“Now run,” he ordered.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Run.”
My legs felt weak, but I knew it was just the fear. I was strong enough to run. I started up a jog. Billy still clutched my shirt and jogged with me. We made it all the way down to the end of the drive, between the two tabby pillars that guarded the entrance, and then turned on the rutted road toward the dock. He pushed me forward.
“Faster,” he panted.
I stumbled, and he collided with me, and we both fell. I leapt back, poised to spring away from him, but he was pointing the gun at me. At my head.
I held my breath and closed my eyes, suspended in time, waiting for the blast.
But nothing happened. No gunshot. No explosion of pain and blackness. He spoke instead.
“It was Pete Darnell. You know after he got married, he brought his brand-new wife to the island? Flaunted her in Doro’s face. His wife had no idea, but it broke something inside of my girl. One day when the new wife was off at the beach, Pete and Doro, they . . . ah . . . slept together.” He flung out a hand. “That piece of filth seduced my daughter in her very own house.”
I thought of the missing 1990 ledger. Of course Doro had hidden it. She was ashamed.
“So you sued Frances?” I said.
“It was all her fault, I figured, in the end. She was the one who set the whole thing in motion.” He rubbed his eyes, and I saw my chance.
I sprang off the road and fell into the dense palmetto thicket.
“Hey!” I heard Billy call, but I scrambled up again and pushed forward. Thorns tore at me as I thrashed through the brush, but I kept running until I’d made it deep into the woods. I stopped for a second, trying to still my breath, to listen for crashing footfalls.
Nothing.
I picked a different direction and dashed through another formidable-looking wall of brush, weaving through the tangled trees. I was heading to the dock, just like Billy wanted, only not the long way on the road. I would get there first and take his boat while he was looking for me in the woods. Maybe I’d catch up with Mom. At least I could get myself to St. Marys and call Koa.
Koa. Fresh panic sluiced through me. Billy had said he’d been to see him earlier. What the hell had he done?
I kept up my pace, sprinting through the woods, branches of palmetto and blackberry slicing at me until I spotted the sound. I burst out onto the shoreline, then slowed. I’d overshot it; the dock was a couple of hundred yards to my left. Frances had already gone, apparently, with Captain Mike. I trotted along the tangled shore, looking for the boat Billy said he’d hidden. There was nothing. Just the Jeep Frances had parked nearby.
Had the story about the boat been a lie? Was Billy planning to get me out here and shoot me so he could dump my body in the sound?
I retreated back into the woods. At least there I’d be safe. I walked for a while, wondering what my next move should be. Finding Koa seemed like my best bet. He had a gun and could help me find Billy’s boat, if the thing actually existed. I angled toward his cabin, picking up my pace.
Then stopped. I’d come upon the edge of a huge saw-palmetto thicket, a sea of the hostile-looking bushes stretching out at least a hundred yards in a vast semicircle. Their serrated fronds formed a formidable barrier. If I ventured in there, I’d encounter skunks and snakes and who knew what other animals, not to mention the spiny thorns of the plants themselves. I’d be sliced to ribbons.
Leaves crunched in the distance.
Billy.
I looked around wildly for some kind of ditch to duck into. A boulder to hide behind. But there were only trees—among them a huge live oak, dripping with moss and a couple of low spreading branches. The crunching became crashing. Billy was closing in on me. I had to move. Now.
I jumped and swung up over the lowest branch, the rough bark burning my hands. Billy was old, I told myself, my triceps and lats screaming in protest. He probably couldn’t see worth a flip. If I camouflaged myself in the tree branches, he’d have a hell of a time shooting me. And he’d never be able to come after me. I might be a princess, but he was an old fucking man. I’d stay up here all night, if that’s what it took—beat him on sheer stamina alone. I finally made my way up onto the branch, then stood and edged my way closer to the trunk where the branches were thicker and closer together. I pulled myself up, farther and farther into the tree, until I was out of sight.
I shrank behind the curtain of silvery moss. Pressed my back against the tree. Willed my breath to slow. I could hear Billy’s heavy work boots stumping through the underbrush. He was getting closer. The rustling got louder and louder until, at last, it stopped.
A squirrel chirped. Birds cawed over the treetops on the water. I could hear a boat engine in the distance, puttering away. I held my breath.
“Megan!” he yelled right beneath me, then, “Goddammit.”
I opened my eyes and looked around at the curtain of leaves and moss. And then I saw something that nearly stopped my heart: a snake—a rattler—was coiled in the crook of another branch, just to the right of me at eye level, so close I could see its diamond-shaped head resting on the layers of brown-and-black coils.
“Fuck,” I mouthed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
I reached around to my left, groping. My fingers closed around a branch the size of a switch. I bent it toward me, slowly, slowly, and, after a long time, I finally felt it crack. The snake hissed, jerking its head up. I froze.
“Megan! Come on out!” Billy was pointing his gun into a stand of pine trees. “I told you, I don’t want to hurt you. But if I’ve got to use this gun to slow you down, I will. I’ll do it for your own good, if I have to.”
He squeezed off a round, and a boom cracked the air. The snake’s body quivered, and a section looped below the branch. I looked down. Billy had backed up all the way to the tree, my tree, and was directly under the snake.
I pictured myself reaching over, flicking the snake down with my stick. In my mind I saw it fly down past the branches, its body flailing in the air. Saw it land on Billy. I imagined him screaming. Contorting his body to rid himself of the beast. Screaming again when it sank its fangs into his neck. Yes.
I reached forward, moving the stick toward the snake. Carefully slid it through the narrow U-shaped loop. That’s it. Thread the needle. Don’t move. Don’t breathe.
In one fast motion, I whipped the stick downward toward Billy, then released it. The snake sailed down toward the ground, hitting a few branches and ricocheting. The next instant, Billy screamed and began dancing over the leaves, swinging his arms wildly. I peered through the branches and moss, straining to see.
Billy whirled around it like some kind of possessed dancer, brushing frantically at his shoulders and groping blindly for his gun. He danced back, pointed the gun at the ground, and fired twice. Dirt and leaves sprayed out from the craters.