Chills & Thrills Paranormal Boxed Set (12 page)

Liz sipped some water from the cup she'd poured earlier and
refrained from commenting that he didn't need beer on top of whatever he'd been
sipping from the
 
flask. Besides, her
mind was a bit fixated on the name Zach had given his daughter.

"Zettie," she repeated. "Is that a nickname
of some sort?"

He raised his eyebrows and regarded her a moment.
"Yes."

"For what?"

This pause was longer. "Lizette."

The word hung in the air as their eyes locked. "It was
Rita's idea," Zach explained hastily. "She liked the name, that's
all."

She didn't believe Zach, but no way was this a road she
wanted to travel. "Three wives in nearly twenty years? You can't be that
bad."

His eyes narrowed. "I should have warned you,
cher
.
I'm a real bastard."

Liz dearly wished she hadn't blurted out the question, but
she'd wanted to get away from the subject of his daughter's name, and this open
exchange had revived the
 
feeling of
camaraderie they'd shared as kids, A time when she hadn't censored her
 
thoughts before she spoke.

"It's the business," he added, breaking the
awkward silence. "I was away all the time, setting up systems, working
cases." He gave a
 
bitter chuckle.
"Funny, now Jed's gone, all I do is push paper and talk to pinstriped
suits. Vera would've loved that."

It wasn't a stretch to assume Vera had been the latest wife,
so she didn't try to confirm it.

"I'm truly sorry about Jed," she said softly.
"You must miss him very much."

"Yeah." He popped a crawdad in his mouth, his
first, and she took that time to eat one herself, realizing she was hungrier
than she thought.

"I wish Allain hadn't blabbed all over the place about
the similarity between Jed's death and your ma's," he said. "It's
only superficial, and I don't accept the doctor's conclusions."

"What happened?" Liz popped another tasty morsel in
her mouth. "To Jed, I mean."

"He . . . he came to Bayou Chatre chasing a guy who'd
escaped from the Louisiana
 
pen. Jed was
missing for nearly six months, and then he and the con washed up in Vermillion
Bay handcuffed together." She saw him shudder slightly, and offered to get
his windbreaker. He nodded, and she walked over for it.

"They were murdered?"

"Not according to the findings. They called it an
accidental drowning."

She handed him the windbreaker and sat back down. "But
you disagree."

"Yeah, I do. You know how Jed loved the water. He'd
survive under almost any
 
conditions."
 
He shrugged
into his jacket, then went on. "The blue lips are what made me
 
suspicious. Odd thing to happen. Usually the
color fades right away, and it made me
 
suspect poisoning. It's also the reason the doc got ahold of me. Thing
is, just like your ma, Jed's toxicology came up negative, only there wasn't a
family history of
 
strokes to explain it
away." He put his plate down. "I'm not hungry anymore."

"Oh, Zach." Liz put her plate down, too, and
touched his shoulder. "How awful it must
 
have been for you."

"Awful doesn't describe it." He pulled out a
cigarette and lit it. "What's worse is not
 
knowing the truth. See, I think the con was connected to a drug ring
working out of the backwater, and that Jed found it. Then the ringleader
disposed of them both to keep
 
anyone
else from stumbling across the hideout. Trouble is, I can't prove it. I had
teams
 
comb those bayous, and nothing.
Nothing at all." He got to his feet and reached for the
 
flask. Then, apparently reconsidering, he
dropped his hand. "I should have been with
 
him, Liz. It never would've happened."

"Or maybe you both would be dead," she replied
softly, standing up to join him. She moved to comfort him, but he turned away
sharply.

"Light's almost gone," he said. "We'd better
wolf our meals down and get back on the boat."

Feeling helpless, Liz bent and picked up her plate.

A soft sound rose from the brush.

"What's that?" she asked in alarm.

"What?"

A muted hiss, like air slowly being let out of a tire, or—

"A snake! Dear God, I hate snakes."

"It's not a snake, Liz. They don't move much at night.
Besides, I didn't hear anything."

"Snakes don't move, they slither like slime," she
countered, not the least bit amused when Zach chuckled at her unintentional
alliteration.

The sound came again.

"There!" Liz pointed at the bushes.

The light from the charcoal fire gleamed off a pair of eyes
in the brush.

"Relax," he said reassuringly. "It's just a
raccoon. Crawdad is their favorite dish. He probably wants an invite to
dinner."

Liz smiled at her own foolishness, and turned to tell Zach
he was right. Just then, the hiss transformed into a horrifying wail that
brought up images of blood and carnage and terrible, terrible slaughter. Liz
whirled to see a streak of tan and black hurling toward her.

"Watch out!" Zach yelled.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her forward just as the racoon
sprang. Its body brushed her other arm, sending crawfish and potatoes flying.
Frozen to the spot, she
 
watched in
stunned shock as the animal turned around, then crouched to leap again. Its
eyes held such malice, an almost human malice, and her blood froze as she
realized it was deliberately attacking her.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Zach rasped,
dipping to grab the lantern as he yanked
 
Liz from her spot. The next thing she knew she was running after him.
Despite their
 
marathon speed, he somehow
managed to steady her each time her trembling legs gave out

Sometime later they emerged from the woods, finding
themselves on a dirt road. Both bent over, their hands on their knees to let
their heaving breath subside.

Finally, Zach
 
straightened up. "Sure as hell hope that coon likes my
cooking."

Something gurgled in Liz's throat. A laugh. And when it came
out of her oxygen-starved lungs
 
she
coughed. For a few minutes she alternated between laughing and coughing, and
when she felt tears come to her eyes, she pushed them
 
back. Damned if she'd cry over a crawfish
supper when she couldn't even cry about her
 
own mother.

Zach just waited, his breathing still quite heavy. This
inanely reminded her of the ardor she'd failed to find with Stephen, and when
her choking laughter finally ended, she just stared at him a minute.

The moon had risen in the dusk, a big yellow ball that
bathed his tanned face and shock of wheat-toned hair. He gleamed gold against
gold. Such a beautiful man, truly he was. Her ardor became physical, a rising
heat low in her belly.

Zach smiled, white teeth showing in the golden haze. She
took a step toward him, wondering if his skin and hair would feel as smooth as
they looked in the moonlight, not quite sure what she was doing or why.

"What're you doing to these animals, cher, they keep
attacking you?" He continued to smile. "So what do you think it is?
If you're a voodoo queen, after all, tell me now."

Whatever crazy purpose she'd had in mind vanished in the
shock she felt at Zach's innocent remark. She stopped short, feeling once again
exposed, as much a victim to those superstitious rumors as she'd been before.

"That's silly. I'm not doing anything." Why was
she defending herself? He'd only been kidding. "The raccoon must be rabid,
and the alligator .. . you said yourself it's mating season. He was defending
his territory. And there you go."

"Just a joke," he said, realizing Liz was getting
frantic over his stupid remark. "If I
 
really thought you were into voodoo, I wouldn't've come on this
trip."

She buried her hands in her hair. It gleamed like polished
ebony in the moonlight, all curly now that wind and dampness had erased the
sleek form she'd molded it into, and her cheeks were rich with color that the
moon turned a tawny pink. What had been
 
on her mind when she approached him? he wondered, recalling the dreamy
quality in those amber eyes.

"You're so beautiful,
cher
," he said,
almost in a whisper. "No way you could be a
 
witch."

She smiled so sweetly he could barely resist ravishing her
right there on the spot. But
 
she was
still the gal who'd turned her back on him, and they were still stranded
miles
 
from nowhere.

"We'd better find shelter." He circled around to
the south and pointed. "It'll get mighty cold mighty soon, and we'll have
better luck finding civilization that way. We need a
 
place to spend the night. You cold?"

He touched her bare arm and she shivered slightly. "A
little."

"It'll just get worse with the sun falling. He took his
key chain from his pocket.

"You planning on driving?"

"Cute, Liz." He opened his pen knife, then began
sawing through the inside placket of his shirt.

"What're you doing?"

"Leaving a marker so we can find this place
again."

She let out a soft sound of comprehension, then watched as
Zach cut a strip of fabric from his shirt and went to the nearest tree to tie
the frayed piece around a branch.

"Come morning, this'll stand out like a beacon."

"Seems I put my trust in the right man," she said
jauntily. "Lead on, great navigator."

He lit the lantern with his cigarette lighter, a tricky task
at best, considering the fuel
 
might
ignite the lighter as well as the jets. When it started to glow he held it
aloft with
 
more relief than he wanted to
admit.

They headed in the direction he'd suggested, keeping their
eyes peeled for signs of
 
civilization.
People camped and kept cabins out here, and they were bound to come
 
upon someone. But he gave only half his mind
to the search. The other half was occupied with Liz's words of encouragement.
'Great navigator.' Right. If he hadn't
 
insisted on stopping, they wouldn't be stranded on this dark and lonely
road, with him
 
scared sober by a
maniacal raccoon. A fact he'd kind of like to remedy.

He reached for his flask, but caught something funny in
Liz's eyes and stopped himself in mid-reach, going for a cigarette instead.

"Anyone ever say those aren't good for you?" she
asked as he lit up.

"What do you think?"

"Hundreds of times, I imagine."

"Then why waste your breath?"

"Don't know. I waste it with Papa, too. Do you know he
still rolls his own? Still keeps his tobacco and papers in that wooden box we
made for his birthday. One time when
 
I
took him and Mama to the Cowboy Hall of Fame, he nearly got arrested cause they
thought he was smoking marijuana. Can you imagine? Papa? Who thinks drugs are
the devil's tools."

This was the most she'd talked on their trip, except for
that confession about why she'd left the Port, and Zach figured she was trying
to overcome her terror at being attacked not once, but twice, by swamp animals.
She also had wrapped her arms tightly around her body, saying the words between
chattering teeth.

"We went on so many great trips. I keep remembering our
trip to Disneyland. We rode the Pirates of the Caribbean. Afterward Mama got
cotton candy. She loves— loved cotton candy, and she was still laughing about
the holograms while she ate it, and the wind was blowing her curls into a
tangle and . . ."

She talked nonstop, giving tidbits about her adult life with
her parents that both enlightened and confused him. She was confirming what the
people at Ellie's wake had
 
told him—Liz
had never returned to the Port. So exactly how had she arranged all these
encounters in cities as far away as Anaheim? Who had picked up the tab?

Opportunity, means, motive, and visible evidence of an
unexplained source of cash.
 
These
thoughts bothered him, but what bothered him even more was he didn't want to
find out who murdered his brother if it led to Liz's father. How would he live
without this driving force in his life? And what would he do after Liz left
Port Chatre, probably never to return?

It was totally dark now, except for the rising moon and the
light cast by the lantern. On their left were the wetlands, a mass of
shadowless vegetation, but the other side was dry, and he'd expected to spy
some sign of people long before this.

"You're freezing, aren't you?" he asked Liz.

"Pretty much, and wishing I'd eaten more crawdads,
too."

"I can't do much about your hunger, but if we don't
find shelter soon, I'll fix us a bed of leaves in the underbrush." Not
something that appealed to him. Bugs abounded in
 
those leaves. Spiders, too, which came out at
night to weave their sticky webs.

"There!" Liz said excitedly. He looked over to see
her pointing at a tall, ominous
 
cypress
tree. "Look, Zach, lights. Over there. Look."

He didn't see a thing.

"Behind the tree!" she repeated, crouching.

Zach flexed his knees until he was at Liz's eye level, and
between the curtain of moss blanketing the cypress, he saw twinkling.
"I'll be damned," he said. "The saints are watching out for
us."

"Saints have nothing to do with it. We're just
resourceful."

"Sometimes resourcefulness isn't enough."