False Pretenses - Kathy Herman [87]
“Nice try, Vanessa. But you don’t know where they are anymore than I do.”
“Yes, I do. I’ll drive you to New Iberia. Just don’t kill me. Please!”
“Kneel down and keep your hands behind your head.”
Lord, is this my time to die? She remembered Ethan telling her that he had asked the very same question when he was running from his cousin’s killers. Was there still hope? Or was this it?
Vanessa almost bolted, but something inside her held her back.
What was Shapiro doing? He whistled some tune she didn’t recognize and seemed perfectly relaxed. Didn’t it bother him one bit that he was about to kill a child’s mother?
“All right, up on your feet. Keep your hands where they are.”
“If you kill me,” Vanessa said, “you’ll have to answer to God. I belong to Him.”
“Well, I don’t.” He came around and stood in front of her, surgical gloves on his hands, and opened a folding chair and sat it on the ground. That’s when she saw the rope.
She sucked in a breath. Terror seized her, and she fought back the tears. Was he going to hang her?
Lord, help me! Don’t let him do this!
He flashed a smug grin. “I hung that Jarvis kid on a whim—to distract the cops while I did my business with the Broussards. It’s been pretty entertaining. And since the cops think blacks were responsible for lynching Jarvis, they won’t have trouble believing blacks hung you in retaliation for the shooting in the park. Especially since this is the tree where Jarvis was hung—and the specific location was never released to the press. Only the killer would know.”
“You won’t get away with this. My mother’s a police chief. She’ll make it her life’s mission to solve my murder—and track you down.”
“Yeah, well. She’ll have to stand in line. I’m a popular guy.” Shapiro threw the rope over a low branch and tucked his gun in his waistband. “Don’t worry. It won’t be long before you lose consciousness.”
Vanessa homed in on the cane fields behind him and remembered Ethan’s stories of how he and Drew would sneak off to the fields and disappear for hours.
Run! The voice was almost audible. Go hide!
Vanessa lunged at Shapiro and clawed his eyes with her fingers, then ran as fast as she had ever run in her life toward the cane fields.
Shapiro hollered curses and threats. Shots rang out, and a bullet whizzed past her ear.
She pushed herself until she stumbled and lost her balance, but managed to stay on her feet. Help me, Lord. Don’t let me fall. Don’t let him catch me.
Another bullet grazed her right shoulder, but she kept running, thinking about Carter and Ethan and how she refused to let this maniac steal her from them.
She was quickly closing in on the field. She could do this. She had to do this. She pushed herself until she thought she would collapse, finally bursting through the wall of green, her hands protecting her face as she ran the gauntlet of sharp leaves that whipped and scratched her skin, farther and farther from the mad man who would surely be in pursuit. Finally she stopped, her hands on her knees, and struggled to catch her breath.
Shapiro shouted that he was coming after her. Had he seen where she entered? What would he do if he caught her—shoot her dead and leave her here where she would be cremated when they burned the fields?
There was a road somewhere in these fields for bringing in equipment. Could she find it? Could she find help?
Then it fell quiet. Eerily quiet except for the sound of her panting and the buzzing of insects. Shapiro had stopped shooting. And shouting. She listened for the swishing sound of someone moving through the stalks and heard nothing. Where was he?
Jude sat at his desk, looking through the newly created file on the Broussard extortion case. What had Zoe gotten herself into? Normally he wasn’t sympathetic to someone who was a thief and a liar. But in the ten years he’d known Zoe, had she ever been anything but gracious? Did she deserve this? Did Pierce?