Don't Ever Tell

by Brandon Massey

  Although she herself deserved punishment for all she had done, she couldn’t sacrifice their unborn child on the altar of her guilt. Joshua might not want her any more, but he would want their child—and a baby was the least she could give him since she had failed to give him the truth.

  Hand pressed against her stomach, she turned back to regard the ocean.

  It was, truly, a postcard worthy view. She’d surrounded herself with photos she’d taken of the beach, and had used to feel joy and peace whenever she looked upon them.

  But with Dexter at large and searching for her, her private paradise had become a beautiful prison.

  59

  An hour before sunrise, Joshua was ready to go. He’d had 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.

  Last night, he’d stopped by his parents’ house and picked up his dad’s .357, a leather holster, and a box of ammo. When his dad offered to show him how to load the gun, Joshua shocked him by adeptly plugging the cartridges in the chamber.

  He’d spent hours cleaning up the house, too. Sweeping up the broken glass. Righting the furniture. Putting away the contents of the ransacked cabinets and drawers. Getting the bloodstains out of the carpet. 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 held the gun and ammo, toiletries, and enough clothes for a couple of days.

  Coco waited in her pet carrier on a chair in the kitchen. Eddie had agreed to keep the dog while he was away. As Joshua picked up the kennel and started for the garage, Coco made an inquisitive whimper.

  “You’re going on a vacation, kid,” he 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?

  During his brief period of slumber, he’d dreamed, for the third consecutive time, of walking the beach with Rachel and their son. Upon waking, he’d been too disturbed to return to sleep.

  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 trip to Darien, where the island’s ferry dock was based. He hoped to catch the noon boat to the island.

  He pulled out of the garage.

  Driving in the pre-sunrise darkness, he kept an eye out for any vehicles that might have been following him. As he didn’t know what make of car Bates might be driving, all vehicles were suspect.

  He also reminded himself that as a former cop, Bates might be capable of tailing him without detection.

  After fueling up at a gas station, he moved Coco’s kennel to the backseat and the overnight bag to the passenger seat, with the half-open compartment that held the loaded gun in easy reach. It automatically made him feel better.

  DON’T EVER TELL 305

  In a matter of a few short days, he’d gone from a man who avoided confrontation to a man who had shot 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. His face bore purple bruises, and his eyes were webbed with red—but they glinted with iron resolve.

  He missed the soft-hearted, innocent Joshua, the one he’d seen in the mirror before chaos and violence had taken over his life.

  But that man was gone, perhaps never to return.

  Wearing a wrinkled T-shirt and sweatpants, Eddie opened the front door.

  “Damn, dawg,” he said, staring at Joshua’s bruised face. “I’m feeling pain just looking at you.”

  “Good morning to you, too,” Joshua said. He held Coco in her pet kennel in one hand, and a canvas bag containing dog food, her blanket, and favorite treats in the other.

  Eddie quickly took the bag from him.

  “You get that finger x-rayed yet, man?”

  “I haven’t had time for that.”Joshua looked past Eddie’s shoulder. “Ariel and the kids here?”

  “Just woke up. I have to help her get the kids ready in a sec.” Eddie filed inside.

  Joshua entered the house behind him and gently set Coco on the foyer floor. Coco scratched at the bars of her cage. Eddie knelt and waved at her.

  “Thanks for letting her stay here while I’m gone,” Joshua said.

  “No prob.” Eddie straightened. “Any sign of Bates?” Joshua shook his head. “He’s gone—for the time being.”

  “I still can’t believe you shot him. Damn, I only showed you how to use the gun like two days ago. I’ve known guns most of my life and I’ve never pulled the trigger at anyone.”

  “Hopefully you never will.” Joshua moved toward the doorway. “Give Coco a half cup of food, once a day, and she’ll be fine. She’ll mostly sleep all day anyway.”

  “Got it.” Eddie followed him to the door, as if reluctant to let him leave. “You’re serious about checking out this island?”

  “She’s there, man. I know it.”

  “You find her listed in the phone book for this place?”

  “I checked the phone book, but she wasn’t in there. It doesn’t matter. I know it here.” Joshua tapped his heart.

  “I hope you’re right, dawg. Hope you aren’t driving all that way for nothing, either.”

  He knew what Eddie meant. He wasn’t talking about Joshua traveling to the island merely to find that Rachel wasn’t there. He meant Joshua finding Rachel there as he believed she was, only to discover that their marriage was over, and all hopes for their future dashed.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen between us,” Joshua said. “But I have to get there. We talked about how far I’d go to protect my family, remember? Isn’t this what it’s all about— putting it all on the line for the ones you love?”

  As if on cue, Eddie’s children released shrieks of laughter from one of the bedrooms, and Ariel’s voice followed shortly thereafter, admonishing them to get dressed.

  Eddie glanced from the back of the house, to Joshua. Grim-faced, he clasped Joshua’s hand.

  “Go take care of yours,” he said.

  From a distance of well over a mile, Dexter tailed the Ford Explorer.

  He wore a bandage on his shoulder from where the bullet had grazed him. He’d sustained worse injuries in the line of duty, and had been able to treat the wound on his own with a simple first aid kit—a good thing, since the law would have been paying close attention to ERs around the city.

  He wore the concealed body armor under his jacket, as he’d been wearing from the beginning. Basic cop common sense. When you were out on the street, you geared up.

  The two shots to the chest he’d sustained, though stopped by the body armor, had stunned him, and the tumble down the stairs had briefly knocked him unconscious. His eyes were red and grainy from the cleaning agent that had been sprayed in them, his nose was swollen, his wrist was sprained, and some of his tendons were sore, too.

  It had been by sheer dumb luck that the guy had whirled around before Dexter had slit his throat in the hallway at the house. He had been toying with the guy, taking his time, enjoying the ass-whipping he’d been delivering, and the guy had gotten lucky. It happened sometimes.

  It wouldn’t happen again.

  Sunrise was brightening the horizon, chasing away the last vestiges of the night. Dexter rolled along Highway 16 at the posted speed limit, cutting southeast through Georgia, an old school soul station on the radio and a Styrofoam cup of hot, strong black coffe
e in his cup holder.

  He sang along with the music. Drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the beats.

  Although conducting a tail on a suspect usually involved a team of undercover vehicles switching off periodically, without the benefit of backup, he had to do all the work on his own, which was fine, when you had technology on your side.

  During his ransacking of his wife’s house yesterday, he’d swiped an extra set of house keys he’d found on a pegboard in the kitchen. The set included a key to open the roll-up, sectional garage door.

  After he had cleaned himself up and attended to his wounds, he’d visited a local electronics store. He purchased a GPS tracking kit, good straight out of the box.

  In the wee hours of the morning, he’d returned to the house, used the key to get into the garage, and affixed the miniscule transponder to the undercarriage of Moore’s Explorer. The transponder would transmit GPS location data to the handheld component of the device—a gadget barely larger than a cell phone with a color LED screen that displayed a virtual map—every five minutes. He had hung the handheld to the dashboard with the included Velcro strip, to keep his target’s path in plain view.

  Meanwhile, he sang, and savored the pain that simmered in his body. He hadn’t used painkillers to take the edge off. Pain, as one of his instructors at the academy had used to

  DON’T EVER TELL 311 say, was weakness leaving the body. It would keep him sharp.

  Focused. Eyes on the prize.

  And the big prizes were yet to come.

  Moore had lied to him. He knew where the bitch was hiding, and he knew where she was keeping the money, too. He was going to lead Dexter straight to both of them—he sure hadn’t awakened before dawn that morning to take a leisurely drive through the state for the hell of it.

  He gazed through the windshield. The Explorer was so far ahead that it had faded from view, but that mattered not at all.

  “Lead on,” he said. “Lead on.”

  62

  At ten minutes past eleven, Joshua pulled into the asphalt parking lot of the Hyde Island Visitor Center in Darien.

  As he got out of the Explorer, draping 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.

  Then he saw a vehicle in the far corner, under the long, limp leaves of a palmetto tree, that made his breath catch in his throat.

  Rachel’s silver Acura sedan.

  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.

  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.

  The Acura had Rachel’s rear Georgia license plate. The other giveaway was the red-and-white bumper sticker. It gave

  314 Brandon Massey

  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.

  He walked around the car, peering inside. The seagull, perched like a weathervane on the roof, didn’t flee at his approach. The bird followed him with a penetrating, almost challenging look.

  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.

  He placed his hand on the vehicle’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 surface, as if the car were a live wire running directly to Rachel.

  The seagull shrieked and took flight. It glided toward the sun-jeweled ocean, as though daring him to follow.

  He gave the Acura another glance, and then he went toward the visitor center.

  The visitor center was a small, red-shingled building standing atop a four-foot high slab of wind-sculpted stone. Winter-sapped palmetto trees dotted the property. A set of wooden steps led to the front door.

  Inside, a middle-aged black woman with wild hair that made her resemble Chaka Khan in her heyday booked his passage on the ferry for ten dollars, and gave him a laminated plastic “Visitor” badge to pin to his jacket.

  The dock was behind the building. The ferry was tied at the end of the dock, and shrimp boats and other sea-faring vessels bobbed gently in the water, too. Overhead, seagulls cawed and banked through the clear sky.

  Walking along the dock, he noted with satisfaction that the ferry was the same boat he’d seen cresting the waves in

  DON’T EVER TELL 315

  the photographs that Rachel kept in the house. The vessel was the red of autumn leaves, and Hyde Island Queen was scrawled across the hull in eggshell white.

  Seeing it up close gave him an oddly surreal feeling— like stepping into a picture, or a dream.

  But the hard lump of the handgun in his bag, and the thought of why he needed it, kept him tethered to reality.

  63

  At a quarter to noon, the ferry began boarding. The first mate was a short, dark-skinned black man with a fuzzy goatee fringed with silver.

  Politely ignoring Joshua’s bruises, he nodded at Joshua’s guest pass and showed a gap-toothed smile. When he spoke, it was in an accent that reminded Joshua faintly of a Caribbean patois. “Visiting a friend?”

  Joshua cleared his throat. “Actually, uh, my wife.”

  Secret knowledge gleamed in the man’s bright eyes. “Ah, we will speak shortly, my friend.”

  “Oh, well, okay.”

  The ferry had a few rows of bench seats that ran the length of the vessel. Joshua sat at the end of a bench and braced his overnight bag between his legs.

  The only other passengers were a trio of college students with bulky backpacks and University of Georgia caps and jackets.

  At precisely noon, the ferry cast off into the marshy channel. Seagulls circled the boat, like escorts. Cool, salty breezes swirled over the deck, tickling Joshua’s nostrils.

  He got off the bench and leaned against the deck’s metal railing, watching the dark water churning underneath as the vessel surged forward. A pair of dolphins swam off to the side, gray fins cutting the water’s surface.

  He thought about his dream. Walking the beach with Rachel and Justin. Gazing at the beach house, the ferry, and the sea. He felt an almost painful swell of yearning in his chest.

  “It be a scenic ride, no matter the time of year,” a man’s voice said, from behind him.

  It was the first mate.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty out here,” Joshua said. “You said you wanted to speak with me?”

  “My name is Jimmy.” He offered his hand.

  Joshua shook it. “I’m Joshua. You got a look in your eye when I said I was going to visit my wife.”

  “A look?”

  “Like you know who she is.”

  Jimmy smiled gently. “There not be many of us, my friend. All us know each other, from way, way back, yeah.”

  “You’re talking about her family, the Halls?”

  “Yeah. Has she not told you?”

  Joshua shook his head, his face hot with embarrassment. Jimmy touched his arm sympathetically. “When we dock, I drive you to her, ’kay?”

  “That would be great.”

  Jimmy excused himself to attend to ship operations.

  About twenty minutes later, a lighthouse, striped with fat red bands, came into view. Joshua could make out old wooden houses on high timbers along the shore.

  He thought he could see the house he’d seen in his dream, but it was too far away for him to clearly discern it.

  If that’s the same house out there on the shore, that would mean my dream was a vision of the future, wouldn’t it?

  A chill played down his spine.

  The main dock was ahead, c
rowded with shrimp boats and smaller boats secured to the pilings. He took out his BlackBerry to call Eddie and let him know he’d arrived, and received a message on the display: NO SERVICE.

  The lack of a service carrier wasn’t surprising. With the island’s remote location, it most likely fell into one of those infamous cellular dead zones.

  The ferry docked, and the passengers disembarked. Joshua waited at the end of the gangplank for Jimmy to finish his duties. He tried to use the BlackBerry again, with the same frustrating result.

  When Jimmy was done on the boat, he and Joshua loaded into a battered black Ford pickup that was parked in a dusty parking lot on the outskirts of the dock. Jimmy steered out of the lot and onto a narrow, bumpy road.

  “How far away is her place?” Joshua asked, shouting to be heard above the roaring engine.

  “Two miles, yeah. Not far.”

  “Did my wife’s people found Hall Hammock?”

  That brought a grin. “Ask her. Maybe she tell you, yeah.”

  The ride was rough; the road there might have been the same one used during the antebellum era. Numerous rusty cars sitting on sagging tires lined the grassy shoulder. The sun-spangled ocean was on the left, visible through the palmettos and moss-draped live oaks that bordered the road.

  Soon, they neared a white sign with blue text: HISTORIC

  HALL HAMMOCK. ESTABLISHED CIRCA 1857. 445 ACRES. POP. 72.

  They entered a community of mostly old, modest homes and faded trailers that sat on high wooden foundations. A large brick ranch house had a sign out front that advertised a bed-and-breakfast. A tiny cinderblock store sold groceries, and there was a white stucco church with a large bell.

  He didn’t see anyone in the street, or in the yards, though winking Christmas lights decorated several of the residences.

  “Quiet place,” Joshua said.

  “Not always this way.” Jimmy shook his head sadly. “Everybody’s moved to the other side. Ain’t no jobs here, no nothing. Place be dying.”

  He steered around a bend, stopping at the mouth of a long, gravel driveway that led to a two-story Cape Cod. The clapboard house had a fresh coat of white paint and burgundy trim, and was in good repair.