The Surrender Gate: A Desire Exchange Novel

by Christopher Rice

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really? What? I seem like I’ve been to a lot of sex clubs?”

  “I don’t know what you soldiers get up to overseas.”

  “Most of it ain’t sexy, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “Alright, well, a fantasy room I can deal with, I guess.”

  “Really? Why’s that?”

  “Because I didn’t tell them my real fantasy.”

  “The one you told me, you mean?”

  “Yeah. That one. That’s ours now.”

  He’s silent.

  “That belongs to us,” she adds.

  “I see…”

  “So,” Emily finally says. “If I could see you right now, would I see you smiling?”

  “A little. Yeah.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  “Yeah. It is good. I like having a secret with you, Emily Blaine.”

  “You have a lot of secrets with me right now, Marcus Dylan.”

  “Yeah, but the rest of them involve other people. Not this one.”

  “I guess you’re right. Want to know another secret? I hate the swamp!”

  “Have I told you that if anything happens to you I’ll be there in five minutes, tops?”

  “Tell me again.”

  “If anything happens to you, I’ll be there in three minutes. Tops.”

  “Okay. Now tell me where you’re going to take me out to dinner when all of this is over?”

  “Just dinner, huh? Am I going to get to hold your hand too?”

  Thank God she decided to wear the jeans and the blouse. She can’t imagine braving the trail ahead in some shiny cocktail dress. The leather jacket she’s wearing has a zippered pocket on the inside flap and that’s where she’s placed Arthur’s letter. From the Aston Martin’s trunk she removes a Maglite and starts sweeping the ground at her feet for snakes.

  “7:45,” Marcus says. “Let’s do a little refresher. When I ask you a yes or no question, yes will be…”

  She sniffs once through both nostrils.

  “Great. And no?”

  She sniffs twice through both nostrils.

  “If you ID Ryan?”

  “Two quick coughs.”

  “If you want me to extract you?”

  “Four quick coughs.”

  “If you want the strike team?”

  “I’m not going to want the strike team.”

  “Let me rephrase that. If either you or Jonathan are in grave and immediate danger and require the use of the strike team.”

  “Marcus…”

  “How ’bout we work on getting over our fear of the strike team in the ten minutes before your pickup. What do you say?”

  “If I want the strike team, I say the words, That’s enough.”

  “Excellent. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. But I’m not going to want the strike team.”

  “Yeah, I got the message. Fingers crossed we won’t have to use the strike team.”

  “And I am not walking down this road to the water until it’s time.”

  “I can see that… Hey, Emily.”

  “Yes, Knight in Shining Armor.”

  “I know it’s probably sounding pretty repetitious at this point, but whatever you have to do tonight to get that letter to Ryan, I still want to take you out to dinner later and, you know, maybe hold your hand and stuff.”

  “And stuff?” Emily asks.

  “Yeah. Stuff.”

  “Stuff could be fun.”

  “With me, it usually is. I’m really good at stuff.”

  She’s trying to think up a witty, flirty response to this line when the Maglite’s beam falls across a wooden post marking the entrance to the trail ahead.

  “There’s something up here,” she mutters, dropping her voice when she sees some sort of shiny gift has been hung from a nail in the top of the post.

  “What is it?”

  “A handbell.”

  “Like the one they rang last night?”

  “I didn’t see that one so I won’t know if they’re the same unless I ring it.”

  “Alright, well, it’s three minutes to eight. I say ring it. But after you do, I, uh, guess that’s the end of you being able to talk. To me, anyway.”

  “Yeah,” she says.

  There’s a small catch attached to the tip of the bell’s handle. She slides it gently off the nail, careful not to ring the bell by accident before she’s good and ready.

  “One more time, quick review,” Marcus says.

  “Okay.”

  “Yes.”

  She sniffs once through both nostrils.

  “No.”

  She sniffs twice.

  “If you spot Ryan?”

  She coughs twice.

  “Extraction?”

  She coughs four times.

  “Strike team?”

  “That’s enough.”

  “Okay. And as soon as you’re inside I’m going to ask you for a headcount. If it’s a double digit figure, do taps for each digit separated by five seconds.”

  “Got it.”

  “Alright. You are green to proceed, Miss Conran.”

  “See you on the other side, Hot Stuff.”

  “Emily?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m not sure if I said this already, but I love that painting you gave me.”

  “Thank you. I wanted you to love it.”

  “Well, I do. Now ring that bell, Miss Conran.”

  She does. The chime is clear, resonant, and soothing. As it echoes out across the dark swamp, two strings of swaying paper lanterns come gradually to life before her. With rounded purple shades swaying gently in the breeze, they line the trail down to the water’s edge, and in their sudden spreading light, Emily can see the walk before her is far from being the tangled, predator-concealing mess she feared it would be. Rather, it’s as manicured as a garden path, and the small dock at the end looks freshly painted and in perfect condition.

  She’s halfway to the dock when she hears a boat’s engine groaning across the water.

  “Incoming,” Marcus whispers.

  By the time the vessel is within sight, she’s struck a surefooted stance on the dock, the handbell in her right hand, Arthur’s letter burning a hole in her jacket pocket. The boat has a single running light on the bow, so for several minutes after she hears its engine, the vessel is just a burst of noise and one tiny pinprick of light advancing toward her out of the blackness.

  Once it’s within the halo of soft light given off by the lanterns behind her, she can see its shiny varnished wooden body, its small wheelhouse tucked up against the bow, and the flapping canopy covering the small open area in back. The boat carries four shadows, and one of them is leaning halfway out of the wheelhouse on the side opposite the pilot. She recognizes his mask, his familiar full lips and strong jawline. It’s her silent messenger from the night before, the same man who may or may not have vanished into thin air while on camera. Only tonight, he’s missing his robe. Along with the other three members of his team, he’s dressed in skin-tight black jeans with black leather side-stripes, his muscular olive-skinned chest exposed and shaved smooth just as it was when he helped to ravish her.

  It’s an odd reversal of their power dynamic from the night before, when she was naked and they were partially dressed. One side of the boat swings toward the dock, and once he’s within reach, her silent messenger falls to one knee on the edge of the boat and extends one gloved hand toward her. The sudden move startles her so much she backs up a few steps. The handbell emits a weak ring.

  “Was that bell a distress call?” Marcus asks.

  She sniffs twice through both nostrils.

  “Cool.”

  The boat is idling with one side flush against the dock. Her silent messenger turns his extended hand up and spreads his fingers; he’s asking for the bell. When she hands it off to him, he passes it to the masked woman behind him and returns his right hand to its original, inviting position.


  Emily manages a smile, places her hand in his, and allows him to pull her onto the boat. She has to duck slightly to avoid hitting her head on the canopy, and as soon as her feet come to rest on the rocking deck, three of the team members take a step back, and in the deep shadows, it takes her a minute to see they’re each holding up something in their hands, something they want her to see. One woman holds a piece of fabric between two fists—a blindfold, Emily realizes. The other holds a long strap, the use of which is beyond Emily’s ability to comprehend in this moment. Meanwhile, her silent messenger has reached into his pants pocket and removed two dangling wrist ties, one in each hand.

  “You there?”

  She sniffs once.

  “Are they restraining you?”

  She sniffs once.

  Her silent messenger grips both of her wrists, gently raises her arms skyward, turning her around bit by bit as he works. By the time he’s fastened her wrists to two metal loops above her head, she’s facing the rear of the boat, and just before the blindfold is wrapped around her eyes, she realizes what the long strap is for; they’ve wrapped it around her waist and are now securing it to the canopy supports on either side of her. It’s designed to keep her upright and comfortable during the journey ahead, given that she won’t able to use her hands to support herself.

  “Have they blindfolded you?”

  She sniffs once.

  “Are you in pain?”

  She sniffs twice.

  “Good. Your tracking device is up. We’re good to go.”

  The deck rattles beneath her feet as the boat’s motor throttles back to life. Two sets of hands hold her gently in place as the boat takes off, and then, once whomever they belong to is confident she has her balance, the hands retreat, leaving her in total darkness made deafening by the sudden wind ripping across the deck.

  22

  On the screen the advance team mounted next to the boat’s wheel, Marcus watches a flashing blue dot travel south into the Atchafalaya Basin. It marks Emily’s position and gives him something to monitor her journey with besides the rush of wind coming through the earpiece. Heading toward her, on a direct collision course it seems, is an orange blip marking Jonathan’s northward progress across the dark swamp. A good ways behind him, Dupuy’s marker flashes green.

  In another few minutes, Emily’s ride will pass several hundred yards from where the strike team sits dark and silent, hidden somewhere in the cypresses. Marcus ordered them to a central location an hour ago. He figured that was the best way to ensure they’d be able to make decent time to the final destination once it was established.

  Watching the steady progression of these dots across a shiny, new computer screen convinces Marcus, for a moment at least, that maybe, just maybe, this whole thing will go off without a hitch.

  But then he remembers a guy vanishing into the night sky, then he remembers turning those candles over and over again in his hands as he searched desperately for a way to make them light, and suddenly his hands grip the wheel so tightly he’s sure his knuckles are whitening, even if he can’t make out his fingers in the shadows.

  While the boat’s battery-powered engine is whisper quiet, he’s forced to travel dark. Running lights could give away his position, for sure, and despite Arthur’s vast resources, they couldn’t locate a GPS monitor that would also provide detailed radar information about the shallow, obstruction-filled swamp. The resulting compromise has left him with three different screens to consult; a night-vision camera attached to the bow that feeds a detailed surface view to a TV. set just ahead of the wheel, the GPS monitor, which sits to the left of the wheel, its brightness lowered to the point where it won’t give away his location, and then a radar display that makes clear how little room for play the swamp offers if any of them need to accelerate. The setup would drive him bonkers if he weren’t forced to drive at a speed a drunken day-tripper would consider sluggish.

  The electrical engines that power the Zebotecs the team is using may be silent, but they also require a charge after several hours, which means they’re all under orders to conserve energy in the event that this whole thing goes to shit and they all have to throttle it at the same time. He’ll also have to shut all of the monitors down as soon as he’s got The Desire Exchange within sight to avoid drawing too much electricity away from the engine.

  Emily passes the strike team’s location, well within earshot of them, Marcus is sure. But he’s relieved to see the two red dots remain in position. They’re following Marcus’s order not to move until he texts them the coordinates of their final destination.

  He’s been so focused on Emily’s progress he hasn’t noticed that Jonathan’s marker has come to a complete stop. Dupuy follows suit.

  Marcus slows, watching as Emily’s flashing blue dot starts to slow down as well. In his earpiece, the deafening rush of the wind starts to fade, replaced by the sound of hurried footfalls on the boat’s deck, until, eventually, the blue dot representing the woman he’d do just about anything for comes to a complete stop, just a fingertip away from Jonathan’s marker.

  “Bingo,” Marcus whispers.

  There’s an answering sniff from Emily, probably to confirm the boat is coming to a stop.

  “Still blindfolded?”

  Yes.

  “We’ve got your position. Jonathan just got there. I’m going to hold back on the questions now. Don’t want your new friends to think you’ve got a sinus infection.”

  Yes.

  He’s too far away to see their actual location, but that’s the idea. Slide in slowly and quietly once they’ve had time to go inside. If there is an inside. There has to be an inside, he thinks. No way are they going to conduct their business out here in the great wide open, with the snakes and the gators and who knows what else darting through the trees overhead. You still don’t know what their business is, dude.

  He grabs his phone, texts the coordinates to the other team members. Dupuy follows up with a text as well; same coordinates almost exactly. Now, all four boats are set to begin a slow crawl into position, stopping only once they’ve each established a reasonably good visual on whatever this place is.

  The boat’s propeller reduced to a weak sputter, Marcus manages his first deep breath in a while. Then he sees an e-mail sitting in the inbox on his phone.

  The subject line makes his heart jump: ARE YOU MESSING WITH US? He straightens, scrolls down, and breathes a sigh of relief when he sees the sender is the security team on duty at Magnolia Gate.

  Facial recognition guys got a hit on your fine black lady.

  Is this a joke? Srsly, what the hell’s next dude?

  Below this text, one of the still images he captured last night of Emily’s beautiful visitor has been framed next to a scan of an old missing persons flyer featuring a black-and-white portrait photograph of what appears to be the same woman. The exact same woman, he realizes. The only real difference between the two images is the woman’s hair; in the older portrait, the woman’s proud Afro has been subdued into a single mahogany wave. With a two-fingered swipe, he zooms in so he can read the text printed above the woman’s photo.

  LAST SEEN – APRIL 4, 1959

  It’s a joke. It has to be. Or maybe it’s a prop from a movie or a play, which means the woman’s an actress, and wouldn’t that make sense. Maybe they’re all actors. But in a rush to look at the photos, he scrolled past the text in the e-mail the security team forwarded, an explanation of the method from the contracting firm they hired to conduct the face match, official-sounding sentences about how this hit came from an archive dedicated to crimes and disappearances among the New Orleans black community the local newspapers of the time refused to report. The date has been verified.

  The woman’s name is Lilliane Williams and she went missing on April 4, 1959.

  And she hasn’t aged a day since.

  Can u see it? I’ve got a visual.

  Dupuy’s text message shocks him out of his daze. He grabs the wheel. Someth
ing big and bright has gone inferno on the night-vision screen. But he doesn’t need the camera anymore, because he’s got eyes on the light source ahead.

  A massive purple tent appears through the trees. It glows with a warm, flickering interior illumination, and as he floats nearer to it, Marcus spots at least two identical, covered walkways jutting out from the main tent like the spokes on a bicycle wheel. Both walkways are completely covered in the same kind of semitransparent purple fabric that makes up the rest of the tent. Two boats, just like the one that picked up Emily, are tied to the floating platforms at the end of each walkway. There’s enough space underneath the tent’s floor for small boats to pass underneath, but the shadows under this platform are so deep, he can’t tell what’s lurking under there, if anything.

  As he nears it, there's no ignoring the sheer impossibility of the entire structure, the way it’s top is strung precisely through an uneven network of giant trees. Despite the fact it appears temporary, there’s no way anyone could have built this place without major construction equipment and the barges needed to transport all of it. And no way in hell anyone could get a barge out here, not with all the surrounding obstructions.

  Marcus cuts the engine.

  Dupuy and the strike team have all done the same.

  On the GPS monitor, their four boats now form a radius of blinking lights around the location of this giant, impossible-to-build tent.

  Another text from Dupuy comes through.

  What the hell man?

  Marcus texts back, My thoughts exactly.

  23

  They haven’t removed her blindfold, but Emily can tell they’re walking her through some kind of enclosure. Two of her companions flank her, each one resting a hand gently on her shoulder. Up ahead are more footfalls; she figures they belong to the other two team members who brought her here. Then, suddenly, she hears the sound of curtains being pulled across rods.

  The blindfold is gently removed.

  She blinks, finds herself alone inside what at first appears to be a luxurious padded cell. Purple candles burn on two wall sconces. Once she gets her bearings, Emily realizes it’s not a cell so much as a curtained off section of the walkway. Her escorts are divided up on both sides of her now; two of them stand outside of each curtain, blocking her in.