Dick lay on the floor near the window where Chalk had let him fall. He was not so far down from the wound that he couldn’t recognize his own kid. “Ben! That you?”
Ben ignored his father, and fixed Chalk with a brute’s feral eye. He pinioned Chalk’s undivided attention with a long knife grasped in his outstretched hand.
Chalk realized the blade was already cooling a fine line along the skin of his throat. Just above a carotid artery. With every heartbeat, Chalk’s flesh pulsed a half gram harder against an edge that promised surgical sharpness. Fortunately, neither Ben Blackshaw nor Maynard Chalk was prone to jitters.
Knowing the protocol in situations like this, Chalk lowered his gun to the ground. The knife in Ben’s hand never wavered. Chalk waited for the twin sensations of the cold blade going in, and the warmth of his own blood flowing over his collarbone. He had experienced both a few times before, but to his complete shock, nothing bit into him now. No hot gush.
Chalk said, “A deal.”
Ben shook his head once.
Chalk broke a sweat. “Hear me out. You get your ma-bird. I get off this island.”
Then this madman, and Chalk knew a lunatic when he saw one, shifted the knife one millimeter. And there was the sting he awaited. Blood trickled down his neck. “You inbred fucking idiot! You started the bomb!”
Ben hissed, “If you hurt her — Where is she?”
“Slow your roll, kid. I tell you now, you’ll kill me. There’s a file in my coat on the beach. It tells you everything. I’ll leave it for you. Otherwise you’ll have my people dealing with your people out there, and somebody’s going to get hurt.”
“Is she alive?”
“Deal’s a deal. Kill me, and my guys will shoot you down before you see word one of that file. Time’s a-wasting.”
Using the blade like a precision shepherd’s staff, Ben pushed Chalk’s neck toward the parlor door. Chalk sensed the keenness of the blade again. Realized that to stand still would oblige this wingnut to give him a field tracheotomy without benefit of anesthesia. No gracias. Chalk took a slow trial step toward the doorway, away from the itchy pressure of the knife edge.
Ben pressed a little harder. A little more blood flowed. Chalk knew this bastard meant business. His next step was a little longer. Catching Ben’s drift, that he was encouraging the old exit-pursued-by-a-bear, Chalk took another step. At last the blade was off his throat, but Ben still held it thrust toward Chalk to discourage a curtain call.
Still watching the wild child, Chalk said, “Ricardo, don’t you dare. Don’t you dare die. I swear I’m going to look you up. We’re going to complete this detail.”
With that, Chalk bailed.
CHAPTER 63
Ben watched from the window until he was sure Chalk had left the building. Heard him clatter down the stairs. After a moment, Chalk appeared outside. The snorting old warhorse galloped past his dead soldier and dashed toward the beach.
Ben took the prosthetic eye out of his pocket and fitted it iris-down into the scanner in the bomb’s panel. The timer stopped counting backwards. Twenty seconds remaining. He pocketed the eye again. Only then did Ben hurry to his father’s side. “I thought you were dead!”
“All gossip, that is ’til just now. Seems a round flew right through that front wall a few minutes ago. Damn termites! But you figured it out. His eyeball controlled the switch.”
“Your letter. ‘A keen eye? Important to get things started?’ You could have spelled it out.”
“Didn’t know who’d read it. Had to be careful. When they saddled me with that asshole Cyclops to come along with the bomb, I almost had a fit. Hadn’t planned for passengers. Technician, he called himself. Got him drunk, and he bragged that’s how he controlled it, with that eye. On and off. With a coded retina scan. See son? Looks can kill. A whole lot!”
“You need a hospital.” Ben’s mind welled up with questions, but blood drenched the front of his father’s pants and washed all other thoughts away. Ben pulled off his ghillie coat, balled it, and pressed it against his father’s wound. The entire plan had failed. His father was alive after all, but hit badly. Nothing was working. Ben was crushed.
Dick went on, his voice feeble, but still full of admiration. “You found the wrecked boat. And that sidekick they sent. Out there when the storm came in, and it looked like we were going to broach? That chicken-shit Cyclops bastard had enough. So I got us to the rendezvous point, gave him a bar of gold before he tried to dog-paddle to shore. And my wallet for some folding money, ’til he could fence the gold. Told him it was his bonus payment. Priciest anchor ever, but he was my new best friend. Already knew he couldn’t swim for sour apples. I slit his life vest and helped him over the side. After he went down for good, I rocked the boat ’til it swamped. Ellis okay?”
“Minding the west approach. Let me help you.”
Dick Blackshaw’s next sentence floored Ben. “How’s your mother?”
Ben could not speak, or even think straight for a moment. Then he remembered his father’s letter. It was clear that like Ben, Dick had no idea where she was.
Ben said, “I thought she was with you. She left the same night you did. I haven’t seen her since. Nobody has. I thought she was with you, ’til today, when Chalk said he had her.”
Richard Willem took this in. Seemed more sobered by this news than by the bullet in his gut. His mind drifted back across the years. “They tried to run us off the road once before. Busted up her arm. Docs had to put in some pins to keep it together.”
“I remember. She was proud of her x-rays. They’re still framed and hung on the parlor wall.”
Dick grimaced, continued. “The night I left, she and I were going to meet out in the Martin refuge. At that duck blind by the south pond. At midnight.”
Ben said, “She even didn’t leave the house ’til then. She could never have poled over there in less than an hour, not with that arm.”
Dick pieced it together. “If she did show, I was already gone. We had a boat there just in case. I should have waited, but we set up other places at later times to meet on the main. Days, and even weeks later. She never came to any of them, and I didn’t dare call for fear of bringing black-ops guys back in on you. I thought she stayed behind to take care of you. We weren’t supposed to be gone long. Just ’til things quieted down again. It was me they really wanted. I had to keep moving.” He squeezed his eyes shut, slowly opened them, looked at his son. “I’m so sorry I didn’t show myself here before, but you were doing so damn well, and I was still half-drowned from swimming to shore in this storm.”
Then Dick thought a moment more, and said, “They must have got Ida-Beth. They were looking for me that night. Instead, they found her, but who knows when or where.”
Dick Blackshaw wiped his eyes with a sleeve. Ben understood. He’d come close to learning firsthand about the burden of killing the one person you loved best in the entire world. And now, after fifteen long years of waiting to meet his parents again, it was all going to hell. This was no good. Ben jumped back in the zone, and zeroed-in on the one thing he could do.
He said, “Doc Alan’s waiting back home. She’ll tend to you. We’ll get that file if Chalk left it. And wherever mom is, we’ll find her.”
“You do that, Ben. And you give her my love. But I’m done running. I’m done in.”
“I can carry you. The boys are all outside. Be here in a second.”
An impatient look crossed Dick Blackshaw’s face. “Why the hell did you take the gold out of Deep Banks? You had the herons working for you. Their stench would have kept everybody away.”