Chương 17
"The tide is coming in," I told him, looking down at my Casio watch. "It’s nearly midnight. The water level in the sound is high enough to run the back marsh canals."
"You don't have a boat, Sloane," Vance said. "Your skiff was in the workshop shed behind your house. It went up with the birch lumber."
"I have my father's old skiff," I replied. "The aluminum fourteen-footer. It's chained to the cypress stump in the creek behind the abandoned turpentine kiln on Mill Creek. It’s been sitting under a green canvas tarp since last duck season."
I looked at Lainey. She was leaning her head back against the glass, her face pale, the purple swelling across her cheekbone stark under the dim dome light.
"Marcus," I said. "Take Claire and drive to the public ramp at the end of Harkers Island Road. Don't turn your headlights on until you clear the marsh bridge. I’m going to bring Lainey to you by water."
"And then what?" Vance asked. "Even if we get her out of the county, Boyd still has the magistrate's warrant. He still has the press calling you an armed kidnapper."
"Then I’m going to take the fight out of the swamp," I said.
I hung up the phone and dropped it back into my pocket.
I reached across the console, caught Lainey’s chin gently in my fingers, and turned her bruised face toward mine.
"Lainey-bug," I said, keeping my voice soft, steady, and immovable as granite. "You remember what your father used to say when the hurricanes came across the barrier islands?"
She sniffled, wiping the corner of her swollen eye with the frayed edge of the wool blanket.
"Hold the line," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Don't let the wind push you into the ditch."
"That's right," I told her. "We don't get pushed. Not by the wind, and not by the Lusks."
I turned the key. The F-250’s diesel engine rumbled back to life, its low vibration humming through the steel floorboards.
I backed the truck out of the borrow pit, angled the wheels down the overgrown logging trail toward Mill Creek, and let the darkness of the Carolina pines swallow us whole.
Behind us, through the rear glass, the orange glow of my burning life faded into the humid coastal mist. But inside my chest, the cold iron grate had locked tight, and the woman who had spent fifteen years training men to survive in the dark had finally found her war.
Chapter 6: The Final Ledger
The outboard motor was an ancient two-stroke Evinrude fifteen-horsepower, pull-start and tiller-steered, smelling of unburned two-cycle oil and salt corrosion. I kept the throttle low, barely above idle, letting the aluminum hull slide through the black marsh grass of Mill Creek without throwing a wake.
Lainey lay curled on the bench seat near the bow, wrapped in the wool blanket, her head resting against a spare life vest. The rhythmic, muffled chug of the propeller in the tidal canal seemed to soothe her. The swelling on her face had begun to set into a hard, dark mask, but her breathing was deep and even.
Out on the open water of Core Sound, the mist lay thick and silver over the shallows. The tide was running full, covering the oyster shoals with three feet of brackish water—just enough draft for a flat-bottom jon boat. Five miles to the south, the single amber beacon of the Harkers Island bridge cut through the low fog.
I brought the boat against the pilings of the old commercial slip behind the fish house at twenty minutes past one.
Marcus Vance was waiting in the shadows beneath the tin roof, a heavy flashlight held low against his thigh, unlit. Beside him stood Claire, her turquoise scrub jacket zipped tight against the damp chill, clutching a canvas medical tote.
May you like
Before the aluminum bumper even bumped the rubber fender, Claire was over the gunwale, dropping to her knees in the bilge to wrap her arms around Lainey.
"She’s stable," I told Claire, holding the bowline taut around an oak cleat. "They hit her with five of Versed, but it’s wearing off. Ribs are cracked on the left. Watch her orbital when you move her."
