But Not Forsaken: A Clint Wolf Novel (Clint Wolf Mystery Series Book 3)

by BJ Bourg

  “Where is he?” Susan asked, her bottom lip trembling. “Where’d he go? Did he just run off without saying goodbye? Do you really think he’d do that to me?”

  “I don’t know,” Melvin said. “I tried calling his phone a hundred times, but it goes straight to voicemail. Amy hasn’t heard anything either. God, Susan, what are we supposed to do now? Do we try to find him? What do we do?”

  Susan dropped her phone and sank to the floor in the kitchen, leaning against the wall. Tears flooded her eyes and blurred her vision. Was this her fault? Had she scared him off when she expressed her feelings earlier?

  “Damn it!” she leaned forward and punched a hole in the nearest cabinet door. “Why couldn’t you just keep your mouth shut?”

  Blood poured from several cuts in her knuckles as she stood to her feet and stared wildly about her kitchen. How was she supposed to make this right? What if he was gone forever? What if she never saw him again? What if he was going out to do something destructive—?

  “Holy shit!” Susan quickly wiped her eyes, remembering a conversation they’d had yesterday. She was almost too afraid to wish for it, but it was all she had at the moment. “Holy shit! I think I know where you’re going!”

  Wearing nothing but a thin T-shirt and skintight shorts, she snatched up her keys and ran to her old pickup truck. The engine hesitated when she turned the key, almost refusing to turn over. “Come on!” she screamed, turning the key again. Finally, it roared to life and she smashed the accelerator, racing down her street and then turning north, heading for the city. As she drove with one hand, she used the thumb of her other hand to call Melvin. He sounded bummed out when he answered.

  “Melvin, are you near a computer?” Susan’s wet hair whipped across her face from the cool November wind blowing through the window and it was difficult to hear Melvin’s voice. “Say it again, but louder.”

  “I can be…why?”

  “Get on it and find the funeral arrangements for Michele and Abigail Wolf—I think Clint’s going out to their gravesite. Send me the address to the cemetery as soon as you get it.” Without waiting for Melvin to answer, she tossed her phone into the console and sped up to pass a car traveling the posted speed limit.

  A million thoughts raced through her mind as she drove, and her feelings vacillated between sheer panic and a slim chance of hope. She clutched at her chest often, complaining that her heart couldn’t take much more abuse.

  Susan was still twenty minutes away from the city when a text message came through her phone. She stomped the brake pedal and pulled the truck to the shoulder of the highway, kicking up rocks as she skid to a stop. She read the message with trembling hands. Melvin had located the cemetery and sent her the address. She quickly punched it into her GPS and waited impatiently for the information to load. She let out an involuntary screech when she realized it was only ten minutes away. Shoving the gearshift back in drive, she merged into traffic and drove even faster, panic beating her insides like a jackhammer. What if Clint had left already? What if she was completely wrong about his destination?

  Afraid to consider the negative possibilities, she tried to concentrate on something else as she drove, but it was no use.

  Finally, mentally drained and physically exhausted, she turned into the cemetery parking lot. Her eyes misted over and she sighed when she caught a glimpse of Clint’s Tahoe on the far end of the lot. Not really sure of what to do next, she parked beside his vehicle and just sat there, sparsely dressed, her hair a mess, and her emotions in turmoil. While she waited, she sent a quick text message to Melvin that she’d located his vehicle at the cemetery.

  She received an immediate reply from Melvin. Her heart pounded as she read it, You don’t suppose he’s decided to check out so he can be with his family again, do you? He might’ve been living to get revenge and now that it’s over…

  “Clint! Oh, God! Clint!” Susan shoved her door open and dropped to the shells, ignoring the pain to her feet. She sprinted across the parking lot and smashed into a metal gate, nearly knocking it off of its flimsy hinges. She raced toward the back of the cemetery, her head on a swivel as she searched between the tombstones on either side. She screamed Clint’s name as she ran, tears flowing down her cheeks.

  When she reached an oak tree at the end of the aisle, she fell against it and gasped for air. She hollered his name, but it was barely a hoarse whisper as she tried to catch her breath. Tears blurred her vision and she wiped her eyes, trying to scan her surroundings, hoping for a glimpse of movement. She screamed his name again and then stopped suddenly. What was that noise?

  She heard the sound a second time before it registered. Pushing herself off of the tree, she looked toward the right. Off in the distance, against the blinding sun, she saw a black figure running toward her. It was low to the ground and it was barking as it ran.

  “Achilles!” her heart immediately sank. Where was Clint? Why was Achilles alone? What if Clint had taken his own life? She started running toward Achilles when another shadow emerged from the shimmering waves of light. As she grew closer, she recognized the walk and the shape of the man she loved. She rubbed her eyes with her hands and he slowly began to come into view.

  “What are you doing here?” Clint asked when they were within speaking distance.

  Susan didn’t say a word until he had stopped right in front of her and stared down into her eyes. She fought back the tears that threatened to fall once again. “I…I thought you had left me. I thought you had just run off and…and you were never coming back again.”

  Clint smiled as Achilles ran circles around them, showing off his speed and athletic prowess. “No,” he said. “I did it right this time…I got permission from Michele to move on.”

  “But, where are you going? Melvin said you resigned from the police department.”

  He smiled and his eyes sparkled. “I did resign, but I’m not going anywhere. I resigned so we can be together.”

  Without saying another word, he stepped forward and wrapped his strong arms around her and pressed his lips firmly to hers.

  CHAPTER 56

  One year later…

  Sunday, September 25

  Susan was already talking to the couple when I arrived at the boat launch and exited my pickup. The couple looked young—early twenties, maybe—and it was obvious they’d been enjoying a day on the water. The girl wore a skimpy bikini and her boyfriend had on a pair of boardshorts, and they were both bright red from too much sun.

  “I swear to God,” the man was saying when I walked up. “It’s a dinosaur and it lives in the water!” He wiped his face and nodded. His eyes were wide. “We were fishing and it just floated on by like it didn’t even care that we were there.”

  “Could it have been an alligator?” Susan asked.

  “No way!” said the woman next to him. “It was too big.”

  “How big was it?” I asked, shoving a hand in the back pocket of my jeans. I’d responded to dozens of such reports over the past year, but none had panned out. While this one seemed different because the people were terrified, I wasn’t going to get my hopes up.

  “It was longer than our boat.” The woman was chewing her nails and drumming her bare foot in the shells. “I thought it was going to flip our boat and eat us.”

  The man nodded. “She’s right—it was bigger than my boat, and my boat is fourteen feet long.”

  I glanced at Susan, who was standing there in her polyester uniform, an air of authority surrounding her. She had taken to the chief job as naturally as a fish to water. She’d hired two more officers, purchased updated radio equipment, and they were set to move into their new hurricane-proof building by the end of the year.

  “Where was it when y’all last saw it?” she asked.

  The man described the area and shook his head. “We’re never going back there again, that’s for sure!”

  Susan waved for me to follow her and we walked to the far end of the pier, out of earshot of the trou
bled couple. She hitched her gun belt up on her waist and studied my face. “Do you think it’s Godzator?”

  I allowed my eyes to rove over her tan uniform shirt and whispered, “I can’t wait to rip that thing off of you tonight.”

  “Clint, stop it!” She looked over her shoulder to make sure the couple hadn’t followed us. “Seriously, do you think it’s him?”

  I chuckled and shrugged. “Whatever it was, it scared the shit out of them. I’ll go check it out.”

  A smile played at the corners of her mouth and she leaned close to me. “And I can’t wait to rip those jeans off of you.”

  As she walked back to the couple and cut them loose, I got in my truck and backed my boat into the water. She came back to the wharf just as I was getting ready to push off.

  “You know you don’t have to keep doing this, right?” Susan said. “Someone will eventually get him—it doesn’t have to be you.”

  “I let him take Dexter’s arm and then I let him get away.” I frowned. “I’m responsible for everything he does now.”

  “But he hasn’t done anything in two years. In fact, he hasn’t hurt anyone since Dexter.”

  She was right, but it was something I had to do. When I said that, she just smiled her understanding.

  “Just be careful.” She leaned to kiss me goodbye and squeezed my biceps. “The wedding is in two months and I want you carrying me across the threshold with these arms.”

  “Don’t worry, love, I’m coming back in one piece, and we’ll have lots of alligator sauce piquant for the reception.” I pushed off and turned the key to start the engine. Once it roared to life, I waved to Susan and headed west toward Lake Berg, revving the engine and smiling as the front of the boat rose gently into the air and the wind began to blow through my hair. I’d spent the last year running swamp tours and I’d grown to love being on the water. Aside from being a great gig, my new job increased the likelihood that I’d locate Godzator and put an end to his reign of terror.

  Once I reached the southern tip of Lake Berg, I turned down a small stream that cut its way through the swamps to the west. Giant cypress trees shot up from the water and thick clumps of Spanish moss hung from their branches. I surveyed the water all around me, but the surface was completely covered by duckweed. If this was the spot the man had described, there should be a trail through the greenery where his boat had traveled.

  I puttered along for several more minutes scanning the surrounding swampland. I was about to turn away when I saw what looked like the beginning of a black path amidst the light green background up ahead.

  I immediately shut off the engine and reached for my push pole. Careful not to cause too much of a ripple, I gently eased the pole into the water and strained against it, burying the duck web foot in the soft mud until it met some resistance and moved me forward. One push at a time, I drew nearer and nearer until I was about thirty feet from the black path.

  I looked up from one of my pushes and cocked my head sideways. The path through the duckweed seemed to stop about fifteen feet from where it started, as though the boat that made it had been lifted into the air after making contact with the water.

  Confused, I drifted closer. I was almost upon it when I realized it wasn’t a path at all, but an actual black object jutting up out of the water. I gasped when the object shifted in the water, lining itself up with my boat. It looked like a giant torpedo waiting to be launched in my direction. That was when I realized I was looking at the enormous body of an alligator—and the head was facing my boat.

  I gently placed my push pole down and snatched up my sniper rifle, bringing it smoothly to my shoulder and peering through the scope. I flipped the safety off with my thumb and allowed my crosshairs to come to rest on the spot between the alligator’s eyes. I glanced at the side of the alligator and saw a number of scars from where I’d shot Godzator sixteen times two years earlier. My heart pounded in my chest. I’d finally found him!

  “This is it, Godzator,” I said aloud. “Time to meet your maker.”

  Godzator didn’t move. He just hovered there in the water staring at me. I gently placed my finger against the trigger and took a deep breath, exhaling it slowly. When I’d reached my respiratory pause, I began to apply slow, steady pressure on the trigger, focusing on my crosshairs. I felt the trigger start to slowly creak rearward—

  “He did what came natural…that don’t rate a death sentence.”

  The voice was so real in my head that I jerked around looking for Dexter, knowing he was nowhere around.

  “He did what came natural,” I repeated. “That don’t rate a death sentence.” As I turned his words over in my head—words that had been spoken two years earlier—it finally occurred to me what he meant. We’d tried to harpoon Godzator after he ate Mrs. DuPont’s German shepherd, which was no different than someone shooting a spear through my chest after I’d grabbed a hamburger for lunch.

  The sun was slowly setting behind me and it painted the beautiful swamps in a golden hue, setting a magnificent stage for what would happen next. As we faced each other down—two battle-scarred warriors doing what came natural to us—I realized we were a lot alike.

  “I’d be pissed off, too,” I said, “if someone shot me with a spear.” Knowing what Dexter would want me to do, I slowly lowered my rifle and stood there staring into Godzator’s eyes. There was a brief moment of uncertainty when I thought he might attack, but with a subtle swish of his tail he turned away from me. As though bidding me farewell, he closed both eyes and slowly faded into the depths of the murky water, the duckweed swallowing up the hole left behind by his absence.

  I sank to my seat and stared for a long moment at the spot I’d last seen him, thoroughly pleased with my decision. I sat there until the shadows began growing long and darkness started to fall across the swamps. Realizing I’d better leave before he changed his mind and came back to eat me, I started my engine and began the return ride home.

  CHAPTER 57

  “Did you get him?” Susan asked when I walked through the door of the old plantation home and entered the living area. She was standing on a ladder and held a paint roller in her hands. The last time I’d been in that room the walls were bare, but now most of it was coated in a fresh coat of white paint. There were blotches of paint on her arms and even a few droplets in her hair, but she didn’t seem to care.

  “You’re getting more paint on you than on the wall,” I joked, picking up a brush to help her finish the room.

  We’d been working on the building for months trying to get it ready for the secret opening in October. At first, I’d felt weird about keeping the place since it had been illegally purchased in Michele’s name for nefarious reasons, but Susan had made an offer I couldn’t resist.

  “I’ve always wanted to run a battered women’s shelter,” she’d said, “but I’ve never had the opportunity. This is the perfect location, we’re the perfect people to run it, and we have the time to make it work.”

  We had driven out to the property and I’d stood beaming as Susan bustled about, relaying her dreams to me. She pointed out which rooms could serve as private living quarters, described where she would be putting the gym to teach the women self-defense, and even suggested a shooting range in the back yard where we could teach them how to safely handle firearms. “They’ll feel safe here because it’s in the middle of nowhere,” she’d said, “and they’ll fall in love with the view.”

  We’d gone to work immediately and had begun spending all of our extra time remodeling the place. “We’ll be able to launch just in time for Domestic Violence Awareness Month,” Susan had explained one evening as we looked over a calendar, “but we won’t be able to make any announcements because it has to be kept secret.”

  With brush in hand, I moved to a corner of the room that needed attention and went to work. As we painted, I told her about my encounter with Godzator and how I’d decided to let him live.

  “Wait a minute,” Susan twisted around on
the ladder to look at me. “After all the time you spent trying to find and kill him, you just let him live?”

  I nodded, explaining my reasons. She smiled warmly, agreeing it had been the right thing to do.

  When Susan had finished her side of the room, she dropped from the ladder and began cleaning up. “I’m ready for a hot shower and some personal time with you.”

  She didn’t have to draw me a picture. I helped her clean up and we were soon on our way home. Once we arrived, we raced to the bathroom and began ripping each other’s clothes off. Even after all of our time together, I still had a hard time containing myself when we were alone.

  We hurried through a shower and I snatched her up when we were done—both of us still dripping wet—and carried her over the threshold of the bathroom door. She began giggling, but stopped when I bent to kiss her. Her lips were soft and moist and I moaned as our tongues came together. I kept walking and kissing her until my foot bumped against the bed. I then pulled my face away and lowered her onto the soft mattress. Looking into her dark eyes, I could see how much she wanted me. I felt the firmness of her breasts against my chest as I pressed my body to hers, and it turned me on even more.

  We made love deep into the night, ignoring Achilles’ whining and scratching at the bedroom door. When we were finished, we lay beside each other, breathless and fulfilled. As she played with my hair, I ran my hand over her breasts and down her stomach, enjoying how smooth her skin felt against my fingers.

  “God, you’re so beautiful,” I said.

  Her face turned red and she buried her face in my chest. I wrapped my arms around her, loving the way she still got embarrassed when I complimented her.

  After a while, she pulled her head back and stared up at me, chewing on her bottom lip.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I’m thinking about taking a break from the police department after we get married.”