Mute (30 page)

“I need your keys.” Moni pointed at the keychain
dangling from his belt. “You blocked me in.”

“And you’re counting on me staying here and
becoming gator chow while you escape with the girl that Sneed ordered me
after?” Harrison sounded much more alert than a minute ago. Firing a few rounds
into a reptile and then seeing it spring back alive tends to generate some
adrenaline. “I won’t be your human shield like Nina was.”

So much for him covering their escape, Moni
thought. With a scowl on her dark eyelashes and lips, Mariella flung her hand
out for a slap on Harrison’s shoulder. Moni pulled the girl away before she
made contact. That didn’t surprise her and she couldn’t blame her. A man who
had sworn to protect the innocent had just broken his promise.

The surface of the canal erupted as the possessed
gator and its serpent cohorts leapt out of the water. It slid through the grass
on its belly as nimbly as a killer whale coasting across the beach for its
prey.

“Shoot it!” Harrison ordered Moni. He pumped lead
through the bottom of its gaping mouth. The monster did the gator roll through
her yard.

Moni raised her shotgun and targeted the gator’s
skull. Then she heard scratching on the railing of the deck above her. She
jumped out of the way. A gang of rats dove off the deck. Their eyes blazed
purple. Vermin like these had shredded the last witness into kibble. With
Mariella ducking behind her shoulder as she stayed fastened to her back, Moni
punted two of the rats across the lawn. Harrison didn’t fare so well. One rat
perched on his shoulder and started nibbling his ear into a bloody stump.
Another rodent gnawed through his pants leg. He grunted and howled as their
sharp teeth scraped his skin, but he didn’t take his focus on the three sets of
even sharper teeth barreling towards him. Harrison fired twice more into the
gator. Then his clip ran out.

“Stop fucking around and shoot the bastard!”
Harrison screamed at Moni as he fumbled for another clip on his belt while the
rats made a meal of him.

 
Moni shot
out the gator’s eye. Purple goo splattered across the grass as if a gigantic
grape had been squashed. The smoking remains of the eye roasted the grass until
it browned.

Its charge halted, the gator twitched its neck and
flexed its jaws. Harrison finally turned on the rats and swatted them off. He
felt for the remains of his ear. It resembled a raw bone that had been chewed
up by a pit bull. With that distracting him, Moni slipped her hand around his
waist and snatched his keys.

She hadn’t even planned it. She saw the opening and
took it. The Lagoon Watcher had infected enough animals for an all-day target
practice—except the targets shook off their holes. Mariella didn’t belong in
the middle of this, but if Harrison felt like going out with his guns blazing,
she wouldn’t stop him.

But
I’m not helping him either, am I?

When Harrison eyed her with intense hatred, Moni
shelved that last thought. As long as Mariella survives, she shouldn’t regret a
thing. He had spied on her. He came here to take her away.

He’s
a follow officer. We don’t leave our own behind. What will they think of me if
I let this happen again?

Moni realized that the approval of Sneed and his
good ol’ boys club doesn’t matter. After all, they thought so highly of her
that they orchestrated this heist of Mariella. If they want the evidence
Mariella supposedly knows, they need the girl alive, she thought. Moni agreed with
them on that point. She knew they couldn’t stop the killings without the girl.

She would have been the next victim when she dove
into the canal after the girl, but Harrison had shot the gator. As the creature
stirred once more with its one good eye and the rats scurried up his tattered
pants, Harrison had become the new target.

“Get these little bastards off me!” he cried as a
rat bit his wrist, making him drop his gun.

With Harrison’s car keys in one hand and a shotgun
in the other, Moni turned her back on her fellow officer. She sprinted toward
his patrol car with the girl on her back. Moni prayed for thunder. Only a force
of nature so terribly loud could drown out the screams that echoed through her
backyard.

Chapter 30

When his cell phone rang, Aaron rolled over in bed
and covered his head with the blanket. The pattering of the rain on his window—not
to mention some shots of whisky the night before—had lulled him into a long
sleep. He didn’t realize just how long until he rubbed his eyes and read the
time on his phone showing a quarter to eleven on a Saturday morning.

After nearly getting his nose busted by an ex-con
the day before, Aaron wouldn’t mind staying in bed all day. But he couldn’t
resist answering the call of the woman who got him in all those wicked jams. He
loved that his own parents considered him too much of a fuck-up to watch their
house when they were away, but a police officer kept calling on his skills.

“Hey babe,” he answered. Aaron couldn’t suppress a
yawn. “Why you always waking me?”

Moni responded with a soft whimper. He heard the
whooshing of wind rolling over her speeding car.

“Aren’t you wondering why I’m all slacking and
sleeping so late?” he asked.

Despite the slow set up pitch right down the center
of the plate, Moni didn’t swing. She peppered the phone with short tense
breaths that reminded him of a red-faced woman undergoing labor pains in one of
those childbirth documentaries.

“Moni? What’s wrong?”

“That damn Sneed. He ordered officers over to steal
Mariella.”

“What! Where is she?”

“Thank God.” She sucked in a relieved gulp of air.
“She’s here with me. The Lagoon Watcher’s monsters took her before Sneed’s
cronies did. They took her into the canal. They wanted to… But I… I dove in and
grabbed her back. You don’t know how brave my little one was.”

“Sounds like you were plenty brave yourself,” Aaron
said.

Moni groaned as if someone had just balanced a
boulder on her spine. Aaron hoped that her reaction came from his flattery, but
she reverted into exorcism breathing mode. Moni couldn’t get a word out that
wasn’t mangled.

Aaron let the waters settle and then he asked her
what happened.

“I ran away when I could have helped them,” Moni
said in a sobbing voice. “Tanya Roberts, and Clyde Harrison are dead. I escaped
with the girl. The monsters… they…”

“Dead? That’s terrible. Moni, the important thing
is that you and Mariella are…”

“No! I mean I know it’s important, but the sheriff
and Sneed won’t see it that way. I disobeyed a direct order to turn over the
girl and the two people who were sent for her wound up dead. Who do you think
they’ll blame?”

Her anguish hadn’t stopped Moni from thinking
straight. Aaron agreed that they would try pinning their deaths on her. Even
short of trumping up murder charges, Sneed could build a strong case that Moni
had neglected her duties by fleeing the scene while they were in danger.

“Were there any witnesses?” Aaron asked.

“My neighbor watched from her window and called the
police. I’m not sure how much she saw. I left before they got there.”

“Left? Where are you going?”

She didn’t hesitate before she told him;at least
she trusted someone else besides the girl.

“I’m headed up the Space Coast Parkway towards
Kissimmee. I’m going as far away from the lagoon as possible.”

He was glad Moni couldn’t see him shaking his head.
She had cut and run while leaving two people she worked with to their deaths.
And her next plan? Cut and run again. She was headed out of town with the only
witness to the beheadings while the helpless citizens of the county she served
continued getting murdered.

Harsh judgments like that came too easily, Aaron
realized. He dwelled on Crystal Marshall, his former best friend who had moved
away because he didn’t stick up for her against those racist punks. He couldn’t
blame her for leaving. How could she take on all those kids by herself?

Moni fled because Aaron hadn’t done enough. He
should have been there when the officers came for Mariella. He should have
skewered that gator on his speargun. His whole life, Aaron had cowered away
from moments like that. When they dumped the books out of his backpack in
school, he had laughed it off and scooped them up instead of throwing down.
When they picked on his little brother, he pretended like he didn’t know him.

His parents would never believe that Aaron could
help someone like Moni. Maybe he couldn’t conquer the horde of mutants in the
lagoon, or crack the secrets of the bacteria like Professor Swartzman, but
Aaron could make good use of his crafty noggin. It had saved him from expulsion
more than once.

“Running isn’t the right move,” Aaron said.
“Whoever is poisoning the lagoon wants Mariella out of the picture and hiding
her is the next best thing. You need to keep working your magic with her, and
solve this case.”

“But, what about the Lagoon Watcher? I can’t fight
for her life every day. Then there’s Sneed. He won’t let me near the girl after
this. I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t take my badge and toss me in jail.”

“I’ve got a plan for both of them,” Aaron assured
her. “Sneed likes card games, right? We’ll cut him a deal. You can keep
Mariella and your badge if you allow her to help lay a trap for the Lagoon
Watcher.”

“Hell no! I’m not using my baby as bait.”

“I hate to break it to you, but she’s already bait.
The Lagoon Watcher is stalking her whether you’re ready or not, so you might as
well prepare a little something special for him. ”

“I can’t keep putting her life in danger. I want
out of here.”

“Running away won’t put an end to this. If we don’t
catch the Lagoon Watcher, will you feel safe a year from now—ten years from
now? Could you send her out of the house alone knowing that he’s still out
there looking for her?”

Her silence answered the question for her.

“If the Lagoon Watcher is gonna come, let’s be
ready for him,” Aaron said. Think of it like a surprise party, but minus the
party and plus a whole lotta beat-down.”

“I hear you. That does sound good. Lord knows he’s
earned it.”

“It’s more than good. It’s perfect. Remember how
Trainer showed up outside the police station? That’s because you were too far
from the water for one of his animals. So you move into temporary housing away
from the water and don’t take her anywhere near the lagoon. You can have
undercover officers guarding her, so when the Watcher makes his move, they
catch his crazy ass.”

Moni didn’t say a word. Aaron gave her space so she
could think it over. He heard her decelerate and switch on the turn signal.

“I’m sorry, Mariella. But you know we couldn’t
leave home forever,” Moni said. Aaron wondered how she knew the silent girl
wanted to flee. “No matter what, I won’t let any bad people near you, baby.”

After agreeing that he would call Sneed and
shoulder the brunt of his rage, Moni said she would meet him at the sheriff’s
office that night for the obligatory task force meeting they held after each
murder. When their call ended, Aaron wondered what he had just set in motion.
Did he invite Moni back to town, despite the risk to her and Mariella, because
he wanted her? Or maybe he couldn’t resist feeling wanted.

The first time he went home from school with a
black eye, his mother had told him—with his father scoffing while watching
baseball in the background—that it’s best to walk away from a fight. Aaron had
always followed that advice—until he met Moni.

Chapter 31

Moni couldn’t make eye contact with a single one of
them. As she strode through the sheriff’s office with Mariella’s hand in hers,
she felt the hateful stares of the officers she had betrayed roast her skin
like dozens of heating lamps. Many of them had spent the day cleaning up the
bloody mess at her house. Soon, they would lower one of their own into the
ground—minus his head—and hand a folded flag to his widow.

Harrison had been the toughest man on the force.
More than a few of the officers owed their lives to him. He had felled two
suspects in police shootouts without losing a fellow officer either time. When
they cornered suspects after car chases, Harrison was always the first one who
charged the vehicle. Moni felt bad enough that she had let him die, but burying
his headless body denied everyone closure. Harrison’s sturdy head had been
severed as cleanly as all the others. No one saw how it happened, but they
doubted that a gator could have done it so smoothly.

Tanya Roberts’ body also popped up a few blocks
down the canal—without her head and with one arm dangling by a single tendon.

Aaron had met Sneed at the scene, and then filled
Moni in on everything. He thought Sneed couldn’t get any more furious, but he
had no idea. Moni wouldn’t dare set foot in the station without Aaron, and his
plan to deflect Sneed’s rage.