“Jordan, just stay up here. With us.”
“Listen. I'll be back in a minute. Please. Go back.”
“Stubborn, just like your mama.”
I didn't argue this time. He turned and headed back toward Candace's room. I breathed a sigh of relief.
Silence fell. I imagined Philip lying wounded, or dead, on the study floor, a thin tendril of smoke rising from the hole in his skin. And I'd let him go down there alone.
Whoever was down there shooting, he or she had been the one to hurt Candace. To kill my child. I blew out the candle and closed my eyes for a brief prayer.
Then I rushed down the stairs, my hands aching for a throat. The study doors stood half-closed, and I heard only silence within.
Slowly I pushed back the door, keeping my head low. The other study doors stood open onto the porch, wind and rain rattling in, soaking the floor. The air felt oppressive with the weight of the storm. The room was a shambles, as though a fight had torn it apart. I crept in, keeping my back against the door, breathing softly through my mouth, listening for any telltale sign that I wasn't alone.
Lightning cascaded its eerie flash into the bay, and the room lit dimly. And I could see the body lying on the floor, folded over the end of the rug.
I scurried forward, my fingers trembling as I fired the match and lit the candle. Light spilled out in an eldritch glow, and I stared down into the vacant, dead eyes of Rufus Beaulac.
The bullet had smashed through his throat, and his hand lay limply near the terrible wound, as though he needed simply to cough and all would be well. Blood-maroon in this uncertain light-speckled his face, his chest, his twisted lips, the floor. I held my fingers above his mouth. No breath stirred against my skin.
“Oh, my lord,” a voice not my own murmured, and I nearly screamed. I jerked the light up-Uncle Jake sat huddled in his chair, his face as frightened as a child's. His hands were clasped in the fold of his robe and he shivered in the dampness gusting in from the door. He blinked at me as if he didn't quite know me. “Jordan. Oh, dear. Something's wrong with Rufus. You better fetch Deb, he's-”
“He's dead, Uncle Jake. Are you okay?” I felt a sudden, sharp fear that with his heart condition, tonight would bring on an attack. “Where are the others?”
Puzzlement clouded his usually acerbic face. “I'm fine.
They-they're outside. Mutt and Philip argued about opening the safe, and taking the boat-” He pointed toward the wall safe, exposed now because the reproduction battle flag covering it lay on the floor. The safe door was open like a dark eye.
The boat? My heart pounded. I hurried to the study doors and out into the storm. Rain smashed into my face like a hard slap. The sky frothed with violence. Dark, cancerous clouds pummeled each other, lightning leaping from them to earth in obscene caresses. In seconds, I was drenched to the skin. I shaded my hands against the wind and the rain, trying to make out the stretch of terrain from the house to the dock. I stumbled forward, past the dark shape of the greenhouse, into the blackness of the night.
I had gotten to the beach-the ill-fated beach that gave this island its terrible name. For a moment, in the glassiness of vision in unrelenting rain, I thought I saw the shadows of a dozen boys, lying in the sand in their tattered uniforms, throats laid open like Rufus's. I gagged and yelled out. But there were no boys, there was only a dark shape lying on the beach, facedown in the wet sand. I stumbled forward and pulled on a shoulder, heaving him over.
Philip. I screamed out his name and leaned close to him. Ragged breath hit my ear. I felt up and down his head, his body, trying to see what was wrong. Sand daubed in a wound on his head. I had to wait for a flicker of lightning to see it'd been creased by a bullet. I yelled his name again, but he didn't answer.
Lights flicked on, out on the water. The boat. I ran toward it, the wind slamming into me, screaming out at Uncle Mutt.
Waves rocked the small boat. In the pale gleam of its running lights, I saw Wendy hurriedly donning a life preserver. And I could see Mutt's second boat, Little Brutus, its lines cut, bouncing in the pounding waves. Unreachable.
“Don't leave us! Don't leave us here, you asshole!” I hollered into the wind. “You murderer! Murderer!”
I couldn't see them clearly; the rain cut at my eyes like talons. Their boat bobbed in the hard swells, bumped against the dock, and turned out toward the bay.
Now I was on the dock, arms flailing, trying to keep my balance in the violent gale. A wave struck their boat, it rocked. And began moving away.
“Don't! Don't!” I screamed. If they ever heard me, there was no indication.
The dock jolted and tottered under my feet. I turned away from the fleeing vessel and hurried back to Philip. He still wasn't conscious and I slowly pulled him up into a fireman's carry, hoping I wasn't hurting him worse if he had suffered injuries I hadn't detected.
Halfway back to the house, Tom and Pop found me. Pop seized me in a grateful hug, nearly making me drop Philip. They eased him from my shoulders (he was not light) and we headed toward the house.
I came up after them onto the porch, staggering with delayed shock. I steadied Philip's back as Pop and Tom carried him in between them. I stumbled as we headed onto the porch, and my hand smashed through one of the panes of glass in the study door, cutting it deeply. I yowled as warm blood gushed over my hand.
“Oh, Christ,” I muttered.
Jake still sat in the study, watching us with wide eyes. He looked like a little boy on a too-scary adventure. “What's happened?” he cried.
“Mutt-or Wendy-shot Philip. The bullet creased his head,” I managed to gasp. “They've left us. They've taken one of the boats and cut loose the other.”
Jake got to his feet with more alacrity than I'd have given him credit for. His eyes were bright furnaces of shock. “The phones are still out,” he said. “I just tried a minute ago-”
“Get Philip on the settee,” Pop gasped. “Tom, hurry. Get Deborah down here.” They lowered Philip down to the sofa and Tom sprinted up the stairs. In the dim light of my candle, which Jake had kept lit, Philip's wound didn't appear so grave-more of a deep bruise and a nasty laceration. It was clear the bullet hadn't penetrated his skull. But he was shockingly pale, and I started cleaning the clumped sand from around his face.
“Oh, Jordy, your hand,” Pop muttered. “I'll take care of Philip. That's a bad cut. Gonna need stitches. We got to get Deborah to look at it.”
“It'll keep,” I answered. “Oh, shit, Pop, Mutt did all this. That bastard-”
Deborah and Gretchen barreled down the stairs with Tom. Gretchen let out a little shriek at the sight of Rufus's body. Deb paused at Rufus, but saw he was dead. She pushed us out of the way to examine Philip. She began issuing orders to the others.
“Come here, Jordan,” Jake called. “Let Philip be. Deb'll take good care of him. Let me tend to that cut.”
“Go ahead, Jordy,” Pop ordered. “You got to be sure you got the glass out of there.”
“I was a medic in the war,” Jake said. “I know how to fix a cut.” He led me, as though I were a small boy, into the hallway and down to his room.
“Ever since I needed a cane,” Jake said, “Mutt put me in this downstairs room. But I like it.” He took my candle and lit another candle on a mantelpiece over a small stone fireplace.
It was a nice room. The furniture was oak antique; plants hung in profusion from shelves and the ceiling, like an extension of Mutt's beloved greenhouse. A beautiful writing desk stood in the corner and I remembered Mutt mentioning Jake had many pen pals. He'd have a hell of a story to tell now. Family pictures dotted the walls, most of Mutt at various ages. There were some of a man I recognized as a much younger Jake with a child.
“That's Mutt,” Jake said. He went into the adjoining bathroom. “Pretty child he was, just like you.”
I shivered in delayed shock, soaked and chilled. My hand was a bright flame of pain. “He's not pretty, Uncle Jake. He's a murderer.”
“I'd prefer not to ponder that right now,” Jake answered. His tone was mild, as though this were a normal framework for conversation. He lit another candle in the bathroom. “Got to keep candles around when you live on the coast. Hate to take a dump in the dark.”
Despite the horrors of the night, I managed to laugh. Not much of a laugh, but a laugh. I suddenly wanted to see and hold Candace very badly.
“Now get over to the sink and rinse out that hand good. I'll fix you up a bandage.” I obeyed him, standing
