Jeff Abbott: Distant Blood

“Take the candle!” Gretchen called.

“No,” I answered. “Deb needs it.” I shut the door on Gretchen's reply. A moment later I heard the bolt slide home.

They'd be safe in that room. I hoped.

I felt my way along the wall, stumbling. I could hear voices raised in hue and cry two floors below, shouts of two men and one woman's strident tone. Mutt, Wendy, and Philip, probably having it out.

I made a quick stop by my room, where I fetched a matchbook and the candle I'd used to explore the attic. (I didn't want to think about what I'd seen there while the entire house was bathed in darkness.)

I was tentatively feeling my way down the stairs when the shots rang out.

I crouched in the stairway, listening. Above the lashing cry of the storm the only regular sound was the intense drum of my heartbeat.

Another gunshot erupted. I hugged against the wall.

You see, I've been shot before. I know the lancing agony of a bullet ripping through skin and muscle, the heat of it kissing your bone, the blind pain that defies imagination. Terror welled up in me like black blood from a deep wound. My breath rattled in my chest.

A voice from above whispered harshly, “Son?”

Pop. I grimaced. “Pop! Go back upstairs. Stay with the others!”

“No, I won't. I ain't gonna let you go down there-”

“Listen.” I nimbly ascended a few steps to where I could see his outline, crouching in the heavy blackness of the hallway. “One of us has to go. I'll go. I think the shooting's over. No one's screaming, so maybe no one's hurt.” I believe this technique is called clutching at straws. But I didn't share that thought with Pop. I shoved the gun toward his hands in the darkness. “Is there a cartridge for this up here?”

“I don't know. I don't think so. Mutt always kept all the guns in his study.” Pop's voice was strained, pleading. “Jordan, just stay up here. With us.”

“Listen. I'll be back in a minute. Please. Go back.”

“Stubborn, just like your mama.”

I didn't argue this time. He turned and headed back toward Candace's room. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Silence fell. I imagined Philip lying wounded, or dead, on the study floor, a thin tendril of smoke rising from the hole in his skin. And I'd let him go down there alone.

Whoever was down there shooting, he or she had been the one to hurt Candace. To kill my child. I blew out the candle and closed my eyes for a brief prayer.

Then I rushed down the stairs, my hands aching for a throat. The study doors stood half-closed, and I heard only silence within.

Slowly I pushed back the door, keeping my head low. The other study doors stood open onto the porch, wind and rain rattling in, soaking the floor. The air felt oppressive with the weight of the storm. The room was a shambles, as though a fight had torn it apart. I crept in, keeping my back against the door, breathing softly through my mouth, listening for any telltale sign that I wasn't alone.

Lightning cascaded its eerie flash into the bay, and the room lit dimly. And I could see the body lying on the floor, folded over the end of the rug.

I scurried forward, my fingers trembling as I fired the match and lit the candle. Light spilled out in an eldritch glow, and I stared down into the vacant, dead eyes of Rufus Beaulac.

The bullet had smashed through his throat, and his hand lay limply near the terrible wound, as though he needed simply to cough and all would be well. Blood-maroon in this uncertain light-speckled his face, his chest, his twisted lips, the floor. I held my fingers above his mouth. No breath stirred against my skin.

“Oh, my lord,” a voice not my own murmured, and I nearly screamed. I jerked the light up-Uncle Jake sat huddled in his chair, his face as frightened as a child's. His hands were clasped in the fold of his robe and he shivered in the dampness gusting in from the door. He blinked at me as if he didn't quite know me. “Jordan. Oh, dear. Something's wrong with Rufus. You better fetch Deb, he's-”

“He's dead, Uncle Jake. Are you okay?” I felt a sudden, sharp fear that with his heart condition, tonight would bring on an attack. “Where are the others?”

Puzzlement clouded his usually acerbic face. “I'm fine.

They-they're outside. Mutt and Philip argued about opening the safe, and taking the boat-” He pointed toward the wall safe, exposed now because the reproduction battle flag covering it lay on the floor. The safe door was open like a dark eye.

The boat? My heart pounded. I hurried to the study doors and out into the storm. Rain smashed into my face like a hard slap. The sky frothed with violence. Dark, cancerous clouds pummeled each other, lightning leaping from them to earth in obscene caresses. In seconds, I was drenched to the skin. I shaded my hands against the wind and the rain, trying to make out the stretch of terrain from the house to the dock. I stumbled forward, past the dark shape of the greenhouse, into the blackness of the night.

I had gotten to the beach-the ill-fated beach that gave this island its terrible name. For a moment, in the glassiness of vision in unrelenting rain, I thought I saw the shadows of a dozen boys, lying in the sand in their tattered uniforms, throats laid open like Rufus's. I gagged and yelled out. But there were no boys, there was only a dark shape lying on the beach, facedown in the wet sand. I stumbled forward and pulled on a shoulder, heaving him over.

Philip. I screamed out his name and leaned close to him. Ragged breath hit my ear. I felt up and down his head, his body, trying to see what was wrong. Sand daubed in a wound on his head. I had to wait for a flicker of lightning to see it'd been creased by a bullet. I yelled his name again, but he didn't answer.

Lights flicked on, out on the water. The boat. I ran toward it, the wind slamming into me, screaming out at Uncle Mutt.

Waves rocked the small boat. In the pale gleam of its running lights, I saw Wendy hurriedly donning a life preserver. And I could see Mutt's second boat, Little Brutus, its lines cut, bouncing in the pounding waves. Unreachable.

“Don't leave us! Don't leave us here, you asshole!” I hollered into the wind. “You murderer! Murderer!”

I couldn't see them clearly; the rain cut at my eyes like talons. Their boat bobbed in the hard swells, bumped against the dock, and turned out toward the bay.

Now I was on the dock, arms flailing, trying to keep my balance in the violent gale. A wave struck their boat, it rocked. And began moving away.

“Don't! Don't!” I screamed. If they ever heard me, there was no indication.

The dock jolted and tottered under my feet. I turned away from the fleeing vessel and hurried back to Philip. He still wasn't conscious and I slowly pulled him up into a fireman's carry, hoping I wasn't hurting him worse if he had suffered injuries I hadn't detected.

Halfway back to the house, Tom and Pop found me. Pop seized me in a grateful hug, nearly making me drop Philip. They eased him from my shoulders (he was not light) and we headed toward the house.

I came up after them onto the porch, staggering with delayed shock. I steadied Philip's back as Pop and Tom carried him in between them. I stumbled as we headed onto the porch, and my hand smashed through one of the panes of glass in the study door, cutting it deeply. I yowled as warm blood gushed over my hand.

“Oh, Christ,” I muttered.

Jake still sat in the study, watching us with wide eyes. He looked like a little boy on a too-scary adventure. “What's happened?” he cried.

“Mutt-or Wendy-shot Philip. The bullet creased his head,” I managed to gasp. “They've left us. They've taken one of the boats and cut loose the other.”

Jake got to his feet with more alacrity than I'd have given him credit for. His eyes were bright furnaces of shock. “The phones are still out,” he said. “I just tried a minute ago-”