Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

with the storm. Even if she were tall enough to reach the windowsill, which she wasn’t, she just didn’t have the muscle mass to lift herself that far using only the strength of her arms.
    Was it her imagination or did the wind pick up speed when Joe left her alone? It flung water in her face, her mouth, her nose, so that she couldn’t even take the choking wet half-breaths that had sustained her since she crawled out onto the roof. Sitting there, twenty feet above the water, she was going to drown.
    Afraid to raise her hands from the roof where they were bracing her against its sharp slope, Faye shook her head to drive the water out of her nose, her eyes, her mouth, but it was no use. Tucking her chin against her chest and hunching her shoulders forward, she used her own body to block just enough wind and water from her face to let her breathe a bit.
    The tiny bit of oxygen fed her strength. Nothing but her brain could fight the panic, the racing pulse and heaving chest and trembling limbs that were adrenaline’s gift to humanity. You are safe, she told her adrenal gland. Joe would never leave you out here to die.
    Faye, who had always taken pride in her self-sufficiency, sat in the wind, talking to her autonomic nervous system and waiting for rescue. It would have been a humbling moment if she’d had a prideful piece of herself left to be humbled. In the first minute after she conquered the panic, three branches bigger than she was crashed into the tin roof and bounced off. When, not if, something similar hit her, it would knock her cold, shaking body into the heaving sea.
    She could have kissed Joe when he reappeared and dangled the rescue line over the windowsill, reaching down to help her to safety. For a long while, she lay wet and spent on the floor of Joyeuse’s master bedroom, listening to the storm and the throb of her tortured leg.

    The Senator lay on Faye’s bed and enjoyed the cheery light of her lantern. He had no idea how Faye had come to be outside his window, but he’d seen her there, peeking in, and he’d heard her struggle across the roof and crawl through the next window. She was right next door. This was going to be easy.
    He had successfully contained his anger, bottling it up until he saw Faye again. So she was living with another man and seeing him on the side. She had been so sly and so good at hiding her duplicity. It was a relief to know that she and the Indian, the two people who posed the last remaining danger to him, and thus needed to die, were the same two people he most wanted to kill.
    How strange that Faye would be the Indian’s companion, the one he had been chasing since he dispatched the two archaeology students. He’d been confounded by his inability to find the Indian, understandably, as it turned out. Wally had described him as a hermit, more or less, a hermit whose only companion was a boy named Faye.
    His fabled luck had brought on a howling storm to cover his crimes. When he had stepped onto Faye’s boat that morning, he had planned to kill her and sink her body in the Gulf. Simple and neat. Given her secretive ways, it would be days before she was missed. With no body and no sign of a struggle, Sheriff Mike would, sooner or later, decide Faye had simply moved on. She did have a habit of making sure no one could find her.
    The risk associated with killing Faye had been comfortably low when they had set out for Joyeuse that morning. Now that the hurricane had entered the picture, her murder carried no risk at all. After sinking her body, he could return to land and tell a harrowing story of survival with an unhappy ending. How tragic the headlines would be—Senator Risks Life in Futile Attempt to Save Woman.
    And his luck had brought Douglass Everett to him. Now the body of the only witness to Abby’s death was bobbing in the storm. Even if it should wash ashore with its inexplicable bullet wound, who could tie Douglass’ death to him and his unregistered gun?
    The only other soul who could hurt him was in jail. Once he dispatched Faye and returned to shore, the big Indian’s days were numbered. Such an assassination was best done in jail, anyway. Beatings and killings happened in jail all the time. That’s why those people were there. Joe Wolf Mantooth was as good as dead.
    His secrets were all safe at last. He had never killed for pleasure before today, but putting a hole in Douglass Everett had given him great satisfaction. Killing Faye would be the