Lee Child: First Thrills Volume 2

It was daylight. I could no longer bear the horrid odor that rose to the fresh summer sky, or the sight of the bodies. I ran back to my house.

A few hours later, I decided that I was leaving. I would find my father. I would take one of the little sailboats, and if there was no wind that day, I would row. I was going in to Charleston.

The sun was falling; it was the perfect time to start the long journey. Night would save me from the heat, and the lighthouse would guide me. At first, my plan was perfect. I caught a bit of a breeze, and the darkness fell, but the air was balmy and I was fine. Then, I felt the first thump against the boat. Then another.

And, in that balmy breeze, with the sea so gentle and the stars blazing in the sky above, the thing crawled aboard. It was Johnny. For a moment, his eyes were dull and dead. He came toward me and I scrambled swiftly, ready to leap overboard. He caught my shoulders, his strength incredible. He opened his mouth, aiming for my throat.

Then he paused. To my astonishment, tears came to his dead eyes. “I don’t want to, I don’t want to, oh, God, I remember you…”

“Johnny, let me go, for the love of God, Johnny,” I begged.

I felt the boat bump again.

Rescue, I thought, somehow, rescue.

Johnny jerked around. I looked past him.

It was another of the things.

I looked hard. My heart sank. It was one of them.

And it was my father.

He leaped at Johnny, rocking the small boat precariously, and I thought he had come to save me. But he wrenched Johnny from me, and then, I saw his eyes.

Dead eyes. Once, a dancing brown shade. Now, dead.

“Father, no!” I screamed in terror and misery. But he would have bitten down upon me, ripping and tearing, if Johnny hadn’t pulled him away. Johnny was still crying, and suddenly, my father was crying, too. But still, they weren’t battling to save me.

They were fighting over their prey.

I was desperate. I leaped off the small boat, though I knew that they could swim. I tried freeing myself from my cumbersome skirt and boots while they fought, unaware that I was gone. Then I set out for the island. I was a good swimmer, but still, I had come far from shore.

I was crying myself, gulping too much water, fighting the numbness of terror. I had left the island, and I had done so with the Colt, but little good that did me now. I’d never had a sword, nor had my father. I had to pray that I could swim hard enough, fast enough.

My exhausted limbs could barely continue moving, but I began to believe that I might make it.

Then, I felt the tug upon my ankle. And gasping for air, I went down. In the dark, murky seawater, I could barely see. But it was Johnny. Dead eyes blank, wide open, blank. No more tears. No sign of life or memory.

He took my shoulders. I was done in. I closed my eyes; he would rip out my throat. It wouldn’t last long.

But I was ripped away from him. No matter; hope didn’t even float in my soul. It would be my father, claiming his portion of the kill.

But I wasn’t ripped to shreds. I was tossed back. I fell hard and realized I was almost on the little patch of beach south of the harbor area. I could stand, and I staggered to my feet. Then I saw Brent. He swung his sword, and Johnny’s head was swiftly severed from his body, and lost to the waves. The headless body stood for a minute, then fell. Brent turned to me. He shouted, and lifted his sword. I thought he meant to kill me; that he believed that I had been bitten, infected, and that he meant to kill me, as well. But he strode past me.

“Don’t look, Jules, don’t look!” he shouted.

I didn’t. I winced. I heard the plop of the head, and then the splash of the body, and I knew that my father was at peace as well.

Soaking, Brent and I staggered from the water together.

“I told you,” he said sadly. “Something wasn’t right with Johnny.”

Federal troops came the next day; the incident was quickly over. At that point in history, none of us had the energy to argue much when the murders on Douglas Island were blamed upon the horror and stress of war.

Brent and I left soon after. We are a strange couple, but we do well enough. We manage in life, and like other couples, we sleep together at night.

Unlike other couples, we both sleep with swords at our sides. Johnny is at rest. But God knows who else might come marching home.

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author HEATHER GRAHAM was born somewhere in Europe and kidnapped by gypsies when she was a small child. She went on to join the Romanian circus as a trapeze artist and lion tamer. When the circus came to South Florida, she stayed, discovering that she preferred to be a shark- and gator-trainer.

Not really.

Heather is the child of Scottish and Irish immigrants who met and married in Chicago, and moved to South Florida, where she has spent her life. She majored in theater arts at the University of South Florida. After a stint of several years in dinner theater, backup vocals, and bartending, she stayed home after the birth of her third child and began to write. She has written more than 150 novels and novellas, including category, suspense, historical romance, vampire fiction, time travel, occult, horror, and Christmas family fare.

She is pleased to have been published in approximately twenty-five languages, and has had more than seventy-five million books in print, and is grateful every day of her life that she writes for a living.

“Things aren’t always as they seem,” my father liked to say, and when he said it, I would shake my head as if to say, no, they certainly are not.

Really, I was shaking my head because he was wrong.

Dead wrong.

Dead-the irony should make me smile, but I don’t dare, because they’re watching me now. Every twitch of my mouth, every word that comes out of it, makes them wonder.

Let them.

Yes, my father was dead wrong. Most things-and people, too-are, I have learned, exactly as they seem.

Take Abby. Some might assume that beyond the triple chins and homely façade must belie a sparkling wit or a generosity of spirit. Why else would the most eligible bachelor in town-my widowed father-have married her?

Not for her money, though she had enough of it. But then, he does-rather, did-as well.

Not for her well-regarded family name, either. Our own name is equally-if not more-illustrious in this particular corner of the world.

Nor did he marry her to raise his motherless daughters. I was going on five when Abby moved in with us, but my sister was a decade older; she took better care of me than anyone. I have never needed-or wanted-a stepmother.

I barely remembered my own mother, having lost her when I was just a toddler. Yet I have always missed her. Does that make sense?

Never mind; I don’t care if my feelings make sense to anyone other than myself.

My Uncle John told me once that my mother doted on me to the point where people whispered that I was spoiled. But who could blame her for indulging her third daughter when she’d buried her second just two years earlier?

As for her firstborn-if my sister had minded being overshadowed by my birth thirty-odd years ago, she either got over it or hid it very well, because I’ve never sensed resentment from her.

Not even now.

“Are you all right?” she asks anxiously from across the breakfast table, and I’m touched by the concern in her eyes, brown and somber, like our father’s…

A terrible, wonderful fantasy sweeps through me, and then I realize it isn’t a fantasy anymore. It’s a memory now, a fresh one; I indulge it until my sister utters my name and repeats the question.