by Tina Whittle
I sighed. Sometimes that man…
I changed out of my khakis and golf shirt and ducked into the shower, leaving my phone on the countertop where I could hear it. I turned the water as hot as I could stand it and stuck my face in the spray. I knew why the memories rose—I was in the cauldron that created them. I’d underestimated their power, however, like I’d underestimated a lot of things.
The KKK, for example. I was not naïve—I knew the Confederate cause was dear to the racist heart. People dismissed my reenactor clients as crazy for running around in fields, eating from cast iron pots, sleeping in primitive tents. But they were living a memory the rest of us were trying to forget.
So was the Klan, in their own way. A memory we didn’t deserve to forget, not yet.
I wrapped up in one of the hotel’s robes and pulled my copies from the printer. Trey’s desk now sported fresh sketches from our golf game—the front nine, the clubhouse, the parking lot. In the middle of the desk sat a stack of file folders, including surveillance system installation materials from Secure Systems. New maps too, a multitude of them making a pastel patchwork.
I turned the Hutchinson Island map around to see the details better. The hotel and the convention center stood side by side, sandwiched between the acres of manicured golf courses on the northern border and the gray skein of the Savannah River to the south. Undeveloped scrub land lay to the east and west, with the twin buildings like paired jewels not yet set into a crown. But they would be, and soon. The cranes were already in place.
I sat on the bed and dumped out my tote bag, sorting the research into four piles—one for Hope, one for Winston, one for Vincent DiSilva down in Florida, and one for the Harringtons. I knew I’d need a fifth pile eventually—for the KKK—but I didn’t want to think about that yet.
My phone rang. I checked the number, then took a deep steadying breath. “Hey, Jasper.”
“Got your message.”
His voice was familiar, another memory surfacing. I waited, but he didn’t offer any pleasantries. I took the cue and got to business.
“Did you talk to Boone?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“He said he’ll meet you at Oatland Island. Three o’clock.”
I snatched a pen from Trey’s desk. “I thought he was on electronic monitoring?”
“He gets to leave the house twice a week. Today’s one of his days.”
“Can’t I meet him at the house?”
“He don’t take visitors anymore.”
“Come on, Jasper, I—”
“That’s his offer. You don’t want it, I’ll tell him so.”
“No, no. I’ll be there.” I scribbled the info on my palm. “Oatland Island. Three o’clock.”
“At the wolf den. And come alone.”
I recapped the pen and placed it back exactly where I’d left it, precisely aligned with the pencil and highlighter. “Don’t worry, Jasper. You didn’t have to tell me that part.”
Chapter Fifteen
I’d been to Oatland Island more times than I could count. Science teachers loved the nature preserve, and today was no exception. Three fat yellow school buses hunkered on the grassy field that served as a parking lot. I noticed a silver Hummer, incongruous and menacing. Boone’s car, I was betting.
I crumpled up the sandwich bag from my lunch and parked. And then I froze, stunned. No. It couldn’t be.
But it was.
The black Lincoln rested in the shade of a sprawling live oak. A familiar figure leaned against the driver’s side, making notations in a palm-sized leather notebook.
I got out. “Trey? What the hell?”
He looked up. One eyebrow rose as he took in the Camaro. “Where did you get that?”
“I asked you a question.”
“No, you didn’t. You—”
“What are you doing here?”
“The same thing you are.” He checked his notes. “Meeting Beauregard Forrest Boone. Two-time felon, assorted charges for alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana smuggling, two counts involuntary manslaughter. Ties to several white supremacist organizations, including serving as a Grand Dragon in the KKK. Out now on compassionate parole.”
He snapped the notebook shut and looked at me, eyes hard. Felons belonged behind bars in Trey’s worldview. Not meeting me, his all-by-herself girlfriend, on some island.
I glared at him. “You followed me.”
“Of course I didn’t. I got here first.”
“But how…” Then it hit me. “Omigod, you bugged my phone!”
Trey looked insulted. “I did not. Georgia law forbids telecommunications interception without consent of both parties.” He paused, then cocked his head. “I bugged the hotel room.”
It took me a second for his words to register. “You did what?”
“It’s a simple infrared signal burst device. I installed it right after lunch. It saves each session as a separate MP3 file, time coded, smart phone accessible. See?”
He held the phone out. Sure enough, the screen displayed a neat listing of several recordings, each time-stamped, including my most recent visit to the room.
I felt a hot geyser of mad bubbling in my chest. “And you didn’t think to tell me this?”
“You were gone.”
“So? You had no right to bug our room!”
“It’s not our room, it’s my room, and as the primary registrant, I had the legal authority—”
“Don’t throw legal bullshit at me! I’m your girlfriend, for crying out loud!”
“That has no relevance.”
I held out my hand. “Give me that phone! I’m dismantling this set-up right now.”
“Not until we’ve talked to Boone.”
“We? No way. I’m talking to Boone all by myself, and you’re waiting here until I come back.”
He shook his head. “That’s not how this works.”
“It bloody well is. We made a deal. You agreed to drop the overprotective routine.”
“And you agreed to be sensible.”
“This is sensible!”
He folded his arms. “You’re meeting a convicted felon, alone, without telling anyone where you are. You’ve got no back-up and no secondary escape options, which means that what you’re doing is not only not sensible, it is, in any reasonable estimation, stupid.”
I stared up at him. His expression was serious, but not bland. And not passive. He was angry—I saw it in the flash of his eyes, the set of his jaw. I remembered the last time he’d gotten angry with me and swallowed hard. Anger got the juices flowing in more ways than one. I knew the hormonal cascade—cortisol then adrenalin—and I knew what happened with a dose of dopamine in the cocktail. It had happened before, red-eyed fury burning into something equally hot, and maybe even more dangerous.
I bit back the curse. This was getting us nowhere. I had Boone to deal with. The last thing I needed was a lover’s spat with my pissed-off, chemically unstable powder keg of a boyfriend.
I kept my voice calm. “One question.”
“What?”
“When you installed that system, were you being my boyfriend? Or were you being a corporate security agent?”
He looked startled. “What?”
“How about showing up here? Boyfriend or security agent?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But I’m here. And I’ve presented a valid interpretation of the scenario. You know I have.”
How had we gotten into this mess? Which had come first, the stupid chicken or the overprotective egg?
I rubbed my eyes. “It’s valid based on the facts you have. But there are things you don’t know.”
“Then tell me.”
“I will. On the way.”
“To where?”
“To see Boone.”
He frowned suspiciously. “You’re letting me come?”
“You may as well. You probably slipped some bugging device in my underwear when I wasn’t looking.”
He made a soft noise of affront. “I did not.”
He started to walk around me, but I planted myself in front of him. “One condition—you have to let me talk to Boone alone. You can watch. There’s an observation area. But he wants to see me alone, and I agreed, so that’s the situation.”
“It’s too risky.”
“I’ll be perfectly safe.”
“He’s a convicted felon.”
“Who is also my uncle.”
Trey blinked at me. The forest wove a tapestry of sound around us, including the long piercing cry of a red-tailed hawk, followed by a cacophony of shrieks and harsh calls, like the soundtrack of a Tarzan movie.
“I’ve known him since I was a baby,” I continued. “And he’d sooner cut off his own head than hurt me, but he does not like tardiness any more than you do. So come on. The wolf den is this way.”
***
Trey and I took the path backwards. Normally the trail ran counterclockwise, winding first through the gator pond, then past the bobcats and foxes, the eagles and panthers. But we weren’t sightseeing. We had one goal in mind.
The wolves.
We took the path side by side, and I explained my complicated ties to Boone. “He married my mama’s sister fresh out of high school. They opened a boat servicing business and marina, a very successful one. When I was little, our families used to spend Saturdays together at Boone’s place. I’d play hide and seek with Jefferson and Jasper—Boone’s kids, my cousins—and the grown-ups would drink.”
The memories flooded me as I talked, incandescent and idyllic and almost tangible, like mental postcards. Trey didn’t interrupt. He let me set the pace, our shoes crushing gravel.
I sighed. “But Boone and Aunt Rowena got involved with the KKK. She eventually ran off with another Klansman, dumped the boys on Boone and vanished. Mama said I wasn’t allowed out there anymore, so I didn’t seen any of them until I became a teenager and could sneak out on my own. Jasper and Jefferson were too grown-up to hang around with me then, but Boone always had time.”
Trey held a moss-tangled branch out of the way. He was back to his usual patient chivalry. As we walked, I told him the stories I’d grown up with, hissed under my mother’s breath in the kitchen when I was supposed to be in bed. Told with a grin by my other cousins at the family reunions. Spread by the kids in high school who counted on him for their underage libations.
Boone was a legend. And as his niece, I was a legend by proxy. Many a school bully left me the hell alone when someone whispered his name. For several years, I couldn’t pick a fight on any playground in town.
I shoved my hands in my pockets. “He ditched the KKK when he went to prison the first time. Saw the error of his ways and repented.”
Trey arched one eyebrow. “Really?”
“I know, hard to believe. But these days, if you wanna be a successful smuggler, you gotta deal with the melting pot.”
“You said he repented.”
“Oh, the violence and race hating, yeah. But not the moonshining and tobacco smuggling, which is why he eventually went back to prison. Now he’s home servicing boats again, him and Jefferson and Jasper all on their best behavior, although the rumor mill proclaims otherwise.”
Trey stopped. In the distance a whooping crane made an unearthly racket. “Why did you arrange this meeting?”
“Because I’m trying to decide if the KKK is involved in the hunt for the Bible. If they are, Boone will know.”
“And he’ll tell you?”
“Of course.” I stopped and pointed. “There it is.”
What looked like a log cabin was actually the entrance to the wolf pack observation area. We went into the cool dark interior, a rustic room with a dirt floor and three exposed log walls. The fourth wall was thick clear plastic, a transparent barrier between the visiting humans and the resident wolves.
A pack of five, they moved like ghosts through the shifting green shadows and wan afternoon light, three of them loping the perimeter of their territory, two others resting in the shade. At the other end of the enclosure, waiting in the outdoor observation area, I saw Boone.
He was shorter than average, but it took looking twice to notice because he carried himself tall. He wore his thin blond hair in a perpetual crew cut and shaded his pale white skin under the brim of a slouchy Panama hat. Still as lean as a whippet, he could arm wrestle men twice his size into submission.
“That’s Jefferson out there with Boone,” I said, “which means Jasper’s at the door. Both of them are mean as snakes and very good at hide and seek.”
“So one stays with Boone, and the other stays with me?”
“Most likely.”
“I don’t like that.”
“It’s the rule.”
Trey didn’t argue; he understood rules. He kept his eyes on Boone even when I put my hand under his jacket and rubbed his back. He was fully strapped, the H&K nestled in the shoulder holster.
I dropped my voice. “Listen, Jasper’s the meanest, the sneakiest too. But he’s no match for you. And I’ll be right there, on the other side of that door, two seconds away. Okay?”
Trey nodded. “Okay.”
Jasper opened the door leading to the outdoor viewing area. He had Boone’s raw looks, but none of his cool Nordic temperament. Like his brother standing outside, he wore combat boots and camo and probably had six different weapons on him.
He glared at Trey, then turned the glare on me. “Daddy said alone.”
Through the open door, I saw Boone leaning against the wooden railing. He gave Trey a cursory glance, then nodded.
Trey didn’t react. His hands were open, shoulders dropped, backbone straight. He was calm and collected, but it was the poise of an unsplit atom. He wasn’t happy about this, but he was willing to trust me. The thought made my heart pound.
Or maybe that was Jasper with the .45 in his waistband.
Too late to reconsider.
I went through the door, and Jasper shut it behind me.
Chapter Sixteen
Boone watched me approach. He wore tiny round spectacles that intensified his eyes, hazel green going to ice-gray at the edges, like moss caught in a frost.
He pulled off the glasses. “Well, look at you.”
I stepped into his embrace. His chest felt thin against mine, and I realized he was skin and bone under his jacket. His scent was a punch in the memory banks—Red Man chewing tobacco and Lifebuoy soap.
Jefferson watched from the edge of the wooded trail. Darker in hair, keener of eye, and swarthier than his brother, he had the calm authority of the eldest son. Despite his demeanor, I knew he was on red alert. So were Jasper and Trey back in the observation room. Boone and I were the epicenter of so much aggression-fueled focus, I thought we might combust like ants under a magnifying glass.
Boone examined Trey with sharp appraisal. “You brought muscle?”
“No. That’s my boyfriend.”
“He’s a cop.”
“Ex-cop.”
“Same difference.” Boone polished his glasses on his sleeve. “He’s got Black Irish in him.”
“On his mother’s side, yes.”
“And his father?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. The man abandoned his family when Trey was two.”
Boone regarded Trey with new eyes. In the enclosure, the wolf closest to us stopped pacing and turned its nose into the wind. It was colored the hard pale white of quartz, its every movement honed and deliberate.
Boone put his glasses back on. “So what ant hill you gone and stirred up now?”
I told him the story. He eyed me with curiosity. “You think somebody killed that old man down in Florida?”
“The autopsy said natural causes.”
Boone smiled wryly. “Every death’s from natural causes.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. But you got this story secondhand from John Wilde.” He spat on the ground. “Why concern yourself with his b
usiness?”
“Because that’s all it is—business. You know how that goes.”
He clucked his tongue. “So what do you want from me?”
“Information.”
“Why should I help you now?”
“Oh, come on, Boone!”
“I haven’t heard a word from you since your mama’s funeral.”
“And you know that’s not true. I sent you a thank-you card for those flowers. The ones you didn’t put your name on? The pot of marigolds? Don’t even pretend that wasn’t you.”
He didn’t deny the accusation.
“So help me or don’t help me, but don’t make it about what an ungrateful wretch I am.”
He smiled. “Did I say I wouldn’t help you? I made up my mind when I heard you were coming back home.”
I didn’t ask him how he’d heard. He kept his ears pricked, like the wolves.
“I’m out of my league here,” I said. “Trey’s equipped to deal with this kind of stuff—”
“He looks like it.”
I laughed. Boone wasn’t one to be fooled by a little Armani. I glanced over at the observation area. Trey was watching one of the wolves, a dark gray creature as lean as a shadow. The wolf was watching him right back.
I turned back to Boone. “But this is my battle, not Trey’s. And I don’t want it following me back to Atlanta.”
“Makes sense. Anything in particular you want to know about?”
“This woman, for starters.” I handed him the still shot from the elevator footage. “Her name is Hope Lyle, although she may be using an alias.”
He examined the image, then shook his head. “Nothing on her.”
“How about this guy, Winston Cargill?” I handed him another printout, pulled from the Lowcountry Excursion website, featuring Winston resplendent in one of his Hawaiian shirts. “He’s hiding something, for sure, including a big box of something under his front counter.”
Boone looked at me over his glasses. “You heard I’m on the straight and narrow, right? Don’t reckon I’ll be peeking under any man’s front counter.”
“I’m not here to sic a burglar on anybody. All I want is information.”
“About these two?”
“Yes. And the local Klan. Rumor has it they’re poking about in the same spots I am.”