Nail Biter (23 page)

He dragged hard on the cigarette, tossed it away. It hit the water with a little hiss. “There's something I need to finish. When it's done I'm going to turn myself in.” Saying this, he flashed a surprisingly white grin. “Scout's honor,” he said.

As soon as the words were out of his mouth I remembered: Saint George. The saint on the coin was shown seated astride a white horse, like a knight in his shining armor. And Saint George was the patron saint of . . .

At the same moment, too, I saw clearly the gun in Rickert's hand.

. . . Boy Scouts. As for the gun . . .

The safety was on. Which meant either (a) he wasn't familiar with the weapon, which I didn't believe for a minute—

Around here, guys like Mac started handling guns about the time they put down their baby bottles and blankies—

—or (b) he didn't intend to shoot me. This thought, however, might have encouraged me into feeling just a little too confident. “So what exactly do you want me to do besides play messenger?” I asked.

Because if that was all it was, he could have written Bob Arnold a note. Stuck it under the wiper of the squad car maybe, or had his brother Joey do it.

“And,” I pressed on, even more unwisely, “why should I believe you haven't killed Wanda already? She must've been a witness to Dibble's shooting, that must be why you kidnapped her in the first place, right?”

I took a breath. “So why shouldn't I just run screaming to Bob Arnold the minute you put me ashore, when there's still time for him to get out and catch up with you?”

But my confidence evaporated when in the silence following my remarks he lit another cigarette and by match-gleam I got a glimpse of his eyes.

“I didn't kidnap her,” he said coldly.

Not Boy Scoutish. Also, he didn't
have
to put me ashore. He could shove me overboard and then the only messages I'd be sending would be in the bubbles escaping from my lungs.

“Right, sure you didn't. But what else do you
want
from me?” I backpedaled, feeling that I'd better reestablish the notion that I might be useful. And this time he answered my question bluntly.

“I've already got it.”

Then it hit me: Wanda's pills. Which—I checked my pockets—he'd already taken, along with the gun.

“Killed Dibble with one just like this,” he remarked. As he spoke he leveled it at me, thumbed the safety off.

He'd wanted the pills, that was all. The diabetes medicine; he needed it to keep his teenage captive alive.

“You son of a
bitch
.” I heard the words burst from me, felt myself hurtling at him, my fingernails aiming for his eyes.

And for a glorious instant I had him at a disadvantage; what I was doing was suicide, so it was the last thing he could have expected. With my weight pushing him back on the engine mount, I kneed him hard.

“Christ,” he grated out, and dropped the .22.

I scrabbled for the weapon, but where was it? In the dark I couldn't find it, and now the water began to make trouble, as well, rolling the little vessel treacherously.

Rickert's hand flopped ineffectually, searching for the tiller to bring us around. A wave hit, knocking me sideways, and when I fell my head smacked the rail with a sick
clunk!

The gun, where was the gun . . .
There
. But as I reached for it, his right boot came up, grazing my chin. I landed in the bow, my shoulder first smacking the wooden seat and then sliding halfway under it. I was stunned with pain and as helpless suddenly as a turtle on its back.

The boat swayed, then settled as with one hand Mac seized the tiller, his other hand reaching down to secure the weapon and aim it at me again. Gunning the engine, he raced us away from the open water, where now that the stars were out there was a chance we might be visible from shore.

If someone happened to be scanning in our direction, that is. And if they'd alerted the Coast Guard on account of us having no running lights, maybe being in distress.

But even at this distance I could see the Guard's big orange Zodiac boat, empty and motionless. No cavalry was riding to my rescue. Then the lights of town vanished as we hurtled around the south end of the island, past the cargo docks at Prince's Cove.

I could have jumped overboard. The trouble was, I couldn't swim to shore. Not in this water, so frigid that a person without a special dive suit would die in twenty minutes, even if they were wearing a life preserver.

Because the challenge wasn't keeping your head above water; it was getting your body out of it before all the vital systems chilled so low that they shut off entirely.

Rickert throttled down. The only sound was the engine wetly grumbling in neutral, the only light a distant, diffuse glow from the runway beacons at the airfield, half a mile distant.

He picked up an oar. For a moment I thought he meant to haul engine and row in, that the rocks here were too numerous for the boat to land under power. But then he spoke.

“I meant what I said. They have to wait. I need a few days. Or maybe just one.”

Sour bile rose in my throat; I averted my mind's eye from an all-too-clear picture of what he might want to finish.

“Leave her alone,” I whispered.

Ignoring me, he stood. If I'd tried it, I'd have capsized the boat immediately. But this guy moved as surely as if he were on shore.

“Out,” he ordered, gripping the oar.
That
got my attention. We were still a hundred yards from land.

Then he hit me with the oar. Not hard, but the flat part smacked the side of my head convincingly. If he'd done it with the edge it would've taken the top of my skull off.

Woozy with pain and fear, I clambered up. “Listen,” I began, “we can talk about this—”

Everything seemed to have ratcheted way down into super-slow motion; the waves, my heart. Rickert swung the oar again. This time the flat blade connected with my shoulder the way a bat hits a ball, lifting me and carrying me over the rail.

The last thing I saw was his face watching impassively as I splashed down. Then came the sudden roar of the outboard as he motored away.

Leaving me in the icy water, kicking and flailing.

Drowning. The shock
to your system is indescribable and the first thing you do is begin gasping, uncontrollably and in a way that makes you panic.

But panic spells doom; you must think, and eventually the gasping will pass. Sinking, I kicked hard. That sent me up again, my face breaking the surface just long enough to drag in a breath. And then . . .

My arm hit something solid. Instinctively, I went after it, and it bounced away, floating. Once more I sank, then somehow found the thing again, whatever it was, clawed at it knowing it would be only a clot of seaweed and no help to me, but unable to stop myself.

Another hopeless grab, punctuated by a throatful of salt water. Gagging and weeping, I felt my hand brush the seaweed clump and somehow fasten upon it.

Only it wasn't seaweed. It was Mac Rickert's life jacket.

With the last burst of non-drowning purposefulness I could muster, I shoved an arm into it. That gave me enough hope to get my other arm into the other side, and my head through.

Next I took a ragged breath, immensely grateful merely to be inhaling air instead of water, and after that I assessed my situation.

Verdict: still terrible. But not quite
as
terrible.
In with the good air and out with the bad
made a lovely mantra, under the circumstances. Grimly I forced my iced legs to start kicking and my hands to begin paddling.

But time was running out. My hands were little more than numb clubs. Soon I would be so chilled that my mental processes would quit working, too.

Although you could argue they'd stopped functioning usefully a whole lot earlier, like way back when I'd decided to meet Mac Rickert out here at all. . . .

But that was a scolding I could give myself later, if there was one. For now I kept kicking, paddling, and breathing, nearing a stony shore whose cruel battering I would soon be enduring.

If I was lucky. Which by now I'd decided I was. After all, I
could
have gone into the water with a bullet in my head.

But I hadn't. And
that
meant . . .

My foot brushed a rock. A slippery, unhelpful, murderously treacherous rock. My shoe skidded on it, hurling me face-forward into the cold brine; sputtering and coughing I struggled back up, my eyes burning and my hands stinging and bleeding.

I could feel warmth streaming from them. And . . . I could feel the
bottom
. Jagged, uneven, littered with granite edges so sharp they were practically serrated . . .

Sobbing with relief, I scrambled on hands and knees, never mind the pain. I was ice cold, bruised, bloody, humiliated, and madder than hell; half at myself for getting into this mess, and half at Rickert for shoving me overboard, leaving me for dead.

But I wasn't in deep water anymore, and that was something.

Everything. Crawling up onto Deep Cove Road, I searched the darkness, spotted a window glowing yellow about a quarter-mile distant.

Struggling up, I began trudging toward the light.

The people in
the house were very kind. They didn't dither or demand to know what I'd been doing out there in the first place. The only real trouble I had was in getting them to take me home instead of to the hospital.

Especially since my teeth were chattering so hard I could barely speak, which was the first thing Wade noticed.

And that I was soaking wet. “Jesus,” he said when I turned on the light and woke him, and he got a look at me.

As he swung his legs out of bed I was already stripping my clothes off, my icy fingers struggling. He ripped my shirt down the front and pulled it from me, muscling me toward the shower.

“Okay,” he kept saying when he got me under the warm water. It felt scalding hot. “Okay, now, you're going to be okay.”

I couldn't stand up by myself, so he lowered me to a sitting position and got the rest of my clothes off. By then I was shuddering uncontrollably, unable to speak.

But later I did, dressed in warm flannel and wrapped in blankets, a mug of hot milk laced with brandy cupped in my hands, sitting up in bed.

“Alone,” Wade said grimly when I'd finished. “Without telling anyone.”

It was four in the morning. “Jacobia, you know there's not a thing you can do or ever will want to do, that I'll ever tell you not to. But this . . .”

I nodded wretchedly in reply. The superficial shivering had ended; now the shudders were slower and more painful, seeming to come from the insides of my bones.

Also, my nose was running. Wade took the mug from my hands and replaced it with tissues, then caught sight of my hands.

“Let's see,” he said sternly.

Reluctantly, I held them out. They were a mess, with long, water-bleached skin flaps that if they were any deeper would have required stitches to close. As it was, they just stung like hell.

Wade looked silently at them for a moment. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and put his arm around me.

“You poor kid,” he said as I began weeping again, hating myself but not able to stop. By now anyone else would've been shouting at me, I knew.

Wade just sat there until I was finished. “I'm so sorry,” I whispered. “I thought if I found out what he wanted . . .”

It still didn't make sense unless you knew what sent me out there, and maybe not then either. Anyone else would have told me what an idiot I'd been.

But Wade heard the silences between the words. And didn't press me. Instead he concentrated on Mac.

“He drugged you, held a gun on you—”

Wade's gun. We hadn't even gotten yet to the part about Mac still having it. Or that I'd taken it without asking.

Or about Victor. “. . . hit you and forced you overboard.”

He stood up, turning away. Probably so I couldn't see his face; under most conditions Wade was the gentlest of men.

But this wasn't most conditions. “Yeah,” I said. “It was pretty pitiful, actually.”

I drank some more hot milk. My heart wasn't palpitating anymore, another symptom I hadn't mentioned to Wade.

When he turned back his face appeared carved out of stone. “Well, then,” he said. “I guess there's no choice. I'm just going to have to go out and find the son of a bitch and kill him.”

The gentlest of men, but at that moment he wasn't kidding. And in downeast Maine, he didn't have to be; guys vanished here. Not often; years might go by before a sort of unofficial court of last resort passed down an unspoken verdict.

But over the decades this remote part of the world had disposed of enough proudly unreformable wife-beaters, predatory child molesters, and other innocent-victim-creating monsters to form a precedent: if you were bad enough, and the justice system didn't get you, sooner or later someone else would.

“Wade, if I hadn't been so dumb he'd never have had a chance to do anything to me.”

Wade said nothing.

“Also if he has got Wanda and something happens to him, we might never find her,” I went on.

Wade studied his hands.

“I'm sorry I didn't tell you where I was going, or bring you along,” I added. “It was foolish of me and I won't take that kind of risk again.”

He was listening.

“But don't let what's happened make you do something foolish, too,” I pleaded.

His hands relaxed.

“When you walk into a buzz saw,” I said, “if you get cut, you don't blame the saw.”

Reluctantly, Wade nodded. He hadn't put away the idea of punishing Mac Rickert, but there wasn't going to be any vigilante justice dispensed tonight.

“Okay,” he said. “But don't do this to me again, Jake.”

His face was gray and exhausted. “I mean it. Don't make me wonder where you are every minute, what's happening to you. Because I can't take it.”

I nodded. Part of me argued silently that if I'd been a guy we wouldn't be having this conversation. But the other part—the sensible part—knew that getting hijacked by your own obsession was a gender-neutral form of stupidity.