“I’ve got my own copy,” Julianna reminded her. “Remember how it mysteriously showed up in the mail?”
“Yes, but I’ll bet it’s sitting in that house of horrors on River Drive,” Virginia said as she drew on a cigarette. “I’m going to bring you my copy and put it in your hands myself.”
“Fine, but I don’t know when you’ll get it back,” Julianna said, knowing she wouldn’t have time to even open the cover at the moment.
They hung up, and Julianna curled into the comfort of her bed, snuggling beneath her thick quilt. She wanted to sleep, just sleep, but the book was scratching at her mind. Other people had mentioned it, too, critics raved and bookstores had it prominently displayed in their windows.
What’s the big deal? she wondered as a yawn overtook her. It’s fiction . . .
Leyton was glad to see the sun come up. He had stopped traveling at dusk, afraid he would get lost, and waited out the dark in the thickness of the woods. His coat was warm, but hadn’t completely barricaded him against last night’s air. February had breathed cold down his neck and seeped into the pile of leaves that served as his bed.
His throat hurt, and he wanted his morning coffee. Sitting against an oak, he looked around at his natural surroundings, scowling at every trunk, pinecone, and unidentifiable bush. Were any of them poison ivy, and did such a shrub even live this time of year? He knew nothing about nature, but the thought of a rash-inducing botanical creature made him itch. He squirmed against the tree, trying to scratch his back.
His clothes looked like they had been dragged across a rake. Disgusted, he examined the snags and tiny rips, cursing the thorns and branches that were responsible. Things were sticking to him as well, little burrs clinging to his pants as though the garment was their life source. He picked them off and tossed them aside.
The great outdoors, he decided, was greatly overrated. What he needed was a suite, not a campsite, and he preferred his car over hiking the happy trails. He was no mountain man and not likely to discover an untapped spring of lumberjack talents. Not him, Leyton Drakeworth, connoisseur of caviar, fine wine, and beds that sat on box springs instead of ground that bore animal tracks.
I’m getting out of here, he swore, taking an angry swig of bourbon. Ah, that was good, shutting down the shiver in his bones and proving medicinal for his throat. It helped him stand his present conditions, but still, he wasn’t about to tolerate this lifestyle much longer. No more communing with acorns and stumps, no more waking with a start, thinking a bear had been sniffing his feet. He’d had enough of au naturel . . .
He took another swig and thought of Julianna. She was my ticket to riches once.
He stood and brushed the dirt from his pants. Jerking up his bag, he began the day’s journey, continuing through the woods.
And she’ll be my ticket again.
The destruction of the Lightfoot Gang was welcome news in the south. Paperboys worked double duty waving special extra editions, and radio stations interrupted their regular programs. Police chiefs were on the phone with other chiefs and sheriffs. By morning, most people had heard the news.
Justice had been served.
Somewhere in the Midwest, though, the governor of one particular state woke to a day that would see its own gavel of justice come down. This time, for him, it was here at home.
The governor was a busy man. A very busy man, indeed. Today, though, he had cleared his morning calendar to witness an execution.
He didn’t usually do that—watch a man die. No, seeing a man jerk and jolt as electricity coursed through his body was not something the governor liked to count among his pleasures.
Today, though, was different. Today it was personal.
The man strapped into Mr. Fry, the nickname given to the state’s electric chair, was a killer. With the ice-crusted blood of a snake, he’d pumped a full round of ammo into the chest of a sheriff who had merely warned him to steer clear of a speakeasy. That’s all. The sheriff had bled to death in his car, leaving behind a sickly wife and three boys.
The sheriff had been the governor’s nephew. So yes, it was definitely personal.
When the prisoner’s body had stopped jumping and the coroner declared him dead, the governor turned to the warden, a square-jawed, squat-bodied man who had badgered him with letters requesting funds. Seems like his guests at the Grand Hotel La Prizion didn’t find their accommodations up to par.
“Warden Josing,” the governor said, “if you want money for prison improvements, you’d best give me a tour of the place.”
Josing swallowed hard and threw an anxious look at his assistant. “Today?”
“Yes, today,” the governor said, going against the wishes of his wife and the advice of his staff. “I don’t know when my schedule will let me to get back down this way.”
“Uh, with all due respect, sir, today isn’t a good time,” Josing said, shifting from one foot to the other. “Some of the prisoners, uh, have shown hostility about today’s execution.”
“I’m not surprised.” The governor smirked. “They lost one of their own.”
“We’ve got some troublemakers who feel that the man we executed wasn’t given a fair shake,” Josing said, not daring to add what he was thinking. Because the victim was your sister’s son.
The governor pulled his gold watch from the pocket of his trousers and looked at it impatiently. “I’m a busy man, Warden Josing.”
“I understand, but today is—”
“You’ve got the wild animals locked in their cages, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Josing’s assistant jumped in. “We felt that, what with the execution, hostility, and all, it was best to keep them confined today. All except for a few who are painting the sides of the building that face the courtyard. They’re model types, though, not ones to worry about.”
“Then I shouldn’t be in any danger, should I?”
“No,” Josing sighed. “If you insist—”
“I do.”
“Very well. If you and your aides will follow me in your car, we’ll be there in ten minutes.”
As the governor’s car was drawing closer to the prison, Bruno Simons was writhing on the bunk in his cell, groaning loudly as his scarred hands clutched his stomach.
Bo Brown, the new guard—and a kid, by the looks of him—walked up to the bars of Simons’ cell. “What’s going on?”
“I’m croaking,” Simons gasped. “Right here in this stinking cell, I’m croaking.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I got me a kidney stone.” Simons wallowed to and fro. “Ya gotta help me, Bo. It’d be inhumane if you didn’t.”
Bo knew he wasn’t supposed to enter a prisoner’s cell unless he had backup. He looked down the cellblock for Hammerick, the other guard patrolling this part of the prison, and hoped he was back from his break. There was no sign of him, though.
“C’mon, Bo,” Simons pleaded. “I’m dying here.”
Bo threw a look at Simon’s cellmate, a guy called Skunkman because of the silver streak that ran through the middle of his coal-black hair. Skunkman was asleep, no doubt about it. He was snoring so hard that his second chin quivered every time he exhaled.
“Fine,” Bo relented. He jammed the keys into the lock and turned them. The cell door opened with a clank, and Bo stepped inside. He squatted beside Simons’ bunk and said, “All right, Simons. Tell me again—what’s your beef?”
Simons sat straight up on his bunk and displayed two rows of yellowed teeth. “No beef, Bo,” he snarled as he whipped out a jagged piece of metal that he’d smuggled from the machine shop, where he sweated away most of his days. He stuck the sharpest end of the metal against the tender flesh beneath Bo’s chin. “No beef at all.”
Bo gulped as beads of sweat popped out all over his face. “Take it easy.”
“Tell that to Skunkman.” Simmons laughed as his bulky cellmate sprang from his bunk and ripped Bo’s rifle from his shaking hands. In one swift move, he flip
ped the rifle around and smacked its butt against the side of Bo’s head. The young guard crumpled to the floor, where he lay in an unconscious heap.
Hammerick, back from his break, barged into the cell. Skunkman whirled around and rammed the butt of the rifle hard into Hammerick’s stomach. He gasped and doubled over, giving Skunkman perfect aim for the back of his head. The rifle butt hit it with a crack, and Hammerick also fell into the dark world of the unconscious.
Simons and Skunkman laughed loudly. This was beautiful. More beautiful than they’d ever imagined. Bo’s greenness—that they’d counted on. But entering a two-man cell with nobody to cover his back? They hadn’t expected him to be that green.
Two knocked-out guards lay at their feet. That meant two rifles and two sets of keys. They grabbed them and ran through the cellblocks, freeing their fellow inmates. The mob grew thicker and meaner. They fired on any guards who tried to stop them, then they pounced on them and took their weapons too. From the start, there was no guessing which group had the upper hand.
Voices raised in anger, the prisoners poured into the courtyard as the governor and his aides were beginning their tour. They turned to flee, but there was no shelter in sight, and the mad stampede thundered toward them, throwing punches, hurling rocks, and brandishing broken pieces of glass and metal. They fought each other, fought the guards, fought whoever was in their path.
The governor yelped as a rock slammed into the small of his back, catapulting him forward. Facedown on the ground, he covered his head with his arms as feet stormed across him. A couple of times he raised onto all fours but was quickly flattened again.
Finally, there was a break in the mob, and the governor managed to crawl out of its direct path, but he was far from safe. It was a fact he became frighteningly aware of minutes later when a meaty arm yanked him to his feet and clamped around his neck, drawing tight as a noose. He clawed at the arm, its purple veins straining beneath the flesh, but the arm only closed in more snuggly around his throat. It was like playing tug-of-war, and the governor knew he was losing.
Eyes bugged, he watched another prisoner charge toward him, arm drawn back into a rock hard fist, ready to land a face-shattering punch. The governor winced and braced himself.
The sickening crack of knuckles against skull assaulted the air, but the governor didn’t feel it. All he felt was the arm around his neck growing looser and looser until it fell away as his capturer dropped to the ground, out like a light.
Now a swarm of guards surrounded the governor in a circle of armed protection. He reached over one of the shorter guards and pointed a trembling finger at the man who had intervened for him. He was a prisoner, with splatters of paint on his shirt from where he had been working before the other inmates barged out in a riotous pack. The paint, though, did not cover the identifying number on his shirt pocket. “That man—number 12904,” the governor gasped. “That man saved my life.”
Thirty minutes later, the shaken governor sat safely in the office of Warden Josing, reviewing the file he had demanded on prisoner number 12904.
“Is he in solitary?” The governor wanted to know.
“Yes, as of a half hour ago,” Josing said. “He’s there for his own protection.”
“I’ll bet,” the governor spat. “All the other kids want to kill him for ruining the party.”
Josing said nothing. There was no need to. The governor had hit the nail on the head.
The governor closed the file and stood up. “Start processing him out.”
“He’s leaving?” Josing asked.
“That’s right. I’m granting him a full pardon,” the governor said as he went to the warden’s phone. “He saved my life . . . now I’m saving his.”
As he stepped outside of the prison’s stone walls, the winter winds were chasing fat white clouds across the brilliant blue sky. Number 12904 loved the clouds. Like him, they were free.
He breathed in the air as though for the first time. It was the same air he had breathed while exercising in the prison’s courtyard. Out here, though, it seemed cleaner, crisper.
He looked down at his street clothes—the same ones he had been wearing back when he had first arrived at this fine establishment for men. In his hand was a small military-green duffel that held a few personal items and a copy of the book Not As It Seems.
He’d gotten the first one that came off the presses but had never bothered to crack open the cover. There was no need to since he knew how the story ended.
He should know. He wrote it.
As he walked down the street toward town, the sun danced on his head, making a few gray strands of hair glisten around his temples. As soon as he got to town, he would go to the bank and close the account set up by his publisher. Next, he would board a train, the fastest train heading south.
And then, he was going to claim the woman he loved.
He took another deep breath and smiled.
Jace McAllister was a free man.
Scotty Reidman liked Ambrose Point, but this unexpected trip had been a headache. He and the boys weren’t due to come until March, but the Starlight Beach Club had been sold. The new management had decided to audition bands for their spring opening, telling Scotty he would have to sell himself before they’d put him on the entertainment list. So much for five years of being the orchestra of choice.
Well, the audition went great and he and the boys had gotten signed for the deal, but then Scotty had to hammer out a whole new agreement with the management. Cheapskates, they were. Penny-pinching misers. Scotty had his pride, along with his boys who needed to be paid, so he had held his ground on the money. It finally got squared away, and he left the manager’s office just around dinnertime.
“The fellows are itching to head home, but it’s nearly dark,” said his piano player, Gus, when Scotty got back to their motel. It was a mom-and-pop place closer to the old part of Ambrose Point. “What do ya say, boss?”
Scotty chewed on a toothpick. “Nah, let’s have a decent dinner tonight. Rest up. We’ll hit the road in the morning. Besides, I’ve got something to do before we get outta town.”
Gus gave him a curious look. “Not much happens here in February. What’s up?”
“Favor for a friend” was all Scotty told him.
They had dinner at some seafood dive near the pier. Not much on the eye, but plenty on taste. That was a funny thing about seafood places, Scotty thought. The worse they looked, the better they were. Maybe because the owners were too busy reeling in the fresh stuff to worry about the frills.
After dinner, he left the boys and drove into town, his mind on Julianna. He was thinking about their conversation at the ball, when she had asked him to drop in on Sheriff Tucker Moll.
Tell him that I’m sorry.
That’s what he planned to do when he walked into the sheriff’s office, recognizing him right away by the star-shaped badge that he wore on his shirt. He was a big man, a huge man, who almost overpowered the scarred-up, wooden desk that he sat behind.
“Evening, Sheriff,” Scotty greeted. “Got a minute?”
Tucker Moll tossed back a peppermint candy and smiled. “I know you,” he said. “You play at the Starlight every spring.”
Scotty was flattered. “Didn’t know you’d caught the show.”
“I keep up with what goes on in my town,” Tucker said. “You’re here early this year.”
“Yeah, the boys and me had a few rough spots to iron out with the new management.”
Tucker grinned. “I hear they’re a tough bunch. Need me to arrest them?”
“Nah, we settled them down.” Scotty laughed. “I’m here because a friend of mine wanted me to give you a message.”
Tucker looked puzzled. “Who’s the friend?”
“Julianna Drakeworth,” Scotty said. “You know her as Julianna McAllister, or Sheffield before that.”
Tucker’s color darkened, his friendly expression vanishing in a snap. “Nope,” he said abruptly. “I know her
as Drakeworth.”
Scotty’s brows raised at the sheriff’s quick shift. The tone was pretty hard, and Scotty could see where it might wound a soft soul like Julianna. Inwardly, he smiled, remembering her on stage at the ball. A soft soul who can flatten a full-grown man if need be.
“I don’t know your personal take on things, Sheriff, but Julianna asked me to tell you that she’s sorry about McAllister, sorry about everything.”
“Sorry,” Tucker said, his eyes mirroring disbelief. “That’s all? No explanation, no nothing? Just a sorry old sorry?”
Scotty didn’t like the way this was going. He jammed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “Look, Sheriff Moll, no disrespect, but you can’t blame her for McAllister being dead.”
Now it was Tucker’s turn to lift his eyebrows. “Did you say dead?”
“Yeah, she thinks you blame her for his death.”
“Oh boy,” Tucker muttered, looking troubled and running a hand through his snowcap hair. He yelled to his deputy across the room. “Go get some dinner.”
The deputy looked up from some paperwork. “Thanks, but I’ve already been to dinner.” He rubbed his stomach. “Had some country ham, green beans—”
“Go have some more,” Tucker ordered then turned his attention back to Scotty. “Pull up a chair, boy,” he said. “It’s not going to be such a quiet night around here after all.”
A few hours after nightfall, Leyton made it out of the woods.
He would have gotten out sooner, but Mother Nature had grown confusing, with one tree speaking for all trees and every path seeming to dead-end. When the North Star came out, he got his bearings and found his way to the edge of the woods, emerging into the dark countryside.
Keeping low, he worked his way through pastures, hoping bulls weren’t roaming about. His concern about bears had been left in the woods, but now there was this. Ah, to be in the lap of luxury again, where the only bulls and bears were those associated with the stock market.
Seeking the Shore Page 21
