by Gil Brewer
I kept thinking about Evis without any excitement whatever, and I began to feel very hungry and tired. I kept thinking about her, still hearing the way she yelled.
She was getting hoarse.
It didn’t do anything to me. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t sad. It just wasn’t anything.
“Sullivan, you could at least say hello.”
Rona had been with me for a few minutes. I’d known that, but I had no reaction. Now, when I looked at her, I began to feel again.
“They’ve got Sheriff DeGreef,” she said. “They just brought him in from the island out there. He’d almost burned the island up with a signal fire.”
Just then I saw Hugo DeGreef come across the field, walking with a stocky man in a business suit, wearing a Panama hat. DeGreef looked bad and his arm was in a sling.
“He told them he overheard Evis talking with you out on the island. Said she cleared you with her talk. He hadn’t told you, because he figured he’d need your help and could get it easier if he kept you on the string.” Rona kept taking my hand, then letting go again. “The other man is an insurance detective,” she said.
“Listen to her yell,” I said.
“She’s getting tired. It makes me sad, Sullivan. After all, she is my sister.”
They had a light trained on the alligator pit. They kept trying to throw a length of rope down to her, trying to get her out, but she wouldn’t help herself. She kept heaving the rope back out at them. Maybe she wanted to stay there, but she kept right on yelling. Maybe it was a good place for her.
DeGreef and this other man walked over to us.
“Just wanted to say, Sullivan, we got the money, all right. I guess we got what we want. Haven’t counted it yet, of course. So all you’ll have to do is answer to the law for a few things. I don’t imagine it’ll be so bad.”
“This Sullivan?” the man with DeGreef said.
“Yep,” DeGreef said. “That’s him. That’s Sullivan.”
The man slowly shook his head, staring at me. Then they walked away, with DeGreef talking loudly, waving his one good hand. It looked as if he had things under control again.
I took Rona’s hand and we walked away.
“Don’t you want to see them bring Evis out?” she said.
“No. I guess not. I don’t really want to see anything.”
We walked like that along through the pines and under some big oak trees toward the highway. You could see the cars passing slowly on the other side of the canal, and the police were directing traffic. One of them had a red flashlight, using it like a baton. We came to the bank of the canal.
“Isn’t there anything you’d like?” Rona said, looking at me that way again. She moved close to me.
I looked down at her and, slowly at first, and then very quickly, something was quite good again.
“Could we wait just a little while?” I said. “I mean, just so we could be alone some place?”
“Yes, Sullivan,” she said. “But I’ve waited a terribly long time. So let’s hurry.”
THE END
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Copyright © 1976 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.
Registration Renewed in 1985 by Verlaine Brewer
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4206-6
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4206-0
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