Sting

“We’re not budging an inch till you tell us where to find Josh.”

“I’ll direct you to where I believe he might be, but only after we get to Bayou Gauche. Not before.”

“This standoff is wasting time, Jordie.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“You’re willing to give Panella time to find Josh first?”

“No, you are by sitting here!”

“Shit!”

With the expletive reverberating, Shaw faced forward, dropped the gear stick into Drive, and steered the car into a hard turn. “Feel free to read her her rights,” he said to Wiley. “Or are you scared of her?”

Wiley frowned at the rebuke, but turned to Jordie. “Okay, you’ve got our attention. Start talking.”

“You’ve seen Josh in what you referred to as freak-out mode.”

“He comes apart at the seams. Easily.”

“Correct. If he’s cornered by U.S. marshals and state troopers, who do you think he’ll best respond to? Armed officers? Or me?”

Wiley looked over at Shaw. “She has a point. She convinced him to take the prosecutor’s deal when neither Hick, nor I, nor his own lawyer made a dent. If anybody can persuade him to give himself up now, it’s her.”

Shaw didn’t comment, but his body language came through loud and clear. He was chewing his inner cheek, driving fast, his fingers clutching the steering wheel so tightly, they’d turned white. For letting his pistol get lifted, he was probably madder at himself than he was at her.

Wiley asked her, “So where do we find your brother?”

“I don’t know that we’ll find him, but I know where to look. You know the Christmas festival and boat parade they have on Bayou Gauche?”

“I know about it. Never been. Marsha says we should take the kids one year.”

“I’m glad you brought this up,” Shaw said. “Remind me to book my reservation.”

She ignored him. “After the…accident, our family no longer celebrated Christmas at home, so we went the first year they held the boat parade. My dad’s elderly aunt lived in Bayou Gauche. We picked her up at her house and took her to the waterfront with us.

“Josh worked at spoiling every family outing. That night he was particularly sullen. Bent on ruining everyone’s time. He said he’d have rather stayed away from the crowd. Why hadn’t we just left him at the aunt’s house? He could’ve watched the parade from there.”

She paused, studying first Shaw’s and then Wiley’s expressions. Both were skeptical, but neither spoke.

She plowed on. “To me her house seemed isolated. No neighbors to speak of. On the edge of a swamp. Its distance from town was deceptive, however, because the road to it winds around town. As the crow flies, it was much closer.

“When Josh said he should have been left behind, he pointed out to me that from the banks of the bayou where we were watching the parade, you could see the light poles from Great-Aunt’s boat dock. Just barely. But every once in a while you could catch the light from them twinkling through the trees.”

“Twinkling?” Shaw’s penetrating gaze was fixed on her in the rearview mirror. She avoided his scornful remark and stayed on Wiley.

He asked, “Is the old lady still alive?”

“She died not long after that. I hadn’t thought of her or that occasion in years, not until you mentioned Bayou Gauche.”

“What became of her house?”

“I have no idea. Dad wasn’t an heir, if that’s what you’re thinking. We never went there again.”

Wiley frowned. “What I’m thinking is that it’s—”

“A crock of crap,” Shaw said.