Lost Cargo (12 page)

She stared at him. “Stop it. We’re getting married.”

That afternoon they stood in a magistrate’s office in front of a wall of legal books. Monroe took his bride’s hand as the magistrate began to speak. Annie looked heartbreakingly beautiful in a soft blue silk dress and seed pearl necklace. As the short ceremony came to an end, the magistrate recited a wedding blessing:

Now you will feel no rain,

for each of you will be shelter to the other.

Now you will feel no cold,

for each of you will be warmth to the other.

Now there is no more loneliness,

for each of you will be companion to the other.

Now you are two bodies,

but there is one life before you.

Go now to your dwelling place,

to enter into the days of your togetherness,

and may your days be good and long upon the earth
.

(Apache wedding blessing, author unknown)

Monroe kissed his wife and turned to thank the magistrate. While they were shaking hands, a tiny door filled with blue light appeared in front of the man’s face, blotting out his left eye.

“I
don’t remember this place,” Lexie said. She tucked a lock of blonde hair behind an earring and looked around with exhaustion all over her face. The overgrown trail rose before them, branched off to the east, and disappeared in a grove of dark, weathered cedars.

Travis put his hand on her shoulder. “I don’t remember it, either.”

Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the woods. They’d been looking for the black triangle in Rock Creek Park since early morning and had prepared to stay out all day. She’d brought a camera, rope, flashlights, and a knife. Nerves frayed, Travis kept the World War I pistol at his side while he carried a backpack filled with apples, cheddar cheese, sandwiches, and a thermos of coffee that Lexie had optimistically packed for Burke. They’d long since eaten their share and emptied the thermos.

Their chances of finding her brother were looking less and less likely, but neither one of them said it out loud. Still hungry, Travis obsessed about the rest of the food, especially the cheddar.

“What if we passed the ship?” she asked, interrupting his thoughts.

“You want to turn around?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

He stared at the woods. “It’s here somewhere. I don’t think we came this far. It has to be behind us.”

“Let’s go back then,” she said despondently. “We have to find him before sunset. We can’t leave him out here another night.”

The pale sun moved lower in the sky. Leaves drifted across the path, hiding its twists and turns. After a while they came to a rise that almost seemed familiar. The land fell away into the gorge where rain-flattened grass and tall weeds grew by the water, and beyond, the current swirled around rocks in the middle of the streambed. But the eroded slope on the far bank bore no resemblance to the rocky bank they’d climbed when they discovered the black triangle. Lexie looked so stressed out he wanted to put an arm around her.

Leaves softly rustled. He expected to see an animal, but the woods were empty.

Lexie gripped his sleeve. Her eyes grew wide. On guard now, Travis followed her stare. The leaves on the ground stirred again. He strained to see the squirrel that had to be there, the gray fur and fuzzy tail, but the leaves seemed to press down by themselves. The outline of footprints moved across the forest cover. Twigs snapped under invisible feet that crept toward the creek.

It was on their side of the water.

“Look at that,” he said. Wonder and prickling fear spread over him.

“You have my brother,” she shouted into the woods.

He grabbed her arm. “No, Lexie, don’t—we don’t know what it is.”

“You have my brother,” she screamed, twisting free. “He hasn’t had anything to eat or drink and he’s injured. You let him go.”

The footprints left the bank. A moment later, the underbrush rippled as the invisible thing ran along the creek. Branches snapped and leaves rustled again. Lexie took off after it, pushing low-hanging limbs out of the way, scrambling around moss-covered trunks and rocks.

“You have no right to keep him!” Her shouts echoed through the woods.

Travis pounded after her over the uneven ground. Then she turned back into the woods, spun in a circle, and stopped.

“Where is it?” she gasped. “Where did it go? I can’t see it.”

“Listen!” He stared at the thick cover of leaves on the forest floor, the rotting logs, the shifting patterns of light. The canopy of leaves swayed under the sun. Then, there it was again, the rustle of leaves.

“Where is it?” she shouted.

He whirled around. “Behind us.”

“Shoot it! Shoot it before it kills us! Shoot it!”

“I can’t see anything. No, there it is!” He aimed, squeezed the trigger—and to his horror nothing happened. “The gun’s jammed. It won’t fire.”

“Let me have it.” She grabbed the gun and tried to shoot into the woods.”What’s wrong with this thing?”

“Let me have it back, Lexie. Let me have it.”

“Where’s my brother?” she shouted, waving the gun. “Damn you, where is he?”

Travis wrestled the gun away. “We have to get out of here. Something’s wrong with the gun.”

They scrambled through the weeds to the creek, splashed across the icy water, and clambered up the washed-out bank on the other side, scraping skin, jarring bones, stumbling through a tangle of bushes and trees. More leaves rustled. When Lexie turned, he dragged her with him.
Not going to die in the woods. Not going to die
.
Not going to happen
. They ran until his sides burned.

Twilight fell. Even the lengthening shadows of the trees seemed to be chasing them, falling over their shoulders and racing out before them.

The gloom turned to darkness. The low, constant movement of cars and the wail of a siren came through the trees. Finally the broad stone walls of Buchanan House appeared. Lamps were beginning to come on in the windows and streetlight shone over the grounds. They climbed up the final bank and came out of the woods on Connecticut Avenue, breathing hard and staring at each other.

Lexie looked devastated. “The safety was on the gun.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he told her.

“Yes, it was. We had a gun and we ran and we blew everything.”

He took her hand, feeling like a fool. “No, I’m the one who blew it. I’m the one who wanted to go. I’ll make it up to you.”

She pulled away. “We ran like cowards and we had a gun the whole time.”

“We can’t go back there, not by ourselves. You have to call the police again.”

“They’re not going to listen to anything I say, and you know it.”

“We don’t know what’s in those woods. It could kill us. It’s not from here, and we don’t know what we’re dealing with—we already saw that thing kill a man right in front of us. I don’t want to leave your brother out there, either, but we can’t do this, Lexie. We can’t shoot something we can’t see. You call the police again and tell them he’s missing. They’ve got to look for him.”

She turned away. That night he stayed on the couch in her bedroom again, but they barely spoke and he couldn’t sleep, worried that he’d let her down.

In the morning Travis took a cab home, decided to text his sister, fumbled around, and finally just said he wanted to talk. He made coffee and toast and sat down with the paper.

“Police Officer Disappears,” a headline said. In the predawn hours a police officer had driven up Newark Street to check out a scream and never reported back to the dispatcher. The police found the car an hour later with the keys still in the ignition. Travis skimmed to the end. They didn’t have any leads, but the bloody sidewalk showed up in the story. Sickened, he lost his appetite and put his toast down.

Someone tapped on the kitchen window. Startled, he looked up to see Lisa waving through the glass. He hadn’t expected her to show up on his doorstep. Something was going on, too. Her hair swung in a fresh blunt cut and she wore a dove gray suit and white silk blouse.

“They approved the loan,” she said, all smiles when he opened the door. “I got your message and I was in the area, so I wanted to swing by and tell you in person. We got the condo. We’re signing the papers this morning. It’s ours.”

“Congratulations,” he said, shocked.

Tell her. Tell her the giant went in her building
.

She studied his face and touched her hair. “Is my haircut that bad? Maybe it’s too drastic. Yesterday I caught myself in the mirror and decided it’s time to look like an adult instead of somebody who just escaped from the eighth grade.”

“No, you look great. You really do.”

“Oh, donuts. Let me check my blood sugar.” She took a small kit from her purse and pricked her finger. “No, too high. What’s in the paper?”

“A cop disappeared on Newark Street.”

She glanced at the front page. “Oh, yeah? Where’s that?”

“A couple of blocks from here.”

She gave a polite wince. “I guess that happens in cities. Anyway, that’s what Ian says. So I got your text. What did you want to talk about?”

He froze. “It’s not that easy to explain.”

“I’m a really good listener.” She smiled and poured herself a cup of coffee. “Let’s go outside so I can have a cigarette and you can tell me all about it. Don’t tell Ian I’m smoking. Last week I told him I quit and I don’t want him to find out he’s married to a spineless jellyfish.”

“That makes two of us, because I’ve got spineless jellyfish stamped all over me.”

She laughed. “And what’s that about?”

He didn’t answer and went outside, dreading the conversation. Lisa settled on a stone bench at the far end of the backyard. There wasn’t much left of the garden. The wind had blown leaves under the bench and scattered them across the flowerbeds mulched for winter. He sat down beside her and listened to the click of the lighter and the sparrows on the eaves and knew she was waiting for him to say something.

Something scrabbled behind them. He held his breath and then exhaled when a squirrel moved across the grass.

They were too exposed, though. Too many trees grew in the yard. Behind the bench stood several old oaks that were so thick he couldn’t see around the trunks. Towering firs grew beyond the oaks and hid the house next door. Anything could be lurking back there. He thought about the footprints in the woods and sized up the kitchen door. It seemed a mile away.

How fast could they run if something happened?

Tell her the giant went in her building
, his conscience drummed again.
Tell her
. When Lisa started talking about the condo, he realized they were planning to move in tomorrow. Everything was happening too fast.

“I’ve reserved the truck and the elevator,” she was saying. “Can you give us a hand? Some friends of Ian’s are coming over, but we can use you, too. Most of our things are in storage in Alexandria, so we’ll have to go back and forth.”

He heard himself say, “I have classes tomorrow. I can help you after six.”

Tell her
.

“We might be finished by then,” she said. “Call me, and if we’re done you can help us unpack. You know how it is when you move. You label all the boxes and then you can’t find your socks for a week. And we’ll get a pizza, so dinner’s on us. Now, enough about me. You said you wanted to talk about something, so I’m all ears.”

Say something. Tell her the truth
.

“The building. I want to talk to you about the new building.” He felt as if he were falling off a cliff, and his blood roared in his ears. “You shouldn’t stay there by yourself. It’s not a good place to live, and it’s too close to the woods. You can still get out of it. Just tell them that you changed your mind and back out of it. There’s still time.”

She gave him an incredulous stare. “We have a contract and a mortgage. They would sue us if we backed out. And we’d never do that anyway. We love the place. Too close to the woods—you sound like an old lady. What’s gotten into you?”

His face burned. What did he expect? He’d known all along that if he told her the truth, even half the truth, she would never believe him. Nobody would. Flat out nobody. He opened his mouth, not sure what was going to come out next.
Tell her
. But at that moment his cell phone back on the kitchen table rang. The faint rings came across the lawn.

“The phone,” he said, jumping up.

She stared at him. “I’ll finish my cigarette.”

“It’s not safe out here by yourself.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me, Travis. What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s not safe. The newspaper article. The missing cop.”

“Come on, you’re overreacting,” she said, but she followed him inside.

Breaking into a run, he grabbed the phone.

“It’s me,” Lexie said, sounding relieved. “What’re you doing for lunch?”

So she didn’t hate him after all. Trying not to melt into a puddle, he fingered the newspapers and magazines on the table. “I’m dining alone with a
Time
magazine.”

“Can you meet me at the Hearth & Hook at noon?”

“You sound pleased with yourself.”

“I am,” she said. “I have something to show you.”

“The Hearth & Hook on Connecticut Avenue?”

“That’s right… Travis, can I borrow the gun?”

Caught off guard, he didn’t know what to say. His sister looked down and began to straighten up the kitchen table.

“I would feel safer,” Lexie went on, sounding rushed. “You live with roommates, and with Burke gone, I’m by myself most of the time.”

He should have thought of it before. “Yeah, sure, of course you can. The Hearth & Hook at noon. I’ll see you in a few.” He closed the cell phone and stood there for a minute on a cloud.