Reckoning and Ruin

by Tina Whittle

  Jasper swung the rifle up, once again pinning me in the light. “Get in. I’ll tell you what to do.”

  I took a quick inventory. My sneakers were already soaked, the sucking mud pulling at them. My skirt would be a soggy bundle of uselessness. The blouse would offer some protection from sharp rocks and pointy branches, but not gator teeth.

  I pointed. “There’s a pair of waders in the dock box. Throw them to me.”

  “What?”

  I dropped the tow rope and shucked the skirt. “You want me messing around in there, you gotta give me some protection.”

  Jasper hesitated. “This better not be a trick.”

  “You want me to get your damn money or not? If not, shoot me now and wade in yourself!”

  He stared at me. I could see the jangly burnt-wire part of him that wanted to do it, and I saw it smoothed over by the efficient no-nonsense part. He needed me swift and successful. Then he could shoot me.

  He trained the gun on me as he worked the top of the dock box, feeling around inside until he dragged out Jefferson’s hip waders. He chucked them to the edge of the water, where they slapped like a gator tail.

  “There. Now get to it. And if you make one sly move—”

  “I know, I know.”

  I dragged on the heavy rubber. Yes, some protection, but mostly stalling for time. The water was shallow, deepest in the middle around the aerator, maybe ten feet. The waders were too big, but they would keep my shoes on my feet. And I was going to need those shoes. I was gonna need to run, as soon as I got a half-chance. I flexed my fingers and felt the broken glass slide against my skin. There might be other things I had to do before that.

  Jasper sent the light to the edge of the pond, where the chain link ran. “I know what you’re thinking. But even if you make it out of the water, I’ll take you down at the fence. Hundred foot shot. With this here fine rifle, I could make that blindfolded. You hear me?”

  I didn’t say anything, and the green dot from the rifle centered on my chest. I felt the raw skin on the inside of my wrist burn in the dirty water, and I remembered Trey, and I imagined him standing right there beside me, like we were running a scenario, like we were training. I even heard his voice in my head.

  Timing and opportunity. Watch for the convergence.

  I took a deep breath, straightened my spine. “What am I looking for?”

  “Chain. Goodly length of it.”

  “And how am I supposed to find it?”

  “Head out to the piling. I’ll tell you what to do.”

  I waded in. The water was warmer than I expected, thick with coontail moss and lily pads. I slogged my way forward until the kayak got clearance, then I swung myself inside. It was muscle memory, a move I’d made a thousand times, only this was the first time I’d done it at gunpoint.

  “Okay. Now what am I—?”

  The bump came out of nowhere, like a torpedo. The kayak tilted crazily, and I screamed and grabbed my knees, pulling myself into a ball.

  Jasper’s voice was irritable. “What happened?”

  “Fucking gator! What do think goddamn happened?”

  Jasper sent the light down the bank, and a dozen pair of glittery red eyes stared unblinking back. “Probably a mama warning you off her nest. You gotta be more careful.”

  I muttered curses, wrapped myself tighter. Waited. The gator didn’t return. Definitely a female then. The bulls would not be so generous. I moved like a reptile myself—sluggish, slow, dull. Trey had explained why during our drills at the gun range. Adrenalin shuts down the blood flow to the extremities, routing it to the core. Hands go numb, fingers get clumsy and thick. I could feel it happening to me.

  I moved the paddle into the water, and it almost fell from my grasp. “I can’t do this! I’m gonna get eaten alive out here!”

  “I’ve seen you swim with sharks. You can do this itty bitty thing.”

  I heard another bellow, and felt my stomach go liquid. Jasper fired, and I heard a wallowing thrash. Then silence.

  Jasper raised his voice. “You better hurry up. I ain’t got a million bullets.”

  I tightened my grip on the paddle and stroked shakily for the middle of the pond.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  The kayak bumped up against the piling. “Now what?”

  “Now you take that paddle and you stir around at the bottom until you hook the chain. Then you pull that up and grab hold.”

  I stirred in the soupy water, catching nothing. Every sensation sent a ripple of dread through me, every sound jerked my head in its direction. I could hear splashes at the banks, the hiss and glide of leathery bodies moving through the vegetation.

  I tried to sound calm. “You could throw me a boat hook, that’d help.”

  He laughed. “Right. So you could throw it right back at my head. Make do with what you got.”

  I shoved the paddle back around the base of the piling, careful to avoid dislodging the hunk of glass up my sleeve. The water was even shallower than I’d guessed, only five or six feet, and I knew if I didn’t find his freaking chain, he’d make me get in the water and dig around bare-handed. I heard another bellow from the weeds, and I jammed the paddle back down until it hit bottom, then raked the T-shaped handle through the mud another time.

  This time I caught something. Something heavy and loose.

  Jasper played the light over the water. “You got it?”

  “I think so.”

  “All right now, be careful.” He was all earnest and excited, like we were kids on a treasure hunt. “Pull that chain up nice and easy. Don’t mess around with the box yet. It’s loaded with fishing weights, and you pull that chain off, you’ll be diving for it, you hear me?”

  I shoved my hair out of my face. “Shut up and let me do this!”

  He kept the light on me. I gritted my teeth and plunged my hands into the water, slowly pulling my cargo to the surface. I lost count of the minutes as I focused on my task. Hand over hand, I drew the paddle up, until I finally saw the end of it, thick with rust and slime. A length of heavy chain.

  Jasper’s boots clomped on the wooden boards. “You got it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Haul it up then, just the chain, until you feel the box tugging.”

  I did as he said. Soon I felt the resistance at the other end. I pulled a little, testing it, and felt the box give. It was heavy, but not buried completely. If it was still properly secured to the chain, it would come up without a problem.

  Jasper’s voice echoed over the water. “I’m gonna throw a buoy out. You attach it to the chain. It’s solid line, so use a good knot, now. You don’t want to be diving tonight.”

  I froze. The second I did as he said, I was done for. All he had to do then was haul on his end of the line until the box came free. But he couldn’t shoot me until I did because the box would sink again into the muck and he’d have to dive for it himself in the sloppy sucking mud, with gators slavering all around him. He had to make sure my knot worked, which meant I stayed alive until he had the box in hand. I held the chain as the buoy splashed next to the kayak. I didn’t reach for it.

  I raised my voice. “You decided what you gonna do with me when I get done?”

  Jasper laughed. “Lord have mercy, you don’t ever quit, do you? How about this? You get that line attached to that chain, throw me the other end of it, and I’ll let you get back on the pier and give you a running start. It’ll be all sportsmanlike. That fair enough?”

  “Ain’t exactly sportsmanlike, you up there with your rifle and Kevlar and fucking Bowie knife in your boot, shining a light in my eyes.”

  “I didn’t say it was fair, just sporting.” Another laugh. “Come on, cuz. Don’t you wanna die trying?”

  The tattoo throbbed where the glass scraped it. Jasper had the rifle trained on me, the flashlight in one hand
. I couldn’t see him for the blinding light. I didn’t want to swim for it, not with the gators riled up like they were, but I’d rather face them than Jasper. Of course, even if I reached the bank, I’d have to climb over the chain link fence, Jasper hot on my heels. Maybe staying in the water was best after all. At least Jasper couldn’t—

  Two splashes off the keel nixed that idea. I felt the almost irresistible urge to beat at the water with my paddle. My head was a slosh of panic and anger and desperation and confusion. I could only think one move ahead at a time. Only I didn’t have any more moves.

  Except one.

  I tied the buoy to the chain with a sturdy bowline. Tugged it once to make sure it would hold. The box wasn’t completely buried, but it would take two hands to haul it in. Jasper would have to put down the rifle to do it. That would be my time to make a break for it. I hoped he cared more about getting his money than hurting me. I was betting my life on it.

  I coiled the line and threw it toward the pier. “There!”

  The line hit with a clunk. The light moved with Jasper’s footsteps. He picked it up, and the light wobbled, but I could tell he still had it trained on me. I was right, though—the box wasn’t budging.

  Jasper stopped tugging. I could see enough in the glare to know that he’d stooped to tie the line around one of the pilings. “How about you paddle on back here, and I’ll give you that sporting chance we talked about?”

  The green dot centered on my chest once more.

  I almost dropped the paddle. “You don’t have to kill me to get your money. Drag it in and go!”

  “Get up here. Now.” He paused. “Or not. You could just close your eyes.”

  So much for Plan A. We were back to Plan B. I picked up the paddle, feeling the slide and shift of the glass. I’d get one chance, one, and the only reason it was a chance at all was that he wouldn’t see it coming.

  I paddled closer. The green dot shimmered over my heart. I started to breathe harder, getting light-headed. A fresh adrenalin rush. Overwhelming, stupefying. At least this way I wouldn’t have to go through the gators. At least this way it would be quick, however it was going to be.

  I stopped at the edge and climbed out, water up to my ankles, the trees twenty yards to my left on the other side of the chain link, the path to the house ahead, dozens of gators behind. And Jasper, on the pier, hidden behind the light. And the glass, sharp against my skin.

  Jasper’s voice was cajoling. “Oh, come on. Don’t make me shoot you like a fish in a barrel.”

  I shook my head. Didn’t move.

  “You don’t trust me.” He laughed. “I promised you a chance, and I aim to deliver. See?”

  He laid the rifle at his feet. I knew then that he was telling the truth, that he did want me to make a run for it. He was a hunter, after all, and he’d have the rifle shouldered and aimed in two seconds. It was no chance, running, and we both knew it. But he wanted me to try.

  I started shaking worse, praying maybe, whispering pleaseplease-please in my head if not from my lips. Die running or die fighting? Make for the woods or charge at Jasper? I walked toward him, stepping out of the hip waders. I dropped my hands and spread my fingers, and the broken glass slithered out of my sleeve and into my grasp.

  I couldn’t see Jasper for the light, but I could hear him. “Come on up, cuz.”

  I rolled myself onto the pier, stood. Shaky but on my own two feet. I started counting down. Three…two…one…

  The noise came from my left, from the trees—a swift swish followed by a meaty thunk. Another swish, and I heard the heavy thud of a body. I was still blind from the light, but I listened hard, heard nothing except my ragged breathing.

  Then footsteps from the woods, a soft tread. I heard splashing at the bank of the pond, just beyond the beam from Jasper’s rifle. A lone figure stood half in the light, half in darkness, dressed head to toe in black, eyes blackened too in the manner of night hunters. The figure held a compound bow, a fresh arrow nocked and ready to let fly.

  “You stay real still, you hear me?”

  A woman’s voice. One I knew.

  Cheyanne.

  I didn’t move a muscle. “I hear you.”

  I stayed still as she slogged through the underbrush to the pier. She worked in darkness, her boots on the wooden boards. I heard the slosh of the box as she hauled it in. She’d put down her bow, I was sure. But I didn’t move. She could have taken me out. She hadn’t. I was damn sure not about to give her a reason to do otherwise.

  Soon I heard footsteps up the oyster shell path. I guessed she was headed for the river, where she probably had something small and quiet waiting, a canoe or jon boat. She’d collect whatever sparse gear she had and slip into the night. Jefferson was in a Kentucky jail. And she couldn’t let his land, their lives, all they’d worked for, all they wanted to pass down to their daughters, go to ruin. She had come back to protect it, to find the money she knew had to be there somewhere, so that she could give it back to the Klan. So they’d leave her family alone and not burn everything she loved to the ground.

  I crawled forward until my fingers wrapped around the rifle. I could hear Jasper breathing, rapid and shallow. A whistling sound, not even a moan. I picked up the rifle and pointed the light his way, the broken glass still in my hand.

  He lay on his back, a thick pool of blood spreading beneath him. The first arrow protruded from his throat, the second from his chest, right through the ballistic vest. It was made to stop bullets, not blades, something a hunter like Cheyanne had known since she was a child. She had good aim—either arrow would have been a kill shot on its own.

  I sat cross-legged, the rifle resting in my lap, the green dot centered on Jasper. I kept it on him as my own breathing returned to normal. As his breathing grew fainter, shallower. I didn’t move until there was an emptying sound, a last exhale released from lungs that had no more work to do. Until only the sounds of the night surrounded me.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Trey beat the cops to the scene. He’d called them, of course, as soon as he’d heard about the explosion at the detention center. And then he’d violated every protocol and procedure that existed and taken the situation into his own hands, parking at the road and hurtling through the woods, fully armed once more. I’d heard him coming, for even though he was as silent as a ghost on concrete and pavement, in nature he was as unstealthy as a bull moose.

  I remembered him taking me by the shoulders, saying my name. I remembered him trying to get me to stand, and my refusing, him peeling my fingers from around the gun, from around the broken glass. Eventually he sat on the pier behind me, my back against his chest as the sirens rose.

  The EMTs managed to get past him, but he hovered just outside their circle. I cried out as they hauled me into the ambulance on a backboard, Trey at their heels. He stayed right behind them the entire time. I know because every time I called his name, he said, “I’m here.” He said it over and over and over.

  The EMTs, bless their hearts, insisted I be stabilized before I was questioned. They had no such qualms about Trey, and that was the second thing that separated us—his interrogation. It wasn’t an interview. He endured it all stoically. He was told there would be more to come, once I got out of the hospital, which is where I was headed once the State Patrol opened the road back into town.

  They let him sit with me in the ambulance while they made sense of the scene. I took his hand. Cameras flashed. The cops had asked a dozen times who had shot Jasper, and I’d said I didn’t know, a dozen times. They’d found no trace of Cheyanne, and I knew they wouldn’t—as far as anyone knew, she was in Kentucky, and I was willing to bet a dozen people there would swear she still was.

  I didn’t know why I refused to give Cheyanne up, except that she could have killed me and hadn’t. But I did know that the authorities would shake down every militia nut and KKK big job and c
onspiracy-minded ranty secessionist in the whole of Southeast Georgia —and that would take some time—and they would end up with too many suspects to count. One of them might even get taken down for it. I didn’t really care. They’d told me they’d found Train—alive. They’d told me everybody else in my world was accounted for and under protection. And Trey was sitting right beside me. I had everything I needed.

  I squeezed Trey’s fingers. “How’d you find me?”

  He hesitated. “I tagged you with a small ergonomic processor. A prototype, impervious to water. It tracks without batteries using a GPS signal. And as long as it stays in motion, even movement as slight as respiration—”

  “Where’d you put it?”

  Another hesitation. “On your bra. In your bra, actually. I inserted it between the padding and the wiring, then used the hotel sewing kit to stitch it shut.”

  “Show me.”

  He slipped his hand under my shirt, his fingers following the line of elastic to the swell of foam lining at the side. He tapped a tiny hard disc. I’d never even noticed. If I had, I’d have thought it was part of the Italian engineering. I remembered the patdown he’d given me before I left his hotel room, checking to make sure it was still in place.

  “When did you do this?”

  “Wednesday morning while you were in the shower. It’s the field sample from the meeting I walked out of at Phoenix, so I had it in my briefcase. I forgot to give it back.”

  “Forgot? You never forget.”

  “That day, I was a little…you know.” He met my eyes. “I didn’t activate it until a few hours ago, when I got the cell phone alert about the explosion.”

  His phone was always going off with warnings and BOLOs and APBs, Amber alerts and fugitive last-scene-in reports, any bit of danger a quasi-authorized law enforcement officer might need to know about.

  “You didn’t check, that whole time we were separated? Not even once?”

  He shook his head. “I was questioned, repeatedly, as to your whereabouts, and what I didn’t know, I couldn’t tell. It was difficult, I will admit. But it was enough to know that I could check at any time. If I needed to.”