Midnight in Ruby Bayou (49 page)

“Who ever is?”

“Hush. The French doors are moving. The thief will be in the gallery real quick. Then he could come out anywhere.”

Faith readjusted the goggles and watched the back of the house. Although the lower gallery had four exits—more if you counted the possibility of simply going through one of the rotten screens—Walker was betting that the thief would head for the bayou rather than the front road.

He was right.

“Got him,” Faith breathed.

“Where?”

“In back, just like you said.”

“Go inside real quick and quiet,” Walker said softly. “Get next to April and stay there.”

“No,” Faith murmured without looking away from the back of the house. “We've been over that twenty times, too. I'm staying with you.”

“Even if it means going facedown in a leaky, smelly skiff?”

She hesitated “Whatever it takes.”

“You'd be safer here.”

“So would you.”

“Damn it, Faith,” he said in a soft, desperate voice,
“I can't guarantee you won't get killed.”

“Did I ask you to?”

Walker's mouth flattened. It was too late to argue anymore. He could only follow the thief and pray that Faith wouldn't regret trusting her life to him.

And that he wouldn't regret it even more.

T
he figure that hurried down the path at the back of the house would have been invisible but for the high-tech night-vision goggles Walker and Faith wore. Knowing that wind would cover most sounds, Walker eeled out of the overgrown garden and fell in a hundred feet behind the dark shape.

Faith fell in behind Walker.

He tried not to look back to make sure she was safe, but he found himself doing it so often he finally stumbled. Only the need for silence kept him from cursing savagely. He couldn't divide his attention and hope to keep up. The thief was moving fast.

Wind breathed down across the marsh, sending pale green ripples over the surface. At least, the ripples looked pale green to Faith. The trees had a dancing green nimbus of light around them that was frankly spooky. Even as she told herself she would be blind without the goggles, she shivered and wished that some tech wizard had figured out how to correct the color.

Abruptly Walker yanked her off the path and under the cover of a whispering, wind-trembling pine. Her stomach sank as she watched the dark figure get nimbly into one of the skiffs, cast off, and begin rowing down the bayou toward the marsh.

“It isn't Jeff,” Walker said softly. “Too small.”

“It must be Tiga. You were right.”

“Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” He stepped out of the tree's cover, pulling Faith behind him. “I hope you meant it about the skiff, sugar. There's no going back now without losing her, because I'm not letting you out of my sight.”

Silently, biting her lip, Faith hurried after Walker to the skiff.

“Sit on the bottom with your back to the stern and stretch your legs under the rowing bench.” He knelt on the dock and held the little craft as steady as he could while he watched over his shoulder to see where the other skiff was going.

This isn't a small boat,
Faith told herself desperately.
It's a raft in a swimming pool. That's not stinking fish bits I'm smelling, it's chlorine.

Teeth embedded in her lower lip, Faith scrambled into the boat before she lost her nerve. The skiff teetered wildly. She barely bit off a scream.

“Easy, sugar,” Walker whispered, balancing the boat. “Slow and easy is the secret of a small boat.”

She let out a breath and inched over until her weight was centered in the skiff.

“That's good,” he said. “Now stay put.”

With a skill she could only envy, Walker slid into the skiff as smoothly as if it were on dry land. He pushed off and bent to the oars, pulling the skiff through the water with the limber speed and silence of an aligator.

“Lean slowly to your right and look past me,” he murmured. “That's far enough. Can you see her now?”

Faith nodded.

“Let me know if you lose her.”

She nodded again.

Walker watched Faith with equal parts irritation and approval—irritation for her stubbornness and approval for her guts. He knew she was so scared of being in the little skiff she could spit cotton. She would probably look pale green even if he took off the goggles. Yet there she sat, her mouth a flat line of determination as she watched the boat ahead.

“She's turning right,” Faith said quietly.

Walker searched through his memory. It was high tide now, which meant there were several places up ahead where the bayou unraveled into channels that led to the larger marsh.

Tiga could have chosen any of them.

“Pick a landmark,” he told Faith.

“How? It all looks the same to me.”

“Then don't take your eyes off the place where she turned.”

Less worried about making noise than about losing Tiga, Walker quickened his stroke. The skiff shot forward.

“Just ahead,” Faith whispered.

Walker glanced over and recognized the dead pine where cormorants roosted during the day, patiently drying their wings after hours of fishing. He rowed on hard, suddenly certain that Tiga wasn't taking the arm of the bayou that headed out to sea. She was heading into the marsh.

Even with night goggles it would be too damned easy to lose her there.

He lifted one oar, pulled sharply with the other, and turned where Tiga had. He found himself in an inky little channel that was passable only at high tide. Very quickly shrubs gave way to dry, tall marsh grass whose thin blades rattled and trembled in the wind. The passage was so narrow that fronds of coarse grass reached out to rasp over the oars. There was barely enough room to row at all, but the marsh was so shallow here that he could use an oar to push off the bottom if it came to that.

He hoped it didn't. Some of that mud was deep enough to bury a man alive.

“See her?” Walker asked as he leaned forward on the oars.

“Sort of. There's more room up ahead.”

“Well, there's a blessing.”

Faith peered through the goggles into an eerie, luminous, green-on-green world. The shape of the skiff ahead melted into clumps of marsh grass and then solidified on open stretches of water. Tiga couldn't see them without night glasses of her own, but Faith still felt naked, vulnerable. She guided Walker with low, terse whispers.

Ahead a small night heron shrieked and flew up, its hunt ruined by Tiga's passage. Her skiff never hesitated. Obviously she was used to the marsh at night.

To Faith, Tiga's path was marked in swirls of pale green, which was the enhanced light thrown off by the water disturbed by Tiga's rowing. She was turning again.

“Left as soon as there's an opening,” Faith murmered.

Walker drew on old memory and recent experience. Tiga was getting close to the edge of Ruby Bayou's holdings. Soon they would be among the high-rise dinosaurs of the twenty-first century, beachfront condos for Yankees who had grown too old for skiing, sledding, and driving in the Northeast's harsh winters.

“Here,” Faith said.

Walker glanced over his shoulder. The opening looked too narrow for a skiff. “You sure?”

“Either that or we've been following ghost trails left by the wind.”

Walker turned the skiff in to the small opening. There wasn't room to row. Quietly he shipped one of the oars, reversed his position, and used the other oar as a pole to push the small craft forward. The smell and sheen of the water ahead told him that Tiga was doing the same, stirring up pungent marsh mud with each thrust of the oar.

Faith leaned to one side and got a face full of marsh grass. She leaned the other way. More coarse edges scratched her arms. Straight ahead of her, Walker was a solid column of darkness outlined by a shifting green nimbus of light.

“I can't see,” she said.

“I can.”

“Well, hooray for you,” she muttered.

Walker ignored her. Ahead, the little channel opened into a wider swath of water. Abruptly he quit poling. “She stopped.”

Faith spit out a piece of grass that the wind had slapped over her face. “What's she doing?”

“She's fixing to pull a pot.”

“What?”

“She's pulling up a crab pot,” he said.

The undercurrent of excitement in his voice was as clear as the gusts of wind hopscotching through the marsh.

“I want to see.” Forgetting her fear of tippy little boats, Faith switched to a kneeling position.

Automatically Walker steadied the skiff. “Slow and easy, remember? Spread your knees.”

She started to make a smart remark, then realized that he wasn't teasing her. Cautiously she inched her knees apart. He was right. It was easier to balance that way. When he leaned slightly to the left, she took the hint and leaned the other way. Carefully.

Both of them watched as water dripped like pale, liquid emeralds from the line in Tiga's hands. There was a soft explosion of green as she swung the pot into the boat. The metal cage hit the bottom of the skiff with a solid thump that carried over the sound of the wind.

“How much do crabs weigh?” Faith said against Walker's ear.

“Depends on the catch. From the sound of that, come suppertime tomorrow, Ruby Bayou's folks will be ass-deep in deviled crabs.”

“Or something.”

“Or something,” he agreed.

Tiga bent over the trap. Her body screened their view.

“What's she doing?” Faith asked very quietly.

“Can't tell. Could be putting crabs in a bucket and baiting the trap again.”

“Or . . .”

“I'm hoping, sugar. I'm not guaranteeing.”

“I'm not asking for guarantees, remember?” Faith said.

“You should.”

“Why?”

“You're worth it.”

“So are you, and you're not asking.”

Walker didn't know what to say, so he shut his mouth and said nothing.

A few moments later, the trap made a muffled splash as it hit the water again. It sank rapidly. Tiga straightened, rubbed her hands over her clothes, and picked up the oars again. Expertly she turned the skiff in place and rowed back toward them.

“Damn,” breathed Walker. “We gotta get out of here.”

He switched positions and grabbed an oar. There was no room to turn the boat around. He would have to pole stern-first. It was going to be awkward, especially with Faith in the way.

“Sit down and don't move if you can help it,” he said.

For once, she didn't ask questions. She just sat as fast as she could without dumping both of them over the side. Walker poled quickly, powerfully, but Tiga was gaining.

They burst out into the main channel a few seconds before she did. Walker looked around quickly and spotted the only possible cover, a dense clump of marsh grass. He nosed the skiff into the grass as Tiga's bow appeared a dozen yards away. They froze and sat motionless.

Faith felt as naked as a heron's legs. She held her breath as the sounds of Tiga's oars grew closer. The old woman's skiff would pass a few yards from theirs. She would surely be able to see them, even without goggles. And if she did, she would be able to double-back before they could stop her, snatch the trap, and disappear again into the marsh, this time forever, with a million dollars in gems plus God only knew what else.

But if Tiga noticed anything wrong, she didn't show it. She simply rowed toward Ruby Bayou with an easy rhythm, as though she was headed home after a pleasant night on the water.

Walker waited until he was certain Tiga had gone before he backed the skiff out and looked around.

Nothing but marsh, wind, and night tinged green by the glasses.

His grin flashed, pale against the darkness. “Let's go see what's for dinner.”

He made quick work of getting through the tight channel and into the opening beyond. The float that marked the crab trap's location was so covered with mud and algae that he looked for five really long minutes before he found it. He wondered how Tiga had managed without high-tech aids.

The line attached to the float was dark and overgrown with slime. It was as slippery as fish guts and just as cold. He wrapped the line around his hands and pulled. Drops of pale green water whipped off the nylon rope as he drew it in.

“Well?” Faith asked after a few seconds.

“Doesn't feel like crabs.”

“How do you know?”

“Experience.”

She would have danced with impatience if there had been room. She forgot to be afraid of the skiff and almost tipped them over trying to stand up.

“You fixing to dunk us?” he asked without breaking the rhythm of pulling up line.

Before Faith could answer, the crab pot broke the surface of the water. Streamers of green glowed as water sheeted off the pot and back to the marsh.