Long Time Gone (Hell or High Water )

by SE Jakes

  Mick was silent as Tom racked his brain, trying to think of where Etienne might’ve gone. They’d had several haunts when they were younger. But when they got old enough not to care that people knew they were together, they hadn’t needed them anymore.

  “I’m sure the sheriff’s already been to Etienne’s house,” Tom said.

  “So now we’ll go,” Prophet told him.

  “We can’t leave here, remember?”

  “We can’t—but Blue can be our eyes.”

  Tom realized that, despite all he’d heard about Blue and his conquests, you couldn’t fully appreciate what he did until you saw him scale . . . anything. Like fucking Spiderman.

  And Blue couldn’t help it. One minute, he was there on the ground, the next, he was on the roof. Or in a tree. And he and Prophet were viewing it from the front row, or, in this case, a camera attached to Blue’s NVs.

  Mick looked lethal. Blue was far more dangerous. It would be easy to underestimate him.

  At least there was no police tape anywhere, so technically, they weren’t breaking two laws. Just the whole illegal entry one.

  “You know, there’s a spare key under the rocks in the back,” Tom said again.

  “Key?” Blue acted like the word was foreign. He slid inside an opened attic window in the dark and scanned the room.

  Tom recognized the paintings. Etienne kept a small cache in his attic, pieces he didn’t really like anymore but couldn’t bear to part with.

  “It’s quiet,” Blue said. “Cool.”

  That was the way Etienne always kept it.

  “It’s clean. Just a layer of dust—maybe four days old,” Blue said.

  “Which matches his disappearance,” Tom agreed. The man hated dust and clutter.

  “Great place,” Prophet commented as they watched Blue go down the stairs and turn into the master bedroom. He went first to the dresser.

  “Check the top right drawer,” Tom told him. Blue did, pulled out Etienne’s wallet. “Shit.”

  Blue opened it. “Cash and credit cards here. License too. Plus a watch and a wedding ring.”

  Prophet looked at Tom.

  “Not mine,” Tom told him.

  “He didn’t really marry Remy’s mom,” Prophet said.

  “Kinda did, yeah.”

  “Hello, you two—can we gossip later?” Blue asked.

  “I wouldn’t have to gossip if you could find me something,” Prophet grumbled.

  Blue put his middle finger up in front of the camera he wore.

  Tom turned to Prophet. “So you’re not the least bit jealous of me and Etienne?”

  “I do a great job of hiding it, don’t I? Unlike you.”

  “You like when I don’t hide it.”

  Prophet smiled in agreement.

  “Bastard,” Tom muttered, and then he semi-froze.

  Prophet asked, “T, what’s wrong?” just as Blue announced, “I hear footsteps.”

  “Blue, get the hell out of there,” Mick told him. Tom watched as the camera attached to Blue gave him a dizzying shot of Blue basically jumping out of the window and finally coming to hang on the rope about halfway down. There were sirens in the distance.

  And even though that was happening a couple hundred miles away, he couldn’t help but look around.

  Prophet’s phone beeped. He looked at the number and frowned. “Shit. Gotta take this.” He pressed a button and said hello.

  “Who’s this?” A female voice over the speakerphone.

  “Who’s this?” Prophet asked back, his concern clear on his face.

  “I found this number in my son’s phone. Did you take him, you bastard?”

  Prophet looked at Tom. “Remy’s mom?” he mouthed, and Tom nodded, the tension tightening around his head like a vise.

  Tom was about to say something to Blue when he heard a voice behind them say, “You didn’t have to go through all this trouble to find him. I could’ve helped.”

  Tom watched Prophet’s expression harden for a second before going neutral, and Tom knew that face well by now. There was a threat.

  He turned, saw Charlie holding a gun pointed at the back of Prophet’s head. “Charlie, what are you doing?”

  “You’ll both have to come with me to find out,” Charlie said.

  All Tom could think as he stared at the man he’d thought of as a laid-back stoner with the memory of an elephant was, Get him talking. “What the hell, Charlie?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “I’m not going fucking anywhere with you, asshole,” Prophet told him, then grabbed his neck and yanked a dart out. “What the fuck? Ah, not again. Dammit.”

  “Shit, Proph.” Tom went for him, but Charlie waved his gun. The real one he held in his left hand—the dart gun was in his right.

  “If you don’t cooperate, you can be sure you’ll never find Remy in time to save him,” Charlie told him, and Prophet muttered, “Fuck,” even as he stumbled a little. Tom grabbed his hand and Prophet gave it a squeeze, almost like he was telling Tom to do what Charlie wanted. Which had been Tom’s plan too.

  “Disconnect that.” Charlie pointed to the computer and Tom reluctantly pulled the wire, cutting them off from Blue. “I knew your friend wouldn’t come along all peaceful like. And since he came in your place last time and survived the alligators, I figured I’d give you both another shot at this.”

  Charlie, not Gil Boudreaux. A small victory, but still . . . “At what?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough. In the meantime, you wrestle him into the car for me, all right, Tom?”

  “We can leave him here. He’s got nothing to do with this,” Tom said through gritted teeth. Prophet was passed out on his shoulder. He put two fingers against the man’s neck, reassured by the steady—albeit slow—beats of his pulse.

  “He’ll be fine. Unless I have to give him another dose.”

  “He’s already passed out.”

  “What matters to me is your cooperation,” Charlie said, and Tom suddenly saw the man clear as day, like the curtain had been lifted.

  Charlie hadn’t changed, like Tom had thought the other day. No, Tom had changed. He’d finally gotten his head out of his own shit enough to be able to see that Charlie had always been lying to him.

  He noted for a brief moment how ironic it was that he’d been upset that none of his partners trusted his voodoo shit, when really, he managed to ignore it a hell of a lot. And fuck it all if he didn’t want to tell Prophet he’d been right about that too.

  But the thing was, Charlie hadn’t known about Tom’s involvement with Miles and Donny. Not until . . .

  Charlie had been watching Tom try to put the pieces together, and when he started, Charlie gave him a round of applause, hitting the corner of the hand he held the gun with. “Give the deputy a prize for making a connection. I heard the AA rumors about Miles too. That he was going to admit to something big.”

  “I’m not a deputy. And why would you care about those rumors?”

  Charlie waved the gun at Prophet. “Get him in the car. Don’t try anything, Tom.”

  “Can’t we just talk this out, Charlie?”

  “Maybe we could’ve, if you’d shown up in the marsh, instead of your friend here. But now it’s complicated.”

  Tom got moving, because he didn’t want to risk Remy’s life, or risk Charlie shooting Prophet and then be forced to leave him there.

  Leave no man behind didn’t just pertain to military men, but by going with Charlie, the chances of escape were tougher. Unless he was taking them into the bayou, in which case, Tom definitely had the upper hand, because Charlie had only lived here for five years.

  He hoisted Prophet up and over his shoulder, because the guy was out. Deadweight. He walked out of the house, and Charlie pointed to the trunk of the car. Tom had no choice but to put Prophet back there. And stuffing a big guy like Prophet into the back of the small trunk wasn’t easy—he winced when he jammed him awkwardly on his side.


  “Now handcuff him. Behind his back,” Charlie said, tossing him the cuffs. Tom maneuvered Prophet’s arms carefully behind his back, making the cuffs loose enough for his circulation.

  They’d never hold Proph for long anyway.

  Charlie had him cuff and chain Prophet’s ankles too. Made Tom close the trunk and then handcuff himself to the passenger’s side door as Charlie blindfolded him. But not before he caught a glance of a red knife sheath on the floor by Charlie’s feet. Briefly, he considered the fact that Charlie might’ve killed Gil Boudreaux, but decided that his father was too goddamned mean to be taken down that easily.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Tom told him.

  “You trying the psych bull rap on me, deputy? Oh, right, forgot, you couldn’t keep that job. What, did your favor from the sheriff run out?”

  Tom’s gut tightened. He rubbed his wrists together so he could feel the leather bracelet. “How do you know so much about it?”

  He felt the prick of a needle in his arm and fuck, he wouldn’t be able to track where Charlie was taking them. The blindfold wouldn’t’ve been an issue, but the drugs . . .

  He only managed to fight unconsciousness long enough to hear Charlie’s nonanswer.

  “You haven’t figured it out by now?” Charlie asked as he started the car and jerked it through the tall grasses.

  Prophet groaned. His mouth was cotton and nasty, and he blinked through his blurred vision. His arms were jacked up behind him, but hey, at least he wasn’t hanging from them.

  “Seriously?” Tom asked, and Prophet realized he’d said that last part out loud.

  “Gotta be grateful for the little shit, T,” he managed, and that’s when he realized that they were sitting back-to-back, tied to chairs and each other. “Guessing we’re alone?”

  “Charlie’s been gone for half an hour, at least.”

  “The kid?”

  “No sign of him,” Tom said grimly. “And I don’t know if Blue or Mick got picked up by the police.”

  “Shit.” He’d told Mick to grab Blue and get the hell out of there if anything bad went down. Whether they’d listen or not was another story, but even if they weren’t hours away, neither of those men knew the bayou. Not like Tom or Charlie. “Any idea where we are?”

  “We’re in an old boathouse. There are a few of them left along the swamps near the cemetery in my parish—he could’ve easily taken the time to drive here because he blindfolded me. And he fucking drugged me.”

  “I think he dropped me at some point. Feel like I was slammed into concrete.” Prophet rolled his neck a little, trying to orient himself.

  “I carried you.”

  “You dropped me?”

  “It was into a padded trunk, not the ground.” Tom was working on the ropes and Prophet moved his fingers to help him.

  They had to play this safe and slow. With Remy’s life on the line, Prophet’s usual methods of just slamming the hell out of Charlie wouldn’t work here. “This is going to require your touch, T.”

  “Yeah,” Tom muttered, because Prophet wasn’t talking about the ropes. “If we corner him, he’s not going to talk. That’s what this whole thing’s about—making all of us pay.”

  “What’d he tell you?”

  “He heard the AA rumors about Miles and what happened on the bayou.”

  “Why the fuck would he care?”

  “I have no idea,” Tom said, as he helped Prophet try to get the ropes as loose as possible. They didn’t get far, because the ropes were a mix of thick braided twine and thinner rough rope tied in intricate knots from hell. Charlie had obviously learned his lesson, because he’d stripped Prophet of his weapons, including the knife he usually kept in his boot.

  Tom struggled against the ropes. “I thought sailors were supposed to know knots.”

  “Kidding me with that shit, Tommy?”

  Charlie strode in then, looking so pleased with himself that Prophet wanted to smash him. “Have you figured it out yet?” Charlie asked, and Prophet bit his tongue to keep from saying anything that would make the situation worse.

  And he had a strong feeling it was going to get worse anyway, especially when Charlie pulled out what looked like an old-fashioned cattle prod.

  “I want to help you, Charlie, the way you always helped me,” Tom reasoned, and Charlie smiled, like he was an equally reasonable human being. And then reached out and stuck the cattle prod right into Prophet’s side, where his shirt had ridden up.

  The electric heat seared his bare skin and for what seemed like forever, his entire body was suspended in a twist of pain. When it left, he was still vibrating, his brain scrambled and his entire body came down in one big shudder.

  He was aware of Tom cursing, yelling at Charlie to “cut it the fuck out!”

  “We’re playing my game now, Tom. All those years I helped you out . . . I had no idea who I was helping.”

  Prophet spat out, “You were saving your own ass, Charlie, because you were dealing. Last time I looked, that was illegal.” Charlie held the prod against Prophet’s side again. Prophet tensed, waiting for the jolt.

  “Charlie, don’t,” Tom said. “What happened in the bayou wasn’t Prophet’s fault. It’s mine, okay?”

  “That’s what Miles said too, right before I killed him,” Charlie said, pulling the prod back, and Prophet leaned back in relief. “Right after he confessed what he’d been talking about in those AA meetings. Because I’d been looking into my father’s death for years, but there was nothing.”

  “Your father?” Tom asked quietly, and oh fuck, this wasn’t good. “That was your father who—”

  “That was my father you killed!” Charlie yelled and stuck Prophet with the cattle prod again, triggering it this time.

  When he could focus again, he heard Tommy begging. “Come on, Charlie—use the thing on me. I’m the one you want to hurt.”

  “Exactly. You’re the one who I want to watch suffer.” Prophet drew in a stuttering breath, and felt Tom still trying to free their wrists.

  “Where’s Remy?” Tom asked. “Just let him go. He’s got nothing to do with this, Charlie. Don’t ruin his life the way ours were ruined. If you do nothing else, have some goddamned compassion for the kid you once were.”

  “It’s too late for that,” Charlie said.

  “You fucking bastard,” Prophet muttered. “Why not go after the sheriff who put kids in danger to begin with?”

  “Why not shut up?” Charlie told him, moving around to face him.

  “I’ve found that’s never really gotten me anywhere,” Prophet told him seriously.

  “Are you fucking trying to get another round of electric current?” Tom asked, obviously going for the distraction. Anything that pissed Charlie off enough to keep him talking, even torturing, was better than killing them.

  “Gonna happen anyway. Might as well do something to earn it,” Prophet said, and was rewarded with another long prod. “Fuck. Me.”

  Even as he jerked, Prophet could feel Tom loosening the ropes enough so he could easily pull his hands out when the time came. Prophet breathed through the pain as Tom finally asked over his shoulder, “Is Remy dead?”

  The asshole checked his watch. “He will be soon. He was bleeding out the last time I saw him.”

  Tom sucked in a hard breath. Remy had to be close for Charlie to know that. And since this was symbolic, then he’d have to be keeping Etienne and Remy close by.

  It was a risk, but . . .

  “I know, T,” Prophet said when Tom squeezed his hand urgently.

  “You know what?” Charlie demanded.

  Prophet jumped him then. Slammed him to the ground with an unnecessary force that felt really fucking good. Tom grabbed the gun as it slid across the room and held it on Charlie.

  “Take us to Remy,” Tom demanded.

  “It’s too late,” Charlie told him.

  “It’s never too late,” Tom said in a voice so fierce Prophet knew he meant it.

&nbs
p; Prophet put his fingers on the pressure point along Charlie’s neck. A quick squeeze dropped the man to unconsciousness. Then he emptied Charlie’s pockets—flashlight, phone, knife, car keys.

  “Did he have a GPS in his car?” he asked Tom.

  “I didn’t see one. I didn’t hear him use one either.”

  He scrolled through the GPS capabilities on Charlie’s phone. Just because the man hadn’t needed to use it tonight didn’t mean he hadn’t been planning this.

  “You found something?” Tom asked as he hauled Charlie to one of the chairs and tied him.

  “Old GPS coordinates, not too far from here.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Prophet let him take the lead, and Tom followed the coordinates through the thick bayou grass, the swamp sucking against his boots with every step. It was like quicksand around here . . . and they had no lights. He closed his eyes and just pictured Remy, and then he called out softly, “Remy, it’s Tom. Where are you?”

  He was greeted with the night sounds of the bayou. Prophet was right behind him, so close he could feel the heat off the man’s body. And he was back here again, fourteen and trying to find someone in the dark.

  He pictured the cemetery to his right. When he’d walked home in the daylight with Etienne, they used to take the pathway that led down to the swamps instead of veering off toward the main road.

  He took a few steps, reaching out to let the big cypress trees guide him as he trained the flashlight on the ground, until he was walking without having to think. And then he stopped and heard someone crying softly. “Remy?”

  “Tom?”

  Remy’s voice. Weak. He and Prophet moved forward in tandem, until the light shined on Remy, who was half-lying, half-kneeling next to Etienne.

  Shit. Tom knelt next to Etienne, because Prophet was already next to Remy. He touched Etienne’s neck, although it was obvious before he felt the cold skin that the man was dead, even if he hadn’t seen the spread of blood over Etienne’s chest.

  He blinked tears back but didn’t have time to process anything because Prophet was calling him urgently. “Tommy, I need your help. He’s bleeding out fast. Knife wound to the chest.”