinez work out that she’d been a bitch about the address thing, but he was willing to gloat at a later date.

“What I didn’t get,” Martinez continued, “was why talking to Jacobson felt wrong. I mean, he was so good with the kid.” Her eyes shifted to Lucas. “I remember feeling like you were the first person I’d met from CPS who belonged there, like it was your destiny or something.”

“Don’t say that,” Lucas blurted.

“I tried to call you back, but the nurse who picked up the phone said you’d already been discharged.” She cocked her head, ponytail going flatter every second in the misting rain. “I see you found the place anyway.”

They had, and while the idea of a gun on their side of the equation gave Lucas a boost, he didn’t relish the idea of Swift telling her to turn it on them, or Martinez obeying with a smile. With his luck, she was holding a subconscious grudge about the empty gas tank thing.

The way Jase was shaking his head, he’d come to that conclusion five minutes ago. “I’m sorry. We have to do this alone.”

She blinked rapidly, face screwing up in a rebellious expression, then shook her head. “No.”

Lucas grinned, turning to share his glee with Jase. Bet he hadn’t seen that coming. Looked like this town was full of people who could give Jase the proverbial finger. Okay, two didn’t equate to “full,” but it was still more than he’d ever met before. Maybe there was something in the water that wouldn’t bite your arm off.

“Carla, no,” Jase said, spinning Lucas back to dismay. “It isn’t safe in there.”

Jase didn’t know this woman at all, did he? As Lucas expected, Martinez drew herself up to her full five feet one inch and glared. “I’m a police officer. I’m trained to handle these kinds of things.”

Not these kinds of things. Lucas threw another glance down the street. By his calculations, the Pearl house should be right around the bend in the road. Out of sight for now, but the longer they took to get moving, the greater the possibility of attracting attention.

“This man can manipulate your thoughts with a word,” Jase said, not pulling any punches. “You know that, right? Because he’s done it already. He could tell you to shoot us, or yourself, and you’d do it with a smile on your face.”

Jase could do that too, if he wanted. Funny that Lucas had pictured all sorts of scenarios where Jase’s power would prove useful, but that one thing hadn’t occurred to him. If a rational person followed that line of thought, Jase could hypothetically instruct Martinez to shoot Swift, and she’d perform the task with enthusiasm, never understanding why she’d taken a life. How long would the question haunt her? Forever? Lucas began to understand where the headwaters of Jase’s self-disgust sprang from.

“He can do that? What kind of a monster is he?” Martinez whispered, and Lucas cringed, but Jase absorbed the statement with no reaction.

Still waters. Jase acted as though the person he’d been seven years ago was completely different from the one he was today, but how many people could have endured what he had? Jase hadn’t been selected at random. Lucas had suspected that for a while, but now he was sure. Very few could claim his strength of spirit.

“He can do that,” Jase told Martinez. “So if you come with us, I need you to stay out of sight. You can’t let him see you.”

“Will that really make a difference?” Lucas asked.

“Yes. If Swift isn’t aware she’s there, he won’t be focused on confusing or directing her.”

“But what about Jacobson?” Martinez asked. At Jase’s blank stare, she added, “Won’t Swift do the same thing to Jacobson?”

“Lucas is immune to ou—his influence.”

Martinez’s eyes narrowed at Lucas. “Isn’t that a nifty trick?”

“Got it in a box of Wheaties,” Lucas said, inspecting his fingernails.

She snapped her gum. “I took you more for the secret-spy-decoder-ring kind of guy.”

Lucas shook his head. “You have to buy Frosted Flakes for a decoder ring. Do you know how much sugar there is in one bowl of Frosted Flakes?”

“Do you know how pathetic it is that you do?” Martinez rolled her shoulders, addressing Jase. “I’m going.”

The mist grew into a gentle rain, and a trickle of water penetrated Lucas’s shirt, zigzagging down his back. Jase looked back and forth between them, then started up the sidewalk without a word. They rounded the bend three abreast and there it was, the white plastic numbers like a beacon on the mailbox: 844. With the generous summer rains the yard was lush...rainforest lush. The peach stucco exterior and white-slatted hurricane shutters made the house look like a Mayan temple emerging from the jungle.

One of the Pearls had been an amateur landscaper. The front yard boasted a crisscross of elevated planting beds, hemmed in with railroad ties. Had it been maintained, it would have made the lot unique. Left to expand on its own, it left too many hiding places for Lucas’s taste.

A sheriff’s sale poster had been pasted over the faded Sunshine Realty sign in the yard.

Jase paused in the driveway, then took Martinez’s arm in his. He pointed Lucas to one side of the house. “I’ll take Carla and circle around from this way. We’re in luck. The hurricane shutters are closed.”

Lucas had been thinking the same thing. The Pearls must have put them up before they’d left. Inside the house would look and feel like a cave and give them little light to work with, but at least Swift wouldn’t see them coming. There had to be a means of entry somewhere—around the back made the most sense. He nodded, matching Jase’s steady gaze before edging around the right side of the house. Jase and Martinez circumnavigated the front yard and started up the opposite side.

Lucas’s wall angled out, creeping closer to the property line the farther back he trudged. The few windows that dotted the wall were sealed tight. Still, he ducked under them as he passed. The house was larger than it had looked from the street, not unlike the abandoned house the Pearls had settled in. He reached the end and peered around the side just as Jase did the same on the other end. They exchanged a brief wave.

Taking a deep breath, Lucas edged around the corner, straining for a glimpse of the back of the house, and came upon a stucco wall. Eight feet tall, it connected the two wings across the back, creating a private courtyard, which Lucas bet was visible from every room. Ignoring Jase’s frantic wave to pull back, he sneaked forward until he came to the aluminum gate that led inside.

He’d been right about the courtyard. Even left to disrepair and the elements, it was beautiful, filled with fruit trees, a flower garden and a stone fountain. The storm shutters were intact along the wings, but the large panel that was meant to cover one set of glass sliders had been unscrewed and set aside. Lucas squinted but saw nothing but inky blackness.

Now what? Getting close would be like running the gauntlet. There was no telling where Swift was hiding. The bastard could be watching Lucas right now.

He ducked back, starting when he saw that Jase and Martinez had crept forward along their section of the courtyard’s wall. They stared at each other across the gate. “This is going to suck,” Lucas announced.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Jase said in a loud whisper. He unlatched the gate, taking his time with the squeaky latch. “I’ll go first and try to get up against the back wall. Even if he’s standing right at the glass, he won’t be able to see from that angle.”

Lucas vetoed that idea. “I’ll go first,” he said, stabbing at his chest. “You need to stay alive for Macy. Let me be the rat in the maze.”

Judging from Jase’s horrified expression, Lucas might have offered to shoot himself with Martinez’s gun. “No. I’m going.”

“Mother of God. Move!” Martinez either wowed Jase with her eloquence or stomped on his foot—Lucas put money on the second option, considering Jase’s choked cry and the way he doubled over. Martinez swung the gate open and raced inside. Lucas grabbed for her and missed.

Inside the courtyard, a patchwork of concrete squares and mulched beds created a brown-and-white checkerboard. Orange and grapefruit trees dotted the beds, wreathed by wilted pansies. Near the kitchen, a line of dying tomato plants framed an herb garden overrun with mint. A pink wagon off to the side held brightly colored gardening tools, and as Martinez sidestepped it, diving for cover along the wall, she brushed its wheel. Momentum carried it a few feet before it squeaked to a stop.

Lucas held his breath. Martinez stood flat against the wall, chest heaving. Calm down, Lucas thought, and she did, giving one last silent sigh before going still.

Nothing moved in the murky depths beyond the glass doors. Martinez reached under her jacket and unholstered her gun, then eased up and around the doorframe. After a few seconds, she gestured to Lucas. He moved before thinking twice; lingering would give the nervousness time to take hold.

He dodged the wagon, but nearly tripped over a rake hidden under the mint. Martinez caught his arm before he crashed into the side of the house. A moment later, Jase was beside him. Everyone accounted for. Now what?

Jase bent down, coming up with one of the fist-sized rocks that edged the herb garden, and Lucas’s heart hammered into his throat. They were about to lose their element of surprise. “Ready?” Jase asked.

“Wait.” Martinez dug in her pocket and came up with something far more useful than a rock.

Lucas pointed at the silver key.

“Is that to here?” He jerked a thumb to the house at their backs.

With a nod, Martinez handed it to Jase, who examined it, then reached to fit it quietly into the lock.

“Where’d you get it?” Lucas whispered. Slowly, Jase spun the key clockwise.

“Same place I got the kid’s address,” Martinez replied. “From the personal effects collected at the scene.”

The disengaging lock sounded like gunfire. Lucas hissed in a breath and held it. After a thirty-second count, Jase reached for the handle. Nothing terrifying happened when he did—no gunshots, no pickaxe through the doorway, so he slid it open and crawled inside, Martinez providing cover from behind.

Lucas followed, slipping into a large, airy kitchen dominated by a wide island. The only light in the room spilled in through the glass-paneled door, although a weak yellow glow emanated from the adjoining living room. Content that the kitchen was clear, Jase rose to his feet. Martinez kept her gun up and ready, panning it across the room, first toward the dark hallway, then back to the living room. Lucas followed the beam of light, wondering in which direction they’d find Macy and Swift.

Martinez peeled off toward the hall and Jase inched his way to the living room doorway. “Carla,” he whispered. “Get out of sight.”

Lucas strained his ears for a sound, any sound, but all he heard was the soft patter of the ever-strengthening rain. If it followed the usual pattern, a deluge would follow. When Jase glanced over his shoulder to the open doorway, Lucas knew he was thinking the same thing—the downpour might cover their approach.

Jase raised a hand to Martinez, who nodded and backstepped into the kitchen. They’d wait for the rain. The skies opened a few seconds later. When it rained in the Everglades, it didn’t fool around. The water fell so heavy and thick that Lucas couldn’t see two feet out the door and into the yard. Rain pounded onto the roof loud enough to cover his heartbeat, and they all looked to the ceiling. Maybe fate was on their side.

Lucas gave in to a tense smile, dropping his eyes to meet Jase’s across the dim room. He knew the split second he was in trouble. Jase didn’t gasp or shout or even move, but his eyes shifted, turning cold as they came to rest over Lucas’s shoulder.

“Don’t move,” Swift said in Lucas’s ear. Water dripped from his sodden clothes onto the floor. Something cold and hard jabbed at Lucas’s windpipe.

After all their precautions, Swift had come up behind them. If they’d been ten minutes earlier, the scene would have played out differently. If Martinez hadn’t arrived when she had. If they hadn’t lingered in the car to kiss and say goodbye. If. If. If.

Lucas had never felt more powerless in his life.

Martinez swung her gun around, cursing, and Swift growled at her, “Put it down!”

“No!” Jase yelled at the same time, and Martinez fell to her knees, clutching her ears. “Get out of here,” Jase ordered, rushing around the island toward Swift.

“Stay back!” Swift jabbed the gun deeper, and Lucas choked, but it was the distraction Martinez needed. She bolted down the hall and out of sight. Jase stopped a few feet away and raised a trembling hand toward Swift.

“Don’t hurt him.”

Lucas squirmed and Swift drew him tighter, until his every heaving breath washed over Lucas’s face. “Don’t tell me what to do,” he spat. “You can’t control me.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Jase replied, lowering his voice.

Swift panted noisily in Lucas’s face. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here for Macy.”

Swift sucked in a deep breath. “That’s what I thought.” The arm pinning Lucas loosened, and the ice-cold weight against his throat disappeared so fast that he stumbled. Swift shoved him away, and he tripped forward two steps, turning just as Swift aimed the gun at Jase. “I’m not going to let you ruin this.”

It was the nature of Lucas’s job that he saw people at their worst, and over time he’d learned to recognize the heaviness in their voices that meant they’d hit bottom. Everything in Swift spoke of that moment of desperation.

Jase started to speak, putting his faith in reason and dialog, but it was too little too late. For once, Lucas was the one to see the future, knowing in the same moment that he could change it. He leaped, playing out the scene in almost perfect silence, leaving only Jase’s gasped denial, the pummeling rain and the report of Swift’s gun to mark the moment.

Lucas landed in Jase’s arms, and they both tumbled to the scuffed vinyl tile, Lucas on top. No pain, he thought as Jase cried out and rolled them over. He felt strangely light and disconnected, limbs weightless.

“Lucas!” Jase called, bending over him.

“It’s okay.” Lucas smiled and closed his eyes. “It doesn’t hurt at all.