Hot Water (21 page)

A loud jangling sound came from behind me. The fence at my back shook and swayed. The gator stopped his approach, and I dared to glance over my shoulder.

Morris stood on the other side of the road, a security guard beside him, talking into his radio. The protestors had gathered along the fence, watching my impending gator death match.

All of them except Liam. He’d thrown a piece of tarp over the razor wire at the top of the fence and was scaling it as easily as I walked up a flight of stairs. Like he did this kind of thing all the time.

The gator was close enough for me to smell its fetid breath, but it seemed as mesmerized by Liam’s actions as I was. With every move Liam made, the gator let out a strange hissing noise like a steam engine getting ready to blow.

I took the opportunity to sidle to the side, then circle back behind it again. Now its focus was on Liam, who’d just reached the top of the fence and was carefully circumventing the razor wire.

“Don’t jump,” I called out, making sure I was in the gator’s blind spot. “It’ll be on you before you can stand.”

He grunted his agreement. Then he jerked his head up and shouted to a guard who had drawn his pistol. “Are you crazy? You’ll just make it angrier or you’ll hit one of us.”

The guard was a good thirty feet away. Liam was right, I wasn’t about to trust my life to a stranger’s aim. And I was too far from the fence now to climb it; there was no way the gator wouldn’t get to me first.

“You know how to use that thing?” Liam nodded to the knife I held at the ready.

I realized immediately what I needed to do—use Liam as bait while I took out the gator. Hated to admit it but I was scared spit-less by the thought of getting closer to the beast, much less having to kill it. But it was obviously sick, and better me taking it out fast than giving it time to attack someone else or let the guards use it—and us—for target practice.

Once, back home hunting with Ty and Cole when I was a kid, I’d shot a deer and hadn’t made the kill shot I’d intended. The deer had run off into the woods, and we had to chase after it. The sound it made—that wounded cry—haunted my nightmares for months, not loud but such a sorrowful keening, it rattled my marrow. Ty finally caught up with the deer, me and Cole not far behind. I knew it was my responsibility to not allow that poor animal’s suffering to continue, but I just stood there crying at the pain I’d wrought.

Finally Ty had done what I couldn’t. With one quick motion of his knife, he put it out of its misery.

I never aimed at any creature again—not unless I knew I had a kill shot.

But that was with a rifle. This time it was me against a creature that wore its own armor, my only weapon a blade shorter than its claws or fangs.

The gator whipped its tail, gouging a furrow in the mud. Liam swung over to my side of the fence, clinging to the chain link just below the razor wire. The gator charged the fence, furious that its new prey hung just out of reach.

The crowd gasped as the fence bowed, the force of the collision almost dropping Liam into the gator’s open, waiting jaws.

No time to think about being ready or to come up with another plan. I had no choice but to leap past the gator’s writhing tail and onto its shoulders.

Raw, primal power surged below me as the gator whipped its snout back and forth, trying to dislodge me. I hung on, squeezing my thighs tight; I only had to last a second, just long enough to plunge my knife blade into its eye.

Liam jumped down from the fence and pushed the gator’s lower jaw up, snapping its mouth shut, and holding it closed. The gator fought in his grasp, bringing him to one knee.

“Hurry,” he said, muscles straining to control the beast.

I have to admit, I flinched and shut my own eyes at the last second, just as the blade pierced the gator’s eye and sank into the goo beneath. I held the knife with both hands and pushed with all my might until I felt a crack like an egg bursting open. Then I pushed some more until the hilt stopped, unable to go further.

The gator writhed and twisted, and then, with a mighty heave, flipped over, doing a death roll.

Liam lost his grip as it whipped its snout around, aiming for my leg. I twisted away, its claws snagging on my jeans, tearing the fabric but missing my skin. It kept rolling, and suddenly I was trapped underneath its massive body, its weight squeezing my breath away.

It gave a final shudder then stopped, still on top of me.

I couldn’t breathe. All I could see were the scales—gray greenish brown, slimy with algae and mud. A terrible stench filled my lungs as I fought to heave it off of me. I couldn’t budge it.

Then the weight lifted and I saw the sky again and was able to breathe. Liam shoved the gator to one side and stood above me, a strange smile twisting his ragged features. He made a sound like a boar snorting when he extended his hand to me. It took me a second to realize he was laughing.

“What the hell’s going on here?” Owen shouted from behind us. “Back. Everyone back.”

I looked up to see reporters’ cameras aimed at me and the dead gator. Then Liam pointed a finger at me. “Hey, your thingy there is beeping.”

Thingy? I raised the dosimeter on its lanyard. Turned it around, and sure enough, there was a bright red light flashing and it was emitting a beep that was gradually growing louder.

Liam backed away. Pulling the dosimeter over my head, I held it out to Morris and Owen and the security guys and they backed up as well. The only people who crowded forward were the damn reporters on the other side of the fence—until more security pushed them back.

I had the sinking feeling that this couldn’t be good.

Morris confirmed my suspicions when he said, “Call the health physicist and get the decon unit set up.”

“I’m contaminated?” I shouted across the increasing distance between us. “But how?”

I swung my hand with the dosimeter down. The gator lay beneath it. The beeping grew more insistent.

“Drop it on the gator,” Morris told me.

I did. The dosimeter landed beside the half-open jaw of the dead gator. The beeping crescendoed to a piercing wail like a smoke detector.

Just my luck. I wasn’t attacked by a rabid gator but a radioactive one.

TWENTY-TWO

Elizabeth watched as the firefighters brought load after load of junk out to hose down and rake through, searching for any stray embers or hot spots. There was no way Judge Mabry was going to let the Palladinos take even temporary custody of David, not after this. But hopefully he wouldn’t know anything about it until tomorrow, after AJ was back.

Smoke burned her eyes and she finally turned away. Looked like almost the entire town had turned out to witness Frank and Edna’s humiliation. Some just stared, others nodded as if they’d seen this coming, and a few even laughed and pointed.

One man leaned against his car, talking earnestly on his cell phone. He looked over the top of his designer sunglasses at her and did a finger wave before beckoning her to join him.

Elizabeth walked slowly over to Hunter—he looked entirely too pleased for this to be anything good.

“I agree, Judge, the best interests of the boy must be protected. No, I don’t believe any psychological evaluation has been completed yet, but wait, here’s Ms. Hardy, I’ll ask her.” He put the phone on speaker and held it out to Elizabeth. “Do you know if your client’s parents have been evaluated by a psychologist, in light of this recent revelation?”

His tone was neutral but his smirk was downright nasty. Hunter at his best—and worst.

“No, they haven’t.” Elizabeth hated to admit it, but she couldn’t lie to a judge. “Not to the best of my knowledge, sir.”

“Mr. Holcombe is concerned about their ability to adequately supervise the child in question tonight.”

“Actually, your Honor,” Elizabeth dared a slight hedge of the truth—at least she hoped it was the truth, since Ty said he’d be talking to AJ. “Ms. Palladino gave permission for her son to spend the night at a friend’s house. A sleepover with other children, supervised by responsible adults including a sheriff’s deputy.”

“That’s all well and good if this was a normal day, your Honor,” Hunter tugged the phone away from Elizabeth. “But the child has suffered several traumas in the past twenty-four hours. His mother abandoning him—”

“She left on a business trip. I’d hardly call that abandonment.” Elizabeth was forced to yell into the phone when Hunter tabbed the speaker off and held it against his ear.

“He finds his great-grandmother near to death at the hands of a trusted employee—”

“Allegedly. We think—” Too late for the judge to hear what she thought about Jeremy’s case, Hunter turned his back to her.

“And now he learns that his maternal grandparents are suffering from some kind of obsessive-compulsive hoarding that is so severe that it could very well have killed them.”

Sacrificing all dignity, Elizabeth actually leapt into the air to snag the phone. “Your Honor, we can address all this tomorrow at the hearing—”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Hardy,” the judge overrode her voice. “Until the hearing, I’m granting emergency custody to Mr. Kyle Masterson, the paternal grandfather. Mr. Holcombe, you may transport the child to the Masterson house at your earliest convenience. I’ll see you both with your clients tomorrow.”

“But, your Honor—” Elizabeth was pleading to a dial tone.

Hunter pocketed his phone and pushed his sunglasses up his nose with one manicured finger. “Gee, it’s a good thing I happened to drive along when I did, saw this for myself. Of course, it was my duty as an officer of the court to report my observations to the judge immediately.”

He cocked his head and smiled pityingly at her. “I’m sure you would have called him yourself if you hadn’t been so busy dragging your client’s parents out of their little”—again with the look over his sunglasses and down his nose—“fire trap of a house. See you tomorrow, Elizabeth.”

He swung his car door open, then paused as if waiting for her to bounce back with a snappy rebuttal. Not today. She was too exhausted to waste time or effort on Hunter. She had bigger things to worry about. Like saving AJ’s family.

Ever wonder what happens after you’ve been contaminated by radioactive material, like, say, an alligator?

Abject humiliation. That’s what.

It took the form of a stern-faced woman wearing full banana-yellow protective regalia who introduced herself via bullhorn as a “health physicist” and a pudgy, pasty-faced man who didn’t introduce himself but his protective suit had “NRC Representative” written in letters big enough for me to read them from where Liam and I stood near the gator carcass.

Seems they were at an impasse. There were extensive decontamination facilities inside the plant, but to get us there (us, including the gator that was already beginning to stink in the heat—but that could have been my imagination) they had to figure out a way to transport us without spreading the contamination.

The health physicist, NRC guy, Grandel, and a bunch of other folks stood arguing—while Grandel’s crew quickly screened the protestors and reporters for contamination, then ferried them away from the site, confiscating all the media footage in the name of security.

Thankfully Morris gave up on the debate, went to the inside guard gate where the tram was parked, and drove it up to us. By the time he arrived, several other workers had had time to don their protective suits—talk about roasting in a sauna, their faces were flushed red and beaded with sweat—and together they began to wrap the gator in lead blankets in preparation of hoisting him into a metal box they had wheeled out.

Morris loaded Liam, me, the health physicist, and NRC guy onto the tram.

“It’s totally washable, easy to decon,” he shouted to the two encased in their protective suits, waving an arm over the tram’s plastic seats and metal walls.

I didn’t notice the clouds growing black overhead or the wind picking up until we were speeding toward the rear of the plant in the rickety, overloaded tram. I craned my head out and glanced up at the sky, then back to the parking lot, where more workers were busily crouched over the black top.

“They need to finish before it rains,” Morris told me. “We don’t want to risk any contaminated runoff into the river.”

“So how did the gator get exposed?”

“I have a theory on that,” the NRC man spoke up. “I believe the gator drank from the puddle of contaminated water during the incident earlier this month. The timing would fit for his symptoms to be so severe.”

“No, impossible,” argued the health physicist. “The half-life—”

“All right then, perhaps the gator ate an animal who drank the water. That would concentrate the radiation in the animal’s tissues prior to ingestion by the alligator. Similar cases have occurred at Savannah River.”

The woman opened her mouth then snapped it shut.

“Hanford also had problems with that,” Morris put in. “Rabbits. No matter what kind of fence they built, they couldn’t stop the rabbits from getting into things. They’ve also had contaminated pigeons, squirrels, mud wasps, and once had an entire dumpster filled with contaminated fruit flies, which in turn contaminated some frogs and—”