Claw Back (Louis Kincaid) (15 page)

             
He glanced toward the west. There was only about an hour of daylight left. If they didn’t find some trace of Katy or Keno soon they’d have to give up and start again in the morning.

             
If he could even convince Gary to try again.
They had checked out four abandoned camps so far and none had any signs
that
anyone had been there. 

             
The thick brush parted and Louis spotted a clearing ahead and then a cabin. No, not a cabin, he decided as they drew near, just another listing shack.

             
There were no fresh tire tracks in the narrow dirt road leading in and no signs of life anywhere in the weed-choked compound. Louis let out a hard breath of disappointment.

             
“Another dead end,” Gary said as steered the SUV in a wide slow circle. “That’s it. We’re heading back.”

             
“Have we hit them all?” Louis asked.

             
Gary was quiet, his jaw clenched, eyes trained on the windshield.

             
“Gary, are there any more camps?”

             
Gary braked to a hard stop. “Look man, this is nuts. You realize what the chances are of finding anyone out here? Fuck, you’re not even sure Katy is really missing.”

             
“I know
she is
.”

             
“How?
You don’t even know the woman. You don’t know what she’s like. She just does this sometimes.”

             
Louis stared at him. “What do you mean?”

             
Gary’s face was red and he was gripping the steering wheel hard. He looked away and shook his head. “Katy and me, we used to be together,” he said slowly. “But it got too hard, you know? It was always work with her, always the damn cats. She’d like disappear on me. I wouldn’t hear from her for days and then she’d come back saying she was out hunting down a cat or nursing a sick cub or going to some school or to
talk to
a damn
politician.”

             
Katy and Gary
?
Yeah, it seemed odd.
But only on the surface.
Th
ey both loved the same thing –
this awful desolate beautiful place.

             
Gary finally looked at Louis. “I loved her but there was never any room for me. It just got too
damn
hard
.
”

             
He looked away, jerking the SUV into gear. They rode in silence for a long time. Louis realized they were not heading west back toward Alligator Alley, that they were still going south. The brush was getting heavier, the terrain changing
from  prairie
to swampland.

             
“
I thought we were going back to Fort Myers,
” Louis
said
.

             
“
There used to be two
abandoned
camps northwest of Copeland,” Gary said. “
I don’t know if they’re still there but w
e might as well check them out.”

             
Copeland. Louis remembered the place. It was a forlorn little town on the edge of the
Fakahatchee
Strand Preserve. He and Joe had chased a kidnapper out into the swamp. The man had almost killed Louis before Joe shot him.

             
Her job had always come first, too. It was why she was now sixteen hundred miles away in Michigan. It was partly why they had split up last Christmas.

He was deep in thought and it took him a moment to realize the SUV had slowed. Gary was leaning forward peering into the thick stand of cypress trees ahead as they inched forward.

             
“I thought I saw something move,” Gary said.

             
Louis sat up straighter, his eyes straining into the dusk. Then he saw it –- a faint quiver of white light. It was there and then it was gone, like a firefly moving through the trees.

             
“A flashlight?”
Louis asked.

             
Gary braked.
“A lantern most likely.”

             
He shut off the engine. The quiet rushed in, followed by the soft sounds of the coming night –- frogs and crickets.

             
“We’d better walk from here,” Gary said.

             
Gary reached in the back and pulled out rifle and a flashlight, sticking the flashlight in his hunter’s vest. Louis slid out of the SUV, landing ankle-deep in warm water. He pulled out his
Glock
and followed Gary.

             
The outline of a shack materialized out of the gloom. It was constructed of weathered wood
with
a corrugated metal roof, its two windows boarded up.
Louis
couldn’t see a door; they must have approached from the back. A broken picnic table sat in the high weeds next to two rusted oil drums. In the swampy ground,
Louis couldn’t make out any tracks. There was no sign of a vehicle, no lights
,
no
sounds
. No signs of any life.

             
“Shit,” Gary whispered at his side. “I could have sworn I saw something.”

             
“I saw it, too,” Louis said, his
Glock
trained on the shack’s
windows
. “Let’s check the front. You go left, I’ll take the right,” Louis said.

             
He crept up to the shack, flattening himself against the wall.
He started slowly toward the front of shack.

             
A sudden
pop!

             
He knew that sound.
A silencer.

             
“Fuck! I’m hit!”

             
Gary.
Somewhere to his left in the darkness.

             
A crashing noise, like someone running through brush.

             
“Gary!” Louis yelled.

             
A soft moan.
Louis headed toward it.

             
In the darkness, he almost tripped over Gary’s body. Louis dropped to one knee. Gary was lying on his side in the mud, writhing.

             
“Shit,” Gary hissed, gripping his thigh.

             
“Did you see where he went?”

             
“No, no, I didn’t see anything. Ah, shit, it hurts...”

             
Suddenly, Gary went limp and quiet.

             
“Gary! Gary
!
”

             
No response.

             
Louis padded Gary’s vest and found
his
flashlight. Crouching low over Gary’s body, he switched it on. He had to find the wound, find out how badly Gary was hurt.

No blood.
He couldn’t even see a hole in his jeans.

             
Son of a bitch.

             
Louis switched off the flashlight. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust but finally he could make out the black outline of the
far
trees.
No light. The lantern was gone.

             
But Louis knew h
e was out there, waiting. Not with bullets but with tranquilizer darts.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

             
The buzzing of insects filled his ears. Sweat burned his eyes.

             
Damn
.
H
e couldn’t see a thing.

             
But he couldn’t risk turning on the flashlight and being an easy target for a dart.

             
Louis pressed his fingers against Gary’s neck. His pulse was slow but strong. He remembered that Katy said a tranquilized panther would stay out for at least a half-hour.

             
He’d have to chance it and leave Gary here.

             
Louis began to crawl, slowly, silently, alert for every snap of branch or creak of a door opening. When he made it back to the shack, he eased up against the walls, moving back to the shuttered window.
He pressed
against
it, straining to hear anything inside.

Nothing.

             
Then he heard it...a faint moaning sound.

             
No, not a moan.
A low growl.

             
Grace was here, inside this shack.
But what about Katy?
She had to
have heard
him yell out Gary’s name. If she was inside, why hadn’t she called out? 

             
Louis slipped around
to
the front
of
the shack, feeling his way along the planks for the door, mindful that there might be a
cypress stump or porch he could trip over. But there was nothing under his feet but muck.

             
Grace growled again, louder this time, a deep throated cry that ended in a whimper. It was the strangest
sound
Louis had ever heard from an animal. Was she dying? Was the bastard performing some sick ritual on her?

             
Louis drew a breath and held it, hoping to hear a human voice.
Nothing.

He knew he had to go in.

             
But if Grace was loose, wounded and hungry, she might attack him and he might be forced to --
God forbid
-- shoot her. Even if Grace was caged, the shooter could be lying in wait inside and dart him as soon as he opened the door. He would have only a few seconds to return fire. And if he missed, he’d be helpless.

             
He should retreat. Go back to Gary’s SUV and get on the CB radio. Get some help out here, even if it didn’t come until dawn. He could keep this shack covered until then.

             
But
then
Grace cried again, a pitiful growl that floated in the night a long time befo
re it faded. He couldn’t wait -
Grace could be dead by morning.

Louis drew up the flashlight and his
Glock
and stepped to the door.
He kicked it in, splintering the jamb.

             
A scream.
Animal scream.

             
He switched on the
flash
light and swung it in an arc. Grace
...lying
in a cage. Other things registered in a blur. A cot heaped with clothes.
A
dirty portable toilet.
A belt of knives hanging
on
the wall.
And the smell –- like rotting meat.

             
A muffled
sound in the dark corner behind him.

             
He spun.

             
It was Katy. She was tied up, arms over her head, suspended from a hook on a rafter. In the flashlight beam her eyes were
wide and wild above her duct-taped mouth. Her face was streaked with mud and dried blood.

             
He went to her and peeled off the tape.

             
She pulled in a ragged breath.
“Keno!
He’s outside!”

             
“Katy, take a breath.”

             
She was tied with fishing line, looped over the hook. He began to work at the line on her wrists.

             
“He heard your truck and he tied and gagged me! He took the dart rifle and ran outside. He wants to –”

             
Something hard came down
on
the back of Louis’s neck. He tumbled forward, almost falling into Katy. He dropped the flashlight and started to grope for it but suddenly he heard Keno working a rifle mechanism. The bastard was trying to load another dart.

             
Louis scrambled to his feet and suddenly
a beam of light
beam
came up behind him -- Katy had worked one hand free and was holding
the flashlight
. It washed Keno in white light. He stood, holding the large sighted rifle. His hands were shaking, his clothes were caked with mud and his face was dripping with sweat.