James Rollins - Altar Of Eden

She scowled and headed toward the gate. “Shouldn’t you be patrolling? That’s what my daddy paid you for.”

He leaned on a hip, completely blocking her way. “Why don’t you be a good girl and head on back to the house and cook me up some of that chicken, sweetheart.”

His gaze traveled up and down her form, as if he were interested in more than just chicken. Disgust churned up, but also a trickle of fear. She was all too conscious of her exposure-not just the amount of bare skin, but also her precarious perch on the plank.

She also knew this man well enough to fear him. Garland Chase- better known around these parts as “Gar” because of his resemblance to the nasty snake-fish that plagued these swamps-was the sheriff’s son, and everyone in Pasquamish Parish knew his daddy turned a blind eye to his boy’s less-than-legal activities, including running his own protection racket. Stella’s father volunteered a monthly stipend to the “policemen’s orphan fund,” paid directly to this asshole.

“My daddy’s paid you plenty for the night,” she said. “You can fetch your own dinner.”

Feigning more courage than she felt, she straightened her shoulders and headed toward the gate. She refused to let him intimidate her. He backed aside, but only a step. She tried to push past him, but at the last moment he blocked the way with a thick arm again.

He leaned in close. She smelled his breath. He had been drinking.

“What’s wrong? Can’t dykes cook?” he asked. “Or is it your girl-friend who does all the cooking? What you need is a real man… someone to teach you how to fetch and carry like a good wife.”

Fear turned to fury in a heartbeat. “I’d rather fuck Elvis.”

The man stiffened, his fat lips disappearing into a sneer. “Maybe I’ll throw you in there and you can try. Accidents happen all the time in the swamps.”

Stella knew this wasn’t an idle threat. The man wasn’t above such actions. Gar and his cronies were known to have caused accidents in the past. It was one of the reasons her daddy never missed a payment.

She shoved his arm out of the way, but he kept tight to her, his eyes gone dead mean.

At that moment the screaming started-loud, strident, and terrified.

They both turned.

It rose from the Boy Scout camp.

Lorna sat by herself on the front deck of the CBP boat. It slid smoothly down a narrow canal, framed by ancient cypress trees. The low rumble of the engine had a lulling effect. She had not realized how tired she was until this quiet moment. She took what rest she could, staring out at the spread of the bayou.

Half a mile ahead, the sharper whines of the two airboats led the way. Their searchlights were will-o’-the-wisps in the darkness. Closer at hand, fireflies flickered in branches and flew in warning patterns across the channel.

She listened to the swamp breathe around her. The wash of water through cypress knees, the whispery rattle of leaves from an occasional ocean breeze, all accompanied by the heavy croaking of bullfrogs, the screech of an owl, the ultrasonic whistle of hunting bats. Beneath it all she sensed something timeless and slumbering about this place, a glimpse of a prehistoric world, a sliver of a primordial Eden.

“Are you hungry?”

The voice made her jump. She had been close to drifting off, lost in her private thoughts. She sat up, smelling something wonderful and spicy in the air. It cut sharply through the moldy mire of the swamp.

Jack approached. He had a helmet under one arm and a plastic bowl in the other. “Crawfish gumbo. Hope you like okra.”

“Wouldn’t be a southerner if I didn’t.”

She took the bowl gratefully. She was surprised to discover a couple pieces of pain perdu floating in the stew. Her mother used to make it every Sunday morning: soaking stale bread in milk and cinnamon overnight, then frying it in a skillet. The smell would fill the entire house. She’d never had pain perdu served with gumbo.

She spooned up a piece questioningly.

Jack spoke, a grin behind his words. “My grand-mére’s recipe. Try it.”

She tasted a chunk of the sodden bread. Her eyes slipped closed. “Ohmygod…” The blend of heat from the gumbo and sweetness of the cinnamon came close to making her swoon.

The grin in his voice reached his face. “We Cajuns know a thing or two about cookin’.”

He sat near her as she worked her way through the bowl. They kept each other quiet company, but it slowly turned uncomfortable. There was too much hanging between them, ghosts of the past that grew all too real in the dark swamp and the silence.

Jack finally broke the tension. As if needing to push back the darkness, he swept out an arm and captured a flash of light that flickered past. He opened his fingers to reveal a tiny firefly, gone dark, its magic broken, just a small winged beetle again.

“Where my grand-mére was a great cook, my grand-pére was a bit of a medicine man. He had all sorts of homegrown remedies. Bathing in pepper grass to soak away aches. If you had a fever, you slept under the bed. He used to crush fireflies and mix them with pure-grain alcohol to make an ointment. Cured rheumatism, he claimed.”

Jack blew on the beetle and sent it winging away, again flickering and winking brightly.

“I still remember him walking around the house in his underwear at night with glowing goop smeared all over his shoulders and knees.”

A warm laugh bubbled out of her. “Your brother once mentioned that. Said it scared him to death.”

“I remember. grand-pére passed away when Tom was only six. He was too young to understand. ’Course it didn’t help that whenever we spotted some fiery swamp gas in the bayou, I’d tell him it was the ghost of grand-pére coming to get him.”

She smiled as their two memories wrapped around each other, centered around Tom. Silence again dropped around them. It was the problem with keeping company with Jack. No matter what they discussed, they had their own ghost haunting them.

In that moment they could’ve let the silence crush them, drive them apart, but Jack remained seated. Plainly there was much left unsaid between them, left unexplained for years. His voice dropped to a breath, but she still heard the pain. “I have to ask… do you ever regret your decision?”

She tensed. She had never talked about it aloud with anyone, at least not directly. But if anyone deserved an honest answer, it was Jack. Her breathing grew harder. She immediately went back to that moment in the bathroom, staring down at the E.P.T strip. As always, the past was never more than a heartbeat away.

“If I could take it all back,” she said, “I would. And not just for Tom’s sake. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about it.” Her hand drifted to her belly. “I should’ve been stronger.”

Jack waited a half breath, clearly weighing how much and what to say. “You and Tom were just kids.”

She shook her head slightly. “I was fifteen. Old enough to know better. Before and after.”

She and Tom had made love in the garden shed at her house after a spring dance. They were stupid and in love, having dated for almost a year. They’d both been virgins. Their coupling had been painful and ill-conceived and full of misconceptions.

No one got pregnant the first time.

After she missed her period, followed by confirmation with a pregnancy test kit, that particular misconception was shattered. The full weight of reality and responsibility came crashing down on them. They’d kept silent about it, a terrifying secret between them that wasn’t going away. Over the next month, she had practically cleaned out a neighboring town’s drugstore of its test kits. She prayed on her knees every night.