The Right Kind of Trouble

by Shiloh Walker

  It felt like a lifetime.

  The car slowed as they crept over the pitted and narrowed road and she started to breathe in shallow, short breaths. This wasn’t good. Not at all. Something ugly and hot climbed up her throat and it only got worse when he slowed the car to a crawl.

  The seat belt should have held her snugly in the seat, but she’d been slowly inching her way forward, trying to give herself room to move and when he slammed on the brakes, the locking mechanism clicked in with several inches to spare. The rough edge of the belt’s material rubbed against Moira’s already abused throat and she fought not to gasp.

  With her feet braced on the floor, she shoved herself back as quickly as she could, turning to face Charles as he looked over at her.

  She had the blanket.

  A pitiful weapon, but it was all she had.

  When he sprang into motion, she jerked up the blanket between them. Something wet trickled through and she just shoved harder.

  Charles growled, and she sensed more than felt his hand withdrawing.

  Then he shoved with a force that had her head smacking against the window.

  Dazed, her reaction time was slowed, and she cried out in shock as he jabbed the syringe’s needle into her thigh, straight through the material of the pants she’d swiped from Hannah.

  “Stupid bitch,” Charles swore, his voice ragged.

  She lifted her wrists and balled them up, swinging at him. The drugs hadn’t hit her system, but her arms felt heavy and the blow glanced over his chin without making much of an impact.

  Still, it infuriated him and he grabbed her bound wrists. She gasped, hoping he wouldn’t noticed the loosened ropes. He didn’t seem to, hauling her up against him. “Listen, pet … I’ve been tolerant with you, but try to hit me again and you’ll be sorry for it.”

  “Tolerant…” She said it slowly. “Sure, Charles. I’ll be tolerant. You can get right out of this car and go fuck a gator and I won’t judge you at all. How is that?”

  For a moment, the pretty blue of his eyes went diamond hard.

  Then, to her annoyance, he bent his head and pressed his lips to her brow. “Moira my love … you always did enjoy trying to push your luck. But you won’t get out of this one with words, my pet.”

  She thought she said something else, thought maybe he even answered.

  But his words were … far away and she couldn’t really focus on his face now either.

  * * *

  The howling of his dogs wasn’t precisely what Zeke would call an unusual noise but he couldn’t exactly call it commonplace, either.

  Zeke rose from the table where he and his wife Ida had been enjoying a cup of coffee. Behind him, Ida continued to pore over the blueprints they had set aside years ago.

  Just a few days ago, Ida had been the one to pull them back out.

  He had no idea where she’d put them, just knew that she’d put them away and told him they had to let it go, had to move on. We can’t keep letting this eat at us, all this anger, all this hate. It’s not good for us, honey. If it’s meant to happen, it will. I’ll pray about it. If it’s meant to be, God will find a way. But this isn’t good for us, baby, she’d whispered to him.

  When he’d told her that she was wasting her time with prayer, she had simply kissed him and said, That’s what you think … but I prayed for you every night you were gone. Every time you had to go on tour, I prayed. And every time you came back.

  She was always tripping him up.

  She’d even managed to trip him into going to church.

  He’d told her that if she wanted to pray, she could pray. If they ever ended up with getting their land, he’d even start going to church with her, every Sunday for the rest of his life.

  He had already made good on the promise too.

  He’d been more than happy to sit with his wife in the third row of the county Christian church where they had been married almost forty years earlier. He hadn’t minded a bit when people came up and shook his hand and chatted with him either, keeping him and Ida there for almost an hour after the service.

  Granted, it had kept him away from his dogs.

  Zeke had never much cared to be kept away from his dogs for longer than he had to be, but on occasion it was nice to talk with something who actually spoke instead of wagged a tail.

  It was more annoying when he had to listen to the comments like, I do hope it’s not so long before we see you again. Most times, it’s a wedding or funeral that brings you out.

  But those comments wouldn’t keep him from coming back the following Sunday. After all, he had made his wife a promise, and Zeke was a man of his word.

  Just as he was a man who listened to his instincts.

  Right now, as he sat there with the howls rising in the cool, midmorning air, his instincts were screaming. There was more to the caterwauling of his dogs than whatever the canines had perceived as an invasion on their territory. He’d trained them better than that.

  They didn’t bark because they smelled a rabbit or even a stray dog.

  They only raised hell when they sensed a threat.

  “Gracious, Zeke.” Ida frowned, concern lighting her pretty, pale eyes. “They certainly are all worked up today, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah.” Without elaborating, he moved over to the radio on he kept on the long, skinny counter Ida had long since dubbed his “junk station.” It was organized to a fault and every spare inch of space was utilized. There were harnesses to repair, lists of potential owners for his dogs, lists of potential breeders. None of that held his attention, though.

  He went straight to the radio.

  He kept it on at all times.

  Most of the time, the voices on it were white noise, talking about how the world had gone straight to shit and on occasion there would be argument about who was to blame and why and which politician had fucked it up the worst.

  The few times it wasn’t white noise, it was because something in the region was going on. It didn’t matter if it was a storm or a missing child or somebody’s Auntie Bess had taken a walk and hadn’t come home. Usually Auntie Bess was going senile and would be found some miles from home. Once, a call had gone out for a little boy’s lost dog.

  Zeke turned up the radio and listened, head cocked as he focused on that noise instead of his dogs.

  “… a BOLO out of Treasure over in Mississippi. Got us a pretty redhead gone missing. They think her ex-husband has her. Name’s Myra McKay.”

  Zeke’s eyes narrowed.

  “You got the name wrong there, Bobcat. It’s Moira. We got eyes up in Dechamp?”

  Zeke hit the button and went to respond as Ida came closer. “Swamprat here. I got eyes. Me and my dogs will be watching.”

  “Hey there, Rat.” Bobcat’s voice came out tinny and thin through the radio. “I’m hearing they think this Hurst guy might head your way if he’s in the area. Stay sharp.”

  In the center of his workstation was a sink. Over it was a rifle. It was the first one he’d ever owned and while it wasn’t the most accurate, the Remington 700 BDL Varmint was still his favorite. He’d spent many days out in the woods with that weapon, listening as his dad taught him all about how to hunt, how he’d once helped his own father hunt and trap for food.

  Closing his hand over the Remington, the wood worn and smooth and familiar, he looked over at Ida.

  She didn’t say anything, just turned back to the table.

  He gently turned down the radio until it receded to little more than white noise.

  Zeke had been trained as a sharpshooter in the military.

  It wouldn’t much bother him if he had to raise his weapon now. Whatever had his dogs so worked up certainly wasn’t because some poor soul had up and found themselves lost on the way to Grandma’s house, that was certain.

  “You won’t go doing anything foolish, I hope,” Ida said as he took down a harness from the series of hooks on the wall.

  “You know me, Miss Ida.”


  “Again … you won’t do anything foolish, I hope.”

  He gave her a smile as he slid out the door.

  The dogs saw him and fell silent.

  He called to Solo, and his best dog moved to the front, tail wagging, eyes locked on the harness. “It’s time to go to work, boy.”

  * * *

  Charles hefted Moira’s slim body out of the car, grunting as he was forced to settle her over his shoulder.

  One thing he hadn’t prepared for all the way was the awkwardness of carrying her.

  Logically, he knew that dead weight was just that. Dead weight. She might only weigh roughly one hundred twenty pounds, but that weight seemed magnified when she hung limp over his shoulder.

  He didn’t have time to spare either.

  He suspected half the dose he’d given her had been wasted, and he couldn’t risk giving her more. Not with her small frame and her tendency to react badly with medication anyway.

  The single dose he’d given her earlier should have only put her under for an hour, but she’d been unconscious for nearly three. He’d needed her to sleep longer this time and had prepped a dose that he would have thought would suffice, but after how long she’d stayed asleep, he’d modified it slightly, squeezing half a milliliter out.

  Then she’d gone and fucked things up good and proper, jamming that blanket into him as he’d gone to inject her, as if she’d known.

  She slept now, but he didn’t have the time he’d hoped for to prepare her.

  They had to hurry.

  Off to the northeast, he could hear dogs barking.

  That stubborn old git who’d caused trouble early on.

  Charles hated those miserable dogs. He wished they’d just turn on their master.

  It had been nearly ten minutes since he’d started down a path he knew like the back of his hand. The barking had stopped maybe five minutes earlier and he breathed a sigh of relief when he caught sight of the small boat, powered by a quiet little trolling motor.

  He dumped Moira into the boat and then slid in as well, sitting down. The motor purred to life. A cold breeze blew off the Mississippi but he had worn a coat, prepared for the chill. Moira shivered by his feet. He ignored it. She didn’t need to be comfortable now, did she?

  The low-lying branches bent over the river, forming a tunnel of sorts. This was one of the few places he actually enjoyed here. If he couldn’t be at Edgeworth House, then this place was one of the few he wanted to be. Edgeworth House … the house his father had been forced out of when he’d only been a boy, recently orphaned.

  Of course, he’d take the place that should be his.

  McKay’s Treasure.

  Here, people hailed that worthless sod Patrick McKay as a hero, but they didn’t know what Charles knew. Patrick had been a vile, violent man. The men he’d taken onto that boat he piloted up and down the river had been former pirates, yet he had the nerve to act outraged when others looked to the river for a profit themselves.

  He’d just wanted it all for himself.

  As he cut through the water, Charles heard his father’s voice, reading the stories from the journal to him. That journal and a few other trinkets, a locket that had belonged to Elizabeth … all that was left of the Whitehall family.

  Do you think it’s still there? Charles imagined he was asking his father the question again.

  George would suck on his pipe and ponder the night sky. Who is to say, boy? McKay was like any Scot—crazy and paranoid. Sly, though. Very sly. He went aground once, just before he would have been ambushed, they say. Old Whitehall wrote in his journal that people said the water would talk to him. Maybe it did, because no pirate alive ever got his hands on McKay. McKay, though, he got his hands on many a pirate and he stole the treasure from many a pirate. And Whitehall says he buried some of it in the very cove where the pirates tried to end him.

  Do you think it really happened?

  There’s no telling, boy. Then he’d smile at Charles, his teeth a bit crooked and yellow from the smoke. He looked rakish, Charles had always thought. Like a pirate himself.

  Charles had spent a great deal of his life hunting down artifacts and treasures for others all for one simple purpose. The better he became at it, the more he would learn about the art of finding things.

  Because there was an art to it.

  Coming here all those years ago had been a strategic move and it had allowed him the time to begin his own search.

  Moira might insist no such treasure existed, but she was wrong.

  The town whispered of it.

  Entire legends were based on it.

  And every legend began somewhere … many even had a thread of truth.

  Charles was willing to lay odds that this was one of them.

  At his feet, Moira moaned.

  He smiled down at her and stroked her hair.

  “Soon,” he murmured. “Soon.”

  * * *

  Zeke had seen weirder things for certain.

  However, he couldn’t recall if there had ever been a time when he’d seen a man dressed like he might be a banker out on a business lunch sitting in a jon boat trolling down the lazy waters of the Mississippi. It was a chilly day and the idiot did have the presence of mind to put on a coat, but he didn’t have on a hat or gloves and he definitely didn’t look like the kind to be out fishing.

  He also looked like he was talking.

  While Zeke didn’t see anybody else, he had a strange feeling the man wasn’t just talking … he seemed to be listening too.

  A crazy man on my river. Shaking his head in disgust, he almost turned away, but then he paused, watching as the man looked down at something in the bottom of the boat. Whatever it was, Zeke couldn’t see it. But the man bent, touched it.

  Was it an it?

  Solo whimpered, his ears pricking up.

  He was staring at the boat, too.

  Zeke settled back behind a tree and gave the dog a low command. “Quiet, Solo. Quiet.”

  It was a simple command and the dog obeyed, going to the ground with his head resting on his paws, but he continued to watch the boat. Zeke knew his dog well enough to know one thing.

  It wasn’t the man that held his interest.

  Solo had been trained as a rescue dog and he’d always shown an interest—a soft spot, almost—for people in distress and needing help. He was displaying some of those signs now.

  Making a decision, he tugged out the sat phone he’d grabbed on his way out the door and punched in a number.

  Nobody answered.

  A quick search yielded the information he needed and he shot another look down the river. They were getting farther away. “Come, boy. Watch.” He pointed at the boat, signifying that they were going to keep an eye on the boat. If he gave another command, follow, they’d be moving in much closer, and he didn’t want to do that yet.

  Solo crept along close to the ground while Zeke followed, ever vigilant, watching for any sign that the man might have heard them. He was so far down the river, it wasn’t likely, and Zeke was worried they’d fall too far behind.

  “I need to speak with Chief Marshall,” he said when a woman’s harried voice finally came on the line.

  “I’m afraid he’s unavailable.”

  “Make him available. I think I might have a line on the man he’s got a BOLO out on.” He hesitated before adding, “Tell him it’s Zeke Sanders—and FYI, he owes me now.”

  It didn’t take thirty seconds before his call was connected to Gideon’s. There was some interference and he could tell that Gideon wasn’t in the station, but that didn’t matter. “I hear you’re wanting to find yourself a man. He about your age, Marshall?”

  Gideon wasn’t one to mince words and he didn’t waste time with chatter. “Yes. Where are you?”

  “Out by my place. Along the river. Dark hair, looks pretty neat? Like a banker?”

  “Well … yeah, I guess that suits him. Build, eye color?”

  “Wasn’t able to di
scern that much. He’s in a jon boat, Gideon. Heading north up the Mississippi. I got eyes on him but I can’t chat and keep watch, too.”

  “He got a woman with him?”

  The tension in the chief’s voice had Zeke biting back something ugly. “I can’t say yes or no to that. I think he might have somebody with him. He was…”

  “He was what, Zeke?” Gideon snapped.

  “Talking to somebody. Down in the floorboard of the boat. At least it looked like he was.”

  * * *

  Wait for the ideal moment. You might only get one chance.

  Moira kept the words at the forefront of her brain as Charles climbed nimbly out of the boat.

  She’d sort of been planning on taking that chance, because the man she’d married had been an absolute nightmare in nature. Or so he’d always seemed to be. They’d gone camping once—Charles’ idea of camping. It involved luxury tents and catered meals. He’d decided then and there that he loathed the outdoors and never wanted to go anywhere that didn’t come with air conditioning and hot tubs. He’d been uneasy under the wide-open skies and he’d fumbled when their guide had shown him how to pilot the pontoon out on the glittering blue waters of the lake.

  That man had disappeared, replaced by somebody who handled the jon boat capably, tying it off at the small dock as though he’d done it every day since he’d been a boy.

  Through her lashes, she watched him, her hair providing additional coverage, but she suspected he was getting suspicious. He hadn’t given her as much medicine and the lulling rhythm of the boat ride had made it hard for her to tell how long it had been since they’d gotten out of the car.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious, either.

  Something nudged her shoulder.

  She shrugged it away and grunted.

  It came again and she swore, batting at it with her hand before lifting her head.

  She wasn’t going to be able sell this one as good and when she saw Charles standing on the dock, looking competent and comfortable, she wanted to scream. The idea to grab at his legs and just jerk them out from under him came over her, but she didn’t think it would do any good.