Circled

by Anne McAneny

  “Anything else?”

  She shook her head, but then piped up with one more thought. “Oh, wait. He also mentioned how he lost his pants there and hadn’t been back since. That’s when he hung up and hightailed it outta here.”

  “Lost his pants? You sure that’s what he said?”

  “Yeah, I remember, because the last thing I wanted to imagine was Sheriff Ryker with his pants off, getting a happy ending somewhere.” She threw up her hands defensively, warding off the image. “No thank you.”

  I smiled. I knew exactly where Strike Ryker was. “Don’t worry, Annika. No happy endings in store for the sheriff today.” I winked. “I’ll see what I can do about that double-date.”

  Chapter 44

  I pulled up to Quail’s Victorian mansion for the second time in a week. The tire tracks from Chad’s Blazer and my Subaru were still visible in the muddy trail that looped along the side of the house, but evidence of our previous adventure had begun to petrify. Now, two additional sets of tire prints zippered the terrain—one set thin and shallow, the other wide and deep, probably from a truck. And the new tracks weren’t the least bit hardened.

  I suspected that the sheriff was here following up a lead on Zeke Carver—the “dumb-ass hick” Annika had mentioned. And the house’s library-cum-gambling-den was the only place I knew of where a cautious man like Strike Ryker might have “lost his pants”—when he’d kissed away big bucks in that poker game years ago.

  As a nod to safety, I’d texted both Chad and Sherilyn to let them know where I was going. I’d said that if I didn’t call back within a half-hour, to come running. I’d had more than enough of rednecks pointing lethal weapons at me lately.

  I parked on the side of the house and proceeded on foot. I peeked around the corner toward the back. Yes! Strike’s car was there. No sign of a pick-up truck, though. Hopefully, Zeke had already taken off. With my gun at the ready, I squished through the mud to the pee-yellow door, careful to crouch low, out of sight of anyone inside.

  I strained my ears for sounds from within the house. Got nothing.

  The padlock dangled open. Still crouched, I nudged the door with my shoulder, cursing every decibel of its creaking hinges, and crept in.

  Silence for three seconds, followed by heavy footsteps and a door slam, possibly the front door, but I couldn’t tell. More muted footsteps followed. From someone descending the front porch steps?

  I sucked in a gulp of air and waited. Nothing.

  Crash! Something had fallen to the floor upstairs.

  I pressed myself flush against the wall and let my heart settle. Hard to tell where upstairs the noise had come from.

  A car door then slammed outside. I instinctively patted my pocket to make sure I had my car keys, but the sound hadn’t come from the direction of my car—or the sheriff’s. Was it possible there’d been a third vehicle out there that I’d missed? Moving quickly and quietly, I ventured toward the front door, near the bottom of the stairway. As I did, a loud engine roared to life outside. Damn, someone must have been parked on the far side of the house, behind the jutting screened porch. There was no window on that side of the house for me to peek through.

  I glanced up the stairs. No motion. No sound. I made a dash for one of the small windows flanking the front door. The sound of tires grappling with mud filled my ears. Before I could move the curtain aside and wipe clean a spot to see through, the tires outside caught hold and thrust into motion. The vehicle revved and peeled away, its rumble growing faint fast. I saw only the rear of a blue pick-up blazing down the long driveway. I cursed myself; I’d just let Zeke escape, but that might be a good thing. Hadn’t really wanted to get between him and the sheriff.

  Smash!

  This time, the noise upstairs was followed by the tinkling of broken glass. Given my position at the base of the stairs, I knew exactly where the sound had come from: the poker room. With my gun raised, I took the stairs two at a time and squatted near the door. It was open half an inch, but I couldn’t see much.

  A low moan reached my ears, and the scent of the room hit me hard. Pungent, slightly sweet, with a touch of baked-in sweat.

  Another moan. “Sheriff?” I called out, without much thought to the risk.

  “Chloe?” said a weak voice followed by a cough. “What in . . .?” The voice faded to nothingness.

  “Are you alone?” I said.

  No answer.

  “Sheriff?”

  Silence. My heart galloped, but in a good way. It sharpened my thoughts. The sheriff wouldn’t have given up my name if someone dangerous were lurking in there. He would have told me to run, even if it wasted his last breath. I burst in.

  The sheriff lay on the floor, the front of his shirt covered in fresh blood. It bubbled up like a dying fountain with each shallow breath he took. The first surreal thought that entered my head was: Jacqueline’s never going to get that stain out. Then my subconscious took in the heavy lamp on the floor near the sheriff’s foot—the source of the first crash. A shattered bottle and a puddle of whiskey surrounded his other foot—second crash. The sheriff had been kicking things over, hoping to alert someone to his situation. And from the looks of it, each effort had cost him another pint of blood.

  “Sheriff, don’t worry. I’ll get you through this.”

  No response. I got down on my knees and peeled back his shirt. One bullet wound to the gut. I whipped off the scarf I’d been using as a belt and applied pressure to the wound. With my other hand, I called for help. In all, it took less than fifteen seconds from the time I entered the room to the time help was on the way. What followed was harrowing nothingness: reassuring words falling on deaf ears; me peeling off additional clothes that did nothing to staunch the sheriff’s bleeding. I was about to rip off my pants—fully appreciating the irony of losing my pants in this room—when a spark of memory ignited.

  Macy had once told me how her bounty hunter father had chased down a Lebanese bail jumper who’d accidentally shot himself in the leg. The criminal had taken refuge in a neighborhood store. When Macy’s dad had burst through the door, he found the guy with a pile of fresh coffee grounds pressed into the wound to stop the bleeding.

  I glanced around. On the low table next to me was another bottle of whiskey, eight chipped glasses, two ashtrays, a coffee maker, and a canister of Maxwell House Original Roast—all the makings of a late-night game, minus the cards and cash. I couldn’t remember the exact outcome of Macy’s story, but the sheriff’s blood was begging for a dam.

  Holding my shirt against the sheriff’s abdomen with my foot, I stood and grabbed the coffee. As I packed it into the unnatural hole in his body, I did something I hadn’t done in years: I prayed. Why not? The Big Guy had pulled off a miracle for me once before, and He’d kept me alive all these years for some reason. Maybe our connection was still intact.

  After two serious prayers, recited frantically in my head, the smell of the blood started to make me punchy. “Heavenly Father,” I finally said aloud, “I need you! Make these grounds good to the last drop.”

  The bleeding slowed so dramatically, it almost frightened me. Prayers and coffee—who knew? Not only that, but the sheriff opened his eyes—wider than I’d ever seen, even on his best days.

  “Chloe,” he said in a voice that wasn’t much more than a muted vibration in the back of his throat. He reached up to grab my arm, but strength eluded him for perhaps the first time in his life. I lowered my ear to his mouth.

  “Get out,” he said. “Had to be Zeke. He’s desperate. He’ll—”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “He’s gone. They’ll get him.”

  And then, with strenuous effort, he muttered, “What are you doing h—?” But he passed out, the rest of the sentence proving too much for him.

  I stayed quiet, knowing the answer would really prove too much for him.

  Chapter 45

  Trying to explain to Chad why I’d gone to Quail’s old mansion in the first place didn’t prove near
ly as difficult as I’d imagined. I couldn’t tell him I’d gone to accuse his dad of robbery and fraud, but another answer came practically gift-wrapped. “I was returning the stuff I stole from the Whitakers’ bin the other day.”

  “Are you serious? You went back and tampered with evidence after I told you not to?”

  “At least I was returning it.”

  Chad killed the next couple minutes by lecturing me on the sanctity of evidence. I let him ramble; it kept his mind off his father.

  Jacqueline, Annika, and Chad, along with two deputies and I, had spent the last hour and a half listening to a cheap clock ticking on the wall of a dreary hospital waiting room. It had been a dismal fifty-four-hundred ticks of feeble encouragement when there wasn’t a deep well from which to draw. I was feeling particularly awkward with Strike’s blood turning up in weird places on my body—under my nails, crested across my elbow, and woven into my hair. I tried to keep Jacqueline from noticing, but every so often, I caught her glancing in my direction, tears brimming near the lower lids. At least the nurses had given me a patient gown that covered the upper half of my body, plus a portion of my stained jeans.

  Finally, a doctor with weary eyes and a jarringly young face entered the room and bucked up his lanky frame as best he could. Jacqueline disengaged herself from Annika whose nonstop whimpering had shown that she cared more about the old dinosaur than she’d let on.

  Jacqueline, Chad, and I huddled around the doctor. He asked if I was family, and Chad blurted, “It’s fine. She can stay.”

  The doctor provided a highly technical update, as if by doing so, he could spare himself from delivering the simple message lurking behind the Latin: It doesn’t look good.

  Apparently, the bullet, due to its angle of entry and Strike’s muscular frame, hadn’t gone as deep as expected, but it had struck his liver and nicked his small intestine. He had a chance, just not a big one.

  Jacqueline grabbed Chad’s arm, while Annika, who’d heard every word, latched onto a chair and looked close to collapsing. Chad remained stoic, his eyes locked onto mine, seeking my strength. I gave it to him.

  “Applying the coffee may have turned out to be a life-saver,” the doctor said to Chad.

  Chad jerked a thumb in my direction. “Thank the reporter here.”

  The doctor turned to me. “Did you do an article on survivalist first aid or something?”

  “No,” I said, realizing the irony of Macy’s words having been the ones to save the sheriff. “A friend of mine told me a story once.”

  We sat again, but Chad implored me to go home; I sensed it might be better for everyone if I disappeared and took Strike’s blood with me. I hugged them, went to my car, and cried. Not only for the Ryker family but for my secret. What was I supposed to do with it now? Would Strike take it to his grave? Would I let him?

  I released a sigh as I punched the steering wheel. Then I went home and showered. By the time I wrapped my hair in a towel, Chad had left me a voice mail with some good news. Strike had turned a vital corner and was doing better than expected. The hospital would be providing an overnight room for Jacqueline. Chad, meanwhile, would be spearheading the effort to track down Zeke Carver, who, by the look of things, should have stuck to doing foundations; his own was looking pretty shaky at the moment.

  As soon as I tossed my phone down on the bed, it rang again. The Caller ID read: R. O. Borose. It took my overloaded mind a few seconds to realize it was Rafe. He must have typed his name into my phone that way, using his initials.

  I reached down to answer, but my brain suddenly jolted me to paralysis. Horrid chills rippled across my skin, one by one, each sending a new wave of disbelief through my beleaguered body and mind.

  I read the name on the Caller ID again. I juggled it in my head, trying to convince myself it wasn’t possible, yet hoping it was.

  My heart pittered.

  I spoke the name aloud.

  My breathing slowed and my heart pattered.

  I repeated the name, this time with a shaky voice: “R.O. Borose.”

  No. Not possible. No!

  The phone kept ringing. The Caller ID kept flashing.

  So much for giving up hope and moving on. I freaked the hell out.

  Chapter 46

  A Month Before the Thump

  Chloe rowed Mr. Swanson’s canoe through the swamp as Hoop’s head lolled back and forth against his balled-up shirt. Twenty minutes earlier, she had lost at Spot-It-First, thus making her the designated rower. She and Hoop had made up the game on their way back to the canoe. In the final round, Hoop had been the first to spot a squirrel with a chunk missing from its tail, putting him way ahead of Chloe, who’d scored only one point with her discovery of tree sap sticky enough to hold an acorn.

  The sun’s rays were long upon the water, and a cool breeze came up unexpectedly, blowing Chloe’s long hair and dropping the temperature a couple more degrees. She rowed hard enough to keep herself warm and to get home in time for dinner. She and Hoop had spent a full hour in Boyd’s tree fort, during which she’d learned more than she wanted to from those risqué magazines. Why would a man buy a vibrator for a woman? Didn’t it kind of defeat his purpose? She considered asking Hoop, but her ignorance in such areas was too mortifying to reveal.

  “Now that there, Clover,” Hoop said as he lazily lifted his head and pointed to the edge of the swamp. “That there is pluff mud.”

  “Yeah, Hoop, I live here, remember? I’ve seen the airboat patrol pull more than a few fishermen from the pluff over the years.”

  “You like the smell or not?”

  “Love it. Whenever we go on vacation, or even into Charleston, I always know I’m home when that rotten-egg smell hits me. Stings my nostrils but tickles my heart.”

  “That’s real poetic, Clover. Me? I always think the pluff makes Beulah kind of exotic. Like our own brand of quicksand. Puts us on the same footing as places like Egypt.”

  “Except footing is the last thing anybody gets once they’re in the pluff,” I said.

  He grinned. “My pa taught me only to wade where the grass is short.”

  “Because you can’t see too well if grass is in your eyes?”

  “No, because the shorter the grass, the harder the bottom; the taller the grass, the deeper the mud. Head-tall grass means head-deep pluff. More like thick water than soft dirt; it’ll swallow you whole.”

  “Guess I never thought of it that way. You ever heard the legend of The Cane Man?”

  “Sure,” Hoop said. “He spent decades tapping that cane ahead of his steps to make sure the swamp bottom was solid enough to hold him.”

  “Till one day, he happened upon a familiar gator—a gator whose mate he’d killed with his bare hands twenty years earlier.”

  “Old Cane Man,” Hoop said, “he mistreated a lot of gators over the years.”

  “That’s right. So this particular gator rose up and knocked Cane Man’s cane right out of his hands. And Cane Man, well, he’d been mighty attached to that cane, hand-carved and aged as it was. And didn’t he get down on his hands and knees and search for that cane with all he had.”

  “And down on his hands and knees like that,” Hoop said, “he never realized how tall the grasses were getting, towering over him five, six feet at least.”

  “And didn’t he happen upon a big patch of pluff mud while doing so.”

  “Sure did, Clover. Which is when he made the awful, terrible, rookie mistake of standing straight up. Full-on panicked, he did. Heard he sank faster than—”

  “Than a fool in the pluff?”

  “That’ll do, Clover. Works for me.”

  “That was the last anyone ever saw or heard of Cane Man. But his cane, they found it years later, chomped in two, next to a big ol’ gator.”

  “Gator with a smile on his face, I heard.”

  “Ashes to ashes,” Chloe said. “Or in Cane Man’s case, ashes to pluff.” They both laughed. “Isn’t that all pluff mud is, anyway? Decay and t
he bacteria that feeds off decay?”

  “Yep,” Hoop said, “along with the bacteria’s waste products. But it supports all the life in the swamp. One big cycle. Ouroboros, I call it.”

  Chloe frowned. “A row of what?”

  “Not a row of anything, Clover. Ouroboros.”

  “Still don’t know what you’re trying to say.”

  “I ain’t trying to say it. I am saying it.”

  “Spell it out then. I can’t know a word till I see it in my head.”

  “Really? Okay, then.” He spelled it out as Chloe nodded along, engraving it in her mind.

  “Pronounce it one more time,” she said when he finished.

  “It’s easy,” Hoop said. “Errrrr, like a dog growling. Row, like a boat. Brrrrr, like you’re cold. Then ros rhymes with dose. Er-ROW-brrrrr-ROS.” He fake-shivered during the third syllable.

  “Got it. Ouroboros. It’s mine forever now.”

  “Guess that’s how you win the spelling bees, huh? ’Cause you spell things in your head?”

  “That, plus I read like a book a week.”

  Hoop lay back in the canoe, his head resting against his shirt, a wisp of a twig clamped between his teeth. “I like reading true stuff, like about gators and ouroboros.” He stuck a finger in the air like an enthusiastic professor. “Did you know that the symbol for ouroboros is a snake eating its own tail, representing the eternal cycle of life?”

  Chloe smirked. “Thought you said you read true stuff.”

  “I do.”

  “Not sure most people consider a snake eating its own tail to be true, seeing as how no one’s ever seen one. But far be it from me to mess with your obsession.”

  “At least give me this: it’s true that there’s a legend about hoop snakes. And the ouroboros legend goes back to Egyptian times, maybe even earlier.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that.” She rowed harder on the right to make the vessel turn. “Can’t say I don’t learn something every time I’m out with you, Hoop.”