Nail Biter (26 page)

Then, pulling on the earmufflike hearing protectors and goggle-ish safety glasses, I got to work.
Bang!
The nail gun shot a nail into the first step tread while not quite knocking me backwards with its kick; encouraged, I continued nailing the treads onto the structure until the job was done.

By that time it was nearly dark, all the lights on in the houses around me. Through the bare branches of the trees, the moon came up over the water, deep fiery orange like a bubble of lava on the dark horizon.

My shoulder felt like hot lava, too, my earlier massage now only a pleasant memory. But as I got up with my back aching and the
bang!
of the nail gun echoing distantly in my head despite the hearing protectors, I felt a pleasure that had nothing to do with getting the porch project advanced, or running the nail gun with halfway decent competence, either.

It was the nail gun itself that had attracted me, with its hair-trigger firing mechanism, explosion of power, and bulletlike steel projectile. Because every time I thought of Wanda Cathcart, all I really wanted to do was shoot everything in sight.

“Okay,” I told
Ellie later that evening, “we bring her to my place, and we don't tell anyone we've got her except Marge.”

Ellie nodded grimly. “If she's there.
And
if we can get her away.”

We were in Ellie's car on the dock watching Joey Rickert's boat, the
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. From what I could see, the vessel hadn't gotten cleaner or more shipshape in the brief time since I'd been on it last.

More importantly, however, Joey wasn't on it. Just as we'd hoped, we'd watched him leave on foot, followed him the few blocks to the grocery store—at a safe distance so he wouldn't realize he was being shadowed—then returned to the dock to wait.

Another attack of nerves hit me. “But what if we're wrong? Maybe we
should
just tell Bob Arnold we think they're on Tall Island. Or call the state cops.”

“And let them plus maybe the Coast Guard make some kind of half-assed assault landing?” Ellie asked in reply. “Somewhere Mac might be able to see them coming, maybe even start shooting?”

This didn't assuage my fears about our own expedition one bit. “Okay,” I gave in, “but I've got to tell you this whole thing is driving me—”

“I know. Crazy,” Ellie said, and there was a silence between us.

Then, “Jake, do you remember before the baby was born when I insisted on having that special ultrasound exam in Portland? And you drove me all the way there and back without asking why?”

I remembered, all right. Wild winds, thunder and lightning, and sheets of driving rain.

“Yes, but . . .”

She stared out the windshield. “I was too scared to say why I wanted it, even to George. If I said it, it might come true. That the baby had a problem, a birth defect or something, and no one was telling me.”

I turned to her, surprised. “Ellie, that's—”

“I know. Unreasonable. But you didn't say that, then. You drove me. And then you waited around all afternoon and brought me back.”

Another silence. Then: “Wade home?” she asked.

“Getting there about now.” The tug was at the dock already; it took around an hour for his paperwork, and Wade was as regular as the tide in his habits.

The tide also being a crucial—no, indispensable—part of
our
plan. “He should be walking in the door any minute,” I said.

Walking in, reading the note I'd left.

The detailed, very specific note. Ellie sat up straight.

“There's Joey now,” she said.

We sank down in our seats like a couple of spies. But Joey
Rickert didn't even look in our direction. He was too busy managing the sacks of groceries he was carrying back from the market.

“Our timing was right, anyway,” I said as he made his way down the gang to the
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.

We hadn't known for sure he'd be getting supplies tonight. But if he was helping Mac Rickert hide out with Wanda, he'd have to do it sometime.

And it would have to be after dark. “Lucky for us,” Ellie said. “Hey,” she added, her tone turning alarmed, “he's getting ready to go out right away. We'd better—”

Hurry
. He'd gone below with the bags but now he reappeared to cast off his lines. Instants later he was on the bridge of the unpleasant vessel, its diesel inboard grumbling to fume-billowing life.

Ellie put the car in gear, waiting only until the foam of his wake cleared the mooring at the entrance to the harbor and his running lights passed the tugboats.

Then she U-turned hastily toward the street. “He's heading south,” she said. “Toward Tall Island, like we thought. And if we make it fast I think we can still—”

There was only one way to get onto the island by land: wait until low tide and walk over. But once the tide came back in, you couldn't return; not until the
next
low tide.

Suddenly she slammed the brakes on so hard I got a chance to notice how well the seat belt worked. Also I noticed Wade standing in front of the car with his hands raised.

“Room for one more?” He opened the passenger door. I climbed out and then into the tiny backseat while he climbed in front.

“Got your note,” he said.

“Yeah, huh?” I replied, inadequately.

I don't know what I'd thought might happen, only that I had promised to let him know what I was up to. Now I half expected an argument of some kind.

But I didn't get one. Wade addressed me again, a gleam in his eye as we hurtled out Route 190.

“Sounds like fun,” he commented mildly, and sat back for the ride.

A
wild
ride. The cop at the Pleasant Point speed trap must have been home eating his dinner, because we made it through at speeds very nearly approaching liftoff without getting pinched.

Ten minutes later we were pulling to the end of a dirt road in darkness so thick it was like being wrapped in black velvet.

“Where . . . ?” I began, then shut up as a set of running lights appeared on the water.

“We're a hundred yards south of Tall Island,” Wade said quietly; sound travels well on water, especially when everything else around you is silent.

Even over the boat's engine, Joey might hear us if we weren't careful. Or Mac might, which could turn out a lot worse.

“See there?” Wade pointed at a paler section of darkness. “That's the sandbar. It'll be there another hour or so. After that—”

His arms made swimming motions. I squinted around for Ellie, couldn't spot her. “Wade, are you sure you want to . . .”

Do this,
I meant to finish. But I couldn't because before I got the words out of my mouth, he was kissing me on it.

“Oh,” I said softly when he was done.

“When I tell you I'm on your side, what I actually mean is,
I'm on your side
,” he said. “Now skedaddle.”

So I did, scrambling over the wet stones, mindful that in just a couple of hours the water here would be ten feet deep.

But what I witnessed soon after I got to the shore of Tall Island made the tide seem a small thing, indeed.

“Over here,” Ellie
whispered urgently as I struggled through the vines and thorny branches that made Tall Island an obstacle course at night.

We were at the edge of a clearing. At the shoreline twenty-five yards away, two figures carried bags ashore, not speaking. But they weren't nearly as interesting as the smaller figure crouched by a little fire, concealed from view on the water side by a dense thicket.

“It's Wanda,” I uttered, jumping up.

“Wait.” Wade drew me back. One of the men slogged out to the
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and climbed aboard, returning moments later with his arms full again. Meanwhile the figure by the fire held her hands out to warm them.

Another wave of protective fear surged through me, worse than before. “If he wants her alive, that could be worse than if he'd wanted to kill her,” I managed through the sudden lump in my throat. “The
bastard . . .
”

“Jake, I've never heard a word from anyone about Joey
or
Mac Rickert liking little girls,” Wade said evenly, understanding what I implied.

The two men approached the fire, lighting cigarettes and dropping the last of the supplies in a heap near a small tent that was pitched nearby, with a bedroll in it.

A nice tent, not just some saggy little A-frame, and the bedroll was a good-quality item, too, with the unmistakable loft of high-fill goosedown. Room enough for one in it.

Or two, if what I still feared was true. “You never do hear,” I said bitterly. “No one hears a thing, and afterwards . . .”

A sob caught me by surprise. I tried swallowing it, fearing I might burst into tears; it caught painfully in my chest.

But it went down. “Afterwards people say they never dreamed he could do a thing like that,” I said. “When it's . . . when it's too
late
.”

The sob burst out with my final words, raw with all the pain and bitterness I'd been hiding. But not anymore; in the silence that followed, what I'd said hung in the air like an evil mist that once released can never be captured again, and it was clear that I knew just exactly what I was talking about.

And now they knew, too. “Jake,” Wade said softly, but I just shook my head.

“I'm fine, okay? We can talk about it later.” But I didn't want to. What I wanted was to walk into the water until it came up over my head.

And keep walking. “I'm going down there,” Ellie whispered at last. “I want to hear what they're saying.”

Then she was gone, slipping along the edge of the clearing until we couldn't see her anymore. Once she'd vanished, Wade still stood there, silent, as misery flooded through me.

“Wade,” I began, “I'm sorry I never . . .”

Told you
. He turned suddenly.

“You're sorry?” he demanded brusquely. “
You're
sorry?”

One long step and he was beside me, his arms wrapped around me. “Don't ever say that.” He spoke into my ear. “Don't you ever apologize. And don't feel you have to talk about it, you hear? Or not talk about it.”

His embrace was ferocious. “You stick with me, and whatever happens we're in it together, Jake. The two of us no matter what. Got that?
Do
you?”

“Got it,” I whispered, nodding against his shoulder, tears running down my cheeks. But then I looked up at him, and at the sight of his face smiling gently down at me I had to smile, too.

Not that he'd fixed things; not all of them. Not even close. But for then it was enough.

Ellie popped back out of the bushes. “The good news is that Wanda's okay as far as I can tell.”

Then she grimaced, dragged one of her shoes through the weeds. “Darn, I've stepped in deer scat. Fresh, too.”

In the moonlight she examined her other shoe; she was picky about her footwear. “That's the thing about preserves, if no one does anything with them there get to be about a million of the animals.”

Wade plucked a clump of fuzz from a twig. “Yeah. One of 'em lost some hair here, looks like.”

Then he frowned, rubbing the tuft of fluff in his fingers and sniffing it. “Blood. Deer is wounded, I think. Poachers've been out here again, maybe.”

“Wouldn't someone have heard shots?” Ellie asked, glancing back at the campfire.

The men had sat down by it and were passing a bottle back and forth. Wanda sat with them.

Wade shook his head. “Not if they were bowhunting. But you need to be really good with a bow, drop the deer dead. Poachers,” he added unhappily, “aren't always good shots.”

“What's the bad news?” I asked, turning back to Ellie.

The clouds closed over our heads and the wind was picking up too, tossing the
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around where she rode at anchor.

“They're arguing, Mac and Joey. Mac's been here a couple of nights and he wants to stay a little longer.” Ellie waved at the sky. “But Joey says another storm's coming in.”

Wade nodded. “Yep. Heard it on the weather radio before I left. Worse than the last one, they say.”

“There's something Mac's waiting for,” Ellie went on. “‘Just a little longer,' he told Joey, ‘and she'll do it.'”

“Do what?” I demanded. Out beyond the campfire, Mac and Joey Rickert were on their way back down to the shoreline again.

Wanda still sat. “Don't know,” Ellie replied. “But whatever it is, once it's done and the storm passes by, he's going to move her. And I don't think it's going to be to anywhere around here.”

“What makes you think that?” Wade asked as Joey sloshed back out to the
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.

God, but that water must've been cold. I winced in unwilling sympathy. “Mac said it was somewhere no one would
ever
find her, and Joey wouldn't see Mac for a while, either,” Ellie answered.

“Oh, come on, then,” I burst out, “let's go get her.”

“No.” Ellie put a hand out. “Don't you see what he's got?”

I squinted. Mac had stood up, and he
was
carrying something; I just hadn't been paying attention to it before.