The Immortalists (10 page)

He didn’t hear the wave until it hit, knocking him off his feet and pulling him into the impenetrable darkness. He rolled and slammed into something that felt like a submerged log, confused for a moment as to which way was up.

“That son of a bitch!” Richard Draman said when he finally managed to surface and expel brackish water from his lungs.

“You did almost stab him to death,” Carly pointed out, grabbing hold of him for stability as another set of waves hit. “I don’t think you should have been looking for any favors.”

The smuggler had given them two badly patched inner tubes and dropped them off about a quarter mile from shore, assuring them that if they just followed the glow of electric light, it would be a straight shot to a beach.

When the clouds parted, though, a three-quarter moon illuminated not the glow of white sand but the shadow of a mangrove swamp. From their position, a thick tangle of roots was visible for about fifty feet before going completely black beneath an unbroken canopy. If they went in and lost their sense of direction, they could end up wandering around for days. And even if they got through, did the road they’d been told about really exist?

“Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Carly said in an attempt to lighten his mood. The strain was clearly audible in her voice, but there wasn’t even a hint of accusation. Not that it mattered. He was doing a perfectly fine job allocating blame without her help.

Why the hell hadn’t he just let that asshole wave his knife around and make as many threats as he wanted? All he had to say was “yes, sir,” do a little cowering, and they’d have been strolling past the pool at the Hilton right now. But no. He’d had to pick that moment to lose it.

“Are there alligators in here?” Carly said, looking around as they started forward again.

“How should I know?”

“You’re a biologist.”

“
Micro
biologist. If there’s anything in the world that’s not micro, it’s a goddamn alligator.”

He let out a long, frustrated breath, chastising himself for snapping at her. Precisely none of this was her fault. “I’m sorry, Carly. I think the water here might be too salty for them.”

“Might be?”

“That’s the best I can do. But look on the bright side. Based on our luck, the snakes will get us first.”

“This is stupid,” Richard said, grabbing his wife by the arm and pulling her to a stop. “We’re just going in circles.”

They’d been wandering around the swamp for an hour now, following what little moonlight could penetrate the tangle of trees. Where they were in relation to the coast, how far they’d gone, and what they were even looking for were all a mystery. At least they were still in one piece, though. So far, the largest reptile they’d seen was only about a foot long.

“Giving up isn’t really an option at this point,” Carly said. “I’m not looking to take up permanent residence—”

“Look, I know, OK? I know. But this isn’t getting us anywhere. Remember what Burt said—the most important thing is to think. And we’re not doing that.”

“We’ve got to get back to Susie,” she said, sounding increasingly desperate. “I have to know if she’s all right.”

He understood how she felt. He was dead tired, scared, and fairly certain that they were attracting a fair number of leeches— something his wife thankfully hadn’t yet noticed. Much worse, though, were thoughts of Susie. The not knowing.

“Take it easy, Carly. She’s got Burt with her, and I’ve gone over this in my head a hundred times. There’s no way anyone can track her to him without basically going though every person I’ve ever met.”

“You don’t know that, Richard. Someone could have seen the truck. They could—”

He reached out and put a hand over her mouth, cocking his head at something barely audible over the buzz of the swamp. “Shhh. What’s that?”

“I don’t hear—”

She fell silent as the periodic thump grew louder—too rhythmic and deep to be natural.

“Wait,” she said excitedly. “I do hear it. Is it…is it music?”

They dodged roots and clambered over tiny patches of dry land for another miserable half hour, sometimes in areas so dark they had to navigate entirely by touch. But it
was
music. In fact, it was a Grateful Dead bootleg that he himself had owned since college.

They were able to move faster as they got closer, following the flickering light of a campfire past a canoe tied to a tiny island no more than fifty feet wide. On its high point were two people sitting in lawn chairs—a man and a woman staring into the flames as they passed an oversized joint back and forth. Both looked to be in their early twenties, with matching dreadlocks and bare feet sticking out from the bottom of dirty jeans.

Richard climbed onto the spit of land, looking down at himself and saying a silent prayer of thanks that the leeches had just been a figment of his imagination.

“Hello!”

The woman started, staring wide-eyed at him and trying to hide the joint behind her back.

“Who are you?” her companion said, standing to an impressive height but losing some intimidation points with his Winnie the Pooh T-shirt.

“Police,” Richard responded, using the obvious opportunity that the marijuana presented.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” the young man said, watching Carly emerge from the water. “They’ve got you wading around all night in the swamp to find people camping illegally? What, did you get caught screwing your boss’s daughter, ’cause—”

“We work narcotics, actually.”

The young woman’s eyes became even rounder, and she began slowly retreating with the joint still behind her back.

“Come on, dude. It’s a little pot. I’m not Tony Montana, here.”

“Do you have a phone?” Richard said.

“What?”

“We had to bail off a boat about a half a mile offshore, and mine’s full of water.”

“Yeah, I’ve got one.”

“Tell you what. If you let me use it and give us a ride out of here, I’ll forget we ever met.”

Knowing a good deal when he saw one, the kid dropped to his knees and retrieved an iPhone from his pack. Richard took it and flashed Carly a relieved smile as he walked to the far corner of the island, dialing from shaky memory what he hoped was August Mason’s number.

“Come on…” he said, listening to the phone on the other end ring. “Pick up. Pick up the—”

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice. Groggy, with a familiar Spanish accent.

“May I speak to Dr. Mason, please?”

“Who is this? Do you realize it’s two in the morning?”

“This is detective Anderson from the Baltimore police. I’m sorry about the hour, but it’s urgent.”

“I’m sorry. I thought you would have known. Dr. Mason passed away.”

Despite the warm temperatures and humidity, Richard suddenly felt a chill.

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” he said, trying to keep his tone matter-of-fact. “May I ask how?”

“Of course. He was on a private aircraft that crashed.”

The windows of the surrounding homes were uniformly black as they hurried across Burt Seeger’s lawn and into the impenetrable shadow of his front porch.

Carly knocked, quietly at first, and then more insistently. Nothing. She rang the bell a few times with a similar result.

“Where are they?” she said, the panic starting to build in her voice. “Where would they be at this hour?”

“Calm down,” Richard whispered. “He’s an old guy and his hearing probably isn—”

The blow to the back of his head seemed to come from thin air, bouncing him off the door and buckling his knees. His vision swam sickeningly, and he heard Carly grunt through what sounded like a hand clamped over her mouth.

He flipped onto his stomach and was trying to get to his feet when he felt the cold metal of a gun barrel press against the back of his head.

“Stop! Don’t shoot!” Carly shouted.

“What the hell…”

The voice was unmistakable. Burt Seeger wasn’t as old and deaf as Richard had thought.

“Get up,” the retired soldier said, already starting down the steps to the lawn. “Follow me around back.”

Richard was still dazed from the blow to the head, and Carly threw his arm around her shoulders, supporting as much of his weight as she could as they hurried along the side of the house.

“Is Susie all right?” Carly said as Seeger motioned them through the open door leading to the kitchen. “Is everything OK?”

“She’s sleeping upstairs,” Seeger responded, taking one last look out the door before closing it. “But you’re not supposed to be. You’re dead. I read it on CNN.”

“Did you tell Susie?” Carly said. “Has she—”

“No, thank God. I’ve been putting it off and keeping her away from the TV and computer until I could figure out what to do.”

“We got off the plane before it went down,” Richard said, lowering himself into a chair at the kitchen table. He touched the back of his head and pulled back fingers wet with blood.

“I figured that. How about some details?”

Carly pressed a dishtowel to his wound, and he winced, ducking away from the pain. “Whatever’s going on, our best friend, Chris Graden, is involved. We were going to call you but weren’t sure it was safe.”

Seeger leaned back against the wall, gun still hanging from his hand. He’d always been skeptical, but now he looked downright suspicious.

That wasn’t all that had changed, though. He also seemed a little tanner. A little straighter.

“When you got here, the police wanted you for peeking at some research that wasn’t yours, and you had a pickup that you could argue you borrowed,” he said. “You told me you were innocent, that someone had tried to hurt Susie. Fine. But now there’s a body count. I figure two pilots and one Nobel Prize winner.”

“Mason…” Richard said.

“They’re reporting that he was on that flight with you.”

“It’s not true.”

Seeger took a seat across from Richard, laying his pistol on the table in front of him.

“Are you planning on shooting us?” Carly said, looking down at it.

He didn’t answer for long enough that it became unnerving.

“I know better than to believe anything the press tells me. Hell, they said Susie was with you too. And I was there when you tried to save my wife. I feel like I know a little bit about you. But even I’m starting to have my doubts.”

“That sounds like an accusation,” Richard said.

The older man shrugged. “Could somebody be after you? Sure, anything’s possible. But it seems like you’re doing pretty well, and the people around you are the ones dropping like flies.”

“You think we did something to that plane?” Carly said. “That we killed those people?”

“You’ve got a daughter to save, and maybe you think someone has information that could help you. I’ve only known Susie for a few days, and if saving her meant bumping off a couple pilots and a biologist, I might give it some thought.”

“Everything we’ve told you is a hundred percent true,” Richard said, the throbbing in his head adding to the challenge of remaining calm. “We’re not evil people. We’re not killers.”

Seeger smiled and ran a hand over the gun. “You make it sound like those are the same things.”

They fell silent for a few moments, and Richard rose, taking the bloody towel from his wife’s hand and laying it on the table. “I’m sorry you don’t believe us, Burt. But it doesn’t really matter. Carly and I have talked about this, and we both agree that we had no right to get you involved. Give us an hour to wake Susie up and get our stuff together and you’ll never see us again.”

“Now, hold on,” Seeger said, suddenly looking a little alarmed. “We’re just talking here. I didn’t say anything about throwing you out.”

“This has gotten too dangerous for you,” Carly said. “Whatever debt you felt you owed Richard, it’s been paid. We don’t want to be responsible for you ending up dead or in jail for something that’s not your problem.”

Seeger toyed with the gun for a few more seconds before responding. “You know what I’ve been needing for a long time, Carly?”

“No.”

“A goddamn problem. I sit here all day alone in this house waiting for my pension checks. Other than a few old bullet holes, the docs tell me there isn’t a thing wrong with me. That I could live to be a hundred. Can you believe that? A hundred. I used to make life-and-death decisions ten times a day. Now I melt down if two TV shows I want to watch are on at the same time.” He pointed toward the living room. “I took up quilting to meet women. That’s what I’ve come to. Quilting.”

She actually smiled at that. One of those broad, toothy grins that dented her cheeks. Richard looked on, suddenly pulled back to the first time he’d seen that smile.

Seeger slid the gun off the table and tucked it into his pants— a peace offering. “So if we assume you’re telling the truth—and I’m willing to go down that road a mile or two—then your main problem is that you have people trying to kill you. In the scheme of things, that’s not all that complicated.”

“It’s not?” Carly said.

“Nope. There are only two ways to make that particular issue go away, and they’re both permanent: You kill them first or you die.”

She pondered that for a moment. “I vote for the first one.”