River Rising

by Merline Lovelace

  He hoped McMann suffered. He hoped the bastard saw his whole life cartwheelin' in front of his eyes as he swallowed half the mud in Alabama. With any luck, Gator would be there to see it when they found his bloated carcass, stuck in the mud like a dumb cow.

  He didn't feel even a twinge of sympathy for the woman who'd gone down with McMann. He figured she was the officer behind the rumors that had been flying around the compound like wildfire yesterday, the woman who was investigating Billy-Boy, else why would she have been out in the storm lookin' for him and McMann? It would suit Gator just fine if McMann had taken her to the river bottom with him.

  Now if only the Alabama had swallowed that tight-assed bitch of an assistant warden, too! Gator didn't know how much she'd heard of McMann's accusations, couldn't be sure whose story she'd believe.

  He bellied around on the roof and raised his head, turtlelike, to search the lake that already spread for a good quarter mile or more. Preston had washed right past him into the trees and scrub beyond what used to be the boat shed.

  She was still there, he saw to his profound disgust. Her yellow slicker was like a flag, torn half off her back, trailing in the water as she clung with both hands to the top of a bent-over sapling. Her brown hair rat-tailed down her face, and her blouse was plastered to her like a second, muddy skin. She spotted him almost the same moment he saw her.

  "Burns!"

  She shook her head, trying to throw her hair out of her face and clear her vision. The movement bent the sapling even more. The bitch went under and bobbed up a moment later, spitting and grabbing frantically at the slender, slippery limb.

  "Is ... Is there a radio or a squawk box in that truck?"

  Gator took great pleasure in the tremor that shook her voice. She was scared, scared and soaked and surrounded by still surging water.

  "Yeah," he shouted. "A squawk box."

  "Can you get to it?"

  "Maybe."

  He could, Gator thought with a twist that pulled at his split lip, but he didn't think he would. Nossir, he didn't think he would. Not right yet, anyways.

  "Do it!" she shouted, as though she still exercised authority over him. "Tell whoever you raise to alert the E-Squad to the flooding. Tell them to get us some help out here!"

  Yeah, sure. As if he gave a flying fuck whether the emergency response squad drove into a wall of water.

  "Do it, Burns! Now!"

  He decided to let her think he was cooperating. Keeping a wary eye out for any critters that might have swum into the cab with the raging waters, he lowered himself gingerly through the open window.

  Back bent, boots on the seat and ankle deep in the muddy swirl, he fished around for the switches on the rusted box bolted to the dash. It was one of those old-fashioned jobbies, connected only with the civil engineering roads and grounds shop, the kind you could call in to request water or more sand.

  The box was silent, minus its usual, scratchy static. The water must have shorted it out. Still, Gator wasn't taking any chances. He flipped the switch to off.

  He wasn't quite sure how he was going to use this situation to his advantage. Maybe Preston would get tired of hanging on to that tree. Maybe a nice, accommodating cottonmouth would swim up her pant leg and take a bite out of her ass. Hell, Gator wouldn't mind taking a bite out of that ass himself. She shook it around the compound often enough.

  The idea grabbed at his gut, sent hot streaks straight to his groin. She was scared, half drowned. A couple of fists to the jaw would knock the fight out of her. He could bend her over the edge of the truck bed, peel down her pants, have at her. He'd have to make sure she didn't tell anyone about it, though. Make sure the river got her, too, like it did McMann.

  Almost salivating with eagerness, he swung through the window into the back of the truck. Water sloshed calf high, lapping over his boots and climbing his legs. His eyes glued to the figure clinging to the bent-over sapling with straining arms, he started for the rear of the truck. It wasn't until his boot toe clunked against iron that he remembered the tie-down rod... and the fact that McMann was the last person to touch it.

  A sudden, visceral excitement leapt into his gut. Would the river water have washed off McMann's prints? Gator searched through a lifetime on the streets, trying to remember bits and pieces of police lore learned the hard way. He didn't think so. Hell, he knew so!

  The rod was filmed with black grease. The damned thing had slipped right through Gator's gloves. Grease didn't mix with water, but it should make for nice, fat prints.

  Satisfaction pricked into him sharp and fast, like the jab of a good needle. He shifted his narrow gaze to the Preston bitch.

  "Burns!" Her thin, strident cry cut across the muddy water. "Did you raise anyone on the box?"

  "Yeah," he lied. "The CE yard. They're sendin' help. May take some time, though."

  "How much time? "

  Longer n' you got, lady. "Didn't say."

  She spit out a curse that raised a smile in Gator's heart. Setting her jaw, she tried to work her way up the sapling, hand over hand. The more she clawed and climbed, the more the young tree bent into the water. She gave it up, frustrated and still hanging chest high in swirling, muddy water.

  "That trunk's gonna break," Gator shouted. "You'd better let go and swim over here while you still got some strength left."

  He could spot the mistrust in her face even across the newly made lake. She'd seen him and McMann going at it, heard something, Gator didn't know what. He would, though. Before he finished with her, he'd know exactly what she'd heard. She'd sob it out, he promised himself with mounting excitement. She'd sob more than that out.

  While she stewed and hung with straining arms from her tree, Gator slowly, cautiously shuffled his boot toe from side to side, feeling, searching. When his sole rolled onto the smooth round rod, his hands fisted inside the wet work gloves.

  McMann's prints were on the tie-down rod, but not Gator's. Christ, it was like being handed the keys to the bank. Whatever he did, whatever he made Fayrene Preston suffer, he could lay squarely on the man who bashed her head in before he himself drowned.

  And if McMann hadn't drowned, Gator thought with savage glee, he'd surely wish he had. Yessir, when Bolt and company got through avenging the brutal assault on one of their own, McMann would surely wish he had.

  First, though, Gator had to lure the rabbit into the snare. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he shouted across the water.

  "Better haul yourself up some, Warden. I just seen a cottonmouth swim by."

  He could hardly hide his grin when she twisted and thrashed at the end of her sapling like a hooked bass.

  "Jesus! There's another one." He managed a credible display of repugnance." The water's crawlin' with 'em! Get over here fast... if you can!"

  Chapter Fourteen

  "McMann! McMann, please! You have to...help me. I can't... I can't..."

  Carly's plea ended on a sob. Exhausted, too weak to move her arms or legs, she lay on her back and stared at the sullen sky. Water lapped at her calves. Something crawled across the back of her hand. She couldn't summon the strength to shake it off.

  Eyelids encrusted with mud drifted down, shutting out the sky. The black clouds were gone. The storm that had spewed such destruction had passed. Blown east, Carly thought numbly, where it would rain down more havoc, more violence. More death.

  No. Her sluggish brain registered the protest. Not death. McMann wasn't dead. She'd heard him groan a while ago, after she'd used the last of her strength to half drag, half swim him to the only island of high ground in this endless sea of river. It took almost all she had to break the mud's suction and open her eyes once more.

  "McMann."

  The hoarse croak got no response from the inert form beside her. Almost weeping with the effort, Carly slid an elbow deeper into squishy Alabama clay and levered up the top portion of her body.

  Lungs still on fire from the long, terrifying ride down the river wheezed out a strangle
d gasp. Sweet Lord above! If she hadn't heard that groan, hadn't felt McMann's chest rise against hers when she'd collapsed on top of him a few moments ago, she'd swear the river had claimed him. Like Carly he sprawled half in, half out of the turgid water. His black hair was plastered to his skull. Slime coated his face and neck and what remained of his shirt, scored to tattered strips by the pine that had almost drowned them both.

  Just the thought of that spike-branched tree suffocated her with panic. If the trunk hadn't turned, if it hadn't lifted them both clear of the water for the precious seconds it took for Carly to rip McMann's windbreaker free of the jagged spear that had gone through it, they would have died, tangled together by her belt, in the dark, silt-filled waters. The terror of those moments rushed back. Carly whimpered, digging into the mud like a frantic crab to escape it.

  It was the sound of her own mewling that shocked her to her senses. She blinked and waited for her galloping pulse to slow once more. She'd survived, she reminded herself with a gulp that scratched her raw throat. She'd pulled herself and McMann out of the water.

  Almost out of the water. The river still lapped at them, still wanted them. Well, it wouldn't get them, she vowed fiercely. Not today.

  Willing her brain to shoot some neurotransmitters to her aching arms and legs, she pushed out of the sucking mud and onto her knees. The effort started a buzzing in her ears. Watery earth and watery sky spun dizzily. Panting, she waited for the world to right itself.

  When at last it did, she planted a hand on McMann's shoulder, another just under his ribcage. Grunting, she shoved at his bulk, let hurt rock back, shoved again, until she managed to roll him over.

  Too weak to fight the force of her own momentum, Carly rolled with him. She hung across his middle, gasping, while seconds slipped by. Long moments passed before the insistent, slapping water forced her onto her hands and knees. She was gathering her strength for the next move when McMann gave a raspy cough.

  She turned her head to find him staring at her with red-rimmed eyes.

  "I... wondered... if that... was you."

  She didn't bother to reply to the obvious. She couldn't. Her breath still needled painfully through her lungs just from the effort of turning him over.

  He ran his tongue over caked lips, grimacing at the taste of mud, and tried again. "Are we... still tangled... together?"

  "No." Using the butt of her hand against his stomach, Carly pushed back on her haunches. "I shed my... raincoat right after I got you... out of your windbreaker."

  He thought about that for a long while. Too long for Carly, who felt the water oozing between her legs.

  "We have to move," she got out wearily. "You have to help me. I can't... drag you. I had to float you this far. Me and the pine."

  "The pine." A shudder started at McMann's shoulders and shook its way down his chest. "I thought it had us."

  "It did."

  Her throat was scraped too raw from the water she'd coughed up to tell him that the same pine that had almost killed them had, in fact, saved them. She had no idea how long she'd clung to its rough-barked trunk, how long she'd kept her body wedged against McMann's so he wouldn't slide through the branches into the angry river. The tree and the raging current must have carried them a good five miles before the storm passed, the drumming rain ceased, and the river broadened into a lake where acres of rich farmland used to be.

  The sight of that endless expanse of drowned earth had clutched at Carly's heart when she'd first seen it. The only signs that humans had once inhabited the area were a line of telephone poles in the distance, the tin roof of a submerged house, the upper half of a barn. They'd floated on, the current less savage but still relentless. She'd grown weaker, McMann more heavy. Panic had started to claw at her when she spotted the farmhouse perched atop a hill that rose out of the muddy sea. Using reserves of strength she didn't know she possessed, she'd kicked and thrashed and tried to propel the tree toward the tiny atoll, all the while shouting for help.

  Her feeble cries hadn't raised any signs of life, much less of rescue. The pine wouldn't turn or angle closer. It had almost swept them past the island of safety when sheer desperation gave Carly the courage to abandon her hold on the trunk and drop into the water, dragging McMann with her. Finally she'd crawled onto oozing red mud and collapsed.

  Now she needed to tap into the last of her reserves. Hands on her upper thighs, she pushed off her haunches.

  "We need to get higher. Out of the water. Can you move?"

  McMann lifted an experimental hand. The small effort put white brackets on either side of his mouth. "I can move."

  Carly could only guess what it cost him to roll over and stagger to his feet. She knew what it cost her. Exhaustion pulled at her like an anchor as she hooked an arm around his waist.

  "I'll help you. You help me."

  Together they stumbled up the steep incline toward the row of pecan trees that formed a windbreak around the house. From the way the stately trees reached almost to the eaves of the two-story dwelling, it was obvious they'd been there for decades.

  So had the house. White paint peeled in strips from the trim on the brick and stone facade. Even from halfway down the hill, Carly could see that the porch sagged a bit on its cinder-block supports and the screen door hung at a comfortable angle. Despite the evidence of age and hard use, however, the farmhouse represented a sanctuary that had her almost sobbing with anticipation.

  There was a barn in the fields beyond the house, she saw as she wove an unsteady path beside McMann, a weathered structure that had also seen a few decades of use. The river had burst through its doors and flooded the lower regions, but she caught a flutter of movement through the open hatch of the loft.

  McMann saw it, too. He halted abruptly and pulled free of her. Lifting his hands to cup his mouth, he shouted hoarsely across the water.

  "Hey! In the barn! Is anyone there?"

  The only response was a flurry of straw from the upper story. Thin stalks drifted down to float on the water. McMann chewed on the inside of his cheek, staring at the puddle of straw. "Chickens?"

  "Or barn cats," Carly answered. His little grunt spoke volumes. Not a cat lover, apparently.

  He slid an arm around her waist again, and the welcome support made her realize that he'd regained far more of his strength than she had. Her legs would hardly hold her. Her lungs still wheezed with each step. She'd lost one of her shoes as well as her raincoat to the river.

  The first time her heel came down on a sharp rock, Carly winced. The second time, McMann bent and lifted her into his arms. She didn't protest. She'd gone beyond caring how she reached shelter, as long as she reached it.

  She couldn't even hold her head up. She sagged against McMann's shoulder, letting her body absorb the heat and movement of his. What remained of his tattered shirt and windbreaker cushioned her cheek. The river's stench clung to him as it did to her. The wet, rusty smell grew more potent in the crook of his neck, where his skin had warmed with the effort of walking up the hill, but Carly had breathed and swallowed too much of it now to care. Her lids swept down again as exhaustion claimed her.

  She didn't open them until the wooden steps leading to the front porch squeaked under their weight. When McMann set her down on the white-painted porch, the toes that stuck through Carly's shredded hose curled against the smooth-planed wood.

  Propping her against one of the roof supports as he would a rag doll, McMann pulled open the screen and hammered on the front door. His forceful thuds echoed emptily inside the house. He pounded again, then again for good measure, before rattling the doorknob. He gave up after a few tries.

  "Looks like they were smart enough to get out before the river jumped its banks."

  "Either that, or they were evacuated," Carly said, scraping back her tangled hair. "I heard on the news last night—I think it was last night—that county coordinators were evacuating some of the farms south of the city. Just in case."

  "Good planning o
n someone's part," McMann muttered as he worked his way along the porch, testing the windows. Their sturdy bolts held.

  "Stay put. I'll try the back door."

  Carly couldn't have moved if she'd wanted to. Still, his brusque assumption of command put a crease between her eyes. She stirred a little, not enough to surrender the support at her back, then sank against it again.

  It was some moments before she could process thoughts and memories through her bone-deep fatigue. For the first time since the river sucked them into its maw, she thought back to the scene she and Fay Preston had stumbled onto. Slowly, the images resurfaced. Bit by bit, the pieces clicked into place. She could hear the inmate, Burns, screaming accusations, see once more the fury in McMann's expression as he leaned over, fist raised to smash his accuser's face.

  Her sense of victory at having cheated the river died. Twisting her head from one side to the other, Carly swept another look over the bleak vista that stretched in every direction. Nothing moved except the water. No boats chugged across the horizon. No helicopters circled overhead. Unless McMann's pounding on the back door raised a response, she was alone with a man Gator Burns had identified as Elaine Dawson-Smith's killer. And Billy Hopewell's.

  A chill crawled down Carly's skin. Oh, God! Was it true? Had Billy fallen victim to a killer?

  Setting her teeth, she forced herself to examine the possibility that the handsome young inmate ended up under that mower by design, not accident. Her lawyer's mind sorted through the facts. Hopewell's death was ruled an accident, but there had been no witnesses. The mower rolled over him sometime on Friday afternoon, after Carly had stumbled into him in the woods. The same afternoon, she recalled with a sudden closing of her throat, that she'd taken McMann to a barbecue stand to grill him about Billy... and a person named Joy.

  No!

  The denial ripped from deep inside her, erupting from instincts that disregarded facts and possibilities.

  No!

  He didn't kill Billy. Ryan McMann was capable of violence. Carly acknowledged that. His chosen profession proved it beyond any doubt, for heaven's sake, as did the brutal beating she'd seen him administering to Burns such a short time ago. But the man who'd stood alone in a southside cemetery, his face closed and stark, couldn't have engineered Billy Hopewell's death. He couldn't have!