Free Possession by Tori Carrington

isolated in the comparative silence. A flock of vultures set off from a stand of trees, cawing in warning. She ignoredthem even as she searched for a landmark she might recognize.
    There. To her right she watched three dark sedans speed down the road toward Lafitte’s cabin. There would be no out for him now—at least not through conventional routes. And with their two boats, an escape via the bayou would be cut off, as well.
    The airboat hit the side of a grassy knoll and she bolted onto the soft earth, the other men following behind her. She led the way through thick vegetation, her booted feet hitting soggy patches of land here and there until finally she burst through the brush and stood off to the west of the cottage where Lafitte had held her captive the day before.
    On the other side, the other team was doing the same, the third team coming up from behind the cabin via the road.
    Akela held up her fingers and counted down from three, then ran for the porch, taking the stairs two steps at a time until she flanked the right side of the door, another officer flanking the other. She didn’t bother with niceties. Instead she opened the screen door, the other officer kicked in the wood door and they both entered, training their sights on the interior.
    The empty interior.
    Damn.
    She quickly searched inside.
    “House secured. Spread out and search the area,” Akela said into her radio.
    She heard footsteps outside then Chevalier was moving inside the house wearing his trademark rumpled trenchcoat and lighting a cigarette. “You won’t find him.”
    Akela resisted the urge to point her shotgun at him, handing it off to a fellow officer instead. “If I didn’t know better, Lieutenant, I’d say you’re privy to information the rest of us aren’t.”
    He smiled at her. “Not privy. Just mindful of.” He stepped toward the bed in the corner and considered the empty cuffs still fastened to the headboard. He raised a brow at her. “This where he held you?”
    Akela didn’t answer. She’d already told him what had gone down the day before. Three times. She wasn’t about to tell him again.
    Besides, just looking at that bed made her remember feelings she’d be better off forgetting—for good.
    The scent of cigarette smoke reached her nose and she stepped out of the cloud.
    “If we’d come last night as I wanted, we might have caught him,” she said, stepping back outside.
    “If we’d come last night, we would have gotten lost,” Chevalier said, following her.
    “If I recall, that wasn’t your argument then.”
    He looked at her. “No. It wasn’t.”
    Essentially his argument had been that she was emotionally overwrought and wouldn’t have been able to remember where Lafitte had taken her. So he’d told her to go home and get some rest—rest she had yet to get.
    Akela walked the perimeter of the house back to the shower. She didn’t dislike Chevalier. While he was a chauvinist pain in the ass, he had been very adept at his job judging by the framed accolades on his wall, and what others had said about him. At least up until recently. And while with his sarcasm he made it seem he didn’t like her, she knew that he held a grudging respect for her and her position. And once he’d agreed to the raid, she hadn’t heard a single smart-ass remark. Well, at least until they’d figured out Lafitte wasn’t there.
    Of course, it didn’t pass her notice that he was in some sort of trouble with the higher-ups at his station or else she would have had a more difficult fight on her hands when she’d gone in there this morning.
    “The deed?” she asked when she’d come back around, directing the question at Chevalier where he stood with a few of his men.
    “None on record,” he said. “There are some places out here that aren’t listed in any books yet.”
    So essentially this place didn’t exist. There was no way to tie it in any official way to Lafitte.
    Something shone in her eyes, briefly blinding