Deeper Than the Grave

by Tina Whittle

  Words failed him. He gave up trying to explain and stacked the papers, his movements quick but methodical. He stayed silent, but it was the silence of a volcano before it erupts, a silence of ash and smoke and gathering.

  “Talk to me, Trey.”

  “I have nothing to say.”

  “Oh no, you started this, you’re not backing out now.” I planted myself right in front of him. “You can go around thinking in black and white—you can do it literally and you can do it metaphorically and nobody will say boo to you about it because that’s your thing now—but I don’t have that luxury.”

  He kept his eyes on the paperwork. “That’s not—”

  “Yes, it is! You think I like hiding things from you? But I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t, and I will not stand here and be lectured by you, yet again, when the only reason I keep anything from you is because I’m trying to protect you!”

  He switched his gaze on me hard and fast, raked his eyes across my mouth. I let him see it, the whole truth, and his expression shifted to astonishment laced with potent, rising fury.

  “You believe that,” he said incredulously. “You really do.”

  And my sensible voice was yammering in the back of my head—shut up shut up shut up!—but there was another voice—a shriller, louder voice, red-eyed with an equal fury—and that was the voice that started coming out of my mouth.

  I popped my hands on my hips. “Screw it. You’re not getting protected anymore. You can deal or don’t deal or lock yourself in your apartment, I don’t care, because I have had it with you, Trey Seaver, and the ATF, and the cops, and the fucking Kennesaw whatever-the-fuck commission, and every other goddammed—”

  “Stop talking.”

  “—overbearing, head-up-their-ass authority trying to be the boss of me—”

  “I said, stop talking!”

  “And another thing—”

  He moved like a lightning strike, sweeping my computer off the counter with a backhand blow. It crashed into the fresh plaster, where it shattered with a crack of glass and plastic. The screen went black as the drive died, and then there was only Trey’s rapid ragged breathing, and the hornet-like whine of pure rage singing in my head.

  And then I saw it in his eyes—the SWAT cop stare—and I knew he could do whatever he wanted at that moment, that not a thing could stop him. Not me, not the rules, certainly not the scrambled circuits of his brain. He clenched his hands to fists, and I remembered the coyote, the howl, the wild edge of the night.

  I felt the chemical floodgates open—adrenalin and cortisone, fight or flight, tooth and claw—and with a sickening flash, I took an inventory of the weapons around me—the board on the floor, the wrench on the counter, the gun in the drawer—before I remembered I wasn’t dealing with some random bad guy—it was Trey standing in front of me—but my body and brain didn’t see any difference. All the training he’d insisted on kicked in, and my feet moved into neutral stance, and my hands opened, and I tried to make my mouth form his name, but my throat had closed.

  Trey blinked. And he transformed right in front of me, like melting. He looked down at his hands, then at me. And he saw my fear, saw it clearly. He went pale, and the tremor started. And I wanted to go to him, I really did, but I couldn’t make myself move forward.

  He exhaled in a burst. “Tai…”

  “You need to go.”

  “I—”

  “Now.”

  He hesitated for only a second, then he averted his eyes and headed for the door. Quickly, without looking back, without taking his things. The stupid bells jangled behind him. And I didn’t budge until I heard the roar of the Ferrari, the kick-up of gravel, the screech of tires.

  And then I sank to the floor, put my face in my hands, and sobbed.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  I sat next to the wreckage of my computer. Small shards of plastic here, bits of coiled wire there. I picked up a piece of meshed metal and held it to the light.

  Rico’s voice was gentle. “Did you try calling?”

  “He won’t answer his phone.”

  I could hear music at the other end of the line. Rico was having a Snowpocalypse party at his apartment, gathering a charmed circle of poets and artists, singers and activists, maybe even a movie star or two. Once I would have been there with him. Instead I sat with my knees against my chest on the floor of my shop, ten minutes past sundown, all alone, with a rising storm outside.

  I slumped backwards against the counter. “This sucks.”

  “Of course it does. Y’all are all up in each other’s stuff right now. What did you expect?”

  “I expected it to get better. But it’s not.” I thumped the back of my head against the wall. “It hurts.”

  “Good.”

  “Rico!”

  “I’m serious. People take all this hard fake stuff and put it on the outside, and that keeps all the soft real stuff safe on the inside, and that is the exact definition of armor, baby girl. And you two have taken it off. And that’s where it gets real. Skin in the game real.”

  “This was a little too real.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I was scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Trey.”

  No response. But the music got quieter, which meant he’d gone into the bedroom and shut the door. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  I explained as best I could. Sometimes with Trey, the rush of anger flared with a different kind of heat, and in the past, I’d responded with a matching, primal hunger. But there had been none of that red-blooded drumbeat this time. This time I’d felt only fear, cold and pure and irresistible. And now I felt a different kind of fear, the anxious kind, the kind that left my heart sore and my throat raw.

  “I swear, Rico, I can’t think of him out there by himself, hurting and confused, and me here, stuck in this freaking shop. But I remember that look in his eyes, and I get…Damn it!”

  The restless itch started in my legs again. I recognized it from before—the first twinge of a panic attack—and I tried to breathe it down, but that wasn’t happening.

  “I have to get outside,” I said.

  “What?”

  I scrambled to my feet and shoved open the front door. A blast of cold hit me like a slap in the face. The square outside was sheened with snow, the trees heavy with ice, the streetlights tingeing everything a tawny amber. I sucked in a lungful of the crisp air, wet now, sharp as a razor. There wasn’t a single ounce of tobacco in the shop. I’d have smoked anything, even a scuzzy, stale, lint-pocked cigarette from the bottom of my tote bag.

  I rubbed my arms. “Jeez, Rico, I gotta get it together.”

  “You gotta get your ass back in that shop.”

  “In a minute.” I took another breath, relieved when it went all the way in. “It didn’t feel like a betrayal when I did it, any of it. I knew Trey wouldn’t have liked me talking to Kenny by myself, but I didn’t know that was going to lead to the damn Russian mafia, and he had so much else on his mind this morning, and—”

  “That’s not why you didn’t tell him, and you know it.”

  I kicked the curb, sending a tiny plume of ice and snow into the air. I didn’t argue because he was right. I’d been laying claim like a gold rush prospector—my shop, my parking space, my A&D book, my investigation—all in an effort to control something that couldn’t be controlled, something I couldn’t fight any longer.

  The tears started again, and I cursed softly. “Everything’s all mixed up, Rico—Trey and Dexter and the ATF and the cops and that poor girl’s bones. I can’t help thinking that could be me one day, a dusty skeleton shoved in the back of the closet, no name, no resting place, no people to miss me.”

  “Careful, baby girl. You’re working yourself into a one-woman pity party.”

  I ti
lted my head back against the brick and blinked back the tears. “I think he killed her, Rico.”

  “Who?”

  “Braxton Amberdecker. That girl died on Amberdecker land, I know it. What if they made up that story about him disappearing in the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain and then hid him out until he died and then buried him in an unmarked grave in those woods? What if that’s why they put his sister in an asylum and destroyed her journals, because she knew the truth?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. That’s a whole lotta ‘what ifs’ there.”

  I wrapped my arms tighter around myself. “I swear, once this city unfreezes itself, I’m going to prove it.”

  “How?”

  “By digging up Braxton Amberdecker.”

  “You don’t know where he is.”

  “I bet I do, thanks to a tip from a Russian mobster.”

  “And where is that?”

  “I’ll tell you if I’m right.”

  In the square, I saw the headlights on the police car flare bright. Then the blue lights on the dash followed, a kaleidoscopic spin, as the cruiser pulled onto the street.

  “So much for that,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “My sentry just abandoned his post.”

  “No surprise, probably got another call. You think these people can’t drive on good days, wait till you see what happens with a little ice on the road.” Rico paused to take a swig of something. “Keep your door locked up there in the boonies. You don’t want things to get all Donner Party and shit.”

  I laughed, even if it was half-hearted. Laughter echoed at his end of the call too, his poet friends coming in, wondering where he was. His community. His people. At my end, there was only a silence coming down like the night, and the rising cold.

  I went back inside the shop and shut the door, stamping the slush from my feet. And that was when I saw it, the tiny red flicker behind the glass eyes of the stuffed deer. I walked over and stood under it.

  Rico’s voice was concerned. “Tai? You still there?”

  “I’m here. But I have to go.”

  “All right, but you be careful up there all alone.”

  “I will,” I said, and hung up.

  I didn’t tell him I wasn’t exactly alone anymore.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  I tilted my head back, looking the deer right in the eye. “I know you’re watching me. I can tell, you know, even without the little red light to give you away.”

  I sat cross-legged on the floor, put my chin in my hand. The shop was quiet, save for the chirps of various surveillance equipment, a noise like well-behaved robot crickets. I could hear the drip drip drip of the faucet, the hum of the electric lights, the muffled roar of the gas heater. The noises blended into the smells—gunpowder and leather and tobacco and strong coffee—and I realized with a pang it was the smell of home.

  “It’s okay. I watch you too sometimes. Like when I come to bed and you’re already asleep. Some days I can’t believe you’re real and not a figment of my imagination.” I fixed my eyes on the red light. “You’re probably close to Buckhead by now. At least I hope you are. It’s nasty out, and getting nastier.”

  As if in response, the wind surged, and I heard a branch snap and tumble to the ground with a muffled thud. I held my breath waiting for the electricity to flicker, but the current stayed on. So did the red light.

  “You left all your paperwork. I’ll put it with mine. And then when the storm’s done, we’ll dump it all on your dinner table and see how it connects. Because I’m betting it does. I’m betting the skeleton in my closet and the skeleton in the Amberdecker woods and the skeleton we still haven’t found are all part of one whopping story, and if anybody can figure it out, it’s you and me. We make a great team, boyfriend. Which reminds me.”

  I leaned over and dragged my tote bag into my lap. I pulled out a piece of paper and held it up.

  “This isn’t finished yet, but here’s the idea I was telling you about, my contribution to your seduction strategy. Besides me learning to be more patient, of course.” I unfolded it and turned it to face the camera. “It’s a flowchart, see? It starts with a single box here—that’s you, taking one step forward. One step. Then based on the response you get from me, you choose the next action. It’s all linear except for some…what do you call it? Circular non-divergence? And you’re quite familiar with this section already, so nothing new there. Except for this sequence…” I pointed to the lower right corner. “It may seem a little odd, but just go with it, trust me.”

  A spatter of sleet lashed the window, mixing with the snow. Soon it would freeze, and the power lines singing in the whiplash wind would grow heavy with ice. The shadows of the tossing tree branches wove patterns on the wall.

  I tucked my knees against my chest. “I suppose you saw my little freak-out when I was talking to Rico. You told me that PTSD triggers are complicated, but mine is pretty specific—it’s feeling trapped. Rooms. Circumstances. Expectations. Anything where I’m not in control. And when one hits, it’s Savannah all over again, those hours before I finally found you, when I didn’t know if you were alive or…not. So last Sunday, when you locked me in the safe room and went off into the darkness, that was a trigger. And now, with the storm, and you out there somewhere, where I can’t get to you…”

  My voice broke, and I focused on the red blinking light. I recognized the vulnerability behind that ruby glow. Trey had covers for his empty places, perfectly engineered ones that camouflaged the abyss below. He wasn’t the only one. And as I sat alone in that cramped messy room, all the memories flooded back—every kiss, every hesitation, every blush, every sideways glance, him in the dark bottom of that boat, lifting his head at the sound of my voice, him in the dark of the bedroom, his mouth against mine—and I got dizzy with the weight of what he meant to me.

  “Trey Seaver, I know you’d never hurt me. I know it with my whole heart. I know the kind of damage you’re capable of inflicting—and yes, that’s scary to see, I’ll admit—but you are the best man I know, good and true all the way to your middle. I keep saying, over and over and over, that I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not. I’m right here.” I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath. “And I’ve got something to tell you. It’s something I should have told you when I first figured it out, and as soon as I lay eyes on you again—”

  My phone started ringing.

  I smiled up into the red light. “Took you long enough.” And then I put it up to my ear. “Hey, boyfriend.”

  But the voice on the other end was unfamiliar. “Excuse me?”

  Not Trey. I yanked the phone down and checked the display. It was an unknown number, from an unknown area code. I put it back against my ear. “I’m sorry, I thought you were…who is this?”

  A hesitation. “I’m calling for Tai Randolph?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Professor Geoffrey Walker. I’ve been told that you may have found the bones of my great-great-grandmother?”

  Chapter Fifty

  I stammered a little. “Excuse me, could you repeat that?”

  “Ophelia Price gave me this number. She said that you’ve discovered bones that quite possibly belong to my great-great-grandmother, Josephina Luckie.”

  “Yes, yes, yes.” I scrambled over to my tote bag. “I’m sorry, it’s been crazy here.”

  As I pulled my papers from the bag, I sketched out the story for him—the backpack of bones, the mourning jewelry, the forensic details the ME had shared. He listened. I could feel his excitement mounting.

  “We never thought we’d find her. She moved to Atlanta in the late 1850s with her aunt—the Sophia Luckie memorialized on the locket—but when her aunt moved back to North Carolina, Josephina stayed in Georgia, moving in with her brother and his family. She was supposed to flee Atlanta with them, but she never returned from
gathering provisions, and they had to leave without her, barely ahead of Sherman’s troops. There’s a memorial in the family plot and an empty grave but…” His voice cracked with emotion. “How did her remains get in your shop?”

  “We’re still trying to figure that out, but it’s looking like a relic hunter who used to work for my uncle hid them in the wall, probably to sell on the black market.”

  His end went silent. I glanced up at the wall—the red light still flashed—then pulled out the papers Ophelia Price had printed for me.

  “Dr. Walker, if you’ll send me all the information you have, I’ll do the same for you. Tomorrow. In case you don’t know, it’s blowing up a snowstorm of epic proportions here in Atlanta, and since my computer is suddenly defunct…” I directed a pointed glance at the deer head. “…my cell phone is my only link to the outside world.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course. Although we don’t have much—the few letters she sent, anecdotal recollections from other family members.” His voice went emotional again. “All we’ve had of her has been the story, which some of us assumed was more fiction than fact, and a photograph.”

  I got a tingle. “You have a photograph?”

  “Yes. It’s posted on the genealogical website my cousin maintains. Shall I message you the link?”

  “Oh yes, please do.”

  Another pause while he got his voice under control. “I know you’re still trying to figure out the story, but…were there other bones with hers?”

  I got another tingle. “We don’t know—the remains were removed from their original burial place. Why do you ask?”

  “She was supposed to be bringing her betrothed with her to the meet point. She never mentioned his name, only that he was a freeman, and that he was bringing provisions from his home for the trip. He had a sister, the letters said, and this sister was providing food and gold and clothes, but they had to sneak it out past an unsympathetic older brother. Josephina planned to marry him once they got north of the Mason-Dixon line, then head west.”