by Sam Cameron
Mom asked, “Is revenge really worth it, Miranda?”
Miranda leaned back in the armchair. Her gun rested in her lap, but the chances of her shooting herself seemed pretty slim.
“Revenge is always worth it. My mother and I lost our house, her job, my chances of staying in school. This is my chance for a future.”
Brian said, “You’re smart and beautiful. How much more of a chance do you need?”
She said, “You’re very sweet, Brian. In a dorky, clueless kind of way.”
She rose and went to the patio doors to look out at the dark sky and water. A few minutes later her phone rang again. This time she answered it. “Yes? All right. Don’t worry about the evidence.”
She turned around and said, “That was my father. They’re only a mile or two away. Hannah, I hope you’ll forgive me, but this really is for the best.”
Miranda took out a cigarette lighter and set fire to the white curtains beside her.
*
Denny raced the Sleuth-hound past Beacon Point toward Brian’s house. The weather had started to turn sour—cold wind, rising waves, a smattering of rain. His phone rang and Steven said, “The line’s still open, but I can’t hear much.”
They hadn’t heard much when Carter first picked up, either—voices in the distance. Brian and his mom, maybe.
But then, her voice closer than anyone else, Lucy Mcdaniel.
“I’m two minutes away,” Steven said, from behind the wheel of his truck.
“I’ll beat you.” Denny could already see the Vandermark house on the water. Lights shone inside, white and steady.
Steven warned, “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I wouldn’t,” Denny said, even though he felt reckless and determined.
Three figures emerged from the house and walked down the dock. Denny didn’t think they were coming to meet him specifically, which meant someone else was on the way. He didn’t have a gun or any other kind of weapon. Or a plan. And what he was doing was probably the very definition of “reckless.”
He pulled up alongside and cut the engine.
In the gloom he recognized Lucy with a gun and two hostages—Brian and his mother, each looking grim.
“You!” Lucy exclaimed and turned the gun his way.
“Hi,” he said as confidently as he could. “My dad’s on his way, with the entire police force and FBI behind him.”
Brian gaped at him.
Lucy said, “You’re lying. I don’t hear any sirens.”
“She set the house on fire!” Mrs. Vandermark said. “Nathan and Eddie are inside—”
“Shut up, Hannah,” Lucy said, the gun swinging around again.
Mrs. Vandermark plowed into her, knocking her right off the dock and into the water.
At the same time her gun discharged, a shot zinging off.
“Mom!” Brian yelled as Mrs. Vandermark teetered and almost fell in herself.
Denny scrambled and grabbed Mrs. Vandermark before she could fall into the water. Once she was safe, he peered down in the black water. Lucy sputtered and splashed to the surface, her face contorted.
“I can’t swim!” she yelled.
“Let her drown,” Mrs. Vandermark said, which was maybe the last thing Denny expected.
“Hold on to the ladder,” Denny called down to her.
A window broke behind them. Denny saw bright orange flames licking out past the shards. Lucy really had set the place on fire. Swiftly Denny used his pocket knife to start freeing Brian and Mrs. Vandermark. Steven’s truck pulled into the circular drive with a squeal of brakes, and he climbed out with his cell phone in hand.
“Call nine-one-one!” Denny shouted. “The house is on fire!”
“Already on the line,” Steven said, jogging toward them.
Lucy was still screeching in the water. “Get me out of here! I’ll drown!”
“We have to save them,” Mrs. Vandermark said to Steven. “Nathan Carter’s on the kitchen floor. Eddie’s in the master bedroom or bathroom.”
Steven saw the fire, blanched. He sprinted toward the front door.
“Wait!” Denny yelled. Damn it. Steven couldn’t just barge into a blazing house without a plan—
He heard an approaching boat, saw a light coming toward them on the water.
“That’s Poul,” Mrs. Vandermark said. “He’s got my husband hostage.”
He had guns, no doubt. And he probably wasn’t alone, Denny thought, remembering the German man from Tavernier and Key West.
“Get into the boat,” Denny said, pushing Brian down the dock. “We’ll outrace them.”
Brian said, “But Carter—”
“Steven will save him, and the fire department will be here soon,” Denny said. “Go, go.”
With his arm in the sling, Brian couldn’t get over the edge of the boat unassisted. His mother followed him, but as Denny started the engines she leapt back onto the dock.
“Mom!” Brian said.
She only had eyes for Denny. “I’ll help your brother, you help my son! Get him out of here and keep him safe.”
Brian immediately exclaimed, “No, Mom, don’t!”
Red lights appeared in the trees—two cruisers, maybe three. Denny made his decision. He turned the Sleuth-hound away from the dock.
“You can’t!” Brian shouted and tried to wrestle the steering wheel from Denny’s hands. “Go back!”
Something popped near Denny’s ear, like a firecracker. Then a second pop.
“Get down!” Denny yelled, and pushed Brian down to the deck.
He crouched low himself, sped away from land, and hoped to hell that Steven didn’t get himself killed in the burning house behind them.
Chapter Thirty-six
Surrounded by thick smoke and shooting flames, Steven thought, This is not the best plan I’ve ever had.
But he kept low, kept crawling, using his hands to try to find what his eyes couldn’t see.
“Carter!” he yelled, coughing on the bitter, hot air. “Answer me!”
He heard nothing over the whoosh and crackle of fire as it ate up the living room and ceiling.
Steven had never been in the Vandermark house before, but it had been built by the same people who’d built Jennifer O’Malley’s house. High ceilings, open floor plan. The kitchen was maybe to his left. Tile under his knees and hands—that was a good sign. He was counting every time his right knee hit the floor: eleven, twelve, thirteen.
“Help!” Eddie’s voice, not too far away, high with terror. “Help me!”
“Eddie! Hold on!”
The fire kept growing. Steven thought he could hear sirens from outside, but maybe that was wishful thinking. He kept moving forward, kept his hands moving. When he touched something like a tree log, he realized he’d found Carter.
Leg, knee, a splayed arm. Yes, a body. Alive or dead, too big to be Eddie, must be Carter.
“Help! I’m in the bathroom!” Eddie yelled.
Something wet under Steven’s hands now. Blood.
Smoke clogged up his lungs, blinded him. A reasonable person would get out while he could. Steven wasn’t reasonable. He grabbed the legs and started dragging Carter backward along the way he had come. Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen—
Carter was no lightweight. He was like a two-hundred-pound sack of concrete. Pulling him tore at the muscles in Steven’s arms and back.
He’s dead, said a voice in Steven’s head. Leave him. Find Eddie.
Find your best friend.
“Help!” Fainter now, as if Eddie didn’t have much strength left.
With a monstrous crack, part of the living room ceiling collapsed downward in an explosion of fiery timber and flying embers.
Fear clawed up through Steven’s gut, but he kept pulling. Already he knew he was going to be too late for Carter, for Eddie, for himself. Coughing doubled him onto himself, and the spasms of his lungs made him fold over Carter’s ankles.
Someone bumped into him in the thick smoke,
reached for Carter with long slim arms, and started pulling the heavy body.
“Pull!” Mrs. Vandermark yelled.
Together they dragged Carter to the front door. Steven only knew they had arrived because the air got cooler, wetter. Bodies in rubbery suits appeared all around them and started helping.
Thank goodness for the Fisher Key Fire Department.
“Eddie!” he told them as someone with a helmet and big face mask lifted him to his feet. Steven couldn’t tell up from down anymore, left from right, but he knew he was being taken away. He fought against it. “In the house!”
“Easy, kid,” said the fireman who was holding him.
But nothing was easy anymore—not breathing, not seeing, not keeping himself conscious.
He slid into darkness thinking I failed, failed, failed…
*
Pain everywhere, or everywhere that mattered. His chest, his head, his hands. Someone was talking to him, but all he could hear was Eddie screaming for help and the terrible crackle of fire eating wood and fabric. He was sure fire was still burning into him, past his skin into his bones.
“—to the ER, and we’ll keep looking,” someone finished saying.
Steven forced his eyes open. He was lying on the ground under a steady patter of rain. No, not rain. Spray from fire hoses aimed at the Vandermark house. Somehow Steven had ended up on an ambulance gurney with an oxygen mask over his nose.
“No hospital,” he gasped and snatched the mask off. “Eddie.”
A man standing close to him said, “It’s okay, kid. Your friend was tied to the towel bar, but he got free and out through the bathroom window.”
Sure enough, there was Eddie sitting in the ambulance. He too was wearing a mask and had a blanket slung over his shoulders, but he looked a lot better than Steven felt. Beside him was Mrs. Vandermark, watching the firemen put out the fire.
“The police found his mother and his girlfriend locked up in the trunk of the girlfriend’s car, both of them fine,” said the man over Steven. “Do you remember me?”
It took a second or two. “You’re Agent Crown.”
The FBI agent nodded. “You nearly got yourself killed in there, but good job saving Carter’s life.”
“He’s alive?”
Agent Garcia appeared behind Crown—haggard, angry, with blood on his white shirt. “He’s on his way to the E.R.”
“You should go,” Crown said.
Garcia shook his head. “He’d want me to nail the bastards.”
A paramedic crossed the short distance between the ambulance and Steven’s gurney. “We need to get you to the hospital.”
“No.” Steven pulled himself upright. He felt lightheaded and dehydrated, as if he’d been sitting in the sun for hours. “I need to find my brother.”
The paramedics and firemen who knew Dad—and that was all of them—tried to argue with Steven. Steven refused to be persuaded. “I’m not going,” he said over and over until they left him alone. Crown and Garcia helped free him of the blanket and oxygen line and gurney.
“The Coast Guard is looking for your brother’s boat,” Crown said. “No sign of them.”
“If they’re being chased, would your brother try to lay low?”
“Yeah,” Steven said. “He’d hole up somewhere safe. He might not want to use the radio, but he’s got his phone.”
Garcia held up a broken hunk of metal. “This phone? It was on the dock. He must have dropped it.”
“There’s a storm warning out,” Crown said. “Where would he go?”
Steven looked out at the churning waves. Lightning flashed in the west, a crack of light and sound that promised more to come.
“I need your phone,” he told Crown.
When Crown gave it to him Garcia asked, “Who are you calling?”
“We need a boat,” Steven said. “And I know a girl who hates me.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Three bullets whizzed over their heads in quick succession. Then none at all.
“Keep down!” Denny snapped as Brian started to rise beside him.
“Can you outrun them?” Brian asked.
“I’m trying,” Denny said.
Lightning cracked across the sky and rain began to pelt down as Denny steered toward Whale Point and Mercy Key. He’d thought about running straight down the coast, but it seemed more likely he could lose their pursuers in the bays and coves of the offshore islands.
He had the home-field advantage, after all.
And a keen desire not to get shot.
Unfortunately, they had the disadvantage of poor visibility and worsening weather. Denny had no desire to be caught on open water in a storm.
Brian said, “They’re falling behind,” and he was right. The boat behind them was fast, but not as fast as the Sleuth-hound. The bullets stopped coming when Denny rounded the southern tip of Mercy Key. Brian cautiously stood up.
“My mom,” he said, his voice cracking.
“Is fine,” Denny said. “And so is my brother. We can circle back to the Coast Guard station—”
The engine began to sputter.
Denny swore and said, “They must have nicked the fuel line.”
Brian asked, “Does that mean we’re going to blow up?”
“No. It means we’re going to run out of gas.”
“What do we do?”
“We put in,” Denny said.
The Sleuth-hound limped into Howe’s Point, east of the rotted old pier that was now a navigation hazard. Denny anchored her and reached for his phone. His pocket was empty.
“Where’s your phone?” he asked Brian.
“At the house. Where’s yours?”
“I had it on the pier,” Denny said, dismay spreading through his stomach. “I must have dropped it.”
Brian shivered as the rain grew heavier. “Do you have a radio?”
“Yes, but it’s open frequency. Everyone will hear us.”
If it weren’t for Poul and the storm, Denny would stay in the boat. But he couldn’t chance it now. He crouched next to the storage locker and started shoving supplies into a knapsack.
“There’s an old Civil War fort here,” he told Brian. “We’ll have to go ashore, use it for shelter. This here—” he held it up for Brian “—is an EPIRB. An emergency beacon. A satellite will bounce the signal to the Coast Guard.”
He shoved the beacon into the backpack, made sure the anchor was secure, and fished the life jackets out from under the bench. He also pulled out a plastic bag.
“You’re going to have to ditch the sling for now,” he told Brian. “We’ll try to keep your cast dry, but no promises.”
“Do we need life jackets? How deep is it?”
“Only about four feet, but the waves are going to make it higher.” Denny didn’t really want to sit around and debate it, so he started undoing the sling for Brian. “We won’t be in the water long.”
It was easier to make that promise than keep it. Once they were over the side, the waves slammed into them like punches. He tied his and Brian’s jackets together to make sure a riptide didn’t suck Brian away. It physically hurt Denny to abandon the Sleuth-hound, but it would physically hurt more if Uncle Poul showed up and started shooting again.
Half-swimming, half-dragging each other, they fought against the push and pull of waves and undertow toward shore. A large wave slammed Denny from behind, pushing him under, smashing Brian down next. Denny felt the backpack line snap. He groped for it frantically in the underwater blackness, grazed it with his fingertips, lost it again to the water.
Sputtering back to surface he yelled, “Grab it!” but Brian didn’t know what he meant, and another wave was pushing them both under again.
Denny remembered how Mom and Dad used to drill him on water safety. You can drown in a few inches of water, Dad used to say. Denny was surrounded by more than a few inches, but damn it if he was going to drown.
He pushed the backpack problem out of his mind and foug
ht his way forward, bringing Brian with him.
They got to the sandy shoreline and collapsed there, waves still trying to grab them by the ankles. His face contorted, Brian cradled his broken arm. “What about the backpack?” he called. “Should we go back to the boat?”
Denny coughed out seawater that was making his throat and chest ache. “Too dangerous. The fort’s not far—we’ll come back in the morning.”
Steven would immediately object to that kind of thinking, but Steven wasn’t here, thanks much, and Denny’s number-one job was to keep Brian safe for the foreseeable future. Denny’s best flashlight had been in the backpack, but the life jacket had a smaller light tethered to it and he knew the island well enough to get them to the footpath winding away from the beach.
Once in the overgrowth and foliage, they were sheltered some from the rain, but the wind whipped branches and leaves at them and the ground was treacherous with mud.
“How far is it?” Brian asked.
“Not far. You okay?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t sound okay. Denny himself probably wouldn’t sound okay if he’d been held hostage and watched his house get set on fire. He didn’t have anything useful to say so he kept them moving through the storm until they reached the first crumbling bricks of the old fort.
It wasn’t much, as forts went. Not nearly as big as Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, and only half-built before the money ran out, but still fun to explore in good weather. Long overgrown with vines, no roof or proper floors, ammunition room walls built but never finished. A ridiculously easy place to trip and hurt yourself in, which was why Denny and Steven always found it fun.
The northwest corner of the ruins offered some limited shelter—two walls wedged together under the canopy of trees, the ground sloped enough to drain the rain. Denny got Brian seated in the driest part with the life jackets as pillows against the rough brick. Brian sat with his knees drawn up, guarding his arm.
Denny sat beside him, careful not to touch his leg or good arm. Rain drizzled down on them, but the thunder and lightning had eased off. Maybe the storm was already over, Denny thought hopefully. Or maybe another squall was coming.