‘We were stealing from him,’ Cora pointed out.
‘Him? He had boobs. Did you see that? Shit. A hermaphrodite.’
‘I really think he’s gonna come after us,’ Vivian said. ‘Maybe we oughta get going.’
Abilene didn’t want to move. She felt too weary, too comfortable sprawled on the dock with the sun warming her. Keeping her eyes shut, she said, ‘Batty won’t come after us. Probably too busy calling down another curse. Plans to let the forces of magic nail us.’
‘I guess we’re doomed,’ Finley said.
Though Abilene couldn’t help smiling at the remark, she was surprised to hear Cora and Vivian laugh.
‘Next thing we know,’ Finley went on, ‘we’ll have flocks of birds dive-bombing us.’
‘More likely bats,’ Abilene said.
‘I think maybe we should get out of here,’ Vivian said.
‘Batty can hex us till hell freezes over,’ Cora said. ‘It’s just bullshit.’
‘That storm wasn’t bullshit,’ Abilene said.
‘It was just a storm. Batty didn’t make it happen.’
‘You sure of that?’
‘Christ, Abby.’
‘More things in heaven and earth, Horatio…’
‘That’s not what I mean, anyway,’ Vivian said. ‘It’s not curses and hexes that… I think maybe we should get out of here before something else happens. I mean, we could’ve drowned. Finley almost got stabbed. Cora, you got tom up by that damn cat. I killed it. We attacked that poor freak. Abilene broke his arm. Finley, you got so crazy you actually took a shot at him. It’s all… out of hand.’
‘It’s out of hand, all right,’ Finley muttered. ‘Someone murdered Helen.’
In the silence that followed Finley’s words, Abilene rolled over and pushed herself off the boards. She sat cross-legged, facing her friends. They were already sitting up.
‘You want to leave leave?’ she asked Vivian. ‘Not just go back to the lodge, but… really leave? Hike out of here?’ Lower lip clamped between her teeth, Vivian nodded. Her green eyes looked solemn, thoughtful. ‘Nothing we do is going to bring Helen back,’ she said. ‘If we stay… I’d rather get out of here alive, with all of you, than stay and try to get revenge. Look what just happened to us. Just so we could get our hands on a shotgun.’
‘We got it,’ Finley said.
‘And a lot of good it did us when the boat sank.’
‘I guess I go along with Viv,’ Cora said. ‘Hell, I was ready to walk a couple of hours ago until everyone talked me out of it. You included,’ she told Vivian.
‘Things have changed. I never realized…’
‘We always got payback,’ Finley said.
‘Nothing ever got this heavy,’ Cora said.
‘Nobody ever butchered one of us before. I want to kill the son-of-a-bitch that did it to her. And now we’ve got the gun. All we need to do is stay the night and ambush the bastard when he shows up. A piece of cake.’
‘Right,’ Cora said. ‘A piece of cake like stealing the gun from Batty. Let’s just call it quits. I want the four of us to make it out of this alive.’
‘What about you, Hickok?’
‘I’ve had enough.’
‘God! You’re all gonna woos out on me?’
‘You were one second from having a knife in your back.’
‘Sure, but you…’
‘You would’ve been as dead as Helen. If I’d been looking the other way. If I hadn’t been quick enough. It was just too close.’
‘Like they say, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.’
Nobody smiled at her remark.
‘Besides,’ Abilene continued, ‘now we’ve got Batty on our case. I don’t know if he’s got any special powers. It sure did look like that storm was meant for us. But, regardless, I don’t think he’s gonna just leave us alone after all we did. He’ll want to nail us one way or another. So we’ve got Batty and the killer to worry about.’
‘Batty might be the killer,’ Finley pointed out.
‘It was that kid,’ Vivian said.
‘We’ll never know if we don’t stay and find out.’
‘Then we’ll never know,’ Cora said. She wrapped a hand around the shotgun barrels and stood up. ‘We’d better get started.’
‘This really and truly sucks,’ Finley muttered.
‘It’s the only smart thing to do,’ Vivian said as she got to her feet.
‘I don’t feel good about it either,’ Abilene said, forcing herself to stand. ‘But we’ve already pushed our luck. Let’s just hike out and let the police handle things.’
‘A lot of good the cops’ll do.’
‘Come on, Finley,’ Vivian said.
Finley frowned at the three of them. She shook her head. She muttered, ‘Shit,’ then stood up.
Cora in the lead, they started walking over the weathered planks of the old dock. Abilene felt tired and stiff and achy. It would’ve been nice to rest a while longer.
But, God, we’ve got a long way to go.
Miles and miles.
At least we’re getting out of here.
At the end of all those miles, there would be a motel. Eventually. A motel. A cool, soft bed.
If only we’d done this last night.
Helen would still be…
A plank gave out beneath Cora’s foot with a sound like a cracking whip and she gasped ‘Fuck!’ and pitched forward, her foot trapped. Her outthrust arms crashed the shotgun against the dock. Crying out in pain, she slammed down on top of it.
As the others rushed forward, she pulled her fingers out from under the gun. They were red and shaking. She wiggled them a bit, apparently to see whether they still worked. Otherwise, she didn’t move.
She lay there, left leg thrown out to the side, right leg straight out behind her but twisted, caught at the ankle between two boards.
Vivian stepped over the gap, knelt at Cora’s side, and stroked her head. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Just great.’
‘You’ll be all right.’
‘Sure. Damn it!’
Abilene and Finley crouched over the opening. The heel of Cora’s shoe was wedged under the board behind the one that had broken.
‘We’ll have it out in a second,’ Abilene said.
‘Be careful.’
Finley let out a huff. ‘Yeah. God knows, we might get careless and bust it.’
‘Very funny,’ she muttered. She flinched when Abilene eased her knee sideways. She let out a long groan when Finley, holding on just above the top of the sock, pulled her foot out from under the edge of the plank and lifted it free.
Around Cora’s ankle, the sock bulged like an inflated balloon. Vivian, watching, wrinkled her nose.
Finley whistled and said, ‘Nasty.’
Feeling sick, Abilene said, ‘I hope it’s just a sprain.’
‘Don’t bother,’ Cora told her. ‘It’s broken.’
‘So much for hiking to civilization,’ Finley said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Cora rolled over slowly and sat up. She scowled at her misshapen ankle. ‘Just great.’
‘Does it hurt much?’ Vivian asked.
‘It hurts like shit.’
‘Now what’ll we do?’ Abilene asked.
‘Sit here and wait for it to heal,’ Finley suggested.
Ignoring her, Cora said, ‘I guess I can use the shotgun as a crutch. But we’d better start by stabilizing my damn ankle. I don’t want it flopping around. We’ll need some splints.’
Abilene stretched out flat on the pier. She looked down through the gap and saw the splintered ends of the plank that had snapped under Cora’s weight. Still nailed at the top, the two sections of board drooped toward the water. She grabbed one, pulled it up, and jerked it from side to side. The nails squawked as they were tom from their moorings.
She stood the slat upright. With Batty’s knife, she split it down the middle. She broke each board across her knee. When she was done, she had two usable pieces of wood, each a couple of inches wide and nearly a foot in length.
‘Perfect,’ Cora said.
Grinning, Finley said, ‘Hickok, you’re a regular Boy Scout.’
‘Taking the makeshift splints from Abilene, Cora pressed them against both sides of her ankle. ‘Now we need to bind them in place.’
‘Belts,’ Finley suggested. She lifted the hanging front of her shirt, looked down at her waistband, and frowned.