Noah looked up at the cook, who still stood there, gawking.
“Drag him inside and lock the door,” Noah told the man. “Keep pressure on the wound until the paramedics arrive and take over.” He glanced up at the curious faces looking down at them through the diner’s windows. “And get everyone in there into the kitchen.”
The best way to protect these people would be if he and Mercer left. The men who were coming for them would give chase. But if they stayed, there would be another shootout and this time, Noah would most certainly be outnumbered.
“Oh, God,” Mercer murmured, fidgeting in fear, her eyes on the approaching vehicles. They were now halfway down the access road. One of the men who had been seated at the counter emerged from the diner.
“What can I do?” he asked.
“Help him out,” Noah said as the cook positioned himself behind Tyson. The sedan’s keys lay on the concrete stoop where they had been dropped. With a last look at his partner, Noah snatched them up, sprang to his feet, and grabbed Mercer’s hand, pulling her up, too. As they ran to the car, she tried to stop to pick up her purse, but Noah propelled her onward. “Leave it! There’s no time!”
They jumped inside the sedan.
“Put on your seatbelt!” Noah quickly did the same, then started the engine and peeled out, the car’s tires throwing up a gravel spray. They blazed past the three vehicles that were nearing the lot’s entrance. Watching in the rear-view mirror, Noah saw the cars turn quickly around on the road and come after them. He floored the accelerator, the sedan’s engine roaring. Several tractor-trailers were waiting to get on the interstate, creating a bottleneck that would slow them down. Noah headed east instead.
“Noah!” Terror ratcheted up Mercer’s voice. “There’re too many of them!”
“Hang on! I’m going to try to lose them.” He gripped the steering wheel harder, his hands sticky with Tyson’s blood. He had been up here a couple of times with Tyson recently, fishing and hiking. There was a patchwork of rural roads ahead and he might be able to shake them with enough turns if he could get some distance between them. As he drove, he used the radio connected to the dashboard to alert the local police of their location.
A short time later, they sped past a sign directing tourists to the Upper Santee Swamp System. Tires squealing, Noah took a sharp turn onto a two-lane road with heavy foliage on either side. A guardrail ran along the right side of the road and, just below them, murky, green-brown water could occasionally be seen between the trees and vines. For several minutes, it appeared that they might have lost them until the vehicles came shooting out from a side road. A Ford Mustang GT and a souped-up Camaro—both more powerful than Tyson’s sedan—led the chase while the third vehicle was some type of large, off-road-capable SUV. Despite Noah pressing the accelerator to the floorboard, the two muscle cars were closing in.
Mercer screamed as the Mustang got close enough to bump them from behind. Meanwhile, the Camaro had moved into the lane meant for travel in the opposite direction and was trying to get alongside them.
“Get your head down!” Noah yelled, flinching as gunfire shattered the car’s rear window.
He had placed his gun and cell phone in the console between the sedan’s front seats. Heart slamming against his ribs, Noah gripped the steering wheel with his left hand and picked up his Glock with the other, then twisted in the seat to return fire. He got off two shots, but the Mustang bumped them again, harder this time and causing the sedan to fishtail. Noah cursed, forced to put his weapon down so that he could get the car back under control.
“We have to stop, Noah!” Mercer cried, her hand on his arm. “We’re going too fast!”
“We stop and we’re dead!”
Using the side-view mirror, Noah watched the Camaro that was running nearly beside them now. His stomach flip-flopped as a gun barrel emerged from the open window on the passenger side. Noah reached for his gun again just as another gunshot rang out and his rear tire exploded. The sedan veered wildly before slamming into the guardrail. The velocity was too much.
The car sailed over the twisted metal and went airborne.
Chapter Seventeen
Dazed, Noah hung upside down, secured into place by his seatbelt. The car had flipped, landing on its roof and skidding down a steep, rock-covered embankment before coming to rest in a grassy floodplain. After the din of crumpling metal and shattering glass, it was now eerily quiet except for a plunking sound that he realized was blood dripping onto the roof’s interior below him. He turned his head to look at Mercer. Her long hair obscured her face as she hung upside down, too.
“Noah?” she whispered.
Closing his eyes briefly in relief, he swallowed and found his voice. “You okay?”
“I-I think so.”
There wasn’t much time. They had to free themselves before those men picked their way down the embankment after them. Noah braced his weight with his left hand on the roof’s interior and strained against gravity to release his seatbelt before dropping down with a heavy, awkward thud. He tried to use the radio that now hung off the cracked dashboard, but it was dead. His cell phone was missing, too, apparently having slid away somewhere inside the car when it had flipped.
“I can’t get this off!” Panicked, Mercer struggled with her seatbelt.
“Hang on. I’ll come around.”
Opening his door, Noah pulled himself out, refusing to give in to lightheadedness. Although nothing seemed broken, he touched his left temple and his fingers came away wet with blood. Spotting his weapon inside the overturned, mangled car, he grabbed it and squinted up at the road. Surprise made his skin tingle. No one was trying to pick their way down the treacherous embankment after them. Instead, their pursuers had abandoned the cars and were climbing into the SUV. Noah recalled passing a side road a few thousand feet back that led down to a nearby fishing camp. He suspected they were headed to that road to take an easier route to reach them. Regardless, it bought them a little time. Noah jogged around the vehicle’s smoking front and forced open the passenger-side door, which was wedged against a thick mound of sawgrass and sedges. Mercer now crouched on the upside-down roof’s interior, having managed to free herself while Noah had been prying open the door. Her eyes were frightened as she looked up at him. Once she had climbed out with his help, Noah ran his hands over her arms and shoulders, needing to assure himself that she was uninjured.
“You’re bleeding, Noah,” she said worriedly.
Wiping at the blood trickling down his temple, his stomach tensed at the roar of an approaching vehicle. By the sound of it, the SUV was off-road and heading toward them. Noah had six rounds left in his gun’s chamber. Not nearly enough to hold off these men.
Mercer’s voice trembled. “They’re coming!”
There wasn’t time to search for his phone. “Are you able to run?”
Mercer stood white-faced and frozen, still looking off in the direction of the noise.
“Mercer!” Clasping her shoulders, Noah gave her a small shake to break her from her trance. “Can you run?”
She gave a tight nod and they sprinted together into a dense thicket of trees. The SUV wouldn’t be able to follow. If they wanted to pursue them, they would have to do it on foot. Noah ran with Mercer deeper into the woods, sun dappling the leaves and creating shadows on the ground at their feet, their combined breaths coming hard.
“What’re you doing?” Mercer whispered as Noah halted them a few minutes later. She leaned forward, panting, her hands on her thighs as she attempted to catch her breath.
“Trying to misdirect.” His own chest heaving, Noah broke several thin branches on a young sapling in the opposite direction that he and Mercer were headed. Ripping off his tie, he tossed it onto the ground to make sure that their pursuers saw the broken branches. Blood dripped from Noah’s temple. He couldn’t see the men through the trees, but they were out there. Their voices carried in the not-too-far-off distance as they shouted directions to one ano
ther.
As Noah and Mercer continued on, the odor of stagnant water and decaying plants grew stronger, indicating that they were nearing the swamp. Standing water had begun to form small pools under the verdant foliage in between brown silt and moss-covered ground. Noah’s dress shoes were muddy and slick, the stylish loafers Mercer wore equally so, and she had slipped more than once as the ground had grown wetter. Twigs were caught in her hair and her cheek was scratched, but she continued running beside him. She froze only momentarily as a snake slithered over the ground in front of them, but to her credit, she didn’t make a sound.
Minutes later, the trees gave way to low-growing shrubs and tall grasses. Noah wiped at the blood that had leaked into his left eye. The cut throbbed and perspiration made his shirt stick to his skin. He prayed that he was right about their location. Relief flooded through him as a sun-weathered, deteriorating shack on the swamp’s edge finally became visible. Noah had recalled seeing it a month ago when he had been staying at Tyson’s cabin but had taken off by himself on a long hike. The place had appeared abandoned then, as it did now. But it wasn’t the shack that Noah was interested in.
It was the covered shelter off its dock where a canoe had been.
He estimated that Tyson’s cabin was still four or five miles from here. Even if they were able to reach it on foot, their pursuers would track them every step of the way. But if they could get there by water, they had the best chance of leaving them behind.
“This is Detective Beaufain’s place?” Mercer whispered. She followed Noah as he walked down the dock, which had rotted in places. Other sections of plank were missing altogether or were covered in slick, green algae.
“No, but I’m hoping it has something we need.” He looked over his shoulder at her, his words low. “Careful. Step exactly where I do.”
Upon reaching the covered portion of the dock and seeing the battered canoe still there, Noah released a pent-up breath. He thanked God that time moved like molasses in these parts and little changed. The canoe appeared to be water-worthy, so he pushed it across the rough wood planks until it slid into the swamp with a splash. Mercer fetched the two oars that leaned against the covered structure’s railing. Noah steadied the canoe as she got in and sat at one end, facing forward. The canoe rocked as he climbed in behind her. Once he was seated, he took the oars from where she had left them on the dock’s edge, handed her one and together they pushed off across the scummy water and began paddling.
Several minutes later, he squinted back to the dilapidated shack that had grown smaller with distance. Men were storming onto the dock. Six of them in all. Noah was too far away to make out their faces clearly, but one of them looked like Lex Draper.
Mercer glanced back, too. “Oh, God, Noah!”
They both paddled harder. The men fired at them, but they were too far out of range. Soon, both the men and the shack disappeared. Noah and Mercer continued dipping their oars in and out of the water on either side of the canoe until they were lost in the freshwater swamp that Noah knew to be comprised of more than sixteen hundred acres. After the bedlam of the last hour, it seemed strangely peaceful out here. When Lake Marion had been created in the 1940s by the damming of the Santee River, this area had been transformed into a deep water, flooded forest. A turtle’s shell parted the floating algae as it swam in front of them, and the shadowy outlines of catfish were visible through the murky water below. His throat parched, Noah felt tension in his stomach. Even with his survival training, they were ill equipped to be out here. No water or food, no cell phones, both of them dressed in street clothes. He couldn’t afford to get them lost out here. He had to find Tyson’s cabin before nightfall. Noah stopped paddling to look at the compass on his sports wristwatch.
“Do you know where we are?” Mercer looked back at him, her expression worried.
“Not exactly.” Determined, he used his oar to adjust their direction. The cut on his temple stung. But he wasn’t the only one who had taken the brunt of the crash. Now that they were in less danger, at least for now, Noah noticed that Mercer was moving more gingerly when the oar was on her right side.
“Why don’t you take a break?” he suggested. “We’ve got some distance. I can paddle by myself for a while.”
She shook her head, then looked over her shoulder at him again. “You’re still bleeding, Noah—”
“I’m okay. Put the oar down for a few minutes.”
Placing her oar in the boat’s hull, Mercer turned carefully around on the plank seat to face him. She swatted at gnats that swarmed around her, fatigue evident on her features. A bluish bruise had begun to form below her collarbone where the seatbelt had lashed tight to keep her in place. “What happened to the real marshals, Noah?”
“I don’t know.” Draper and his men had managed to somehow either kill or subdue the marshals who had been scheduled to meet them. Noah figured that the Celtic cross that had been on the man’s money clip and on Draper’s ring must be some kind of secret symbol worn by The Brotherhood’s members, something that hadn’t been known to police. He wondered who the two men posing as marshals were, since their images hadn’t been among the ones of Draper’s inner circle on the precinct’s corkboard.
“How’d you figure out they were imposters?” Mercer asked.
As he told her what had given them away, her mouth slackened in horror. “God. If I’d left with them—”
“I wasn’t going to let that happen.” He paused, his throat tight with meaning. “I would’ve died first.”
Their eyes held until she spoke. “You’re worried about Detective Beaufain. He’s more than a partner to you, isn’t he? He’s a friend.”
Noah didn’t respond as he thought of Tyson’s wound. The abdomen was a dangerous place to take a bullet.
“Ty has a wife and twin daughters,” he said finally. “The girls are just six years old.”
Mercer’s eyes were pained. Neither spoke much after that, too exhausted, thirsty, and shell-shocked to make further conversation. Noah veered them into a narrower channel shaded by black tupelos and cypresses, still heading south since the fishing cabin was located past the swamp’s mouth near the upper end of Lake Marion. This area was isolated and it didn’t surprise him that they hadn’t seen anyone—not even kayakers—out here. Croaking frogs rested on gnarled tree roots and more than one snake glided through the water in front of them. Noah kept an eye out for the landmarks that he had noted either while hiking or fishing from Tyson’s pontoon boat, but Draper and his men were never out of his thoughts. He wondered again how he and Tyson had been set up. Draper must also have a source inside the U.S. Marshals Service, Noah figured, since no one from his department—not even Captain Bell—had been privy to the time and location of the rendezvous point. The Marshals Service had contacted Noah directly with that information, including the names of the marshals assigned to meet them.
The men who had tried to take Mercer from the diner were dead. But Noah had no doubt that the ones who had pursued them by vehicle would soon have an engine-powered boat—maybe more than one—out here so they could look for them. If the men caught up to them, he and Mercer would be sitting ducks in the canoe.
They had to find the cabin soon.
Despite the mildness of the fall afternoon, Mercer suppressed a shiver as the canoe glided through dark water beneath a canopy of trees. This vast place was both beautiful and terrifying. Little sunlight reached this area of the swamp, and Mercer had glimpsed numerous species of birds as well as reptiles, including a large alligator as it dropped into the water from its resting place on a partially submerged tree trunk, possibly sizing up Noah or her as a potential meal. The creature had trailed them until it finally lost interest and changed course. Rubbing at the stiffness in her neck, she watched Noah as he paddled, his eyes on the bank, apparently searching for something that might tell him they were headed in the right direction. The top buttons of his dress shirt were undone, his shirtsleeves rolled up. The bleeding from his
temple appeared to have slowed. Bloodstains marred his collar and shirtfront, some of it his and some of it Detective Beaufain’s.
I wasn’t going to let that happen. I would’ve died first.
She recalled Noah’s words, all too aware that he might still lose his life trying to protect her. She had rested enough. Needing an outlet for her anxiety, Mercer reached for her oar again, but Noah’s voice halted her.
“Look.”
Her eyes fastened on an egret that stood on long legs under Spanish moss hanging from a tree at the water’s edge. But she soon realized that Noah was looking past it at the ghostly, stone shapes jutting up from the ground among the undergrowth. “What is it?”
“A slave cemetery from the early eighteen-hundreds.”
The sweat-dampened hair on her nape prickled.
Noah’s muscles flexed in his forearms as he stroked the oar through the water. “There were cotton plantations not far from here. They were burned in Sherman’s March to the Sea. Tyson showed me the cemetery when I was last out here. It means that we’re headed in the right direction. I’m estimating that we’re still about a mile from the cabin.”
“The place must be isolated.”
“That’s the beauty of it. Tyson inherited it just a few months ago from his grandfather. I’m pretty sure no one on the force even knows about it except for me.”
Taking up her oar and facing forward again in the canoe, Mercer began paddling, her spirit renewed. A short time later, they emerged from the narrow channel and its awning of trees, sunlight once again warm on her back and shoulders. As they moved out of the swamp and into the lake, she noticed that the water was becoming less encumbered with vegetation. They traveled another twenty or so minutes before Noah directed their path into a nearly hidden, tree-protected cove. A cabin made of mud-chinked cypress logs appeared in a small clearing in front of them. The rough-hewn cabin would have appeared primitive if not for the solar panels in its roof that collected light. A pontoon boat topped by a marine-blue sunshade floated in the water on the far side of a long, L-shaped dock.
In Dark Water (Rarity Cove Book 3) Page 14