Shadow Dance_ A Novel Part 24

"'You there.'"

He smiled. "So?"

"So she wanted to know why 'you there'-that would be me-came to Serenity."

"And what did you say?"

"To wreak havoc."

"Good answer."

"'Serenity,' she said, 'used to be a peaceful place.'"

"Until you came to town."

"She would also like to know when I'm leaving. I believe she plans to stay inside and keep her doors locked until I do."

He laughed. "Soon," he promised. "We'll be on the road in a couple of hours. Joe asked me to wait until Chadd.i.c.k and Street get here. He's nervous. It's a big case, and he doesn't want to mess up. I know you're ready to take off..."

"I'm...conflicted," she said with some hesitation.

"Yeah? How come?"

"I want to leave, but I also want to find out who, what, and why. And I have a funny feeling the answer's right in front of me."

"You can read all about it in the papers when it's over."

The comment about the papers triggered something in Jordan's memory, but it was too elusive to catch hold.

"After you drop me at the airport, are you going to come back?"

"Sugar, I'm not dropping you anywhere."

He pulled her toward the car. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Joe standing in the middle of the street, talking to a fireman.

"Then what's the plan?" she asked.

"I'm going with you all the way to Boston, so no, as much as I would like to help, I won't be coming back. This isn't my area of expertise anyway. Chadd.i.c.k's the man in charge now-or will be as soon as he returns my call-and he knows what he's doing. He's been at it awhile, and he's got a lot of experience."

He handed her the keys when they reached their car. "Why don't you turn the motor on and get the air conditioner going? I'll be right back."

Jordan got behind the wheel, started the engine, and adjusted the air-conditioner dial. She watched Noah in the side mirror. Now he and Joe spoke to the fireman. Then Joe pulled out his cell phone and made a call as Noah headed back to the car. Shaking his head, he looked frustrated. He walked to the pa.s.senger side, but she climbed over the console and motioned for him to drive. Sweat trickled down his neck, so she turned up the fan and adjusted a vent to blow directly on him.

"How come you don't want to drive?" he asked.

"Traffic," she said. "I hate driving in traffic."

It took a second to realize what she'd said. He laughed. "What const.i.tutes traffic in Serenity? Three, four cars in front of you?"

"Okay, I just hate to drive." Before he could comment, she asked, "What happened with Joe?"

"He's getting a warrant to go into J. D.'s house. He's talking to a judge in Bourbon now."

"I'm going in there with you," she said. "Because I bet I'll find my laptop. And if I do..."

"What? What will you do?"

"Something," she said. "All my files are on it, all my accounts..."

"Are you worried someone can get private information?"

"No," she said. "It's encrypted. No one could get into my files."

"Then what are you so worried about?"

"I just know that with all the right information and data, I can figure all of this out."

He was looking out the window. "I wonder how long it's going to take Joe to get in his d.a.m.n car and drive to J. D.'s house."

"I'd say about five seconds." The calculated guess was based on the fact that Joe was sprinting toward them.

"It's signed," he shouted at Noah. "But we could go in anyway. A neighbor just called in. J. D.'s front door's wide open."

A moment later, they were on their way.

"Shouldn't someone call Sheriff Randy?"

He shrugged. "I'll leave that up to Joe."

She s.h.i.+fted in her seat. "The sheriff did a complete turnaround. He was almost...humble at the police station, but back when he drove into the lot with his brother and saw J. D. hit me, he was pretty obnoxious."

"He's doing a fast dance trying to keep his brother out of trouble. He knows..."

"Knows what?"

"J. D.'s a lost cause. I understand his loyalty though. It's his brother."

"Does J. D. have that kind of loyalty? I bet not. Sheriff Randy would be better off with J. D. back in prison." She rubbed her arms as though to ward off a sudden chill. "If J. D. happens to be inside his house, you be careful. There was something crazy in his eyes. I don't know how to explain it. He was hateful...and creepy."

"I can't wait to meet him. I can be pretty d.a.m.ned hateful too."

"Remember, he's innocent until proven guilty."

"He hit you. That's what I remember."

Joe pulled into J. D.'s driveway. Noah pulled in behind him. "You wait here. Keep the doors locked," he told her.

He moved fast. Pulling the gun from his holster, he held it to his side and met Joe at the front door. "We go in, you head left, I'll go right."

Jordan's heart skipped a beat as Noah, gun in hand, rushed into the house. She told herself that everything would be fine. He was a federal agent, trained to protect himself. She'd heard stories about some of the harrowing situations he'd been in, and he had the scars to prove it. He knew what he was doing. He'd be fine. She nodded to reinforce the thought. Still, freak accidents happened, and sometimes there were unexpected surprises...some not the good kind.

She was working herself into a state, as her mother would say. Then Noah walked outside and everything really was fine. J. D's house was so small, it had only taken a few minutes to make certain no one was there.

She unlocked the car door for him. He pulled it open and said, "It looks like J. D. left in a hurry, and the door didn't catch. Wait until you see-"

Joe interrupted, running from the house into the yard shouting, "They found J. D.!"

AND THEN THERE WERE THREE.

J. D. d.i.c.key was found in the ashes. The firemen discovered what was left of him underneath a pile of still-smoldering rubble near what used to be the back door of the professor's house. They were soaking the last embers when they spotted his remains. The only reason they knew for sure that it was J. D. was the gaudy belt buckle. Its edges were melted and blackened, but the rhinestone initials were still legible.

Jordan sat in the car in front of the smoldering ruins of the collapsed house and watched Noah. He was standing in the front yard talking to Agent Chadd.i.c.k and Joe while they waited for the FBI's crime scene crew to arrive. He looked over at Jordan every once in a while to make sure she was okay.

Three corpses in one week. Professor MacKenna. Lloyd. And now J. D. d.i.c.key. The boast that Serenity was a safe and peaceful place to live had just been shot to h.e.l.l. And the town blamed Jordan Buchanan. After all, she was the only connection between the murders and the fire. She wouldn't be surprised if the residents showed up at her motel room with pitchforks and torches to run her out of town.

She could still hear Old Lady Scott's accusations. Never had a murder before she came to town...never had a fire like the one that consumed the MacKenna house. Oh, and they never had car trunks full of dead people-before Jordan came to town.

Statistics don't lie. This was more than a run of bad luck. It was a curse of biblical proportions. Even she she wanted to get away from herself. Jordan knew such superst.i.tion wasn't logical, but nothing about this situation was logical. Just one thing was certain: Since Jordan had met the professor, she had become a one-woman plague. wanted to get away from herself. Jordan knew such superst.i.tion wasn't logical, but nothing about this situation was logical. Just one thing was certain: Since Jordan had met the professor, she had become a one-woman plague.

It was impossible to predict what would happen next, but while she waited for Noah, Jordan tried to do just that. It was a frustrating exercise because she didn't have sufficient data, and the horrifying images from the last few days kept breaking into her thoughts. To think clearly again, she needed to erase these pictures from her mind. She reached into the backseat for a folder from MacKenna's research and began reading.

Noah glanced at her and saw her head down, poring over a paper. He had told her to stay in the car, that he didn't want her to see J. D.'s incinerated remains. He didn't think he would ever forget her reaction. She'd looked stunned and then had very quietly asked, "Why in G.o.d's name would you think I would want to see a charred body?"

Why indeed? It was a gruesome sight. And while neither Noah nor Chadd.i.c.k were the least affected by the scene, Joe was having difficulty keeping it together. His face was a shade of gray that Noah had never before seen, and he kept making gagging sounds.

Noah took pity on him. "Joe, you'll feel better if you don't look at him."

"Yeah, but it's like a car wreck. I don't want to look, but I do anyway."

Chadd.i.c.k was exasperated. "You're a cop," he reminded him. "You come up on a wreck, you're supposed to look, aren't you?"

"You know what I mean."

One of the volunteer firemen motioned them over from the front yard. His name was Miguel Moreno, and he was a retired fireman from Houston who decided late in life to own a ranch. He'd trained the volunteers, which was why they were so well organized, quick to respond, and efficient. Since he'd taken charge, none of his firemen had sustained a single injury. He'd already walked through the rubble several times and was ready to tell Noah what he thought.

"There ain't any doubt that J. D. set the fire, but I'm willing to bet he didn't know his way around such a volatile accelerator. If he did, he sure wouldn't have ignited it while he was still inside the house."

Joe stepped away from the body. "J. D. could have accidentally started the fire too early," he suggested. "The way I see it-he gets inside and he soaks everything down real good, and then he's thinking he'll go out the same way he came in, through the back door. Once he's outside, he'd toss something in to get the fire going, like maybe a rag dipped in kerosene or maybe some rolled-up paper he was gonna light up."

Moreno nodded. "It's possible," he said. "Just needed one spark to get a flash."

"Anything could cause a spark," Joe said, now eager to share his theories. "Maybe when he opened the door to leave, the friction from the metal threshold against his boots made a spark...that would have done it."

"Only an arson expert can say for sure what happened," Moreno said. "You have any of those coming to Serenity, Agent Chadd.i.c.k?"

"I sure do," he replied. "Joe, you think you can handle this with Moreno? Keep the area sealed until my crew gets here? I want to head over to d.i.c.key's house with Noah."

"I can handle it," Joe a.s.sured him. "Has Agent Street found anything interesting?"

"I'll know as soon as I get over there."

Joe followed Noah. "Noah, you have a second?"

Noah turned back. "Yes?"

"Do you think the agents will want me to step back now that they've taken over?" he asked in a low voice. "I don't want to get in their way, but..." He ended the sentence with a shrug.

Noah motioned to Chadd.i.c.k. "Why don't we find out right now?"

Joe looked embarra.s.sed when he put the question to the agent. Chadd.i.c.k, the more diplomatic of the two agents, glanced at Noah before answering. "I know you have heard stories about how we're bullies and roll over the locals when we take charge, and most of those stories are probably true," he added with a grin. "We don't like local interference, but Noah told me this is a different situation. You and Street and I will work this together."

Joe quickly nodded. "I sure appreciate it," he said. "This is a great opportunity to learn from the experts."

That settled, Noah headed back to his car. The windows were down, and he could see Jordan reading some papers while she sipped from a bottle of what was no doubt lukewarm water. Poor Jordan had been waiting a h.e.l.l of a long time for him to finish up, but she hadn't complained or tried to hurry him along.

Jordan saw him coming and quickly gathered up the papers she'd spread over the seat. She was so hot, she thought she was going to have a heatstroke any second now. She hadn't wanted to keep the engine idling with the air on for such a long time, and so she had turned the motor off and prayed for a little wind to push the heat around.

Earlier, despite Noah's orders, she had momentarily slipped out of the car to sit under the shade of a walnut tree, but the stares from the crowd that had gathered across the street made her uneasy. Whispering to one another, they never took their eyes off her. Who knew what they could be saying? Probably something about tar and feathering or burning at the stake.

When she and Noah had driven from J. D.'s over to the professor's house, she'd offered to return to the motel and wait for him. All he had to do was call her and she'd drive back, but he wouldn't hear of it. He didn't want her out of his sight, and from the steel in his voice, she knew it would be pointless to argue.

Noah got behind the wheel, started the engine, and flipped on the air. Then he turned to her. Her face was flushed. She'd pinned her hair up, but the tendrils at the back of her neck were damp. Her clothes stuck to the curves of her body, and her skin glistened. She looked both utterly beautiful and wilted. It made him feel guilty for what he was about to do.

"How are you holding up?" he asked.

"Good," she answered. "I'm good."

"I hate to ask this of you, but I really need to get back over to d.i.c.key's house. I want to go through it-"

She interrupted. "It's okay. You don't have to explain. You need to do this, and I'm fine, really."

She didn't push him to take her back to the motel because she knew he'd again refuse. He'd insisted that she stay with him, and if that helped him get the job done, she'd cooperate.

Noah didn't notice the time until he was pulling up to J. D.'s house. The day was getting away from him. He couldn't believe how long they'd been at MacKenna's house, and he knew he'd spend as much time if not more going through J. D.'s place.

He parked behind Chadd.i.c.k's car and said, "We may have to stay another night."

"I know."

"You're okay with that?"

"Yes," she a.s.sured him. "We can leave first thing in the morning." How many times had she thought that?

Already inside, Chadd.i.c.k came to the front door and called out, "You're gonna love this."