Read Blood, Ash, and Bone Online
Authors: Tina Whittle
He arched an eyebrow. “And it is?”
“Remember, this is a total shot in the dark.” I pulled out my little faux map. “Okay, so his wife finds a piece of deciphered code. One word—boneyard. She assumes he meant a cemetery. But look.”
I pointed to the map. “Here’s where his body was found. But consider the flow, factor in the tides, and I’m guessing he was somewhere in this vicinity when he went in the water.”
I pointed further up the map. Trey peered closer.
“Wassaw Island. Is there a graveyard there?”
“No. But there is a beach littered with driftwood logs and dead pine trees. Locals call it the Boneyard. And the only way to get there is by boat.”
“But he didn’t have a boat.”
“I’m still working on that part of the theory.”
Trey cocked his head. “Have you shared this theory with the authorities?”
“I’m coming into this theory as we speak. But I’m willing to call it in, see what happens.”
We both knew what would happen. It would go onto someone’s desk and they’d see it in the morning. But that was what law-abiding citizens did—they followed official channels, washed their hands of the responsibility. Trey was one of these citizens.
Except that Trey wasn’t picking up his phone. And his finger was tapping the desktop.
His eyes met mine. “All right. We alert the authorities, share our information. And then what?”
I sat on the edge of the desk. “Normally I would say, let’s go check out the island and see for ourselves. Unfortunately, it’s almost dark. There’s no getting on Wassaw Island legally after dark. And normally I would say screw that, let’s chance it. But it’s a National Wildlife Refuge, which makes trespassing a federal crime, and the ATF does not look upon those favorably. Inspector Cranky-Pants would snatch my federal firearms license in a heartbeat.”
Trey listened, very intently. “Go on.”
“So while I’m usually the run-around-sneak-over kind of girl, not this time. But believe me, if this rumor’s spreading, and if anybody else makes the connection I just did, that island will be crawling with treasure hunters in the morning.”
“And the scene will be destroyed.”
“Definitely, especially if that next storm flares up tonight like they’re predicting. Because nobody’s getting on without a special permit, and those are scarce as hen’s teeth.”
Trey eyed me, arms folded. “Why would he have gone at night?”
“Because his wife described the map as having strange symbols on it, including a moon. And last night was the full moon.”
“Wouldn’t he have been afraid of getting caught?”
“Not if he had treasure on the brain.”
Trey looked at me, his eyes catching the light like a scalpel. “And there’s only one way to Wassaw Island?”
“Only one way—by boat. And during the day, Dee Lynn would be pulling in the dock lines and heading over. But at night? Like I said, that’s a no-go.”
He pulled out his phone. “Dee Lynn owns her own boat, correct?”
“Yes. But like I keep saying, there’s no way…who are you calling?”
He held up a finger. A crisp formal voice at the other end of the phone answered. Trey reached for a pen and yellow pad.
“Hello, Grace, this is Trey Seaver. Is the senator available? Yes, I’ll hold.” He covered the phone’s mouthpiece with three fingers. “There are certain benefits to…how did you put it? Being pimped out?”
***
Within five minutes, he had a Department of Natural Resources special permit waiting for us at the ranger station. Trey didn’t excel at small talk, but no matter—he’d apparently done duty for the senator during his dignitary protection days with Atlanta’s SWAT team. And the senator remembered. And was grateful.
Trey made one final notation on the paper. “Thank you. I appreciate this.” He looked up then, his eyes on mine. There was a sexy little crinkle at the corners. “No, Senator, it’s nothing official. Simply a favor for my girlfriend.”
Trey had the right skill set for eating crabs—patient, with nimble fingers and singular focus. He’d dressed in clean workout clothes, storing his second set in a dry bag along with a change of clothes for me. Everything of his was fresh from the laundry despite my warning that clean clothes and blue crabs did not mix.
The evening lingered warm after the chilly morning, the sky purpled and rippled with fishtail clouds. The planked floors of the tiny waterside restaurant felt like a boat deck beneath my feet, and the breeze smelled of brine and pluff mud. We sat at a table near the marsh, pedestal fans keeping the sand gnats at bay, and watched the dock.
“Is she here?” Trey said.
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
I watched him work at the crustaceans, white shirt sleeves rolled up, juice running down his wrists. He’d taken his watch off.
I grinned at him. “You look positively bohemian. Almost—”
I bit back the word. Almost normal. It was disconcerting to remember that he wasn’t. I reached too quickly for my beer and knocked it over. Trey caught it in one deft move, then placed it upright on the table without spilling a single drop.
“What’s the name of Dee Lynn’s boat?” he said.
“Storm Season.”
He nodded toward the dock. The boat was pulling up, Dee Lynn at the wheel high above the deck. It was a thirty-foot sport fisher, an older craft tricked out with the latest in artifact hunting technology.
I stood. “Time to go, sailor. Our ride’s here.”
***
Dee Lynn steered us down the Wilmington River, the islands and hammocks passing on both sides. She kept her eyes straight ahead, her ponytail swinging almost to the waistband of her khakis.
“Right fine boyfriend you got there.”
I turned my face into the wind. “I know.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“I manage that just fine.”
She laughed. “He’s in there messing with the side-scan sonar, like a kid with a new toy.”
“I’m not surprised. Trey’s a city dude all the way, but he’s got a knack for graphics. Maps and charts, drawings and diagrams and blueprints.”
“Treasure maps?”
“Those too, I’ll bet.”
Dee Lynn’s eyes were bright. “I swear, Tai, if we pull Confederate gold out of the dirt—”
“We call the proper authorities.”
“Don’t spit the law at me, I know it backwards and forwards. I also know it’s pretty gray on this particular topic.”
“Don’t you go catching gold fever. We’re here because Trey called in a favor. I’m on my best behavior, and you’d better be too.”
She grinned and took the boat into a tight turn, sloshing up a wake. “Good behavior doesn’t run in our family, leastways not amongst the women. But I’ll do my best.”
***
Wassaw is a barrier island just southeast of Savannah, between Little Tybee and Ossabaw. We were headed for the spit of sand on the northeastern tip, where the trails started. When the wind blew or the current was high, it was a choppy passage, even in a boat the size of Dee Lynn’s.
But this night was easy. The next band of thunderstorms had yet to blow in, so the moon rose fat and almost full against a deepening indigo sky. The Blood Moon, it was called, the moon closest to Halloween, when the veil between the worlds is thinnest, they say. My ghost tour bookings had always gone up during the Blood Moon. But tonight it was as innocent as a pat of warm butter, and it would have been easy to dismiss the legends…except that we were following a dead man’s tracks.
Dee Lynn went down to double-check her equipment. She’d packed a kayak full of treasure-hunting gear for us to pull ashore, including a couple of pulse induction metal detectors, plus the more mundane tools of her trade—shovels, plastic bags, hand trowels. She’d let me take the wheel, and Trey stood beside me, scrutinizing every dial and console.
“You know the way?” he said.
“I grew up with a tiller in one hand. Dad loved the water.” I pointed to the left. “That’s Cabbage Island. Once we’re past this curve, you’ll see Tybee in the distance. Skidaway to the right. Soon we’ll be coming up on Dead Man Hammock.”
Trey gave me a look. I shook my head.
“Not making that up. There’s good fishing here, seatrout and redfish especially. Dad and I used to come here all the time.”
I suddenly missed it, all of it, with a deep tidal longing. I was an orphan in this land now. No anchor, no ties. What was I really doing out here on this beautiful night chasing a dead man’s fevered fantasy?
I turned my face into the wet rush of air. Beside me, Trey dropped his duffel bag and did the same.
“It’s very dark,” he said.
“You’ve gotten used to Atlanta. The dark comes solid and fast here. It can catch you off guard, especially when a storm’s on the way.”
“The weather looks clear.”
“Don’t be fooled. We only have a few hours before we have to turn back.”
He didn’t ask any more questions. I kept the silence too, until Dee Lynn returned from the deck and took the wheel.
She handed me a rope. “You still know how to tie a bowline?”
I made a noise. “Please.”
There are no docks on Wassaw. To get to the beach, we’d have to drop anchor and swim to shore, pulling our kayak full of tools behind us. For an unseasoned sailor, it was a perilous endeavor—too small a boat, too inexpert an anchoring, too weak a swimmer. It all added up to drowning far too often.
Dee Lynn surveyed the shoreline. “I don’t know, Tai. Drowning may have been the official cause of death, but it don’t make a lick of sense.”
“His boat got away from him, they say, and he tried to swim out to it. But he overestimated his ability, they say, and didn’t make it.”
“They say? You have doubts too?”
“They never found the boat. And his wife says he didn’t own one, didn’t know anything about them.”
“Mighty suspicious, that.” Dee Lynn shook her head. “Oh well. Back to business. Go get the main anchor. I’ll bring her ’round and set the second.”
***
With Storm Season firmly tethered, Dee Lynn dropped the kayak. Fifty yards away, the beach was flooded with light from the moon, which glowed phosphorescent through the trees. Trey was barefoot already, only a sweatshirt covering the t-shirt and shorts he’d worn for the swim. The rest was in dry bags, to change into when we hit the sand.
He pulled his sweatshirt over his head. I watched him, his skin white in the moonlight.
“You undress like a Chippendale dancer,” I said.
He stuffed the sweatshirt into the dry bag. “I do not.” He peered over the edge of the boat. “Are there alligators?”
“No gators.”
“Sharks?”
“I would never send you into dangerous shark-infested waters.”
He tried to read my face, but the dappled moonlight played across my features like a shifting mask. He stared at me for five seconds, hard. And then he climbed over the edge and slid into the water.
Dee Lynn watched him swim to the equipment-stuffed kayak, then leaned closer and lowered her voice. “You lied to that man.”
“Not a lie. It was what we call ‘technically true but deliberately evasive.’” I pulled my own shirt over my head and stuffed it in the bag. “The sharks won’t bother us unless we bother them. You know that.”
She chuckled and swung herself over the edge.
The Boneyard lay on the eastern shore, inaccessible during high tide, so we waded onto the rippled beach instead, dunes and sea oats tumbling to white sand, dragging the kayak behind us. Over two thousand acres of pine and oak and palm trees all to ourselves.
Dee Lynn consulted her compass. “Come on, you two. Grab your stuff.”
She handed Trey and me our flashlights, showing us how to switch from regular light to black light to signal flare. Compasses next, then radios in case we got separated. Trey noted each piece of equipment with satisfaction. Dee Lynn was as prepared as a Girl Scout, and he approved.
I played the light around the deserted beach. “What do we do?”
“Keep your eyes down. Look for anything out of place—freshly turned dirt, manmade objects, broken tree limbs. There’s been a storm and three tides since he disappeared. You’ll have to look close and thorough.”
Trey’s specialty. He and Dee Lynn moved in the natural searcher’s pattern, within five feet of each other. I followed behind.
The beach was clean of human evidence, the previous night’s rain having beaten the sand into a flat clean plane. It crunched beneath our feet, marbled and pocked in the moonlight, strewn with seaweed clumps. The skitter of crabs sounded like stage whispers from an unseen audience.
Soon the Boneyard lay in front of us, its jagged coastline broken by the stark lines of the downed trees, some lean and gray and eroded smooth, others fresh-fallen. One weather-beaten specimen jutted upright in the water like a ghostly hand, skeletal fingers reaching for the fat moon. The wooded interior of the island lay to the right, crisscrossed by narrow trails.
I moved to Dee Lynn’s side. “So where would you hide treasure?”
“Me? I’d think like a pirate, move inland.”
“So let’s do that.”
“Fine by me. But you gotta know where he started to know where he ended up.”
I looked around the beach. Vast and dark. No way to track Simmons’ movements, no way to predict what he’d been up to or if he’d even made it this far. But my fingertips itched, and not from my usual nicotine withdrawal. If only I had the real map…
Trey touched my elbow. “Tai?”
“Hmmm?”
“Tell me again…what do alligator eyes look like?”
“Shiny red dots.”
He sent the beam of his flashlight into the woods. A single ruby light glittered back. Then he looked at me, one eyebrow raised in accusation.
I laughed. “That’s not a gator.”
“Are you sure?”
“Unless it’s a one-eyed gator that can climb trees, I am totally sure.”
“Then what is it?”
Which was an eminently sensible question.
When we got close to the palm tree, I ran my finger along the bark. A single red triangle winked at me when I played my flashlight over it.
Trey peered closer. “What is it?”
“Reflective marker. The real question is, what’s it marking?”