by Jana DeLeon
A yelp sounded from some distance away, and Max knew he’d gotten off a good shot. A second later, he heard someone running through the brush, the sound growing fainter with every passing second.
Max scooped Colette up and hurried back to the village. There was no way he could risk carrying her to the boat with the shooter in the swamp. And for all he knew, the shooter may have found the boat and set it adrift. The village was hardly secure, but it offered a lot more safety than the swamp.
Thunder clapped overhead and he cursed as he picked up his pace. He’d forgotten about the storm, but it was coming. Whether they were ready for it or not.
He ran to the center of the village and paused for a moment to consider the options. The church offered a good view of everything and the advantage of a loft with windows. The disadvantage was all the windows downstairs, but he could grab blankets from the cabins and cover them. Mind made up, he dashed into the church and
gently placed Colette on one of the pews.
She was still unconscious, but the cut on her head was no longer bleeding and her pulse was still strong. He needed to find blankets, medical supplies, and food and water, but he hated the thought of leaving her here alone. Still, the windows were solid glass and there was no back door, so if he kept his cabin search to areas where he had a clear view of the church’s front door, he should be able to protect her.
He ran out of the church and into the nearest shack. Once the storm hit, gathering supplies would become only more difficult. He needed to locate as much as possible before it began to rain.
The first shack yielded two blankets but no medical supplies. All the food was spoiled, so he tossed the blankets through the front door of the church and sped into the next shack. In this one, he found a bag of potato chips, probably from trading at Danny’s gas station.
He managed to scour ten more shacks before the rain began to plummet, reducing visibility to almost nil. Dripping wet, he burst into the church and dropped the last of the spoils on the floor beside the others. He’d managed a decent haul in a short amount of time. Plenty of blankets for the windows and to cover Colette, a hammer and nails, bandages and peroxide, aspirin, chips and canned food, a couple of canned sodas and some jugs of distilled water. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it was enough to outlast the storm and the night, if necessary.
He went to check on Colette and was relieved to see her starting to stir. Her eyelids fluttered and her hand moved.
He placed his hand on hers and said softly, “Colette.”
Her eyes flew open and she tried to bolt up, but she barely lifted herself from the pew before clutching her head with both hands. She stared at Max, clearly frantic at first, but then the panic left her eyes as she focused in on him.
“Max! Thank goodness.” She lowered her hands from her head and glanced around. “What happened?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I was searching the shacks…” She frowned, her brow scrunched in an effort to remember. Suddenly her expression cleared. “I found drawings and wanted to show them to you. I left the shack and someone hit me on the head.”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“No. He was wearing a mask, like the one we found here.”
Max hurried to the front of the church and opened the cabinet. The black mask was still hanging in place. “He must have brought his own.”
“He started dragging me into the swamp. I tried to fight but I was so dizzy. He hit me again, and I don’t remember anything after that.”
Max took a seat next to her and filled in the gaps.
“Oh!” She covered her mouth with her hand as he described dragging her through the brush as the attacker fired on them. He went on to tell her about his return fire.
“Do you think you hit him?”
“Yeah, but he ran away at a good pace. He may be injured, but I have no way of knowing how badly. I might only have nicked him.”
“You made him leave. That’s all that matters.”
Her bottom lip quivered and a single tear fell out of the corner of her eye and down her cheek. “I thought I was going to die,” she whispered. “If you hadn’t found me…”
Max wrapped his arms around her and held her close, the memory of his own fear slamming back into him. They’d both been very lucky. “But I did find you. Don’t even think about anything else. You’re safe and we’re going to keep you that way.”
She clung to him a little longer then leaned back, wiping the tears from her face with her hand. “I don’t understand—if he had a gun, why didn’t he shoot me?”
He frowned. She’d narrowed in on the one thing that had been bothering him, too. “I can only guess that he wanted something from you.”
“But I don’t know anything.”
“He doesn’t know that. You’re friends with Anna and you spent the night in her hospital room. Maybe he thinks she woke up and told you something, or maybe he thinks she told you something before she left.”
“About the coins?”
“If we assume that’s what he’s after, then yeah.”
“He still would have killed me,” she said, her voice shaky. “Once he found out what I knew or decided I didn’t know anything at all.”
He struggled for the right answer, because the honest one wasn’t very pleasant. But ultimately, all he could do was nod in agreement.
“And he’ll try again,” she said, “because he didn’t get the answer he was looking for.”
Max clenched his hands, not willing to think about another attempt on Colette’s life. “He’ll have to come through me to do it. We didn’t know how far he’d carry things before. Now we know and we’ll be more prepared.”
“But how? We’re sitting ducks. He can just stay in the swamp and wait for us to leave.”
“I’m working on that. Just try not to worry about it. When I’ve worked everything out in my head, I’ll let you know.”
She nodded but didn’t look convinced. “In the meantime, we’re staying here?”
“Yeah. I scouted some supplies before the storm hit.” He rose from the pew and dug through the supplies. “I haven’t had time to get them sorted, but I found some aspirin, and we need to clean those cuts on your hands.”
He retrieved the bottle of aspirin and a can of soda from the pile and brought them to Colette. “It’s not much, but it should help your headache.”
He went back to the pile and dug out a jug of water and some cloth. “Use these to clean your hands. I want to get the blankets up as soon as possible.”
“I can help,” she said and started to rise.
He placed a hand on her shoulder, preventing her from standing. “Stay here and rest. I need you in top shape for when we run.”
She wanted to argue, but with her medical training, he knew she wouldn’t. He was right and she knew it. Finally, she nodded and started cleaning her hands.
He grabbed a blanket, the hammer and some nails from the supply stack and began covering the first window. Lightning flashed, illuminating the village, and he peered into the darkness, trying to ferret out any sign of movement. Any sign that the shooter had returned. He couldn’t see anything.
But he knew something was out there.
* * *
COLETTE SHOOK A COUPLE of aspirin out of the bottle and downed them with a swig of the soda. Her hands throbbed a bit from the cuts, but they were mostly superficial and should heal quickly. It was already dim inside the church with the storm raging, but as Max covered the windows, the light was reduced to only what filtered through the windows of the loft at the front of the church.
Watching Max move quickly from window to window with blankets and a hammer, she tried to come to grips with the fact that she’d almost been killed. She flipped the aspirin bottle over and over between her fingers, staring down at it as her pulse beat its rhythm in her temples. It could have been over. That easily. Despite all the things she’d never done. Despite all the goals she had that would h
ave gone unaccomplished. Despite having never found that one person to share her life with.
“It will take a while to process it.” Max’s voice sounded quietly behind her.
“Oh.” She hadn’t even realized he’d stopped working, much less that he’d walked up behind her. He handed her a blanket then climbed over the pew and sat down beside her.
“At first, it’s like you dreamed it all,” he said. “Then when it hits you that it’s real, you either get upset or mad or both. Then you figure out how to deal with it. And the more time that passes, the less you think about it, so the less you have to deal.”
“Have you ever been close…”
“I’ve been as close as I was today several times. It was the nature of my job.”
“But it doesn’t seem to bother you as much.”
“I got used to it, I guess. I go straight to pissed off and skip the dream state. But I wasn’t talking about the possibility of dying, exactly. I just meant when something happens that stretches the boundaries of even our wildest imagination, it takes some time to absorb.”
He sounded so certain that she wondered what had happened that was so bad it knocked him into a surreal state. What was worse than the fear of dying? She looked over at him, but he was staring up at the cross at the front of the church. Had he sought answers in religion before? Had he gotten any?
Before she could change her mind, she asked, “So what happened to you that took time to process?”
He continued to stare at the cross for several seconds, and she thought he wasn’t going to respond. Finally, he said quietly, “My father was murdered.”
Her breath caught in her throat and she placed her hand on his. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I was only ten when it happened. It’s not something I talk about much.”
“I understand.”
He looked at her and nodded. “People say that a lot, but do they really?”
“I can’t speak for other people, but I think I do. My parents were both killed in a boating accident when I was six. I was raised by my aunt, a stern, humorless woman who tolerated children but never liked them.”
Max shook his head. “That’s tough.” He turned his hand over to clasp hers and gave it a squeeze. “I guess you do understand.”
“Did they ever catch him? The man who murdered your father?”
“No.”
The answer was so brief, given the huge revelation, that Colette knew he was leaving something out. Something big. Perhaps something that he still hadn’t processed, even all these years later.
He released her hand and rose from the pew. “Are you hungry? I have some cans of chili and potato chips. It’s not exactly five-star fare—”
“Sounds wonderful to me, and yes, I’m starved.”
She watched as he dug through his bounty and was surprised to see a glow of light. He turned around and she saw the candle he carried on a plate. As he approached the pew, she got a better look at the candle and felt an irrational spike of fear run through her body.
The candle was black.
It doesn’t mean anything. The words sounded logical as they echoed in her mind, but all the logic in the world wasn’t enough to eliminate the creepiness of that black candle, its flame burning brightly in the still, silent air of the church.
He placed the plate with the candle on a table just behind the pew where she sat, then turned and went back to retrieve the food. Colette was glad he hadn’t clued in on her unease. He had enough to worry about already without having an irrational female on his hands.
She looked back at the candle and watched the flame flicker, swaying to an unheard beat on its black dance floor. Despite the small flame, the candle put off quite a bit of light, illuminating a ten-foot area with its glow.
“It’s not much,” Max said as he walked back over to her, his arms loaded with supper fixings. “But it gives us enough light to see in here.”
“Do you think if he’s out there…”
“That he can see the light? Probably, but there was no place in the village we could hide that he couldn’t find us. The church was the best choice out of a lot of bad choices.”
He handed her the chips, can of chili, can opener and a spoon, but didn’t sit back down next to her. Maybe it had been easier to bare his soul in the dark. Disappointed, Colette opened the can of chili and tasted a bit. It would have been better hot and loaded with onions and cheese, but it wasn’t bad.
Max walked from window to window, pulling each blanket to the side and peering out into the darkness. Then he climbed the stairs to the loft of the church and looked out the windows on all three sides. Apparently satisfied, he climbed back down and grabbed another can of chili, then sat in the pew in front of her, stretching his legs out on the pew, turned so that he was facing her.
She handed him the can opener and he opened his supper. “You said you found some drawings you wanted to show me?”
“Yes. They were tucked between the sheets of a book—Grimms’ Fairy Tales.”
“How appropriate,” he muttered.
Colette smiled at their shared thought. “They were very detailed pencil drawings. One of them was of Anna.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. It’s a perfect rendition of her, even down to the mole on her left cheek.”
“Then this must be Cache.”
“Oh.” She stared at him for a moment. “I guess I have assumed all along it was. I probably shouldn’t have. There must be more villages like this in the swamp.”
“That’s it!” He jumped up from the pew. “They must have another village.”
“Another village?”
“The legend was that the village disappears, but what if the truth is that it’s not the village that disappears but the villagers?”
Colette nodded, cluing in to his line of thought. “And over the years, the story got skewed and eventually became a campfire tale.”
“Exactly. And that’s why they didn’t need to take supplies. All these years, the villagers have managed to live in the swamp without issue, and maybe now we know why.”
“But why all the secrecy? What danger were they in that would prompt them to build entire alternate communities?”
“Something to do with the coins, perhaps? As soon as we get back to New Orleans, I want to look harder into this coin angle.”
Colette felt a trickle of warmth run through her at his confidence. He wasn’t saying “if” they got back to New Orleans. He was assuming it would happen, and that gave her own slagging confidence a boost it dreadfully needed.
“Maybe Anna will be awake when we return.”
“That sure would be the most direct route to information. Do you think it’s possible?”
“Yes. There’s really nothing about her medical condition that would keep her unconscious. At this point, it’s simply her body’s way of speeding up the healing process.”
“Then we’ll hope for the best on that end.” He walked over to a back window and peered outside. “Did you recognize anyone else in the drawings?”
“Not straight off, but there was one drawing that looked familiar. It was an old man, wrinkled and unkempt, but there was something about him that I know I’ve seen before. I just can’t place it.”
“Maybe a descendant? Someone in Pirate’s Cove who shares the same features, but younger?”
She shook her head. “I did a mental comparison between the drawing and everyone I’ve met in Pirate’s Cove, but none of them resemble the man in the drawing. I wish I had the book. You might be able to recognize someone.”
He glanced outside once more and frowned. “What cabin did you say the book was in?”
“The second one from the end nearest the edge of the clearing.”
“Where the attacker hit you?”
“Yes, that’s it exactly.”
“I wonder…” He stared outside for several seconds, then looked back at her. “That cabin is only twenty yard
s away, if I cut through the next row. Do you think you’d be okay—”
The apprehension must have shown clearly on her face because he cut off his sentence entirely. “I’ll be fine,” she said, trying to sound tough and calm.
He didn’t look convinced.
“I promise. My headache is almost gone and you’ve recovered the shotgun. Quite frankly, between the storm and the shooter, I’m safer in here than you are out there.”
“That’s true,” he said, but she could tell he still didn’t like it.
“I’ll take the shotgun and move up to the loft. If he comes in, I’ll have a clear shot at him from up there.”
He nodded. “You’re right. I’d planned on moving us up there for the night. Go ahead, then.”
She put down what was left of her chili, food completely erased from her thoughts, and hurried to the front of the church. She grasped the first rung of the ladder as Max slid behind it to hold it as she climbed. She pulled herself onto the loft then reached back down to grab the shotgun, which Max handed up to her.
“You’re sure you’re okay with this?” he asked.
“Positive. Just go, and hurry.”
“I promise,” he said as he hurried to the entrance. “I’m only going for the book. It should take a couple of minutes.”
He opened the door a crack and looked outside, then slipped out the door and eased it shut behind him. Colette watched as the door closed and tried not to think of what she would do if he didn’t return.
She glanced around the loft, trying to figure out the best vantage point among the boxes strewn around. A wooden crate sat in a corner back a bit from one of the loft windows and would offer her a clear view of the church entrance. A row of boxes sat two feet in front of the crate, given her the perfect cover. If anyone but Max walked through the front door, she’d drop down behind the boxes and start firing.
Taking a seat on the crate, she peered out the window and into the storm, but she couldn’t see a thing in the inky black and pouring rain. It was dark in the loft, and for a moment she wished she’d brought a candle with her, but with the loft windows uncovered, it would have been a dead giveaway of her hiding place. Better the candle was left at the back of the church, where it would illuminate whoever walked in the door.
