Murph had a damned good idea. With the animal-like survival instincts he'd honed over the years, he sensed that the business with Billy and the women in the woods was about to bust wide open. Well, they couldn't track nothing back to ole Murph. He didn't know anything, not for a fact, hadn't seen anything. Probably wouldn't hurt him none to display his ignorance to the assistant warden, either. Scratching his head, he made a show of thinking back.
"Well, I don't recall as McMann said exactly what he wanted with Gator. He was heated up, though. Seemed to think Burns knew something about him and his friend, Billy Hopewell, something McMann didn't want to tell me about."
The two women exchanged swift glances, then started for the door.
"We'll take my vehicle," Fayrene said. "It has four wheel drive and a radio, which might come in handy if we hit high water."
"Right."
Satisfied that he'd put the hounds to bayin' up another tree, Murph ambled to the coffee pot and refilled his cup.
"Where's Burns?"
Fayrene Preston pitched the question loud enough to be heard above the roar of the river and the pounding rain. The guard supervising the crew strung along the breastworks swiped a hand over his cheeks and shouted a reply.
"He took a ton-and-a-half back to the civil engineering compound. You should have passed him on the road."
"We didn't."
Standing beside them, Carly felt the earth shudder beneath her feet. From the vantage point of the road carved atop the breastworks, she eyed the churning water. It rushed south, then west, then south again, digging a sinuous, ever-changing course through cotton fields and peanut farms all the way to Mobile. Swollen and muddy, it had taken on a snarling character far different from its normal, placid flow. Uprooted trees and debris and what looked like a small, bloated pig pulsed along with the rushing waters. The carcass tumbled and dipped in the muddy river like one of the fishing bobbins the Judge used to tie on Carly's line for her.
The Alabama was going to break. Maybe not here, where long, snaking lines of green sandbags reinforced the raised earthen banks, but somewhere, and soon.
"Try the road to the boat ramp," the guard shouted. "We had another crew working there earlier, helping shore up the dock."
Carly slogged alongside the assistant warden to the utility vehicle that sat with its engine idling and wipers slashing back and forth like sabers. Mud churned up by the trucks splashed onto her pant legs.
Her slacks were already so wet below the hem of her raincoat that the reddish slime slid right off. The door slammed, cutting off the rain and plunging both her and Fayrene Preston into a steamy dampness.
"We'll try the boat ramp," the slicker-clad assistant warden said grimly "Then I'll have to put you and your inquiry on hold."
Before shoving the vehicle into gear, she jerked the radio from its dash mount and instructed central control to put her through to the base civil engineer. They reached him at the command post activated to deal with the worsening situation.
"I don't like the looks of things down here," she informed the colonel tersely. "What's the situation upriver?"
His reply crackled over the radio. "Not good. We've got reports of flash flooding and downed power lines around Clanton. Abridge washed away about three miles south of the town and took a section of I-65 with it. We launched some of our choppers to help the state police locate and evacuate stranded motorists."
Carly pushed her wet bangs off her forehead. She'd bet Jo West was piloting one of those birds. The captain wouldn't want to miss out on the action.
"What about the base?" Fayrene asked the colonel. "Any flooding yet? "
"The fairways east of Cottonwood are pretty much under water, but nothing that worries me too much right now. How about at your end? Your command post rep says you've already completed the preliminary steps in the evacuation op plan."
"I've had central control contact all our off-duty people and put them on standby for recall," she confirmed. "We've also requested extra buses from the motor pool to transport the inmates to Hangar Twenty-one, if and when evacuation becomes necessary."
"What about the warden's family?"
"We'll move them, too. Mrs. Bolt has been notified that she might have to..."
Preston broke off, ducking instinctively when lightning cracked through the black clouds.
"Mrs. Bolt knows she might have to evacuate," she continued when the booming thunder faded. "She's getting her things together. The kids are in school."
"Well, it's your call when to move them, but I wouldn't wait too long."
The assistant warden flicked another glance at the reinforced bank, obviously weighing the necessity of getting a handle on the scandal about to break against the storm wreaking havoc upriver. Indecision showed on her face, in the lower lip she worried between her teeth.
Carly bit down on her need to find McMann and Gator Burns. Ever since the guard at the dining hall had linked Billy Hopewell, McMann, and Burns in the same sentence, her heart had drummed a furious beat. Hopewell was dead. McMann, she believed with more certainty each passing moment, knew more than he'd admitted to either the military investigators or to Carly. Burns, she hoped, would prove the catalyst that finally, irrevocably unraveled the mystery of Elaine Smith's death.
She couldn't urge the assistant warden to continue the search for them, though. Not with everything else pressing down on the woman at the moment.
Preston hesitated a few seconds longer before informing the civil engineer that she'd be on mobile for another twenty minutes or so. "I'm going to swing by the boat ramp," she told him crisply, "then head back to the prison compound."
"Roger that."
Her decision made, she flicked the radio back onto its dash mount and shoved the vehicle into gear.
Chapter Thirteen
Gator saw them coming. Through a pinwheel of pain, he caught a flicker of yellow as it rounded the corner of the shed that housed the base's pleasure boats. The assistant warden, his screaming brain registered. Someone else was with her, an indistinct figure in a belted raincoat. He barely had time to identify the figure as female before McMann's left connected with his jaw again.
A fireball of red exploded behind his eyes. Teeth cracking against teeth, Gator staggered back against the fender of the ton-and-a-half, throwing out hands still encased in rough work gloves to keep himself from sliding into the mud.
He needed a weapon, any kind of a weapon! The closest was an iron tie-down rod, designed to secure the truck bed's canvas top if one was used. He lunged for the rod, only to snarl in fury as the grease-smeared pin slipped through his gloved hand. McMann snatched it out of his grasp, tossing it into the truck bed as he closed on Gator, his eyes murderous.
"I should use that rod to beat what I want out of you, Burns, but the feel of my fist in your face gives me a whole lot more pleasure."
"Bastard!"
"I may be a bastard, but you're a dead man. Today, tomorrow, however long it takes, you're dead."
The right fist that plowed into his solar plexus doubled Gator over. He dropped to his knees in a swirl of water, wheezing bloody bubbles.
Above him, lightning cracked across the sky. In the blinding flash of white light, he saw the assistant warden break into a run. While thunder and pain boomed with equal violence, he searched frantically for a way to save his skin, to turn the accusations McMann had thrown at him with every punch back against his accuser.
"Fuck you... McMann," he wheezed through the fire igniting his intestines. "You can... kill me, just like you killed that Smith woman, but... they'll get you. This time, they'll get you!"
"You miserable, twisted son of a bitch, we both know who shot that woman, and why."
Desperate now, Gator cringed against the truck's tires. "Billy told... me what you made him do... before you was sprung. He told me 'bout money you collected every time you came out to the prison."
McMann straddled him, wrapped a fist in his shirt to haul him into his f
ace.
"Give it up, Burns. You know damn well you're not walking out of here, so you might as well..."
"Hold it right there!"
The shrill command barely pierced the rage that had driven Ryan into the storm to find his quarry. His right fist balled, raised, readied to smash into the ugly mug just inches from his face.
"I said hold it!"
Ryan jerked his head around. Rain and blood from the cut over his left eye blurred his vision, but he could see well enough to identify the assistant warden.
"Back away from that prisoner! Now, McMann!"
Beneath him, Gator's split lips peeled back in a sneer. "Looks like we got company, pretty boy."
Just in time, Ryan remembered that the inmate played by street rules. With a twist of his hips, he took the knee aimed at his groin on the inside of his thigh. The bony knee hit with enough force to knock Ryan off balance for a moment, just the moment Gator needed to slither away and stagger to his feet.
"Jesus! Good thing you got here, warden." Burns leaned a shaky hand on the tire of the massive truck and spat a stream of blood. "He tried to kill me, like he killed them others. That Smith woman and Billy Hopewell. He's crazy, fuckin' crazy."
Chest heaving, Ryan turned around to face the warden. Only then did he see the woman standing just behind Preston. Carly's wide, accusing stare slashed like a straight razor through the rage still screaming in Ryan's veins.
She'd heard Gator. Did she believe the bastard?
Did Fayrene Preston?
Although none of the officials at the minimum security facility carried side arms, they were trained to handle volatile and potentially dangerous situations. Keeping a safe distance from the combatants, the assistant warden snarled an order over her shoulder.
"Get back to the vehicle, Major. Radio central control, tell them I have McMann and one of the inmates involved in a situation here. Tell them to dispatch the E-Squad immediately."
Carly gave Ryan a look that ripped out his heart, then spun around. A moment later, she disappeared behind the corner of the shed.
"You boys want to tell me what's going on here?" Fayrene Preston demanded.
"McMann come after me." The words spewed out of Gator, fast and furious. "Damned near drove me off the road. He's crazy, I tell you. Crazy. He done accused me of whoring with women in the woods."
He spat again and dragged the back of his arm across his mouth. Water streamed down his shaved head and squat, bull-like neck, sloughing off the mud that clung to his face like a dirty beard.
"As if any women would pay money to get it on with me," he sneered. "Why should they, when they had studs like Billy Hopewell and McMann here to stick it to them?"
The assistant warden had spent too many years of dealing with the dregs of society to let anything show on her face, but Ryan felt her withering scorn.
"That's a good question. You want to answer it, McMann?"
"He's lying."
"The hell I am. Ask him why he keeps comin' back twice a week, even after he got sprung. Ask him why a big, smart university man like him done got so close with that halfwit, Billy Hopewell. They was gettin' money from those bitches, I tell you, and havin' themselves a time doin' it. You don't have to take my word for it. You can talk to Pauly Rich and Jimbo Johnson."
A product of the streets, Gator knew his word didn't hold any more weight than McMann's. Less, perhaps, since his rap sheet ran to three pages.
Which was why, Ryan guessed grimly, he played his last, desperate card.
"Me 'n Jimbo 'n Pauly ain't the only ones what knew what was goin' on. Ask Murphee why Hopewell always wanted to work the woods by them stables, why he whined for his buddy McMann all the time."
The guard would have to back Burns up, Ryan realized with a twist to his gut, or admit to taking bribes.
He stood rigid, pummeled by rain and the shattering knowledge that it was about to start all over again. Another investigation, possibly another trial. Hordes of media descending on him, dogging his every step, creating sensational fiction when the facts weren't salacious enough to suit their tastes.
The open road that beckoned continually in the back of Ryan's mind shimmered for a moment on a silvered screen formed by the driving rain, then went dark. He'd come so close, so agonizingly close, to anonymity, to freedom. Maybe even a little peace.
Still keeping a watchful distance, the assistant warden instructed Ryan to move away from the truck and from Gator.
"I want you over there, McMann, until the E-Squad arrives. Then we'll... Shit!"
Another bolt of lightning cracked out of the black clouds. Preston hit the ground, diving face first into the mud, as it struck the pines only yards away. With a report like a rifle crack, a trunk split halfway up. Blinding white light lit up the entire area. Electricity leapt from tree to tree.
Gator threw up his arms to protect his head and flung himself down beside the truck. Ryan's first instinct was to do the same. In that heartbeat, he saw Carly coming around the shed.
She froze at the awesome sight, then threw herself down as one ear-shattering thunderclap after another followed the strike and the top half of the pine came crashing down.
Like a big budget disaster movie, nature's wildness played out before Ryan's eyes in vivid, heart-stopping Technicolor. The decapitated pine dragged a another tree down in its wake. The second pine upended, pulling its root ball clear of the river bank that had anchored it. A small gap sprouted in the bank and filled instantly with a rush of angry, churning water. Before Ryan's horrified eyes, what began as a stream exploded into a torrent.
Huge sections of bank crumbled. More trees toppled. Red clay and brown, rushing waters raced toward the shed, toward the boat ramp, toward the woman stretched flat on the ground.
"Carly! Lookout!"
She pushed up on one elbow, then onto a knee. A look of terror came over her face as she saw the wall rushing right at her.
Ryan didn't stop to think. Didn't try to gauge his chances of reaching her before the angry water. Using every ounce of speed, every agile move, every defensive countermeasure he'd developed during ten years in the world's most brutal sport, he launched himself across the sodden ground. He scooped her up on the fly, bending to drag her out of the mud, and raced toward the illusive safety of the shed.
For a single, wrenching moment, he thought they'd make it. Only a few yards separated them from the structure when the force of the onrushing water knocked his feet out from under him. He tried to throw Carly clear, fought to lift her out of the muddy swirl and propel her sideways. He couldn't get any purchase. She was fighting him, fighting the swamping water, thrashing in his hold. He lost her, somehow tangled an arm in the belt to her raincoat, found himself anchored to her as they tumbled and twisted alongside tree branches and brush that stung at his face and neck.
Just when Ryan thought they might ride the beast to safety, it devoured them whole. Like a wild animal with a nose pushed through the door of its cage, the river roared free of its banks. Ton after ton of water poured over and through and around the breastworks, until long sections of earth disappeared and the swirling, crashing water turned back on itself.
Ryan fought its pull, went under, came up beside a choking, spitting Carly. He saw Gator drag himself into the bed of the ton-and-a-half, thought he caught a flash of yellow slicker, before the rampaging brown river sucked him down again. Concrete scraped one side of his face as the rushing vortex dragged both him and Carly down the boat ramp and into the main current.
Ryan had never imagined anything as monstrous as the force of that current. It drove him down, down, into water thick with silt, captured him, weighted him. His lungs bursting, he kicked, scissored, clawed upward with one hand. Carly was a dead weight at the end of his other arm, tethered to Ryan by the raincoat's belt. He dragged her up with him, felt his arm almost tearing from its socket with the strain.
He burst to the surface, heaved Carly up beside him. Gasping, thrashing, she hacked out
a stream of brown water.
"Swim!" he shouted, knowing it was useless but determined to try anyway. "Kick!"
"I... am!"
Fighting the raging current, Ryan tried to angle toward the bank, or what used to be the bank. The ramp, the shed, were gone. Muddy water spread at warp speed, gobbling up the landscape like an insatiable beast. The ton-and-a-half sat in the middle of a spreading lake, an immovable island in a sea of brown.
"The truck," Ryan shouted. "Try... for... the...."
"Oh, God!"
Carly's horrified cry snapped his desperate gaze from the ton-and-a-half to the river. What little air he'd been able to suck into his lungs left on a curse.
A downed pine tree rode the vicious crosscurrent. Bristling with broken branches, it hurtled toward them like a deadly projectile fired by a malevolent hand. Ryan knew they had one chance, just one chance, to dodge those ragged spikes. He dove straight down, dragging Carly by her belt, grabbing her arms, rolling her under him to protect her body with his.
Sharp stakes ripped along his back, tore through his jacket. Something snagged on the windbreaker's collar. He fought the stranglehold, twisting, jerking, trying to reach behind him with one hand as he was dragged along with the racing current. Water filled his nostrils, his lungs. He felt Carly's frantic hands on his just before the muddy water turned black.
Spread-eagled on the roof of the truck, Gator clung to the rim of the open window. Ragged breath whistled through his broken teeth. His heart slammed against the metal roof with all the fury of the river pounding against the truck's sides.
Through streaming eyes, he watched McMann and the woman disappear under the branches of a fast moving tree. The pine swept toward the river's bend. Gator held his breath, watching, hoping. Seconds passed, five, ten, a minute and more. When neither McMann nor the woman came up again, his lips pulled back in a vicious smile. Still smiling, he watched the pine swoop around the bend.
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