backdropped by a lone cypress tree.
Movement in the bushes, along with the noise, stopped instantly as if stilled by the unexpected light. A moment later, I watched an owl the size of a pelican drop from the cypress canopy, its eyes luminous and huge. It made a screeching hiss as it swooped low across the water, then ascended into darkness. The bird was silhouetted briefly by stars, then was gone.
In the fresh silence, I heard King laugh. “You dumb-ass,” he said. “It wasn’t nothing but a big bird. Jesus Christ, Perry, you’d be scared of your own shadow.” He was still laughing, but it was the laughter of nervous relief.
Perry said, “Shut up and tighten them nuts. Let’s see if this old wreck will move.”
I was still looking at the sky, my brain working. An owl wasn’t the source of the distant crashing we’d heard in the swamp. If the two cons believed it, good. But I knew better.
A few minutes later, I listened to a door slam. The truck’s engine started. Lights came on, and the vehicle began to move. Once again, though, King or Perry had made a sloppy decision. I heard the tires hit a marshy area and then I heard them begin to spin. Whoever was driving shifted into reverse, spun the tires faster, then shifted into first gear and accelerated, as if attempting to escape a snowdrift. Back and forth the truck rocked as the tires dug themselves in deeper.
“Stop, you idiot! Stop or you’ll bury her up to the rims!” It was King’s voice, so I knew that Perry was at the wheel.
I heard the door open. There was a long pause of inspection before Perry’s voice whined, “Son of a bitch, why does shit like this always have to happen to me? How bad is it?”
King snapped, “Worse than it would’ve been if you’d taken your damn foot off the gas when I told you. You’re an idiot, you know that?”
As the men argued, my thoughts turned to Arlis. He wasn’t unconscious and he certainly wasn’t asleep. I knew that they had bound his hands and legs again, but they had tied his hands in front of him this time so he could drink when he needed water.
I had hidden the wire cutters and a flashlight under the blanket. If King and Perry left him alone long enough, he could clip the tie wraps and run for it. Or he could even take the truck if Perry was dumb enough to leave the keys in the ignition. It didn’t matter if the truck was stuck. Not with Arlis at the wheel. King and Perry didn’t realize the vehicle had four-wheel drive or the tires wouldn’t be spinning now.
I thought about that for a moment. I wanted Arlis out of harm’s way, but I couldn’t risk him taking the truck. Not now. Without the truck, King and Perry’s plan to drive to freedom with a load of gold would collapse. They would kill me where I lay, then leave on foot.
I raised my voice and said, “Cut me loose and I’ll show you what the problem is.”
“The problem with what, Jock-o? You keep your mouth buttoned until I tell you to speak.”
I said, “The truck has four-wheel drive. You’ve got to shift into low and lock the hubs. It’s not that hard, but you’ve got to know how to do it.”
Perry said, “Shit, that’s right. It’s got four-wheel drive, it says it right on the side.”
King didn’t sound convincing when he told Perry, “I knew that! That’s what I was trying to tell you, numbnuts. If you’d listened to me, you wouldn’t have gotten stuck in the first place. Use the four-wheel drive, she’ll climb right out of there.”
I started to tell Perry that King was lying as usual but stopped in midsentence because I heard yet another unexpected sound.
This time, though, it wasn’t an animal.
The sound came from the far, far distance, in the direction of the swamp, but it was more muffled, barely audible. It was a shrill, two-fingered whistle, a series of piercing notes that were absorbed by the dense tree canopy.
The notes had a familiar rhythm. Or was I imagining it?
I had been facing the truck and so I rolled onto my other side. I moved my head, ears searching, hoping to hear the whistle once again. As I lay there, I sorted through alternative explanations. Screech owls are common in Florida swamps, but what I’d heard was not the mellow trill of the eastern screech owl. No, someone was out there—a person, definitely a person this time. I’d never learned to whistle through my fingers, but I knew a lot of people who could—Tomlinson among them.
Was it possible that Tomlinson was signaling me from the swamp? It made no sense. If he and Will had somehow escaped from the lake, they would have hiked back to the truck. Unless . . .
I came up with only two explanations: If it
It was a startling possibility. If he and boy were somewhere beneath the surface, even a shrill whistle would be almost inaudible. Water conducts sound more efficiently than air, but that didn’t apply if Will and Tomlinson were beneath ten or fifteen feet of sand and limestone.
Suddenly, the impossible seemed plausible . . . even reasonable. I had read of at least one account of a similar incident. A female cave diver had survived underwater for several hours, only occasionally screaming for help, because she didn’t want to deplete the few inches of air she’d found at the top of the cave where she was trapped.
I continued to listen, hoping for confirmation. The wind had shifted. It was freshening now, a chill breeze from the northeast. The wind seemed to brighten the stars as it moved across the lake and through the cypress canopy. After several minutes of silence, the wind carried once again a distinctive staccato series of notes.
I didn’t imagine it. As faint as the call was—and it was very faint—I was now sure. It was Tomlinson calling for help.
Struck numb, I listened to Perry say something to King and then I heard the truck start. There was a brief grinding of gears. Lights came on, illuminating the lake.
As the truck began to creep toward me, carrying the extra scuba gear I would need, I rolled onto my back.
I was thinking,
SEVENTEEN
WHEN HIS FLASHLIGHT FAILED, TOMLINSON CLOSED his eyes to soften the darkness. He began to concentrate on channeling his core energy—and what he hoped was comforting wisdom—into Will Chaser, who was now breathing from the last emergency air bottle while he stubbornly hacked at the ceiling of the snow globe where he had found tree roots.
There were only a few minutes of air left in Tomlinson’s primary tank—which is why he was now holding his breath—and he knew the end was near.
The boy’s knife made a steady metal-on-rock clinking as Tomlinson focused, feeling energy move through his arm, through his fingers, which were pressed against Will’s back, holding the boy in place as he dug. Channeling energy was something Tomlinson had done many times—often gifting strangers who never suspected that the strange, scarecrow-looking man next to them was their benefactor. But he had never given so wholly as he gave now.
Meditation was such an integral part of his life that he could continue channeling even as his brain processed unimportant details such as the glowing numerals of his watch, which he saw whenever his eyes blinked open. It was the only light in the blackness that engulfed them and so was of peripheral interest at first, but then it became more than that.
It was a new watch, and the glowing face gave him unexpected pleasure. The numerals were large and luminous, a swollen molten green.
As Tomlinson moved the watch closer to his eyes, the numerals blurred like fireflies in flight. The next image that came into his mind was that of an owl, its round eyes ablaze. Envisioning an owl—an ancient symbol of death —was an unexpected interruption and caused him to analyze what was going on in his own brain.
