Chills & Thrills Paranormal Boxed Set (24 page)

When he turned to lead Frank out, he saw the reason for his
prisoner's silence.

"Bastard!" Liz hissed with a venom he'd never ever
heard from her. "You filthy, rotten bastard!"

* * *

Maddie waited for them at the bottom of the trail, and Liz's
rage boiled anew when the woman rushed into her father's arms.

"Frank," she murmured fervidly. "Thank God,
you is safe."

"
Oui, cher
, I am safe. Zacharie care good for
me."

Liz exploded. "Good? He accused you of murder! He
arrested you!"

"Murder?" Maddie repeated.

"He does what he got to, that's all," Frank said.

Liz's head jerked toward Zach. "You had to do this?
Papa wouldn't murder Mama or Jed.
 
That's
crazy. He loved them." She looked back at her father. "Tell him,
Papa, tell him you didn't do it."

"Liz," Zach said. "I didn't arrest Frank. I
don't have that power. I'm just taking him back for formal questioning."
He went for his windbreaker, which he'd left by the supply crates before entering
the cave, and pulled two small clear envelopes from a pocket. "I have
evidence. I found Jed's card case, a scrap of prison uniform . . . behind your
parents' cabin." He waved the envelopes near her face, but she refused to
look.

Her father was still talking, too, talking just as
 
crazy as Zach. "That not what count,
Izzy—"

"Evidence, Liz. And I heard him talking to
someone—"

"What count is you leaving the island before
Ankouer—"

"Stop it! Stop these fairy tales, both of you! There is
no Ankouer. There is no curse. And you're not a killer. Zach has just accused
you of murder. Defend yourself, for God's sake." She whirled toward Zach.
"And nothing you say, nothing, will convince me my father is a
killer!"

Zach's only response was to say her name again, softly,
sadly.

Her father said they'd talk later. "Alone, without the
lawman near. He read me my rights, so meantime I got nothing to say."

Zach became all business. "How did you get here,
Frank?"

"My fishing boat."

Clearly annoyed by the terse answer, Zach barked,
"Where'd you leave it?"

"It be anchored on the east shore."

"We'll pack up and go right away. It's early enough we
can make the Port before dark."

"So you can put Papa in jail?" Liz asked
caustically.

"No gas," Maddie said.

Zach ignored Liz's question. Giving Maddie a doubtful
glance, he turned to Frank. "You didn't bring extra cans?"

"I did,
oui
, but raccoons throw it overboard
while I unload."

"Raccoons?" Liz and Zach asked in tandem. He
caught her gaze for just an instant, but she quickly averted her eyes. Damned
if she'd share even this with him.

Frank nodded. "Most of them cans sink to the bottom,
but I seen the neck of one sticking up near the shore. Them damn animals
wouldn't let me get near it. Middle of the day, too."

"So that's what happened to our pirogue," Zach
murmured, then asked, "Is one can enough to get us back?"

"
Non
."

Zach sighed wearily. "Guess I'll have to dive for the
rest. But I'm eating first."

Under other circumstances, Liz would have felt sorry for
him. Under any other circumstances. But she did go to the crates and rummage
for food, finding dried meat and canned fruit, and the loaf of bread she'd seen
earlier. As soon as the food was out, she went to the rock wall beside her
father, leaning against it to gulp down her meal and ignoring Zach, who sat on
a small boulder a distance away.

Distance . . . precisely what she wanted from him. But even
as she ignored him, even as she ate, her eyes repeatedly glanced in his
direction. When Zach finished eating, he stood up, taking a minute to close his
flask

"I'll dive for those cans now."

"Good plan." She wanted him away from camp for a
while. "Take Maddie with you."

Maddie objected. "I will stay with Frank."

"Zach needs someone to watch for alligators and cotton
mouths."

"You go then!"

"Absolutely not!" Liz snapped.

"Go with Zacharie, Maddie," her father said
quietly.

Liz saw the woman's mouth open to protest again, but she
hesitated, then changed her mind. "Okay."

While Zach and Maddie emptied crates to carry the cans back
in, Liz picked up a pan of water she'd set on the camp stove to boil, and left
the alcove in search of a relatively private place to wash. She felt sticky and
grimy from head to toe, and she stripped down to her underwear to tackle the
dirt as best she could. She'd never get truly clean anyway, and what she'd
really needed was a place to think.

More than anything, she wanted her father to say he hadn't
murdered anyone. Of course, he hadn't, but she needed the denial from his own
lips. How hateful to have even this small doubt, but she couldn't deny his
actions suggested he was losing his grip on reality.

What if he had? No, that was absurd. The possibility
wouldn't have entered her mind if not for Zach's reputation as a thorough
investigator. Why had she read up on him anyway? His company wasn't even
public. But she had, and the information she'd uncovered confirmed he wouldn't
have accused her father without reason.

Sick at heart, she turned for her clothes, just in time to
see Maddie picking up her overalls.

"What are you doing?" she asked sharply, wondering
why she hadn't heard the woman approach.

"Looking for your mama's journal."

Liz stepped forward to snatch the shorts from Maddie's hand,
relieved when she felt hard, square edges. "For what purpose?"

"Ankouer. I want to read on ways to hold him
back."

"You decided to rummage through my clothes without my
permission because you want to hold back a phantom that doesn't exist?"
Liz bent for her T-shirt, tired of Maddie's nonsense, but too weary to get
angry. As she swept the shirt over her head, she added, "even if this
ridiculous fable were true, it doesn't matter. We are leaving soon. Shouldn't
you be helping Zach?"

When the shirt settled around her neck, she found herself
the object of Maddie's stare. "Maybe we leave, girl, maybe we don't. But I
wouldn't count on that man you love so much if I was you."

With that, she swished her colorful skirt around her legs
and flounced off, leaving Liz with no one to question about the meaning of
those words. Seconds later, she dismissed the remark as a product of Maddie's
twisted mind. She had no intentions of counting on Zach. What woman on earth
would trust a man who'd charged her father with killing her mother?

When Liz returned from washing up, neither Zach nor Maddie
were there, and her father was leaning against the cliff, asleep.

She replaced the pan on the camp stove burner to reheat.
While she waited for the steam to rise, her thoughts returned unbidden to
Maddie's remark. For some reason it still bothered her. Why? She tried to put a
finger on the cause of her uneasy belief that Maddie meant something different,
something yet to come. The woman's furtive manner? The secretive look on her
face?

In disgust, she turned away and gathered up a cloth and
towel. Maddie was always furtive and secretive. How could that mean anything?

The water was hot, so she dropped the cloth inside the pan
and walked over to sit beside her father. She nudged him gently and he opened
his eyes.

"How're you feeling?"

"
Tres Bien
." Very good. He didn't look all
that good. Tired and defeated, actually, and his skin had an alarming gray
pallor.

"Do you want a tablet?" As soon as she asked, she
remembered Zach still had the vial.

"My heart is fine. I am tired, just tired."

Yes, she thought, that's probably all it was.

She leaned forward to work a twig out of his tangled hair.
He smiled wanly. "I need a bath, yes?" She pasted a return smile on
her face. "This is a hard place to stay clean."

"
Oui.
"

She tested the water, then wrung out the cloth and began
washing one of his hands. Dirt filled the lines of his knuckles and stained his
calloused fingertips.

Dirty hands.

In more ways than one?

"Why does Zach think you killed Mama and Jed?" she
blurted out. It wasn't the way she'd wanted to ask, but there it was.

"I cannot answer, but if I can, would you
believe?" He took the cloth from her hands. "I think, no, you would
not. "Leaning over, he dipped his hands in the water, splashing the liquid
up his arms and scrubbing away the soil. "You hear now, Izzy. Open your
mind and hear. I have much to tell, and when I get done, maybe you will know
why Zacharie think I am a killer of people I love."

Liz waited in dread.

"The fire stone come down a long line of women who are
its guardian. It pass from mother to daughter like the torch, and it finally
come to your
grandmere
. Each woman in her life does battle with
Ankouer—"

"Ankouer doesn't exist," Liz said as gently as
possible. "You're imagining him. Please try—"

"Let me finish, girl." He lifted his hand to stop
her. Water trickled over his wrist and forearm, leaving streaks of clean skin
that looked white against the gray dirt. "When I am done, you can say all
you want about me imagining, but for now hear me out."

She'd get nothing else until she did, so Liz agreed.

"Ankouer seek the opal so he can be of flesh. But
before he do, he must remove the last guardian from the book of man. You are
the last one, Izzy, the one it is written can defeat him for all time. This is
why he want to kill you."

Mild nausea churned in Liz's stomach as she listened to her
father saying exactly what she'd hoped he wouldn't.

"And he got the opal. You got no hope to survive
without it. So I come to Quadray Island and go in that sonuvabitching, stinking
hole to get it for you." His dark eyes clouded with pain. "It is this
way, you see. Every guardian got a defender. Your
grandmere
, she lost
her man when she is young, and so Ankouer can get her easy. I was your
maman's
defender, me. But a defender's love, it gotta be pure." His voice
thickened. "And, me, I got my mind clouded."

"Maddie," Liz said involuntarily, and with great
bitterness.

"Ankouer, it were Ankouer. He make me not to see the
right way, and so Ellie gotta fight him all alone. I seen them with my own
eyes, but nothing I do will help her."

He scrubbed his hands and arms, hard, almost cruelly, and
the water sloshed, forming a backdrop to his words. "Zacharie think I kill
little Jed and that prisoner who got away. No, it were not me. Ankouer done
that. But, God forgive me, I send them to him." He leaned forward and
spoke with urgency. "You got to forgive him for making me under arrest.
Let him do what a man, he must do. He is your defender. God bring you together
to defeat Ankouer for all time. This place is for the final battle. If you and
Zacharie lose, darkness will come over the world, and no one will be left to
fight."

Oh, Papa
. Losing her mother truly had taken his mind.

"Do not look at me with big sad eyes, girl. Looney, I
am not. I been trying to make you believe what your heart knows all along. You
been running from your duty. You can't run no more."

He pulled his hands abruptly from the pan, leaving the cloth
in the pan, and Liz handed him the towel. He took a moment to blot the water
away, finally giving her an opportunity to speak.

"I wish you would stop worrying about these
things."

"Someone got to worry." He stroked her cheek, and
she saw exhaustion in his face. The circles under his eyes were like dark
stains, and he'd aged ten years in these few days. "When I done washing I
think I will sleep, yes?"

"Good idea. You need your rest. We'll leave soon."

He shook his head. "I hafta see Ankouer again. He still
got the fire stone."

"Papa, no! We have to leave!"

He looked at her for a long moment, then lifted the washcloth
from the water and began washing his face.

"Papa?"

She wished she could see his dark eyes. They always revealed
his true thoughts, and she suspected he knew it and had hidden his face to keep
them from her.

Finally he lifted his head and let the cloth fall back into
the water. Turning for the towel, he said, "Okay, Izzy. If that is what
you want, we will do it. Now go get me my old tobacco box so's I can roll me a
smoke before I rest."

"Your heart—"

"Izzy . . ." This was said in a warning tone, one she
always obeyed.

He pointed at one of the crates stored with the many others
by the base of the butte. Liz went to it, and easily found the box, which was
tucked against the narrow end. As she picked it up she remembered the day she
and Zach had worked out the design. Zach had executed the plan in wood shop,
and later they had stained the wood, then waxed and polished it until it
gleamed. It still gleamed, and she ran her fingers tenderly over the smooth
surface, wondering how many other reminders of the past she'd encounter before
she got home.

After she handed her father the box, she took the washcloth
out of the water, then picked up the towel and took them both to a tree to hang
out to dry. Then she got the pan, and left the alcove to dump the dirty water.
Murky inside that pan, so murky she couldn't see the bottom. Somewhat like the
events of the last few days. Like Papa's warning about how Liz had run away.
Maddie had said something similar, and so had someone else. Someone she
respected. But who?

As she dumped the water, she again wondered why she wasn't
able to cry. Tears were right there. In her chest, in her throat, behind her
eyes, and yet they refused to flow. She wasn't sure how much longer she could
bear the pain.