When they walked in, the two bucks were at the kitchen counter, playing with food from the refrigerator. Geronimo had taken up his now-familiar position standing with his back to them, staring out of the big windows at the vast Everglades. He had changed his clothes, had found a colorful jacket in the patterns similar to those on the wall tapestry. He had also braided his long hair into two black ropes and pinned them to either side of his head.
Rae’s nose wrinkled at the odor of some kind of incense or burning seed that scented the air. Geronimo left them standing in silence, posturing on purpose, Rae thought, before raising one hand, a signal for the other two, who gathered up a bowl of raw chicken parts and hurried out the door.
Danny waited until the door was closed and then stepped forward, a move that Rae had seen before in other situations, which meant he was done taking the backseat and was ready to drive or move on.
“You wanted to see us?” Danny said.
Geronimo turned and made himself big in front of the sunlit window, but still said nothing.
“What’s the plan, Alvin?”
Danny was using Geronimo’s given name, another clue to Rae that he was done with the bullshit. It was a joke among the kids who knew Geronimo that he was a Chippewa and that Alvin was the name of one of the chipmunks of cartoon fame. It was usually used behind his back.
“Ah, Danny boy,” the big Indian said. “You are now the brave one, eh? No more letting your squaw be the mouth?”
Danny let it go.
“This isn’t what we signed on for, Alvin. I was the driver. A couple of days safely hiding out and then we were supposed to get our money and split. That was the deal, not taking some mystery trip out into the middle of God’s country and hanging on to some pregnant federal judge for who knows how long.”
The words federal judge even made Rae twitch. She’d only found out from texting Kelsey. But again Geronimo didn’t flinch.
“You obviously have some people with money backing this whole gig,” Danny said, raising his hands palms up to indicate the camp. “So how about I drive us back to civilization, you get on your fancy cell phone and talk to whoever it is you talk to, we get our money, and we’ll be on our way.”
This time, Geronimo stepped forward.
“So, driver, you are now the white man who’s going to take over and tell the Indian what to do and when to do it, and then send him back to the rez? Is that what you think?”
Rae could feel the tension in the room rising by the sentence, and even if she couldn’t really tell the future, when Geronimo moved both of his hands behind his back as if taking an at-ease position, the recollection of the bowie knife stuck in the back of his waistband made her reach out and touch Danny’s elbow.
“Look, guys, let’s just ease back, OK?” she jumped in. “Chief, we’re just a little uptight with all of this change-in-plan stuff and want to know what’s up, you know? You’re the man. You’re the one deciding. We just want to be let in on what’s happening, all right?”
The big Indian seemed to look beyond them instead of at them, and then said: “You will get your money.”
“When?” Danny said, not taking the edge off his voice.
“Tomorrow. In the morning, we go to Tampa and you get your money,” the Indian said, and then began turning back to his window. Rae had started to exhale when Danny asked his next question:
“And what do we do with the woman?”
When Geronimo turned back, he was wearing a grin, the first time such an expression had ever creased his face, Rae was sure.
“Ah, great white warrior. I think I will leave that decision to you,” the Indian said, making his face an even more obscene mask by raising one eyebrow.
In the silence that followed, Geronimo turned back to the window again and spoke to the glass.
“You decided to break the rules. And now you live with that decision. It is your face that she has now seen. You are the only one she can identify. Everyone else, including your squaw, can walk away. Been to Florida lately? No, I’ve never been to Florida, Officer. Well, we have an eyewitness who says otherwise.
“So you decide, get-away driver. If it was my decision, I would let nature decide,” Geronimo said, raising his hands to the vision of the Glades before him. “Five miles from this place, she can be set off the boat in the middle of this ancient wilderness and let nature take its course, as it always does.”
Again, silence. Rae knew Danny was doing his thinking, not jumping in with a reaction without first rolling it over in his mind. The catch had not surprised her. She’d thought of the conundrum the first time he’d told her he’d taken the woman’s hood off. But she had let it sit. Cross that bridge when it came. Well, here’s the trestle. She looked at Danny, who was blank-eyed, looking inward.
“OK. Look …” he started. But his words were cut off by a searing sound coming from outside, a wailing that penetrated not just the door of the cabin, but the soul of a young woman who had heard such a rending scream of pain before.
Chapter 34
The contractions—and there was no doubt about them now—were longer and coming only a few minutes apart. And yes, despite all of Diane’s bucking up and self-convincing, they hurt like hell. This wasn’t a high ankle sprain in one of her lacrosse games, or a collarbone break, or a fall off a damn horse. She’d been gritting her teeth and had even begun sticking a wad of sheet into her mouth at the peak of the contractions to keep from crying out.
She didn’t want them to know outside: not the boy or the rest of them.
Endure, Diane, she kept telling herself. Pant and endure. Pant and endure. You know Billy’s on his way. He got the message. They tracked the phone. Help is coming. Endure.
She closed her eyes. In the classes, they’d emphasized trying to relax in between contractions. Save your strength. Breathe deeply and regular, but don’t hyperventilate. Roll from side to side to keep this damn backache from destroying you. Think pleasant thoughts and scenarios: your favorite spot on the beach, the sound of surf, and the feel of warm sun.
Yeah, right. I’m having a baby alone. Outside the door are kidnappers who may end up killing me anyway, even if they do get whatever the hell they want. My first child is going to be born in a strange room in the middle of nowhere, and there won’t be a single person to care for it.
Another contraction hit. Was that three minutes since the last one, or even two? She’d only been guessing about the time. She’d been trying to count seconds between the contractions since they began, but after the boy had left and she’d found the cell phone, she’d lost all focus. Now, she was just trying to stay conscious.
Please, Billy, get here. Please get here.
She rolled onto her back and raised her knees and then the tightening came again. She squeezed her eyes tight and OH MY GOD, THAT HURTS LIKE HELL … ARRRRRGH!
It was dark and she heard a wolf cry. Not a call into a lonely night, but a howl of intense pain, a ragged, screeching response to a leg caught in a snapping iron trap, a cry of some sixty, maybe ninety seconds that felt way longer. Diane opened her eyes, blinked back to consciousness, and saw light and then a ceiling, and then her raised knees. When she tried to swallow, she felt the rawness in her throat—and knew that she was the howling animal.
Chapter 35
The cries of a woman’s pain tore a hole in my heart.
I spit out a curse and then took a quick look up at the men who had instantly stopped their idiot game at the sound of the howl. I tried to contain both my fury and the urge to charge up the boat ramp and just start firing. Then I heard a door fling open and the sound of footsteps on the wooden planks above, one set light but quick, and the other heavier, but following the first. Their direction was toward the third cabin in pursuit of the painful wails.
Yet again, I held. How many times had I jumped too quickly? How many times had I not waited f
or backup when I was a cop in Philly, including the night I ran into the robbery on Fifteenth Street and caught a bullet in the neck for my impatience? Despite the blood now pounding in my ears, I dared to wait, and the howling stopped.
Was it Diane? Was she being tortured? Jesus, why torture her now? For what reason? Kidnap victims weren’t tortured; kept in isolation, yes, abused through living conditions, yes. Their lives were bargained for politics or money. But torture didn’t make sense.
I dared another glance up at the men, who were now shrugging their shoulders and looking toward the door of the big cabin. Two minutes? Less? And the wail began again and to hell with backup!
I was up and out of the water, striding up the boat ramp and pulling the P226 Navy from my pants pocket at the same time. The two men instantly swung their heads to me and the look in their eyes would not have been different if one of those gators had roared up onto the deck after them.
“Down!” I yelled, motioning with the barrel of the P226 Navy. “Get the fuck down, hands behind your head.”
Again, they looked at each other, but followed the order, onto their knees and then bellies to the wood. It was six long strides with the painful screeching in my ears, but I kept repeating in my head, Protocol, Max. Disarm. Secure who you have. Do not screw up. You’re no good to her if you screw up.
I jabbed the nose of the P226 Navy into the back of each man’s head as I slapped his pockets, checking for firearms. Nothing. Unarmed guards—what the hell was I into?
“If a face comes up, I will shoot it,” I growled. “Got it?”
Heads bobbed, noses stayed down. Now, with that pain shrill in my ears, I turned to the middle cabin, but heard another door open behind me. I spun to the big house to see a figure of enormous size fill the frame.
The big Indian took two steps into the sunlight, glanced at the others lying on the deck and then at me. Stoic—he had to be the man that rooftop Yoda had described. But under the present circumstances, he also had to be the calmest human being I’d ever seen. He was dressed in a colorful Seminole jacket, but he was no Seminole. His black hair was oddly braided. He went easily six foot six and near three hundred pounds.
There wasn’t a single discernible emotion in his eyes: no fear, anger, or surprise. His hands were at his side. My gun was pointed at his chest. I worked the scene in my head: two on the ground, two more who had run to the third cabin, one big fucker in front of me staring like it was a soft summer day, and the wrenching cries of my best friend’s pregnant wife over all of it. The big Indian made up my mind for me. His right hand went for something behind his back.
“Don’t do it, Chief!” I yelled. “You’re a dead man if you move!”
“Then so be it,” the deep voice said with no more emotion than was in his face. His arm moved with incredible speed. I picked up on the flash of steel in the sunlight, and from fifteen feet away I fired the P226 Navy four times. All four of the water-sealed rounds worked as manufactured, finding a grouping within an eight-inch circle on the big man’s chest. The first bullet hit a piece of sternum bone, which sent it tumbling and tearing through the superior vena cava of the man’s heart, and then bouncing off a rib and spinning through the viscera in the middle lobe of his lung.
Two others passed through his body just below the sternum and bored expanding holes through upper liver tissue and exited through his back. One path was never determined by the medical examiner. The big man went down, first onto one knee, then onto a tripod of palms and knee, and finally over onto one side on the deck. There was no Tarantino spraying of blood or ridiculous propulsion of body through the doorway behind. Bullets pierce and rip and tumble and internally destroy. Trained cops go for center mass with intent to kill, never just to wound. It is not a circus; it’s real death.
I looked over at the others. They were still nose-down on the planks, though they’d cut their eyes to the big man when the shooting started. I stepped across the deck to the big man’s body, and there was no doubt that it was a body. Death is not hard to recognize: total, and I mean total, lack of movement—nerve, muscle, or respiratory. Lying next to him was a huge-bladed knife with a carved-bone handle. I put my foot next to the weapon and kicked it across the deck into the water where the young men had been feeding the gators. They wouldn’t be going in after it.
With my gunshots still echoing across the open Glades, I went for the door from which the sound of agony was still roiling. I hesitated for only a second at the frame, but when I heard the distinct but ragged voice of Diane Manchester say, “Please, Billy, please,” I went hard, shoulder-first, splintering wood and wrenching open metal-lock hardware. I came into a single room crouched low with the barrel of the P226 Navy sweeping chest-high at anything that moved.
A white kid about the same age as the two outside, but definitely not of the same family, turned when I bashed in the door. When he saw the P226 Navy swinging toward him, he raised his palms and said: “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”
I swung my sights from wall to wall and then stepped to my right. Behind the kid was a strawberry blonde girl, face turned away, who did not look up. On the bed lay Diane, her back propped up by a mound of pillows, her face a ghastly pale, her mouth providing the only noise left in the room—that of a raspy panting and blowing.
I took two more steps forward, let my eyes move down her body, and said: “Oh, geez.”
“No kiddin’, right?” the kid with his hands up said.
“Shut the hell up and help already, Danny,” the girl said, and finally turned and looked first at the gun in my hand and then into my face.
“And if you’re gonna keep shooting that thing, then get to it, mister,” the girl said. “’Cause we’re having a baby here, and it isn’t waitin’ on you.”
I was still mesmerized by the girl’s audacity when I heard the rasping voice say my name.
“You’re done shooting, right, Max?” Diane said, and the words caused me to lower the P226 Navy and move to her side.
“Diane? Jesus, Diane.”
“No, it’s not Jesus, Max. It’s a baby,” she said. If she was trying to make a joke, it was an awfully brave thing to be doing at that moment. Then she shifted her eyes to a spot behind me. “Where’s Billy?”
Even if I knew, which I didn’t, I had no time to answer as Diane’s face suddenly turned into a mask of grimacing pain. A throbbing blue vein rose on her left temple as she tucked her chin to her chest. “ARRRRRRGH” came out of her mouth like an unholy eruption.
“OK, OK, push, push, push,” said the girl at the end of the bed. Every living muscle in the room tightened for the next ninety seconds.
Chapter 36
God, that wail!
The cry of pain that speared through the door of the big cabin went straight to Rae’s heart, and she had no check on her reaction the way Danny always did. She’d bolted, just turned and ran out the door and went straight for the woman’s cabin as if the throat-burning howl had physically reached across the deck and dragged her to the room.
“Mommy?” she thought she heard, in a tiny girl’s voice that she hadn’t heard outside her own dreams for many years. And there it was, the nightmare appearing behind her open eyes as if the thing had happened yesterday, or this morning, or right this moment.
That day, years ago, she’d walked home alone to their trailer from the bus stop like she had dozens of times when her mother was too sick to meet her there. “Sorry, Rae-Jay, but Mommy’s a little sick today, you know? But I do have your Oreos up there on the counter, baby.”
And indeed the package of Double Stufs was there, right next to the near-empty bottle of Allen’s brandy, which Rae had always thought was named after her mysterious uncle whom her mom talked about having to go see, as in, “Got to go visit old Uncle Allen tonight,” as she walked out after doing her makeup and hair and whispering, “Girl, you still got it,” into the bathroom mirror.
She got up from the couch and started toward her mother’s bedroom and the ugly sound. At the time, she didn’t know why tears were running down her face. When she got to the doorframe’s edge and peeked around into the room, she saw the man on the bed first. He was in an unfamiliar pose above her mother, straddling not her hips this time, but her chest and shoulders. The fingers of his left hand gripped a fistful of her mother’s beautiful hair, and in his right hand he held a knife with a flashing blade against her mother’s cheek as he said: “Isn’t gonna be so pretty no more for them other fellas now are you, Glory?”
In between Rae’s mother’s cries of pain as the knife edge cut deep into her perfect unblemished skin, she somehow sensed Rae’s presence and looked over at her daughter with those penetrating green eyes and called out: “Run, Rae-Jay. Run, baby, just run.”
Rae had run. But it was the last time. She had not run from anything in her life since and never would: not from the funeral that followed. Not from the men who would later try to lure her and mistreat her and disrespect her, who ended up with a fist to their own faces or a gouge from a sharp key on the paint job of their fancy Town Cars. Not from the life she swore would not belong to anyone but her. Now, she was running toward the sound of a woman’s cries of pain and not away, never away again.
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