Bitter End (Seychelle Sullivan #3) (28 page)

I nodded.

“I was gonna tell Gramma Josie ’cuz she’s family, but after what happened out here this afternoon, I got scared. I don’t think that was an accident.”

“I’ve been thinking about it, Zale, and I don’t think so, either.”

He was still for a minute, and then he exhaled a long breath. “Okay. About two or three months ago, when I was over at my dad’s, he came in my room and said he wanted to talk to me. He closed the door and everything. He told me he didn’t like what was going on with the business, and he was worried that something might happen to him.”

“Wow,” I said. So Nick had known, or at least suspected. And he voiced his suspicions to the kid. Was that why someone was after him?

“Yeah,” he continued. “This was right after he’d hired the bodyguards. I didn’t know about the bodyguards until he told me that night, and then he said it bothered him to always have these guys hanging out with him like they were his babysitters. It all really scared me. It was like something out of the movies or a video game.”
 

“Yeah, it’s hard to believe that someone wants to kill your father.”

“Like, I was scared, but I also couldn’t totally believe it. I mean, I still went to school and went to his house on weekends, and I forgot all about it after a while.”
 

“That’s normal, Zale.”

“But that night he made me promise.”

“Promise what?”

“He said there was a safe onboard the
Mykonos
, and that he had put something important in there.”

“Did he tell you what it was?”

He shook his head. “He said that if something were to happen to him, though, I was supposed to tell my mom about it, and we were supposed to go get it. He made me promise.”

“So did you tell her?”

“Well, when I first heard about him, you know, getting shot and all, I didn’t even think about it. It was hard enough to believe my dad was really dead. I didn’t remember about what he’d told me to do until the day of his funeral. I was gonna talk to my mom about it that night, but I never got a chance to.”

“So what you’re saying is your dad knew he was in danger and he left some kind of documents or something on his boat.”

“I guess. I don’t know what it is. I was thinking at first that I just wouldn’t say anything to anyone except my mom, because that was what I’d promised. But then I kept thinking that whatever is there could maybe help my mom, and I didn’t know what to do. The Tigertail family out here is more worried about what’s gonna happen to TropiCruz than they are about my mom.” He sniffed and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. “So, I decided to tell you.”

I reached over and rested a hand on his shoulder. “I appreciate that. I’ll make good on it, I promise. Now, let’s get back inside and get on the road home before we freeze our asses off out here.”

With a little pressure on his shoulder, I guided him to start walking around the parked ATVs. Just as we neared the mouth of the structure, I thought I saw some movement out in the front yard, and I gripped his shoulder hard. He stopped and turned to look at me. I held my finger to my lips and eased us back into the shadows. Maybe it was just Jimmie and Earl coming back over to talk to their mother, but I decided to wait and see if I could identify them before we crossed the open yard.

I could see the outlines of what looked like two men standing on the far side of my Jeep, keeping the vehicle between them and the house. Both were dressed in black—black jackets, black pants, and their heads looked misshapen, as though they were wearing some kind of hats. They seemed to be talking to each other, although I couldn’t hear even a whisper. One of them was shaking his head and waving his arms in the air, as though in violent disagreement with the other.

I was trying to see if the larger of the two had a ponytail, to see if it was Earl, but they had their backs to me and I couldn’t tell. Finally the larger one waved his finger to signal them to get going, and they reached up and pulled what I had thought were hats down over their faces: ski masks. Then they ran, hunched over, out from behind the car. It was when they passed the open space between the car and the house that I saw that the one in the lead was carrying a gun.

XXII

I pulled Zale down into a crouch. We were hunched between the two all-terrain vehicles, and I hoped that we would just blend in with the dark outline of the machinery.

The two men were working their way down the side of the house with their backs to the wall, the larger one in the lead, his rifle or whatever held at an angle across his chest. The second one was very small and, as near as I could tell, he wasn’t carrying any weapon. When they made it to the corner, they would be about a dozen feet from the back door.

I glanced over to the kitchen window. B. J. was no longer standing at the sink, so I guessed that he and Gramma Josie were finished with the dishes and sitting in the living room waiting for us to come back inside. If those men entered through the kitchen door, B. J. and Gramma Josie would be only one room away from that gun.

I couldn’t let that happen. But if I attracted the gunmen’s attention here, we were probably dead. Unless.

I reached up and felt around on the ATV. Hallelujah! The keys were in the ignition. I’d never driven one of these things, but I figured they must be just like jet skis with wheels.

I put my mouth close to Zale’s ear and whispered, “Which one did you ride today?”

He pointed to the one on our left.

“Did it start right up?”

He nodded.

I looked back at the two men. They had rounded the corner of the house and were now inching their way toward the back door. They peeked in the window on the kitchen door and passed by, crawling beneath the window. They were heading, instead, for the sliding glass doors on the far side of the kitchen window. If Josie and B. J. were sitting in there, they’d be easy targets.

The good news was that the men were traveling farther away from the mouth of the garage. We would need that distance to give us the time to get around the corner and behind the shelter of the building before they realized what was going on and shot us in the back.

I jerked my head to indicate that Zale should get on. I grabbed two helmets off the wall and plunked one on the boy’s head, slid the other on mine. They were the kind of big motorcycle helmets that have dark faceplates that slide up and down, but the faceplate on mine was missing. I climbed on behind him. I wasn’t crazy about the idea that it would be my back they’d be shooting at, but I had to keep Zale safe.

“Once you get it started,” I whispered under his helmet, “swing around to the side of the garage and try to keep the garage between us and them. If they start shooting, do zigzags and head for the trees, okay?”

The big plastic helmet bobbed up and down. I could feel how fast his chest was expanding and contracting. He was hyperventilating.

“Hey, Zale? I’m scared, too, but we can do this. I won’t let them hurt you. And we can’t let them hurt Josie and B. J.”

We pushed the vehicle out to the garage opening. We could see the two intruders standing next to the sliding glass doors, starting to peer around the edge.

“I got your back,” I said, and put my arms around his waist. “Let’s do it.”

The kid was quick. It must have been the reflexes from all those hours spent sailing dinghies. The ignition had barely caught when he cranked the throttle and the ATV leaped forward. I clutched hard at his waist, nearly sliding off the back of the seat, my bruised body screaming at the new assault. Then we were careening on two of four wheels as we made the turn around the corner of the garage. We’d crossed the grass and were into the scrub and I hadn’t heard a single shot. The terrain was so bumpy, I felt like I’d got whiplash, and I bit my tongue twice in the first few yards. Zale didn’t let up on the throttle and somehow we didn’t tip over. I felt like my back must have a big red target on it, but I still didn’t hear any shots. Then we were in the cover of the trees, and forced to slow down as the bushes and dead undergrowth clutched at the wheels and tangled round our legs.

The fact that they hadn’t shot at us worried me. I suddenly pictured B. J. and Josie sitting on the couch, their arms in the air, two masked men holding a gun on them, but seconds later I heard the powerful roar of a big engine. It sounded like a monster truck, one of those swamp buggies Earl drove, with the big mud tires and heightened suspension.

Zale kept us in the fringes of the wood, where the ATV could make it through the shrubbery. The night had seemed cold enough when we were standing in that shed, but now, as the wind whipped at my bare hands and face, I thought I would freeze solid. Without headlights, we couldn’t see where we were going or what we were likely to encounter on the ground. Zale continually gunned the engine and then overcorrected when the vines and shrubs let go of the frame and we shot forward or up or down, depending on the terrain. We crossed limestone boulders and downed trees, but the knobby tires just climbed over it all. I couldn’t hear the roar of the truck over the sound of our vehicle’s engine, so I had no idea if they were following us or not.

Then suddenly, like magic, a dark hole appeared in front of us. It was a dirt path made by kids on ATVs just like ours and it seemed to stretch, arrow-straight, right through the woods. Not a real dirt road, it was only a path, and definitely not something designed for trucks. When we hit the smooth dirt, the back end of the ATV fishtailed, and then we took off, our speed climbing. Water streamed from my eyes as the cold air bit at every inch of bare flesh.

I’ve had vertigo on a boat at night before, but it was nothing like this. Shooting down this forest trail at forty miles per hour, I began to lose track of up and down. I had the sensation that we were climbing a mountain, but my rational mind kept telling me that there were no mountains in the Everglades.

And then we shot out of the woods, the tree canopy was gone, and we were on a dirt road. We barreled forward toward a crossroads and only at the last minute did both Zale and I realize that the road we were traveling dead-ended in a T, and the dirt road we were crossing ran parallel to a canal. The kid’s body stiffened as he hit the brakes, hard.

By the time Zale stopped the ATV, the front two tires were in the water, we were engulfed in a cloud of dust, and the engine had stalled. We both sat there, shaking, trying to catch our breath, realizing just how close we had come to launching that vehicle into the middle of the canal. Zale climbed off, tore off his helmet, and bent over, his hands on his knees, his face parallel to the ground. “I think I’m gonna throw up,” he said, and then he did.

In the absence of the engine’s roar, the night sounds filled in. I’d always been under the impression that the birds out there were day creatures, and I was startled at the cawing, chirping, and peeping going on around us.

And I was completely turned around. I thought this must be the L-28 canal that we normally passed over on Snake Road when arriving at the reservation, but I wasn’t certain. And if it was, which way should we turn to get back to the settlement? I wanted to get somewhere where there were other cars on the roads and streetlights, and the occasional law enforcement officer patrolling around.

“You okay?” I asked.

He stood up straight and looked at me. He shook his head and then lifted his arm and pointed down the dirt road behind me. I turned. The road stretched along the canal to the horizon, growing nearly invisible, but the canal reflected the starlight as far as we could see. About halfway down, I saw a pair of headlights coming our way.

“Shit,” I said, climbing on the ATV and backing it off the canal bank by hand and onto the dirt road.

“I can’t,” Zale said. “My hands. I don’t have any strength left.”

“Climb on back and hold on to me,” I said as I turned the key. The ATV roared to life again, and though I winced and thought I might vomit when he squeezed my ribs, once I felt his arms around me, I twisted the throttle.

The machine seemed to have lots more power than any water bike I’d ever ridden. We were up to forty in a matter of seconds and bouncing over the uneven terrain on the open road. I understood why Zale said his hands were tired. In the icy wind, my fingers felt like frozen claws, and even on that smooth dirt road, it took nearly all my strength to maintain control. Dark shadows, clumps of cypress trees, flew by on the right. I glanced over my shoulder. I was going as fast as I dared without risking a rollover, and they were still gaining on me. I had to get out of the open.

Just then another dirt road opened up, ahead on the right, and I swerved wildly, trying not to hit the brakes that would light up the taillights, but I just couldn’t help it. Even using the brakes, we lifted two wheels making the turn. As we slowed, I could hear the increased RPMs of the vehicle following us. If it were just some Seminole headed home after a long day at work, he wouldn’t have reacted like that to the sight of our lights.

The road we’d turned onto dead-ended in less than a quarter mile in a clearing between two cypress domes. An old chickee hut with half the roof missing stood abandoned in the center of the dirt clearing. I could hear the engine growing louder behind us, and I knew I had no choice. I turned toward the woods and gassed it.

We were barely into the tree line before we hit water. No matter where you are in the Everglades, there’s always water underfoot. In many places it’s just a foot or two underground, flowing through the aquifer. Anyplace where you find a low-lying area, the water will fill in. This particular clump of cypress trees was old and wet, the hollow here deep. These trees had been around for a while and their trunks were broader than any others I’d seen. I dodged the ATV in and out between the trees, and the bottom switched from a little water over mud to water up to the height of the engine. I was afraid the engine was going to suck water and stall. I tried to turn around and head back the way we’d come, but the trees all looked alike, and I couldn’t tell which way would lead us to drier ground.

“Which way?” I hollered, hoping the boy would have a better sense of direction than I did. He lifted a hand from my midsection and pointed straight ahead.