by Gayle Wilson
Limping more heavily than usual, he started toward them at once. Afraid that Emma would think it was Jemison, Susan looked back at her to explain.
“That’s my friend Jeb. His truck’s out on the highway. We’ll walk back to it and call the police.”
She realized suddenly there was no reason to wait until they reached the truck. She had stuffed her cell phone in the pocket of her slacks before they’d locked the truck.
She reached into her pocket to retrieve it, feeling the clammy, wet fabric in dismay. As she’d crouched in the water, shielding Emma as much as she could, she had never once thought about the damage the river would do to her phone.
It was too late to worry about it now. They needed to get away from here and drive into Pascagoula. It couldn’t be far, not given the distance they’d followed Diane’s pickup along that narrow, twisting road.
“You okay?”
She looked up in response to Jeb’s question. Every stitch he wore was wet. Water trickled from his hair and down his face, colorless in the moonlight. His mouth was slightly open, his breathing shallow but audible.
“What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, holding out his hand to her. Pulling Emma with her, she moved into his arms instead, which closed around her so tightly it took her breath.
They were safe. Thank God, all of them were safe.
After a moment he leaned back, increasing the distance between them. “She all right?” he asked, nodding toward Emma.
“Considering.”
“Then let’s get her out of here.”
He turned, and for the first time she saw the stain on the back of his shirt. The splotch was frighteningly large, obviously blacker than the water-soaked material around it.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Yeah. It’s okay.” Something about the quality of that attempted reassurance wasn’t at all reassuring.
“Jeb?”
He wasn’t a man who would welcome her solicitousness. She had recognized that the night they met. This, however…
“We need to get into town. To get her into town,” he said, nodding again toward Emma before he continued his slow progress toward the track that led out of the clearing.
“What about the other one?”
It took a second for the import of Emma’s question to register. Susan had already opened her mouth to ask who she meant, when Jeb whirled around.
He glanced questioningly at Susan. When she shook her head in bewilderment, he closed the distance between them as quickly as his limp and obvious exhaustion would allow.
“What other one, Alex?” Jeb stooped down so that he was on eye level with the little girl. As he did, an involuntary grunt of effort or pain escaped between his set lips.
“I think she means me.” The voice came from the darkness behind him. “I’m really sorry, Jeb, especially since you worked so damn hard to take care of Jemison, but…sometimes that’s the way things play out. We don’t always get what we want.”
WITHOUT ATTEMPTING to get to his feet again, a task that seemed Herculean despite the sudden sickening surge of adrenaline, Jeb pivoted in the speaker’s direction. He had to put his hand on the ground as vertigo washed over him.
He blinked, trying to clear his vision enough to find the man among the shadows that stretched across the clearing. When he opened them again, he discovered that the figure was frighteningly close. Close enough that Jeb could identify, despite the darkness and his light-headedness, what the man carried.
Apparently the need to get this over and done now outweighed any desire for silence. The crack of that high-powered rifle would echo a long way down the river. Of course, by the time someone reacted to it, it would be far too late.
Jeb straightened the elbow of the arm he’d been holding himself upright with, using it to push up off the ground. Then he stood, swaying slightly, trying to think of something he could do as the last person on earth he would have expected to be involved in this advanced across the clearing.
No wonder the sign at the end of the pier had seemed so familiar. He must have seen that word a dozen times atop that damn poem in Duncan McKey’s office.
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul…
You vicious bastard, he thought, watching the surgeon’s advance. Always so goddamn concerned. So supportive. And all the time—
“The surprisin’ thing is that I really am sorry it’s got to end this way,” McKey said. “I knew once you got your teeth into this, you wouldn’t give up. But then, neither can I. Not now. There’s too much at stake. My whole life’s work. You, better than anyone, should be able to understand that. Besides, love and war have no rules.”
The familiar drawl reverberated in his head like an echo. If the bastard was going to shoot him, Jeb thought bitterly, he should have the decency to do it without talking him to death.
Death. The harsh reality of the word stopped his attempt at bravado. Although he wasn’t unaccustomed to the possibility, this was in no way how he’d ever envisioned his own death. Not the kind of combat in which he had thought he might fall.
But McKey had it right. What he’d said about love and war. This whole thing, from the beginning to the end, had been about both. He just hadn’t figured out in time who his enemy was.
And as for the other…
He wished he’d told her, he acknowledged, watching McKey come closer, his stride unhurried. He had foolishly believed he’d have plenty of time when everything else had been resolved. After she found Emma. After his reevaluation. And now? With a bitterness as caustic as bile, he knew it was too late.
There had to be something he could do, he told himself, fighting the lethargy that spread deeper into his brain with every heartbeat. At the least, he could try to prolong it.
“Why?”
There was no reason for McKey to respond to his question except ego, which was exactly what Jeb was counting on. After all, no one reached the position McKey held without a very healthy dose of self-esteem. Add to that the god complex inherent in the personalities of most doctors…
“Why? Because it turns out the bastard wasn’t only cheatin’ the stockholders, he was cheatin’ me as well.”
Not Richard. The only person that description fit was McKey’s former partner, Ray DeCourtney.
“So you killed him.”
It wasn’t a question. DeCourtney’s death shortly after Richard’s disappearance now seemed too obviously coincidental. Another of the dots Jeb hadn’t connected in time.
“Hell, if I hadn’t, his greed would have brought it all down. And me with it. If somebody like Kaiser, some shit-ass low-level bean counter, could figure out what Ray had been doin’, it stood to reason somebody else would.”
“Richard Kaiser called you when he found DeCourtney was cooking the books,” Jeb said, finally putting it all together despite the growing buzz in his head.
“Said he needed somebody he could trust to do ‘the right thing.’” Amusement colored the deep accent. “Seems his boss wasn’t too happy with him accusing a major client of some pretty serious criminal activity.”
“And that’s when Kaiser made the mistake of trusting you.”
“I told him whatever he did, not to tell anybody where he was going. That until I had the proof he said he had in my hands, I was as vulnerable as he was. He bought it hook, line and sinker.”
Poor stupid bastard. He had bundled up his baby and headed down here to meet the world-famous surgeon with the spotless reputation. The man who had been building DeCourtney’s company into the household name it would become. Following McKey’s advice, Richard had been careful not to use his cell or his credit cards or leave a message for his wife. And then he’d walked straight into the trap set for him by a man who was every bit as ruthless as his dead partner.
“And then you killed him.”
“If I hadn’t, Ray would have. He’d already tried once and botched it. That’s what sent the stupid so
n of a bitch running to me. Pretty much par for the course.”
“Except you botched it, too.”
Jeb had realized with a dawning sense of hope that McKey was exactly what he’d always been. Overconfident. Almost cocky. So sure of his own success and his omnipotence.
Despite the range of the weapon he carried, the doctor had moved in too close. Another foot or two…
“Yeah, well, it’s hard to get good help around here,” McKey said, again clearly amused. “We live in a world of shiftless white trash, Jeb. You know it, and I know it. We may not talk about it openly—”
“Adams.” He and Susan had been wrong. Wayne hadn’t found Richard’s body, he’d been sent to kill him.
“Wayne had done some things for me in the past. Nothing like that, of course, but he was always short of money. Goes with the territory, I guess.”
And that piece of information made sense of Diane’s big house and truck and everything else. Ironically, that’s where the money Adams had gotten for Richard’s murder—and maybe even Richard and Susan’s savings—had gone. To provide a suitable home for Emma.
And the fact that Wayne hadn’t been ruthless enough to murder a baby girl had been the thing that had eventually caused this to unravel. McKey could have afforded to hire the best for his dirty work, a professional who would have had no qualms about doing what he’d been asked to do, but this had apparently been set up on short notice. Probably as soon as Richard had placed that fatal call to him.
McKey had been the one who’d warned him about using his cell again. About the danger of leaving a message for Susan. All the things that had made it so easy for him and Adams to do exactly what they’d done seven years ago. Make Richard Kaiser disappear.
“But then that stupid bastard took the baby for his slut of a sister.”
The bastard the surgeon made reference to this time was Adams, Jeb realized. Of course, in McKey’s world that’s what they all were. Stupid bastards to be manipulated by him. Kaiser, Adams, Buck Jemison and even Jeb.
“If he hadn’t,” the doctor went on, “none of this would be happening now. We’d all be home, not having to bother with any of this…unpleasantness.”
“He was supposed to leave Emma in the SUV with her father.”
There was an intake of breath or a shift of position behind him. Susan or the little girl reacting to that revelation?
“Who the hell coulda guessed Kaiser would bring his baby with him? I didn’t have any idea he had. Not until I read in the papers that she was missing along with him. I called Wayne as soon as I saw that. Bastard swore to me she’d been in the car when he’d pushed it into the river. I didn’t know he’d lied to me until you told me.”
That day after his therapy session. His words were what had gotten Wayne killed.
Again McKey hadn’t dirtied his own hands. He’d called on another of his henchmen to take care of the problem Wayne represented. Just as when Richard phoned him.
In the process Jemison had gotten what he wanted—Adams’s job. But he had also sold his soul to the devil to keep it. When McKey called on him to carry out tonight’s murders, Buck couldn’t refuse.
“Stupid redneck. All Adams had to do was think for himself. For once in his life, just figure out the smart thing to do. Do what anybody with half a brain would have done in that situation. Instead, he takes the kid home with him.”
“It’s hard to kill a baby,” Jeb said, putting his right hand under the elbow of his injured arm.
He shifted his weight off his bad leg as he did, managing to move half a step forward. There was no reaction from McKey. Again that tiny spark of hope flared inside his chest.
McKey had probably evaluated his physical condition by now, discounting any possibility Jeb might try to attack. What the surgeon didn’t understand, however, because he wasn’t a soldier, was that there were some rules of war. And the primary one of them was: Never underestimate your enemy.
He charged, watching McKey’s eyes widen as he tried to bring the weapon into the firing position. Time seemed to slow as Jeb closed the few feet that separated them, his entire focus on reaching the tip of the barrel before McKey could pull the trigger.
He was aware of nothing but that. Forgotten were the wound in his shoulder, the loss of blood, the damaged leg. He was totally concentrated on what he had to do to save their lives.
The fingers of his outstretched hand touched the bottom of the barrel, shoving it upward. The report of the shot, which occurred almost simultaneously with the contact, was right in his ear. He could feel the powder burn across his cheek. Apparently the split-second delay between his touch and McKey’s squeeze of the trigger, however, had allowed his eyelids to close enough to protect his sight.
Ears ringing, he careened into the doctor, carrying him to the ground. Whatever McKey’s credentials as a sportsman, he wasn’t a fighter like Jemison had been. Instead of trying to roll and take Jeb over with him, he was attempting to maneuver the gun to get off another shot.
Running on sheer adrenaline, Jeb wrenched the weapon out of his hands. Without a moment’s hesitation, he used both hands on the barrel to bring the butt down in the middle of McKey’s face.
Panting, he raised the weapon once more, prepared to hit him again if the murdering son of a bitch so much as twitched. He waited, rifle raised, through endless seconds.
He could feel the effects of the adrenaline that had fueled his desperate charge begin to fade. As it did, weakness, like the effects of anesthesia, invaded his limbs.
The rifle seemed too heavy. And the task of climbing off the man he’d just struck with it too difficult to contemplate. The only other option, however, was to fall face forward onto McKey’s body. Which was a definite possibility right now.
He closed his mouth, trying to control his ragged breathing. Then he laid the rifle across McKey’s throat, intending to use it to push himself up.
Someone touched his shoulder. Still in combat mode, Jeb swung the gun he’d just thought he couldn’t hold a second longer around. And found he was pointing it at Susan.
He had no idea how she’d gotten there. He hadn’t heard movement behind him. Of course, given the nearness of the rifle shot, he was probably still deaf. She might have been talking to him before she touched him, and he wouldn’t have heard her.
“Here.”
He lip-read the word as she stretched out her hand. He started to take it and realized he still held the rifle. And then realized that was what she was reaching for.
“Ask her if there’s anybody else.”
“Emma? Ask Emma?”
He nodded, feeling the scene around him waver with the motion. He needed to get them away from here before he passed out. He released the barrel of the gun, letting it fall onto McKey’s chest. He turned his head, watching Susan because he couldn’t hear her.
Although he knew the effect would fade shortly, the temporary deafness was one more thing to be dealt with. Right now, he wasn’t dealing with any of them too well.
This time Susan knelt beside him before she spoke. He watched her lips, trying to make sure that despite the darkness, he didn’t miss anything.
“She says there were just the two of them.”
He nodded. “Can you guard him until I get the truck?”
She glanced down at the body he was astride and then quickly back up. “He’s dead, Jeb. Nobody has to guard him.”
She took his hand, guiding his fingers to the artery at the side of McKey’s neck. He waited a long time, the tips of his fingers pressed against cooling flesh of the man who was the reason he’d come to Linton. His miracle worker. His last chance.
Finally Susan put her hand on his wrist, drawing his attention back to her. He’d almost forgotten she was there.
“He’s dead, Jeb. I need your keys.”
He shook his head, unsure what she meant.
“The keys to the truck. I’m going to go get it and come back and pick you up. And I’m going to take Emma wit
h me. Just…Just stay here, and we’ll be back as soon as we can.”
He nodded, pushing himself upright so that he could fish the keys out of the pocket of his jeans. He held them out to her, dropping them onto her palm. He watched her fingers close around them, but he’d already forgotten why she needed them.
She stood up, reaching back to take her daughter’s hand. “Are you going to be all right?”
He raised his head, the motion almost beyond his strength. The moonlight formed a halo around Susan’s head. It shimmered, as if the light were reflecting off the surface of the river.
He nodded, although he had no idea if he could remain upright until she got back. He didn’t want them to go alone, but he knew he’d finally reached the end of his strength. There was no way in hell he could make it back to the highway.
“Be careful.”
“You just be here when we get back,” Susan said. “You hear me? You wait right here for us.”
He nodded again, almost the only response he seemed capable of. And then he remembered what he’d been thinking before he’d gone after McKey. Something he needed to tell her.
Maybe this wasn’t the time nor the place, but he wasn’t all that sure he would get another opportunity. And if he didn’t, he still wanted her to know.
Maybe that was selfish, but there were too many things he hadn’t done in his life. This wasn’t going to be one of them.
“I love you,” he whispered.
She had already taken a step, heading toward the track that would lead back to the highway. She turned, her eyes wide in the moonlight.
“What did you say?”
He caught the words this time, thankful he no longer had to rely on reading her lips. This was far too important.
“You heard me.”
She released Emma’s hand and came back to where he was kneeling over McKey’s body. She bent, putting her hand along his cheek. She left it there, looking down into his eyes for a long time. Then, still without saying anything, she put her lips over his.
They were cold, trembling either with the stress of the situation or with emotion. His mouth opened, welcoming her kiss. After a moment she broke it, putting her forehead against his. He leaned against her strength.