He twitched a faint smile. “Yeah?”
“Yes, baby.”
He opened his mouth to say something else –
And the staccato crack of gunfire shattered the morning.
Again, Ava lamented the sparse packing room, because the best outfit she’d brought was skinny jeans and a sleeveless black top with a low V neck and a floating, loose hem that landed at her hips. She loved the shirt, but it was wilting in the ripe heat, clinging to her, the way her hair fell in a single flat sheet down her back. Louisiana was not a girl’s best fashion accessory, she decided, looking at her reflection in the wavy glass of the mirror above the sofa.
“Stop worrying about your hair,” Mercy said as he passed her, tackle box and fishing rod in hand, “and come on. You look fine.”
“My hair doesn’t like this humidity the way your hair does,” she said, sliding the strap of her cross-body purse over her head. “It takes some sweet-talking.”
He leaned over, pressed his face into the top of her head and whispered something in French. “There. It’s been sweet-talked. Let’s go.” He sounded cheerful, and she knew it had nothing to do with the trip to see his mother, and everything to do with the surprise he’d promised her for breakfast. “I won’t make you clean your own food today,” he’d joked.
He doubled back, once she was out the door, and locked the cottage door.
“I thought it was always open.”
“Only when no one’s staying in it. I don’t have much shit to steal, but it’s my shit, and I like it.”
It was early, and the Hollow was shrouded in thick shifting clouds of white mist, peeling off the water, steaming from the hot damp ground. Ava shivered at the spectacle it made, the Gothic blotting out of the light, dimming of the sound, the way the whole swamp felt like it held its breath, waiting for the veil to lift. There could have been any number of terrors waiting in the mist for them. She half-expected a hand to come darting out. Maybe a claw. When Mercy put the rod in the hand with the tackle box and put his arm around her, she leaned gratefully into his side.
“Spooky, huh?” he asked, reading her energy.
“I’m waiting for Bela Lugosi to jump out,” she said, sliding her hand into his back pocket.
“Nah. Out here, it’d be the Creature from the Black Lagoon.”
“That’s nice. I feel much better.”
In the cypress cave, he handed her down into their bateau and then passed her the tackle box and rod so she could stow them in the bottom while he climbed in.
“The cooking lesson went so well you thought you’d try to teach me to fish too?” she asked with a laugh as he got settled at the motor.
“We’ll see.”
The Evinrude started with a strong snort, and in the dark little cavern of tree roots, it kicked at the mist; she felt the wet clouds of it billowing against her face.
With a deft hand, Mercy reversed the boat out into the clear channel, and got the prow pointing the right way, the motor chugging and asking to be given rein.
Ava pulled her knees up and put her face to the wind, trusting him to navigate them through the roots and eddies. As they passed deeper into the steam-clouded morning, she ceased to be a student, or a club daughter, or someone wanted dead by enemies. She was just a girl, in a boat, with her husband, and the birds were calling to her from the high, unseen canopy. Later in the day, she would want to return to this moment in her mind, and draw strength from it.
It was the protesters, Maggie saw. All those righteous signs had been dropped and the hundred or so Knoxville residents who’d been camped along the street, outside the Dartmoor fence, lay sprawled on the ground, clutching at one another, all of them screaming and crying and shouting. From the office door, she couldn’t tell who was hurt, and who was just traumatized.
Then she saw a man whip his shirt over his head and press it to the abdomen of the woman lying at his knees.
“God,” she breathed, hand closing on Ghost’s shoulder where he stood half-blocking her, automatically protective when she’d tried to come out of the office.
RJ jogged toward them from the clubhouse. “Drive-by!” he called, his face pale with the excitement of it.
“Did you see the car?” Ghost asked as he drew nearer.
“Old shit-brown Caddy. Dark windows.” He paused to catch his breath. “I called 9-1-1 for them.” He waved toward the bawling crowd.
Ghost nodded. “Right.” He turned around to face her, and shoved her back into the office without ceremony. “Stay in there.” His look told her he wasn’t being an ass on purpose, but that he wasn’t about to have her shot, too. He snapped his fingers for RJ to fall in beside him and started toward the protesters.
Maggie went into the office and watched them through the open blinds at the window. “When’s it gonna stop?” she asked the empty room around her. “It’s gotta stop.”
