True Evil (64 page)

"There's an island just east of the rendezvous! It's small and oblong. There's a downed chopper on one side. I'll be on the other. Stay clear of that chopper!"

Tarver hugged the perimeter of the island, and soon they were idling in its lee. The island shielded them from the wind, but the rain still stung Alex's face as she searched the dark sky. Jamie crouched on the deck, holding his hands over his ears as though afraid that the madman he was tied to might start firing the rifle again. Alex hunted for something she could use to cut the rope that bound them together. Jamie was an excellent swimmer, and she wouldn't hesitate to throw him overboard if she could. But there was no blade in sight.

The
whup-whup
of rotors reached her again. She froze. Was this Tarver's accomplice? Or had Kaiser summoned aerial reinforcements? The Highway Patrol and the DEA almost certainly had helicopters based in Jackson, not to mention the sheriff's departments of the surrounding counties.

She could hear the chopper descending through the black sky, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't see it. The rotor noise grew to a roar, and then a group of lights flashed on fifty meters above the boat. No wonder she hadn't seen the damned thing! It was dark gray, almost indistinguishable from the sky. As she watched the chopper descend, hope died within her. Dr. Tarver was talking to the pilot on his cell phone, carefully guiding him in.

The rotor blast drove her to the deck, and static electricity crackled around the boat. As Dr. Tarver shouted above the thunder, she suddenly realized why he hadn't cut the rope binding him to Jamie. With the FBI so close, simply escaping was not enough. Tarver needed insurance to guarantee his survival.

Jamie was it.

CHAPTER 54

The gray helicopter hovered next to the speedboat in the rain, so low that whitecaps were washing over its skids. A huge door slid back, opening a space big enough for a squad of marines to rappel through. At Dr. Tarver's signal a black man leaped from the helicopter into the speedboat.

"Load those cases!" the doctor shouted, pointing to the Pelicans in the stern.

While the newcomer hustled to the back of the boat, Tarver slashed the rope binding him to Jamie, then wrapped the end still tied to Jamie's waist twice around his hand like a leash. Alex got to her feet, waiting for a chance to do something, anything. Tarver jammed his pistol into his waistband, then pulled the high-powered rifle out of the ski locker and tossed it into the hovering chopper.

The black man had already loaded one case and was going back for the other. Dr. Tarver lifted Jamie into the crook of his arm, then planted his right foot on the gunwale of the boat and prepared to toss Jamie into the rocking chopper.

"Aunt Alex!" Jamie screamed, his face white with terror. "Don't let them take me!"

As Jamie flailed against Tarver, Alex lunged forward and grabbed for the pistol at the small of Tarver's back. Her fingers closed around the butt—

Then she was gazing up from the deck, the left side of her face numb. She saw a blurry image of a black man staring down at her with a gun in his hand. Sure that she was down for the count, the man made two more trips to the stern of the boat. As he stepped over Alex for the last time, the Kelty pack in his hand, she struggled onto one elbow, then to her knees. Looking over the pitching gunwale, she saw Tarver grinning from the chopper door while the black man secured the cases inside.

Jamie was nowhere in sight.

When Dr. Tarver turned away to help the loader, Alex saw the chopper pilot, and her breath caught in her throat. It was the gray-haired man who had visited Tarver's clinic yesterday. In that frozen moment, she realized he was also the army officer standing with Tarver and the blonde in the VCP photograph in Tarver's office. Then she saw Jamie strapped into a seat behind the pilot, his face a mask of fear. Alex saw the terrified eyes of Grace on her deathbed, dying with the awful knowledge that she was leaving her son in the care of a monster.

Alex looked frantically around the boat, but Dr. Tarver had left her nothing: not a flare gun, not an ax. He had even taken the key with him. When the helicopter lifted into the sky, she would be left alone in the roaring storm, and Jamie would be gone forever. She screamed from the depths of her being, a cry of utter failure and desolation.

As if on cue, the chopper dipped its nose and began to rise. Twenty feet, forty, sixty. As it rose, the pilot kept the open door facing the boat, and Alex soon saw why. Dr. Tarver had picked up the rifle and was now kneeling in the door, aiming at her chest. Some distant part of her brain screamed,
Drop!
Yet her body remained frozen. If she could not fulfill her promise to Grace, what did her own fate matter? She would watch Jamie until he disappeared, no matter what the cost. If Grace called her to account in some other world, she could at least say she had done that.

Waiting for the muzzle flash, she saw a blur of white descend in front of Dr. Tarver's face.
The bedsheet?
No, that lay discarded on the deck behind her. Then she saw Jamie, his face beside the flapping whiteness. He'd thrown his little arms around Dr. Tarver's neck. As the black man appeared in the door and grabbed for Jamie, one of those little arms jerked something tight.

A drawstring,
Alex realized.
The croker sack!

Tarver began flailing his arms, and the rifle flew out of the door. The doctor looked like a scarecrow being jerked around by a mad puppeteer. He swung back into the cabin, lurching into the pilot. The helicopter stopped ascending and began to pitch wildly in the air. Seventy feet above the lake, the chopper spun through 360 degrees. As the door came around, the yellow Pelican case flew out, followed by the black man. He turned two long somersaults in the air, then smacked the choppy surface of the lake.

When the helicopter came around the second time, Alex saw Dr. Tarver in the door again. He seized the white sack with both hands and tore it violently from his neck. A thick black rope hung from one of his cheeks. She shuddered as she realized it was one of the cottonmouths, attached to the doctor by its two-inch fangs. Tarver ripped the snake away from his face and flung it into space. The black serpent seemed to hang in the air, twisting wildly, then it fell.

As Dr. Tarver turned back to the interior, the chopper dipped fifteen feet, and Jamie shot from the open door like a cannonball. Alex screamed in horror, but as Jamie fell, she realized that his was a controlled fall. He wasn't flipping like the man who had gone before him. He was dropping straight down, feetfirst, like a schoolboy showing off at a swimming hole. He landed seventy yards from the boat, and Alex lost him in the chop.

She jumped behind the wheel, then remembered that Dr. Tarver had taken the key. Slamming her bound hands against the gunwale, she ran to the stern. Hope flooded through her. On the port side of the Carrera was an emergency trolling motor. Bill had used it to quietly propel the boat around fishing holes. A bracket allowed the electric motor to be lifted out of the water when not in use. Two cables connected it to a battery on the stern deck. Alex looked back toward the spot where Jamie had fallen. The helicopter was descending over it. Her first thought was Jamie, but then she realized they were after the fallen case.

She ran her hands along the head of the trolling motor until she found the power switch. Then she lifted the bracket so that the propeller emerged from the water and protruded just above the gunwale. She knew she could steer the boat with bound hands, but she would be useless once she reached Jamie. When she hit the start switch, the prop instantly spun into a black blur. She held her taped wrists over the whirring prop and yanked her forearms as far apart as they would go, slightly stretching the duct tape. With every molecule of her instinct rebelling, she lowered the tape onto the edge of the prop.

The ripping whine of a Weed Eater assaulted her eardrums, and a red mist filled the air. She tumbled onto the deck. The force of the prop had kicked her hands into her face, knocking her backward. But when she looked down at her bloody wrists, only a shred of tape remained intact. Yanking her arms apart, she got to her feet and thrust the spinning prop down into the water.

The speedboat slowly moved forward. Alex jumped behind the wheel and aimed the bow toward the spot where she believed Jamie had landed. Her left hand was covered with blood. The prop had gouged deep into that wrist, chewing up veins and exposing a radiant white carpal bone. She forced herself to look away. She didn't care how much blood she lost, so long as she had the strength to pull Jamie out of the water when she reached him.

Ahead and to her right, the gray helicopter had settled just above the surface of the lake. Dr. Tarver was straddling its left skid, trying desperately to pluck the heavy yellow case from the waves. Alex had reached the spot where she thought Jamie had fallen, but she saw no sign of him. Twenty meters away, Dr. Tarver heaved the yellow case into the belly of the chopper. As he did, a big wave sloshed inside the machine. Almost instantly, the chopper bellied, and another wave flung itself inside. Obviously panicked, the pilot dipped his rotors to the right, venting the water from the door and lifting the chopper six feet above the waves. This maneuver dumped Dr. Tarver into the lake.

The pilot ascended another ten feet and hovered there, as though uncertain what to do. He had Tarver's bag and cases. Did he really need the man?

Apparently so.

As Alex slowly circled in search of Jamie, the chopper settled back to the surface, low enough for Dr. Tarver to climb onto the skid and into the cabin. This time the nose tilted forward, and the chopper beat its way powerfully into the air. Fifty feet. A hundred. Higher. Alex was searching for Jamie again when the crack of rifle fire echoed over the water. Two shots…five. An explosion reverberated off the shore behind her. The helicopter had risen high enough for Kaiser's snipers to get an angle on it! Alex glanced up only a moment, but it was enough to see the chopper plummeting toward the lake, black smoke pouring from its engine.

Afraid that it might crash on top of her, she steered away. At the last moment the pilot flared, and the chopper hit the waves with a strange whump, not twenty-five meters from her.

She steered in ever-wider circles, trying to control her fear. What part of Jamie might she see first? A tangle of reddish hair? A silver tennis shoe?

"Jamie!" she shouted, astonished that she hadn't called out until now.
Maybe I'm in shock,
she thought, looking down at the growing pool of blood around her feet.
"Jamie! Jamie! It's Aunt Alex!"

Nothing.

The trolling motor was maddeningly slow. She glanced to her right. Tarver's helicopter had already sunk to its engine cowling.

"Jamie!" she screamed. "Answer me!"

"Here!" shouted a weak voice. "Over here."

That wasn't Jamie. It was either Tarver or his pilot. Then she saw the doctor's bald head moving through the water with surprising speed. He disappeared behind a wave, then shouted again.

"I have him, Alex! Jamie's over here. Help us!"

She knew it was probably a trick, that Dr. Tarver might still have a gun, but she had to be sure that he hadn't found Jamie. Ducking behind the gunwale, she slowly turned the blood-slickened wheel, taking the Carrera in a wide circle that would carry her nearer the doctor. Seconds later, her heart thumped her sternum, and her pulse began to race. Jamie was floating faceup in the heaving waves, and Tarver was swimming toward him. He would reach Jamie long before Alex could get there with the boat.

Instead of veering toward them, Alex continued her circle, which carried her out of Dr. Tarver's line of sight. A rush of instinct so powerful that she could not ignore it told her that Eldon Tarver was about to enter her element. For six weeks she had been playing catch-up, following cold clues that led nowhere. Even after she'd gotten the doctor in her sights, he had always been three steps ahead. But this would be different.

This was a negotiation.

As the boat circled, she ran to the stern and searched for the fuel line.
There.
A transparent hose no bigger than her little finger. The aorta of a human was hardly bigger, and this was the main artery of the boat. She yanked it loose, and gasoline began running onto the stern deck. She went back to the wheel and steered toward Dr. Tarver, who was now holding Jamie in a lifeguard's cross-chest carry. The boy appeared to be unconscious. When Alex was thirty feet away, she ran back to the stern and switched off the trolling motor.

"Let's talk!" shouted Tarver. "We don't have much time."

As she moved back to the bow, a memory flashed into Alex's head. She saw Bill Fennell on the Fourth of July, yanking up a seat cushion to get at some tools. She stopped, tucked her fingers under that same seat, and pulled. The seat cushion popped free. In the small compartment below, she saw a screwdriver, a roll of electrical tape, a set of Allen wrenches, and some copper wire. No knife. No flare gun.
Shit
—

"What are you doing?" shouted Tarver. "I want to make a deal."

"I'm hurt!" Alex yelled back. "Bleeding bad…hang on."

She pulled off her soaked shirt and wrapped it tightly around her mangled wrist. Then she took the screwdriver from the compartment and slid it underneath the makeshift bandage.

"I want the boat!" Tarver shouted.

Alex looked up. The boat had drifted closer to the doctor. She ducked below the gunwale. "I want Jamie!"

Tarver stroked nearer, holding Jamie's head above the water. "Then I'd say we have a deal."

She shook her head. "You have a gun. I know you do."

"I lost it in the crash."

Alex shook her head again. "No gun, no boat!"

Dr. Tarver's right hand stopped treading water, dipped under the surface, then reappeared holding an automatic.

"Throw it away!" Alex yelled.

She saw rage in his eyes, but he threw the gun into the waves.