Ariel looked visibly nervous. Then she swam around in an angry circle of kicks and slapping arms. Jake couldn’t help but be reminded how young she was in terms of mental maturity.
Ashley squatted down at the edge of the pool. “Hey, we’ll work this out, no need to get all huffy.”
Ariel stopped, treading water a few feet away. “You don’t understand. I’ve been so bad they’re going to punish me. I’m just a baby maker to them now.”
Ashley glanced up at Jake but didn’t say a word.
Ariel looked around. “Where’s Father?”
Jake sighed. “They didn’t tell you?” Jake shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ariel.”
“Father is gone, isn’t he?” She looked despondent.
“Yes, he is.”
Ariel nodded. “I knew he was gone. I felt it.”
“I’m so sorry, Ariel,” Jake said. “I wish things were not the way they are.”
Ariel smiled. “Father used to say that same thing to me. He loved me a great deal. I wish you’d have known him during happier times.”
“Me too. I wish we all would have known each other during happier times.”
Chapter 36
Jake woke up before the sunrise and heard the whimpering. Once his eyes adjusted for the low light, he sat up. Ashley was still sleeping silently next to him.
As he leveraged himself to the edge of the bed, Ashley rustled and tugged at the blankets. With a gravel voice she said, “What time is it?”
Jake got to his feet. “It’s early.”
Ashley groaned her way to a seated position. “Is that crying I hear?”
“Yeah.” Jake slipped his feet into his flip-flops and headed down the hallway toward the stairs.
As he got closer, the crying turned more into a moan. He turned the corner, rubbing his eyes awake while navigating the new-to-him dynamics of these curved concrete steps. The second he saw Ariel, he knew something was wrong. “Are you okay?”
From her hammock, she turned to look at him, tears streaming down her face. She just shook her head slowly but didn’t say anything.
“Ariel, what’s wrong?”
“Something’s wrong with my baby.”
“What is it?”
She moaned. “I don’t know, it just hurts so bad.”
Ashley came shuffling toward them from the staircase. His face must have given away the gravity of the situation because her posture changed from casual to urgent. “What’s wrong?”
Jake shrugged at her and widened his eyes. “I don’t know.”
Ashley touched his arm. “Where’s your phone?”
“Upstairs, nightstand.”
Ashley turned, and in a few quick steps, disappeared up the stairs.
Jake stooped over to the low-slung hammock. “Ariel, where does it hurt?”
Through tightly clamped eyes, she just shook her head with a soft whimper.
Ashley returned, already talking on the phone. Roger Pender had given them his emergency number in case they needed anything. She ended the call and said, “He’s on his way.”
The next twenty minutes went by excruciatingly slow for Jake, but no doubt, they felt like a lifetime for Ariel. Those minutes paled in comparison to the minutes that clicked by once they arrived and took Ariel in the exam room.
As he faced the pool, looking up at the rising sun through the glass, Ashley slid her arms around his waist from behind. “You okay?”
He nodded. “I’m fine.”
“I hate to be the voice of reality here, but…”
Jake nodded over his shoulder to her. “I know.”
“If something happens to that baby.”
“I know.”
“Jake, we need a plan quickly.”
He turned to face her. “Ashley, I want you to know that I love you.”
“I know you do.”
“Whatever happens next, just know that.”
“I love you too, Jake. I always have.”
After another few moments, Roger Pender stepped quietly out of the exam room into the pool area. The look on his face said it all. No matter what this man was, no matter what insanity this whole mermaid thing concealed, Jake knew that Roger did truly care about that baby. He wasn’t even sure how he knew that, maybe it was just intuition, maybe it was the fact that at his core this man was a doctor.
“How is she?” Ashley asked.
Roger puffed out his formidable chest and flexed his rugged jaw. “She lost the baby.”
“I’m sorry,” Jake said. “She must be devastated.”
Roger’s expression went cold. “I have to go. I’ll be in touch.”
As he turned, Jake stopped him. “Wait.”
Roger turned slowly. “Not now.”
“Hell yes, now.” Jake insisted. “So what happens?”
“We’re taking her for more tests.”
“Tests? For what?”
“I have some concern she cannot carry a baby at all.”
Jake felt his blood start to simmer. “And let me guess…that makes her a useless piece of meat to you people.”
Roger said nothing. He only turned and walked, stopping near the door. “We’ll see what the tests show.” He slipped out the door.
A minute later, as Roger’s car sped away up the drive, the group of three lab-coated men carried a sedated Ariel on a stretcher through the doorway.
Jake asked the more official-looking man with the clipboard under his arm, “Where are you taking her?” But he knew the answer. And the man didn’t even so much as look at him, they just kept moving through the wide doorway.
Attempting to follow, Jake hurried up to the white van, but was met with a stern straight-arm from the clipboard man holding the van door open.
“Hey!” Jake bounced back. “Get your hands off me.”
The man opened his jacket to make sure Jake saw the pistol on his hip. “Don’t even try me,” he asserted.
Jake took a step back, with every intention of letting this go. But then something came over him. He knew in his heart that if he let them go, he’d never see Ariel again, and he and Ashley would be dead. He charged the man, slamming into him as hard as he could and crushing his body into the van.
The van rocked, propelling them both away from the white vehicle. Jake had no idea what had happened, but in a flash, he was twisted, yanked, and slammed to the concrete surface. Before he could even move, a stiff boot found his chest just below his chin. He lifted his gaze to see the smiling man.
“You’re out of your league, punk. You probably thought I was some stuffy doctor. I was a Goddamned Navy Seal.” The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a silencer. With the calmness of a trained killer, he threaded the silencer onto the end of the black pistol then leveled it on Jake’s head. “Say goodnight, pumpkin.”
“I don’t think so!” Ashley said from the doorway to the pool. “Let him up.”
The man laughed. “Sure thing, sweetness.” He quickly moved, putting the gun on Ashley.
Jake twisted the man’s leg hard as gunshots erupted. The man fell and Jake rolled away and popped up to his feet to come face-to-face with the smoking gun in Ashley’s hands. He stepped to the side as he realized she was moving toward the van.
Jake bent and snatched up the loose gun on the ground.
“On the ground!” Ashley yelled to the other two men standing with their hands up.
They looked around, confused, then finally started, one-by-one, to sink to their knees and get on the ground. Jake quickly closed the van doors and hurried to the driver’s seat.
The second the engine fired, he slammed the shifter into drive and tore away up the driveway, glancing once in the rearview mirror to see the men in the white lab coats were climbing to their feet.
“Where’d you get that gun?” Jake asked.
“It’s Mike’s…well, it was Mike’s.”
“You’re getting a little too used to shooting people.”
“The first one was the hardest
.”
“I don’t know if that makes me feel any better.”
“It was life or death, Jake.”
“I’m not judging you. What’re we doing?”
Ashley huffed. “You’re asking me? I have no idea here, Jake. This is your circus to conduct. I’ve just been following your lead this whole demented trip into the Twilight Zone.”
“Playing the hired-gun role apparently.” Jake cut the wheel, and with a screech of the tires, headed toward Fort Fisher.
“What’s happening?” Ariel called groggily from behind them.
Jake looked up at the mirror but couldn’t see her. “Ariel, we’re getting you to the ocean.”
Chapter 37
After getting Ariel into the water, they stood above the surface looking down at her. She bobbed softly in the gentle surf. “What will I do?”
“You have to get out of here, Ariel,” Jake insisted as he looked around nervously.
“Where will I go? How will I eat? I can’t get to my garden.”
Jake hadn’t considered this conundrum. She was not a wild animal. She could not simply be set free into the ocean the way he’d thought.
Ashley touched his arm. Without words, she understood. He met her soft brown eyes. She smiled and gave a subtle nod, “Where would we go?” and he knew.
“The Palladium?”
Ashley shrugged. “Yeah, I mean…”
Jake directed his attention back to Ariel. “Do you know where Harper’s Inlet is?”
Ariel narrowed her eyes. “I’m not sure.”
“The jetty down by the old docks on the river side, do you know where that jetty leads if you follow the sandbar?”
She nodded. “Yes, I think so.”
“At the edge of Harper’s Inlet there’s an old building. It used to be Palladium Surf Shop many years ago. It was wrecked in a hurricane, but the concrete structure still stands today, and there’s a huge basin that flooded into the basement. Go there. There’s plenty of places to hide out and we can get you food at nightfall.”
Ariel cracked a slight smile. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
Ariel ducked into the surf and splashed away with a kick of her tail.
Ashley let out a long sigh. “Did we do the right thing?”
“Ash, we did the only thing. What other options are there?”
“You tell me.”
Jake shook his head. “I’m not sure.” He could not help but feel like they’d made some sort of miscalculation. They couldn’t just let those people take her.
He started to get a sense of doom.
They took two steps back toward the van when the thumping blades of a helicopter split the morning skies above Fort Fisher. Cracking the wind around them, the rotors thumped in waves.
Jake grabbed Ashley’s hand and pulled her quickly toward the van. The chopper swung low, swooping between them and the van. They stopped as the door of the black machine swung open. A man with a large caliber gun waited behind mirrored goggles.
Jake was sure this was it. Death had finally snared them in its clawed trap. But in a flash, the chopper lifted up and gunshots erupted with thunderous violence, slamming into the van instead of their bodies. The van gasped and jerked in mechanical agony as the bullets virtually ripped it apart until it burst into smoke and flames.
They ran off in the other direction, trying desperately to get some distance between them and the death machine in the sky that was clearly set to destroy them. The only shelter was clear across the street in the form of the bunkers of Fort Fisher. He dropped Ashley’s hand in order for both of them to run as fast as possible. He felt like his legs would not drive him forward fast enough through the sand.
The roar of the helicopter raged at their backs. He felt a moment of doom just as they got to more solid ground and the firm dirt propelled them forward twice as quickly as they had been moving.
As they approached the paved street, a white van flew toward them, cutting off their path to the safety of Fort Fisher and the shelter. Another van sped in from the other direction. They were boxed in on three sides and that’s when Jake realized it was all but over.
A gang of men jumped from the van and began spraying them with gunfire. Jake screamed as he watched bullets tear into Ashley’s body. He prayed the bullets would take him, kill his vision. He fell to the ground and screamed as the bullets hit him with wicked force. Only after a moment did he realize his screaming was the only sound. He looked up. As if by magic, everything was gone.
The speeding vans were gone, the helicopter was gone, and the van they drove in was completely intact, as if nothing had ever happened. And most importantly Ashley was fine. Jake was sure he’d died, but the look on Ashley’s face was as twisted and confused as his.
As she caught her breath, she huffed, “What the…?”
Jake looked around suspiciously, waiting for the chopper to reappear. “This can’t be.”
Ashley moved back toward the sand in a few frantic steps. “Are we going insane?”
“We imagined the entire thing?”
“How? How can two people have identical elaborate hallucinations?”
Jake realized he was bleeding from the mouth. He’d bitten is cheek so hard that it took a chunk out. “I don’t know what just happened.” Jake took a few steps over toward the van, but then hurried back toward the street. He didn’t know what to do next. Things were happening in a strange way, the world was shifting. The clouds in the sky moved oddly.
Ashley started speaking to him but her words were broken and garbled. He didn’t know if it was her speech or his hearing. She faced him and took a step to square him up.
“Jake, are you okay?” Her words cleared.
He nodded. “I think so.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, but we have to get over to the island.”
“Huh? What island?”
“Where we told Ariel to meet us.”
“You told her to meet us at the surf shop.”
He shook his head. “No, that’s not right.”
“Yeah, Jake, that’s what you said.”
He was so confused. “Are you sure?”
She squinted and looked out toward the ocean. “I’m sure. I mean, I think so.”
“Ash, we are messed up.” Jake didn’t know how he knew, but he felt like he’d been drugged or something.
“We were just…” She trailed off and started marching toward the ocean.
Jake watched her for a few long seconds and didn’t think much of it, until she started marching straight into the surf.
“Ashley!” He broke into a fast walk, because he could not run. In fact, he was having trouble walking in the right direction. He staggered. The sand seemed to be getting so deep it was sucking him in. It was growing deeper with each step.
Meanwhile Ashley was getting deeper into the water. He could see her just about disappearing into the dark green waves. She was marching to her death and he could not stop her from doing it. He screamed, digging as hard as he could with his legs, trying with desperation to move forward, but he just could not get there.
He watched Ashley’s head disappear under the waves and she didn’t pop back up.
“Ashley! Ashley!” Jake was just about to give up when his feet suddenly pulled him forward, toward the harder sand near the break. He bolted into the water after her and just slammed into the first set of waves.
After a few seconds, he cleared his vision and looked around. He didn’t see her anywhere, but then he felt something hit his midsection and he reached down, catching hold of a hand.
He pulled back toward the shore and Ashley popped up on top of him, gasping what must have been her first breath in a minute. Jake swam backwards a few steps until he was able to catch his heels into the sand and walk back to solid ground.
He collapsed onto the beach with Ashley next to him. Maybe it was the excitement or maybe it was the cool wa
ter, but his head finally felt clear. Rolling to face Ashley, he gasped, “Are you okay?”
She wiped some sand off her face. “I’m okay now.”
“We have to get out of here.”
“We have to get away from that van.”
Jake looked at her. “What makes you think it’s the van?”
Flopping onto her back, laugh-salted words burst out of her. “I don’t know.”
It made sense. That van was their van, maybe there was something in it that could cause hallucinations. The problem was, he didn’t know when the hallucinations started. “You might be right.”
“I feel fine now.” She sat up.
Jake levered himself to his feet and held out a hand to Ashley. “Let’s get out of here.”
“To where?”
“Anywhere, let’s just walk.” He pulled her up. “I just want to get away from this part of the beach. Something here isn’t right.”
As usual, she was on the same page of his brain. “When did the hallucination start?”
Jake shrugged. “I don’t know.” He traced back in his mind. “But as usual we were thinking the same thing.”
“Why does that surprise you?”
“Ashley, that’s always going to surprise me.”
Chapter 38
They reached the back of the house. Jake walked up to the deck and turned to Ashley. “Sam is a little eccentric, but he’s cool—he won’t ask any questions.”
They climbed up the weathered steps, past a dilapidated old doghouse, and to the dirty screen door. Jake knocked on the wooden edge, five sharp raps. “Sammy!”
A thin, middle-aged man, with bad teeth and leathered skin too tan for its own good, came into view. “Jake, y-you salty dog, w-where ya been?” Sam ripped open the flimsy door and gave Jake a one-armed hug. “Haven’t seen y-you out in a w-while.”
“I’ve been around. I see the stutter is back.”
“Y-yeah only a few w-words. Mostly anything that begins with W and Y.”
“Sam, this is Ashley.”
He extended a hand. “Fine to meet y-you, pretty lady.” He looked her over. “W-what’s a beautiful gal like y-you doing w—w-with this beach rat?”
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