by Zoe Sharp
Chris was still alive but only just, if the shallow liquid rasping he was making was anything to go by.
Haines leaned over and calmly put two rounds into the ruin of Chris’s face. There wasn’t a flicker of pity or remorse on his own features as he did it. The body jerked at the impact, then finally lay still.
Haines carefully picked up both the brass shell casings, then tucked the gun away out of sight in the belt holster under his shirt. As he jogged back to where Brown was waiting for him all the old man did was raise an eyebrow.
“Never could stand leaving things untidy,” Haines said, smiling.
If Brown made any reply to that I didn’t catch it. Mason jerked me forwards again and I was too busy trying to keep my feet as he hustled me outside and down the flight of concrete steps to the street. The sunlight was far stronger than the dark tinted glass of the doors had led me to expect and I squinted in the glare.
I could already hear the urgent clamour of the sirens heading towards the scene. Brown’s men had heard them too. They started to bundle us into the back of the van that was now waiting by the kerb.
“Wait. Put the boy in with us,” Brown said. He nodded darkly towards me and Sean. “Just in case they get any fancy ideas.”
Panic flared in Trey’s face. He tried to dig his heels in, even grabbing hold of the edge of the van door. Haines gave an irritated sigh and took him by the throat almost negligently with one hand, lifting the kid until his toes were barely on the ground.
“Think you’re some kinda tough guy, huh?” he growled.
I went for him but never got there. Brown brought the revolver up and the memory of how he’d killed Gerri with so little effort stopped me in my tracks. Mason grabbed my arms, just in case I thought about risking it anyway.
Trey’s face had congested. He let go of the van and clutched vainly at Haines’s hand. I wished fiercely that I’d had the chance to teach the kid some basic self-defence, how to break a stranglehold and your attacker’s little finger in the same move. There had never seemed to be the time. Or the need. He’d always had me to protect him before.
Haines had only been waiting for the boy to let go of the van door before he slackened his grip. Trey thumped back onto his heels, thoroughly shaken, and threw me a wounded glance as though I’d failed him. He allowed them to push him into the back of the Suburban without further resistance.
The rest of us got the van. Once the doors were slammed and locked it was stiflingly, suffocatingly hot in there. There was no handle on the inside of either rear door and no windows we could open – either to escape or to breathe. The air had a tangible mass, making it almost too heavy to drag into your lungs. I resisted the urge to pant like a dog.
The back of the van had been lined with cheap plywood, completely separating the load bay from the front seats and boxed out over the rear wheels to form a narrow bench. Whitmarsh and Lonnie ended up on one side, with Sean and I facing them and trying not to let our legs tangle in the middle. The only illumination came from a dim bulb in the centre of the roof.
Keith was forced to sit on the floor, his back to the cab. He looked insulted at being relegated to the dog shelf but he was wise enough to realise it wouldn’t make any difference if he voiced his complaint.
Nobody made any attempt to release Sean’s hands, which were still bound behind him with police-issue handcuffs. It made sitting on the cramped makeshift bench difficult and probably uncomfortable but with Sean it was difficult to tell. If he was in pain he didn’t show it.
The van pulled out, lurching as it gathered pace. We seemed to be making a series of sharp turns, weaving through the back streets rather than risking the exposure of the main drag.
I jerked my head to Whitmarsh. “You must have the keys,” I said. “Uncuff him.”
Whitmarsh just gave Sean a careful glance and shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.
It was pointless to argue with him. I settled for sitting close to Sean, thigh to thigh, needy for any kind of contact. It still didn’t quite feel like it was really him. Why, I wondered, had it seemed more real to me to accept that he was gone than it did to find him suddenly resurrected?
I reached up, uncaring of the eyes fixed on us, and touched his face with a gentle hand. The stubble on his cheek prickled against the backs of my fingers. The blood there had dried into black flecks that came away like ash.
“I thought you were dead,” I murmured. “I thought they’d killed you.” And as I said it I realised with a cold shiver just how close I’d come to executing an innocent woman for that crime. It created a big dark hole somewhere in my mind. I teetered on the edge of falling into it.
“I know. They told me the same about you,” he said, adding with a quiet vehemence, “but I knew they were lying.”
“How?”
The black, expressionless eyes skimmed across the men opposite, then back to my face. “Because if you had been,” he said simply, “they would have had no reason to keep me alive any longer.”
I turned my own gaze on Whitmarsh. “So who was the dead guy you dumped with Sean’s ID on him?” I asked. “Don’t tell me – you keep a stock of corpses in the freezer, just in case?”
“Didn’t need to this time,” Whitmarsh returned with scorn to match my own. “You helped us out good there, Charlie.”
I stilled and he laughed when he saw me do it.
“Remember the two guys who followed you out of the motel before you had that shoot-out with the cop? Well, they were Brown’s boys. You plugged the driver in the gut – lucky shot through the door of the car by the look of it. He got away but he bled out before they could treat him. After that, well,” he shrugged, “I guess it was just too good an opportunity to waste.”
I considered that information for a moment, filing away the fact that I had another death on my hands. I was running out of fingers to count them all on. The mouth of the hole grew larger and more gaping and was lined with jagged teeth like a shark. When I looked down into it I couldn’t see the bottom. I closed my mind to the lure of the edge.
“That old Breitling of yours is still ticking, by the way,” I said to Sean absently, aware of the inconsequential comment.
“That’s good,” he said in turn. “It’s a nice watch.”
Whitmarsh gave one of his gasping laughs. “I hope they bring a good price on the secondhand market,” he said, “‘Cos one thing’s for sure, neither of you will be the next to wear it.”
I tried to keep my face cool and haughty. “Come on, Jim, do you honestly think Brown’s going to let you walk after what you’ve tried to do to him?” I laughed too, but it was a brittle, mirthless sound. “You go through with this and you’re going to be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life.”
“Well, whichever way you square it,” he said, a touch of bravado creeping in now, “it’s gonna be longer than yours.”
“Brown will kill you,” I said, talking to Lonnie as much as Whitmarsh himself. “He’ll kill both of you. There’s too much at stake for him not to.”
“Brown’s an asshole,” Whitmarsh dismissed. “He got caught out bad when we had the last big hurricane through here and that fancy time-share he’s building is just about to go belly up. Why d’you think he’s gotten himself into this?” Another asthmatic laugh. “And for what?” he finished bitterly, with a vicious glance at Keith.
I followed his gaze. Keith was sitting with his thin knees hunched up in front of him, arms wrapped round his shins and his chin tucked down so his straggly little beard nested between his kneecaps.
I had a sudden vision of the way Trey had sat, just like that, in the enamelled steel bath at Henry’s place. If the boy hadn’t lied about his part in the program, I wondered, would Henry have been tortured and murdered? Would Scott have been half-paralysed?
As if suddenly aware of the hostile scrutiny Keith lifted his head, pushing his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. “At least we have until sundown,” he said, li
ke that made all the difference. “Isn’t that what Livingston said?”
Whitmarsh almost snorted. “Yeah,” he said, disdainful, “and you know why that is, don’t you?”
Keith shook his head.
Whitmarsh waited a beat, like a schoolboy dragging out a gory tale to see if he can make the little girls in his class sick. “That’s when the ‘gators come out to feed,” he said, baring his teeth in a malicious smile. “That way there ain’t no bodies for the cops to find.”
***
For a while after that nobody else had the energy or the inclination to speak. We sat and glared at each other, or avoided eye contact with each other, as the van rocked and bounced and vibrated at speed along the road south.
It seemed to take a hell of a lot longer to get back to Brown’s resort than it had done to get from there to the Ocean Center. Maybe they were just taking a more circumspect route.
Eventually, it was the music that gave it away. I heard the same raucous blare of manically cheery pap that had been pouring out of the clubhouse when I’d gone to confront Gerri. Was that really only a few hours ago?
The noise grew louder, then faded as we passed and drew further away from it. Perfect Doppler shift. The comparatively smooth metalled road gave way to what sounded like gravel, then to a rutted track that threw us around like we were the steel ball inside a tin of spray paint. By the time we stopped Keith had started to look slightly green. I don’t know if it was travel sickness or just anticipation.
When they opened the van doors Mason and his sidekick had the Mossbergs to hand again. They stood far enough back to make any thought of rushing them a suicidal one.
Whitmarsh and Lonnie got out first, moving smartly aside so Brown’s men had a clear line on the rest of us. I suppose I could understand their caution. If I’d had the opportunity I wouldn’t have hesitated to put either one of them between me and a shotgun blast.
As I climbed out I looked around me. We had come far enough on from the time-share so there was no sight or sound of it beyond the impenetrable body of trees that more or less surrounded us. The van and the Suburban had pulled up on a pad of cracked concrete that had been bleached white like old bones by the sun.
There was a single-storey building to one side of us, its walls made from silvered timber. Flakes of faded yellow paint still clung to the wood and every metal fastening was pitted with corrosion. A barely readable washed-out sign by the door announced airboat rides twice daily but I doubt it had seen a paying customer in years.
To the other side was the swamp, which was what Brown’s development must have looked like before he drained and reclaimed and reshaped the land. The concrete extended down to the edge of the sluggish water where two airboats were tied. Drums of fuel for their massive exposed V8 engines sat on the tiny dock.
Around the boats, spilt fuel created greasy rainbow rings in the water. The whole place had a run-down dirty air to it, but retained a certain picturesque quality, even so. More like a film set than real life.
Next to the building sat the rusting hulk of an old step-side pickup, a relic from the 50s. It was no longer possible to tell what colour the body might once have been. Tough grasses and weeds had grown up past the level of the floor and were making slow but steady progress in retaking the ground they’d lost during the first engagement.
“Where are you planning on putting them?” Haines asked as he approached. He had Trey by the scruff of his neck, casually shoving him along in front of him.
Mason glanced at Brown before replying, as though he didn’t like being questioned by the cop. “We’ve a couple of storerooms in the back,” he said, short, jerking his head towards the timber building. “They can stay there for a couple of hours or so. Until it’s time.”
Haines shrugged and nodded. “Sounds good to me,” he said and then he turned to Brown. “What do you want to do about the others – the kids she was with in Daytona?”
“Let’s make sure this mess is cleared up first, then you can go tie up the loose ends,” Brown said.
Trey started to squirm harder, protesting. Haines didn’t even bother to look at him, just tightened his grip. I could see his knuckles turning white with the effort he was putting into punishing the boy.
“Let him go,” I said with quiet feeling.
Haines looked at me and smiled while Trey thrashed at the end of his arm like a hooked fish.
“Or what?”
“Oh, leave him be,” Brown said with mild irritation. “You’ll get your chance for that.” He checked his watch. “Anyhow, I gotta scoot. It’s welcome night and I have to go play genial host up at the clubhouse.”
Haines dropped his hold with marked reluctance, even though he was still smiling at me.
Brown ignored him and moved back to the Suburban. He climbed in and cranked up the engine before leaning out of the window. “Let me know when it’s done.”
He rolled up the tinted window and the Chevy quickly disappeared down the narrow track cut between the Cypress trees. We could see his dust trail long after he had gone.
Mason looked at Whitmarsh and Lonnie. “Well, I guess you got a choice now,” he said. “Either you do what the boss man wants with these people, or you join ‘em. What’ll it be?”
Despite the doubts I’d tried to plant on the ride down there, Whitmarsh barely hesitated. “We’ll do it,” he said, looking me right in the eye as he spoke. “Don’t you worry none about that.”
***
They put Sean and me into one storeroom and Trey and his father into the other. The rooms had bare concrete floors and a row of tiny windows, little more than meshed glass vents up under the roof line. Apart from that they were empty of either creature comforts or possibilities for escape.
Mason’s only concession to our well-being was to take the keys from Whitmarsh and unlock the restraints. I think it was probably down to Whitmarsh’s obviously lack of enthusiasm for letting Sean loose that made Mason do it, rather than any particular concern on his part. When Sean shook his hands free I could see the bloody bracelet marks on both wrists but he never even winced.
Then they put us inside our prison and locked and padlocked the door behind us. We listened in silence as their booted footsteps receded.
“So this is it.” Sean’s voice was disembodied in the gloom.
“Maybe,” I said. “We still have a chance to get out of this.”
I felt him turn. “You reckon?”
“You remember what was said at the Ocean Center?” I asked. “Well, Trey and I have been helped out over the last couple of days by a retired FBI man called Walt – lives down on the beach. He gave me one of those micro-cassette tape recorders to try and get a confession out of Gerri Raybourn.” I blanked out my own reasons for wanting to confront Gerri and pushed on. “It was in my bag at the Ocean Center. It should have got everything that happened there.”
For a moment Sean was silent. “If it recorded OK from the inside of a bag,” he said at last. “If the local cops bother to play it back. And if they recognise its significance and pass it on to the FBI, we might have a chance. That’s a lot of ‘ifs’, Charlie.”
“I know that,” I said, hearing the wobble in my voice. “But right now it’s the only hope we’ve got of getting out of this, so please don’t take it away from me.”
I heard him sigh. “Come here,” he said. My eyes were beginning to adjust to the dimness now. I could see his outline more clearly but I would have known where to find him, in any case. My system was tuned to his, alert and sensitive.
I walked into his open arms without a stumble and laid my head against his chest. Under my ear his heart beat a steady hypnotic rhythm. His hands closed gently across my back, enveloping me.
I wanted to stay like that forever.
“I thought I’d never get to do this again,” he said into my hair, so quiet I had to strain to catch the words.
I said nothing. What could I say? That I’d already accepted his death? I kept the col
d little secret to myself. It sounded so faithless to admit it out loud.
Sean didn’t seem to notice my silence. “They got me getting out of the bloody swimming pool – how stupid is that?” he said, rueful. Those agile fingers had begun to stroke up and down my spine, feeling their way across each vertebra, almost distracted.
“I managed to put Whitmarsh on his arse before Chris waded in and then Lonnie turned up with that shotgun and made it pretty damned clear I was a disposable item. Chucked some clothes at me, then it was the usual blindfold and cuffs and into the boot of his car.” I felt him shrug to try and slacken the tension that was tightening him up as he recounted the story. “I thought that was it. Game over. They’d lined the whole thing with plastic.”
“I know,” I said, remembering what we’d found in the boot of the Taurus I’d hijacked outside Henry’s place.
“The worst thing was knowing what they had planned for you and not being able to do a damned thing about it,” he went on. “They were talking about you like you were already dead.”
“We probably would have been if I hadn’t found the SIG where you left it,” I said. And as I said it I remembered that I’d abandoned the gun, too, in the little flowered bag at the Ocean Center. What I would have done to have it back right now.
“I wasn’t sure if they’d miss it when they cleaned out my room,” Sean said, “but I knew if they did you’d find it. If you made it back to the house.”
“Yeah, we made it.”
“So I understand. You know where I was when that little bit of news came through?” Sean said and his voice had taken on a flat, dispassionate tone now, like he was debriefing after a disastrous operation, burying the emotion and keeping strictly to the facts.
I gave a slight shake of my head, though I realised his question was largely rhetorical.
“Haines took me out into the Everglades – some godforsaken track in the middle of nowhere – and they put me on my knees and he put a gun to the back of my head,” he said calmly, although under my cheekbone his heart was punching like a fist. “And just before he did it Haines’s mobile rang and that’s when he found out that they’d missed you at the house, and then again at the motel. And they thought I might still have some value, after all.”
