The Cypress House

50

THE CLOUDS THICKENED and continued to hide the sun, but the rain held off. It was as if the storm were being kept at bay, and angry about it. The skies contained menace that hadn’t been able to break through, just bathed the world below in shadow and trapped the heat and humidity close to the ground. Arlen took the dirt road all the way to the end, came out at the T-intersection with the paved road and thought, What now?

He turned left. There was no conscious decision, no reason for going left instead of right, he just looked in each direction and felt his foot leave the brake and return to the gas when his eyes locked on the windswept gray moss that dangled from cypress trees ahead to the north.

He’s guiding me, he thought. Owen’s guiding me.

He didn’t know how, but he felt confident in it, had a strange assurance that this was the right route, that it would lead him to Paul.

The wind picked up as he drove under the cypress grove, and a piece of Spanish moss drifted down in a lazy arc and landed in the passenger seat beside him. It was just past one now but so dark it felt like dusk. The arrival of the Cuban boat was still eight hours away. If it showed up at all. He had a feeling it would not, that word would have been passed somehow, and everything Barrett and the others waited for would not transpire.

Rebecca was on this same road, somewhere well ahead of him. She would have a few hours at least before they began to look for the truck.

And then I’ll catch up with her, he tried to think, but a single glance in the rearview mirror revealed the smoke in his eyes.

He would not see her again.

It was an agonizing thought. He’d never feared death. Had, at times in his life, longed for it. But those were in days past, days before her.

It was right for him to bear such a loss, though. It was needed. He thought of how he’d laid his hands on Owen Cady’s shoulders and looked into his dead eyes and heard his voice so clearly, heard the truth from him, and he remembered his boyhood trip down to the Fayette County sheriff and the way his father’s blood had pooled in the dust, and he knew that all things circled back in time. You paid for your sins, and he would pay for his today.

As he drove down the road, he reached into the backseat and moved one of the rifles up front with him, braced it against his leg with the barrel pointed down and the stock and trigger close at hand.

The car drove beautifully; Solomon Wade had a fine taste in machines. Arlen was holding it close to seventy. Twice he passed other cars moving at half that speed, saw drivers lift hands in annoyance and surprise, and blew by them and continued on. He’d gone at least five miles headed due north, passing two intersections without much pause, certain somehow that they held no significance, before he reached a four-way and again found himself turning left without thought or reason. The pavement soon disappeared and he banged onto a dirt road. The water from the previous night’s rains had not drained well here, and he splashed through deep puddles and spun the tires through soft mud. Thunder rippled to the south, but there was no lightning and the wind was still. He tried to keep the speed up, but the road was deeply pocked and rutted, and he was afraid he’d rattle the wheels right off the car. He felt one solitary raindrop find his forehead as the road narrowed into what looked like a thin green tunnel. The strange bird-of-paradise plants pressed close, their wide green fronds stretching toward the sky in search of sunlight.

“Where am I going?” he said aloud, hoping for an answer, hoping that Owen’s voice might reach him even here. There was nothing but silence, though. The road wound on and on, and no sign of humanity existed, just that green jungle.

He’d believed in each move he’d made in the car, believed that the dead man was guiding him, but what if that was all a foolish trick of the mind and he was driving away from Paul? His doubt grew as the road led him farther into the woods and farther from anyplace he knew, and he dropped the speed off again so the car was moving at a crawl and began to consider turning around. The road was so damn narrow that such a feat would be difficult. There were tire tracks in the mud and hoofprints from horses, but what did that prove? Only that someone had come this way; it didn’t have to be the McGraths.

A stretch of muddy water showed through the trees then, a creek winding into the woods. Arlen studied it, saw that while it was narrow it was also deep, and remembered the boat from the inlet the day he’d been up repairing the roof just after the hurricane. Tate McGrath. And Owen had said the McGraths emerged from the inlet today.

“It’s the right place,” he said. “You’re getting me there, aren’t you?”

Again, no answer. He wished he could hear him, or at least feel him, know that he wasn’t making this ride alone, but there was nothing. He had to take it on faith, had to believe, and the sight of the water made that easier.

He drove on, and a rickety wooden bridge appeared ahead. It was many years old. Arlen wasn’t sure it could even support the weight of the car, but then his eyes drifted ahead and what he saw made that concern vanish.

There was a car coming his way. It had just rounded a bend well ahead of him and was approaching the bridge, driving at a slow speed. Arlen pushed the brake all the way down and stayed where he was, watching it come on. When it passed out of the shadows and took on enough clarity, he recognized it-the county sheriff’s car. Tolliver.

He felt his breathing slow, felt his muscles go liquid and soft, the way they once had in fields far from this country, and he wrapped his hand around the walnut stock of the Springfield and waited.

The sheriff’s car had slowed when the driver spotted Arlen, but it kept coming on, up to the edge of the wooden bridge, which was maybe a hundred yards ahead, and then stopped. Arlen could see Tolliver clearly now, the big man riding behind the wheel with one hand out of sight. Surely resting on a gun, the same as Arlen’s was. Only Tolliver’s gun was a pistol, and it didn’t have the range to do damage until he crossed that bridge. The Springfield had plenty.

They’ll hear the shot, Arlen thought. He’s come from a good ways off, but not so far that they won’t hear the shot.

Tolliver’s car lurched forward again, out of the mud and toward the old bridge, and Arlen knew that the sound of the shot was going to be the least of his concerns if he let him drive on.

He engaged the parking brake and rose up as the sheriff’s car spun mud and neared the bridge. Put one knee on the seat to support himself and then cleared the Springfield and rested it across the frame of the windshield. The engine of the sheriff’s car howled with a sudden increase in gas as Tolliver saw the weapon and realized what was coming. Arlen dropped his face and pressed his cheek against the smooth stock of the rifle and gazed down the barrel. The car was driving fast but still centered; until it cleared the bridge, Tolliver couldn’t maneuver to the right or to the left. Arlen let the front wheels find the boards of the bridge and then he exhaled a slow, patient breath and focused right-center on the windshield and squeezed the trigger. The gun gave a gentle buck in his arms, an old but unforgotten sensation, and then he ejected the shell and closed the bolt and fired again. There were three shots left in the Springfield, but he didn’t need to use them. The car gave a last lurch forward and then the growl of the engine dropped off, and the car rolled slowly down from the bridge and came to a stop in the mud. The engine was still running, but no foot remained on the gas pedal. Tolliver was out of sight. He’d fallen sideways, down onto the passenger seat.

Arlen left the convertible running, climbed out and jogged toward the sheriff’s car with the gun held out in front of him and the mud sucking at his boots. When he got close enough, he dropped to a knee and pointed the rifle at the passenger door and waited. Tolliver could be baiting him, could rise up with the pistol in his hand the moment Arlen reached for the door handle.

He didn’t rise, though. The two.30-caliber bullets from the Springfield had landed true; there were twin holes cracked through the windshield, inches apart, fractured glass surrounding them just above the steering wheel. Arlen gave it a few more seconds, listening to the engine run, and then he saw something drip out of the car near the base of the door frame. Blood.

At the sight of it, he rose and walked to the passenger door and pulled it open, holding the Springfield against his side with a finger on the trigger. Tolliver’s wide body was jammed between the dashboard and the passenger seat, shoulders wedged tight. Blood pooled on the floor beneath him, and a thin stream of it ran out onto Arlen’s boots when the door was opened. Arlen could see the big man’s back shudder. Trying to breathe. Not gone yet.

There was a pistol on the driver’s seat, the weapon Tolliver had held when the bullets found him. Arlen reached over and picked it up and slid the barrel through his belt. Then he took a handful of the sheriff’s shirt and hauled him out of the car and down into the mud.

Not a sound had come from anywhere up the road. The shots from the Springfield had been loud, though, and Arlen suspected the McGraths could move as silently as they chose through these woods. He kept his back against the car, protected, as he rolled Tolliver over. He had to set the rifle down to do it; the sheriff must have gone every bit of two fifty. When Arlen got him over, he saw the holes punched through him, one high on the right side, blown through the collarbone, and another lower and centered. Tolliver gave a long blink, smoke billowing out from under his eyelids, moved his lips like a fish searching for water, and then he died. Arlen knew the moment that he went; he’d watched enough men find that moment in the past.

Arlen said, “Bad news, buddy: you can’t hide from me that easy.”

He left the rifle leaning against the car, and then he reached down and cupped each side of Tolliver’s head with his hands, lifted the dead man’s face and looked into his eyes.

“Come on back now,” he said, “and tell me how many they are.”

You’ll never cross this bridge again.

This voice was nothing like Owen’s had been. Recognizable as Tolliver’s, yes, but changed, gone dark and twisted. As Arlen held the dead sheriff’s head in his hands, the man’s flesh drained of color, went white as sand under moonlight, as if every ounce of blood had been pulled away. Arlen felt a shiver ride through him and nearly dropped Tolliver and stepped back. He held his position, though, swallowed, and said, “I didn’t ask about crossing the bridge. I asked how many they are.”

Don’t understand this game, do you? Tolliver’s ghost whispered. We ain’t all here to help you, friend. Just because you can reach us doesn’t mean we’re required to help.

Arlen didn’t say anything. Tolliver’s blood was running with the slope of his torso, dripping down his throat in warm rivulets and caressing the sides of Arlen’s hands.

You’re a good shot, Tolliver said. Tate’s better.

“We’re about to find out,” Arlen said.

Hell, yes, you will. That man’s as natural a killer as I’ve ever seen. More natural than a rattlesnake, more natural than a shark. You ain’t never seen his like. And there isn’t a life that old boy values but his sons. You? You’re partnered up with them that killed one of his sons. I’d call that a death warrant.

The world had begun to spin around Arlen. He was holding his focus on Tolliver’s eyes, but outside of that center everything was in motion, a whirl of trees and sky and colors. This wasn’t like talking to Owen at all. It felt like being lost in a terrible fever.

“Is Wade with them?”

Not yet. But he’ll be riding close soon enough. He’ll see you before the end of your time, and then you’ll wish you’d not come this way.

A high, harsh hum was in Arlen’s ears now, coming in waves, like a pulse, and he squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced. When he opened them again, the hum was louder and the world seemed draped with fog. He could see nothing beyond Tolliver’s face, could hear nothing but that hum, and…

Let him go.

It wasn’t Tolliver speaking. A familiar voice, but not Tolliver. Was it Owen Cady? No, it seemed to come from a time much longer ago than that. So familiar, though. So damn familiar. Whose voice was it? How could he-

Let him go.

forget a voice like that, so deep and strong and full of command? He knew its source, knew it well, but here in the fog and the hum everything was lost. If he could only remember the-

Let him go, son.

Isaac? No. It couldn’t be. How could a man so long dead reach and find Arlen now and tell him…

The instruction finally registered. He had to let Tolliver go. He dropped his hands from the sheriff’s head and fell back against the car with a gasp as a searing rod of pain drilled through his chest.

A bullet, he thought. I’ve just been shot.

But there was no bullet, and the pain passed. He closed his eyes and opened them again and drew in a deep breath, and now the world was steady except for a tingle on his hands where Tolliver’s blood stained his skin. He wiped them on his pants, looking down at the dead man and realizing what had nearly happened-Tolliver had been holding him here. Arlen had opened the contact, maybe, but Tolliver had nearly closed it, and that trancelike state that Arlen had entered with Owen could have turned deadly this time. He’d been unable to see anything around him, unable to hear, would have been utterly unable to defend himself if he hadn’t released the body and stepped back. The longer he’d held on to Tolliver, the longer he’d tried to keep that corridor open, the deeper he’d sunk into the trance. He might have stayed there in the road for a long time.

That was his father’s voice. He was damn near certain of it, and somehow it chilled him more than any of the others.

This was a dangerous game. Wasn’t as simple as talking. There was more to it than that, and what Tolliver had said had been the truth-the dead weren’t required to help him. The ability to reach them wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

He stood up now and stepped over the body with the rifle in his hands, scanned the road ahead and the woods and the creek, watching and listening and holding his finger tight against the trigger.

There was no one in sight, no sound that wasn’t natural. He stepped back to the front of the car and put his hand on the hood. The engine was still running, and it was running hot. Tolliver might have come a longer way than Arlen had initially suspected. It could be that the McGraths remained unaware of his presence here. Or it could be that the engine always idled hot, and Arlen’s time was running dangerously short already.

He went through the inside of the car quickly, searching for weapons. There were none except the pistol he’d already taken from the sheriff, but he did find two pairs of handcuffs. There was also a length of tow chain in the back, outfitted with a lock. Arlen hung the handcuffs off the other side of his belt, opposite the pistol, and then stepped back and looked down at the body, saw Tolliver’s big hands stretched open in the dirt and remembered the beating the sheriff had given him in the jail while Solomon Wade leaned against the bars and watched wordlessly.

He’ll be riding close soon enough, Tolliver had said. Wade was on his way.

Arlen thought about that and then turned and studied the trees that grew thick alongside the road on either side of the bridge. There was one limb that was low enough and stout enough for his purposes. He’d have to hurry, though. He reckoned if the McGraths had held Paul alive for this long, they’d continue to do so until Wade arrived, but he couldn’t afford to be caught on the road like this.

He backed the sheriff’s car off the bridge and pulled it far enough away that the road was clear for the convertible, which he drove over the bridge and parked behind the sheriff’s car before climbing out again. It took him only two tries to toss one end of the tow chain over the limb, and then he lowered it until both ends were on the road. It was just long enough. He took one set of handcuffs and wrapped them around Tolliver’s ankles, then fastened them together. Dragged the body over and fastened the chain to the cuffs, then pushed Tolliver’s body into the ditch and went back to the convertible and fastened the free end of the chain to the back bumper. When he climbed in this time, he drove very slowly, pulling forward inch by inch. The chain tightened and began to slide over the tree limb, and then Tolliver’s feet were tugged into the air. There was a short hitch as the chain hung up on something, and Arlen pushed harder on the gas pedal, driving the car into the weedy, rutted ditch. The chain slid free again, and Tolliver’s bulk was hoisted into the air.

He kept the car moving until the sheriff was dangling about four feet over the road, upside down, his body swinging just as Owen Cady’s had. Blood dripped off the corpse and found the muddy road below. It would be the first thing visible for a driver who rounded the bend.

“Come on down, Wade,” Arlen said softly as he got out of the convertible and went back to the sheriff’s car, positioning himself behind the wheel with the rifle across his lap. “Come on down.”

He cast one look in the rearview mirror before he drove on, saw the dark sky and the body swinging in the wind, and the smoke-thicker now, darker-in his own eyes.

He was close.

51

THE ROAD RAN DOWNHILL over the bridge, and the ground on either side grew marshy, black puddles lining the ditches and tangled mangrove roots visible farther out, where the creek curled around and followed the road. He went at least another mile without seeing a thing, and the distance reassured him-it was unlikely that the McGraths had heard anything of the gunfire at the bridge.

Finally the road hooked to the right and narrowed even more, and there he shut off the engine and got out of the car. He couldn’t see a house yet but felt he must be close. For a moment he knelt beside the car and listened and watched. The trees gave him nothing but wind rustle and birdcalls. Water lapped against the shore just through the woods, the creek riding high after the previous day’s downpour. The way the sky looked, another was due soon enough. He wished the rain would begin to fall; it would offer sound cover that he needed. So far, though, the clouds had just continued to build and darken without letting loose. There was occasional thunder, but it was well to the south.

He started forward on foot. It was awkward moving with a rifle in each hand and the pistol and handcuffs on his belt, but he’d rather have all the weapons if it came to that sort of firefight. Empty one Springfield, drop it and pick up the second, empty that and roll on to the pistol. If he ran that dry, too, he probably wouldn’t have much need to reload one way or another.

Here the road was so deeply wooded that it was almost dark. The trees pressed close on every side and the wind roused them to a constant rasping sound that unsettled him because the noise was so damn close. It was one of the things he didn’t like about this part of the country; the leaves were right at your side, not well overhead. A rustle in the leaves fifty feet above you was less disturbing than one ten inches to your left.

He didn’t even consider leaving the road and venturing into the woods. It would slow him down and make him noisier. Even though they likely hadn’t heard the gunfire, the McGraths would be ready for trouble. It was a day of trouble, and they were well aware of that by now.

To his right the woods opened up, and he could see the creek merging with the mangroves, creating a knee-deep swamp of tangled roots that looked like hundreds of frozen snakes. He came to the bottom of the gentle slope, and then the dirt road rose again and he could see the first building just ahead.

It was a shed or barn of some sort, with a hide stretched over the wall. A dark gray skin, probably a boar. There was the smell of smoke from that building, but he couldn’t see any. Whatever fire had burned there was extinguished now. Farther on he could see the roof of another building, this one a cabin, long and low. He pushed down into the weeds and dropped to his knees, felt moisture soak through his trousers. He laid one Springfield in the weeds and brought the other up and held it against his thigh.

There were voices coming from up ahead but not from inside the cabin. He thought they might be at first, but then his sense of the place corrected and he realized they were coming from below the cabin, out of sight to him but close to the creek. He heard the thump of boots on boards and the sound of a splash and realized there must be a dock of some sort down there.

How many sons did Tate McGrath have? There’d been three with him the night they’d come to the Cypress House. If all of them were with him now, that meant four enemies to contend with. Unless there were others. Neighbors, cousins, collaborators of some sort. Hell, maybe even men from New Orleans by now, maybe the Cubans themselves. Could be a dozen down there.

He pushed farther down from the road, water bubbling up and soaking his boots and pants. Pointed the rifle at the cabin and squinted down the barrel and liked what he saw. He could pick men off quickly if they’d just walk out there and stand around. It hadn’t been so long since he’d fired a Springfield rapidly that he’d forgotten how it was done.

First he had to bring them out, though.

He waited a few more minutes, heard those muffled voices but saw nothing, and then he slid back out of the wet ditch and returned up the edge of the road, walking backward and holding the gun high. He left the second Springfield tucked down in the weeds. He could find it again if he needed it.

His focus coming up the road was on the sheriff’s car. Particularly the windshield. He wanted to see how close you had to be before the bullet holes were obvious. Here in the shadows, he found it was better than he’d expected. Even knowing they were there, he had to close to within about a hundred feet before they became obvious.

The sheriff’s car was the only bit of cover he had, the only touch of confusion. He figured there were two ways to approach this: One was to slip right up into the homestead and start shooting. The other was with a bit of a ruse. He knew he could take some bodies down with the first approach, but taking bodies down wasn’t enough. He had to get to Paul, and doing that required finding out where the boy was. Once the shooting started, nobody would be volunteering that information.

The only time he’d seen the sons at all had been the day they arrived at the Cypress House to avenge their brother’s death, and then it had been Tate who did all the talking. Likewise, it had been Tate who dealt with Wade, Tate who traveled with Wade. He was the decision maker, the leader. He would also, Arlen assumed, be the one who came out to see why Tolliver had returned.

Maybe not. Maybe they’d all come slinking through the woods with guns. If that were the result, the second of Arlen’s options would blend quickly into the first, and he’d have to open up with the Springfields and hope the old instincts weren’t far gone. But if Tate McGrath came out alone…

“Love lingers,” Arlen said quietly as he opened the door of the Corridor County sheriff’s car and slipped behind the wheel. They’d been his father’s last words, and he hoped like hell they’d been accurate. What was it Tolliver had said of Tate McGrath? The only human lives he valued were those of his sons. Arlen intended to test the truth of that. If he could bring old Tate out to this car alone, he intended to do something that had probably never been attempted anywhere in this world before-hold hostage the living to gain the help of the dead.

52

A FEW DROPS OF RAIN splattered off the windshield as he drove, and he was momentarily hopeful that the sheltering storm would finally appear, but then the sprinkle ceased entirely. The Springfield was in his lap and the pistol on the passenger seat. He could feel warm moisture under his thighs. Tolliver’s blood. The inside of the car reeked of it, a wet copper scent baked by the heat.

He drove down just short of the point where he’d left the second rifle. Just out of sight of the buildings. Nothing moved around him, but the sound of the approaching car had surely been heard, and his throat felt tight. The moment was here now. Preparations had ceased; battle would begin.

I’ve come out of worse places, he thought. I was in the Belleau Wood. Will come a time when that doesn’t mean anything to a soul in this country, but for those who were there, it did one of two things: killed you, or changed your perception of fear. This place doesn’t scare me. Not after the Wood.

He cast a look in the mirror, watched the smoke swirl in his eyes, and thought, I won’t be coming out of this one, though. So I should fear it even less.

The end was here. There was a certain measure of peace in that. All that remained was a bit of unsettled work.

It was a good spot, close to the mangroves and where the creek had flooded well over its banks and turned the marshy ground into a shallow pond of shadowed water. Reeds and grasses grew tall and thick in the ditch, offering prime cover. The clouds were a roiling mass, some layers as black as fresh-laid tar, others the color of wine. Beneath them the mangrove trees stretched endlessly and cast shadows on an already dark day, the gloom so deep it seemed to be dusk.

He turned the headlights on, and their beams cut farther down the road than should have been possible during the day, harsh and white and, he hoped, distracting from the bullet holes in the windshield. They’d also draw focus away from the water and make the area just beside the car seem darker still.

As soon as the lights were on, Arlen popped open the driver’s door and pushed the Springfield into the driest weeds he could find. When he glanced back up the road, he saw nothing. Tate McGrath had no doubt selected this location for his homestead because of the near impossibility of sneaking up on it, but that worked against him as well; it would be damn hard to sneak away from the cabin. Arlen would hear them when they came.

When the rifle was hidden, he put Tolliver’s pistol in one hand and took out his pocketknife and opened it with the other. It wasn’t a large knife, but it was a good one. Had a strong handle with a textured grip and a four-inch stainless steel blade that he worked over a whetstone regularly. He held it tight in his left hand as he leaned out of the door, then reached back inside and hit the horn with the butt of the pistol. Two short taps, then one long bleat. He hoped it sounded like a signal. He flashed the lights three times, and then he was out of the car.

He slipped down into the ditch, moving carefully into a gap between the reeds so that they wouldn’t be trampled and broken down. The water soaked through his clothes and chilled him. He dipped his hand into the soil, took a palmful of thick black mud, and coated his face and neck with it. Insects buzzed over him and one mosquito drank from his forearm, but he didn’t swat it away. Instead he kept his eyes on the road and on the trees.

He was quickly hidden behind the tall grass as he slid away from the gap and deeper into the water, taking care to avoid crushing the reeds in a way that would be easily spotted. He remembered the paces he’d carefully measured toward the car before he’d seen the bullet holes in the windshield and tried to match that distance. The best place he saw looked to be about eighty feet ahead of the car. He was moving as quickly as possible, keeping to a crouch so that his shoulders were submerged in the water, holding only the pistol up to keep it dry.

He was now neck-deep in the water, the same water where just a few miles downstream the girl from Cassadaga, Gwen, had been left by these very men. He positioned himself behind a thatch of reeds close to the edge of the road. He laid the pistol in the reeds, then lowered himself until his chin touched the top of the water. He was able to see up the road with his left eye only; the reeds blocked any other field of vision. The glow of the headlights cast long, empty beams into the gloom. No one appeared inside them.

He was counting on the sheriff’s car, counting on it to a critical level. Tolliver was a friend, not a foe, and he’d left in this same car less than an hour earlier. His return, while unusual, should not necessarily be an indication of true trouble. Arlen’s hope was that Tate would hear the horn and see the flash of the lights and perceive it to be a signal, Tolliver calling for him because something had changed. Perhaps he’d encountered Wade and had new instructions; perhaps he’d seen something he didn’t like or thought of something he should have said. It might be odd for the sheriff to sit outside the homestead, but on the day he’d driven down to the Cypress House to drop off the money with Owen, he’d parked at the top of the hill and leaned on the horn. It had been pouring rain then, but rain was threatening now as well.

When he finally heard the first footstep, it crunched on brush, which meant the approaching man was walking on the side of the road and not up the middle of it. The car’s horn and lights had drawn him out, but he didn’t trust them yet either. Not completely.

This was good. This was as planned.

He was advancing along Arlen’s side of the road. Also good, also as planned. Whoever was coming now was approaching the driver’s-side door. The footsteps came on and on, and still Arlen could see nothing. He had sunk so low in the ditch that even his chin touched the water, his head buried in the thicket of reeds and painted black with mud. The footsteps were very close when they stopped entirely, and at the cessation of the sound, Arlen felt his heart go cold.

Seen? Have I been-

Crunch, crunch, crunch. The feet were on the move again, and no more than twenty paces away. Down in the water, Arlen tightened his fingers around the handle of his knife. He could see the pistol resting in the reeds and knew that he could grab it quickly, but would it be quickly enough?

You’re a good shot, Tolliver’s ghost had whispered. Tate’s better.

We’re about to find out, Arlen had said. Yes, they would.

He didn’t want to shoot. Wanted this-needed this-to be a silent killing.

There was another step, and another. They seemed to be coming quicker now, with more confidence, as if the sight of the sheriff’s car had proved reassuring to whoever was approaching. Arlen hadn’t so much as glimpsed the man yet, but he was almost sure it would be Tate. There was only one man on the way, and he wouldn’t have sent one of his sons to talk to Tolliver alone. He’d have come himself.

Right then a shadow flicked into the edge of the headlight beam, and Arlen saw a heavy canvas boot and mud-streaked trousers above. Another step forward, and now he could make out the man completely-Tate McGrath. He was walking at a fast clip, but his head was on a swivel, looking everywhere but at the sheriff’s car. Guarding himself against attack, which was a wise play, but the longer he spent staring into the swamp woods, the longer it would be before he noticed the pair of bullet holes just above the steering wheel.

Tate had a knife in the sheath at his belt and a long-barreled revolver in his right hand, held down against his thigh.

Tate’s better…

He’d certainly have the fastest draw. Arlen was going to need to move quickly, quicker than his body had in years, quicker maybe than his body was still capable of. And right now, Tate’s attention was beginning to drift toward the sheriff’s car.

Wait till he sees the holes, Arlen thought suddenly, an abrupt reversal of his original plan. He’d wanted to move before Tate realized someone had fired a rifle into the sheriff’s car, but now he had the instinctive thought that in that one sharp second of realization, Tate’s focus would narrow. For an instant at least, he’d be more aware of that car than anything else.

Tate’s boots hammered into the mud and the reeds not five feet from Arlen now and came on. Down in the water, Arlen wriggled his fingers on the knife handle. The soil was soft, would make it damned difficult to push off quickly, and he gave up on the thought of trying to clear the ditch completely. No, he’d need to take Tate’s legs out first and drag him down here and finish it fast. He’d need to-

McGrath’s foot hitched in midair, paused and fluttered as if he were searching for a step in the dark, and as it finally descended again Arlen realized what had just happened-he’d seen the bullet holes.

Arlen blew out of the water and the reeds as the soft mud clung to his boots and tried to suck him back down, as if the land itself were Tate McGrath’s ally. Had he been attempting to reach the man at full height, he’d have surely been killed, but that last decision, to go for the legs first, saved him. He got his left hand around McGrath’s calf and gave a powerful yank as Tate spun with the lithe grace of a young man on a ball field, bringing the revolver around as he did it.

Don’t shoot, Arlen thought, don’t shoot, I need silence, I need silence!

Tate fired. He was falling as he pulled the trigger, and the bullet sailed well clear of Arlen, tearing into the mangroves behind them, but the damage had been done: this time there was no doubt that the gunfire had been heard.

Tate McGrath landed on his back on the dirt road and seemed to hardly feel the impact at all, was swinging the gun barrel right back toward Arlen’s face when Arlen swept it aside with his left hand and lunged with his right.

Another shot rang out as Arlen sank the pocketknife into Tate’s chest, buried it all the way up to the handle. He was scrambling out of the ditch now and had Tate’s gun hand pinned down against the road as he pulled the knife free, a warm geyser of blood splashing his neck, and then slammed it down again, aiming higher this time, finding the heart. He leaned into this second thrust, felt the blade push in until the handle caught, and then he put his weight behind it and the handle itself pushed through the wound with the terrible sound of tearing flesh. Tate McGrath opened his mouth to let loose a howl of pain that never came.

He might be the better shot, Tolliver, Arlen thought, but it doesn’t always come down to shooting.

He knew they’d be coming now, after the sounds of those two gunshots, and so he didn’t pause at all before beginning his retreat, sliding back into the reeds with a hand around each of Tate’s ankles, dragging the dead man into the water with him.

53

THE FASTEST WAY TO MOVE would be without the body, of course, but Arlen needed the body. He took Tate’s revolver, dug Tolliver’s out of the weeds, and pushed them both into the dead man’s belt. Then he laid the Springfield across Tate’s chest and backpedaled into the water, towing the corpse behind him.

Thunder crackled again, a low rumble that went on and on, as if the storm were stretching out before beginning its real work. Still to the south but closer now. Down here in the mangroves it was nearly dark, and he was grateful for that.

He couldn’t see anyone approaching yet, but he also couldn’t hear anyone, and that concerned him. Silence meant they were treating this with caution. If they’d all come running down the road at the sounds of the shots, he could have reduced their numbers quickly and easily.

Now, though, he knew there’d be no rash mistakes made by those who lingered up at the cabin. And that meant the dead man in his arms was going to become awfully important.

Love lingers.

He would see if it did.

Back into the mangroves he went, keeping low, floating the corpse and towing it through the water. The mud at his feet was very soft and difficult to move through, but the tangled root systems of these strange, hurricane-proof trees provided cover. He pushed back until he found a snarl of roots that twisted well out of the water, three feet at least, and then he nestled into them so that his back was to the road and Tate McGrath floated in front of him. From this position, he couldn’t see a damn thing, but that was fine; no one would be able to take a shot unless they were directly in front of him, and to accomplish that they’d have to come through a hell of a lot of water. He had a little time at least, and that was what he needed. Time to talk.

He looked down at McGrath’s body. The mouth was parted and showing yellowed teeth, several of them missing, and long gray hair fanned out into the swamp water. Arlen took it all in and felt awash with astonishment over the plan he’d conceived. The idea was insane, and yet he believed it could work.

Love lingers, his father had promised. If indeed it did, then Arlen was about to have a dead man’s assistance.

He took the Springfield off McGrath’s chest and leaned it against the tree, then kept his left hand wrapped around one of the mangrove roots, as if seeking anchor in reality, before he reached with the right and pushed Tate McGrath’s eyelids up. Then he moved the hand under the dead man’s back, in such a way that he could keep him upright and facing toward himself, and spoke softly but clearly.

“I’m going to kill them all. Understand that? I know you can hear it. I’ve reached the dead all day, and I’m reaching you now. Here’s a promise, old man: I’ll wipe all your sons from the earth unless you help me. Your sons, and whoever else waits up there. A wife, a daughter. Makes no difference. I’ll kill them all.”

There was no answer, but he felt himself begin to slip through that unseen door again. It was so strange, simultaneous sensations of falling and walls closing in, like taking a tumble into a long, narrow well. His peripheral vision went first, trembling at the edges and then going to gray, and the swamp faded until all that was left was McGrath’s face. He had sullen brown eyes, and even in death they carried a feral quality. Arlen squeezed his left hand tighter against the mangrove root, not wanting a repeat of the situation that he’d fallen into with Tolliver.

“You got to speak fast, Tate,” he said, his voice less steady than before. “I won’t give you much chance, old boy. I’ll leave you here and then I’ll kill them. I’ll send them to join you, if that’s as you’d like it.”

Nothing. Arlen’s head ached and his throat was dry and now everything in the world seemed gray and wrapped in mist except for those brown eyes. He felt the bark of the mangrove root rough under his palm and tried to focus on that but couldn’t, and abruptly he moved his right hand away from McGrath and let the dead man float free into the water. He drifted away slowly, and his legs sank and his torso rotated until his face had turned away. Arlen caught him and dragged him back and shoved him into the mangrove roots so that he couldn’t drift far. Then he took the Springfield and lifted it, his finger on the trigger.

“All right,” Arlen said, feeling weak. “I gave you a chance, you son of a bitch. Now I’m going to send your boys to join you.”

He leaned around the tree, slid the barrel of the Springfield between two of the roots, and looked back up at the road. The mangroves were some of the best battle cover he’d ever encountered. He didn’t like standing so deep in the water, but the root coverage was dense enough that he knew he was nearly impossible to see, and he had a decent view of the road. To his left he could make out the roof of the shed and part of the cabin beyond, but nothing else. The sheriff’s car was still running where he’d left it. They’d have to head up there soon enough. They’d have to go in search of their father when he didn’t return. Sort of boys the McGraths were, they might have even been able to recognize the gunshots as Tate’s. Could be they figured he’d dispatched with whatever trouble had come their way. But time ticked on, and when he didn’t make his way back up that road, they’d know that it hadn’t been so easy, and they’d come for him.

Arlen’s fatigue drained away as he waited, the physical effects of the attempt to connect with McGrath’s ghost easing. Damn it, he’d thought it might work. A wild idea, to be sure, but on a day such as this, when all he’d known to be true had blown apart beneath the mortar shells of firsthand experience, wild ideas had seemed possible. Just because you can reach us doesn’t mean we’re required to help, Tolliver had whispered from the beyond, and it had been the truth. But Arlen had thought, had hoped, that perhaps he could coerce such help.

McGrath hadn’t answered him, though, hadn’t heeded his request or even allowed proof that whatever form of him remained could hear Arlen at all.

Come on, he thought, searching the road for McGrath’s sons. Come on, damn it, let’s get on with this.

The mosquitoes buzzed around him and drank of his blood and he forced himself not to react. The boys were out there somewhere, and they knew this swamp far better than he did.

He finally saw them. Saw one at least. And when he did, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of true admiration. This man, this boy, he moved through the woods as quiet as a snake. He was coming up through the water just outside the reeds, and even though he was moving steadily, he’d somehow avoided Arlen’s eyes until just now, when he was halfway down the length of the road. He held a shotgun in his hands, just above the waterline, and he shifted sideways here and there to avoid obstructions that Arlen couldn’t even see. He was nearing the place where Arlen had once hidden in the reeds. He’d detected it somehow, had looked from a great distance away and spotted some small disturbance there that told him it was an area of danger. Unlike his father, he no longer trusted the sheriff’s car, not after the gunfire.

The water eddied around Arlen, and Tate McGrath’s corpse shifted in it slightly, his legs bobbing against Arlen’s back, trying to sink but prevented by the roots below. As his father’s body floated in the water, the boy moved on, moved like a creature of the swamp, and that, of course, was exactly what he was. Arlen watched him and thought that in his own way this boy was very much like Paul-gifted, truly and deeply gifted, at a very particular craft.

It was almost a shame that he had to die.

Arlen lowered his cheek to the stock of the Springfield, sighted, and trained the muzzle on the boy’s chest. He was close enough that a headshot was possible, and Arlen thought maybe that’s what he would take, even if conventional wisdom ruled against it. He’d end things quicker that way.

No.

He wasn’t sure he heard the word. A whisper in his brain but so faint, so weak, that at first it seemed like a figment. Then he heard it again, and this time it was clearer and seemed pained, as if the delivery of the word came at a terrible strain. No!

Arlen pulled his head away from the stock of the Springfield and looked back at Tate McGrath’s body. The legs were banging against Arlen, the only form of contact he had with the corpse, and the eyelids had slipped nearly closed. But he was calling to Arlen. He was calling out for a second chance.

Arlen reached out and laid a hand on McGrath’s chest, close to the knife wounds, and whispered, “Come around, did you?”

Don’t take that shot. Don’t.

Arlen slid soundlessly back around the tree, so that he was hidden completely, and, with his hand pressed firmly on the corpse, watched the edges of the world shudder and go gray again.

“I told you I’ll kill them all,” he whispered, his face close to the dead man’s. “I wasn’t lying. You don’t want me to take that shot, you best be prepared to guide me to Paul. It’s the only thing that saves them.”

I will.

“How many are there?”

Three. Only my boys. That’s all. They’re my sons. They’re my-

“Owen Cady was a son,” Arlen whispered.

You’ve settled that. Was me that killed him, and you’ve settled that.

“Do you have Paul? Is he here?”

Yes. Yes, he is here.

“Where? That cabin?”

No.

“Where?” He was talking in the softest whisper he could, but even that was a risk. The trance was intensifying, pulling him in deeper and pushing the real world farther away, and he couldn’t afford to let it go on for long. A few more seconds, at most. If Tate wouldn’t help him in that time, or couldn’t, he’d let him go and kill the first of the sons. He’d have to.

Not the cabin. Other side. The creek. Under the dock.

“Under?” Arlen echoed, his voice barely audible. “He’s dead? You killed him, too, you-”

Alive. In chains. We was waiting on Solomon. He’ll be here soon enough.

Just as Tolliver had promised. He’d also promised that Arlen wouldn’t make it back across that bridge, and the smoke in Arlen’s eyes hadn’t shown him to be a liar. But Paul was alive. That was all he needed to know.

The thought of Rebecca entered his mind then. For a long time it had been held at bay by the action of battle, but now he thought of her driving north, alone, the image of her dead brother lingering in her eyes, and he felt a sense of loss more acute than any he’d felt in his life. It unsteadied him for a moment, but then he squeezed his eyes shut and made himself say, Paul. Had to stay focused. Had to stay at this task. It was the only one left for him, and he’d better do it well.

“You guide me,” Arlen whispered to Tate McGrath. “I know that you can do it; was a dead man who guided me here. You get me to him, and those boys won’t die today.”

Yes. I can guide you.

“Well,” Arlen said, “let’s get to it.”

He released the body then. Leaned back into the trunk of the mangrove and took a few deep breaths as the gray mists that had built around the edges of his eyes drifted free and the world took on clarity again. When he cautiously swung his head out around the trunk and looked for McGrath’s son, he found him now almost to the place where Arlen had killed Tate. He was moving much slower now, taking inventory of the signs ahead of him and shooting occasional glances up at the car. He’d be seeing the blood by now, certainly, the blood and the bullet holes in the windshield, and trying to determine what had happened.

If Tate led Arlen in the way that Owen Cady had, Arlen wouldn’t hear a voice, would operate more through an instinct that wasn’t his at all, moving with confidence but without reasoning. Without known reasoning at least.

He didn’t trust such a technique here. There was a whisper in the back of his mind that said a man like Tate McGrath was not to be trusted dead or alive, and that while he surely wanted to see his sons survive, he’d rather achieve that by watching Arlen perish.

So he reached back to Tate, laid his palm flat on the still-bleeding chest wound, and said, “Where?”

Walk backward. Have to put more distance between Davey and you. He knows these woods better than you, better than anyone. He’ll hear you soon enough, but that shotgun in his hand don’t have much range. If you don’t make much of a sound you’ll be able to circle down and come up behind the cabin. Need to get into the creek on the other side to get to the boy. That’ll take time.

Deeper into the swamp. Some of what the dead man had said made sense, but when Arlen looked up and surveyed the brackish water extending through the trees and into the marsh beyond, he wasn’t sure he liked this plan.

Could just shoot him, then. Say the hell with trying to negotiate with a dead man and kill his son right now, kill this one he’d called Davey and then keep moving and try to take the rest of them. So far he was doing just fine-two for two with Tate and Tolliver.

What Tate had said was true enough, though-his sons knew these woods, and eventually Arlen was bound to run into trouble because of it.

He hesitated only briefly and then began to backpedal, walking deeper into the marsh, moving slowly enough so that his passage was nearly soundless, even with the corpse that floated behind him. He moved in a straight line, so that the large mangrove would continue to shield him from view.

It was foolish, maybe; the awkward extra weight made every maneuver more difficult, but he also had the notion that as soon as the sons located their father’s body, they’d have but one thing on their minds: killing. So long as Tate was missing, they might take a different tack. The idea that there were still two of them out there, unseen, was bothersome. After watching the first of McGrath’s sons move through the water silent as an eel, he felt no degree of confidence in his ability to detect the others before they were upon him.

He was cautious with each step, the Springfield grasped in his right hand and Tate McGrath’s belt in his left as he moved backward. Every now and then he turned to glance over his shoulder at what lay ahead. There was an empty stretch of water, maybe thirty feet across, and then more trees. Looked like the water grew shallow over there, which was tempting because he’d love to be out of it, but that would also make his movements noisier and his ability to tow McGrath’s body nearly impossible. Again he wondered if he was making a fool’s play by trusting Tate’s guidance.

It was just as this thought slid through his mind that Tate’s voice returned, a whisper that came from nowhere but that rang clear in Arlen’s head.

Move left. He’ll be seeing you soon enough otherwise. See the base of that tree what has the split in the trunk? Walk toward it. Get right down in there by the roots and wait a piece. See what he does.

Arlen pulled up short, the corpse floating against his belt, Tate’s mouth open and slack, and then turned to look over his shoulder. He found the tree Tate was indicating but couldn’t imagine how it would prevent his being seen. If anything, it might put him in the son’s sight line.

Get moving, Tate McGrath whispered, and you best do it quick.

There was urgency to his voice, and Arlen decided he had to listen. This was the bargain he’d made, and the time had come to put it to the test. He walked on toward the base of the tree, and as he walked he turned so he was moving sideways, tugging Tate alongside him. He could no longer see Davey in the reeds, but he could make out the top of the sheriff’s car.

Go on, Tate said, close in now.

Each time he spoke the world tightened on Arlen, the edges going gray, the hum coming back to his ears. He didn’t like it much, wished the old bastard would stop trying to communicate. Arlen was headed exactly where he needed to be, only a few steps from the tangled roots of yet another mangrove…

He was one stride away when one of those roots moved. For an instant he froze, and then he saw another shift, the roots sliding among one another, and he realized that they weren’t roots at all.

They were snakes.

Four of them at least, maybe more, a nest of water moccasins coiled at the base of this tree, the tree to which Tate McGrath had urged him. He tried to take a step back, but he was too close, the evil little creatures felt threatened now, and the first snake slid down out of the roots and struck.

It caught Tate McGrath’s neck. Arlen didn’t know what sort of senses snakes had beyond vision, but it was as if this one had smelled human flesh and assumed it was the enemy, had been unable to tell the dead from the living. Its fangs sunk into the side of McGrath’s neck, just below his dead eyes and just inches above Arlen’s hand.

The first miss was enough.

Arlen twisted the dead man in the water so that the body was between him and the snakes and watched as two more moccasins came down out of the roots and struck with stunning speed. One caught the corpse’s shoulder and one the arm as the first of them pulled back and struck a second time in the neck.

Arlen snatched Tolliver’s pistol from McGrath’s belt, praying that the water hadn’t left it useless, and then he took aim and fired.

It was mighty close range. He blew off the head of the closest snake, the one on McGrath’s arm, then turned and fired at the one floating just off McGrath’s shoulder as it struck forward again, this time coming at Arlen. The shot caught the fleshy body solid and dropped it into the water no more than a foot from Arlen, but still the jaws snapped, so he fired again, blowing the snake clean in half this time. By the time he turned to the one that had struck first, it was gone. He felt a cold, horrible fear-It’s under the water, it’s coming right at me, I’ll feel those fangs any second-but then he saw the ripple ten feet away, watched as the snake glided into the swamp. The roots were empty now, all others gone as well, and Arlen’s flesh prickled as he pictured them in the water that surrounded him.

He waded clear of the mangroves so he could see the road. Tate McGrath’s son was standing in the reeds just where his father had died, and he’d turned and lifted the shotgun. When he saw Arlen, he fired. Tate had been telling the truth about one thing: the shotgun didn’t have much range. It blew bark off the trees well ahead of them, but nothing touched Arlen as he lifted the Springfield and took aim.

Tate’s whisper came again, urgent, clear: No!

“You had your chance,” Arlen said aloud, and then he put his cheek to the gunstock, sighted, and pulled the trigger.

The sound was shatteringly loud in the still swamp, and McGrath’s boy let out a cry as he fell. He was able to let out a cry because Arlen had sighted low instead of high and blown out the boy’s legs. He was down now, down in the water and the reeds, but he was alive. He moaned and thrashed, but he did not scream again. As Arlen watched, the boy pulled himself deeper into the reeds, seeking cover. Then he put a hand out and grasped for the shotgun.

That, Arlen thought, again with some measure of admiration, is a damn soldier right there. That’s a warrior.

And then Arlen fired again, one round into the reeds. He didn’t hit anything, but the hand jerked away and the gun sank, leaving the boy unarmed.

Behind Arlen, Tate McGrath’s body floated free, the flesh on the side of his neck already puffed with venom. Arlen reached out and grabbed his foot and pulled him closer. The minute he touched him, his brain was racked with the single most terrible sound he’d ever heard-a dead man’s howl.

It came at him from the unknown just as Tate’s whisper had before, but this was a cry, a shout of anguished pain, and Arlen jerked his hand free as if McGrath’s foot had seared it. For a moment he stood where he was, waist-deep in the water, holding the Springfield and searching the rest of the swamp. When he saw nothing, he reached out again, tentatively this time. When his hand touched McGrath’s calf, he said, “I told you, you bastard. It was up to you. Still is. I can see him now, and I can kill him. You know how easy I can kill him.”

The boy was trying to push out of sight into the reeds but couldn’t, and Arlen watched him twist and moan and said, “I was told that love lingers. I suppose you didn’t have enough of it.”

Don’t, McGrath’s ghost said. Don’t kill him. Don’t you kill my boy.

“You walked me into a nest of snakes. I’ll kill them all now. I’ll kill every son you have left.”

No. I’ve told you where he is. You can find him. I’ll guide you-

“You won’t guide me to shit,” Arlen said. He’d ducked low because as McGrath talked his vision faded again, and though the wounded boy couldn’t do him harm, the others well could. He had no time for this.

I’ll tell you how, McGrath whispered. You got to use Davey. It’s the only chance you have. You’ll never leave this swamp without him. They’ll kill you.

“Use him?”

Get to him quick, and keep him alive. His brothers won’t kill you if it means his life. That’s the only-

Arlen released him and shoved him free, because the world was going too gray and the hum in his ears too loud. McGrath bobbed in the water, twisting and sinking, the side of his neck and face already grotesquely bloated with venom. Arlen watched him drift away, then looked back at the road and realized that in the last moment Tate McGrath had told him the truth.

Having that wounded boy as a hostage was his best chance.

Love lingered, all right. Tate McGrath had just needed a bit of convincing.

54

THE BOY MCGRATH had called Davey was not making a sound as he lay in the reeds. Arlen was certain he wasn’t dead; Arlen had probably cost him the use of a leg, maybe the leg itself if this water was as filthy as it looked, but he hadn’t shot to kill. Anybody else, he’d have thought perhaps the silence was due to a blackout from pain, but with this young man he imagined otherwise. He was faking death, probably, holding silent and willing the pain aside as he hid there like an animal caught in a trap and tried to think of a way out. His way out was in his brothers. He knew that, and so did Arlen. The only difference was the boy knew where they were, too. Arlen had not the faintest damn idea, and because of that he knew he had to move fast.

He splashed through the mangroves, heedless of the noise because it was long past the time when noise mattered. With every step he thought he saw snakes. If there were any, though, they didn’t strike. He was twenty feet from the reeds when the first shot came.

A rifle, and not a large one. Maybe a.22, some old varmint gun. It had a dry, sharp crack, not a powerful sound like the Springfield. The bullet it fired, though, was plenty hot and plenty painful when it found Arlen’s shoulder.

It burned a furrow between his left shoulder and his neck, and the pain sent him stumbling face-first into the water, and that was probably all that saved him from the next shot. He’d been looking left as he ran, up toward the houses, and had seen no one. Whoever had taken that shot was mighty fine with a rifle. Fine and cocky-they’d been looking to take a headshot and had damn near succeeded. Matter of inches.

When he hit the water, he kept moving his legs, driving forward through the mud and into the nearest cluster of mangrove roots. Two more shots came in quick succession, but they caught only the roots.

He came up spitting water and gasping with pain. He could feel hot blood on his neck and chest but didn’t look at the wound, turned quickly and fired the Springfield twice in the direction of the shots. It was blind shooting, useless shooting, painful shooting, and he stopped himself before pulling the trigger a third time, finally realizing that it was the last cartridge he had in this Springfield. The second, the one he’d used to kill Tolliver, was up in the weeds with three rounds left in it, but he had to get there first.

The tree sheltering him was one of the closest to the road. He pushed deep into the roots, and the absence of gunfire told him that the tree screened him for now, and whoever was taking those shots knew better than to waste bullets.

He looked into the reeds and found Davey McGrath, hunkered in the ditch with his right leg bent sideways, a painfully bright and clean bone showing amid all the red. The Springfield had been built to do damage, and built well. It was a gory wound, to be sure, but there was no smoke in his eyes-just rage.

This was the oldest of the remaining sons. Probably twenty years old. Arlen remembered him from the night they’d come to the Cypress House. He lay on his side now with his cheek in the mud and took fast, shallow breaths and kept his eyes on Arlen. He never looked at the wounded leg.

Arlen turned and pointed the rifle at him and said, “Call out to your brothers, boy. Call out and tell them to cease fire.”

He didn’t answer. The shotgun was gone, down in the water that separated them. Arlen saw for the first time that he had a knife in his right hand. He was trying to hide it in the reeds.

“That knife might kill me if I get over there,” Arlen said, “but this rifle will kill you without the trip. And you know what? It’s not going to stop with you.”

Still no answer. Just that rapid breathing and the flat eyes. Arlen glanced down and saw the blood coursing over his own chest, then shook his head.

“It bleeds bad,” he said, “but not fast enough. You ain’t going to outlast me. And all I want, all I’ve come for, is that boy you all have chained up under the dock. It’s a simple thing.”

He gave him another moment even though by now he knew there would be no answer, and then he let out a holler. The pain made his voice even louder than intended. It echoed through the swamp woods.

“Listen here-your brother, this boy Davey, he is alive. I’m facing him right now with a Springfield rifle in my hands and a finger on the trigger. I don’t want to kill him. But if you don’t start down that road, I surely will.”

There was no answer but a crackle of thunder. The wound on the top of Arlen’s shoulder was throbbing now, and the rifle felt heavy in his hands. This thing needed to end, and soon.

“Y’all have thirty seconds,” he bellowed. “And if you don’t think he’s alive, I’m plenty ready to make him scream to prove it.”

The wind picked up and put a tremble over the surface of the water.

“Twenty seconds,” Arlen called. His dilemma was made worse by the fact that this damned boy wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t cry out to his brothers. They had no proof that he was alive. Arlen expected they’d need such proof to lay down their weapons, if indeed they did.

“Son,” he said, looking the wounded boy in the eye and speaking low, “your father’s last wish was that I let you live. I told him I’d keep it if I could. You’re going to hinder that? You want your brothers to die, too?”

Davey McGrath lifted his head and spat at Arlen.

Arlen nodded. “Fair enough,” he said, and then he drew Tolliver’s pistol from his belt, aimed, and fired.

He’d wanted to put the bullet in the boy’s thigh, same leg but higher, but it worked out even better than he’d planned. He missed by a touch, and the bullet scorched over the edge of the leg. Didn’t do much damage, but it did some hurting, enough that even this tough little bastard couldn’t bite down on the scream that rose. He cried out and then tried to twist as if to cover the wound with his palm. When he did it, his mangled lower leg shifted and caused even greater pain, and this time the scream was louder.

The shots came then, two guns involved this time. Arlen expected they would. Even if they didn’t have an angle on him, the sound of their brother’s scream would make them waste some bullets. He pushed as far down into the roots as he could and listened as bullets cracked into the tree behind him and drilled into the water in front of him, some coming far closer than he’d thought possible. They were awfully good shots.

They didn’t push it long, though. Knew that they couldn’t hit him, and knew a lot of useless fire wasn’t going to help their brother. If anything, he stood a greater chance of being hit by a wild shot than Arlen.

“You heard him!” Arlen bellowed as more thunder rolled and a few drops of rain began to fall. “He’s still alive, and I’m still shooting. The next one I fire will be the last in his direction! Now put your weapons down and come up the center of the road. If you want Davey here alive, you do it now!”

This time they came. Didn’t seem like they spent much time conferring on it either. When they stepped into view they had their hands lifted, no weapons in them. Arlen rose up out of the roots of the mangrove, dripping with water and mud and blood, and pointed the Springfield at them.

“Stop walking,” he called. They stopped. From here they looked so much alike it was as if he had double vision. Same height, same frame, same stance. It was a bloodthirsty family, Arlen thought, but a close-knit one all the same. They’d do what was needed for their brother.

“I’m here for one reason,” Arlen said. “Paul Brickhill, the boy you’ve got chained under the dock.”

If they wondered how he knew Paul’s location, they didn’t show it. Neither of them spoke or moved, just waited.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Arlen said. “One of you is going down to get him and bring him to me. The other is going to stand right where he is. I’ll wait five minutes before I set to killing.”

There was a hesitation as they looked at each other, holding some silent conference.

“Something you’d better keep in mind,” Arlen said. “Paul Brickhill doesn’t mean a damn thing to either of you. I expect the three of you mean plenty to each other. So ask yourself if any of this is worth dying over.”

Neither answered, but the one on the left broke off and went back down the road. These were the younger brothers, Arlen knew-they’d looked no more than fifteen when they’d come up to the Cypress House. Looked like the many boys he’d worked with at Flagg Mountain, in fact.

It took the boy a long time. Too long. The wound in Arlen’s shoulder was becoming more painful with every passing moment, and he was having trouble keeping the Springfield up. How in the world could eight pounds possibly feel so heavy? He shifted his gaze from the boy in the road to the one in the reeds, but neither moved. The wounded one had closed his eyes, his face drained of color. Suffering. Arlen thought about their father, floating dead back there in the swamp, and felt a sudden, savage hate. Who raised boys like this? Put guns in their hands and knives on their belts and sent them out into the world as killers? He was glad he’d dispatched with Tate. Had probably been far too late to save his sons from the life he’d set them on, but he was glad all the same.

When the boy finally reappeared, with Paul Brickhill walking at his side, Arlen almost dropped the rifle. He’d been struggling with it anyhow, but the sight of Paul took strength from him that the bullet had not. He felt his breath slide out of his lungs, and the Springfield almost went with it.

“Bring him here,” Arlen said, and then he waded through the water and fought his way past the reeds, staying well clear of Davey McGrath and the knife in his hand, and up to the road.

Paul Brickhill was pale and covered with dirt. His nose had been broken and there was dried blood on his face, and he was taking halting steps, as if his legs and maybe his ribs were hurting him, but he was alive. He was alive.

Arlen said, “Paul, come here and take these handcuffs.”

He shuffled past, looking at Arlen with a face caught between amazement and horror. Arlen had a sense that anyone who saw him would be horrified. Covered in mud and water and with blood flowing freely along his neck and down his chest, a rifle in his hands and a pistol tucked into his belt. Arlen kept the rifle pointed at the McGrath boys as Paul took the handcuffs. The McGraths watched with sullen hatred.

“You’ll want to tend to your brother,” Arlen said. “But I don’t mean to leave one of you to do that and the other to follow us. Paul, you fasten that one’s right hand to the other’s left. That’ll leave them moving well enough, but it won’t make things easy on them.”

He held the Springfield on them as Paul did as instructed.

“Get in the sheriff’s car now,” he told Paul.

Paul said, “All right,” the first words he’d spoken, and then he was out of sight and it was just Arlen on the road facing the McGraths.

“Davey isn’t going to die,” Arlen said. “But he’s bad hurt. Do what you can for him. There will be men headed this way soon. The law. They’ll see to your brother, but I expect they’ll have some reckoning to do with you as well.”

Neither of them answered. They looked every bit as mean as the water moccasins that had sunk fangs into their father’s corpse.

“You want to know who’s responsible for it all,” Arlen said, “you need look no farther than Solomon Wade. Your daddy thought of him as a friend, I’m sure. But he’s the one who dug your daddy’s grave. Remember that.”

He backed up, keeping the gun on them, and fumbled the door open. Fell in beside Paul and said, “Time to drive the hell out of here, wouldn’t you say?”

He put the sheriff’s car into gear, backed it up, and then turned it and drove away. The McGrath brothers were paying no mind to the car, busy instead with climbing down into the ditch to find their eldest. Once he was cared for, they’d go after their father, Arlen knew. They wouldn’t like what they found.

“There’s blood all over this car,” Paul said.

“Yes,” Arlen said. “The sheriff didn’t want to let me borrow it.”

The rain had begun to fall now, steady but quiet, and Arlen got the wipers going, then removed a waterlogged handkerchief and pressed it to the wound on his shoulder. Paul looked over at him.

“Owen is-”

“I know,” Arlen said. “We found him. They’d hung him upside down from the roof.”

Paul shuddered.

“How bad did it go?” Arlen asked. “You’ve taken a beating, clearly.”

“Went fast, that’s all. One minute it was only Tolliver out in the yard and the next they were on us.” His voice was close to breaking when he said, “It’s all on me, Arlen. It’s on-”

“Stop,” Arlen said. “There’ll be no more of that. It’s on Wade and these bastards who work for him. None other.”

“Where’s Rebecca?”

“Driving north,” Arlen said. “I sent her alone. Then I came for you.”

“How?” Paul said. “How did you do this?”

“Wasn’t easy” was all Arlen could answer. He thought of those gray trances and the harsh whispers of dead men and the snakes coming at him through the water, and he shook his head. The idea that he was in this car now with the boy at his side was incredible. Because he’d known from the start that he was going to die out there, and yet…

He looked up then. Raised his eyes and shifted his face to the mirror. What he saw chilled even the searing pain of the bullet wound in his shoulder.

There was still smoke in his eyes.

How? He dropped back into his seat, lips parted and mind spinning. How in the hell could it still be there? He’d survived every challenge, taken every comer, was driving toward safety. The wound in his shoulder throbbed, but it wasn’t a killing wound.

“What?” Paul said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Arlen said. He was remembering the battlefields of France, though, remembering the Belleau Wood and what he’d discovered there. The dead couldn’t save themselves. He could help those men with smoke in their eyes, but they couldn’t ever help themselves.

He said, “Hey-look at me.”

Paul turned to face him. He was a wreck, all right, covered with dirt and dried blood, but his eyes were clear. Nothing but deep brown. Not even a hint of those gray wisps.

“All right,” Arlen said softly. “Let’s keep driving, son. Let’s not stop.”

It was no more than a minute later that they rounded a bend and the bridge came into view and they saw the roadblock. The convertible was parked where Arlen had left it, and Tolliver’s body still dangled from the trees, but another car had been pulled in sideways on the other side of the bridge, blocking any attempt at exit. It was a steel-gray Ford coupe.

55

FOR A MOMENT they sat in silence and stared ahead. Arlen was squinting to see through the fractured windshield, and finally the bullet holes rang a bell in his mind and he said, “Get down, Paul. Get real low, out of sight.”

The shots Arlen had taken at Tolliver had been clean and simple. He didn’t want to leave Paul exposed to the same.

“Pass me that rifle,” he said.

Paul handed him the Springfield. It felt good to have it in his hands again, but hard in his mind was the knowledge that he had one cartridge left. The other rifle was still in the weeds down there with the McGraths. In the moment he’d seen Paul, he’d forgotten it. All he’d wanted to do then was move, get the hell away from this place and do it fast. Now he was wishing for those extra rounds.

No one was in sight, though. The rain fell gently and pattered off the hood of the sheriff’s car. Paul was crouched low, keeping his head below the dash.

“That’s Solomon Wade’s car,” he whispered.

“Yes, it is.”

“And that body in the trees, that was the sheriff.”

Indeed it was. Tolliver’s body was swinging more vigorously now.

Paul said, “Did you-”

“Yes,” Arlen said. He was still staring at the Ford. It didn’t look as if there were anyone inside. The headlights were on, pointing down at the swollen, swift-running creek, but inside there was nothing but shadow. The rain was falling harder, making visibility difficult. Arlen’s left side was wet and warm. Blood.

He was feeling a touch dizzy and nauseated, the pain working at him, and when he thought of the three McGrath boys back there, with vengeance in their hearts, he knew that he didn’t want to wait this game out. Wade had come down and parked his car in a way that blocked the bridge, but he didn’t appear to be in it. Perhaps he’d gone ahead on foot, or maybe he’d had a boat in the creek. Maybe he’d been accompanied by someone in another car and they’d taken that one and headed back up the road. Arlen wasn’t short on maybes. Just on time.

The smell of blood was heavy in the car, his own blending with Tolliver’s. He wiped a hand across his mouth and then looked in the mirror again. The smoke was storm-cloud gray now, dark and dense.

“I may need your help,” he said to Paul, watching the smoke waft from his own eye sockets. “I may not be able to do this alone.”

“Okay. Just tell me what to do.”

That was the question. And when he looked back at Paul and saw his clear eyes, he found himself shaking his head.

“No,” he said. “Actually, you just sit here, all right? You sit low. Even lower than now. I don’t think they know you’re here. My guess is, anything happens out there, they’ll drive on by you.”

He hadn’t been sure of this until he said the words. Now that they were out of his mouth, though, he could almost see it, was so certain that he found himself nodding slightly. If Wade thought Arlen was alone in this car, he’d drive on by and head toward McGrath’s. There was nothing about a bullet-riddled car that was worth his time. Not with the situation he was trying to handle today.

“I think he’ll drive on past,” Arlen said, “and if he does, you let him go. You don’t move, hear? If any car comes toward you, do not move.”

“Arlen, what are you saying? Don’t go out there and-”

“Just sit low and watch your ass,” Arlen said. “Anything goes sour, use this pistol.”

He passed him Tolliver’s pistol. There would be at least a shot in it yet. McGrath’s gun was still tucked in his belt, floating out there amid the mangroves and the snakes. If gunplay lay ahead, Arlen and Paul didn’t have much left for it.

“I’m going to go move that car,” Arlen said.

“What? He might be back there, Arlen. He might be just on the other-”

“Well, if he is,” Arlen said, “he doesn’t seem to be inclined to move the car for us. So we’ll have to do it ourselves.”

For a moment Arlen just sat there in silence in the pounding rain, and then he checked the mirror one last time, as if something might have magically changed. This time he didn’t stare at the smoke for long.

“If Wade drives this way,” he said, “you let him go, and you count to one hundred, all right? Count nice and slow. When you hit one hundred, you get behind this wheel and drive. Drive as fast as you can, and as far.”

He popped open the door before Paul had a chance to answer and stepped out into the mud. The Springfield banged against his thigh as he swung the door shut, taking care not to look back inside, not to give any indication that he hadn’t come this way alone. He held the rifle in his good hand and walked up to the center of the road and on toward the bridge in the rain.

Still no one was visible, and now he thought he could make out the interior of the Ford pretty well. If Wade was here, he must be out of the car and on the other side, using it for cover.

He paused when he reached Tolliver’s body. For a moment he was tempted to reach out and take hold of it and try to get the dead man to speak. There was nothing to be gained, though. Tolliver would offer no more aid out of this life than he had in it. Ahead the rain pounded off the Ford, and the headlights glowed through the trees to where the creek continued to rise on its banks.

His right foot came down on the first plank of the bridge with a hollow clapping sound. He paused again and now he swung the rifle up and pointed it at the Ford. What he wouldn’t give for a boxful of cartridges. He’d pound shots through that car until it was more holes than metal, shred Wade if he was back there waiting. But he had just the one round left.

He crossed the bridge with the Springfield up, doing his best to support most of its weight with his right arm because his left was no longer working particularly well. There seemed to be a numbness spreading down from the shoulder. The Ford was no more than twenty feet away, and now Arlen was certain there was no one inside. He could see through the windows to the trees on the other side. He could also see his own reflection back here in the shadows-a skeleton with a rifle in hand.

He stopped while he was still on the bridge, ten paces from the car. He’d studied the shadows underneath, searching for signs of a man hidden there, and couldn’t see any. Now he steadied the rifle as much as he could and called out, “Wade? It’s done. Let us pass.”

For a long moment he could hear nothing but the rain. He thought, Maybe he’s actually gone, maybe it’s as simple as pushing that car to the side of the road, and then the shot came.

There was no time for recognition or understanding-the bullet entered his back and blew through his chest and drove him forward. He pulled the trigger on the Springfield as he fell, an instinctive move, and his final bullet merely blew out the window of the Ford, taking Arlen’s skeleton image with it. Then the rifle was out of his hands and he was down on the boards of the bridge.

He tried to move, tried to hide, just as any animal in its last moments will. He made it as far as the rail on the north side, thinking he could slip off the bridge and into the creek, and then he knew it was hopeless and he stopped moving and turned back to see Solomon Wade standing before him.

Under the bridge, he thought. He hid under the bridge, but on the opposite side of his car. Just where he should have been. Just where you should have thought to look.

It didn’t matter now. Arlen’s blood was running freely across the boards, and Wade was walking toward him with a pistol in his hand. He wore that white Panama hat, rain shedding off its brim. He smiled when his eyes met Arlen’s.

“You liked that trick with my sheriff, did you?” he said. “Hanging him up to greet me. You’ll wish you hadn’t done that.”

Arlen didn’t answer. The pain was radiant right now, and his blood looked very bright on the worn planks of the bridge.

“Don’t you go so easy,” Wade said. “Wanted to drop you, not kill you easy. You’re going to beg me for another shot. Beg.”

Wade had never so much as turned to glance back at the sheriff’s car. The last lobe of Arlen’s numb brain that retained capacity for thought registered that and whispered, Good. He doesn’t know. He’ll drive right past Paul without a look.

Wade stepped over Arlen and picked up the Springfield. He hefted it, gave it one curious glance, and then tossed it over the bridge and into the creek.

“Your mistake,” he said, “was in doubting my reach. You’re not the first man to have schemed against Solomon Wade. Won’t be the last, I’m certain. But you know what? I’m still standing now, and you’re down there choking on your own blood. That’s how it goes. That’s always how it will go.”

Wade shoved his pistol into his coat pocket and then withdrew a knife. It had a six-inch blade with a hook at the end, the sort you used for gutting deer. When Arlen saw it, he closed his eyes.

Picture Paul, he told himself, picture him driving fast and far. Driving north. Chasing the coast as far as he can go, all the way to Maine. Rebecca’s waiting there. He can find her.

Wade knelt beside him, said, “No, no, no. You stay awake, tough boy. You stay awake for this.”

You should have told Paul the town, Arlen thought sadly. The place where she’s going. Camden. You should have told him, so they could find each other.

Wade registered the sound of the engine before Arlen did. One second he was kneeling over Arlen’s body with the knife in his hand, and the next he was gone, on his feet. The sound was clear in Arlen’s ears, but it had no meaning, not right away. Then he got it. A car. Coming this way, and coming fast.

No, he thought, anguished, and tried to lift his head. No, Paul, damn it, all you had to do was wait…

The sheriff’s car barreled on toward them, the engine howling and the tires spraying mud as it neared the bridge. Solomon Wade took one step back, into the center of the bridge, cleared the pistol from his belt, and began to pull the trigger.

Arlen opened his mouth to scream, but all that came out was blood.

Wade looked entirely calm as he worked the trigger. Looked calm for his first shot, and his second, and his third, and only then, when the front wheels of the sheriff’s car hit the bridge with a bang, did his face show any concern. He fired once more, and then the trigger clicked on empty, and he turned to run. The edge of the bridge, and the safety on either side of it, was three steps away.

He made two of them.

The car missed Arlen, stretched on his side beneath the rail, by maybe a foot. It might have been less. It did not miss Solomon Wade.

He was diving to his left when the hood caught him. The impact threw him into the air as the sheriff’s car came to a squealing stop with its front wheels on the road and its back still on the bridge. The side of Wade’s head smacked the top of the windshield and spun him sideways, and he landed on the bridge near Arlen.

The door opened and Paul ran out of the car with the pistol in his hand. He went to Arlen first, but Arlen called him off. There was blood in his mouth when he spoke, but he got the words out.

“Shoot him.”

Paul turned and looked down at the man he’d just hit. Solomon Wade’s neck seemed to point in two directions at once, and the side of his face was a fractured, bleeding mess.

“He’s dead,” Paul said.

“Shoot him,” Arlen said again, and blood dripped from his lips.

Paul shot him. Once in the head. The body jolted and then was still. Paul came back to Arlen and dropped to his knees on the bridge. He looked at the wound and then pulled his shirt off and pressed it against Arlen’s ribs. His face was very pale.

“You’ll make it,” Paul said, but his voice was shaking. “It went in below the ribs. That’s good, isn’t it? You’ll be fine. You’re going to be-”

He was talking too much and hearing too little. Arlen was trying to speak, trying so hard to get the words out, but it had become a terrible strain. Finally the boy heard him trying. He leaned closer.

“What?”

“Camden,” Arlen said.

“Camden?” Paul echoed, his face registering nothing, and then he looked away from Arlen again and back down at the wound, and his lips pressed into a grimace as he began to work with his fingers. He was no longer paying any attention to Arlen, but that was fine.

He’d heard the name.

Camden.

He had heard it. Arlen was sure of that. They would find each other.