Lethal(71)

She didn’t know, and she didn’t allow herself to debate it. She rushed through the door of the wheelhouse, down the steps, and into the cabin.


Emily came awake, sat up, and looked around.

It was still kind of dark, but she could see, so she wasn’t scared. Mommy was there, lying beside her on the smelly bed. Coburn was in the other one. They were both asleep.

Mommy was lying on her side, her hands under her cheek. Her knees were pulled up until they were touching her tummy. If her eyes had been open, she would have been looking at Coburn. He was lying on his back. One of his hands was resting on his stomach. The other one was hanging off the edge of the bed. His fingers were almost touching Mommy’s knee.

She hugged Elmo against her and dragged her bankie along as she scooted to the end of the bed and climbed down. She wasn’t supposed to walk barefoot on the floor because it was so nasty. Mommy had said. But she didn’t want to sit down on it to put her sandals on, so she went on tiptoe up the steps and looked into the room with all the funny stuff in it.

Her mommy had sat her in the crooked chair and told her that it used to be her grandpa’s seat, and that he had let her sit in his lap while he steered the boat. But she’d been a baby, so she didn’t remember. She wished she did, though. Driving a boat would be fun.

Her mommy had got to drive it yesterday, but when she asked Coburn if she could drive it too, he said no because they were in a hurry, and he had better things to do than to entertain her. But then he’d said maybe later, we’ll see.

Coburn had told her not to get too close to the broken windows because the glass could cut her. She had asked him why glass cut people, and he said he didn’t know, it just could, and for her to keep away from the windows.

It wasn’t raining anymore, but the sky looked wet, and so did the trees that she could see.

Her mommy probably wouldn’t like it if she went any farther, so she tiptoed back down the steps. Mommy hadn’t moved and neither had Coburn, except that his stomach went in and out when he breathed. She pressed her hand to her stomach. Hers went in and out too.

Then she spied the forbidden phone and the battery lying at the foot of Coburn’s bed.

Yesterday, while her mommy and Coburn were cutting bushes off the boat, she’d asked if she could play her Thomas the Tank Engine games on Mommy’s phone. Both of them had said “No!” at the same time, except that Coburn had said it a little louder than Mommy. She hadn’t understood why they said no, because sometimes when Mommy wasn’t using the phone she would let her play games on it.

Mommy wasn’t using her phone now, so she probably wouldn’t mind if she played a game.

She had watched when Coburn showed Mommy how to put the battery in. She could do it. Coburn had said so.

He didn’t move when she picked up the phone. She lined up the gold bars on the battery and snapped it into place, just like Coburn, then turned on the phone. When all the pretty pictures came on the screen, she tapped on the picture of Thomas the Tank Engine. Of all the games, she liked the puzzle best.

Concentrating hard, she started with the wheels, then added the engine and the smokestack, and all the other parts, until there was a whole Thomas.

Each time she worked the puzzle, Mommy told her how smart she was. Mommy knew she was smart, but Coburn didn’t. She wanted him to know that she was smart.

She crept toward the head of his bunk and lowered her face close to his. “Coburn?” she whispered.

His eyes popped open. He looked at her funny, then looked over to where Mommy was sleeping before looking back at her. “What?”

“I worked the puzzle.”

“What?”

“The Thomas puzzle. On Mommy’s phone. I worked it.”

She held it up for him to see, but she didn’t think he really looked at it, because he jumped off the bed so fast he banged his head on the ceiling.

Then he said a really bad word.





Chapter 27





Deputy Sheriff Crawford was surprised to discover that their destination was a derelict shrimp boat that seemed not to be floating so much as squatting in the water.

As hiding places went, it was a sorry choice. First, it was an untrustworthy-looking vessel. Bad enough. But then it was also situated between miles of hostile terrain and a labyrinth of bayous in which one could easily become hopelessly lost before reaching the Gulf of Mexico, if that was indeed the planned escape route.

Maybe Coburn wasn’t as smart as he’d given him credit for. Maybe he was becoming desperate.

Using only hand signals to communicate to the men with him, they approached the craft on foot with stealth and extreme caution.

The team, working out of the temporary command center in the Tambour Police Department, consisted of himself, two other sheriff’s deputies, three Tambour policemen, two FBI agents, and one state trooper who’d just happened to be in the room chewing the fat with the others when a techie came in and announced that he was getting a signal from Honor Gillette’s cell phone.

His attempt to locate it using triangulation was successful.

It then took an agonizing hour of discussion to determine how best to get to the isolated location. By air, land, or water? Once it was decided that land was the best option in terms of a surprise, Crawford had yielded the floor to the closest thing that either the Tambour P.D. or the sheriff’s department had to a S.W.A.T officer, who had taken a few classes in his spare time and at his own expense.