“I’m right here,” Skeet said.
“Hot damn,” Bernie said.“My horoscope said this was my lucky day.”
The gun was in Lash’s hand before either man thought to react.Bernie went down still wearing his smile.Skeet had started to run and then stumbled and fell when Lash’s second shot caught him square in the back.The echo of the gunshots beneath the roof of the old porch were still ringing in Lash’s ears as he nudged each man with the toe of his shoe.Neither moved, nor would they ever again.
While Lash was staring down at their bodies, something fell on his sleeve.He looked down and then shrieked in sudden panic.Frantic, he brushed it off with the butt of the gun, then stomped it flat.What was left of a caterpillar lay squashed on the floor of the porch.
Another worm.A rapid staccato of drumbeats began again, ricocheting through Lash’s mind as he backed away from the worm and into the house with his gun drawn.He was all the way inside and halfway across the floor before he realized he had his back to the door of the room in which Casey was being kept.He crouched and spun.Heart pounding and slightly breathless, he aimed the gun at the middle of the door.
It took a bit for him to calm down.And when he did, he went to the door, rattling the knob just enough to let her know he was coming.
The tone of his voice took on a high, singsong pitch.“Here I come, ready or not.”
He opened the door, saw her standing across the room, and stepped inside, right into the puddle of lotion.
One second Lash was looking at Casey and the next he was staring at the ceiling and struggling to breathe.He clutched his chest with a groan and rolled as air began to fill his deflated lungs.
“Damn you,” he gasped, crawling to his feet just in time to duck an object that came flying through the air.Although he knew it wasn’t Casey, he pulled the trigger in self-defense, then gasped as something splattered all over his face.He looked down at himself in disbelief.Beans?He’d shot a can of beans?
* * *
For Casey, the two shots outside the door were unexpected.But when total silence followed, Casey suspected her worst fears were about to come true.Not only was Lash capable of killing her, but she’d bet her last dollar he’d just done away with Bernie and Skeet.It figured.He wasn’t the kind of man to leave loose ends untied.Lash was nothing if not neat.
She backed against the far wall, and when his voice taunted at her through the door, she traded the dagger in her right hand for the can of beans, then held her breath and waited.
The door opened, and to her undying relief, Lash hit the oil slick of lotion and fell flat on his back.While he was struggling for breath, she hauled back and sent the beans sailing, then ducked when his shot went wild.
While he was still brushing at the thick sauce and beans splattering his coat, she came at him.It was only through an inborn sense of self-preservation that he looked up in time to see her coming, but he didn’t move in time to save himself from the dagger’s sharp thrust.
He swung at her head with the butt of his gun just as the pain began to burn through his chest.Casey went limp, slumping to the floor at his feet as Lash stared at the familiar silver shaft sticking out of his chest.
The drumbeat got louder.He kept thinking of the dagger sticking out of that fat rat’s body, and now it was in him.The analogy was as sickening as the nausea rolling in his belly.
By now, the drumbeat was so loud in his head that he couldn’t hear himself scream.And yet the soft patois of the French-speaking slave, warning—predicting—promising, could still be heard above the drum.
Sharp like a serpent’s tooth, it will spill your blood and your flesh will be eaten by the worms of the earth.
In a wild kind of panic, he yanked at the handle, ignoring the pain, losing sight of the fact that, with Casey Justice unconscious and helpless at his feet, his goal was well within reach.Blood welled then poured out of the wound, and Lash staggered from the shock of seeing his life spilling on Casey’s legs.
And then he heard her groan, and a certainty came upon him.Kill her now, before it’s too late.
He wiped at the sweat beading on his brow and aimed the gun.He had to do it now while she was unconscious.He no longer had the guts to let her witness her own death.Not anymore.
He leaned down, jabbing the barrel of the gun at her head as the room began to spin around him.And then footsteps sounded on the porch outside and he turned and froze.A gourd rattled, like a rattlesnake’s warning, and the drumbeat grew louder, hammering—hammering—in what was left of his mind.
Crazed with pain and the impending vision of his own mortality, he lifted his gun, his wild gaze drawn to the shadow crossing the floor ahead of the man coming in.
* * *
When the first two shots came within seconds of each other, Ryder panicked.He tightened his grip on the gun Roman had given him and picked up his pace as he moved through the marsh beyond the old house.Brush caught on his blue jeans and tore at his shirt.Limbs slapped at his face and stung his eyelids and eyes.Water splashed up his legs to the tops of his knees and he kept on running, assuming that whatever was in his path would have to move of its own accord.His focus was on the house just visible in the distance, and the small white car parked nearby.
A hundred yards from the house, he saw the bodies of two men sprawled upon the porch and fear lent fresh speed to his steps.That explained the two shots.Water splashed a bit to his right and he knew that Roman was there on his heels as they ran out of the marsh and into the clearing.
Another shot rang out and Ryder almost stumbled.Dear God, it wasn’t possible that they’d come this far just to be too late.He couldn’t let himself believe that God would do that to him… not twice.
Two seconds, then ten seconds, and Ryder was up on the porch.He cleared Bernie Pike’s body in a smooth, single leap and came in the front door on the run.
“Dammit, Ryder, look out.”
