Storm Gathering (22 page)

“No.”

“Then I don’t have to answer any of your questions.”

“No, you don’t.”

Liz licked her lips. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with my workout, which should tell you something, since this is my least favorite thing to do.” An unkind smile swept her lips.

“So you’re okay if the wrong guy goes to jail?”

“I just want Taylor back, and it doesn’t sound like that will happen,” Liz said, pumping her legs back and forth on the press. Sweat trickled down her temple, but Aaron suspected it wasn’t from the workout.

“That’s not going to happen if the police are focused on Mick. If you can tell me anything that might help the police look in a different direction . . .”

“Maybe you just want your brother off. Who cares if he did it, right?”

“That’s not true. If I thought Mick did this, I’d be out there helping them hunt him down.”

Liz studied his eyes carefully, then looked away. “All I know,” she finally said, “is that this Sammy Earle made her life miserable. And Taylor was a woman who hated who she was.”

“Really?”

Liz nodded. “Yeah, I mean, she’s beautiful, but she never saw herself that way. She always seemed like she needed someone to affirm that. I tried to do that for her, and I think I accomplished it in a way. As we grew to know each other, I saw this quiet strength in her, growing day by day, you know? I can’t comment on Sammy Earle. Taylor never talked specifically about him very much. She tended to talk in more general terms. Really, the only thing I do know about him is that, though he was really rich, when it came to her, he was cheap.”

“Cheap?”

“From what I understood, he would buy her things in such a way that it made her feel really bad. Like he would never buy her anything nice, as if she wasn’t worth it. Maybe he’d buy her jewelry, but he’d go to Sears and get it at 75 percent off, always making sure she knew he bought it at a discount.”

Liz swiped the towel across her forehead, then blotted her face, as if trying to hide something revealing in her eyes. After a moment, she reemerged and looked at Aaron. “Something happened.”

“What?”

“I don’t know specifics. I swear she never told me. But one day, a month or so after they broke up, Taylor came to work, and there was just something different about her. Something in her eyes. I’m not sure I can describe it. I asked her about it, and at first she shrugged it off. But then she said something.” Liz bit her lip, shaking her head at the thought. “She said that she’d been reading about revenge in the Bible.”

“Revenge?”

“Yeah, it was strange. I asked her what she meant. She said she thought it was really interesting what God did to evil people in the Old Testament.”

“Did she happen to give details about that?”

Liz shrugged. “I don’t know my Bible all that well, to tell you the truth, and I never thought Taylor was the churchgoing type. So I was trying to follow. I got this odd feeling that maybe her boyfriend had done something really bad to her.”

“Who broke off the relationship?”

“She never would say. She was just very weird about it. I guess this guy was a big society guy, so maybe she didn’t want gossip to start. I don’t know.”

“Did she seem happy after the relationship was over?”

“Sort of. She seemed heartbroken for a while, probably when she was on the antidepressants. She seemed to take a liking to a guy in accounting. Joe, I think his name is. But it didn’t really go anywhere. She suddenly stopped taking the antidepressants, which I hear is pretty dangerous. Anyway, over the past few months, I thought she was doing much better. But then last month that changed.”

“How?”

“Taylor was becoming more and more distant. I asked her if she had gotten back on the antidepressants, and she’d answer very vaguely. I had no idea what was going on with her. I’ll admit I was worried.”

“What do you make of her disappearance, Liz? Do you think all of this is connected?”

“I don’t know. A random act seems to make more sense, you know? I just keep thinking something horrible has happened to her.”

“Did Taylor happen to mention which book of the Bible she was reading?”

Liz thought for a moment. “The book of Easter.”

“Esther?”

“That’s it.” Liz smiled slightly. “Sorry . . . I don’t own a Bible.”

“Esther is a fascinating book.”

“You go to church, huh?”

Just then, Aaron felt someone hovering over him. He looked up at Trisha, her noodle-thin arms flopped across one another. “You’re not going to lose flab sitting around talking to beautiful women.” She looked at Liz. “I’m sorry about that, ma’am.” She snapped her fingers at Aaron, indicating he should stand. He did. “Apparently you’re going to have to learn more than one discipline at this gym, sir.” Trisha pointed a strict finger away from Liz.

Aaron smiled sheepishly, glanced back at Liz with an embarrassed grin, and walked away.

He could hear Liz laughing.

Choking and gagging, completely disoriented and as cold as if he were dead, Mick paddled toward a thick and muddy embankment. Air tried again and again to squeeze into his lungs, but it was useless. His rigid fingers found a stable root, and he pulled himself upward, his arms trembling ferociously, his body depleted of oxygen.

With his feet still dangling against what he perceived to be water, Mick laid his cheek in the mud and vomited. Rolling over onto his back, he sucked in air as fast as he could, but it was too quickly, and he vomited again. With slow and deliberate breaths, he cautiously refilled his lungs with air.

After a few moments, Mick opened his eyes. Everything around him blurred, and dizziness nauseated his stomach again. Closing his eyes, he coughed and spewed, then managed to sit up. He raised his hands high over his head.

“I give up.” It was barely a whisper, raspy and hoarse. “Don’t shoot. I give up.” He tried to keep his arms up, his voice louder this time. “Please don’t shoot. I give up.”

He thought he heard guns being cocked, and his body shivered from head to toe. Maybe they couldn’t hear him. “I give up!” This time his voice cracked, and his words were louder. “I give up!” he tried again, and now he was shouting loud enough that he knew they could hear him. He half expected a shower of bullets to race toward him.

High above, a breeze swished the treetops, and the leaves applauded his efforts. Mick fell backward onto the embankment, using it like a recliner.
Shoot me dead now. I don’t care.

He waited for gruff hands to yank him to his feet and clasp handcuffs around his wrists. But after a few moments, he heard nothing but the sound of water. He tried to open his eyes again as slowly as he could. A sharp pain stabbed behind his left eye, so he kept that one closed.

A gurgling and foamy creek, swollen from rain waters, rushed by him. The creek looked to be about ten feet across at its narrowest point and up to twenty feet wide downstream. Thick groupings of trees lined both sides of the creek, which Mick thought probably flowed much more lazily on normal days.

He took note of his surroundings and realized he was totally alone. Listening, he could hear the sound of a helicopter very far away. And when he gazed above the trees, a plume of smoke clouded the distant horizon.

Another breeze made him shiver; he desperately needed to get out of the water that had somehow carried him to safety. He rolled over and grabbed a thick tree root, pulling his feet out of the water and climbing up the embankment toward the wooded area. His teeth chattered violently enough that he thought he was going to inadvertently bite his tongue.

At the top of the four-foot embankment, Mick rolled to his back, took a few more deep breaths, and then sat up.

His duffel bag.

Across the creek, he saw it caught on a bobbing log at the water’s edge. If he wanted it, he was going to have to wade across the creek to get it.

Right now, he wasn’t even sure if he could stand.

Pressing his hands into the ground, he steadied himself and tried, but as he did, sharp claws of pain scraped up the back of his calves and he yelped, collapsing to the ground. Situating himself, he turned and looked behind him, trying to figure out what was wrong.

Huge white blisters bubbled up from fire red skin. His jeans were singed and burned away. On his right leg, the burns were confined to the back of his calf, but on the left leg, they wrapped around his shin too.

Though painful, the blisters were signs that it was probably a severe second-degree burn. His entire body shook violently, protesting the pain and the cold it was being forced to endure. Mick looked again at the duffel bag dancing in the water.

He tried to remember how much money he had left. Twenty-five dollars or so? Plus he had a change of clothes in there too.

He managed to stand on trembling legs. As his body adjusted to the pain, he took a few careful steps, then used a tree that was growing horizontally across the water to help him down the embankment. He was just about to step into the water when he heard them.

Dogs.

Their hollow, frenzied barks carried through the windswept trees. Had the police discovered he’d made it out of the fire? It had stretched on both sides of the creek, swallowing up any good visuals for a while, he imagined. Were they now catching on that he’d escaped through the creek? The dogs wouldn’t find a scent in the water.

Mick trudged forward, his shins pressing against the fast-moving water that rushed around his body. As he made his way toward his bag, the creek bed plunged, and the water now rose to his waist.

Even though his body was probably suffering from hypothermia, the pain in his legs slowly dulled. After a minute or so, he reached his duffel bag. He clasped his arms around the log and unhooked the bag, throwing it over his shoulder. Underneath him, the water swept his legs free from the bed, and Mick felt weightless and comfortable.

A water moccasin on a log that rested halfway out of the water greeted him with a forked tongue. It uncoiled and slithered into the water.

Mick swallowed hard. He hated snakes. Especially water snakes. Still gripping the log, he wondered what he should do now. His body wouldn’t take much more of this abuse.

He laid his head on the log, his legs swinging weightlessly beneath him. The fact that he had been ready to give up caused him to rethink running again. Did he have any more energy left? any will to find what he was looking for? What
was
he looking for?

A delirious energy swarmed his mind. He felt half dead anyway. Why not go for it? If he got shot down, he’d be out of his misery. If he succeeded, in whatever he was supposed to be succeeding at, he’d be set free. At least in one sense.

He bobbed up and down in the water like a fishing cork, his stomach scraping against the log with each surge of frothy, reddish brown water. It lulled him but with the bite of a cold, uncaring mother.

With dull resignation, he stared downstream, unable to deny his own mortal shortcomings that had led him into this predicament. His tide had come in. He always knew it would. In every part of his life where he’d strayed from what he knew to be right, fear of the consequences diminished his gratification.

Ahead, the swollen creek wound around the trees and through the land, narrowing in the distance and curving so that Mick couldn’t see where it headed. Feeling an unexplainable peace flood his insides, he allowed himself to breathe normally. He stopped trembling, like somebody had robed him with a heavy blanket. Perhaps God’s gentle hand did reach down to hell after all.

He closed his eyes, holding back hopeless tears.

He was tired of running.

But he needed to find the truth.

Then a coarse but slimy ropelike sensation tickled his skin, and he felt something wrap around his ankle and climb up his leg. Thrashing in the water, Mick tried to pull up onto the log but couldn’t grasp it tightly enough. With legs kicking, he tried to untangle himself out of its grip, but it wrapped tighter.

Mick’s body went rigid with fear.

Punching his hand down into the water, Mick grabbed the snake, squeezing its body, attempting to pull it up out of the water and away from his leg, but it wasn’t an easy task. The snake’s tail clung to his ankle. With a mighty yank, he ripped half its body out of the water, his fingers squeezing mercilessly around it.

Holding it high over his head, shouting out his rage toward it, Mick stared into its face only to frown in disbelief.

This was no snake. It was a soggy, scummy tree limb, dripping water, not blood, from its mangled body. With a cynical laugh, Mick threw the limb into the water and rubbed his eyes. All he wanted was a warm bed. A jail bed would do nicely. At least he’d have dry clothes.

And then he heard the dogs again. The pitch of their bark was higher, and he could tell that their yelping pleas were advancing at a faster pace through the trees.

Gripping his bag, Mick released himself from the log. The fast-moving water carried him easily, and he paddled around obstacles. It was not an easy ride. He’d lose his footing against the creek bed and have to swim with all his might to try to stay above the water.

Something he couldn’t identify kept him from releasing control and letting himself drown.

So he kept swimming.

After assuring Trisha he was not hitting on Liz, Aaron received his three-day pass back from the Gatekeeper of Flirtation with a careful smile. He took it, placed it in his bag, and left the gym through the front doors.

“Kline.”

Whirling around, he spotted Shep Crawford leaning against the brick building like one might do while enjoying a smoke. But he wasn’t smoking. His casual demeanor contrasted with his sharp eyes.

“Lieutenant.”

Shep pitched a thumb to the door as he approached Aaron. “Good workout?”

“Sure.”

A knowing smile put a small curve into the straight line of his lips. “Uh-huh.”

“Why are you here?” Aaron asked.

“We found Mick.”

The words punched his stomach. “You caught him?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what?”

“He was spotted on the southwestern edge of Irving, riding a dirt bike. The chase is still on. We’ve got the chopper in the air, dogs on the ground.”

“Is he armed?”

“Don’t know.”

“So he hasn’t fired off a shot.”

“No.”

Aaron ran his fingers through his hair. “I pray they don’t kill him.”

Crawford said, “Looks like he was in to kill himself. He ran straight into an uncontrolled burn. They think he might still be in there somewhere. The fire’s at least fifteen acres wide. I thought you should know.”

“Know what?”

Crawford’s expression didn’t budge. “Your brother has messed a lot of things up by running.”

“I have a feeling Mick’s running for more than the reasons you think.”

“Oh?”

“Mick’s not a guy who scares easily. But he knows something. He senses there is more to this case than meets the eye.”

“What has he told you?”

“I haven’t seen or talked to him since he ran, if that’s what you mean. But I agree with him. There’s something more to this case.” Aaron looked at Crawford. “Don’t you agree?”

Crawford’s eyes glazed with displeasure. “Rethink getting involved, Kline. I’m warning you. The consequences you could face for doing so aren’t worth it.”

“Is that a threat?”

Crawford didn’t blink. “Some things that are put into motion cannot be stopped.”

Aaron narrowed his eyes. “You’re a man who likes justice, aren’t you?”

Crawford’s words were held back by an intensely drawn mouth. He seemed somewhat flustered by the comment, and Aaron had never known Crawford to be flustered. Anger flashed through Crawford’s eyes. But it was followed by something else, something deeper.

“Just stay out the way,” Crawford mumbled, then walked toward the parking lot, his body thrust forward as if his legs couldn’t keep up.

Aaron looked around, still not spotting a tail. He watched Crawford speed away in his sedan.

Dropping his bag to the ground, he leaned onto the brick that had supported Crawford moments before. “Mick . . .” Part of him wanted them to catch Mick. But something urged him toward a prayer that was quite different from capture.

“Don’t let them get you,” he said aloud. “Keep running, brother. I’m close to the truth.”

But in his mind’s eye, he could only see a blazing fire consuming Mick.