Ghost Key (33 page)

She twisted around, pushed the mop and the broom onto the road, opened the box. It held handguns, clips, handcuffs, handheld radios, a couple of cell phones. She plucked out a pair of nine millimeters, all the extra clips, passed Delaney the gun and half the clips.

“You know how to shoot that?” he asked.

“Probably better than you do. That colorful figure you mentioned—my dad?—knew as much about guns as he did about fish. Look, you don’t have to put yourself at risk. Tell O’Donnell I took you hostage.”

“He wouldn’t believe it.” Delaney turned abruptly into the trees on the right, killed the cart’s headlights, and they both hopped out. He pulled a duffel bag from each of the boxes and they dashed through the trees, working their way farther north along the marsh, distancing themselves from the cart.

Their shoes sank into mud and muck, branches slapped her in the face, she heard fish jumping nearby. It was nearly dark now and she could barely make out the canoe. Fitted with an electric motor, it was tied to the branches of a scruffy bush, half hidden in the tall reeds along the water, the paddles on the floor. They dropped the duffels inside, she quickly got in, and Delaney pushed them off the beach and started the motor. It purred and quickly took them into the tallest reeds. Minutes later, a voice rang out. O’Donnell. “Delaney, don’t be an idiot! The cutters are blocking your way outta here.”

“Is that true?” Kate whispered.

“I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. We have a way out. It took me most of the day to set this up.”

O’Donnell kept shouting, his voice echoing through the darkness and across the water. An airboat came into view, the top of it about even with the top of the reeds. Once the tide came in, though, it would be visible. “That’s where we’re getting off.”

“Hardly subtle.”

“It’ll do the trick.”

They brought the canoe alongside the airboat, and Delaney killed the engine. He steadied it as she got out, passed her the duffels, then removed the electric engine and climbed aboard. He stashed the duffels and engine in a deep aluminum box anchored to the floor of the boat, dug out two pairs of goggles and two pairs of headsets. He passed her one of each. “Put those on.”

She put on the goggles, slipped on the headset, they climbed into the tall seats, and moments later, the airboat exploded out of the marsh and into open water, engine roaring. The Zodiac tied behind their seats lifted into the wind like a sail, then throbbed like a giant heart against the floor of the airboat. A pair of Coast Guard cutters tore after them, but the airboat screamed onward, outpacing the cutters.

Bugs splattered against the windshield, smeared across her goggles. When they ripped through another marsh, Kate slapped her hand over her nose and mouth to keep the bugs and caterpillars out. “Where’s your houseboat?” Delaney shouted over the racket.

“Sea Horse Key, directly west of Snake Key,” she yelled back. “Go around the inside of Atsena, it’s shorter, and may be too shallow for their boats.”

The airboat swerved west, engine shrieking, a rising furl of water curving on Kate’s side of the boat. She gripped the edges of her bench, terrified she might slide off into the water. As they shot away from Atsena Otie, she glanced back. In the light of the stars, she could see that one of the cutters was stuck, beached, and the other had slowed considerably. She couldn’t hear their engines, not over the din the airboat made, but imagined they were straining.

“Keep going straight,” she hollered. “The tide’s low and there’s a marsh coming up on your side where we can ditch the airboat and take the Zodiac.”

He flashed a thumbs-up. Kate wished he could turn off the airboat’s brilliant spotlight, but the risk of accident was too great if they couldn’t see where the hell they were going. She kept shouting directions, turn here, turn there. When they reached the marsh, Delaney immediately turned off the engine, the lights. The darkness swallowed them, the airboat bobbed like a cork in the shallow waters, the night sounds closed around them.

Kate tore off her goggles, and she and Delaney stood at the same moment. Without uttering a word, they worked as if their brains were completely in synch. She retrieved the duffels, paddles, and engine, and he untied the Zodiac and dropped it alongside the airboat. He fitted the engine onto the back of it.

Just before Kate climbed down into the Zodiac with one of the duffels, she glimpsed a much smaller boat racing toward them. Delaney saw it, too. “Hurry, hurry,” he whispered. “Get in.” Then he drew a dark green tarp over the airboat, either end resting against the reeds.

It was too shallow here to use the engine, so they paddled fast, away from the airboat, and paused at the edge of the marsh, watching the smaller vessel. It had slowed and now moved south around Snake Key, probably checking out the mangroves in the cove. “I say we wait a few minutes,” she said softly.

“Total agreement.”

“You plan well, Delaney.”

“I had plenty of help.”

“From?”

“RV.” He parted the reeds with his hand so that he had a better view of the boat. “I actually saw you the day I shook O’Donnell’s hand outside of Gainesville, when Sanchez informed me he was going rogue. I saw myself interrogating you, then I was alone with you, asking about a note a hawk dropped at my feet. When I saw that hawk this morning, that’s when I knew what was going to happen. Yesterday, after you were brought in, I made a point of touching O’Donnell and saw myself readying an airboat.”

“Did you see how it turns out?”

“Uh, no. O’Donnell suspected I was reading him and moved away from me.”

The boat rounded the tip of Snake Key and they lost sight of it. “Let’s move to the other side of the marsh and head for Sea Horse,” she suggested.

“We’ll have to paddle until the water’s a bit deeper and we’re out of this shrubbery.”

They paddled, but it wasn’t easy. The shrubbery was thick, the leaves like saws. Some of the reeds had snapped in two and their pointed ends scraped and clawed against the sides of the Zodiac. Even though the boat was made of Hypalon, a durable plastic material, a puncture by one of these reeds would create a slow leak and they would probably sink before they got to Sea Horse. “You have any glue for this sucker, Delaney?”

“Nope. This part was a rush job. How far is it to Sea Horse?”

“From here, less than two miles. But it’s all open water.”

Kate heard something and at first thought it was another airboat. But Delaney touched her arm and pointed upward. A chopper swept in low across the gulf, its searchlights burning a path through the darkness, the
whoop
of its rotors growing increasingly louder. They pushed back into the marsh and Delaney slid lower in the boat. The Zodiac barely accommodated him when he sat up straight, but now his legs came along either side of her and his feet hung over the end. Kate leaned back against him, her head resting against his chest, his hands on her arms. He dropped his head back, and through the tips of the reeds, they watched the chopper make a wide circle around the marsh that hid them.

“Delaney, when you saw me in this vision or whatever it was, did that mean that what you saw would absolutely happen?”

“Never. In remote viewing, you only see what’s most probable at the moment you see it.”

He suddenly drew his fingers through her hair, a touch so gentle, so soft, that Kate felt it all the way to the tips of her toes.

“But I have to tell you,” he went on, “that when I first saw you, I hoped like hell it would all come to pass.” Then he leaned over her and touched his mouth to hers, a kiss so simple and yet so exquisite that she felt powerless to do anything except reach back and lock her hands behind his head, at the back of his thick, powerful neck. For long moments, it seemed that they breathed in perfect rhythm with each other, that their hearts beat as one.

Then the chopper moved in low over the marsh, sixty feet, fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, practically skimming the gulf, and gunfire tore through the reeds, chewed through the water. Kate instantly rolled to the right, onto her hands and knees, pulled the nine millimeter from her jacket pocket, rocked back onto her heels and shot blindly, without thought, into the sky, at the chopper. When she emptied the clip, she slammed in another. As the chopper circled in closer, she fired twice and the helicopter blew apart in midair.

The explosion reverberated across the water, through the marsh, a moving tide of violence. Pieces of flaming debris rained around them, igniting the tips of the reeds, which burned fast and hot. She just sat there, clutching the weapon, air bursting from her mouth in short, panicked staccato bursts.

“Delaney, we need to—”

He lay there bleeding, groaning, motionless, and she fell forward, her hands landing on either side of his head. “Delaney, Christ, what…” She lifted his head, begging him to speak to her, open his eyes, something, Christ, something. His eyes opened, but were glazed with pain.

“Side,” he gasped, and passed out.

His shirt and jacket turned crimson. He was going to bleed to death here, in the Zodiac, where he had kissed her. A part of her actually believed she had caused this, that she was cursed, a purveyor and vehicle of bad luck. She loved Rocky and he had disappeared. She had loved Rich and he had become possessed by a
brujo
. This intriguing man had kissed her—and now might die. Kate started the engine and broke free of the marsh. Flaming debris rained down as she crossed the open water between the marsh and Sea Horse. She thought she heard a boat closing in on her and maneuvered the Zodiac erratically, a zigzag that hopefully would make her a more difficult target.

“Stay with me, Delaney, stay with me.” She kept repeating these words, a mantra, a prayer.

Kate heard the hawk before she saw her, circling low, then flying in alongside her, keening loudly. When she plunged into the mangrove around Sea Horse, she cut the engine, tipped it out of the water, and paddled frantically. Liberty spiraled upward. Delaney hadn’t moved. His blood covered her hands, saturated her clothes.

The instant Kate saw the houseboat, she shouted for Wayra, but he was already on the deck, probably alerted by the hawk, who keened nearby. “I can see you,” he shouted, and shone a flashlight in her direction. “I heard the gunfire. Are you hurt?”

“Delaney is.” Her fear for him choked off her words. She had some first-aid supplies on board, but was pretty sure that Delaney’s condition went well beyond what first aid could do. “He … broke me out. Freed me from the feds.”

The Zodiac bumped up against the side of the houseboat; she tossed the rope to Wayra, and he secured it to the ladder. She suddenly realized that getting Delaney out of the raft would be difficult. She estimated that he was six foot seven or eight, weighed well over two hundred and fifty pounds, and that she and Wayra might not be able to move him. Her hands, slick with his blood, kept slipping off him. He continued to bleed. She heard the wheeze of his breathing as she lifted his torso and Wayra grabbed his forearms and pulled.

They finally managed to get him onto the houseboat deck. Kate buckled from relief, exhaustion, and sank to her hands and knees. Wayra dragged Delaney into the houseboat, leaving a trail of blood behind him. The ripe stink of Delaney’s blood suffused her senses; she knew she would smell it for the rest of her life. Minutes ticked by before she could haul herself up. She stumbled through the open deck doors.

And what she saw paralyzed her—Rocky on the floor, his body caught between human and animal, like some scene from that movie
Altered States
. His limbs were human, his face was that of a dog or wolf, his eyes were wide open, lupine, a soft amber color, flickering here and there, rolling back in their sockets. And beside him was Delaney, Wayra hovering over him, one hand pressed to his forehead, the other welded to Delaney’s chest, light shooting from his palms. He sank his teeth into Delaney’s neck and Kate shrieked and lunged at him, and Wayra caught her and whispered, “Shit, Kate, I’m sorry,” and slapped his hand against her forehead.

She swam into a dream. And in this dream, she was everywhere and nowhere. She wandered through memories that were not her own and every time she struggled to break free of whatever this was, she found herself at Rich’s place, the last time they had made love, when the evil ghost had been inside of him.

And she knew that Wayra was changing her just as he had changed her son and was changing Delaney. With his mouth at her neck, she didn’t have the strength or the will to fight him. She succumbed.

Sixteen

Wayra tasted his own urgency, a foul bitterness that coated his tongue, clogged his nostrils, threatened to choke him. He swept Kate’s fallen weapon off the floor and pocketed it. He worked off her jacket, then lifted her and set her gently on the couch, on her back. He stared down at her, sickened by what he’d done.

He knew he’d bitten her for no other reason than to prevent her son from ever being alone, as Wayra himself had been for so many centuries. It violated every code he’d ever lived by and he deeply regretted it. His emotions had gotten in the way. But he couldn’t undo it now and was grateful she would sleep through the transformation process. As the only uninjured and healthy one in this trio, her transformation would be complete in four to six hours.

He turned his attention to Delaney. Big man, nearly seven feet tall. Wayra guessed he weighed about two-seventy. That alone would lengthen the time of his transformation. But he was also badly injured. It meant his vastly improved immune system would slam into high gear to heal him first, just as Rocky’s had. Then the transformation process would begin. No telling how long it would take. Rocky was twenty-four hours into the process. When Wayra had turned the mother and son who were infected with the plague, their transformation had taken two days. He hoped that wouldn’t be the case for either Rocky or Delaney. He didn’t think either of them had two days to spare. Wayra removed Delaney’s jacket, tore open his bloody shirt. Christ, so much blood. It covered his right side like a second skin and made it impossible to tell the nature of the injury or how bad it was. He ran over to the galley sink, filled a pot with warm water, set it on the floor next to Delaney. He hurried into the bathroom and fetched clean towels and washcloths, Betadine and hydrogen peroxide.