She pressed her lips together, turned back to regard the ocean.
Shortly after dawn, the ferry would begin its voyages from the mainland to the island. She had a strong feeling that she was going to have a visitor—or two—today.
She would have to alert the authorities.
Chapter 51
An hour before sunrise, Joshua was already prepared for his journey.
He’d gotten fewer than four hours of sleep, and his lack of rest had little to do with the assorted aches and pains that wracked his body. He’d been busy.
Late last night, he’d stopped by his parents’ house and picked up his father’s .357, a holster, and a box of cartridges. He had no longer had any reservations about traveling with a firearm. His desire to arm himself was greater than any fear of being arrested.
He’d spent several hours cleaning up the house, too. Sweeping up the broken glass. Righting the furniture. Getting the bloodstains out of the carpet. Setting out new photos in place of the ones Bates had damaged or destroyed. Trying to make the house livable again.
It would take days of work, fresh paint, and new furniture to get their home back to its former state, but he did the best he could with limited time. Allowing it to remain in a state of chaos seemed the equivalent of letting Bates win.
He’d packed an overnight bag that contained the gun and ammo, toiletries, and enough clothes for a couple of days. He didn’t intend to be away from home any longer than that.
Coco waited in her pet carrier on a chair in the kitchen. Eddie had agreed to keep the dog while Joshua was away. Joshua picked up the kennel and started for the garage, happened to glance at the reminder he’d written himself to bring her dog food to Eddie’s, and took her kibble out of the pantry. He plucked Coco’s toy stuffed dog off the counter, too, put both food and the toy in a large plastic bag.
Coco made an inquisitive whimper.
“You’re going on a vacation, kiddo,” Joshua said. “You’ll be staying at Uncle Eddie’s house. When Daddy comes back Mommy will be with him.”
Although he spoke those comforting words to the dog, he had no idea how he would feel when he saw Rachel. Would he hate her? Would he want her to come home with him? Would he want to resume their lives, as before? Would he want a divorce? He felt a jumbled mix of feelings that he couldn’t sort out.
The only matter of which he was certain was that he had to protect her. She was carrying his baby. As long as Bates was on the loose, Rachel’s life, and the life of his child, was in danger.
During his brief period of sleep last night, he’d dreamed, a third time, of walking the beach with Rachel and their son. Upon waking, he’d been too disturbed to return to sleep. Thoughts of Bates roaming out there in the darkness, possibly getting closer to Rachel, kept him on edge. He’d paced through the rooms with the gun, vainly wishing that he could teleport to Rachel’s side like a character in a sci-fi movie. He would not relax until he was with her again.
In the garage, he placed the dog on the SUV’s passenger seat. He clipped his driving directions to the sun visor.
It was a four-and-a-half hour drive to Darien, where the island’s ferry dock was based. After he registered with the visitor center, he hoped to catch the noon boat to Hyde Island.
And then, he hoped to find his wife, and figure out what kind of life they would have together . . . if they had one at all.
* * *
“Have you seen the news this morning?” Eddie asked.
Joshua entered the house with the pet carrier and Coco in one hand, the plastic bag containing the dog’s toy and food in the other. “No. What’s going on?”
“Tanisha,” Eddie said. “The sista who co-owned Rachel’s salon? She was found murdered in her house last night.”
Shock hit Joshua like a blow below the belt. He dropped onto the sofa. “Tanisha?”
“Yeah, man,” Eddie said. He sat on the arm of a nearby chair. “You know Bates did it.”
Joshua couldn’t speak. He’d talked to Tanisha only a couple of days ago, and she’d been her ordinary self, full of joy and positive energy. She couldn’t be dead.
“Do they know when it happened?” he asked woodenly.
“The cops said she never showed up at the salon yesterday, so they’re saying it happened two nights ago.”
“And Bates came at me yesterday,” Joshua said. “I bet he forced Tanisha to tell him where we live. Then he . . . ” He swallowed, unable to finish.
“Yeah, you don’t need to say it. They named him as a suspect. Showed a picture of him, the whole nine.”
“Did they mention me or Rachel?”
“Not yet, but you know it’s coming. Nothing ever stays secret for long. News crews are probably getting set to bum rush your crib.”
“I’ll be long gone.” Joshua looked around the quiet house. “Are Ariel and Gavin still sleep?”
Eddie glanced at his watch. “Maybe for the next fifteen minutes. Then the rat race begins. Why?”
Although Eddie had said his family was sleeping, Joshua lowered his voice to a whisper: “Bates is going to be looking for me—he thinks I can lead him to Rachel. But since I’m going to be gone . . . what if he finds out about you?”
Fear quivered through Eddie’s face, but it was replaced by a frown. “Wait, how the hell would he find out about me?”
“I don’t know. But he found out about Tanisha, didn’t he?”
Eddie didn’t answer. His silence, and his worried gaze, was response enough.
“You’ve got to be careful,” Joshua said. “You have any kind of weapon here in the house?”
“With a rambunctious kid running around?” Eddie asked. “No, man. We don’t have any guns here.”
“How about something else?”
“Now that I think about it, Ariel has a stun gun she carries in her purse. I could ask her to let me keep it here with me. But it’s just a stun gun—it’s not going to kill anyone.”
“I hit Bates with three rounds from a .38, and that didn’t stop him, either, remember?”
“Damn, dawg. You make him sound like the Terminator or something.”
“I don’t mean to scare you. I only want you to be on your toes.”
“I’ll be on code red, trust me.”
“Remember what I said about him being invisible—for lack of a better term.”
Eddie nodded. “I remember that. Don’t know if I believe it, but I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Okay.” Joshua took his car key out of his pocket. “Honestly, I doubt he’ll come around here. There’s too much heat on him for him to risk staying in the area.”
“But it wouldn’t matter if he can walk around invisible, like you said.”
Joshua pursed his lips. “No, I guess not.”
“We’ll be fine.” Eddie shook his hand, and then they exchanged a brotherly hug. “Go find your lady and bring her back safe, all right?”
* * *
Driving south on Interstate-75, Joshua kept a circumspect eye out for any vehicles that might have been following him. He didn’t know what kind of car Bates would be driving, so all vehicles were questionable.
He’d moved his overnight bag to the passenger seat, and unzipped the pocket that contained the loaded .357. He could have the gun in his grip within two seconds. It would only be a matter of clicking off the safety.
He had never foreseen such a transformation in his personality. He’d gone from a man who strenuously avoided confrontations to a man who had gunned down a person in his home; from a man who would capture spiders in his house and transport them outdoors to avoid stepping on them, to a man who drove around with a lethal weapon close at hand and an eager trigger finger.
He glanced in the rearview mirror, scanning the highway behind for suspicious cars trailing him. His eyes were webbed with red, but shone with steely resolve.
He missed the soft-hearted, innocent Joshua, the Joshua he’d seen in the mirror before chaos and violence had taken over his life.
But that man was gone, perhaps never to return.
Chapter 52
A powerful kick, perfectly placed, blew open the front door of the house.
Dexter walked inside, breathing slowly and evenly. Dead leaves and brambles were lodged in his hair, like the crown of a pagan god. His shirt hung partway open. Deep, blood-crusted craters of flesh that had once held misshapen slugs expanded and contracted with each breath he took. Blood painted his chin, like some strange beard, and thick crimson crud was lodged under his fingernails.
He’d spent last night in the forest that bordered the subdivision, winding up there somehow after he had staggered out of the house, bleeding profusely yet miraculously alive. Collapsing, he’d awakened in the dead of the winter night, wracked with pain from the bullets stuck like giant splinters in his body.
Although in agony, he understood he could not go to the hospital. The police would have been expecting him to wander into a hospital or emergency clinic, to seek treatment for gunshot wounds, and would have dropped a net on him and hauled him in.
With no options, he’d been forced to open his own clinic, under the moon and the hard stars. A hospital with only one instrument.
His Bowie knife.
Amazingly, in spite of his fall down the stairs, he’d managed to keep the blade on his person. Resilience was a sign of a true warrior.
He’d used the knife to carve the slugs out of his flesh. One at a time. With no anesthesia. The procedure had taken hours, the blood loss had been tremendous, and the pain had been unbelievable; he’d blacked out more times than he could remember.
But the suffering, though hellish, had also been sweet. Cutting deep into himself, feeling the warm blood flow over his fingers, he had fixated solely on his wife’s shining face.
See how I’m bleeding for you, bitch. See the sacrifice? Till death do us part . . . .
It didn’t seem possible that a man could bleed so much and continue to live, but he had held on to life, savagely. Perhaps, thanks to the mad mulatto doctor, he had become something greater than a mere man.
Sometime after he’d removed the last slug, he passed out again. When he awoke, it was dawn, and he was ravenously hungry.
He came upon an unsuspecting doe in the woods. He’d intended to gut it with the blade, but using the knife suddenly seemed like a crutch, like something only a weakling would use. He finally understood that a man of true power did not need a weapon.
So he’d leapt onto the doe like a panther and, with one mighty twist, snapped its neck.
The raw, steaming flesh was the most satisfying meal he’d ever enjoyed in his life.
He had evolved to a higher level, he realized. His capabilities were blossoming, in unexpected ways—his body had mostly healed from the gunshot wounds and his crude, battlefield medical procedure. Death had tried to take him, but he had given Death the finger.
He was truly unstoppable.
One thing hadn’t changed, however: his mission to find his wife. She was more important than ever.
He wanted to fuck her. To impregnate her. Something he’d been unable to do before his incarceration, supposedly due to some shortcoming of his. The asshole doctors had called it a low sperm count. Whatever the problem, his evolution had solved it.
He was going to get his wife pregnant, keep her close while she brought the baby to term and gave birth to his seed, the first of a new generation of genetically advanced men.
Then he was going to kill her.
He got a hard-on just thinking about it.
But first, he had to find her. The illegitimate husband was the key. The motherfucker knew where she had gone.
Dexter went deeper inside the house. The only sound was the humming refrigerator.
He’d known before he kicked down the door that the guy was gone, or else he would have entered with more stealth. A few rings of the doorbell while he was cloaked had failed to rouse any reaction from Joshua or the little dog, confirming the house’s vacancy. With them away, he saw no need to break in stealthily, like a common burglar.
He noted that the bastard had cleaned up the place. Had swept up the glass and re-arranged the furniture. He’d set out new pictures, too.
It was as if he were telling Dexter to fuck off. A charge of anger pulsed through Dexter, like electricity crackling through a wire.
But where had he gone? To run errands? No. Wrong. If he was out taking care of routine business, the dog would have been there.
Their battle yesterday could have rattled Joshua so much that he’d decided to take the dog with him wherever he went, to keep the little pisser safe, but that didn’t feel right to Dexter. Something else was going on.
He entered the kitchen. He stood beside the island, and looked around.
Beside the refrigerator, there was a small wooden board on which hung various keys. An erasable white board hung near the key rack. It was the size of a regular sheet of paper, with a black marker and a small eraser clipped to the side. The title at the top read: “To Do List.”
Dexter approached the board. There was one item written in barely legible handwriting: Remember Coco’s food for Eddie’s.
Coco had to be the little dog. But who was Eddie? And why did his name sound familiar?
Dexter ran his hand through his hair, dead leaves falling loose and wafting to the floor.
Eddie had to be a friend. A friend that Joshua was entrusting with the dog.
Which meant that Joshua was going somewhere, and didn’t want to take the dog with him. Such as going to be with Dexter’s wife, wherever she was hiding.
Still, the name Eddie was familiar to him. He had seen the name recently, in reference to Joshua.
He turned around and around in the kitchen, as if searching for the answer on the walls.
Yesterday. The mailbox. Dexter had skimmed through Joshua’s mail. The envelope that had looked as if it contained a holiday card. He had seen the name “Eddie” in the return address, along with a more distinctive name. Ariel or Ariyanna or something.
He didn’t see an envelope lying on the counter, so he looked in the next most reasonable place: the tall, stainless steel garbage can at the edge of the kitchen.
He found the envelope, Christmas red, buried amidst a couple of banana peels and a crushed box of Honey-Nut Cheerios. The big boy apparently liked to eat a healthy breakfast.
Dexter fished out the envelope and flattened it on the counter. There was a return address label, white on black text with a silver snowflake in the background: Eddie and Ariel Barnes. It was an Atlanta address.
Dexter glanced at the refrigerator. One of those photographic holiday cards was pinned to the freezer door with a magnet: “Happy Holidays from the Barnes Family.” An attractive young black couple and a fat-headed kid were gathered in front of a Christmas tree.
Dexter recalled seeing the guy before. He crossed into the family room and looked at the wedding photos. There he was, standing with Joshua in one of those groom and best man poses.
“It’s going to be a Merry Christmas for you, Eddie,” Dexter said.
Dexter crumpled the envelope and tossed it in the trash—he’d memorized the address—and left the house to make the acquaintance of Mr. Eddie Barnes.
Chapter 53
Joshua pulled into the asphalt parking lot of the Hyde Island Visitor Center, in Darien. It was ten minutes past eleven. The next ferry departed at noon, which gave him ample time to book passage to the island.
On the way there, he’d made a quick stop at Wal-Mart, to purchase a few items that he anticipated he might need later. He wanted to be prepared for anything that might happen.
As he got out of the Explorer, slinging his overnight bag over his shoulder, he surveyed the parking lot. It was less than half full; winter was probably a slow season for island visitors. But he saw a vehicle in the far corner, under the long, limp leaves of a palmetto tree, that made his breath snag in his throat.
Rachel’s silver Acura.<
br />
At first, he thought he was mistaken. He’d seen plenty of similar Acuras the past few days, and every time, his heart jack-hammered and he looked to see if his wife was driving, and he was always wrong.
But this one had to be hers. He walked closer, rocks crunching under his boots.
A seagull wheeled overhead, screeching, and in a fluttering of wings landed atop the car’s roof.
He was right. The Acura had Rachel’s rear license plate. The other giveaway was the red-and-white bumper sticker. It gave her salon’s name, and included the shop’s phone number and Web site address. In a city like Atlanta, where everyone had a hustle, you had to promote yourself constantly to stay competitive.
Joshua walked around the Acura, peering inside. The seagull, perched like a weathervane on the roof, didn’t flee at Joshua’s approach. The bird followed his movements with a penetrating, almost challenging look. It must have been accustomed to close contact with humans.
Streaks of salt, from the ocean breezes, filmed the windows, but he could see that she hadn’t left any belongings inside. It was typical of her. She always kept the car showroom-clean.
Joshua placed his hand on the car’s flank, needing to make sure it was solid and wouldn’t evaporate like a figment of his imagination. His fingers tingled on the cool metal, as if the car were a live wire running directly to Rachel.
For a minute, he considered getting in his SUV, and driving away. He’d finally assembled the great puzzle and learned where Rachel had taken refuge. He could leave her alone on the island, let her stay until she decided to return home. She would be safe. There was no way Bates would find her there.
Yes. He could just go home. Leave her be. Hadn’t she advised him not to track her down?
As thoughts of withdrawal circled his mind, Joshua recognized them for what they were: traces of the old, non-confrontational Joshua. The truth was, when he found Rachel on the island, they were going to have a difficult conversation, a talk that would determine the future of their marriage. The old Joshua rebelled at such discussions, would rather bury his head in the sand, ostrich like, and naively hope for the best.
The Darkness To Come Page 24
