HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down

by T. J. Brearton

  Maddy had become somewhat frantic. “Why are they boarding him? How are they letting him on?”

  Tom looked around, taking it all in. “In the midst of all this, I don’t know. I was wrong. No one or nothing can stop him.”

  “But there’s FBI involved now, Tom. Haven’t they radioed to stop the boat?”

  “I’m sure they have. And I’m sure Jim has told them he’ll kill his hostages unless it takes him across.”

  Tom’s cell phone was ringing. He checked the incoming number, hoping. But it wasn’t Jim calling. It was DA Rory Blaine.

  “Tom? Are you okay?”

  Tom glanced at the Caprice up ahead. Jim and his passengers were driving onto the ferry. The boat was tethered to pilings that were half submerged. Soon there would be nothing to secure it to land. The helicopter thudded overhead. It would be only minutes now.

  “He’s getting on,” Tom said to Blaine in a low voice, almost inaudible underneath the rain drumming on the car’s roof.

  “Cruickshand ordered everyone back,” said Blaine. “If anyone boards after you he said he’d kill the girl and the baby. He’s on the phone now.”

  Tom looked at Maddy and raised his eyebrows. She looked back at him with a quizzical expression.

  Tom peered out at the stunned ferry workers. Two young men in orange raincoats watched intently as Tom drove the Blazer aboard.

  “My God,” said Maddy. She had turned around to look behind them. At least twenty law-enforcement vehicles sat in the confused mayhem of civilian vehicles, state workers, the phone-company people working on the toppled pole, and all the raincoated human beings looking at them.

  Tom was about to say something when Blaine went on, blurting out, “Tom, something’s going on there . . . at the place. The Kingston place.”

  “I know, Rory.”

  “I took a picture. Yesterday morning. I took a picture of the pond.”

  Blaine was an ambitious, thirty-five-year-old DA. Not only was he present at crime scenes to ascertain whether warrants were necessary and to help obtain them, but he liked taking pictures of everything, too.

  “And?”

  “I think there was something in it.”

  This wasn’t surprising to Tom. And he suspected, well, he knew, of course, that Blaine wasn’t referring to a floating needle or lost inner tube.

  “Okay,” said Tom, “I understand.”

  “You understand?”

  “I can’t get into it, Rory, I’m sorry. Are you at the Kingston place now? Is the Sheriff with you?”

  “He’s coming.” The connection was spotty.

  “Okay,” said Tom. “Rory? Can you hear me?”

  “—es.”

  “What about at the other dock? They’re going to be waiting at the New York dock.”

  Tom squinted into the night as he piloted the Blazer into the lane, parking behind the Caprice. Lake Champlain was too wide to see across, but he thought he could detect the faintest twinkling of red lights in the distance.

  “They’re backed off, too.”

  “Rory, he’s going to get to that house.”

  “What’s happening? What’s Cruickshand —oing? He’s gone —uts, Tom, totally—”

  “It’s not only Jim I’m worried about. He’s got an accomplice.”

  “The —ingston —oy? —ostage?”

  Tom kept his eye on the backseat of the Caprice. Jared Kingston’s head lifted, as if stirring from sleep. “Yeah,” he said. “But I don’t think Jared’s a hostage. Not Jim’s, anyway.”

  “Tom? —om?”

  The connection was lost. Tom hung up.

  The water splashed against the ferry and broke over the deck. Tom glanced in the rearview mirror as they cast off. He watched the dock, the land, and the police on shore begin to fade.

  “I don’t know how this is possible,” said Tom.

  “I do,” said Maddy.

  They saw, positioned at various spots along the ferry railings, young men in their dark clothes. They stood on top of the railings, and, in unison, spread out their arms.

  * * *

  Tom made his way through the sheeting rain, watching the young men who seemed to miraculously unburden the ferry, making it just light enough to skate across the water.

  Most of the time, we can’t interfere directly, Samuel had said.

  This was interfering directly, Tom thought. And why? Didn’t they want to keep Caleb and Elizabeth away from the Kingston place?

  He approached slowly up along the driver’s side of the Caprice, his hands out in front of him.

  Jim was still on the phone. He glanced at Tom and then jerked his head to the passenger side, indicating that Tom go around and get in. Tom went around the front of the car, looking over at his car. Maddy stared back out at him, her face was pale and ghostly. She winked at him.

  Tom opened the passenger door and got in.

  “Wet, huh?” Jim hung up his cell phone and set it in the console between them.

  “Yeah.” Tom glanced into the back seat. The girl was motionless, propped against the door. Caleb slept next to her, one hand draped across her abdomen, the other tangled in his own hair. Jared Kingston was asleep, too. His head lolled, as though dreaming, uncomfortable.

  “What do you think of that?” Tom asked, jerking his head towards the nearest young man standing atop a railing.

  Jim shrugged. “Milliner . . .” he said.

  Tom looked over at him. Jim watched the sweep of the rain over the lake. The ferry still rose and fell as it made for the opposite shore, despite the preternatural aid of the young men. “You carry too much guilt with you,” Jim stated.

  Tom asked, “What are you going do once you get where you’re going?”

  “First, you feel like some sort of failure because your draft card never got pulled. You or your brother. What did I do? I enlisted, but I ended up in a tank unit that never got deployed until the last minute.”

  “Well, at least you served.”

  “Yeah. I served. I ran over a civilian woman once with that fucking tank.”

  “You never told me that, Jim.”

  “Then you’re on the force, you’re pulling beat, and you get the call about the kid from the convenience store.”

  Tom bristled. The ferry lurched again in the lake swell. Tom glanced out the window. In the distance, fire still burned on the surface of the water. It silhouetted one of the young men. They seemed to be lifting the ferry just enough so that it wasn’t overcome by the deluge.

  “You know, Tommy, nobody could have known. You can’t keep beating yourself up for it. The kid was a deadbeat. I’m sorry, but he pitched himself down a well. That’s one fucked up way to do it, if you ask me. Not very manly. Imagine your ma seeing that, seeing you get pulled out of there, pieces of you all sticking out, bones. But that’s not on you, Tommy. Any more than Charlie’s suicide. You can’t keep getting yourself all emotionally involved. You’re trying to save these kids, and for what? What’s it doing? You coulda married Stephie, Tom. She was a good woman. Fuck cares what her kid is like? He’s not your kid, but you hadda get involved. Try to show him a thing or two — he doesn’t care for it and neither does she. Mothers always side with the kids. That’s why my old man never bothered to show me anything.”

  Jim blew through his lips, making a dismissive sound.

  “But you, Tommy, you keep trying. You’re like The Catcher in the Rye. Don’t look so astonished; yeah, I remember a book from high school besides Lord of the Rings. But for what? So you can have these sleepless nights. Drink your coffee, roam around, still trying to save the next kid before he pops off down that well. Now look where you are, Tommy.”

  “I don’t mind where I am.”

  Torrents of water crashed over the flat deck. The rain came down, pelting the concrete and steel, hammering the roof. Fresh thunderheads rumbled in the distance. The fires flickered on the southern horizon.

  “Go on, Tommy. Go on and get back in with Cruder. I always wo
ndered why you two never got it hooked up. She likes you, Milliner. God knows why, bald, paranoid, getting fat — yeah, you’ve put it on, don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

  Tom sat for a moment, smiling, looking at his hands. The ship gimbaled and slapped down, rocked and surged. Tom wondered if the kids were losing their grip out there, and felt a flash of fear in his belly.

  “Lucky we got this last ferry,” Jim said, as if there was no one outside in the storm, no one miraculously helping them survive.

  “You know,” said Tom, musing, “Charlie and I had our chocolate lab. You remember that old dog?”

  “Sure,” said Jim. “Sure I do.”

  “When he got old, that dog had gas. Used to sound like a rodent being squeezed to death when he let one go.”

  Jim started laughing, and Tom laughed, too. He glanced behind him, looking to see if the Kingston kid had come around. Jared’s head was down, his chin resting on his chest.

  Jim wiped his eyes, breathing and slowing his laughter down.

  “Poor old thing,” said Jim.

  “Yeah,” Tom said, “poor old thing.”

  * * *

  The rest of the trip went quickly. They disembarked on the New York side without incident, Tom having got back in his car with Maddy. The young men disappeared without a flourish — there one minute, gone the next. No explanation — leaving Tom with the vague sense that Caleb, Liz, and everybody else had all been spared what would’ve otherwise been a catastrophic attempt to cross the violent lake.

  They’d been there just to keep everyone safe, he realized. Including him.

  The helicopter tracked them above, but no other law enforcement trailed in their wake. They were alone along Route 33, driving through the night, the rain finally, unbelievably, tapering off. Tom was sure it wouldn’t last, any of it. Pretty soon the rain and the cops would be back. It was inevitable.

  They turned down Donna’s Road. Their heads wobbled as they drove over the bumpy terrain, following the red eyes of the Caprice taillights.

  “Wow,” said Maddy.

  “Been a long time since you been here?”

  “Yes, it has.”

  As promised, no one else was there. Tom sensed them close, but the Kingston home was quiet.

  Except for one person.

  Christopher was walking toward them along the dirt driveway as they drove in. Tom leaned forward and gripped the steering wheel. “Holy shit.”

  Christopher was soaking wet. Tom brought the Blazer to a stop and got out. At the same time, Cruickshand had already exited the Caprice and was fishing the Goldfine girl out of the back seat.

  Christopher walked slowly towards them, his coat flapping heavily about him and his exposed shirt torn and drenched. Tom felt his sparse hair whipping atop his scalp; the wind was picking up again, heralding yet another storm. It would be the third big storm in the last seventy-two hours. Three days, three big storms. Cold rain, snow. Spring in the mountains, only times ten.

  Jim pulled Elizabeth out of the Caprice, one hand on her elbow, the other on her head to keep it from whacking the roof of the car. Caleb followed, scooching his butt along the bench leather seat. He swung his legs out the door and hopped onto the dirt, twirling his hair again. The child made a loop with a bunch of strands, held it pinched with his little thumb and forefinger, and with his middle finger flicked it back and forth. He regarded them all calmly, and he smiled when Maddy appeared. She scooped him up and kissed him.

  Tom peered into the car at Jared Kingston, who was awake, though he was just staring into space.

  “Kingston,” said Tom, “you’re home.”

  Whether it was the gruffness in his voice or something else, Tom started coughing, and pulled away from the car, a balled fist pressed to his open lips, coughing and gagging until it passed, and then turned and spat behind and away from him. By this time, Christopher had reached them. The Kingston boy was blinking and looking around, his eyes swollen and red from his thin, troubled sleep.

  Christopher stopped in front of Elizabeth who stood motionless. He put a hand to her face. She didn’t react. He squatted in front of the little boy who was playing with his hair, holding onto Maddy’s hand, and sucking his pacifier.

  “Hi,” said Christopher.

  “Hi,” said Caleb.

  The boy reached out and touched Christopher’s face. “Wet,” he said.

  Tom observed all this, still a few paces away, simultaneously keeping an eye on Jared Kingston, who was now climbing out the other side of the Caprice.

  Jim Cruickshand took his Western .38 out, and also pulled his cell phone out.

  Tom looked down the driveway, the way they had come in. He listened to Jim reiterate his instructions into the phone, with the same calm voice he had used at Fletcher Allen, there in the parking lot with the cameraman from News Channel 10 lensing the whole thing, along with the reporter who’d had his pants rolled up as he had poked a yard stick in Lake Champlain the morning before. If anyone came beyond Donna’s Road, if they attempted to turn down the Kingston driveway, Jim calmly explained, he would kill his hostages, doing the child last.

  Tom listened to the thudding of the helicopter, somewhere not far off, but staying out of sights. The air smelled of woodsmoke and exhaust, but beneath those odors was another smell, like the garage of his boyhood, where oil dripped onto the concrete floor from the old Ford, and the garbage bins leaked their foul discharge. A rotten eggs smell.

  Christopher picked up the child. “Okay?” he asked the baby boy.

  “Okay,” the boy said.

  Christopher brought his hand to the child’s face and wiped his thumb just under Caleb’s eyes, where the gunk had been. Christopher smiled. He turned to Maddy and smiled at her, too. His clothes dripped onto the ground.

  Christopher turned and touched Elizabeth’s eyes. He scowled at the odd, translucent disks which covered them.

  Christopher caught Tom’s eye, and both of them at last turned to watch Jared Kingston. Jared was walking towards the house, a man just recently awakened from deep sleep, pulling at his pants, holding the trooper’s Glock in one hand, running the other through his matted, dark curly hair. He glanced back. His eyelids had gone a darker shade of purple. Even his eyes themselves seemed to have changed shape. They were longer, more almond, narrowed, his nostrils flared like an animal’s. Jared stopped, seemed to think better of it, and turned towards the shed just off to the side.

  “Jared,” Tom called. “I wonder if we could go in your house and dry off. Maybe all get a chance to talk. Could we do that?”

  Jared stopped again. Christopher and Tom watched his back, waiting. Tom snuck a glance at Jim, who had gotten back into the Caprice and was still on the phone, his head lowered, his expression hard to read.

  Jared stood in front of the shed. Tom wondered what was really in that shed.

  “Whatever,” said Jared.

  “Christopher,” Tom said quietly, but the young man already seemed to be in step with what Tom was thinking.

  “I’ll keep them with me. I think you have your hands full out here with the officer. We’ll go in with Jared, just have a kind of family discussion.”

  Tom half expected Christopher to wink, but the young man didn’t. Instead, he added, “Good to see you again, Tom.”

  Maddy needed no prompting either, efficient as ever, she took Caleb from Christopher’s arms and went towards the house, a dutiful nursemaid. Tom remembered hearing about her at Little Rock; you never had to tell Madeline Kruger twice. In fact, you never had to tell her once — she told you.

  Jared went over to them with a desultory gait, the Glock swinging in his grip, his eyes on the ground. He headed up the stairs to the porch, paused, looked around, looked into the sky, and the trees. Tom watched him.

  The treetops, the branches. Looking for movement. Something hopping from one bough to the next. Calling, its voice like cornhusks scraping together.

  Then Jared went in, and Christopher followed. />
  “I hope there’s a bathroom in here,” Tom heard Maddy say from just inside the kitchen.

  Tom walked around the front of the Caprice, watching Jim — he could only see the big man from the nose down, through the front windshield. He saw Jim’s lips move as he spoke into the small phone engulfed by his hand.

  Tom glanced down the driveway again. They won’t wait long, he thought. But Tom found himself wondering if it was really the pursuing law enforcement Jim was speaking to, or someone else altogether.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Jared walked through the kitchen with his head down. He stopped and looked over his shoulder at the child and Liz.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  Christopher stood just inside the kitchen, in front of the storm door. He was holding Liz’s hand, her eyes sealed behind the discs. Maddy had taken Caleb with her into the bathroom.

  “She’s been poisoned.”

  “Poisoned? The kid seems alright.”

  “Yes,” said Christopher. “He’s a little different. She’s been put to sleep, sort of. They’ve been working on you, too.”

  Jared grunted. He started to walk out of the kitchen, towards the hall and the stairs. Then he paused again. With the same lackluster quality to his voice, his head rounding his shoulder to look, he said, “Oh yeah, you wanted to talk. You can have her.”

  “You’ll become like them,” said Christopher.

  Now Jared turned all the way around and looked at Christopher from under his hooded eyes.

  “You’ll burn. When it takes you, you burn. All the rain coming down can’t stop the burning. And when you come out the other side, you’re shrunken. You’re body bloated, your slick feathers coated with ash. You’ll appear different to different people, as obsessions, as fears. You’ll come to them in dreams, but your natural state will become defective.”

  Jared regarded Christopher, his head lowered, the gun in his twitchy grip. Christopher paced slowly back and forth in the kitchen, dripping, making a puddle.

  “This sort of thing . . . this sort of thing might happen after you die. At times in our world, most of the time, it happens after you die. Where you go. At times like these though, these little voids in between . . . now it can happen to you while you’re still here.”