Beneath Bone Lake

by Colleen Thompson

  Rage welled up, bubbling past all else. Letting go of Zoe, she turned to glare at him, only inches from a familiar face warped by a sadistic psyche. A face that looked less like his brother Sam’s, she thought with a stab of raw grief, with each passing moment.

  “You really get off on the sick threats, don’t you?” Since he clearly meant to kill them—would have to kill them, even if she’d had the damned flash drive to give him, her only hope was to knock him off-balance for an instant, an instant she prayed would give her even the smallest chance of changing the outcome for her family. “You’re a real freak, aren’t you, J.B. McCoy? Not half the man your brother was.”

  As if in slow motion, she saw his face contort and his hand move, trigger finger tightening as the barrel swung toward Zoe’s chest. Too late, she realized he meant to punish her by killing Zoe. Too slowly, Ruby dropped her shoulder with the intent of driving it hard into his sternum.

  But she was too close for a solid hit, too slow and weak to make a difference.

  Instead, it was her sister, Misty, who attacked, smashing the water basin behind his head. Misty who sent him staggering, his hand flailing as the gun fired, sending a bullet ricocheting off something and shattering a window near what appeared to be the front door.

  J.B. fell hard, with Ruby coming down on top of him, screaming at Misty, “Get Zoe out. Now!”

  One of Ruby’s knees slammed down on J.B.’s gun arm. He was so much larger, so much stronger, there was no way she could grab or keep the weapon pinned down. No way she could do anything but knot her fists and do her damnedest to distract him for as long as possible.

  From the instant Sam had heard the gunshot, every last vestige of restraint shattered. Shoving his way through undergrowth, he leapt onto the front porch, where he looked through the jagged edges of a broken window.

  He heard Ruby’s frantic “Get Zoe out. Now!” Saw Misty looking back, too dazed to drag the shrieking child to the window. He looked farther in to see the desperate struggle on the floor. And understood at once that Ruby had gambled everything, had sacrificed any chance of her own survival in a desperate bid to allow her family to escape.

  Yet Misty and Zoe stood frozen, too horrified to react.

  Using the flashlight in his hand, Sam smashed out the remainder of the glass and leaned through to grab Misty. “Get out. Move,” he shouted at her.

  She turned to look at him, eyes huge, before he pulled first her and then Zoe outside.

  “Ruby,” Misty cried.

  “Take her. Run,” Sam shouted as a second shot exploded from inside the house.

  C HAPTER T HIRTY-FIVE

  “Let man fear woman when she loves: then she makes any sacrifice, and everything else she considers worthless.”

  —Friedrich Nietzsche,

  from Thus Spake Zarathustra:

  A Book for All and None,

  translated by Thomas Wayne

  The sound of shattering glass mingled with Zoe’s cry of terror. Then Ruby heard a second male voice—Sam’s? Sam, alive and here to help her family?

  Next came a crack, like the crack of the world splitting asunder. The acrid smell of smoke. The shocking impact of the hardest punch she’d ever taken.

  Stunned, she rolled over, her hand moving reflexively to an explosive pain in her side, a pain that dwarfed all others. Right palm slicking with the hot spurt of her blood. Brain reeling with the knowledge that it hadn’t been a hard punch, that she’d been shot. The crash of comprehension grayed her vision, hit her even harder than the bullet, and she went still, not even daring to draw breath against the mindless shriek of each nerve.

  J.B. must know she was finished, for he rolled to his feet in one swift motion. He launched himself toward the window, toward Misty and toward Zoe, his gun hand rising in an arc toward Sam’s face. Toward Sam, who tackled him as more gunfire erupted.

  Only this time, she realized, the shooting was coming from the darkness outside, where she’d just sent her family. Outside, where she could do nothing to save them.

  Where she wouldn’t even have the chance to say good-bye.

  Sam plowed into the man, bringing them both down before it registered that J.B.—his cruel asshole of a brother—was here somehow. That the drunken disaster of ten years earlier hadn’t been arrested in New Mexico as the peach fuzz drug enforcement agent had claimed but must be working for the assassin, Hobson Best, helping him to find his way around the area.

  But Sam didn’t give a damn about the particulars, not with the sound of shooting outside, shooting that made him fear that Best was out there somewhere, that he was firing on Misty and Zoe.

  Sam grabbed J.B.’s wrist, grappling for control of the gun while his brother tried to bring up a knee to kick him in the groin.

  “You always were”—Sam twisted to avoid the cheap shot and rolled on top of J.B.—“a fucking dirty fighter.”

  As Sam slammed his brother’s forearm to the hard floor, he heard the crack of bone and caught a glimpse of Ruby.

  Ruby lying still, blood leaking through the fingers she’d pressed over her side. Blood all over her. In an instant, he took it all in, right down to the realization that her hand was limp, that she was limp and staring.

  That she could be dead.

  With a shout of pure rage, Sam embraced the violence he had shunned all his life. When several hard blows failed to make his brother drop the gun, Sam used his free hand to pull the utility blade from its pouch on his belt and brought its point around.

  “You’re only shadow. Less than nothing,” J.B. roared just as his left fist struck the side of Sam’s skull.

  The impact sent Sam reeling, sent the blade spinning from his grasp. He felt the world turn over, realized too late that his brother had regained the advantage and flipped him onto his back.

  That his brother, sweating and panting with exertion, had shoved the muzzle of the gun beneath his jaw. For the first time, Sam focused on a changed man, a man who had traded the sloppy viciousness of a mean drunk for something far more alarming. Something that made Sam wonder what hellish metamorphosis he’d undergone in prison, what could account for the murderous new light in J.B.’s stone-sober eyes. Was he—could a two-bit criminal have possibly grown into the assassin known as Hobson Best?

  “You always—always thought,” J.B. said, sneering, “that you were the only one with substance. The only fucking one who deserved a decent family, a fucking college education. The only McCoy who could become a real professional or figure out his goddamned way around computers.”

  “If you want to think spoofing a few phone calls makes you a—”

  “And now look at you, loser,” J.B. went on as if he hadn’t heard. “Going to die like a fucking dog as soon as you tell me where the files are. Tell me what you did with them because now I know you’re in on this. I know you were the one who took them from her.”

  He jerked a nod toward Ruby, on the floor behind him. Ruby, who was moving her hand and rolling onto her side.

  So she’s alive, for now at least.

  But Sam had no idea how to keep her breathing.

  Justine stayed low, shallow breaths gusting past the edge of panic—a panic it took all her resources to push past. She still had no idea who’d shot at her, only that her flashlight’s beam had caught two people moving, both dressed all in black, down to the night-vision goggles they were wearing. She’d shouted a command to freeze, identified herself, and watched the pair split, wheeling and firing as they’d rocketed off into the brush.

  Professionals for certain and not the common run of East Texas meth-heads she’d been half expecting. Switching off and holstering her flashlight, she picked up the gun she’d dropped, her hand shaking so hard she’d be lucky if she could hit a stationary target.

  She was in huge trouble here, could be picked off at any moment. And it was her own damned fault for breaking department policy. Rather than waiting for backup as she should have—both her own men and the DEA agents with whom they
’d liaised were on the way—she’d taken off running when she’d heard a shot.

  Taken off running toward the possibility of a redemption that couldn’t be bought, a stupid risk that could damned well leave her child orphaned. All the shooters had to do was circle back to take her out, or intercept her as she made her way back to the SUV she’d left parked down the road, its lights off. She thought she might have hit—maybe even killed—one during the exchange of fire, but their night vision and their obvious training gave them a formidable advantage.

  She rose to a crouch and took a step in the direction of the road, only to whirl toward the sound of someone crashing through the brush behind her.

  Before she could fire, a woman called, “Help—you have to help us. My sister—Ruby’s back there and he’ll kill her.”

  “Misty? Misty Bailey?” Astonishment goosed Justine’s already racing heartbeat. “Do you have Zoe with—”

  “Sheriff Wofford?” Misty stumbled through a patch of moonlight, a child in her arms.

  In that split second, Justine glimpsed the chance she’d been praying for these past months. The chance to give her career—and the devil’s bargain she had made to claim it—meaning.

  “This way,” she ordered, more confident, more competent than she had felt in years. “I’m taking you somewhere safe.”

  “But my sister—” Misty protested over the sounds of Zoe’s weeping.

  “Help will be here soon.” Justine prioritized her mission in her mind. The child’s safety had to come first, then Misty’s and her own. Outnumbered and outgunned, Wofford knew she’d done the best she could.

  And from what she’d seen of Ruby Monroe, the woman would likely count her family’s safety as enough.

  C HAPTER T HIRTY-SIX

  “Where there is mystery, it is generally suspected there must also be evil.”

  —Lord George Byron

  “Now that she’s dead,” Sam said coldly, “I’ll sell you what you’re looking for. Sell it to you for half a million.”

  Ruby’s vision swam, pain forming eddies that threatened to drag her under like a riptide, pain that overwhelmed her relief that Sam still lived. Did he really think her dead now? And could he really be so callous that he’d seek to turn her tragedy to profit? Or was he simply scrambling for some way to save his own life?

  So what? Isn’t that what you did when you let Carrie Ann go on the supply truck? Didn’t you tell yourself that her problems weren’t yours?

  As J.B. pushed himself off his brother, Sam’s gaze flicked to hers for a split second. In that moment, Ruby understood his gambit, understood that he was looking for some chance to save her.

  Don’t, Sam. Get yourself out. This was never your fight in the first place.

  Now sitting, J.B. kept his gun on Sam and his back to Ruby, a sign that he, at least, had dismissed her as a threat. As well he might, with the agony of each breath tearing through her, with her life’s blood pooling on the floor around her.

  Just like Elysse’s… Ruby thought of her friend, dying alone and terrified, dying with so many of her dreams unfulfilled. Fury sparked in Ruby’s heart, a tiny flame that made her grit her teeth and cling fiercely to consciousness.

  And she remembered something, something she’d heard slide across the floor while the brothers were fighting. Praying it would be a phone, she swept her hand across the floor in an attempt to find it. Though she couldn’t risk speaking, maybe she could dial 9-1-1. Maybe it was too late for her, but Ruby prayed Sam and her family, at least, might be saved. And that J. B. Mc-Coy would pay for what he’d done.

  “If I kill you, I get it anyway, along with the computer you used to create the fake.” Best—or J.B.—sounded amused as all hell. “Besides, what my employer really wanted here was an illustration. An example of how far DeserTek’s willing to go to protect its—”

  “You can’t think I’d come here with the real drive on me,” Sam said. “Besides that, if you kill me, you’ll have no way of preventing the automated e-mail blast that’s going to expose DeserTek’s secrets to every major media outlet in the country. It’s already in motion—and can’t be stopped unless the money is deposited in an account set up to—”

  J.B. laughed at him. “What makes you think I’m in DeserTek’s employ? And what makes you think exposing them isn’t what we’ve wanted all along?”

  Ruby’s fingertips bumped something. Something just out of her reach. Ignoring J.B.’s ridiculous denial, she gritted her teeth and used her feet to push herself toward the object.

  Fresh pain blanked out her vision, yet she reached through it until her fingers curved around something hard and plastic but the wrong shape and size for a phone.

  Disappointment burned through her, sent hot moisture rolling along her face. Grief that so much suffering—from Carrie Ann’s to her family’s to her own—would make no difference, that Sam’s sacrifice, the possibilities she’d once sensed for them were doomed to shatter beneath the wheels of corporate greed.

  Sam was talking, arguing loudly with J.B. now, but the present was beginning to sink beneath memory. Submerging her beneath Bone Lake, where the lapping wavelets echoed an earlier conversation.

  “If you can’t stand against systematic murder, then what can you stand against…against…against?”

  As her awareness faded, Ruby’s fingers skimmed cool metal, and her own words glittered above her, a host of silvery minnows whose meaning sparkled in the sunlight.

  “I stand for my child, Sam, and the sister I practically raised….

  “I stand…

  “I stand…”

  With a tremendous effort, she stood, breaking through the surface, surging to her feet. Flowing only briefly before ebbing.

  Yet her fall gave her momentum, strength enough to plunge the blade in J.B.’s neck as he swung toward her and fired off a wild shot.

  Sam kicked away the falling gun as J.B. dropped it, his hands flying toward the knife jutting from the side of his neck. As Ruby collapsed, Sam tried to stop his brother, tried to keep him from pulling the three-inch blade free.

  But with a howl of pain, J.B. jerked it out, showering Sam with an arterial spray of blood. Sam dove for the gun, but still on his knees, J.B. ignored him, turning instead toward Ruby and raising the knife as if to strike.

  But he fell instead, spasming on the floor with a hand clasped to the spouting neck wound.

  Ignoring him, Sam stuck the gun beneath his belt and went to Ruby, his eyes burning as he took in her injuries.

  Lifting her hand, he said, “You did it. You saved Misty and Zoe. And you saved us.”

  He wasn’t certain she had saved her family, much less her own life. Wasn’t sure of anything except her courage and the way his heart contracted when her blue eye met his.

  And the pain he felt when that eye drifted closed. Until she whispered, “We did. Because of you, Sam.”

  With a splintering crash, the front door of the house flew open. Two men dressed in commando-black burst in, what looked like assault rifles at the ready. Federal agents, Sam thought, until the first in, a man larger and more muscular than the most imposing bouncer, shouted at Sam, “DeserTek security. Back away, hands up, unless you want to die now.”

  But Sam couldn’t move from his spot in front of Ruby. “She’s seriously wounded. I’m not letting you take her. I won’t.”

  To his surprise, instead of shooting him, they went to J.B. While one man covered Sam, the second jerked J.B.’s hand from the spurting wound and pinned his wrist down with a booted foot.

  “Are you working for Colo-field, Incorporated, or Global Missions?” the buzz-cut private soldier demanded.

  J.B.’s eyes rolled back into his skull, his body bucking and convulsing.

  “Which one hired you?” screamed the soldier, but J.B. was well past answering, his breath rattling from his body, a sudden, shocking stillness taking hold.

  Dead, Sam realized. The tormenter of his childhood, this resurrected nightmare. But
he doubted he’d live long enough to feel relief.

  Confirming his fear, the man guarding him yelled, “On your knees—now.”

  He glanced back at Ruby, who lay so still, save for her breathing, that he thought she must be unconscious. He decided there was no place he would rather die than by her side.

  Kneeling, he followed the order to lace his fingers behind his neck. Closed his eyes while one soldier began searching the cabin while the other stepped behind him. Inside his head, he ticked off his last moments, his mind filling with the taste and feel of Ruby, the sacred moment when they had eased their pain with the joining of their bodies, the way he’d thrown off his isolation and immersed himself completely in one shared task, the quest to free her family.

  And as he did, he regretted not the briefness of his life, but all the years he’d wasted with his nose pressed to life’s window. The years he’d spent as a foster child and a criminal’s son instead of really living life as Sam Mc-Coy.

  “All right, we’re done here,” called the soldier who’d been searching.

  And to Sam’s astonishment, the two men ran out the front door, leaving him alive and—he soon discovered—leaving Ruby bandaged to keep her from bleeding out.

  C HAPTER T HIRTY-SEVEN

  “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”

  —Joseph Campbell,

  from The Joseph Campbell Companion

  Four months later

  “I’ll leave you two to discuss it.” A Dallas attorney in a killer suit glided to the door of an office rich with distressed leather, walnut, and a hand-knotted Persian rug. With her hand on the knob, Delia Scott turned back toward her client, her expression sympathetic. “When you’ve decided, Mrs. Monroe, you can ask the secretary to call me back—I’ll be working in the conference room. Or if you need more time, just call me.”