All the Bridges Burning (Davis Groves Book 1)

by Neliza Drew

  “I hit a joint back in the day, but I ain’t touching cocaine or meth or any of that other shit.”

  Rebecca looked worried, pulled up her sleeve and looked at her veins.

  I looked down at her bare feet. “Check between your toes.”

  She pulled one up and balanced like a yogi. Looked back at me, afraid.

  “My mother.” I didn’t feel like explaining all the times we’d checked her arms, her feet, her fingers, her pupils, her temperature.

  “What the hell did they give me?”

  I didn’t notice the pain when I shrugged. I was too busy ignoring the pain in my past.

  Jimmy looked up from his own feet. “Probably heroin. Lot of the kids around here are hooked on it. Says it dulls the pain. Don’t know what kind, but…”

  I knew what kind. I knew what a few tokes on a joint could make go away. Problem was, it came right back when the drugs wore off. And then it was almost worse. I knew what Charley had gone through. I knew how she’d fallen from user to addict. I knew.

  Engine sounds carried across the water. Jimmy spun, searching the horizon.

  “What’s up?”

  “That’s them.”

  “Them who?”

  Jimmy didn’t answer. He shoved the throttle forward.

  The boat lurched forward in the water. I lost my balance and stumbled back, hitting the wall of the cabin and landing on my ass. Rebecca took two steps and went down on her knees a foot from me.

  “What the hell, Jimmy?”

  Rebecca scrambled to her feet and grabbed the steering column next to Jimmy. Her body tensed. “They’re chasing us? That boat is chasing us?”

  I pulled myself up and looked. Sure enough, out of all the available water in the Atlantic — Graveyard, my brain added — there was another fishing charter less than a football field away and it seemed to be gaining.

  Jimmy jiggled the throttle and looked worried. “Something’s wrong. My engine’s faster than this.”

  The other boat closed the gap rapidly.

  Jimmy’s brow broke out in a sweat despite the icy wind whipping past us.

  Rebecca stared at the approaching boat. When it was close enough to make out the captain, she turned to me. “It’s him.”

  “Huh?”

  “The guy from the…” The rest of her sentence disappeared. Engine noise drowned her out as Jimmy yanked the throttle back and then forward again. Jimmy’s Daydream jerked to a near-stop before taking off again.

  I landed on my ass again.

  Gunshots echoed across the water. Bullets hit the wall behind me.

  Jimmy yelled, hopped on one foot, and fell forward. His arm hooked the wheel as he slid to the deck and the boat spun hard to the left.

  I looked up at Rebecca. “Get down!”

  She stood, frozen, her face etched with a terror I could understand but couldn’t process at the moment. “He seemed so…”

  I reached out for her hand.

  Gunfire broke through the sound of the engines and Jimmy’s moaning. Everything felt like it had slowed, like I had time to solve it all, like it could be made right.

  She let me take her hand.

  Blood splattered my face. I shut my eyes involuntarily against the assault, and when I opened them I saw Rebecca still standing there, a hole in her neck, blood pouring from it. She reached up with her free hand, covered the hole and stared at me. Her life ran through her fingers, her mouth moved, but she said nothing. Or I heard nothing.

  The bullets didn’t stop. Just time.

  I snapped out of my trance, willed myself back to reality, and pulled Rebecca down. The gunfire came in staggered bursts. Short pauses between shots, longer pauses when his finger tired or he was looking for targets, even longer pauses when he reloaded. Those longest pauses told me he hadn’t practiced quick loading, didn’t have full magazines ready.

  Not that it mattered.

  I pulled off my shirt and put it on her wound, used her hands to hold it tight. We were way too far from medical help for it to be anything but a pointless gesture. Her eyes said she knew it, too, but still appreciated it.

  Another round of fire overhead. Suppressing.

  Instinct rolled me away from Rebecca and away from the sound of the other engine. My hand slipped into my bag and pulled out the revolver without thinking about it. Instead, I thought about how I had six shots and our assailant seemed to have boxes.

  He came from the stern, starboard side. Jumped. Landed on a mildewed, sun-bleached cushion. Five feet away.

  He swung his gun up. Semi-automatic pistol. Sleek and black. Menacing.

  Crouched in a corner between the wall and the bin holding the life jackets, I had no cover. Phil’s revolver already in front of me in both hands. Waiting for a target.

  His chest before my sights and I pulled the trigger. Twice.

  He fired. Once. The bullet slammed into the fiberglass next to my head, kicked out minute slivers.

  He fell. His face registered surprise, pain, shock.

  I watched, torn between relief and horror.

  His head hit a cleat and he rolled onto the deck next to Rebecca. Her eyes were wide and glassy. Next to each other I could see how she’d have been attracted to him, could see them sitting at the bar next to one another, talking.

  He wasn’t the dorky, doughy guy she’d seen with Melissa. He wasn’t the one Lane had shot in his mom’s apartment. He was the third musketeer, the good-looking blond who could probably worm his way into a lot of pants even without drugging them.

  Brad.

  I’d killed Amber’s twenty-one-year-old brother.

  Chapter forty-four

  I was fine until Jimmy died.

  I found a towel to put pressure on his side. I elevated his leg, tied a stray pair of pants around it. He told me how to work the fish finder, how to get us back to shore. His breath grew shallow. The pool under him grew larger. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the navigation equipment had a bullet hole in the middle of it.

  I checked my watch, stared up at the overcast sky until I worried I’d burnt out my retinas trying to decide where in all those clouds the sun hid. Stared at the charts, trying to make sense of tides, notations, channels, and all those barrier islands.

  The boat stank of blood, of urine, of feces, of fear and death. The deck was slick with fluids, sticky with the drying puddles. I busied myself, did what I thought needed doing.

  I’d tied us up to Brad’s boat long enough to search it — gun out, on edge, keeping the shaking under control by breathing and focusing on my pulse and potential movement. I found nothing except a self-inflating dinghy. I wiped the only surface I’d touched and kicked it loose. Only after did it occur to me his navigation equipment probably worked.

  Somewhere in our drifting, I tossed Phil’s old revolver into the sea. The ammunition I flung in separate directions from the top of the tuna towers. I couldn’t be sure if it was because of what I’d done or what I was afraid could be found. Wasn’t sure if I was afraid of myself or prison. Wasn’t sure it mattered.

  Jimmy died hard.

  Where Rebecca had bled out or asphyxiated in minutes, Jimmy remained alive for hours. He didn’t say it, but he had to have held out hope that my insufficient boating skills would find land in time, but what had taken him two hours to cover eluded me for the next four. When he finally died, it was a little after one. He should have been eating lunch or fishing. I knew I had his blood on my hands, too, and not just because I’d been applying pressure to his wounds.

  I sat in my bra and stained, stiffened jeans on the fiberglass bin full of life jackets, surrounded by death. I felt I should cry, but I didn’t. My skin, numbed by the cold wind, didn’t seem any more real than the rain moving toward us on the horizon. I was lost in the Graveyard of the Atlantic. All around us were the invisible ghost ships, inhabited by dead sailors far more skilled than me.

  And yet, I didn’t try to send out an SOS. Didn’t try to shoot a flare. And I couldn
’t be sure if it was because I didn’t know how to explain the firefight or the bodies or if it was because I thought I deserved to die with them.

  At twenty-four, I was the oldest one on the boat. I’d never know what Brad had or hadn’t done to Rebecca. She’d never know if she had the strength to move past the uncertainty and captivity. I thought she could have. But then, I thought I had, yet I had to hold the image of his barrel in front of my mind to believe I hadn’t just killed him because I’d once dated someone who seemed nice, too.

  The storm rolled over us, rocked the boat that I’d left to drift, washed evidence and offal into the drain holes, cleansed my face of Rebecca’s blood. I started the engine and tried to at least keep us upright as the seas grew choppier, angrier.

  Eventually, I went back to the cabin to find a sweatshirt or maybe a raincoat. I was staring at the floor, at the cheese puff I’d crushed that morning and the broken things that had joined it, when my captaining failed for good.

  The boat hit ground, hard because I’d left the engine running, figuring anywhere we went was better than where we were. Dumb, sure, but I hadn’t cared at the time. Something under the surface breached the hull with a great grinding, splintering sound like a traffic accident with a covered wagon. The force knocked me face down onto the cheese puff and debris. The engines continued to drive us forward, pushing until they’d carved away part of the starboard side. It took mere minutes before the whole boat tilted and I fell into a wall of useless instruments.

  A box of zipper-topped plastic bags fell off the counter. I picked up a few and shoved my phone and wallet into a series of them. Looped my bag around me tight, grabbed a sweatshirt and life jacket. Found the dinghy and stood knee-deep in the waves to pull the rip cord.

  Before I pushed the dinghy off the stern, I saw Jimmy’s body slip into the turbulent ocean.

  Chapter forty-five

  I staggered onshore, teeth chattering, vision blurry, hands and feet numb to the point I wasn’t even sure they’d bleed if I stabbed them. I dragged myself over the rocks and shells, used my elbows to pull me forward like Phil had once trained me to do. Early evening or mid-afternoon, I’d lost track of time and the sky remained black and threatening. I’d lost track of distance and everything but the blinking light that I hoped was a lighthouse or ship.

  The dinghy had capsized, and after fighting to right it in the strong surf too long I’d given up and started swimming. Land had been in sight. That didn’t mean it had been close.

  Why I was even still alive was beyond me. Somewhere in my head I knew the stories of people who misjudged the miles on water and drowned, surfers with hypothermia, strong swimmers and fishermen swept away in currents and storms. Yet, I found myself in front of a squat, white lighthouse as it cycled through its pattern.

  I pulled myself up on the fence and balanced on unfeeling, wooden feet. Staggered through the rest of the marsh, across the caretaker’s lawn. Up the street, I could see the lights of houses and motels and maybe restaurants or bars. They might as well have been the moon. I’d gone as far as I could go. Possibly further.

  I lay down and took out the triple-wrapped phone and, after a few tries to convince fingers and buttons to interact, called information. My mouth wasn’t keen on forming words, my lips too frozen for nuance. I muttered something that resembled taxi and hotel.

  “You at the ferry? Ain’t gonna run no more tonight. Inlet Inn might have a shuttle if Barry ain’t too drunk yet.”

  “Lighthouse.” There was no way I could manage a sentence and I felt oddly warm and knew that wasn’t good.

  “Well, hell, even drunk he can get there. He’s at the end of the street. Let me give him a ring.”

  “Please. Hu-rry.” My tense, chattering jaw hurt and my brain could only think of sleep. I ended the call and curled up to wait for death, or drunk Barry.

  • • • • •

  Barry found me on the edge of consciousness. “I gotta put you in the old building, upstairs. It’s already haunted.” He gave me a look that said he was pretty sure I was ready to join his hotel spirits. “You look cold. What the hell made you wanna go swimming in your clothes, lady?”

  I held my hands in front of his truck’s heating vents and vibrated, bit the inside of my lip until I tasted copper, then mashed my mouth shut to hide what I’d done.

  He looked worried, but I managed to warm myself enough to sign the credit slip. I held the wall on the way to the room, fighting the urge to pass out by trying to control the shivering with breathing exercises.

  In the room, I stripped and wrapped myself in the quilt. Stripping alone took fifteen minutes since my fingers refused to follow basic directions, and as the room heated up from chilly to stuffy, they tingled and burned.

  I focused on getting warm, but cold wasn’t the only thing leaving me shaking. Uncle Phil had said there were people who got used to death and people who didn’t. He’d always wanted me to believe he was one of the ones who didn’t, but I suspected that was regret. Then, I’d had nothing to regret.

  I dumped my purse, found my phone, and dialed Craig. Left a message. “I think I need you.” It came out garbled and my hands shook trying to hang up.

  I called Nik, but it went straight to voice mail. I wanted to tell her something, anything, but the words froze in my mouth and I listened to the static until the beep cut me off.

  • • • • •

  Craig called back, demanding to know where I was and what was wrong with me. I’d muttered something about an inn and a white lighthouse because my jaw couldn’t manage Ocracoke. He hung up.

  I’d curled deeper into the quilt trying to think warm thoughts. Palm trees. Corpses. Turquoise ocean water. Stormy seas. Rum runners with umbrellas. Dead eyes.

  Craig called back ten minutes later with a name and a promise. “Boomer and I met at EMT training. He’s one of the best I know. And he’s been to med school. Just didn’t have the cash to finish. He’ll take good care of you if you let him. I swear.”

  I was shivering in the fetal position on the carpet. I answered by chattering my teeth.

  “He should be there in a few minutes. He doesn’t live that far from the inn.”

  “How?”

  “Did I know which one? Wow, you really are messed up. It’s the closest one to the lighthouse.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Call me back when you’re feeling better.”

  “Mmm…”

  “Don’t fall asleep, Davis. You gotta answer the door for Boomer.”

  “Unlocked.”

  “You left the door unlocked?”

  “Cold.” I shivered. Things weren’t going well. I should have warmed up. “Sleepy.”

  “Davis!”

  Someone pounded on the door.

  The phone clicked off in my ear and I heard ringing outside. The door opened a few seconds later.

  I looked up. He was mountainous, football-player-shaped with shiny dark skin and bleached, cropped hair.

  “Hi, Boomer.”

  “Davis?” He had a large soft-sided case looped across his bulk and held a Thermos. No sign of the phone. He dropped to one knee and poured what looked like cocoa into the little black plastic cup. “Hold this. Don’t drink it yet.” Like a giant Florence Nightingale.

  I took the cup, staring as he popped a thermometer under my tongue, pulled a pair of shake-and-bake hand warmers and told me to put them under my armpits.

  “Stay here. I’m going to run you a bath.”

  I waited and shivered.

  Boomer returned and took the thermometer, glared at it. “Drink that now.”

  I gulped and burnt my tongue and throat. He eyed me but poured more. When the second cup was gone, he picked me up, quilt and all and carried me to the bathroom, where he sat me on the toilet lid.

  “I’m gonna leave. Get out of the quilt and into the water.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be used to naked people?” I let go of the quilt and sank into the water.
>
  He looked at me, worried.

  “That bad?”

  “Just try to stay awake for me.” He disappeared and returned with the Thermos, handing me another cup of scalding cocoa. “Drink up.”

  I drained the cup and leaned back again. “You won’t let me die, will you? I have something I’m supposed to do tomorrow.”

  He picked up a washcloth and put it over a cut I hadn’t realized I had. “Craig knows I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”

  “Makes sense.” I smiled at him and realized my teeth had stopped chattering.

  He stared at the water. “Craig told me not to bring my partner. He likes her. But he said she’d make you go to a hospital.”

  “Would she?”

  He gestured at the water that had turned reddish gray. “Yeah.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “Craig’s right. You don’t know what’s serious.”

  I couldn’t remember a day without an ache somewhere. I only noticed when it stopped me.

  He leaned me forward to check for more wounds and took a sharp breath.

  “What?” Now that I had feeling again, things hurt, but not too much, so I was figured I was fine.

  “Does Craig know about this?” He ran a finger along the latticework of old scars.

  I tried to rub off a dirt patch that turned out to be a bruise on my shin. “Yeah. Happened a long time ago.”

  He opened my hands and studied the calluses I didn’t remember shredding. “Can you stand to shower?”

  I nodded even though I didn’t feel like it.

  “I’ll meet you in the other room with bandages and antiseptic.”

  I stared at my reflection in the mirror for a long time. I didn’t look any different. My eyes were still blue and my lips no longer were. I felt different, though. Not because of what had been done to me this time, but what I’d done to others. It had been the right decision.

  Leaving Phil’s gun at the bottom of the ocean had been the right choice, too.

  It all just felt wrong.