The Swamp Killers

by Sarah M. Chen

  “That’s where I can show you, Melody. You want me to prove how you’ve been duped to come here. That’s where I’ll show you.”

  Melody swivels her head toward the direction she came from. The black vultures look away, averting her gaze—at least that’s Vicky’s interpretation. There is nothing but road that way, open space and no humans. Melody then looks down the perpendicular road with the green column of canopy overhead, and Vicky looks too. Not too far down is visible activity: a couple of cars pulling out of the B-TAP.

  “That way. Where those cars are? The Book Tower?” Melody asks.

  “Yes. That way. That’s the Book Tower. People call it the B-TAP.”

  “Whatever. Fine.”

  Vicky knows Melody assumes the B-TAP is a regular business with workers and phones. She figures Melody thinks she’ll buy time there to escape with her jewels, unscathed. Vicky should insist Melody walk away, she should give up on demanding the sapphires. But Vicky’s in a whirl, a total confusion of convictions between wanting to run, wanting revenge, retribution, wanting no guilt, and wanting to give Nana what she needs. She doesn’t know what’s to happen next and she can’t focus on any one single sense.

  When they enter the B-TAP campus, Melody walks ahead, the place is empty of employees and customers, and Nana is nowhere in sight. Vicky hopes Nana is immersed in cooking the books, as she often is at the close of the day. Typically, she doesn’t emerge until eight, for dinner. And Vicky and Granval aren’t supposed to be back so soon with Melody. Now all three, Vicky, Granval, and Melody, are at the top of the Book Tower, hunched over Vicky’s computer. Her window is open to a river-swamp breeze, which shimmies through the hanging moss, high in the cypress canopy around the top floor.

  Vicky displays the black vultures picture she’d posted as fake Twitter account @WildGirlTravels. Next, she flips through draft versions of popular memes she knows Melody will remember. The more Vicky reveals, the wider Melody’s mouth opens and the further she backs away from the computer in a trance.

  Vicky keeps opening files, showing drafts, clicking on past posts. An endless stream, an endless reveal.

  “You were duped, Melody,” Granval says, watching her back away from Vicky.

  “Holy shit, holy shit…” Melody repeats. She backs herself against the open window. “Holy shit.” Melody’s eyes open wide and round, looking beyond Vicky and Granval and to the doorway. She points.

  Vicky turns from her computer to see Nana in her catalogue hiking shorts, exhaling through her nostrils like a bull. Her shoulders are rounded, boots sliding, ensuring traction on the wood floor. And then she charges, bowling into Melody with such force, Melody flips backwards out of the high window.

  Two seconds later, a loud crash kills Melody’s scream.

  Vicky runs to the sill, as Nana steps to the side, catching her breath. Melody’s crooked body is smashed upon Vicky’s heavy fruit cart, her spine snapped on the hardness of the refrigerator in the belly; her neck too. The green canopy is obliterated, apples and pineapples and lemons roll everywhere, some rocketing down the steep slope and plopping into the river’s current, which is in effect a garbage disposal. The gators, the abundant feral hogs, other wildlife, consume anything and everything deposited in the river—the waters and shorelines around here infested with opportunistic omnivores. Melody’s head twists around the wrong way. Her neck hollow not breathing in or out.

  Vicky clatters down the external spiral staircase, checks Melody’s pulse, confirms her death.

  A west wind swirls, cooling and slowing everything.

  A hush filters through the moss and the trees, creating a whistle and a hiss; Vicky’s hair tickles her cheek.

  A cricket frog clicks.

  Clicks again.

  Click.

  At Vicky’s feet is a Red Delicious. Embedded in the apple is a blue jewel, the improbable pairing of a sapphire earring stabbed through the flesh. Vicky stares, taking in the glitter, the beautiful contrast of blue against red, of shiny smooth ocean against blood leather. The potluck of texture, color, and the suggestion of eating eternity swirl together for Vicky in a visual aphrodisiac so thick, she can barely stand the sensation. Her whole body shakes.

  She picks up the apple, removes the earring, takes a bite, and allows an explosion of juice to linger on her tongue, drip down her throat. Drizzle to her chin.

  Nana coughs, dousing Vicky’s passion.

  “So Granval says he’s taking you to Vermont now. That so?”

  “That’s so.”

  “Mm, hmm.”

  “And I’m taking all these sapphires with me,” Vicky says, as she watches Granval picking Melody’s body clean of the jewels.

  “Suppose you’ve earned ’em.”

  Vicky nods.

  “She have a phone?”

  “She lost it in the river at the bridge.”

  Nana winks at Vicky. Smiles.

  “Ain’t that fortunate then?”

  Vicky shrugs.

  “Poor Melody fell off the bridge all by her lonely, broke her neck, floated away in the river’s current and into the swamp. Sad,” Nana says, staring off into the middle distance.

  The west wind plays with Nana’s hair, as she pushes Melody off the cart, and boot kicks her to roll the way of the fruit and plop into the river. Melody’s body sinks at first, and then portions emerge at the surface, as she drifts away, along with clicking frogs, and into the vast depths and trenches of the swamp. They’ll find her phone at the bridge. Maybe. They’ll find the portions of Melody that remain after this garbage disposal has its way. Maybe. And ain’t nothing is ever going to come back on the Windsongs. Nana owns these here parts.

  “I’m going to go now, Nana. Granval and I are going to Vermont.”

  Nana looks away, dips her head in acquiescence.

  “I didn’t really want this, this, with Melody,” Vicky says, braving to admit what she hopes Nana must understand by now.

  Nana closes her eyes. “So I’ve lost you too then. You and your father. That’s the price I pay, I guess.”

  Vicky closes her eyes to count a frog’s clicks. One, two, three…And she thinks, and my price to pay is to never live beyond the clicks, the individual fibers, confined within the slowness of every breeze, each trickle of juice on my tongue, every glint of a single sapphire, for I can’t tolerate speed, I can’t brave the past nor the future.

  Back to TOC

  Into the Swamp

  Elizabeth Heiter

  This mosquito-bite-sized town desperately hanging off the edges of Jacksonville and wedged in by a tributary of marshes held the key to her future. It would put her on the path to unbelievable power. Or it would kill her.

  Zara Duplass glanced at the man keeping stride with her, his deep brown eyes shaded by dark glasses, the hard planes of his face unreadable as he scanned the crowd. One hand always lingered near the weapon on his hip. The other hovered just beyond the small of her back, ready to usher her behind him, protect her with his own body if necessary.

  Whatever her fate, Beau Constantine was going to share it.

  Her stomach flip-flopped at the idea, but of course, that’s what her father paid him to do. Protect her. Or die trying. If he knew she’d lured Beau into her bed more than a year ago—and kept him there by letting him do almost anything he wanted to her—her father would have already cut Beau into a thousand pieces, tossed each bit into the marshes. After all, Sheldon Duplass might have only been second-in-command of the Duplass empire, but he was a man you didn’t want to cross.

  “We’ve got to keep an eye out,” she reminded Beau. “If my father sees me here…”

  “He’ll wonder why you’re not back in New England, finishing up that Ivy League degree he paid for with a multi-million-dollar donation?”

  “Something like that.” Zara didn’t glance Beau’s way. She didn’t need to. He’d do what she asked—and she wasn’t naïve enough to believe it was beca
use of her skill in bed. Beau knew most of her plan. He was here for himself, for the place within the Duplass empire it would secure him if she succeeded.

  As they walked down the dusty, potholed main street, Zara kept her attention focused on the locals. She tried not to fixate on the feel of her hair already frizzing against her forehead, the humidity lingering heavy and uncomfortable in her lungs. She’d spent most of the past four years away from the South. Being back felt smothering, as if she couldn’t get a full breath. But if her plan succeeded, it would all be worthwhile.

  The locals stared back, openly curious and wary beneath their exhaustion. They were carrying buckets of god knew what, skin weathered beyond their years, the scent of fish and marsh water rising up around them. Zara had dressed way down to blend in, but it wasn’t enough. Trading in her flat-ironed hair, four-inch heels with skin-tight jeans and a couple of carats in each ear for French braids dangling over her shoulders, a worn jean skirt and a big floppy hat to hide her face made her feel like a fake. And not just any fake. She felt like Melody.

  The thought made her want to peel off all her clothes, climb right out of her skin.

  There was no one in the world she wanted to look like less than her cousin, Melody Duplass. The spoiled princess who could flutter dark eyelashes surrounding sapphire-blue eyes and tilt her head sideways, looking innocent as could be, but would smirk as soon as you turned your gaze.

  Physically, Melody took after her father’s side of the family and so did Zara. When they’d been kids, people joked they could have been twins if they’d been closer in age. Zara’s hands clenched into fists even now thinking about it. She and Melody were nothing alike.

  Zara’s own deep blue eyes never held fake innocence or pretend agreement. They were always cold and honest. With one glance, they warned people to keep their distance.

  Being four years older, Zara should have been afforded more respect. When Melody’s father died, the rightful passage of power should have gone to Zara’s father. It had always been that way in their family, man passing power to man, while the women stood in the background, smiling and beautiful and calculatingly deadly in their own rights.

  From childhood, Zara had dreamed of being the one to change all that, to wrest control someday with her father’s help. But Olivia had swooped in first and Zara’s father had let her. No, not just let her. Worse than that. He’d actually supported her, fought for her. Now he was merely a sad background player, Olivia’s trusty second-in-command, and it was Melody living in luxury, reveling in her own unearned power. But not for much longer.

  “Zara!”

  “What?” she snapped back at Beau, cursing as her ankle twisted on a stone. She kicked it out of her way and it bounced off the chipped stucco of a bait and tackle shop.

  He showed no response to her fury. But he wouldn’t. Not in public. But once they were alone…She hid a smile, because even now, a year later, it surprised her how different he was than she’d expected. Zara’s father believed in a visible show of strength, so Beau was huge, almost ridiculously muscle-bound. He could have easily overpowered her, but he never did.

  She’d let him into her bed to control him, but discovered he was the only man whose touch she could stand. And besides her father, Beau was the only person she trusted.

  “People are staring. You’re going to be noticed and Sheldon will hear about it. He’s down here somewhere, paying off the hitmen himself. We need to get off the streets.”

  “You’re right,” she agreed, smiling coyly, her fingers already itching to press into those muscles. “Let’s find a hotel.”

  A smile twitched at the corner of his lips, but he didn’t let it break. “Sounds like the word is out about Timmy and Melody being in town, too.”

  “Yeah,” she said, scowling now, all thoughts of putting off her mission for an hour with Beau between the sheets fading fast. She’d heard the locals whispering, too, speculating as they passed. Wondering if she and Beau were just two more assassins—or worse yet, feds—searching for Timmy and Melody, hunting down the cache of money rumored to be hidden somewhere in the swamps.

  “Let’s settle in and get this over with,” she ordered Beau, pointing to a disgusting-looking motel down a side street. She’d been waiting for this chance all her life, but now that she was here, she just wanted it to be over. To skip past the betrayals and murder and side-stepping the father she loved despite his weaknesses. To have taken her revenge already and assumed her rightful destiny—as heir to the Duplass family business.

  Zara Duplass was going to get him killed.

  Beau had suspected it the day she’d seduced him into her bed, but back then, he’d figured it would be her father slipping up behind him and slicing a knife across his throat. Not killing him that quickly, of course. But the knife would go deep enough to make him panic and Sheldon would wrap those enormous arms around him while his guards stripped Beau of his weapons.

  Then he’d be dragged off to some sound-proofed location where he’d face a thousand cuts of Sheldon’s knife, electrocution, kidney punches hard enough to make him piss blood. Still, it wouldn’t be over. Beau knew how Sheldon worked—he’d suffer for a week before Sheldon finally, thankfully, ended it all.

  But a year later, Beau had stopped worrying so much about Sheldon. Beau snuck a look at Zara, head down to shadow her face beneath that ridiculous hat, strides long and purposeful through the dirty streets. She’d shared some of her plan with him. It’d be his job to tie up Melody and stash her somewhere. But Zara insisted she needed to kill Timmy herself, to prove her loyalty beyond a doubt. In her mind, Beau would simply be backup, a quick shot to the head if Timmy managed to get the upper hand. Then she’d collect the cash and force Melody back home.

  It wasn’t hard to figure out what Zara hadn’t told him: after a betrayal like this, Melody would never be Olivia’s successor. But returning her precious daughter, taking out the man who’d lured her away, and delivering the cash would ingratiate Zara to Olivia forever. Suddenly, Zara wouldn’t just be the second-rate cousin, but Olivia’s confidante.

  Zara would do anything for that kind of power. Even save the woman she hated most in the world.

  If she succeeded, Beau wanted to stick close enough to share in her rewards. But if things started to go south, he needed to stop her, to drag her out of here before anyone realized she’d left school. Or that he’d let her.

  “Shit!” Beau slipped a hand around Zara’s waist and yanked her off her feet, pulling her behind the side of a bar. The country western song spilling out the doors covered her squeak of surprise.

  As soon as he set her back on her feet, she peeked around the corner. “Who did you see?”

  “Milici,” Beau answered, pulling her back even as he took another look. “If he spots you, we’re done here.”

  “Bastard,” she spat, hatred dripping from her voice.

  He shared the sentiment. Timmy was bad news. He’d always had a quick smile, but it was a little too slick, something dark in the depths of his eyes that suggested he’d twist a knife into any of them if the mood struck. And he’d probably give that easy smile while he was doing it. Even now, sauntering down the street in broad daylight while hitmen from all over the South were gunning for him, there was an untouchable aura about him that made Beau nervous.

  “Where’s Melody?” Zara whispered.

  “Not with Timmy.” He might have told her to stay put while he wandered the streets like he was untouchable—unkillable. Or he might have murdered her the second he got to town.

  “No shit,” Zara replied. “We need to follow Timmy and see if he leads us to her. We have to secure Melody before we take out Timmy.”

  She started to move and Beau grabbed her arm hard. He couldn’t let Zara fuck this up. “No. We need to split up. I’ll follow Timmy. You find Melody.”

  She stared at him like he’d lost his mind. And he probably had. Sheldon paid him to never leave Zara’s side,
to never leave her vulnerable or exposed. If he failed…well, he knew what waited for him.

  But right now, he was less worried about some random asshole hurting Zara than he was about her confronting Timmy—with or without him. No man with a price on his head ordered by Olivia Duplass herself should look that confident. It was no secret how many hitmen had descended on the place and yet Timmy was still alive. Whatever his secret, Beau didn’t want Zara anywhere near it.

  She was in charge, but she’d do what he told her. He’d earned her trust the hard way: by killing a man. It hadn’t been his first kill, but it had been one of the few he’d truly enjoyed. Ever since that day, Zara had looked at him differently, yielded to his suggestions a little easier. And he knew that deep down, she dreaded the thought of making her own kill.

  Although he’d pretended to agree with her plan, there was no way in hell he was letting her try to kill Timmy. But she needed to think it was her idea when she let him take over.

  “I have to take down Milici,” Zara insisted, sounding as petulant as she had the first day he’d come on as her bodyguard. Back then, she’d been just heading off to college, seemingly a spoiled brat who’d never had to worry about anything. He’d since learned differently. And he knew her weakness.

  “Maybe you should take down Melody instead.”

  Her lips tightened, putting tiny lines all around them, forecasting what she’d look like when she was older. Still gorgeous, but the barely contained fury that made people give her a wide berth now would just make her seem formidable later. “You know I can’t touch that bitch.”

  “What if Timmy did it?”

  Zara blinked at him a few times and he could see it in her eyes—the desire for revenge bloomed hard and fast. But it cleared away just as quickly, overcome by a bigger desire—power. “If that goes even the slightest bit wrong…I need to take her back to Olivia in one piece. She cares about her daughter even more than punishing Timmy, even more than her empire. It’ll have to be enough to watch Melody back in that house, knowing Olivia will never trust her again, knowing I have the power now. Knowing one day I’ll destroy her the way she destroyed me. I can wait.”