by Stacey Jay
“I don’t.” I kick the base of the antique streetlight, cursing it for being another reminder of Fernando. He could lobby the city council for three years about these stupid streetlights and “beautifying Railroad Street,” but he couldn’t give me more than a month to make a decision about where to go with Cane.
And now I don’t have a decision to make. Because Fernando handed Cane the apple and Cane gobbled it right up. Even if Cane’s meeting in the bayou turns out to be something innocent, or at least forgivable, it’s over. I can’t be with a man who came creeping into my house to try to catch me with someone else. Even reminding myself that Cane would have had something to catch if he’d happened through the junkyard thirty minutes earlier doesn’t make what he did okay. I’ve made mistakes and had moments of weakness, but I’ve never tried to pin a romantic crime on Cane or anyone else. I’ve always believed that trust was synonymous with love.
Obviously I’ve been wrong.
“I keep trusting people.” I squeeze the keys until the ring digs into my skin. “When no one should be trusted.”
“That’s not true. There are people worth trusting. Lots of people.” Hitch makes an effort to sound sincere, but I know he’s lying. Either to me, or to himself.
I stop by the Land Rover’s dusty bumper and face him. “Name one.”
His eyebrows lift. “One what?”
“One person I should trust.”
“You,” he says, a soft look on his face that makes me dizzy. “You should trust you. I trust you.”
“You shouldn’t.” I refuse to give in to the spinny feelings he inspires or the warmth creeping into my chest at the unexpected compliment. I don’t have time for bullshit. Even sweet-smelling bullshit.
I lift my chin, pinning him with a glare I hope he can see through the dark lenses of my glasses. “I’m lying to you. About several things. But I’m going to give myself a free pass. Because A: I tried to tell you some of the truth and you refused to believe me. And B: I’m not the one who came to you and asked you to risk your life to help me out.
“But you? You don’t get a free pass, and I want to know what you’re hiding.” I step closer, and continue in a whisper. “So I’m going to get in that truck and drive, and you are going to tell me everything you’ve neglected to tell me. Everything. If I believe you’re being straight with me, I’ll keep driving and we’ll find this cave and you can run back to New Orleans and send the FBI to save the day and you and Stephanie can try to fix your life. If not, I—”
“If I don’t find the cave in the next week, there won’t be a life to fix,” Hitch says, his voice rough in a way I know has nothing to do with the clove. “Stephanie’s in the hospital. If I don’t find the cave and destroy it, she’s going to lose the baby. And it will be my fault. She’ll never forgive me.”
And then his face crumples and his body sags and I’m left with a much bigger mess than I was anticipating.
Hitch and I get in the truck and drive. He pulls himself together quickly, but doesn’t say a word during the drive to the south gate.
I wait as patiently as possible, stealing glances at the passenger’s seat as he slides on the iron mesh overshirt of his suit, then unbuckles his seat belt to step into the pants. He zips the top and bottom of the suit together before moving on to the mesh footies and gloves. By the time we reach the gate, he’s suited up, save for the hood piece with the breathable iron face mask, which he leaves in his lap.
Deciding he’s suitably protected—he could have the hood on in a few seconds—I hop out and hit the button to raise the gate. As the gears turn and the heavy iron lifts, I scan the world outside. There’s not a fairy in sight. No pink and golden glow under the trees, nothing fluttering above the water on either side of the road or hunting mosquitoes in the shadows.
Hopefully that means Grandpa Slake made it back to the swamp, issued the cease and desist order to his hordes of flesh-hungry minions, and it’s safe for me to take this drive.
If not, at least Hitch is protected. If the fairies roll the truck off the road, he’ll be able to crawl out and walk back to town without fearing a bite. The new suits look more fragile than the bulky iron shell Cane wears when he ventures outside the gate on police business, but iron mesh is about a hundred times stronger than iron plate. The fairies could try gnawing their way through, but they’d be dead of iron poisoning long before they made it to Hitch’s skin.
Trying to take comfort in that and not let myself worry about trusting another person—or monster—that I shouldn’t, I walk back to the truck. Worry won’t accomplish anything, and I’ve got no choice but to trust Gramps. His information is the only thing we have to go on, and we have to find that cave. Our mission is even more urgent than I’d assumed. I believe that, though I’m going to need a lot more explanation before we get where we’re going.
I slide into the truck, shift into drive, and ease through the gate at a creep, searching for the perfect prompt. As if sensing I’ve reached the end of my patience, Hitch speaks.
“Someone broke into our house while I was working late at the office,” he says, in that familiar I-am-an-FBI-agent-in-control-of-my-destiny-and-vocal-tones voice I’ve come to know and hate. But I can’t hate him for it right now. I know it’s something to hide behind so that he doesn’t lose it again.
Watching him cry for his fiancée and unborn baby—even if it was only for a minute or two—changed the way I see him. He said he loves me, and I think he means it, but he also loves her. Being a member of the torn-between-old-and-new-love club, I can sympathize, but I can also resent him for hiding how much he loves her.
Though maybe he wasn’t intentionally hiding. Maybe he’s as messed up and confused as I am.
“Stephanie was alone, napping on the couch, waiting for me to get home,” he continues, the glimpse into their lives stinging more than it should. “She didn’t wake up until the guy was on top of her. He pressed something over her face and she passed out. I found her unconscious, with a note pinned to her shirt.”
“Shit.” And now I feel awful. I’m not a Stephanie fan, but . . . shit.
“It said she’d inhaled an undetectable biological weapon that would progressively elevate her blood pressure until she lost the baby.” Hitch relates the information without a great deal of passion, but I can feel how hard it is for him to speak. I bite my lip, holding back the stream of questions until he’s finished. “She’ll recover after the stress of the pregnancy is eliminated, but the baby is going to die. Unless I find the cave Steven found and destroy it.”
“Oh my god.” I know I should say something better, but I can’t think of anything. It’s too horrible. Stephanie’s only a few months along, but she’s already in love with that baby. This will devastate her. And maybe Hitch, too, judging from his haunted look.
It makes me grateful I have to keep my eyes mostly on the road. No matter how conflicted I am when it comes to Hitch, I don’t enjoy seeing him hurt. I really don’t.
“If I shut down the lab inside the cave within a week—maybe two if Stephanie’s immune system fights off the initial effects of the toxin—the person who wrote the note promised they’d deliver the antidote to her bedside, and turn themselves in to FBI custody.”
I cast a skeptical look his way. “Really?”
He shrugs. “Allegedly they used to work at the lab, and only want the experiments stopped before more bioweapons are created.”
“And they’re using an unborn baby to force you to do their dirty work.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Jesus, Hitch. I’m so sorry.” I risk another glance his way, but he’s staring out the window at the still fairy-free bayou.
“I called an ambulance as soon as I found her, but she woke up before it got to the house. We decided not to panic until the doctors ran some tests, but . . .” He turns back to me, a hopeless expression on his face. “The note was telling the truth. The toxin screens came back negative, but Stephanie’s
blood pressure kept spiking. All night long. Nothing her doctors did made a difference. In the morning they moved her to a private room and assigned a high-risk pregnancy specialist. I left her with a guard and came here. That was . . . Friday.” He blinks and runs a hand through his hair. “I can’t believe it’s only been two days.”
“How is she doing now?”
“The same. Her pressure keeps spiking, none of the conventional fixes are working.”
“What are her doctors advising? Because you know it’s not only the baby at risk. Stephanie could suffer kidney damage or . . . something worse.”
“I know. I explained that to her,” he whispers. “She promised me that she’d let the doctors terminate the pregnancy if they thought her life was in danger. But . . . the message I got this morning was from her doctor. He’s a friend of mine. He wanted me to know Stephanie’s refusing to talk about the possibility of an abortion.”
“She could die,” I say, unable to help myself. I wouldn’t be in Stephanie’s place for anything, but if it comes down to losing the baby or losing both the baby’s life and her life, there’s only one choice to make. Her death won’t help the baby survive. It would be a senseless waste. “You have to talk to her. Explain that—”
“I’ve explained. She won’t listen. She’s waiting for me to do what the note said. She thinks the person who poisoned her is really going to bring the antidote.”
“But you don’t?” I come to a fork in the road and take a left, following Grandpa Slake’s directions, praying that he was telling me the truth.
“I don’t know what to believe. If this fuck is okay with poisoning a pregnant woman, I’m sure he’d be fine with a lie or two, don’t you?” Hitch pinches the bridge of his nose and let’s out an exhausted sigh. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth. The note said anyone I told would be killed, and that if I tried to get help from the FBI the man would let the baby die. I’m not sure he won’t, anyway, but—”
“Even a chance is worth it,” I assure him. “You have to at least try.” I search the side of the road, looking for the hidden path the fairy said would be on my right side about a mile past the fork. “But . . . you know what I don’t understand?”
“What?”
“Why didn’t the person who wrote the note tell you where to find the cave? Why make you look for it? If he or she used to work there, they have to know where it is.”
“Apparently it moves around a lot.”
I ease my foot off the gas, seeing a break in the trees that could be a road. “The lab moves around? It’s not always in—”
“The cave moves around. It’s a mobile unit.”
I brake in front of a rough-looking dirt road almost hidden behind a pair of cypress trees, but don’t turn down it. Instead I slip my glasses to the end of my nose, needing Hitch to see the confusion in my eyes. “How can a cave be mobile?”
“Tunnels. Really big tunnels. Under the swamp.”
“Really big tunnels under the swamp,” I repeat, a nasty feeling getting started in my stomach. I shove my glasses back on. “That’s an enormous project.”
Hitch nods. “Yep.”
“It would have to have been around for years. At least a decade.”
“Yep.”
“Maybe more than a . . .” My words trail off as the full weight of my suspicion thuds inside my brain, squishing so hard I wouldn’t be surprised to feel gray stuff oozing out my ears.
“I did some research,” Hitch says. “I couldn’t find anything in the county records, but I did find an old newspaper article in the Baton Rouge Gazette, talking about oil found near Donaldsonville and the possible environmental impact of a digging project starting in the bayou that summer. It was sixteen years old.”
Before the mutations. “Fuck.”
“Yep.”
“Would you say something other than ‘yep’?”
“Why? You know what I’m thinking.”
I do. He’s thinking that sixteen years is almost four years before the mutations. If someone was creating a secret mobile cave/lab way back then—and continued to move forward with it after the fairies emerged—then there’s at least a chance, “They knew about the fairies.”
“Or worse.” Hitch shifts in his seat, not seeming surprised that I’ve stopped in the middle of the road. “Maybe the terrorist attacks and the petrochemical spills aren’t responsible for the mutations.”
A sound—half gasp, half gag—escapes from my mouth. “Who was digging for oil? What company?”
“Robusto Chemical. A subsidiary of Gamut 9.”
I close my eyes and hang on to the steering wheel, as if it will keep me grounded in a world that’s being flipped like a sloppy omelet. I make it my business to know as little as possible about politics and politicians—this country’s government is a joke, and not that funny kind I enjoy—but even I know about Gamut 9.
After the mutations, there was an ongoing investigation into then President Rush’s association with Robusto Chemical and its associations with Gamut 9, a Middle Eastern–owned oil company that allegedly helped finance the terrorist attacks that poisoned the Mississippi River delta and caused the fairy mutations. There was never any connection made between the president and the attacks, and no one could find a money trail connecting Gamut 9 with the terrorist organization, but that didn’t matter to most Americans. Especially those of us living in the Delta.
The head of the terrorist organization responsible for the attacks said Gamut 9 paid the tab for destruction of the chemical plants and we believed him. And wanted him, and Gamut 9, destroyed. Everyone living in the Delta—and a lot of people in the noninfested states—boycotted gas stations carrying Gamut 9 oil. Within a few years, the company disappeared from the United States.
“But the federal investigation into Robusto Oil didn’t find anything.” I open my eyes. There’s nothing to see behind my lids except fleeting glimpses of Caroline’s face the day before she died, before she was bitten by monsters someone might have deliberately created.
“What was there to find?” Hitch asks. “Robusto pulled out their drilling equipment after the mutations. As far as a satellite can see from outer space, they left nothing behind.”
“Nothing but some tunnels underground and a mobile cave being used as a biological weapons lab.”
“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe not. There isn’t enough evidence to know one way or another.”
“And the person who wrote the note couldn’t give you any idea where to start looking?”
“Maybe they could have, but they didn’t.” He tosses his headpiece into the cup holder between us. “Now it’s your turn.”
“My turn to what?”
“Who told you where to find the cave?”
“It was one of the Junkyard Kings,” I improvise, knowing Hitch will never believe a truth involving talking fairies. “They meet with the local highwaymen at the gates and exchange supplies and information. One of their contacts said they heard screaming in this corner of the swamp and went to check it out. They saw the entrance to a cave, but didn’t go inside. They didn’t want to borrow trouble.”
“How long ago was this?” Hitch asks.
I shrug. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I didn’t think that would be important. You don’t usually think of a cave as something that’s going to move around.”
“S’all right,” Hitch drawls. “At least we’ve got something.” His gloved hand comes to rest on my knee. “But I’m going to ask a favor.”
“Another favor?” I try for a joking tone, but fail. Nothing is funny right now.
“When we get within a mile or two of where we’re going, I want to park and go the rest of the way on foot.”
“Okay, that sounds—”
“Alone.”
I shake my head. “No. What’s the point in me helping you if—”
“The point is that we may have found what we’re looking for and I have training you don’t,” he says. Not in his holie
r-than-thou way, but in a rational tone that reminds me Hitch isn’t the same man I knew in many ways. The man I loved wasn’t a federal agent, with training in sneaking and spying and deadly breeds of intrigue. “Hopefully, I’ll be able to get inside unnoticed, plant the explosives I brought in my case, and get out before they know I’m there.”
I eye the case his suit came in with new respect. It’s black—not the clear number he carried the last time he was in town—and not much bigger than a carry-on bag, but I know there’s room in there for an explosive device serious enough to blow up a building. Amazing how tiny bombs are getting these days.
Jesus. There’s a bomb in the truck. Mere feet from my feet. I’ve never been this close to a weapon like that. It makes me squirm, and Hitch pull his hand from my leg.
“So you’re just going to do what this guy who poisoned Stephanie told you to do?” I ask, a tremor in my voice. “Without taking the time to surveil or whatever it is you—”
“I don’t have the time to ‘surveil,’” he says. “And I don’t see that I have a choice.”
“But Hitch,” I say gently, understanding that his thinking is probably pretty muddled right now. “What if there are innocent people in there? Those people Steven saw being pulled inside obviously don’t want to be a part of this. They could be victims like Stephanie and the baby.”
“Then I’ll do my best to get them out.”
“Your best.” My skin suddenly feels colder, though the air-conditioning in the truck is still on low.
“Yes. My best.”
I shift the car into park. I don’t trust my wobbly leg to keep tension on the break. “Hitch . . . This is crazy. What if your guess is wrong? What if this guy is lying about what’s going on at the lab?”
Hitch starts to protest, but I barrel on before he can argue with me. “And even if he’s not, and you’re right, and only good can come from destroying the weapons being developed, who knows how many people you’re going to kill doing it? It could be a lot. And you’re still a doctor. You swore to protect all life.”
“I know.” He drops his gaze to the seat. “But I . . . This man isn’t someone I can afford to cross. I can’t make an enemy who can . . . do the things he does. Stephanie and the baby will never be safe.”
