Tied to the Stern

by Mark Stone

  Mercifully, the door swung open. Less mercifully, clouds of thick, dark smoke poured out as it didn’t, causing me to stumble backward. Pulling my shirt off over my head, I tied it around my nose and mouth. It wouldn’t do much to block me from the smoke, but it would be better than nothing, and that was all I had right now.

  Turning from the smoke and taking one last deep breath, I turned back in and charged.

  The heat that barreled toward me stung as I ran through it. Though the fire hadn’t consumed this area yet, it was close. The heat was too intense and the smoke was too thick for it not to be. It felt like the air around me was made of burning cinders. It felt like they were scorching my now bare skin with every passing second.

  I shook my head, trying to focus my thoughts. From what I could see of the area around me, this was a long hallway, studded with padlocked doors. Eve Jensen could be in any of them or she could be in none of them. It would take hours to check them all, and thanks to the roaring fire, I’d be lucky if I had minutes.

  I had to think. I had to focus and try to figure out where this woman might be, but how could I do that when all of these doors looked exactly the same?

  And that was when I saw that they didn’t.

  Looking up at the top of the door I saw a small painting of an orange blossom at the right hand corner. It was the state flower of Florida, of my home. But why would it be there? We weren’t in Florida. Donald Rightman didn’t even have any connection to Florida. Looking at the next door, I saw a similar painting in the top right hand corner, only this wasn’t an orange blossom, it was a blue columbine, the state flower of Colorado. The next door had a painting of a purple iris, the state flower of Tennessee.

  My mind flew back, for just a second, to the calendar in my mother’s room when I was a kid, the one that had state flowers dotting it. She used to read to me from that, telling me all the factoids and talking about how we’d visit all of these places one day.

  We never got to do that, of course. Cancer took her from me first. But maybe now the knowledge would come in handy. These things had to mean something. They had to have a purpose. My mind raced, trying to remember where Eve Jensen was from.

  “Morris?” I muttered to myself. “Manfort?” My eyes went wide as the answer came to me amid all the smoldering smoke. “Moline! She’s from Moline!”

  A lot of people think Moline is in Iowa, which would mean I would be looking for a painting of the pink delicacy of the prairie rose. But the town just borders Iowa. As part of the Quad Cities, Moline is actually in Illinois, and that left me looking for none other than the common blue violet.

  I scanned the doors as the smoke got thicker and thicker. Running through flower after flower, I began to lose hope when finally, like a ray of light shooting through the dark, I found that common blue violet.

  “Oh, thank God,” I muttered, rummaging in my pocket for the key the woman in the limo gave me. Pulling it out, I saw I was shorter on time than even I had thought. The terrible orange glow of the fire pierced through the far hall now. It would be here in minutes.

  Jamming the key into the doorknob, I turned only to find the damn thing didn’t work. I wasn’t sure why, but this key didn’t work, and since there was no pinpad here, there was no other way for me to open the door.

  Cursing under my breath, I slammed hard into the door, hoping my shoulder would jar it. As it turned out, the only thing that jarred was my shoulder. Still, I tried it again and again with no result other than a shooting pain up my side.

  Taking short, shallow breaths, I remembered the gun tucked into my waistband, I pulled it out.

  “If you’re in there, stand back!” I yelled over the crackling roar of the fire. Then I took a shot at the doorknob. It hit, of course, and then I slammed into it again with my shoulder. This time, the door gave way, depositing me on the other side of it. I fell against the hard floor, sweating and looking up at the ceiling. Suddenly, the woman I saw from Facebook stepped up over me, looking down. “Eve Jensen,” I muttered. “I’m here to save you.”

  The woman looked up at the fire, her eyes going wide as though she hadn’t seen it before.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “I don’t know who you are, but I guess I’ll take what I can get.” Helping me up, I grabbed her hand. “My name is Dillon Storm, and I’m a detective. You need to come with me.”

  Without another word, I pulled her back into the hallway. The fire was so close now that the burning sensation I felt was probably actively singing my skin.

  “Move!” I yelled and hauled ass for the far door.

  Reaching it, I took a deep a greedy slurp of fresh air, pulling the shirt from around my face.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, looking over at the woman.

  “Not for long,” another voice said from in front of us. Looking up, I saw Terry standing there, a gun in her hand pointed at us. She looked over at Eve with strangely excited eyes. “Hello sister. It’s been far too long.”

  Chapter 32

  “Look at you,” Terry said, most of her attention poured over her little sister. “You’re a grown woman now. It’s almost heartwarming.”

  My mouth dropped. Not only was Terry holding a gun on both me and the woman she was fawning over now, but she had just attempted to burn an entire house down just to kill her and cover her tracks. So what was with the whole ‘heartwarming’ thing now?

  “Get away from her,” I said intensely, pointing my own gun toward Terry. A strange thought occured to me. She was the first person I saw when I started all of this. It struck me as oddly fitting that she would be where it all ended too.

  “This doesn’t concern you, Mr. Davidson,” she said, looking over at me for just a moment. “Or whoever you are. I suppose I’ll have to find out the answer to that when I read it on your toe tag at the morgue.” She shook her head just slightly. “And don’t bother with that little gun. We’re not alone.”

  As if on cue, two men, each holding firearms of their own walked out of the surrounded woods toward us. Their weapons were both pointed on Eve and I, letting me know that I was hopelessly outmatched.

  “I want to talk to my sister,” Terry said.

  “What could you possibly have to say to me?” Eve asked, her face turned down in disgust. “You’re a monster. You’re a murderer. You killed our father!”

  “He was the monster!” Terry said. “He deserved to die, and if I did something wrong, it was only because I wanted to make sure you were okay!”

  “Me!” she asked. “You killed our father, you ran away and made my life a thousand times harder to make sure I was okay?” Eve spit on the ground. “You really expect me to believe that?”

  “It’s the truth,” Terry said. Then, looking at me as though I merited some sort of explanation, she added, “He was very physical with us. He would hit us, me mostly. Drunks tend to do that.”

  “Don’t you speak ill of our father,” Eve said. “Especially after what you did to him, after what you’ve become. He was a decent man.”

  “You never saw what I did. I was the oldest. I got the worst of it. I did what I had to in order to protect her,” Terry continued, turning to me again after speaking to her sister. “I knew I wasn’t coming back from St. Thomas. I knew I would never live another night in that awful house with that horrible man. But I also knew that all his attention would have to go somewhere. I knew that, without me, he’d turn on her. Eve would be the one who got beat. She’d be the one who hurt out of it.” She blinked back what looked to be tears and motioned to her sister. “If I would have been older, if I’d have had any money at all, I’d have taken you with me. But I couldn’t. I was broke and desperate. I couldn’t have you living on the streets. So, I did what I had to do. I killed our father, but I made sure you were okay.”

  “And what about this?” Eve asked, looking around. “You’ve turned into some criminal mastermind.”

  “It was for you too, as strange as that seems,” Terry said. “All I wanted was for us
to be together. So, I did what I had to do. I made the money I needed to make, hoping I’d finally make enough to be able to support you.” She shook her head. “By the time that happened, though. I had become someone else. I didn’t think you’d approve of who that person was.”

  “You were right,” Eve siad, blinking back tears of her own.

  “Doesn’t mean I stopped caring,” Terry said quickly. “I watched you grow up from afar. I watched you go to school, become a teacher. I watched you get married through Facebook videos and newspaper clipping.” She smiled. It was a small and hurt thing. “I even got you a wedding present. Made sure it was set at the table with the rest of them” She looked back at me. “A gravy boat.”

  “You have to let her go,” I said, deciding to push on the weak spot I could now see. “You say you love her, you say all of this was for her. Prove it. Let her go. Let her live.”

  “It was for her!” Terry said quickly, her mouth turning downward. “Until she decided to betray me.” She pointed the gun directly at Eve now. My heart jumped. “Why did you do it? Why did you think it was okay? How did you even find out about me?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Eve said. “None of that matters now.”

  “It matters to me,” Terry answered. “I want to know why my sister, the person I loved most in the world, decided to betray me. I want to know when the moment came.” She took a step forward. “Tell me or I’ll kill you right now.”

  Eve stared at the woman, taking a deep breath of air that was quickly filling up with smoke.

  “After my husband died and I won the lawsuit, Donald Rightman came to see me,” she said. “I thought he was going to be upset. After all, the lawsuit I filed uncovered negligence in his company that affected hundreds of people. He was going to lose it all, and in a way, it was all because of me.” She ran a hand through her hair. “That wasn’t what he wanted, though. He just came to say he was sorry about what had happened, about what that negligence took from me.”

  “What a saint,” Terry scoffed. “A martyr now, I suppose. Get to the point.”

  “He saw a picture on my mantle, one I kept of you,” Eve said. “I thought he recognized you from the news. You were the girl who disappeared and never came home. But he didn’t. He recognized your eyes. He recognized the scar on your right hand.”

  I looked down at Terry’s gloved hands, hands that had been gloved every time I saw her.

  “One time,” Terry muttered. “The sonofabitch saw me one time without my gloves on.”

  “Apparently that’s all it took,” Eve said. “He told me who he thought you were. I said it was crazy at first, but then he showed me a picture.”

  “You recognized me after all these years?” Terry asked.

  Tears streamed down Eve’s face now. “How could I not recognize you? You had the same eyes. You have dad’s eyes.” She cleared her throat. “All I wanted was to see you, but when I got here, Donald Rightman did something else.He took me to dinner, he took my picture and told me to post it, and then he brought me to this house.” She shook her head. “Then someone tried to kill me. He told me it was you.”

  “It was,” Terry said. “That picture was a warning shot. It was Donald letting me know he had the goods on me, that he had proof. He wanted to extort me. He wanted his money back off my hard work. I wasn’t having it. So, I figured that, if you were going to turn on me, I might as well cut you out too.” She shrugged. “I figured the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. I might have dad’s eyes, but I figured you had his spirit.”

  “I’m not the killer, Jessica,” Eve said.

  “It’s Terry!” Terry yelled. “It’s the Archer!”

  “The Archer?” Eve mused. “Dad loved archery. Why are you doing this? If you hated him so much, then why take his name? Why call yourself something he loved?”

  “Because I’m taking the power back, Eve,” she said. “I’m doing more with his name than he ever could.”

  “Don’t you get it?” I asked. “You were both played against each other. You don’t have to do this Terry. You don’t have to kill your sister. You can start over. You can-”

  “Shut up!” Terry shouted, scoffing at me. As she screamed, I looked past her. Several small outer buildings and structures sat at her back. A tool shed, a barn, and even a fuel tank. The latter of those things held my interest the most. Fire was spreading, moving through the main house and the grounds, heading toward the woods and these outer buildings. If it reached the fuel tank, and there was anything combustible in it, we were in trouble. My guess was we had just a few minutes to get out of this. Unfortunately, Terry didn’t seem like she was in any mood to listen to reason.

  “Did you not hear me?” Terry balked. “I told you that the things I did turned me into a different person, and I like the person I became. You know what I was back then? I was a pathetic girl who let her father destroy her life. But here, in St. Thomas, I became something else. I became a woman who would never bow down to any man ever again. I became powerful and fierce. I became a person people feared, a symbol.” He shook his head. “And I’m never going back to the person I was before. Not even for my sister.”

  “You always were a selfish bitch!” Eve shouted. “How dare you pretend all of this was about me? None of it was. I was a child, and you wanted revenge against a man you believed hurt you. You don’t get to rewrite history, Jessica. It happened the way it happened whether you like it or not. You are who you are, and that person is a damn murderer.” She shook her head. “So make all the excuses you want, but the truth is this was always the way it was going to be. You hate the person you used to be and I’m the only connection you have to that. That’s why you’re doing this. Don’t lie to me and don’t complicate things. It doesn’t suit you.”

  This outburst caused Terry to clench up. Her eyes went wide and I watched as anger, every bit as raging as the fire, turned on in her eyes.

  “Thank you, Eve,” Terry said with an eerie calm in her voice.

  “For what?” Eve scoffed.

  “You just made this a lot easier for me,” she said, taking another step forward, moving the barrel of the gun right up to Eve’s chest. “Say hello to Dad for me.”

  The world seemed to slow down as I took in what was happening. Terry was about to shoot Eve point blank. She’d kill her. Then she’d kill me. Everything we’d done since we came here, everything we’ve given up would have all been for nothing. What Natasha did would have been for nothing. I couldn’t have that.

  I moved the barrel of my own gun, not to Terry, but to the fuel tank behind her.

  “God help us,” I muttered.

  Then I took the shot.

  The tanker exploded as the bullet I fired slammed into it. Fire blew out with enough force to knock us all backward and the world seemed to disappear into a fury of orange flames.

  Grabbing Eve, I spun, taking the brunt of the hit as we both fell to the ground below.

  “Stay here,” I whispered, jumping up as quickly as I could. The world spun as I stood. The others were closer than me, and that gave me the only edge I would have in all of this.

  One of the men was already down. So I wouldn’t have to worry about him. He stood close enough to the tank that the explosion very likely knocked him out. The other one was just dazed, though. In seconds, he would be back up and functional. I had to stop that from happening.

  Rushing the large man, I hit him with an open palm to the throat. Then, when he gasped for breath, I caught him with an uppercut. Kicking him in the gut seemed to finish him off as he tumbled to the ground.

  Spinning, I saw Terry was back up again. She pointed her gun down at her sister.

  She coughed and roared at her sister. “I’m the Archer, bitch!”

  “Archer,” I muttered, looking at her. “Meet tidal wave.”

  Taking a deep breath, I ran toward her, barreling like an unstoppable force. As I hit her, I felt her give way. She practically flew off the ground, falling hard against i
t as the gun fell from her grasp.

  Sirens filled the air as I walked up to her, signs of the fire department, no doubt. Pointing my gun at the woman, I spoke breathlessly.

  “It’s over, Archer,” I said, thoughts of Natasha running through my mind. “You’re under arrest.”

  Chapter 33

  The sky in Montana let loose with a torrent of rain that day. It was like it knew we were laying her to rest. It was like it knew one of the most important people in my life had passed on from this world, and the sky itself was crying with me.

  The service was small and uneventful, nothing like I’d imagine Natasha Rayne would have wanted. She was larger than life. She was huge and bright. She lit the world up when she came into view. Then again, I’d always heard funerals aren't for the dead. They were for the living, and the living were laying Becky Shaw to rest. I alone knew Natasha Rayne. That reason alone was enough to make me glad I came here.

  “Reverend Shaw,” I said after the funeral, walking to an aged man with graying temples and wrinkles around his mouth. The casket had just been laid in the earth and the tears had just stopped flowing from my eyes. I needed to be strong now. I needed to be clear. Natasha deserved that. “I wanted to talk to you for a moment.”

  “You knew her from later on, right?” Rev. Shaw asked, looking at me with eyes brighter than they had any right to be today. “You knew my Becky after she left me.”

  “I did, sir,” I answered, nodding at him. “It’s why I’m here. I wanted you to know something about your daughter.”

  He smiled at me. It was a pained but hopeful thing. “I’m surprised you even knew her at all. She was kind of a an enigma, our Becky. I always said she was a hundred people at once, that girl. She never knew what she wanted to be, you see. She never knew where she wanted to be either. I always said it was like she was on a boat. Like she was tied to the stern of the ship. She was always moving. She always got a first class view of the next place. I liked to think she lived for that. I liked to think it made her happy.” He leaned in closer to me, his eyes crystal clear and wide. “Let me ask you something, son. Was my little girl happy?”