Jodi Thomas - Twisted Creek

I had been holding back passion all my adult life, thinking it was something I’d never express. When he touched me, Luke made me want to taste it fully.

Giggling, I decided that Luke didn’t have to even flirt. I was ready. I’d probably frighten him. Part of me felt like a fish trying to jump into the boat.

Closing my eyes, I listened to the faint sounds of a paddle hitting the water. Luke was coming, just as he’d promised.

Jefferson must have stopped renting canoes years ago. I couldn’t help but wonder if Luke’s was the last survivor. It was the only canoe I saw regularly on the lake. Most of the fishermen preferred to row, or use a motor.

Smiling, I wondered if he’d notice that I wasn’t wearing pink underwear. I’d made a trip to town before supper just to buy new black panties and a small bottle of the perfume I used to love in college. Now the smell of it vanished into the smells of the lake. I’d wasted my money.

I laughed, realizing I didn’t care. It had felt so good to be able to buy one thing that wasn’t a necessity. I’d bought Nana a white shawl so she could sit on the porch these cool nights and watch the sunset. She told me it made her feel like a queen.

The sound of the paddle grew closer and I tried to think of what I’d say to Luke. That I was still mad? That I missed him all day? Maybe I wouldn’t say anything at all. We seemed to be progressing nicely in our current pattern of not talking.

When the canoe hit one of the dock’s poles beneath me, I jumped. Even in the dark I would have thought Luke had more skill. Many more knocks like that and the sole surviving canoe would be at the bottom of the lake.

Standing, I walked over to the edge and waited for him to swing himself up. But he didn’t.

I waited, then thinking he must be walking beneath the dock, I searched along the line of planks for him to appear. It was far too dark and too late for him to be playing games. Besides, Luke wasn’t the kind of man who’d try to scare me.

Five inches from my tennis shoe one blackened hand flapped onto the dock. Then another. The one lamp threw enough light for me to see that the hands were thin and scabbed.

“Dirty kind of, black but not oily,” I whispered Dillon’s description of the drug dealer’s hands.

I backed away. Luke was not below. He hadn’t been in the canoe. Someone else had. Someone I didn’t want to see out here alone at this time of night.

The dock squeaked beneath my steps as I moved backward. I searched the lake, looking for another boat. Praying I’d see Luke heading toward me.

The hands disappeared. I froze, listening to every sound. I hoped whoever crawled beneath the dock would stay there. Every muscle in my body wanted me to run, but if I ran, I might be heading right toward him.

I heard only the lapping of the water against the boards below. He could be anywhere below. Footsteps in the sand wouldn’t make a sound.

I forced a slow breath, telling myself I’d fallen asleep waiting for Luke. The hands had been nothing but the remnants of a nightmare.

Just as I turned to walk back to the house, my nightmare reappeared. A black, scabbed hand shot up and grabbed my ankle, pulling me down hard on the wet dock with one violent jerk.

I scrambled and kicked as the grip tightened and a fiend of a man worse than any of my under-the-bed monsters appeared. He dragged me across the dock as he used my leg to pull himself up.

His hands and arms were gross with blackened, burned skin that was healing at different rates. In the light I saw pink new underflesh and hanging dead skin that hadn’t yet let go. The rest of him was thin, bony, reminding me of a deformed crawdad as he crawled up on the dock.

If his body hadn’t frightened me, his face would have. His eyes were wide and hollow, his mouth twisted from his effort. Brown hair grew across his chin in patches. Madness flooded his stare.

“Let go of me!” I screamed, kicking at his hands with my free leg.

I connected, my tennis shoes landing hard against the side of his face.

His eyes registered no pain, only fright-like a wild animal gone mad.

His grip tightened, dragging me to him.

I braced to kick him again but his free hand caught my arm and pulled me against him. His body felt fever-hot against me and jerked in tiny panicky movements.

“Help!” I yelled, knowing no one would hear. “Someone help!”

His grip was stronger than I’d expected and I couldn’t break free. As he struggled to his feet, he planted his knee on my captured arm and pulled a knife from his belt.

The cold blade slid beside my throat deep enough to cut into the first layer of skin.

“Be still. Be still, lady. You got to be still,” he rambled, his rank breath polluting the air. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to borrow a car. I ain’t going to hurt nobody. I didn’t shoot nobody. I just got to have a car. A car.” He pushed the knife a fraction deeper into my neck. “You got a car?”

His hand was unsteady. I tried not to breathe for fear he’d jerk slightly and cut into an artery.

He stood, pulling me up to him, then pressing his body behind me. “Take me to it, lady, and I’ll leave you be. I just got to go. Got to have a car.”

We walked like Siamese penguins down the dock. I could feel his body shaking. If possible he seemed more nervous than I was. Frantically I tried to think of something, anything to say. Nothing.

I thought of saying, “Don’t kill me,” but I didn’t want to give him any ideas. If I turned around and looked at him, he’d probably think he had to kill me. He was the one with the knife. He should have been the one in control, but he didn’t seem to know it.

We moved slowly toward the porch. His grip eased a bit, but the knife remained. “Are you here alone?” he hissed in my ear. “Where’s the car? You got a car. Anyone else here?”

“Yes,” I lied. I wouldn’t put Nana in danger. “I’m alone and I have a car. You can have it. I’ll just have to reach inside the door and get the key.”

“Good.” He seemed to think for a moment, then asked, “Why are you here? I’ve been here before once. This ain’t your place. Why were you out by the dock?”

“I’m Jefferson’s niece.”

We stopped at the first step. “Jefferson’s that old guy who used to own the store? I seen him once. He didn’t look like he liked me. You his kin?”

“Yes.” I started to nod, then remembered the knife. “Did you know him?”

“No, but I heard he was a nosy old guy.” He removed the knife and pointed with it to the van. “That your van?”

His grip on my arm warned me not to move. “Yes.”

He poked the point of the knife against my back. “Give me the keys. I don’t mean you no harm. I just got to get away from here.”

I stepped on the porch, reached inside the door, and lifted the keys from the nail just above the light switch. As I pulled the keys away, my hand brushed the switch and twinkle lights blinked on.

He jumped at the sudden dots of light and I saw near insanity in his gaze.

Shoving the keys at him, I yelled, “Here, take the van.” All I wanted was him gone.

He stared at the key, then at the lights, and shook his head as if he thought I was trying to trap him. “No, you come, too.” He turned, shoving me off the porch and onto the steps. “If I leave you here, you’ll call the sheriff and he’ll be real mad at me.”

“No,” I said, deciding I’d rather be killed here than along the dark road somewhere. “I’m not going with you.” My words came out in frightened hiccups. “I’m staying right here.”

He pushed the knife until the point cut through my blouse. “You’re coming with me. You have to.”

I stumbled forward off the last step just as Nana barreled through the door.

“What do you think you’re doing, scaring my child?” She puffed up like a baby horned toad preparing to spit.

I took a step to block him from getting to her.

She grabbed his arm and the knife slid across my back as Nana twisted him to face her. This was the Nana of my childhood, strong and always willing to fight for me. For an instant I saw myself as a young girl, when Nana had been my only warrior, my only harbor no matter what the storm.

He swung wildly, the knife connecting with flesh.

Nana screamed but didn’t back down.

I jumped into action, grabbing one of the lawn chairs and slamming it into the stranger’s head as hard as I could.

He wavered as though deciding which way to fall. I hit him again.

The knife flew. The monster crumbled.

I dropped the chair and ran to Nana. Her arm, from wrist to elbow, had been cut deep.

“Stay still. I’ll get a towel.”

She nodded, pain showing in her wrinkled old face. “I’ll sit on him while you’re gone.”

Running to the office, I grabbed towels and duct tape from the catchall shelf. One of the file boxes tumbled and pictures scattered across the floor. The mess barely registered. Nothing mattered now but Nana.

Nana sat waiting for me, holding her arm tight against her. I wrapped towels around it as tight as I could and bound it with duct tape. “I’ve got to get you to the hospital.”

She looked down at the stranger. “What do we do with him? I don’t think he belongs here.”

I grabbed the duct tape. “We’ll leave him for Luke. He’ll know what to do with him.” In seconds, I’d wrapped his hands and feet.

By the time Nana walked to the van, I knew my attacker wasn’t going anywhere. One last round of tape secured him to the porch. I grabbed Nana’s shawl and ran for the car.

As I drove the van faster than I thought it would ever go, Nana sat beside me, hugging her arm.

“I’m cold,” she whispered.

“We’re almost there.”

The night passed by with blinking telephone poles flickering in the moonlight. I told myself that Nana would be fine. Stitches, that’s all she needed. In a few minutes it would all be over and Nana and I would have a story to tell around the coffeepot.

But a worry wormed its way into my thoughts. If the drug dealer had Luke’s canoe, where was Luke?

Something the drug dealer said kept picking at my brain like an embedded thorn.

He’d said he didn’t shoot anyone.

I shoved the gas pedal to the floor and tried to focus on one crisis at a time.

2300 hours

North Shore

By the time he reached the gate at the back of Mary Lynn’s old Mission home blood burned in Luke’s throat with each breath. He shoved the wrought-iron gate open, popping vines of dried morning glories as he charged.

A light spilled into the garden from the picture window that overlooked the dam road. Luke trudged across flowerbeds packed for winter, not caring what damage he did to sleeping bulbs.

“She’s home, Nathan. Just a few more steps now.” Luke pushed harder. “I see a light. We’ll have you on your way to the hospital in minutes.” Mary Lynn’s skills at first aid were far better than his. Luke had seen that firsthand the night Dillon had been hurt. She’d take good care of Nathan.

Luke felt responsible for him. None of the other agents had shown much interest, but Nathan was on board from the first. There should have been four or five seasoned men in the field tonight. Luke should have insisted. He had enough pull to make it happen, but for once he’d misjudged the situation.

That fact bothered him more than he wanted to think about. A supervisor once said that when you start making mistakes it’s time to get out. One way or the other, you will. The only question is, do you walk or ride?

Right now Luke needed to think about the three places he should be at once. First, with Nathan. Second, back rounding up the two drug dealers before the lowlives gnawed out of their chains like wild animals in traps. And third, he should be standing next to Allie in case Skidder made it across the lake. If the wiry little man had no plan when he stole the canoe, with his bug-sized brain he’d be drawn to the firelight. And Allie would be in his way.

Luke looked up and thought he saw movement on the balcony. “Paul! Mary Lynn!”

“Luke?” a male voice yelled back. “Luke, what’s wrong?” Paul ran down the circle of stairs as he shouted, “We thought we heard shots.”

“You did,” Luke answered, allowing himself to slow his pace for the first time since he’d lifted Nathan half a mile ago. “I’ve got a man hurt.”

Paul reached them and shouldered part of Nathan’s weight as they hurried into the open archway beneath the stairs.

Mary Lynn flipped on lights. “Who’s hurt?”

“Nathan, my partner. The drug dealers shot him.”

Rushing to Nathan, she rested her hand on his throat. “Get him to the couch.”

She checked for more wounds as they walked. She had the gentle touch of a healer.