Page 108 of Crosscurrent

For a moment, in that ringing quiet, none of them moved. Gabe drew her in, and Cara put her face against his chest and let herself shake, biting back sobs of fear.

"Lord, keep him," she said into his shirt. It was the whole of the prayer she had. "Don't take Tom. Not Tom."

"Amen," Gabe said, low, his mouth against her hair. Then he let her go, because there was still the cabin and the prisoners and a night that wasn't done with them.

They went back inside. Owen sat gray-faced against the galley counter. Skye had slid down the wall with her hand still locked over her side, refusing to be a patient until the place was secure. Wide-eyed, yet still as a panther, Skye watched Helen Cartwright. The woman hadn’t moved an inch. Wade stayed out on the dock with his rifle, practically daring any of Cartwright’s men to return.

Cara wasn’t about to put any money down on that. The slowest of them would be miles down the road by now, melting into the shadows.

Gabe keyed his radio. "Cole. Tell me you're close."

"Two minutes, brother." Thibodeaux's voice came back tight under the whine of his own engine. "Heard enough on the way in to know to hurry. Sit tight."

Two minutes later, true to his word, the patrol cars came down the cabin road, light bars strobing red and blue through the cypress, too late to be anything but cleanup. Cole Thibodeaux unfolded out of the lead car, took in the cabin and the sinking boats and his old friend standing in the middle of the wreck, and didn't waste breath. "Everybody alive?"

"Mostly," Gabe said.

"You can thank the man who called me." Cole tipped his head back toward the road. "Wouldn't give a name. Told me it was time to roll, with or without your say-so. He wasn't wrong." He shook his head. "Long gone now, whoever he is."

The thing Cara had carried since the doorstep finally set itself quietly down. Don't come back the way you went out. Not a leash. A hand on her back in the dark. Barrett had spent the last of his cover to keep them breathing, and he'd done it from inside the one place where a man got nothing for it but a knife or a bullet.

"Leave him out of your report," Skye said. She'd come up at Cara's shoulder, gray and swaying and standing on pure spite, one hand clamped to her side. "You got an anonymous tip, and you found the place." She held Cole's eyes until he gave her the nod. It was the only protection any of them could hand a ghost.

"I've got one passenger for you," Gabe told Cole. “Don't let her out of your sight, and don't let her near a phone." Two of Cole's deputies went in for her.

They brought her out without a fight, wrists zip-tied in front of her, cardigan still buttoned to the throat, mild as a woman being shown to her table.

At the cabin door she stopped and looked at Cara. Something oddly like fondness softened her features. "I knew you’d be the most dangerous one." A small, tired smile. "You talked your way into my world tonight, dear. There aren't many people still breathing who've done that."

"You'll have a long time to think that over," Cara said. "In prison."

Cartwright shook her head gently. "No, I won't."

Her eyes slid past Cara to the dark line of the brush. She seemed, if anything, like a woman who had been waiting on a bus and finally seen it come around the corner.

It happened almost gently. One soft cough of a silencer under the rising insect chorus, and Helen Cartwright folded down onto the boards as though her strings had been cut.

Cara gasped. Owen squealed. Cole Thibodeaux ducked, then raised his weapon. Skye didn’t even bother to react.

As Thibodeaux’s men fanned out, weapons trained on the perimeter, Gabe and Wade and Thibodeaux tore into the brush, crashing through cypress and palmetto after a shooter who had left nothing behind but a settling quiet and a wrinkle in the black water.

Cara dropped to her knees beside Cartwright. Skye was already there, both hands going to Tom’s side out of the same reflex that had kept Reagan's hands pressed to Tom’s wound. But instead of compressions, she sat back on her heels and met Cara’s eyes, shaking her head. “Nope.”

The entry wound told its own story. One hole, dead center. Nothing anyone's hands could do a thing about.

Skye pursed her lips, her gaze following the direction of the shot. "Through the heart. First round, in this light, at that range." She shook her head slowly. "I know maybe two people alive who could make that shot. I'm not sure I'm one of them."

"That's why nobody ever talks," Skye said, her voice low. "Super effective, I’ll give them that."

While two of Thibodeaux’s deputies guarded the site, the other two photographed the body and the scene. Once they finished, Owen laid a canvas tarp over what ten minutes ago had been a ruthless, capable woman.

Gabe and Wade and Thibodeaux came back with nothing. Not that Cara was surprised.

Face slack with exhaustion, Gabe holstered his weapon. “Shooter’s long gone. I didn’t even catch a glimpse.”

Eying the body, Cole Thibodeaux snorted. “Wouldn’t help anyway. These folks move way above my pay grade.”

“You got that right.” Rifle slung over his back, hands on his hips, Wade stared down at the body.