The floor of the lower level was alive with rats, scurrying to and fro in panic, squealing horribly. One or two sat up and sniffed at the intruders. Others tried to flee the sudden burst of wind and rain coming through the open door, but ran into the sheer mass of their fellows, backing up against the bottom of the stairs until the formed a solid, panicked mass. The way to the stairs was blocked by what looked like a furry brown carpet. Glory screamed in revulsion.
“Oh, God damn it,” Sharon groaned. It was the last straw. She leveled the gun and fired. There was an explosion of blood and viscera in the center of the mass of rats and the terrified squealing doubled in volume and urgency. Sharon fired again. “Get out of my way!” she shouted.
Someone shouted something unintelligible from the top of the spiral stairs and Sharon heard a clatter of feet on the wooden risers. There was a sudden smell of burning in the air and a red, demonic glow filled the center of the narrow cylinder. Len Bohler came into view, holding a sputtering, bright red flare in one hand. The squeals rose to screams as the rats panicked. “Step back!” he yelled to Sharon and Glory. “Give them somewhere to run!” Sharon stepped away to the side of the door, drawing Glory with her, just as the rats charged. They flowed out into the rain like a dirty brown river, spreading out into a wedge before they vanished in the tangled masses of downed vegetation that now surrounded the lighthouse on its landward side. When the last of the vermin had fled, Bohler stepped out, the flare hissing and steaming in the rain. “Come on,” he urged them. “They’re gone now, but they’ll be back when they get over being scared.”
Once inside, Sharon sat down on the bottom step, winded. Glory sat down on the floor in front of her, her head down with exhaustion.
“Where’s Mercer?’ Bohler asked.
“He was…” she struggled to catch her breath, “He was in the house. When the tornado hit. You saw?”
Bohler nodded.
“I don’t get it,” Glory whispered. “Why didn’t he come with us? He could have just shot that guy. He could have…”
“He knew Deputy Bohler here would try to take him in when this is over.” Sharon was looking at him steadily. “Right, Deputy?”
Bohler nodded.
“I don’t think he saw that as an option,” Sharon went on. “And since I’d made him promise not to kill you…” she trailed off. There were tears in her eyes.
“I guess I should thank you for that,” Bohler said quietly.
“Yeah,” Sharon said. “You should.” She stood up and started climbing the stairs. Glory stood up and gave him an inscrutable look before she turned and trudged after her. After a moment, Bohler followed.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
The storm finally ended shortly after three in the afternoon. Bohler, Glory, and Sharon stepped out onto the catwalk of the lantern room. Phillips was still inside, lashed securely to a metal support. He had not spoken since Sharon and Glory returned, expect for a quiet, pained “Thank you,” when Bohler had splinted his leg, immobilizing the ruined knee with scraps of wood scrounged by Glory from just outside the lighthouse door.
There were still bands of cloud scudding across the sky, and to landward they could see the thunderheads and lightning flashes where the storm was expending its slowly diminishing fury. Robbed of the sustenance of heat and open water, the great storm began to die as soon as her eye came onto dry land. Her death throes would certainly cause more major damage, and it was likely more would die, but the monster was doomed.
They looked out onto a scene of complete devastation. The water was everywhere, glittering in deceptive calm in the bright sunlight. Not a single house stood intact from what they could see. The clubhouse was no more than a pile of rubble. What looked like hundreds of trees were down, many of them stripped of leaves and branches. They were scattered haphazardly across the landscape like pick-up sticks.
“One thing’s for sure,” Sharon said. “I’m going to need to find a new job.”
“Well,” Glory said, “I never wanted to go to that school anyway.”
“Look,” Bohler was pointing back toward the mainland. A sleek deep-hulled blue speedboat was bouncing across the chop that remained in the sound, throwing up a spray of water behind it in its haste. It slowed as it approached the island, moving along the shoreline. They could make out a single figure at the controls.
“I think Mr. Phillips’ ride is here,” Bohler said. The speedboat suddenly accelerated and sped away. They watched it silently until the sound of its engines faded over the water.
It wasn’t until hours later, when the waters had begin to recede, that they spotted another, larger boat headed toward the island. This one was painted white, with a single orange stripe on the side. “That one’s our ride,” Bohler said. “Come on. They’ll probably put small boats in at the marina.”
It was a slow walk to the marina, with Phillips, still glum and silent, hobbling with support from Bohler. On the ground, in the sunlight, the total ruination of the island was even more apparent. They picked their way through the tumbled and shattered landscape like visitors to an alien planet.
Halfway there, they heard the sound of rotor blades. A few moments later, a blue and white helicopter, obviously a civilian craft, buzzed overhead. By the time they reached the marina, the chopper had landed in the open space nearby.
As Bohler had predicted, a small boat had tied up at the emptied docks. The place was a wreck. The office building where they had tried to use the radio was missing its roof, the longest of the docks was torn off halfway up its length, the splintered boards jutting in multiple directions like bone fragments from a compound fracture. A skiff that had been lashed to the dock sat atop the paint shed.
A knot of uniformed men was standing near the office. A man in an expensively cut suit was conducting a loud argument with someone who appeared to be the leader of the Coast Guardsmen. One of them noticed the group of people approaching and pointed. In a moment, the four survivors were surrounded by young, earnest men who looked impossibly well-scrubbed and shiny to Sharon. She became acutely conscious of how she must look, covered with caked-on mud, her hair in tangles. More Coast Guardsmen trotted up with a stretcher, upon which Phillips was promptly and efficiently loaded.
“This man’s my prisoner,” Bohler insisted. “He’s under arrest.”
“Yes sir,” the man who appeared to be in charge of the medical team sad, “But we need to…” Sharon tuned that argument out in favor of the one going on between the man in the suit and the commander, because she’d caught a familiar name at the edge of her hearing. She walked over, Glory following a few steps behind.
“There are valuable papers in that house,” the man in the suit was insisting. “Which I need to try and…”
“Excuse me,” Sharon said. “Are you Senator Buchan?”
The man turned on her, irritated. Everything about him looked expensive and perfectly cut, from his stiff brush of gray hair to the shiny black shoes that were getting marred by the mud in which the man was standing.
“Of course not,” the man snapped. “I’m Robert Dawkes. The Senator’s chief of staff.”
“Well, Mr. Dawkes,” Sharon said. “I don’t think there’s much of anything left in that house. We saw a tornado hit it.”
“A tor…” he stopped, turned back to the commander. “I still need to examine the safe.” The dismissal was obvious.
“Well, fuck you, too,” Glory muttered.
“Glory,” Sharon said reprovingly. She was really going to have to start cracking down on the use of that word.
Sharon wondered how Dawkes would react when he saw that the safe had been opened. She wondered what he would do when he or the other rescuers found bodies inside. Then she realized that Kyle Mercer’s was probably one of those bodies and her throat closed with grief. Her vision went blurry with tears and she fought the impulse to begin sobbing. Not in front of all these strangers, she thought. Later. When I’m safe.
She was distracted by
a flash of color at the corner of her eye. She looked over, and her eyes widened in amazement.
Captain Jack the cat was pacing up and down the dock, in front of the door of the paint shed. He stopped, looked at it, and mewed. Sharon walked over, glancing behind her. Everyone was still busy arguing. She scooped the cat up into her arms. Glory, delighted, reached out to stroke the cat’s ears. “Hey, you,” Sharon whispered to it. “How many lives did you go through last night, hmmm?” The cat began to struggle, eyes still fixed on the door of the shed. “What’s in there?” Glory crooned. She walked over, opened the door, and gasped.
Kyle Mercer sat cross legged on top of a work table that was covered by a paint stained tarp. He looked up at them and put a finger to his lips. The cat leaped out of Sharon’s arms and up onto the table, purring. Mercer scratched it behind the ears.
“How did you…” Sharon whispered, unbelieving.
Mercer smiled. “God laughs,” he said.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
Glory looked nervously out the door. “You need to get out of here,” she said.
“I will.”
“How?”
Mercer shrugged. He was still smiling. “I’ll figure something out.”
“Will I see you again?” Sharon blurted the words before she could stop herself.
“Yeah,” Mercer said. “You will. As soon as I find out what’s in this.” He held up a black notebook.
“I think the guy who knows,” Sharon said, “is right outside. His name’s Dawkes.”
“Can’t exactly ask him now,” Mercer said. “And you need to get back out there before someone comes in here and sees me. I think Deputy Bohler, and probably some other people, would still like to take me in.”
“Okay,” Sharon said. “You’re right.” But instead of moving toward the door, she ran toward him. He slid off the table and came to her, wrapping her in his arms and holding her against him. “I was sure you were dead,” she whispered.
“I got kind of worried about that a few times myself,” he said.
“Promise me you’ll...” she stopped, pulled away, wiped her eyes. “What am I saying? I’ll see you again. You said I would.”
“And I never go back on my word,” he said. “Now go. And take this damn cat with you before he gives me away.”
They came out of the paint shed to find Bohler walking up the dock toward them. They walked quickly, trying to meet him as far away from the paint shed as possible. Sharon held up the cat. “Look what we found,” Glory said brightly.
“We need to go,” Bohler said. “There are a couple of FBI agents who want to debrief us about Kyle Mercer.”
Sharon resisted the temptation to look back. “Kyle’s dead, Deputy.”
***
They carried Phillips in his stretcher down the gangplank of the cutter, Bohler following behind. An ambulance waited at dockside. An EMT stood by the open rear door, next to a tall bald man in a dark suit. The man in the suit beckoned them over.
“Agent Parker, FBI,” the man flashed a badge at Bohler. “I’ll take him from here.”
“This man’s my prisoner,” Bohler insisted. “I want to come along.”
“Sorry, Deputy,” Parker said. “You don’t have the clearance. This man is wanted for questioning in conjunction with a number of terrorist actions.”
“Terrorism?” Phillips rose partway off the stretcher in his agitation. “Bloody hell. I want a lawyer.”
Parker smiled nastily at him. “Where you’re going,” he said, “there aren’t any lawyers.”
Phillips turned to Bohler. His eyes were panicked. “You can’t let him take me,” he pleaded. ”I have rights.”
“We’ll be in touch,” Parker said to Bohler. “In the meantime, we need to ask you to say nothing about what you saw on the island until you’ve been properly debriefed. I can’t emphasize to you how important that is to our national security.”
“What did you say your name was again?” Bohler said. “Can I see that…” But Parker had turned away and was climbing into the back of the ambulance. They loaded the still-protesting Phillips into the ambulance. The EMT got in behind him. The doors slammed shut and the ambulance roared away, leaving Bohler standing frustrated on the dock.
When they were on the highway, Phillips looked over at the man in the suit. “It’s a fair cop,” he said in an exaggerated Cockney accent.
Storch grinned and took off his shades. “Welcome back,” he said.
“What a clusterfuck,” Phillips said. He nodded at the EMT. “Who’s he?”
“A friend,” Storch said. “Don’t worry.”
“That Deputy is going to be trouble,” Phillips said.
Storch nodded. “We’ll take care of it.”
“And what about me?” Phillips said.
“What about you?” Storch said blandly.
“You knew about Moon,” Phillips said. “You had to. So are you taking over his job? Eliminating all the witnesses?”
Storch grinned. “I have a better idea,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
The “EMT” spoke up. “Information is power, Mr. Phillips.”
Phillips nodded. And?”
“And I work for a third party. Someone who’d like to know the information you and your friend possess about what happened on Pass Island.”
Phillips chuckled. “A white knight, eh?”
The “EMT” smiled. “Sure. Let’s go with that.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
“I’m sorry, sir,” Dawkes said into the cell phone. He held it away from his ear, wincing. When the storm of invective died down on the other end, he put the phone to his ear again. “I understand, Senator. But the FBI is insisting on treating the house as a crime scene. It seems…” he braced himself. “It seems that the safe inside had been breached.” He waited, but there was only silence on the other end of the line. Then a terse instruction.
“Yes sir,” Dawkes said. I’ll be right here.”
He shut the phone and shook his head. He knew Hart Currant was getting desperate, but to try and steal the documents back under cover of a hurricane…
“He must really be tired of being led around by the short hairs,” Dawkes said out loud. He smiled to himself and poured a scotch into a hotel tumbler. He looked around the room. The place was a shithole, not up to his usual standard at all, but with so many people displaced and using hotels for temporary shelter, not to mention the influx of workers flowing in from everywhere to make a quick buck on the reconstruction, he was lucky to get anything.
There was a knock at the door.
Dawkes’ brow furrowed. “Who is it?” he called out.
The voice that came through the door was muffled, indistinct. “I have a package here from Washington for Mr. Dawkes?”
“I don’t know about any package.”
“It’s marked urgent. It’s from a Mr., ah, Boo-kan?”
“It’s Buchan.” Dawkes opened the door. The man standing in the doorway hit him, once, a hard right straight to his nose. It was the first time Dawkes had been hit with a fist since grade school, and it hurt worse than anything he had ever felt. Tears streamed from his eyes and he staggered back, falling hard on his rump, his hands over his face to contain the awful pain.
When he looked up, the man standing over him was pointing a gun at his face.
“Oh, my god,” Dawkes said. “Please…don’t hurt me.”
“I’d say that depends on you, Mr. Dawkes.”
“Who are you? What do you want?”
The man with the gun smiled. “Just call me John Doe.”
Dawkes shoved himself backwards across the rug with his feet, fetching up against desk chair with faded upholstery. “My god…you’re…you’re Mercer, aren’t you?”
“That name’ll do as good as any.”
“You’re supposed to be dead!”
Mercer shrugged. “Lot of things are supposed to happen that don’t.”
Dakwkes, having
put a name to his enemy, was recovering some of his composure. He got himself up into the chair. “You’re not going to get away with this.”
“Y’know,” Mercer said, “People tell me that a lot. But yet…” he spread his arms in a “what are you gonna do” gesture, “here I am.”
“This is different. You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“Well, Mr. Dawkes, I see you’re a man who cuts right to the center of the problem. That’s exactly my problem. I don’t know who I’m dealing with. So…” he reached behind with his free hand and pulled to a slim black notebook that had been tucked in his waistband. He threw it on the bed. Dawkes’ eyes followed it in fascination, as if Mercer had thrown a poisonous snake on the bedspread.
“Why don’t you enlighten me?” Mercer said.
When Dawkes hesitated Mercer shook his head. “Come on now, Mister Dawkes. We both know you’re not a brave man. Unlike Senator Buchan the famous war hero, you got out of the draft. Let me see…spastic colon, I think it was?”
“Bleeding ulcer,” Dawkes whispered.
“Right. See, I get a little confused sometimes. I grew up following a different kind of politics. So, why don’t you fill me in on what I’ve missed. Fill me in on why a U.S. Senator, or someone like that, had to hire a gang of murdering thugs to take this little black notebook. in a hurricane, no less. I’m all ears.”
“I can’t,” Dawkes said. “I can’t.”
“Yeah, you can,” Mercer said, almost gently. “It’s just a question of when.”
He only had to break one finger before Dawkes told him.
“Hart Currant,” Dawkes whimpered.
“And who’s that?” Mercer said. “And stop crying. You’re getting snot on your nice shirt.”
“You honestly don’t know who he is?”
Mercer shook his head. “I told you. I don’t follow your kind of politics. But I guess it’s time I start.”
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