Bermuda Heat (27 page)

“We have to let him know what’s going on. Maybe he can call for help.”

Chris and David moved, bent over at the waist against the force of the wind and the slashing rain, toward the checkered Opel with the yellow stripe. There was no motion inside the vehicle and Chris began to feel goose bumps crowding his skin under his sopping wet jacket.

“What are you going to say to him?” Chris asked.

“I don’t know,” David said. “The truth, maybe.”

“Hasn’t done you much good before this.”

“This is different.”

Chris hoped he knew what he was doing. “Something’s not right—”

David tapped on the window. Nothing. They could vaguely make out a man-shaped figure in the driver’s seat. David rapped again.

Chris wasn’t surprised the cop was loath to leave the dry warmth of his patrol car.

“He’s not about to come out of there,” Chris said. “Not as long as he can stay warm and dry inside.”

The car was facing away from them, looking out over Castle Harbor. There was no way to tell what the driver was doing.

Dozing in his cozy haven? Listening to radio chatter? David had often told him how in his early days on patrol in the streets of L.A., that boredom was a cop’s worst enemy. And out here there wouldn’t be that sense of danger that an LAPD cop grew inured to. He could only imagine the excruciating boredom that the constable would face under these conditions.

David yanked the door open.

Chris screamed when the uniformed constable toppled out
216 P.A. Brown

onto the sodden pavement with a meaty thud. One arm flopped over his head, his wrist watch clinking against the road.

Chris stared at the open, glazed eyes and the gaping wound across the man’s throat. Daryl’s attack had been so savage he had nearly severed the constable’s spine. The car seat was saturated with viscous blood that still looked fresh. He watched, appalled, as David approached the open door. Before he could object, David crouched by the body and felt for a pulse, though even Chris could see the guy was beyond help.

David stood up. Chris could see his fingers were smeared with blood, which quickly washed away in the relentless rain.

“He hasn’t been dead long,” David said. “Less than thirty minutes.”

Chris hugged himself as he looked out across Castle Harbour.

The water was rough now, pounding against the Causeway, sending salt spray over Chris’s face. He couldn’t tell if he was crying or if it was just seawater.

“Don’t look,” David said. “Get back, Chris. We can’t help him now.”

Chris obeyed, blindly staggering toward the nearest concrete abutment.

David followed and took him in his arms, pulling him tightly into his embrace as Chris buried his face against David’s chest.

“D-David?”

“I’m sorry, hon.”

“God, what’s he done to Imani?”

David stiffened. “Wait here,” David said. Without waiting for him to comply, David spun around and headed back toward the patrol car.

“Where are you going?” Chris demanded.

“I have to go see if I can call for help. They need to know what’s going on.” He slapped the abutment. “Stay here.”

Chris made no move to follow. He turned so his rump was BeRMudA heAt
217

pressed against the concrete, sagging against the solid support.

Chris wasn’t surprised to realize his shoulders were shaking.

Tears poured down his cheeks.

Then David was back, enfolding him into his embrace. “Oh, hon.” He reached for Chris, awkwardly patting his denim-clad back. Chris’s fists closed over his jacket and nearly strangled him with the ferocity of his grip. “It’s going to be okay. I promise, hon. It’ll be okay.”

Something in him snapped. Chris jerked away from him, pounding his fists against David’s chest. “No, you’re a liar. It’s never going to be okay again. Never!”

David grabbed his wrists and held him tight until finally his rage was spent and he had dissolved into tears in his embrace.

He murmured against his hair, wordless soft sounds that finally penetrated his fury.

Chris hiccupped softly. “Did you get through to anyone?” he asked.

David nodded. Wearily he tilted his head back. “I don’t know how fast they’ll be getting out here. Things are pretty hairy back in town.”

“In other words we’re on our own,” Chris said.

“Yeah.”

They both turned to look out toward St. David’s, where Daryl had fled. If anything, the wind had picked up and the rain was heavier, pounding the ground and abutment with machine-gun intensity.

“Wait here for the police,” David shouted. “You can let them know where I’ve gone.”

“No,” Chris said so low David had to stoop down to hear it.

Chris dug his fingers into the lapel of David’s jacket. “I’m not staying here.”

“Chris—”

“I’m going with you.”

218 P.A. Brown

David stared at him for several heartbeats before nodding.

“Okay, but stick close.”

“You seriously think he walked out on that?” Chris asked, staring out at the small stretch of causeway he could see through the blur of rain and sea foam.

“You don’t think he was desperate enough?”

Chris stuffed his hands into his pockets.

“I think he was,” David answered his own question, peering at the water covering the cement like sheets of flawed crystal.

“And I won’t leave Imani to his madness.”

A blast of salt water and grit slapped Chris in the face. He gasped and buried his head in his chest, rubbing his eyes. He leaned over and spit salt and sand into the storm. Laughter with an edge of hysteria burst out. Talk about spitting into the wind.

David hunched over and moved along the length of the abutment, with Chris following. Every so often a gust of wind would attempt to hurl them to the ground. Chris found it hard to keep his feet under him, the ground was slippery and the sodden debris made it even more treacherous. It was like trying to walk on marbles.

Chris’s feet skidded out from under him. He went to his knees, feeling a muscle wrench in his thigh. He swore and climbed back up, biting his lip as hot shards of pain lanced down his leg. Strong hands clamped under his armpits and hauled him upright. He hugged David, pressing his sodden face into David’s equally soggy chest.

“Why don’t you go back and wait?” David murmured against his hair. Chris shivered and clung to him. “You can hole up in the pickup, out of this. I can do this quicker alone.”

Chris savagely shook his head. “No.”

“Come on, Chris. It doesn’t take two of us to do this.”

“N-no?” His voice was shaky. “But it does take both of us to protect each other’s back. I’m not letting you stay out here alone.

Don’t ask me to.”

BeRMudA heAt
219

He could feel David sigh. “Okay, champ. Let’s do this.”

Together they inched their way onto the Causeway, sidestepping fallen branches and slick piles of sandy mud.

David peered out at the growing storm. “Unless he took refuge at Grotto Bay, he’s out there.”

“Maybe if we wait a bit,” Chris said. “The storm will let up…”

“Nice idea,” David said. “But when? And how far does he get? We know if he reaches the other side we’ll never find him.

Or Imani.”

At least not alive, were the unspoken words between them.

Chris took a deep breath. “Then let’s do it.”

David squeezed his sodden shoulder.

Saturday 7:30pm, The Causeway, Hamilton Parish, Bermuda
They waded through a litter of blood red petals that stuck to their pant legs and slipped under their feet. Sheer instinct kept them on the smoother surface of the roadway and out of the sand and rubble that littered the edge of the stone wall.

In between blasts of rain laden wind Chris could see further.

When he caught his first glimpse of Longbird Bridge at the north end of the Causeway, he touched David’s arm. They huddled close, as much for warmth as to hear each other.

“Can you see any sign of him?” David asked.

Chris strained to see through the rain but couldn’t make out anything even vaguely human.

“Nothing,” he shouted.

David pointed right, toward the open ocean, and shouted,

“Let’s go around that way.”

Bowed under the force of the storm, they struggled to cross the last section of road. As they made their way toward the bridge, they tried to keep the fallen palm fronds from tripping them. For the first time since his release he almost envied the inmates at Westgate. No doubt they were on lock down, warm and dry in their cells, away from the storm surge. No worries except whether their next meal would be edible.

They reached the bridge. They were almost on the other side, in St. George’s Parish. David grabbed a steel frame that allowed the drawbridge to be raised or lowered for ships moving through the harbor. Wind roared and whined around them and now he could hear the boom of the all too near ocean. Waves crashed over the Causeway, at least a foot of water lay over the roadbed, washing back into the harbor, sucking everything with them.

Winds screamed overhead and tried to pry their fingers loose
222 P.A. Brown

and knock their feet out from under them. It was as though the sea wanted to claim them for itself.

Finally, they were beside the bridge abutment. Chris’s fingers slipped off the wall he was clinging to. He cartwheeled his arms as he lost his balance and nearly toppled over the short stone wall that separated the road from the bay. David grabbed his saturated jacket and hauled him back. Chris yelped and fell into David’s arms.

“Are you sure you can do this?” David shouted. “Or should we go back?”

“No!” Chris pushed away from him. He struggled back to the wall and didn’t even look to see if David followed.

Chris felt like he was blind. He forced his head down to prevent his eyes from filling with salt water. He could taste salt in the back of his throat and up his nose, his lips were caked with sand and salt. Chris and David clung to each other as much to protect each other as to stay upright.

Chris knew they had made a terrible mistake. What were they going to do if they found Daryl? David had no weapons, nothing more than his size to intimidate Daryl. Any physical fight out here could lead to them all being swept over the side into the unforgiving sea. If they turned back now, they might have a chance. On the other hand, if they turned back now David would lose everything. His job, his self-respect; it would all be gone.

And then he thought of Imani and what abandoning her would mean. More than even David faced. Even if they could convince the police of Daryl’s guilt, it would be too late to save Imani.

Their only chance was to catch Daryl here, on the Causeway.

He forced himself upright and tried to see through the veil of rain and pounding surf, but there was still no sign of their quarry.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if after all this, Daryl was killed by this storm?

He put his head down and kept walking.

BeRMudA heAt
223

Saturday 7:50pm, The Causeway, St. George’s Parish, Bermuda
David wrapped Chris in his embrace and could feel the younger man’s strength ebbing. It matched his own exhaustion.

Both of them had been through so much since they had arrived in Bermuda. Was it worth it? Or had he already sacrificed too much? For what? To discover a father who had abandoned him years before? To finally realize that his mother was an award-winning bitch who had never really been any kind of mother at all? But was that fair? She had faced her own demons and had dealt with them as best as she could. The fact that she did such a lousy job was probably as much a result of her upbringing and her own unbending mother.

Beside him Chris stumbled and nearly took them both down.

David sat him down and crouched next to him on the pavement, his back against the stone wall. When Chris looked up at him in alarm, he bent over him.

“Just sit here for a minute.” David rubbed Chris’s legs through the soaking wet denim. His own were cramping up from the cold and damp so he could only imagine what Chris’s were like. It was only recently that Chris had been bed ridden. Normally a fanatic about his fitness, he hadn’t been to the gym in weeks. He’d gotten over the flu, sure, but no way had he regained his strength. Now he was out here doing this and risking it all, for what?

David stretched his legs out, doing his best to ignore the water that soaked everything. After he’d worked the kinks out of his legs, he went to work on his husband’s.. Chris groaned when David’s fingers dug into tight muscles, forcing them to yield.

A hitch developed in David’s side and he tried to take in several diaphragm relaxing breaths. Chris did the same and David felt him wince from the pain.

“Breathe slowly. Try not to inhale any water.”

Chris’s eyes were bleary. “Easy for you to say.”

David forced a breathy chuckle as he continued to try to imbue Chris’s legs with warmth. “So, was it the vacation you
224 P.A. Brown

imagined it would be?”

“Oh yeah, Disneyland for the criminally insane,” Chris muttered. When he struggled to his feet, David reluctantly helped him up. They both stood swaying in the gusting wind. “Let’s do San Quentin next year.”

David smoothed Chris’s spiky hair back from his forehead.

Even wet it remained golden, like spun sunshine. David’s own shaggy mass lay plastered to his skull, feeling abnormally heavy.

Water poured down his back.

Chris leaned into his shoulder. His eyes had a dreamy, faraway look. David suspected he was going into shock.

“Come on,” he said as gently as he could, given he had to shout just to be heard. “Let’s finish this once and for all.”

Swaying and stumbling under the barrage of wind, rain and pounding surf, they pressed forward. If it wasn’t for the presence of the stone wall, they couldn’t have kept their course. Even with it, they staggered back and forth, banging already skinned knees and hands on the hard limestone rocks.