“Thank you.”
“Hold off on that thanks, because there’s something else.” His serious tone arrested her attention. “I told Wiley about Costa Rica.”
She had expected him to, of course, but the implications were daunting. “Does he see me as an accomplice?”
“He’s thinking it over. Reason I’m telling you now is in case you’re planning to bamboozle us, help Josh get away, something like that. It would make you look really bad in the eyes of the law.”
“I won’t.”
“Okay.”
“I swear to you.”
“Okay.” He held her gaze for several seconds, then said, “Now…the other rules.”
A few minutes later, Wiley opened the passenger door and got in. “Sorry that took a while longer than it should have. The lady is so relieved she couldn’t stop talking. Hick’s regained consciousness. He’s alert. Responds correctly to the questions put to him.”
Jordie exclaimed her relief.
“That’s good news,” Shaw said.
“Not for you,” Wiley said. “He woke up mad as hell. Remembered the hoodie, thought it was you who’d shot him.”
“I hope somebody told him different.”
“He still doesn’t like you. But nobody does, right?”
Shaw looked in the rearview mirror and shot Jordie a look. She smiled back, but then her features returned to being taut with anxiety.
Following the directions she gave him, Shaw angled off the main road onto one whose bends were dictated by the winding bayou which it ran alongside. The swampy landscape on either side was a panoply of sameness, one perspective exactly like every other. With no signposts, either natural or man-made, one could get easily lost. He b
egan to doubt Jordie’s recollection.
But then she said, “There. On the right.”
The turnoff was marked only by a rusty and dented metal mailbox. It sat atop a steeply leaning wooden post that seemed to be relying on the surrounding weeds to keep it from toppling. A quarter of a mile farther along the narrow gravel road, a house came into view.
“That it?” Shaw asked.
“Yes. I’m positive.”
It didn’t look at all hospitable or even habitable. There wasn’t a sign of life about the place, not a blade of living grass or green shrubbery. Even the surrounding trees had been suffocated by the Spanish moss that hung from their bare branches.
“Looks like a haunted house,” Wiley said.
“That would appeal to Josh,” she said. “He likes video games with supernatural and horror themes.”
Shaw stopped the car about fifty yards away from the house, but he kept the engine running as they assessed it. It was built in a typical Acadian style, supported on stout cypress beams, with a deep porch on three sides, shaded by the overhang. The exterior might once have been white, but the elements had stripped so much of the paint that the structure had been left a mournful gray that matched the monochromatic setting. Rust had taken over most of the tin roof. Snaggletoothed hurricane shutters hung crookedly from the windows.
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Shaw said. “Which is why I hate that there are so many windows. We’re sitting ducks for anybody who might be inside looking out.”
“Josh wouldn’t shoot anybody,” Jordie said.
“Wasn’t referring to Josh.”
“Panella?” Without waiting for an answer, Wiley drew his weapon just as Shaw did. “No car here.”
“I noticed that,” Shaw said. “Not sure what it means.”