A Moment to Prey (10 page)

    "You better cut loose," I said before Lily could answer. "You're a long way from the nearest camp."

    "That so? You people don't seem worried."

    I socked it in good. I had to. I hoped Lily would keep still. I didn't know how far we'd travel to find Marve, but I'd as soon have had bloodhounds tracking us through that scrub as Sklute.

    "We're not worried about a camp," I said. "We're going to make our own camp."

    Sklute glanced at Lily again. I was afraid to look at her. I held my breath, hoping she'd keep her mouth closed.

    "Well, you've got all the equipment for a fine camping trip," Sklute said, bearing down on the double meaning.

    "Yes. Haven't we?" I glanced at Lily. "Well, let's get moving, doll. We got a long trip."

    Sklute didn't release the boat. "Going far?"

    "We don't know," I said. "We might. What we're looking for is a good lonely place to camp."

    "Oh? Well, I saw a lot of those drifting down this river today."

    "Yes. But the place we're looking for is something special."

    Sklute nodded, not convinced at all. I didn't know what I could say, because if the looks of Lily didn't convince him, I had no words that would draw a better picture.

    "Had no idea you were taking a trip down this way," Sklute said.

    "Are you two friends?" Lily said.

    "Old acquaintances," I told her over my shoulder. "But nothing I'd want to waste any more of our time on, honey." I put sincerity in my gaze and stared at Sklute. "You can understand that, can't you?"

    Sklute smiled for the first time. "I don't even see why you stopped."

    "Lily is polite," I said.

    Sklute glanced at Lily with a new interest that made my neck quiver. "Oh, is your name Lily?"

    "Lily Sistrunk," she said.

    "Nat Sklute. I'm pleased to meet you." He gave her that smile. "I don't blame Jake for not introducing us. If the situation were reversed, I'm sure I'd act the same surly way."

    He was looking her over again, and I began to be ill. This was not the wolf-blood in him rising to the surface. This was a professional appraisal. I devoutly wished him in Hell.

    "Well, Jake, you given any more thought to our little talk?"

    I played it dumb. "I don't even remember our little talk."

    "Our friend," he said. "You remember anything about him yet that might help me. My offer still stands."

    "I'm sorry about that," I said. "I don't, Nat. Not a thing."

    "Oh? Well, I'll be on the river for the next couple weeks. Fishing. Funny we both came down here on our vacations. Huh?"

    "No," I said. "You're vacationing. I'm not. I don't have a job, remember?"

    Nat Sklute looked at me for a long time. Lily started the motor. He raised his voice. "Well, Jake, have a good time. Glad to have met you, Miss Sistrunk. And, Jake, if you think of anything-anything at all-why don't you get in touch with me?"

    "I will, Nat. I will."

    I sounded so sincere I half-convinced myself. But I didn't breathe again until we were two miles up the river.

    

    

    Lily cut the motor. "Who was that man?" she said.

    I turned and stared at her. "Another one looking for Marve Pooser."

    "What does he want with him? Who is he?"

    "He's an insurance investigator and he wants him for the same reason I do. Maybe you'll believe me now about that robbery."

    "I still don't believe Marve Pooser's got a hundred thousand dollars."

    I lost my temper. "Why the hell not?"

    "He'd never have come back out here if he had."

    "Is he out here?"

    She nodded.

    "Then he came back. With money. I don't care what it looks like to you. Nat Sklute is down here for fishing like I'm out here to play camping trip with you. Pooser and two friends got away with a hundred thousand. Sklute's company had to shell out and make that loss good. They've written it off their books by now, but that silly bastard Sklute can't do that. He's got to keep after it until he gets that money back or gets a bullet in his back."

    "Looks like he'll have to stand in line behind you for that."

    I sat there for a moment staring at the black water rushing past us. I lit a cigarette but it was tasteless and I flipped it away.

    "Don't worry about that. Sklute will be behind me all right. Especially now. Why in hell did we have to run into him?"

    "Somebody must have told him Marve Pooser was in the scrub up here but didn't say exactly where."

    "Sure. Sklute recognized your name all right."

    "What have I got to do with it?"

    "You don't know Sklute. Anybody along this river that might know Pooser, Sklute will know all about, and he's heard about you. So surer than hell, that ties me up with Pooser, and he'll decide I'm looking for him, if he doesn't already know I am."

    "You gave quite a show about why you and I were up here."

    "Sure. And he almost fell for it. Until he heard your name."

    "What are you going to do?"

    "It stands to reason that if we go straight on to Marve Pooser now, we'll lead Sklute there. He's not going down the river while we're going up it. That's for sure."

    "Will he stay out here all night?"

    I laughed bitterly. "If it had been a ten dollar loss, Sklute would camp in the open without mosquito netting. And the loss was a hundred grand. What do you think?"

    "You want to turn back?"

    I looked at my watch.

    "We're going to camp. We're going to make camp and we're going to spend the night. We can move out about four in the morning."

    Lily was seeing something in the middle distance. She chewed her underlip a moment, finally sighed deeply and shrugged.

    We pulled the boat ashore about five, beaching it at the foot of a six foot cleared bluff. I cut wood for a fire and Lily cleaned a couple bass with my hunting knife.

    After we'd eaten it was dark. I had been thinking about nothing but the loneliness and Lily's nearness and the smell of her since before we started to eat.

    She cleaned up the plates and I set up a single bedroll under a mosquito netting she'd packed. She watched me with a twisted smile but did not speak. I was having trouble with my breathing. It didn't matter that she made no conversation. I was prepared with an argument. Sklute might be watching. All we had to do was sleep separately and he'd be on us like a wood tick.

    But she said nothing. When I had things looking cottage-shape, she got up, carried in another bedroll and spread it close to the first, under the same netting.

    "You're not playing it smart," I said.

    "Paw always told me when I couldn't be smart, be careful."

    I shrugged. That netting would never have covered a three-quarter bed. The silence and the sense of eternal isolation pressed in with the darkness. Animals cried out in the scrub and ran through the dry underbrush.

    "How much further do we have to go?" I asked her. "To get to Marve Pooser's place, I mean?"

    She was staring moodily into the dying fire. She looked around at me.

    "Sometime after daybreak," she said.

    "You don't look happy at being here with me."

    "I didn't ask for it."

    "I've heard about women like you. I just never believed it. Doesn't all this-" I gestured at the darkness, the bluff edge and the river below it, the miles of swamp in which we were completely alone, "doesn't this do anything to you?"

    "It might."

    "Yes?"

    "If I were fool enough to let myself think about it."

    "But you're not."

    She glanced over her shoulder, eyes cold.

    "What would it buy me?"

    "Does it have to buy you something?"

    "I know what I want. This isn't it."

    I shivered. The fire was dying rapidly, the darkness moving in closer. We made no plans for keeping the fire alive. If Sklute had not already marked our camping site, we were not going to lead him to it with a fire that could be seen for miles in the scrub.

    I glanced toward the bedrolls, the blankets turned back.

    "Think I'll hit the sack. Don't forget to put out the cat and lock up."

    She did not look around. "Good night, Jake."

    "Honey," I said. "Don't be old-fashioned."

    She sighed deeply, shrugged, went on staring into the fire.

    I sat down beside the netting, pulled off my boots. I opened it, slid through and lay down in the bedroll, watching the faint fire glinting in her black hair. I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. Everything inside me congealed in the pit of my stomach. I lay there on my back, waiting for her.

    At last she stood up. The fire was almost dead, but the glow cut her silhouette sharply against the blackness of the scrub night. I wiped my hand across my mouth again, feeling my breath hot against it.

    She slid through the netting, pulling it together securely behind her. Every muscle in my body was stretched taut, throbbing with the tension within me. An owl screamed in the darkness. The fire glittered, a long shaft of orange light fitful against the blackness. I felt her lie down in her bedroll, careful not to touch me.

    "Lily."

    I didn't recognize my own voice. I lifted myself on my elbow, looked down at her. The fire was almost gone now, but I saw her clearly. Everything was exaggeratedly clear, the darkness, the shadows, the color of her flesh, the warm fragrance of her.

    Her black eyes were wide. They stared up into mine.

    "For God's sake," I said.

    Her lips were parted, damply separated and glistening in the faint light. But I saw her clearly as if the noon sun were concentrated on the glistening of her lips.

    "Don't do it," she said. It was the first time I had ever heard her voice that soft. She was asking me, she wasn't telling me. The bitter-sweetness surged upward through me.

    I parted my mouth and covered hers, moving it because I was hungry for the taste of her.

    Her black eyes closed. I felt her breath hot against me and my hand closed on her and her heart pumped as wildly as mine against my hand.

    "Oh, no, Jake. No. Don't."

    It was as if the will had gone out of her. It drove me insane. I knocked the covers back somehow. I moved closer to her, dragging her blanket down. The ache in my body was never going to be satisfied until I was pressed hard against her, all of my body against all of hers.

    I brought my face down. That was when I felt the knife point against the base of my throat. It was my own hunting knife and its pressure stopped my breathing for a moment.

    "I told you… don't." Her voice still had that empty urgency in it, but there was no weakness in the hand that held the knife.

    "My God, Lily. I've got to. You must know that."

    "I'll kill you, Jake. You think I won't, but I will."

    Her voice still sounded weak and helpless. But she pressed that knife against my throat. I felt the bite of it. If I grabbed at it, I knew she would thrust it into me. I wasn't deceived. In my mind I saw Charlie Bullock staggering blindly. In that moment I bought it. Lily Sistrunk had set a price on herself, and it was a price that Charlie Bullock couldn't meet. If I wanted a knife in my jugular vein all I had to do was try to press my luck.

    The knife bit again. I moved back, every muscle in me straining forward and I moved back. "My God, Lily, you wanted it. As much as I did."

    "It don't matter."

    I lay back down. I felt exhausted, fatigued. Frustration was a poison in me. Wanting her was a sickness and I was ill with it, feverish, my temples throbbing.

    When I was on my back, she removed the knife. I lay there staring at the star-struck sky through the netting. I heard her moving around, pulling the blankets over her again.

    She did not speak for what seemed hours. When she did, her voice was casual. "I've been out on this river a hundred nights like this."

    "Just like this?" The bitterness was acid between us.

    "Just like this."

    "It must have been hell for somebody."

    She laughed.

    I lay there and the tension would not subside. I knew how terribly I wanted her, and I began to believe her. Nobody got to her. It didn't matter what a woman looked like, it was what she thought about. Lily was equipped by the National Cash Register Company. The sound of her heart was the sound of an adding machine.

    No amount of bitter thinking helped me. I did not move. I knew that knife was waiting, ready. It grew cold, but I did not pull up the covers. The hell with the knife, I wanted the cold. I hoped it would freeze.

    I did not sleep. Sleep is for people with settled nerves. I remained taut, drawn, thinking about Lily's lying there beside me with that knife gripped across her breasts. So close I could move my hand and touch her, but I didn't move and I didn't touch her. It wasn't the knife that stopped me or worried me, and that wasn't what kept me awake. I kept thinking about Lily, whether I wanted to or not, and I kept thinking about her without that knife.

    

    

    As the sun came up, the river still deep in shadows, Lily cut the motor and drifted into a small creek shielded by elders and water lilies, so well hidden I had not even seen it.

    "What's the matter?" I asked.

    "We hide the boat here."

    "All right."