She had to do it. The alternative meant a short life at the hands of a monster. Besides, alligators didn’t jump. All she had to do was stay out of the water.
The first brace was just a few feet below her, angling up to another brace that went down to the piling that supported the front of the shack. She scooted forward, until her toes were just inches from the cross brace.
Leaning back, she let her butt slide over the edge and felt the rough wood on her feet. Slowly, she worked her way down the brace, until her body hung precariously in space.
With a surge of adrenaline, she reached out with her left hand and grabbed the brace, slipping a little and nearly falling.
Steadying herself, Vanessa twisted and swung her lower body over the brace, while moving her right hand to the corner of the opening. After centering her weight on the beam, she let go of the opening and grabbed the rail, straddling it, thighs pressed tight against the rough wood to keep from sliding down.
Still terrified, but gaining confidence, she looked around, tossing her long dark hair out of her eyes.
She was on the brace angling up from the piling supporting the back wall. The piling in the middle of the shack was just in front of her. She scooted higher on the brace to reach for the other one that went down to the piling supporting the front.
She could see the bridge right next to it.
Both braces were bolted to the middle piling, one on each side. Getting around the telephone-pole-sized support column would be difficult. No matter which way she went, it meant going around the full girth.
Sweat streamed down her face as she got up close to the floor beams. Spider webs caught on her slippery skin and in her hair, but she ignored them. Slowly, she reached around the piling to grab the other diagonal brace.
Once she had a firm grip, she stretched her right leg around the piling and looped it over the brace. Quickly, she moved her body around the pole and was straddling the next cross brace.
She smiled in the darkness, confidence building. She was going to make it.
Vanessa looked around again. She saw no sign of the alligator.
She’d have to work her way down the brace to where it was bolted to the exterior piling about a foot above the water. Then, somehow, she would have to climb that thick pole to the rickety bridge.
She moved slowly, trying to be as quiet as possible. She didn’t know if alligators could hear, but she didn’t want to take the chance. The rough wood drove splinters into the insides of her thighs and belly.
The pain was excruciating. For every three inches she slid down, she had to pull herself back up an inch to pull a sliver of wood out of her skin.
Finally, Vanessa stood on the crook between the angled brace and the upright piling. It was bigger around than she’d thought.
She could get her arms around it to the point she could touch both forearms with her fingers, but it was slick with damp, spongy moss on the shaded side.
Vanessa moved her left arm under the chain, moving it from in front of her to behind her back. Then she wrapped one leg around the pole.
Her bright yellow dress was now filthy and ripped to tatters. She was bleeding from several open wounds on her left thigh and belly.
“So help me, God,” she muttered breathlessly, “when I get back to the Upper East Side, I’m going to kill Benny for this.”
She threw her other leg around the pole, locking her ankles like some crazed john was pile-driving into her. She knew the strength in her inner thighs.
Reaching up, the chain now dangling below her butt, she moved higher. The length of the chain was shorter, now wrapped one and a half times around her neck. It stopped her from going too high.
From her neck, the chain curved down and back up again to where it was shackled to her leg, raised high on the other side of the pole.
She let go with her left hand to remove the chain from her neck and slipped down almost as much as she’d gained.
Her breath came in rasps as she held tightly to the pole again. If she fell in, even if an alligator didn’t eat her, the weight of the chain would pull her under. Vanessa wasn’t tall, and the water could easily be over her head.
Clinging desperately to the pole, she looked around, her eyes filled with terror at what she might see below her. The water looked impenetrable—dark brown, almost black.
She couldn’t see the bottom.
Beyond the pole, the high ground where the bridge ended, where the big man had stopped and nearly choked her to death, was only twenty or thirty feet away.
She decided not to remove the chain and just work her way up the pole, like an inchworm.
Squeezing her thighs together, she stretched her body until the chain tugged at her neck, then moved her arms up to get a higher grip.
Just as she eased up with her thighs, she heard a splash from below and something grabbed at the thin fabric of her dress.
The alligator!
And it had the chain in its jaws as well.
Vanessa held on for dear life, surprised that the weight on the chain was so little. The alligator wasn’t pulling her off, but the chain was tight around her throat, cutting off her windpipe.
What she didn’t know was that the big bull gator was only barely moving its giant tail, lifting itself slightly to get an idea of what was on the pole.
There was another louder thrashing of water and Vanessa’s left leg was violently bent up against her shoulder as the alligator tried to pull her from the pole.
The terrible jaws opened wider and engulfed the left side of her butt and her thigh. Clamping down, the sharp teeth pierced the skin of her back and thigh. The pain in her hip was excruciating as the alligator squeezed her leg against her torso at an impossible angle until there was a loud pop.
She screamed and tried desperately to keep hold of the pole, but the animal’s weight and power were far more than she could withstand.
The last thing Vanessa heard as she hit the water was Michelle screaming her name from above.
A soft morning rain fell on the old house as Willy finished weighing the fourth brick and sealed it up. He was making another east coast run later in the evening, with deliveries to four night clubs.
Jo and Sue Roy, his late wife Marley’s younger sisters, had been watching him like a hawk. But he’d worked hard at getting the sisters to trust him. Marley’s daughter, Kurt, was in prison. He’d explained to Jo and Sue Roy that until Kurt was home with them again, he was going to hold fast to his late wife’s dying wish as she lay gasping in his arms. He would keep the operation running and the fortune intact until the family could decide on who would lead the clan.
Another week was all he needed to put up with them. Then the timing would be right. Moving forty million dollars in gold bars from the underground vault in the backyard would take some time.
Willy stared out the window at the rain falling down. Then he looked around the room. He’d accepted living in squalor for the last fifteen years, but it would soon come to an end.
Jo and Sue Roy were driving up to Raiford to visit Kurt next weekend, so he knew they wouldn’t be around. That was when he planned to load the bars into his pickup and head for South America.
Willy heard the bong of the sensor he’d placed in the dirt track leading to the house. He rolled his eyes, wondering which of the Blancs was stopping by this time. It seemed that someone was visiting every three hours or so. It’d been going on for months, throughout each day. At first, he thought the family was genuinely concerned about him since Marley’s death.
He was fairly certain that the highway was being watched at night.
Just the same, Willy was a cautious man and quickly put the cocaine and scale away. Then he went to the door and took his rifle from a rack just above it. He opened the door and stepped out, waiting under the cover of the small porch.
A white Ford Expedition pulled into the yard, splashed through a puddle, and drove toward the barn. It was Sue Roy, the youngest of the Blanc sisters
.
Willy stepped back inside and put the rifle in its rack, then trotted to the barn to open it.
Sue Roy stopped just short of the barn door and waited. When Willy swung the doors open, she drove inside and shut off the engine.
As a rule, Willy made sure that all vehicles were out of sight, giving the house and barn an abandoned look.
“I wasn’t expecting you for a coupla more hours,” Willy said. “Your product ain’t ready yet.”
“This rain’s got me antsy,” she replied, stepping down from the cab.
Aside from being the youngest, Sue Roy was also the best-looking of the sisters. And unlike her sisters, she was small. Standing at just five-foot-four, she was rail thin and Willy didn’t think she weighed much over a hundred pounds. Meth does that to a person.
But between the two still living, Sue Roy was the most dangerous and unpredictable. Another by-product of meth use.
But neither held a candle to Marley’s daughter, Kurt. That woman was just pure mean, Willy thought.
He knew Sue Roy always had a gun on her and today was no exception. It was stuffed into the front of her tight jeans.
“You gonna shoot your cooter off with that thing one day,” he said, pointing at her crotch.
“That cooter’s highly trained,” she fired right back. “It can pull the trigger without me even taking my gun out.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.
“Figured I’d come and help ya weigh out the deliveries,” Sue Roy said, stepping toward him. “Are you doin’ okay?”
More like it’s your turn to keep an eye on me, Willy thought. They had a rotation, he realized. With so many in the clan, and with the loss of his wife over three months earlier, at first it didn’t seem strange.
Willy lowered his gaze, feigning the distraught widower. “Good days and bad,” he grumbled. “I do miss Marley come nighttime, though.”
Together, they ran through the rain to the house and Willy held the door open for his sister-in-law, noting with some glee that the cold rain had soaked her tank top and turned her nipples into little rocks.
The woman’s got some pretty titties, he thought, remembering seeing her dance in a topless joint one time.
Over by the couch, Willy lifted the hinged top of the coffee table, took the scale out and set it aside. “I got the coke ready. Was just about to start on your meth.”
He sat down and pulled out a large, plastic container holding ten pounds of light blue crystals. “Three keys, right?”
“Two keys and two half-key bags,” she said, sitting next to him and eyeing the meth with a look that bordered on ravenous. “And an ounce for me.”
He took a glass pipe from inside the table. It was about six inches long and had a rounded bowl at the end with an air hole in the top.
He placed the pipe beside the container and looked at her. “Knock yourself out.”
Sue Roy picked up the glass pipe and anxiously peeled the top off the plastic container, reveling in the scent as if it were an aphrodisiac.
The chemical stench hit Willy’s nostrils like a tenth-grade chemistry lab. He didn’t like meth. It smelled nasty and he knew it was highly addictive. Willy preferred beer, then maybe whiskey. He smoked a little weed now and then, and on occasion would snort a line of coke if it were offered. Those all came from natural things.
Meth was made in a lab.
Selecting two small rocks, Sue Roy dropped them into the pipe and flicked a lighter beneath it, waiting for the drug to start vaporizing.
When it did, she drew deeply on the pipe, then fell back on the couch, arching her back to hold the smoke in. The outline of her ribs and breasts didn’t leave a lot to his imagination and Willy felt an urge to pinch those two little rocks. He also felt a stirring in his loins.
Slowly, her body relaxed as she released her breath and slumped into the cushions. She looked over at him and caught him staring at her chest. With a dreamy expression on her face, she extended the pipe to Willy.
“You know I don’t use that stuff,” Willy said.
“Don’t knock it till ya try it,” she mumbled.
She was lit now. Pupils dilated and breathing shallow.
But the effect meth had was short-lived and Willy knew she’d start tweaking again within fifteen minutes, as the drug wore off. The ounce she was getting wouldn’t last the rest of the weekend. And she’d probably screw half a dozen men before it ran out.
Sue Roy put another smaller crystal in the pipe and again offered it to him. Willy looked past the offered pipe at her face. She was still pretty for her age, but her teeth were stained and rotting, and she was missing a few. She looked hungry. For the meth or for something else, he wasn’t sure. But he knew she was as horny as a goat when she was high. The five kids she’d had before she was twenty-five attested to that. Carrying those babies hadn’t done anything to her body, though.
“What the hell,” he said, taking the pipe from her hand.
He held it out and she flicked the lighter again. When he hit it, he felt a wave of euphoria wash over him. He’d smoked meth a few times but was always cautious about not doing too much or doing it too often, due to its addictiveness. Though he didn’t like it, there were times when it helped smooth things over with a new buyer.
They both leaned back on the couch. With his greater weight, he sank deeper. Gravity, combined with her relaxed body, pulled her into him, their shoulders touching.
He felt the fire of her skin against his and looked over at his late wife’s sister. The truth was, Willy had always hated his wife. He’d wanted Sue Roy for years, but Marley had always held the power.
And the key to the gold.
Willy was a very patient man. He knew he’d outlive his fat wife. He was five years younger than her and in much better health. He’d been an athlete while she was getting high on pain pills and anything else she could find. So, for the last two decades, he played the part of the devoted, big-woman-loving husband.
Sue Roy turned toward him, their faces just a few inches apart. “Tell me that don’t put lead in your pencil,” she said, trying her best to be seductive.
They’d played this game many times, back before Marley died. Sue Roy knew he’d wanted her, and she was a constant tease. Toying with her brother-in-law had always been a game to her. He let his breath out slowly, feeling the stirring in his pants.
“Yeah,” he sighed, as she loaded the pipe and flicked the lighter again. “It sure does.”
Sue Roy did another hit, again falling back onto the couch against him, her hip now pressing against his leg. When she emptied her lungs, she looked straight into his eyes. “Are you as big down there as you are everywhere else?”
When he reached for her, she flinched slightly. That should have warned him. But he grabbed one of her little breasts in his big hand and kneaded it like dough.
“What the hell!” she said and started to resist him, but he easily held her in place.
She began to struggle against him, reaching for the gun in her pants, but was too high to do anything more than let it fall from her waistband and clatter to the floor.
Willy didn’t notice it and reached for her jeans with his other hand. She struggled harder and he forced her back on the couch.
“You know you been wantin’ it,” he slurred, pinning her to the couch with one mighty hand at her throat.
She couldn’t speak but beat on his arm as he forcefully yanked at her jeans with his free hand.
It was over in seconds. Sue Roy tried to lunge for his eyes, and he pressed down on her throat with his full body weight, snapping her neck like a dry twig.
Sue Roy fell limp, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.
Willy hadn’t meant to hurt her. He’d genuinely thought she wanted it. But she was dead, and he was screwed. As soon as one of the others found out, they’d all come gunning for him.
Shaking the cobwebs from his head, he stood and looked down at her lifeless body.
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“Dammit,” he growled, then kicked her foot.
There was no response.
Willy looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost noon and Jo would be arriving to pick up her delivery in two hours.
His phone rang, and Willy practically jumped out of his skin. He looked at it and saw that it was one of his clients on the east coast. He quickly calmed himself and touched the Talk button.
“Yeah,” he snarled, almost afraid to say anything more for fear of being found out.
“It’s Benito, amigo. We have a problem.”
“What problem?” Willy asked, his head starting to clear.
He looked out the back window toward the wood pile, which concealed the entry to the underground bunker.
“My man in the Keys flew the coop,” Benito said. “He says the private investigator the Murphy woman hired is on to him. I think we better meet at the shack and get rid of the evidence.”
A part of Willy’s mind was aghast at the thought of getting rid of what he considered his personal property. Having been so close to satisfying his urges with Sue Roy, he now needed to get to his shack for his own reasons.
“What do you mean?” Willy asked. “What’s a punk in the Keys got to do with me?”
“The girl I brought you last month?” Benito said. “The young one? She’s not from my stable. She’s a friend of my guy in the Keys and some hotshot PI is looking for her, hermano.”
“Fuck!” Willy bellowed, his mind racing. “Okay, okay. I was planning to head your way later. I can leave in about an hour and be there by three or four.”
“Es Bueno,” Benito said. “My man thinks a helicopter was following him. So, I told him to find a parking garage and stay outta sight until the afternoon. We’ll meet you there and help you get rid of everything, including him.”
Willy agreed, then ended the call.
He could do hard time for running drugs. But his shack out in the Everglades was the scene of four murders. He’d planned on killing the young one later that night, anyway, having found a suitable replacement.
He quickly stuffed the four bricks of coke and the ten-pound bag of meth into his backpack, then opened the table again. There were several bundles of cash, which he also put in the pack. He also pulled out a large bag of weed, which went into his pocket.
Rising Moon: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 19) Page 16
