Page 65 of Landry

As they neared, her captor loosened his hold ever so slightly.

Camille seized that moment, jabbed her elbow into his side and slammed her head backwards into the man’s face. When he released his hold, she slid downward, ducked under his arm, turned and ran toward Billy Ray.

Two more men caught up with her, each grabbing one of her arms. Another man stepped in front of her with narrowed eyes and a wicked scar running from his temple to the corner of his mouth. “Get in the boat, or we shoot the kid.”

The man holding Billy Ray had a pistol pointed at the boy’s head. All the fight had gone out of him.

Rather than risk Billy Ray’s life, Camille thought quickly. “Look, you have me. You don’t need a kid. Let him go.”

The man snorted. “You’re not in a position to bargain, bitch. We don’t need no stinkin’ kid, but if it helps keep you from doing stupid shit, he goes with us.” He jerked his head toward the boat.

The man holding Billy Ray slung the boy into the boat. The man holding the rifle pointed it at Billy Ray, where he lay on the deck and then back at the other man standing nearby. “Either one of you moves, and I blow you away.”

The man and the ten-year-old boy remained motionless.

The two men holding Camille marched her to the boat and lifted her onto the deck to stand in front of the man the rifleman had been holding at gunpoint.

As he lifted his chin, starlight illuminated his face.

Camille gasped. “Richard!”

He nodded. “Yeah. It’s me.” His face was thinner, paler, and his hair was cut shorter than he had kept it when they’d been married, but it was him. The lying, cheating thief she’d tried to leave behind.

Anger boiled up inside, laced with her fear. “What the hell’s going on here?” she demanded, her gaze sweeping the array of men clambering onto the airboat. She counted six. With Richard, there were seven men against one woman and a boy.

The odds were not in their favor.

“I took something their boss wants back.” He sighed. “Look, all we have to do is give it to them, and they’ll let us go.”

“Seriously?” Camille shook her head. “You just got out of jail. How could you have taken anything in that short amount of time? And what does that have to do with me?”

Before she finished, Richard was shaking his head. “I took it five years ago and hid it where it wouldn’t be found.”

Camille crossed her arms over her chest. “Again, what does that have to do with me?”

“You have it,” Richard said, simply.

“What could I possibly have that you hid this...whatever it is...in? You left me destitute in the middle of a recession. Because you insisted I drop out of college to marry you, I couldn’t get a job that paid enough to afford daycare, much less pay for utilities and the loan payment. I had to sell all the furniture just to get by until I had nothing left. The mortgage company foreclosed on our house. I ended up in a shelter with nothing more than what I could fit into a single suitcase. If you left this item in something we had, it’s long gone.”

“There was one thing I knew you would never part with. I put it inside that item.”

Camille’s brow furrowed. “I lost everything.”

“What was one thing I tried to toss in the garbage that you nearly had a coronary about?”

Her thoughts went back to that day she’d caught him with his hand halfway to the outside trash container. In that hand, had been the only item she’d had left from her own childhood. Her only connection to her parents since their deaths.

Her eyes widened as she looked up into Richard’s gaze. “Fuzzy Bear,” she whispered. “You hid one of your jewel thefts in my daughter’s bear?” She looked at the man she’d once thought she loved. “Who are you? Certainly not the man I thought you were. What father would hide a priceless item in his daughter’s bear?”

“A desperate one,” Richard said. “I didn’t realize the woman I took it from was the girlfriend of the New Orleans mafia’s kingpin.”

“Yeah, and he wants it back,” Scarface said. “Enough of the reunion, give us the necklace or we start killing you one at a time, starting with the boy.”

“Wait!” Camille said. “You can’t kill him. He had nothing to do with taking the necklace. He’s innocent.”

Scarface sneered. “Yeah, but he’s leverage.”

A siren’s wail pierced the darkness.

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