Don't Lose Her

by Jonathon King

  It reminded her of shining deer on the roads back home, the animal frozen in the headlights, staring at you with those weird luminous eyes, but most times breaking for the woods when you swerved. But a fucking alligator! Jesus. She’d only seen them on TV when those hick swamp assholes hooked them with baited steel and then head-shot them with shotguns.

  It wasn’t the only thing that amazed her on this damn trip. After about an hour of buzzing over the watery landscape, Geronimo had extended his long arm and pointed out something in the distance. As they approached, she’d made out a man-made structure low on the horizon. As they came closer, it became a floating collection of buildings and then a raised camp with four distinct cabins all squatting on a flat deck on pilings. It was a little wooden island in the middle of nowhere.

  Danny had eased back the throttle, and then took them in slow and docked the airboat against a slanted ramp. When he killed the engine, the sudden lack of both noise and vibration felt like a cone had been pressed over Rae’s ears; the sensation kind of stunned her. It was like when you stopped your snowmobile in the middle of the snow-covered woods at night and let the quiet envelop you.

  Danny jumped onto the dock and called for one of the lines and tied up the boat. The braves were careful taking the woman off. She’d seemed to have lost her ability to stand on her own, weak and slouched. Geronimo pointed to one of the smaller cabins, and the braves half-dragged her across the big deck and took her inside.

  Geronimo had gotten out and stepped up onto the deck and then just stood there, imposingly tall and straight, looking out at the sky and curve of the planet like he was some damn Indian elder in those old anti-littering ads on TV. But Rae knew this Indian wasn’t going to have any tears running down his face. She looked at the spot on his back where she’d seen the knife handle and her mind was working, working, working: How the hell would they get out of this goddamn mess?

  Rae had watched the big Indian survey the place. After her hearing had recovered, she picked up on the sound of a humming engine in the direction of the smallest cabin at the far end of the deck. Geronimo strode to the opposite end, to the biggest cabin, and without hesitating—like he knew it would be unlocked—opened the door and disappeared inside. Either someone was already here, or they’d set it all up for them. They weren’t just pulling up on some abandoned place hoping for the best. Rae went over to Danny and, since they were alone, let him have it.

  “Did you know about Geronimo’s fucking knife?” she hissed as he bent over a cooler someone had loaded onto the boat. She heard the slosh of water and ice as he hefted it up onto the deck.

  Danny looked into her face and said, “What? What knife?” and Rae knew he wasn’t lying or covering. Although she knew she really didn’t have the ability to see the future, she sure as hell knew when a man was lying to her, and Rae knew Danny’s every twitch and tell. He was honestly surprised.

  “In the small of his back—that big-ass bowie he carries,” she said. “I saw it when he bent over to lift Ms. Prego out of the trunk.”

  She waited for some kind of reaction from Danny, who slid the cooler onto the deck.

  “I never saw it when we were at the warehouse.”

  “Well, maybe things have changed since we left the warehouse,” Rae said, recognizing the questioning tenseness in her own voice. Again, she awaited a reaction. Danny held to character, not jumping to answer… .

  “Yeah, well, it ain’t going according to plan, that’s for sure. But I still want to get us paid, and then we’ll get the hell out of here.”

  Rae was not so thoughtful in her reactions. Hers came from the gut.

  “Uh, Danny, look around. Does it look like we control where we’re gonna go to get the hell out of here?”

  She was looking at Danny’s cheeks and neck this time, but no coloring came to them. He simply nodded back toward the airboat.

  “Geronimo could no more handle this thing than he could fly. Unless somebody else shows up, we’ve got control of the only way out of here.”

  She knew then that he, too, had been working on alternatives, had maybe become as wary as she was over this entire screwed-up operation, and had been formulating a plan of his own.

  The braves came out of the cabin where they’d stashed the woman and headed across the deck to the big house, gawking at the surroundings. For the first time, Rae saw them whispering to each other. The code of silence might indeed be dead, but she and Danny ended their conversation and followed them.

  Geronimo had gone weird and maybe Rae could see why. Inside the big cabin, the place was laid out like one of those huge private bungalows up at the Grand Traverse Resort and Spa. It was all done in some kind of polished pinewood: a kitchen with an island bar and stools on one side and then an open living area with big stuffed chairs and couches all done in muted green material. On end tables were what looked like hand-carved statuettes of Indians with waist-length coats and beaded necklaces and others standing up in narrow canoes with long poles in their hands. But the showcase was the western wall made of smoked, floor-to-ceiling glass with a view of the Everglades, its expanse reaching out to the end of the damn earth.

  Geronimo was standing in the middle of the big room, silhouetted by the light from the huge window, staring at a large tapestry hanging over a stone fireplace on the eastern wall. The tapestry was made of some kind of woven cloth interspersed with strings of colored beads. The big Indian was stock-still, his thick hands clasped behind him, forearms encircling the spot Rae knew held the knife. If he was seeing something in the wall art that mesmerized him, it was beyond her. Yeah, it was pretty cool; the colors were bright and pure and interesting, but snap out of it, dude.

  The braves wandered around, first opening the refrigerator and smiling at its contents. Rae noticed the light come on when they opened the door—electrical generator, she thought. That’s what she heard coming from the smallest cabin. Mike Pierce’s dad had one at his hunting cabin in the Upper Peninsula, where a bunch of kids from high school went after graduation just to party. Full electric, water heater, and everything—really roughing it.

  The braves started going through the cupboards, probing like little kids in a candy store.

  Finally, Geronimo seemed to snap out of his trance and turned to her and said, “Squaw, make us something to eat.”

  Rae looked at Danny and he looked back, awaiting her eruption at being ordered in such a way. He squared his feet in order to react, especially now that he knew Geronimo was armed. But Rae gave him a little nod… .

  “No problem, Big Chief, what’s your pleasure? A little alligator tail and some palm salad?”

  Geronimo just gestured toward the kitchen.

  “OK, Big Man, just let the little woman see what she can rustle up for you all.”

  Rae had been in enough restaurant kitchens to know her way around. She’d fended for herself since she was a child, cooking meals in her mom’s little trailer. Not a big deal as long as you had the goods. As she rooted through the fridge, she found that the place was loaded: steaks, hamburger, peeled shrimp, pre-made salads, French bread, eggs, and butter. It conjured up a menu for anyone from anywhere. There was some mystery meat that might indeed have been alligator tail and some raw fish that she didn’t recognize. But she stayed with what she knew and put together a dinner that the CEO of any Fortune 500 company would have loved. And while the Indians weren’t looking, she spit in every dish she served them.

  Those trips to the restaurant kitchens had taught her more than culinary arts.

  Twice during the preparation and serving, Rae sent a plate of scrambled eggs with Danny out to the cabin where the woman was still locked up. Geronimo didn’t question it. But Danny came back both times saying the woman was still out.

  “I checked her breathing, Rae. She isn’t dead, just sleeping.”

  “Did you try to give her water?”

 
“Yeah, I tried. It just dribbled off her lips, and she fussed a little but never opened her eyes.”

  “How do you know she didn’t open her eyes?”

  In a voice loud enough for everyone in the big cabin to hear, Danny said: “I took the damn hood off. It’s fucking stupid to keep that thing on out here. What’s she gonna see?”

  Geronimo looked up from his steak for a second, but then continued eating without comment. Rae and Danny exchanged glances.

  After the meal, which Rae had to admit was pretty damn good, all had withdrawn to their own corners of the wooden island as night settled in. Geronimo lorded over the big cabin, and the braves staked out the other cabin, a bunkhouse of sorts. Danny and Rae simply took some comforters and made up a nest on the dock where they dozed and made love in the cool open air and rehashed their situation in whispered voices.

  “Should we just make a break for it?” Danny asked her. “I know I can get that boat started and get it moving. And in the dark, even Geronimo’s not gonna throw a knife in our backs.”

  “And you know where the hell we are and how to get back to the road?” Rae said.

  Danny hesitated. “Maybe.”

  Rae knew the difference between Danny knowing and maybe knowing.

  “How much gas is in it? How long is it gonna run and how long if we get fucking lost in the dark?”

  “We just get away and then shut it down and wait until daylight and figure from there.”

  “Ha,” Rae barked sarcastically. “On the way out here, did you see any damn thing different from east to west to north to south?”

  “No, but the sun rises in the east, Rae, so we go from there.”

  They were quiet for a while and then Rae rolled into him, wrapping one leg around his, and felt the warmth and knew he felt it, too.

  “So we just run away with nothing?” she said. “Everything they asked us to do, we did. Don’t you want to get what they promised us?”

  “Ten thousand might not be worth all this.”

  “I’m thinking you’re right. Hell, fifty each ain’t enough for kidnapping a damn federal judge.”

  There. She’d spilled it, and now she had to wait for Danny’s reaction, which wasn’t nearly as slow in coming as it usually was.

  “You’re still thinking she’s a judge?”

  “She told me.”

  “And since when do you believe anybody, Rae? Maybe she just said that to make you scared.”

  “I checked,” she said, going deeper into it now.

  “What do you mean, you checked?”

  “With Kelsey.”

  Danny’s legs cinched up, squeezing hers, and then he rolled away. It was hard to check his eyes with only starlight to see by, but she knew anger would be there.

  “Rae, Christ! You’ve got your damn cell phone? Geronimo will go fucking nuts if he finds out. You were supposed to leave all that shit back at the airport locker.”

  This time, she held on to her own response, letting the moment of her truth-telling pass.

  “He hasn’t found it yet and he isn’t going to.”

  She’d told Danny of her hiding place before. He’d actually blanched and raised his eyebrow the way he did when he thought people were bullshitting him. But it was Danny who’d told her the stories of the prison work camp in Grayling where both the inmates and their women visitors hid packets of drugs and other contraband in their body cavities. He even told her of one woman who smuggled in a single-shot zip gun and ammunition that way. She hadn’t believed him, but experimented and found out, yes, it was possible.

  “So who the hell you been talking to, Rae, besides Kelsey—the fucking FBI?”

  She let that go also. Danny knew she didn’t like it when he was a smart-ass to her. She also knew he’d be contrite about it if she let him. After a few moments, she said: “I only texted her.”

  “Rae, they can track a text just as easy as a conversation.”

  “Yeah? Well, where the fuck is the FBI then, Danny? They didn’t find us at the warehouse. They didn’t find us on the road. What makes you think they’re gonna find us out here in the damn middle of nowhere?”

  They both stared up at the sky, quietly. Rae reached out in the starlight and found his hand.

  “Look, all we have is each other, Danny. That’s it,” she said. “Something bad is going to happen out here and don’t even tell me I’m wrong because I’m not. I can see what’s coming and it ain’t good.”

  Still Danny said nothing.

  “That fucking knife is making me nervous,” she repeated.

  “No shit. You remember that story Randy Williams tells about seeing­ Geronimo pull that thing out of its sheath and flip the blade into his hand and throw the damn thing twenty feet into a fence post?”

  “Yeah, I heard it was thirty feet.”

  “Whatever. If you’ve got your cell on you, get rid of it, Rae. We don’t need to piss him off.”

  “What? Is he going to strip-search me?”

  This time, Danny stiffened up.

  “Not while I’m alive,” he said, looking into her eyes with a seriousness that might have even made her neck color a bit. She reached into her shorts and came out with the phone, wiped it on the comforter, and gave it to him. He took it, got up, and walked toward the woman’s cabin.

  “I thought you were gonna toss it into the swamp,” Rae said after him, before he got to the door, searching a little with the statement.

  “Not anymore,” Danny answered. “We might need it.”

  Rae watched Danny as he came back out of the prego’s cabin and sat next to her with a look she’d never seen before. His eyes were diverted and his head turned away, but she took him by the chin and turned his face to her. There was an inward, unfocused dullness to his eyes, and even in the starlight, she could see the red glow of his neck pallor.

  “What?” she said. But Danny kept his eyes off hers. “What the hell did she say?”

  “Nothing,” Danny lied. Rae always knew when he lied.

  “Bullshit, Danny. I heard her voice,” she lied right back to him. “What did she say?”

  “Nothing, Rae,” he repeated, but met her gaze. “She wants more to eat.”

  Rae kept her eyes on his. There was something going on in those damn mirrors of the soul, as her mom always called the eyes, that put Rae on edge. “Don’t go getting all touchy-feely on her, Danny, now that you’re having conversations and all,” she said.

  “Damn, Rae. It wasn’t a conversation.”

  “But you took the hood off, Danny. You’ve seen her face, so now she’s a person and not just a thing,” Rae said, not going into the fact that he was now recognizable and everybody knows what that means for the damn eyewitness you don’t leave behind.

  “She was always a person, Rae. But maybe I should have thought of that before I got us into this.”

  “No, no, no way, Danny,” Rae said, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him into her. “You didn’t hold a gun to my head, baby. We’re in this together. Don’t take that away.

  “Together,” she repeated, holding on long enough to let him believe it.

  Chapter 30

  The bloody show: Why in God’s name would they call it that? Diane stepped out of the shower and used a towel to dry herself and sop up the tinges of pink fluid that had streaked down her leg. She recalled the warnings that her obstetrician had given her: the bloody show was supposed to be just a small mucus discharge, blood vessels in the cervix rupturing. But it was hard to tell in the shower, mixed as it was with the water.

  Now, she wiped herself again with one of the white washcloths, and again there was a pinkish stain.

  Do not panic, Diane, she told herself. The periodic contractions—and she was now convinced that they were real contractions—would have naturally led to this. If her water had broken, it
would continue to flow awhile. If it was the bloody show, it would stop. Either way, her baby was on its way; it was only a matter of how much time she had.

  She wrapped a big towel around herself. Do not panic. Be smart. She took the bloodstained washcloth, folded it, and placed it carefully back in the stack of towels in the linen closet. She had already methodically pressed her fingertips in the corners of the mirrors and on any smooth surface that she thought a cleaner might miss. She was going to leave as much DNA as she could. She was determined to leave a sign that she’d been here.

  Next she picked up her clothes from the floor. How many days had she been here? She’d lost count with the sleep and the darkness. She took her underwear to the sink and turned on the water and used a bar of soap to wash them as best she could and hung them on the shower door to dry. Then she filled the basin and began soaking her silk blouse, dipping the fabric into the soapy water and then rinsing it out: dipping and rinsing, rinsing and dipping …

  While she washed, she looked into the mirror and saw the drawn, bleary-eyed face of a woman she hardly recognized. Tears were running down the woman’s face.

  “What am I doing?” she asked the face. “Am I nesting? Or getting ready to die? Preparing to be a mother, or a corpse?”

  She turned the water on full cold and filled handfuls and splashed them into that woman’s face, keeping her eyes closed, feeling the tingle, summoning the strength. Another contraction gripped her abdomen, and she put both hands on the vanity, steadying herself until the tightening eased.

  By the time she’d made it back to the bed, darkness had filled the single window and she had her answer and lay down. She let the towel drop away off her belly and massaged the skin with the palms of her hands. She was going to give birth, by herself, in the middle of nowhere. So be it. She began running scenarios through her head, remembering the instructions about panting and being careful not to hyperventilate. She envisioned the position: she could use the extra pillows on the bed to prop up her back. She could get more towels from the bathroom for wiping the newborn’s mouth and nose. She felt herself crying again, the tears running out of the corners of her eyes and down into her ears. She’d never felt so alone. And that’s when she felt the baby kick.