Barbara Dunlop - A Secret Life

Anthony cut the engine, and the big fan blades whirred to silence as they drifted the last few feet. The bushes creaked and groaned with unseen secrets, while insects whirred and chirped in the undergrowth. With a rope in one hand, Samuel grabbed a pillar on the dock and levered himself onto the weathered planks.

“Hold still,” he warned the women as he tied off.

Anthony stripped off his life jacket and tossed the coiled stern rope into Samuel’s waiting hands. As the craft stabilized, he stood up to help Joan and Heather.

“Spooky,” Heather remarked, gazing around at the dense bush as she got her footing on the dock.

“You sure this is the place?” Joan asked Samuel when he handed her up. Anthony released his stabilizing hold on her hips.

Samuel’s gaze moved to a narrow, crumbling set of stairs cut into the bank between two sentinel oaks. He nodded. “This is the place.”

“So now what?” asked Heather, dusting off the back of her lightweight green slacks.

Anthony hopped out of the boat, automatically testing the strength of the boards as he moved. “Now we check out the neighborhood.”

There could be a grow operation or a drug cache of some kind, maybe even a hidden safe house. He didn’t want to speculate about shallow graves. Although he imagined the forest would have swallowed up anything like that over the past twenty years.

Joan glanced down at her open-toed sandals. “We’re going trekking.”

“You two can wait in the shack,” said Samuel. “Or out here, if you want.”

Anthony moved toward the stairs to see if the Kanes’ shack was still standing. There were walls and a roof, at least, although the porch sagged to one side of the small, square plywood building.

Heather smacked a mosquito on her bare arm. “I vote for the shack.”

“Let’s go check it out.” Anthony started up the stairs.

The wind freshened as he climbed, easing the number of insects buzzing around his head. He was too proud to bat at them the way the women were doing. As long as Samuel remained stoic, Anthony would, too.

After a few days in the heat and raw earthiness of Indigo, he was gaining a whole new respect for the residents of Louisiana. The song said if you could make it in New York, you could make it anywhere. He was beginning to think some of these Southerners could kick New York’s butt.

They crossed the canted porch and Samuel eased the door open.

It was surprisingly neat inside.

The floor was dusty, but you could see it had originally been sanded and polished. The walls were painted a bright white, and the furniture was protected by dust covers. Whoever last left the shack hadn’t been in a hurry. And there were certainly no signs of foul play.

Samuel opened the curtains on two small windows. Then he pulled back one of the dust covers to reveal a willow rocking chair with brightly colored cushions. Next, he uncovered a small, floral couch. There was a dusty kitchen table and three chairs in one corner, and two beds against a back wall.

“Toilet’s out the back.” He gestured with his thumb.

Heather groaned.

He chuckled at her reaction. “I’ll check it for snakes before we leave.”

This time, Joan groaned, and Anthony snickered. He wasn’t too crazy about an outdoor privy, but he’d be a man about it. “I’ll get the water bottles out of the boat.”

Luc had thoughtfully provided them with a knapsack stuffed full of drinks and baked goods from the B and B. Smart man. Anthony was already thirsty.

Heather thumbed through a stack of magazines on a side table Samuel had uncovered. “Good Housekeeping,” she said, turning to grin at Joan. “Maybe we can learn something useful.”

“Speak for yourself,” Joan returned. “You’re spoiled.”

Heather flipped open the magazine. “I suppose that’s true enough. I’ve never used an outhouse.”

“It’ll teach you a little humility,” said Samuel, as Anthony left the shack. Anthony didn’t hear Heather’s response.

The dock was in full shade now. Between the bent branches of the oak trees, Anthony could see clouds forming above them. He hoped that would bring the temperature down a few degrees. If fall was this hot, he honestly didn’t know how people around here survived the heat of summer.

He turned at a series of splashes out in the bayou channel and thought he saw a scaly, green tail disappearing on the far bank. He continued to wonder how anyone survived down here. If the insects didn’t get you, the alligators would. And that was before you worried about snakes lurking in the outhouse.

Give him rats and muggers and street gangs any day of the week. At least he knew how to avoid those.

He hopped down into the airboat and grabbed the knapsack from the bench seat. Another breeze came up, and he inhaled the cooler air in relief as he climbed back onto the dock and headed up the stairs.

“You have everything you need?” Samuel was asking the women as Anthony came through the door.

“Anthony.” Heather rushed toward him. “My hero.”

Samuel snorted. “I cleared the cottonmouth out of the privy.”

“I need water before I worry about the outhouse,” she retorted. “There’s biology at play here.”

Anthony grinned. Okay, so Heather could grow on you after a while. He unzipped the pack and handed a water bottle to each of them, then opened his own and drank half of it down.

“So, what else is around here?” he asked Samuel.

Samuel nodded toward the north. “Old Man Barns used to live about a mile up the shore. I’m sure he must be dead by now. And there was a bizarre little hippie place down the other way. Don’t remember anyone living there full-time. There’s a network of trails out back that’ll take us to both.”

“Quieter than using the boat?” asked Anthony.

Samuel nodded.

Joan looked at Anthony. “You think there’s someone out there now?”

“The guy who broke in the second time pretty much vanished into thin air.”

The night photographs Samuel had taken had turned out not too badly, but nobody had seen the man around town.

Joan looked worried. She also looked as if she needed a hug of reassurance. She was obviously holding back because of Heather and Samuel. She and Anthony hadn’t announced their new relationship to the world. Not that he knew what their new relationship was, exactly.

He only knew he wanted to hug her, too.

He touched her shoulder, but it was wholly unsatisfying. “We’re just going to look around. If we see anything suspicious, we’ll report it to the police.”

Joan gave a slow, uncertain nod. “Okay.”

He turned to Samuel. “You ready?”

“Let’s do it.”

ANTHONY WAS dripping with sweat by the time they found Old Man Barns’s shack. Despite the earlier tease of a wind, the air had stilled and the temperature had crept up several degrees. They found the hippie place easily enough. But it was empty, and had been for some time.

Then they’d circled back farther into the forest, trying to find evidence of human activity. Again, nothing.

They were coming up on the Barns shack along a trail through the bush. There was nothing to indicate humans had used it recently, but then it wasn’t completely grown over like some of the old trails Samuel had pointed out.

Suddenly, Samuel put a hand on Anthony’s shoulder.

Anthony came to an immediate halt, twisting his head to look at Samuel’s expression. Samuel tapped his ear and then pointed to the shack. Anthony cocked his head.

They waited without breathing for a few seconds, and Anthony heard a thump. Somebody was inside the shack.

His heart rate jumped, and his sweat turned cold against his skin. The thump was replaced by a scraping noise, as if something were being dragged across the floor.

Samuel indicated with hand signals that he thought they should approach from the back. Anthony nodded.

They backed into the underbrush and made their way around in a wide circle. Scrapes and scratches formed on Anthony’s bug-bitten face and arms. Deep down, he wondered if they were crazy. But he also knew he had to figure out who was threatening Joan.

They made it within ten feet of the back wall of the shack, still camouflaged by the underbrush and the hanging moss.

The noise continued without pause or change. Whoever was inside didn’t know he’d been discovered.

Anthony pointed to the right. “Meet at the front door?” he whispered.

Samuel nodded. “Might as well find out if he’s armed.”

They split up to round the building.

On the way, Anthony checked the small window at his side of the building, but it was dusty and greasy and impossible to see through.

He carefully rounded the final corner to see Samuel coming the other way. Samuel checked out the front window, then shrugged his broad shoulders. He obviously couldn’t see anything, either.

They carefully inched toward the door. It was half-open, sagging on a crumbling jamb. The scuttling inside increased.

Anthony reached out and shoved the door open. Then he and Samuel flattened themselves against the outside wall.

The noise abruptly stopped. But no bullets rang out.

“Hello in the shack,” Anthony called, on the off chance it was an innocent tourist or some kind of squatter.

No answer.

“Get yourself out here,” Samuel called, more menacingly this time, still crouched low in case whoever it was started shooting.

Still nothing.

Anthony crept a little closer.

Samuel crept a little closer.

Anthony made his way onto the low sagging porch, carefully squinting into the dusty, dim interior, ready to bail if things went wrong. He blinked for a second, thinking he saw bones.

“What?” asked Samuel.

They were bones. “What the hell?”

Samuel swung up on the porch for a better look.

Suddenly, a massive gator burst full-bore through the doorway, its jaw wide-open.

Anthony shouted a warning, leaping out of the way.

Samuel reacted a split second too late.

The gator moved with lightning speed, its jaw snapping down on Samuel’s boot.

SAMUEL IMMEDIATELY grabbed a rock and aimed at the gator’s head.

Anthony went for its tail, gripping it tight and yelling obscenities at the top of his lungs. He reached for a stick and whacked its leathery skin. “Back here,” he yelled. “Back here!”

It opened its mouth for the briefest of instants, and Samuel jerked free, rolling over and over, while the gator shot forward, dragging Anthony with it.

“Can you make the tree?” he yelled to Samuel.

Samuel jumped to his feet, limping in a full run toward a huge oak tree.

“Go, go, go!” he yelled back to Anthony as he scrambled up the first few branches.

The gator turned, and Anthony sprinted for a second tree, gripping a branch on the run and yanking his feet up as the gator snapped from below. He grabbed the next branch, and the next one, and the next one. By the time he stopped to look down, he was about thirty feet above the ground, the monstrous gator standing perplexed below him.

“You okay?” he called down to Samuel.

“Not broken,” said Samuel. “I’m bleeding a bit.” Then he paused. “You sure you’re far enough off the ground?”

Anthony chuckled. “Adrenaline.”

Samuel laughed and shook his head. “I’ll say. I owe you one.”

“No problem. You going to be able to get the bleeding stopped?”

“I think so.” Samuel had already taken off his T-shirt and was tearing it into strips.

Anthony glanced back down. The gator was gazing around the forest with long, slow blinks. It seemed as though he’d forgotten the near miss. Just another day in the life of an alligator, Anthony supposed.

Breathing deeply, he rested his forehead against the rough trunk of the oak tree. “I miss New York,” he griped.

Samuel laughed. “You think this guy developed a taste for Old Man Barns?”

“You see the bones?” asked Anthony.

Samuel nodded as he wrapped a strip of cloth around his ankle. “Looked like they’d been there for a long time. I bet the old guy died of old age.”

Anthony agreed. If a gator had killed Old Man Barns, he would probably have dragged him into the bayou. “Seems likely. You going to be able to walk?”

“I think so.”

“You’re a freaking dangerous man, you know that?”

Samuel chuckled again. “It really doesn’t seem to be my week.”

“All this and Heather, too.”

Samuel straightened on the branch. “Who says I’m involved with Heather?”

Anthony had seen the intimate look that passed between them when they left the shack. “Do I look stupid?”

Samuel considered Anthony’s position in the tree. “At the moment? To be perfectly honest…”