Amande considered what she should tell him. One of her coins had come from a spot currently submerged in three feet of water. The other one, though, had been in the place where Faye had uncovered bits of very old wood. This suited her purpose better. Steve would spend more time poking around in a spot where it was easy to dig and where he stood a chance of finding something soon enough to keep him distracted. And distracted was good.
He nodded when she pointed to the trees, saying, “Yeah, Justine used to tell me about digging up stuff on this island. Maybe that was the spot. That goddamn Dane was obsessed with finding a shipwreck. He just wanted the island to use as a base. Said it would be a lot easier to salvage a big load thataway. And there was some fancy legal reason that having the island would help him claim the treasure, but none of that makes any nevermind now that he’s dead. Justine knew a lot more about this island than he did, and she always thought there was a chest of gold buried here. We come to look for it a few times, before she got sick. I’m going with her story.”
Getting there was a slow experience, since Steve insisted on dragging her. He seemed to think it was too risky just to let her walk. As they walked, Amande thought of her mother as a child, running free over this very same patch of sand.
Steve kept her body clamped against his, her back to his chest and his knife to her throat. When they reached the spot, the disturbed soil from Faye’s digging was still visible. The tremble in Steve’s body said that he wanted to drop everything and shovel dirt until he got to a pile of treasure. But he couldn’t do that with his arms wrapped around a prisoner.
Amande felt a tremble seize her own body. This was a moment when he might decide to kill her. Seconds passed and she was still alive, so he either thought she still possessed valuable information, or else he had other plans for her before she died. She felt a chill at her core that only made the trembling worse.
Then Steve spoke, but his words didn’t reveal the full scope of his plans for her. They only gave a glimpse into the next phase of her torture.
“I got a shovel in the cabin. And some rope.”
***
Faye had found a handy patch of marsh grass big enough to hide her boat. She’d anchored, then slid overboard with her trowel in one hand, her pocketknife in the other, and the binoculars hanging around her neck. Standing in waist-deep water, she’d maneuvered herself into a spot where she could see the entire near side of the island without much risk of being seen.
Michael had been inconsolable when he saw that she was “swimming” and he wasn’t, so she’d put him in Joe’s backpack and strapped it on herself. He wanted to be fully submerged, but his little legs were dragging in the water, so he was happy enough for the moment.
Faye had watched Steve drag Amande into the cabin and come out alone.
It made little sense to pass up the opportunity for a neat and tidy murder aboard the boat, like Dane’s, opting instead for messing up the interior of a house. Granted, it wasn’t much of a house, but what kind of nut would leave a young girl on its floor in a puddle of blood?
The same kind of nut who had been committing low-stakes murders all week, that’s who. Was a treasure that might not even exist worth doing murder? If you were a person who would kill for a ratty old houseboat, Faye figured it was.
She had to get into that cabin.
If she came ashore on the far side of the island, Steve’s view would be blocked by the trees and by the tallest part of the island and by the cabin itself. By making her way from one clump of grass to another, she could maintain some degree of cover for most of the journey.
It wasn’t going to be easy to do this while carrying a one-year-old on her back and a trowel in one hand. Even the binoculars were starting to look heavy to Faye. There was no help for it, so she took the first step. Michael splashed his feet into the water and laughed out of the sheer joy of being alive in such a beautiful place.
At least her passenger was happy.
***
Amande lay spread-eagled on the floor of the cabin, one arm and leg tied to a post in the middle of the room that had apparently been installed to hold the sagging roof up. Her other arm and leg were tied to a tremendous old brass bed that was topped with a soiled and rotting mattress.
Her brain didn’t seem to be working well. She’d always been able to count on her sharp mind but now, when she most needed it, she found her thoughts to be as slippery as wet swamp muck.
She should be thinking of a way to escape, instead of lying here in this most vulnerable of positions, wondering what Steve had planned for her when he got tired of digging for treasure. Efforts to free herself had accomplished nothing, other than to show just how tightly Steve had tied her bonds. There seemed to be no way to cut those bonds, when she couldn’t reach the stone blade hidden in her pocket.
Instead of plotting her escape, she found her mind wandering in the direction of Henry the Mutineer. Henry had been kidnapped and forced to serve on a pirate ship, then lived to rule a pirate ship himself, at Gola George’s side. If only she had a seven-foot-tall pirate coming to rescue her…
But that pirate had turned on Henry the Mutineer. No, wait. Her frantic brain was scrambling the story, and that just wasn’t like her. Gola George had indeed turned on Henry the Mutineer, but Henry had betrayed him first. On the day that George put his hands on Marisol, and she defied him by splaying her ivory fan in his face, George had shattered the fan with one big hand and prepared to take her by force.
How could he have possibly predicted that the foppish Henry would pull his jeweled dagger from the decorative scabbard strapped to his leg, burying its blade in the thick shoulder muscles attached to George’s sword-wielding arm?
And then Henry and Marisol had run for their lives. They ran from George and from his crew of pirates, who would have turned on Henry the instant they heard what he’d done. They ran from Henry’s paintings and Marisol’s lute and their silk clothes. They fled down the gangplank, straight through the shabby settlement where George housed his women, and right out the other side. They hid deep in the swamp, so deep that Marisol had to shed the heavy skirts that dragged in the mud and caught in the thick grasses. She stripped to her linen chemise and drawers, and it was a long time before she owned clothes other than those.
Just before dawn, after the pirates had given up their hunt and gone to sleep, Henry and Marisol stole every last rowboat and dinghy in the settlement. Why did two people need all those boats? And how did they steal them, with only the two of them to row?
They needed all those boats for Henry’s final mutiny, because they took every last one of George’s women with them, and all of George’s children. Amande had heard it said that George hunted Henry till the end of his days, but she doubted it. According to the stories, Henry had hidden in plain sight, with the river pilots who lived near the great river’s mouth at Head-of-Waters. If Gola George had wanted to find Henry and kill him, he could have done it. But that would have meant looking straight in the face of his betrayer and his lifelong friend, and he would have had to do it while knowing full well that, by attacking Marisol, he had betrayed Henry, too.
It was no coincidence that Amande was thinking of Henry’s spectacular escape and of the rescue of Gola George’s women and children, and she knew it. She was a self-sufficient person, and she liked to think that she could take care of herself, but at that moment, right then, she knew that she just couldn’t. Sometimes a person needs rescue. Amande wondered if a rescuer would ever come for her.
Perhaps she had been hallucinating, but she could have sworn she saw something at the moment of Dane’s death. It was nothing metaphysical. She’d seen no spectral spirit rising heavenward, but at the moment she rose from the bottom of the boat where Dane had thrown her to save her life, she’d seen…something. It had been nothing more than a speck on the horizon that was too hard-edged to be natura
l, but it had been something.
Amande’s dreams of rescue had been dashed with Justine’s death. Her mother was never going to sweep into her world and fix it, but maybe there was somebody out there who would.
Something about that speck on the horizon had brought Amande comfort and hope.
Something about it made her think of Faye.
Chapter Thirty-one
Faye’s goal was in sight. She had a clear view of the path Steve would take when he returned to the cabin, so she knew that Amande was still in there alone. The only door was on the far side of the cabin, which wasn’t as bad as it seemed. There was no need for her to walk around and go through that door, risking being seen by Steve. The glass had been gone from both windows on her side for years, from the looks of things.
It wouldn’t be easy to shove Michael through one of them and then crawl through herself, but it wouldn’t be the hardest thing she would do before bedtime, either. The land between her and the cabin was covered with shrubby underbrush and marsh grass where she wouldn’t leave obvious footprints. For once, nature was on her side.
Faye had lingered in the water until she’d almost worked out a way to get Amande out of there and to get all three of them off the island, but Michael’s presence complicated every plan she tried to make. She was going to have to improvise. She’d never seen an old movie that climaxed with the cavalry topping the hill, coming to the rescue with bugles blaring, while the soldiers cared for the toddlers astride their saddles in front of them. This did not mean that it couldn’t be done.
Sticking a pacifier in Michael’s mouth and clipping its handle firmly to his shirt, she crept up to the window and manhandled him and herself through it. Her little pocketknife was sufficient to cut through the ropes binding Amande, but it took some time. Finally, the girl was free. It was time to get out of the cabin.
Faye struggled back through the window, then took Michael from Amande and helped her crawl through. Bowed down by the weight of Michael in a heavy backpack designed for Joe, she could barely stand, but it made more sense to crawl anyway. Only the waving of the underbrush and marsh grasses would give away their position as they made their way back to the boat.
It would have made sense to shift Michael from her scrawny back to Amande’s broad, strong one, but Faye knew that her last nerve would snap into two ragged pieces if she lost the ability to protect Michael with her own body. Also, Amande looked like she was one adrenaline jolt away from complete collapse.
They had no choice but to move slowly. Michael was so heavy that Faye regretted every spoonful of baby food that she’d ever shoveled into him. He was enjoying their adventure, burbling constantly, and Faye was grateful that the wind had kicked up. She could barely hear him over its noise. If Steve were to find them, it would be by sight, because he wouldn’t be able to hear them and he damn sure wouldn’t be able to smell them over the pervasive stench of oil.
Faye found a spot sheltered from view by a low sand dune on the bay side and by vegetation in the other directions. It was a good place to pause and get a bearing on Steve’s location, after having spent a few minutes with her vision blocked. Still on all-fours, she raised herself up enough to peer over the dune. The sight of Steve standing in the water beside her boat was nearly enough to make her lie down and quit.
The words, “He knows I’m here,” escaped her lips and she wished them back with the adult’s instinct to protect a child from bad news. It was a ridiculous feeling, since there was no way to hide the situation from Amande for long, but she felt it anyway.
Faye’s world grew even darker when she saw Steve remove the hose that carried fuel from her boat’s tank to its engine. His boat, on the opposite side of the island, was now their only exit.
Hose in hand, he stormed toward the cabin, passing uncomfortably close to their hiding place. He leaned his entire upper body into one of the open windows, then emerged, stomping and gesturing and, presuming Faye’s lip-reading was accurate, cursing. Now he knew that Amande was gone.
The wooded area was the only obvious hiding place on the island, so he must be headed past the spot where he’d been digging, deeper into the copse of trees, on the theory that they’d somehow sneaked past him and hidden there. It would take only a few minutes to search that area. If she could get Amande and Michael to Steve’s boat in that amount of time, and if he’d left the keys in the boat, then they were saved.
Unfortunately, she didn’t think it was possible. The distance was too far. Michael was too heavy. There was no cover on that side of the island, so they would be visible as soon as they got past the cabin. It was entirely possible that Steve would be able to see them from that very moment, and he looked capable of outrunning Faye, even when she wasn’t burdened by a backpack full of her cherished son. She couldn’t know where Steve was or what he could see until she committed herself to making a run for it, and she simply couldn’t take that gamble with the children’s lives.
Faye needed to make her decision, and she needed to move. She did so.
“Follow me,” she hissed. “I’m going to hide you two in plain sight. Since he’s already checked the shack, it probably won’t occur to him to search it again.”
Once through the window, she lifted Michael from her back and handed him to Amande. Shedding the backpack, she took her pocketknife and cut off her own shirttail. Amande followed her, wearing a question mark on her face, as Faye fashioned the scrap of fabric into a tight roll. Moving to the kitchen counter, she opened Steve’s bottle of Jack Daniels. Amande’s expression said she was shocked to see Faye suddenly starting to behave like her drunken relatives.
Faye doused the roll of fabric with copious quantities of Jack, soaking it through, then she stuck it deeply into the plastic container of sugar sitting beside the liquor bottle. Handing Amande a sugar tit that would have made Miranda proud, she said, “Here. If Steve comes back, Michael cannot make a sound. Not a single solitary sound. He needs to be unconscious. Keep this in his mouth the whole time I’m gone. Put some more whiskey on it, if you need to. Now give me your shirt.”
As Faye stripped off her own shirt and handed it to her, Amande stood there with the baby on her hip and her mouth agape.
“I’m going out this window,” Faye said, “and I’m going to get Steve as far from his boat as humanly possible. And I do mean far…way out there in the water.” Faye gestured out the back windows, far into the bay. “When that happens, you take Michael and you go out that door. Get in Steve’s boat and go home.”
“That would leave you here alone with—” Amande stopped and tried again. “He messed up our boat. If I take that one, you’ll have no way to get off this island.”
“Yes, I will. You’ll tell Joe and Benoit where I am, and they’ll bring me some help.”
“That’s too long for you to be out here alone with Steve. He’ll…Faye, he killed Dane. And my grandmother and my uncle, too.”
“I know.”
“I won’t leave you here with him.”
Faye reached up and grabbed Amande by the shoulders, bringing the girl’s face all the way down to hers. “Yes. You will.”
She let go of Amande with one hand and used it to cradle Michael’s round cheek. “Look at this child. Look at him. He cannot take care of himself. I can, but I have to know that you and Michael are safe first. This is what it means to be a grown-up.”
Amande was shaking her head and pulling away. Faye gripped her shoulder and brought the panicked girl back down to her level. “You have to help me by getting the two of you off this island. Believe me when I say this: when the turmoil is all over, I’ll still be standing. Now give me that shirt. And give me that purple hat, while you’re at it.”
Amande pulled off the shirt and hat and her dark curls streamed over the tender skin of her bare shoulders. “Here,” she said, handing them over, tears streaming
down her face. “Take this, too.” She reached in her pocket and pulled out a stone blade that Faye recognized from Amande’s collection.
Faye handed Amande her own shirt in trade, then grasped the wrist of the hand holding the blade and pushed it back toward her. “No, you might need that. And keep this trowel, too. It won’t help me where I’m going. Don’t worry. I’m armed and I have a plan.” She brandished her pocketknife. “When Steve is completely focused on me—you’ll know when—make a run for his boat. If something goes wrong and he comes here instead of chasing me, take Michael and get in the broom closet. If he doesn’t look for you in there, then you’ll have another chance to escape when he leaves.”
Faye pulled Amande’s shirt on and drew her hat down low on her forehead, then she kicked off her shoes. She reached out her arms and drew Amande and Michael close, saying nothing but, “I love you both.” Then she went out the window before she had a chance to change her mind.
***
Amande stood at the window and watched Faye run. Wearing Amande’s brightly colored hat and shirt, she’d lingered at the corner of the shack, fully visible in three directions, until Steve came into view. When Faye knew for a fact that he’d seen her, she’d run for the water. Steve had taken off at a run, as Faye had known he would.
Amande had watched Faye run toward the boat Steve had disabled and past it. He’d followed. She’d kept a hand on her head as if to hold the purple hat on, but Amande could see that her real motive had been to obscure her face. From a distance, it wasn’t completely obvious that she was far smaller than Amande. Were the distinctive hat and shirt enough to convince him that this was the girl he needed to silence? Maybe. They had certainly provoked the desired response. When Steve saw her, he took the bait.
As she watched, Amande poured more whiskey on the sugar tit and stuck it in Michael’s mouth again. Faye had told her to get in the broom closet with him the instant that Steve headed their direction. It hadn’t happened yet, and maybe it wouldn’t, but she wanted to be ready. If the opposite happened, if he continued chasing Faye in her guise as an Amande decoy, then she was to pick the right time and run for Steve’s boat, keeping the shack between her and Steve. This plan seemed quite workable as a way to get Amande and Michael off the island, but Amande saw no way that it could turn out well for Faye.
Plunder Page 27
