Landfall (10 page)

“That sounds great, thanks,” he said, and looked at his watch.

“Here’s your license, Mr. Hamilton, and I’ll just print out your agreement for you to sign.”

Wyatt put the license back in his wallet and tried Maggie’s cell one more time. Nothing. He slid the phone back into his shirt pocket.

“Here you go, Mr. Hamilton,” the redhead said. “If you’ll just sign where indicated and check the boxes that are highlighted, we’ll have your car brought around front.”

Wyatt got everything signed and checked, and smiled and said “thank you” where indicated as well, but he had a hard time not rapping the cane against the counter and asking her to speed things along.

Finally, she handed him seven copies of his rental agreement in three different pastel colors, and pointed at the glass front doors. “There’s your car now,” she said. “We’ll see you back here tomorrow.”

“Okee-doke,” Wyatt said, and lurched toward the doors.

He knew that, most likely, Maggie had had car trouble or some other minor issue that had prevented her leaving Apalach as scheduled. He also knew that, given the fact that one of them had been shot every time they tried to have a real date, it wasn’t that outrageous to assume she’d simultaneously had phone trouble. He just wasn’t sure he was buying it.

If he drove through hell and high water, pissed off his doctors, and was popping Percocet tonight all because she forgot to gas up the Jeep or something, he’d go ahead and yell at her for a while, then make her cook him a steak. Maybe he’d even take her dog.

Until then, he was going to assume that there was a good reason for him to be doing what he was doing.

When Maggie felt the rope actually give, truly and without question move, she immediately broke into a sweat.

It wasn’t that she was exerting herself any more than she had been; it was the almost instantaneous supply of adrenaline her brain provided her heart and muscles as soon as it perceived that she had a reason to need it.

Her mouth opened just a bit, and her eyes widened, and she saw immediately that Sky noticed. Sky had been watching her for the last half hour, alternating staring at her mother with glancing over at the man, who seemed newly enervated by the promise of the new arrival. He had been walking around the main room without purpose, occasionally stopping to check his phone, get a drink of water, or watch the storm out the kitchen window.

Maggie purposefully and with great effort kept her breathing slow and even, and kept her butt in her chair and her arms back, though every instinct but the smart ones pushed her to leap from her chair.

What she wished was for the man to go to the bathroom, go anywhere that would give her half a chance at getting to one of her guns on the kitchen counter. But she knew that she would be unlikely to have enough time to get there, reload one of the guns he’d emptied, and be ready before he shot her in the back.

The man walked over to the front door and laid his ear against it, listening. Maggie heard nothing but the incessant wind and rain.

Her focus changed to the gun that was already loaded, the one tucked into the front of his waistband. She needed that gun.

She was taking slow, deep breaths, trying to slow her thoughts so that she could come up with something viable, when Sky got up out of her chair, wobbling a little unsteadily on cramped legs.

“I need to pee,” she said boldly.

The man straightened up and snarled at her. “No, you don’t. Sit back down.”

“Sky!” Kyle croaked.

“No! You wanna kill me, you ignorant redneck, then you go ahead and do it, but they’re not gonna find me with piss running down my leg,” Sky snapped. “Take me to the freaking bathroom.”

Maggie’s heart pounded with hope as the man shot over to the table, but he pulled out the .22 and pointed it at Sky’s face. “Sit down now,” he said through his teeth. Maggie’s eyes zoomed in on the safety, expecting him to flick it off at any moment.

Sky’s eyes blinked several times, but when she opened her mouth, all she said was, “No.”

“Sky!” Kyle yelled again, and Coco started barking furiously from the bedroom.

The man kipped the gun sideways and pulled his arm back a bit to strike Sky with it, and Maggie stopped thinking.

She grabbed the loose rope in her right hand and whipped the remaining knot off of her left wrist as she got to her feet. She had been planning on slapping at the gun with it, but as she got up, she changed her angle. It was unplanned and awkward, and she was slower than she had been when she’d envisioned it in her mind.

She slung it underhand, hitting him where his wrist met his hand. She was unsteady on her feet and her head spun a little, so she didn’t have the momentum she’d hoped she would, but it was enough to knock the gun from his hand. It clattered to the table, then skidded off the table and onto the wood floor, where it slid under the kitchen island.

Sky sat down hard in surprise as the man whipped his head to follow the trajectory of his gun, then spun back to face Maggie. Maggie got one kick to the back of his thigh, but she had to use her left leg and wasn’t really positioned for good leverage. The kick was slightly weak and put her off balance, but it was hard enough and well placed enough to make him slump a bit.

As he did, Maggie stepped forward and got him in the throat with the side of her left hand. It was a hit, but a weaker hit than she needed it to be. The pain registered on his face, but when she went for an upper cut with her right fist, he caught it.

She twisted out of it before he could break her wrist, but his free hand popped straight at her and he slammed her broken nose with his palm. Pain exploded in every part of her face and head, and her vision swam. It gave him the precious few seconds he needed to wrap both hands around her throat.

Maggie heard both Kyle and Sky screaming behind her as the man bent her backwards over the table. She thrust her arms between his and outward against his elbows in an attempt to break his hold, but she didn’t have the speed or power behind it that she needed.

He actually lifted her by her neck, stronger than he’d appeared to be, and slammed her down on the table on her back. For a moment, Kyle’s face was visible above her, just inches away. She grabbed both of his thumbs and started trying to bend them backwards, to twist them enough to make him loosen his grip, but she couldn’t breathe and her vision was already darkening.

Maggie kept pulling back on the man’s thumbs, trying to dislodge his hands from her throat just enough to get one breath of air, one breath to keep her conscious. The man lifted her neck just a few inches and slammed her head against the tabletop. She heard Kyle screaming, could see his frightened eyes just a few inches above her, as he sat there, staring down in horror.

She felt her brain start to shut down, and she thought,
Please don’t choke me to death six inches away from my son. Please don’t do this in front of my children.

Above the sound of her children’s screaming and the man’s cursing, she heard the front door slam inward. It crashed against the wall with a clap as loud as thunder, and suddenly wind filled the room, and rain fell onto Maggie’s legs where they twisted and kicked between the man’s.

Then, like something her air-starved brain had conjured, Boudreaux’s face appeared over the man’s shoulder. He was looking at her, and the pure, unadulterated, animalistic rage in his bright blue eyes was like something from someone else’s nightmare.

Maggie didn’t even have time to reconcile what she was seeing with what she thought ought to be there. Boudreaux’s arm whipped around the man’s neck, and the man released Maggie’s throat. Two seconds later, they were both gone. Boudreaux pulled the man backwards, back out the front door, and the wind yanked the door shut again with a bang.

It was as though some huge, tentacled creature had wrapped itself around a sailor and pulled him overboard into the sea, just like that. If she couldn’t still feel the rain on her legs, couldn’t see the water all over the floor in front of the door as she pushed herself up on one arm, Maggie would not have believed that it had actually happened the way her eyes told her that it had.

M
aggie laid on the table for two pounding heartbeats, then slid off and onto her feet, and scrambled over to Sky’s chair.

“Mom, what just happened?” Sky asked, her voice near hysterical.

“I don’t know,” Maggie managed to croak, squatting behind Sky’s chair and furiously working the ropes that bound her wrists.

“What did he do?”

“I don’t know, Sky!”

The wind was whistling like a train outside, and it seemed impossible that it could be louder than it had already been. Maggie looked up toward the kitchen window as something small but hard hit it, and she caught Kyle’s eye. He was staring at the front door, his eyes wide.

“I’m coming, Kyle,” Maggie said. He looked at her, but didn’t say anything.

Sky wiggled her fingers. “Hurry, Mom!”

“Hold still, baby, please,” Maggie said.

She yanked the ropes free and jumped up as Sky pulled her arms around to the front. They were stiff from hours of being bound behind her, and she rolled them gingerly.

“Sky, I need you to grab the Glock,” Maggie said, as she squatted behind Kyle and started working on the ropes. His thin wrists were bleeding, and the ropes had left welts on them that made Maggie want to scream.

Sky ran over to the kitchen counter and picked up the Glock, where it lay with the Mossberg and her great-grandfather’s .38. “Do you want me to bring it to you?”

“No, I need it for you,” she said. “Do you remember how to use it?”

“Yeah, but…I guess. Why not the .38?”

“This is not the time for a revolver, baby,” Maggie answered. “Just take it. I want you take it, and I want you to take Kyle, and I want you guys to go in my room, and you don’t come out unless I come get you.”

“Mom, wait—”

“You don’t come out unless I come get you, do you understand me?” Maggie yelled.

“Yes.”

A branch slammed into the window behind Sky, and she ducked instinctively, but the glass didn’t break. The branch fell away again as she straightened up and grabbed the extra rounds from the counter and shoved them into her pocket.

Maggie finally pulled Kyle’s wrists free, and she rubbed them for just a second before she pulled him up from the chair. “Kyle, you go with Sky, and you guys stay in there. Do you hear me?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice a croak.

“Go!” Maggie barked at Sky, and the kids ran down the hallway. As soon as she heard their steps, Coco started barking and scratching at the door again. Maggie watched Sky open the door, watched the kids go in and slam the door behind them, then she ran over to the kitchen counter.

She glanced up at the front door several times, as she loaded the Mossberg, shoved a couple of extra rounds in her shorts pocket, and then ran over to the door. The floor was wet from when he had burst through, and she slipped and nearly went down before catching herself.

She put an ear to the door, but it was a ridiculous thing to do. On the other side was nothing but noise, and she could hear nothing beyond the pounding of the rain on the deck.

She took a deep breath, slammed back the action on the shotgun, and flung open the door.

Boudreaux was in the yard, a few feet from the bottom of the stairs. He was almost knee deep in water from the creek, and the water closest to him was colored a deep, dark red.

He looked up at her, the wind buffeting him and pushing him, his hair whipping wildly.

Maggie raised the shotgun and felt a catch in her throat as she looked into those eyes, so deeply blue even from this distance. She hadn’t wanted him to be the one, and she felt, ridiculously, the heaviness of disappointment in her chest.

“I wish you hadn’t come here, Mr. Boudreaux.”

He stared at the shotgun, then wiped his forearm across his eyes. “Your father called me,” he yelled to her above the rain and wind.

It took a second for Maggie to process what he’d said. “What?”

“He was worried about you,” he called back.

“Why would he call you?” she demanded.

Boudreaux seemed to hesitate for a moment. She could almost see him deciding on the best answer. “Because he knew I would come,” he yelled.