A piece of flying debris caught McCracken in the wrist, tearing Liz from his grasp. He managed to grab her, but now they were in danger of being sucked over the edge. His grip on the van gave finally, and both of them were dragged across the pavement, Blaine groping desperately for a handhold on something,
anything
, as the chasm in the upper span loomed dangerously close.
His fingers had scraped across the wrecked husk of a BMW, when a hand shot down from its open sunroof and clamped like a vise upon his shoulder. Blaine looked up into the determined eyes of Johnny Wareagle and focused entirely on holding on to Liz.
The wave dissipated as quickly as it had come, leaving Blaine and Liz sitting on the debris-strewn pavement a mere ten feet from the jagged edge of the gap. Sal Belamo, whose leap had ended between a pair of heavy trucks that effectively shielded him, limped gingerly past them and peered down at the frothy, bubbling water, which had turned smoky black.
“Anybody for a swim?”
O
n the New Jersey side of the bridge, the huge convoy from Fort Dix was lined up as far as the eye could see, awaiting permission to cross into New York City.
“Just tell them to stand by,” instructed the governor, as he spoke with Mayor Lucille Corrente on another line.
And on the upper span, Warren Muldoon, his face blackened with soot, his clothes torn and splattered with grime, rose between a pair of car wrecks, holding his cellular phone tight to his ear.
“Put it
back
again?” he asked disbelievingly. “Can’t you people make up your minds?”
B
laine walked with Liz along the hospital corridors, her IV hookup keeping their pace slow.
“What about the Devil’s Brew still underneath New York City?” she asked him.
“Apparently, it begins to dissipate after twenty-four hours. But, just to be on the safe side, they flooded the tunnels with overflow from the Hudson River.”
“Even Devil’s Brew won’t be able to survive that.”
“There’s something else,” Blain told her. He had visited her daily since the day New York City almost perished, but this was the first time she had been allowed out of her room. “According to Kirkland, the FBI lab has tried to re-create what your bullet supposedly did in that classroom and hasn’t even been able to come close. You’re being exonerated in the death of Tyrell’s son.”
“My father was right. They made me the scapegoat.”
“And now they’re prepared to reinstate you, with the Hostage and Rescue Team, if that’s what you want.”
“As a favor to you?”
“Payback’s a bitch.”
Liz shrugged. “Right now, all I want is my son back. I think he’d like growing up on the family farm.”
Blaine stopped and faced her. “That doesn’t sound like a Torrey to me.”
“Not Buck, because I can’t be like him.”
“There are plenty worse things.”
“But I’ve watched him and I’ve watched you, and from what I’ve seen, well, it just seems like you can never walk away from that kind of life. It sticks with you like gum on a shoe. Like it or not.”
“I like it; I was afraid I had lost it.”
“So you went to my father to get it back.”
“And you know what I learned? That I had never lost it. That’s what your father was trying to get across to me in Condor Key. That’s what this means,” Blaine said, holding up his hand so Liz could see his DS ring prominently displayed. “Dead Simple wasn’t about the ease with which we killed; it was about the attitude that kept us alive. It’s a mind-set that defines the level where I, the Indian, and your father play out our lives … . You too, if that’s what you want.”
Her gaze fell on Blaine’s finger. “You notice Buck never gave me one of those rings.”
“Maybe he was waiting for you to ask for it, hoping you never would.”
“Why?”
“Because he didn’t want you to pay the same price for wearing it he had.”
“Is that why he ran away and hid in Condor Key?”
“No more than the Indian or I hid in other places, other ways. That’s what your father didn’t want to happen to you. I don’t think he realized it had happened to him as well, until I found him down there. But he got it back, Liz. That’s what brought him up here. That’s what sent him after Stratton’s gold, because he realized how goddamn much he missed the kind of life he turned his back on when he moved to Condor Key.”
“Thanks to you going down there and reminding him,” Liz said, not bothering to hide the bitterness in her voice. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why not? It’s true.”
“I already lost him for five years. I don’t want to lose him again.”
“You won’t,” Blaine promised.
W
ill Thatch was waiting upstairs when Bob Snelling got to his office.
“I told you I didn’t want to see you ever again,” Snelling told him.
“There’s something I need you to do,” Will said flatly.
“I’m not messing with those people again. Christ, not ever.”
“That’s all in the past, believe me.”
Snelling looked him over. “So what is it you want?”
“My family. I want you to find them for me.”
T
hey met at a roadside diner, Farley Stratton into his second cup of coffee by the time McCracken walked through the door. He laid the leather
pouch he had recovered from the corpse of William Henry Stratton on the table and eased it toward the colonel’s great-great-grandson.
“I think you’ll find the documents you’re looking for inside,” Blaine said. “I figured I’d leave the rest to you.”
Stratton grasped the pouch tightly. “I’ve got a safe-deposit box just waiting for them.”
“You’re not going to open it?”
“You already told me what was inside.”
“Doesn’t mean I was right.”
“But this way I’ll never know if you were wrong.”
“So history remains unchanged,” Blaine concluded.
“The colonel was a hero. He helped win the Civil War. That’s enough for me.”
“What about the monster under the lake?”
Parley Stratton leaned back. “I think it’s time it became extinct.”
“Last of his kind. Too bad.”
“It happens. Like dinosaurs.”
“Be careful,” Blaine warned, a smile tucked behind his lips. “They’ve been known to come back.”
“
T
his is as far as I can take ya,” the sheriff said, stopping the old squad car where the dirt road ended. “But I reckon this time he knows you’re coming.”
Blaine McCracken nodded his thanks and slid out of the car, focusing on the tangled growth of vegetation and dark waters ahead.
“Don’t forget your bag, now,” the sheriff reminded, shifting it across the back seat.
Blaine reached inside and hoisted his duffel bag out effortlessly. The sheriff made no motion to join him outside the car, pointed straight ahead through the windshield instead.
“Looks like he’s waiting for ya.”
For the first time, Blaine noticed Buck Torrey’s figure seated on the edge of the dock. He heard the sheriff pull away as he made his way over. Buck sat staring straight ahead. His legs dangled over the side. A pair of crutches lay dampening next to him. The familiar skiff was tied up to a mooring.
Buck kept his eyes on the water. “I heard what you did for Liz.”
“I just told the FBI what you said. They took it from there.”
Buck looked at him. “Good thing too, ’cause I got a bone to pick with you: what the hell you doing down here when those sons of bitches from Black Flag are still running around free?”
“They let Hank Belgrade and Will Thatch go, both unharmed. I figure that’s as close as they can come to a show of good faith. Declaring a truce.”
“They kept them alive just in case they needed them. Knew what would happen if they didn’t.”
“I can live with that.”
“Can you live with playing their game?”
“It’s our game too.”
Buck gazed at his still heavily bandaged ankle. “Yours, maybe.”
Blaine sat down so the crutches were between them. “That’s why I came down.”
“And me hoping you just wanted to buy a place in the neighborhood,” Buck said, and hobbled gingerly to his feet.
“No vacancies, remember?” Blaine rose, bringing Buck’s crutches with him. “You ready to get started?”
“I’m beginning to think I taught you too well, son.”
“That’s Captain to you, Sergeant Major.”
T
hey started the day after Blaine’s arrival, Buck wearing old fatigues that made him hot but kept the bugs from eating him alive. They took the skiff past all the stilt houses into the shallow muck that made Blaine remember this was the Everglades … .