Chaz pulled open the drawer where his uncle kept his meds. He popped a bottle and placed two nitro tabs under Red’s offered tongue. Lee got him a glass of water from the tap. They helped him into a chair.
Chaz sat by him and spoke soothing words, kind words that only his uncle could hear. He held his ear close to his uncle’s mouth. He held his uncle’s hand in his and listened.
“Man with green eyes. Asking about you. Asking about your friends.”
“You going to be all right, Red?”
“Don’t worry about me. Go do what you got to.”
“I’ll call Tracy.”
“No need, son,” Red said, his voice gaining strength. “She’s on the ADT too. She’ll be calling. Just leave the phone by me.”
“What now?” Lee said.
Chaz was standing at the rifle case in the dining room. He pulled an AR-15 out of its place and pocketed some magazines.
“Now we go after the fucker.” Chaz hit the door.
“He’s got a fifteen-minute head start on us,” Lee said and made for his Explorer after Chaz.
“He thinks he does,” Chaz said, shouldering Lee aside and tossing his rifle in the back seat. He plucked the keyring from Lee’s hand.
“I’ll drive,” Chaz said.
The Explorer bounced down a dry wash that was choked with berry bushes and sumac. Chaz had to be driving from memory because Lee couldn’t see anything past the hood but the wall of green rushing to meet them. Brush slapped the windshield and scraped down the side panels. Chrome went flying. A side mirror snapped off and hung there, then tore away. A low tree limb starred the windshield. Lee gripped the dash with one hand and held an arm over his head, braced against the roof. Even strapped in, he was hitting the top of the cab. Now he knew what the candy inside a piñata felt like.
Lee thought of telling Chaz to slow the fuck down, only Chaz would never have heard a word of it. The man was leaning on the wheel, his face hard and eyes seeing something only he could see.
The Explorer burst out onto a roadway in an explosion of flying leaves and bark. Chaz cranked the hand brake, and the big SUV came to a sliding stop facing back toward a curve in the road.
The rental sat on the curve with the driver door open and engine running.
Chaz and Lee left the Explorer athwart the roadway and walked swiftly toward the idling car. Chaz had the AR-15 up tight to his shoulder and the front sight trained on the car. Lee had his long slide .45 in his fists and swept either side of the car as he moved to flank the passenger side.
They reached the car. Empty. The road on one side was a ten-foot escarpment, rising up from the shoulder. On the other side was a rusted guardrail. Beyond that, the ground fell away to a creek bed below. It was the same car. The hole punched in the trunk made a messy exit through the rear seat. There was no sign of blood. No sign that anyone had left the road for the woods. No sign of anything or anyone.
“Where’d he go?” Chaz said.
“And why did he leave the car?” Lee said.
Chaz removed the keys from the ignition and popped the trunk. Spare tire and jack. Nothing else. The rest of the car was just as clean. There wasn’t even a rental agreement to be found. And it was rental. The keys were clipped on a bright yellow Budget key ring.
Chaz drove the rental and Lee took the SUV. They stayed in contact through their burners with the setting on speaker. The rental had an astringent odor inside like someone had sprayed disinfectant inside.
They each drove the road in either direction for two miles or more and saw no one. They drove back slower and checked the ground on either side of the road surface for any sign of human passage. It had rained yesterday, and the ground was soft. Still, there was no sign in the mud.
“It’s like Jesus took him,” Chaz said.
“I don’t think Jesus had anything to do with this,” Lee said.
They met back at the curve where they found the rental. Chaz left the car along the guardrail with the keys in it. He swept pebbles of safety glass off the seat and got into the Explorer on the passenger side.
“We going back to the farm?” Lee said.
“No.”
“What about your uncle?”
“My cousin will take care of him. She lives over in Hadley. Lives to fuss over him. She’s on her way now.”
“So, where are we gonna go?” Lee said.
“You know where we have to go.” Chaz turned red-rimmed eyes to Lee.
“Okay,” Lee said. “But when this over, you owe me a truck.”
31
Pirates of the Aegean
The ship matched the brief description provided in the Praxus codex.
It was a bireme, with two ranks of oars down either side. The prow was decorated with a snarling lion with claws raised to strike. It was hammered bronze above a long iron ram fashioned like a lion’s paw with talons extended. The yellow sail was tied up to the cross spar and weighted with a spar beneath. Two banks of oars worked steadily, drawing the craft along at a swift pace. Water foamed over the ram as it lifted and fell.
The ship arrived from the south and made its way around the headland of the largest portion of the island. It was bound for the deep water on the eastern face of the peninsula.
As the craft entered the shallows, the oars on the top row lifted from the water and were drawn inboard. The pace of the remaining oars slowed then with the blades dipped into the water to raise foam wavelets and bring the boat drifting to a stop close into the broad beach between two of the rocky spires that formed the
