Lethal(66)

He thought of her as an angel who had filled his underground room with an essence as bright and clean as sunlight. He basked in her light and was reluctant to leave it.

The Bookkeeper’s stupid assignment could keep for an hour or two.


Honor was sitting on the bunk beside her sleeping daughter, listening to the rain and her own anxious heartbeat, when she heard a bump and actually felt the vibration of it. She slid the pistol from beneath the mattress and held it in front of her as she crept up the steps and peered through the opening.

“It’s me,” Coburn said.

With profound relief, she dropped her gun hand to her side. “I’d almost given up on you.”

“It was a long way back to the truck, especially going overland. By the time I got there, it was getting dark and raining hard. Then I had to find a road. Only waterways were on the map. I finally found a gravel road that runs out about a quarter mile from here.”

It was a miracle to Honor that he’d found his way back at all.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Emily wanted to wait up until you got back, but we ate, then played with Elmo a while. I started telling her a story, and she fell asleep.”

“Probably better.”

“Yes. She would’ve been afraid of the dark, and I didn’t want to turn on the lantern. Although I considered putting it on the deck to guide you back. I was afraid you would miss us in the dark. You left me few instructions before you left.”

If he noticed the implied rebuke, he ignored it. “You did right.”

Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she could make him out. His clothes were soaked, his hair was plastered to his head. “I’ll be right back,” she told him.

She descended the steps and replaced the pistol beneath the mattress, then gathered up some items and returned to the wheelhouse. She passed him a bottle of water first. He thanked her, uncapped it, and drained it.

“I found these.” She handed him the folded pair of khakis and a T-shirt. “They were in one of the storage compartments. The pants will be too short, and they smell moldy.”

“Doesn’t matter. They’re dry.” He peeled off Eddie’s LSU T-shirt and replaced it with one that had belonged to her father, then began unbuttoning the jeans.

She turned her back. “Are you hungry?”

“Yeah.”

She went back down the steps and flicked on the lantern only long enough to locate the food she’d set aside for him. By the time she returned to the wheelhouse, he had swapped out the pants. She set the foodstuffs on the console. “You forgot to get a can opener.”

“I got cans with pull tabs.”

“Not the pineapple. And of course, that’s what Emily wanted.”

“Sorry.”

“I found a can opener in a drawer under the stove. It’s rusty, so we may get lead poisoning, but she had her pineapple.”

Using his fingers, he ate his meal of canned breast meat chicken, pineapple slices, and saltine crackers. He washed it down with another bottle of water that Honor fetched from below. She’d also brought up a package of cookies to appease his noticeable sweet tooth.

He was sitting on the floor, his back propped against the console. She sat in her dad’s captain’s chair, which had suffered the ravages of the elements like everything on the boat.

The silence was broken only by the pelting rain and the crunch of cookies.

“It’s raining harder than ever,” she remarked.

“Um-huh.”

“At least the rain keeps the mosquitoes away.”

He scratched at a place on his forearm. “Not all of them.” He took another cookie from the package and bit off half.

“Will they find us?”

“Yes.” Noticing that his blunt answer had startled her, he said, “It’s only a matter of time, depending largely on when Hamilton kicks things into full gear. He probably has already.”

“If they find us—”

“When.”

“When they find us, will you…” She searched for the word.

“Go peacefully?”

She nodded.

“No, I won’t.”

“Why?”

“Like I told Hamilton, I’m not quitting until I get this son of a bitch.”

“The Bookkeeper.”

“It’s not just an assignment any longer. It’s one-on-one, him against me.”

“How did it work, exactly? The business between him and Marset?”

“Well, let’s see. Here’s a for-instance. Each time a truck passes from one state into another, it has to stop at a weigh station. Have you seen these arms that extend over the interstate near state lines?”

She shook her head. “I don’t routinely cross state lines, but in any case, no, I’ve never noticed.”

“Most people don’t. They look like streetlights. But they’re actually X-ray machines that scan trucks and cargo, and they’re constantly being monitored. Agents see a truck that looks suspicious, or that hasn’t stopped at the weigh station, it’s pulled over and searched.”

“Unless the person monitoring it is on the take and lets it pass.”

“Bingo. The Bookkeeper created a market out of doing just that. His business strategy was to corrupt the people enforcing the laws, effectively making the laws a joke. A human trafficker would pay for the protection and consider it a cost of doing business.”