Dark water rising, p.7
Dark Water Rising, page 7
“Mae, honey! What happened? Did you fall? Where are you hurting?”
“No, I didn’t fall. Hershel is dead. I felt his spirit in the room with me! Oh Lord, Lord, Pete. Our boy is gone!”
Pete wasn’t going to argue, but he wasn’t one for believing spirit visitations really happen.
“Now, Mae, we’ve been concerned as to his whereabouts because of Hurricane Gladys, and I think you just worked yourself up to—”
“Just stop talking, Pete. I didn’t ask you to believe me. You asked if I fell. I told you what I know.”
Pete got up, then helped her to her feet. “I’m sorry, sugar. You know how I am. I’m not doubting what you believe. I’m just saying, I’ve never been shown anything like that, okay?”
Mae nodded, then went to the sideboard to get a tissue and wiped her eyes.
“I’ll finish those dishes later. I want to sit outside a spell and come to terms with this. I’ve been praying for an answer to his whereabouts, and now I know.”
“I’ll finish the dishes. I want you to know this hurts me as much as it does you, but I guessed long ago that this is how his life would end. You go on now.”
“Thank you,” Mae said, and took another tissue with her as she went out onto the front porch.
She pulled her granny’s old wooden rocker into the shade, and settled into it, swallowing back a fresh set of tears as she gazed off across the front yard to the purple irises blooming tall against the white board fence.
Pete was right. They’d both known Hershel’s lifestyle would be the death of him. She’d just never thought about a natural disaster being the way he would pass.
She thought about calling the US Marshals Office and then changed her mind. They were all about evidence, not a mother’s intuition. They’d likely know soon enough.
* * *
Dude Santos had evacuated Houston before the hurricane and gone back home to Mexico. He was in Cozumel, having lunch with old friends, and enjoying the view from the little casa where he’d grown up. Their chatter was full of laughter and teasing as they availed themselves of shrimp ceviche, warm, handmade tortillas and a pitcher of margaritas that never seemed to go dry.
One beauty, a woman named Marigrace, caught Dude staring off into space. She wondered what he was thinking about, and decided he needed to be thinking about her.
He wasn’t all that tall, but then neither was she. But he was vain, which explained why his friends always called him Dude, when his real name was Alejandro. Someone once told him that he looked like the Hollywood actor Mario Lopez, which fed into his desire to be important and wealthy, but she didn’t see it. She also knew he walked on the shady side of the law, but so did most of the people she knew.
He didn’t often come back to his home, and when he did, she suspected it was to hide out, or at least stay under the radar of the US law enforcement, until whatever he’d done calmed down, but he always had money to spend on her, and he always had great parties.
He still had that look on his face, and she wanted attention, so she left the buffet, put her arms around his somewhat ample waist and ran a finger down the side of his face.
“So, my beautiful man, what is it that puts such a frown on your face?”
Dude shifted into party mode and laughed as he pulled her close.
“The fact that you have been ignoring me, of course.”
She giggled. He popped her shapely bottom and then let her pull him back to the buffet where she insisted on serving him. He let her choose his food and drink, and even let her lead him to a table out on his patio where his guests were seated and eating their food.
“Look at this view!” Marigrace said. “Cozumel is muy magnifico, is it not?”
“Sí, sí, Marigrace, but not as stunning as you.”
She beamed, then forked up a bite of the shrimp ceviche. “For you, my beautiful man.”
He let her put it in his mouth, and winked at her as he chewed, all the while wondering what the hell was going on with Hershel and Roy, wondering why they hadn’t tried to call. It was eating at his greedy heart that all that money might have been lost to the flood. If it was gone, then Hershel and Roy better be dead, too, because if they weren’t, he’d kill them himself.
* * *
Momma, I’m tired.
Daddy’s crying. Tell him it’s okay.
* * *
Haley woke. Her head was throbbing and her belly hurt. When she felt the weight of an arm across her waist she remembered.
Sam has saved her.
But she was hot—so hot. When she moved her head, the room began to spin.
She moaned, and Sam woke and sat up.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“I hurt in so many places...so hot. Feels like I can’t breathe.”
Sam felt her forehead and frowned. She was hot, but her skin was barely damp. This worried him.
“You need water,” he said, and got up to drag the backpack close to the sleeping bag.
Haley eased up into a sitting position to watch him.
“I was dreaming about Robbie,” she said.
Sam paused. “I dream about him. I dream about you, too.”
Haley’s shoulders slumped. “I spent six months in therapy when I first moved to Houston. I only remember those days in bits and pieces. I had a total meltdown. For the longest time, I blamed myself for losing him. I was as close to the bottom as I ever want to be.” She paused, trying to read his expression, then shrugged it away. “She was a really good therapist. She let me scream and cry. She listened to me shouting in anger at God. She held my hand the day I had the breakthrough, and held my head when I vomited up everything in my belly, then sat in silence, watching me as I gave up the fight and finally admitted, both to her and to myself, that what I killed was us.”
Sam felt the words like a punch in the gut, and got up to put some distance between them, because what he wanted was her.
He moved toward the window, then stopped and turned to face her. Seeing her in his clothes was just a reminder of before.
“We didn’t just lose Robbie. We lost each other. I didn’t know how to reach you then. You were so broken.”
“I know I was.”
He watched her face, wondering how she was going to respond, then said it anyway. “Robbie was our gift, not our loss.”
She frowned. “You always saw the rainbow.”
“And you always saw the storm,” he countered. “But it was your strength that held you together as long as Robbie needed you. And that same strength is what kept you alive through this. You are a warrior, Haley, and I’m grateful that you trusted me enough to call.”
Haley held out a hand, and when he moved back to where she was sitting and grasped it, she tightened her grip and pulled him back down beside her.
“Forgive me?” she asked.
“There was nothing to forgive,” Sam said. “That was then and this is now. We’ll get through this, only this time, it will be together. Understood? You called me back into your life. I won’t easily leave you again.” He got a bottle of water and opened it for her. “Drink. You’re hot, but you’re not sweating much. You need to hydrate.”
Haley took the bottle and took a big drink while Sam was digging through his things for a bottle of salt pills. As soon as he found them, he shook two out into her hand and made her take them.
Haley kept the bottle of water, continuing to sip from time to time.
“Will the chopper come back when the wind dies down?” she asked.
“It’s not all about the wind. If it’s still raining too hard to fly, Lee will still be grounded. He will have to be the judge of when that’s safe.”
“Is Lee the pilot?” Haley asked.
Sam nodded. “He’s also a friend. He won’t let us down.”
Haley glanced toward the little stairwell, and to the door beyond.
Sam saw the fear on her face.
“They’re dead, remember?”
She nodded, then looked away.
“I saw the bullet holes over the bed,” Sam said.
Haley stared off into space. “I shot two rounds at them. He put two in the wall, and one in the door after I got free and locked him out. There was one bullet left, and I’d just lost the wrestling match to recover the gun when you arrived.”
Sam frowned. She sounded so matter-of-fact. Somewhere down the road the shock of what she’d gone through was going to hit hard.
Haley screwed the lid back on the water and then set it aside as she got up. She started toward the bathroom, and then the room began spinning again. She turned toward Sam, but there were two of him.
“Sam, I don’t feel good.”
He saw the color fading from her face and was up and running, barely catching her before she hit the floor. He carried her back to the sleeping bag, then began checking her vitals. Her pulse was racing. Her forehead was hot, but dry. He feared she was hurt somewhere—somewhere he couldn’t see, or sick with some kind of disease brought here by the flood. This was the worst-case scenario he’d feared, and no way to get immediate help.
“Please God, please don’t let her die,” he said, grabbed some wet wipes and began wiping her face to cool her down, then put the cool wipes on the back of her neck.
She moaned.
“Haley? Honey? Can you hear me?”
“Shot them...caught me...can’t get away. Miss my ride.”
“You didn’t miss your ride, baby. I’m here. We’ll leave together.”
Haley sighed, then began mumbling.
Sam took the lid off her water and lifted her head.
“Open your mouth, Haley. Water. Drink the water.”
She moaned. “Dark water...rising...gonna drown.”
Sam gritted his teeth and drizzled a little water on her lips. When she licked it off, he poured more.
“Open your mouth, Haley. There’s water to drink.”
Her lips parted slightly, but he feared she was going to choke, so he raised her into a sitting position, and poured some into her mouth.
“Swallow, Haley! Swallow the water!”
A little water dribbled back out, but he saw her throat working. Some of it had gone down. He kept pouring it, a little bit at a time until he had most of the bottle in her, then he put the rest aside as he eased her back down.
There were two injuries she had that he was most concerned with. The head wound, and the huge bruise on her stomach.
He grabbed her phone to contact Lee and was relieved to still see it in service.
Lee answered on the first ring.
“Hello?”
“This is Sam. I don’t have long to talk. Haley is unconscious. Dehydrated. Not sweating and the attic is a sauna. She’ll need a litter rescue. Advise the need for Life Flight helicopter for her. Will you coordinate?”
“Yes. Will send details when the weather clears,” Lee said.
Sam lost the signal, and then laid the phone aside and began tending to Haley.
* * *
US Marshal Reagan Landry had just finished briefing Deputy Director Bob Richmond of their missing prisoners’ whereabouts, as well as what they’d done while on the loose, and Richmond wasn’t taking the news well.
“You said you had photos of the woman they kidnapped?”
“Yes, sir. Her ex-husband sent them to me when he called.”
“He called you? From Houston? I thought communications were knocked out.”
Landry shrugged. “I don’t know how he did it, but I had him checked him out. He’s a hotshot private investigator out of Dallas. If he hadn’t arrived when he did, Haley Quaid would be dead.” Then he pulled up the shots from his phone and handed it to his boss. “Some of these old bruises are from when she fell down the stairs. But a good deal of them are from the beating she endured at Roy Baker’s hands. These are shots Sam Quaid also took, at my request, of the room where she’d been held. See the bullet holes in the wall above the bed where she was tied? Baker was using her for target practice.”
The deputy director’s eyes narrowed as he studied the pictures. “You say she shot both Baker and Arnold before they caught her?”
“Yes, sir.” Landry pointed to the body visible in the bed. “That’s Arnold. She shot him in the shoulder when he was coming at her, and then fired a second time at Baker, and nicked a rib.”
“So Arnold died from his bullet wound?” Richmond asked.
Landry shook his head. “No. Haley said Baker couldn’t stop the bleeding, so he put a pillow over Hershel Arnold’s face and smothered him.”
Richmond frowned. “That’s cold.”
“Baker was a bad one,” Landry said.
“And we know where this house is located?” Richmond asked.
Landry nodded. “Yes, sir. And the moment it’s safe, we’ll have boats in there to pick up the bodies and work the crime scene, although it’s gonna be a rough one. The house is a cooker right now with the power off, and the bodies aren’t gonna hold.”
“So where are the Quaids right now?”
“They’re holed up in the attic. As soon as the storm passes, they’ll be picked up by chopper. He’ll have her checked out medically before they head back to Dallas. She’ll be there with him for the time being. I have his contact info. We’ll get her statement at a later date.”
Richmond nodded. “Looks like you’ve got as many ends tied up as possible until this storm passes. Good work.”
Landry shrugged. “Truth is, sir, if it hadn’t been for Sam Quaid’s phone call, we still wouldn’t know where our prisoners were.”
Richmond picked up one of the phones and scanned the pictures of Haley again. “Do you know how hard you have to be hit to get a bruise like this on your belly?”
Landry shook his head. “No, sir, but according to Ms. Quaid’s story, she was tied to the bed when he did it.”
“We won’t be wasting anymore taxpayer money housing Roy Baker,” Richmond muttered.
Landry picked up his phone and dropped it back into his pocket. “The way I see it, Baker was a dead man walking after he made his first kill at the age of seventeen. It just took this long for someone to stop him.”
“Even though we know it’s them, hold off on notifying the Baker and Arnold families until we have recovered the bodies and made positive identifications,” Richmond said.
“Yes, sir,” Landry said. “Will that be all?”
“Yes, and thank you for coming in,” Richmond said.
* * *
Night came and Sam still had no answer from Lee.
But he had dragged a full-size mattress from one of the bedrooms into the attic hours earlier, rather than have Haley sleeping on the floor, and had his flashlight out so he could keep an eye on her condition.
She was still talking, but none of it made sense, so he kept pouring little sips of water down her mouth. He’d found a hair band in her tote bag hours earlier and had pulled her long dark hair up into a ponytail to keep it off her neck, but he needed to cool her down.
He needed that fever to break, and the water coming out of the taps was lukewarm. Putting her in a bathtub in one of the bathrooms wouldn’t break her fever. It would just be like giving her a bath, which she was too weak to handle. He discarded that idea. He didn’t need lukewarm, he needed cold. He paced the floor, trying to think of every survival trick he’d ever heard of, but the obvious need was for water. He jumped as the winds blew a sheet of rain against the window, and that’s when it hit him. The rain was water, and coming straight off the ocean, it should be colder than what was in this house. And, until it reached the flood below, it wasn’t contaminated!
He looked back at Haley, then at the window.
“If I wait, I take a huge chance of losing her,” he muttered. “Oh, what the hell. I can’t stand here and do nothing.”
He pushed the window back up as far as it would go, and got an immediate blast from the storm. He picked her up and carried her toward the window. The rain coming in was blowing hard enough that it stung his skin, so he could only imagine how her bruised body would feel. But he needed that fever to break.
Afraid the force of the rain would damage her eyes, he turned her face to his chest, and let the storm soak her to the core.
Six
Haley was locked into a bad dream loop that wouldn’t go away.
Roy Baker was shooting at her, and every time he pulled the trigger, the bullets came closer and closer to her head.
“Stop! Stop!” Haley shouted. “The gun is empty. Stop shooting!”
Roy laughed. “I don’t have to stop until I want to.” Then he walked right up to the foot of the bed, aimed the gun straight at her head and shot her.
The pain in her head was terrible, but she was still alive, and where was Roy? As soon as he pulled the trigger, he disappeared.
Still tied to the bed, she felt water all over her body. The flood! The water level was rising and she was going to drown!
Someone was coming to save her. Sam. It was Sam. Hurry, Sam, hurry. Water was everywhere.
Haley woke with a jerk, only to realize she was in Sam’s arms, and there was rain coming in the open window. She moaned, and then put her hands over her face.
The muscles in Sam’s arms were in spasms from holding her so long, but she was awake, and that was a plus.
“I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry. Just a minute.”
He carried her back to the mattress, then ran back and closed the window. Quite a bit of rain had come in, but it had run straight across the attic floor to the stairs and then out beneath the door.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
He knelt beside her, felt her skin, then opened another bottle of water and helped her sit up.
