Jeffery Deaver - A Maiden's Grave

Thank you, Danny, she thought. For then, and for now. Because it was this memory that she believed was going to save some, if not all, of her students.

The river was wide here. The surface was choppy and the current fast but she remembered a tangle of branches and garbage washed up against a fallen tree that hung into the choppy water maybe a hundred feet downstream. Melanie pictured the girls moving silently through the back corridors of the slaughterhouse, over the dockside, into the water, then drifting with the current to the tree, scrambling out through the branches. Running to safety…

"Never underestimate a body of water," Danny had told her. "Even the calm ones can be dangerous."

Well, there was nothing calm about the Arkansas. Could they manage it? Donna Harstrawn can swim. Kielle and Shannon – superheroes that they are – can swim like otters. (Melanie pictures Kielle's compact body cannonballing off the diving board, while Shannon's willowy frame leisurely completes her laps.) The twins love to play in the water. But they can't swim. Beverly knows how but with her asthma she can't. Melanie doesn't know about pretty Emily; the girl refuses to put her face underwater and always stands demurely in the shallow end of the pool when they go swimming.

She'll have to find something for the ones who can't swim, a paddle-board, a float. But what?

And how do I get them to the back of the slaughterhouse?

She thought of Danny. But Danny wasn't here to help. Panic edged in.

De l'Epée?

She sent her thoughts out to him but all he did was whisper his reassurance that there'll be police to find the girls that escape into the river. (They'll be there, won't they? Yes, she has to believe they will.)

Crap, Melanie thinks. I'm on my own here.

Then, suddenly, the smell changes.

Her eyes open and she finds herself staring into the face of Brutus, a few feet away from her. She no longer smells the river but rather meat and stale breath and sweat. He's so close that she sees, with horror, that the marks on his neck – what she thought were freckles – must be the blood from the woman with the purse, the woman he killed this afternoon. Melanie recoiled in disgust.

"Sit tight, missie," Handy said.

Melanie wondered again, Why can I understand him? Sit tight . A phrase almost impossible to lip-read, and yet she knows without a doubt that this is what he said. Brutus took her hands. She tried to resist him but she couldn't. "You were sitting there with your eyes closed… hands were twitching like a shot 'coon's paws. Talking to yourself? That what you doing?"

There was movement in the corner. Kielle had sat up and was staring at him. The little girl had an eerily adult look in her face. Her jaw was set. "I'm Jubilee!" Kielle signed. Her favorite X-Man character. "I'm going to kill him!" Melanie dared not sign but her eyes implored the girl to sit down.

Brutus glanced at the little girl, laughed then stepped into the main room of the slaughterhouse, motioning Bear after him. When he returned a moment later he was carrying a large can of gasoline.

Kielle's face went still as she stared at the red can.

"Don't nobody move." Brutus looked into Melanie's eyes as he said this. Then he set a heavy metal canister, a small rendering vat maybe, on top of a shelf above the girls and poured the gasoline into it. Melanie felt the thud as he pitched the gas can into the corner of the room. Then he tied a wire to the edge of the canister and ran it to the other room. Eerie shadows danced on the floor and wall as the light from the other room grew brighter and brighter and Brutus returned suddenly, swinging another of the lights. He unscrewed the cage and tied the unprotected fixture and bulb to a bolt in the floor, directly below the canister of gas.

Bear surveyed the workmanship with approval.

Kielle stepped toward Brutus.

"No," Melanie signed. "Get back!"

Brutus suddenly dropped to his knees and took Kielle by the shoulders. He put his face inches from hers and he spoke slowly.

"Here now, little bird… hassles from you… or somebody tries to save you, I'll pull that wire and burn you up."

He pushed hard and Kielle fell over one of the blood grooves in the floor.

"What one should I pick?" Brutus asked Bear. The fat man looked them over. His eyes lingered longest on Emily, her flat chest, her white stockings, her black-strapped shoes.

Bear gestured at Shannon. "… kicked me. Pick her, man."

Brutus looked down at the girl, tossing her long, dark hair. Like Kielle, she gazed back defiantly. But after a moment she looked down, tears filling her eyes. And Melanie could see the real difference between the girls. Shannon Boyle was one hell of an artist but she wasn't Jubilee or any other kind of hero. She was an eight-year-old tomboy, scared to death.

"You're a kicker, are you?" Brutus asked. "Okay, let's go." They led her out.

What were they going to do with her? Release her, like Jocylyn? Melanie scooted toward the doorway of the killing room – as far as she dared. She looked out and saw Shannon in the greasy window in the front of the slaughterhouse. Brutus took his pistol from his back pocket. Rested the muzzle against the girl's head. No! Oh, no…

Melanie started to rise. Bear's bulbous head swiveled toward her quickly and he raised the shotgun. She sank down to the cold floor and stared hopelessly at her student. Shannon closed her eyes and wrapped her fingers around the pink-and-blue-string friendship bracelet she'd tied on her wrist a month ago. The girl had promised to make a matching bracelet for her, Melanie now recalled, choking back tears, but had never gotten around to it.

Angie Scapello paused on her way back to the van from the rear staging area.

"Hey, Captain."

If he hadn't known it for a fact, Charlie Budd would never have guessed she was a federal agent. "Hi," he said.

She paused and fell into step beside him.

"You worked with Arthur much?" he asked suddenly, flustered. Just trying to make conversation.

"About thirty or forty barricades. Maybe a few more, I guess."

"Hey, you must've started out young."

"I'm older than I look."

He didn't think "older" was a word that applied to her at all.

"This isn't a line – I'm married." Budd awkwardly held up his glistening ring, which happened to match his wife's. "But you ever do any modeling? I only ask 'cause Meg, that's my wife, she gets these magazines. You know, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar . Like that. I was thinking maybe I saw you in an ad or two?"

"Could've been. I put myself through school doing print ads. Was a few years ago. Undergrad." She laughed. "I was usually cast as a bride for some reason. Don't ask me why."

"Good hair for a veil," Budd suggested, and then went red because the comment sounded like a flirt.

"And I've been in one movie."

"No kiddin'?"

"I was a double for Isabella Rossellini. I stood outside in the snow for long angles."

"I was thinking you looked like her." Though Budd said this uneasily, having no idea who the actress was, and hoped that she wasn't some unknown who'd never appeared in a movie shown in America.

"You're kind of a celebrity in your own right, aren't you?" she asked.

"Me?" Budd laughed.

"They say you came up through the ranks real fast."

"They do?"

"Well, you're a captain and you're a young man."

"I'm older than I look," he joked. "And before today's over I'm going to be older still by a long shot." He looked at his watch. "I better be getting inside. Not long till the first deadline. How do you manage to stay calm?"

"I think it's all what you're used to. But what about you? That highspeed chase, the time you went after that sex offender in Hamilton?"