by Greg Iles
Tarver began flailing his arms, and the rifle flew out of the door. The doctor looked like a scarecrow being jerked around by a mad puppeteer. He swung back into the cabin, lurching into the pilot. The helicopter stopped ascending and began to pitch wildly in the air. Seventy feet above the lake, the chopper spun through 360 degrees. As the door came around, the yellow Pelican case flew out, followed by the black man. He turned two long somersaults in the air, then smacked the choppy surface of the lake.
When the helicopter came around the second time, Alex saw Dr. Tarver in the door again. He seized the white sack with both hands and tore it violently from his neck. A thick black rope hung from one of his cheeks. She shuddered as she realized it was one of the cottonmouths, attached to the doctor by its two-inch fangs. Tarver ripped the snake away from his face and flung it into space. The black serpent seemed to hang in the air, twisting wildly, then it fell.
As Dr. Tarver turned back to the interior, the chopper dipped fifteen feet, and Jamie shot from the open door like a cannonball. Alex screamed in horror, but as Jamie fell, she realized that his was a controlled fall. He wasn’t flipping like the man who had gone before him. He was dropping straight down, feetfirst, like a schoolboy showing off at a swimming hole. He landed seventy yards from the boat, and Alex lost him in the chop.
She jumped behind the wheel, then remembered that Dr. Tarver had taken the key. Slamming her bound hands against the gunwale, she ran to the stern. Hope flooded through her. On the port side of the Carrera was an emergency trolling motor. Bill had used it to quietly propel the boat around fishing holes. A bracket allowed the electric motor to be lifted out of the water when not in use. Two cables connected it to a battery on the stern deck. Alex looked back toward the spot where Jamie had fallen. The helicopter was descending over it. Her first thought was Jamie, but then she realized they were after the fallen case.
She ran her hands along the head of the trolling motor until she found the power switch. Then she lifted the bracket so that the propeller emerged from the water and protruded just above the gunwale. She knew she could steer the boat with bound hands, but she would be useless once she reached Jamie. When she hit the start switch, the prop instantly spun into a black blur. She held her taped wrists over the whirring prop and yanked her forearms as far apart as they would go, slightly stretching the duct tape. With every molecule of her instinct rebelling, she lowered the tape onto the edge of the prop.
The ripping whine of a Weed Eater assaulted her eardrums, and a red mist filled the air. She tumbled onto the deck. The force of the prop had kicked her hands into her face, knocking her backward. But when she looked down at her bloody wrists, only a shred of tape remained intact. Yanking her arms apart, she got to her feet and thrust the spinning prop down into the water.
The speedboat slowly moved forward. Alex jumped behind the wheel and aimed the bow toward the spot where she believed Jamie had landed. Her left hand was covered with blood. The prop had gouged deep into that wrist, chewing up veins and exposing a radiant white carpal bone. She forced herself to look away. She didn’t care how much blood she lost, so long as she had the strength to pull Jamie out of the water when she reached him.
Ahead and to her right, the gray helicopter had settled just above the surface of the lake. Dr. Tarver was straddling its left skid, trying desperately to pluck the heavy yellow case from the waves. Alex had reached the spot where she thought Jamie had fallen, but she saw no sign of him. Twenty meters away, Dr. Tarver heaved the yellow case into the belly of the chopper. As he did, a big wave sloshed inside the machine. Almost instantly, the chopper bellied, and another wave flung itself inside. Obviously panicked, the pilot dipped his rotors to the right, venting the water from the door and lifting the chopper six feet above the waves. This maneuver dumped Dr. Tarver into the lake.
The pilot ascended another ten feet and hovered there, as though uncertain what to do. He had Tarver’s bag and cases. Did he really need the man?
Apparently so.
As Alex slowly circled in search of Jamie, the chopper settled back to the surface, low enough for Dr. Tarver to climb onto the skid and into the cabin. This time the nose tilted forward, and the chopper beat its way powerfully into the air. Fifty feet. A hundred. Higher. Alex was searching for Jamie again when the crack of rifle fire echoed over the water. Two shots…five. An explosion reverberated off the shore behind her. The helicopter had risen high enough for Kaiser’s snipers to get an angle on it! Alex glanced up only a moment, but it was enough to see the chopper plummeting toward the lake, black smoke pouring from its engine.
Afraid that it might crash on top of her, she steered away. At the last moment the pilot flared, and the chopper hit the waves with a strange whump, not twenty-five meters from her.
She steered in ever-wider circles, trying to control her fear. What part of Jamie might she see first? A tangle of reddish hair? A silver tennis shoe?
“Jamie!” she shouted, astonished that she hadn’t called out until now. Maybe I’m in shock, she thought, looking down at the growing pool of blood around her feet. “Jamie! Jamie! It’s Aunt Alex!”
Nothing.
The trolling motor was maddeningly slow. She glanced to her right. Tarver’s helicopter had already sunk to its engine cowling.
“Jamie!” she screamed. “Answer me!”
“Here!” shouted a weak voice. “Over here.”
That wasn’t Jamie. It was either Tarver or his pilot. Then she saw the doctor’s bald head moving through the water with surprising speed. He disappeared behind a wave, then shouted again.
“I have him, Alex! Jamie’s over here. Help us!”
She knew it was probably a trick, that Dr. Tarver might still have a gun, but she had to be sure that he hadn’t found Jamie. Ducking behind the gunwale, she slowly turned the blood-slickened wheel, taking the Carrera in a wide circle that would carry her nearer the doctor. Seconds later, her heart thumped her sternum, and her pulse began to race. Jamie was floating faceup in the heaving waves, and Tarver was swimming toward him. He would reach Jamie long before Alex could get there with the boat.
Instead of veering toward them, Alex continued her circle, which carried her out of Dr. Tarver’s line of sight. A rush of instinct so powerful that she could not ignore it told her that Eldon Tarver was about to enter her element. For six weeks she had been playing catch-up, following cold clues that led nowhere. Even after she’d gotten the doctor in her sights, he had always been three steps ahead. But this would be different.
This was a negotiation.
As the boat circled, she ran to the stern and searched for the fuel line. There. A transparent hose no bigger than her little finger. The aorta of a human was hardly bigger, and this was the main artery of the boat. She yanked it loose, and gasoline began running onto the stern deck. She went back to the wheel and steered toward Dr. Tarver, who was now holding Jamie in a lifeguard’s cross-chest carry. The boy appeared to be unconscious. When Alex was thirty feet away, she ran back to the stern and switched off the trolling motor.
“Let’s talk!” shouted Tarver. “We don’t have much time.”
As she moved back to the bow, a memory flashed into Alex’s head. She saw Bill Fennell on the Fourth of July, yanking up a seat cushion to get at some tools. She stopped, tucked her fingers under that same seat, and pulled. The seat cushion popped free. In the small compartment below, she saw a screwdriver, a roll of electrical tape, a set of Allen wrenches, and some copper wire. No knife. No flare gun. Shit—
“What are you doing?” shouted Tarver. “I want to make a deal.”
“I’m hurt!” Alex yelled back. “Bleeding bad…hang on.”
She pulled off her soaked shirt and wrapped it tightly around her mangled wrist. Then she took the screwdriver from the compartment and slid it underneath the makeshift bandage.
“I want the boat!” Tarver shouted.
Alex looked up. The boat had drifted closer to the doctor. She ducked below the gunwale
. “I want Jamie!”
Tarver stroked nearer, holding Jamie’s head above the water. “Then I’d say we have a deal.”
She shook her head. “You have a gun. I know you do.”
“I lost it in the crash.”
Alex shook her head again. “No gun, no boat!”
Dr. Tarver’s right hand stopped treading water, dipped under the surface, then reappeared holding an automatic.
“Throw it away!” Alex yelled.
She saw rage in his eyes, but he threw the gun into the waves.
“Get out of the boat!” he bellowed. “I have the key. When you’re out, I’ll swim to the transom and get in.”
“No!” cried Alex. “Swim away from Jamie first.”
“He’ll sink.”
She turned and snatched up a life ring, one of the few things Tarver had left in the boat. She tossed it to him. “Put that under his arms, then swim away.”
Seeing no alternative, Dr. Tarver struggled to push Jamie’s body into the life ring. As he worked, Alex saw that the dark purple mark on the left side of his face was not his deformity as she had thought, but the livid swelling of a snakebite.
“All right!” Dr. Tarver shouted.
“Swim away!”
Obviously reluctant to give up his leverage, Dr. Tarver released Jamie and swam quickly toward the stern of the boat.
“Jump out!” he shouted.
Still suspicious, Alex pulled off her shoes and stripped off her jeans. Wet jeans could quickly drown you in water like this. She climbed onto the gunwale and dropped into the cold water. As she breaststroked toward Jamie, she sensed movement to her left. Dr. Tarver had not climbed into the boat. He was kicking toward Jamie again. She started to swim freestyle, but Tarver still got there first. As Alex stared in disbelief, he put his big hand on top of Jamie’s head and shoved him right through the life ring, deep under the water.
“Save him now,” he snarled.
Alex couldn’t see Jamie, but he didn’t appear to be struggling. Dr. Tarver held him under as easily as he might an infant. She thought of pulling out the screwdriver, but that was no solution. She’d never overpower Tarver face-to-face.
The answer struck her with the force of revelation. As she dove beneath the waves, her father’s voice echoed in her head: When your back’s against the wall, do the unexpected. That’s how you stay alive. She kicked deeper, deeper, until she was fifteen feet below the surface. Then she opened her eyes and looked up. All she could make out was a dark blur against the gray surface. As she floated slowly upward, a tentacle of darkness swept past her eyes. She grabbed it.
It was an ankle—the smooth ankle of a boy.
Knowing that Tarver was braced for a fight, she expelled all the air from her lungs and jerked the ankle straight down, then swam toward the bottom with all her strength. With a rush of joy, she felt Jamie’s body come with her. After a few seconds of kicking, she started trying to tow him laterally, but her oxygen was disappearing fast. She had to surface.
As she kicked upward, she saw a splash above, then a black shape sweeping down toward her, trailing bubbles. Switching Jamie’s ankle to her left hand, she drew the screwdriver from her “bandage” and waited. When the shadow reached for her, she kicked upward and stabbed with savage force.
The tool struck something, but the shadow didn’t stop. A powerful hand seized her throat. Alex flung her arm wide and stabbed from the side. An explosion of bubbles enveloped her. Tarver’s big body thrashed like a wounded shark’s, and then his hand let go. Hope surged through her, urging her to a final blow. She yanked back on the handle of her weapon, but the screwdriver wouldn’t pull free.
Terrified that she’d lose Jamie, she released the tool and tried to swim clear, but now her air was truly gone. Lungs burning, she grabbed Jamie beneath both arms and kicked for the gray light above.
She broke through the waves and saw the boat bobbing fifteen meters away. She was shifting Jamie to a lifeguard’s carry when Dr. Tarver surfaced directly in front of her. His eyes shone like those of a man in the grip of a religious vision, but something about his mouth was wrong. It sagged the way Grace’s had after her stroke. Alex had no idea how to keep hold of Jamie and fight Tarver in the waves, nor had she the strength to do it. But when Tarver’s hand rose from the water, it did not reach for her. The hand was open, and it moved to the side of his head, as though searching for a wound. Alex and the doctor understood the horror of his plight at the same moment: the handle of the screwdriver protruded from Tarver’s left ear, where the metal shaft had been buried to the hilt.
Tarver’s eyes widened as his hand closed around the handle. He seemed about to jerk the screwdriver free, but then some flicker of knowledge overrode his instinct. His hand dropped into the water, and he looked over his shoulder. With a last wild look into Alex’s eyes, he turned and began swimming awkwardly toward the boat.
Alex turned in the water and started kicking toward the island. It appeared to be fifty or sixty meters away, not a difficult swim under normal conditions, but now potentially lethal. Her burning lungs and blurred vision told her she’d lost more blood than she knew. Still, she kicked on through the battering waves. Forty meters. Thirty. Her leaden limbs began to sink. Jamie’s face was blue, but she could no longer kick. She knew then that they might die within a few meters of the shore.
An image of Grace rose into her mind, and then her father. Then her mother lying unconscious in the hospital. We’re the last, she thought helplessly. Jamie and me. She tried to kick, but there was nothing left. She kissed Jamie’s cheek and prayed for the strength to hold his head above the surface while she drowned.
Her mouth was full of water when she heard a male voice barking orders. Kaiser? She shoved Jamie higher, trying to kick with dead legs. Then a powerful arm swept around her, propelling them both toward shore. Someone dragged Jamie from her arms. She was dimly aware of someone counting chest compressions. A blessedly warm hand touched her face, and she opened her eyes. John Kaiser knelt above her, looking anxiously into her face.
“Can you hear me, Alex?”
She nodded.
“Is there anyone else in the boat?”
She shook her head. “Jamie,” she gasped. “Is he alive?”
As if in answer, there was a fit of coughing beside her, then the sound of a boy crying.
“Disable the boat!” shouted Kaiser, getting to his feet. “Fire at the engine!”
“No,” Alex cried, remembering the disconnected fuel line, which from the roar of the engines, Tarver must have reconnected.
Her cry was drowned by the crack of rifle fire.
She rose onto her elbow and tried to shout. “Stop…the fuel—”
“What?” called Kaiser, moving back to her.
But the rifle cracked again, and the stern of the fleeing Carrera erupted into flame. A figure leaped onto the starboard gunwale, but before it could jump clear, the speedboat blew apart.
Alex collapsed in the mud, rain falling steadily on her face. She tried to explain about the Pelican cases, but her voice was lost in the squawk of radios, Kaiser’s barked orders, and shouts about a man in the water. The pilot of the doctor’s helicopter? None of it mattered now. She rolled onto her side and saw Jamie lying beside her, staring at her with wide eyes. But it was Grace looking out through those eyes—and no longer with despair. When Jamie held out a shivering hand, Alex pulled him to her, burying his face in her chest.
She had kept her promise at last.
EPILOGUE
Two Weeks Later
Alex slowed the Corolla and told Jamie to watch for a gravel road on the left. They were driving down a deserted gray road through an endless tunnel of oak trees.
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” asked Jamie.
“I think so. It wasn’t that long ago that I was here. I stood with him on that big bridge we just went over.”
Jamie took off his seat belt, got onto his knees on the seat, and propped his
elbow on the terra-cotta jar between them.
“Careful,” said Alex.
“Sorry.” Jamie leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the windshield. “I think I see it. Is that a road?”
“It is. Eagle eyes.”
Jamie was staring anxiously at the narrow gap in the trees. “Man, it’s dark in there.”
Alex slowed to a stop, then turned left onto deeply rutted gravel. “Chris told me that bad outlaws used to hide out on this road.”
“When?” asked Jamie. “A long time ago? Or like now?”
The car jounced so hard that his head hit the roof.
“Ow!”
“Sorry,” said Alex. “Like two hundred years ago.”
“Oh.” Jamie had lost all interest.
Alex almost regretted coming. The washed-out road was virtually impassable without a four-wheel drive. After fifty yards, she had to give up and park, unsure how she would ever get back to the Trace proper.
“Come on,” she said. “From here we walk.”
Jamie looked surprised, but he got out. Alex lifted the clay jar off the seat, locked the door, and led Jamie along the gravel road that quickly turned to sand. The air was close and muggy, and horseflies dived around their faces, thirsty for blood.
“This sucks,” said Jamie. “I don’t think there’s anything down here.”
“Have a little faith, huh? You’re a tough guy.”
She walked a few more yards, then stopped, listening. “Do you hear that?”
Jamie stopped, too. “What’s that sound?”
Alex smiled. “Water.”
She broke into a trot, and Jamie ran alongside her. A moment later they broke out of the trees into bright sunlight that flashed like diamonds from the surface of a broad, clear stream.
“Hey!” called a male voice. “We thought you’d given up.”
Alex shielded her eyes against the sun and looked down the course of the stream. A hundred feet away, Chris and Ben Shepard sat on a fallen log facing a small campfire. The smell of cooking meat drifted on the wind. Jamie yelped and started sprinting across the sand. Alex followed more slowly.
