Then the water was above her knees. Almost to her hips. Swirling around her, the moon shimmering in the dark broth. She could see her own frightened face reflecting from the surface. Run. She turned, tripping over a cypress knee hidden just below the shadowy surface. She fell. Facedown in water the color of black ink. She held her breath, the dreamlike cushion of swamp water in her ear canals. She heard nothing but her own heart thrashing.
She slowly rose to the surface. Only her head emerging, swamp water rolling down her face. Eyes searching between the massive cypress trees standing like gothic custodians of the bog.
She smelled him first.
The stench of a cheap cigar. Then she spotted the tiny orange glow from the tip of the cigar in the night. It smoldered like a one-eyed beast in the forest. The ash inflamed to a laser-like red color during inhalation, diming to orange when he exhaled.
Kim didn’t move, hiding behind cypress stumps, staring at the single red Cyclops’s eye in the distance. He was brazen. Smoking a cigar while hunting. No hurry. Maybe he won’t look in the water, she thought. Maybe he’ll turn to the right or left and search some other areas. Then I double back, take his truck and leave.
She felt something on the back of her neck. Something digging into her skin. Felt the same tiny teeth chewing between her breasts and then on the inside of her upper arm. She reached behind her neck with one hand, pulling the thing from her skin. Looked at it between her thumb and finger. A black leech, twisting in her fingers. She screamed. Trying to plug the sound of her terror back into her larynx before it escaped. Too late.
Within seconds, Silas Jackson stood at the water’s edge, the flashlight in Kim’s face. He laughed. “I ‘spect you got one of ‘em buggers up your ass. This spot is full of leeches. One of my men nets ‘em out to use them for fishin.’ Let’s go. Get outta there.”
“Go straight to hell.” Kim used her thumb to crush the leech between her breasts, pulling one from her upper arm.
The water exploded a few inches from Kim’s left thigh. A flash of gunfire and the echo of the noise reverberating through the forest. “I said get outta there. Next shot’s in your leg.”
Kim climbed out of the swamp, slipping in the slick mud at the water’s edge. Jackson used his left hand and arm to lift her up. He pushed her against a cypress tree like he was propping up a disjointed doll. He held the cigar between clenched yellow teeth. Eyes wide in the moonlight, nostrils working with a doglike rhythm, testing the molecules in the air.
Kim went rigid. “Don’t touch me!” She raked her fingernails across his scruffy cheek.
“Shut up!” He backhanded her with his right hand, knocking her head against the tree. Then he used his fist, striking her hard in the jaw. Kim went down, knees buckling. She looked at his Civil War boots, the mud on the ridges. She lay there with her face against the cool pine straw and decaying cypress leaves. She spit blood, felt a back tooth knocked out, bits of her flesh torn like tiny pieces of chewed meat in her mouth. She was nauseous, woozy. She leaned over and vomited in the ferns and pine straw.
Silas Jackson squatted, grabbed her chin with a strong, heavy hand and turned her head left and right, his eyes drinking her in, examining, as if he was inspecting a fish in the market. “You made me do this.” His voice was just above a whisper. “This won’t be good, not while you’re ripe, in the cycle. You need to be calmed down and cleaned up. Then we will commence.” He placed an open palm against her stomach. “You’re handpicked by God to birth a new leader. You’re the hope for the rise of the South.”
SEVENTY-NINE
All heads began to turn. The guests were looking toward the bow, chuckling, and some pointing, the sailboat rocking slightly moving through the inky current. “Now that’s a great performance,” said a twenty-something actor to his friend, winking and gesturing toward a naked blonde woman slowly walking across the bowsprit, the wind billowing her long hair, the river beneath her, the woman’s bare breasts pointing in the direction that America II was sailing.
O’Brien approached the bodyguard, the man using his thick index finger to push the tiny earpiece deeper into his ear canal. O’Brien stepped up to him and shouted, “She may be a jumper! She didn’t get the part and is overcome with depression.”
“Not on my watch!” He took off, running down the ship’s deck toward the bow. O’Brien could see two other guards doing the same thing. He waited a few seconds, opened the wooden door near the wheelhouse and entered. O’Brien remembered the video footage from the newscast when the reporter and camera crew, led by Sheldon, walked through the interior of the ship. Low-wattage lamps designed to mimic flickering candlelight, giving the illusion of shadows dancing over the wooden floor and roughhewn walls, lighted the hallways.
He heard the muffled voice of the man before he saw him. Past the galley, past the crew’s quarters, further into the bowels of the ship. The man said, “If she jumps, somebody’s got to go after her. There’s no way in hell that we’re gonna have a suicide tonight. You need me up there?”
A long pause. The man listening. O’Brien removed his shoes, walking in his socks down the hallway. Then the man was back on the radio. “When you grab her, take her to the guest’s quarters. Give her the Gettysburg cabin. Maybe she’ll sleep it off until we get back to Jacksonville.”
O’Brien turned the corner, the man’s back to him. Wide shoulders. Big hands. Ears that protruded slightly from his skull.
The wood floor creaked.
O’Brien saw the man reach into his coat, reaching for his sidearm. The man turned, trying to level the pistol.
O’Brien was faster. He stepped to within three feet of the bodyguard, a hard right fist connecting directly to the man’s left jaw. The impact sounded deceivingly subtle, as if someone had cracked an egg on the lip of a cast-iron frying pan. The sound of bones splintering. Muscles dislocating. Lower teeth uprooting. The man fell where he stood. O’Brien reached in, removing the gun. It was a 9mm Beretta.
He walked farther down the hall, stopping to listen. Could barely hear the calypso beat, like steel drums in the distance. As he rounded another hall, he saw the closed door. Above the door was a hand-carved sign that read: Captain’s Quarters — Private. O’Brien placed his hand on the brass doorknob and slowly turned. Locked. He could see light coming from the large, antiquated keyhole. He knelt down, looked into the keyhole. There was no sign of James Fairmont. Could he be standing near the door? Anywhere in the room outside of the tunnel vision through the keyhole?
Frank Sheldon was there. Sitting behind an antique French desk, an opulent chandelier above him, and someone below him. The brunette in the small black dress that O’Brien had spotted on deck, Sheldon had whispered in her ear. She was now on her knees giving Sheldon oral sex as he sipped whiskey from a leaden crystal glass while staring at something.
It was the painting of the woman. Hanging on Sheldon’s wall. Next to it in shadow boxes lit with small direct lamps, was the diamond and what appeared to be the Civil War contract. O’Brien bent one of the two prongs on the small cocktail fork and slid it into the keyhole. He slowly rotated the fork. Stopped, feeling for the metal. Then he twisted the fork to the right, felt the metal move. O’Brien stood, one hand on the doorknob, the other holding the Beretta. He dropped the fork into his pocket and pulled out his phone, pressing the video record button, quietly stepping inside the cabin.