Dead Low Tide (26 page)

But losing him for what?

What was it a pair of goggles could hold over Prendergast that he’d risk kidnapping Unc?

And I thought of Jessup climbing into the back of the Range Rover, his calm words—
Be resourceful—
as I’d sat there knowing already but without any guts for it that the only way out to follow the Suburban would be to pull into that yard, and to get away fast.

He had his ID and badge. He’d tried to kick us out of the vehicle so’s he could take over, follow them wherever no intel could figure.

What would a special agent be doing at a stupid Mount Pleasant poker game? And why take over the Range Rover to follow someone military, no matter what a shit Prendergast was?

Jessup’d been in the Army all those years I’d been wallowing in the lucky shit of my own life. He’d left the day after 9/11, like it’d been something he was waiting for, some sign to him he could just stand up from his desk in homeroom and give his life meaning, because he could serve the country.

He’d been to Iraq twice, and to Afghanistan. And though I’d thought he was done with that, done serving the country, now here he was: a special agent with Homeland Security. Something called Federal Protective Service. Nothing I’d ever heard of.

“Bryden Lane,” he said in his microphone voice as we moved past a street on the right. He looked out Tabitha’s window, and though Jessup only leaned a few inches toward her, I could see she was pushing herself as deep into her seat and away from him as she could, as though he meant to touch her by peering out that window. Then we were past the street—no headlights coming at us, no taillights—and Jessup eased back, looked out the windshield.

I said, “Talk to me, Jessup.” I gripped the wheel, pressed a little harder on the gas. “Why are you here?”

“Listen,” he said, and I could hear him breathe a little easier suddenly, as though he were relieved, “I’m authorized to show you my ID. Authorized to appropriate this vehicle.” He paused, said, “Clancy Road,” as we passed the next empty street, then said, “Official statement: The mission of the Federal Protective Service is to render federal properties safe and secure for federal employees, officials, and visitors in a professional and cost-effective manner by deploying a highly trained and multidisciplined police force.”

“What does that have to do with a poker game?” Five said behind us, his voice lower, unimpressed. “All’s we’re doing is playing Texas hold ’em, and if my dad has two illegal aliens making drinks and cashing chips, what in the hell does that have to do with Homeland Security and some half-assed car chase in my own stupid neighborhood?”

Jessup said nothing, only looked ahead of us. Tabitha leaned forward in her seat, waved to get my attention, then shook her head, pointed at her eyes: she couldn’t see his lips to read them.

I said, “Federal Protective Service. Security for federal property and people,” and looked out the windshield: houses, and houses. The street started to curve off to the right, and it seemed this was a kind of loop, the rim of a half wheel that had the traffic circle as its hub. If we weren’t careful, I thought, this street would lead us head-on into Unc and Prendergast and company, coming straight at us after having peeled off in what had looked the opposite direction.

“I said, what does all this have to do with a poker game?” Five said again, and I heard him move in his seat, pictured him with his arms crossed and waiting: a kid.

“It doesn’t,” Jessup said, though his voice was so low and quiet beside me it seemed it was more for me than any answer to Five. “It’s about Landgrave Hall.”

“What?” I said quick, but as soon as he’d said it, I’d known. I’d known.

Landgrave. I was wrong. This
was
about it. This was about a body. That woman. Jessup had been there when Unc and I found it. And he’d followed Harmon, right to my house.

“You don’t think the federal government,” Jessup nearly whispered, “is going to let a piece of marshy real estate wedged between the Naval Weapons Station and the 841st Transportation Battalion sit unattended all these years, no matter it looks like nothing other than a bunch of rich folks whacking at golf balls for fun, do you?” He paused. “Present company excluded.”

I swallowed. I glanced to my right, saw Tabitha leaning forward, shaking her head for being left out altogether from what was being said. But I only looked at her, then out the windshield again.

“Especially with the fact battalion command’s just the window dressing over there. SPAWAR’s only three hundred yards inside the fence from the sixteenth green.” He stopped then, took in a breath.

“The United States Naval Consolidated Brig,” he said, even quieter but as solid as rock, “with all those nasty terrorists holed up in there, is only eleven hundred and seventeen yards in. Not to be too precise.”

He paused. “You don’t know how valuable the land you live on is. Agents of the Federal Protective Service have been parked at Landgrave since the Navy jumped the creek and bought the weapons tract. Nineteen forty-one. So you may think Tyrone and Segundo and I are glorified rent-a-cops. But you’d be wrong. We’re standing watch. And because of the high-value target this place is, and how important it is to keep it secure, we take this very seriously.”

“So what are you, some kind of spy?” Five said, and I couldn’t quite tell if he was being a smart-ass now, or if he meant it. But I knew I wanted him to shut up.

Here came another street, and we all looked down it to nothing, though there might have been in this moment the sense this was of course what we’d see. Nothing.

Where were Unc and the Suburban?

“Zinser Lane,” he reported, then, quieter, “No. No spy.” He turned toward me the smallest way again, said over his shoulder to Five, “But I do know, from fact sheets passed around regarding known affiliates of soon-to-be visiting dignitaries, that you graduated Duke with a 1.78 GPA, you been through six jobs as a glorified bank teller in five years, and the only reason you can afford that loft condo on Hill Street up in Charlotte on your punk-ass thirty-two grand a year is because Warchester Four made the down payment and splits the monthly with you.” He paused, shook his head. “And I know if I turn more than ninety degrees away from Dorcas Lydia Galliard, better known as Tabitha, she can’t read my lips and hear all this data about said affiliates, all of which she knows nothing about.”

Five was silent, didn’t even move.

Jessup faced front, and I looked at him. He nodded, said, “Eyes on the road.”

I turned, but glanced at Tabitha again, hands palms up in front of her:
What is happening?

I shook my head, my hands to the wheel.

See my mom
, Tabitha’d said was why she was here, but then Five’d put in
She’s here for an interview
, and made the lame joke she’d have to kill me if she told me.

She was here for SPAWAR. To become a computer somebody at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command.

Ahead of me was a street, only knowable as far as the reach of my headlights. Around me were homes of people I didn’t know, and most likely never would. Somewhere someone was taking street names from Jessup, and giving him orders. And somewhere between this moment of asphalt beneath my tires and whatever back way that led out to another street called Porchers Bluff Road was Unc, held hostage.

Somewhere someone had a fact sheet on Tabitha and all known affiliates, prepping to lead her into a life inside the fence at the bottom edge of Landgrave Hall, and I gave myself the luxury inside the middle of this all to wonder what facts there might be lined up about me.

Driver, I saw. Follower. Errand runner.

Thursday night Maps app monitor. Golf ball retriever.

Viewer of a dead body.

I blinked, blinked again, felt this idiot adrenaline in me rushing up again, felt my breaths coming quicker at the vision one more time of that woman bathed in green, a crab picking delicately at her jaw.

And now the neighborhood around us was changing: next to the landscaped house out my window stood an unfinished one, wrapped in torn and faded Tyvek, same as the condos out to Hungry Neck since the developers gave up and went home. Out Tabitha’s side sat a house only framed up, the dirt yard littered with trash, pieces of wood.

We’d come to the far end of the development world now, us moving through unfinished homes in various forms of decay, the live
ones suddenly behind us. Some of these houses were framed, some just foundations, some with clapboard halfway up the walls. But all of them dead. The place where life at Hamlet Square cut off, us just this quick inside the handbasket the whole real estate world had gone to hell in.

And the place where at any second we ought to see a black Suburban coming at us.

“Yep. Everyone over at SPAWAR knows Tabitha’s the one,” Jessup said, and now my stomach was starting to tighten. I looked over at Tabitha, Jessup leaning in between us, and saw she was reading his lips now. It was darker in the car, those streetlamps and lit-up houses gone. But there was still the dull glow of the dashboard lights, and I could see by them her mouth was shut tight, her eyes open wide.

I looked ahead. Houses were disappearing altogether now, just empty lots on either side up there. “She’s here for an interview, but there’s no interview to do,” Jessup said, still looking straight ahead. He touched his ear, said, “Copy. As determined,” then to us, “The postdoc she’s doing fits like a shell in a chamber for SPAWAR. Data Visualization and Probabilistic Function in Aggregate Encryption.” He paused. “Now
she’s
a spy,” he said. “Or sure looks like she’ll be one soon.”

Tabitha tapped hard the dash, and I looked at her, saw her shake her head, then three times in a row put her hand to her mouth and sweep that hand down and away. Tough little moves, and fast.

Bad bad bad
.

I quick looked at the street, thought to gun it, to do something fast, because I understood her, and knew this was bad, whatever we were in.

But there, up ahead and at the outermost edge of where the headlights reached, I could see a row of trees, the strip of asphalt we were on heading straight at them. Trees up there, like a line of men on horseback, waiting.

“But that’s not even the real story,” Jessup whispered. “That’s gravy, sure, having her with us. But that’s not why I’m here,” and I heard
again that thin scratch of windbreaker material, heard that snap of a button. “That’s not why
we’re
here,” he said.

“Wait a minute,” Five said from nowhere, his voice a quiet shock. I’d forgotten him, and heard him move now. “I know where we are. I know where this goes.” He paused. “This is a dead end.”

“Like I told you, the real story,” Jessup said, “is Landgrave.”

He disappeared from between us again, and I heard in the same moment a solid thump of sound from behind us, a dull groan of air out of Five, and the slow slide down of him against the backseat.

And next a cold jab at the side of my neck: a pistol barrel, the instant of its fact coming at the same moment I saw the end of the street in the headlights, the cul-de-sac I’d driven us straight into. Trees all around. No homes anywhere, dead or alive.

Tabitha screamed, a high and dark shock of strangled noise, the sound maybe the only surprise to come at Jessup this whole night long, and I felt the barrel quiver an instant at his turning to her, heard the word “No” solid and cold.

Here in the rearview came a pair of headlights.

“No heroics,” Jessup whispered.

I could give it the gas hard, circle back around them coming up from behind us, just drive like hell away from here.

But Jessup would still be here in the Range Rover with a gun on me, Tabitha and Five with us and ready to be shot. And Unc would still be in the Suburban.

I pulled to a stop in the middle of the cul-de-sac, put it in park. Dull green pines stood in the headlights, in front of them pavement edged with a concrete curb, poured at the direction of some developer who’d counted on houses going up forever. Like everything we knew would never end.

Tabitha breathed fast beside us, and I cut my eyes to her, barely shook my head for the pressure of the barrel against my throat.

“Good,” Jessup said. “Tell her to keep quiet.” I could feel him turn to look behind us then, and saw in the rearview the headlights disappear
beneath the rear window. In my side-view, the Suburban’s door opened, someone climbed out, the door closed.

Prendergast, I could see, their headlights banging off the back of the Range Rover.

Tabitha took in thin snatches of air, her back pressed hard against her door, each breath the brink of a scream.

Then I said it, because I wanted to know. Because knowing would seem to give some reason to this whole thing. There needed to be a reason.

I said, “Who killed her?”

“Not me,” he said, and gave a small laugh. “Oh no. Not me.”

I heard another car door close, saw in the side-view Prendergast look across the hood of the Suburban, nod.

I said, “Do you know about the goggles?”

The barrel against my neck, I could feel the way Jessup was moving, looking out his window, then out Tabitha’s side, waiting. But he stopped, pressed the barrel even tighter into me. “Know about what?” he said.

Then came a sharp knock at Tabitha’s window. She jumped, seemed to scatter to pieces for what she’d felt, turned and pushed away from the door with both hands, legs stiff against the floorboard until her back was to us and against the console, and Jessup took the gun from my throat, hit the side of her head, a quick pop of his hand, the gun right back at my neck just as quick.

“No!” I shouted, and reached a hand out, even with the barrel jammed as far against my throat as it could go.

She slumped forward, her legs folding beneath her so that she seemed to pour down the seat until she filled the leg well, her in a kind of ball on the floorboard.

“Now here’s our man,” Jessup said.

I tried to breathe, looking there at Tabitha. I tried to get air into me, but only felt a kind of quiver in my chest, a shallow nothing in and out.