Beneath Bone Lake

by Colleen Thompson

  To beef up the impression, he whistled for Java—who leapt and barked about him playfully, enjoying this new game after a long day spent cooped up in the cabin.

  When he reached the door, he pounded and then tried the doorbell. Hearing no response, he called loudly, “Dylan? Dylan, it’s Sam McCoy. I’ve got a flat, man. Can you give me a hand?”

  Shutting up, he listened intently, but the only sounds that came to his ears were the buzz of evening insects, the sound of an automatic garage door rising somewhere down the block. Unable to see anything inside, he decided to go around back. Java raced ahead of him, tongue lolling and tail wagging.

  Sam spotted something in the grass ahead, something that turned out to be a cell phone. Picking it up, he recognized the phone’s spring green outer case as Ruby’s—and then he saw a set of keys, including one bearing a Toyota emblem, only steps away.

  “Shit, shit, shit.” His mouth chalk-dry, he scooped the keys up—then heard, from around the corner, what might have been a human moan.

  Java froze, growling softly as the hackles on her neck rose. She rushed forward for a few steps, then chickened out and doubled back to fall behind her owner as Sam crept forward, crouching and cutting off his flashlight. Terrified as he was for Ruby, he still was hesitant to race blindly into a situation he didn’t understand and might somehow make worse.

  But a soft cry, clearly feminine, made him forget his caution. “Ruby?” he called, racing around the corner and switching on the beam, which he swung wildly as he searched.

  Until the light jerked to a stop at the partially nude and bloody human figure lying next to the back window. A figure that was struggling disjointedly to raise itself onto hands and knees.

  He stared in horror, unable to make sense of what he was seeing, confused by the woman’s bent neck and dripping hair.

  Until finally, her face turned his way, and his horror took a sharp turn.

  “Misty?” He dropped to his knees. “Misty? Is that you?”

  Have to reach the surface. Break it. Kick off the chains and swim up, toward air and light. Toward life.

  But the pain settled thick around her. Thick and heavy as the slimy muck of rotting vegetation, yet sticky somehow, like the tarry mud that sucked her feet down through the bottom of Bone Lake.

  She felt her legs sink deeper, felt her body slipping through layer after layer of dark ooze. Panicking, she fought and struggled but only settled deeper—until she dropped into a blackness broken only by the leering face of the full moon.

  C HAPTER T WENTY-THREE

  “There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.”

  —Joseph Conrad,

  from Lord Jim

  Instinctively, Sam reached to help the shivering, shirtless woman. Flinching at his touch, she dropped to a seated position, her head drooping as she groaned in pain.

  “Easy there. It’s me, Sam.” He brushed back the stiff hair covering her face. “Misty, are you—is Zoe still with—”

  The moment her eyes opened, he sucked in a startled breath, understanding that through some trick of the light and terror and the sisters’ shared genetics, he had been mistaken. This was Ruby, not her sister.

  With both relief and horror pounding through him, he laid his hand on her bare back, avoiding the worst of the blood for fear of hurting her. He pushed back the whining Java and said, “I’m calling for help, Ruby, and whoever did this—he’s gone. So be still, lie still if you can and breathe.”

  “So deep,” she moaned. “Under the water. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t—”

  “You’re nowhere near the lake.” Using the light, he scanned her body for a deep cut, a gunshot, any wound serious enough to explain the quantity of blood staining her and puddling on the concrete. If he could find it, he could apply direct pressure, make a bandage, keep her from bleeding out while he called 9-1-1.

  Keep her from dying right here and right now.

  Yet as closely as he looked, he couldn’t find the source. “Where are you hurt, Ruby? What did Dylan do to you?” Sam wanted to choke the bastard, pound his face to pulp—and when he noticed Ruby’s open and unzipped jeans, nausea joined the mix of fury and raw fear pounding through his system.

  She reached to the back of her head, wincing when she touched it. “Not Dylan. It was that man from the house, that horrible man with all the sixes on his face. I saw his reflection coming at me. Tried to get away, but he jumped me…banged my head against the window, there.”

  Sam turned his beam to follow her hand gesture and saw the faintest smudge of blood with a few hairs sticking to it. Two feet to the left and slightly lower, a softball-sized hole had been blown through the glass. Though he had a vague impression of a hellacious mess inside, he quickly returned the light to Ruby.

  To his shock, she was sitting up, shuddering as she hugged her knees.

  “There was a gunshot,” she said, sounding astonishingly alert. “I heard it. But I don’t know—I must’ve blacked out. We were—fighting. I was fighting because I wouldn’t—I couldn’t let him rip my clothes off. I tried—I tried to stop him, but he…I should’ve made him stop, Sam. I should have.”

  Sam’s heart broke at the look in her eyes, at the suspicion of the violence done her. Taking off his own shirt, he draped it over her. “God, Ruby. It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have possibly…Hang on a minute while I make that call.”

  As he punched in the digits, her bloody hand clutched at his forearm. “Please don’t,” she pleaded. “I don’t want anyone to—”

  He shushed her as the dispatcher started speaking. Since he had used his satellite phone instead of Ruby’s, he had to be transferred to the Preston County dispatch center.

  “I’m not hurt, Sam, not really,” Ruby insisted as he waited to be connected. Gingerly, she poked her arm inside a shirtsleeve. “No cuts, no bleeding, just this bump on my head. Don’t you see? This isn’t my blood. If I’d lost this much, I’d be dead, or damned close to it.”

  “They’ll need to do some X-rays,” he said while on hold. “And you’ll need an examination….There’ll have to be a rape kit.”

  She shook her head, then grimaced and rubbed her neck. “I don’t think that bastard raped me. I don’t think he had time before someone blew him away.”

  Sam’s attention jerked back to the hole through the window, which could very well have been caused by a bullet. So where was the tattooed man? And what about whoever supposedly had shot him?

  “Nine-one-one dispatch,” the operator said in his ear. “What is your emergency?”

  “I need an ambulance. A woman’s hurt at—”

  “No,” Ruby insisted, ripping the phone from him before he could give the address. As she disconnected, she said, “I can’t afford to waste time at the ER or in a freaking interview room answering more questions. He’s supposed to call tonight. About the exchange for my family.”

  Instead of arguing, Sam asked, “So you really think someone shot the guy attacking you?”

  “I heard a bang while I was blacking out. And when I look at all this blood—somebody’s hurting a heck of a lot worse than I am. I wonder where he went, though. I can’t imagine he was in any sort of shape to run off.”

  “Unless he dragged himself off to die elsewhere, or maybe the shooter took him along for some reason.” Sam cut himself short as she struggled to stand. “Stay down, Ruby. We still have no idea where the shooter is or how badly you’re hurt.”

  “Probably mildly concussed,” she said, grimacing as she rubbed her head. “I know the signs. I’ve studied nursing.”

  He gave up and took her hand to help her. “Then you ought to know concussions can be bad news.”

  “Let’s worry about that later, once we’re out of here. Somebody else could’ve heard that shot and called the sheriff.” She patted her hips, looked down at where her pockets hung inside out. “What happened t
o my keys?”

  “I found them, with your phone, along the side of the house.”

  “Guess he got my credit card, then. Maybe that was what he really wanted in the first place, not rape.”

  Or maybe he’d been looking for the flash drive, Sam suspected.

  “Hand me those keys, please,” said Ruby.

  “If you think I’m letting you drive—”

  “I’m not abandoning Elysse’s car.” Bruised and bloody as she was, Ruby was stubbornness incarnate.

  But she didn’t have the market cornered on that commodity.

  “Elysse is gone now, Ruby, and no way am I giving you the keys. Now let me help you to my truck, and let’s get out of here before someone shows up.”

  Ruby pulled away from his grip, but after a few wobbly steps, she bent forward, groaning. He grabbed her arm to save her from going to her knees.

  “All right.” She shot him a sheepish look. “We’ll try this your way, in your truck.”

  As they walked back along the side of the house, he looked for any sign of Ruby’s credit card, in case it had been dropped with the other items.

  Gripping his hand, she whispered, “Listen, Sam. You hear that?”

  Sam first heard some kind of mechanical noise—one that reminded him of a dentist drilling—and then made out an engine idling. Mostly hidden by the bulk of his SUV, the dark bumper of some lower-profile vehicle was all he could make out.

  “Sheriff’s department?” he asked, thinking Ruby might have gotten a better look.

  “No flashing lights,” she said.

  “Let’s move over this way, see if we can get a better angle—hey!” Sam heard the splash of liquid and belatedly, he understood the drilling sound. Letting go of Ruby, he ran toward his Yukon with Java at his heels.

  He made it around the SUV in time to hear a car door closing and tires squealing as an older Mustang—one he recalled from only minutes earlier—took off in a hurry.

  “Son of a bitch,” Sam yelled, smelling the gasoline gushing from a round hole in the bottom of his tank.

  When he saw Ruby weaving toward him, guilt gave him a swift kick. Hurrying back to her side, he said, “We’re not going anywhere. Bastard punched a hole right through.”

  “What are you doing running out here in the open?” she asked. “That guy could’ve shot you.”

  He opened the Yukon, the thought jolting through him that the driver of the black car could have made off with their bargaining chips. Relief flooded him when he found the items safe and sound in the under-seat storage drawer where he’d left them. “Thank God, our stuff’s still inside. If we’d lost the laptop and the flash drive…”

  Ruby nodded, her expression grim. “Better forget about the truck for now. We’ll take Elysse’s car, if he didn’t hit it, too.”

  Sam got down on his knees next to the Corolla but spotted no damage—or any suspicious-looking wires or boxes that might explain why the shooter wanted to force them to use it. Standing, he opened the passenger door for her.

  Ruby hesitated, blinking down at the seat. “I hate getting her car all bloody.”

  “It’ll be all right,” he said. “We’ll clean up her car later. Careful getting in there.”

  As Ruby sat, she groaned, once more raising her hand to cup the back of her head. When strength and coordination failed her, Sam lifted her right leg inside the car, then pulled her seat belt across her trembling shoulder. The dome light highlighted tear trails cutting through the blood smears, revealing the moon-pale face behind.

  Despite the mess, he leaned in to kiss her temple. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  He shut Java into the backseat and then drove out of the subdivision. “No emergency lights yet. Maybe no one heard anything—or understood what they were hearing.”

  “Another lucky break.” Ruby smiled tiredly, the mask of blood smears crinkling. “I’m feeling so blessed.”

  Sam smiled back, relieved to hear a note of sarcasm. It meant she still had some fight left in her, more than he ever would have imagined. But what was it Elysse had once told him? Some quote about women and tea bags, how you could never guess the strength of either until they were dropped into hot water.

  Certainly, that was when his mother’s weakness became apparent. When the going got tough, when his father’s drinking and disappearances and the constant money problems and sporadic bursts of violence turned too difficult, Brenda McCoy had left him and J.B. playing behind their room at the local motor court while she’d slipped into something more comfortable. Which had turned out to be a Greyhound bus.

  Sam shook off the memory of coming inside after J.B.—a bullying ass-wipe even at the age of twelve—had opened a big gash on Sam’s shin with the steel blade of a rusted shovel they’d found. The injury had bled like hell, but it was nothing to the pain, and the searing shame, of realizing she’d left them only seven crumpled dollar bills and a six-word parting message, a scribbled note that told them Sorry, boys. Your mama’s had enough.

  As he and Ruby rolled along the dark road, Sam thought about that refuge, the one place where his lame-ass family had remained welcome even in their bleakest hours. For years, he had avoided the place, had avoided the only soul, other than his brother, who knew the entire, sordid story of what it meant to be a McCoy.

  “You’ll always be safe here,” she’d told him, that last terrible day. “Till the day I die, I swear it.”

  He’d sworn he would never take her up on it, would never put himself in a position where he’d be forced to sink so low. But tonight, his pride was going to have to take a backseat, he decided as he cut another look back Ruby’s way. She might be a mess now, physically and emotionally, but somehow, she still sat upright with her blue eyes narrowed—looking mad enough to gnaw and claw her way through hell itself for her kid.

  “Tell me everything you remember,” he said, with the old nightmare of the motor court still rumbling like thunder in his head. “Everything from the moment you got over here. Maybe then, between the two of us, we can figure out what’s really going on.”

  She shuddered, hugging herself inside his shirt. For a moment, the facade of her strength trembled; then she started speaking. She recounted the facts slowly, taking her time to get details straight. Each time emotion seemed poised to overwhelm her, she took a deep breath, steeling herself to continue.

  “Dylan was clean, for what?” he asked. “Four or five years, right? Not a single hiccup…”

  “Not that anybody knew of. Seemed like he’d found himself, found his calling, when he got into the building trade.”

  “But when he stumbles for whatever reason, he tanks big time, gets into financial trouble with some very bad sorts. And somehow or other, he drags an old friend—your sister—into it.”

  “I just don’t get it,” Ruby said. “Misty and Dylan—they were kids together, working around Hammett’s, always cutting up. More like a brother-sister thing than any kind of romance.”

  Sam, nine years older, had been long gone from the area during those years, but he’d heard as much. Yet the financial records hinted at a different truth. “She gave him money, Ruby. Probably thirty grand all told, according to what I found in her bank records.”

  “You broke into our bank accounts? How could—”

  He shrugged. “I made a good part of my living testing bank security. Let’s just say, First Bank of Dogwood got a really bad grade. And I hate to tell you this, but most of the money Misty gave him was yours.”

  “How generous of her,” Ruby said darkly. “But it would have to be my money. Misty’s been spending every cent she can scrape together on school and that high-dollar equipment she needed for her court reporter training. I imagine that’s all up in smoke, too. But I don’t give a damn about the money, or the house, either, for that matter, as long as I find Zoe and learn that Misty’s all right. And then I’m going to strangle her for dragging me through hell.”

  “So what do you think happened back at Dylan�
��s?” Sam asked. “You think Tattoo Man came looking for him, maybe over money?”

  “I’m guessing the tattooed creep—I’m pretty sure he’s Coffin—has been tearing apart that house for valuables because he knows Dylan’s long gone. Which begs the question, where is Mrs. Dylan? Surely, Dylan didn’t run off with both his wife and my sister.”

  “Doesn’t seem too likely.”

  Ruby looked away, and several moments later, her voice drifted like that of a swimmer carried on the current. “I keep thinking about that crying, that child crying in the background of the phone call. Best’s last call, if that’s really who it is. What if he’s not bluffing? What if Zoe’s really with him, scared or hurting or—What if the DeserTek people tell him they have the flash drive? It’s just killing me not knowing which way to turn, which place to look.”

  As Sam took a corner, Ruby looked from side to side. “Wait a minute. You aren’t going—this isn’t the way back to Paulie’s cabin. Like I said, I can’t risk going to the hospital or getting stuck at the sheriff’s office, either. I can’t take a chance on having Best call and—”

  “Don’t worry. There’s no way I’m letting you within a mile of Wofford.” He explained the recent wire transfers, tens of thousands at a time, that he’d found in her personal bank records.

  “Wofford? I can’t believe it. She seems so…”

  “Honest? People fake that. Some of them, quite well.”

  “Sharp. I was going to say ‘sharp,’” Ruby corrected. “Don’t the banks have to report large deposits to the IRS?”

  Sam glanced over at her, impressed that Ruby knew this. “Cash deposits, yeah, but she might’ve slipped under the radar with transfers from offshore if there weren’t enough of them to trigger antiterrorism bank-reporting software.”

  “Where’d the money come from? Could you tell?” “Some sham front company—Sunrise Happy Doodle International—doing business through a bank out of the British Virgin Islands. All untraceable, of course.”